Spoilers: "Back to the Future (Not the Movie)".
Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine.
Author's Notes: Not something I ever thought I would write! This was my assignment for this year's LJ yuletide, for grrtoyoutoo. I had forgotten that I even offered it, so when it showed up as my assignment I panicked a bit. But good ol' Doctor Who was able to help me through, with the time-travel and love-and-loss motifs that we see so often. Had to figure out a way to sneak Pim in there, too!
When Keely turns twenty, she stops looking for his face in crowds.
When she turns twenty-one, the planes and angles begin to dull in her memory, and Phil Diffy gets swallowed by the life she's built up around herself in the wake of his departure.
When she turns twenty-two, she stops looking for real, but this time only because she can no longer fully recall his face, and looking for sparkling eyes and a kind smile on crowded streets is an exercise in futility.
It should come as no surprise, then, that he reappears mere months after the dawning of her twenty-third birthday.
The Midwestern sun is warm on her shoulders as she crosses the quad, coffee in one hand and newspaper in the other. This particular situation has caused more trouble than she'll care to admit in the past, so she keeps a careful eye out for pedestrians in front of her as she scans the headlines. Article by Mike, article by Rick, article by Laura...and there it is. In a small, lonely corner at the bottom of page 73 is Keely's first official byline in the Pantagraph. Grinning, she hops the steps in front of Fell Hall in two quick bounds and leans against the entryway to admire the image before her. She can practically recite the words from memory, but she's fairly sure that seeing her name in bold script is never going to get old. As the weight of what she's looking at begins to sink in, her toe is suddenly scalding hot.
"Shit!" Keely hops over to the nearby bench and reaches into her purse for a tissue to wipe the coffee off of her foot. When she looks back up, there's a guy staring up at her from the landing, fingers nervously gripping the peeling white railing. Keely squints against the glare of the sun, distracted by her blistering pinky toe. "What?" she snaps.
"Keely?" Her eyes narrow, trying to figure out if she knows him. That party at Mulligan's last week? Her sociology class? His eyes are wide and as she studies him, he reaches a hand up to tug at his ear. The gesture is so achingly familiar that Keely is immensely glad she is sitting, otherwise she would have collapsed straight to the ground.
"Phil?" He grins, and his entire face shifts with the change in expression. Those sparkling eyes and kind smile are peeking out at her from beneath a face that even age and time could not erase. Her entire cup falls to the ground this time, but even as the sticky liquid slides across her sandals and seeps into the hem of her jeans, she scarcely notices.
"Pizza tastes so much better than I remember!" Phil exclaims as he scarfs down his third piece in as many minutes. Keely calmly sips her soda and prays that his stomach can handle as much as it used to.
"I keep telling you - if there's no pizza in the future, I don't know what there is to look forward to." Watterson Commons is crowded tonight, but Keely manages to sneak them into a side-room so that they can eat in peace. Phil is happily taking advantage of her dining dollars and Keely is reminding herself to breathe.
He's aged a few years beyond her - strong jaw, broad shoulders, shadow of stubble on his chin. He is, to put it quite simply, gorgeous. Not that she ever had any doubt. But having him sit in front of her now, looking so much like all of her adolescent fantasies combined, is somewhat surreal.
"How much time has passed?" she asks. "For you, I mean?" He suddenly looks guilty, pausing to swallow.
"Twelve years," he confesses. She nods, taking it all in. Phil looks like he wants to say more, but instead picks up a fourth piece of pizza. There are large clocks on each wall of the Commons and Keely has never been so aware of how fast the seconds slip by.
He looks out of place in her dorm room and he knows it - he switches from perching on her bed, to a satellite chair in the corner, to the edge of the built-in desk, settling finally for leaning against her roommate's loft with his hands in his pockets. Lisa won't be back until Tuesday, and Keely is glad for the silence. She carefully lays the paper on her desk before dropping onto the bed. She wants to show Phil, to brag, but a tiny nagging part of her insists that her name on a sheet of paper is hardly impressive to someone who travelled here in a time machine. She studies her shoes instead, feeling his eyes on her but not being able to muster up enough courage to meet his gaze. When he suddenly moves toward her, she starts. He looks hurt, but crosses the room until he's sitting next to her.
"Keely, I never meant to make you wait for so long," he says breathlessly. A hand reaches out to take one of hers, their fingers interlocking as perfectly as if he had left only yesterday. What's amazing is that the simple touch of his hand still gives her butterflies. She stares, and misses part of what he's trying so desperately to tell her.
"...the government has very strict laws about time travel. My family broke just about every single one of them by staying on Earth for as long as we did, but to go back...there would be consequences. Lots of them." Keely frowns.
"But you came back," she pointed out. He shrugs, fingers stroking the back of her hand.
"Today's Christmas in my time," he says. "This was my Christmas present."
Lying side-by-side on the bed is both familiar and frightening at the same time. Keely has maps of the constellations plastered to her ceilings, and she laughs as Phil points out all of the inaccuracies, which ones will change in a few years, decades, centuries. The bed is a traditional dorm twin - long enough for Phil's legs, but a bit too narrow for two full-grown people. Phil gallantly takes the outside edge, and Keely clings to the wall on the other side for fear of brushing too close. Their hands are still linked between them.
"I have a boyfriend," she blurts. Phil's grin fades.
"I figured," he responds.
"Why?" He shifts uncomfortably, bringing their calves into contact.
"Because you're smart and you're gorgeous and it was never fair of me to expect you to wait for me." He grabs her hand tighter, as if he's afraid of letting her go.
"Did you wait for me?" she asks. The set of his jaw is answer enough.
Phil is beyond amused that she actually lives in a town called Normal, but Keely shrugs it off. "There's nothing wrong with wanting a little normality in your life," she says. "After you left, what choice did I have?" His smile falters, so he just catches her hand in his and lets her lead him through the streets, past quaint coffeehouses and renovated movie theatres. This is her life now, he reminds himself. This is her life and he has no part to play in it. But she seems oblivious of this fact as she bounces along beside him, and something bubbles out about her first byline in the local paper. Phil's heart swells with pride, but he misses his chance to tell her so when she spots a plump blonde with determined eyes and a purposeful stride headed directly towards them. Keely's eyes light up.
"Pim!" she exclaims, enfolding the younger girl in a hug. Pim's expression is horrified.
"She's touching me," she informs her brother. "Why is she touching me?" Keely lets her go, still grinning. Even without the fact that her clothes are glaringly post-21st century, one would be hard-pressed not to notice Pim Diffy. She turns to Phil, eyes ablaze.
"We have to go. Now," she insists. A muscle in Phil's left cheek twitches as he clenches his mouth into a frown.
"Pim, go home. Don't get yourself mixed up in this." Pim rolls her eyes.
"I can take better care of myself than you could and you know it. Now go - the ship is behind some dumpsters in the construction zone down the street." Keely's head is reeling.
"Phil?" she half-whispers. "What's going on?"
"Oh, you didn't tell her?" Pim sneers. "Well that just figures. He's not supposed to be here, Barbie. He stole a ship from the Time Council and left the rest of us to the dogs. Christmas Eve and he suddenly disappears." Though her expression is practically murderous, Keely is certain that she can see the hurt beneath the facade. "Mom and Dad were arrested last night," she reports calmly. Phil drops Keely's hand and takes a step backwards, as if to physically distance himself from the situation. All the air seems to have rushed from his lungs, and he struggles to breathe.
"Why?" he chokes out.
"Because you were gone and they needed a scapegoat!" Pim fumes. "I'm not going to argue about this anymore - thirty more seconds and I'll beam you to the ship myself." Phil turns to Keely, their faces mirror images of shock.
"You lied," she accuses.
"Keely..." She's in his arms before she knows what's happening, face pressed tightly against his neck. "I never meant for this to happen," he murmurs into her ear. "I'm so sorry." He pulls back so that he can look her in the eyes, ghost of a smile on his lips. "I was going to stay," he tells her. But if anything, it only makes it worse, and the tears pour down Keely's cheeks. Pim fidgets beside them.
"Now, Phil!" she says irritably. Phil kisses Keely once, hard and fast.
"I'm coming back," he promises, even though they both know that he won't, and she watches him tear down the street towards the ship. Pim lingers for a moment, eyes full of pity.
"I'm sorry," she says. "He's Phil - he just wants everyone happy." Keely nods.
"I know," she says. She wipes the tears away and composes herself, feeling vulnerable and exposed standing on the corner of North and Fell with her classmates passing around her. She grabs Pim's wrist just as she's about to leave. "Take me with you," she demands. The blonde actually looks sympathetic.
"Keely, we can't. Crossing your own timeline...bad things can happen. The fallout will be bad enough just from Phil's little jaunt." The tears threaten to reappear, and she tilts her head back to dissuade them.
"Just tell him..." she flounders, unable to finish the sentence, but Pim nods gravely.
"He knows," she assures. "But I'll tell him anyway." Tears blur Keely's vision. When she blinks them away Pim is gone, the day with her, and she wonders whether she didn't dream it all up after all.
"It's Christmas?" Keely repeats. Phil nods, still gazing upwards at her posters. She doesn't tell him that she used to stare at them for hours, as if she could figure out exactly where he was.
"I almost met you on Christmas," he says. "Remember?" Keely grins. She remembers. She scoots closer to him on the bed and tentatively lays a hand on his chest. Phil turns his face towards her and she's rewarded with a wide, genuine smile. She tilts her head closer and kisses him gently. Phil tries to roll towards her, but like something out of a bad slapstick he ends up on the tile floor of her dorm room, groaning. Keely scoots over to the edge of the bed.
"Ohmigod, Phil are you okay?!" she exclaims. The ceiling light is shining through her hair, and as she hovers above him Phil is certain that it's the closest he will ever come to seeing an angel. With a smile, he takes her hand again.
"Best. Christmas. Ever."