Test Drive Meme 008

[sinfulmods]

Test Drive Meme

Considering apping to the City of Sin, but unsure of who to bring or if they'll fit? Feel free to give the setting a test drive here! These are a perfect way of getting your playing sample done for the application.

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→ Comment with the character you'd like to test drive in the setting, with name and canon in the subject line
→ Choose a scenario, or create your own
→ Tag around

Possible Scenarios 01. A New Arrival: Hello, New Person! You seem to have found yourself on a sidewalk in the City of Sin with nothing but the clothes on your back and a stomach chruning feeling of being displaced. Thankfully, the streets are full of people - Watch out that you don't get mugged! 02. Demonic Presences: You were just minding your own business, weren't you? But that's always when bad things seem to happen, and the City of Sin isn't really that friendly. Whatever bar or street you're hanging out in suddenly go dim, filing the area with an unnerving feeling as the shadows on the walls jump out into reality. We suggest you phone a friend for help, or maybe try running? 03. Party Hard: You've been invited to a massive, elegant party at the Tower that spills out it's doors in welcome, by someone who calls themselves the Emperor. Obviously that's weird, but maybe you can get some free drinks and food out of it! This place might not be so bad. 04. Prominence: The City of Sin influences it's population on a weekly basis. Too bad you came right smack dab in the middle of a heavy Prominence. Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Envy, Wrath, Sloth, or Pride. Choose your choice of sin and be wicked. 05. Trouble: Not everyone is sunshine and roses here. Some people are violent and cruel, raised in the sludge of a sinful city. And they like to pick on people they think can't fight back. Are you that person? Or are you the Hero who can't stand to watch? Worse yet, could you be the person doing the instigating? Villian. 06. Carnival: The City has carnivals or festivals now and then; you're lucky to catch one! With it's open booths filled with cork gun games and funnel cakes, how can someone not have any fun! Go win your darling a stuffed animal, or meet someone new on the spinning cup ride. You might even see someone you know being talked into sitting in the Dunk Tank. 07. Wild Card: Choose your own adventure in the game's setting!

Comments

[tactical_alert]

He notices, and he doesn't let himself pause before stepping right through. He wants this to be normal, but this is the City of Sin, and Malcolm got flung back into his own universe for five years. There is no normal, not here, and not when they both loved each other once upon a time and have no idea where that leaves them now.

Malcolm slides into a booth and settles in with a short sigh. They don't have to talk about it now; they don't even have to talk about it tonight. But instead of wanting to push it away and ignore it for another day, he feels it's important to get out. Later, maybe. Give it just a little more time to breathe.

Give them both time to breathe.

[capj_harkness]

"What flavour would you like?" Jack asks, settling into the booth himself. He wasn't the one who broke things off and he doesn't want to push by asking how Malcolm feels now. Things had happened between them near the end and he didn't know whether Malcolm's memories favoured the good or the bad.

[tactical_alert]

"Apple is fine. Classic apple. A la mode," he ventures, and once upon a time he wouldn't have indulged so openly, bad at asking for more than the basics, and, okay, maybe he just feels like if he's going to be here, now, then he's going to damn well treat himself.

"How long has it been for you? What have you been up to? Don't let me steal the spotlight here."

[capj_harkness]

"Oh, I've been here for... must be over five years now. Probably a solid four since... you left me."

He ordered black coffee and cherry pie when the waitress arrived, apple pie a la mode and tea for Malcolm. When the coffee arrived, he took a sip, glancing across the table. He set the coffee down and, once the waitress had gone, continued.

"After the City changed, nothing was the same. I only just started the Fire Department back up. It's nowhere near as modern as before. I started it up with money I scraped together doing odd jobs."

He shrugged.

"Martha was here for a while. She survived the change in the City. She insisted I couldn't live in the shack they assigned me. I lived with her for a while in a posh sort of a flat in the middle of town. Then she disappeared. I went back to the shack. The Doctor stayed with me for a little while when his fiancee disappeared." A pause. "That sort of thing happening hasn't changed."

[tactical_alert]

Some things change, but a lot stays just the same. "There's no getting back to normal when there really isn't any normal to begin with," he muses, although the fire department is a step in the right direction. He remembers that. And the suggestion of calendars. Good times. Some good times, anyway.

"So has the Doctor moved out, then? Are you...living on your own?" He wanted to say 'alone' but that just seems too...sad, in a way. Pointed, perhaps.

[capj_harkness]

They've made a calendar now.

"Yeah. A little while ago. He moved back to the flat he was sharing with her."

[tactical_alert]

"...This must be tremendously awkward." Yeah, having a sort of not really ex come back after years would be. He might as well get the question out. "You aren't seeing anyone?" He wouldn't blame Jack at all if so. After all, it had been only a week after Ianto that he and Jack had started seeing each other.

[capj_harkness]

A brief, sad laugh at the question.

"Seeing anyone? No."

He'd tried after Malcolm. With Martha. But she disappeared. No. He wasn't much good for anyone, he'd realized.

"No one."

[tactical_alert]

He reached out after a moment to cover one of Jack's hands with his own. There were a lot of buried feelings bubbling up, like hitting pause and coming back years later to hit play again, and he wasn't sure how exactly he felt now. But he did care. Deeply. He couldn't not. "After so many years? Jack. I'm sorry. It must be...lonely."

[capj_harkness]

Jack didn't draw his hand away, but he did shrug.

"I have friends. I have...outlets." The Red Lantern District was full of them. "I'm fine."

[tactical_alert]

"You're fine." There's a distinct note of disbelief, but...maybe he is. Maybe he's fine.

Or he's Malcolm's version of fine, which they both know is bullshit. "Hopefully those outlets work for you."

[capj_harkness]

"To a point."

Having random encounters almost nightly with strangers in seedy clubs and brothels was totally healthy, right?

He looked up from his plate to watch Malcolm's face for a moment.

"I don't know what you're expecting. Where were you hoping I'd be?"

[tactical_alert]

It strikes him that he did meet Jack in the red light district. At the time, it hadn't meant anything. After all, he'd been traveling through there as well, but not to partake in the people. Jack, however, has his urges and needs. It was initially a point of contention, as he recalls, but...of course he would.

It doesn't hurt, not in a way that feels like cheating. And it doesn't hurt in that Jack's more used to a time and lifestyle that means many people, human and alien and all sorts, in sometimes increasingly elaborate ways.

No, it mostly just aches that Jack has decided that's how to get the urges out, rather than cultivating deeper relationships with people that he also happens to sleep with. Maybe he does that on the side. Who is he to know, these days?

"Home," he says with a bittersweet smile. "Or somewhere better than here." Malcolm finally pulls his hand away.

"I don't know what to expect myself. I'm still sorting through memories that are coming back and yet have always been there, dormant. I'm not going to make any promises or expect anything of you or of myself. Not at least until I've got my own head sorted and my living situation, well, situated. For what it's worth--" And he's not sure it's worth anything at all, and his eyes drop to the table, a lick of his lips, one deep breath, then he looks back up. "For what it's worth, it was a mistake to leave."

[capj_harkness]

"You didn't have a choice," Jack tells him.

He thinks Malcolm is talking about leaving the city. Of course he thinks that. He couldn't assume he's talking about leaving Jack.

"But here's not been so bad to me. I don't regret any of it." It hurt, but he wouldn't give it back. He wouldn't give up any of them.

He's already lamenting the loss of the warmth of Malcolm's hand. Silly. Grow up, Jack.

[tactical_alert]

"Of course I had a choice." There's a mildly hurt tone in his low voice, but it's more directed at himself than at Jack. "I was influenced by people who clearly had no idea what they were talking about, and instead of standing my ground, I got overwhelmed like a bloody cadet. I shouldn't have left you. I don't know if that would've changed the outcome, if I would have stayed in the city or vanished back to my reality all the same, but...there it is."

[capj_harkness]

I shouldn't have left you.

Jack stared at him for a moment.

"You... you really feel that way?"

[tactical_alert]

"I do." A slow, small, sad smile ticks across his face. "Even as I try to sort everything out being here, I know that much for certain. And I'm sorry for all the pain and uncertainty my decision caused you."

[capj_harkness]

Jack studied him for a moment. The confidence and self-assurance, things he didn't have so much of when he was there before. Things that looked good on him.

"You had to do what was right for you," Jack told him. "I'm...always going to be okay. In the end."

Not so much yet, but...eventually.

[tactical_alert]

"I remember you saying that before." It's what happens when one is an undying fixed point in time, he supposes. "But that doesn't change the fact that I'd like you to be okay now rather than wait until later. I was wrong. We were making some headway before I left."

Malcolm leans back in his seat and sighs a little, looking out the window. "But I'm not here to muck up your life and your feelings. I'm just letting you know where things stand right now."

[capj_harkness]

"Muck up my life and my feelings? That's... not what's happening." In so far as he even had a life anymore. "Where are you staying?"