Work Text:
It has been a long day. You dare say a long night because that was all you saw from the day. It had been dark when you had left home to go to work, and it is dark once more when you leave the office. Not that there had been any sun between the hours. It had been misty and cloudy. All winter and a whiff of depressing. A cold breeze is going on since a couple of days too.
Not the After-Christmas-Time you like, but exactly the one you’ve expected. You're back on track at work after a few days off. Having spent them at home in peace and silence. Watching Netflix and a bit of Doctor Who. Sorting some papers.
You have visited family at the particular days, of course. It seemed necessary, and so you had brought yourself to go to an annoying dinner with them. Not that you didn't like them, no, you did. As long as they stay away from you at least ten feet for exactly 351 days a year.
Family, so complicated. Too much chit chat. Too much of “ME” and you never were one for taking up the competition with your siblings and other relatives to push yourself into the centre. What for? Too much energy wasted for so little attention.
After the holidays you returned home to your apartment, to your cat and you wrapped yourself into your cosy blue blanket. No, there wasn’t a police phone box on it. Nevertheless, the colour of it had been chosen wisely.
So after the end of work, you went your way, now waiting for to train to arrive. While doing so, you shove your nose deeper into the woollen loop scarf and start to fumble your headphones through all the layers of clothes and scarves toward your ears when you see the train approach. Before the wind, driven by the waggons, can hit you, you flip the collar of your coat upwards.
It's a cosy, green thing and an inch too big but your size was out of stock, and when you saw the eleventh Doctor Green coat on sale, you had to order it. While driving in the back seat of a car toward an appointment for work praying that the darn internet connection on your phone will at least last until the PayPal payment was made.
Green never was your colour, but this coat is just perfect and totally your style. It keeps away the cold, and it is Doctor Who — what is very cool.
Now people mingle toward the open doors, and you bump into someone you only can see the eyes. A man wrapped under tons of layers and scarves too. Mumbling a sorry, you find your usual spot by a window, standing.
Sometimes you use the train, at times the bus and sometimes the car, but the weather had just been too nasty, and so you had gone for the public transport.
After a minute, the train is moving; you fumble again with your headphones you suddenly hearing a bit of a giggle. First silent and then louder and louder. Raising your head, you find yourself observed by a group of three teenage girls. Unsure how to take it you turn around, in case it is not you they mean with their joyfulness and the nervous whispering, let alone the pointing. Nobody is behind you, so, it seems they mean you.
Finally one of them steps up to you. Yes, they so mean you. Leaning back in anticipation you blink at her, totally forgetting that most of your face is still hidden behind the dark fabric.
"You... You aren't by any ch-chance," the girl motions up and down your coat and an insane idea pops up in your head and falls into place, "M-att Smith?"
Unsure of how long you just stare at the girl, you almost break out into a burst of disrespecting laughter. Only the so very hopeful eyes of the girl let you keep your composure. "Uhm...," you remember the one time someone told you on Tumblr you would look like Tom Hiddleston, "Uhm." The girl gets joined by the others. Maybe it's a prank. Or not.
For a moment you wish you had a bit more of guts and a pen — you would just start to sign a piece of paper as Matt Smith and hand it out. Only to flee out of the train the next station.
You reach for your scarf and pull it down, revealing yourself, throwing a silent look at them that tells them what kind of mistake they have made.
The girl who has asked blushes so hard you wonder that someone can develop such a shade of red. She apparently wants to sink into a hole that doesn't turn up while her friends cover their faces and start to giggle again.
You reach out for a moment to the girl, touching her arm, smirking at her. You can feel with her. See her at home, all those Doctor Who posters on the wall. Matt here and there. All those tears when he had regenerated.
The girl is a version of you, just way younger, waiting for her doctor to arrive. A hope you have buried mostly. Not at all, but you're grown enough to know you can't spend your nights waiting outside the house on a suitcase for the next 12 years. That's why you give her friends a scrutinising look before turning back to her, "Sorry, maybe next time."
Whether or not she can read the honesty in your eyes, you can't tell, because she turns around and leaves with her friends the next station. It should have been your role, you think, after signing false autographs.
Shaking your head after such encounter, wondering how such thing can even happen, you remember your actual plan of listening to some music.
With a sigh, you're shuffling a bit away into a corner. You just want to have a bit of peace. Hang about your thoughts. That's what you usually do. Sometimes read a book or a Doctor Who comic. The comic you often hide in a map. You don't know why. Sometimes you feel a bit old for comic's even it is now common for the grown-ups to read them. You can't tell.
Finally having your headphones shoved into your ears, you search for your phone, to start your music app, when you see a shadow approach you. Since the girls have left, two stations have been passed, and when you look up, you find a guy and his friend in front of you. Have they been there since the beginning? You don’t know.
When making eye contact with one, he makes a gesture with his head and walks closer. “Hey.”
With a silent huff, you pull the phones out of your ears, “Hey?”
The guy has dark hair, a bit long for your liking, thin face, slim figure. You can see him examine you and you wonder what will come next. His friend stands aside him, bit smaller and not that thin. Something tells you that the first is the leader of this two-man-group.
"Who's your doctor?" he asks suddenly, and for a moment your eyes get bigger. You lean forward a bit as if the sudden energy that creates itself out of that simple question wants to burst out. A gleam in your eyes. A sparkle and you feel the need of sputtering out the one you chose for yourself. Not your first but the one you found a home with. The one you have a complicated "relationship" with.
But there is something with the boy. Not yet a man. In his young twenties maybe. He looks nice, standard. It's a simple question, but there is something in the sound of how he asks. The way his eyes peer down at you. The way they narrow slightly. Like snakes do. Do snakes have eyes? There is a challenge hidden in - and now you notice - his devilish smile.
You're good at reading people. Not always, as it cost a lot of energy too, but this time you are. His way, it’s somehow obtruding.
One of those, you think. One of those you could name any number, and they would start a discussion why this particular Doctor is not the cool one. Not the good one. Not the One.
You have heard the discussions way too often. Read them on the net. Tumblr. Twitter. Insta. All those shitty sites you turned your back on after you had decided to move on. From discussions, hating comments and a torn community.
Maybe he is a Tennant fan you try to guess. Or Smith. Not that you believe he is one for Classic Who, but you have "met" some smartasses who think to be better just because they have seen it all. Young and old.
His eyes flash over your green coat, he probably puts you in the 11th corner, so you’re in for Tennant but you sure he has noticed that shredded shirt you wear under it. The hint is not that subtle for a connoisseur.
"It's-," Luckily you can stop yourself, and there you see the mask of your counterpart fall. Slight disappointment. He knows you won't give in.
"I... I like them all," you say. Feeling sorry for not going all in. For saying that number and defending it to the bones.
"Ah," he gives you a careless shrug with one of his shoulders. And after a second, a time span he has secretly given you he leans forward because the movement of the train is giving him no other possibility, he speaks, "10 is mine."
It's more like throwing a dog something to eat down to the floor.
"Of course," is all you say. Part out of politeness. Part because you like 10, as you like them all and also you say it because you hope the conversation will end now. You finally getting your peace.
Because you assume it is so; your eyes wander around in the compartment. It's not that full. A lot of seats are taken, but not all of them. With the group of fangirls who has left a couple of stations ago, a lot of others have left too. Aside from you, there are only two others who chose to stand and not to sit. Plus the Tennant Whovian. A woman having a toddler at her hands that seemed to be curious how often one can pace around one of those grab poles. There are at the back of the car.
And a man you haven't really noticed. You have seen him standing there before; you even think you both have entered at the same station, but you can't be sure. Too many people are looking all the same, living in this town.
He has silver hair, sort of curls with it. They look ruffled; he probably has worn a hat because it's cold and has a long work day behind him.
Glasses with a thick black frame. Ray Ban you gather. They are modern these days. Holding a black leather map in the size of A4 paper in hand - reading. His work day obviously isn't over yet; it crosses fleeting your mind.
A scarf around his neck, half covering his face, most of the chin, but you can see him wearing a beard, and a bit familiarity flashes up. The one you bumped against?
It's an observation you make in a short second or two.
"I bet you skipped 9," it then reaches your ears, and the boy you have already forgotten is back on your display.
For a moment you are as far as possible away from Doctor Who, and you need another second to understand those letters that form words - spit at you more as said. A frown builds up on your forehead while you still look at the man, not far away from you. Three quick strides and you would be at his side.
He is not reading his papers; just appears to be, that is what you now realise. A secret listener of your conversation. The acknowledging frown on his forehead and the smirk that builds up (you can see little wrinkles appear around his eyes) are betraying him. Then your eyes meet. Kind. Generous. Amused. Plus those eyebrows. A scene in a movie flashes up in front of you.
You know now.
Again the car makes a sudden movement, and you have to bring your attention back to your grip and the annoyance in front of you.
"What did you say?" it's harsher as you’ve intended. And not that loud.
For a blink, he is surprised and browbeaten from the tone in your voice, but he is not ready to back away and repeats, "I bet you skipped 9!" This time louder, so you’re sure half the compartment has heard.
But it's long just him and you. And... the eyebrows, who, you can see in your peripheral, who hasn't moved. Still doing as reading while secretly listening and probably watching.
You can’t check, swaying with your attention now would give the other the upper hand, and you would lose hold of something that has built up in you throughout the conversation. A feeling of; ‘it’s enough now with people like you’.
Taking a deep breath, not because you are nervous, but because you’ll need the air. And yes, because you are nervous, just a tiny little bit,
“Do you know like we were sayin'? About the Earth revolving?” you start, and the confusion is visible in the eyes of the other. “Like when you're a kid. The first time they tell you that the world's turning and you just can't quite believe it 'cos everything looks like it's standin' still.” A defying smile escapes you. “I can feel it. The turn of the Earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinnin' at 1,000 miles an hour and the entire planet is hurtling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour, and I can feel it. We're fallin' through space, you and me… ,” the rest you leave out, staring at him, not blinking, now in full confrontation mood.
“Damn!” it slips his friend. “I love that speech, dude!”
Looking at the other it makes you giggle up silently in disbelieve.
“Shut the fu- up!” Tennant-Boy hisses at his pal, turning his head a bit. A mumbled sorry got whispered.
The train slows down; a new halt is coming up. You bent forward, grabbing the pole a bit higher as necessary, but it gives you the room to lean into his personal space, before saying, “I bet you skipped 12.”
And then everything goes fast.
The fanboy wants to answer you, already leaning forward, and for a long time afterwards you won't forget the way his eyes looked at you. All hurt and pissed, all knowing he has lost that round, wanting to go into another round even it was useless.
He doesn’t get a chance.
While the train comes to a halt — slowly rolling into the station — a hand slips under your arm grabs you by the elbow. A sudden movement and you should be startled, but you aren't because you still bathing in your triumph and also because the touch feels weirdly trusting.
Feeling a body aside you, you look up finding the man by your side that stood three strides away from you just a second ago. He gives you a short smirk and a wink before he directs his attention to the others. Pulling down that scarf.
All of you four know who he is, and you are sure Tennant-Boy and his friend pull an even more idiotic face as you do. It amuses you. Relaxing into the touch of the hand, it gives you the feeling that you are no more alone again those two.
The proof you aren’t, follows quickly. "We're fallin' through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world, and if we let go...," as if orchestrated and trained a million times the train stops in that very second and the doors go open, "That's who I am!"
He flashes a Tuckerish grin and then pulls at your arm whispering one little word into your ear, "Run!"
Within three moments you both turn your back and lunge out of the train. When your feet hit the concrete of the platform, the doors go shut again. Swirling simultaneous around you both can watch two idiots stare in disbelief and shock at you while the train vanishes in the distance.
You hear yourself laugh and also the man at your side.
It doesn't hit you yet, but all this is probably just a dream and not the movie-like-feeling that spreads in your body and mind. Full of endorphins and joy.
'That's who I am!' it echoes in your head. Not with Christopher Eccleston's voice but with the one of your Doctor.
You can't hold back, the energy inside you way too strong to hold back, "Ha! This was... fan-, amaz-," the first sign that your sound mind slowly settles back in, "I mean, have you seen this?!"
He giggles a bit, what turns into a smirk, while two greenish blue eyes give his face a particular shine. For a blink, you are sure he is as proud and amazed at the situation as you but holds back. The platform with a crowd of people is maybe not the right place to attract that much attention. He wouldn't get home until morning.
Getting the situation, you give a quick glance around the place, and come back to earth, "Of course you have seen it. Stupid... Uhm.. Well... Sorry."
"There is no need to be, " he smiles gently, his voice low and you feel your heartbeat speed up.
Twelve questions at once come to you, and not one makes sense at this moment. Have you auditioned this moment? A hundred times and this is the one you fail most. You give it a silent sour huff.
The man in front of you notices and places a hand on your shoulder, shoving you gently into the direction out of the way of the others. "It's probably me who has to apologise."
The moving round relaxes, and you frown upon his words, making it notice by stopping near the next wall staring at him.
" I... I basically kidnapped you out of that train," he explains.
"I bet you do that on a daily basis," you forget for a moment how intimidated you could be.
His lips twitch and purse a bit before he says, "Actually I get paid for it."
" Huh? " you lean back, and then you get the joke. You blush violently. "Why?"
"Because they asked me to do it and I would have been a fool for saying no to my childhood dream...," he sees your amused smile. "Oh, you meant... "
"The scene on the train. Why?"
He begins to search his pockets till he finds his hat and puts it on. As you find it a great idea, you do the same. A harsh wind is going.
"I often see people with... a bit of Doctor Who on them," he points at your Green coat. "Sometimes they notice me, sometimes not. And then... those girls…. And when you started reciting I felt as if this was a good moment to be a bit childish. Because there is no point in being grown up if-,” a young skater passes you both only by an inch, and you want to ask the Doctor, who is following the guy with his eyes if he can’t sonic his skateboard.
Those words fail you. Instead, you finish the quote, whispering more to yourself as anyone else, “-you can't be childish sometimes.”
“Exactly,” it makes you look up, not having expected he has heard it.
Without reason you feel the long day in your bones, the weight of exhaustion on your shoulders and with a huff, you say, “It’s getting late.” Immediately you feel bad.
He nods. By now you both would have been home when you wouldn’t have played along with the little adventure. “Do you… do you want a picture?”
“A picture?”
“On you phone,” he smiles timid, “with me. A photo.”
It makes you snort, “Good idea, yeah, sure,” quickly you reach for your phone and start the camera app. The light is crap, and your phone camera also but you don’t care.
And so you both pose for the phone, wrapped in scarves and hats and because there is a lit commercial near your stand, you can shot a good photo of him and you. Not that he can be recognised with all those layers, nor you.
You know better. That’s enough. Later you’ll print the picture out and carry it as a bookmark.
The next train that will bring you finally home will be there in like five minutes, so there is not too much time for chit chat, and you hold out your hand, “It was great meeting you.”
“I can only give the compliment back.”
His hand is warm, soft and you do not want to let go. Instead, you want him to hold it, call “run”, and off you are.
“Take care.”
For a second you believe to see hesitation with him, a thought popping up in his head, something that wants to come out, but nothing happens, and so you assume you had the wrong impression. With that, he’s gone.
Looking at the destination board for a few seconds you need to give into the urge to turn around and look for him again.
Gone.
A lot of people mingle here and there, and aside you stretch your neck and scan the area, you can’t see him anymore. Like a ghost and you wonder if you have imagined all this. Tennant-Boy. Those girls. The eyebrows. The Doctor.
With a sigh, you turn back to the tracks, and almost squeak out loud. Directly in front of you a figure, still wrapped in layer over layer.
“Just, one question,” he explains his return.
On a whim, an urge he wasn’t able to suppress. As if, after all, those years, he needed an honest opinion.
Not that there hadn’t been a lot of them, but this time he had to ask, had to know. In person. Not from the media. Not the internet. Not on a convention.
“Y-yes?”
“The boy. Tennant-One. He has asked a question.”
Your eyes move from left to right while you search your memory. It’s a bit of crap at the moment. Blame it on the man in front of you. Nevertheless, you nod.
Why isn’t he on his way home? People are waiting for him. Tomorrow starts early, a short night in front. Yes, he knows, he should be home, eat something and lay down for a good rest. Instead, he has turned on his heels, needing to know something he has asked himself all those years.
“So, who is it then?” he sees he has to be more specific. “Your Doctor, who is it then?
There is something in his eyes, and you remember an interview without being sure that he has given it. There is a good chance it was one of the other 11.
That not everybody would like him, but this one generation that grows up with him that he would be the one Doctor for them - their Doctor.
You also remember those nasty discussions about age and him having been literally 2000 years too young for the role. For a half second you believe to see something desperate, and then you realise it’s just curiosity and a significant bit of hope.
Biting your lip your befuddled mimic turns into a smile. You haven't auditioned this moment, never have planned it. What for? Not in your wildest dreams, this has ever happened.
Taking a deep breath, you know exactly what to say, "So, there's this man,” you begin, “he has a time machine. Up and down history he goes…”
End.