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It wasn’t really Malcolm. There had always been something slightly unearthly about Malcolm, slightly ethereal, but not like this. Julius could tell the difference.
And the difference was physical: with a face that was a little older than Malcolm’s would have been, hair longer than he’d ever seen and wild. Sartorial: sharp, yes, but almost too sharp, with a coat that was elegant to the point of being overly so, something Malcolm would never have worn and would have thought too ostentatious for a government official. Something unspeakable, indescribable: a glint in the eyes hinting at an entire universe behind them, an aura projected of a creature greater than the human shell that encompassed it, a soul that took Julius’s breath away in ways that Malcolm’s hadn’t—not that Malcolm hadn’t.
And hate: that familiar kind of hate that reminded Julius so much of Malcolm, the kind of hate that only comes after, and with, a consuming sort of love.
Around them, the building began to shake, and the man who wasn’t Malcolm but hated with the same intensity grabbed Julius’s hand, pulled him along, and said, “Run.”
*
“Whoever you think I am,” Julius said, “I’m not.”
The man looked him over like he was unimpressed and not a little disgusted. “Could say the same to you.”
“Okay,” he said. There had been something in the pipes, and Julius’s first thought had been a terror attack. But the things that had come out of the pipes had been inhuman, small creatures that looked like the nightmares one saw out of the corners of one’s eyes when it was too late at night, too dark, and had been too long between sleep. His brain hadn’t really been able to process what he’d seen, and even now, after having run a good ten minutes with this strange man, he wasn’t sure what he’d run from, exactly. “Can you at least explain what’s going on?”
“Invasion,” he said. “It happens quite often around here, I’ve never really understood why.” He turned to Julius with a frown. “Don’t suppose you’d know, well probably not, you work for the government don’t you? They never know anything, the government.”
“I don’t-” He stopped them in the middle of the panic-filled street, ignoring the people running away (or, in confusion, toward) danger, and grabbed the man by his shoulders. “Who are you? What is going on here? Are these—will these people be safe?”
Some recognition flickered in the man’s eyes, then was gone. “I’m the Doctor. They’ll be fine if you let me do my job.” He was off running again, leaving Julius the decision whether to follow or stay behind.
Taking a deep breath, he chose to follow.
*
Julius wasn’t sure how, but they’d managed to stop the threat. The nightmare creatures were banished through—he couldn’t really explain what. A hole, a rip in the air that had sucked them through, created by the Doctor with some kind of machine that he had brought out of his impossible ship. Julius had helped, in the middle of being shot at by the swarming creatures, and in spite of the strange looks the Doctor was giving him. And when it was over, the Doctor turned to him with a hard expression and said, “You know, you did almost too well.”
He stood stiffly against the Doctor’s suspicions, pointedly ignoring the bizarre ship they stood in, pulling back his awe and fear of a capsule that could be so small on the outside but hold such a vast interior. “Nicholsons don’t back down from a fight,” he said. “Of course I did well.”
The Doctor’s eyes were searching, flickering over Julius’s form like he was some kind of unreadable manuscript. “You truly think that’s your name, don’t you?”
“It’s been my name for as long as I can remember,” he said. He was just as incorrigible as Malcolm, just as paranoid, so much so that Julius wondered if Malcolm hadn’t secretly been this man all along. So much so that his heart hurt and ached for the familiar; he was a weak man, and the fight to keep his distance when presented this loophole was one he would surely back down from. “Come here.”
The Doctor didn’t move—for a moment. Then, he glanced away, surly and with a clenched jaw, and walked to Julius. Julius reached behind him and closed the door, and when the Doctor was within reach, he tugged on the lapels of that too-rich overcoat, pulled him close enough to cup his hands around the Doctor’s jaw, and kissed him. He didn’t taste like Malcolm. He certainly didn’t kiss like him. But he made a sound of surprise, like he finally understood that this wasn’t a kiss from who he’d thought it would be from, and Julius murmured, “I’m not him. Whoever he is. Do you see?”
He did see; Julius saw, too, the quiet heartbreak of knowing that this was only one Julius Nicholson, only one human with a familiar enough face, that this was only someone that looked like whoever the Doctor could love so much that he hated. But the Doctor clenched his eyes shut, leaned forward and kissed Julius back and—he didn’t taste like Malcolm but the feel of him under Julius’s hands, the way he went pliant as Julius turned them both around and shoved him back, the soft, contented moan when his shoulders hit the door and when Julius kneed his legs apart, if he closed his eyes he could recall Malcolm as much as the Doctor was recalling someone else. The words were foreign, whispered against his ear when Julius scraped his teeth against the Doctor’s jaw, but the heat of his breath against Julius’s skin was as familiar as the dig of Malcolm’s hipbones against the flesh of his palms.
It wasn’t really Malcolm, but as long-fingered hands found his belt and clumsily undid it, Julius wasn’t sure it mattered much.