milliways_bar | (no subject)

Current Mood: cross

(no subject)

Romana grumbles as she enters Milliways. Stupid TARDIS is acting up which makes her more than just slightly irritable. Ah well. The bar is better than the potato farm she'd been stuck on for the last week or so.

She tosses her manual onto the table and orders a few bottles of Atlantean wine before taking a look through it. She'll figure it out or she'll scrap the fool thing and get the new type. Assuming she can hitch-hike to Gallifrey.

She may feel very foolish about sulking but she's sulking nonetheless.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Oh, but she's cute when she's sulking.

"Bad day?" asks a familiar voice, the sound of smiles in the words.

Then again, Ray always thinks she's cute.

She smiles slightly because-- well, it's Ray. Romana was never good at sulking.

"Bad fortnight or thereabouts."

Ray nods, resting his hands on her shoulders and quietly starting to knead. "Tell me all about it, if you like," he suggests. "Or don't, if you'd rather not think about it. I'm good either way."

"You're quite good at that," she observes before sighing. "My TARDIS is acting up. I was literally trapped on this potato farm. It was embarrassing and awful."

Not to mention she had always prided herself on having a reliable TARDIS. Her only hope was no one else back home ever found out.

Ray smiles. "Glad you think so," he says; then his smile fades. "Whoa. That's unusual. You didn't run into anyone who might've sabotaged it or something? I know how much care you take of that thing."

Silently, he upgrades the shoulder massage by several notches. It sounds as if she needs it.

Romana ponders this. "Well, I did go home for a few days. That was probably a mistake." Damned Timelords. Which one of them did it? Although it was wrong to assume one of them had and yet fitting.

"I'll fix it." Then she reluctantly adds, "Or maybe you can."

But it's not so much asking Ray for help as hating to ask anyone for help with her ship.

"Until then, I'm not going traveling. I hate farms."

"That kind of thing," Ray says, fingers still working, "is exactly why I hate politics. Not that they're anywhere near as spectacularly nasty for me, exactly, but the containment unit did blow up because of what was basically a personal quarrel growing out of political nonsense."

He moves up from her shoulder sto work his thumbs against the back of her neck; that's where a lot of the tension accumulates on him when he's getting frustrated, so maybe...

"If there's anything I can do to help, I'd be glad to," he murmurs. His hands pause as he runs across a thin, familiar golden chain.

There is a tremendous smile in his voice as he says, "You'll be sticking around here, then? In the TARDIS, but around here, I mean?"

Romana nods. "It's always personal and petty on Gallifrey. Everything is. I really should stop going back but I feel responsible for it. Like I should stay and try to change it for the better."

Which isn't something she's ever really said aloud to another person. Huh.

She smiles fondly over her shoulder at him. "You always help. Only this time, I think I need your engineering skills.

I could also stick around here in here if you'd like. I'm sort of sick of the inside of my ship."

"That's a pretty common thing, from what I understand," Ray says. "Wanting to change something even when you're not sure if it'll ever get better. Is there anyone you'd trust to carry on reform, if you ever managed to get the ball rolling there? I mean, do you honestly think there are people who'd appreciate a less asinine future on the planet, or is it just a matter of thinking 'things shouldn't be that way'?"

"That's kind of what I assumed," Ray says, hands stilling. "I might not be fully conversant in temporal mechanics, but I know my way around a sonic screwdriver, sure enough."

"And... yeah. I think I'd like that." His voice drops, but he's still smiling. "Seems like pretty much everything's better when you're around, you know."

It's been a while since he last saw her, and she did seem pretty disgruntled about the potato field, so his enthusiasm when he leans the rest of the way in and kisses her is probably understandable.

"Time is rarely of importance with my people. And change...it takes forever. I'm not sure I have enough lives."

Romana blinks. "You have a sonic screwdriver?"

Aw. She kisses him. "I'll stay. Even if you fix it. I don't feel much like travelling."

This is nicer.

"Oh. Ouch." Ray wrinkles his nose. "Yeah, that does put a different spin on things. I keep forgetting just how bad bureaucracy can get when it's had millennia to get entrenched. Humans just aren't that idiotically persistent, no offense to your own people or anything."

"Yeah," Ray says. "Got it from the Bar a while back. I needed some tools I didn't have on hand to build my friend Naraht a climbing machine so he could get up and down the stairs without causing property damage. It's really amazingly useful."

He smiles, fighting the urge to duck his head as he so often does, and nods instead. "Thank you, Romana," he says. "I've missed you, you know. I mean- I know you know, but-"

Okay, nobody ever said the guy was any good with words.

Romana nods sadly. "Luckily I have been to few planets in as bad shape as my own."

She eyes the bar. "She's very generous."

She smiles and hugs him. "Well, I've missed you too. It's been pretty lonely with only a handful of chickens for company."

She doesn't mind.

"She charged me a lot for it," Ray says. "I've been manufacturing gemstones left, right and center to pay my Bar bills- opals, mostly, one or two crystals along the way... I've gotten really good at the opals, if the amount my Bar tab's been reduced is anything to go by." He pauses. "I kept several of the best for you, if you're interested in that kind of thing."

He nods towards the stairs. "I could show you the lab I've got set up for that, if you wanted. Uh, it's... kind of taken over my room upstairs. In the sense that it looks like a lab with a bed in it, instead of a room with a couple of scientific extras, or... um, you know."

"I love that sort of thing. Particularly if you made them." She likes shiny things.

Romana giggles. "You ramble on in such an endearing fashion. Yes, I would like to see your lab with a bed in it."

"Oh, good," Ray says with a smile. "Bernard said I should make sure to save at least one for you, so I took him at his word and then some. Most of them have red veins, but there's a few greens and some rainbows..."

He chuckles, lifting his hands from Romana's shoulders. "Right this way, then."

((And the thread continues here.))

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only