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It was a rare morning of productivity. Mickey had gotten up before Ian, and put all of his renewed energy into cleaning the kitchen-- the counters, the floors, the appliances… he’d even gathered up the dirty laundry from their room and added it to the growing pile at the side of the stairs.
By the time Ian had gotten up and followed the wafting smell of coffee, bacon, and pancakes, he found his husband fully dressed in front of the oven, bicep flexing sexily as the spatula worked at the scrambled eggs.
He took a moment at the last few steps of the staircase to admire his husband’s masculine physique, his strong muscles on display in those jeans. But his attention kept pulling to the contented grin on Mickey’s face, the soft kind of smile that showed his teeth and deflected from how cranky Mickey could sometimes be. Married domesticity had brought out a new side to him.
He’s happy, Ian thought to himself.
He crossed his arms in a self-congratulatory pose as he spoke his next thought out loud.
“This a thank you for last night?”
Mickey chuckled, that grin pulling tighter at the sides of his mouth. “They were out of ‘Thank You For Each of Those Nine Inches’ cards at the corner store.”
Mickey returned Ian’s gaze with a quick side-eye, trailing up and down Ian’s nearly naked form, clad only in his boxers.
Ian strode confidently forward, stalking his prey with devilish intent. “Oh yeah?” He pressed up against Mickey’s back, sliding an arm around his collarbone and pulling him in close. “Guess I’m going to be thanking you for all of this. If only I could think of a way…”
“I know something you could do right now, in fact…” He pressed his ass into Ian’s crotch.
Ian tucked his head into Mickey’s neck as his other hand trailed down his abs, making its way south. “What’s that, baby?”
Mickey tilted his head back and whispered, “Laundry.”
. . .
Ian had just licked the pancake syrup from his chin and was contemplating doing the same to Mickey when Liam flung the back door open and clambered into the house, a furious gust of wind sending the freshly folded clothes into the air; a whirlwind of assorted fabrics.
"Shut the goddamn door!" Mickey scrambled to his feet to help a struggling Liam do just that. "Aren't they supposed to warn you about tornados and shit?"
"It's not a tornado!" Liam yelled above the roaring wind. "It's a port-a-potty!"
"A what?!"
From where he sat watching this unfold from the kitchen table, Ian tilted his chair to the side, leaning precariously on two aged wooden legs.
He craned his head enough to get a good look at the driveway through the window. Past the flimsy, threadbare curtains, he could make out a large blue object. One that seemed to be... flickering?
Ian's face scrunched up in discomfort at the piercing noise surrounding them. "What is that sound?" he shouted over his shoulder. Liam and Mickey were too busy trying to close the door, their feet scrabbling comically against the floor, Flintstones-style.
All at once, the wind stopped, sending the two of them crashing to the ground. The pile of towels that Ian had painstakingly folded and left next to the bathroom door were now a strewn mess, cushioning the blow of their fall.
"I told you!" Liam stressed, already exasperated. "It's an outhouse. You know, where people go to pee when they're outside in a big crowd and don't have a real bathroom to use? It fell from the sky."
Ian and Mickey shared a look, a flash of confusion between them, before the panic set in. Mickey pulled himself to his feet and bolted for the kitchen stairway.
They could hear his boots stomping up the staircase as Ian tossed the wind-flung tea towel off of his chest and hurried to his feet. He reached for the family bat on the other side of the doorframe.
"Stay here." He held a halting hand out towards Liam, who rolled his eyes and followed him outside anyway, moving aside the two oversized bags of garbage that had yet to be taken out.
Ian had the bat slung up and over one shoulder, both hands gripping the handle tightly when he saw him: A tall man in a brown suit coat with a red, upside-down bucket on his head. He was holding something at chest height, scanning at the sides of their swimming pool.
"This is private property. You have five seconds to fuck off," Ian gritted. His hands ground into the handle, ready to take a swing before the intruder could get the first hit in. "And take your shithouse with you."
"He's not kidding," Liam added. "And he's the nice one. At least he gave you a warning. His husband will shoot you in the kneecaps no questions asked, so you'd best hit the road, if you want to keep them." He shrugged, his face open and honest.
The man whipped around with his hand still aloft, brandishing a glowing--
"Screwdriver?" Ian spat. He looked at the pool, eyes quickly scanning each screw holding the parts together.
"Sonic screwdriver, actually." His polite demeanor didn't stop the Gallaghers from jumping in surprise at his unmistakably British accent.
"Carries a lot more bing! bang! whim! than you'd expect, but then the task of ridding your lot of destructive alien rebels was never a one-and-done type of transaction, now, was it? No, you Earthlings require an expository manual before you'll stop yammering about and let me do my business and by the time you're quite finished, your planet's exploded and you've got no one to blame for it but yourself, haven't you?" He paused his examination of the two (much like the TSA scanning passengers for metal objects at the airport) to eyeball the top of Ian's head.
"At least I've only got to deal with one ginger. That'll keep matters from derailing entirely."
"Hey!"
"Now, if you don't mind, we've got an extraterrestrial who refuses to follow Protocol Fifteen Zee Subsection Prsbetol of the Intergalactic Space Agreement, and we must suss him out post haste!"
"Aw, shit..." Ian's face twisted in recognition. This was just like that time he'd shared a hospital room with Seamus during his stay at the mental ward several years back. He wore a tin foil hat, and declared himself Turkish royalty. He insisted on dining on the finest crayons, and went on rants about how the wind was affecting the storylines on reruns of Downton Abbey, played soothingly on the old tv in the common lounge after they'd dispensed their morning meds.
He lowered the bat, letting it roll down his leg and fall limply to the ground.
"Is there someone we can call who can... help you?"
"Dude's not from this neighborhood, that's for sure." Liam squinted at the red monstrosity atop his neatly combed brown hair. "Not wearing a bucket-hat, he isn't."
The man straightened his posture, smiling coyly. "It's a fez. Fezzes are cool."
The back door swung open with a bang, with Mickey barrelling down the stairs muttering to himself. “Motherfucking cheap ass tin bullets ain’t gonna fit in the goddamn chamber if--” he paused trying to jam Iggy’s pilfered bullets into the magazine of his 9mm and frowned.
“Ay Gallaghers, step aside!” His knees jutted outward in a bowlegged fashion as he advanced on his intended target, clicking the magazine into place. He pulled back the slide and released it.
"Whoa, whoa, Mick! Stop!" Ian threw his hands up and stepped in front of the man, protecting him from Mickey's close-range hit. "He's..." Ian twirled a finger at his temple. "...He's a little out of it, so we're going to call an ambulance, and they'll help him get back to wherever he came from."
"Gallifrey. Well, technically I was perched atop what you would call "The Sears Tower", but that's beside the point, isn't it? No need for dilly-dallying. We've got all of mankind to save."
"Funny." Mickey furrowed one eyebrow and propped the other, denoting his impression of the stranger as nothing of the sort.
"Am I? Good. Funny's good."
He pointed the screwdriver towards Mickey, the tip of it flickering a faint green in a different way from the blue telephone booth now fully-fleshed and solid upon the gravel driveway.
Mickey's empty left hand darted out to smack it away, but the man pulled it back with practiced reflexes.
"Hoho, not quick enough! Sorry. Let’s establish some ground rules, shall we?” He twirled with a flourish.
“You’re gonna tell us how it is, huh? This ain’t your fucking house.” Mickey’s lack of patience was obvious before he’d stepped foot out of the house, and was quickly verging on fed up.
“Rule number one: No guns.” His eyes shifted to the semi-automatic in Mickey’s clutch. “Never carry weapons. If people see you mean them no harm, they’ll never hurt you.” He paused, counting on his fingers. “Yep, nine times out of ten.”
Three sets of eyes bore into him.
Liam’s lip curled. “You do know that you’re in America, right?”
“What, you don’t get news where you’re from? People get shot just for walking down the street.” Mickey tapped his knuckle to his nose. “Surprised you made it three steps into Cook County without getting dropped.”
“Mickey…”
“I heard a dude got clipped yesterday because they saw him checking his notifications and thought that his phone was a gun.” Liam looked to Mickey in solidarity.
“Cops don’t need a reason. They’ll make up shit if they have to.” He advanced on the man with a withering look. “You a cop?”
“Mick!” He glared expectantly. “You’re going to scare him. Just keep it out of his sight for now, okay? Maybe I can call Sue and see if she can swing by.
Mickey was approaching peak grumble mode, but rolled his eyes and exhaled sharply through his nose, reaching back to holster his gun in the waist of his jeans. His fingers trailed along the hem of his white tank top, pulling the waist line up and over the pistol.
Only Mickey could make such a moment as hot and endearing as it was. Ian couldn’t help but smile, the word “cute” floating through his mind.
Ian slung an arm over his husband’s shoulder, pulling him proudly into a side embrace. Mickey felt warm against Ian’s naked upper torso.
Their guest cleared his throat in a way that could only be interpreted as reprimanding. “Which brings me to rule number two: No snogging.”
“No what?” Liam scrunched up his nose.
“Snogging. Lip locking. Tongues wagging about everywhere…” The Doctor shuddered in repulsion. “You Americans and your public displays of affection.”
This time, it was Ian who was offended. “Excuse me?”
Mickey looked at him with his best *oh NOW you’re offended?* resting bitch face and said with a smirk, “Ay, trying showing a little compassion, Gargamel.” He glanced at the man in mock reference. “Stalin over here used to be a real Gay Jesus. Like Mother Theresa for the rainbow sparkles. He turned back to his husband, his tone dripping with sarcasm. “He’s clearly got a condition, Ian.”
But Ian wasn’t paying attention. He was too busy frowning defiantly at the wanderer, locked in a staring contest like it were a battle of wills. His hand moved itself over to cup Mickey’s crotch, a move as bold as it was declarative.
Mickey’s eyes widened. The man had a point-- public displays of affection had their limits, and Ian loved to push them. But this situation was as bizarre as any he had ever encountered, and if he had to let Ian grope him in front of a stranger to stand their ground against the imposed social mores of some stuffy British prude, then so be it.
The man held his hand up in front of his eyes, palm facing outward, as if deflecting a blinding beam from burning into his retinas.
“That’s quite enough of that! This is serious business, and WE need to FOCUS!”
Mickey had opened his mouth to respond when the stranger’s eyes flicked over Mickey’s shoulders towards the driveway. “Excuse me, this is private property! You can’t just barge on in like that!”
Mickey whirled around, fists balled up and ready to battle the next goddamn intruder to treat his backyard like it were a public park. His features, already tense and lined with annoyance to begin with, were now verging on kill.
There was no one. Just the blue telephone booth sitting boredly upon the gravel.
“Are you some kinda schiz--” He halted mid-sentence as he was now face to face with the screwdriver. The man had sneakily scanned him with it while he was distracted, giving him a thorough extraterrestrial examination from head to toe, and looked mighty fucking pleased with himself for doing so.
Mickey’s eyebrows furrowed in betrayed disgust, his eyes wide and nostrils flared.
Liam stepped in before Mickey could pull the gun from his waistband. “What’s your name?”
They hadn’t thought to ask. Liam always was the rational one.
“Why, I’m the Doctor!”
“Doctor who?”
“Actually, if you don’t mind, it’s just ‘The Doctor’. But you,” he nodded at Liam while tapping at the tip of his screwdriver, checking it for any malfunction, “can call me ‘Doctor’.”
Liam tilted his head to the side in consideration. “You’re a lot like Sherlock Holmes. Is this kind of like a cosplay, but it took over your life?”
“Ah, yes, dear Detective Holmes, the pride of Baker Street. Best detective in all of London, and a fantastic travel companion, for a time. Shame he had to return to his partner. Seems they just couldn’t bear to be separated.”
“You met Benedict Cumberbatch? In real life?”
“No, no… yes, but no.” The man sliced the object through the air as he spoke, as if expecting something paranormal to hurtle towards them, cutting through the fabric of space and time. “I mean the real Sherlock Holmes. He was quite aged in his years during our adventures-- 1918, as it were-- but then, we had an entire World War to win. No feat for the young, I’m afraid.”
Ian blinked. “He’s… he’s a fictional character?” He ended his statement in an uptick, no longer sure of what constituted reality.
“No, but that’s Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s second-best kept secret, as it turns out.” He winked at Ian. “His first best being that he knew the true identity of Jack the Ripper. He was a Spiritualist, as you surely know, and regularly communicated with the dead. He simply conjured up the butcher himself and solved that riddle on the spot! But then,” he sighed, “once you’ve been forced into a blood oath of secrecy with Queen Victoria, there really is no turning back on it.”
The four of them stood in silence as he held his thousand-mile stare into the horizon.
A dog barked in the distance. Somewhere, a vehicle screeched through the sweltering streets of Canaryville.
“Anyhow, my current companion is the Tardis, as you can see. She directs me--”
“She?” Mickey looked around, cautiously keeping an eye on the screwdriver.
“Yes, the Tardis. All Gallifreyan Time Lords use TARDISes for getting from point A to point B - TARDIS, of course, stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space, or, if you’re a purist, it--”
“You mean the outhouse?” Mickey crooked his thumb over his shoulder.
The Doctor was visibly incensed at being interrupted. “It. Is. A. Telephone. Booth!” His delicate fists trembled with anger, made even more comical with the screwdriver wobbling unbalanced in his grasp.
He stopped to collect himself, inhaling deeply. He adjusted his bowtie. “I travel through space and time, never choosing where or when, simply landing where she sends me, and solving the most pressing issues at hand. Tricky thing is always popping me into where I don’t want to be, yet it is always where I’m supposed to go…”
His expression darkened. “Which brings me back to why I’m here, precisely…” He swivelled in place, his body rotating solely by the maneuvering of his feet. He held the screwdriver straight ahead at the standing pool, and the four of them witnessed it light up, the green glow now luminous and strong.
He reached into his coat jacket and retrieved a small item. “And now that we’ve determined that none of you three are the alien…” He tossed what appeared to be a tiny paperback novel into the pool, and dropped to a squatting position on the ground. He closed his eyes, ducked his head, and put his fingers in his ears.
Nothing happened.
They waited with a bemused lack of suspense.
Several seconds had passed with no result. The Doctor pulled his fingers out of his ears, and glanced up at the shortfall.
“Did he just throw a book into a pool?”
He sighed at the absence of action, and rose to his feet, blushing off his slacks on the way up. “Books! Yes, best weapons in the world, books! One could even--”.
It was then that all of the water within the confines of the pool exploded in a massive ball of liquid. The walls of the pool remained unharmed as a hurricane of 3,000 gallons of water hit them directly on.
They gasped to catch their breaths, Ian doubling over with his hands on his knees. “I just did laundry, for fuck’s sake.”
“So, not inside the pool, then,” the Doctor mumbled, oblivious.
“What were you expecting to happen?”
Ian placed a hand on his brother’s shoulder, cringing at the boy’s soaked tee. “He’s sick, Liam. Why don’t you go back inside the house and we’ll wait with him out front until help arrives?”
Mickey was less forgiving. “Aight, man, you just wasted my entire pack of smokes,” he patted sadly at his pocket before frantically reaching behind him to ensure that his pistol was still safely holstered. “Ian, take him to the street and dump his ass in the gutter. I swear to FUCK if he drowned my cellphone…” He trailed off as he fished it out of the side of his wet jeans.
The Doctor groaned in frustration. “I am TRYING to catch a rebel alien! Why aren’t you listening to me?” He began pacing in place while muttering to himself. “Selfish, spoiled Americans. They never actually listen, do they? No, they just wait for you to finish speaking so that they can talk some more. It’s their favorite thing, listening to themselves speak. It’s maddening!”
He stopped abruptly. “But the calculations were correct, and she specifically pointed me in this direction…”
He hurried towards the pool, gripped onto the ledge of it and pulled himself upwards. There was nothing in it, but one glance beyond the rounded wall showed him exactly what he’d been looking for.
“Geronimo!” he whispered aloud.
He hurried around the side of the pool and froze when he saw it.
An ancient looking red van. Beat up, rusted, and covered in dirt. One tire lay flat with a large hole in it, another was removed completely, the rim bent outward.
He stared it on like the menace it was.
Or, at least, the creature inside it.
He approached it with his screwdriver out and at the ready. It glowed deeper, with more emerald intensity.
“I’ve got you now, you…”
He paused in front of the crusted window, peering inside.
His arm dropped to his side, the screwdriver falling to the ground.
“That can’t be right… that CANNOT be right…”
He looked over his shoulder at the clan watching his every move, surveying their faces. He looked at Mickey, squinting his eyes at the object in Mickey’s hand.
“Did you say… your cellphone?”
Mickey shrugged, the wet cigarette between his lips moving limply as he spoke. “Yeah. Why?”
Dawning shock etched itself all over the man’s face, filling his features with awe and amazement. “Then- this isn’t 1976 at all, is it?”
Mickey waited a beat before he shifted to the left, tipping his head back to look into Ian’s face. He couldn’t tell what he was thinking.
The man slowly, ever so slowly, turned his head over his shoulder, almost making eye contact with what was inside, before whipping back, eyes full of electric excitement.
“It’s 2020, man. You’re almost fifty years too late.”
“JULY 2020?” He rushed forward and squatted to his knees in front of the boy. “Is it the 24th of July, 2020?” His words were filled with delighted urgency; the puzzle in his mind finally reunited with its last remaining piece.
Liam looked to Ian, and then shrugged in agreement. “Yeah.”
The Doctor leapt and twirled, spinning around in exhilaration. He threw his arms up into the air, whooping loudly in celebration.
“Hahahaaaaaa, woooooooo!” He danced in front of them. “Don’t you get it? Don’t you see?!”
His face dropped at the blank stares.
“Oh, no, you wouldn’t at all, would you? You’re no fortune tellers. You don’t know what’s happening at all! Of course, that does explain why none of you would recognize a telephone booth when you saw one… Alas! I shall explain!”
It was a visible struggle for him to contain his manic energy as he continued. “I have clearly misinterpreted the information the Tardis display had given me. Not a first. The old girl can be quite temperamental when she wants to be. All bugs and wonky-- but that’s not what matters!”
He splayed his arms out in grand victory. “We’re not here to capture an alien! I’m here to witness the dawn of a new form of human species. A revolution!” He danced a jig, celebrating the solo party happening within his head.
“And!” He reached into his pocket. “I now understand that these were clearly meant for you three!”
They surveyed each item as it was handed to them. “For you, Mickey, I bestow upon you this lump of coal. Use it wisely.”
Mickey gripped the bridge of his nose, feeling the beginning of a migraine coming on.
“For you, Ginger, I offer you this tarot card.” He flipped it over and extended it to Ian. They all looked down at an old man in a golden crown sitting upon a throne, his long white beard extending to his crimson robes.
“The Emperor,” the Doctor explained. “Ambition, Father Figure, Responsibility… I do suggest you get yourself a Red Jasper immediately. You’re going to need one!”
He kneeled again in front of Liam, placing both hands on his shoulders. He looked Liam in the eye, very serious. “And for you, Liam, I give you this advice. Please remember it!”
Liam nodded, eyes wide.
“Every life is a pile of good things and bad things. The good things don’t always soften the bad things, but the bad things don’t always spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
With that, he was on his feet again, running towards the Tardis at full speed.
“Uh, I haven’t even… don’t you want us to call someone for you? At least someone to give you a ride somewhere. You don’t have to walk.”
The Doctor chuckled. “No, no, Ginger, you kind man. No, there will be no walking for me.” He opened the door to the big blue box, and smiled back at his new friends. “No, I’m going to be getting the bloody hell off of this planet while there’s still time!”
Ian frowned. “I thought you said we were on the edge of a revolution. Isn’t that a good thing?”
The man stood in the open doorway, one hand on the inside of the frame, grinning beautifully.
“For the rest of your galaxy, yes, absolutely! But for Earthlings, no. Not in the slightest. The alien inside that van is about to change life on this planet as you know it. In the very near future. But none of you lot are going to die! Goodness, no! Just an innocent gene mutation that will affect how you look, speak, and act. You’ll be like monstrous sea monkeys wandering around, limbs dragging about. All due to unforeseen circumstances of his doing. All on purpose. Of course, mankind could avoid this fate if you figure out how to use your items correctly...” He nodded towards the coal and the tarot card. “As my wife always said to me, ‘Spoilers, darling!’ Haha! A dazzling woman. Very charming. Well, good luck!”
He hopped inside, and the door closed. The Tardis flickered in and out of sight, and disappeared.
They stood there in silence.
The hatch door at the back of the van raised open, squeaking at its rusted hinges. The unmistakable voice of Frank Gallagher rang out. “Can’t a man get enough peace and quiet to take a nap in his own backyard?”
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