Ficlet: Press Ganged - Colin (Prompt Fill #3)
justice_turtle suggested: Any character from Press Gang becomes a companion. (There turned out to be a couple of these - so far. This is the first.)
Title: Press Ganged: Colin
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 509
Characters/Pairings: Colin Mathews, Lynda Day
Notes/Warnings: Set S5 (vague spoiler for the episode “Windfall”).
Summary: Colin’s not cut out to be a companion.
***
The police box vanished from the newsroom, leaving behind it a grating echo and a dejected Colin, who now slumped into the nearest chair. It had looked, Lynda thought, as though he had been pushed out of the thing by force. Which was a perfectly reasonable reaction to Colin, as far as she was concerned.
“So. It didn’t go well?”
Colin sank further down the chair and gave a muffled groan. “Remember the date with Julie? And that school trip to the zoo?”
Lynda stopped. “Colin. You didn’t kill somebody’s pets, did you?”
“Worse,” he said, and muttering something else under his breath.
She frowned. “Did you say ‘interplanetary war’?”
“Was it my fault?” he said, looking up. “I mean, those Dalek thingies - aggressive or what? And I offered them that deal with the second hand sink plungers in good faith. You know me, Lynda. Would I ever sell even my worst enemy shoddy third-rate goods knowingly?”
“I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question, but if not I’ve got the list in a drawer - if you’ve got an hour or so to spare.”
“Even if the ends did drop off, they didn’t have to start blaming those giant squids. I mean, I might have said something, but - aliens were pointing weapons at me! And you know I’ve got an unnaturally low fear threshold. Besides, that trouble with those metal men that didn’t take to the nail varnish remover wasn’t my fault, not exactly, anyway -”
“Colin -”
“There was this accident with the orange nail varnish, right, so obviously, I stepped into the market gap with the remover and next thing you know, everybody’s blaming everybody else and trying to kill me.” He hid his head in his hands. “It was horrible, Lynda, horrible. Planets exploding all over the place and suddenly it’s the end of the universe!”
“End of the -? Colin!”
“He’s going to fix it, he said,” Colin added, with another sigh. “He just muttered something about it being safer to take me back where I belonged first. He said it was that, or he’d have to kill me.”
Lynda reviewed all this, and decided there was only one thing to say, since she’d have to hope the Doctor knew what he was talking about when it came to saving the universe from exposure to Colin. What she had to do was restore her financial manager to what passed for normal around here.
“Just as well,” she said, marching back over to her desk. “We need some more advertising on page four, and you haven’t shown me the account books this week. In fact, you haven’t shown me the accounts for the past two and a half months. Being abducted by an annoying and over-talkative alien is no excuse for sloppy work - even if you did nearly destroy the entire cosmos. Tough. That’s not my problem, is it?”
Would you believe me if I said he abducted the account books, too?”
“Colin!”
“In fact, I’m pretty sure one of the giant squids ate them…”
***
Title: Press Ganged: Colin
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 509
Characters/Pairings: Colin Mathews, Lynda Day
Notes/Warnings: Set S5 (vague spoiler for the episode “Windfall”).
Summary: Colin’s not cut out to be a companion.
***
The police box vanished from the newsroom, leaving behind it a grating echo and a dejected Colin, who now slumped into the nearest chair. It had looked, Lynda thought, as though he had been pushed out of the thing by force. Which was a perfectly reasonable reaction to Colin, as far as she was concerned.
“So. It didn’t go well?”
Colin sank further down the chair and gave a muffled groan. “Remember the date with Julie? And that school trip to the zoo?”
Lynda stopped. “Colin. You didn’t kill somebody’s pets, did you?”
“Worse,” he said, and muttering something else under his breath.
She frowned. “Did you say ‘interplanetary war’?”
“Was it my fault?” he said, looking up. “I mean, those Dalek thingies - aggressive or what? And I offered them that deal with the second hand sink plungers in good faith. You know me, Lynda. Would I ever sell even my worst enemy shoddy third-rate goods knowingly?”
“I’m going to assume that was a rhetorical question, but if not I’ve got the list in a drawer - if you’ve got an hour or so to spare.”
“Even if the ends did drop off, they didn’t have to start blaming those giant squids. I mean, I might have said something, but - aliens were pointing weapons at me! And you know I’ve got an unnaturally low fear threshold. Besides, that trouble with those metal men that didn’t take to the nail varnish remover wasn’t my fault, not exactly, anyway -”
“Colin -”
“There was this accident with the orange nail varnish, right, so obviously, I stepped into the market gap with the remover and next thing you know, everybody’s blaming everybody else and trying to kill me.” He hid his head in his hands. “It was horrible, Lynda, horrible. Planets exploding all over the place and suddenly it’s the end of the universe!”
“End of the -? Colin!”
“He’s going to fix it, he said,” Colin added, with another sigh. “He just muttered something about it being safer to take me back where I belonged first. He said it was that, or he’d have to kill me.”
Lynda reviewed all this, and decided there was only one thing to say, since she’d have to hope the Doctor knew what he was talking about when it came to saving the universe from exposure to Colin. What she had to do was restore her financial manager to what passed for normal around here.
“Just as well,” she said, marching back over to her desk. “We need some more advertising on page four, and you haven’t shown me the account books this week. In fact, you haven’t shown me the accounts for the past two and a half months. Being abducted by an annoying and over-talkative alien is no excuse for sloppy work - even if you did nearly destroy the entire cosmos. Tough. That’s not my problem, is it?”
Would you believe me if I said he abducted the account books, too?”
“Colin!”
“In fact, I’m pretty sure one of the giant squids ate them…”
***