best_enemies | Like It's 1999 3/?: Vinyl

Like It’s 1999 Part 3/?: Vinyl
Wordcount: 6,349
Rating: R for references to sex, language, and drug use, eventual NC-17
Pairing: Ten/Jip, Ten/Simm!Master
Author:

doctor_caduceus
Betaed by

piping_hot (and in all seriousness, I could not do this without her!)
Author’s Note: An AU sort of crossover with the movie Human Traffic. Alters the Master’s timeline post Time War and the Doctor’s from the end of Gridlock onward, with references to Torchwood: Day One. Helps to have seen Human Traffic, which is available streaming on Netflix at the mo (yep, still).
Summary: The Face of Boe has different last words for the Doctor which will lead him into the world of a young man in Cardiff at the end of the 20th Century.
Disclaimers: The Beeb owns Doctor Who, Irish Screen (I think) owns Human Traffic, and Radiohead and all other musicians, celebrities, public figures, etc., own themselves and referenced works.
Spoilers: Some small spoilers for the One arc Marco Polo, earlier Ten arcs, and a few references to historic figures the Doctor's met.

Previous bits: 1, 2

Jip was not tired. Glass of warm milk? Pfah. Rank amateurism! It would take a stronger sedative than tryptophan to put him down like… like…

Shut up and go to sleep, you imbecile.

Right.

The waves crashed softly in the dim room, lulling the volume of drums in his head to a soft patter. Jip couldn’t really hear any difference in these supposedly two-moon waves as opposed to regular old seaside waves, but… if he listened carefully, carefully as he could while falling asleep, anyway, there was a vague echo. No, not an echo. More like a heart murmur, a vague hushing hiss that didn’t quite belong in his usual sense of ‘this is what waves sound like.’ At the same time, though, it was so calming that it made sleep irresistible.

He didn’t remember much of his dreams on a comedown, and they were gone entirely by the time he opened his eyes. When he woke up, his face was wet. That happened sometimes; Jip figured he just slept with his eyes partway open, and it was just his body trying not to dry them out.

There wasn’t a clock in the room, or a window, so he had no way of guessing the time. He felt somewhat rested, no headache. Maybe that tire gauge full of whatever-the-fuck-it-was had something to do with that. He got up, shuffled into the bathroom by the dim nightlight and took a piss, washing his hands and getting a cup of water. A Manchester United toothbrush hung there, there was a little tube of toothpaste (Punch and Judy, strawberry flavored, with fluoride); it was really quite homey, though it wasn’t the sort of thing that had occurred in Jip’s home ‘til he moved in with his mum, who’d always bought the Tutti Fruitti flavor.

He actually liked strawberry better.

He brushed his teeth and hung the toothbrush back up, going back and sitting on the foot of the bed, tapping his toes for a moment.

“…best not go wandering about,” the Doctor had said. He glanced towards the door of his bedroom, chewing his lower lip, and stood up.

Sit. Down, the voice in his head said tersely. Reluctantly he sat, reaching for the book he’d been left, before shaking his head.

You know what? No! Jip thought, smacking the book back to the bedside table. I’m fucking done doing as I’m told today.

Because ignoring me was working out so well yesterday, the posh voice pointed out, but Jip just put on the purple fuzzy slippers with green monster claws that waited at the foot of the bed and got up.

I’m a moon monster from Mercury, and I’ll do what I like, Jip retorted. Besides, I have it on good authority that all Halloween-based antics are confined to another floor.

Mercury hasn’t got a fucking moon!

Jip marched (as best one could march in fuzzy slippers) out the bedroom door, back into the eerily glowing honeycomb corridor, ignoring any and all grousing from his snide, posh-voiced Jiminy Cricket. There were no bees or wasps in the wall, not that he could see as he peered closely at the hexagons. Jip tried to remember which passage had led away from the library, but couldn’t, so he picked one at random, following its venous forks, picking left sometimes, right others. When there were more than two choices, Jip selected a middle route, until a corridor appeared that actually had some doors in it. He opened the first on his left, and…

He was back in the fucking library? He hadn’t remembered which turn he took to get to the bedroom, but he was certain that he hadn’t taken as many turns as that. Maybe there was a second library, he thought, trying to shake that feeling of déjà vu. Yeah. A second library. He backed out and shut the door.

He went across the hallway to the door directly across, opening it and blinking rapidly, trying to adjust to fluorescent colors. This room was covered in posters and lit solely with black light. He shut that door quickly, rubbing his eyes to try to get the green photonegative burned there from the neon pink nipples on a black velvet poster of a masturbating woman. At that point, honest to god, Jip would’ve just gone back to his bedroom and read the book he was given if he could remember the damned way back, but he was absolutely disoriented and doubted he could find it again. He opted for whatever was behind door number three, the second door on the right, squinting in case of more violent lights.

He got the barest glimpse of the inside of the room before the door snatched itself out of his hand and slammed shut. He heard several scrapes, clicks, thunks, and thuds, ranging in magnitude from a deadbolt to a bank vault slamming and locking.

Open that door and get back in there. Now, the voice in his head whispered, trembling.

Why, what did you see? Jip asked the posh voice, because it had never sounded so vulnerable before. Jip pulled at the knob, which didn’t even rattle, as though the door and knob had been poured in one solid piece.

I don’t know, the voice said. But you have to get back in there.

Jip tried to feel for any looseness in the hinges then got down on the floor to try to look under the gap beneath, only to find there wasn’t one. He fingered the panel and found that it was flowing directly into the floor, melting together with the honeycomb. Springing back to his feet, he kicked it in desperation, but it didn’t give in the slightest. Jip’s foot came clean out of the slipper and he fell back against the door opposite, bruising his shoulder blades.

No, no, fuck! the posh voice wailed, the drums in his head roaring. Jip pressed the heels of his hands to his temples, gritting his teeth against the furious, terrified railing of the voice and the furious, terrifying thundering of the rhythm. It was too loud for him to hear the door he leaned against unlock and unlatch, but he did feel the barrier behind him giving way. He slid to the floor partway in yet another room.

The light was soft in this one, and there was a gentle hiss in the air. Jip ignored the frustrated howl of the voice and looked inside, pushing himself back up to his feet, only one of which was now monstrous, the other foot bare and vulnerable.

It was another library, but oh, Jip could relate, because he recognized those skinny skinny spines on the shelves, tall and short, oh sweet lord, vinyl. Further back, he saw card catalog-like drawers the exact square size of CDs, and other shelves filled with things he didn’t recognize. The hissing noise was coming from a phonograph as the needle went from the outside grooves into the first song.

It was Radiohead. God, he’d know it anywhere, so familiar and comforting that the drums settled down, slowing, quieting, and even the posh voice stopped shouting. He sank into a chair right beside the phonograph table. The music came through the horn, which looked like some marriage of a conch shell and a lily made of pearl. Sitting beside it was a pair of perfectly ordinary, high quality headphones, and though they weren’t plugged into anything, Jip picked them up and put them on, all other sound canceled out as the lyrics came through:

“You can force it but it will not come, you can taste it but it will not form, you can crush it but it's always here, you can crush it but it's always near, chasing you home saying ‘Everything is broken. Everyone is broken.’”

He got up and wandered the shelves, feeling lost in a dream, the posh voice sounding like it was laughing, or crying, or both. He felt like he’d walked miles before he found the ‘Rs,’ checking to see if this library had OK Computer. Gently, gently touching the spines (because where Jip came from, you just didn’t disrespect the vinyl of others, any more than you’d rough up someone else’s kid), he read the names, found what he was after. Before he could pull it out, though, he noticed that there were several records more between the one he wanted and the tab that showed the next artist’s name, even though it looked like chronological order. It was only right to help a collector with mis-shelves, so Jip pulled the first out.

Radiohead. Kid A. That wasn’t out yet. Who the fuck was this lucky tosser with his indoor swimming pool, his amazing record collection including pre-releases? Thom Yorke’s secret brother? Jip put the album back and carefully withdrew the next.

Radiohead. Amnesiac. He’d never even heard of this. Flipping the jacket, he looked it over. Maybe this was some very rare foreign album, Koop specialized in them, but mostly for American stuff. The copyright date was 2001. God, this Doctor must be ridiculously special, or the best blackmailer in the world…

When Jip pulled out the next album, he felt a bit sick.

Radiohead. Hail to the Thief. 2004. In Rainbows. 2007. A best of from 2008. He put each back, one by one, pulling out the next, and looked at the back. 2011.

He flipped the jacket and looked at the front and had to swallow hard to keep from vomiting. The image on the cover, and everything written on it, kept shifting and changing, not like one of those crappy things you could tilt back and forth with the plastic ridges, but a constant flux which provided nothing onto which his brain could grab.

Jip carefully laid the record on his lap, his hands shaking so fucking badly he was afraid he might snap it. He covered his mouth with his trembling fingers, grinding his eyes into the crook of his elbow, because you simply didn’t weep on another man’s vinyl, not even the jacket, and now The Bends was back on the shelf and OK Computer was gone from it, starting up in his ears as though he’d walked back and placed it on the turntable himself. He sat there, very carefully not crying on the vinyl as he felt himself falling apart.

He didn’t hear the footsteps in trainers charging through the library as hard as their wearer could run; the headphones were that good. He didn’t catch the scramble-squeak of rubber as the runner stopped suddenly and changed directions. In fact, he only realized he wasn’t alone when the person he wasn’t alone with grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. He couldn’t hear his own shout of shock, or whatever the Doctor was sputtering at him as he clutched his own hair and gestured wildly, back in a suit while Jip was still in pajamas.

Jip could hear himself shouting though, over and over, through his teeth and the bones of his jaw:

“Who are you? Who the fuck are you?”

The Doctor reached out and took the headphones off of Jip, making Jip’s own shouting that much louder to his own ears.

“I told you not to wander off!” the Doctor shouted over him, in that way his mother had shouted at him when he’d chased his football into traffic and nearly gotten hit, the sort of anger that came out of being scared to death. “You have no idea what could’ve happened to you!”

“Then why wouldn’t you let me leave?” Jip railed, pushing himself backwards to try and get some distance between them, his sole still-slippered foot slipping against the floor as he tried to scoot away. He noticed the Doctor clutching his lost slipper in one hand, pressing the heel of his other hand against his forehead, taking a breath before kneeling down, crouching on his haunches like he was trying to calm a frightened stray.

“You asked me for help,” the Doctor said sorrowfully. “I’m just trying to give it to you.”

Jip said nothing, because he knew if he did, he’d just get another look at the paper which just screamed any thought that crossed his mind before Jip knew he’d thought it, and how was that fair? But when the Doctor edged closer, Jip didn’t move away. The Doctor straightened Jip’s left leg and put on the missing slipper.

“There you go, Cinderella,” the Doctor said with a timid little smile, “and not a step sister in sight; lucky us!”

Jip took his foot back and tucked his legs against his chest, scowling into his knees. The Doctor sighed, rubbing his hand through his hair and fluffing it up further.

“I could explain, maybe?” he asked hopefully. “I mean, it might be a nice alternative to going catatonic from cultural dissonance?”

Jip continued not saying anything, but did deign to shrug. The Doctor grinned and scooted over to sit beside him, touching Jip’s shoulder with the very tips of his fingers.

“Right. So. Explaining,” he said, then stopped, as though unsure where to begin. Jip didn't help out by saying anything, so the Doctor plowed on.

"This isn't- this is my home, but it's not a mansion. It's a space ship, and a time machine."

The Doctor wrapped his own arms around his knees and peered at Jip. Jip stared distantly at his slipper claws. The silence dragged on further, until Jip at last turned and glowered at him.

"Why are you staring at me like that?" Jip asked.

"What... I was... well, I was letting it sink in, wasn't I?" the Doctor sputtered. "I mean, it's big news, you know, so I was banking on some sort of reaction as a 'got it, head still attached, please continue' sort of thing!"

Jip scowled harder, leapt up and started pacing.

"Fine. Reacting," he said, standing still and pretending to bite his fingertips like a frightened girl at a horror movie. "Eeee, time travel, somebody rescue me from the man of tomorrow or yesterday or whenever! That reactionary enough for you? Maybe you’d prefer a full-on swoon? What sort of demonstration would you like, exactly?"

The Doctor pointed at Jip’s chest in the manner of a schoolteacher about to send a child to see the headmaster, mouth open, gearing up for a really good telling off, then closed his mouth and his hand. The impending rant was reduced to a frustrated noise delivered through his nostrils.

"Well now I think I know why you like the drugs!" the Doctor crabbed, getting to his feet as well, taking up the pace as Jip in turn stood still. "You're bloody stroppy sober!"

"So are you just a time traveler, or are you an alien too?" Jip demanded. "I mean, that makes a difference, you know. Could push me out of swoon and straight into a coma."

“As a matter of fact, yes, both, I’m an alien as well,” the Doctor snapped, jaw set, challenging Jip to make something of it. “I realize that my lack of antennae might be confusing to you—”

“Past or future?” Jip interrupted.

“What?” the Doctor asked, stopping in mid-pace. Jip circled him, padding silently in purple monster paws.

“Past or future?” Jip repeated. “I mean, maybe I’m more evolved than you are, and all this lecturing is out of order.”

Jip stepped in and prodded the Doctor square in the chest.

“Maybe you’re fucking antiquated.”

The Doctor stared for a moment, mouth slightly open, then burst out laughing. Jip stepped back in surprise only to be yanked into a hug.

“You’re fantastic,” the Doctor crowed as Jip squirmed and tried to get away. “Marvelous. The cheek of you is just…”

“Let go!” Jip squawked, his hands flapping at the ends of his arms, ineffective as they were immobilized against his sides by the hug.

“Oh, stop being so prickly and enjoy the hug. Hugs aren’t so bad, are they? Or do you consider hugs antiquated, less evolved and obsolete?”

Jip quieted, focusing on breathing. After all, the last time he’d tried to wrestle away from this man, he’d wound up achingly hard and having an even more awkward conversation. The Doctor’s fingers spread out over Jip’s back. For every degree Jip had relaxed, the Doctor relaxed tenfold.

“I’m from the past, technically. It doesn’t really flow like that, not for me. Time, I mean. It’s just not quite that simple, I’m older than you, but the whens are a little… complex. A bit like asking if I’m from the North, I mean; I’m from a past, and a future, but, you know, whose is really up for debate.”

“Oh. Is that what’s making you want to hug me?” Jip asked. The Doctor chuckled.

“Lots of things are making me want to hug you. The fact that you’re upset and frightened, the fact that you scared the hell out of me by running off, and you’re not hurt, and that’s marvelous, the fact that I really rather like hugs in general, and I haven’t argued like this in years, and…”

The Doctor sighed, squeezing Jip’s shoulders once before letting his arms go slack.

“Right. Sorry. Letting go,” he said, letting Jip loose and giving him an appraising look.

“You were in a good mood when you went to bed…” the Doctor pointed out, worrying his lip. “Did something happen? Bad dream?”

“No, I just woke up, couldn’t get back to sleep, and figured I’d explore.”

The Doctor shook his head, putting his hands in his pockets.

“You’re always wandering off,” he clucked, gazing up at the high shelves. “Really, my fault for leaving you alone. It’s lucky you came here; this is one of the safest spots in the TARDIS.”

Jip tried to decide which of the sundry questions that statement generated he wanted to ask first.

“I’ve wandered off exactly once since you met me,” he said, which wasn’t so much a question, but he hoped the, ‘so what the hell are you on about?’ was understood.

“Oh, no, not you personally, I meant you in the species sense. Tricky thing, English,” the Doctor mused. “No plural ‘you,’ no species ‘you,’ no future pluperfect infinite tense, no mobius paradoxical tense. I mean it’s no wonder humans find me so confusing; you make it so hard to be clear!”*

“Besides,” Jip added, “you said all Halloweeny shit was on its own floor, so I reckoned if I stayed on the same level, nothing bad would happen.”

The Doctor smiled sadly, bending down and pulling out a couple of the Radiohead albums.

“It is, but monsters come ‘round all days of the year, Jip,” he replied softly, glancing to the floor and picking up the album with the flickering cover. Jip felt his stomach lurch and looked away. “Ohhh. This happened, hm?”

“Please put that away, it’s making me…” Jip trailed off as his stomach heaved and he fought the urge to vomit.

“Sorry, sorry!” the Doctor said, putting it back on the shelf. “The album is… well, it comes out at a very wibbly-wobbly point in the time stream. So much influences it that my copy is never quite stable. Is that what tipped out off that things were a bit weird?”

Jip sighed, rubbing his eyes.

“Yeah, well, that and the fact that there’s a stack of albums by my favorite band from a whole decade that hasn’t happened yet, and records that play themselves, and that whole room across the hall that glued itself shut.”

The Doctor’s eyebrows knit just a bit as he put the other albums back on the shelf.

“What room?” he asked Jip.

“The one across the hallway from this one, with the fancy security?” Jip asked. The Doctor put his hands in his pockets and tilted his chin down slightly.

“And what was in it?” he asked.

You tell me, Jip heard the voice in his head whisper.

“I don’t know,” Jip said. “It shut like, a quarter second after I opened it.”

The Doctor stepped in a bit closer.

“Right across…” the Doctor pointed across his body toward the entrance. “…that hallway over there?”

Jip nodded, and the Doctor looked in that direction, and Jip could see the skin around his eyes was tight, the tendon in his jaw sticking out slightly.

“Well!” he said, too brightly, too loudly, “I’m sure that room vanished because it was boring and empty. Someone probably could’ve gotten stuck in there, like an empty refrigerator, best that it’s gone!”

The Doctor stuck his hand out to guide Jip out of the stacks, his grin still tight.

“I bet that room was rubbish. Breakfast? You’ve had a busy night; I think some tea and orange juice and a protein of some kind must be in order.”

Jip let the Doctor lead him, his fingertips exerting gentle pressure between Jip’s shoulder blades. The music faded out as they reached the door, like the end of a movie, and once they were on the other side, stopped completely.

The wall across from the music room was entirely bare, the floor sloping into the wall, the wall into the ceiling in glowing honeycomb like other parts of the corridor. Without much conscious thought propelling his feet, Jip found himself with his ear pressed against the wall, fingertips feeling for any crack or secret latch. Maybe there was a catch, subtler than a sconce of some kind, and when he found it, the wall would spin and he’d be back in the room and he’d know where he was and what was in there that he needed so badly, and maybe, maybe, the satisfaction would be the seed of silence in his fucking head.

“Jip?” the Doctor said. Jip ignored him. The Doctor touched his shoulder and Jip flinched away, shrugging him off, but the Doctor persisted, laying his hand flat on Jip’s back. “There’s nothing there, Jip; it’s just a wall. The TARDIS changes things all the time; she wouldn’t tease you—”

“You keep using that word,” Jip muttered, moving his ear to another spot on the wall.

“Tease?” the Doctor asked, sounding perplexed.

“TARDIS,” Jip corrected, still straining.

“Oh, well!” the Doctor said cheerfully. “A TARDIS—”

Jip turned around and put a hand over the Doctor’s mouth.

“Just… would you just shush a minute?!” he ground out. The Doctor’s eyebrows went up and he shrugged. Jip let go slowly, like the Doctor might attack, and when he remained standing where he was, Jip turned back to the wall. He laid his ear against it once more, trying to quiet his breathing as much as possible. The Doctor stepped around him, facing him, and pressed his own ear to the wall as well, bent over slightly so that they were on the same level, five or so inches separating the tips of their respective noses. The only sound was breathing, and the inaudible roar of two people locking eyes at a significant moment.

Breathe in, breathe out. In, out. In, out.

“Do you hear anything?” the Doctor whispered softly.

Of course I do, how can you not? the voice muttered in Jip’s head, but all Jip heard was the one-two-three-four of the constant beat, and the gentle whir of whatever made the space ship-stroke-time machine go, or stay, or capable of melting whole rooms into the ether.

“No,” Jip said, letting his hands slide down the smooth wall, turning his head and resting his forehead on it. “Nothing.”

“Well I do,” the Doctor said with a little smile. “I strongly suspect it’s your stomach rumbling. C’mon. Breakfast.”

It only took a bit more of the Doctor plucking at the back of his pajama top to coax Jip from the wall. Jip’s stomach lurched with despair as his fingers fell away and he lost contact entirely, but it was gone almost as soon as it had hit him. He realized that he was hungry, really hungry, like when he was a kid and he was about to grow six inches in six weeks or something equally bonkers.

“Yeah,” he said, more to himself than to the Doctor, then repeated more for the latter’s benefit: “Yeah. I could eat.”

The kitchen was startlingly normal. The refrigerator hummed and had little magnets shaped like zoo animals all over the door, though they pinned no notes, homework assignments, grocery lists, or children’s drawings. The sink was stainless steel; the countertops were robin’s egg-blue formica with silver flake scattered throughout, and they sat across from each other at a square table that looked like it had been appropriated from a chip shop.

The Doctor waved at one of the two mismatched chairs at the table, and Jip sat, running his finger over the bevels in the metal trim on the table’s sides. His finger traveled round to the middle, where the two halves were joined, and up to the top, where it picked at little grains of sugar, salt, and flecks of ground pepper which had worked into the slight crack between the assembled pieces, just like any other table in any kitchen in the UK.

“Oooh!” the Doctor cried in delight, opening a cupboard. “I must have been very good indeed! Or you have, one of the two!” The source of this assessment was apparently two plated stacks of pancakes, butter melting on top, syrup dripping down the layers to pool around sausage, still sizzling faintly as though it had just been removed from the pan.

“How did you…?” Jip trailed off as his stomach made a noise seeming to indicate that it didn’t care what the answer to whatever Jip had intended to ask was going to be. The Doctor shrugged.

“Think of it like an automat, just without all the fuss for loose change or having to say out loud what you’d like. Don’t wait on my account; dig in and I’ll just get the kettle on.”

As poor a decision as it seemed to Jip to take pancakes from a stranger without at least seeing the stranger take a bite first, he picked up a sausage link with his fingers and devoured it before he could even be bothered to pick up the knife and fork. He watched a bit warily to see if the Doctor was waiting for something to happen, but there wasn’t any anticipation on his host’s face as he pottered around, putting a carton of orange juice on the table as well as drinking glasses, and a can of whipped cream.

“Not sure where the napkins got off to…” the Doctor muttered to himself before sitting across from Jip. The table was just the right size, or more accurately the wrong size, for them to jostle one another’s knees while eating, but Jip was too engrossed in his food to care, and the Doctor appeared not to mind for his own reasons, or lack of them, whatever they were.

“Oh!” the Doctor moaned as he took his first bite, stomping his foot on the floor like he’d just taken a strong drink. “That’s just… banana pancakes; is it my birthday?”

Jip paused, swallowing.

“Huh. Mine are regular,” he said. The Doctor looked up.

“You want one?” he asked, proffering a pancake on the end of his fork. Jip shook his head.

“No thanks, I’m a bit of a pancake purist.” The Doctor shrugged, flopping the pancake back onto the stack.

“Glad I grabbed the right plate then,” he said, giving the orange juice a quick shake before uncapping it and pouring some into each glass, then grabbing the kettle and pouring water into the teacups, dropping a bag into each. Now that the sharp edge was off of his hunger, Jip could focus once more on the situation as a whole.

“So,” he asked, “should I be worried that you appear to be, like, adopting me, and I don’t see any other orphan recues around?”

The Doctor picked up the whipped cream can and shook it as well.

“Wouldn’t that be a relief?” he asked as he put a massive spiral over his whole plate, clockwise, outside edge to the center. He put a dollop into his tea, and raised it over his glass of orange juice. Jip placed his hand over the top of the glass, shaking his head.

“Unless you’re after really revolting curds and whey, I wouldn’t,” he said. The Doctor blinked.

“Right! Acids and dairy, right,” he exclaimed, setting the can aside, and resumed eating his newly anointed pancakes.

“Why would it be a relief?” Jip asked, sipping his own juice as he got back to the previous point. He noticed Snidley Whiplash was on his glass; the Doctor’s appeared to feature a bus full of Muppets. The Doctor shuffled all of the pancake cud over to one cheek so he could speak out of the opposite corner of his mouth.

“Well, wouldn’t that mean that any previous orphans had moved on to live full, productive lives?” he asked brightly. Jip snorted.

“Could do. Or it could mean that these are Soylent Pancakes and any minute now Charlton Heston’s going to tear down that hallway shouting that they’re made of people. Or that all the orphans are locked in the basement shackled to sewing machines and that all Nikes are manufactured by a madman in a beehive.”

“I would never! Quite like children. And she’s not a beehive,” the Doctor corrected, “she’s a TARDIS.”

Jip rolled his eyes, gesturing with his fork.

“Now you’re teasing me with the word ‘TARDIS.’ What does it mean already?” he complained. The Doctor nodded, chewing quickly.

“Right, right,” he said after swallowing. “That’s what this sort of ship is called. TARDIS. Stands for time and relative dimension in space. She’s my ship and my home.”

“And rooms vanish?” Jip asked, finishing his last bites of pancake. “Sounds like a pretty dodgy sort of house if you ask me.”

The Doctor grinned widely.

“The dodgiest! She’s brilliant. Looks after me like no one else, takes me everywhere and everywhen, helps me find people who need my help and then helps me help them.”

“Helpful,” Jip snorted.

“I like to think so,” the Doctor beamed. “It’s worked out so far. I met you, didn’t I?”

Jip shook his head, drawing little patterns in the syrup left on the plate with the tines of his fork.

“Sounds like a really roundabout way to meet people, Doc,” he sighed. “You should come out with me; you’d meet loads of people.”

Jip gave up his maple Zen garden as the Doctor cleared the dishes, licking sticky syrup off his fingers as he set one plate atop the other, the utensils on top of that.

“I can meet loads of people anywhere,” he said, plunking them into the sink in a way that would make any housewife cringe, returning to lounge in his chair again. “I wanna meet the ones- good ones, the great ones, the weird ones- who everyone overlooks. They’re always the best.”

Jip hummed at that, not really certain if he believed it, but still curious about the theory.

“And the movers and shakers, not so much?”

“Yeah, the famous ones are usually a disappointment,” the Doctor answered, drizzling dish soap over the stack and frowning at it, turning the water on and giving the stack a squirt with the sprayer hose. Jip was beginning to think that dishes might not be the Doctor’s strong suit, but wasn’t about to pursue it.

“Like who?” he asked instead. The Doctor turned back to him, leaning against the counter, almost as if to hide the dishes behind him, drumming his fingers on the edge, considering.

“Marco Polo was a tosser, tried to steal my TARDIS. Queen Vic made a whole organization to try and imprison me because I made her cross. Alexander the Great was really pretty so-so. Lovecraft was the stupidest smart man, so much insight, but afraid of all the wrong things… anyway. Yeah. Famous people are usually disappointing, whereas unknown people are so often little miracles,” the Doctor regaled him. “Sometimes a lot bigger than little.”

Jip sighed, staring up at the ceiling.

“It’s not like Prince Phillip was invited to the whole do, you know,” he said. “Everyone at that party was ordinary. I mean, not the girl puking purple, obviously, but the only resemblance to Margaret Thatcher was the fact that she was trying to kill me. You don’t wanna meet ordinary people, you don’t wanna meet important people, so how the hell do you find this like… cross section of people who are just special enough?”

The Doctor appeared right above him, looking down at Jip, smiling.

“Easy,” he said. “The right ones find me. I just have to make sure I’m at the right places at the right times.”

“And you’ve got a time machine.”

“Bingo,” the Doctor said, booping Jip’s nose, retracting his hand before Jip could swipe at it. Jip twisted around in the chair to look at the Doctor at a less ridiculous angle.

“So then what? Have you got an autograph book or something?” Jip asked. “What’s the point? What’s the goal?”

“Same as yours, I guess,” the Doctor shrugged. “Enjoying my life, making friends. I try to help people out where I can.”

The Doctor got a secretive little smile on his face.

“Sometimes, you know, people come with me,” he said, “to see it. The universe.”

Jip said nothing for a moment.

“Regular old people,” he said. “People just drop everything and leave with you.”

The Doctor sat on the table, which wobbled a little but didn’t tip, and rested his feet in the seat of his former chair. Jip rotated around, wishing that he’d pick a spot and stick to it.

“Yeah,” the Doctor answered with an easy grin, like ‘of course they do.’ Jip huffed skeptically.

“Fuck the rent, fuck the job, fuck the cat—”

“—hang on!” the Doctor interrupted, looking a little scandalized, but Jip plowed on.

“—and just… go? For how long?” he asked. The Doctor chuckled slightly.

“Time machine, so, you know, so I can have you back tomorrow, if you want. The cat’ll never miss you. If cats ever miss anyone, which isn’t certain.”

Jip’s head shot up.

“Wait, is that an invite?” he asked. “Or are you just being… you know, hypothetical-like?”

The Doctor’s eyebrows knit, perplexed.

“Well yeah it’s an invite! What do you think I’ve been on about this whole time?” the Doctor asked him. Jip rolled his eyes and slapped his hands onto the table.

“How should I know that? You kept going on about saving me, and your little notepad kept ratting me out, but you never said anything about coming with you!”

The Doctor cocked his head, thinking.

“Suppose I didn’t put it in so many words…” he conceded.

“I mean, I’ve only known I was in a space ship for about thirty minutes!” Jip pointed out. “Let alone a time machine, I mean, I’d been thinking this was a building the whole time, so…”

The Doctor looked back at Jip, a little crestfallen.

“So is that a no then?” he asked.

Jip stared. The time travelling, alien, supposedly life-saving, definitely stiffy inducing, whatever-the-prefix-would-be-when-you’re-in-your-nine-hundreds-genarian, straight-edged liar was making sad puppy eyes at him, and Jip didn’t even think it was deliberate.

“I’ll make you a deal,” Jip answered. “I’ll go one place, time, whatever, that you want to go to, and in exchange, you come to one party with me.”

The Doctor pulled a face, and started to argue:

“I’m not doing any—”

“You don’t have to do any drugs, you big girl,” Jip cut him off, “you just have to come to the party, dance, and not hide in the toilets all night. I’m pretty sure you can handle it. And I’ll go to your space picnic or whatever, and, you know, we’ll see. Deal?”

The Doctor appeared to be mulling it over, head tilting from side to side slightly like the whole debate in his head was a game of table tennis, finally turning back to Jip.

“No drugs?” the Doctor double checked. Jip rolled his eyes.

“Didn’t I say you didn’t have to?” he said, then narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “You’re not going to back out on me, are you? Museum trip to the Big Dipper and then you refuse to come to a rave?”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped.

“Oy, no I wouldn’t!” he protested. Jip quirked a grin.

“So we’re on, then?” he asked. “I mean, you’ve got all the time in the world, right? You pick one, and I pick one.”

The Doctor peered at him sidelong, seeming put slightly off balance at being negotiated with in this way.

“I get to pick first, right?” the Doctor asked. Jip smiled reassuringly.

“Not gonna re-neg on me?” Jip asked. “Promise?”

The Doctor nodded earnestly.

“Cross my hearts,” he said. Jip’s face got a bit sterner.

“And you’ll bring me home whenever I want?” he asked a bit more quietly.

The Doctor nodded again, scooting his knees around to face Jip.

“You say the word and fast as I can, I’ll get you home, promise.”

“Then we have a deal,” Jip agreed. The Doctor leapt to his feet, damn near causing Jip to flail over backwards.

“This is going to be brilliant!” the Doctor crowed, bouncing on his toes. “Oh, where am I gonna take you, when are we going to go…”

The Doctor clapped suddenly, making Jip jump, then grabbed his shoulders.

“You,” the Doctor said, “are going to love this! Allons-y!”

Cackling, the Doctor let go and tore out of the room. Jip shook his head and got to his feet, jogging after before the Doctor could lose him in the labyrinth of this house that was also a space ship that was also a time machine.

The man had the best record collection Jip had ever seen. How bad could it possibly be?

*There's quite a good fic which inspired the starred reference to Gallifreyan grammar, which can be read here: Glossophilia, by

astrogirl2

Next bit