first blueprint

[takeitsleazy]

[he'd had plenty of advance notice about the moon: first from Merlin, then from Hades, and then, the previous evening, from that strange little bird. he didn't know what to expect, but whatever it was, he knew that whatever gave him his power - and his guess was his Eternal nature - was going to be weakened even more than it already had been.

he had to prepare.

so he'd spent part of his first paycheck on something very, very important. a hoodie. on a whim, he'd also grabbed a few other things: some snacks, a few books, and a box of paper clips.

he manages to make it home to his apartment before the sun starts to set, and feels pretty positive and confident about this whole thing. he lines the books up on the coffee table, and puts the snacks which require refridgeration in the kitchen. but as the sun sinks, so does his mood. suddenly, everything starts to look daunting. strange. larger, somehow. something inside him begins to wind up into knots, turning and churning, creating sea changes. what's happening? he doesn't know. but he's --

-- oh. frightened. great. he tries to pace it away, but that only makes the knots worse. soon his stomach hurts, and even glancing at the junk food is a bad idea. he retreats to the bathroom, where he shucks off his suit coat and dress shirt, pulling on the hoodie to stare at himself in the mirror. He tries to will even just his eyes to look the way they really do. Nothing. Not even a faint glimmer. Just ice blue and floating black, wide and human and scared.

Michael pulls the strings tight on the hood, making its tiny little round black ears stand up, and retreats back to the couch, falling over on it sideways. His 3M slides out of the pocket of his pants, and he stands it up against a few of the books to look into it]

[just. staring. congratulations. he's on a couch full of emotion.]

Comments

[takeitsleazy]

"Me?" He blinked. "Oh. Well ... uh ... I hadn't really thought about what kind of neighborhood I'd want. I always designed them for other people. Maybe ... maybe if you start, it'll give me ideas."

THere was plenty of space in the background, and he picked up another piece of paper, using it as a guide to draw a proper horizon line behind the lava pool.

[bigbadrose]

"Lava surfing!" a determined growl and then Rose let herself go a little crazy with it. "And bungee jumping, and asteroid hopping, and waterfall showers, and stonehenge rock concerts, and meteor showers, and frozen ocean waves reaching up to the moon, trapped in place on Widow Wept, and lots of animals everyone thought was a monster, but were actually nice and kind, and instead of geometric shapes all meant to fall in on themselves, it'd be the opposite! Again, like Widow Wept! Everything in perfect balance with everything else because they're all pulling each other apart and hanging each other up like trapeze artists! And barrage balloons and tightrope walks; but they're all solid, just look dangerous. And you know how those super violent cuttlefish have like sixteen cones of color in their eyes? Everything would be like that, and even if people couldn't see it right away, they'd be able to learn and train their brains to see it psychically! And a racetrack. And dancing gummi bears. And every kind of contest ever. And the only punishment is for being boring."

[takeitsleazy]

He's sketching as fast as he can, and to be fair, he keeps up well. But a few of those things trip him up - the not!monsters, especially. The geometric shapes and the trapezes, though, those he has fun with, using them to fill the spaces not occupied with the rest. His lines are true and straight, and clean, and the racetrack winds around and through everything, even shooting up over the lava for one spectacular corkscrew down around the frozen waves afterwards.

His piece de resistance is a caricature of Shawn, dangling upside down by a bungee being held by the dancing gummi bears, because who else to exemplify being boring than his former boss?

[bigbadrose]

"Perfect!" she giggles and gives him a giant thumbs up.

[takeitsleazy]

"Good! So ... let's see. Oh. There's already ice cream, but there needs to be a bar."

He drafts one in at the top of one of the geometric plateaus, with a patio that stretches between two frozen waves. On the patio, waving to the blonde lava surfer, is a little cartoon Michael with a margarita glass in his hand. He adds a karaoke machine in the corner. And through a window, the tiniest suggestion of something yellow. Maybe hair, if you squint just right.

The perfect neighborhood always has an Eleanor. He does it without thinking.

[bigbadrose]

"Yes!" Beams and giggles as he adds to it, and Rose nods, and makes a weird sort of danceclub with a Jack in it. Not that anyone would know it was Jack, except he has a World War 2 captain's jacket. "Jack and Eleanor would shag," she mumbles to herself without thinking about it, chewing her bottom lip in thought. "That'd be weird, yeah?"

Rose points to some of the minimal space left, "'Ere, can you draw some Glenn Miller music? Or no. What do you think it should be?"

[takeitsleazy]

"Glenn Miller. Yeah, I think I know how that goes."

The scales start out as In The Mood but by the end of the last swooping measures, it's Glenn Miller and His Orchestra's swingin' rendition of She Hates Me by Puddle of Mudd. Oops.

"Why would it be weird? Eleanor's had ..." He counts in his head and realizes it might not be flattering to speak of her in that much detail. "... lots of intimate encounters. Probably about as many as your friend Jack."

[bigbadrose]

That'd be amazing and make Rose die of laughter, if only she could read music and knew how much Hell was obsessed with that song.

"Yeah," Rose made a face, "That's what makes it weird." She tried to figure out how to translate it into easier terms for Michael to get, but barring using himself, it didn't seem possible. "Weird for me. Normal every day for them, which is why it would happen, but it's like..." she rolled a hand in a circle, at a loss for words. "Oh!! Imagine if you met someone with your face, right? Like a completely alternate universe version of you! And instead of being an asexual architect sort-of-demon, they were like, I dunno, really into shagging other people... it's a weird disconnect, right? Like it's not really you, but it's your face, and it's weird!" Rose nodded, pleased with this analogy. "For humans, family members are kind of like that. Not that Jack's family, and I was kind of happy my parents got back together. But Jack bein' my friend, and Eleanor bein' yours, and them shaggin'... it's weird. For me. Not for them."

[takeitsleazy]

"Ohhhh, I see." He nodded. "I know exactly what you mean. It's how I felt when Janet married Jason."

His face twists in discomfort at the mention of it, but it doesn't last long. "I mean, aside from the fact that Janets aren't .... really supposed to get involved with humans, and I'm not even sure if ... wait. When you say 'shagging' you do mean sex, and not something strange to do with rugs, right?"

[bigbadrose]

"You are SO her Dad!" sorry, not sorry.

"Yes, sex," Rose made a small face, but as to carpets, "Whut?"

[takeitsleazy]

"Wh- No! No I'm not! Why does everyone keep --"

UGH. He closes his eyes, holds up his hands, and sighs. He just can't with you people, he just. Can. Not.

"Shag. It's a kind of carpet. Generally really cheap and tacky."

[bigbadrose]

"Adopted. You're generally protective of her, she's always your backup, and let me ask you this. Remember how she made Derek with windchime--" Rose devolved into giggles again, that was never going to get old. "You know..." All the giggles, but she tried to breathe. "I once created a paradox that nearly destroyed the multiverse, and would have, but both the Doctor and my Dad sacrificed themselves to stop it. My Dad said he couldn't be there to take me to ball games or picnics or movies or watch me graduate or get bronze in gymnastics, but he was my Dad, so it was his job to fix any of my mistakes, yeah?"

A nod.

"Right yeah, think they come from the same origin. Word-wise."

[takeitsleazy]

"So you're saying I helped her get rid of Derek for the same reason. ... I can follow that. But she's not my child, she's just my friend. And friends can do that kind of thing, too, can't they? I mean ... I tried to sacrifice myself for Eleanor and I know I'm not her father. Adopted or otherwise. We're just ... friends. Also, what do sex and carpets have to do with -- you know what, I don't want to know."

[bigbadrose]

Rose thinks about it. "Maybe. It's different. Fathers and daughters and friends though." How to pinpoint it? Rose really couldn't. Her father rescued her even after turning his back on her once, rescued her multiple times, took her in as his own, gave her a job, home, life, tried to help her repeatedly even when she didn't deserve it. It was confusing and complicated. "Your friendship with Eleanor and Janet is different too, yeah?"

Rose shook her head. "But see, it does faze you that Janet got weirdly corrupted with Jason, and not that Eleanor has... err sexual relations, yeah?? That's a more father-daughter-y thing. Although the Doctor would definitely be weirded out by the TARDIS getting married or having a rebound fling too," Rose nodded.

[takeitsleazy]

"Eleanor's history doesn't bother me because it's her history," he clarified. "She was already an Arizona trashbag - her words, by the way, not mine - when I met her. Janet ... how do I explain this. Ah. Would you marry a smartphone?"

[bigbadrose]

"I fused my heart and soul with the TARDIS," Rose answered blandly, but quirked her eyebrows in deep amusement. "So only Eleanor's history doesn't bother you? What if she was here and decided to snog or shag the Doctor now? You originally didn't think her getting it on with Jack would be weird, but was that only because you weren't thinking of how it relates to you??"

[takeitsleazy]

He shifted uncomfortably, feeling some new, fresh knot of hell start to tie itself together beneath his ribs. "I don't like to think about anyone kissing or screwing anyone, Rose. It's all very ... foreign and disturbing to me. I mean - look at kissing. You mash your food holes together. Gross."

There's some other layer to this, something he isn't completely aware of, something he isn't sure he wants to unearth. You know: the part that Rose probably had pegged by the third or fourth time he talked about her. How fond he is of her. How protective.

[bigbadrose]

Oh definitely. And being Rose, she wanted to dig it all up and make a mess of it. Especially because it was similar to her and the Doctor and equally why the Doctor tended to repress his feelings about Rose and et cetera.

"Spoken like someone who's never been kissed," Rose smirked darkly at him. "We use our mouths to talk and whistle too, of course they're used for pleasure. And snogging."

A beat... and luckily for Michael, Rose unfortunately derailed her own thoughts. "Although the Doctor can taste chemical composition with his tongue, so he's always licking wood and blood and things, I have no idea if he snogs. He once flirted with a treeperson by breathing heavily on her. Weird, right?"

[takeitsleazy]

"He can taste it? Now that's interesting. I wonder how that works. I'll have to ask him about it sometime. Do you think he can still do it here, or do you think he lost it, the way I lost my other dimensions?"

He reaches out and brushes his fingers over the tips of the crayons in their box, laid out like waxy stadium seating, enjoying the feel of it, but knowing there should be more to the experience.

"All these colors ... They're great, but there are so many you can't see..."

[bigbadrose]

"No idea. You'd have better luck asking him. He tends to downplay anything out of his control like that."

She hummed quietly watching him with the crayons. "Tell me about them?"

[takeitsleazy]

That was an interesting little insight into how his other roommate's mind worked, and Michael filed it away for later contemplation. He sat up, then shifted on the couch, stretching back against the cushions and putting his long legs up on the table, one arm draped across the back of the couch. He had no idea that someone might interpret it as an invitation to come snuggle, too lost in thought as he stared up at the ceiling, recreating the lost palette in his mind.

"The best thing is, they're concepts at the same time that they're colors. Instead of red, orange, yellow, et cetera, you've got anger, confusion, joy, envy, sorrow, pride, and vulnerability..."

[bigbadrose]

Yeah, Rose is already there, oops.

"Vulnerability?" she makes a face. Clearly the worst color ever. "What is that, like a really terrible lavender?" A quiet hum. "How does determination taste? Crowley said it wouldn't make a good candy. Originally I was thinking of these super exotic rare flowers that are said to have a sort of orgasmic scent, but when I was trying to think of how to recreate it, he brought up the Doctor and that threw me way off."

[takeitsleazy]

He thinks about it a little. His favorite color is closest to blue in the way chai is like cocoa: they share similar enough traits to justify the comparison, but it's still a really awful one. It's all he's got though.

"More like..." He takes her wrist and turns it over, pointing to the hollow of her wrist where the pink of skin meets the bruised color of veins. "...that but really, really not. I'd say pink is the most basic component if I really had to pin it down."

He lets go of her and closes his eyes briefly, calling up the taste of determination. "As for determination, it's salty, and kind of umami ... like tinfoil without that weird feeling you get when you bite it. And Rose? I don't know if you've noticed, but you're like Pavlov's dog when it comes to You. Know. Who."

A pointed look. He's got your number, gurl.

[bigbadrose]

"Eugh," she instantly makes a face and reacts to the color of vulnerability. "That's even worse than I thought."

She likes the idea of determination's taste, but as for the reacting like Pavlov's dog to the Doctor...

She just lightly punches Michael's arm, since she remembers that he's human now and more fragile, especially with the new moon. "I am not!!!" A very annoyed huff. "I shut down the conversation entirely, because he thought I would want to have a sweet to tempt the Doctor with and make him all--" a face scrunch, and her cheek twitched in pure irritation, as she faltered with words to describe it. Randy. Susceptible. "Weaker to suggestion, and the very idea of it..." she growled low and dangerous, hair on the back of her neck standing on end like an angry wolf with raised hackles, "I would never do that to anyone," she growled more darkly than ever. "But especially not him."

[takeitsleazy]

Michael, the picture of a supportive friend, giggled. "He tried to sell you aphrodisiac candy? For the Doctor?! Ahah-" The giggles doubled him over, overwhelming him. Normally it would have just been one little burble of glee and he would have been over it, but everything was amped up to eleven. Twelve, even, as it were. When he finally sat up straight, his face was red and a tear smeared his cheek. He wiped it away with the side of his hand.

"I'm sorry, I just... I tried to picture him all ... ehehehe...whoooh." He waved a hand in front of his face. "But no, no, you're right, that's just ethically all kinds of wrong. And ridiculous. Not to mention how mad he'd probably be when it wore off. He's even bigger on the free will thing than some humans I've met."