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libraryofgage · 5 months ago

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A Hop, a Skip, and a TARDIS Jump (2)

Part of: Steve Deserves Good Parents, Actually

Here's the second line jump fic! If you'd like to learn about line jumping, you can read this post

Anyway, after 84 years, here's part 2 of TenRose being Steve's parents. This time actually with TenRose lol

There's a meme at the end of this one, too, so I hope you enjoy it

Anyway, as always, if you see any typos, no you didn't :^)

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Hawkins, Indiana, 1974

Steve looks the same, but his organs are new, he's a tiny bit taller, and he's having the same growing pains as his father. He stretches his fingers, wiggles his ears, and feels his liver chugging along like never before. He's doing better than his father, though; he's not too caught up in the taste of a new pancreas, at least.

He is, however, subject to scolding from his mother.

"I can't believe you!" Rose shouts, pacing in front of the console before coming to a stop. "Are you thick? You could've been seriously hurt!"

"Oh, I don't think that's very fair," the Doctor says, pushing his hair out of his face, something he's never been able to do before. "He's a teeny-weeny Time Lord, Rose. He regenerates just as good as me. Well, better even."

"That's not the point, Doctor! You've only got so many lives before you run out. Don't let Steve join you for the beginning of each one."

"Well, maybe we should remember how we got here in the first place," the Doctor says, "Someone thought, 'Oh, I'll just take a little peek-a-boo into the time vortex,' for the fun of it!"

After listening to them argue for a few more minutes, Steve slowly gets up and quietly makes his way over to the console. He places his hand on a dial, holding still but feeling it turn under his palm. "Take us somewhere safe," he whispers, glancing to where his parents are holding a staring contest that could end in them kissing or shouting.

Steve feels the TARDIS hum around him, agreeing with his suggestion, and the engine kicks to life. "What?" the Doctor asks, looking around before spotting Steve at the console. "Hold on a minute, who said you could send us anywhere?"

"I didn't turn anything," Steve says, innocently looking up at his parents. "Maybe the TARDIS got tired of your arguing, too."

As though agreeing with him, the TARDIS makes a particularly loud whoosh as it jerks and nearly sends Rose off her feet. The Doctor catches her easily, an arm around her waist, but stumbles himself. "Oh, blast, this body is scrawny," he says, clenching his jaw as he grips the console to keep himself upright.

"I'll say. You're likely to stab me with an elbow there," Rose replies, her voice more amused than anything else, and Steve quickly looks away before he's subjected to the gross goo-goo eyes his parents start making at each other.

When the TARDIS finally comes to a stop, Steve barely waits before rushing to the doors. He hears his parents shout after him, but he throws one of the doors open without a second thought, an excited grin forming when he sees familiar trees and a familiar playground. It's been a few months for him, long enough to be an entirely new person, but he has no clue how long it's been for Eddie.

Maybe only a day has passed. Maybe a week. Maybe fifteen years. Well, he doubts it's been fifteen years. The playground doesn't look like fifteen years have passed. Either way, he looks over his shoulder at his parents. "I'm gonna go play now!" he says, letting the door slam behind him as he runs out.

He's only more excited when he immediately finds Eddie. It's odd, because most humans just look alike to him, other than his mother, of course. They're all kind of shaped the same and none of them feel like time and space; they're boring, completely untouched by and unaware of the greater universe beyond the molecules of stardust that formed them.

But Eddie is different. Eddie's hair holds red space and his fingers scatter time when he moves. Eddie's words drip with galactic dust and meteoric currents. His eyes are the brown of T'Lochlor royal jewels and contain the sparks of planetary births. His smile curls with the essence of alternate dimensions and black hole gates.

Steve tried explaining it to the TARDIS once, figuring she was the most likely to know what's so different about Eddie. The only thing she'd been able to tell him is that, somewhere in the future, Eddie would be destined for tragedy and stars. She wouldn't say (or simply didn't know) what order they would be in, but Steve decided to focus on the stars.

He rushes over, his smile wide as he gets closer to where Eddie is sitting on a bench, watching the playground with a slight pout and a cast on his right leg. "Eddie!" he shouts, practically tackling the boy in a hug when he's close enough.

"Stevie?!"

Steve pulls away, hopping onto the bench and settling next to Eddie. "Yep! Hi."

"Dude, it's been so long!"

"Oh," Steve says, frowning slightly as he looks Eddie up and down. They still seem to look the same age. "How long?"

"Like three years. Where were you?!"

"Uh, traveling. My parents go all over the place," Steve explains, figuring it's not exactly a lie. "Anyway, what happened to your leg?"

Eddie blinks, looking down at his cast before pouting again. "I broke it in P.E. cuz the coach made me play soccer," he says.

Steve doesn't quite know what P.E. is. Or soccer. But he gets the main point: Eddie can't play because his leg is still healing. "How come you're still here then?" he asks.

"Better than being home."

There's something weird about Eddie's words, but Steve doesn't ask him about it. His mother has told him that, sometimes, you just shouldn't pry into people's home life. Even if you care, it could make them angry or upset. They'll share when they're ready.

"Oh," he says, moving closer to Eddie on the bench until their shoulders are touching.

"Tell me something cool," Eddie says. "Where did you and your parents go?"

Steve thinks for a moment. He already told Eddie about being an alien, but is he allowed to talk about the time travel stuff? Is that too impossible to believe? Maybe he'll just ease Eddie into it. "Uh, we went a lot of places," he says, swinging his legs, "Oh, like this city where they have a super big hospital and the doctors are all cat-people."

"Why'd you go there?" Eddie asks.

"I died, kind of, and Mom wanted to make sure I was okay, even though Dad promised her I was. And Dad died, too, but he's done it a few times, so he's better at it than I am. Anyway, Mom was going crazy with worry, so Dad brought us there to get me checked out. Clean bill of health, according to the doctor."

Eddie stares at him for a while. "You died?" he finally asks, his voice sounding a little strained.

"Yeah, but not really. I mean, my people regenerate instead of die. So, like, my current body can't survive, so I pull on time and space to make myself a new one, one that can live as long as I need it to."

"Oh, right, cool, that's not confusing," Eddie says, huffing as he glances away. He swings his legs a few times before asking, "What happened?"

"Mom looked into the TARDIS's heart, absorbed the time vortex and became Bad Wolf to save us. If she stayed like that, she would've burned up from the inside out, so Dad kissed her to draw the time vortex out. He started to regenerate, but the backlash of it was destroying the TARDIS. We would've crashed otherwise, so I absorbed some of his regeneration energy, and that burned all of my cells up, so I had to regenerate, too. Mine was a bit gentler than Dad's, though, so it didn't cause much damage."

"I feel...even more confused."

Steve smiles at him, holding out his hand. After a few seconds, Eddie takes it, and Steve squeezes once. "That's okay. Alien biology is weird. Like, I think it's weird that you've got an appendix. You don't even need it anymore."

"What did we need it for before?"

"Something digestive, I think," Steve says, waving his free hand dismissively, "Dad knows more about that stuff than I do."

Eddie nods, looks down at their hands, and then looks at the playground. "Your parents sound...really great, Stevie," he says.

There's something in Eddie's voice that makes Steve hesitate. He bites the inside of his cheek, hesitates for a moment, and then scooches a little closer. Maybe telling Eddie about the time travel thing will make him smile again; maybe it will take that weird hurt in his eyes away for just a few minutes. "You wanna see something cool?" he asks.

"Sure," Eddie mumbles, looking over as Steve reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a phone from 2046. It looks totally clear, but the glass panel on the back is frosted, keeping people from seeing what's on his screen.

"What kind of music do you like?" Steve asks.

"Usually whatever my mom listens to," Eddie says, shrugging as he watches Steve tap on the glass in his hand. He jerks when the screen lights up, showing a bunch of tiny squares across it. "What's that?"

"A phone."

"Uh, nope, no way, phones are, like, attached to walls and stuff. They plug in. They're, you know, bigger, and stuff. And they aren't made of glass."

"It's, uh, a future phone. From the future. Many, many years in the future."

Eddie snorts, bumping their shoulders together. "Time travel isn't real, Stevie."

"I'm an alien. I just told you about a city with cat-people doctors. Time travel is the unbelievable part?" Steve asks.

They stare at each other for a few minutes, Steve waiting patiently as he watches disbelief fade into realization in Eddie's eyes. "Holy shit," Eddie whispers, his eyes getting wider as he looks down at the phone. "Where's your time machine?"

"Across the street. That blue box over there. My parents are inside."

"How did I miss that?"

"It's got a perception filter," Steve says, repeating his father's words easily. "So people's eyes just...slide over it."

Eddie slowly nods and looks back at Steve's phone. "I, um, my mom likes David Bowie."

Steve nods and looks up David Bowie music videos.

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Despite thinking Steve might hang around this time, that he might not disappear from Eddie's life like last time, that's exactly what he does.

He introduces Eddie to music that won't exist for decades, to bands like Green Day and Lovejoy and some singer from another planet called Ln'ra. Their voice makes Eddie's brain prickle between his ears, his heart lurching in his chest with the desire to sing the way they do.

Steve holds Eddie's hand the entire time, a gentle breeze passing over them, their heads leaning against each other. Music plays surprisingly clear from the piece of glass Steve insists is a phone. Time seems to slow down for a brief while, and Eddie forgets all about the world for a while.

He forgets about his mom crying. He forgets about his dad shouting. He forgets about the dull ache in his leg as the bone mends itself. He forgets about everything, and it's the most peaceful and relaxed he's felt for months.

And then the sun is setting, dipping beneath the trees and splashing the sky with oranges and pinks and reds. Steve sighs when he sees the colors, lets the music video play to the end, and then turns of his phone and slips it into his pocket.

"I've gotta go," he says, standing up from the bench but still holding Eddie's hand.

Eddie doesn't fight it, even though he wants to, because something tells him Steve can't stay. Something deep in his mind tells him that he won't. Not yet, at least. Because Eddie is sure, at some point, Steve is going to stay.

Or Eddie will stay, because he's technically walking away, too, right? He's not exactly begging to follow Steve wherever he goes, because he can't. He has a mom, a dad, an uncle, guitar lullabies at night and surprisingly good waffles in the morning, some friends at school and a group project that needs turning in.

So, neither of them can stay. Not right now, at least. But maybe next time. Eddie hopes---as he watches Steve push open the door of that weird blue box and wave one last time before going in---that one of them will get to stay sometime soon.

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Tag List (let me know if you'd like to be added!)

@romanticdestruction, @lublix, @jackiemonroe5512, @lee-da-vinci, @rowanshadow26, @didntwant2comecome, @katouasobi

And here's the meme! Very tiny text but it's basically just copy/paste Steve's dialogue about regenerating lol

#steddie #steddie fic #doctor who #doctor who crossover #eddie munson #steve harrington #rose tyler #10th doctor #tenrose #steddie over time #steve deserves good parents actually

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