Fic: Envy, Content and Sufficient Champagne (Rose/Sarah, G)
Title: Envy, Content and Sufficient Champagne
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Rose/Sarah Jane
Rating: G
Notes: Backup fic for kowarth for the dw_femslash ficathon - request was for any couple and a ball. Spoilers for School Reunion. Title’s from Dorothy Parker.
Summary: Rose comes back down to earth.
Outside in the hotel’s car park, the quite terrifying sound of two hundred seventeen-year-olds getting boozed up and hormonal became a dull roar, drowned out by the semi-rhythmic thumping that Sarah Jane was determined to call music if only to reassure herself she wasn’t ready for the free bus pass and the blue rinse just yet. She’d told Saga where they could stick their subscription, thank you very much.
Still, as she gathered up her frock and sat gingerly on the low wall, she allowed herself a small grumble that she was too old for this. It was midnight, and it was February, and it was freezing, and she was irritatingly sober because she’d felt she had to live up to her faux teacher persona and stick to the coke. And there wasn’t a single alien invasion to be seen. Kenny, she was starting to realise, had been making that bit up. Trying to relive the glory days one last time, maybe. None of the dull teachers she’d spoken to knew anything about the school blowing up or the godmaker or the rest of it. Even the kids had looked puzzled - “is it some sort of puzzle, miss?” (Miss!) Kenny had helped saved the world, and fast forward a couple of years and the world didn’t even notice.
It was a shame. She’d been looking forward to some aliens, and there wasn’t so much as a sinister geography teacher with a world-dominating gleam in his eye.
There was Rose, though, coming out of the hotel’s fire exit in the dress that had popped the eyes of more than one acne’n’angst-suffering adolescent tonight. She was swaying a little - she was only undercover as an ex-dinnerlady, she’d said, and she didn’t need to be anybody’s role model. Sarah had refilled her glass to the brim, thinking to herself that tea might be the national drink of disaster management but for a recently-broken heart you couldn’t beat red wine, and lots of it. This was, she had decided, one of myriad reasons why it was lucky she was never going to be someone’s mother.
“Hello,” she called. “Did you get tired of being handed mobile numbers of boys whose dads probably haven’t started shaving yet?”
“Not just the boys. I got one girl. Tracey something bought me a drink. That’s progressive, that is.” Rose beamed, beautifully and a bit dopily, and Sarah resigned herself to being vomited on or used as a pillow at some point in the night’s proceedings. “Oh, but did you see Kenny?”
“All grown up, as they say, isn’t he?” Built like a rugby player, he’d towered over both of them, nice girlfriend on his arm as he pumped Sarah’s hand and thanked her for coming, and she’d thought: but you were just a weedy little boy and that was only five minutes ago, wasn’t it? Surely it couldn’t have been whole years before Rose turned up on her doorstep at three in the morning, all brave smiles and plans for jobs, A-Levels, worthy causes.
“Least he left you the dog,” she’d said, and frowned as if wondering why she had ended up in Sarah Jane’s kitchen in Croydon instead of her mother’s, or anywhere else on Earth, and then she’d asked, “Is it all right if I stay here a couple of days?”
“As long as you like,” Sarah had said.
“I love this song!” And here she was, drunk and giggly and dancing by herself outside a glorified school disco. Sarah stood up and went to her, because if misery loved company then so did bouncing-back-and-getting-on-with-things. Rose laughed, probably at her attempts to dance, and slung her arms around Sarah’s neck and guided her into the rhythm.
“Have you got a lecture in the morning?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got a deadline. Unfortunately, we’re not all lazy students who can sleep in and copy our friends’ notes.”
“You secretly get K9 to write your articles anyway.”
“Oh, such slander!”
“You do. I bet you so do.” The song had changed, and Rose dropped her chin unto Sarah’s shoulder and now they weren’t so much dancing as just standing in a loose hug. “I’m so drunk.”
“I’m so old,” Sarah said, and earned herself a poke in the side. “Ow! Sorry. I’m differently young.”
“Better than most of the kids in there,” Rose mumbled, her voice trailing into a yawn on the last word.
“Don’t go to sleep on me standing up. At least wait until we’re in the car. Rose…? Oh, go on, then. I’m still convinced the legal drinking age should be thirty-five.”
So this was that real life thing that people kept talking about; deadlines in the morning. Being the sensible, sober one. Days racing past in the right order. Buying enough milk for two and coming home to a house with the lights already on and Rose’s notes all over the kitchen table.
“This getting a life thing,” she whispered to Rose, propping her up as she fumbled for her car keys, “I think I should have tried it ages ago.”
And for just a second there was a flash of dark blue in the corner of her peripheral vision, and years ago her heart would have jumped and she would have felt stupid for days to realise it was nothing but a van passing beneath a streetlight; but she was busy pouring Rose into the passenger's seat, and thinking about her article, and remembering that it was Rose's birthday next week, and for the very first time she didn't even notice.
Author: Doyle
Pairing: Rose/Sarah Jane
Rating: G
Notes: Backup fic for kowarth for the dw_femslash ficathon - request was for any couple and a ball. Spoilers for School Reunion. Title’s from Dorothy Parker.
Summary: Rose comes back down to earth.
Outside in the hotel’s car park, the quite terrifying sound of two hundred seventeen-year-olds getting boozed up and hormonal became a dull roar, drowned out by the semi-rhythmic thumping that Sarah Jane was determined to call music if only to reassure herself she wasn’t ready for the free bus pass and the blue rinse just yet. She’d told Saga where they could stick their subscription, thank you very much.
Still, as she gathered up her frock and sat gingerly on the low wall, she allowed herself a small grumble that she was too old for this. It was midnight, and it was February, and it was freezing, and she was irritatingly sober because she’d felt she had to live up to her faux teacher persona and stick to the coke. And there wasn’t a single alien invasion to be seen. Kenny, she was starting to realise, had been making that bit up. Trying to relive the glory days one last time, maybe. None of the dull teachers she’d spoken to knew anything about the school blowing up or the godmaker or the rest of it. Even the kids had looked puzzled - “is it some sort of puzzle, miss?” (Miss!) Kenny had helped saved the world, and fast forward a couple of years and the world didn’t even notice.
It was a shame. She’d been looking forward to some aliens, and there wasn’t so much as a sinister geography teacher with a world-dominating gleam in his eye.
There was Rose, though, coming out of the hotel’s fire exit in the dress that had popped the eyes of more than one acne’n’angst-suffering adolescent tonight. She was swaying a little - she was only undercover as an ex-dinnerlady, she’d said, and she didn’t need to be anybody’s role model. Sarah had refilled her glass to the brim, thinking to herself that tea might be the national drink of disaster management but for a recently-broken heart you couldn’t beat red wine, and lots of it. This was, she had decided, one of myriad reasons why it was lucky she was never going to be someone’s mother.
“Hello,” she called. “Did you get tired of being handed mobile numbers of boys whose dads probably haven’t started shaving yet?”
“Not just the boys. I got one girl. Tracey something bought me a drink. That’s progressive, that is.” Rose beamed, beautifully and a bit dopily, and Sarah resigned herself to being vomited on or used as a pillow at some point in the night’s proceedings. “Oh, but did you see Kenny?”
“All grown up, as they say, isn’t he?” Built like a rugby player, he’d towered over both of them, nice girlfriend on his arm as he pumped Sarah’s hand and thanked her for coming, and she’d thought: but you were just a weedy little boy and that was only five minutes ago, wasn’t it? Surely it couldn’t have been whole years before Rose turned up on her doorstep at three in the morning, all brave smiles and plans for jobs, A-Levels, worthy causes.
“Least he left you the dog,” she’d said, and frowned as if wondering why she had ended up in Sarah Jane’s kitchen in Croydon instead of her mother’s, or anywhere else on Earth, and then she’d asked, “Is it all right if I stay here a couple of days?”
“As long as you like,” Sarah had said.
“I love this song!” And here she was, drunk and giggly and dancing by herself outside a glorified school disco. Sarah stood up and went to her, because if misery loved company then so did bouncing-back-and-getting-on-with-things. Rose laughed, probably at her attempts to dance, and slung her arms around Sarah’s neck and guided her into the rhythm.
“Have you got a lecture in the morning?”
“Yep.”
“I’ve got a deadline. Unfortunately, we’re not all lazy students who can sleep in and copy our friends’ notes.”
“You secretly get K9 to write your articles anyway.”
“Oh, such slander!”
“You do. I bet you so do.” The song had changed, and Rose dropped her chin unto Sarah’s shoulder and now they weren’t so much dancing as just standing in a loose hug. “I’m so drunk.”
“I’m so old,” Sarah said, and earned herself a poke in the side. “Ow! Sorry. I’m differently young.”
“Better than most of the kids in there,” Rose mumbled, her voice trailing into a yawn on the last word.
“Don’t go to sleep on me standing up. At least wait until we’re in the car. Rose…? Oh, go on, then. I’m still convinced the legal drinking age should be thirty-five.”
So this was that real life thing that people kept talking about; deadlines in the morning. Being the sensible, sober one. Days racing past in the right order. Buying enough milk for two and coming home to a house with the lights already on and Rose’s notes all over the kitchen table.
“This getting a life thing,” she whispered to Rose, propping her up as she fumbled for her car keys, “I think I should have tried it ages ago.”
And for just a second there was a flash of dark blue in the corner of her peripheral vision, and years ago her heart would have jumped and she would have felt stupid for days to realise it was nothing but a van passing beneath a streetlight; but she was busy pouring Rose into the passenger's seat, and thinking about her article, and remembering that it was Rose's birthday next week, and for the very first time she didn't even notice.