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TreecrafterW t1_itwlt16 wrote

You couldn’t believe your luck. You were on a fourth date with a beautiful, well read woman who also had a place as a prominent pediatric oncologist with a stellar reputation for patient success. You’d met while she volunteered her time after hours at an animal shelter. Granted, she hadn’t kept to current custom for the third date, and it didn’t seem like she was wanting to do anything after this one, but she was still a catch.

Her phone started getting notifications like some emergency was happening while she went to the bathroom for the second time in half an hour (she had apparently drank an entire liter of tea before the date as her preferred caffeine source, to not be too tired and dull for this date, and was experiencing the consequences) and you decide to check what was happening.

Hot Stuff: are you on another date with Mr Persistent?

Hot Stuff: I don’t see why you’re wasting your time with him when you know it’s not going anywhere.

Hot Stuff: I’m at the apartment, so don’t be alarmed if you break from your nature and bring him back with you. Liam is a twit and I shouldn’t have let my dick do the thinking for me.

You would have been alarmed, but you knew that Hot Stuff was the nickname in your date Selene’s phone for her twin brother Helios, who “tomcats around like STDs were never a thing and acts like Captain Jack Harkness turned up to 11” You’d needed an explanation of who that was, but understood when you met him.

Selene came back, the dinner continued and more conversation was had, and then she’d run to the bathroom again. More messages came in.

Hot Stuff: I looked over your calculations and I think you’re missing something in the variables. I’m going to run a sim and double check things.

Bright Eyes: ugh, he’s reorganizing the shop again. Wish you were back to keep me company for the next week. I’m so Bored! Just transcendentally bored!! 🐍😎🥺😵‍💫

Hot Stuff: yeah this isn’t matching with your calculations, I think your date is off, you need to get ready to go sooner than expected.

azfellco@books: To whom it may concern. The shop will be closed temporarily for spring cleaning and reorganization. Please seek your reading material elsewhere. Thank you. Try back in June if you must.

Bright Eyes: oh fantastic, there’s a bigot causing trouble at the pub, ruining his day will kill at least a couple of hours!

Hot Stuff: BIG PROBLEM!!! Call ASAP!! The portal window has shrunk, for optimal arrival results you need to leave TONIGHT!!! I’m packing your stuff up and I will write up the new itinerary for you, come home as soon as you can!

Portal? What is that loser brother of hers talking about? Leaving? She hadn’t mentioned any travel plans at all before now. Was he high?

Hot Stuff: I would feel bad about ruining your date but he wasn’t going to be getting any anyway, maybe this way he’ll get a pity lay from someone who sees he’s been abandoned by his date 😂

Selene is back. She checks her phone, and blanches. “I have to go. I’m terribly sorry, I’ll leave money for my half of the tab.”

You grab her wrist and ask “what’s all that about a portal? You’re leaving? Do I even matter to you at all?” You’re agitated, and your voice is getting louder.

“Let go.” She says in a voice as stern as a schoolmarm, and twists herself free. “You kept pestering me to give you a chance to win me over. Your company is slightly more enjoyable than being by myself with nothing to do, but less so than eating alone with enjoyable reading material. You spend half the evening trying to convince me that you are important at work and the rest of the time complaining about everything. I’m going to go see what my brother is on about regarding my calculations, and if I do have to take my next jump tonight, I won’t be missing you. I suggest that you do some soul searching and improve yourself rather than assuming you’re hot shit and feeling entitled to a woman’s time. Goodbye, if it turns out my brother is incorrect I will still not be seeing you again.”

She leaves you sitting there, dumbstruck. (Sequel is going to be from her perspective, I can’t really get into Nice Guy mindset)

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TreecrafterW t1_itwsqkr wrote

Selene was perfectly willing to not interfere with her bladder’s natural inclination for frequent expulsion after copious amounts of tea, for now. She wished she’d never decided to be accommodating and let this man-baby have any of her time.

He had gotten more and more tedious and entitled the more time she spent with him, and the last two dates had been spent dodging his “subtle” advances.

Thankfully, after tonight she was going to put her foot down and go back to her comfortable solitary lifestyle. She would skip dessert here, they didn’t have any of her particular favorites anyway (he’d picked) and she’d grab some tubs of ice cream from the store on the way back, and she and her twin would commiserate about how difficult humanity could be to interact with.

And then she had a nice busy slate of patients to help over the next week. She was well on track for her usual quota of a thousand lives saved in a year, and her research had been noticed and would be spread around the world to allow others to better save lives without her direct intervention. Which was good, because she only had another month on this version of Earth before she needed to make her next jump towards home.

She got back to their table at the restaurant again and checked her phone (she really should just bring it with her next time and take longer in the bathroom).

Her thoughts: {{So my calculations are off? Really? We’ll see about that when I get back home. It’s spring cleaning again? I’m missing out on so much, I have been gone for too long, I can’t wait to get home again. Shrunk?! Leave tonight? But my patients…. I need to get there and confirm things one way or the other, I love my patients dearly but they do not come before getting back home to my dearest friends and the version of Earth that I’ve spent so much time improving.

He grabbed my wrist. He dared to physically impede me from leaving? Me? It’s ridiculously easy to get free, but that he would try that makes me lose what little respect for him I had. I don’t have time for this nonsense. }} She stormed out after giving him a piece of her mind and paying for her own food with a sizable tip, (it wasn’t the fault of the waitstaff that she hadn’t had an enjoyable experience after all) and took off for the apartment she’d been calling home for the last two years. Her twin opened the window by the fire escape for her and handed her a set of calculations.

She scrutinized them minutely, but he apparently did know how to show his work appropriately after all this time, and it checked out. A variable in the multi-dimensional paths of creation had been overlooked when she’d made her itinerary before, and this route would cut off forty years of lived experience and six months off her arrival time back home to her friends.

“Wow, this looks like a big oversight, can you show me the sim you used? I can’t believe I missed that.”

“No problem. Here, I’ll pull it up.” Golden light cascades out of his hand as he gestures and forms into patterns around the twins. “See that little one there, behind the big anchor world? It’s barely visible from behind the penumbra. That’s your missing variable.”

“Oh wow, I see it now but you’re right, I hadn’t registered it before. Thank you so much for spotting that.”

“I’ll stay behind and get your affairs in order for your patient’s sake and catch up with you later.”

“Really?!” She says in excited surprise, looking up at him.

“Yeah, your neighbor, Sophie, came around asking if we had baking powder and we hit it off, so I want to stay a while and get to know her better”

“So much for not thinking with your dick”

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ClassicClassicist t1_ityeas7 wrote

> who “tomcats around like STDs were never a thing and acts like Captain Jack Harkness turned up to 11”

Bwahaha! I about fell out of my chair at this line. Nice quote!

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