Archive of Our Own ^beta

It begins when the Doctor wakes next to him in the small bed they shared (and didn’t talk about that fact) with a shudder and gasp at 4:21am while the Crab floated off the Amalfi Coast. Stone shifts so he can watch the Doctor as the man slowly sits up, bathed in the soft neon blue and red glow of the Crabs’ floor lighting. The Doctor raises one hand to his lips in a soft gesture of awe which morphs to a rare expression of confusion as the minutes tick by before finally settling into a frown with narrowed eyes and a glint that spoke of a witness to expansive galaxies of inspiration Stone was not privy to.

Uh oh.

The frenetic energy which inhabited the crab for the next 83 hours is something Stone hasn’t seen since the Doctor had been possessed with chasing that blue rat. The kitchenette had been pillaged and the 3D printers had been competing with the Doctor’s constant marathon of movement for the past three and a half days. Now both stood silent, beholding their masterpiece. A device with whirring and clanking and sparking parts stands tall on one of the lab benches. Little red lights embedded in its chaos of wires and parts slowly blink on and off, as if it were opening its eyes for the first time.

It truly resembled something out of a mad scientist’s laboratory. Stone is usually good enough to keep up with most of the technical details, but whatever the hell this thing was, was beyond even his comprehension. 

“Behold, Stone!” The doctor introduces his new creation.

Stone nods along, “magnificent, sir.” 

“You have absolutely no idea what it is, do you?” 

Stone shakes his head, “not a clue.” 

And here comes his favourite part, where his Doctor bounds over to him in an excited fervour, whipping out his red dressing gown in a show of dramatic flare before he puts his arm around Stone’s neck and yanks him in close so that they’re cheek to cheek and staring at the little blinking lights and impossibly delicate and complicated inner workings of whatever brilliance the Doctor’s mind has conjured up this time.

“Of course you don’t. For how could your tiny intellect ever understand that I have done the impossible, once again, and uncovered the answer.”

Stone breathes out ever so slowly, trying not to let the Doctor see how much his closeness affected him, his racing heart doing its best to beat its way out of his chest and display itself on the table for all to see. “The answer to what, sir?” 

The Doctor stands up suddenly, grasping Stone’s lapels and pulling him up to his level, nose to nose so that he has an unparalleled view of the Doctor’s sleep-deprived, sunken eyes holding pin-pricks of creative brilliance so endless, it was like looking into the eyes of god. 

“Time travel, Stone.” The way the Doctor whispers it, breath fogging out over Stone’s own lips has him desperately holding back a shiver. 

He attempts to diffuse the situation lest he be found out. “Do we need to drive at 88 miles an hour?” 

The Doctor drops him. “Of course it’s not something as archaic as that. It’s coded to your DNA and a scan of your molecular structure, Stone. Keep up.”

“DNA—wait, when did you collect my DNA?” He certainly doesn’t remember handing over a swab.

“Bzzt—irrelevant question! Now, do you have cash? American dollars, mind you.”

Stone promptly fetches a wad from their supplies and hands it to the Doctor, tucking the other half in his jacket. “Sir, why are we time travelling?” He thinks this question is pretty critical to understanding why this machine exists at all. 

The Doctor throws up his hands, “ugh Stone. Sometimes I think it would be easier if you could read my mind.” He pauses for a moment, “actually, scratch that idea. Garbage. Fine, the reason we are going to time travel, to 1988 to be exact, is because I am missing 3 days’ worth of memories and we’re going to go and get them back. Or at least, figure out what it is my inner neural pathways have refused to connect to and are hiding from me. I shall not be defeated by something as pedestrian as human biology.” He mimes a puking expression. 

Stone frowns, hoping the Doctor hadn’t just gone on a 3-day college bender. He has caught glimpses of the man’s past experience with depressants and stimulants over the years, most of them accompanied by a story so unhinged, Stone honestly has no idea how the Doctor managed to survive his twenties, let alone another three decades after that. “What were the events leading up to the memory loss.” 

“I was kidnapped, wasn’t I? Minding my own business, halfway through the thesis of my fourth PhD and several Defence and…other… contracts when BAM—I was kidnapped on my way back to the college dorms one night. Then I found myself standing in my office and the date read three days later and I had no recollection of how or why I was there.” 

The lab falls silent except for the whirring of the time machine. It appears to be ratcheting up in pace, albeit slowly. The little blinking lights flashing faster and faster. 

“Doctor,” Stone starts delicately, “was there some kind of…trauma associated with this?”

“Of course not, Stone. What, you think I didn’t already account for the idea that I was drugged and experimented on and then returned. I examined every inch of myself and apart from some light bruising, sunburn on my right arm and a couple of scrapes I was… uninjured. No little tracking chips inserted into my brain. No horrific trauma uncovered. No way to join up whatever severed connection within my own neural pathways had led to the memory loss. As if I hadn’t already tried that, Stone. I did two years of neurology research and—ugh, it pains me to say this—psychology experimentation before putting it on ice to focus on building the Model 2 Badnik. Time travel is the only answer!” 

Something in the machine clicks and whirs, a red laser light bathing both of them in a warm glow that travels up and down their bodies. 

Stone digests all of this before saying, “so if we’re going back in time to find your younger self, who was kidnapped, doesn’t that mean we’re likely the ones who save him–you?”

“Of course not, Stone. Because we’re not going to interact with him at all. I’ve calculated there’s a 63.82 percent chance the universe will implode on itself if we interact with my younger self and while I am a betting man, I would not be so stupid as to take those odds. This is simply an observation exercise—stop looking at me like that.”

Stone carefully schools his expression. “Like what, sir?”

“Like you think you already know the outcome to an experiment even though your teeny tiny piddly brain could not possibly comprehend the vast amount of possibilities I have already calculated and run scenarios for.”

They stare at each other for a beat. “Out with it,” the Doctor mutters.

Stone licks his lips, “I just think that it seems likely your memory loss could be connected to some kind of time travel related interaction with your older self? Isn’t that how time travel works?”

The Doctor stands up and looks derisively at him and Stone prepares to pin himself against the wall for the incoming tirade, right as a little blinking red light turns green. The Doctor takes a step towards him, hand out and ready to grasp his tie as he says, “no, you idiot, it works like—

But the machine dings and the Doctor’s fingers close around thin air as Agent Stone disappears.

Agent Stone is unprepared for the way that travelling thirty-five years back in time felt like having every inch of his body fed through a meat grinder and being hyperaware of that fact. He could feel his veins, the marrow in his bones, every cell in his bloodstream, his guts, his brain—for the first, and what he hopes is sincerely only the second-last, time in his life he is pulled apart and reassembled. 

Not just in time, but, as he very quickly becomes aware of, space too.

His senses pop back in rapidly one by one and he blinks into focus the stifling hot back of a van with four armed hostiles (casual clothes, though with scarves at the ready for masking, semi-automatic rifles held casually in their laps) seated on benches and what he assumes is his target—hooded and immobilised on the floor. For a moment, nobody moves as they stare at each other. Then the van hits a pothole in the road and everyone is jolted into action as one of the hostiles frowns and begins to say, “what the fu—

Stone punches him in the throat before he can finish, not bothering to relish the sound of choking as he efficiently wrenches the man’s gun up before elbowing him in the temple and slamming his head against the side of the van. He whirls around and kicks the next man in the face before he’s even able to move and as the other two scramble for their guns (bad idea in such a confined space), and Stone closes on them while drawing his own silenced pistol (the Doctor’s own design).

One, two, three shots is all it takes and the movement in the van stops. Stone lowers his gun and lets out a long breath, right as someone bangs on the divider to the cabin of the van. “Murph, everything alright back there.”

Stone sincerely hopes the first hostile who had spoken was Murph as he attempts to emulate the man’s voice from the two and a half words he’d heard him speak. “Yeah, eyes on the road, not the potholes!”

“Fuck off, asshole,” comes the amused reply and Stone sighs in relief. 

Then, he’s over to the only hostile who wasn’t dead, checking that the man is out cold and hoping he’d stay that way for enough time for them to make a quick getaway. He finds a spare pair of cuffs and then gags the man with his own scarf for good measure. 

Finally, he crouches down next to the curled up and slightly shaking body of a young man, broad shoulders, tall, skinny and in a long-sleeved black sweater and jeans with ratty converse sneakers on his feet. He reaches out a hand and gently touches the man’s shoulder, grimacing at the whole-body flinch he makes. Stone leans in close and speaks softly, though he thinks it’s noisy enough that there’s no chance anyone in the cabin will overhear. “I’m here to help. Sit up, slowly. Stay silent,” he says as he eases the man into a sitting position, still with his hands bound (those always come after the kidnapped person’s sight is restored, he’d only ever made that mistake once). He thinks he might get chewed out for that last remark, but that’s exactly why it’s necessary.

Then he unties the hood and pulls it off, not quite ready to be greeted by the shock of unruly dark ginger hair, dusting of freckles across a pronounced hooked nose with a somewhat adequate attempt at a moustache but nothing like the full-bodied magnificent specimen his Doctor was capable of. He suddenly remembers far too late that the universe had sizable odds of collapsing if he were to meet his boss but, well, it hadn’t, and a young, 26 year-old Doctor Ivo Robotnik furiously and defiantly blinks up at him, spitting mad and looking as though he was ready to rip Stone’s throat out if it wasn’t for the gag.

Stone presses his finger to his lips for good measure and then removes the gag.

“Who the hell are you?” the sharp hiss comes from the…Doctor.

The longer he stares at those fiercely intelligent dark brown almost black eyes, the more he can’t help but think of how young they are. Still so much to see and conceive of and create and become—so much left to do over the many years before either of them met in the future. Stone thinks that he probably won’t get away with his as of yet non-existent cover story and that sometimes the truth was the easier option. The universe hadn’t exploded and if the Doctor lost all of these memories anyway, maybe it didn’t matter. 

“Agent Stone. I’m from a government agency—no, I won’t tell you which one. I’ve been sent to retrieve you.” There. That sounded pretty believable.

The Doctor—no, actually. Stone can’t think of him like that. It was far too disconcerting and just felt weird and wrong… Ivo looks him up and down with an expression of extreme scepticism. “Stone? What kind of name is that? And what, they only sent you? You look like the kind of person who actually enjoys writing emails. God, they’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel sending some government desk-jockey shill to save me.” He eyes the three dead and one unconscious hostiles keeping them company in the van. “Well, if you managed that, maybe you’re not totally incompetent—though I wouldn’t be surprised if these idiots had blown their own brains out.” He rubs his wrists and winces as his arms rotate in front of him as Stone frees him from the handcuffs. “Ugh, should have known you bastards were watching me. Of course you’d want to protect an asset as great as what’s up here,” he taps his head.

Stone stares at what he is now conceptualising in his mind as “baby Ivo” and is surprised to find himself thinking, what a little shit. He’s saved from further contemplation and his own slowly forming mild crisis at the concerning confrontation of his age in comparison to Ivo’s by the van slowing down and lurching off the road, hitting a bump and rolling to a stop. 

There’s a bang from the cab side. “Refuel and piss break!” 

Good timing. Stone checks his pistol before holstering it. “Ok, time to go—

“No shit, Sherlock—

Stone ignores him and picks up one of the scarfs from the dead men and throws it on Ivo’s head. “Put that on and keep your head covered and down. Follow me.” 

“You’re a bossy one aren’t you,” he grimaces at the second-hand scarf but wraps the it around his head all the same. “Wait, hang on, you’re the one in a three-piece suit, don’t you think that’s way more obvious in the middle of the deser—

Stone yanks Ivo forward right as he kicks open the van’s back doors, shooting the hostile who had been about to open them from the other side as he briefly takes in the sight of a gas station and accompanying diner surrounded by fields of nothing and the sounds of the freeway behind them. Ok. Time to improvise.

He drags Ivo into a sprint across the open space from the gas station to the diner’s parking lot, skidding into a crouch behind the row of parked cars right as a balding, middle-aged man walks towards a black corvette swinging a set of keys around his fingers. Stone sends a tiny thank you out to the universe at large for not blowing up and also not fucking him over just this once. 

As distant shouts begin to sound over near the van, Stone drags Ivo over in a low crouch towards the man before he lets go, not bothering to attempt to negotiate and pistol whips the poor middle-aged man unconscious, catching his body and lowering him gently to the ground. He grabs the keys, right as he hears a woman scream and more shouting. “Ivo, get in the car!” he shouts as he leaps up and slides over the massive black hood, warm from the afternoon sun, to jam the keys into the door, unlock it and slide into the drivers’ seat. The car roars to life as Ivo throws himself into the passenger side, ducking and letting out a yell as several bullets ping into the car, gunshots sounding behind them. 

Ivo at least has the sense of self-preservation to slide down in his seat and minimise the target range while he shouts, "I’m more useful to you alive! Stop shooting at me you stupid fucks!”

Stone slams the corvette into reverse and burns rubber pulling a move he’s always dreamed of after doing a dangerous driving course in 2016 as he swings the corvette around with a roar of the engine and squealing tyres, managing to hit one of the hostiles with the side of the car before he jams it into first and takes off through the parking lot on the wrong side of the road. 

Three cars tear out of the gas station to try and gain on them, two sedans and a pickup truck. All three had little chance of keeping up with them once the corvette got going, but he had no idea where they were and if there were limited alternative routes. e didn’t exactly want to get lost on one. They’d have to switch cars relatively quickly in any case. All of this plays in the back of his head as he tries to simultaneously look out for landmarks to figure out where they are and clutch-kicks the car into a drift out of the exit to the parking lot and onto the freeway, narrowly avoiding a truck which blares its horn as the three cars behind him have to brake hard to avoid causing a pile-up. Stone ratchets up the speed to a good 140mph, quickly losing them in the rear-view mirror as the corvette comfortably reaches a cruise and Ivo finally stops screaming. 

“Seatbelt,” Stone points without taking his eyes off the road.

“What the fuck is a seatbelt going to do if you crash at this speed?” Ivo yells at him, his face incredulous. “I’ll tell you, because my vast intellect has already calculated the numerous examples of crash scenarios and our odds of survival, and it’s,” Ivo taps a finger on his chin as if thinking, “FUCK ALL!” 

“I’m not going to crash, but we might have to brake suddenly and I don’t want your head going through the windscreen. So. Seatbelt.” Stone points again. 

Ivo is blissfully silent for a moment, then: “you’re insane. Alright, fine, Agent Pebble. I’ll put a seatbelt on and you can answer some questions, the most pressing of which is how the hell you managed to materialise in the back of that van without any sound, none of the doors or windows opening and no other ingress or egress points being available to you?” He punctuates the end of the sentence with the click of the seatbelt as Stone winces. 

He’d really hoped that he’d get away with that one for a bit longer. Though he shouldn’t be surprised, it never did well to underestimate the Doctor. Stone sighs, “that question is going in the same category as the agency I’m from.”

“Oh right, and I guess I’ll just mark down the same answer as the reason to why you have no backup, no vehicle and look like you were sitting in an office two seconds before you decided to drop in on me in the middle of…” they finally pass a road sign which tells them they’re leaving the great state of Texas and entering (Ivo groans), “fucking Arkansas. I knew I was in that cursed van for way too long.” He rubs his wrists.

“Are you ok, si—Ivo?” Stone mentally kicks himself as Ivo darts him a searching look he spies out of the corner of his eye. Too observant and not quite good enough at hiding that fact yet. 

“Oh yes, of course, I’m fine. Fucking dandy for spending 23 hours in the back of a van, a good portion of it unconscious.” Ivo turns to the front and crosses his arms. “I’m hungry, I have to piss and everything fucking hurts. Being kidnapped sucks.” 

“Not your first time?” 

“Surprisingly, no. Though being kidnapped by the US government is at least marginally more comfortable than whoever those losers were. Probably goons hired by a foreign government. They handled things like mercenaries. By the way, if Agent Walters is thinking of staging another kidnapping to try and get me to agree to work for him, you can tell him to fuck off. I’ve got plenty of other job offers on the table and I’m upgrading security. Good luck getting through my new drones.”

Despite Stone’s face not moving a muscle at the drop of Walters’ name, Stone can feel Ivo’s sharp eyes on him. He keeps his eyes on the road, trying not to give the game away. Whatever the game was now. He was going to have to improvise the rules. The Doctor clearly hadn’t hitched a ride through time with him and he hadn’t exactly had time to ask any of the kinds of questions that mattered like, how long was he here for? And how the hell was he supposed to get back? The only thing he had to go off was the three day time limit and the Doctor’s memories. Maybe that was it? Whatever time they spent together now, the Doctor was going to forget. Which meant that he needed Ivo to be back in his university office in three days time if Stone had any potential chance of getting back to the future and not causing irreparable damage to the timeline and blowing up the universe or whatever. 

Ok. Arkansas to Boston in two and half days was doable. It was around 4pm now and the lack of care for any kind of road rules meant they were already making good time. They would need to ditch the car and swap it out if they had any hope of not being caught, depending on how well-funded and resourced the hostiles were. Ivo would have to wait a couple of hours for a rest stop but they’d ideally manage to do both at the same time.

Stone gathers up his thoughts and tries to put the ones worrying about the Doctor out of his head so that he could worry about Ivo instead. Whatever was happening in 2023 was 35 years out of his control.

They drive eastward for another couple of hours in silence until Ivo begins shifting more and more uncomfortably in his seat and Stone seriously has to consider just going with the next available option, not least because they were also running out of gas.

The universe truly being on his side was not something Stone was counting on, but a billboard with NASHVILLE COUNTY FAIR is already in their rearview mirror along with the sunset by the time it registers that he’s been yet again given the perfect solution to his problems. 

“Ready to go to the fair?”

Ivo looks up from where he is leaning against the window, deep in thought. “What? Are you actually insane?” 

“No, but I am hungry and a corndog sounds real good right about now. Plus there’s a rodeo! Could be fun?” 

“I would literally rather kill myself than step foot in a place full of rednecks, horse shit and whatever wailing nonsense someone decided was a music genre.”

“We don’t have to. But I guess everyone else is already offering to do that for you. How about I pull over right now and we save ourselves the trouble of a two day drive?” Stone says brightly. 

“Are you sassing me, Stone?”

“Only a little bit, Ivo.” Stone can’t help but smirk. 

Ivo finally turns to him, teeth bared and eyes alight. “My name is Doctor Robotnik. Put some respect on it.”

“Earn it.” The words slip from his mouth before he has a chance to hold them back. 

Oops. 

It’s something he would have never said to the Doctor. That man had earned it a hundred, no, a thousand, times over. But Ivo is… kind of annoying. He feels guilty for even thinking it, but the young man was like a feral cat with its claws out, hissing and spitting in the face of any who approach it. He thinks he can understand why, given the Doctor’s past, but it was still going to be an ordeal attempting to adopt the stray for the next couple of days. 

He pulls off the highway and follows the signs all the way until he can see the spotlights, tents and rides set up in the distance as the last glow of the summer sun sets over the fields and fields of pasture. They pull into the parking lot, a barren paddock filled to the brim with cars and more still coming in. It was busy, people everywhere. 

Perfect.

Stone sighs out with relief as he finds a spot and shuts off the engine. Ok. Food, water, new car and then they’ll be on their way. 

Easy. Simple. 

He looks over at the passenger seat and sees it’s already empty, Ivo having slipped out and making a beeline towards the fair.

Shit. 

Stone hustles out of the car, not bothering to lock it and runs after Ivo, cursing his own lack of awareness. It has been more than a few years since he’s had to be this on his toes with the Doctor. Back home they were simply in sync with each other, Stone knowing the patterns of his Doctor’s moods and emotions and making sure he fit in with them. He thinks his Doctor would be loathe to admit it, but Robtonik also moved in sync with Stone. And he had for many of the years even before they were both confined to life in the Crab. 

Clearly Ivo changes a lot in the twenty-seven intervening years until they meet.

When he catches up to the young man, he can already tell that what they were wearing was not going to cut it for what he had hoped would be a simple case of being lost in the crowd. Ivo’s look of disgust was also not helping the situation as heads turned their way.

Stone empties the pockets and then shrugs out of his suit jacket to surreptitiously leave it hanging over a fence paling. The tie comes off next, which he drops while unbuttoning his cuffs and rolling up the sleeves of his button-up shirt.

Ivo finally looks over at him and then does a double-take, “what the hell are you getting undressed…for?” The words falter as Stone watches Ivo’s eyes track over his forearms, lingering there for a moment.

Then the eyes flick up to meet Stone’s and he can’t help but raise an eyebrow. This was an interesting development. Ivo’s face flushes red and he quickly looks away as they join the line waiting to enter. 

“Because we don’t look like we belong here, so the first thing we’re doing is,” he pauses a moment to pay the entry fee, hoping that nobody looks too closely at the dates on the banknotes he hands over for the next few days, and then manages to swipes a couple of stetsons from the back of a table where they were resting. “Get some disguises,” he finishes as he places the hat over Ivo’s shock of red hair and tries not to laugh at the results.

“This is the worst day of my fucking life,” Ivo says through his teeth as he glares up at Stone from under the brim. “And that’s saying something for someone who spent the first eighteen years of it in the most miserable orphanage on the planet.”

“We’ve still got a couple of hours to go, I’m sure we can make up for the kidnapping.”

“That wasn’t what I—” Ivo cuts himself off with a snap of his teeth and Stone can’t help the little smile that dances across his lips.

“I’ll meet you back here, partner,” he says as they finally find the bathroom area and he tips his hat and goes to find an open stall. He can feel Ivo staring daggers into his back as he does, but he resists the temptation to look back. He can’t help but be relieved then, when Ivo doesn’t completely ignore him and has even kept his disguise on, returning to their meeting spot.

“What? Thought I was going to ditch you?”

Stone raises an eyebrow. “It crossed my mind.”

Ivo rolls his eyes. “What am I going to do? Drive myself to Boston? I’ve been banned from driving in 52 states,” he says it with more than a hint of pride.

“And when has that ever stopped you?”

Ivo tilts his head, “yes, when has that ever stopped me, Agent Stone?”

Shit. He needs to be on his toes. Suddenly the amount of driving he’s had to do in Robotnik’s service makes a lot more sense. He tries to shrug it off with a guess of why he’d been banned from driving. “I’ve seen your file and don’t necessarily disagree that laws sometimes get in the way of progress.”

Ivo clicks his fingers. “Exactly. Those fools just don’t get that autonomous vehicle testing has to be done somewhere and my funding was not enough to hire out a private road. Like, are you kidding? As if I’d want to drive myself around when I can get a perfectly good robot to do it for me... in like, a few years anyway once I manage to increase the processing power and memory databanks of my rig. Driving is for losers.”

Stone can’t help but snort at that. “Well, I’m glad to be of service,” he says with a sweeping bow. He looks around the fair. “What are you hungry for?”

Ivo just makes a beeline for the food tents and trucks area, ignoring the line of people in front of the most popular van, complaints from those behind him silenced with a look from Stone, and then proceeds to order one of every kind of corndog on the menu and loaded fries with a frankly nauseating amount and combination of toppings. Stone sighs, in some ways glad the man’s tastes are predictable, in others, mildly horrified that they remain this way for the next 35 years. He orders a single corndog and fries for himself and pays as they stand to the side and wait for the food, ignoring the glares from the rest of the people in line. 

They eat in silence, Ivo scarfing down his fries and all five of his various corndogs in the same time it takes Stone to eat his one. Another habit that doesn’t change all too much in the years they’ve known each other. 

“What?” Ivo says through a full mouth, finally catching him looking halfway through his last corndog. It takes all of Stone’s willpower not to reach out with a napkin to wipe away some ketchup that had got caught at the side of his mouth, something the Doctor tolerated from him nowadays in the Crab. 

“You can slow down, you know.” The words slip from Stone before he can catch them. There’s just something so…young about Ivo’s big eyes, staring out from that pale freckled face. He finds the dam that usually held back all the words, whether it was mothering or nagging or otherwise just caring, was breaking over the vulnerability he can see written there. So far from the walls the Doctor normally hid himself within.

Ivo swallows his food and then stares for a moment at the remaining half a corndog before putting it down. “I know,” he says simply. “But it’s a difficult habit to break after a lifetime of having to fight for scraps. You know some nights at the orphanage they didn’t have enough food, so they decided to punish some of us so it didn’t look like they couldn’t take care of us, just so they could keep embezzling state funds? Guess who was picked 99% of the time?” He pauses then, “but you already probably knew that about me.”

Stone had guessed. From years of small, barbed comments the Doctor had made about his experience growing up in state care. 

“Don’t.” Ivo says sharply as he looks up at Stone.

“Don’t what?” Stone replies as he gathers up their trash and stands up. 

“Don’t pity me,” the young man spits. “I’m not a child anymore for gods sake.”

“I don’t pity you, Ivo.” I just regret not being able to be there for you sooner. But he can’t exactly say those words without sounding like a creep. They didn’t make a lot of sense here and now either. What could he have done? He’s six years old in the outer suburbs of San Francisco right now. “Come on, let’s go and see what these bucking bulls and bucking horses are all about. I need to stretch my legs for a moment before we get back on the road.” 

He doesn’t add that he’d noticed someone else watching them. Far across the other side of the picnic tables in the eating area, a man in a red flannel shirt was leaning against the side of one of the sheds and had singled them out. Stone knows a mark when he sees one, now he just has to confirm that the man was actually there for them, and whether or not he was alone. 

They weave into the crowd, Stone struggling not to get distracted by just how different everything is in 1988. The clothes, the music, the simple quality of the air and things around them. The end of America’s golden age of manufacturing having given way to Reagan’s disastrous economic policies that would eventually lead to the mess they were now paying for in the future. But the decline was yet to come.  

Ivo is eyeing off the various carnival game stalls they are passing, “scam, scam, scam.” He stops in front of a colourful tent with a range of air-rifles and little moving targets on rails. “Now this would be a game of skill. Want to show me how you’ve earned your proverbial badge, Agent Stone?” Ivo looks down on him with a grin. 

“And which prize would you like me to win for you, Ivo?” Stone says with a small smile curling on his lips. A challenge. 

Ivo grimaces at the various western-themed memorabilia before landing on an absolute unit of a teddy bear wearing a tiny cowboy hat.

“That one is the least offensive, I suppose.” 

“Ok,” Stone says mildly as he pays the store holder for a game and loads the rifle. “Consider it yours.” He takes the two seconds he needs to line up the shots, judging the speed and size of the targets, aims and then looks Ivo straight in the eyes as he pulls the trigger five times, knowing from the sound and low whistle from the attendant that he’s knocked down all five targets.

Ivo tilts his head to the side slightly as he raises an eyebrow at Stone. “Oh so you’re a show-off? Either that or you just want to impress me,” the way Ivo smiles over his teeth suddenly makes Stone feel like he’s being toyed with. Or flirted with. One was far more likely than the other, but the possibility of either option made him swallow and curse his inability to try and be chill around any version of Doctor Robotnik it would seem.

He breaks the eye contact, doing a casual sweep of the area for their tail as an excuse and yep, great, there’s two others now. Stone pays for another game, shoots all five targets on auto-pilot and then manages to do another sweep while Ivo receives his prize from the attendant, the man looking more impressed than he was annoyed that Stone had managed to win a grand prize with as little effort as it looked like. In those seconds Stone confirms that two of the tails were working together, and were sloppy, glancing at each other and being much too obvious about who they were watching. The third was far more professional and skilled. Likely from some other government-sponsored organisation, or the original kidnappers, whoever they were. 

This was more complicated than Stone had time for. Who the hell these people were and what they had to do with them both was irrelevant to his mission: get Ivo back to Boston in 3 days. Unharmed. 

“And for you, sir? Can I interest you in a game?” The attendant asks Ivo. 

“Ugh, no. I’ve made it a point never to pull a trigger myself. I find buttons far more elegant for the job.” Ivo makes a face at him, the effect of which is somewhat ruined by the massive teddy bear cradled in his arms.

“Ok, that’s enough fun for now then,” Stone says cheerfully. He places a hand on Ivo’s back and gently guides them both into the crowd, where Ivo shrugs off his hand with a shiver and a couple quick steps forward.

Then he glances back at Stone over the tiny cowboy hat between two furred ears, dark eyes alight with a familiar look. The one that says, gotcha, right before the Doctor tells you something he figured out eons ago. It’s one of Stone’s favourite, but right here, right now? It made him nervous. 

“You’re not with GUN,” Ivo says like he’s known it all along. “Or at least you aren’t anymore.”

Damn. “Who’s GUN?” Stone asks innocently.

Ivo gives him a look. “Don’t play games with me Agent Rock. Nobody else in the three-letter-acronym agencies have codenames as stupid as the imbeciles who work for GUN.” He taps his finger on his chin. “You’re not with GUN, because I recognise Agent Bark over there—yes, that is his stupid codename—and you… do not. Which begs the question then, if you don’t recognise them and no longer work for GUN but are still pretending to, who do you work for?” 

Stone presses his mouth into a line, trying not to let Ivo know how impressed he was at his observation skills and how annoyed he was at himself for not noticing that they were GUN agents. 

“What about the third one?” Stone asks, trying to deflect.

Ivo is silent for a moment, seeming to freeze and almost skip a step as he processed that information. Thankfully, he doesn’t look around and try to locate the third tail. 

“So there’s more?” 

“Mmmhmm,” Stone says. “Which means we’re unfortunately going to have to leave that behind.” 

Ivo looks at the oversized bear for a moment before shaking his head slightly and saying, “no shit. It’s not like I actually wanted it anyway.”

If two out of three were with GUN though, as much as it rankled Stone to think it, perhaps it was safe to leave Ivo with them. If he chose it. “If you know the GUN agents, do you want to go with them?” Stone asks quietly.

Ivo stares at him a beat before looking away. “No,” he mutters.

Stone feels his stomach somersault at the pronouncement that Ivo had chosen him. “Then I guess you’re stuck with me,” he says casually. “For now.” 

“If we can avoid them.”

“Oh I have no doubt of that. Surely between the two of us, we can come up with a plan to ditch these losers and get back to the parking lot in, oh, five minutes.”

Stone watches as Ivo’s—no, the Doctor’s—eyes flicker with the million possible plans and then his mouth slowly curls upwards, sending his moustache to the side with a crooked grin. 

Oh, this was dangerous. “And?” Stone asks.

“Bucking bulls and bucking horses,” Ivo replies, grin getting wider, more manic. “I never thought I’d say this in my life, but let’s go and watch the rodeo.”

They join the crowd of people shuffling towards the stands, Ivo simply dropping the massive bear onto a bench next to a little girl, right as a booming voice comes over the loudspeaker. “WELL HOWDY Y’ALL! WELCOME TO THE NASHVILLE COUNTY FAIR. DO WE HAVE A BUCK WILD SHOW FOR YOU TONIGHT—

Stone tunes it out, watching instead for the telltale signs of their marks following them. He had decided to drop watching the GUN agents in favour of keeping a closer eye on the third unknown one, likely far more dangerous than whoever GUN had sent. Unfortunately, he thinks the man has realised that Stone has realised he’s following them, as he’s made himself a lot more scarce. 

“Going to tell me your plan?” He asks Ivo, subtly ducking his head away from where he last saw the mark looking at them so that he couldn’t lip read.

“Distraction upon chaos, Agent Stone,” Ivo says. “How good are you at either of those?”

“Oh, I think I can arrange something to your satisfaction.”

He catches only a glimpse of the mischief in Ivo’s eyes then as the young man turns back to him and says, “excellent. Meet you in the parking lot next to the blue Chevy pick-up with the numberplate 138NSV. 5 minutes.”

And then he ducks down and disappears and Stone is left to turn casually and find their marks and make their jobs very difficult. He doesn’t want to kill them; that might cause problems for Ivo in the future, but he also doesn’t want them to have the capacity to follow them. First things first then: Stone turns on his heel, locates the third, far more competent mark, pulls his hat’s brim over his face so that the man can’t get a good look at his features and weaves through the crowd so fast that anyone witnessing his movement from the outside would assume he was floating, or an excellent dancer.

He spots his opportunity among a number of teenagers all eating ice cream cones and talking loudly and trips into two of them, pushing a third straight into the mark’s path, the poor girl’s ice cream ending up all over the mark’s chest. In the ensuing screaming and exclamations of, “what the heck are you doing, man?” Stone stumbles forward, takes out his tiny silenced pistol and shoots the mark in the kneecap.

Then the chaos really begins as the man screams so loudly that he sounds like a wounded animal and Stone yells into the crowd, “Oh my god, I think he’s broken his knee, somebody call a medic!” And then slips away into the milling crowd which has also started screaming, taking up his cry for a medic.

Stone manages to spot the sloppy GUN agents behind him, staring distractedly at the scene of chaos on the other side of the thoroughfare and entrance to the arena. Idiots. 

Stone disables the first agent with a fast combination of kidney punch into knockout blow to the back of the neck and letting the agent fall into the dirt at the back of the crowd. “Someone’s collapsed!” Stone shouts before ducking through the crowd once again, weaving their threads like he used to back in his field days. 

The other GUN agent is looking around urgently from his position next to some tents, panicked eyes seeing nothing at all, so they completely miss Stone until he’s behind them with his pistol pressed into the Agent’s back. 

“Move. Now. Between the tents.” Stone’s voice is low. Dangerous. They both disappear into the narrow dark space between a cotton candy tent and another carnival game/scam. And it’s there that Stone really lets the growl into his voice. “Why are you following him?” 

The agent breathes out a shaky breath but remains silent. Stone is almost impressed with their sudden fortitude, having grown a pair. Well. Time to cut them back off. He leans forward, more heavily pressing the muzzle of the gun into the centre of their back as he whispers in their ear, voice deadly calm. “Why. Are. You. Following. Him?”  

“I—we’re not,” the agent squeaks out.

Stone narrows his eyes. Oh. Not good. That meant they were here for him. “I think you’ve just made a mistake, Agent—

The agent swallows and then stutters, “L-Leaf, sir.”

“Agent Leaf. See, you and your partner Bark over there, never saw me here. You’re going to tell them that you lost sight of me, and that unfortunately, during the chaos of the fair, you failed to see where we were going or what I looked like. And if you and your partner, by some minute chance, do describe me. I will find you. And I will kill you. Whereeeeeever you might be.”

Stone thinks he might have gone a bit far with the Liam Neeson impression when the Agent’s knees give out and they sink to the ground, shoulders shaking. “Please, I have a family.”

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before deciding to follow me.” And mine. He doesn’t say it out loud, but he thinks the Agent gets the picture, right before he pistol whips them in the temple, dropping them like a sack of horse shit in the dust. 

Then he hears it. Screams. And not the nice kind. The terrified kind. Followed by a beat that drummed up through the ground and into his chest. Oh.

He rushes to the edge of the alley between the tents and watches as people begin to sprint past him, screaming as they go. 

Oh no.

Stampede. In the thoroughfare. And Ivo nowhere to be seen.

Distressed whinnies and snorting bulls suddenly drown out the human noises, all while Stone searches desperately for Ivo among the chaos.

Then, he spots it. The shock of orange hair bobbing up and down, just above the backs of the first bulls and horses heading their way. Stone is shoved to the side by several screaming people rushing to get out of the way of the incoming bullrush and he desperately tries to fight the tide of the crowd to get himself within reach of Ivo when whatever the hell he’s managed to hitch a ride on rushes past. 

It’s like fighting a king tide, Stone shoves surging people to the side without a care for who they are as he wades forward, calculating his trajectory with that of Ivo’s ride. He thinks he can make it.

With one final push, just as the first bull screams past him, narrowly missing him with its horns, he dances aside of the second and manages to reach up, leaping high right as Ivo spots him and screams, “Plan B, Stone! Plan fucking B! HELP!”

Stone grasps the mane of the stallion Ivo has somehow managed to stay seated on and, in a move fuelled by adrenaline, no uncertain amount of panic, and several hundred late-night viewings of the Lord of the Rings extended editions over the past couple decades, does his best Legolas impression. He manages to use his momentum, the ground and a picnic table bench to kick himself up and over the back of the stallion, one hand not letting go of the mane of the horse, the other now clutching Ivo for dear life as they are painfully jostled up and down on the its back.

Riding bareback (on a horse, goddammit) with a young Doctor Robotnik screaming in front of him was not on Stone’s bingo card for this point in his life. But then, neither was being stuck in 1988. He supposes that’s just how life is with the man he’s chosen to spend the rest of it with. Keeps things interesting. The thoughts flit past, somehow calm in the most insane situation he’s ever been in that didn’t involve alien hedgehogs. It helps somewhat as Stone prepares them both to bail as the parking lot approaches. 

He manages to steer the wild stallion just enough towards the merciful pile of hay bales in front of the entrance to the fair where he then kicks them both off the back of the horse with enough momentum to take them tumbling into the, not soft, but softer than the ground, landing. Ivo’s bony frame crashes into his chest, definitely bruising several of his ribs as he clutches the other man tight, protecting his head and rolling enough that Stone takes the brunt of the force of their landing. 

Then, they’re still, the sounds of chaos and the rest of the stampede fading into the background as Ivo begins to shake.

For a moment, Stone is struck with fear. Was he hurt? Injured? Is he crying?

Then Ivo rolls over and lets out a hoot of laughter, cackling as he looks up at the stars, lying on one of Stone’s arms. Stone can’t help but breathe out in relief, his own smile creeping onto his face, despite the hell he’d just been put through by the, yep, there he is, the shit-eating grin of Doctor Ivo Robotnik’s young freckled face blocks out the stars and lights up his world instead as he looks down on Stone.

“That. Was fun,” he says, eyes on fire. “Let’s do that again sometime.” 

“Maybe not anytime soon, cowboy,” Stone replies, looking up at his future boss. 

It’s then that Ivo seems to realise the position they’re in and he suddenly blushes and scrambles up, practically leaping off the pile of hay bales they had half flattened. 

Stone gives himself a second before groaning as he rolls onto his feet. 

“What, can’t keep up, old man?” Ivo snorts at him.

“I can keep up just fine. You’ll eventually learn that sometimes you’re not as young as you think you are.” Stone says it without thinking and instantly wants to bite back the words. Shit. And there it is again, that calculating look in Ivo’s eyes. 

Time to go. The parking lot was already beginning to become a mess of panicked drivers trying to leave so Stone decides they’re stealing something as close to the back entrance as possible.

They weave their way through the rows of cars in the field, Stone casually snapping off an antenna and forcibly bending it to a hook.

“What’s the fastest car to easiest for you to hotwire ratio?” Stone asks.

“Oh, is MacGyver finally stumped by the possibility of hotwiring?”

“No, I just know you’ll be faster at it.” 

Ivo throws him another look, eyes narrowed in suspicion. “And how do you know that?” 

Stone shrugs, “Come on, you’re the genius between the two of us, five PhDs and all, I’m sure you’re much faster at figuring out how to do it than I am.” He doesn’t add that the kinds of cars he does know how to hotwire or hack are all mostly built after 2003 these days.

Ivo comes to a stop in front of a black Chevrolet Impala, the old—ish muscle car was clearly someone’s pride and joy, well-looked after and as good as begging them to take it for a ride. Stone grins as he steps up to the window and shoves the wire down the side, quickly hooking the window latch and pulling it up.

“Three PhDs. I’m almost finished the fourth.” Ivo says quietly as the latch clicks. Stone’s stomach drops and he kicks himself for the second time-based slip-up of the day—he was getting too sloppy for his own liking (though in his defence, he’d been out of the field for years at this point. Life in the Crab was a lot more slow-paced).

He glances up and sees several more tents catch fire in the distance. “My mistake. Must have misread your file,” he says lightly. Then the car is open and Ivo quickly ducks down, attempting to get his slender fingers around the plastic on the underside of the steering well and failing to pull it off.

Stone reaches down instead and rips the whole lot off in one go. Ivo quirks an eyebrow at him. “Resourceful,” Ivo mutters as he slides into the drivers seat and pulls out the multicoloured wires, squinting in the dim light from the distant fair that was taking on a delightful warm, orange glow as more and more people began flooding the parking lot, and in under ten seconds, there’s a spark and the engine roars to life. 

Ivo straightens up and jumps in the driver’s seat, both hands on the steering wheel. “Get in, Agent Stone, I’m driving.”

Stone looks down at Ivo and tries not to laugh at the attempt to be cool. “Do you know how to pull a sick drift?” He asks. 

“I think I have a good idea after watching you do it. I’m a fast learner.” 

Stone raises an eyebrow at his charge. “Get in the passenger side, please.” 

 “Yeah, yeah ok.” Ivo climbs over the centre console, immediately checking all the nooks and crannies of the car for whatever the previous owner had stored in it. 

He stills as Stone throws an arm around the back of his headrest, concentrating on wrestling the car into reverse and joining the line of cars exiting the fairground. He seems to restart the second Stone’s hand returns to the steering wheel. 

Interesting. 

Then, Ivo pulls something out of the glovebox, holding a pair out to Stone. Sunglasses. Aviators in fact. 

“Is this going to help me drive better at night?” Stone asks as he flicks the headlights on and they exit the parking lot, roaring onto the backroads of Nashville county and back towards the highway.

“No,” Ivo says. “But it will make you look cool-er. And nothing is worth doing unless you look good doing it.” 

Stone smiles as he takes the sunglasses and puts them on, sinking back into the comfortable seat and winding down the windows. Wouldn’t you know it, he thinks fondly at the young doctor sitting next to him, also wearing a pair of aviators, hair whipping about in the warm southern evening as they fly away from Nashville. 

Stone drives until 3am, putting in good time on Route 81, halfway up through Virginia. He feels himself flagging though and Ivo is slumped over against the window asleep with his mouth open. He pulls off the highway and onto a backroad, eventually pulling into a small town he can’t care enough to remember the name of and a shitty motel he spotted from the signs. 

Ivo wakes up as he pulls into the parking lot and shuts off the enormously loud engine. They would deal with the problem of gas and restarting the car in the morning. Stone had spotted a gas station not too far from the motel. He might have to do a trip or two with a jerrycan as he thought that might be preferable to trying and failing to suspiciously start their getaway car at the pumps. 

He pays the tired motel attendant in cash and gets the key to their last room for the night. He barely listens to the sleeping arrangement, anything preferable to sleeping in the car at this point. And Stone also desperately wants a shower. However grimy the bathroom might be was preferable to smelling of dust, horse shit and itchy hay.

After fumbling with the key and finally managing to get the shitty door to their shitty room open, Stone takes in the rather unimpressive sight. Right as Ivo ducks under his arm and shoves his way into the room before turning around and staring accusingly at Stone.

“There’s only one bed,” Ivo says.

Stone shrugs and closes the door. “What do you want me to do about it?” 

“Sleep on the couch,” Ivo points to the most hideous couch Stone has ever laid eyes on. He would literally rather sleep on the nasty carpet than whatever excuse for a couch that was.

He stares at Ivo for a beat. “No.” 

“Well, I’m a messy sleeper, so get ready to be kicked in the middle of the night.”

Stone has to bite back a, I know. But thankfully Ivo doesn’t give him much of a chance to screw up further as he walks into the bathroom and slams the door. 

Stone gives himself a moment to decompress in the centre of that room. What a day. He hopes that wherever the Doctor is, he’s ok. He sincerely hopes that whatever went wrong with the time machine was limited to the mistake of sending him to 1988 alone. Then he empties his pockets onto the bedside table, suddenly realising his wallet is missing.

He flicks his eyes to the bathroom door where the sound of the shower has just shut off. That little shit. 

Stone runs a hand down his face and waits for the universe to explode.

It doesn’t. Which meant he was now going to have to explain how he had a drivers licence with an expiry date of 2025 on it. Fuck.

But when the bathroom door opens, revealing Ivo with his wet curls darkened with water and in a bathrobe, he’s not holding what Stone expects.

He knows what it is though. Instantly. 

The small polaroid photo had sat tucked away in his wallet for nearly six years since he’d taken it at a mandatory Ethics in Weapons Systems Research and Development training day the administration at the time hadn't got around to canning yet. The event organises had, in some misguided attempt at fostering a bond and networking between fellow colleagues who also made things used to blow up foreign nationals, decided that putting instamax cameras on all the conference tables was a good idea. The whole conference had been a disaster, start to spectacular finish and culminating with the Doctor going on a tirade about how an ethics course for weapon designers was a big fat waste of time and resources since the point of their job was to make things that blew up whoever the person on the other end of the button wanted them to and it wasn’t exactly under his control as to whether that person decided that would be a civilian or alleged terrorist. He’d made no less than five people cry during the course of the day, but he had still turned around with a tiny smile quirking up his moustache when Stone had softly called his name and taken the selfie with the little camera. He’d kept it all these years. And it had become a bit battered and torn and slightly waterlogged but he cherished it, because that smile had been for him and him alone. 

And now Ivo is looking down at it and then up at Stone, dark eyes knowing as he says, “this old man—the one who looks like he hasn’t slept in five years and is also probably in love with you. That’s me, right?”

“I—what?” Stone feels his brain stutter to a halt as he blinks several times trying to process words which have upended the axis of the world on which he held his views. 

But Ivo seems to have moved on, like a cat not realising the glass it has knocked carelessly off the table was going to smash on the floor and startle everyone in the room in thirty-five years’ time. “Wow, so you’re actually younger than me, then. A lot younger.” A grin curls on his face before he frowns, squinting at the polaroid. “Why the hell would I dye my hair? Seems like a lot of work. Nice coat, though. When was this taken?”

Stone slowly lets go of the breath he had taken, letting it hiss out from between his lips. Well, there goes any last shred of mystery as to their relationship and the whole time travel story. The universe hadn’t exploded but Stone is left off-balance and feeling like the glass itself, tumbling end over end in negative space, waiting for that inevitable impact with the floor. 

He decides the truth is the easy option, “2018.”

Ivo’s eyes widen. “Holy shit, I survive that long?” Then he looks up at Stone, perplexed and with wide-eyes. “Wait, when are you coming from?” 

Stone slumps with defeat, giving up the game. “2023.” 

“And we’re still, like, together then?” Ivo sounds hesitant, looks as though he’s bracing himself for a familiar answer he doesn’t want to hear.

And Stone… Stone suddenly wants this conversation to end. It was starting to hurt. “I’m still your assistant, yes. That’s all I’ll say.” He plucks the photograph from Ivo’s hands and covets it away back in his wallet. 

“Assistant, huh.” Ivo appears to think that over for a moment, before, “you need to tell me to get some sleep. The eyebags make me look ancient.”

Stone looks at Ivo and then points to the bed. “You should get some sleep. The eyebags make you look ancient.” 

The pout is worth it and Stone can’t help but laugh as he makes a quick exit into the bathroom, just thankful Ivo hadn’t pick-pocketed his phone. He feels like a Doctor Robotnik with a smartphone in 1988 was a recipe for the universe exploding on purpose. 

It’s not until after he’s had his shower, pulling back his side of the covers and sinking into the strangely comfortable bed, hoping for at least a couple of hours of sleep, that he realises Ivo is still awake. The room is dark except for the red glow of the digital clock on Ivo’s side of the bed. 

“Stone?” 

The voice is hesitant in the dark and he can’t help but melt into it. Temporarily imagining he was back in the Crab with his Doctor lying next to him.

“Mmm?” He says in reply.

“Why are you here?”

The with me is missing from the question, but it’s palatable in the air. Loaded with its implication. It’s vulnerable and it hurts because Stone can’t exactly tell him the truth right now because the truth isn’t for Ivo. He wonders whether he’d tell his Doctor the truth if he ever deigned to ask that same question. Perhaps he should. It’s been a long time coming and if what Ivo had said of the photograph was true… it was a truth that might change everything.

The silence stretches on and Stone eventually has to settle for half of the truth. “Because someone had to get you back to Boston safely,” he says with a yawn.

“But just by virtue of you coming from a future where I’m still alive and old means that you succeed, which brings the question of free will and whether all of my current and future actions are now pre-determined to the forefront of the time travel paradox we could create. Does free will even exist for me anymore? It does for you, seeing as you’re from ahead of this version of me in the timeline. Or does it, seeing as your actions are only serving the outcome of my older self’s need to exist as a result of the success of this ill-advised mission. But, for instance, what if I tried to kill myself, right now—

“Ivo,” Stone interrupts sharply. He’s not quite sure where the fine line between philosophical lecture and suicide ideation was, but he’s had enough talk and experiences of the Doctor almost dying to last a lifetime. The man next to him seems to be holding his breath and Stone thinks he may have been too sharp. He offers a quiet sigh and explanation. “As much as I’d love to wax philosophical and metaphysical theories of time travel with you… it’s 4am and we have a long drive ahead of us. Can we please both try and get some rest?” 

There’s a huff from next to him as Ivo lets out his breath. “Fine.”

The events of the day weigh on Stone in the silence, pressing into his chest and making his heart ache. He thinks of that day at the conference, captured on the little polaroid sequestered away and carried with him always. That little smile, a treasure just for him. And suddenly reconceptualised with a handful of careless words from a young man’s mouth. A quiet has settled over his skin as he turns Ivo’s words over and over in his head. And is also probably in love with you, echoes back at him in time with each of Ivo’s breaths next to him.

It feels like he’s waiting for the punchline of some epic joke to hit him. But Ivo hadn’t taken those words back, hadn’t moved to catch the glass he’d so carelessly knocked off the table and Stone continues to tumble through negative space in the dark.

“Goodnight, Agent Stone.” The soft hesitant voice grounds him suddenly, to here and now, in this little motel room in the middle of nowhere. 

At least he wasn’t alone. 

“Goodnight…Doctor.” 

They don’t get on the road again until 11 the next morning. Oops. Stone had slept in for the first time in a long time, instantly regretting not setting an alarm and cursing how relaxed he’d become in the Crab whenever he shared a bed with Robotnik. Rarely given the man’s non-existent sleep schedule. So whenever they did, Stone didn’t want to disturb him and chose to sleep in too. And if he also did it because it was a chance to be close to the Doctor, well, nobody had to know but him. The only problem is that habits are hard to break and Stone supposes that sharing a bed with Ivo was enough to satisfy that habit. 

On the upside, they were both well-rested. More surprising was that Ivo offered to come to the gas station with him, saving him doing a second trip by carrying the second jerrycan. He complained the entire time, but Stone had never minded the Doctor’s complaints. It was just nice that Ivo trusted him enough to want to actually willingly spend time with him. Carrying things. A task far beneath the Doctor even long before Stone had met him.

Then they’re back on the highway, windows down and making their way through the series of cassettes Ivo had found in the glovebox (surprisingly not all of them country and western). The car’s sound system was surprisingly good and even Ivo didn’t seem to mind the owner’s taste, singing along to most songs and nodding along to the beat of others. 

The sun is setting by the time the gas light comes back on and Stone thinks that they’re either going to have to risk attempting to hotwire the car at the gas station or else jack a new vehicle. They’ve been driving this one for far too long in any case.

“We should go to New York,” Ivo speaks up for the first time in hours, turning to Stone and wincing as he moves his very sunburnt arm that had spent the majority of the day resting out the window. 

Stone tilts his head slightly, not quite understanding why they would go to New York. That would make the trip longer. But the exit was coming up fast. “Make your case,” he says.

“We can get far enough on the fuel we have left to get a cab the rest of the way. I’ve seen how much cash you have. Then, train to Boston in the morning.” Ivo turns towards Stone with a small smile, and Stone suddenly realises that Ivo is nervous. He’s fidgeting with the seatbelt. Why? “Plus, it’s New York,” Ivo says. “Could be fun?”

Oh. That’s why.

Stone can’t help but smile in response, despite doing his best to bite his lip to contain it. The simple fact that Ivo wanted to spend more time with him ties his stomach in knots. Who’s he kidding? He’s never been able to say no to the Doctor.

He takes the next exit to New York City. From there, they end up having to take a bus (much to Ivo’s disgust that there would be zero taxis available in the middle of nowhere), then a taxi to Brooklyn at which point they got sick of sitting in traffic and decided to get the subway to Manhattan. They arrive late in the evening but that’s right when the city wakes up for the night—not that it ever really goes to sleep. And New York in the late 80s is something else altogether. Stone can’t help but be captivated by the magic of it all. The clothes were outrageous, the hair wild and free. No smartphones meant that people talked, or listened to walkmans or else read a real newspaper or were just… aware of their surroundings. Wall Street salarymen with briefcases, extremely well-dressed but with that same dead-eyed stare that has just transferred itself to the cryptobros and finance executives in modern times dominated the subway for a brief moment and then left again, transiting to wherever it is they call home. It’s busy and chaotic and in a lot of ways, the same as 2023 and in most ways, wholly different. Stone watches it all from his seat next to Ivo on the subway as it rattles its way to Times Square.

They didn’t have a plan other than to survive the night and catch the first train to Boston in the morning. Frankly, Stone was happy to let Ivo take the lead on this… he wasn’t quite sure whether it was a date, but it sort of felt like it. In the way Ivo had asked, in the way he glanced over at him every now and then, a curiosity in his eyes but also something else. Like he wanted Stone. It was kind of obvious he was interested.

Oh boy, Stone hopes he doesn’t look like that when he looks at his Doctor. Because that would mean Robotnik truly is the most oblivious man in the world or else he had noticed and had simply ignored Stone the whole time. Neither option is ideal. He’s interrupted from his session of existential musing on his non-existent love-life by their station. Ivo stands up with Stone following, swaying with the train’s movement when he pauses, distracted by a child under ten struggling to solve a rubik's cube in the seat next to the doors. 

Right as the train pulls into the station, Ivo plucks the rubik’s cube from the child and in two seconds flat, fingers a blur, solves it, casually throwing it back at the kid. Then he turns to Stone with a knowing smirk.

It would have been impressive, had Stone not seen the Doctor do that trick a thousand times before. There was always a rubik’s cube on hand in the lab and later the Crab for when the Doctor got bored and wanted something to keep his hands occupied. So Stone just raises an eyebrow at Ivo and says casually, “Oh so you’re a show-off? Either that or you just want to impress me.”

The reaction is priceless, Ivo’s face going bright red, tips of his ears burning as his mouth opens and closes like a stunned fish. Stone places a hand at the small of his back and propels the young man off the subway as it screeches to a stop. “Keep up, Ivo, this is our stop,” Stone says as he takes off running through the subway station, laughing at the sounds of sputtering rage behind him. He vaults the newly installed automatic turnstile barrier like any good New Yorker would and stands on the other side with his hands out, as if he’s just completed a magic trick. Ivo catches up, panting with his hands on his knees, caught on the other side of the barrier.

“Has anyone ever told you you’re a bastard, Agent Stone?” 

Stone grins. “Plenty of people. You most of all.” 

Ivo blows one of his unruly curls out of his face with an exasperated puff of air. “I don’t know why I put up with you in the future,” he mutters as he puts his ticket through the barrier. 

“Don’t you?” Stone asks innocently as they climb the stairs together.

“Look, if that old man loves you enough to live with your annoying antics, that has absolutely nothing to do with me.”

And there it is again. The glass has shattered and the cat carelessly plays with the broken shards lodged in his heart. Making it bleed more and more. The worst part is that those words have suddenly opened a vein of hope, with Stone unable to do anything to stem the trickle of thoughts and that ache in his chest that things might change in the future. That the Doctor might, by some unknown chance, remember this moment and question Stone’s actions, his words, ask himself why Stone refused to leave, even when he could tell that the Doctor questioned it—far too often, and far too much, even if he never said the words out loud—that he could. It hurts. 

But Stone can’t help but hope. 

They exit the station into late-night Times Square, which is not what Stone was expecting. The whole place is still an assault of colours and lights but it’s far less energetic. Less wired. But of course the massive LED billboards with their constantly changing images and sounds don’t exist yet. This version is strangely calmer, if the word ‘calm’ could ever apply to any part of New York City. Static rather than ever-changing. Perhaps the right metaphor for how Stone felt about this whole time-travel saga. As far as the future he lived in was concerned, all of this had already happened. 

And the Doctor would lose his memories and that was that. 

Stone could tell him what happened, but he wouldn’t live it. 

As he’s turning on the spot, taking in the sight of 1988 New York City his eyes can’t help but land on Ivo. The young man standing there, bathed in the flashing neon lights of Times Square, reds and yellows and pinks reflecting off his dark orange hair, and who is looking right back at him with a familiar expression. His expression. That little smile from the polaroid picture taken 30 years from now. And Stone realises he’s seen that look on the Doctor time and time again after that moment captured on film. 

In the lab when he caught Stone talking to the badniks like the Doctor does, unable to stop himself from feeling affection for their little actions and emotions and knowing that the genius who pretended to be indifferent and emotionless had been the one who had made them that way.

In the field during a successful mission. Next to his bedside when he’d woken up after a successful mission where he’d been shot twice.

The moment Stone had burst into the cell and rescued the Doctor from being kidnapped way back in Pakistan. The moment the Doctor had laid his eyes on Stone when he had returned the favour in Argentina, bruised and bloodied he had looked up at a face of rage which had melted to that little smile as soon as the Doctor saw that Stone was ok. 

It became rarer in the Crab, but Stone had caught glimpses in the moments they shared together, where it shined through the Doctor’s pain. When he cooked the Doctor his favourite meal, or suggested they watch La Ultima Passion together, or the Doctor watched as he performed the heavier maintenance tasks on the Crab or the badniks.

It was there. It had been there on all the faces the Doctor had worn since he’d met Stone.

It was there every time he brings the Doctor a latte.

He’s not sure when it started, but he’s seen it countless times. He just hadn’t realised it was for him.

Oh.

Oh no.

Stone thinks that maybe all of the insults about his intelligence that gets thrown his way might just be true.

“Earth to Agent Stone! Hey!” Ivo pokes him in the centre of the forehead. “I’m talking to you. I said, do you want to get a drink?”

Stone sways slightly on the spot, the world that had begun tipping on its axis the moment he’d arrived in 1988 finally toppled, its contents shaken free and left to be scattered to the winds of time. And one thought echoes through the mess he’s become. 

He should have told him. 

He should have told him because who cares if the Doctor didn’t want a romantic relationship. He should still know that he is loved. That Stone loves him. 

Because now that he’s wrapped in the knowledge that the Doctor loves him back, in whatever way that is is for him to say, but Stone at least knows that he’s loved, and he can’t imagine a life lived not knowing the reason that Stone stayed. 

God, he’s a fucking idiot. 

“Are you ok?” Ivo has stopped poking him and instead switched to a full-body shake, one hand on either of his shoulders.

“I—uh, yes. Yes,” Stone says, trying to ground himself in the moment. 

“Yes, you’re ok? Or yes, you need a drink?” Ivo tries to clarify.

“The second one is more accurate,” Stone says weakly.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here and find a bar.”

Ivo takes a hold of Stone’s wrist and begins to drag him through the busy streets, eyeing off several bars which looked too rowdy for either the Doctor’s or his own tastes.

They end up hearing the music before they find the club, the pulsing sounds of Blondie’s Call Me bleeding onto the street from a grand entrance. Stone glances at Ivo and sees him nodding along to the beat, already moving his lanky body in time with the music. Stone is suddenly struck by the thought that he too, wants to dance. Maybe he just needs to move. Do something. 

He steers them towards the line waiting to get in. They don’t exactly look dressed for ‘da clurb’ but Stone thinks he can get them in regardless. It takes twenty dollars and a look that Stone does not appreciate but the bouncer waves them through. 

He orders eight vodka shots straight off the bat, much to Ivo’s absolute horror as he divvies them up between them. It’s inelegant, but Stone doesn’t have time to waste getting drunk. They chink glasses and down the rubbing alcohol someone has accidentally mistaken for vodka just as the sounds of synths begin with a heavy beat and Sweet Dreams comes on.

Ok, this he could work with. The vodka settles in Stone’s stomach, already working its magic with a heady glow. It has been quite a while since Stone drank and years since he’d drank with the Doctor. His tolerance was waning.

Ivo’s appears to be non-existent as they lock eyes and an eyebrow is raised at him. 

“Want to dance?” Stone mouths over the song.

Ivo tilts his head at Stone curiously, examining him under the pulsing lights of the disco. Then he slowly reaches out before moving too quick, snatching Stone’s wrist and dragging him out into the crowd of people moving in time with the beat and from there, the night takes hold of something inside Stone. He moves, in all the ways he’s seen the Doctor move before during his dance breaks, in all the ways he’s wanted to join him, in all the ways he knows how, Stone dances with Ivo. For hours.

They do another four shots each and then move to another club, a little more low-key for 3 in the morning. They drink cocktails for an hour and then Ivo pukes in some grimy alley while Stone holds his hair out of his face. It’s then that he realises that neither of them have eaten since lunch and he steers them both to the nearest late night pizza place/grungy diner. They sit in a booth and share a massive pizza in companionable silence, Ivo shoving as much food in his mouth as he can possibly fit, only slowing down to look up at Stone when he can clearly feel his eyes on him. 

“We can just get another one,” Stone says with a little smile. 

Ivo just manages to swallow and mutters, “yeah, yeah, I know. I tend to just spend all my research funds on parts. Food is secondary. Plus it’s rare I go to New York.” 

Stone’s smile can’t help but grow wider. Ivo was so open compared to his Doctor. It was… cute. He kind of wants to capture the moment.

He orders another pizza and glances around the diner, mostly empty at 4 in the morning. Carefully, he takes out his phone for the first time in 3 days. It still has battery, because of course it does, the Doctor upgraded it.

When the pepperoni pizza is delivered to their table and Ivo tries to shove an entire piece into his mouth at once, Stone softly says, “Ivo.” And the young man glances up, one corner of his mouth upturned with half a slice of pizza hanging out of the rest of it. Stone takes the selfie, throwing up a peace sign because he can’t help it.

Oh this was going to be incredible blackmail material when he gets back to the future.

Ivo tries to chew and swallow his food so fast he almost chokes at the same time he holds out his hand and makes the grabby motion at Stone’s phone. Yeah, he knew this would happen, but he’s reevaluated how much damage Ivo could really do with something that wouldn’t even be able to receive network signal for another decade or something and which he’d forget about in another couple of hours provided Stone’s trip back was a given. 

“You can look, but you’re not allowed to delete or mess with anything,” Stone says firmly as he hands it over. 

It takes Ivo barely any time at all to become familiar with the touch screen, after which he makes his way through the apps, half of them unable to work without wifi. Then he lets out a low whistle as he finds the settings and begins trawling through the various menus. 

“Wifi… and mobile data… hotspot tethering. I fucking knew it. Did I invent this?” He looks up at Stone.

“No, but you did invent components of it. And you modified that one pretty heavily.” 

Ivo’s eyebrows shoot up as he swipes through more of the apps. Then he finds the gallery. Stone doesn’t have many photos saved there, a habit he’d kept since his field days, but Ivo opens it to find the one he’d just taken, frowning down at it. His finger hovers, about to swipe to the next when he suddenly looks up at Stone, pinning him to the spot.

“Wait, why are you letting me see this?” But before he can answer, he sees Ivo come to the realisation himself. “Oh… I’m not going to remember any of this, am I? That’s why he builds the machine in the first place.” He looks at the pizza and then up at Stone and oh, that was a real look of devastation right there.

“I’m sorry, Ivo,” Stone can’t help but offer.

“What for?”

Stone gives him a little smile. “Making good memories. I’ll keep them safe, I promise. And who knows, maybe you’ll remember this too someday.”

“Good memories, huh?” Ivo hands the phone back, no longer interested. “Could really use some of those now.”

“Give me another 27 years to get ready and I promise we’ll make plenty of good ones later on. Though you might take a while to warm up to them,” Stone adds wryly.

“Easy for you to say. I have to live twice my current age just to get there? The first 26 years were bad enough.”

“Well the first 32 years of my life weren’t a cake walk either, but meeting you makes it all worth it.” He thinks he’s said too much by the way Ivo is looking at him. Stone stands up. “Are you finished with the pizza? What can we do in the next two hours before the first train?”

Ivo blinks and thinks for a moment. “Still got cash?”

“At the rate you’re spending it, surprisingly there’s still some left, yes.” 

“I saw a 24 hour arcade two blocks back?” Ivo shrugs. “I’ve always wanted to try the co-op mode for Double Dragon.” 

Stone grins. “Now you’re talking. I’m pretty good on a pinball machine too.”

They begin to meander their way down the nearly-empty-but-never-quite-quiet streets in New York, with a distant siren or car horn or some drunk yelling to keep them company. Ivo turns to him. “Bet you’re not good enough to beat me.” 

Stone raises his eyebrows. “You might be surprised,” he warns. 

But Ivo is already issuing the challenge. “If you can beat me at pinball, I’ll… I don’t know, shave my head.” 

Stone looks at him and thinks that a face that young was maybe not quite ready to be bald just yet. Give it a couple of decades and he’d make it work for sure. His memory flashes green for a moment and he has to shake off the full body shiver that comes with that particular version of the Doctor. 

Ivo holds up his hands in a placating gesture, alarmed at whatever Stone’s expression just happened to be in that moment. “Ok, so no to shaving my head—not that you’re going to win,” he quickly adds. “How about… you can ask me for something.”

“A favour? Seems reasonable.” Now Stone is very interested and glad that Ivo hasn’t caught on that he would never need to win a challenge to get a favour from Stone. Now there was real stakes attached, Stone is curious as to how rusty his pinball skills are. He hasn’t played since the 90s.

Ivo waves his hand. “Sure. Collect it in, what, 35 years time?” Ivo turns around to Stone and walks backwards on the pavement. Still a bit wobbly. Definitely still drunk. “Side note: you’re six years old right now?” 

Stone rubs his hand across tired eyes. “Don’t make it weird, please. Like I said, I don’t meet you until I’m 32.” 

“It’s a little bit weird. Does that mean you’re only into old men?” 

Just one, Stone thinks at the same time he lurches forward to try and… he’s not sure what—get at him in any case, for that comment. But Ivo just cackles as he kicks up his heels and sprints off down the street, Stone’s fingers closing over nothing. “Get back here!” 

They end up doubled over and laughing while struggling for breath in front of the arcade, anything Stone wanted to do to Ivo forgotten in the moment they both have to wipe tears from their eyes and Ivo almost vomits up the pizza he’d just eaten. 

“You need to do some more physical exercise,” Stone comments as they enter the arcade and Ivo is clutching a stitch in his side.

But he waves it off. “The occasional solo dance session and having to hike across a field to do testing is enough for me. Plus, I don’t need to be fit to beat you in pinball.” 

Ivo is very good at pinball. But Stone is better. Turns out that the one machine at the arcade he walked past on his way home from school that still took quarters along with two decades worth of training his trigger finger by handling guns is all he needed to beat the Doctor. He does wonder if he’d beat him in 2023 though. The Doctor had an extra 20 years on him then. It feels kind of like cheating knowing he’s got an extra 15 on Ivo right now.

Ivo’s eyes are as round as dinner plates as Stone manages to crush the Very High High Score and some, giving out a whoop of encouragement and booing when Stone does finally miss the last ball. 

“I’m not even mad,” Ivo says breathlessly. “That was magnificent!” 

Stone can’t help but grin at him and give a bow. “Thank you, sir—

He bites off the word as soon as it’s out of his mouth. Too late though. Far too late.

Ivo has frozen, eyebrows creeping his way towards his hairline. He tilts his head at Stone, shit-eating grin pulling up both sides of his moustache, “sir? I do like the sound of that.” 

“Yeah, well, you’re going to have to wait a while to hear it again,” Stone says with a roll of his eyes. “Now, are we going to play Double Dragon? Or do I get to have a nap?”

“Can’t stay awake, old man?”

“Oh, so I’m not the only one who’s into old men?”

Ivo’s eyebrows slam back down and he levels a finger at Stone. “I never said that and you wish! I think I know who is obsessed with who right now.” 

Stone just shrugs and raises an eyebrow, weathering the stare Ivo was giving him. He had to admit that it was a lot easier to rile up and deal with Ivo than it was the Doctor. Not that he terribly minded the consequences of his actions with the Doctor. 

Case in point: Ivo looks away and throws up his hands in defeat. “This is boring! Are we going to play or not!” 

They end up playing until 7am, missing the first train back in favour of beating the game together three times.

Ivo sways in place on the short subway ride to Penn Station, eyes beginning to droop. It’s no surprise then when Ivo’s head lands on his shoulder as soon as the train to Boston leaves the station. Stone adjusts slightly and settles his cheek onto Ivo’s soft hair, letting his own eyes drift shut. Just for a short while. Just until they reach Boston.

The final subway ride and short walk to MIT was like pulling teeth. The tiredness settling into Stone’s bones as this three-day adventure turned bender makes itself known. 

Ivo is quiet for most of the journey, until they’re entering the campus gates when he turns to Stone and asks, “why didn’t I come with you?” 

Stone breathes out a sigh, suddenly hit by an ache in his chest. He can’t help but desperately want to see his doctor again. The man Ivo will one day become. “I don’t know. You were meant to.” he says softly, trying to keep the longing out of his voice. 

“I’ve been thinking—

“Watch out, that’s dangerous,” Stone can’t help the dad joke fall from his tongue.

There’s a moment of silence from next to him. “As I was saying,” Ivo says acerbically, “if I was meant to come with you, I think I must have miscalibrated the molecular anchor for the time slip process. If it was tied to my own molecular make-up then it probably wouldn’t have been able to differentiate between future me and past me, taking my 1988 position in time and space as the definitive Doctor Robotnik. So I never would have been able to go back in time and meet myself anyway. It probably would have caused our atoms to crash into each other and make the universe explode or something.” Ivo pauses for a moment. “Wow, am I an idiot in the future or something? Time-travel is dangerous.” 

“You’re not an idiot,” Stone says, looking over at the young doctor. “You’re magnificent. Trust me. The future doesn’t know what’s going to hit it.”

Ivo becomes suddenly very interested in looking everywhere else but at Stone. There’s a long pause and then a quiet ask. “How long are you… around for?”

Stone gives him a half-smile. “I’m not sure, but if all goes well, then probably not for very much longer at all. He said he lost three days of memories.” 

He watches with a pang in his heart as Ivo’s mouth twitches downward. “Right… well, do you want to see my lab while you’re here? I’m working on some cutting edge stuff right now.” 

“I’d love to,” Stone says with a fond smile. Then he spots it. A cafe. With a real coffee machine. “But can we take a quick detour first? I want to make you something.” 

Stone sweet-talks his way behind the counter and to the coffee machine, helped along with a tip of his final twenty-dollar note. No Austrian goat milk of course, but Stone knows he can make a damn good latte without it. He puts the finishing touches on the latte art, a rendition of a Model 6 badnik twenty years before its time, and delivers the coffee to an Ivo who is visibly drooping with tiredness.

He perks up slightly and then more with curiosity as he looks at the little badnik in the foam. A smile unfurls across his lips as he looks up at Stone. “Is that one of mine? Must be a much later model. Which means I have figured out the zero-g propulsion system—of course I have—I am a fucking genius. Damn, I’m good.” He looks proud of himself, a self-satisfied cat who suddenly goes rigid as he takes his first sip of the latte. 

They sit in silence for a moment, Ivo flicking his eyes down to the coffee and then up to meet Stone’s.

“Agent Stone.”

“Yes, Ivo?”

“I fear that this was a diabolical move on your part. Pure evil in fact.” 

Stone raises an eyebrow. “How so?”

Ivo takes another gulp and then leans back in his chair, shutting his eyes. “Because now I’m not going taste the best fucking latte I’ve had in my life for another 27 years! Are you fucking serious?”

Stone can’t help it. He laughs. “Maybe that can give you something to look forward to.” 

Ivo just takes another sip and tries to roll his eyes but they end up closing in pleasure again.

“The only thing to look forward to and I’m not even going to remember you,” he ends up muttering as he finishes the latte and stands up. 

Stone tilts his head. Oh. This hurts. “There’s plenty to look forward to without me.”

Ivo gives him a sarcastic look. “Do you see people lining up to hang out with me? Nobody even likes me enough to put up with me for the length of a date, let alone agree to go on a date itself.” 

Stone swallows heavily. Well, at least that answered his question as to whether Ivo had thought last night was a date. He quietly contemplates Ivo, willing the young man to hold on. Wait for him.

Ivo catches his look. “You don’t count, obviously. You’re some kind of special brand of freak to put up with me for, what, years? What are you to me anyway? Some kind of henchman? Something else?” Ivo doesn’t give him enough time to answer before barrelling into the next question. “Hey, have they legalised gay marriage yet? Ugh, what am I saying, of course they have. It’s the future. Everyone has to be some kind of queer in the 20s for sure.”

“They’re called the 2020s and it happens later than you’d think it does,” Stone says wryly. “And sadly, no, not everyone is gay.” He doesn’t add that there are more than several global life-changing events that they’d both have to live through first before they got to live with each other. Not least, a colourful alien hedgehog invasion. 

“But you are?” Ivo looks right at Stone who just rolls his eyes.

“Yes, Ivo,” he sighs. 

“And are you married?” 

“Only to my job.”

“But your job is to be my henchman.”

Stone tries and fails to see where this is going so he just shrugs his shoulders and nods. 

Ivo suddenly about faces and Stone has to stop short or crash right into him as he leans down with his freckled nose almost touching Stone’s. “Seems kind of gay to me,” he says, and before Stone can react, turns around again and bounds up some stairs and into one of the dark and foreboding concrete engineering buildings. Stone hurries up the stairs behind him, just trying to keep up with the rate his own emotions are being shaken up and put on display by and for the young Doctor Robotnik. He’s not sure which version he prefers at this point. The one who at least acknowledges but refuses to examine his feelings or the one who examines his feelings far too much and then puts them in a box and refuses to acknowledge them. 

Both were a lot to deal with.

Ivo waits for him outside a non-descript door with only a small plaque on it denoting it as Doctor Robotnik’s office in the dim centre of the building. No windows or natural light. Classic evil lab location.

“Welcome,” says Ivo as he pulls down the handle, “to my lab.” 

It’s a small room, lit with a single dim ceiling lamp and the bright light of about 20 different boxy computer screens of various sizes and locations on a stack of shelves across two walls of the room and looking as if they might collapse under the weight of what was jammed on them. Cables run through the shelves, snaking over each other and hanging down like jungle vines, connecting everything and powering who knows what. A low hum permeates the room, making it feel like it held something alive. 

Stone steps inside the time capsule, the beginnings of Doctor Robotnik’s genius creations. There, on the work bench spanning one of the walls was a Model 1 shell, its innards halfway through being soldered together, a double propeller propulsion system lying dormant next to it, ready to be wired in. Blueprints line the wallspace, drawings of all of the Doctor’s ideas, some which he manifests, others still waiting for their time to come. He recognises the titles of the books and academic journals the Doctor had written or featured in and which were stacked haphazardly on the shelves. He’d read a lot of them before managing to land the job of being the Doctor’s assistant and they waved at him like old friends;The Future of Robotics: provided you’ve finally understood the present; Microprocessors and other ‘Mystical’ Objects: A guide for those who still think that 8 bits is plenty; Efficient Programming, or How to fit genius in 640kb.

Stone can’t help but marvel at it all. A moment in time of the Doctor’s genius, things that will come to exist and might never exist. Brilliance bottled up and contained in a single room. In a single mind. 

His gaze settles back on the man himself and he can’t help but smile. Glad that he has had the privilege of this moment. A shared secret between just the two of them. 

“Stop it.” Ivo wears a stricken expression, as if something has spooked him.

“Stop what?”

“Looking at me like that.”

Stone pauses for a moment, tilts his head and gives Ivo a raised eyebrow. “Like what?”

Ivo just makes an urgent gesture at his face. “Like that! Nobody’s ever looked at me like that before.”

Stone can’t help but let the smile creep its way into a fond grin as he shrugs, “well, I do. So you best get used to it.”

He’s unprepared then, for when Ivo surges forward, a determined and fierce and sure yet unsure look on his young face that is suddenly pushed up into Stone’s too fast as he buries his hands in Stone’s collar and pulls him forward with enough force that their teeth click.

Stone is usually a fight, in limited circumstances, flight, kind of guy. But here, now, he freezes. Brain flatlining as Ivo recovers and tries to slot their mouths together in a more comfortable direction moving his lips on Stone’s, trying to garner a reaction.

Doctor Robotnik was kissing him. 

Stone’s brain tries to restart.

Fails. 

What?

Why?

Hang on. Error. An alert flashes as Ivo begins to pull back, fear and hurt and oh no, that’s shame, visible in his deep brown eyes. And Stone finally jerks himself into action, his heart roaring to life and chasing those lips for all he’s worth.

If Doctor Robotnik was going to kiss him, then he sure as hell wasn’t going to waste this opportunity. He reaches a hand up to cup the back of Ivo’s neck, tangling in his hair and tilting his head so that their mouths more comfortably slotted together. Ivo’s eyes flutter closed and Stone gives himself over to the sensation of kissing Ivo.

It was messy. Overeager and wet. But it was passionate, like Ivo couldn’t help but push himself closer and closer to Stone, his hands clutching onto Stone’s back and scrunching into his collar for dear life.

And Stone can’t help but lean into it. Some part of himself screaming at him that this wasn’t the same as his doctor and feeling a sense of betrayal, and another part of him which thought that maybe that didn’t matter and that Ivo was just as much his Doctor as Robotnik was back home.

He can’t help but become unravelled by it, his very being pulled apart and—

Wait. NO!

He finds himself ripped from that embrace, squeezed through the blender that is time and poured out onto the floor of the Crab, a Stone smoothie. There’s an almighty cracking noise and then the sounds of what was clearly the time machine coming apart and shattering into a thousand pieces across the bench to join Stone on the floor. To complete the picture, a puff of hundred dollar bills rains down around him, as does his discarded jacket to land over his face. Ah, so at least that answers the question as to whether anyone was going to discover that their cash was printed well after 1988. Stone lies there for a moment, just trying to recover from having his entire body disassembled and reassembled and being acutely aware of that fact. 

And of course, more so to recover from being kissed by Ivo. 

“Stone?!” 

His jacket is ripped from over his head, revealing the wide-eyed stare of the Doctor, who had sunk to his knees next to him. 

His Doctor, looking for all the world terrified at what he’d find and whose face crumbled with clear relief as he sees Stone is alive and (he wiggles his fingers and toes), yes, all in one piece. He eases himself into a sitting position, helped along by one of the Doctor’s hands on his shoulder, the other which grabs his chin, turning his head two ways and checking that Stone was still in there.

Then the Doctor freezes.

They stare at each other.

And the Doctor blinks slowly. A tiny frown beginning to crease his forehead, something going on behind those deep brown eyes; dark intelligence caught up with thoughts beyond Stone’s understanding.

Then the eyes flick down to Stone’s lips.

Hang on. Stone gets that one crystal clear. 

And then they’re back up to Stone’s eyes as the Doctor’s widen with revelation.

Robotnik leaps to his feet and continues another few feet into the air, propelling himself backwards as he stares at Stone and sways suddenly. 

Ah. So that’s how you regain 35-year-old lost memories.

“You-me-HE WHAT?!” Robotnik’s eyes are wide with abject horror, which passes into embarrassment and then eventually settles for rage. “How dare you, Stone! You have betrayed me!”

Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was being chewed up and spit back out by time. Maybe it was the kiss. But something inside Stone breaks. One of the shards of glass that the feral cat had knocked over and shattered into his heart has become loose, falling out and spraying blood angrily over the floor. Stone leaps to his feet and strides forwards a few steps to point at the Doctor as he yells, “sorry, is the memory you JUST GOT BACK faulty? Because I seem to remember that, literally not more than two minutes ago,YOU kissed ME!” 

“And you liked it! Stone you hussy!” The Doctor drags his hands through his long and matted hair. “Of course you would!” Robotnik turns away from him to pace around the shattered remains of the time machine, muttering as he does. “He’s young, and fit. Right in my prime. Not that my genius has deteriorated at all! Just that… I’ve let part of myself go. I trusted you, Stone. And now I know that you’ll never want this broken old man. Skin baggy, can’t sleep, can’t move like I used to, can’t—

“Can’t kiss like you used to?” Stone asks sharply. The pain in his heart was building into rage. This man was un-fucking-believable. 

“As if you’d want that,” the Doctor spits at him.

“Don’t you dare tell me what I want,” Stone says coldly. “Anything else, but never that.”

Robotnik seems to realise that he’s hit a nerve for once. “You can’t be serious, Stone.”

“Try me.” 

And if there was ever one thing that really got the Doctor going, it was a challenge.

“Fine. I’ll show you what an extra thirty-five years experience will get you, if that’s actually what you want.” He sounds extremely doubtful. “You’re mine,” he hisses as he leans in and—

It’s tender. Surprisingly soft. Chaste. Filled with hesitation, nervousness. Perhaps a hint of longing. Not the kind of kiss Stone was expecting, but the one he’s given. Wholly different from the kiss he’d just received 35 years ago and the man he had received it from.

Ah. He thinks he might understand now.

And then Robotnik leans back, parts from him too soon. Eyes already downcast, fear written into the way his mouth tightens, turns downward. And Stone can’t help that his heart breaks just a little bit more, and he finally does what he should have years ago and reaches up, gently taking a hold of the Doctor’s face with both hands slotted directly against the man’s beautiful cheekbones and pulling him so close their noses almost touch. 

“Sir, I’ve been in love with you since the day I met you. Any and all versions of you. I will love each and every one. But. I prefer the version of you here and now. Always.” Courage takes root as an action for once as his thumb gently brushes the skin under the Doctor’s eye, glistening and staring at him with absolutely nothing behind it. He thinks he might have broken the man. He also thinks that he was as beautiful and brilliant as the day they had met in 2015 and the day they had parted in 1988. “We’ve been through a lot together.” 

He lets one of his hands trail down the Doctor’s neck, to rest over the man’s rapidly beating heart. “I want to kiss you, sir,” Stone says it clearly, and he watches keenly as the words impact, the Doctor blinking rapidly as his system reboots. “Can I?” Stone finally asks. 

And the Doctor widens his eyes as he nods once, letting Stone’s hand slip behind his head and angling it just right so that their lips slot together. 

Stone makes this one everything but chaste. 

He pours his years of frustration and pent up love, now bursting free of his wounded heart that had already started to heal in its moment of excitement of realising that maybe he can have it all. Stone kisses the Doctor with passion, pulling the man down further while simultaneously pushing him back against the work bench, getting enough leverage to press their bodies closer together, trying to feel as much of the Doctor as he could before the moment ended. It was messy and wet and everything Stone could have wanted as he nips at Robotnik’s lip as the man finally pulls back hard enough to gasp for air that Stone has to let him go. 

Reluctantly.

They’re still close, breathing into each other’s space, the Doctor holding him there as much as Stone is holding him there too.

The Doctor closes his eyes for a brief moment and when he opens them again, his mouth is pressed into a thin line, cheeks red. “Stone, I seem to recall that I said a number of regretfully embarrassing things to you back in 1988. You would do well to forget them.”

Stone raises an eyebrow. “I’ll do no such thing.” 

The Doctor is silent for a moment, unused to Stone saying no. “How dare you—

But Stone stops him by placing a finger over his lips and leaning in close. “I seem to recall promising to keep those good memories safe. And seeing as I just made them, there’s little chance I’ll forget any time soon. Plus, it’s not like you were far from the truth, I suppose I do like old men. Or, more accurately, just one.” He reaches up and cups the Doctor’s face, unable to keep the smile from his face as the Doctor simultaneously leans into the gesture and rolls his eyes.

“Watch it,” he says, with a little smile that pulls at his glorious moustache. “I’m just entering my prime, Stone.” 

Stone draws closer still, thumbing across the darkened skin under the Doctor’s eyes. The result of 80-something hours of little to no sleep. 

“You should get some sleep, Ivo.” Stone whispers, their lips almost touching again. “Those eyebags make you look ancient.” 

Stone almost cracks as the Doctor’s expression flatlines and he looks thoroughly unimpressed. But he leans closer still so that their noses are touching. “Don’t push your luck, henchman.” But there’s a sparkle of amusement caught between them and it’s left to glow brighter as the Doctor leans in and kisses Stone.