[fic] in your east village, soho style
There is absolutely no point to this story. It's not even a story, it's just a collection of words. Plot... who needs it?
-
The first really lasting image Matt has of Karen is, somewhat embarassingly, stockings.
It's the first time he meets her, when he comes in to the studios to read with her for the part of Amy. She's not been cast yet and she's like, the fifth or sixth girl Matt's read with. He walks in to the room and Karen is over by a long table in the corner getting tea. She's got on this short green skirt that looks like its made of sort sort of velveteen and cute little oxford shoes and it's almost schoolgirl but for the stockings. Like, real old fashioned sheer black stockings with this dark seam up the back. They draw Matt's eyes up the long line of Karen's legs.
He thinks of some old half-forgotten line from a movie. Her legs go all the way down to the floor. He resists the urge to roll his eyes at himself.
Matt slides his bag off his shoulder and starts chatting with Stephen about this dream he had about the Doctor last night, but out of the corner of his eye he can still see her shape and a flash of black.
Of course, she ends up being fabulous; sharp and witty and foul-mouthed and a corker of an actress. The reading goes fantastically. They do the scene where the Doctor realizes Amy is Amelia Pond, all grown up, and Karen yanks his lapels fiercely and he can feel the thrum of energy emanating from her body, and he looks in her eyes and sees such anger and vulnerability. Matt catches Stephen's eye after they've done, and he can tell she's going to get the part.
When Karen is gathering up her things, buttoning herself into her coat, Matt sidles over and leans against the wall, composing his face into a dour moue. She looks up expectantly and he pointedly sucks a hiss of air in between his teeth, shaking his head sorrowfully.
"That was right awful, eh?" he says. For a moment he thinks it was too far, but then she rolls her eyes and jabs at his shoulder and tells him to get back to auditioning for hair pomade spots, you great ponce.
Karen has a meeting with her agent straight after, but they make a plan to meet in Paddington the next week.
---
He tries to picks someplace decent for tea, someplace nicer than the grimy pubs and rickety stool-filled sandwich shops Matt himself likes to frequent, because Karen seems like a girl who likes nice things. She's got manicured nails and wears velvet skirts, after all.
But Karen has barely sat down at the table (it's got an actual tablecloth on it) before she wrinkles her nose and suggests they get out of here.
"You're not actually nine hundred and seven, you know," she whispers across the china plates and excessive items of silverware.
Matt can only scramble after her like a fool as she skips out of the restaurant. They buy a kebab and steaming hot tea in dangerously floppy paper cups from a cart on the street instead and eat them as they walk to Hyde Park. They sit underneath a wide tree and talk; Karen hardly knows any of the bands he talks about but she lets him list all forty eight of his favorite bands in ascending order, and then she lists her Top 50 movies in descending order and damned if Matt hasn't seen but half of them. He lies on his back under the leaves and enjoys the feel of the sun against his face and argues for awhile on the superiority of vinyl records and Karen laughs and swats at him and calls him a pretentious hipster git.
They talk a bit about the show and how neither one of them can believe this is really happening. They stare at each other for a long minute, a bit stunned, because they're about to be the stars of Doctor Effing Who and everything is about to change because they're just two unknown kids and this is something bigger than they know how to prepare for.
Strips of sunlight flicker across her face and she's so damn pretty and Matt turns his head away, because if they're going to be coworkers and mates that's as far as he can let that thought go.
--
When Matt is around Karen he doesn't seem to have full control of his body. He's always been the twitchy sort, but it's worse than ever now. He's always chewing on a finger or tugging on his ear or fiddling with bits of his costume. She intimidates him somehow, which is absurd because Matt is a grown man and Matt is cool. He carries a briefcase, for God's sake. But Matt likes to figure people out and he can't figure her out. He finds himself acting like a schoolboy, teasing and punching and doing everything but tugging her pigtails.
Karen notices a couple weeks into filming.
"You are a fidgety one, aren't you?" she teases, blowing on her tea across from him in the canteen trailer.
Matt yanks his thumb from his mouth and quickly wipes the spit off on his trousers.
"S'pose I am," he says. "Always have been a bit. Mum used to threaten to glue my hands to my pockets."
Karen smiles at him and takes a careful sip of her tea. She immediately makes a hurt face, a little line appearing between her eyebrows and hisses with pain once she's swallowed the tea.
"Bugger," she mutters, feeling cautiously at the burnt inside of her lip. Matt can see the angry red from across the table.
He tastes metal, the unmistakable tang of blood and realizes his finger made it back to his mouth, that he's worried away at the cuticle until it bled, bright and red.
---
They go to New York City for the press tour and that's great fun because no one really knows them in America, not yet, and so they can just be another couple of tourists.
Karen drags him to Times Square on the first day, saying it's the proper tourist thing to do, and Matt thinks it's bloody awful; a crowded, smelly, noisy mess of lights and fat families with Midwestern accents. He squints his eyes and lets Karen's solid hand around his arm guide him through the crowd.
They stop in front of a bunch of rows of colored plastic lawn chairs, sitting in the middle of the street in a section separated from the highly aggressive NYC traffic by nothing more than simple orange traffic cones. There are a few people sitting in them, snapping photos as taxis and cars honk and jerk forward all around them, leaving exhaust clouds and the smell of burnt rubber behind.
"What on God's green earth is this meant to be?" Matt asks bemusedly.
Karen surveys the scene. "City beautification, I suppose."
She walks down one of the rows and picks a bright pink woven chair, plopping down and arranging herself primly, looking up at Matt with her umbrella held in her hand like a sceptre. Matt throws his head back and laughs and says, "I'm the bloody queen, mate." Karen sticks out her tongue and he snaps a photo.
They walk over to Fourth Avenue and take the 5 train down to Astor Place. They wander through the East Village, peeking in thrift shops and art studios and record stores. They eat a takeout curry from a hole in the wall shop that tastes just as good as home. Matt drags Karen inside this immense slick Asian grocery just sitting there on a corner in the middle of New York City, and they spend half an hour finding different things to dare each other to eat.
They drink at a Russian bar with curtains at the door to block out the chill. Whiskey for Matt and vodka with tonic for Karen. She falls asleep on Matt's shoulder on the subway as they ride back to the hotel and her hair falls down over her face and Matt doesn't reach over to brush it back. He closes his eyes instead and lets the steady back and forth motion of the train clear his mind.
--
Karen barely wakes up when they reach their stop, and she leans sleepily against Matt's shoulder as they walk to the hotel. Matt's arm is around her waist holding her up, and he marvels at how he never before noticed how tiny it was, all the many times during filming he grabbed her around the waist, all the times he's slid an arm around her for a photo.
She kisses him outside the door to her room and his boots slide on the thick carpeting as he braces his arm against the wall behind her head, braces himself for this. She coaxes his lips open and ghosts her tongue against his and shivers in his arms. She looks up at him when he pulls back, sleepy red-rimmed eyes and it's probably a very bad idea, but Matt follows her inside.
He lays her down on the bed and unlaces her boots, works them off one foot at a time, Karen watching him. She wiggles her toes at him when they're off. She's wearing stockings again and he hooks two fingers in the waistband and peels them down over her thighs. She lifts her hips for him obligingly. Karen is just miles and miles of pale skin when they're off, and Matt kisses the crease of her knee, the dip of her hipbone and the bone of her sternum before she pulls him back up by the collar to kiss her mouth again.
"Kaz," he murmurs against her lips, his heartbeat thrumming against his chest, and she tightens her fingers in his hair and helps him off with his pants.
He licks the inside of her thigh and rubs his lips against her through her cotton underwear and when he doesn't take them off fast enough, Karen pushes him back and pulls her them off herself. After he's made her come, one long leg hooked over his thin shoulder, she pulls him up by his chin and kisses him, licking the taste of herself from his lips.
He pulls back to look at her. "Do you... do you want to-" he starts to say.
"Are you kidding me?" Karen asks breathlessly, and pulls him to her.
---
They play cards on the flight back to London, go fish and gin rummy and slap. Matt wins every round. Karen is a terrible card player.
She falls asleep and snores lightly, adorably. Matt looks out the window at the cloud banks and remembers what it felt like to be inside her, the endless heat that rose in his body, the roll of her hips against his. He shakes her awake with a hand on her shoulder as they start to land and she curls in to his body as she swims up out of sleep, jet lag and time zones and too little sleep behind them.
After they've cleared customs at Heathrow they stand side by side on the moving walkways, shoulders just touching. Karen's boyfriend is waiting at the end and she squeals and runs to him and jumps into him arms and he twirls her around like some awful romantic movie.
Karen looks back at Matt over his shoulder and smiles, a huge happy smile. She jogs back and kisses his cheek, whispers "See you tomorrow," in his ear.
Matt watches them walk off, hand in hand. Karen really should be a better card player, he thinks, because Matt can't read her for the life of him.
YUP.
-
The first really lasting image Matt has of Karen is, somewhat embarassingly, stockings.
It's the first time he meets her, when he comes in to the studios to read with her for the part of Amy. She's not been cast yet and she's like, the fifth or sixth girl Matt's read with. He walks in to the room and Karen is over by a long table in the corner getting tea. She's got on this short green skirt that looks like its made of sort sort of velveteen and cute little oxford shoes and it's almost schoolgirl but for the stockings. Like, real old fashioned sheer black stockings with this dark seam up the back. They draw Matt's eyes up the long line of Karen's legs.
He thinks of some old half-forgotten line from a movie. Her legs go all the way down to the floor. He resists the urge to roll his eyes at himself.
Matt slides his bag off his shoulder and starts chatting with Stephen about this dream he had about the Doctor last night, but out of the corner of his eye he can still see her shape and a flash of black.
Of course, she ends up being fabulous; sharp and witty and foul-mouthed and a corker of an actress. The reading goes fantastically. They do the scene where the Doctor realizes Amy is Amelia Pond, all grown up, and Karen yanks his lapels fiercely and he can feel the thrum of energy emanating from her body, and he looks in her eyes and sees such anger and vulnerability. Matt catches Stephen's eye after they've done, and he can tell she's going to get the part.
When Karen is gathering up her things, buttoning herself into her coat, Matt sidles over and leans against the wall, composing his face into a dour moue. She looks up expectantly and he pointedly sucks a hiss of air in between his teeth, shaking his head sorrowfully.
"That was right awful, eh?" he says. For a moment he thinks it was too far, but then she rolls her eyes and jabs at his shoulder and tells him to get back to auditioning for hair pomade spots, you great ponce.
Karen has a meeting with her agent straight after, but they make a plan to meet in Paddington the next week.
---
He tries to picks someplace decent for tea, someplace nicer than the grimy pubs and rickety stool-filled sandwich shops Matt himself likes to frequent, because Karen seems like a girl who likes nice things. She's got manicured nails and wears velvet skirts, after all.
But Karen has barely sat down at the table (it's got an actual tablecloth on it) before she wrinkles her nose and suggests they get out of here.
"You're not actually nine hundred and seven, you know," she whispers across the china plates and excessive items of silverware.
Matt can only scramble after her like a fool as she skips out of the restaurant. They buy a kebab and steaming hot tea in dangerously floppy paper cups from a cart on the street instead and eat them as they walk to Hyde Park. They sit underneath a wide tree and talk; Karen hardly knows any of the bands he talks about but she lets him list all forty eight of his favorite bands in ascending order, and then she lists her Top 50 movies in descending order and damned if Matt hasn't seen but half of them. He lies on his back under the leaves and enjoys the feel of the sun against his face and argues for awhile on the superiority of vinyl records and Karen laughs and swats at him and calls him a pretentious hipster git.
They talk a bit about the show and how neither one of them can believe this is really happening. They stare at each other for a long minute, a bit stunned, because they're about to be the stars of Doctor Effing Who and everything is about to change because they're just two unknown kids and this is something bigger than they know how to prepare for.
Strips of sunlight flicker across her face and she's so damn pretty and Matt turns his head away, because if they're going to be coworkers and mates that's as far as he can let that thought go.
--
When Matt is around Karen he doesn't seem to have full control of his body. He's always been the twitchy sort, but it's worse than ever now. He's always chewing on a finger or tugging on his ear or fiddling with bits of his costume. She intimidates him somehow, which is absurd because Matt is a grown man and Matt is cool. He carries a briefcase, for God's sake. But Matt likes to figure people out and he can't figure her out. He finds himself acting like a schoolboy, teasing and punching and doing everything but tugging her pigtails.
Karen notices a couple weeks into filming.
"You are a fidgety one, aren't you?" she teases, blowing on her tea across from him in the canteen trailer.
Matt yanks his thumb from his mouth and quickly wipes the spit off on his trousers.
"S'pose I am," he says. "Always have been a bit. Mum used to threaten to glue my hands to my pockets."
Karen smiles at him and takes a careful sip of her tea. She immediately makes a hurt face, a little line appearing between her eyebrows and hisses with pain once she's swallowed the tea.
"Bugger," she mutters, feeling cautiously at the burnt inside of her lip. Matt can see the angry red from across the table.
He tastes metal, the unmistakable tang of blood and realizes his finger made it back to his mouth, that he's worried away at the cuticle until it bled, bright and red.
---
They go to New York City for the press tour and that's great fun because no one really knows them in America, not yet, and so they can just be another couple of tourists.
Karen drags him to Times Square on the first day, saying it's the proper tourist thing to do, and Matt thinks it's bloody awful; a crowded, smelly, noisy mess of lights and fat families with Midwestern accents. He squints his eyes and lets Karen's solid hand around his arm guide him through the crowd.
They stop in front of a bunch of rows of colored plastic lawn chairs, sitting in the middle of the street in a section separated from the highly aggressive NYC traffic by nothing more than simple orange traffic cones. There are a few people sitting in them, snapping photos as taxis and cars honk and jerk forward all around them, leaving exhaust clouds and the smell of burnt rubber behind.
"What on God's green earth is this meant to be?" Matt asks bemusedly.
Karen surveys the scene. "City beautification, I suppose."
She walks down one of the rows and picks a bright pink woven chair, plopping down and arranging herself primly, looking up at Matt with her umbrella held in her hand like a sceptre. Matt throws his head back and laughs and says, "I'm the bloody queen, mate." Karen sticks out her tongue and he snaps a photo.
They walk over to Fourth Avenue and take the 5 train down to Astor Place. They wander through the East Village, peeking in thrift shops and art studios and record stores. They eat a takeout curry from a hole in the wall shop that tastes just as good as home. Matt drags Karen inside this immense slick Asian grocery just sitting there on a corner in the middle of New York City, and they spend half an hour finding different things to dare each other to eat.
They drink at a Russian bar with curtains at the door to block out the chill. Whiskey for Matt and vodka with tonic for Karen. She falls asleep on Matt's shoulder on the subway as they ride back to the hotel and her hair falls down over her face and Matt doesn't reach over to brush it back. He closes his eyes instead and lets the steady back and forth motion of the train clear his mind.
--
Karen barely wakes up when they reach their stop, and she leans sleepily against Matt's shoulder as they walk to the hotel. Matt's arm is around her waist holding her up, and he marvels at how he never before noticed how tiny it was, all the many times during filming he grabbed her around the waist, all the times he's slid an arm around her for a photo.
She kisses him outside the door to her room and his boots slide on the thick carpeting as he braces his arm against the wall behind her head, braces himself for this. She coaxes his lips open and ghosts her tongue against his and shivers in his arms. She looks up at him when he pulls back, sleepy red-rimmed eyes and it's probably a very bad idea, but Matt follows her inside.
He lays her down on the bed and unlaces her boots, works them off one foot at a time, Karen watching him. She wiggles her toes at him when they're off. She's wearing stockings again and he hooks two fingers in the waistband and peels them down over her thighs. She lifts her hips for him obligingly. Karen is just miles and miles of pale skin when they're off, and Matt kisses the crease of her knee, the dip of her hipbone and the bone of her sternum before she pulls him back up by the collar to kiss her mouth again.
"Kaz," he murmurs against her lips, his heartbeat thrumming against his chest, and she tightens her fingers in his hair and helps him off with his pants.
He licks the inside of her thigh and rubs his lips against her through her cotton underwear and when he doesn't take them off fast enough, Karen pushes him back and pulls her them off herself. After he's made her come, one long leg hooked over his thin shoulder, she pulls him up by his chin and kisses him, licking the taste of herself from his lips.
He pulls back to look at her. "Do you... do you want to-" he starts to say.
"Are you kidding me?" Karen asks breathlessly, and pulls him to her.
---
They play cards on the flight back to London, go fish and gin rummy and slap. Matt wins every round. Karen is a terrible card player.
She falls asleep and snores lightly, adorably. Matt looks out the window at the cloud banks and remembers what it felt like to be inside her, the endless heat that rose in his body, the roll of her hips against his. He shakes her awake with a hand on her shoulder as they start to land and she curls in to his body as she swims up out of sleep, jet lag and time zones and too little sleep behind them.
After they've cleared customs at Heathrow they stand side by side on the moving walkways, shoulders just touching. Karen's boyfriend is waiting at the end and she squeals and runs to him and jumps into him arms and he twirls her around like some awful romantic movie.
Karen looks back at Matt over his shoulder and smiles, a huge happy smile. She jogs back and kisses his cheek, whispers "See you tomorrow," in his ear.
Matt watches them walk off, hand in hand. Karen really should be a better card player, he thinks, because Matt can't read her for the life of him.
YUP.