So here it is, eagerly awaited, I know. Please do enjoy.
Visitors from the Other Side
The day started out the same as most other days, and Deborah didn't even notice that anything was odd until she was in the porta-cabin half an hour late, as usual, only to find that nobody else was present. The door jammed as usual, but open swinging open, she wasn't met by the humming and over excited greetings that would usually grace her ears.
Carolyn, she knew, was taking the day off to spend with Herc, even though she claimed that he merely happened to turn up when she was free of responsibilities; it was only by the skin of her teeth that Deborah didn't mock or tease her employer, knowing that if she made Carolyn uncomfortable with the arrangement, she might also ruin her chances for happiness. The things that she did for her friends.
Martin and Arthur however had no excuse for not being in the porta-cabin when she expected them to be; their vehicles had been the last things that Deborah had looked at before she had pulled out her phone and walked by step memory across the car park.
Now she waited, slouched in her seat, feet up on the desk, spinning ever so slightly from side to side, checking her watch every now and then. It was infuriating; Deborah had little else to do until they turned up, and there was no reason for them not to be there, entertaining her.
Deborah wanted to interrogate Arthur about his progress with the girl from the library; things still hadn't been moving ahead as he'd have liked, she still didn't want to go on a proper date or accept his kind gestures, even though she was happy to sit and drink coffee with him. Deborah had been feeding him advice, turning it into her pet project on the side, and she was eager to know what had happened over their two day break from work.
Martin…she just wanted to see Martin; it had been two days since Deborah had spoken to him, busy as he was with van jobs, and so she was just a little indignant about the fact that he wasn't waiting in the porta-cabin just as eager to see her as she was.
Another two minutes passed, and Deborah decided that the boredom was already stretched too far; letting out a dramatic sigh, she slipped her phone from her pocket and dialled the number at the top of her contacts list, pressing the device daintily against her ear and pursing her lips as the dial tone rang out once, then twice, then cut off abruptly, only to be replaced by a rustling and the familiar clearing of a throat.
"Martin, my gallant and dashing Captain," Deborah drawled salaciously, before he could make his excuses; she noted the small scoff that came from the other end of the line, but was unable to identify any other surrounding sounds, "where are you?"
"I'm at work, where are you?" Martin retorted unhelpfully; Deborah rolled her eyes, and slumped back in her seat, inspecting the nails of her spare hand. Of course he expected her to be running even later than she was; if he hadn't, then he would have been there to meet her, rather than away somewhere doing his own thing without her.
"I am also at work and suffering from a particular absence of colleagues." Deborah remarked wryly, listening to the nervous gulp that must have emanated from Martin's throat, "I'm going to assume that you have Arthur with you?"
"Oh god," Martin groaned as if realising his mistake, then he spluttered before Deborah could add her own disdain at the fact; the man sure knew how to make someone feel welcome, "I mean yes, he's with me."
"Oh god?" Deborah repeated, letting her feet slip from the desk as she straightened, ready to stand if she needed to; there was no doubt that there was something Martin didn't want her to see, and that alone was worrying, "Martin, what have you done?"
"We haven't done anything…" Martin insisted, and it sounded as if he were lowering his voice; Deborah couldn't begin to imagine where on the airfield he could be that required that, "it's just, something's happened, it's hard to explain over the phone."
"What's happened? Are you alright?" Deborah demanded, becoming more worried now, lowering her open palm onto the desk, leaning her weight on it to centre herself, "Do you need to me come and help?"
"No-…" Martin replied, but Deborah cut him off, unwilling to listen to a list of excuses when she could quite clearly hear the deception in Martin's tone, as well as the flaring of his temper; something awful must have happened for him to have become so defensive so quickly. It normally took a lot longer.
"Martin, if something's happened you need to tell me," she instructed firmly, gritting her teeth to prevent herself from sounding as concerned as she was; better to focus on irritation for being made to endure lonely boredom, "otherwise I'll sit here worrying that you've managed to drop Arthur into Dirk's wood-chipper, or fallen into something terrible yourself, or that you're being held hostage…"
"Will you just shut up and listen for - " Martin snapped, and Deborah sat back in her seat, eyes widening in indignant surprise.
"Did you just tell me to shut up when I'm being concerned on your behalf?" Deborah asked dryly, rapping her fingers against the desk; there was definitely something wrong if Martin was getting waspish with her, but not wrong enough that he had given in and asked for her help.
"Yes, I did just say that - " Martin replied, sticking to his guns and maintaining his stressed and harried tone; he was using his 'I am the Captain' voice, so she supposed that he couldn't be in too much trouble. In which case, she was being deliberately excluded.
"Oh, well then, I'm going to assume that you're fine and that you're hiding something from me," Deborah drawled irritably, taking pains not to sound as insulted as she felt, "in which case, I want to know what's going on right now!"
"Fine! Fine!" Martin hissed, growling under his breath; Deborah only had a few moments of victory to savour before she heard Martin choke and retort, "Wait, did you not even look around when you arrived?"
"I was on my phone." She replied dully, glancing across the porta-cabin in confusion; Deborah couldn't imagine what there could have been to see on the air-field, but now her head was reeling a little more. What the hell was Martin up to?
"Of course…" Martin sighed, and she could just hear him rolling his eyes in exasperation.
"Martin, I've had enough of this, I'm coming to find you." Deborah remarked, though she made no move to rise to her feet despite her warning save for the tensing of her shoulders; if Martin had been there, she would have fixed him with a petulant glare.
"No don't come looking for us!" Martin might have cried had he not been keeping his voice low; that was enough to reignite the shards of suspicion in her guts, and she refused to let the matter lie, even though she wasn't going to go and hunt him down if he wasn't going to tell her what was happening.
"Tell me what you're hiding and I won't have to." Deborah told him, smirking as she imagined Martin wincing and flushing in panic; she lifted a stray pen and twirled it between her fingers, waiting for the squeaked response.
"No, I'm not hiding anything!" Martin yelped sternly.
"The thing is Martin, I think that you are," Deborah stated plainly, relishing the knowledge that he was suffering mentally from her blanket refusal to accept his terms; that would show him for trying to lie to her, "so I'm going to come and find out what it is."
"Look! Just stay exactly where you are…" Martin ordered, becoming more frustrated, his heavy breathing audible through the speakers of his phone.
"I don't think I will." Deborah teased, getting just a little more comfortable in her seat, returning her feet to their perch atop her desk, "I think I'm going to get up and have a nosey around the airfield until I find you."
"No, no – just stay in the Porta-Cabin!" Martin instructed frantically, oblivious to her playful tone.
"There's no use snapping at me, I know that you're lying to me about something, and I want to know what." Deborah replied reasonably, offering him a chance to come clean; after all that they had been through together there was no need to lie to her about whatever trouble he had got himself into.
"I'm not…" Martin groaned, but Deborah wouldn't listen.
"Yes you are, I can tell." She stressed, pressing the phone a little tighter against her ear as if that might help Martin to feel her insistence, "I'll see you in a minute, once I've hunted down your big secret."
"Stop!" Martin snapped, taking a deep breath that rattled through the phone before he continued in a more measured tone, as if he were trying to placate her and talk her around, "Stop what you're doing and sit down, don't even move…we're coming to you."
"I don't want to sit here and wait Martin, I want to see what the two of you are doing." Deborah sighed, dropping the pen that she was twirling onto her desk and letting her shoulders sag; the chances were if Martin and Arthur came back they would leave whatever they were keeping from her behind, and she was rather curious as to what it was.
"No, I said we're coming to you..." Martin repeated, and this time the already exhausted desperation was evident in the slight whine that had crept into his voice.
"Oh, fine," Deborah agreed with an exaggerated sigh, finishing far more benignly that she had planned, but unable to make herself be truly upset at them for excluding her so blatantly, "but make it quick."
"I'll see you in a minute." Martin replied, lowering his voice into a fond but exasperated hum; with that the dial tone replaced the intermittent crackling, and Deborah lowered the phone, letting her eyes trace over the contacts list for the sake of something to do while she dutifully awaited their return.
When Martin and Arthur did return, she almost wished that they had left their discovery where they had found it; if anything had been destined to fray her nerves and set her heart pounding in her ears, it was the appearance of another Martin, another Arthur, and what was apparently, a male version of her.
oOoOoOo
It barely took any time at all for Deborah to decide that Douglas was in fact her. He may have been male, and a bit older than her, but there was something so undeniably familiar about everything about him that made her accept that they at the very least possessed something akin to the same soul, if such things existed; given that she had been forced to believe in the men from another universe, souls were the least of Deborah's worries.
The Second-Martin and Second-Arthur seemed to be exactly the same, from the roots of their hair to their ingrained quirks; true, their behaviour was just a fraction out of sync, noticeably so, but she supposed that that was to be expected when the third member of their group was inexorably askew due to circumstance.
But Deborah still couldn't shake the feeling that Douglas was her; the way he spoke matched hers, the shifting lights in his eyes seemed to mirror her own emotional wash, and even the way that he reacted to the conundrum around them was like a fractured reflection of how she might have reacted in the same situation. That, and the way that he would move to shift closer to Second-Martin, almost without realising, his eyes flickering down to check what the man was doing, and the cautious way that he glanced around their porta-cabin, was all the convincing that Deborah needed.
And she couldn't keep her eyes from him, as if staring at the greying hair and the greater wrinkles on his face that was eerily similar to hers, and the slightly stauncher build, might allow some sort of tome to open up and give her all the answers that were swimming through her head.
Douglas was doing the same, she could tell; he was scared, obviously he was scared, but there was something else, a rabid curiosity that kept drawing his eyes to her, though he remained close to his Second-Arthur and Second-Martin.
Douglas was a man, but he was in the exact same place as Deborah; she could just shove that in the face of everyone who said that she couldn't be just as good as any man, if only she had the power. Deborah only fleetingly cherished that before she was doubting herself; she had had a hard time getting where she was…what if Douglas had had an easy ride. But then again, he was at his own MJN, so he can't have had an easy ride…
Deborah needed to know, to see whether Douglas' life was better, to see if she could have been happier if her soul had merely chosen an earlier, more masculine model to settle down in.
But she couldn't let Martin know that she was thinking such things; they may have been getting close, and she may have trusted him like no one else, but she couldn't let him know that she was thinking things like that, not until she was sure of the conclusion. Deborah began planning a way to talk to Douglas alone from the moment that Carolyn's phone rang in the other room, and when she returned, she had it fully formed.
It wouldn't matter that Douglas heard her innermost doubts. He was her after all, and she could tell that he was thinking something similar as he glared petulantly at her little pieces of home décor around the porta-cabin, and at her badly organised desk.
So Deborah convinced Douglas to accompany her to his plane, and the two of them were alone, wearing facades of cheer when in reality both were nervous at what they might discover.
"Well, I agree," Deborah remarked as she clambered by Douglas' side down from the inside of his GERTI; every now and then he would jerk as if to catch her in an act of gentlemanly valour, but he never did, as if he could tell that she wouldn't appreciate it, and was capable of such a feat on her own; if his upbringing was anything like hers, then he knew that she was capable, "and I'm definitely not touching that machine until tomorrow when we're all their to make sure that nothing goes wrong."
"You mean, if you get thrown into another universe by accident, you're sure as hell dragging your Martin and Arthur with you." Douglas remarked, quirking a knowing eyebrow at her, and smirking as he heaved himself onto the ground, one hand lingering on the plane's side in what could have been affection or a desperate need to comfort.
"Exactly," Deborah drawled, glad to be back in the open air after the harrowing sight of their charred flight-deck; when she turned back to face Douglas, it was to find that he was running his eyes over the plane's dented and mangled exterior with a sort of muted horror, definitely in need of a distraction, "So, tell me about yourself. What does it take to make a perfect Douglas Richardson?"
"That depends what you mean." Douglas muttered, turning away from the plane and slipping his hands into his pockets, frowning as he looked about his feet at the churned up dirt; it was a dreary sight.
"Start with your family." Deborah suggested, folding stepping forwards to pluck a shard of metal from the ground, inspecting it carelessly between her hands and then dropping over her shoulder when it proved to be unimportant; she met Douglas' gaze and began treading slowly around the plane, pleased when he mirrored her pace, "I'm going to guess that both sets of grandparents were in the RAF, and that your parents raised you in Oxford, down the street with the church and the off-licence at either end."
"Precisely." Douglas replied with a wry smirk that curled up the corner of his lips, and his eyes glazed ever so slightly as he kicked at the debris that Deborah abandoned, following a foot or two behind her as she made her backwards journey, "Dad always said I spent too much time down the wrong end of that street."
"And I imagine he was very eager to analyse your every career move to make sure you weren't just throwing your life away further?" Deborah continued, swallowing down the clump of miserable nostalgia that threatened to clamber into her throat.
"Oh yes," Douglas chuckled sardonically, sighing and shrugging his shoulders in a 'what can you do' sort of movement, "He was very confused as to why I chose to study medicine."
"I remember my Dad telling me that I would do badly as a doctor." Deborah remarked, unable to stop a small smile from bubbling onto her lips as she stepped over a particularly steep ridge of mud, "He was always very supportive, but he said, I remember this, he said 'Debbie, I know you're very good at basic first aid, but honestly dear, you'd let the patients bleed to death before you went near them with a scalpel'" She trailed off, glancing down at the ground before inhaling sharply and bringing her hands together winking a Douglas, "Funnily enough, I had much the same realisation about two months into my studies, so I quit."
"Hmmm, yes, I can't say I was too keen on the gloopier aspects of medicine either." Douglas assured her, catching a lump of shrapnel that Deborah lobbed over her shoulder and inspecting it down his nose before doing the same, letting it splodge onto the ground beside him.
Deborah nodded, and sighed again, making sure to keep moving; she didn't want to stand still for too long, lest she blurt out all the things that she was thinking desperately and scare him away.
"Do you have a brother?" she inquired, tilting her head to the side and folding her arms over her chest; Douglas' eyebrows rose, as if he were still surprised by the likenesses between their lives.
"Yes, I do." Douglas remarked brightly, wandering to her side and turning, so that he could look out across the airfield, his forehead furrowing with the inevitable stress of his situation, "Archie's only a year and a half older than me, so as you can imagine we were never terribly close…competitiveness and all."
"See, it's the opposite with me," Deborah interjected, blinking up at him, a subtle grin crawling onto her lips as Douglas shot her a sideways glance and a wry raised eyebrow, "I've never been close to my Archie because the age gap's so large. How old is yours?"
"He's nearly fifty nine, the bugger." Douglas answered, smirking and letting his gaze wander back into the middle distance, as if he were revisiting images that only existed in his own mind.
"So is mine." Deborah corroborated, somewhat pleased to know that even Douglas' world had some sticking points; then a flash of inspiration struck, and she might have even gasped, eyes widening, "Maybe that's it."
"What's what?" Douglas retorted, folding his arms and stepping back to lean against the plane's outer shell, folding one ankle over the other, "I'm afraid you've lost me."
"Well, Archie's the same age in both of our lives, so our universes must have been the same up until that point." Deborah explained, hands gesturing faintly through the air; she continued when she was sure that Douglas was listening, eyes narrowed as he nodded and followed her motions, "So if we agree that you and I are effectively the same soul, if such things exist, then perhaps souls just attach themselves to families and wait for the right opportunity." She shrugged unabashedly, taking a deep breath, "You're older, and so near to your Archie that maybe you worked on the first attempt. But me…I'm came far, far later, after literally dozens of miscarriages; maybe our soul just waited for me to work?"
"So what you're saying is that our soul, and by that logic souls in general, pick a family, and then wait for a functioning model to inhabit?" Douglas verified, sighing and pursing his lips in thought; Deborah waited for his expression to soften and for him to turn his head back to hers, "I suppose that that makes sense…it explains how we could be the same and yet completely different genders…and ages…how old are you?"
Deborah merely shook her head and tapped her finger against her nose, winking salaciously; she wasn't about to tell him how old she was. Only Carolyn knew that, and that was only because she had demanded a copy of her passport when she employed her.
"No, really, how long did they keep trying for another child?" Douglas insisted, his face lightening with genuine devious interest for the first time since Deborah had laid eyes on him; she shook her head again, "If they started after Archie was born…five years?...ten?...twenty?" Douglas' eyes widened in wondrous shock, "They didn't keep trying for twenty years?"
"I'm not thirty nine, no." Deborah gave in, allowed him a little leeway with a small sigh, "But they did keep trying for a very long time. They really wanted that second child; you should feel extremely proud of the fact you worked first time."
"Forty five?" Douglas continued to press, ignoring her suggestion; Deborah rolled her eyes and made a gesture through the air, pushing her hand downwards, making Douglas' expression grow only more determined, "So somewhere between forty and forty five?" he whistled through his teeth, "I knew my parents were stubborn bastards, but this is a whole new playing field."
Deborah chuckled softly, but didn't reply; instead she turned slowly and began once again stepping lightly over the rubbly ground, inspecting the damaged plane and listening for Douglas' steps behind her. Now that was out of the way, and he was feeling more comfortable all round, she knew what came next.
The questions that she really wanted answering, the ones that mattered; birth and family couldn't be changed, they came as they came, but marriages, careers, they could be drastically different based on…not even who you were, just who people perceived you to be.
But she would let Douglas ask those questions. Let him be the one to delve into those murky waters, and then she would turn it back to her own ends and find out what she needed.
oOoOoOo
After a long day keeping a parallel crew hidden, and pretending to work when really all she was doing was keeping Arthur from rushing off to have fun with his double, and Martin from having a mental break-down over the unauthorised doppelgangers, Deborah was relieved that she had sent Douglas and his crew off on their own. They would be nice and safe tucked away in her flat.
It had been such a long day that she had given in to her impulses and told Martin everything; having him hold her hand and tell her everything was fine was like a weight from her chest. And then he had offered to take her out for dinner, though chips could hardly be called fine dining, and though she had known that the fluttering moths in her chest and the tension between them was aflame, she hadn't the energy to refuse.
Given all that had happened, there was nothing wrong with pretending just for one night that they didn't have to stay just friends; Deborah told herself that it was okay to relax and let herself enjoy his company.
Nothing would happen between her and Martin…and yet, he had been looking at her the same way that he had been the last time that 'nothing had happened'. Both of them were fully aware of the attraction between them, and both flirted shamelessly, as a game, as friends did.
Except tonight Deborah felt dangerously close to just ploughing straight on and forgetting their agreement that things were better off uncomplicated, and forgetting that she was happy being in love with him from a distance…and if she didn't know better, Martin was acting far more comfortably than he had been, even more so than when they were being deliberately 'friendly'.
The only thing that she could think of to explain it, and Deborah spent a long time on the park bench, watching Martin as they shared their cheap meal, wondering why tonight of all nights her resolve was crumbling, was that the other crew didn't have this.
Douglas and Second-Martin didn't look at each other like this, and there was none of the closeness between them, physical or emotional. But she and Martin did have that…why waste that when others weren't so lucky?
But Deborah couldn't. She absolutely couldn't, because keeping Martin was a lot more important that risking everything.
As the two of them left rose from the park bench that they had found a short walk away from the chip shop, they strolled side by side back to where they had left Martin's van; Deborah hugged her coat closed with her arms over her chest, elbow bumping Martin's.
"So what did you tell the other Martin?" Deborah inquired, trying to reignite the conversation that had been somewhat dwindling between them; in the light provided only by the street lamps, it was hard to see much other that than the angular lines of Martin's face exaggerated from the shadows, and a light flush from exhaustion.
"Oh, lots of things, mostly about us..." Martin answered sheepishly, shrugging with his hands in his pockets and glancing down at her, his eyes particularly blue in the semi-darkness, "I um, I left out the...stuff...between us."
"That was a good idea." Deborah reassured him, nudging him slightly as they walked and smiling needlessly up at him when he retaliated; this was good, "I didn't mention it to Douglas, I thought it might worry him."
"Me too." Martin agreed, nodding hastily and dragging his bottom lip through his teeth, "I almost told the other me about how we, uh, we kissed...after the trip to Ottery St Mary, but I realised and said that you made it up to me with a cooked meal."
"Oh, you scoundrel." Deborah drawled, rolling her eyes fondly; the wind gusted in that moment, and she had to push her hair behind her ears to be able to look properly at Martin, whose eyes followed the motion, "I suppose it's for the best - I think the idea of there being anything between them might scar them."
"Hmmm...they're all so jumpy," Martin noted, sighing; then he shot her a conspiratorial glance and said cheekily, "And suspicious…if they knew we were doing this they might think this was a date."
"Isn't it?" Deborah shot back, feigning innocence and batting her eyelashes at him; the flustering in her chest wrestled and confused with itself, but she ignored it, smirking at Martin's expression.
"Um, well, um, it wasn't meant to be…" Martin stuttered guiltily, his cheeks flaming red as he rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, biting particularly awkwardly at his bottom lip.
"Martin, I'm teasing." Deborah said firmly, holding his gaze when he tried to look away in embarrassment; Martin blushed and nodded, rolling his eyes at himself, but Deborah couldn't help but follow the odd little paths that her mind was taking her; she was ever the risk taker after all, and Martin already knew what was bothering her, so she squared her shoulders and took a deep breath, "Would you still like me if I were male?"
"Of course I would, you're my friend!" Martin replied, sounding almost affronted at the very idea; then his lips curled into a wicked smirk, and his nudged his elbow against Deborah's as they walked, "I mean, don't get me wrong, there's a lot about you aesthetically that I like that you wouldn't have if you were male," then to Deborah's amusement he seemed to realise what he was saying, and his eyes widened in terror, "not that that's a major deciding point-"
"You know, you don't have to be so careful around me," Deborah interjected, pressing her lips together and glancing down at the cobbles disappearing beneath her feet when Martin glanced sharply towards her, the lines on his face softening, "you haven't been recently, but I reckon having the other lot around has knocked you off kilter."
"Define careful." Martin said slowly, pausing in his stride; Deborah came to a halt and turned slightly to face him, peripherally aware that they were in the middle of what constituted as Fitton's high-street, but far more focused on the intensely tentative shine in Martin's eyes as they bored into hers.
"I'm talking about how desperate you've been to assure me that you're just feeling'… friendshippy' towards me." Deborah explained, shrugging against her folded arms, and feeling like the shivers crawling from her chest to her throat were telling her to duck her head and not make eye contact for too long.
"I just want to make absolutely sure," Martin replied slowly, the shake gone from his stance, though he kept his hands in his pockets and gazed seriously down at her, eyebrows dipped in the middle, "so that I don't make you uncomfortable."
"It doesn't make me uncomfortable…" Deborah said quickly, eyes widening with the importance of that statement as her shoulders fell back and she met his gaze head on; the very last thing it made her was uncomfortable, in fact, she wanted more…not that she'd ever tell him that.
"Well, hey," Martin remarked nonchalantly, shrugging his shoulders and kicking his toe lightly against a loose cobble, smiling weakly against whatever he thought was going on, "I'm not the only one being bothered by the other lot, am I?"
Deborah couldn't chuckle with him, and the sound died when he saw that she was looking around them without really seeing their surroundings, sighing helplessly.
"It's just...there's stuff between us that they don't seem to have..." she stressed quietly, blinking sadly up at Martin without a trace of deception; she unfolded one hand to gesture through the limited air between them, "things...you know, emotional things…"
"I know..." Martin muttered, pursing his lips and frowning, but tracing his eyes over Deborah's face; this close, she could have sworn that she could feel its heat scorching across her cheeks, "It doesn't take much to see that Douglas and the Other me don't feel the same way about each other as we do."
"And how do we feel about each other?" Deborah asked, inwardly cursing herself for her inability to stop pushing, to just leave things alone; she watched Martin's face twist with nerves, his nose scrunch and his eyes dart here and there about her person.
"Well, I um…I just…" Martin didn't quite splutter, but he couldn't grasp the correct words either, and his hand turned little circles in the air beside him as he swallowed hard and bit down on his bottom lip; Deborah regretted her outburst immediately.
"I'm sorry, you're right. I'm sure that they're friends...but, it's different with us." Deborah amended hastily, adopting the jovial tone of flippancy and wrapping her arms all the more tightly around her chest, fighting the reflexive tremble of her own lips as she smiled stiffly, "We're friends, and I care about you..." the way that Martin looked at her then, the air between them seemed infinitesimal, and the moths in her chest stood to attention, forcing a lie away from her lips, and Deborah could only acknowledge what she had been silent about, like dipping her toe into an acidic lake, "but there's other things there that we're both aware of...certain things..."
"I know, Deborah," Martin cut her off, sounding almost comforting yet simultaneously affectionate and scared, though his smile flickered sardonically and he seemed to lean in, his eyes fixed on hers until she could barely stand to look, or to look away, "It's okay, I know"
"What do you know?" Deborah replied, her voice almost a whisper; she could feel her breathing increase, her lungs beginning to shudder as she wetted her lips and tilted her head back to hold Martin's gaze, gripping the fabric at her elbows.
It was like her mind had frozen momentarily, and although she knew exactly what Martin meant, there was nothing else he could be talking about, she didn't want to acknowledge it, to shatter the precarious balance that they had engineered between them; it had taken so long to get where they were, the idea of changing that physically hurt.
"I...I know how you feel..." Martin explained, then swallowed sharply, taking in a shuddering breath and wringing his hands in his pockets, dragging one up to rub anxiously across his face; now his eyes weren't boring into hers, they were flying here there and everywhere in order to avoid hers at all costs, "…about me."
"Have you been talking to Arthur?" Deborah demanded; it was the first thing that popped into her head, and even as she said it, rising up indignantly at the invasion of privacy, shoulders squared, she wanted to back down even though she couldn't, because she absolutely couldn't admit outright that Martin was completely and utterly correct about how she felt. Let him come to his own conclusions and she would never have to say a word; whatever happened wouldn't be her fault.
"Yes, but I knew anyway..." Martin reasoned, wincing slightly at his own wording when Deborah raised an eyebrow in disbelief; he practically gnawed at his bottom lip, and his cheeks were scarlet as he rocked on his heels, "He told me that you've got feelings for me, good feelings, but that you were...confused, and that you have no idea what you actually want - " he exhaled sharply, hopelessly, pointing his finger in an attempt to regain his captainly stance, "But you mustn't get mad at him! I knew anyway."
"How could you possibly know that anyway?" Deborah demanded, shaking her head until she nearly pressed her eyes closed with the effort, trying to straighten out the whirring in her head; when she looked back to Martin, he was still again, looking down at her with the soppy little smile that he always matched with a cock of his head and glistening eyes.
"Because I know you." Martin said simply, as if that were truly enough of an answer, enough to make everything fine and dandy between them; Deborah just gaped, scowling expectantly and trying to stop her eyes from watering at how touched she was by such an innocuous statement, "And I can tell when you're happy, or when you're staring at me, and it doesn't take a genius to notice that you care, or that you've been going out of your way to spend time with me, or look out for me, like getting me extra cash or my favourite coffee."
"If you noticed all of that, why didn't you say anything?" Deborah asked quietly, hoping that she didn't sound as bitter as she thought she did; it hadn't quite sunk in yet, that they were actually discussing this, talking about how she felt about him, truly felt about, and the moths in her chest were still frozen, screaming up images of millions of moments, the end of the day after a long van trip, "You turned down a perfect opportunity a while ago."
"Because you're confused, and you pull away whenever we get too close..." Martin explained, his voice returning to its usual reedy tenacity as he shrugged as it were no big deal, gazing imploringly down at her, "It's like I was saying to Arthur-"
"Why were you talking to Arthur about this, I told him not to-" Deborah snapped, turning away from him to glare at the edge of the pavement, pressing her lips into a thin line; Martin was wrong, she wasn't confused anymore, she was bloody terrified of the implications of what he was saying, about what he knew, and anger was better than misery any day.
"He didn't mean to - " Martin insisted, but Deborah wasn't ready to listen to his excuses; he couldn't just pull the rug out from under her feet and expect her to be okay with that.
"Then why did he?" Deborah cut him off, inhaling sharply and wrapping her arms around her chest once again, pouting her lips and glaring into Martin's eyes; she was highly aware of how close she was to toppling into either tears or fury; that was how distressed she was.
Martin groaned, and rolled his eyes, and Deborah had to stop herself from scoffing in indignation as he threw his hands into the air either side of him; a man on the other side of the street paused, but Deborah barely noticed him, and he moved on without interrupting.
"Because, he was being miserable because he didn't understand why the girl from he library didn't understand why he liked her so much, so I explained to him how sometimes people just can't process why other people like them, and then he asked me how I would know that..." Martin reeled off at a charged, frustrated pace, his cheeks red from exertion now, as his jaw set and his limbs seemed to droop, and he let his eyes drop down to Deborah's as he continued, exhausted, "and so I...I told him I knew...because I love you…"
The rest of the world vanished for a moment, and Deborah could barely process the words that had just left Martin's mouth.
"You what?" she asked weakly, tracing her eyes over his face, just in case she had heard wrong. His cheeks were red, his expression was sheepish, but otherwise, he was wearing that look of steely determination that always spelled trouble.
"I told him that I knew how he felt, because I love you." Martin repeated, his hands clenching at his sides as if he were steadying himself; Deborah took in a shaky breath, and opened and closed her mouth, unable to say a word.
It occurred to her only then, that for all they had mentioned how she felt, this was the first time all night that Martin had mentioned how he felt; it was the first time that she had actually considered it as a possibility (and what did that say about her self-esteem?).
Carefully, cautiously, Deborah blinked hard and swallowed, letting her arms slip down from her chest to hang at her front, fingers intertwining as she stepped forwards, tilting her head back to look Martin in the eyes, as he watched, frozen as if with the same fear.
"Why would you tell him that?" she asked quietly, wetting her lips again as her eye were drawn to his; Deborah didn't know if she dared believe, it seemed too good to be true.
"Because it's true..." Martin stated decisively; he made sure to look her straight in the eye, never wavering, and it felt like the breath in her lungs had turned to stone, sealing the moths inside to struggle futilely, "I love you."
"Hold on, hold on….why are you telling Arthur that?" Deborah spoke immediately, lest the words linger any longer in her mind, lest they get ingrained when now they were merely turning lazy circles, getting cosy; she raised her hands in surrender, creating a physical if not flimsy barrier between them as Martin moved forwards as if to comfort her, "If that were true, why haven't you said something to me? Perhaps when I offered to spend the night with you, for instance?"
"Because you're having enough trouble trying to work out your own feelings!" Martin exclaimed, trying to make her understand, she knew, as she watched him ache to reach across the small gulf and place his hands on her arms, "You don't need mine to worry about as well!"
"But we're friends." Deborah remarked dumbly; that was the only argument that she had left.
"Yes, of course we are! Friendship isn't just a means to an end!" Martin insisted; he rocked back on his heels and shook his head, closing his eyes briefly, "I like being your friend, and I wasn't going to make that awkward by pushing you when you're not even sure what you want."
"Stop, Martin, just stop!" Deborah snapped weakly, her voice trailing off as she raised her hands again, but didn't step away, "I need a minute to think…"
Martin fell silent, and nodded, teeth digging into his lip, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. Deborah squeezed her eyes shut, relishing the peace the darkness brought even as her arms began to ache were she held them aloft, keeping her grounded.
She wanted so much for it to be true, for Martin to want her like that. But Deborah couldn't just accept his word and let it be, she just couldn't.
Deborah had watched three long term relationships crumble around her, and those men had walked out of her life and stayed away, and she barely missed them. But Martin, Martin…she couldn't bear to have that happen to him, she didn't think she could cope if she lost him, even if he loved her now, or knew that she loved him, so much, it might fall apart, and she just couldn't do that with him, not with him.
But she wanted him so much it hurt.
"Are you alright?" Martin's voice, concerned and tentative breached the whirring tempest in her head, and Deborah's eyes snapped open, to fine him standing closer, blinking worriedly down at her.
"Alright?" Deborah repeated, regaining some sense of indignation; she pulled herself up to her full height and stared him down, though her voice wavered in despair, "In the last five minutes you've told me that you love me, that I have feelings for you, but that I don't know what they are because I'm confused, that I'm scared of being loved because I don't understand why anyone would, and that I don't think I could ever be happy-"
"I didn't say anything about being happy." Martin interjected, his forehead crinkling in confusion; when Deborah said nothing, but merely looked away, at the grim edge of the road, he reached one hand across the small gap between them to brush his knuckles against her upper arm, "Are you unhappy?"
"I..." Deborah opened and closed her mouth, caught off guard; there was no reason that it should be so hard to meet Martin's gaze, but now they were treading into murky territory, and she wasn't sure she wanted anyone to see that, "not always...I was around my last divorce, but…"
"Because I've not noticed you being unhappy." Martin cut in, and one syllable was enough to tell Deborah that he was shifting back into his harried, overly nervous state, expression stiffening as his eyes flickered over her face, searching for any sign that he might have been doing something wrong. That alone was enough to make her realise that honesty was the only thing that could prevent them from shattering into a pile of uncomfortable and awkward shards in the middle of the high-street.
"That's because I'm not when I'm spending time with you…" Deborah explained, raising her hand to place the tips of her fingers under Martin's chin and turn his head back towards her, "I, I just, we have fun."
"Yeah...we do." Martin acknowledged; then his face did something odd, that Deborah assumed was an attempt to stave off a frown as he shifted his chin from her light grasp, "Is that it then? I distract you from being unhappy?"
"No, you make me happy." Deborah insisted, grasping at his sleeve instead; to her relief, she wasn't shaken off, and Martin's eyes met hers, the emotion trapped inside them enough to help ignite the moths in her chest again, "Because I like being with you...and I like you."
"Oh...well...the feeling's mutual." Martin murmured, clearing his throat awkwardly; he let out what could have been a stilted chuckle, and Deborah couldn't help but step forwards just a fraction, still pressing his sleeve between her fingers, "I'm still not sure what you want though."
"No, I do. I have done for a while." Deborah assured him, her voice dropping as she ran her eyes over his face, letting them linger over his lips; she dared to hope, just for a moment, as she felt his hand shifting from beneath his sleeve to worm its way into hers, curling delicately around her fingers, a warm, wonderful sensation, "Do you really love me?"
"Yes...definitely...you're…Deborah…you're perfect." Martin exclaimed on a breath, leaning back to inspect her expression as if he couldn't believe what she was asking; Deborah swore that she didn't feel herself blush under the scrutiny, "I mean, I know you're not, but that's pretty perfect, being able to look like you are when you're not, even though you sort of are because you're not…sorry, that got all muddled."
He raised his free hand to curl in front of his mouth, hiding his embarrassment, though he didn't make any effort to move away; the motion was so Martin, so beautifully normal in the midst of such madness, that Deborah thought she felt her heart drop all over again.
"Martin...um...the feeling's probably mutual." She remarked, hushed, as if saying it too loud might break the sanctity of the admission; wetting her lips, and dragging her eyes over his, Deborah met Martin's gaze confidently, challenging the worry in her chest.
"Oh..." Martin's eyes widened, and he looked more shocked than she had ever seen him in his life; gulping, he pointed his finger between the two of them, attempting a wavering smile, "so you wouldn't mind if I?"
"Go ahead…" Deborah drawled, or tried to drawl; she was too busy focusing on the way Martin's eyes darted to her own lips, and his posture became more confident as if someone had flipped a switch.
Before she could react, or fully beam at the motion, Martin had lurched forwards and pressed his lips to hers as if it were the last thing he would ever do, tilting their heads and crashing into kiss after kiss, until it became hard to smile, and each one merged into the next, all caught up in the rush of heat in Deborah's chest as the moths caught fire and forced her into action.
She could barely concentrate on where his arms were, wrapped around her back, holding her tightly, gripping her as if she might disappear, another hand pushing gently through her hair, urgently against her cheek, anything to pull more in, pull her closer, bring them together and just keep them there, lips parting and making way for tongues, and when Martin broke away for air Deborah was fast on his tail, curling her hands into his coat, kissing him again and again, eyes closed, just wanting to never ever stop.
And they kept going, and Deborah couldn't remember feeling so perfect as she did then, with Martin holding her so tightly, so protectively, but barely pressing them together even though she tried with all her might to be as close to him as possible, cherishing the sensation of his mouth against hers, keening and holding on for dear life.
They had no choice but to stop, to breathe, chests heaving only inches from the other, hands curled and hooked around each other; Martin's arms were around Deborah, holding her close, securely, one hand stroking past her ear as their foreheads very nearly pressed together, and they struggled to keep their eyes open rather than blink dumbly
"I've changed my mind." Deborah murmured, hearing her voice shaking with exertion; their noses brushed as she lifted her head to meet Martin's eyes.
"Oh?" he replied, voice low and warm; his tongue darted out to wet his lips, and his eyebrows danced peculiarly in response, too pleased to be truly confused.
"Yes, very much so..." Deborah continued; she lifted a hand away from his shoulder, untangling her fingers from the creases in his coat, "This, I want this, this makes me very happy."
Martin chuckled, the sort of chuckle that rose from his guts, and let his forehead fall against hers, as his fingers twirled around her loose hair and tickled her cheek.
"Me too." He remarked, nodding stiltedly.
Then they were kissing again, with no intention of stopping; if the local police officer hadn't given Martin a tap on the shoulder, they might not have stopped for a while.
oOoOoOo
The next day passed in a blur, and even though Deborah would remember it for the rest of her life, she barely experienced it as it happened.
When she woke, she remembered that there was a Douglas asleep on her chair in the sitting room, and had gone about readying breakfast. Then, somehow, Douglas had managed to convince her to spill everything she had never told anyone, including how much she loved Martin; after that, there could be no doubt at all that she really, really did love Martin, and showed him as much when he turned up an hour later.
And then on the way to the airfield, with and Arthur and a Martin that weren't hers, she had gone under interrogation again; it had taken all her power not to just tell them that they were so obviously meant for each other. If Douglas and Second-Martin were anything like her and her Martin, then they would need to figure that out for themselves.
"Do you really love the other me?" Second-Martin had asked, slumped with an irritable anxiousness in the passenger seat of her Lexus, peering at her over folded arms in a way that Deborah hadn't seen from her Martin in months, "Douglas said that you did."
"Yes, I do." Deborah had answered him simply, only to have him demand why, as if it were the most important thing in the world, "because he makes me happy." She had told him, as if that were the whole story.
Perhaps it was.
The machine inside their plane was elegant yet clunky, and when the afternoon rolled in, and they were packing the other crew onto their mysteriously healing plane, Deborah felt a pang of guilt; what if they never made it home?
But Martin stayed by her side the entire time, and assured her that nothing could go wrong. It was forced optimism, but it helped somewhat.
Deborah had made sure to give Douglas a lingering hug, something to hang onto, to make sure that he didn't feel quite so alone in the world, she wasn't sure. But she would miss him, even though he hadn't been there for long. It had been nice, having someone to talk to, feeling like she wasn't alone in the world.
She hoped for his sake that he turned out happy, hopefully with his Martin; Deborah had no idea whose life was better, probably neither, but it had occurred to her that for all his fuss, for all his fears over parallel universes and strange potential romances with his Captain, Douglas had been just as eager to see if there was a way for someone like him to be happy as she had been.
So she made sure to tell him, to hint in the right direction, to whisper in his Martin's ear, and hope that when they got home, he'd be happy too.
And then they were gone, and Martin called it a day, let Arthur go home, and declared that what he needed was a good night's sleep.
The two of them paused between their vehicles, like they had so many times before; but this time was different.
"I'm not really sure how to end a day like that." Martin remarked, his voice strained as he smiled helplessly, passing his keys from hand to hand, leaning back against his van.
Deborah watched the motion, and decided to take a chance; she rather figured that it was allowed now that everything was out in the open, and the day's excitement had driven away any chance of true shock.
"You could come back to mine." She offered, letting her hands hang, joined at her front as she shrugged and smiled hopefully across the gap; at Martin's tentative, almost nervous squint, she pushed on, "Not for anything drastic – we haven't really discussed what we're doing yet…and I don't think we're in much of a position to given how tired and stressed we are after the events of today. I just thought perhaps…we could watch some telle…cuddle on the sofa…"
Martin let out a laugh, then a chuckle, and before she knew it, he was laughing, red cheeks, his eyes close to watering with what must have been hysterical nerves held in for hours.
"Cuddle?" he repeated, placing a hand over his chest; he swallowed hard, and then nodded, pressing his lips together tightly, and Deborah saw with a tugging sensation in her chest, that yes, he was close to relieved tears, "You know what? I would give anything just to cuddle and forget all the terrifying, weird stuff that just happened."
Without a word, Deborah opened her arms, and stepped forwards, meeting Martin in the space between the vehicles and letting herself get wrapped in a warm, frantic embrace.
She supposed that, mental scarring as a result of terrible science-fiction trope aside, at least something good had come out of the last few days.
Martin's resolve hadn't wavered since last night, and Deborah wasn't going to let the opportunity pass; it was out in the open now how they felt about each other…even if things didn't run smoothly, they could try at least.
Cuddles in the middle of the air-field were a good start.
I hope I did that justice - I didn't want to cross over too much with the other fic, but I couldn't not mention parts
Never fear, this is not the end - this is only the beginning