Fic for toobroadtoodeep: "A Rock And A Hard Place" (Fitz/Benny, PG-13)
A Rock and A Hard Place
by brewsternorth
Length: approx 1346 words
Characters/Pairings: Fitz Kreiner/Benny Summerfield (strong hints at Eight/Benny and Eight/Fitz). From the prompt by ionlylurkhere for the toobroadtoodeep ficafest: "Fitz and Benny meet. Don't care how, or where in their respective timelines, just ... Fitz and Benny."
Rating: PG-13 for language and implications (with the usual infusion of mild angst and intoxicating substances)
Spoilers: none.
Summary: “I refuse to believe this is a shag-or-die situation.”
Betaed by kseda, Fitzfan extraordinary. (Thanks so much!)
“Hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Shut up and let me think.”
Some minutes passed.
“Well?”
“Give me a minute.”
“You’ve had ages already.” He delved in a dusty pocket. “Could do with some inspiration.” A rococo-looking hipflask (circa 1880, if Benny was any judge, though it wasn’t her period of expertise) followed his fingers out of it. She took a grateful swig. Bootlegged hypervodka. A drinker after her own heart. At least it would drown the whole “we’re not getting out of here” feeling in her guts.
She passed it back, watched him drink with the same look of a man drowning his fears. “Never say die,” she said wanly. “Look on the bright side, we’re not freezing to death. Did I tell you about that time on -?”
“Yeah,” Kreiner said flatly. “And the other one, and the other one, and I told you about Drebnar, didn’t I? Man, we must be in here too long, we’ve run out of Doctor stories.”
“Cruk, yes,” Benny agreed. “And every other kind of stories.”
“S’pose we could always think up captions to some of these wall-painting things -”
“Kreiner, don’t even think about it.” She flicked the light of the torch away from a particularly athletic-looking Kilari coupling (was that tentacle porn or something in that panel?) and into the middle of the back wall of this shrine-thingy. Which was, of course, carved with the same, to put it politely, images of fecundity. “Oh, for Goddess’ sake. Talk about a one-track mind. They’ve even managed to turn the altar into a den of iniquity. How are we off for booze?”
Kreiner inspected it. “’Bout half. Leave some for me, OK?”
Several swigs later:
“Fitzgerald Kreiner, I have a newfound respect for you. Even falling-down drunk you can carry a tune I’ve never heard of.”
“Jus’ Fitz. An’ it’d sound better if I had my guitar. Wrote that after I first met ‘im.”
“Any more where that came from, Beethoven? I think it’s going to be a long night.”
“Yeah. When we get out -”
“If.”
“When we get out, are you throttling ‘im, or shall I?” His hat was beginning to fall off. Benny let it lie when it finally toppled. Keeping her distance.
“No, that wouldn’t work. ‘Spiratory thingy.” She hefted her trowel. “This might give him something to think about. In the right places.”
Kreiner giggled. “Bloody hell. Wouldn’t want to get into your bad books.”
“Damn right, Kreiner. Got a light?”
Kreiner did a double-take. “Torch going out, or you changed your mind about the ciggies?”
Benny sighed, unintentionally confirming her point. “The air supply, you idiot. Unless you or I had a respiratory whatsit we’d both be dead if this place was airtight. I want to look for a vent. And since none of this script seems to say ‘press here for maintenance,’ I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh.’ Matches.” She held out her hand. He blinked at it. “Lighter, or something? Come on, hurry up.”
“Left-hand pocket, Professor.” He was winding down like a clockwork toy, sliding down the wall onto his arse, the hypervodka finally taking its toll. Oh, Doctor, she thought, for one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, your standards are slipping. “Gonna sleep now.”
And that was that. He slumped even further into his coat with an idiot grin plastered to his chops, and slept like a baby.
Infuriatingly like a baby, really: the man’s total innocence as he slept bothered her, even as she mentally wondered whether he’d just given her permission to rifle his pockets, and decided he had. The Dean had declared him a menace to the student body in no uncertain terms, and Benny had been prepared to deal with him, by force if necessary. She hadn’t been joking about the trowel.
Instead of a lothario, though, she’d got a grimy, sulky overgrown teenage hippie guitarist who could just about be trusted to handle a brush without wrecking a priceless find, and, bar a few off-colour jokes from time to time, hadn’t made a single advance to her. And enjoyed a tipple even if it seemed he couldn’t hold his drink for toffee. Benny didn’t know whether to be unsettled, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or bored silly. What the Doctor - and a few stories in she’d worked out that it was the same one she’d left behind, the dashing romantic with the wide eyes and wild hair - saw in him, she couldn’t tell. About the only skill Kreiner had was being able to sing on key. Maybe the Doctor had developed a fetish for live music?
No, nothing like a matchbox in either pocket - aha. A petrol-fuelled lighter, one of those post-war stainless-steel jobs. Perfect. Kreiner wriggled only a little as she fumbled it out of the breast pocket of the jacket, mumbling something incoherent.
She managed to get a flame at the third attempt, and switched off the torch.
“You are crukking kidding me.”
The flame wasn’t flickering in any one direction, it was guttering all over the shop. This place was a sieve.
Or a cage.
Shit.
Long, fruitless minutes of searching for a weak spot in the midst of any of the holes in the wall followed. It didn’t help that these were all located in the orifices of the copulating figures on the walls. Thank God Kreiner was still asleep. This would be one hell of an expeditionary write-up if they got out of here.
“Let’s just make one thing clear,” she said out loud to nobody in particular. “I refuse to believe this is a shag-or-die situation.”
She found a slightly less uncomfortable place to sit up by the altar, switched off the torch again (no point wasting the power pack), heard the sounds of the underground culvert beneath her and Kreiner’s snoring from across the room, and waited.
“Professor? Ow. Professor? Benny?” Kreiner was blundering around trying to grab hold of her in the dark.
Goddess, had she fallen asleep? She was getting old. She switched on the torch - Kreiner looked like Dracula’s idiot grandson shying away from the light. “What is it?”
“I’ve had an idea.”
“Hallelujah.”
“I keep seeing this ugly little bugger repeating around the walls.” He pointed to the bas-relief of a highly stylised gnome. “One facing one way, the other facing the other. They both point towards that thing on the opposite wall there, right?” He indicated the sculpted form of the behind of what presumably was the Kilari equivalent of Miss November.
“Probably means nothing,” Benny grunted, glancing at the nearest gnome. “Looks like he’s having a wank.”
Kreiner cleared his throat. “That’s what I thought too, but that’s, er, not his cock.”
Benny looked closer. “Well spotted. All right, Indiana Jones, what is it?”
“It’s that thing.” He indicated the lifelike lingam on the altar. “The Doc told me to look for the jade sceptre of the Kilari, and, well, maybe they decided to disguise it and booby-trap it so you’d only get out of here if you knew the truth.”
“The key in the lock. The other great Freudian metaphor. I should’ve seen this one coming. Kreiner, you should take over the archaeology chair from me.”
Kreiner gave a grin she almost wanted to remove with her fist. “Nah. I hate paperwork.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear that.”
“Right. Well. Let’s just bugger off out of here.”
“Kreiner, I have a trowel.”
“And I’ve got a stone todger.” He grabbed it from the altar, and, sure enough, a keyhole opened between the shapely buttocks of the exit. “Let’s make like a stone, and roll.”
“One more thing before we go, Kreiner. How did you solve the puzzle?”
“Pillow talk,” he said inscrutably, then hurried for the exit.
It took a moment for the implications of this to sink in before Bernice Summerfield sprang after him with a roar. “KREINER!”
by brewsternorth
Length: approx 1346 words
Characters/Pairings: Fitz Kreiner/Benny Summerfield (strong hints at Eight/Benny and Eight/Fitz). From the prompt by ionlylurkhere for the toobroadtoodeep ficafest: "Fitz and Benny meet. Don't care how, or where in their respective timelines, just ... Fitz and Benny."
Rating: PG-13 for language and implications (with the usual infusion of mild angst and intoxicating substances)
Spoilers: none.
Summary: “I refuse to believe this is a shag-or-die situation.”
Betaed by kseda, Fitzfan extraordinary. (Thanks so much!)
“Hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Shut up and let me think.”
Some minutes passed.
“Well?”
“Give me a minute.”
“You’ve had ages already.” He delved in a dusty pocket. “Could do with some inspiration.” A rococo-looking hipflask (circa 1880, if Benny was any judge, though it wasn’t her period of expertise) followed his fingers out of it. She took a grateful swig. Bootlegged hypervodka. A drinker after her own heart. At least it would drown the whole “we’re not getting out of here” feeling in her guts.
She passed it back, watched him drink with the same look of a man drowning his fears. “Never say die,” she said wanly. “Look on the bright side, we’re not freezing to death. Did I tell you about that time on -?”
“Yeah,” Kreiner said flatly. “And the other one, and the other one, and I told you about Drebnar, didn’t I? Man, we must be in here too long, we’ve run out of Doctor stories.”
“Cruk, yes,” Benny agreed. “And every other kind of stories.”
“S’pose we could always think up captions to some of these wall-painting things -”
“Kreiner, don’t even think about it.” She flicked the light of the torch away from a particularly athletic-looking Kilari coupling (was that tentacle porn or something in that panel?) and into the middle of the back wall of this shrine-thingy. Which was, of course, carved with the same, to put it politely, images of fecundity. “Oh, for Goddess’ sake. Talk about a one-track mind. They’ve even managed to turn the altar into a den of iniquity. How are we off for booze?”
Kreiner inspected it. “’Bout half. Leave some for me, OK?”
Several swigs later:
“Fitzgerald Kreiner, I have a newfound respect for you. Even falling-down drunk you can carry a tune I’ve never heard of.”
“Jus’ Fitz. An’ it’d sound better if I had my guitar. Wrote that after I first met ‘im.”
“Any more where that came from, Beethoven? I think it’s going to be a long night.”
“Yeah. When we get out -”
“If.”
“When we get out, are you throttling ‘im, or shall I?” His hat was beginning to fall off. Benny let it lie when it finally toppled. Keeping her distance.
“No, that wouldn’t work. ‘Spiratory thingy.” She hefted her trowel. “This might give him something to think about. In the right places.”
Kreiner giggled. “Bloody hell. Wouldn’t want to get into your bad books.”
“Damn right, Kreiner. Got a light?”
Kreiner did a double-take. “Torch going out, or you changed your mind about the ciggies?”
Benny sighed, unintentionally confirming her point. “The air supply, you idiot. Unless you or I had a respiratory whatsit we’d both be dead if this place was airtight. I want to look for a vent. And since none of this script seems to say ‘press here for maintenance,’ I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, ‘oh.’ Matches.” She held out her hand. He blinked at it. “Lighter, or something? Come on, hurry up.”
“Left-hand pocket, Professor.” He was winding down like a clockwork toy, sliding down the wall onto his arse, the hypervodka finally taking its toll. Oh, Doctor, she thought, for one who doesn’t suffer fools gladly, your standards are slipping. “Gonna sleep now.”
And that was that. He slumped even further into his coat with an idiot grin plastered to his chops, and slept like a baby.
Infuriatingly like a baby, really: the man’s total innocence as he slept bothered her, even as she mentally wondered whether he’d just given her permission to rifle his pockets, and decided he had. The Dean had declared him a menace to the student body in no uncertain terms, and Benny had been prepared to deal with him, by force if necessary. She hadn’t been joking about the trowel.
Instead of a lothario, though, she’d got a grimy, sulky overgrown teenage hippie guitarist who could just about be trusted to handle a brush without wrecking a priceless find, and, bar a few off-colour jokes from time to time, hadn’t made a single advance to her. And enjoyed a tipple even if it seemed he couldn’t hold his drink for toffee. Benny didn’t know whether to be unsettled, waiting for the other shoe to drop, or bored silly. What the Doctor - and a few stories in she’d worked out that it was the same one she’d left behind, the dashing romantic with the wide eyes and wild hair - saw in him, she couldn’t tell. About the only skill Kreiner had was being able to sing on key. Maybe the Doctor had developed a fetish for live music?
No, nothing like a matchbox in either pocket - aha. A petrol-fuelled lighter, one of those post-war stainless-steel jobs. Perfect. Kreiner wriggled only a little as she fumbled it out of the breast pocket of the jacket, mumbling something incoherent.
She managed to get a flame at the third attempt, and switched off the torch.
“You are crukking kidding me.”
The flame wasn’t flickering in any one direction, it was guttering all over the shop. This place was a sieve.
Or a cage.
Shit.
Long, fruitless minutes of searching for a weak spot in the midst of any of the holes in the wall followed. It didn’t help that these were all located in the orifices of the copulating figures on the walls. Thank God Kreiner was still asleep. This would be one hell of an expeditionary write-up if they got out of here.
“Let’s just make one thing clear,” she said out loud to nobody in particular. “I refuse to believe this is a shag-or-die situation.”
She found a slightly less uncomfortable place to sit up by the altar, switched off the torch again (no point wasting the power pack), heard the sounds of the underground culvert beneath her and Kreiner’s snoring from across the room, and waited.
“Professor? Ow. Professor? Benny?” Kreiner was blundering around trying to grab hold of her in the dark.
Goddess, had she fallen asleep? She was getting old. She switched on the torch - Kreiner looked like Dracula’s idiot grandson shying away from the light. “What is it?”
“I’ve had an idea.”
“Hallelujah.”
“I keep seeing this ugly little bugger repeating around the walls.” He pointed to the bas-relief of a highly stylised gnome. “One facing one way, the other facing the other. They both point towards that thing on the opposite wall there, right?” He indicated the sculpted form of the behind of what presumably was the Kilari equivalent of Miss November.
“Probably means nothing,” Benny grunted, glancing at the nearest gnome. “Looks like he’s having a wank.”
Kreiner cleared his throat. “That’s what I thought too, but that’s, er, not his cock.”
Benny looked closer. “Well spotted. All right, Indiana Jones, what is it?”
“It’s that thing.” He indicated the lifelike lingam on the altar. “The Doc told me to look for the jade sceptre of the Kilari, and, well, maybe they decided to disguise it and booby-trap it so you’d only get out of here if you knew the truth.”
“The key in the lock. The other great Freudian metaphor. I should’ve seen this one coming. Kreiner, you should take over the archaeology chair from me.”
Kreiner gave a grin she almost wanted to remove with her fist. “Nah. I hate paperwork.”
“I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear that.”
“Right. Well. Let’s just bugger off out of here.”
“Kreiner, I have a trowel.”
“And I’ve got a stone todger.” He grabbed it from the altar, and, sure enough, a keyhole opened between the shapely buttocks of the exit. “Let’s make like a stone, and roll.”
“One more thing before we go, Kreiner. How did you solve the puzzle?”
“Pillow talk,” he said inscrutably, then hurried for the exit.
It took a moment for the implications of this to sink in before Bernice Summerfield sprang after him with a roar. “KREINER!”