FIC: God in the Potstickers (Audioverse, Sarah/Josh)
Title: God in the Potstickers
Author: MinervaFan
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Rating: R (for safety)
Words: 2,323 words
Pairing: Sarah Jane/Josh Townsend
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Josh Townsend, Natalie Redfern
Summary: Sometimes a Chinese takeaway isn't exactly what it appears to be.
SPOILERS: All Sarah Jane Smith Audiobooks, through Dreamland
A/N: Remember when they actually resolved cliffhangers? Obviously, neither does Big Finish. Thank goodness for fanfic.
A/N2: Prequel to my story Chain of Events.
It was interesting what life and death and destiny can do for a Chinese takeaway. As recently as a month ago, Josh Townsend would have just eaten it. He would have fumbled with the chopsticks on purpose, mainly to make Nat and SJ laugh. He would have groused about the soy sauce, and waxed eloquent about this little dive across town that had the best kung pao chicken evah until the stupid corporate types had destroyed the area with chains and driven them out of business. He'd have drunk too much wine and flirted with the ladies and basically ignored the absolute, cosmic miracle of a good plate of lo mein.
Those days were way behind him.
Now God was in the potstickers, and nothing would ever be the same again.
*
All she wanted to do was drink. Sarah Jane was not, nor had she ever been, the type to rely on alcohol to get her through the day (or night). But little things like life and death and destiny can do that to a person.
She smiled through dinner, smiled at Nat, who was as clingy and possessive as any mother who'd just barely not lost her munchkins to a horrible, unthinkable fate. She forced motherly looks on Josh, who would continue to stare at her like that. For his life, for the fact that he'd survive to annoy another day, Sarah was more than grateful to them…she still refused to say their names, refused to give them that place in her own personal lexicon. They would forever remain nameless to her, these manipulative angels who had played the most monstrous trick on her own destiny to serve their own unfathomable purposes.
She looked at them and saw what she wanted to see. She saw two friends, young enough to be her own children, loved enough to be family more than associates. She saw bright futures and brave hearts, and ignored the hero worship, the protectiveness, the inappropriate sense of responsibility toward her they both insisted on feeling.
Sarah Jane was brilliant at perceiving what she wanted to perceive and chucking the rest off in self-defense. It was a terrible trait for a journalist, even though she refused to call herself that anymore. It was absolutely necessary for the Herald of the Orbus Pastronem.
She ignored Josh's glance, and took another potsticker.
*
This was getting bloody ridiculous. Nat watched Josh watching Sarah Jane not watching him, and shook her head. Ever since the Dauntless, these two had been flitting around each other like skittish cats, saying absolutely nothing with the most annoying intensity every time they came within ten yards of each other.
She'd gotten used to the weird dynamic between these two years ago. Sort of an Oedipal comedy of errors, pumped through a morass of emotional dysfunction and half-truths. Her own personal life was nothing to write home about, but Nat was at least sure that if she had feelings as deep as these two, she'd at least be self-aware enough to admit it to herself.
So.
These two went up in the Dauntless, all hell broke loose, some odd alien light took over and now, here they were.
Safe and bleedin' sound.
All of them around Sarah Jane's table, nice and tidy, the reports filed, the rest of the Crimson Chapter neutralized at last. She'd gotten the facts along with everybody else, completely unbelievable but obviously true because, well, it was true. Covered up, of course. Stuck in that warehouse with Indiana Jones' Ark of the Covenant and the formula for a clean-burning, inexpensive, renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
What wasn't part of the government cover-up, or the long, odd narratives shared by both Josh and Sarah Jane over too much red wine, was what had transpired between these two.
Nat could understand Sarah's mistrust of Josh-hell, she didn't know how long it would be before she could trust him completely again. He'd killed her boyfriend-in self-defense, she was sure, but still. He'd killed Will Sullivan, whom she suspected was the object of more than a bit of Sarah's deeply guarded affections. He'd lied about being Sir Donald's son, lied about being an acolyte of the White Chapter, then went back on his word and smuggled a gun aboard the Dauntless.
All to protect Sarah.
Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal, all in the name of complete and utter devotion.
It was so fucked up as to be comical.
She stared at those two as they bantered back and forth, skittering around what they didn't want to see sitting right there on top of the box of steamed rice. It was huge and absurd and unavoidable.
Well, unavoidable to normal, sane people.
Josh and Sarah Jane?
They could ignore it forever.
I wish they'd just get on with it and shag already, Nat thought cattily as she reached for another potsticker.
*
It took everything he had not to wheel Nat out of the front door himself. She'd finally begged off and gone happily to her blue mini, promising to meet them round noon the next day.
Sarah had protested, of course, suggested she stay over. This house on Bannerman Road was huge, SJ's metaphoric fuck you to the forces that had kept her on the run for so many years. There was space enough for five of them, she said. Ten if they were friendly.
The joke fell on deaf ears and Nat, bless her bless her bless her, kissed SJ on the cheek and promised to call in the morning.
Sarah fussed with the dishes.
Sarah fussed with the mess.
Sarah avoided looking him in the eyes.
If it hadn't broken his heart, it would have cracked him up.
*
Take the clue, Josh, she thought in his direction as she fussed with the dishes.
Take the hint. Go home. Leave me alone.
He made her laugh. He kept bloody making her laugh, which made it hard to concentrate, which made it hard to remember, and even harder to hate him.
She wanted to hate him, and the part he'd played in her destiny.
She wanted to hate him for that look of adoration in his eyes. It was so damned familiar. He was the same age she'd been when she'd stupidly started all of this with Duke Giuliano. It was stupid and dangerous and short-sighted, that absurd love in his eyes.
Oh, please, Josh. Please leave me alone.
She'd just dumped the last of the dirty chopsticks in the paper sack and tossed them in the bin when she felt him behind her, warm and solid and too gorgeous for words.
Stupid boy, she thought testily as she felt his lips on her throat.
*
He remembered a quote he'd heard once, back when he was still going to school, back when he still played the pretense of being a worthwhile member of his generation. Somebody asked one of the sculptors, Leonardo or Michelangelo or one of Italians, how they got those amazing figures out of stone. And the bloke had made some comment or another like I just chip away everything that doesn't belong until statue is done.
That was Sarah Jane.
She was human stone, worked at for years by forces beyond her control, all family, all identity chipped away until nothing remained but the Herald. They'd found her at her most vulnerable-he could still see the image of Harris at her aunt's funeral, an image that had been lost in the haze of grief until they cleared her thoughts.
He'd sought her out, found her at Lavinia's grave, crying.
Bloody bastard.
There she was, big strong Sarah Jane, burying her last tie to blood, her last tie to her dear departed parents, her last tie to everything in her own genetic history.
And they chose that moment to begin their assault.
Starting that very night, they had been relentless, brutal, unbearable. Every facet of her life stripped to the barest smooth surface, no extraneous textures, no unnecessary connections, nothing to snag onto or remind her of what she had been before.
Except it was all about what she'd been before.
Sarah Jane Smith, reporter for Metropolitan magazine, time traveler and girl adventurer. Sweet-faced and lovely, with a sharp mind and sharper tongue, so innocent and enthusiastic and burgeoning.
Had they been the same age, he would have stopped at nothing to seduce her back then. She was just his type.
Oh, bugger. She was just his type now.
Josh felt her stiffen in his arms, felt the sculpted shell around her harden, and cursed them silently. They had used her, of course, like so many other people had used Sarah Jane Smith. They had taken her innocence and turned it into something deadly, something he feared she'd never fully recover from.
He could feel it in her still, this overwhelming sense of responsibility, the burning on her hands of every drop of blood spilled in her name.
He wanted to kiss it away, to love it away, to shout her clean if necessary.
Josh had never felt anything like this for a woman.
It was more than love, more than lust even, although he felt quite his share of that for her.
It was…oh, god, it was a Lady Faire thing.
He almost laughed, but that would have just made her more self-conscious. She wasn't pushing him away as he brushed his lips against her skin. It was foolish of her, here in the quiet of this box-filled kitchen, to pretend she didn't at least reciprocate some of the attraction he felt toward her. They both knew better.
"Courtly love doesn't usually involve sex, does it?" he whispered into her hair.
She turned in his arms, awkward but daring to look him straight in the eyes. "Your father was Sir Donald, love, but you're still just Josh." A flicker of a smile passed across those lips. "And nobody ever mentioned sex. Ever."
Josh had to laugh now, and she smiled too. It was a fantastic smile, and he kissed it in gratitude. "You know, it's much easier now that I can't hide it from you."
"What? The fact that you're a White Chapter acolyte who's been hiding his true identity for years from his closest friends, or that you've wanted to push me against every available flat surface and shag like bunnies for the past few months?"
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You know, they did us a favor."
"They can rot in bloody hell for all I care," she said in a practiced, tempered tone.
"We saw each other, SJ. You saw me, and I saw you, and there aren't any secrets between us anymore."
"We saw what they showed us, and if I've learned anything in my travels, it's never believe anything that appears too clear and rational, especially if it's being handed to you by aliens."
He kissed her again, brushing his lips across a strand of brown hair that had fallen across her chin. "Cynic."
"Idiot," she breathed back without hesitation. "You're as big an idiot now as I was then, and if you're not careful, in thirty years somebody might build a cult around your mistakes."
"Let it go," he urged, stroking her hair, urgently aware of her body next to his. "You were just a girl. You did the best you could."
"Tell that to the Sullivan family. Tell that to those poor souls who suffered and died at the hands of the Crimson Chapter. The Crimson Chapter wouldn't have existed were it not for me."
"And those people might still be dead, SJ. You can't blame yourself for the evil in the world. You can't hold yourself responsible for life and death. You told Giuliano the truth. You inspired him. You gave him something to dream for. It's not your fault others twisted your words. It's not your fault humanity is, for lack of a better phrase, a nest of vicious, short-sighted morons who can destroy even the sweetest girl's words."
The look on her face broke his heart. He could see her there, in those terribly sad eyes, that girl she used to be. He could see her desperately wanting to believe that there was still hope for redemption. He could see her so much wanting to believe that there was hope for life again.
"Don't call me SJ," she whispered, falling back into the old joke, leaning her head against his chest. "Just…don't…"
'Sarah, you're going to have to learn to live with this. You're going to have to move on from this."
Her voice was like a child's in his jacket, fragile and far-away. "How?"
He didn't have an answer.
*
They didn't make love that night, nor in the weeks that followed. But something shifted, something tiny. She still didn't forgive him completely. He still didn't ask it of her.
But something changed in Sarah Jane Smith, something that made Josh smile as he found himself increasingly drawn into the world of his late-father's estate, increasingly overwhelmed by the grown-up responsibilities of being obscenely wealthy with thousands of livelihoods in your hands.
SJ and Nat teased him, encouraged him, even offered to have a sacrificial cutting off of his ponytail in honor of his new social and financial status.
But they knew, as he knew, that their moment was past. Their adventures had come to an end. Nat had finished her graduate courses, Sarah was slowly rebuilding her career, and life as they knew it was returning to what passed for normal.
Still, every once in a while, before it all just fell apart, before the calls grew fewer and further between, before the demands of their individual lives turned them into numbers on a mobile, every once in a while, they'd gather at the big rambling house on Bannerman Road and reconnect over red wine and potstickers.
The End
Author: MinervaFan
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Rating: R (for safety)
Words: 2,323 words
Pairing: Sarah Jane/Josh Townsend
Characters: Sarah Jane Smith, Josh Townsend, Natalie Redfern
Summary: Sometimes a Chinese takeaway isn't exactly what it appears to be.
SPOILERS: All Sarah Jane Smith Audiobooks, through Dreamland
A/N: Remember when they actually resolved cliffhangers? Obviously, neither does Big Finish. Thank goodness for fanfic.
A/N2: Prequel to my story Chain of Events.
It was interesting what life and death and destiny can do for a Chinese takeaway. As recently as a month ago, Josh Townsend would have just eaten it. He would have fumbled with the chopsticks on purpose, mainly to make Nat and SJ laugh. He would have groused about the soy sauce, and waxed eloquent about this little dive across town that had the best kung pao chicken evah until the stupid corporate types had destroyed the area with chains and driven them out of business. He'd have drunk too much wine and flirted with the ladies and basically ignored the absolute, cosmic miracle of a good plate of lo mein.
Those days were way behind him.
Now God was in the potstickers, and nothing would ever be the same again.
*
All she wanted to do was drink. Sarah Jane was not, nor had she ever been, the type to rely on alcohol to get her through the day (or night). But little things like life and death and destiny can do that to a person.
She smiled through dinner, smiled at Nat, who was as clingy and possessive as any mother who'd just barely not lost her munchkins to a horrible, unthinkable fate. She forced motherly looks on Josh, who would continue to stare at her like that. For his life, for the fact that he'd survive to annoy another day, Sarah was more than grateful to them…she still refused to say their names, refused to give them that place in her own personal lexicon. They would forever remain nameless to her, these manipulative angels who had played the most monstrous trick on her own destiny to serve their own unfathomable purposes.
She looked at them and saw what she wanted to see. She saw two friends, young enough to be her own children, loved enough to be family more than associates. She saw bright futures and brave hearts, and ignored the hero worship, the protectiveness, the inappropriate sense of responsibility toward her they both insisted on feeling.
Sarah Jane was brilliant at perceiving what she wanted to perceive and chucking the rest off in self-defense. It was a terrible trait for a journalist, even though she refused to call herself that anymore. It was absolutely necessary for the Herald of the Orbus Pastronem.
She ignored Josh's glance, and took another potsticker.
*
This was getting bloody ridiculous. Nat watched Josh watching Sarah Jane not watching him, and shook her head. Ever since the Dauntless, these two had been flitting around each other like skittish cats, saying absolutely nothing with the most annoying intensity every time they came within ten yards of each other.
She'd gotten used to the weird dynamic between these two years ago. Sort of an Oedipal comedy of errors, pumped through a morass of emotional dysfunction and half-truths. Her own personal life was nothing to write home about, but Nat was at least sure that if she had feelings as deep as these two, she'd at least be self-aware enough to admit it to herself.
So.
These two went up in the Dauntless, all hell broke loose, some odd alien light took over and now, here they were.
Safe and bleedin' sound.
All of them around Sarah Jane's table, nice and tidy, the reports filed, the rest of the Crimson Chapter neutralized at last. She'd gotten the facts along with everybody else, completely unbelievable but obviously true because, well, it was true. Covered up, of course. Stuck in that warehouse with Indiana Jones' Ark of the Covenant and the formula for a clean-burning, inexpensive, renewable alternative to fossil fuels.
What wasn't part of the government cover-up, or the long, odd narratives shared by both Josh and Sarah Jane over too much red wine, was what had transpired between these two.
Nat could understand Sarah's mistrust of Josh-hell, she didn't know how long it would be before she could trust him completely again. He'd killed her boyfriend-in self-defense, she was sure, but still. He'd killed Will Sullivan, whom she suspected was the object of more than a bit of Sarah's deeply guarded affections. He'd lied about being Sir Donald's son, lied about being an acolyte of the White Chapter, then went back on his word and smuggled a gun aboard the Dauntless.
All to protect Sarah.
Betrayal after betrayal after betrayal, all in the name of complete and utter devotion.
It was so fucked up as to be comical.
She stared at those two as they bantered back and forth, skittering around what they didn't want to see sitting right there on top of the box of steamed rice. It was huge and absurd and unavoidable.
Well, unavoidable to normal, sane people.
Josh and Sarah Jane?
They could ignore it forever.
I wish they'd just get on with it and shag already, Nat thought cattily as she reached for another potsticker.
*
It took everything he had not to wheel Nat out of the front door himself. She'd finally begged off and gone happily to her blue mini, promising to meet them round noon the next day.
Sarah had protested, of course, suggested she stay over. This house on Bannerman Road was huge, SJ's metaphoric fuck you to the forces that had kept her on the run for so many years. There was space enough for five of them, she said. Ten if they were friendly.
The joke fell on deaf ears and Nat, bless her bless her bless her, kissed SJ on the cheek and promised to call in the morning.
Sarah fussed with the dishes.
Sarah fussed with the mess.
Sarah avoided looking him in the eyes.
If it hadn't broken his heart, it would have cracked him up.
*
Take the clue, Josh, she thought in his direction as she fussed with the dishes.
Take the hint. Go home. Leave me alone.
He made her laugh. He kept bloody making her laugh, which made it hard to concentrate, which made it hard to remember, and even harder to hate him.
She wanted to hate him, and the part he'd played in her destiny.
She wanted to hate him for that look of adoration in his eyes. It was so damned familiar. He was the same age she'd been when she'd stupidly started all of this with Duke Giuliano. It was stupid and dangerous and short-sighted, that absurd love in his eyes.
Oh, please, Josh. Please leave me alone.
She'd just dumped the last of the dirty chopsticks in the paper sack and tossed them in the bin when she felt him behind her, warm and solid and too gorgeous for words.
Stupid boy, she thought testily as she felt his lips on her throat.
*
He remembered a quote he'd heard once, back when he was still going to school, back when he still played the pretense of being a worthwhile member of his generation. Somebody asked one of the sculptors, Leonardo or Michelangelo or one of Italians, how they got those amazing figures out of stone. And the bloke had made some comment or another like I just chip away everything that doesn't belong until statue is done.
That was Sarah Jane.
She was human stone, worked at for years by forces beyond her control, all family, all identity chipped away until nothing remained but the Herald. They'd found her at her most vulnerable-he could still see the image of Harris at her aunt's funeral, an image that had been lost in the haze of grief until they cleared her thoughts.
He'd sought her out, found her at Lavinia's grave, crying.
Bloody bastard.
There she was, big strong Sarah Jane, burying her last tie to blood, her last tie to her dear departed parents, her last tie to everything in her own genetic history.
And they chose that moment to begin their assault.
Starting that very night, they had been relentless, brutal, unbearable. Every facet of her life stripped to the barest smooth surface, no extraneous textures, no unnecessary connections, nothing to snag onto or remind her of what she had been before.
Except it was all about what she'd been before.
Sarah Jane Smith, reporter for Metropolitan magazine, time traveler and girl adventurer. Sweet-faced and lovely, with a sharp mind and sharper tongue, so innocent and enthusiastic and burgeoning.
Had they been the same age, he would have stopped at nothing to seduce her back then. She was just his type.
Oh, bugger. She was just his type now.
Josh felt her stiffen in his arms, felt the sculpted shell around her harden, and cursed them silently. They had used her, of course, like so many other people had used Sarah Jane Smith. They had taken her innocence and turned it into something deadly, something he feared she'd never fully recover from.
He could feel it in her still, this overwhelming sense of responsibility, the burning on her hands of every drop of blood spilled in her name.
He wanted to kiss it away, to love it away, to shout her clean if necessary.
Josh had never felt anything like this for a woman.
It was more than love, more than lust even, although he felt quite his share of that for her.
It was…oh, god, it was a Lady Faire thing.
He almost laughed, but that would have just made her more self-conscious. She wasn't pushing him away as he brushed his lips against her skin. It was foolish of her, here in the quiet of this box-filled kitchen, to pretend she didn't at least reciprocate some of the attraction he felt toward her. They both knew better.
"Courtly love doesn't usually involve sex, does it?" he whispered into her hair.
She turned in his arms, awkward but daring to look him straight in the eyes. "Your father was Sir Donald, love, but you're still just Josh." A flicker of a smile passed across those lips. "And nobody ever mentioned sex. Ever."
Josh had to laugh now, and she smiled too. It was a fantastic smile, and he kissed it in gratitude. "You know, it's much easier now that I can't hide it from you."
"What? The fact that you're a White Chapter acolyte who's been hiding his true identity for years from his closest friends, or that you've wanted to push me against every available flat surface and shag like bunnies for the past few months?"
He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "You know, they did us a favor."
"They can rot in bloody hell for all I care," she said in a practiced, tempered tone.
"We saw each other, SJ. You saw me, and I saw you, and there aren't any secrets between us anymore."
"We saw what they showed us, and if I've learned anything in my travels, it's never believe anything that appears too clear and rational, especially if it's being handed to you by aliens."
He kissed her again, brushing his lips across a strand of brown hair that had fallen across her chin. "Cynic."
"Idiot," she breathed back without hesitation. "You're as big an idiot now as I was then, and if you're not careful, in thirty years somebody might build a cult around your mistakes."
"Let it go," he urged, stroking her hair, urgently aware of her body next to his. "You were just a girl. You did the best you could."
"Tell that to the Sullivan family. Tell that to those poor souls who suffered and died at the hands of the Crimson Chapter. The Crimson Chapter wouldn't have existed were it not for me."
"And those people might still be dead, SJ. You can't blame yourself for the evil in the world. You can't hold yourself responsible for life and death. You told Giuliano the truth. You inspired him. You gave him something to dream for. It's not your fault others twisted your words. It's not your fault humanity is, for lack of a better phrase, a nest of vicious, short-sighted morons who can destroy even the sweetest girl's words."
The look on her face broke his heart. He could see her there, in those terribly sad eyes, that girl she used to be. He could see her desperately wanting to believe that there was still hope for redemption. He could see her so much wanting to believe that there was hope for life again.
"Don't call me SJ," she whispered, falling back into the old joke, leaning her head against his chest. "Just…don't…"
'Sarah, you're going to have to learn to live with this. You're going to have to move on from this."
Her voice was like a child's in his jacket, fragile and far-away. "How?"
He didn't have an answer.
*
They didn't make love that night, nor in the weeks that followed. But something shifted, something tiny. She still didn't forgive him completely. He still didn't ask it of her.
But something changed in Sarah Jane Smith, something that made Josh smile as he found himself increasingly drawn into the world of his late-father's estate, increasingly overwhelmed by the grown-up responsibilities of being obscenely wealthy with thousands of livelihoods in your hands.
SJ and Nat teased him, encouraged him, even offered to have a sacrificial cutting off of his ponytail in honor of his new social and financial status.
But they knew, as he knew, that their moment was past. Their adventures had come to an end. Nat had finished her graduate courses, Sarah was slowly rebuilding her career, and life as they knew it was returning to what passed for normal.
Still, every once in a while, before it all just fell apart, before the calls grew fewer and further between, before the demands of their individual lives turned them into numbers on a mobile, every once in a while, they'd gather at the big rambling house on Bannerman Road and reconnect over red wine and potstickers.
The End