Work Text:
Talk in everlasting words
And dedicate them all to me
And I will give you all my life
I'm here if you should call to me - The Bee Gees / Crompton Songs
Kate Lethbridge Stewart leaned against the sink and drew a deep breath.
Her life was far from 9 to 5 but this meant her rare weekends at home were prized with a passion.
Even if that meant more washing up needed to be done.
She grabbed a dishcloth as she exited the kitchen for the study, drying her hands before flicking the cheesecloth fabric lightly over her shoulder.
The study was bright and airy in the spring sunlight but her gaze remained firmly on the chaise opposite her bench.
Or more accurately, on her girlfriend who rested there, head in a battered notebook stamped with the UNIT logo of her father’s time.
“I’d ask what you were reading, because your girlfriend would like to know if she can interrupt. But I suspect your boss would not approve of the source.” The blonde purred.
Osgood jumped with a flush and looked up at her with her expressive dark eyes.
“Then I can tell my girlfriend she is welcome to interrupt.” The earnest scientist unfolded herself and stood, leaving the notebook behind to grasp the ends of the dishcloth and pull Kate into a deep kiss.
Tender at first, soon their lips parted and tongues caressed each other in a balletic dance of chocolate and caramel from their afternoon break.
Osgood let her go with a light cough of breath she had forgotten to draw and Kate hugged her.
Kate strode to the other side of her bench, moved the keyboard into a drawer and replaced it with her potting tools.
Osgood beamed and retook her seat, if not her reading.
She found the re-potting process fascinating, not least because it gave her the opportunity to watch Kate’s slender fingers at work.
Her concentration was such that it took her a few moments to realise Kate was watching her right back.
The potting process on autopilot as the blonde caught the highlights in her partner’s hair from the spring light.
To spare her blushes, no matter how adorable they made her, Kate asked once more what she had been reading.
“It’s Dr Sullivan’s original handwritten reports.” Osgood replied, pushing her glasses up her nose. “They are proving quite fascinating.”
“In what way? You’ve read the file edition well enough to recite it.” Kate complimented, rewarded with another light blush.
“The official report is exactly that, a report. Harry’s notes here are a little more…” Osgood paused, searching for the phrase before giving a little shrug. “Personal.”
“Do they give any more insight into his encounters?”
“More insight into Harry himself, really. Here in the Ark, his initial report is about feeling foolish for causing the flight diversion but then his concerns are very much for Sarah Jane. It’s no wonder he wasn’t taking too many notes about the Wirrrn when she’s still comatose. Some of that makes it into the final report as a medical diagnosis but here it’s…”
“Personal,” Kate nodded. She moved her hands from the pot to the bench, blew hair from her eyes. “Sarah has that effect.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to... uh that is I…” Osgood stammered.
“It’s alright; do go on, what’s your insight telling you?”
Osgood shuffled back into a laying position, her long t shirt rucking up to expose her boxers.
“I suppose, what I’m really thinking is how little of the world is recorded. Imagine if our lives were turned into a TV show? It would concentrate on the official reports and the action because TV likes action. We probably wouldn’t even be the stars. It would be Sam or Josh.”
“I’m not agreeing to any adaptation that I don’t star in!” Kate rebutted with a lopsided smile.
Osgood laughed in reply.
“You know what I mean. Look at Xena; it was seasons along before they admitted that she and Gabrielle were soul mates. They are too busy with the sword fighting and flashing her legs.”
“I have no problem looking at Lucy Lawless’ legs, as you well know.”
“But my point is, if UNIT were a series, our relationship would just be fan-fiction.”
“And what’s wrong with that? Who wants to watch two scientists reading a book and re-potting some wayward Crocus?”
“Romantics?” Osgood replied with a cheeky but heartfelt grin. “There would be pages and pages of fan-fiction about how you have specifically chosen to work on the crocus pots because they don’t flare my asthma.”
“Which is true but I don’t know they require more than the one line of dialogue.”
“Depends on who writes it.” Osgood mused, waving the notepad. “Not Harry Sullivan, you’d probably cut yourself and he’d lovingly explain the course of the blood through the grain of the bench.”
“And if you wrote it?” Kate’s head cocked lightly to the left, she was still smiling but there was a hint of challenge in her eyes.
“Kate Stewart deftly tipped the ailing crocus into her palm and gave it’s pot a precise tap with the handle of her trowel. The delicate bloom refused to budge and the radiant blonde tapped the pot on its side with the flat of the trowel. She separated the biomass from the ceramic with a gentle tug. At no time did her eyes leave those of her partner, Doctor Osgood. The mousy scientist sat enraptured at the ease and care the older woman showed in her work. The same care she had applied to the selection of the crocus in the first place. It could be no accident that the flower was unlikely to agitate Osgood’s asthma any more than the spring onslaught outside would have done.”
Kate chuckled and stood upright, crocus successfully re-potted. “And what about something longer form?”
“Oh, it would probably be a lot more angsty with occasional arcs of hardcore lesbian action interrupted by aliens desperately trying to stop us from having a date on Tuesday.”
“They mostly interrupted our weekends.”
“Yes, but I wouldn’t want our readers to know that. Besides, disrupted Tuesday is a Star Trek joke. About how the Enterprise B wasn’t really ready for action after she was launched and how it killed Captain Kirk.”
Kate opened her mouth, paused, shut it again, deciding against a follow up question.
Osgood continued anyway. “I would probably write it more as a mystery and see how the plot takes me. I know how our lives have gone so I wouldn’t have to plot too far ahead. Unless I wanted to concentrate on those moments not in the official records, you know, like that time I had concussion?”
“Which one?” Kate smirked, rewarded with another flush to Osgood’s cheeks. “When you stayed here and kept not telling me you loved me with anything other than your eyes and your art?”
“Oh, maybe our fans would draw it if I did?”
“Oh, so you’re successful enough for fans are you?”
“Obviously, who wouldn’t want to read about two scientists re-potting a crocus?” the brunette laughed cheekily and settled back against the chaise.
“How long before the kids get here? Maybe I should make a start?”
“About two hours. And you realise I can’t let you publish anything without my oversight, as both boss and girlfriend.”
“You make it sound like I’d be writing for anyone other than you.”
“Thank you. However…” Kate wiped her hands on her skinny jeans, re-potting complete and circled the bench to lean over Osgood with a lingering kiss.
“Maybe we should get some research in before you start writing anything.”