Chapter Text
At a dinner with all the friends of the Doctor; Ace and Graham are sitting next to each other. Ace reaches down and rests her hand on his right knee. Looking over at her with a questioning raise of an eyebrow he finds her softly smiling back at him as everyone chats around them. One of the caterers comes up and clears his throat. “We do not have enough spaghetti with meat for everyone.”
“Graham can share a plate with me,” offers Ace.
“Sir, are you ok sharing with her? Her plate doesn’t have meat.”
“I am, thank you for asking.” As the caterer leaves the table Graham drops his hand to lay on top of Ace’s. Tegan, who was chatting with Yaz, looks at them.
“We seem to be missing some hands,” she jokes. Ace quickly turns her hand and quickly interlocks her fingers with Graham’s, affectingly keeping his hand with hers. She hopes he gets her silent message; to ignore Tegan.
“Kate, you told us there is something going on at UNIT?” Asks Graham, who likes his fingers being locked with Ace’s, and plans to stop somewhere later on to get her flowers before swinging by her place to ask her out on a date.
“Can we please not talk about work,” she pleads with them.
“Why, because Chris has been making eyes at you?” Mel teases, which stops Tegan from watching her friend and turns towards the fearless Kate Lethbridge-Steward.
“What– No– Colonel Ibrahim hasn’t been making eyes at me; why would he?”
“You’re an attractive woman Kate,” Tegan tells her as Ace and Graham start to quietly flirt. “If I wasn’t happily married to Nyssa, and I never met your father, I would’ve taken you out on a date.”
“Tegan, I know too much from your files to date you, or any one of you for that matter. I’d much rather us to be family and friends.”
“Don’t you worry Dear,” Jo starts to say, “all of you are like my kids or grandkids,” her eyes fall on the youngest in the room. “Though we have one person denying something they shouldn’t, and by the looks of it have two more slowly not fighting what everyone has seen since last November.” Everyone looks over into Ace and Graham’s direction. They are in their own world.
“Oi, what was that for?” asks Graham after he feels someone kick him.
“To get you and Ace back to earth. If you want to leave, I am sure the Doctor will take the two of you somewhere; right now though you are at a dinner with many people,” Ryan replies, holding back a laugh as the two adults start to blush.
“Ace, are you actually blushing? Everyone here has seen you two flirt. I know some of us haven’t walked in to find you guys snogging. It’s about time that something happens.” Tegan explains. “Now, are you two going to explore what it is that everyone sees?”
“It’s fine Grandad. You deserve to be happy. Ace has been spending a lot of time with us,” Ryan informs the table.
“She is there a lot of the time I show up. Sometimes Graham is showing her something in the kitchen, other times she is explaining how to make Nitro.”
“You don’t even tell me that,” Tegan slams her hands on the table as she says this.
“You sometimes still have an explosive temperament. Graham is relaxed and yes, he may like blowing this up with me, but I have to see him angry.”
“What is your excuse for me Ace,” Nyssa asks, leaning forward.
“You never asked, Graham did,” Ace shrugs, her hand pulling on Graham’s as she does so.
“Mhmm, and you never offered to begin with.”
“I asked her, it is one of the many things I find cool about her.”
“Why do you think her blowing things up is cool, there, Graham,” Tegan asks him.
“The Doc brought it out of me. Maybe they planned to shape me into someone that would be a good friend to Ace.”
“More you mean,” Mel slightly cojoils him.
“I–,” he adverts his eyes as caterers enter the room with trays full of plates of food. “Look everyone, food is ready.” Him and Ace inwardly sigh with relief as everyone watches as food gets placed in front of him. Ace glares at the plate set in front of Graham. She wanted to share her plate with him. She feels a thumb rub across the top of her hand before letting go before it goes to the table to pick up his fork.
“Where did that hand come from Graham,” Tegan asks.
“I’ve always had this hand, Mrs. Traken-Jovanka.
“That hand hasn’t been seen for a fat minute Mr. O’Brien. Was it being entertained by Ms. McShane’s hand.”
“How can a hand be entertained by someone else’s?” He asks.
“See, fingers playing with each other,” Tegan starts.
“Hands rubbing against each other nonchalantly,” continues Kate.
“Or just fingers interlocked in a handhold. I remember the first time we did when we weren’t running away from anything.”
“About a week after you showed up with Neeka and Adric up at my house.” Tegan smiles as she remembers that warm spring day. Ace smiles remembering how her friend seemed to change overnight when the person she had loved most of her life came to earth. “Our families blended right in.”
“Of course they did, you two belong together,” Ace says. She feels eyes on her.
“You believe that people belong together.” Tegan states, shocked that Ace feels like this.
“Not everyone has the person they are meant to spend forever with, you two do. That is special. My family has had the curse of not having their person.”
“Oh, I think almost everyone agrees you found your person,” Nyssa adds gently, knowing how easily her friend can spook when it comes to people she’s interested in. “It took Tegan and I time and distance to learn that our hearts spoke for each other. While yes I am a sciency person, chemistry is science, and Tegan and I have that. You and Graham have it too. I’m sure if I saw Kate with her soldier, I would say the same thing.”
“He isn’t my soldier,” Kate defends herself.
“We all notice what part you didn’t notice,” jokes Ace.
“You are the one to speak right now, Dorothy McShane,” Kate states, putting her fork down.
“Kate,” Mel interjects, ready to defend the woman she met decades ago, “you are a scientist first and foremost. Yes, you are becoming more military minded in the past few years since getting UNIT back and losing Osgood to a fulltime lab, trying to discover cures for diseases. Ace also knows chemistry. Yes, she has been denying she has some with Graham for months, but you have also been denying yours with Ibrahim.”
“What?”
“I know you don’t see it yet, but all of us see it.” Ace took the attention diverted from her to steal some of Graham’s spaghetti, hoping to create a scene from a movie that she always enjoyed. Graham is watching the scene stuffing face and he feels the pasta stretching, he turns his face to see a glint in Ace’s eyes. Following her lead he doesn’t let the noodle break as their faces come closer and closer until their mouths are touching. She puts down the fork, her hand going to his cheek, Graham does the same as the kiss deepens. The world melts away again.
“All we needed was to get them pasta. Come on,” complains Tegan. “I could’ve been saved from almost a year of her talking my ear off about how she likes Graham.”
“At least you didn’t see them flirting all the time and him moping when she left the house,” Ryan joins in, also happy that they probably found their way together. Graham’s hand moves from her cheek to her hair, bringing their lips closer and the kiss deeper.
“Everyone, let’s let them snog in peace,” suggests Nyssa, knowing her wife will be grilling their friend at a later date.
“We are trying to eat here, Nyssa, and they are doing a show for us,” Mel adds.
“They have forgotten about us often in the past, just has been increasing over the past few weeks,” Yaz states as she continues eating, not wanting to watch the two enjoying a private meal of their own.
“They should need to breathe soon anyway,” Jo gently reminds the room, “and no one will be asking them questions for the next two weeks, got it. I have raised enough kids and been around my adult grandkids enough to know that they might want to see for themselves where it might all go. Do you understand Tegan? No questions, and no taking the mickey,” Jo uses her fork shaking at the younger woman, to make her point.
“I would never.”
“Lies,” the table not otherwise engaged say in unison, making Ace and Graham stop their activities. Both are breathing heavily, Tegan starts to say, stopped by bread being pushed in her mouth by her wife.
“Why is Nyssa force feeding Tegan,” asks Ace, after her breathing gets back to normal.
“No reason, probably just one of her weird spousal things,” Mel tries to find excuses for it.
“She only does that when she wants to stop her from saying something when she can’t kiss her to shut her up.” Most of the table inwardly groans at how close Ace is with the couple.
“Tegan, didn’t our sons need our help with something?” Nyssa tries to come up with something to get them away before the two longtime friends can get into it.”
“No.”
“Then it was Neeka, we should think about getting there soon.” Standing up Nyssa grabs her jumper, putting it on. Then grabbing Tegan’s blue jacket. “Come on, we really need to get there. Sorry everyone, she asked us about it after we had this planned, but everything has been busy. Ace, can you please bring my desert to work on Monday.”
“Of course,” Ace agrees, confused on not hearing why her favorite niece needs help. She would’ve told Nyssa to take as much time as she needed for her family. She feels Graham’s hand rubbing her thigh trying to calm her nerves. The night couldn’t recover after the abrupt leaving of two of the attendees and everyone avoiding the elephant in the room on Jo’s demands.
…
An hour late, Graham is running into a local shop trying to find a large bouquet of flowers and something to help Ace relax. “Graham,” he turns to find one of Tegan and Nyssa’s sons.
“Adric, right?”
“Yeah. You are into my aunt.”
“I am. Do you have any ideas why your mum’s left a dinner a lot of us were having suddenly?”
“No. Did something happen?”
“Your mum, Nyssa shoved some bread into your other mum’s mouth. Ace told the room it is one of the better ways to get her not to say anything she isn’t supposed to.”
“So something juicy happened and Mumma needed a way to get Mum out before she said something.”
“I see,” Graham thinks of the snogging he had with Ace while there. “You know your aunt better than I do. Can you help me with picking a few things out for her.”
“Sure, like what and is there a reason?”
“I want to ask her out on a date.”
“So flowers, she loves many. Anything else?”
“I think I got it,” he holds up a bottle of bubble bath with epsom salt. “For stressful days she can come home and relax.”
“I really don’t want to know more.”
“Huh,” Graham is confused, making Adric laugh, learning the older man is being pure in his attentions.
“That is a good scent, she loves lavender and vanilla. Come, follow me.” A few minutes later Graham is back in his car, tapping away on his steering wheel nervous as he gets closer to Ace’s.
…
“One second,” he hears the voice, “fuck ow, why did I put my boots there?” he chuckles, as he makes sure that her gifts are secruly behind his back. “Graham,” she says, opening the door, shocked and happy to see the man in front of her.
“I got this for you,” he holds out the bubblebath, “I know hearing your niece needs help with anything makes you stressed out.”
“Thank you,” she smiles at his thoughtfulness, “I called her when I got home, she had no idea what her mums were up to.”
“Good, good, she’s ok?”
“She is, is there any other reason you are here?”
“There is actually,” he holds out the flowers, “these are for you.”
“They are?” She knows they are cause here he is standing at her doorstep, taking him in, there is sweat on his face. “I, um- wanted to ask, if you– um– wanted to go on a date with me?”
“There is nothing I would like to do more. Did I snog you too hard or something?”
“No.”
“Then you should’ve known my answer would’ve been yes. Everyone is right, we have been denying this for too long. Want to come in?”
“Uh, yes. Is that ok?”
Throwing her head back in laughter, “Graham, you have been in here millions of times, of course it's ok. Just because we are going to start to see each other, doesn’t mean we can’t be in each other’s houses late at night. We are not hiding from anything.” He follows her in after handing her flowers and the door shuts behind him.