[fic] doctor who - homesick - pg - canton, amy
Title: Homesick
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Canton, Amy, David (OC)
Rating: PG
Length: ~2800
Summary: Canton reflects on what he's left behind. Amy empathizes and takes action.
Notes: Thanks to coffeesuperhero, leiascully, and mcwonthelottery for looking this over at various stages. Follows Next of Kin and Twenty Questions in a series that I really should name at some point. I'm bad at naming things.
***
David liked science fiction. He was a devout Trekkie and his bookshelves were filled with a mixture of medical texts and pulp scifi novels. Canton read anything with words that stood still for long enough, so it was inevitable that he eventually began reading quite a bit of scifi as well. He wasn't as transfixed by it as David was, but he appreciated a good story as much as the next bibliophile and David's worn paperbacks rarely disappointed.
It was a little unfair, then, that Canton was the one who got to travel through time and space while David was attending medical lectures.
Canton sighed and leaned his head back against the sofa, placing his book face down on his lap. Traveling with the Doctor was amazing, but whenever Canton stopped running for long enough to reflect, his mind wandered back to David, who should really be the one traversing time and space.
Canton ran his fingers over the spine of the book on his lap. According to the Doctor, it was in the language of a people who were either long dead or not even conceived yet, depending on when you asked. The TARDIS twisted something in your brain, Amy told him, made you able to read and understand alien languages. The TARDIS library probably would have been his favorite room even if he couldn't understand the words, but the ability to read the hundreds of thousands of books at his disposal made the massive labyrinth of shelves feel like home. There was something about books that seemed to be universal. Sure, there were scrolls and tablets and data chips and holo-pedias and all sorts of other things that Canton had never seen and Dr. Song refused to explain, but over half of the library was made of books, books that felt the same in his hands and smelled the same as books from Earth.
His fingers were still lingering over the text (twisted from the original characters to form "Musical Celebration, the Beauty of Mountains, the Rest of the Just" to his eyes) when Amy found him.
"Aha!" she said. She jumped over the back of the sofa to sit next to him, a quiet reminder of her youth and enthusiasm. "I thought I'd find you here! You're always in here."
"I like it," Canton said, simply.
"There are like, a million rooms in the TARDIS," Amy said. "I swear there are rooms I haven't even seen yet. Why are you always in the same one?"
"It's a library," Canton said. He shrugged. "I like libraries. I always have. All the books... there's so much potential crammed into one building. One room, in this case, I guess."
"Huh," Amy said. She propped her elbow up on the back of the couch and rested her cheek on her fist. "You don't think of FBI agents as being all into reading and things. I guess it's not all kicking down doors and chasing after aliens and government conspiracy and giant worms in the sewer."
Canton raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Sometimes, when it came to the Ponds, he found it was best not to ask.
"Anyway," Amy said, reaching over and tugging at the book on Canton's lap. "What are you reading?"
Canton lifted his hand and allowed Amy to pull the book across the sofa. She was careful to keep his page.
"'Musical Celebration, the Beauty of Mountains, the Rest of the Just,'" she read aloud. "Huh. Never heard of it."
"It's a novel," Canton said. "The customs and geography are a little hard to follow, but it's mostly about a woman who travels through a mountain range to a far away village to seek the instruction of a fabled musician. It's interesting."
"Neat," said Amy. "It's funny, sometimes. Thinking about this stuff, I mean. I guess I had always thought that aliens and other planets would be so futuristic that there wouldn't be any books, and if there were, they'd all read like a scifi novel."
"I never really thought about it," Canton said.
"When I was a girl I read so many stories abut space," Amy said, handing Canton the book. "Waiting for the Doctor for so long, I tore through anything with space ships or other planets or whatever." She grinned at him. "What about you?" she asked. "Did you read a lot of books about space ships, just waiting for someone to take you away?"
"No," Canton said. He shook his head and smiled sadly. "Not me. David's the scifi nut. I only really started reading science fiction when I met him. He leaves these dime store paperbacks everywhere--he probably reads about six at a time and they're always floating around the house."
"You miss him?" Amy asked. Her smile was kind and sad and she reached over and rubbed his arm. She was always doing that--touching, hugging, grabbing his hand. Not just his--Rory and the Doctor's and River's as well. All of them were a touchy-feely crowd, and while Canton had never been that way in the past, he found himself more open to the physical comfort than he would have expected. "What am I saying, of course you do. I missed Rory when I was first traveling."
Canton raised his eyebrows. "You mean Rory wasn't always here?" he asked. He just assumed that Amy and Rory came as a packaged deal. The way they were around each other and the Doctor and the TARDIS, he really couldn't imagine one without the other.
"Nope," Amy said. "When I first met the Doctor, I was a little girl. He crashed into my backyard right when I needed him, and when he left again, he said he'd be back in five minutes and it ended up being 12 years. When I finally left with him, it was my wedding night. I loved Rory, I did, but the Raggedy Doctor was my hero, my best friend, and Leadworth was so small. If I married Rory, I knew I'd never leave and I wanted to see the world, see if I was making the right choice." She smiled. "I was barely gone two weeks before Rory was with us and in that time I just knew marrying Rory wasn't going to be a mistake. I knew I needed him. I knew how much I loved him."
The only explanation was that Canton was feeling nostalgic and lonesome and... sad. He'd told the others bits and pieces about his life back in the District, usually at Amy's persistent request, but he wasn't one for long, heartfelt talks, normally. He had to blame the affectionate influence of the Ponds as he stroked the spine of the book and closed his eyes.
"I've done a lot of things in my life just to piss my father off. I'm not particularly proud of that fact, but I was young and smart and chafing. I'm sure he thought my... proclivities were just another way of acting out. I let him believe it for a long time. I liked knowing it pissed him off. He's hard to ruffle, my old man." Canton laughed a little, lost in the memory. He understood a lot more about his father now, understood how difficult it must have been to run a law enforcement agency during a turbulent time in history and also raise three children with only the help of a parade of nannies and tutors. He was grateful, even, that his father gave him a certain amount of freedom, even if it felt like a cage at the time.
He and his father would never be best friends, but they respected each other, and that was all that Canton really needed.
"I have a feeling the next bit of this story is going to be 'until I met David,'" Amy said. Her voice was teasing, but warm. Amy liked hearing about David, for whatever reason. Rory rolled his eyes a lot, muttered about her being nosy, but Canton wondered if it wasn't more than that, if it wasn't that under her courageous and flirtatious exterior, Amy Pond was something of a romantic.
"Yeah," Canton said. He opened his eyes and shrugged. "I met David in a bar by the university. I use the term 'bar' loosely. The bars were segregated--everything was segregated--but there was a little hole in the wall for students that didn't care and didn't ask questions about who you did what with. I don't even remember how I ended up there that night, but I was reading Finnegan's Wake and probably thinking about how idiotic my peers were when David sat down across from me and told me Joyce was full of shit. I was twenty-one and full of myself and challenged him on it. We fought until closing time. I don't think either of us bought a drink the whole night."
"Love at first sight!" Amy exclaimed.
"Something like that," Canton said. "It was dangerous, and I won't pretend that wasn't part of the appeal, but I wasn't stupid. I wouldn't have taken the risk if I didn't feel something. It's been twelve years and sometimes it's difficult and sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes I get so angry at how hard it is that I want to shout myself hoarse, but I never regretted it for a second. I never knew you could feel that way about another person. That's what I told my pop when he, inevitably, stumbled across the two of us one night. I didn't fight him on it. I didn't rub it in his face. I didn't even want to. I just didn't want to lose David. And that's when I knew."
"That's the sweetest story I've ever heard," Amy said, pressing a hand to her chest. Canton shrugged again, his lips quirking into a grin. "So, the answer to 'do you miss him?' would be a big fat 'yes,' then, huh?"
"Yeah," Canton said. "Yeah, I do." He frowned. "How... this is... wonderful. It's incredible. And I wouldn't give it up for anything, except--"
"Except you miss David every day and even though you know you'll be back before he has a chance to miss you, you still feel guilty and lonely?" Amy said. She punched his arm, gently. "I know," she said. "Bringing Rory on was actually the Doctor's idea, but it was the best idea he's ever had. I don't know what would have happened if I kept running away. Nothing good. But the Doctor figured out what was missing and what was wrong even when I couldn't figure it out for myself."
"Is that so?" Canton asked, grinning.
"Yep!" Amy said. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're lucky you have someone to figure it out for you, too." She leapt over the back of the sofa and headed back into the hallway. "DOCTOR!" she called, her footsteps headed towards the console room. "WE NEED TO MAKE A QUICK STOP!"
***
The house was empty when David got home. Canton generally left a note if he was going out, but the lack of one wasn't entirely unusual. David was home a few hours earlier than he'd planned to be, after all. He assumed Canton was off visiting his father or down at the library, paying his inevitable fine and taking out another stack of books.
The phone rang before he could so much as sit down. He left his case in the living room and went to the kitchen to answer it.
"Hello?"
"Ah, Dr. Bishop."
Canton's father. David supposed he knew where Canton wasn't, then.
"Hello, sir," David said. He and Canton's father weren't on what you would call friendly terms. They showed each other the minimal required amount of mutual respect and did their best to avoid interacting if at all possible. Their similarities ended at their love for Canton, but it was enough to keep them civil.
"Is Canton around?" Mr. Delaware asked.
"No, sir," David said. "I just got in. I actually assumed he was visiting you."
"No, no," Mr. Delaware said. "I haven't heard from him in a few weeks."
"He's probably at the library again," David said, and then sighed almost in unison with Mr. Delaware, who was perhaps the only other person on the planet that could commiserate with him on Canton's problems with books.
"That's fine," Mr. Delaware said. "If you could please have him call me when he gets home, I would appreciate it."
"Of course, sir," David said.
"Goodbye, Dr. Bishop."
David hung up the phone and shook his head. He and Canton were going to have to have another talk about taking books out of the library without bringing back the ones he'd already taken out. They'd been piling up at an alarming rate since Canton lost his old job and started his new, more erratically scheduled job.
He grabbed his suitcase and brought it upstairs to unpack. It was funny, though--they'd changed the sheets right before he left and they were still balled up in the hamper, waiting to be washed. Canton did tend to forget about household chores if left to his own devices, but that usually meant the entire house was hastily cleaned all at once before David returned. He brushed off the full hamper, but when David went downstairs to make himself a snack, he started to feel sick. The milk had gone off. Canton drank milk in his coffee every morning. He'd been known to drive, hastily and sloppily dressed, to the store to get more before he would even think about starting his day.
The milk was off and the dishes in the sink had been neither touched, nor added to since David left. There were no new groceries and the leftovers in the fridge hadn't been eaten.
He fought to swallow his immediate panic. Canton had been strangely mum about his new job, but David knew he'd been working with the President on matter of national security. He knew that Canton came home every night for three months looking tired and distracted and that he'd spent weeks at a time running all over the country with time for little more than a phone call to assure David he wasn't dead. It was dangerous, whatever it was, and now, to come home to an empty house like this?
David's hand hovered over the phone. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't exactly call the police without inventing a lot of stories as to why he was living with a white man from a well-respected local family. He could call Sally, but aside from giving him someone to panic at, she couldn't help much. His best course of action would be to call Canton's father, who could discreetly call his many resources to action. But what could he say? Mr. Delaware, I went away for a week and, in the process, lost your son. Jesus, as if he could even get that out without devolving into hysterics. Canton was missing, possibly kidnapped, probably--
He was slightly distracted from his panic by a strange sound from outside. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, like an orchestra throwing up. He was torn between going out to investigate and calling Mr. Delaware before more time elapsed.
The decision was taken out of his hands when the front door opened and Canton and three people David didn't know walked into the house.
"Where the hell have you been?" David asked, his voice a pitch or two higher than it normally was.
Canton sighed and shot an exasperated look over his shoulder.
"I said 3pm," he said.
"It is 3pm!" the guest in the bowtie said. "Very nearly, at least. It's 3:32, which is near enough to 3pm."
"Closer than he normally gets, at any rate," the redheaded young woman said. She rolled her eyes at the man in the bowtie and then turned to David with an almost blinding grin. "You must be David! We've heard so many stories about you!"
David looked, helplessly, between the visitors and Canton. Canton just smiled, a little sappily, and crossed the room. He pulled David into an unexpected hug as soon as he was close enough. It wasn't that Canton wasn't affectionate. He had his own brand of gestures that David had learned to read over the years, and he never left David feeling unloved. But this was... different. Especially in front of company.
"Hey," Canton said quietly, not letting go.
"Hi," David said. The visitors were smiling and didn't look the slightest bit scandalized, so he hesitantly let his arms wrap around Canton's back.
"I missed you," Canton said.
"I... missed you too," David said. "Canton, what the hell is going on? Where were you? I was about to call your damn father, I was so worried."
"Sorry," Canton said. "I should have left a note. But I can explain."
"You'd better," David said. Canton stepped back, but his hands lingered on David's elbows. He glanced over his shoulder at their three visitors. The man in the bowtie smiled and nodded.
"It'll be easier to explain if I show you something," Canton said. "I think it'll make up for how much I pissed you off." He pulled David towards the door by the elbow.
"I don't know," David said, lightly, "I was pretty pissed."
"Trust me. This is worth it."
And as Canton led him out the door and across the street to a blue booth that hadn't been there earlier, David really didn't doubt it.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Canton, Amy, David (OC)
Rating: PG
Length: ~2800
Summary: Canton reflects on what he's left behind. Amy empathizes and takes action.
Notes: Thanks to coffeesuperhero, leiascully, and mcwonthelottery for looking this over at various stages. Follows Next of Kin and Twenty Questions in a series that I really should name at some point. I'm bad at naming things.
***
David liked science fiction. He was a devout Trekkie and his bookshelves were filled with a mixture of medical texts and pulp scifi novels. Canton read anything with words that stood still for long enough, so it was inevitable that he eventually began reading quite a bit of scifi as well. He wasn't as transfixed by it as David was, but he appreciated a good story as much as the next bibliophile and David's worn paperbacks rarely disappointed.
It was a little unfair, then, that Canton was the one who got to travel through time and space while David was attending medical lectures.
Canton sighed and leaned his head back against the sofa, placing his book face down on his lap. Traveling with the Doctor was amazing, but whenever Canton stopped running for long enough to reflect, his mind wandered back to David, who should really be the one traversing time and space.
Canton ran his fingers over the spine of the book on his lap. According to the Doctor, it was in the language of a people who were either long dead or not even conceived yet, depending on when you asked. The TARDIS twisted something in your brain, Amy told him, made you able to read and understand alien languages. The TARDIS library probably would have been his favorite room even if he couldn't understand the words, but the ability to read the hundreds of thousands of books at his disposal made the massive labyrinth of shelves feel like home. There was something about books that seemed to be universal. Sure, there were scrolls and tablets and data chips and holo-pedias and all sorts of other things that Canton had never seen and Dr. Song refused to explain, but over half of the library was made of books, books that felt the same in his hands and smelled the same as books from Earth.
His fingers were still lingering over the text (twisted from the original characters to form "Musical Celebration, the Beauty of Mountains, the Rest of the Just" to his eyes) when Amy found him.
"Aha!" she said. She jumped over the back of the sofa to sit next to him, a quiet reminder of her youth and enthusiasm. "I thought I'd find you here! You're always in here."
"I like it," Canton said, simply.
"There are like, a million rooms in the TARDIS," Amy said. "I swear there are rooms I haven't even seen yet. Why are you always in the same one?"
"It's a library," Canton said. He shrugged. "I like libraries. I always have. All the books... there's so much potential crammed into one building. One room, in this case, I guess."
"Huh," Amy said. She propped her elbow up on the back of the couch and rested her cheek on her fist. "You don't think of FBI agents as being all into reading and things. I guess it's not all kicking down doors and chasing after aliens and government conspiracy and giant worms in the sewer."
Canton raised his eyebrows but said nothing. Sometimes, when it came to the Ponds, he found it was best not to ask.
"Anyway," Amy said, reaching over and tugging at the book on Canton's lap. "What are you reading?"
Canton lifted his hand and allowed Amy to pull the book across the sofa. She was careful to keep his page.
"'Musical Celebration, the Beauty of Mountains, the Rest of the Just,'" she read aloud. "Huh. Never heard of it."
"It's a novel," Canton said. "The customs and geography are a little hard to follow, but it's mostly about a woman who travels through a mountain range to a far away village to seek the instruction of a fabled musician. It's interesting."
"Neat," said Amy. "It's funny, sometimes. Thinking about this stuff, I mean. I guess I had always thought that aliens and other planets would be so futuristic that there wouldn't be any books, and if there were, they'd all read like a scifi novel."
"I never really thought about it," Canton said.
"When I was a girl I read so many stories abut space," Amy said, handing Canton the book. "Waiting for the Doctor for so long, I tore through anything with space ships or other planets or whatever." She grinned at him. "What about you?" she asked. "Did you read a lot of books about space ships, just waiting for someone to take you away?"
"No," Canton said. He shook his head and smiled sadly. "Not me. David's the scifi nut. I only really started reading science fiction when I met him. He leaves these dime store paperbacks everywhere--he probably reads about six at a time and they're always floating around the house."
"You miss him?" Amy asked. Her smile was kind and sad and she reached over and rubbed his arm. She was always doing that--touching, hugging, grabbing his hand. Not just his--Rory and the Doctor's and River's as well. All of them were a touchy-feely crowd, and while Canton had never been that way in the past, he found himself more open to the physical comfort than he would have expected. "What am I saying, of course you do. I missed Rory when I was first traveling."
Canton raised his eyebrows. "You mean Rory wasn't always here?" he asked. He just assumed that Amy and Rory came as a packaged deal. The way they were around each other and the Doctor and the TARDIS, he really couldn't imagine one without the other.
"Nope," Amy said. "When I first met the Doctor, I was a little girl. He crashed into my backyard right when I needed him, and when he left again, he said he'd be back in five minutes and it ended up being 12 years. When I finally left with him, it was my wedding night. I loved Rory, I did, but the Raggedy Doctor was my hero, my best friend, and Leadworth was so small. If I married Rory, I knew I'd never leave and I wanted to see the world, see if I was making the right choice." She smiled. "I was barely gone two weeks before Rory was with us and in that time I just knew marrying Rory wasn't going to be a mistake. I knew I needed him. I knew how much I loved him."
The only explanation was that Canton was feeling nostalgic and lonesome and... sad. He'd told the others bits and pieces about his life back in the District, usually at Amy's persistent request, but he wasn't one for long, heartfelt talks, normally. He had to blame the affectionate influence of the Ponds as he stroked the spine of the book and closed his eyes.
"I've done a lot of things in my life just to piss my father off. I'm not particularly proud of that fact, but I was young and smart and chafing. I'm sure he thought my... proclivities were just another way of acting out. I let him believe it for a long time. I liked knowing it pissed him off. He's hard to ruffle, my old man." Canton laughed a little, lost in the memory. He understood a lot more about his father now, understood how difficult it must have been to run a law enforcement agency during a turbulent time in history and also raise three children with only the help of a parade of nannies and tutors. He was grateful, even, that his father gave him a certain amount of freedom, even if it felt like a cage at the time.
He and his father would never be best friends, but they respected each other, and that was all that Canton really needed.
"I have a feeling the next bit of this story is going to be 'until I met David,'" Amy said. Her voice was teasing, but warm. Amy liked hearing about David, for whatever reason. Rory rolled his eyes a lot, muttered about her being nosy, but Canton wondered if it wasn't more than that, if it wasn't that under her courageous and flirtatious exterior, Amy Pond was something of a romantic.
"Yeah," Canton said. He opened his eyes and shrugged. "I met David in a bar by the university. I use the term 'bar' loosely. The bars were segregated--everything was segregated--but there was a little hole in the wall for students that didn't care and didn't ask questions about who you did what with. I don't even remember how I ended up there that night, but I was reading Finnegan's Wake and probably thinking about how idiotic my peers were when David sat down across from me and told me Joyce was full of shit. I was twenty-one and full of myself and challenged him on it. We fought until closing time. I don't think either of us bought a drink the whole night."
"Love at first sight!" Amy exclaimed.
"Something like that," Canton said. "It was dangerous, and I won't pretend that wasn't part of the appeal, but I wasn't stupid. I wouldn't have taken the risk if I didn't feel something. It's been twelve years and sometimes it's difficult and sometimes it's frustrating. Sometimes I get so angry at how hard it is that I want to shout myself hoarse, but I never regretted it for a second. I never knew you could feel that way about another person. That's what I told my pop when he, inevitably, stumbled across the two of us one night. I didn't fight him on it. I didn't rub it in his face. I didn't even want to. I just didn't want to lose David. And that's when I knew."
"That's the sweetest story I've ever heard," Amy said, pressing a hand to her chest. Canton shrugged again, his lips quirking into a grin. "So, the answer to 'do you miss him?' would be a big fat 'yes,' then, huh?"
"Yeah," Canton said. "Yeah, I do." He frowned. "How... this is... wonderful. It's incredible. And I wouldn't give it up for anything, except--"
"Except you miss David every day and even though you know you'll be back before he has a chance to miss you, you still feel guilty and lonely?" Amy said. She punched his arm, gently. "I know," she said. "Bringing Rory on was actually the Doctor's idea, but it was the best idea he's ever had. I don't know what would have happened if I kept running away. Nothing good. But the Doctor figured out what was missing and what was wrong even when I couldn't figure it out for myself."
"Is that so?" Canton asked, grinning.
"Yep!" Amy said. She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're lucky you have someone to figure it out for you, too." She leapt over the back of the sofa and headed back into the hallway. "DOCTOR!" she called, her footsteps headed towards the console room. "WE NEED TO MAKE A QUICK STOP!"
***
The house was empty when David got home. Canton generally left a note if he was going out, but the lack of one wasn't entirely unusual. David was home a few hours earlier than he'd planned to be, after all. He assumed Canton was off visiting his father or down at the library, paying his inevitable fine and taking out another stack of books.
The phone rang before he could so much as sit down. He left his case in the living room and went to the kitchen to answer it.
"Hello?"
"Ah, Dr. Bishop."
Canton's father. David supposed he knew where Canton wasn't, then.
"Hello, sir," David said. He and Canton's father weren't on what you would call friendly terms. They showed each other the minimal required amount of mutual respect and did their best to avoid interacting if at all possible. Their similarities ended at their love for Canton, but it was enough to keep them civil.
"Is Canton around?" Mr. Delaware asked.
"No, sir," David said. "I just got in. I actually assumed he was visiting you."
"No, no," Mr. Delaware said. "I haven't heard from him in a few weeks."
"He's probably at the library again," David said, and then sighed almost in unison with Mr. Delaware, who was perhaps the only other person on the planet that could commiserate with him on Canton's problems with books.
"That's fine," Mr. Delaware said. "If you could please have him call me when he gets home, I would appreciate it."
"Of course, sir," David said.
"Goodbye, Dr. Bishop."
David hung up the phone and shook his head. He and Canton were going to have to have another talk about taking books out of the library without bringing back the ones he'd already taken out. They'd been piling up at an alarming rate since Canton lost his old job and started his new, more erratically scheduled job.
He grabbed his suitcase and brought it upstairs to unpack. It was funny, though--they'd changed the sheets right before he left and they were still balled up in the hamper, waiting to be washed. Canton did tend to forget about household chores if left to his own devices, but that usually meant the entire house was hastily cleaned all at once before David returned. He brushed off the full hamper, but when David went downstairs to make himself a snack, he started to feel sick. The milk had gone off. Canton drank milk in his coffee every morning. He'd been known to drive, hastily and sloppily dressed, to the store to get more before he would even think about starting his day.
The milk was off and the dishes in the sink had been neither touched, nor added to since David left. There were no new groceries and the leftovers in the fridge hadn't been eaten.
He fought to swallow his immediate panic. Canton had been strangely mum about his new job, but David knew he'd been working with the President on matter of national security. He knew that Canton came home every night for three months looking tired and distracted and that he'd spent weeks at a time running all over the country with time for little more than a phone call to assure David he wasn't dead. It was dangerous, whatever it was, and now, to come home to an empty house like this?
David's hand hovered over the phone. He didn't know what to do. He couldn't exactly call the police without inventing a lot of stories as to why he was living with a white man from a well-respected local family. He could call Sally, but aside from giving him someone to panic at, she couldn't help much. His best course of action would be to call Canton's father, who could discreetly call his many resources to action. But what could he say? Mr. Delaware, I went away for a week and, in the process, lost your son. Jesus, as if he could even get that out without devolving into hysterics. Canton was missing, possibly kidnapped, probably--
He was slightly distracted from his panic by a strange sound from outside. It was like nothing he had ever heard before, like an orchestra throwing up. He was torn between going out to investigate and calling Mr. Delaware before more time elapsed.
The decision was taken out of his hands when the front door opened and Canton and three people David didn't know walked into the house.
"Where the hell have you been?" David asked, his voice a pitch or two higher than it normally was.
Canton sighed and shot an exasperated look over his shoulder.
"I said 3pm," he said.
"It is 3pm!" the guest in the bowtie said. "Very nearly, at least. It's 3:32, which is near enough to 3pm."
"Closer than he normally gets, at any rate," the redheaded young woman said. She rolled her eyes at the man in the bowtie and then turned to David with an almost blinding grin. "You must be David! We've heard so many stories about you!"
David looked, helplessly, between the visitors and Canton. Canton just smiled, a little sappily, and crossed the room. He pulled David into an unexpected hug as soon as he was close enough. It wasn't that Canton wasn't affectionate. He had his own brand of gestures that David had learned to read over the years, and he never left David feeling unloved. But this was... different. Especially in front of company.
"Hey," Canton said quietly, not letting go.
"Hi," David said. The visitors were smiling and didn't look the slightest bit scandalized, so he hesitantly let his arms wrap around Canton's back.
"I missed you," Canton said.
"I... missed you too," David said. "Canton, what the hell is going on? Where were you? I was about to call your damn father, I was so worried."
"Sorry," Canton said. "I should have left a note. But I can explain."
"You'd better," David said. Canton stepped back, but his hands lingered on David's elbows. He glanced over his shoulder at their three visitors. The man in the bowtie smiled and nodded.
"It'll be easier to explain if I show you something," Canton said. "I think it'll make up for how much I pissed you off." He pulled David towards the door by the elbow.
"I don't know," David said, lightly, "I was pretty pissed."
"Trust me. This is worth it."
And as Canton led him out the door and across the street to a blue booth that hadn't been there earlier, David really didn't doubt it.