Fic: Calendar. (Part One of ?, Doctor/Rose, AU)
Calendar. Part one. Of how many parts, I have no idea. This is a sequel to Monsters. Doctor/Rose, slayer and vampire, PG-13 to R, and oh-so-wildly-AU. Happy birthday, mylittlepwny darling, I'm sorry to have made you wait!
He lies awake afterwards in the retreating dark of his room, shades pulled down, listening through the thin walls. It's just past dawn; his neighbors are starting to get up, turn on their taps and radios and thump around looking for breakfast, shoes, car keys, a goodbye kiss.
He wonders what she's doing.
He still has nightmares.
They all used to be the same; he'd be closing up in the library and walking home, jogging up and down the curb to get a little agility training in, and there'd be a scream from the graveyard. In the dream he'd run in, confident, stake in hand, already with his eye on his opponent, closing in, and then- then the shadow would fall over him, and he'd be scrambling backwards in the grass, blindly terrified, nothing in his reach. And there was a figure clouded by darkness, looming over him, white teeth in a stained mouth. Always the same. "Hello, boy," that shadow used to say, in those dreams. "You look tired." And then massive hands would reach down and claw at his throat and the slayer would scream and thrash and wake up half the neighborhood.
His parents took him to therapy and Yana took him to some kind of dusty meditation temple and his friends took him out and tried to get him smashed, but nobody could get rid of the dreams. They're different now, somehow; faded, kaleidoscoping and shifting under his consciousness. He dreams the fight, the darkness, like he's supposed to. But sometimes-
-sometimes she's all around him in the air, the smell of her perfume and the soft sound of her sighs, her lips at his ear. She's the comfortable weight slung over his hips, tangled under the sheets, tumbling and laughing, the sound of her happiness moving to the surface like waves breaking gently, endlessly over sand.
"Rose," he says, in those dreams, and she throws the covers off, smiles messy and gorgeous in the morning light, her hair caught in her eyelashes and curling flyaway in a dozen directions. "Rose," he repeats, pulls her closer and presses his mouth to hers, feels the cool solid skin against his hands. She whispers his name and her human teeth are perfectly white, lips bare and pinking from the kiss. He looks at her and the sunlight filtering through the blinds touches her edges, halos her and caresses every curve, outlines her in faint, moth-wing gold like a Byzantine virgin. And then Rose reaches down and smiles and puts her hand over his heart. Here, she whispers, and bursts into flames as his eyes open to the ceiling, hands clutching the pillow and his throat choked with fear.
He lies awake afterwards in the retreating dark of his room, shades pulled down, listening through the thin walls. It's just past dawn; his neighbors are starting to get up, turn on their taps and radios and thump around looking for breakfast, shoes, car keys, a goodbye kiss.
He wonders what she's doing.
"You're late," she says.
"You're early." He taps his watch. "Not quite eleven. Perhaps you're just eager to see me." He grins, tries for nonchalance. It nearly works. Rose smirks at him and uncrosses her legs, slides off the gravestone. There are cigarette butts sitting in a pot of dead geraniums at her feet; Silk Cut. She's been waiting. They fall into step and patrol in companionable silence, close enough that their hands might brush together as they walk, hiking over the broken stones and listening for the sound of anything stirring in the woods beyond. It's quieter than usual, summer haze lying on the neighborhood like a layer of carded wool, fuzzy on the senses. Her hair is tied up, curls soft and loose at the back of her neck. Rose smells like lilies, like soil. A handful of cars pass on the road far behind them, bringing the low comforting hum of engines and the flicker of headlights ghosting on the shapes of trees. He watches her walking out of the corner of his eye. "So," he says, "been busy?" She looks at him as if he's lost his mind. "I just mean, you know, things happen, haven't seen you in-"
"Forty-nine hours?" There's laughter lurking at the twitching corner of her lips. "Yeah, I had tons to do. Rushing around, here and there. You missed a lot." He glances at her in surprise, suddenly imagining her at the grocery store, in the corridors of the library, at the hairdresser's; lurking around the backs of coffee shops, shades drawn down over her eyes, hair in a bun, halfway through some ancient first edition.
"Really?"
"No," says Rose, rolling her eyes. And then she says, "look out," because there's a very tall vampire in a Morrissey t-shirt hurtling towards them. The slayer ducks and Rose feints left, swings right, connects solidly and sends the vampire flying. He picks himself off, spitting dirt, and rushes at Rose. "Is that original?" she asks, and he pauses in mid-kick. The vampire beams at her, holding the hem of his shirt out.
"Kill Uncle tour, 1991. Best night of my life." He grins, yellow eyes alight, knobbly forehead wrinkling further. "Last night of my life. I was feeling nostalgic." Rose shrugs and smiles, charmingly. "Hey, I'm staying at the empty house on Scots' Lane. Got a battery-powered stereo, pretty sweet. You should come over sometime-"
-he explodes in mid-sentence, and the slayer dusts his hands off.
"I think I prefer their Rough Trade days, myself," he says. "Did he say Scots' Lane?" Rose nods. He twirls the stake he's been holding loosely between his fingers. "Do you feel like a little exercise?"
Rose tilts her head back and smiles up at the moon. Her fangs are out, just slightly, white points slipping over her bottom lip.
"Allons-y," she says.
"Forgive me for suggesting this," Yana sighs, "but are you perhaps a bit- distracted?" The slayer looks up from his notebook, where he's been drawing climbing vines and stars in the margins for the better part of an hour. There's a faint trail of drool on the side of his mouth. He wipes his cheek with his sleeve and looks up, embarrassed. He shakes off the lethargy and tries to put on an attentive face.
"I'm just- where were we? Charlie Kelly, wasn't it?" He glances down at his scribbled notes; the tail end of every sentence loops up into the vines and is lost. There's a metaphor there somewhere, but he's too tired to pull it together. "Called in 1892 in Barrington, Illinois. Defeated the Black Gate Society at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893." He takes a breath. "Died, 1895."
"Yes. Fine." Yana pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. "The names and dates aren't enough, you must realize. This is your education, your path to understanding. This is where you've come from, your line, the sacred history-" he pauses. "When you bang your head on the table like that, I worry."
"I'm sorry." He sighs into the countertop. It's cool and smooth, almost as good as a pillow at the moment. "I'm very sorry. I didn't get back until nearly three. There was a nest on Scots' Lane, near the construction site. Three vampires and a Groxlar Beast. It took a while to flush them all out." He sits up and rests his chin on one hand. "To say the place was a fixer-upper doesn't quite cover it. There was a pile of rat bones in the basement, a foot deep. Weirdest bit is, I think they were making an effort. Would you believe they were assembling a dinette set when we surprised them?"
"A dinette-" Yana begins, and stops. "We?"
"Me and, er, Rose."
"Ah." There's a noticeable chill in his tone. "The vampire led you there?"
"Not exactly." The slayer sits up. He feels a tick of irritation gnawing at the base of his spine. "She killed their roommate, and we decided to follow the lead." Yana's expression sinks into a skeptical frown; one that provokes another strange flash of aggravation. He doesn't have to be a mind reader to guess at the source of Yana's too-obvious displeasure. "It wasn't a trap, if that's what you're trying to imply." To his surprise, Yana doesn't stammer out a refusal, just shakes his head and turns another page in the chronicles, rubbing the binding with the edge of his thumb.
"Not at all," he says. "Shall we continue?"
"Fine." He glances sullenly at his notes. "Who's next?" Yana doesn't answer. When he looks up, the older man is staring down at the page, perfectly still. "Professor?"
"Yes." He blinks and smiles, distantly. "Yes. Sorry. It's, ah- Smith. John Smith." He traces down the headings that spell out the birth, brief life and death of the slayer. "Called in 1895, at the relatively late age of twenty-three. What do you remember from your readings?"
"A Navy man," he says, automatically. There'd been a picture of Smith tucked inside one of the journals, a grainy photo taken by a watcher particularly keen on technology. He remembers the man in the portrait, thin and tall, short hair cropped close to his head and his posture stiff like a steel rod. There'd been a worn pea coat in his hand, though he was already wearing a heavy sweater. He doesn't know why he remembers, why this photo stood out more than the rest, except that there'd been something sad and knowing on the other slayer's face. Something resigned. He remembers staring down at that photo, at the coat crumpled in his grip and the calm loneliness in the man's eyes, the way he'd faced the camera without bothering to hide behind a smile. "Dishonorable discharge," he adds, finally. "Though I don't remember why."
"He disobeyed orders," Yana says. "He was ashore at Tuvalu and a fight broke out between crew members. Smith was ordered to return to the ship; he disobeyed, struck a superior officer and ran. He was captured and eventually dismissed upon his return to England." Yana turns the page. "Of course we know, as they did not, that he was seeking a member of the crew believed dead, who had been turned and was killing within the village."
"Did Smith find him?"
"It's unclear." Yana frowns. "Smith took up work on the docks and continued to operate as the slayer. There are indications that he focused on vampire activity in the shipping trade, foiling schemes for human trafficking and the import of dangerous magical goods."
"Half slayer, half customs agent. Brilliant." He grins and Yana doesn't. "Sorry. Anything else?"
"No," says Yana. "There was a new slayer in 1899." Yana keeps talking, about the next poor fool in line, but he's already stopped listening. Four years. He can't imagine how briefly they passed. That's how long it lasted, for Smith; long enough to get kicked out of his job, to work on the docks every day and face horror and violence every night, to sleep fitfully and dream of darkness. To lose friends and live alone, not trusting, not hoping; to lay awake sometimes and wonder what happens when the blood drains out, when the bones are snapped and papery and your eyes roll back and finally, finally-
-he tells Yana that he's got to take a break, getting a little peckish, and instead of going to the fridge he goes out the back door and down the back steps and away. He leaves his bag and his phone. He walks to the cemetary and sits alone at the edge, watching the afternoon sun sink below the clouds.
It's hours before she comes.
He hears her footsteps behind him in the grass. She's not trying to be stealthy but she can't help the way she moves. When she's close enough she stops; every sense in his body describes her, knows and startles against her unnaturalness, vibrates with anticipation. He's the slayer, after all. He can feel the demon that's supposed to simmer under her surface. He's looked for it since the moment he met her, and he sees it sometimes, shining out from her eyes when she fights and tears and cries out from the joy of the kill. But right now he smells her shampoo and hears her necklace jingling against her throat. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know where to begin.
He turns to face her and she's standing there with her hands at her sides, waiting. Watching. She looks twenty-two years old.
"Why me?" he says. "Why do you care?"
"I don't know," she says. There's a beat. Rose stares at him, and her eyes are gold and brown, flecked with rays like points of sunlight. Impossibly bright. "But I do." She reaches down to offer him a hand up.
He takes it without thinking.
Part two.
He lies awake afterwards in the retreating dark of his room, shades pulled down, listening through the thin walls. It's just past dawn; his neighbors are starting to get up, turn on their taps and radios and thump around looking for breakfast, shoes, car keys, a goodbye kiss.
He wonders what she's doing.
He still has nightmares.
They all used to be the same; he'd be closing up in the library and walking home, jogging up and down the curb to get a little agility training in, and there'd be a scream from the graveyard. In the dream he'd run in, confident, stake in hand, already with his eye on his opponent, closing in, and then- then the shadow would fall over him, and he'd be scrambling backwards in the grass, blindly terrified, nothing in his reach. And there was a figure clouded by darkness, looming over him, white teeth in a stained mouth. Always the same. "Hello, boy," that shadow used to say, in those dreams. "You look tired." And then massive hands would reach down and claw at his throat and the slayer would scream and thrash and wake up half the neighborhood.
His parents took him to therapy and Yana took him to some kind of dusty meditation temple and his friends took him out and tried to get him smashed, but nobody could get rid of the dreams. They're different now, somehow; faded, kaleidoscoping and shifting under his consciousness. He dreams the fight, the darkness, like he's supposed to. But sometimes-
-sometimes she's all around him in the air, the smell of her perfume and the soft sound of her sighs, her lips at his ear. She's the comfortable weight slung over his hips, tangled under the sheets, tumbling and laughing, the sound of her happiness moving to the surface like waves breaking gently, endlessly over sand.
"Rose," he says, in those dreams, and she throws the covers off, smiles messy and gorgeous in the morning light, her hair caught in her eyelashes and curling flyaway in a dozen directions. "Rose," he repeats, pulls her closer and presses his mouth to hers, feels the cool solid skin against his hands. She whispers his name and her human teeth are perfectly white, lips bare and pinking from the kiss. He looks at her and the sunlight filtering through the blinds touches her edges, halos her and caresses every curve, outlines her in faint, moth-wing gold like a Byzantine virgin. And then Rose reaches down and smiles and puts her hand over his heart. Here, she whispers, and bursts into flames as his eyes open to the ceiling, hands clutching the pillow and his throat choked with fear.
He lies awake afterwards in the retreating dark of his room, shades pulled down, listening through the thin walls. It's just past dawn; his neighbors are starting to get up, turn on their taps and radios and thump around looking for breakfast, shoes, car keys, a goodbye kiss.
He wonders what she's doing.
"You're late," she says.
"You're early." He taps his watch. "Not quite eleven. Perhaps you're just eager to see me." He grins, tries for nonchalance. It nearly works. Rose smirks at him and uncrosses her legs, slides off the gravestone. There are cigarette butts sitting in a pot of dead geraniums at her feet; Silk Cut. She's been waiting. They fall into step and patrol in companionable silence, close enough that their hands might brush together as they walk, hiking over the broken stones and listening for the sound of anything stirring in the woods beyond. It's quieter than usual, summer haze lying on the neighborhood like a layer of carded wool, fuzzy on the senses. Her hair is tied up, curls soft and loose at the back of her neck. Rose smells like lilies, like soil. A handful of cars pass on the road far behind them, bringing the low comforting hum of engines and the flicker of headlights ghosting on the shapes of trees. He watches her walking out of the corner of his eye. "So," he says, "been busy?" She looks at him as if he's lost his mind. "I just mean, you know, things happen, haven't seen you in-"
"Forty-nine hours?" There's laughter lurking at the twitching corner of her lips. "Yeah, I had tons to do. Rushing around, here and there. You missed a lot." He glances at her in surprise, suddenly imagining her at the grocery store, in the corridors of the library, at the hairdresser's; lurking around the backs of coffee shops, shades drawn down over her eyes, hair in a bun, halfway through some ancient first edition.
"Really?"
"No," says Rose, rolling her eyes. And then she says, "look out," because there's a very tall vampire in a Morrissey t-shirt hurtling towards them. The slayer ducks and Rose feints left, swings right, connects solidly and sends the vampire flying. He picks himself off, spitting dirt, and rushes at Rose. "Is that original?" she asks, and he pauses in mid-kick. The vampire beams at her, holding the hem of his shirt out.
"Kill Uncle tour, 1991. Best night of my life." He grins, yellow eyes alight, knobbly forehead wrinkling further. "Last night of my life. I was feeling nostalgic." Rose shrugs and smiles, charmingly. "Hey, I'm staying at the empty house on Scots' Lane. Got a battery-powered stereo, pretty sweet. You should come over sometime-"
-he explodes in mid-sentence, and the slayer dusts his hands off.
"I think I prefer their Rough Trade days, myself," he says. "Did he say Scots' Lane?" Rose nods. He twirls the stake he's been holding loosely between his fingers. "Do you feel like a little exercise?"
Rose tilts her head back and smiles up at the moon. Her fangs are out, just slightly, white points slipping over her bottom lip.
"Allons-y," she says.
"Forgive me for suggesting this," Yana sighs, "but are you perhaps a bit- distracted?" The slayer looks up from his notebook, where he's been drawing climbing vines and stars in the margins for the better part of an hour. There's a faint trail of drool on the side of his mouth. He wipes his cheek with his sleeve and looks up, embarrassed. He shakes off the lethargy and tries to put on an attentive face.
"I'm just- where were we? Charlie Kelly, wasn't it?" He glances down at his scribbled notes; the tail end of every sentence loops up into the vines and is lost. There's a metaphor there somewhere, but he's too tired to pull it together. "Called in 1892 in Barrington, Illinois. Defeated the Black Gate Society at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893." He takes a breath. "Died, 1895."
"Yes. Fine." Yana pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. "The names and dates aren't enough, you must realize. This is your education, your path to understanding. This is where you've come from, your line, the sacred history-" he pauses. "When you bang your head on the table like that, I worry."
"I'm sorry." He sighs into the countertop. It's cool and smooth, almost as good as a pillow at the moment. "I'm very sorry. I didn't get back until nearly three. There was a nest on Scots' Lane, near the construction site. Three vampires and a Groxlar Beast. It took a while to flush them all out." He sits up and rests his chin on one hand. "To say the place was a fixer-upper doesn't quite cover it. There was a pile of rat bones in the basement, a foot deep. Weirdest bit is, I think they were making an effort. Would you believe they were assembling a dinette set when we surprised them?"
"A dinette-" Yana begins, and stops. "We?"
"Me and, er, Rose."
"Ah." There's a noticeable chill in his tone. "The vampire led you there?"
"Not exactly." The slayer sits up. He feels a tick of irritation gnawing at the base of his spine. "She killed their roommate, and we decided to follow the lead." Yana's expression sinks into a skeptical frown; one that provokes another strange flash of aggravation. He doesn't have to be a mind reader to guess at the source of Yana's too-obvious displeasure. "It wasn't a trap, if that's what you're trying to imply." To his surprise, Yana doesn't stammer out a refusal, just shakes his head and turns another page in the chronicles, rubbing the binding with the edge of his thumb.
"Not at all," he says. "Shall we continue?"
"Fine." He glances sullenly at his notes. "Who's next?" Yana doesn't answer. When he looks up, the older man is staring down at the page, perfectly still. "Professor?"
"Yes." He blinks and smiles, distantly. "Yes. Sorry. It's, ah- Smith. John Smith." He traces down the headings that spell out the birth, brief life and death of the slayer. "Called in 1895, at the relatively late age of twenty-three. What do you remember from your readings?"
"A Navy man," he says, automatically. There'd been a picture of Smith tucked inside one of the journals, a grainy photo taken by a watcher particularly keen on technology. He remembers the man in the portrait, thin and tall, short hair cropped close to his head and his posture stiff like a steel rod. There'd been a worn pea coat in his hand, though he was already wearing a heavy sweater. He doesn't know why he remembers, why this photo stood out more than the rest, except that there'd been something sad and knowing on the other slayer's face. Something resigned. He remembers staring down at that photo, at the coat crumpled in his grip and the calm loneliness in the man's eyes, the way he'd faced the camera without bothering to hide behind a smile. "Dishonorable discharge," he adds, finally. "Though I don't remember why."
"He disobeyed orders," Yana says. "He was ashore at Tuvalu and a fight broke out between crew members. Smith was ordered to return to the ship; he disobeyed, struck a superior officer and ran. He was captured and eventually dismissed upon his return to England." Yana turns the page. "Of course we know, as they did not, that he was seeking a member of the crew believed dead, who had been turned and was killing within the village."
"Did Smith find him?"
"It's unclear." Yana frowns. "Smith took up work on the docks and continued to operate as the slayer. There are indications that he focused on vampire activity in the shipping trade, foiling schemes for human trafficking and the import of dangerous magical goods."
"Half slayer, half customs agent. Brilliant." He grins and Yana doesn't. "Sorry. Anything else?"
"No," says Yana. "There was a new slayer in 1899." Yana keeps talking, about the next poor fool in line, but he's already stopped listening. Four years. He can't imagine how briefly they passed. That's how long it lasted, for Smith; long enough to get kicked out of his job, to work on the docks every day and face horror and violence every night, to sleep fitfully and dream of darkness. To lose friends and live alone, not trusting, not hoping; to lay awake sometimes and wonder what happens when the blood drains out, when the bones are snapped and papery and your eyes roll back and finally, finally-
-he tells Yana that he's got to take a break, getting a little peckish, and instead of going to the fridge he goes out the back door and down the back steps and away. He leaves his bag and his phone. He walks to the cemetary and sits alone at the edge, watching the afternoon sun sink below the clouds.
It's hours before she comes.
He hears her footsteps behind him in the grass. She's not trying to be stealthy but she can't help the way she moves. When she's close enough she stops; every sense in his body describes her, knows and startles against her unnaturalness, vibrates with anticipation. He's the slayer, after all. He can feel the demon that's supposed to simmer under her surface. He's looked for it since the moment he met her, and he sees it sometimes, shining out from her eyes when she fights and tears and cries out from the joy of the kill. But right now he smells her shampoo and hears her necklace jingling against her throat. He doesn't understand. He doesn't know where to begin.
He turns to face her and she's standing there with her hands at her sides, waiting. Watching. She looks twenty-two years old.
"Why me?" he says. "Why do you care?"
"I don't know," she says. There's a beat. Rose stares at him, and her eyes are gold and brown, flecked with rays like points of sunlight. Impossibly bright. "But I do." She reaches down to offer him a hand up.
He takes it without thinking.
Part two.