Who: TARDIS and Gwen Stacy When: After this. Where: Tara’s house What: Tara has had a rough couple of days, and needs a friend. Rating: No warnings! Status: Complete
Tara had always been so glad to have Gwen as a friend. The blonde had always been so supportive of her, and Tara felt she hadn’t been quite as helpful the past little while. She’d been distracted by John, sure, and learning who she really was. But she hadn’t been a good enough friend. She would endeavour to change that.
But for now, the brunette sat with a near-complete bottle of whiskey (she hadn’t drank it ALL, Rose had helped with it the other night), sipping it on the rocks while she watched horrible cable movies all night. It helped take her mind off of the Doctor. And off of John. Just the thought of him made her heart hurt, so she took a sip of her whiskey and let out a sigh.
Men.
Gwen didn’t know where she’d be without Tara and John in her life. She was struggling right now, having a pretty difficult time of it. Dreams and working with Peter and all of that... it made things confusing and conflicting. Without Tara and John to keep her sane(ish) she’d probably have done something incredibly stupid, embarrassed herself past the point of no return, and moved back across country to hide in her parents’ basement.
So, when Tara needed her, she sped over. Stopping only to pick up a handful of Ben and Jerry’s pints. She’d probably just dropped about $30 on ice cream, but she was so distracted with worry over her friend that she didn’t even look at the total on her receipt.
It took fifteen minutes, but then Gwen was knocking on Tara’s front door.
Tara would slip some money into Gwen’s bag before she left, because it was her night to pay for the comfort food. Perhaps too generous, but the girl was not to be denied. She wanted to take care of her friends, and if she was able, she would be damned if she didn’t.
Popping up, she didn’t bother setting down the glass of whiskey to answer the door. She opened it up and smiled -- was she drunk? Maybe -- at the blonde. “Hello!” she greeted, reaching for a big hug from her best friend. “Come in, come in. Have you ever been over before?” She couldn’t remember if she’d had anyone over, really. She almost always went to Gwen and John’s. But she couldn’t go there now, not with what had happened.
“Hey.” Gwen grinned softly, tentatively, holding up the bag of ice cream. “Uh... no, I think this might be my first time.” Though, apparently she knew where the place was, as she showed up to the right door. Gwen stepped in as Tara invited her, and then looked around.
“...what’s happening? You’re... holding a drink. A whiskey drink?” Gwen asked, leaning forward to smell a little.
“Come in, then! This is the living room, kitchen’s that way, bathroom is through there,” she waved at each room as she listed it off. “There’s an upstairs, not much exciting up there. Two bedrooms and a bathroom if you need them!” And that was the tour. Welcome, Gwen.
As scatterbrained as Tara usually was, her place was quite tidy. She led Gwen into the living room, bad movie still on in the background, as she sipped at her glass of sweet, sweet amber liquor. “Would you like some?” she asked, brows lifted.
Gwen was impressed. Nice place. She followed Tara, looking around a little bit, and then set the bag of ice cream down wherever. “Sure. Can’t let you drink alone, now can I?” She said, trying to make a joke out of it. But she was really concerned with what was going on. It wasn’t like Tara to be... like this. Something happened with John? Gwen wanted the whole story, straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. She could go ask John, but he’d freaked out at her the other day when she’d brought up Tara.
“What’s happened? Are you all right?”
“You certainly can’t!” she joked right back, bending to pour her friend a glass. She filled it with ice and then handed it over, forcing the blonde into a cheers with her.
To be honest, Tara didn’t know what to feel about the entire situation. John and her friendship was complicated enough. The wrenches that had been thrown in from their dreams, most notably the people they’d known, were not helping much at all. At Gwen’s question, she did what the Doctor was best known for, what she’d learned so well over the years. “Of course I’m all right!” she said, shrugging as she sipped on her whiskey. “Just need a night with Ben and Jerry, we still need to decide who gets who, and all will be well.” Smile.
Gwen didn’t believe it for a second. But she wasn’t going to push. John had snapped at her when she pushed before, so she was simply going to be an ear and a shoulder, and whatever else Tara needed from her.
“I think I get Ben.” She decided to go with the joke, putting on a grin. “He’s the skinny one, right?” There was a wink and then Gwen was digging around in the bag of ice cream pints that she’d bought for them to poke at tonight. “...what goes best with whiskey? Rocky Road or Cookie Dough?”
Nodding happily at the skinny question, Tara was definitely drunk at this point in the night. “I think Jerry is the one with the nice smile,” she said, claiming her man for the night.
Tara considered the next question, hmmm’ing as she cradled her chin between her thumb and index finger. “Rocky Road,” she decided, reaching for the container, then realizing she hadn’t gotten spoons. Without saying anything, she popped up and hurried off to the kitchen to procure supplies.
“Good. I’ll take the cookie dough.” Gwen pulled open the container, and then blinked. She realized she didn’t have a spoon. “Oh...” she said, trailing off when she saw Tara get up to go get utensils. She presumed, anyway.
She reached for her glass and took a gulp. Poor Tara was pretty far along. Gwen had a considerable amount of drinking to do to catch up.
Tara came back with two spoons and an excited smile, settling back on the couch with her best female friend. She handed one of the spoons over, and then dug into her Rocky Road, pulling her legs up onto the couch as she turned to Gwen. “So,” she began. “Tell me about this Peter.” Because she hadn’t heard the story just yet. She’d been a bit too self-involved, and she felt awful about it.
“Oh, God.” Gwen accepted a spoon and dug straight into her ice cream. She was already finished with the first finger of whiskey that Tara had poured for her. “...Peter. Well.” She gave a sigh and went a little pink.
“When Peter and I were in college together he was the TA for one of my classes. We started dating just after that, and moved in... I was so in love, I thought he was going to ask me to marry him. But I wasn’t ready to be tied down that much... I still had doctorate school. Ended up wanting to go to MIT. So we broke up, I moved cross country, and I hadn’t spoken to him in years until we bumped into each other here at Stark.”
She paused. “And now I’m having these dreams about him.”
Tara had her brows raised, chewing on ice cream during story time. When Gwen had stopped and concluded it all, she swallowed heavily and blinked a few times before replying. Because, damn. That sounded rough. “Are these the dreams with the... Web-slinging superhero?” she asked, just to clarify. Because there were dreams and then there were dreams, and often even she got mixed up about her own.
“Yes.” Gwen said, giving a sigh. “He’s just as nerdy in the dreams as he is in real life. Just as fantastic of a kisser, too.” She took a bite of ice cream as if putting a period on that sentence. It’d been a long time since she’d spent any amount of time with Peter Parker. Now she saw him every day--in passing, mostly--at work. And she’d gotten herself drunk and left that stupid, singing message on his machine. It was time for her to pick herself up and move on.
“I hate those damn dreams for making me think of him again. But enough about me. Tell me what’s got you in need of a date with Jerry.” Gwen said, scooping another spoonful of ice cream into her mouth.
Tara made a sad face all through Gwen’s telling of Peter, and shook her head. “Well at least you’ve got the memories,” she supplied, because memories were important to the brunette. She was all about memories and time.
She had eaten nearly half of the container by the time Gwen asked what was going on in her world. With a sigh, Tara shrugged. “There’s this woman,” she began, looking very intently at the ice cream in her lap while she explained. “From the dreams. She and John, the Doctor, he was called, they were in love. Are in love,” she paused. Not really sure how she felt about it, her shoulders drooped as she went on.
“She’s here, and it’s... It’s really messed John up. He feels terribly for what happened in the dreams. I don’t know how to help him.” She looked up then, with those big chocolate eyes, watching Gwen sadly. “She’s with someone else, here.”
Gwen gave a little sigh. Maybe that’s why he’d been so touchy when she was pushing him about his relationship with Tara. She shouldn’t have pried. She should have let everything be. Damn. This whole ‘being a shoulder without pushing too much for information’ was hard shit, man.
“I’m so sorry,” Gwen said, frowning a bit. It was both sympathetic and empathetic. Gwen knew what it was like to dream about someone who was with someone else here. Peter. Pansy. Fuck if Pansy wasn’t pretty. “Are in love, or were in love?” She asked, tentatively. Did John in this world love this woman from his dreams? Gwen herself was still confused about her own feelings in the dreams, she could only imagine how John must be feeling about his.
“He’s in love with her,” she confirmed, putting her ice cream down and reaching for the whiskey again. She took a sip and then continued. “But... He’s explained his Time Lord abilities, right? The ability to regenerate?” she paused. “The man that Rose is with, he’s an earlier version of the Doctor. They’re both in love with Rose, and she’s in love with them both as well. It’s so hard to think of him as a different person, but here...”
She knew that Gwen could wrap her head around it -- she was a very smart girl -- but she would never fully understand the mess this created. “I don’t know how to help him through this,” she admitted. Because she wasn’t thinking of herself, or any feelings she might have on the matter. That was just how John and Tara’s relationship was.
Gwen nodded. She’d picked up bit here and there about John and Tara’s dream world, enough to sort of piece things together. And then all they’d outright told her, really helped. She understood a lot of it, though she couldn’t ever really understand. She wasn’t there with them in those dreams. “I see. I mean, that’s really rough. Emotions in the dreams are so real. They linger. I don’t know if there’s much that can be done, really.” Gwen said. “Just... being supportive. Being by his side. Talk when he needs to talk, distract him if that’s a better idea.”
Gwen didn’t have the best advice for this scenario. It was sort of what she was going through, too. Similar, anyway.
Tara was nodding, and took a sip of her whiskey. After a long moment she was smiling again, lifting her glass to cheers Gwen’s ice cream. “Being friends with the Doctor is hard,” she said, shaking her head a bit. “But it is so worth it.”