Next chapter's on the 9th of February.
"Are you sure you're okay?" The Mistress whispers as she trails a fingertip gently up and down Florence's sternum, all the passion taken from it though Florence still moves closer to her touch.
"Hmm?" The human asks, eyes closed as she takes hold of Missy's arm and pulls it against her chest. It's cold but not enough to deter her. She nuzzles against the Time Lady's neck, nose against her skin.
"I mean. With the Doctor and I being together." The Time Lady clarifies, sighing a little as she pulls Florence in closer, hand splayed across her bare back.
"Mm?" Florence hums in confusion, leaning back again, just enough to be able to properly focus on Missy, "I'm fine with it." She says through the haze, concern writing itself in the crease between her eyebrows.
"I always was before- why wouldn't I be now?" The woman asks, frowning as she unhooks her leg from over the Mistress' hip and crosses her own with it, focus drifting momentarily to her own nakedness and then disregarding it again.
The Time Lady's face shifts and Florence feels the quadruple beat of her hearts against the back of her hand.
"Before I was travelling and spending most of my time with you- not knocked in a box beneath their place of work." Missy replies bluntly, half shrugging.
Florence sighs and pulls the Mistress in again, feeling the muscles of her back shift under her palm as she runs her hand up it so that she can rest the whole of her forearm against the skin there.
"Do you want me to help you get out?" She asks.
The Mistress knows from the sincerity she offers through lowered shields that she would if the Time Lady said yes.
But Missy sighs instead, closing her eyes and pulling Florence's head against her neck and slipping her own leg over her hips.
"It's complicated." She says eventually, "I don't want to be here most of the time but out there is so dangerous for me. I have so many enemies and I think that being here is helping me to change- to be a better person. I love him and I love you. I don't like being held here but I think if I ever asked him hard enough he would reconsider. If I went outside now and was found by one of the people I hurt trying to avenge somebody or something I could relapse far more easily than I think even he likes to acknowledge." The Mistress says, face pressed into Florence's hair.
There's silence aside from their breathing for a while.
"You grew up together." Florence murmurs, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly as she pulls away again and holds the Mistress' face in her hands so that she can look her in the eyes.
"Everything you do and have done- even meeting me- is and has been motivated by him in some way. He loves you too. That's why he's helping in the ways that he can. I can't hold a candle to the complexity of everything you two share but I care for you a lot and so does he- he even brought me to you again. I love you and that won't change. You love him and that won't change. He loves you and that won't change. Why should I be upset by having someone else who loves you and wants to help look after you? I know what loving you is like and the more love you get the better because you are worth that, Mistress." The human says, eyes remaining steadfast on the Time Lady's as she speaks honestly.
The Mistress' gaze lowers and she tucks her head under Florence's chin, silent.
She swallows and sighs, taking comfort in her human's warmth, shields lowered completely.
"I love you." She whispers, pressing her lips against Florence's neck.
"I know." Florence responds just as easily, curling against her too.
Florence knows the supermarket like the back of her hand now and still sometimes she could swear that it reshuffles whole aisles at a whim. She's on a limited time today and she'll be late to pick up the kids if she doesn't get a move on and it's really not appreciated.
The woman looks at the list on her phone and shoves it back into her pocket with an exasperated sigh.
She'll cook properly tomorrow when she has time to go shopping for ingredients- they can have pizza tonight.
It takes her about four minutes to select the pizzas for them all, trying to remember if it was Chelsea or Anna who didn't like mushrooms- or was that pineapple?
It's still far less time than to make anything else.
The queues are blissfully short.
Aaron sighs as he sits down on the bed and Florence shifts, humming a little at the disturbance.
"You okay?" She asks, propping herself up on her elbow and squinting into the dark until she can make out his form.
He doesn't answer and she worms over to his side of the bed and wraps her arms around his waist, kissing where his shoulder and neck meet.
"Long shift?" She asks, voice gentler as she lets her head rest on him.
"Yeah." He sighs eventually, tension going as he leans back against her. His hands work at the buttons of his shirt and she helps, working from the bottom up as he works from the top down.
The offer to listen goes unspoken now. They both know it's there in the quiet around them.
"I love you." Florence murmurs, slipping the shirt from his arms and discarding it on the floor. They can sort that out tomorrow.
"I love you too." He replies, more sigh than anything else as he kicks off his trousers and lets his wife pull him against her chest and the blanket around his shoulders.
The Doctor seems frustrated today when he picks her and Anna up, Chelsea being at a birthday party and Aaron being on call if she needs picking up.
While Anna runs on in, jumping at the Mistress' legs who just about manages to swing her up, laughing as if she were her own child, Florence waits behind, trusting that the two trouble-makers can keep themselves entertained for a minute.
"You seem stressed." She says after an awkward silence in which the Doctor does not look at her.
She isn't certain how to approach him despite the amount of times she has met him throughout the many, many years she has lived. She's never really spoken to him alone and especially not anything which isn't about the Mistress.
The Time Lord's eyebrows raise as he looks up at her, confusion warring for a moment with whatever is beneath the surface. They lower again into a frown.
"Don't worry about it." He grumbles, then softer, "Go see Missy."
Florence folds her arms, making an expression usually reserved for when one of the children needs to tell the whole truth this moment or face her ire until they do or she forgets.
It works.
The Doctor sighs.
"The university is putting pressure on me to actually give reasons for the way I grade the students and proper tests and Unit aren't helping me get out of it because their boss thinks it's funny." He complains.
Florence raises an eyebrow.
"You do realise that you have a time machine? Go and copy some papers and marking guidelines from somewhere you approve of and use them. How are these people on Earth going to know the difference?" She asks, "Or pay someone to do it for you- you have enough money by now surely?" The human suggests. She stares at the alien who seems to brighten up far too much at the ideas.
"Rassilon's arse. You really hadn't thought of that." She says blankly as the Doctor waves his finger at her.
He laughs.
"No- but now I have I know just the place!" He declares, grinning in an almost unnerving way as he runs back to his tardis. The door seems to slam behind him in his excitement and almost three seconds pass before his head emerges from the door again, Florence held in confusion.
"Close the door behind you, would you?" He asks before his head retracts inside again like an oversized turtle.
Florence sighs as the box disappears from view and shakes her head.
"Was that?" The Mistress asks, turning from where she's been crouched over the floor as Anna shows her a new stack of drawings for her, filling rather more quickly than expected, walls.
Florence doesn't need the rest of the question and shakes her head again for Missy's benefit, smiling in bemusement.
"He really is an idiot. I hope he just remembers we're in here this time and doesn't forget to let us out." Florence says, closing the doors behind her and coming to squat behind her daughter who is animatedly explaining the drawings, heedless of the conversation her mother and the Time Lady are having.
The Mistress snorts and raises an eyebrow.
"I don't recall you complaining about it at the time." She quips.
Florence rolls her eyes but smiles, shoving the Mistress lightly as ruffles her daughter's hair.
"How about we stick some of them up on the walls?" She asks, "They'll be easier to see up there and it'll be easier to tell which one you're pointing to."
The child thinks for a second but claps and stands up.
"Okay!" She agrees, grabbing the tape they'd brought with them out of the bag and then holding it up to show Missy with a huge grin.
"Look! We got this tape because it has cats on and- and- you like cats!" Anna says proudly.
The Time Lady's face softens and she smiles back with more warmth than admiration for the tape.
"Oh wow! Do you want me to pick you up so you can use it then?" She asks, pushing herself back onto her feet.
"Yeah!" The girl says, gathering up the paper into a very messy collection in her arms, no care at all for if they get crumpled or folded, "I think they should go high up so you could see them better!" She tells her.
"Oh do you?" The Time Lady asks, bending at the waist and raising her eyebrows teasingly.
"Well. I'll have to lift you very high then!" She says before swooping down and hoisting the child far too effortlessly up onto her shoulders.
Anna screams in delight, dropping some of papers and crushing others to her chest as she giggles.
Florence smiles, picking up the drawings which had drifted to the ground as Missy marches her daughter to the wall to tape her drawings up beside many, many others.