Text Key

"Audible speech."

'Directed thought, telepathic speech.'

Love And Monsters

Chapter 29 – The Diary of Horace Wimp

Why Victor Kennedy had asked for Elton to assemble dossiers for all the members of LINDA was beyond him, but he'd done it mostly because… well, it wasn't particularly difficult. He already knew most of the group already and could break down their abilities and background fairly well; not to a stalker's level, but enough to give his new - not friend, definitely not friend - associate a good sense of who everyone was and what they could bring to a proper Doctor hunt.

So, over the next two weeks, Elton Pope took notes, refreshing information he already had and collecting new bits of it he hadn't really paid that much mind to at all.

Most of the group was the first category - he knew what instruments they played, had a good idea of what their day jobs were, and a few of their hobbies and interests on top of the stories of how they'd gotten interested in the Doctor - though Bliss, for her part, had simply shown up because Ursula had, having nothing better to do with her social calendar and a passing knowledge of Ursula's interest -, but he'd actually had to put thought into some other parts, digging into the resources of the internet whenever casual conversation fell through.

And so he collected his little facts.

Arnold Morbius had a taste for the Melody Malone pulp novels and owned a bassoon - which he played with more enthusiasm than skill -, Ursula had met Bliss at art school and the pair had lived together since, Mr. Skinner had actually gotten one of his novels published a few years back, and Bridget spent at least half a day after each of their meetings looking around London for her missing daughter.

But most of the information of note was on Della, who was difficult to pin down and even harder to get information out of, which made every scrap notable.

She was left-handed, played bass guitar, had an… 'eclectic' fashion taste, did repair work - with a specific specialty in cars, given her many comments on restoring various classic models and ability to knock Bridget's clunky Corsa back into better-than-new condition -, apparently was an artist at one point but 'wasn't anymore', didn't have any tangible internet presence but did have a Michigan accent, the discovery of which had made Elton more aware of American geography and regional nuances than he'd ever wanted to be… and then absolutely nothing else of note.

The lack of any real results was discouraging, taking the wind out of Elton's sails a bit. He wasn't a private detective, as much as he might have tried to style LINDA as such a group at the start, and he didn't know how much more he could get.

Even her story with the Doctor wasn't enough to point him in a useful direction - yes, Southern California was a clear geographical area and, yes, she'd given a similarly clear time frame of October 1997 and at least a few years after - so multiple incidents -, but everything in America was big and that specific slice alone was over half the size of Britain. Mixed in with the fact that not every newspaper for every town was digitized, especially during that hazy area at the edge of the millennium, and there was simply no following up on it.

'Little better than useless,' Victor had declared once the information was turned over, though Elton doubted that the man had actually taken the time to read through everything with how quickly he'd responded. 'Petty little hobbies, silly little interests, but no addresses? Not even full names?'

Of course not. While he did know where Ursula and Bliss had their shared flat and had a further guess as to the rough area where Arnold and Della were based on the fact that they walked to the meetings half the time, Elton had listened to that little prickle running down his spine that had said that bit of information was best kept to himself.
Victor Kennedy was a stranger, a man Elton didn't know from Adam; he didn't need to know things like that and the fact that he even asked was enough to send up several red flags that made Elton regret sharing what little information he had with the man.

'I don't know anyone outside of the group,' Elton lied. 'The relationships start and stop at each meeting.'

Victor's reply of 'Disappointing,' shouldn't have stung. Not when Elton knew the man was unpleasant even across the infinite distance of an internet chatroom.

'Suppose you'll have to look somewhere else,' Elton replied.

'Perhaps,' Victor replied after a minute of silence. 'There is some merit in the saying 'if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.''

Somehow, the sign of Victor leaving the chat wasn't the reassurance Elton thought it would be.

River looked… odd, standing in Mickey's flat. She was at least three degrees too glamorous to look like she belonged there, and something about her just made placing her against a background of a poor twenty-something's budget of slightly grunge decor seem unnatural. Like she was just a little too real for the rest of the space around her… or maybe the rest of the space was a dull, despairing kind of real that didn't suit her at all.

Of course, she didn't comment on that, instead turning to 'business'. "If you don't mind me borrowing a little something from your collection, dear?"

It took me a moment to process that she still meant me by that.

"Ah - weapons or wardrobe?" I asked, already pulling out my Warehouse key and managing only to halfway fumble it once before I got it into the lock of the pantry door. "Or the wine?"

"Trying to get me out of my clothes already?" River teased, her smile taking a turn for the sly as she watched me squirm under the attention. "I was thinking books, given that you have one of the larger and least hostile collections available, but with that kind of offer, I'll have to sample the others as well. It's so rare for you to actually let people have a peek behind the curtain- or perhaps that's entirely thanks to me telling you that now."

"Well, consider the curtain open for now," I said, opening the door and letting them follow me into my Warehouse. Like I had suspected from her even knowing it existed, River's current state of casually curious non-reaction - the same as the Eleventh Doctor had on his 'first' visit, in fact - was a good sign of this genuinely not being her first time in here.

She hadn't seen everything, given that she was still interested enough to look around, but there were probably millions of items in here, if not billions. Anyone that wasn't me or the other Alters would never have a full accounting of the Warehouse without our help.

And speaking of which… "What could I possibly have in my library that you couldn't find anywhere else?" I asked as we moved through the rows of items in no particular direction just yet.

It was a bit of a trick question. The others and I had amassed a lot of books and other resources on almost every possible subject, but not all of it would be useful…

"Oh, only some of the best selection of spell books I know of that don't melt your brain just by reading them?" River said. "It's not really my area of expertise, but it does pay to keep up one's studies..."

My focus sharpened. "Even though this universe doesn't have magic?"

River gave me and then the Doctor a Look.

The Doctor made a slight face. "That rule isn't... quite as permanent as I would have said it was before the Time War," he admitted.

The razor of my attention turned to the Time Lord. "Explain."

"It's… a ripple effect, so to speak," the Doctor said, spreading his hands out. "There's not any live magic in the universe at the moment - or at least, not a lot, not outside of some very specific corners near very specific holes -, but that's going to start changing soon."

The Time Lord's hands began flying around, fingers pointing and twirling as they followed a train of thought that didn't really seem to have the full set of tracks needed to take it to its intended destination. "Once a certain thing that I can't really tell you about happens, it starts waking up. Like the universe's leg is asleep and it's just figured out how to start wiggling it to get feeling back in the toes, except the leg is just magic in general - and it's all moving through the Web of Time, so eventually it's going to be everywhere and everywhen, but your personal timeline isn't in line with it yet so it's nowhere and nowhen for you."

…you know what? That made enough sense to get me through the day - more evidence could be collected as I went along. "We'll talk more about that later. Wardrobe first I think."

I rearranged the layout of the Warhouse slightly, bringing the door to the area in question to a wall just ahead of us… along with the wall, just to save us a little time.

To look at the space, it would have looked like we'd just stepped into a tailor shop or some sort of theater's costuming department, with many racks of items to the left and then an area with a raised podium and mirrors to the right, with a selection of uncut materials packed into the walls around it for easy access.

That was the part we wanted.

Ignoring the racks of already put together clothes, I walked over to the wall of materials and opened a drawer, allowing their contents - a single pair of pure white cotton gloves - to rise up into the air and take on a three-dimensional shape as they stretched out their fingers after a relatively long time spent on the shelf.

"Magic tailor," I explained. "Tell the gloves what you want and they'll put it together."

One of the gloves waggled its fingers in a hello at River.

"Ooh. Can I borrow it? It'd be useful on those lonely nights…" River winked.

I didn't blink. "Not in their skillset, sorry."

"Unfortunate, but having a personal clothier is good anyway. So I just grab whatever-"

"Yep. Whatever you want off the shelves. The silks are really nice - about the strongest stuff you'll find in any universe that's still fit to wear to a cocktail party," I said, gesturing over to the shelf of colorful fabric bolts. "But everything else is good too, I guess. We just collect stuff, there's bound to be whatever you're looking for or something close to it somewhere in here."

At that, I could practically feel the Doctor's interest spike, as he immediately scooted off into the wardrobe and the various rows of shoes and accessories hidden between the mundane and the ridiculous… but there wasn't anything truly dangerous in there, so it'd be fine.
Probably.

"What color do you think?" River said, holding up a few bolts of silk as she called my attention back to her. "Something in red?"

Red was classic and a good color for River, but… "Maybe a metallic? Champagne makes me think of you."

"Because of my expensive taste or my bubbly personality?" River asked, still teasing.

"Both. And it's subtler than people give it credit for."

She gave a gasp of mock offense. "There are people who think I'm unsubtle? How utterly unbelievable!" Then River winked. "Don't advertise that too loudly, dear; life's so much easier when people are focusing on the spectacle."

Hah. That was one name for 'raw sex appeal'. "Well, I don't have cleavage that could fell an ox at… was it twenty paces or twenty feet?"
"Feet. And you really don't know until you try dear - bovine homicide isn't exactly something one manages by accident." She leaned over conspiratorially. "And if I'm perfectly honest, it's mostly in the presentation. The Elvira Effect, if you will."

"I'm familiar with it." Mostly because I unrepentantly fell into that center sweet spot for the two halves of Elvira's fandom; white trash and queer. "Can't say I do much with it myself."

"Ha! Maybe not up top, but I have certainly seen how high you're willing to slit a dress when you're in the mood - and let me tell you, I don't just love a good pair of thighs on myself," River said as she playfully hip checked me. "I'm sure the Doctor's told you all about it."

"Oy, I've made a point of keeping my eyes up front," the Doctor called from the part of the wardrobe where we kept the hats. I could only imagine which one had managed to catch his attention.

…actually, no I couldn't. There were a lot to choose from.

"Sweetie, we both know that you're terrible at that."

I coughed. "I'm surprised you've seen me dress up before."

I mean, I did, sometimes, when I was in my ideal mental and emotional state, and it wasn't like I wouldn't wear a dress at all if I had to go formal, but I was picky about them - the thigh slits were a consistent point, because I liked the look and the mobility, but the rest? That was a nightmare - and didn't enjoy large parties or formal affairs as a general rule.

"I suppose that everything depends on your mood," River replied, giving me a look. "It is odd, seeing you this… repressed. Depressed, even. Did… something happen with-"

"Now how's this for a look?" the Doctor said, pointing to his head with the biggest grin he could fit on his face.

While I'd been busy with River, the Time Lord had picked up a set of aviator sunglasses and a trucker cap with the words 'SAY PERHAPS TO DRUGS' on it - both of Duke's, I knew, even if I didn't remember that hat specifically - and jammed it on his head, leaving it slightly askew.

Somehow, I'd expected him to grab worse, but I'd rather not have the monkey's paw curl another finger on me.

"Dear, if that hat had any head clearance, I'd shoot it off you this instant," River told him.

"...I'll go get him sorted out while you work on getting your dress done," I said, quickly walking the Doctor back into the depths of the wardrobe.

It took longer than expected - not to find the right place for the hat or glasses, but mostly because the Doctor kept grabbing new hats whenever I managed to clear the last off of his head, trading fancy embroidery for battered felt and on through every other possible material and style, right down to a 1950's straw sun hat that may or may not have been radioactive at one point.

"Doctor."

"What? It's an excellent way to keep cool," he said, reaching up to adjust the curve of its brim before finding his attention distracted elsewhere. "Oh, now that's a lovely fez…"

I pulled him back from the latest target of his affections before his fingers could even touch the edge of its golden tassel, even as I returned his current hat back to its designated stand. "We're here so River can shop, not you."

"Well, you should offer to shop for me. We both know you love spoiling your friends - in the gifts way, not the…" The Doctor fumbled a bit with his fingers, apparently trying to communicate a lack of communication. "...sort of way."

"...fine, I'll let you pick out something - from the book section. And as a lender," I added. "So no ripping out pages to skip out on the endings."

"I was thinking more of something-"

"Yes, you can have the fez." It wasn't like I couldn't get another.

The Doctor made a sound of delight as he rushed back to his latest darling, setting it on his head with a level of delicacy that usually didn't come paired with that level of excitement. "And it fits perfectly!" he announced, throwing his hands out to the side.

I smiled, shaking my head slightly as the Time Lord did a little happy dance to celebrate his latest headgear. Over a thousand years old and still patently silly in all the best ways.

The Doctor was still buzzing happily about the fez as we returned to the tailoring area, the steady stream of happy chatter cutting off as we saw what River had done during our absence.

The Doctor summed it up best; "Yowza."

"Always the reaction I aim for, sweetie," River said, giving her new dress a spin.

It was the champagne color I'd suggested, edged along the neckline and waist by black lace. She'd slung the cleavage low, as expected, the halterneck stretching up to wrap around her neck like a dangling lover, but she'd left her arms and back completely open and the dress stopped at about midcalf, leaving the entire end product distinctly 'summery'.

"You've certainly got a better eye for fashion than I do," I said, walking around River to take in the dress she'd designed. It was sexy and suited her perfectly. Still, I'd found something to complain about. "You know, practically everything-proof silk works better when it covers as much of you as possible."

"Yes, but what's the fun in that?" River said, flashing a bit of leg through the thigh high slit she'd had put in one side before slowly stretching it out so I could see the full length of it before she brushed her bare - when had she taken off her shoes? - foot against my ankle, the skin contact feeling like a live wire against my skin. "Life's better with a bit of risk attached, don't you think?"

I opened my mouth, but no words came out. Only a rusty sort of squeak.

"Usually I have to put in a bit more effort than that before I break someone," River said, sounding a bit thrown off by my reaction. "You really are fresh, aren't you? For something so small to set you off-"

"Oh, Delaine just loves a nice head of curls, especially when paired with six cats' worth of confidence," the Doctor said, wrapping an arm over my shoulders.

"Doctor," I managed to rasp out.

"Oh, you've already taken a pass at the Coat of Many Colors?" River asked, grabbing a fur stole to wrap around her shoulders as we left the clothing section, her previous set of clothes shoved into a similarly 'acquired' bag. "That face is a delight, isn't he? So enthusiastic."

Now that was a subject I could and would have words about, even if I still sounded a little raspy from the rapidfire turn-on-turn-off routine. "I wouldn't know, given that a certain someone took the time to interrupt right as we were getting to know each other."
"Oy, don't put Sandshoes's insecurities on me, I'm practically another man," the Doctor said, poking me in the forehead before getting distracted. "Well, a man in-so-much that I adhere to human gender norms, but effectively speaking - how did you put it, Delaine? A different person wearing the same continuity."

That sounded like a twisting on my rationale for handling doppelgangers. "That's a good way to put it. I'm sorry about implying that this you would have run the same primo bullshit circus your predecessor decided to run on me the minute he thought I was going to get some play, even if I'm still mad about it."

"...that's not much of an apology."

"That's where the 'I'm still mad about it' part comes in."

Again, the walk to the library wasn't far - I rearranged the spaces around us again to save time, and we once again stepped into a place that was almost mundane, though this time, it was a library; mostly hardwood shelves cast in moody light cast by lamps with green glass covers further softened by an impression of golden-and-green flecked dust - pixie dust and starstuff, put to an utterly frivolous use that did nothing but add to the atmosphere - on the air.

"Now, if you're not familiar with how this works…" I started to say.

"You can ask this shelf to bring you anything you don't feel like wandering about for," the Doctor answered for me, touching a small, slightly unassuming wooden shelf near the door with a gentleness that seemed almost regretful. "But only if the book isn't secured for whatever reason. You can also ask it to change the style of things. Turn a book into a film, live action into animation, the little tonal shifts that shift a serious piece to a comedy, and so on."

…of course the Doctor would have been exposed to that. "Yeah, pretty much," I confirmed before twisting the library's interior around.

Shelves sunk into the floor and twisted around, moving every book on magic I could immediately think of to our immediate surroundings - though they'd still take up more than a few rows.

"Oh, very convenient," River said. "And anything under security would be?"

"Still under security, but a bit closer," I said. "Unless it's like, super-duper cursed, and then it just gets to stay where it's buried."

"Good thing I'm not looking for anything like that," she said, already looking over the shelves. River stopped to tap a finger against the spines of a matched set of three books; a rich deep pink, an even deeper midnight blue, and a pearlescent white one, all three edged in golden metal.

All three weren't proper 'books' - they were book safes, containing…

"-ah, Spell Cards - ," River said, finishing my thought. "Not really my style, but they're excellent intros to the concepts. The Guardians are charming, though," she added, with a smile. "Orthrus is my favorite."

My ears heated slightly. "Flattery won't get you anywhere I haven't let you in already."

"Aha. That's what things like this are for," River said, waving an artifact I hadn't seen her grab on the way in - an item halfway between a swiss army knife of lockpicking tools and a bizarrely formed key of bronze and ebony, while shell-like patterns of turquoise curled over the pommel. "Though I wasn't aware you were in possession of the Skeleton Key. I thought that Nocturnal kept this moving around."

"That's because this isn't hers; it's a copy that's just almost as good," I said, teleporting it into my hand - we were still in my Warehouse and I wasn't above abusing the privileges that came with that for pettier reasons than saving people I liked a bit of walking - before putting it back where it belonged. "I'm slightly more concerned by the fact that you'd be in a position to be familiar with it and the Daedric Prince whom it belongs to at all."

That wasn't me being facetious or plumbing for knowledge; while Nocturnal was one of the nice ones - for a given value of 'nice', because Daedra -, no Daedric Prince existed in isolation.

Where you had Nocturnal, Sheogorath, Azura, and Meridia, there would be Molag-Bal, Vaermina, Mephala, and Hermaeus Mora, and all the others that fell between their extremes, and it didn't take very much for those extremes to get very nasty very quickly.

"Well, you can't expect someone in my line of work to simply just ignore one of the Ladies Luck, especially the one who favors thieves, can- that's not the question you were asking," River realized a little late. "I just told you too much, didn't I?"

"River, it doesn't take a lot of math to put that together with that bit about magic the Doctor gave me earlier," I said, throwing her a bone. "Because it's more than just magic that's going to leak through, isn't it? It's going to be other things. And not just Daedra, by my guess, which is why you need my books."

It wasn't a surprise, really. This had happened before. Not with Daedra, specifically, but…

I looked to the Doctor, where he was looking over a much more humble looking book - likely actual fiction or some journal picked up along the way over many years of journeys. There was even a fair chance it was one of my own.

"You know I can't tell you anything about your future," the Doctor said, seemingly making a point not to look my way. "Just like you know that you shouldn't tell me too much about mine."

All of the tension and need to do damage control bled out of me, leaving my shoulders sagging under the weight of inevitability.

River's death was written before anything else. It was immutable, unchangeable, the fixed point that was the first anchor for her in the Doctor's life. And, no, she could never be told about it. Not until she was there and realized that he'd given her a diary just long enough to cover her entire life.

"...I know," I said. "But I worry that I'm making things more dangerous for you- for everyone."

It was a bit of a stupid thought, given that it wasn't like this 'Verse wasn't one of the safer ones to begin with and most of the stuff that could possibly follow me wasn't evil as a default, but it was a concern regardless. Uncertainty did not ease anxiety, after all-

Abruptly, there was a poke to my forehead.

"You're being all negative-thinky again," the Doctor scolded. "I know that you know how dangerous my life is even without you being here, so I'm going to remind you that you're not making anything more dangerous than it already was."

"Even if you did," River added, once again looking over the shelves. "Magic makes for a very interesting universe to run about in. Even if the coverage is a bit unreliable sometimes."

"Complaining like it's a shitty cellphone carrier, I like it," I said, breaking into a small grin. "Go on and find your book and I'll tell you if it's available for borrow. And if something's behind glass or locked down, it's probably for a reason!"

"Locks and chains are a favorite, dear, so I'll make note of it," the archeologist said with a smile and a wave before disappearing into the shelves.

"I'd put money on her managing to find the most dangerous thing in here, but I'm pretty sure that'd only guarantee it happening," I said.

"Yes, that tends to happen with us," the Doctor said with a sort of mildness that probably said that he'd done that with me at some point and found himself short a few imaginary dollars for his trouble by the end of it. "You will make sure that she doesn't actually get into anything too dangerous, right?"

"Of course - you're in my territory under my care, it's my responsibility to keep you two safe. Now, did you want anything else besides that?" I asked, nodding to the book the Doctor had tucked under his arm.

"I want to see your collection of Where's Wally books."
"Amazingly enough, I don't have any." Or I didn't think I did. Children's books in here tended to be fairy tales or aimed at a teenage set.

"What? Rubbish," he said. "Your photo albums, then. I was promised real life Pokémon, after all, and the best counter to sad brain is happy memories and I know you have more friends than you remember sometimes."

That brought a smile to my face. It was true. I did have the privilege of having many friends and loved ones, even if sometimes it was easy to forget.

"Only if I get to see some of yours," I countered.

"...fine. I'll even throw in some of… the old man. I don't fully understand why you have a soft spot for him, given the-" The Doctor gestured a bit sharply, waving his hands in a way that communicated a great sweep of something off a table, the motion swirling the sparkling dust in the air. "-but it isn't… unappreciated."

"I know that's not a part of your life you like to talk about."

"It isn't."

"Yeah. So I'm not going to push it past what you're willing to share on your own."

The Doctor stared at me. "...you have all the audios, the books, the comics, and every other odd thing that's ever been tied to my franchise," he pointed out. "It's not like you're at a loss for knowledge."

No, I wasn't. But…

"It still doesn't cover everything, and what you felt then and feel now…" I swallowed down my own thoughts and feelings about the idea of being 'presumed' anything. "That's something personal to you. All I know are some stories that have you in them and a different incarnation of you who never had that experience. I can follow what I know to try to play off your personality and experiences, but I'd be doing you a disservice if I just assumed that I knew everything there was to know about you based on limited snapshots of your life, no matter how many there are."

"But you're not denying that you know a lot."

"You probably know how short the list of people who know more better than I would," I demurred, a bit of good humor returning. "But I don't imagine it's very long."

The Doctor smiled. "My number one fan, eh?"

"I thought that was me?" River called out as she returned, hefting a thick doorstopper of a book stuffed with ragged yellow pages, the whole thing made even heavier by the fact that it had been bound in iron plates. "And I found it!"

"You went looking for the Necrotelicomnocon and completely ignored the Compenydyum of Sex Majick?" I asked. Those two were parked next to each other for a reason - and that was because, out of every book in here capable of holding its own opinion separate from its text, those two could at least be relied on to distract each other.

I didn't have to understand how two books managed to invent their own form of mystical phone sex, I just had to let it happen and be glad that they weren't doing anything worse.

"Oh, I took a little peek - page one hundred and thirty six certainly looked interesting, but everything else, I already can manage on my own, with or without the help of a few toys," she said, waving it off. "You don't mind me borrowing-"

"Yes, I mind, it has a tendency to leave people's brains dribbling out their ears if they're not prepared for it, and even those that do get a hell of a headache half the time," I said, pulling it to my hands. It wasn't one of the super dangerous books, but it had those iron plates and chains for a reason. "Just tell me who you want to look up and I'll give you their contact info. I like your head better with all the interesting stuff ticking away on the inside and would like it to stay that way as long as possible."

River looked like she was going to argue the point for a moment before sighing. "Overprotective or not, I can't argue that I prefer being so much more than a pretty face," she said. "I'm looking for-"

River told me the name and, opening the book at just the right angle where she couldn't sneak a peek, I pulled up the right page.

It wasn't a bad one to call on - and the ritual wasn't a risky one either, not requiring a lot of boffo or resources to pull off, even if that sort of thing tended to repel most magical dabblers or professionals, given that they had 'ideas' on how things were supposed to work.

As I scribbled down the appropriate ritual in a much more mundane notebook - along with a few other convenient names that I figured would be useful to have on hand and wouldn't be too much of a hassle to summon off the cuff should they be needed -, I called another book to hand. "You'll be wanting this as well."

River took a look at the cover and scoffed. "'The Necrotelicomnicon Discussed For Students'?" she asked. "Dear, do you take me for an amateur?"

"No, I take you for the woman who told me that she didn't do a whole lot with magic in the first place before grabbing one of the higher end rolodexes for the danged, damned, mildly darned, and more than likely dead and happy to make that your problem types," I pointed out before pulling out a few guides to summoning - and, the slightly more important part of the process, banishing - to add to her growing load. "And I'll throw in a copy of the Fullomyth. Just in case you need a general directory. Or to handle something in the London Underground - it's got a really good map."

The Doctor nodded in agreement. "You would be surprised how often I end up down there."

"You're really giving me homework?" River said incredulously. "Need I remind you that out of the three of us, I'm the professor?"

"A professor who willingly admitted that I'm a higher authority on the subject than she is," I pointed out, skipping over the fact that, technically speaking, all of us were a professor of some persuasion or another. "And I can give you even more homework, if you like. There's been a lot of different books written about Daedra, since you're interested in them…"

"No, no. This is quite enough, thank you," she said, sighing. "You two are both entirely too overprotective."

"Because you're worth protecting," me and the Doctor said at the same time.

We paused to look at each other before turning back to River.

"And I've got the means to do it here," I added. "Even if it's not a lot, I'd rather do everything I can rather than just hand you something I know is dangerous and wash my hands of any other responsibility."

"And there's the Delaine I remember," River said. "I was wondering when I'd get to see you underneath all the blush."

My ears heated up.

"Though I guess we're not entirely rid of that, are we?" she said. "But I believe you promised me more than just books and a dress…"

"I still think that you shouldn't have offered to give her weapons earlier," the Doctor pointed out once they'd moved to Delaine's armory, where River had immediately gravitated to the ranged weapons options, testing weight and sights with the casual air of a professional.

"But we both know that she knows how to use a gun properly," Delaine countered. "It's completely different."

"Is it though? You've got some odd ones."

"Yeah, but she's probably not going to pick any of them. They're very acquired ta- River, you cannot borrow that-"

In the end, I wasn't sure quite how River had managed to shove the quasar rifle - and a number of wine bottles that were probably pretty impressive to someone who had an eye for vintages - into her purse, despite centuries of doing the same sort of hammerspace bullshit myself, but there was no denying that it was hers to play with now.

Why? I didn't know.

Maybe it was because it had a good punch to it.

Maybe it was because it was a patently ridiculous semi-organic cheetah-print monster of a ranged weapon that nobody else would try stealing given that the guts of it looked like very literal guts, despite firing lasers that had more in common with stellar plasma than the biological kind.

Or, maybe, it was because it'd been one of the things that had actually set me scrambling to try to stop her but without a solid enough reason behind my 'no' for her to actually listen, unlike the Necrotelicomnicon.

Still, it was within my powers to be a nag. "I better not hear about you going wild with that in London anytime soon," I told her as she left Mickey's flat.

River smirked. "Why? Afraid of me having too much fun without you?"

"It's technology from Cybertron," I pointed out. "That's going to be ahead of a lot of planets, even if it's from a more energy-conservative era. I still don't want Torchwood getting their hands on it. Or you."

River's expression softened a bit. "Well, you don't have to worry about me getting caught by them - if they ever manage it, I can promise you that it won't last very long and all they'd get was a destroyed headquarters to show for it," she said. "And I've almost got my business in this time wrapped up, so I'll soon be off to other adventures."

Elton Pope watched Ursula Blake type away at his computer, sitting in his chair at his desk like she belonged there.

He was purposefully not thinking about the fact that she was in his flat, in his room, barely five feet away from his bed - that he slept in! -, going through his chatlogs with Victor Kennedy. It wasn't like he had said anything weird in there, so there wasn't any real reason to be nervous.

Now if he could tell that to the faint sensation of sweat damping his jumper.
"Elton! You told a stranger about us?" Ursula cried as she got to that part of the conversation.

"Not everything!" Elton protested. "And I stopped talking to him when he started getting creepy."

Ursula scrolled further back through the chat. "...you might not have told him that much, but… Elton, this Victor is bad news."

"You think I don't know that?" Elton said, sitting down and running a hand back through his hair. "I - I just didn't have any other leads on trying to figure out more about the Doctor and… you know what LINDA's like now."

"I like how it is now," Ursula replied defensively.

"I do too, I just…" He paused, trying to find the right words. "It's different. Before, we were trying to find out what the Doctor was, find the stories. And then we just started hanging out and talking, and Della and Arnold showed up…"
"Having friends was more important than chasing a mystery, you mean," Ursula said. "I know that… the Doctor is more important to you than the rest of us…"

"He isn't!" Elton insisted. "I- I want an answer, but I like… I like being around you and the others even without that. Maybe not Della or Arnold, but the rest of you are great. Fantastic, even. I never really…"

He trailed off, not wanting to finish the sentence. It would be pathetic, admitting out loud that he'd never really had any proper friends before, that he'd spent most of his life mostly tolerated so long as he didn't make too big a mess or say anything too odd.

"I know," Ursula said, breaking the silence. "It's… such a change, having people around that want to listen to you."

Elton looked up at her.

Ursula was looking away, looking uncomfortable. "I wasn't… people didn't like me talking, when I was growing up. My voice was 'annoying' and I had an odd face. I couldn't do anything about that part, but I could just… talk less. So I just… did. And then nobody talked to me at all… at least until I met Bliss, but you know that she's talkative enough for two."

Elton definitely knew that.

"So I focused on photos. You don't need to talk to take pictures, do you?" Ursula continued, twisting her fingers in her skirt. "And made my blog online so I could share them, because I thought they were good enough for that. But… then you came looking for me because of my blog. And you didn't have a problem with me talking out loud. And neither did anyone else in our group."

"Ursula…"

"I know, I know, it's silly-"

"It's not silly," Elton insisted, taking Ursula's hand. "I know… I'm not good at people. I know that. But I don't want LINDA to be over because I want to know about the Doctor. I like being there. I like having you and the others for friends. It's why I tried… other places to look for information. Online. Like what Arnold said." He laughed a little ruefully. "Last time I take advice from him, I think."

"He's not that bad, Elton," Ursula said quietly. "You don't have to like either of them, but they're not bad people."

"I don't - I don't not like them," Elton said, not quite convinced of his own words. "I just… it's… I'm used to you and everyone else. Those two? They're just… their own weird thing."

"Because you don't talk to them," Ursula pointed out. "If you tried, you could find… something in common."

Elton didn't think he had anything in common with Arnold or Della beyond the Doctor. Both of them seemed very… confident in who they were, even if those things were very different from each other, and Elton was very much not that - at least, not for very long whenever he tried.

But… "Alright, I can try. Small talk, right?"

"Right."

…what did people 'small talk' about?

Well, he had the rest of the week to think about it.

Jackie dropped by Mickey's - well, it wasn't really Mickey's now, if he wasn't ever coming back - flat later in the afternoon… not announcing herself, of course. She was sure one of these times she'd catch some sort of actual proof that neatly put to bed all of her suspicions about Delaine and Arnold's actual relationship.

That wasn't this time, though, as she walked in to the pair going over a rather large selection of books, a box of pizza just off to the side.

"Hi Jackie," Delaine said, nodding as she turned a page over, not even looking up.

"And what are you two up to?" Jackie asked.

This time, it was Arnold that answered. "Oh, looking over some old photos. It's not like I keep up with Delaine's different adventures all the time."

Was the girl showing off what she was doing with the Doctor to her friend? Jackie was pretty sure there should have been some sort of rule about that…

A few photo albums were spread out on the table, showing off a variety of pictures in places Jackie couldn't ever hope to name without the help of some famous landmark in the background - even if they were all on Earth, given that the Doctor wasn't in any of them -, many of which had Delaine in them in some capacity, often in the company of an animal while wearing a silly outfit.

The Mad Max costume was a particularly ridiculous look, considering that it looked like the girl had mutilated the merchandise of some sports team - probably one that played the wrong sort of football, given she was American - called the Lions to put it together, leaving the team name and logo plainly visible even as she'd covered her face with a bunch of realistic scar make-up.

The part that was the oddest about it was the fact that Delaine was smiling in all of the pictures - not the small, tired smiles that Jackie could see regularly, but big beaming grins or moments clearly caught in the middle of laughter as she scratched the head of an oversized lizard or hugged some fellow in an eyepatch who looked like some misplaced 80's American action flick star who'd lost one too many fights against the plate glass windows he'd kept getting thrown through.

"That was a… good time for my mental health," Delaine said, answering Jackie's unasked question. "Kind of weird, considering what it was like, but I was… enjoying myself."

"That's good. It's important to find friends and have fun. Otherwise you're just… spending all your time being lonely and thinking about what you don't have." Which was something that was happening to Jackie a lot these days, not that she'd ever think of telling Rose that, not while she was out having the time of her life with the Doctor.

A thought occurred to Jackie. "Any boyfriends in here?"

Arnold's "Yes," was almost entirely concealed by Delaine's "No!"

"...so you really are not dating your Zeke?" Arnold said, almost as if he forgot Jackie was there for a moment.

"Why would I be dating Zeke? Just because he's one of my favorite people doesn't mean that- that I'm doing lovey-lovey things with him," Delaine said, waving her hand dismissively. "If you're going to make assumptions based on that, you might as well accuse me of being in love with Selby."

"...you know that I know you share a bed with Selby, right? And that it's not a bunk bed situation." Abruptly, Arnold held up a finger. "Wait, don't you have a picture of…oh, old Maroon Suit from the circus? Crepe?"

"Shut up. Larten wasn't a boyfriend, he was a very short-lived bad decision," Delaine said, making a face before adding, "And not just because he got killed."

…if there was one thing that Jackie was gathering from being the third wheel to this conversation, it was that her life was actually blissfully uncomplicated compared to whatever nonsense Delaine was living.

She looked over the albums again, trying to find some way of changing the conversation…

"And who's that?" Jackie asked, pointing at a man who had his face covered up by a very obvious cutout of some fellow who probably - at least based on the instinct of a single woman who had to get creative with some of her weekend entertainment - was one of those actors who got cast in period costume dramas and then spent half their time there in only half of said costume.

Whoever was underneath that glued on face probably wasn't nearly as picturesque, given that the picture looked like it'd come straight out of a World War One trench and the age-gnarled hands holding his gun, but…

"He's a… relative," Arnold said, a stiff note to his voice that was very out of place compared to the otherwise casual and often silly man Jackie had gotten used to. "I don't talk about him much. Nobody does."
"So why-"

"I like him," Delaine answered, giving her friend a gently pointed look. "He's very kind."

"Delaine suffers from a questionable sense of taste," Arnold said, the stiff note in his tone going bitter.

"Of course she does; she let you do that to her hair," Jackie said, waving at the mess of blue and purple. "But I don't see the point in being mean about an old man. My grandad was in the Second World War - he wasn't proud of what he did in it and it didn't do him any favors after, but we never covered his face up in the photos."

She flipped through a few pages of the album in question, revealing that the crudely applied 'face-lifts' hadn't been a one-off on the previous page.

"Your grandad never did anything as awful as… him."

"And how do you know that?" Jackie asked.

Arnold sputtered at that. "I - I just do. Everyone who knows about him knows what he did. And how unforgivable it was. He got everyone who he promised to save killed - the least the rest of us can do is do what we can to… to be nothing like him."

"...you forget that he at least tried," Delaine said gently. "That counts for more than the people who don't care at all."

Arnold's shoulders sank. "...I know. I know."

Jackie had a feeling she was intruding and, slightly more uncommon, that she needed to stop doing that. "I can go, you know, if you need to have a talk," she said.

"...probably not a bad idea," Delaine said after a moment. "You can have some of the pizza if you want."

Jackie returned to her flat, two slices of pizza carefully stacked in hand.

She'd worry about figuring out the two later. When those photo albums weren't out to make things awkward.

"So are you two... together?" Elton asked Della and Arnold at the next meeting. He was pretty sure that was a conventional small talk question, but considering the fact that Ursula had just given him an elbow to the side, he was beginning to doubt that feeling.

Della's expression went blank, the innuendo caught immediately.

"Why does everyone asked that?" she murmured, almost too quietly to catch.

Arnold, on the other hand…

"Well, we are sharing a flat at the moment, yes," he said, smiling as he apparently missed the emphasis on the word 'together' completely.

"I mean, together-together," Elton said, bonking his hands together in a way that he hoped was somehow coming off as helpfully illustrative.

It probably wasn't, given that Ursula had elbowed him again.

Arnold's hands started to flutter nervously around, pointing in one direction before going in another or turning around again to start over. "Oh! Oh, that sort of - I mean, we've had a few flirtations in the past, though everyone agrees I was a very different man at the time..."

"You were Six," Della said.

The hands found a focused direction again in acknowledging her point by pointing at her. "That I was! And now…"

"-now you look like you're Eleven."

Slightly sarcastic, but not cruel or sharp enough to be a proper putdown, Elton noted. Still within the realm of banter, edging into flirting, possibly. It was hard to pin down, given that there were clearly some parts of the conversation private only to the pair.

"Oh, please," Arnold said, adjusting his bow tie. "Twelve at least."

"You don't have interesting enough hair to be Twelve."

"Something to look forward to then."

The numbers struck oddly, though not in a way that Elton could immediately name beyond being clear evidence of some sort of inside joke. It was true that Arnold had a face that looked bizarrely young - though he'd hardly posit it as prepubescent - and it was similarly true that there were people who made friends in primary school… but then there was the wrinkle of where that school would have been, if Della was American and Arnold was English.

"How long have you two been friends, again?" he asked.

"Oh, ages. Back when I had eyebrows, even."

"He lost them in the explosion, sadly," Della said, not sounding at all sympathetic.

Explosion?

Elton didn't miss Mr. Skinner and Bridget sharing a knowing look, mostly because he too had a pretty good feeling he was sharing in the knowing; for all the timeline of their relationship didn't make sense, it was obvious that Arnold and Della were in that weird denial phase of 'trying not to ruin their friendship' that still involved too much back-and-forth focus to be just that.

That, at least, was one thing that made perfect sense about them.

Elton, however, was more concerned about the impossibilities of the timeline he'd been presented with. Despite having washed his hands of Victor Kennedy, somehow he felt the need to go back and try to make a new detective board just for dealing with Della's weirdness.

But no. He was here to be a good friend. And friends didn't spy on each other.

Even if they were only 'sort of' friends.

We were taking our time walking back from the meeting, allowing the faint drizzle that had defined the parts of the day not punctuated by driving rain to cool the heat of embarrassment off of my ears before we got back to the council estate. The odds of Jackie commenting on the lateness of our return was an inevitability, but she'd made a habit of commenting on my closeness with the Doctor - even if she didn't know who he was with this face - anyway and I doubted even punctuality would have held her back from that.

"I'll admit, Gallifrey didn't exactly have a free-love culture, but gender perception never came into our intricate rituals nearly as often as it seems to down here. So archaic," the Doctor said abruptly, making a noise of annoyance. "And I was making an effort to be equally friendly with everyone."

"I think the issue was more the fact that I was alright with you touchy-feeling me rather than you being a touchy-feely person in general," I said, grimacing as I thought back on it. "And the banter after. Really don't think we'll get any of them to believe that we're not in that kind of relationship now."

Like Jackie, who'd been a lost cause from the start on the subject.

"Would there be anything wrong with that? Letting them think that, I mean," the Time Lord asked, watching me carefully. "It's not like you're… otherwise attached."

Yes. Absolutely there were things wrong with that. I didn't want anyone to be casting shadows on the wall and then presuming that they -

I collected myself, weighing my words against the loaded question. I didn't want to say something hurtful, but outright lying or the chance of being misinterpreted had always rankled me in these kinds of conversations.

I owed my friends - and Eleven had effortlessly slid into that position, even if Ten wasn't quite there yet - the truth.

"I don't like people assuming things about me and I don't particularly enjoy being dishonest," I said carefully. "But my real problem is more that my relationship with you is very complicated even without adding anything else into the mix."

I waved a hand over my head.

"Forget the current thing I have going on with your previous incarnation or my relationship with Zeke, you as you-are-now have history with me that I haven't experienced yet and I have knowledge about your past and possible future from a position that is both extremely personal and fundamentally removed from your real experience - not to mention I have no idea if we're on the same page with that. Romance… would complicate things even more, even if it's not the real deal."

The Doctor was still watching me with that steady, neutrally calculative look. Not a sign of danger - not properly anyway -, from my experiences with Zeke, but of him paying very close attention to what I was saying and measuring his own thoughts and emotions against my words. "And you're not one to idly play with matters of the heart."

It sounded like he was quoting someone - likely a me I wasn't yet, but it wasn't like I hadn't done the same to him. "No."

I scuffed the heel of my shoe across the wet pavement, letting the cool touch of the mist clear my mind for a moment.

"Even the idea of it is… it has so much emotional and social weight, I've avoided putting the label on relationships that were almost certainly romantic in nature. Because acknowledging it would be admitting that, yes, it is that serious and not just… Advanced Friendship."

Spoken aloud, it sounded incredibly stupid. The last defense of a sap in denial, who had already exhausted the old saw of 'they'd never look at me like that' and just wanted something to stay… safe, harmless, and most importantly, not so serious it could break a heart when it fell apart, even when it was obviously long past that point.

The Doctor hummed a bit at that. "To be fair, Advanced Friendship is a thing, but humans, especially in this place and time, are… particular about the subject. Holding each other at arm's length and creating intricate rituals just to touch another person's skin, each one carefully categorized and so socially explosive if you somehow do it wrong - and then wondering why so many people feel 'touch starved'."

His hand brushed against mine, warm and safe, before I twitched away, worry already humming in the back of my head about how close I'd probably come to 'ruining' something.

"Like you," he continued saying without missing a hair more than the beat needed to illustrate his point. "You are a very physically affectionate person. But you're so anxious about it and the 'implications' that you avoid it most of the time."

"Ha. Yeah." I let my breath sit in my lungs for a bit before slowly letting it out. "I don't... put myself out in the open. It's frightening, it's painful, it's too much bad for such a slim chance of something good working out - so it's just... better to watch things not happen than to try and fail."

Back in the bookstore on Uberlan, when I'd met the Sixth Doctor, I'd almost done that again.

I'd seen, I'd wanted, and I'd been prepared to leave it at just watching. Just for a moment, to embed as much of the color and presence into my mind.

And then he'd caught me, after my distracted ass had walked into a bookshelf. Asked what I'd found so interesting about him.

I'd wanted to disappear. Run away. Die. Melt into a puddle or become one with the wallpaper in some unseen corner out of sheer embarrassment. One of those.

But between Zeke and fucking Duke, who'd never seen a gamble not worth taking in any of her lives, had pushed through that. Granted a second of smoothness that would have never occurred to me on my own to lubricate the rest of the conversation and then... things had actually gone well.

Six's temper had smoothed and I'd relaxed. Started enjoying myself, to the point where I'd even entertained the thought of possibly even trying something more than just a nice chat about books - well, I had, up until the Doctor I was traveling with burst into the conversation and killed the mood like it had personally insulted his favorite grandmother.

I sighed, putting away the memory and the corresponding swamp of quandaries regarding feeling sixteen different ways about someone who was only just technically a singular individual.

"Besides, I do well enough with Advanced Friendship," I said, finally breaking the silence again. "Harder to fail at it and covers just about every base I could possibly need without… complicating things."

I wasn't going to address how, out of my current set of 'Advanced Friendships', I was probably in actual, irrevocable romantic love with at least two. That would have been the first step of acknowledging that I had a problem that needed solving and I was refusing to deal with it any time this year… or century.

Logically, the odds of rejection were low, but... I couldn't quite convince myself that they were absent, despite all the evidence and common sense saying otherwise.

"Yes, that's why I try to… not encourage those sorts of things with companions myself. It complicates things, especially given the lifespan differences," the Doctor - Model Eleven, and so dramatically different for it - said, spreading his hands out as if to encompass the complicated conceptual landscape of love and sexuality in a single frame. "I keep it space monk-y - no, not monkey, like… Gandalf. Space Gandalf - Yoda. Nobody gets distracted thinking about kissing Yoda."

"Does that ever work?"

His hands fell. "Most of the time, no. It's often worth the try and saves so much more trouble with people who aren't traveling with me long term, but love isn't a conscious choice, Delaine. You can become aware of it and choose what to do with it once it's there, but love itself has a tendency of sneaking up on you when you least expect. Like birthdays and anniversaries… and Zygons, on occasion."

I cracked a smile. "I'd hope not all at once."

"Well, not yet at least. Though with how I get around, it's bound to happen sooner or later."

With my foreknowledge, I couldn't help but laugh. But then the hair prickled on the back of my neck, cutting my good mood short.

"Someone's following us."

The Doctor didn't turn to check. "Mmm, I thought so. Human?"

Closing my eyes, I attuned myself to the sense of prickling dread going down my spine.

Whoever or whatever was behind us was a predator - sharp intent and hunger wrapped up in clammy anticipation and an overwhelmingly powerful feeling of slimy want that was thick enough on the air to trip a body up.

I dared not take any closer look than that, for fear of giving away a tell that couldn't be excused away.

"Don't think so," I said, opening my eyes. "If they are, they're still not someone I'd rather mix with on a night like this."

If they were an ordinary, unconnected human, I wouldn't have had any worries. But this was the Doctor I was walking next to - there was no way 'ordinary' was an option, especially in a city where Torchwood was active.

And with him wearing a very breakable human body right now, I was in no way willing to gamble either.

"Should we run?" I asked.

"No. That'll draw attention and let them know that we know that we're being watched."

We maintained the slow walking pace.

The watching sensation didn't let up.

The Doctor hummed for a moment after I told him. "I think we need something natural. Human."

"And what-?"

I cut off as the Doctor grabbed my face, slipping his hands up to frame my face with his fingers. I had one moment free to startle at the intimacy of the gesture and how odd his hands felt when this warm before there wasn't much room for thinking at all - only the awareness of mouth to mouth contact.

A few seconds passed.

Maybe even a full minute.

I had no idea, because I was busy feeling like a deer caught in the headlights, and probably looked a lot like one too; eyes blown wide, mouth hanging halfway open instead of actively participating in the action, head absolutely empty of anything but one stuttering, barely cognizant thought.

The Doctor was kissing me. The Doctor was kissing me.

What the hell was I supposed to do with that information?

Blank out and have a light anxiety attack instead of just enjoying the ride, my brain decided, because the Doctor fucking lied, this wasn't anything like the idea of kissing Yoda -

The awareness of someone watching us from a distance ended, any apparent interest our observer had in us fading as the mundanity of 'human' ritual face sucking went beyond what would count as an acceptable wait period.

Still, the kiss held for a few seconds more before finally breaking.

"Wh-what?" I finally got out as soon as my mouth started working again and my heart stopped hammering in my chest. "What the hell was that?"

"A kiss. Not the best I've ever had, if I'm being honest; you tensed up too much," the Doctor murmured, adjusting the angle of his face to press his forehead against mine. "Not a good response to that, speaking as someone who has done… rather a lot of it over the last couple regenerations."

I sputtered back to full consciousness after a couple false starts, the immediate heat of embarrassment turning from the subject of 'yeah, but it was with you' to a much more familiar area of self-depreciation.

"Yeah, I'm… not good at… I can't do it right." I turned my gaze away, looking down at the pavement while I tried to summarize a mountain of issues in a way that would let them get past the lump in my throat. "There's no good script for that, so I just…"

"Freeze up," the Doctor supplied.

"Yeah. But that's better than... taking a swing at someone. That's not a good panic reflex, traditionally."

The Doctor smiled, his mouth - very nice mouth, very soft lips - still commanding an unfair amount of my attention. "You've always been good about not putting me through the nearest wall."

Too casual. Too dismissive.

"It wouldn't have been you going through a wall," I hissed, making an abortive jerk backwards out of his grip, before remembering that even doing that wrong risked broken fingers. "If I didn't hold back, you could be-"

I cut myself off before I could say something worse.

He knew me better than Ten did right now, so he had to know how dangerous I was, how much I could break if I was careless, if I wasn't constantly pulling myself back from being too much - and he still made it sound like nothing.

And that was just too much.

Taking a moment to get my emotions back under control, I stared down at the pavement and the shoes - fiddly old-school leather for the Doctor and my own pair of tatty tiger print sneakers -, feeling nothing but the rush of blood through my veins and the warmth of the Doctor's fragile fingers still circling my wrist.

I could rip him apart right now. There'd be no regeneration, no resistance. Just -

"I don't -" My voice was cracking, my throat itself twisting as if to tear itself to pieces and my heart clenched hard enough to threaten the collapse of my ribs. "I make an effort not to hurt you, you know that?"

The Doctor brushed a spot under my eye with his thumb, carrying away a tear that had leaked out without me noticing. "I know. Trust me, I know."

"I just don't want to ruin things. For once in my life, I don't want to-"

"You don't ruin things," he said. "You occasionally put your foot in your mouth and engage in more self-destructive behavior than I'd care to see coming from a friend, but you don't ruin anything."

He's just saying that because -

"I'm not just saying that because I like you," the Doctor said, cutting off the thought with a precision that said he was used to that flavor of my bullshit. "Would I lie?"

"Yes." That was Rule One, after all.

"...fair enough, but I wouldn't lie to you here. Not about something like this. Have I ever said anything like 'you ruin everything' to any of my companions and actually meant it?"

"No." That was ridiculous.

"Exactly. Now, have I given you any indication since I've - this me, not Dr. Hair Gel - gotten here that I would do anything like that to you? That, out of everyone I've ever traveled with, you're the exception to the rule?"

"No."

He flicked the end of my nose with an 'see? I told you so' sort of smile. "Exactly. Now, come along, Delaine - I'm sure that Jackie will slap me again if we're not back to the council estate soon and I'm not sure I can survive another one of those just yet." The Doctor grimaced. "Though considering that it's going to be obvious that you cried, perhaps I should get ready for it anyway…"

"And what sort of time do you call this?" River asked as they got back to their flat.
It was late for them - almost two hours so, which was a bit much even for two people she knew to be both easily distractible and trouble magnets. And in weather like this, it was almost enough to be concerned about.

The only thing that had kept it at an 'almost' was that she knew the pair well enough to know that something as simple as 'rain' wasn't an object.

"The time it takes to drop a tail," the Doctor said, rubbing a suspiciously hand-shaped red splotch on his face before catching himself on a stray thought. "Not the wagging animal kind or anything literally attached but - you know, the not-fun, 'probably has a gun' type."

"What I call a mildly interesting Thursday, then," River agreed, sitting down. "Do give me all the dirty details of how that came about, will you?"

Author's Notes

Conversations w/ my friend (who is a much greater Eleven and River specialist than me so she's been a massive boon while doing their dialogue + actions) while working on the conversation about intimacy and kissing

Friend - yaddle

Me - (lego yoda death noise)

This chapter's ELO title was based on the song 'The Diary of Horace Wimp' which, in the words of one youtube commenter, is about a guy who 'was so terrible at love that a higher power had to intervene'. Which lined up pretty well with the different interactions this chapter.

The tailor gloves are from the Dodgeball jump (very useful perks in there for very low risk). Had a lot of fun letting Eleven play with the hats, even if figuring out River's dress was a slight headache because I'm not an expert of fashion.

Daedra - basically 'demons' or, in the case of the Daedric Princes, 'physical and generally asshole gods' for the Elder Scrolls universe. Not generally 100% friendly across the board but they have a range of extremes in that regard.

Sometimes it's because of their field (ex: Molag-Bal being the Daedric Prince of Slavery, Corruption, and Rape), sometimes it's just because they're a jerk (ex: Hermaeus Mora, Daedric Prince of Knowledge and Memory who regularly betrays and/or vaporizes anyone who's not useful anymore), and even the 'nice' ones tend to figure that you owe them your service rather than ask for it (ex: why everyone who has played Skyrim dislikes Meridia despite her entire thing being Life, Light, and Anti-Undead Artillery and giving you a very good sword by the end of her quest.)

On the other hand, if you do things for any of them, you usually get some sort of cool thingy as payment. Unfortunately sometimes the thingy is a ring that lets you eat people's corpses and gives you terrible breath (along with a stamina boost and healing from said corpse eating but still).

Every book mentioned the library, apart from the Spell Card book safes (Cardcaptor Sakura with a bit of embellishment to be expanded on when I get to writing with that jump, which is also where Orthrus will become the most relevant), is from Discworld. L-Space returns for the win!

(I also left out exactly who or what River meant to summon - to save research time and to avoid painting myself into any corners should that information become more relevant than a throwaway line).

Quasar Rifle - Transformers weapon. Specifically, it's meant to be Cheetor's Gut Gun (™) from Beast Wars. It was the best 'ridiculous' option that was agreed to suit River's aesthetical taste in weapons.

Photo albums - Jackie got to see a bit of Delaine's time in a Fallout jump (complete with a fun take on the standard leather armor that's practically a staple of the series) and a few pictures of the War Doctor (face covered with Eight's) for fun - the last was my friend's idea.

The walk home was the first scene constructed for this chapter - with the kiss distraction as a thing from my friend's recommendation and the rest a conversation that I think helps to push ahead a lot of future character development.