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The first time the students see Ms. Oswald’s new friend, they have no idea what to make of him. Or her. Or any of it, really.
He’s driving a dark blue Camaro. Except it’s not a nice new one, it’s not fresh off the lot—it’s old. Like him. And though it looks like it’s well-liked and well cared for, it also looks like it’s ready for the transmission to state it’s giving up and retiring to Mallorca.
And he—he does not look like the sort of person their sweet, Disney princess of a teacher would even know exists. He looks, with his close cropped salt and pepper hair, his matte black sunglasses, and a grin that could send a serial killer running, like a proper Bad Influence. So when he pulls up to the school for the first time, and she runs to his car with a smile, the students have no clue what to think or say about it.
*
That is, at first.
By the next day, rumors are flying. He’s her dad (except one girl has seen Ms. Oswald’s dad and he looks like an accountant), he’s her strange neighbor (one boy lives in the same building, he’s never seen that guy around), he’s an uncle (she’s mentioned not having any aunts or uncles—and at first it’s presumed he’s ashamed of him, but she didn’t seem that ashamed running to his car the other day).
The consensus by the following day is he is her drug dealer. It’s as good an explanation as any. She is, after all, very happy to see him, which is exactly how they think someone might look if they saw their drug dealer.
*
(If they had been paying attention at all, they might have noticed that her nice friend with the nice tweed suits and the nice bowties and the adorable hair had also driven a shitty car. Maybe even the same car. Maybe even with the same Bad Influence vibe to him.
But that had been more difficult a thing to notice, what with him having been the sort of person who trips over his own feet and gets distracted by ice cream trucks.)
*
New Guy drives up late one day, when very few students are hanging around, and gets out of his car. He’s skinny but has the appearance of someone who throws elbows with abandon, and the expensive-looking dark coat he wears with shit-stomper boots looks more like something he’d nicked rather than something he’d bought and had tailored. It fits him perfectly anyway.
Ms. Oswald seems a little cross at him coming to see her that day, and they get into a little fight outside the school—nothing major, mostly in hushed tones, and it’s barely loud enough for some of the students to overhear her calling him “Doctor” and him calling her “Clara” and “impossible.”
He notices a couple of students staring before she does, and he tells them, “Would you like some advice?” They have no idea what to say, and he says, “Fuck your homework, skip school, get into as much trouble as you like.”
Ms. Oswald is even more cross. “Doctor!”
He glances at her, frowns, then adds, “Fuck your homework except for hers. Do her homework. It’s important.”
The fact that that statement mollifies her is not lost on the students.
*
It is, finally, one of the teachers who broaches the subject.
“How,” asks Danny—tall, strapping, nice Danny—”How do you even know him?”
Clara frowns in the break room, stirs some sugar into her tea. “Dunno. I just do.”
“He’s very strange, isn’t he?” Danny asks.
That gets her hackles up. “He’s perfectly nice.”
“No, I’m sure-”
The conversation subsides there, and ends completely when Mr. Chesterton gets wind of the situation, laughs, and wishes her the best of luck.
*
The Doctor isn’t so strange that he can’t get a job at the school. He teaches art and art history. He is actually very well qualified in the subject. The students assume it’s due to the large amount of artwork he’s probably stolen.
The students also notice him hanging around with Ms. Oswald, taking lunch with her, giving her a lift home in his incredibly awful but incredibly beloved car, occasionally trying to get that car to start in the first place in the staff lot while she leans against it and makes derisive quips. The students notice a lot, but the rumor mill eventually dies down because now he’s not a bad influence, he is A Teacher and that’s really quite boring in the grand scheme of things.
*
There is one day. There is one day. There is one day.
There is one day where they ride in together, on her motorbike, which she’d always had but this fact had never seemed so noteworthy, with her in front and him straddling it behind her, with his arms around her waist.
The students start talking again: he is no drug dealer. He isn’t an art thief. He’s not just a teacher and he isn’t her boyfriend, either.
He is her man-friend. He’s her bad influence-friend. He dismounts the bike after her, still pressed close to her, and she smiles up at him like she is also his bad influence-friend.
Ms. Oswald walks into class wearing shit-stomper boots under a pair of jeans and the Doctor walks into class wearing a waistcoat over his oxford shirt and a set of cufflinks. Somewhere, Mr. Chesterton is laughing even harder.
*
Nobody ever quite figures out how they met. This is probably for the best.