Welcome

Date/Timing: 17 October 2008
Setting: mostly Hermann's flat; Oxford, England, United Kingdom
.
Hermann shifts his feet, passes his cane from sweaty hand to sweaty hand.
Checks his watch.
""/Leannan!""
Searches the crowd for—
Edan emerges from the sea of bodies grinning and waving.
Hermann wobbles to him, drapes his arms around his neck, croaks, "Good to see you."
"Ditto." Edan laces his fingers on Hermann's nape, touches their foreheads together.
"When do you have to leave?"
"I just got here!"
"I want to know how much 'together' we have to cram in."
Edan laughs—
Hermann's heart flutters.
—says, "Sunday night—" Nuzzles his hair. "—so we've got plenty of time."
Hermann sighs contently.
"What're your plans for me?"
"Lock you in my room with an endless supply of tea, coffee, and snacks."
"Brilliant." Grins. "Shall we get started on that?"
"Let's." Hermann pulls away reluctantly, threads his arm through Edan's, and floats them from the station to his building, chatting idly the entire way.
"Give me a moment to check my post."
"I'll just soak in the atmosphere."
Hermann chuckles, peers into his cubbie. 
A letter, plain white envelope, addressed with Bastien's looping letters.
He frowns, gathers it and the junk mail, unlocks the door, tugs Edan through and down the hall to his room.
They kick their shoes into the closet, hang their coats.
"Mind if I finish my reading for Monday before I settle into being your pet?"
"Go ahead. I have some reading to do, too."
"Great." Edan digs a book and a gift-wrapped box from his backpack. He offers the latter.
Hermann tucks Bastien's letter under his arm, raises an eyebrow.
"Flat-warming gift from my mum."
"She didn't need to do anything."
"She in-/sisted it's not a proper British household without one." Shrugs helplessly.
Hermann shakes his head, leads the way to the bed, clambers up and sits with his back against the wall, legs stretched across the mattress the short way. "Apologies for the lack of seating."
"It's a student room. They're not built for comfort." Edan sits close beside him, arms brushing. "You should be glad you have a private bathroom again."
Hermann grunts, carefully carefully picks open the tape on the present, removes the wrap, opens the box, roots about in the tissue paper.
A china tea cup and saucer: delicate, decorated with thin lines and flowers and branches finely drawn in dark colours, maybe black and a blood-red.
"It's lovely," he breathes, snuggling it back in its tissue nest.
"She'll be happy to hear you like it. We'll try it out later, yea?"
"Of course. Put it on the desk for me?" 
"But of course!" Edan takes the box, flops, wiggles, nudges it to relative safety away from the edge of the desktop. He sits up, frowns.
"What?"
"It'll be hard to turn pages squashed up tight against each other. How 'bout I tuck up on the corner side and you use me as a pillow? Stretch out and relax?"
Hermann hearts skips a happy beat. "That sounds lovely." 
"Brilliant." Edan crawls to the far side—pausing to peck Hermann's cheek on the way—tucks a pillow behind his back and settles in.
Hermann eases himself over onto his back, head in Edan's lap.
Edan glows down at him.
Hermann beams back, opens Bastien's note.
Edan turns his attention to his reading, a rather dry-looking textbook.
Hermann unfolds sheets of notebook paper, reads.
- 23 / 9 / 08
Hey Manny.
Since I don't want Father to know I'm talking to you about this: snail mail!
Manny, I'm going crazy here. Father is /so much worse than ever. Yea, there's still no mobile and he still watches my email and he /still won't let me hang out with friends, but now he yells /all /the /time. About /everything. I can't even /breathe right for him anymore.
Then there's my marks. No perfect score? He screams, calls me a disappointment and a delinquent, everything he used to call /you actually, including 'monster'.
How am I supposed to be a normal kid like this?
Why does he hate us like he does? -
Hermann runs a hand through his hair.
"Everything alright?"
"No. Bastien's having trouble."
Edan rests his book next to himself. "Law trouble? Datemate trouble? Health trouble?"
"Father trouble."
Edan hisses.
Hermann sighs.
"What is that man's /problem?"
"Hmm?"
"How can he treat his own kids so badly?"
"He never wanted Bastien and I: only Mother did."
"That's no excuse," Edan sniffs.
Hermann shrugs.
"I mean, my dad always jokes Fen-fen should've been named 'Single Malt' because that's the entire reason she's here—"
Hermann chokes a laugh.
"—but that's never stopped him from spoiling her as rotten as he can."
"Our fathers are very different people."
"Yea, yours is an ass and mine isn't." Edan blinks a couple of times, then a slow smile creeps across his face.
"What're you thinking?"
"I'm thinking about the show we'd get introducing them."
"Oh?"
"Your old man makes /one comment like he did at the wedding and mine'd give him the tongue-lashing of a /lifetime." Chuckles. "He's also nigh-two meters tall and built like a brick shithouse—before you ask, I take after my mum—so he could probably make the man piss himself if he felt like it."
"That might be worth the price of admission."
"Want me to arrange it?"
Hermann waves him off, goes back to the letter.
- Is it because we look like Mother? -
Hermann swallows around the lump in his throat.
- Or is he just sick of being a parent?
Probably not that, since I suggested he sign me over to an orphanage if he was that disappointed with me last week.
He /laughed. /LAUGHED.
Then he locked himself in his office for the rest of the night.
I honestly thought about running away. I don't think I will because the police would find me /instantly, nevermind making it to you or Dietrich or Karla.
Don't suppose you know of any magic potions that'll make me wake up 18 tomorrow, do you?
Or have a line on where I can find a TARDIS to steal and go adventuring for a few years? I'd take you and Edan with me. -
Hermann chuckles.
"What?"
"Bastien says we can be his Companions when he steals a TARDIS."
"Ooo! Sign me up! I could do my doctoral research!"
"The whole of time and space open to you and you're thinking about a measly /degree?"
"Well, /yea. I need to keep up with you, Mr Graduate Student."
Hermann rolls his eyes.
A mobile chimes.
"That you or me?"
"Me." Hermann fishes it from his pocket, checks the display. "Is it alright if I take this?"
"Go ahead."
"Thanks." Hermann accepts the connection. „Hey, Dee.“
„„Hey, Manny. How's uni going?““
„It's been going pretty well. Better than usual today because Edan's here visiting.“
"Hi!"
Dee chuckles. „„That was him?““
„Yea.“
„„Say 'hi' from Sabine and I.““
"Dee and Sabine say 'hi'."
Edan thumbs up.
„How're things with you?“
„„I'm fine, but Sabine is /so sick. She's barely keeping anything down and she's too sore to even move.““
„Ugh. That sounds terrible. Pass along my sympathy.“
„„She'll appreciate it. Definitely more than she will another meal of ginger ale and pretzels.““ Sighs. „„Hopefully this will be over soon. The second trimester is supposed to be the glory days of pregnancy, but it's starting to look like her body doesn't know that.““
„I'm not sure I'll ever understand why women willingly put themselves through this.“
„„Babies, Manny. It's all about babies.““
Hermann huffs. „About children ... I got a letter from Bastien today.“
„„About Father?““
„Mhmm. Is he exaggerating or is it really getting that terrible for him?“
A deep breath. „„I think it's really that bad. Father's working on some sort of big project that's not going well and he's taking it out on Bunny.““
„Then Bastien, being Bastien, fights back instead of quietly enduring it.“
„„Making Father even more angry,““ finishes Dietrich. „„I wish I could think of a way to help, but my brain's too full of work and house and sick Sabine and how we're going to manage everything when the baby comes with all of our family a thousand kilometers away.““ Deep breath. „„At least parental leave for both of us. We have a little time to figure things out before Sabine goes back to work. If she decides to go back.““ A beat. „„Sorry. /When she goes back.““
Hermann snorts. „Sounds like /someone has a plan—“
„„Thank good—““ Rustling noises, muffled voices. „„I need to go hold Sabine's hair. Take care! 'bye!““
The call disconnects.
Hermann drops the mobile on the duvet, sighs, "My family is so complicated."
Edan quirks an eyebrow over his text.
"Bastien wants to become a Time Lord to get away from my father, who's apparently stressed enough to be courting a stroke, while Dietrich is using all his cycles to manage a new house, a new practice, and impending fatherhood. Sabine's too sick to eat /or work, but—thank God—everything's alright with the baby, and Karla's up to her ears in her dissertation and threatening to burn her library to the ground on a regular basis."
"Don't forget /you've just started graduate school at a /ridiculously prestigious university /and been hired as the youngest TA in the physics department."
"True enough," concedes Hermann, then he smiles. "Thankfully, my boyfriend's visit will provide a /very welcome distraction from all of that."
"Brilliant! Five more pages and I'll begin distracting you for real."
"Then get to it."
"Yes, sir!"
Category:Pages with comments
Category:Celestial Mechanics
2008 10 17
Category:Ficlet
Category:Oxford (setting)
Category:Hermann
Category:Hermann's POV
Category:Hermann (ficlet)
Category:Edan
Category:Edan (ficlet)
Category:Bastien
Category:Bastien (ficlet)
Category:Conversations via snail mail
Category:Doctor Who (reference)
Category:Dona (mention)
Category:Lars (mention)
Category:Birgit (mention)
Category:Torquil (mention)
Category:Fenella (mention)
Category:Dietrich
Category:Dietrich (ficlet)
Category:Dietrich is a doctor
Category:Sabine (mention)
Category:Emma (mention)
Category:Conversations via mobiles
Category:Ficlets with images