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It’s your day off and you chose to use it wisely. You had decided to waste it with strolling around in the town, in bookshops and hanging around in cafes, to enjoy some music and some fanfiction over a good hot coffee.
The weather is dizzy and grey, but at least it’s not raining, but you are happy when you enter one of the many cafes the street has offered you. You never have been here before, you just have followed an instinct and the burning need for caffeine. The line is short and when it is your turn you order a cappuccino and a blueberry muffin.
After the barista has placed your order in front of you, you pay her and balance your cup and the muffin over to a counter where one can get three different sorts of sugar and different sorts of milk. You twaddle on purpose, you are in no hurry and think long and hard which sugar you want to try out.
When you are finished you turn around to look for a table. Only now you notice, the cafe is crowded and almost all tables are gone. Stretching yourself you spot a free table in the corner of the room. It’s a round table with a sofa and a armchair in front.
Smiling you quickly make your way over before its gone again and when you reach the table, you reach it not alone. A man, a cup in his hand, a bag under his arm wants to claim the table too. He wears glasses and a full beard in black and grey.
You both look at each other, and none of you wants to back away, or be polite and offer the other the table.
“We can share,” you suggest to him, and he smiles, and nods.
“Deal,” and he claims the sofa and you sit down into the big armchair without giving him another look.
You stir your cappuccino with one hand and bring out your IPad with the other, placing it on your knees. Then you check your phone if it is on silent - you hate nothing more than attracting attention with a screaming loud ring tone.
The man across brings out a newspaper and vanishes behind it, only from time to time his arm reaches for his cup but soon you are immersed into the story you are reading and so time passes.
The cafe is full with chatter, and people coming and going. Some music is playing in the background. It’s a nice atmosphere, you think, and place your IPad away. Your eyes are burning and you have no idea how long you have been reading.
You stretch your back and your neck, till it pops audible in your neck and you grown slightly. Looking up you see the man - it’s still the same person - giving you a glance. Obviously he had heard your bones and your gasping. You give him an embarrassed smirk and then reach for your coffee. It’s half empty and cold by now.
Unnerved by yourself you loudly exhale air through your nose and again you lock eyes for a short moment with your counterpart.
“Sorry,” you whisper, and feel as if you disturb him in his thoughts and his restfulness.
One corner of his mouth twitches up, before he looks down again. There you notice he has switched the newspaper against a larger notebook he is writing or drawing in - you can’t tell.
For a few moments you sip from your cold coffee and watch the pen he holds hurry over the pages. It’s mesmerizing and you need to shake your head to tear away with your eyes and your thoughts from it. You not want him think you are staring.
Placing your cup back onto the table, you concentrate on the music and your head starts to go with the rhythm. It’s a song where people whistle and you find yourself whistling too, only for two seconds, then you stop. This time you don’t look up, you only blush and try not to smile over your foolishness. You can feel he’s looking.
You grab for your IPad again and check your mails when something reaches you. When a sound reaches your ears.
First it is faint and one couldn’t hear it over all the chatter, the clinging of the porcelain cups and the music - but you do. You hear. Slowly your lower your IPad while your head raises in the same slow speed.
The sound gets louder, continuous and your heart starts to race and all the muscles in your body are tense now. You stare in front of you, but all your concentration is with your ears and the sound you take in. You can’t tell if you stare into the mans face, at his chest or simply at his bag beside him. Your left hand lets go of the IPad and reaches without looking at your phone that lays aside of you. Warm fingers embracing cold metal in a tight grip.
It’s the sound of the Tardis.
It still goes on, it hasn’t stopped yet, but you know that one maybe only plays a trick on you here.
Just a few more seconds, you think, your eyes falling shut in hope for more. You are ready, ready to go. To wander off.
And then someone in the cafe answers the phone and the sound is gone. As usual. Your hand lets go of your phone, the only thing you would have taken with you and your teeth bite into the flesh of your cheeks. You’re disappointed, of course. For a second or just a fraction of it, you have believed. You not believe in many things, but you do believe in the Doctor, and that one day this pretentious blue box will finally land in your backyard. You keep that to yourself, to avoid suspicious looks and words about reality.
When you open your eyes again, you meet the eyes of the stranger. He has stopped with his pen, and you can read in his expression, that he has observed you and your reaction. Certainly he has heard the sound too, like half of the cafe.
You smile at him, one of your sad smiles, the feeling of disappointment is bigger than the feeling of having acted embarrassing.
“I always do this,” you explain him, with a shrug of your left shoulder and don’t know why you do tell him.
His eyes flicker for a moment behind you, to the man who has answered the phone, then back to you.
You don’t expect him to say something, at most some banalities, so it surprises you, when he says, “It’s not a bad thing to do.”
Now you look at him longer than a few seconds, you become aware of him, and who he is. You are not sure, because such things not happen to you. And it’s Wednesday, and he shouldn’t be here, you think. Isn’t there a series to shoot? Maybe not, you can’t tell.
It’s the little frown on your forehead, this fine line between your eyebrows, that betrays your recognition of him.
It’s hard to see, under all that facial hair, that he smirks, it almost slips you.
Lowering your gaze, toward his hands and the notebook, you smile too, “It is somehow… stupid, isn’t it?”
Not looking at him helps you to form words, especially words about ‘the Doctor’ and about ‘Tardis sounds’, “Waiting for things maybe not to come.”
A second goes and you find the courage to look at him, as you want to dare him. You believe in this, and yet you have voiced doubt, to him. It feels like a betrayal, things you do, because you care about opinions of others. Aside this show, this man in front of you, has thought you not to think like this, and that you remember and that is why you raise your chin and force a sparkle into your eyes. It tells him, that what you said, is not what you think.
It seems he doesn’t know what to say, or he doesn’t want to attract too much attention, but he doesn’t look away. His attention is still at you.
“Are you, who I think you are?” you finally ask.
He now closes his book, and looks around in the room, you both know mentioning his name too loud would attract attention. There are a group of girls not far from your table, you can’t see but hear and you can feel they might have made already their assumptions.
“Who do you think I am?” he asks with a smile, at ease for whatever will come, but also ready to leave. His notebook has vanished inside his bag.
‘You’re Peter Capaldi,’ you could say or, ‘Your’re the Doctor.’
You don’t, instead you reach inside your bag and pull out your keys, what makes one of his infamous eyebrows arc.
Seeing it, you give it a chuckle, pointing at your own eyebrows, “You’ll betray yourself with them.”
It doesn’t help him to keep control of them, the other brow joins the arc and it seems he really has independent eyebrows.
Now you place your keys on the table, and he needs a second to see that it is not about the keys, but about the pendant. It’s also a key, but another kind. A while ago you have bought yourself a replica of the eighth Doctor Tardis key and now wear it as a keychain.
“That’s who you are.”
He strokes over his beard, nodding at you, giving you one of his smoulders, while he reaches absently for his bag with the other hand. His eyes dart again to the group of girls and you sense time is soon up. You can hear a metallic clatter in his bag, when his hands appears again and places a set of keys onto the table beside yours. It has the same pendant.
“It’s me.”
You need to laugh, and you cover your mouth with your hand to keep your excitement down. Then you catch a snatch of a conversation from behind you, ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’
He has caught it too. “I am sorry, I think I have to go,” he takes his keys away again and so do you.
“You mean you have to run,” you joke.
“As always,” he whispers back, already standing, pulling his jacket tight and a scarf around his neck, half covering up his chin with it.
Then he gives you a pensive look that makes you nervous and when you are about to ask him what is the matter, he quickly pulls out his notebook again and scribbles something down onto a page, before ripping it out, folding it in a haste and pressing it into your hand. It’s also a short embrace of his long fingers around your hand and you watch it happen without reacting yourself. When he retreats you feel the paper in your hand and look up again.
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Then he is gone, vanished out of the cafe and you are left behind, staring toward the exit, crossing views with the three girls who watch you quizzically as if they want to know what you have to do with Peter Capaldi. At the look on their faces you know they have decided that it wasn’t him and you can only smirk about their mistake, finally opening your palm to unfold the paper.
Written in a haste, and you need a bit to encrypt the words and when you have, you smile. There you make yourself a promise, to not stop. You will not stop believing and not stop dreaming. People will ask you why, and you will say, all smug and confident,
“Because the Doctor told me so.”
The piece of paper will find a good place in your room, framed, and always in sight, to remember you at this day, this little happening. It will always will warm your heart, when you read the words the man has scribbled down with a smile;
‘Never stop waiting. Dr ?????’