Fic: Monsters. (Ten/Rose, R, wildly AU and ridiculous.)
Monsters. Ten/Rose, R-ish, wildly AU. Written for starry_eyed's prompt, you can blame her for this madness. ♥ Hee. This is basically just a chance to goof around in the Buffy universe for a bit, with Ten as a slayer and Rose his vampire companion. Anyway, everyone should keep checking and reading and writing at then_theres_us, long live the ficathon!
Maybe it's a vampire con, the long game. She backs him up in a few fights and tells him some fairytales and one day, when he's braiding flowers into her hair, she rips his throat out.
He prefers not to think about that possibility.
He trips over a busted gatepost in the dark and nearly goes ass-over-teakettle down the hill; he catches himself just in time and goes skidding into a puddle instead, squishing muddy water into his knees. He sits there for a minute and blinks the rain out his his eyes, thinking about the vagaries of destiny, and if the vagaries of destiny would mind if he flipped them the bird, just for tonight, and went home. It's pouring and the plastic bags in his trainers are sliding down again, letting cold water seep into his socks. There is no part of him that is dry, or clean, or cheerful.
"You look ravishing," she says, from somewhere behind him. "Really. Wet dog is so you." He turns to glare at her furiously, difficult to do even when he doesn't feel like a drowned terrier. She's sitting on the back of a stone lion under the ledge of a mausoleum, smoking, in a black belted raincoat. Her hair curls in thick waves to her shoulders, warm and golden and perfectly dry. She puffs out a thin thread of smoke and smiles, lips red even in the pitch-dark, and drops the cigarette to the ground, grinding the nub with her boot. He swallows, hard, and tries to think about boring things: exams, trash collection schedules, the news. She's really just an irritant, an itch he can't seem to properly scratch. Through no apparent fault of his own. Yes. And itchy things aren't- sexy.
"Did you come all this way for a laugh?" He stands up and shoves his muddy hands into his pockets, defensively. "Rose Tyler, terror of the night." She laughs. "Thought you had a busy schedule of people to seduce and rob. Kittens to bite, demons to thump."
"I freed up my calendar." She hops off her seat and comes to the edge of the steps, looking down at him. "All for you."
"I'm flattered." He turns away to trudge back up the path, hopefully on his way to a hot shower and a clean pair of socks. But she's faster than him right now, in all this mess, even if it's only by a margin, and so she slides in front of him before he can reach the gate. He makes a move to brush her aside and she catches his hand, cups it steadily as it turns into a fist. She could push him back, but instead she reaches forward and traces the path of a raindrop on his skin, down his temple and across his cheek, sliding down his jaw. He stares at her and for a long minute, neither of them speak.
"Come with me," she says at last. "Just for a bit."
He doesn't know how to refuse.
Rose lives under the old cathedral, in a crypt that was dug out more than a century ago and then forgotten about entirely during the war, when bombs ripped apart the roof and most of the walls and plenty of things were lost for good. She told him about it the first time she brought him here; showed him the shrapnel scars in the ceiling and traced the beams with her hands. She said she remembered the cathedral the way it used to be, the soaring windows and the vaults far above her head, arching like the sky at night. He'd asked if that was when she was a child, and Rose had laughed at him.
"No," she'd said. "I was younger then, but not that young." He doesn't know what that means. There's no record of a Rose Tyler in Professor Yana's books, no lists of sightings and known weaknesses like there are for Count Dracula and his legions of undead fanboys. He ought to know, he's memorized them all. But he doesn't have an encyclopedia entry on Rose, nothing to memorize but the weird tidbits he gathers one by one: her fondness for old French love songs and greasy chips and games of cards, her memories of things he's only read about in textbooks. She says she wore a pink dress for the coronation but he doesn't know if that's a lie or a half-truth, if she was alive or- not. He doesn't know how old she is. And he really doesn't know why she helps him. Maybe it's a vampire con, the long game. She backs him up in a few fights and tells him some fairytales and one day, when he's braiding flowers into her hair, she rips his throat out.
He prefers not to think about that possibility.
"Cat got your tongue?" she asks, lighting another candle. "You had plenty to say a minute ago." She puts it in a jar and hangs it back up with the others on a wire over their heads. She's got electricity, stolen from the grid, but she seems to like the warmth of old-fashioned things. He appreciates that now, in the cold of the underground, with his clothes still sticking to his skin. One more thing he doesn't know: why she lives under the church, where the earth itself ought to burn her or at least turn her stomach.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he asks. "Holy ground?" She looks at him strangely and then grabs a towel off a hook, throws it over his head. He scrubs at his hair. Rose sits on the arm of a chair and watches him like a cat, calm and amused and alien.
"I feel it," she says, after a while. "It's always there around me. I'm just- aware of it. It's a sensation in the back of my spine." She looks away, past him. "There's a lot of things I don't feel. It's kind of nice." He wraps the towel around his neck and smiles at her, tentatively. "Shut up," she says, grinning, tip of her tongue showing between her teeth. "And strip."
"Excuse me?" He tries to look more horrified than interested, though he is not sure which reaction is more honest. "And what?"
"You're going to die of hypothermia," she grumbles, and tosses a hoodie and a pair of jeans his way. They smell like cheap cologne and they're about three sizes too large for his skinny frame. He sniffs at them and gives her a suspicious look.
"Did you murder someone?" he asks.
"Yes, you," says Rose, "if you drop any more mud on my rugs."
When he's dry she hands him a heavy old book covered in a thick layer of dust, and he immediately sneezes into her face. For a second her eyes flash bright yellow, like she's thinking about disemboweling him, and then she just takes the book back out of his hands and smacks him with it.
"Ow," he says, and sneezes again.
"You're such a delicate little flower," she snaps. "I don't know how you survive." She stalks to the table and opens the book, turns the pages and folds out a faded map. "Here. If you're done having a hysterical fit, I found something." He scrubs at his face with his borrowed sleeves and follows her, peering with interest at the symbols surrounding the charts. "Got it off a Fyarl. He thought he'd come into town, throw his weight around, get himself a cozy little setup." Rose smiles happily and he can see her canines slipping down, the beginnings of the fine white points she usually keeps hidden around him. "We had a nice chat, and he gave me a lovely present." He looks down at the book in disbelief.
"Are you telling me," he asks, "Fyarls can read?"
"He was using it to prop up a wobbly table," she says. "Point is, can you read it?"
"That's Vahrall," he says. "Very flowery, very archaic Vahrall." He squints down at the tiny letters. "Does that say darkness?"
"I don't know," she says, rolling her eyes, "you're the boy wonder. My Vahrall's rusty." She folds her arms over her chest and smirks. "And most of what I know isn't exactly printable."
"Your mother's a delightful woman with very good teeth, and other such stories?" He grins. "I've read that one." He traces the letters with his index finger and frowns. "I can't do this myself. Some of these shapes, they're clouding the meaning. This means stone, but this line... it could be mountain or hill. Boulder, maybe."
"Or gravestone." He raises an eyebrow at her.
"Might be." He folds up the map with careful attention and closes the book, tucks it under his arm. "Yana's going to want to see this." Her eyes darken and cool, and the hand that was beginning to slide up to rest against the small of his back is withdrawn. He misses her slight touch. For him, this is the change- not the transformation into the creature that simmers beneath her surface, but the way she retreats into herself when he least expects it. She doesn't trust his watcher and his watcher doesn't trust her, but what does she expect? It's Yana's job to train him to fight vampires, and here he's sitting underground in borrowed knock-off jeans, guard totally down, with someone who's supposed to be his mortal enemy. It's no wonder the old man hates her. The whole thing makes his head hurt. "It's getting late, anyway. I should be heading back." He waits for her to say something and she doesn't, so he turns to leave.
"I'll walk with you," she says, unexpectedly. She smiles again, but not so warmly. "It's dangerous out there."
When Yana opens the door, he stares fuzzily out and smiles and starts to say "Well, what a pleasant surprise," except he gets halfway through surprise and stops, closing his mouth with a snap and staring out at Rose. She is hiding sullenly behind the corner of the hedge, last remains of her second cigarette burning out, and they glower at each other like a couple of maladjusted teenage rivals. "This is a surprise indeed," Yana adds, icily. Rose rolls her eyes and ashes into the older man's garden and the slayer entertains a brief, guilty fantasy of knocking their heads together. Instead, he turns on his most wide-eyed smile.
"Professor," he says, eagerly, because he really is a bit eager to get this translated, "I need your help with some Vahrall." Yana looks caught between delight and dismay at being needed for something so esoteric at this hour of the night, but delight wins out and he ushers him into the house. Rose lingers outside. There's been no invitation. "Professor-"
"Never mind it," she says. "I'm not staying."
"Rose-"
"I'll see you around, yeah?" she says, both to him and Yana, and strides away down the walk, swinging her hips carelessly. He watches her go and turns to find Yana looking at him with disapproval. There's kindness there, too, understanding; but mostly caution. He hates that look. It makes him feel tiny, small, ungrateful. He doesn't want to be the last page in his watcher's book, a name crossed out, but it's different. Rose is different. Yana can probably see all that plastered across his face, because the older man sighs as he shuts the door.
"The slayer," Yana begins, "must choose his companions-"
"I know," he says. "I know."
He does know. He's just not sure he cares.
As it turns out, the symbol really does mean "gravestone." And the one just underneath that?
"It meant end," he says, smashing his fist into a Vahrall's nose, drawing back, and doing it again. He tosses the unconscious demon over a headstone and ducks a knife that someone is throwing at his head. Typical. "As in, end of the world."
"Surprise, surprise," says Rose. "Demons, so predictable." She kicks one in the groin, calmly. "But they do throw good parties." Her fangs are out, but her face is still smooth and natural, weirdly beautiful and innocent in the moonlight. A vampire grabs her from behind and she flips him over her back, kneels down and rips his throat out in one swift motion. When she comes up, there's blood running down her mouth and on her neck, soaking beneath her collar. It's shocking, and it's shocking how not shocking it is. "Duck," she says, and leaps over him to launch herself at another. They fight back to back, circling and leap-frogging and tossing stakes back and forth, synchronicity. It has never been like this with anyone else, not ever. He twists a demon's arm and flings it into Rose's path, and she's there to catch it, snap its neck, move along. They are like a single arm, a single arrow. He won't say it to Yana, but Rose is the silvery edge to his blunt side. She knows he doesn't like it, his calling. He never has.
He doesn't like the kill.
The ritual is almost complete, he can tell by the violent shuddering of the earth under them, the shifty way the demons keep looking around, like they're stalling for time. He thumps a demon's head into a pile of dirt and yells for Rose.
"We need to find the source!" he calls out. "It's close, I can feel the tremors!" She nods, and seizes the throat of the closest Vahrall.
"You heard him," she snarls. "Source."
"I'd rather die," he spits, clawing for her eyes. Rose shrugs and snaps his neck and grabs another one, a smaller one that squirms and shrieks in her grasp. She starts to ask the question again and it just points towards the woods with an earnest expression on its wrinkly face.
"Cheers," she says, and pushes it aside. It takes off running in the opposite direction and the few that are left scatter with it, heading for the hill or the treeline, casting frightened looks over their shoulders. "You think they're scared of something?" she asks, glancing around. There is still blood all over her chin. He is about to make a joke regarding her hygiene and personal grooming when there is a thunderous sound and a heave of the earth beneath them, and they are both sent sprawling. He thumps his head against the side of a mausoleum and rolls, groaning, and suddenly Rose is over him, her fangs gone and her eyes warm and worried. "Are you alright?" Her hands flutter over his scalp, testing his skin, cupping his face in her palm. He sits up and pats her arms away reassuringly. There's a few drops of blood on her fingers where the stone scraped his head, and as he watches, she licks it carefully off the tips. They stare at each other for a second and then she says, "I think something's coming."
"How can you tell?"
There is another shudder in the earth, and then another, like massive footsteps, and then the sickly rotten smell of an enormous, hairy hellbeast wafts in their direction.
"Oh," says Rose. "Women's intuition."
They run.
"So the world's safe again," says Rose. "For a little while." They are lying on their backs on Rose's enormous, ridiculously comfortable bed, because neither of them want to do anything more taxing than remaining perfectly still and counting and re-counting their limbs. They all seem to be in the proper places, but one can never be too careful. The sun is up, anyway, so there is nowhere to go that Rose can follow.
"Yes," he sighs. His chest aches and his head throbs. And tomorrow is Monday and he gets to go to work at the library and be mild-mannered again for a while, at least until one of the thousands of creatures who hates him gets a new idea. For now he's content to sink into the duvet and listen to the sound of his own pulse thudding slowly in his chest. He shuts his eyes and he can still feel Rose curled beside him, lying there perfectly still without breathing or circulating. Not really thinking about it, he takes her hand and rests it on his chest, above his heart. There's only one heartbeat between them, but it doesn't matter. It's never mattered. Her hand is warmer where they touch. "Rose," he says.
"Yes?"
"Did you ever want to be something different?" He stops and thinks about that. He backtracks. "I mean, is there anything you wanted to do that you've never done? Something more?" She strokes a circle around the muscle over his heart.
"Yes," she says. "And you?"
"Every day," he says. He has a thought. "Have you ever been to Norway?" She gives him a quizzical look. "Land of the midnight sun," he says. "Plus the opposite- land of the just plain midnight, lots of lovely darkness, all through the winter." She's catching on, and her eyes are sparkling. "I'd imagine the nightlife is pretty lively."
"Are you asking me on a date?" she says, teasingly, though there's something heartbreaking in her voice. She is the loneliest person in the world, he sometimes thinks. He doesn't understand her completely, but he understands a little. The wild creature in a girl's body. She still could kill him someday, or today, or never. Her golden hair is curling loose out of her braid and he tucks the strands back behind her ear. She's smiling.
"Did I mention," he says, "the reindeer?"
It's a start.
Maybe it's a vampire con, the long game. She backs him up in a few fights and tells him some fairytales and one day, when he's braiding flowers into her hair, she rips his throat out.
He prefers not to think about that possibility.
He trips over a busted gatepost in the dark and nearly goes ass-over-teakettle down the hill; he catches himself just in time and goes skidding into a puddle instead, squishing muddy water into his knees. He sits there for a minute and blinks the rain out his his eyes, thinking about the vagaries of destiny, and if the vagaries of destiny would mind if he flipped them the bird, just for tonight, and went home. It's pouring and the plastic bags in his trainers are sliding down again, letting cold water seep into his socks. There is no part of him that is dry, or clean, or cheerful.
"You look ravishing," she says, from somewhere behind him. "Really. Wet dog is so you." He turns to glare at her furiously, difficult to do even when he doesn't feel like a drowned terrier. She's sitting on the back of a stone lion under the ledge of a mausoleum, smoking, in a black belted raincoat. Her hair curls in thick waves to her shoulders, warm and golden and perfectly dry. She puffs out a thin thread of smoke and smiles, lips red even in the pitch-dark, and drops the cigarette to the ground, grinding the nub with her boot. He swallows, hard, and tries to think about boring things: exams, trash collection schedules, the news. She's really just an irritant, an itch he can't seem to properly scratch. Through no apparent fault of his own. Yes. And itchy things aren't- sexy.
"Did you come all this way for a laugh?" He stands up and shoves his muddy hands into his pockets, defensively. "Rose Tyler, terror of the night." She laughs. "Thought you had a busy schedule of people to seduce and rob. Kittens to bite, demons to thump."
"I freed up my calendar." She hops off her seat and comes to the edge of the steps, looking down at him. "All for you."
"I'm flattered." He turns away to trudge back up the path, hopefully on his way to a hot shower and a clean pair of socks. But she's faster than him right now, in all this mess, even if it's only by a margin, and so she slides in front of him before he can reach the gate. He makes a move to brush her aside and she catches his hand, cups it steadily as it turns into a fist. She could push him back, but instead she reaches forward and traces the path of a raindrop on his skin, down his temple and across his cheek, sliding down his jaw. He stares at her and for a long minute, neither of them speak.
"Come with me," she says at last. "Just for a bit."
He doesn't know how to refuse.
Rose lives under the old cathedral, in a crypt that was dug out more than a century ago and then forgotten about entirely during the war, when bombs ripped apart the roof and most of the walls and plenty of things were lost for good. She told him about it the first time she brought him here; showed him the shrapnel scars in the ceiling and traced the beams with her hands. She said she remembered the cathedral the way it used to be, the soaring windows and the vaults far above her head, arching like the sky at night. He'd asked if that was when she was a child, and Rose had laughed at him.
"No," she'd said. "I was younger then, but not that young." He doesn't know what that means. There's no record of a Rose Tyler in Professor Yana's books, no lists of sightings and known weaknesses like there are for Count Dracula and his legions of undead fanboys. He ought to know, he's memorized them all. But he doesn't have an encyclopedia entry on Rose, nothing to memorize but the weird tidbits he gathers one by one: her fondness for old French love songs and greasy chips and games of cards, her memories of things he's only read about in textbooks. She says she wore a pink dress for the coronation but he doesn't know if that's a lie or a half-truth, if she was alive or- not. He doesn't know how old she is. And he really doesn't know why she helps him. Maybe it's a vampire con, the long game. She backs him up in a few fights and tells him some fairytales and one day, when he's braiding flowers into her hair, she rips his throat out.
He prefers not to think about that possibility.
"Cat got your tongue?" she asks, lighting another candle. "You had plenty to say a minute ago." She puts it in a jar and hangs it back up with the others on a wire over their heads. She's got electricity, stolen from the grid, but she seems to like the warmth of old-fashioned things. He appreciates that now, in the cold of the underground, with his clothes still sticking to his skin. One more thing he doesn't know: why she lives under the church, where the earth itself ought to burn her or at least turn her stomach.
"Doesn't it bother you?" he asks. "Holy ground?" She looks at him strangely and then grabs a towel off a hook, throws it over his head. He scrubs at his hair. Rose sits on the arm of a chair and watches him like a cat, calm and amused and alien.
"I feel it," she says, after a while. "It's always there around me. I'm just- aware of it. It's a sensation in the back of my spine." She looks away, past him. "There's a lot of things I don't feel. It's kind of nice." He wraps the towel around his neck and smiles at her, tentatively. "Shut up," she says, grinning, tip of her tongue showing between her teeth. "And strip."
"Excuse me?" He tries to look more horrified than interested, though he is not sure which reaction is more honest. "And what?"
"You're going to die of hypothermia," she grumbles, and tosses a hoodie and a pair of jeans his way. They smell like cheap cologne and they're about three sizes too large for his skinny frame. He sniffs at them and gives her a suspicious look.
"Did you murder someone?" he asks.
"Yes, you," says Rose, "if you drop any more mud on my rugs."
When he's dry she hands him a heavy old book covered in a thick layer of dust, and he immediately sneezes into her face. For a second her eyes flash bright yellow, like she's thinking about disemboweling him, and then she just takes the book back out of his hands and smacks him with it.
"Ow," he says, and sneezes again.
"You're such a delicate little flower," she snaps. "I don't know how you survive." She stalks to the table and opens the book, turns the pages and folds out a faded map. "Here. If you're done having a hysterical fit, I found something." He scrubs at his face with his borrowed sleeves and follows her, peering with interest at the symbols surrounding the charts. "Got it off a Fyarl. He thought he'd come into town, throw his weight around, get himself a cozy little setup." Rose smiles happily and he can see her canines slipping down, the beginnings of the fine white points she usually keeps hidden around him. "We had a nice chat, and he gave me a lovely present." He looks down at the book in disbelief.
"Are you telling me," he asks, "Fyarls can read?"
"He was using it to prop up a wobbly table," she says. "Point is, can you read it?"
"That's Vahrall," he says. "Very flowery, very archaic Vahrall." He squints down at the tiny letters. "Does that say darkness?"
"I don't know," she says, rolling her eyes, "you're the boy wonder. My Vahrall's rusty." She folds her arms over her chest and smirks. "And most of what I know isn't exactly printable."
"Your mother's a delightful woman with very good teeth, and other such stories?" He grins. "I've read that one." He traces the letters with his index finger and frowns. "I can't do this myself. Some of these shapes, they're clouding the meaning. This means stone, but this line... it could be mountain or hill. Boulder, maybe."
"Or gravestone." He raises an eyebrow at her.
"Might be." He folds up the map with careful attention and closes the book, tucks it under his arm. "Yana's going to want to see this." Her eyes darken and cool, and the hand that was beginning to slide up to rest against the small of his back is withdrawn. He misses her slight touch. For him, this is the change- not the transformation into the creature that simmers beneath her surface, but the way she retreats into herself when he least expects it. She doesn't trust his watcher and his watcher doesn't trust her, but what does she expect? It's Yana's job to train him to fight vampires, and here he's sitting underground in borrowed knock-off jeans, guard totally down, with someone who's supposed to be his mortal enemy. It's no wonder the old man hates her. The whole thing makes his head hurt. "It's getting late, anyway. I should be heading back." He waits for her to say something and she doesn't, so he turns to leave.
"I'll walk with you," she says, unexpectedly. She smiles again, but not so warmly. "It's dangerous out there."
When Yana opens the door, he stares fuzzily out and smiles and starts to say "Well, what a pleasant surprise," except he gets halfway through surprise and stops, closing his mouth with a snap and staring out at Rose. She is hiding sullenly behind the corner of the hedge, last remains of her second cigarette burning out, and they glower at each other like a couple of maladjusted teenage rivals. "This is a surprise indeed," Yana adds, icily. Rose rolls her eyes and ashes into the older man's garden and the slayer entertains a brief, guilty fantasy of knocking their heads together. Instead, he turns on his most wide-eyed smile.
"Professor," he says, eagerly, because he really is a bit eager to get this translated, "I need your help with some Vahrall." Yana looks caught between delight and dismay at being needed for something so esoteric at this hour of the night, but delight wins out and he ushers him into the house. Rose lingers outside. There's been no invitation. "Professor-"
"Never mind it," she says. "I'm not staying."
"Rose-"
"I'll see you around, yeah?" she says, both to him and Yana, and strides away down the walk, swinging her hips carelessly. He watches her go and turns to find Yana looking at him with disapproval. There's kindness there, too, understanding; but mostly caution. He hates that look. It makes him feel tiny, small, ungrateful. He doesn't want to be the last page in his watcher's book, a name crossed out, but it's different. Rose is different. Yana can probably see all that plastered across his face, because the older man sighs as he shuts the door.
"The slayer," Yana begins, "must choose his companions-"
"I know," he says. "I know."
He does know. He's just not sure he cares.
As it turns out, the symbol really does mean "gravestone." And the one just underneath that?
"It meant end," he says, smashing his fist into a Vahrall's nose, drawing back, and doing it again. He tosses the unconscious demon over a headstone and ducks a knife that someone is throwing at his head. Typical. "As in, end of the world."
"Surprise, surprise," says Rose. "Demons, so predictable." She kicks one in the groin, calmly. "But they do throw good parties." Her fangs are out, but her face is still smooth and natural, weirdly beautiful and innocent in the moonlight. A vampire grabs her from behind and she flips him over her back, kneels down and rips his throat out in one swift motion. When she comes up, there's blood running down her mouth and on her neck, soaking beneath her collar. It's shocking, and it's shocking how not shocking it is. "Duck," she says, and leaps over him to launch herself at another. They fight back to back, circling and leap-frogging and tossing stakes back and forth, synchronicity. It has never been like this with anyone else, not ever. He twists a demon's arm and flings it into Rose's path, and she's there to catch it, snap its neck, move along. They are like a single arm, a single arrow. He won't say it to Yana, but Rose is the silvery edge to his blunt side. She knows he doesn't like it, his calling. He never has.
He doesn't like the kill.
The ritual is almost complete, he can tell by the violent shuddering of the earth under them, the shifty way the demons keep looking around, like they're stalling for time. He thumps a demon's head into a pile of dirt and yells for Rose.
"We need to find the source!" he calls out. "It's close, I can feel the tremors!" She nods, and seizes the throat of the closest Vahrall.
"You heard him," she snarls. "Source."
"I'd rather die," he spits, clawing for her eyes. Rose shrugs and snaps his neck and grabs another one, a smaller one that squirms and shrieks in her grasp. She starts to ask the question again and it just points towards the woods with an earnest expression on its wrinkly face.
"Cheers," she says, and pushes it aside. It takes off running in the opposite direction and the few that are left scatter with it, heading for the hill or the treeline, casting frightened looks over their shoulders. "You think they're scared of something?" she asks, glancing around. There is still blood all over her chin. He is about to make a joke regarding her hygiene and personal grooming when there is a thunderous sound and a heave of the earth beneath them, and they are both sent sprawling. He thumps his head against the side of a mausoleum and rolls, groaning, and suddenly Rose is over him, her fangs gone and her eyes warm and worried. "Are you alright?" Her hands flutter over his scalp, testing his skin, cupping his face in her palm. He sits up and pats her arms away reassuringly. There's a few drops of blood on her fingers where the stone scraped his head, and as he watches, she licks it carefully off the tips. They stare at each other for a second and then she says, "I think something's coming."
"How can you tell?"
There is another shudder in the earth, and then another, like massive footsteps, and then the sickly rotten smell of an enormous, hairy hellbeast wafts in their direction.
"Oh," says Rose. "Women's intuition."
They run.
"So the world's safe again," says Rose. "For a little while." They are lying on their backs on Rose's enormous, ridiculously comfortable bed, because neither of them want to do anything more taxing than remaining perfectly still and counting and re-counting their limbs. They all seem to be in the proper places, but one can never be too careful. The sun is up, anyway, so there is nowhere to go that Rose can follow.
"Yes," he sighs. His chest aches and his head throbs. And tomorrow is Monday and he gets to go to work at the library and be mild-mannered again for a while, at least until one of the thousands of creatures who hates him gets a new idea. For now he's content to sink into the duvet and listen to the sound of his own pulse thudding slowly in his chest. He shuts his eyes and he can still feel Rose curled beside him, lying there perfectly still without breathing or circulating. Not really thinking about it, he takes her hand and rests it on his chest, above his heart. There's only one heartbeat between them, but it doesn't matter. It's never mattered. Her hand is warmer where they touch. "Rose," he says.
"Yes?"
"Did you ever want to be something different?" He stops and thinks about that. He backtracks. "I mean, is there anything you wanted to do that you've never done? Something more?" She strokes a circle around the muscle over his heart.
"Yes," she says. "And you?"
"Every day," he says. He has a thought. "Have you ever been to Norway?" She gives him a quizzical look. "Land of the midnight sun," he says. "Plus the opposite- land of the just plain midnight, lots of lovely darkness, all through the winter." She's catching on, and her eyes are sparkling. "I'd imagine the nightlife is pretty lively."
"Are you asking me on a date?" she says, teasingly, though there's something heartbreaking in her voice. She is the loneliest person in the world, he sometimes thinks. He doesn't understand her completely, but he understands a little. The wild creature in a girl's body. She still could kill him someday, or today, or never. Her golden hair is curling loose out of her braid and he tucks the strands back behind her ear. She's smiling.
"Did I mention," he says, "the reindeer?"
It's a start.