best_enemies | Like It's 1999 4b/?: Negotiations (Reply)

Like It’s 1999 Part 4b/?: Negotiation

Wordcount 8,679 [4a + 4b]

Rating: R for references to sex, language, and drug use, eventual NC-17

Pairing: Ten/Jip, Ten/Simm!Master

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 20^th Century.

Previous bits: 1, 2, 3
4a

The Doctor grabbed hold of Jip’s arm the moment it was in a sweatshirt sleeve and hauled him toward yet another door (so many doors, this place) and threw it open. Warm light poured in, and the sound of the birds in the trees and distant laughter, echoed by the Doctor as he tossed Jip out the door and bounded after him. There was a step down which Jip missed, and he stumbled, tumbling to the grass outside in a small clearing among white birch-like trees. Through a break in between the branches, Jip could see a beautiful afternoon, a pumpkin colored sun hanging in a periwinkle sky. Between the trunks of those same trees, the scene past them looked a bit like a posh renaissance fair, everyone done up in jewel colored tunics embroidered in metallic thread. Not one of them appeared bothered in the slightest by the arrival of the TARDIS and her passengers.

Speaking of.

Jip turned to look at the ship, having been unconscious when he’d been brought in the first time. How in the hell had something so vast landed in the woods without alerting everyone in a five kilometer radius?

The Doctor was locking up the door to a blue police box, and then turned and frowned at Jip on the ground.

“Have you got some sort of inner ear problem?” the Doctor asked, tucking the key inside his jacket and putting his hands in his pockets. Jip continued staring past him at the blue box.

“What?” he asked stupidly. The Doctor crouched down on his haunches, folding his height easily and tilting his head at Jip.

“You’ve spent more time on the ground than you have standing,” the Doctor explained.

This. Is. Excruciating, the posh voice whined, punctuated with a snarl. Jip got up from the grass under his own power, the Doctor rising as well.

“My ears are fine,” he said, shoving his other arm into the loose sweatshirt sleeve with unnecessary force, having not quite gotten around to it between being grabbed, being tossed, falling, and getting up again. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed. He whipped out the sonic screwdriver and stepped to Jip’s side, unconvinced, taking hold of his earlobe and pointing the thing at Jip’s ear. Jip twitched as the Doctor did whatever he did that activated the shrill noise and flinched away, swatting at his hands.

“Stop that!” he demanded, clapping his hands over his ears, tempted to cocoon his whole head with the sweatshirt in self-defense. “My ears are completely fine!”

“Yeesh, all right!” the Doctor huffed. He let up on whatever button was making the screwdriver shriek like gang of pissed off tropical insects and put it away. Jip cautiously lowered his hands only when it was safely out of sight.

“No balance beams, tightropes or high heels for you, though,” the Doctor added.

“I’ll try to cope,” Jip grumbled, rolling his eyes, turning to peer through the trees. He leaned his forearm against one papery trunk and tried to gauge a good angle of approach for him and the Doctor to integrate themselves without drawing much attention. “So. What now? I reckon maybe if we went ‘round the block, we could come in from that alley—”

It wasn’t a suggestion by the Doctor that caused Jip to break off, but the man himself swaggering out into his view from their hiding place.

“Oh for… oy! Wait for me!” Jip shouted, pushing through the brush to catch up. The Doctor paused and clapped him on the shoulder like he hadn’t just meandered off without Jip. With the crowds around them, Jip wasn’t really in much of a position to give him an earful. Side by side, they strolled down the cobblestone street. Eventually Jip’s seething didn’t entirely subside, but at least went to low tide.

There was so much to take in: the slightly odd color of the sky and their setting sun, which had apparently led to slightly different tinted greenery, the trees and bushes tending more towards the chartreuse side of things. At the same time, so many basic things were the same: Buildings were made of brick, sidewalks were smooth concrete, stores had signs indicating what they sold with a snazzy sounding name, and there were paper adverts for concerts, plays, businesses and politicians.

The people seemed perfectly ordinary at first glance: Two arms, two legs, one head, no extra bits that Jip could see, anyway. The Doctor paused at a light post to read a particular campaign poster.

“There are your real dragons,” the Doctor said, tapping the nose on the flyer. “Looks like it’s campaign season. He’ll never win with a dour expression like that, makes Nixon look like Mel Torme…”

“Morjamsen… sounds Swedish.” Jip leaned against the pole, glancing around as subtly as he could before picking at the Doctor’s sleeve urgently.

“They look human,” Jip muttered quietly to the Doctor, and the inhabitants did, though all skin tones, like the greenery, appeared to have a more golden cast to them than he’d seen on Earth.

“You,” the Doctor countered, resuming his walk, “look Briedean.”

Jip rolled his eyes, scurrying after him.

“Well so do you!” he pointed out. The Doctor laughed, walking backwards and beaming directly in Jip’s face.

“I look Time Lord,” the Doctor corrected him, crossing his eyes and poking out his tongue. Jip couldn’t stifle his laugh at that.

“Well then so do I, apparently!” he answered, giving the Doctor a playful shove. The Doctor dropped the ridiculous expression and let the momentum of the push spin him around to march forward again.

“Exactly!” he cheered. “Which is a very open minded attitude to have toward the rest of the cosmos, so keep it up. If you’re not speciesist it’ll take the edge off the culture shock.”

Speciesist is not a word. He made that up, so if he asks you to donate to the anti-speciesism campaign, it’s a scam, the voice grumbled. Jip didn’t bother to relay it.

“What’s with all the dragons?” he asked instead, since there were so many winged red lizards all over everything you’d think Wales had made the World Cup.

“Told you they used to have a dragon problem!” the Doctor answered smugly. Jip surveyed the area: Dragon flag, dragon balloon, child playing with a dragon plush, chalk drawing of a dragon on the pavement, dragon banner…

“What kind of dragon problem?” Jip asked him, gazing around at the crimson, orange and gold streamers, ragged on the edges and lightweight to flicker in the breeze like flames, which hung from nearly every structure. “Do all the flags and plushies clog the sewers?”

“Less public works, more large dragons eating people and lighting things on fire, according to legend,” the Doctor clarified, continuing his stroll and either failing to notice or outright ignoring the fact that Jip had stopped walking and blanched. “So, you know, the usual kind. The whole point of all this is that it’s a bit like Halloween on Earth. The dragons see all the fireworks, bonfires and the like and assume the city is already occupied. Happens at the end of every summer when the leaves start to turn, which is when the dragons supposedly would mate and try to find new territory.”

“Actual dragons,” Jip said, incredulous. “Saint George fairy tale forked-tongue… you’re fucking with me.”

The Doctor turned back around, hands in his pockets and shrugged.

“Not at the moment, no,” he said mildly. Jip thought the Doctor winked at him, but wasn’t sure, and was too busy contemplating the possibility of giant carnivorous flying lizards to really be concerned about what was or wasn’t going on between the Doctor and himself. Mostly.

At least I don’t have an erection, Jip thought half-heartedly to himself as he glanced nervously up at the sky.

The Doctor sauntered back over, and if he was aware of Jip’s secondary inner turmoil, he didn’t show it, instead comforting him about the first:

“Oh, there hasn’t been a dragon sighting since the earliest days of their written history. Total myth and legend stuff, I reckon. Or it could be that they did exist, but went extinct. Bit like the dinosaurs.”

“Pretty elaborate excuse for a festival,” Jip commented, stopping in his tracks as a passing stranger tapped him on the arm. She handed him a square paper lantern on a stick, as well as one to the Doctor, which made a great deal more sense when he noticed the little badge she wore that said ‘Official Festival Staff.’

“Thanks so much!” the Doctor cried in delight, examining the flickering light within, and the woman just smiled and kept walking, lanterns bobbing like luminous balloons. “Look how gorgeous. It’s not an excuse; it’s tradition! Look how happy everyone is! Celebration of the fact that we’re all alive and not a snack for a larger predator. Lasted from midsummer to mid-autumn in the old days, but they keep it to a week now.”

The Doctor’s joy was infectious, to the point that Jip swore he could feel the exuberance coming off of him like sunshine. In the shade of the late afternoon light, Jip noticed that the Doctor’s face was peppered with light freckles, like distant stars. His bright smile didn’t wrinkle the thin skin over his nose, just around his eyes, and that made his stomach feel so warm.

Jip was hit with the sudden realization that he’d never kissed someone with freckles. For some reason, this flipped a switch in his head: Why on earth was he being resistant to feeling happy? Because of a few tumbles, an inadvertent O.D. of sorts, a bumpy ride? It was clearly unbecoming of a professional reveler such as himself. What embarrassing thing did he think was going to happen if he cut loose? Was there even the slightest chance that it could be more mortifying than his first impression of surviving an alien encounter due to impotence?

“So how does one celebrate not being a dragon-snack?” Jip asked, resolving to get into the spirit of things and stop ogling the Doctor’s freckles, particularly since his trousers were starting to feel a bit snug. Again. “Fireworks, you said?”

The Doctor looked up at the sky, squinting at the sun, then turned back to Jip.

“This planet’s got a really slow sunset, so the fireworks are hours off. Kites until then, big gorgeous firework display this evening. We can catch it from the field over on the north side of town. There’s a big buffet afterward, music, some games for the kids,” the Doctor beamed. “It’s gonna be great. It’s like gigantic picnic, and everyone’s family today!”

Jip had to admit that it was beautiful, that the joy on everyone’s face didn’t really need much of an explanation, let alone an excuse. How many times had he gone after exactly that, dancing on E? How many times had he longed for just a few more minutes of that very feeling, the one in which he was connected to everybody else in the room, all threat of alienation gone? If he could come to an alien world and manage not to feel alienated, then maybe it wasn’t all a chemical illusion. Maybe there really was a thread, something, running through everyone.

Jip caught a glimpse of color out of the corner of his eye and turned.

“Oh cool,” he exclaimed, scampering over to a cobblestone bridge that looked like it should have a misunderstood cartoon troll living underneath it. Off in the sky, there was a swirling red serpent twisting, rising, and dipping. He looked over his shoulder as the Doctor came up behind him. “That’s a kite?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, frowning slightly. “Specialized silk, designed to catch air currents. Don’t go running off on me, got no way to find you if you get lost!”

Jip ignored him as the kite, easily a hundred and fifty meters long, rose straight into the air, the orange belly like a geyser of fire, and then it dove. Jip could see its whiskered face, two mica-shaded lanterns forming its glowing eyes, looking for all the world like it was coming straight down to devour him. Jip couldn’t move an inch, eyes wide and lips parted slightly. Just as he thought for sure he’d feel the graze of (hopefully silken) teeth, it passed him, the head diving below the bridge. Jip laughed in both relief and wonder and set down his lantern, leaning far over the stone railing, one foot in the air, the toe of his other foot the only thing still in contact with the ground and reached.

“Careful!” the Doctor cried, dropping his own lantern and grabbing the belt loops at the back of Jip’s jeans to keep him from going over the edge. In spite of the Doctor’s concern for his safety, Jip got his reward as his fingertips skimmed over the kite, the silk flowing underneath them like rushing water. He felt like a bloody hero, like he was going through some sort of medieval rite of passage into manhood by daring to touch a beast so grand, even if it was just pretend. Peals of laughter bubbled out of him, the blood rushing to his head, the silk of the kite so sensitive that it rippled under the little bit of additional air from Jip’s lungs as he cackled himself dizzy while the Doctor hung on for dear life.

“C’mon, you’re taller than I am, you can probably reach it,” Jip said to him, righting himself. “I won’t let you fall over.” The Doctor released his belt loops, Jip standing behind him and grabbing onto the tail of his jacket. The Doctor didn’t need to lean over as far as Jip had to touch the kite, but Jip hung on anyway, just in case. The Doctor straightened and smiled.

“Quite a grip you’ve got,” he commented as Jip let go. Jip grinned.

“You’re my ride,” Jip pointed out, and continued down the bridge. They lapsed into silence for a while, people watching, making their way over to the field where most of the festivities were apparently to be held. Several people were tending fire pits, and whatever was cooking over them smelled unbelievably tasty.

Baskets of fruit that looked like something like an apple that was slightly fuzzy, like a peach, were just sitting out, as well as maybe-grapes, possibly-cherries, free for people to take. Jip reached out and was about to grab one, but hesitated. The Doctor looked at him quizzically, then reached into the basket and tossed Jip a downy apple. He nabbed some maybe-grapes for himself, popping them into his mouth one by one and having a seat in the grass, and then glanced up at Jip, who was still staring at the fruit with an expression of concern.

“What’s wrong?” the Doctor asked.

“How do I know that this isn’t poisonous to me?” Jip asked. The Doctor’s eyebrows went up, and the maybe-grape he’d tossed, intending to catch in his mouth, bounced off of his cheekbone.

“Why would I poison you?” he asked, expression dismayed.

“No, I mean—how do you know this won’t poison me?” Jip tried again. The Doctor looked relieved.

“I know an awful lot,” the Doctor said brightly, retrieving his grape, buffing it on his jacket, and eating it.

“About fruit?” Jip asked dubiously.

“About everything!” the Doctor beamed. It should’ve seemed arrogant, or cocky, but instead it just seemed sweet, like a little kid. That somehow reassured Jip more than any certificate from any university his tour guide could’ve shown him.

Jip took a bite of the downy apple, which exploded into his mouth like it was full of cider, and sat beside him. Together, they watched the sun setting in the… whatever direction the sun sat in Briedea. Jip swallowed, and looked over at the Doctor, all freckles and placidity with his eyes half-shut in the orange sunlight, reclined in a field with his remaining maybe-grapes resting on his chest.

“Why don’t you live here?” Jip asked him, trying to sound casual. The Doctor turned to him, a bit more attentive as he propped himself up on his elbows.

“What makes you think I don’t?” he asked curiously, resting his chin on one hand and spilling his maybe-grapes, which Jip caught and set in his own lap.

“You said the little blue box was your house,” Jip reminded him, plucking one for himself. “And we parked it in the woods, and you don’t dress like you live here, and—”

“All right, all right, I don’t live here,” the Doctor gave in. “Good deductive reasoning, though.”

“So why don’t you?” Jip asked. Meanwhile, the posh voice muttered under its lack of breath about the sad state of affairs if being flat out told something had become the hallmark of good deductive reasoning.

“Why would I?” the Doctor asked in the tone of one to whom a particular idea had never occurred.

“You’ve been going on about how great it is. It’s obviously gorgeous, so if it’s half as brilliant as you say—” Jip began. He could certainly do with a flat here. Hell, a room in a flat here would be about as peaceful as any of the country estates outside Cardiff. But the Doctor interrupted:

“There’s thousands upon millions of places in the universe that are gorgeous and brilliant. Why would I settle for one?”

Jip snorted.

“I thought you said this one was special, rare.”

The Doctor still looked utterly perplexed.

“They’re all special and rare,” he answered. Ah. Jip had heard this sort of reasoning before from serial monogamist friends, as well as those of both genders who could be described as indiscriminate at best and a bit slutty and delusional at worst.

“Sounds like planetary polygamy to me,” Jip shrugged.

“Given how many people each brilliant planet tends to have, I think I’m allowed,” the Doctor countered. “It’s not as if they’re beholden to me alone. You humans’ll soon know that better than anyone. You’ll work out how to break away from Earth eventually, and you won’t feel a stitch of guilt about it. Take you, right now: Do you feel guilty for being away from Earth?”

“No, ‘course not,” Jip said. “I might start if people were worried about me… but Earth’s still home. You’ve gotta have a home, right?”

It was a bit hard to tell in the unusual sunlight, but Jip could swear that the Doctor paled a bit.

“I do: the TARDIS,” he said, voice even bordering on monotone, and the muscles in his jaws tensing. For the life of him, Jip couldn’t figure out why in the hell this seemed to be making him cross.

“Your home’s the size of a closet!” Jip protested, trying to lighten the mood a bit. The Doctor rolled his eyes scornfully, which sort of squashed that attempt.

“You’ve been inside; you know perfectly well she’s got plenty of room for me.”

“But she’s not a planet,” Jip protested, trying to get his point across. “No one brings you mail, you don’t have weather—”

“She’s close enough for me,” the Doctor said, brows knitting. “She has to be. Think of her as a house-boat if it bothers you so much. I’m one man; I don’t need a whole planet all to myself. I’m not the Little Prince.”

“Pretty small planet if I remember right, and he had that rose, too, but I take your point,” Jip said, thinking back to sitting at home, watching telly when he was small, bowl of cereal in his lap. The Doctor looked away, and Jip peered at his profile, how his jaw jutted out slightly in consternation. Maybe that was what the Doctor thought of him: Interesting plant life, but all that was on offer. “Or am I the rose, now?”

Jip felt a little bit like he was under a bell jar, separated from everyone else by something too fragile be really protective. The Doctor looked at him, hard and distant, and the silence before he spoke was a little bit terrifying, the drums in Jip’s head intensifying to a crescendo.

“You’re not Rose,” he said. Jip stared back, trying to gauge the right response and finally settled on backing down. He didn’t want to get stranded who knew how far from home, no matter how idyllic the place might seem. Especially since his ride was looking more and more like leaving Jip here might have some appeal.

“Nope,” he said, swallowing, “not one thorn. Gotta be honest, I never read it— the book. Only saw the cartoon.”

The Doctor’s stern expression reset into something more nonchalant and bright, the shift so sudden that it wasn’t altogether comforting.

“Well, maybe you can pluck it out of the library when we’re done here,” he said, “since it seems like Jiggery Bespokery isn’t really to your taste.”

“Well,” Jip admitted, trying to hide his obvious relief, “I haven’t actually started it yet, so…”

He trailed off with a bit of a guilty look, feeling a bit like he was back in school and didn’t have his assignment. The Doctor looked perplexed, waiting for him to finish.

“Got a bit busy, the vanishing room, the record collection…” Jip added. The Doctor’s eyebrows popped up.

“Oh, right!” the Doctor said. “The wandering off, forgot about that. Ooooh, look, lemonade!”

Jip’s mouth hung slightly open as he watched the Doctor leap up and stride over to a giant glass samovar full of pink liquid which just stood beside the sidewalk. He poured himself a cone and took a large glug.

“Or something… tasty though!” he called back to Jip, then gripped the paper cone in his teeth while he poured another for Jip, bringing them both back over. Jip propped himself up on one elbow and took the cone, looking at it for a moment, then glancing back at the Doctor sipping at his blithely. On one hand, the beverage seemed like a peace offering, on the other, the Doctor seemed utterly oblivious to the idea that the peace (if one could really call this chaotic whirlwind ‘peace’) between them had just been disrupted. There was nothing left to do but to take a sip.

“Not bad,” Jip agreed. There was an overtone of something similar to strawberry, or raspberry, or some sort of berry Jip had heard of but not tried, like goose or boysen. “Kill for a pint, though.”

The Doctor snorted, folding his long skinny legs and sitting next to Jip’s shoulder.

“It’s perfect lemonade weather; you don’t need an intoxicant for every single occasion, you know!” he replied, seeming to sulk a bit that Jip found any aspect less than perfect. Jip smiled, and took another sip.

“It’s the single best lemonade I’ve ever had,” Jip offered as a concession. “Truly. Couldn’t be better if it was fulla tequila and gold flake.”

Only slightly tainted by the flavor of freshly kissed ass, the posh voice muttered in disgust, but Jip’s little surrender seemed to make the Doctor feel better, or at least smooth his ruffled feathers. It wouldn’t do to be the only two arguing in a whole city of contented people.

Or, at least, mostly contented. The dour man still peered from two thirds of the campaign posters stuck up on every surface that would accommodate them, and there appeared to be a small group picketing, holding signs on sticks as they surrounded a man standing on some sort of makeshift platform, ranting.

“They look a bit put out,” Jip commented, squinting to read the signs. “‘The End is Nigh,’ ‘Repent for the cleansing fire—’ Oh. They’re nutters.”

The Doctor shrugged.

“Every legend’s got someone who whole-heartedly believes in it,” he said, putting on his glasses and studying the signs himself. “‘Course, if you were to go home to Manchester and start telling people that you were abducted by a time travelling alien…”

“Right, I’d be the nutter,” Jip agreed. He thought about trying to explain that his conspiracy theorist friend Moff would be pretty easy to convince, but then the Doctor was walking over to the people tromping around in a circle.

“‘Scuse me! Beg pardon, sorry,” the Doctor said to them, his hands in his jacket pockets. “Um… end, nigh, could you be a bit more specific?”

The group paused in mid-march, a few of them propping their signs on their shoulders to rest.

“The dragons are going to come back, devour the faithless, and then cleanse the land with fire,” one of the sign holders recited.

“This year!” another exclaimed, bouncing on her toes a bit, looking up at the man on the platform. “Right?”

“Probably,” he said firmly. “The chances are really quite good for this year to be the year.”

“Good to know!” the Doctor said, nodding. “Excellent. So. We’ll keep our eyes peeled then.”

He engages imbeciles like this all the time, just so you know. This is going to be a near constant. Any lunatic, sociopath, or dithering idiot that turns up, he’s going to be scampering over to it like a puppy, the posh voice warned. Go get more of that lemonade, I liked that.

“Well they’re certainly on something stronger than pink lemonade and fuzzy apples, that’s for sure,” Jip said. That was a thought, actually, and he glanced back over his shoulder, considering.

“Don’t even think about it,” the Doctor said tersely. “They’re onto something but they’re not on anything, and you’re not buying any of it even if they are.”

Jip made a little face.

“I never buy from people in cults,” he replied, though he had been considering breaking that rule, particularly if there were going to be fireworks. “No need to nanny me.”

The Doctor gave him a pointed look, lips pursed. Jip tilted his head from one side to the other, giving the Doctor a wry grin.

“Okay, okay,” he sighed. “Saved my life, right, got it, how long are you going to keep bringing that up?”

The Doctor sputtered, nearly spitting out some of his juice before managing to swallow so he could be indignant.

“It was only yesterday!” he grumbled. “For someone who claims to like being alive so much, you’re awfully cavalier about near death experiences and warnings regarding the end of the world.”

“That’s my first really near death experience, I think, at least that I was old enough to appreciate. And we’ve got apocalypse nutters in Cardiff. The signs are almost word for word. I don’t plan to make a habit of apocalypses or near death experiences anyway,” Jip chuckled. He turned his face up to the sky as a twisting shadow fell over them. His head tilted, as he looked over the Doctor’s shoulder, getting to his feet. He plucked one of the campaign posters from a nearby tree, (“re-elect Haufstedder,” it said. This candidate appeared more charismatic than the one the Doctor had likened to Nixon) and used it to wrap up the maybe-grapes he’d taken from the Doctor so that the juice wouldn’t get into the pocket of his sweatshirt. That accomplished, he sipped his drink, walking backwards toward the Doctor as he watched another dragon kite spiral towards them.

The Doctor got up as well, contemplating the red streak in the air while he and Jip both sipped. Jip smiled, sticking one hand in his pocket and shaking his head in awe. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that he was being watched. The Doctor looked at him so expectantly, holding his breath. Jip wasn’t really sure what he was expecting to happen, didn’t know what reaction from Jip could possibly be more amazing than the twisting silk serpent. The Doctor just kept staring, though, and Jip colored slightly and smiled bashfully, face lit, then shadowed, then lit again by the kite blocking the sun, and murmured:

“They really are the most amazingly realistic ki—”

The Doctor was knocked off his feet by a gust of air at his back so strong it looked like he’d just had an entire sack of laundry launched at his back via cannon. Jip wasn’t really much in the forming words frame of mind (beyond a single, drawn out ‘fuck’) as a chilly, scaly hand wrapped around his torso and plucked him off his feet. His stripy trainers and awful, slightly mismatched socks pedaled in the air then absolutely froze when he realized that getting free would mean multiple broken bones and likely death.

Jip stopped roaring as he felt the air get cold and thin, being dragged (was it still dragging if it was through the air?) to who the hell knew where. The hooded sweatshirt did precious little to protect him from the cutting wind. Eventually he managed to catch his breath enough to start begging for his life.

4c (and 4d, if it turns out that it's STILL too long for a single post) will be up in a few days, I reckon.