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]

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."

[bigbadrose]

Rose blushed furiously and hid her face in both hands, but slowly Michael's laughter wore her down and she grinned back, and even laughed softly. "Blimey... yeah. It's..." The Doctor's fierce dedication to free will was why she loved him. So there was that. "I think he, Crowley, just didn't completely understand what I was sayin'.... but yeah. He was like, 'oh everyone uses aids, girls wear makeup, guys dress fancy...'" she shuddered and huffed leaning back. "But I know what flavor I am," she picked up another crayon to continue coloring. "If the Doctor doesn't like it, that's his loss, not mine." She wondered if that was as true as she said it was. She doodled in circles making flower gardens on the paper.

"Blimey, I didn't even tell him I loved him until we were separated because--" she bit her cheek. Hard. It would probably just confuse Michael, and it was embarrassing anyway! She sighed and finished the thought all the same, pushing her hair back with one hand, "I didn't want him to feel like he had to be something more to me just to keep me around."

Her crayon snapped in half and Rose cursed in an alien language, copying the Doctor when he cut himself shaving. "And it's all like that again now, but even worse, because he's twice as old, and he still remembers me and wants me around, but--" Rose shrugged, rolled her shoulders, and neck, and then laughed, using the crinkle of her own eyes to block out and stop any tears. "What color would all this be then?"

[takeitsleazy]

"Hot Mess?" He said it without a trace of malice: to the contrary, a smidge of fondness. He'd seen it on Eleanor and Chidi, even on Janet once or twice. Smears of bright color that burned your eyes and smelled like every cheap perfume and cologne ever created, spots of prismatic joy and slashes of deep, colorless pain all swirling together. "Neon pink and orange. Like cotton candy vomit. But I gotta ask, Rose: what's with you two and age? It almost sounds like it bothers him more than you, and that makes no sense. He's an eternal being, practically. Time shouldn't mean a damn thing. You're like the dot on the I."

[bigbadrose]

"Cotton candy vomit..." a giggle and she shook her head, "Lovely."

A snort. "It definitely bothers him, not me." She doodled a Jeremy Beremy and made the dot on the I a rose again, "I am the dot on the I!" Highly pleased. And she has to forcefully squash the urge to kiss Michael. Seriously. Her self control has been getting an interesting workout since arriving here. "But I'm not eternal. You didn't meet Eleanor until she was dead, even if you got to read up her file and all that and memorize her inside out -- which is a little creepy not gonna lie," Rose colored in the loops of Jeremy Bearimy with bear ears on the Bear part and cute paws, but also some rose thorns around the Rs. "But to him..."

It frustrated her to no end. Worse than hot mess. More tangerine and red and angry. So angry.

She let go of the anger though, calmly coloring with her tongue out the side, making sure she didn't snap any more crayons.

"I've seen him die hundreds of times. But from his perspective, I can only die, only really die once. And losing me the different ways he has pretty much breaks him." Color, color, color.

Rose put down the crayon and took both of Michael's hands in her own. "It's hard to sacrifice yourself to save someone, but it's a lot easier than letting them sacrifice themselves to save you."

She dropped his hands and looked away, cheeks pink, and finally picked up a crayon and colored again. "He knows I'm in love with him. That I chose him over my family. Over a life without him. I don't think he's ever going to be okay with that." She tried hard not to cry, even if her eyes were brimming. She gently colored over the rose dot in the eye, just faintly adding pink filter and background. "He said once I could spend the rest of my life with him, but he can't spend his with me. Because he'll have to carry on after that. And I think that's just too painful for him."

[takeitsleazy]

Something about what she was saying pulled at the end of that knot, unfurling a piece of it, just enough to make him aware it was there.

... it's a lot easier than letting them sacrifice themselves to save you ...

How much might he have hurt Eleanor, when he'd tried to sacrifice himself? He'd never know. He'd snapped it away from her, maybe twice gone, now. He'd never know if it meant anything to the human who was... coming to mean an inordinate amount to him. He wasn't sure what hurt more, the thought that he might have hurt her by helping, or the thought that he'd never know if he did. He had more in common with Rose than she probably realized. Even if the four of them got to the Good Place, there were no guarantees for him. And that was okay. But at the same time... it wasn't. He knew that the real hell afterward wouldn't be the ladles, or the suns, or whatever Shawn ended up putting him through. It would be them, out there, happy without him, and him missing them like the wings he hadn't stretched in centuries.

"I think I know where you're both coming from," he said softly, ducking his head to retreat back under his hood.

[bigbadrose]

Nope, Rose understood completely. He was eternal, like the Doctor, but when he was retired, he would cease to exist altogether. No more afterlife, unlike the humans with their Hell, which was still an existence, if not an ideal one.

Rose gently pulled Michael's head to her chest and gently hugged and shooshed him, stroking his hair soothingly. "They'll be okay."

[takeitsleazy]

He'd only been shooshed twice before, and it had been completely different: awkward pats on the shoulder or a hand rubbing his back. The hug was nice. He definitely appreciated that. But when she pushed back his hood and touched his hair, that was even better. His eyes widened for an instant, his brow crinkling with surprise.

"Whoa. That's like ... a basket of puppies."

[bigbadrose]

Rose just giggles in spite of herself. "So I guess you do like human things, a lot, you just have to experience them first. Like karaoke. I mean, if anyone explained that or bowling without you getting to do it yourself, how daft would they sound, yeah?". She hummed quietly, "Or maybe you're extra human-y right now too. Whichever."

She moved her hands to gently rub behind his ears and massage his neck, dying of curiosity what else it would do.

[takeitsleazy]

The thing about being crammed into a human suit was that there was an awful lot more under the skin than there looked like - especially around his neck and torso. What probably felt to Rose like a mass of muscle knots was, simply put, just a mass of about three times as many knots as she'd think. He sank back into her hands, eyes sliding closed with a sigh.

"Whichever," he said, dreamily. Forget portals and paperwork, this was the Good Place.

[bigbadrose]

Rose giggled some more, completely pleased with how he seemed to be enjoying it, and instinctively worked away at kneading out all the cramped demon forced into a human suit, happily humming to herself. "New moon seems kinda like a--" cycle of another kind, Rose was reminded of. "Special cycle... Yeah." But for men, now, or at least they didn't have any female monsters yet. "Remind me to get you some chocolate now or full moon." Scritch scritch scritch. "For science."

Another happy hum. "And maybe a hot pack."

[takeitsleazy]

"Chocolate for science," he mumbled, half listening. It was way too nice to just be resting there, warm, comfortable, taken care of. Cared for. It was something he hadn't ever really considered. Ever. In milennia.

"A hot pack of what?"

[bigbadrose]

Understandably. Demons aren't exactly the nurturing type notably. Rose, meanwhile, was thrilled to have a physical person with audible reactions to work on, rather than just trying to keep a dying TARDIS from falling apart and using it to skip time and charge the cannon. She looks bed the TARDIS, but it wasn't the same as a breathing person, not even close.

"Just a heat pack," Rose hummed, scritching away. "It relaxes muscles. Loosens them up. Feels good. Especially if the blood's all tight and constricted. If you want, I can go get one now, yeah?"

[takeitsleazy]

"But then you'd have to get up," he said piteously. "And stop."

He must have cut a pretty comical figure, a grown man who looked like he was in his sixties in an oversized hooded sweatshirt and suit pants with his feet up on a coffee table covered in crayons and books, pouting like a small child.

If he was aware of it, he absolutely didn't care. Whining made the feelings less annoying, somehow.

[bigbadrose]

"Yes," Rose admitted simply with a nod, obviously finding the whole thing beyond adorable, "I'd be right back, but it's fine, it can wait. I'm enjoying myself plenty."

God help the universe... Multiverse, if Rose's own whining habits either exacerbated the demons' or vice versa.

[takeitsleazy]

He tilted his head back to look at her, upside down, blue eyes wide. "You are?"

Just sic the two of them on the Corroded, they'd whine them away within moments. Problem solved.

[bigbadrose]

That would be a truly intense amount of whining.

Rose tilts her head right back at him, bemused that he's bemused. "Yes," a firm nod all the same. "I spent the last few years as a ghost. And even when I could be seen and heard, I was pretty helpless to stop the bad things for everyone around me." She trailed a single finger down his jawline and over his cheek. "It's nice to explore again. Just for fun. And to take my time enjoying it."

[takeitsleazy]

"Explore," he echoed, his voice slowly slipping out of that dreamlike register. He knew what connotations that word usually had for humans, after all. He wasn't sure where the line fell between being taken care of and ... well ... being taken care of. And that alone was a little stressful to realize.

[bigbadrose]

"Relax," she rolled her eyes and flicked his nose, "I'm not going to take advantage of the big bad demon being all cute and defenseless."

[takeitsleazy]

Of course she wasn't. He was silly to even think it, he realized, after how she'd acted telling him about Crowley in the candy shop. He gave her an apologetic look and settled back down.

"... Cute, huh?"

[bigbadrose]

Nah, it was her own fault for teasing him constantly, she was well aware. Besides, she'd told him how she felt, so that was enough to make even mortal blokes a bit edgy.

"At the moment, yes," she went back to quietly scritching and kneading. "Just remember what I said about trying to scare me." It made her feel the need to prove she was unpredictable, far more wild, and definitely unintimidated.

"But right now you're kind of like a sad puppy." She magicked up a proper mirror to show him. "Don't worry," another eyeroll, "I won't let the other demons see you like this, even if they'd get all weird every new moon too."