Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (10/27-ish)
Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (10/27-ish)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - Many thanks to jlrpuck, from whom Kate gets her bright red coat.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Work has swallowed me, as usual, which is why this is late, and why I once again beg your apologies with regard to replying to comments. Someday I'll catch up, I swear it!
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
Chapter Ten
Life on the TARDIS was a like a jigsaw puzzle. You had to be very careful to make sure all of the pieces fit, or things would fall apart-and at the moment there was a piece missing. You could feel Brem’s absence tangibly, everywhere, including the subtle shift in the TARDIS’s hum. They all missed him. The girls seemed to miss him a bit less than the rest of them, and Rose suspected that was because they had some way to see him. The Doctor kept going on about teleports, and the girls always looked blankly innocent, which made Rose fairly convinced that they did indeed have a teleport. She was okay with that. Her kids, not surprisingly, had always been very close, and she wasn’t about to deny the girls the ability to see their brother, or vice versa.
She did not tell the Doctor her teleport suspicions, however. She knew the Doctor missed Brem much more than he would admit. Of all of them, Brem was the most like him. Fortuna might adore him and tolerate his lectures but she wasn’t genuinely interested in the TARDIS, and Athena was actually alarmingly good at TARDIS-tinkering but found it dull. Brem had been his partner in things of that design, had been the one interested in all the crazy, timey-wimey theories that so fascinated the Doctor. If she told the Doctor about the teleport, he would use it endlessly. And the point of the uni experience had been to give Brem space, to develop a world that was separate from theirs. As it was, the Doctor was under strict instructions not to land the TARDIS anywhere near Brem until the Christmas holidays.
Life on the TARDIS ticked away without Brem, a little quieter than usual, but they were saved from missing him too terribly much by his penchant for calling. He rang them fairly often: sometimes Athena’s mobile, or Fortuna’s, or his mum’s; sometimes the TARDIS if he wanted to talk to his father. There was normally at least one member of the family who had recently talked to Brem. Rose thought of it as their “dose” of him, to hold them over until Christmas.
It was therefore highly unusual to have as little contact from Brem as they had recently. It was always difficult to estimate how much time was passing in the TARDIS, but Rose thought about a week had gone by with almost no word from Brem. Rose didn’t think it was chance that this sudden silence coincided with the aftermath of his call about a girl. And, although she tried not to be a stifling or prying mother, she found herself pretending to sleep but really taking the opportunity to call Brem.
He picked up with a brief “Hey.”
“You sound distracted,” she smiled.
“No, I…just almost got hit by a car. But I’m fine now. Sorry, I’m walking, I had to stop by the Crimson. What’s up?”
“Not much,” she answered. “I was calling to see what’s up with you.”
“Oh,” he said, still sounding distracted. And then, “Oh. I forgot to call you!”
Rose chuckled. “You did, yes.”
“It went well, Mum. Your advice worked. We’re going to bookstores today.”
“That sounds lovely, Brem. What’s her name?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, sounding adorably pleased with himself. “I found out! It’s Kate.”
“Good. Good to hear you’re making progress.”
“Yes. Thanks for the advice, it worked great. Tell everyone I said hi.”
She knew when she was being brushed off. “And Kate’s still a secret?”
“Oh. Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“No, we’ll keep it quiet. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Mum?” he said, a sudden sharp focus to his voice that had not been there before.
“Yes,” she responded.
“You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine. I’m perfect. No worrying, remember? No wrinkle between your brow at Christmastime.”
“I know,” he promised, a smile in his voice. “Bye now.”
She hung up and stared at the ceiling high above her. “Look at that,” she commented to the TARDIS. “Our Doctor managed to raise a reasonably well-adjusted adult, I think.”
The TARDIS hummed at her.
“Well, yes,” she agreed. “With lots of help from us.”
********
Brem knew books. No matter where you went in space and time, you could always find books. His father bought them compulsively, stuffing them into the TARDIS library, which kept expanding to fit them all. He had developed the same habit, plowing through every book in the library twice and then three times, and adding to the collection himself as he became adept at combing through book stalls at the bazaars they went to. Eventually, he and his father agreed that Brem needed a library of his own, so he would stop moving his dad’s books around and “losing” them-although Brem had never lost a book in his life, his father just blamed him whenever he lost one.
So Brem knew books, and he knew bookstores, and there were some very good ones in and around Harvard Square. He could spend all afternoon happily ensconced in them, especially the used sections, which were inevitably in basements that smelled of books, a scent he loved.
And wasn’t it just perfection when Kate said to him, “I love this smell. It smells like reading.”
He spent a little while just staring after her as she crouched to sift through the books on the bottom shelf, before he shook himself a bit and reached for the shelf nearest him, flipping through the books on it.
They looked through the shelves in silence, but Brem thought he liked it. He didn’t think it was awkward; he thought he could break it any time, ask her a question, or tell her a story, and she would lean back and look up at him with those very blue eyes and possibly even smile at him or, if he was very, very, very, very lucky, he might even make her laugh.
His eyes skimmed over the books, moving along the shelves quickly, pacing around them, rejecting everything before circling back to her. She was only a few shelves in still, with a small pile of books in her arms.
“Let me,” he said, holding his arms out.
“Oh.” She smiled at him as she transferred the pile. “Thanks.”
He began shuffling through them. “Good, good, excellent, good, oh, this one’s rubbish, I wouldn’t waste time on it.” He held it up.
She lifted an eyebrow at him. “You’ve read all of those?”
“Welllllllll.” He looked back at the books in his arms. “Yes.”
“Is there anything you haven’t read?” she asked, in amusement.
“Not here, no,” he replied, sadly, looking around the bookstore.
Kate laughed, turning back to the bookshelf.
Brem wandered around the bookstore again, finally selecting a volume on Roman mythology and forcing himself to slowly read the section on Fortuna, until Kate snapped her fingers in front of his eyes.
He looked up at her.
“You were engrossed. What is it?”
“Oh, Roman mythology. I was reading about Fortuna.” He picked himself up off the floor, gathering the pile of Kate’s books.
“Does your sister know all about her namesake?” asked Kate.
“Are you kidding? Fortuna and Athena both got told complicated stories about their goddesses constantly.”
“What about you?” she smiled. “Did you get tales of bremsstrahlung radiation?”
He chuckled. “Not really, no.”
“You were deprived.” Kate dropped her new pile of books on the checkout counter, and Brem dropped the pile he was carrying, too. “You should buy the mythology book,” she said. “Your sister would like it.”
“We’ve got a ton.”
“Yeah, but none as a special gift from her big brother.”
That was true, and maybe Fortuna would enjoy the spontaneous gift. “You’ve convinced me,” he said.
“Far too many books,” commented Kate, watching as the cashier rang them up. “Where will I ever fit them? And when will I ever read them?”
“I can’t help with the ‘when,’” replied Brem, “welllllllll, I mean, really I could, but that’s complicated and we don’t need to get into that. As for the ‘where,’ I really can help with that.”
“How?”
“I can fix your bookshelf.”
“Huh,” she said.
“What?”
“I didn’t think you’d be…crafts-y.”
“Crafts-y?” he echoed, blankly.
“You know, woodworking and stuff.”
“Oh, it’s not…It’s…science. Complicated.”
“You use that word a lot, you know. Complicated.”
“Wellllllll, I am complicated. Also, somebody once told me I was impossibly cute and that’s a good thing.”
Kate’s smile widened. “It is, yes.” She handed across her card to pay, turning back to him. “So, what’s the plan? Where’s the next book store on Brem Tyler’s Personal Tour?”
“I thought you might be hungry.” Brem watched them bag her books and wondered if he should have offered to pay.
“Why?” Kate grinned at him as she signed her receipt. “Did you do research?”
He knew he blushed. “As a matter of fact I did.”
“Do you know when you are at your most impossibly cute?”
“When?”
“When you blush.”
That only caused him to blush more, as he collected her bags of books for her and purchased the mythology book for Fortuna.
“Lead on,” she said. “I could go for some food.”
He took her to a tiny place below street level, with only one piece of proper food on its menu-a sandwich called a medianoche. Kate, smiling as she sat down, said, “I love this place.”
And, indeed, she did appear to be a regular, the waiter greeting her by name. She introduced Brem very casually, and Brem tried not to feel like every single person in the restaurant was staring at them. But the sandwiches were delicious, and they chatted about books they had read, and which other bookstores he could recommend, and he relaxed and had, as he usually did when he was with Kate, a spectacular time.
The café was the kind of place where you could easily linger, and where even Time Lords could lose track of time, and it was swinging toward darkness when they emerged. They were both juggling so many bags that it was impossible to hold hands, an absence he felt. But they headed as one to Tealuxe, for their thing, where they were now practically regulars as a couple-a thought so astonishing he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He tried yet another type of tea, and thought how he really had to buy tea leaves from here one of these days, but he was always so caught up in Kate that time flew and the place was closing before he knew it.
“A movie tomorrow night?” she asked, as he walked her home.
“Yes,” he answered, readily. “Absolutely.”
“Good.” She was silent for a second. “Unless you don’t want to?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”
It was one of her unusual shy moments. They were infrequent, but they did happen, and he always found them terribly endearing. “I don’t know…” she said, trailing off.
“No, I want to. A movie would be fun.”
“I’ve got to do some homework tomorrow,” she said. “Should we meet around 7?”
“Perfect.” They had reached her dorm. He stood, awkwardly, looking at the bags of books he was still holding. What was he supposed to do with them?
“Would you mind much carrying them to the room for me?” she asked, solving his problem.
“No. Not at all.”
She opened the door for him, and he followed her in, and up to the second floor, and a little way down the hall. She stuck her key in the door and opened it. He caught a glimpse of a dark room before she closed the door again, turning back to him with a frown.
“Sorry,” she explained. “My roommate’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake her up or I’ll never hear the end of it.” Nudging the door open a crack, she set her bags of books down just inside it, and took the bags he was carrying and set those down as well, before closing the door again.
Brem, watching her, had the oddest feeling that he was being watched as well, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He turned, looking down the hallway.
“Brem?” she queried, curiously.
He bought his attention back to her, ignoring the sensation. “I’ll fix your bookcase later.”
“Yes,” she grinned. “I can’t wait to see this ‘science’ you’re going to perform.”
“It’s impressive science.”
“Impossibly cute science, I’m sure.”
Brem ruffled his hair, realized he was ruffling it, and dropped his hand. He had a sneaking suspicion that maybe he was supposed to be kissing her. Then again maybe he wasn’t. Did women really want to be kissed out in hallways? And who was he supposed to ask about where women wanted to be kissed? Maybe there was a book out there somewhere that-
“Brem,” she interrupted his racing thoughts.
“Yeah,” he said.
She gave him the most dazzling smile. “Why don’t you kiss me?”
“Oh,” he responded, stupidly. “Oh. Yes. I’d love to.” He took a step closer to her, considered for a moment where to start.
“Good,” she said, still smiling, just closer to him now.
“Good,” he repeated, because he didn’t know what else to say.
She put her hands on his shoulders, delicately, almost the way you would brush your finger over a petal of an alymnis plant on Fork (the planet, not the utensil) to watch it curl up in reaction, and stretched onto tiptoe to brush her lips over his. And then, just like that-like it was the simplest, easiest thing in the world-he was kissing Kate Bonneville.
He knew that he sometimes had a tendency to step back from things that were happening to him, to look at them the way he planned on chronicling them in his journal. He didn’t do that just now. Not that he could have anyway. Every intense, magnified Gallifreyan sense was being flooded with input, and for once his thoughts were silent as he tried to process everything and take everything in and-
A door slammed somewhere down the hall, hard, and something in the back of his mind not just enjoying the kiss clicked uneasily. He lifted his head up abruptly, looking down the hallway.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
“Brem,” said Kate.
He swung his gaze back to her. She was very, very close, filling his vision.
“The kiss wasn’t quite done,” she said.
Forget about the door, he told himself, and grinned at her. “Of course. Yes. Sorry.”
She laughed at him a bit, and he took a risk and leaned in to cut off the laughter with another kiss, which worked out well if the enthusiasm with which she kissed him back was anything to go on, and he thought he might possibly be doing this correctly. She pulled back finally, leaning her forehead against his. Her arms were around his neck, her fingers threaded into his hair.
“Is the kiss done now?” he asked, hoarsely, and he thought he was glad it was done because he didn’t quite have his breath caught.
She chuckled. “Yes,” she said, sounding just as breathless. “You just need to give me a second.”
“Gladly.” He wondered what he was supposed to say during this second. “Thanks very much for that.”
She laughed, full-out. “Oh, impossibly cute,” she said, and ruffled his hair as she pulled back.
He ducked his head, instinctively, to protect the perfect tousle of it, a reaction she noticed and that caused her to quirk her lips.
She didn’t comment on it, though. “Tomorrow night,” she said.
“Yeah,” he affirmed.
“Good night, Brem.”
“Night,” he responded, as she ducked into her room with one last smile at him.
Brem stood for a second, then reached up and ruffled his hair again. He turned from the door and looked down the hallway, and then walked down it slowly, reading the names on the doors. They were written construction paper insects: ladybugs and dragonflies and bumblebees. Three doors down from Kate he found what he was looking for. Yunny scrawled across a cheerful green dragonfly. Brem stood in front of it, hands in his pockets, and looked back toward Kate’s closed door, then back at Yunny’s. He thought of slammed doors while he kissed Kate, and the hair on the back of his neck telling him he was being watched. He thought he was being silly. Owtvfa made him uneasy, but there was no reason for them to stalk him, really. Even if he was an unusual species they couldn’t place, why should they develop an obsession about him? And there was especially no reason for them to do anything to Kate, so he was overreacting to be standing in front of Yunny’s room feeling cold and uncertain.
Yes. Surely he was.
Next Chapter
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - Rose, OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - Many thanks to jlrpuck, from whom Kate gets her bright red coat.
Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.
The gorgeous icon was created by swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.
Work has swallowed me, as usual, which is why this is late, and why I once again beg your apologies with regard to replying to comments. Someday I'll catch up, I swear it!
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9
Chapter Ten
Life on the TARDIS was a like a jigsaw puzzle. You had to be very careful to make sure all of the pieces fit, or things would fall apart-and at the moment there was a piece missing. You could feel Brem’s absence tangibly, everywhere, including the subtle shift in the TARDIS’s hum. They all missed him. The girls seemed to miss him a bit less than the rest of them, and Rose suspected that was because they had some way to see him. The Doctor kept going on about teleports, and the girls always looked blankly innocent, which made Rose fairly convinced that they did indeed have a teleport. She was okay with that. Her kids, not surprisingly, had always been very close, and she wasn’t about to deny the girls the ability to see their brother, or vice versa.
She did not tell the Doctor her teleport suspicions, however. She knew the Doctor missed Brem much more than he would admit. Of all of them, Brem was the most like him. Fortuna might adore him and tolerate his lectures but she wasn’t genuinely interested in the TARDIS, and Athena was actually alarmingly good at TARDIS-tinkering but found it dull. Brem had been his partner in things of that design, had been the one interested in all the crazy, timey-wimey theories that so fascinated the Doctor. If she told the Doctor about the teleport, he would use it endlessly. And the point of the uni experience had been to give Brem space, to develop a world that was separate from theirs. As it was, the Doctor was under strict instructions not to land the TARDIS anywhere near Brem until the Christmas holidays.
Life on the TARDIS ticked away without Brem, a little quieter than usual, but they were saved from missing him too terribly much by his penchant for calling. He rang them fairly often: sometimes Athena’s mobile, or Fortuna’s, or his mum’s; sometimes the TARDIS if he wanted to talk to his father. There was normally at least one member of the family who had recently talked to Brem. Rose thought of it as their “dose” of him, to hold them over until Christmas.
It was therefore highly unusual to have as little contact from Brem as they had recently. It was always difficult to estimate how much time was passing in the TARDIS, but Rose thought about a week had gone by with almost no word from Brem. Rose didn’t think it was chance that this sudden silence coincided with the aftermath of his call about a girl. And, although she tried not to be a stifling or prying mother, she found herself pretending to sleep but really taking the opportunity to call Brem.
He picked up with a brief “Hey.”
“You sound distracted,” she smiled.
“No, I…just almost got hit by a car. But I’m fine now. Sorry, I’m walking, I had to stop by the Crimson. What’s up?”
“Not much,” she answered. “I was calling to see what’s up with you.”
“Oh,” he said, still sounding distracted. And then, “Oh. I forgot to call you!”
Rose chuckled. “You did, yes.”
“It went well, Mum. Your advice worked. We’re going to bookstores today.”
“That sounds lovely, Brem. What’s her name?”
“Oh!” he exclaimed, sounding adorably pleased with himself. “I found out! It’s Kate.”
“Good. Good to hear you’re making progress.”
“Yes. Thanks for the advice, it worked great. Tell everyone I said hi.”
She knew when she was being brushed off. “And Kate’s still a secret?”
“Oh. Yes. If you wouldn’t mind.”
“No, we’ll keep it quiet. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Mum?” he said, a sudden sharp focus to his voice that had not been there before.
“Yes,” she responded.
“You’re okay, right?”
“I’m fine. I’m perfect. No worrying, remember? No wrinkle between your brow at Christmastime.”
“I know,” he promised, a smile in his voice. “Bye now.”
She hung up and stared at the ceiling high above her. “Look at that,” she commented to the TARDIS. “Our Doctor managed to raise a reasonably well-adjusted adult, I think.”
The TARDIS hummed at her.
“Well, yes,” she agreed. “With lots of help from us.”
********
Brem knew books. No matter where you went in space and time, you could always find books. His father bought them compulsively, stuffing them into the TARDIS library, which kept expanding to fit them all. He had developed the same habit, plowing through every book in the library twice and then three times, and adding to the collection himself as he became adept at combing through book stalls at the bazaars they went to. Eventually, he and his father agreed that Brem needed a library of his own, so he would stop moving his dad’s books around and “losing” them-although Brem had never lost a book in his life, his father just blamed him whenever he lost one.
So Brem knew books, and he knew bookstores, and there were some very good ones in and around Harvard Square. He could spend all afternoon happily ensconced in them, especially the used sections, which were inevitably in basements that smelled of books, a scent he loved.
And wasn’t it just perfection when Kate said to him, “I love this smell. It smells like reading.”
He spent a little while just staring after her as she crouched to sift through the books on the bottom shelf, before he shook himself a bit and reached for the shelf nearest him, flipping through the books on it.
They looked through the shelves in silence, but Brem thought he liked it. He didn’t think it was awkward; he thought he could break it any time, ask her a question, or tell her a story, and she would lean back and look up at him with those very blue eyes and possibly even smile at him or, if he was very, very, very, very lucky, he might even make her laugh.
His eyes skimmed over the books, moving along the shelves quickly, pacing around them, rejecting everything before circling back to her. She was only a few shelves in still, with a small pile of books in her arms.
“Let me,” he said, holding his arms out.
“Oh.” She smiled at him as she transferred the pile. “Thanks.”
He began shuffling through them. “Good, good, excellent, good, oh, this one’s rubbish, I wouldn’t waste time on it.” He held it up.
She lifted an eyebrow at him. “You’ve read all of those?”
“Welllllllll.” He looked back at the books in his arms. “Yes.”
“Is there anything you haven’t read?” she asked, in amusement.
“Not here, no,” he replied, sadly, looking around the bookstore.
Kate laughed, turning back to the bookshelf.
Brem wandered around the bookstore again, finally selecting a volume on Roman mythology and forcing himself to slowly read the section on Fortuna, until Kate snapped her fingers in front of his eyes.
He looked up at her.
“You were engrossed. What is it?”
“Oh, Roman mythology. I was reading about Fortuna.” He picked himself up off the floor, gathering the pile of Kate’s books.
“Does your sister know all about her namesake?” asked Kate.
“Are you kidding? Fortuna and Athena both got told complicated stories about their goddesses constantly.”
“What about you?” she smiled. “Did you get tales of bremsstrahlung radiation?”
He chuckled. “Not really, no.”
“You were deprived.” Kate dropped her new pile of books on the checkout counter, and Brem dropped the pile he was carrying, too. “You should buy the mythology book,” she said. “Your sister would like it.”
“We’ve got a ton.”
“Yeah, but none as a special gift from her big brother.”
That was true, and maybe Fortuna would enjoy the spontaneous gift. “You’ve convinced me,” he said.
“Far too many books,” commented Kate, watching as the cashier rang them up. “Where will I ever fit them? And when will I ever read them?”
“I can’t help with the ‘when,’” replied Brem, “welllllllll, I mean, really I could, but that’s complicated and we don’t need to get into that. As for the ‘where,’ I really can help with that.”
“How?”
“I can fix your bookshelf.”
“Huh,” she said.
“What?”
“I didn’t think you’d be…crafts-y.”
“Crafts-y?” he echoed, blankly.
“You know, woodworking and stuff.”
“Oh, it’s not…It’s…science. Complicated.”
“You use that word a lot, you know. Complicated.”
“Wellllllll, I am complicated. Also, somebody once told me I was impossibly cute and that’s a good thing.”
Kate’s smile widened. “It is, yes.” She handed across her card to pay, turning back to him. “So, what’s the plan? Where’s the next book store on Brem Tyler’s Personal Tour?”
“I thought you might be hungry.” Brem watched them bag her books and wondered if he should have offered to pay.
“Why?” Kate grinned at him as she signed her receipt. “Did you do research?”
He knew he blushed. “As a matter of fact I did.”
“Do you know when you are at your most impossibly cute?”
“When?”
“When you blush.”
That only caused him to blush more, as he collected her bags of books for her and purchased the mythology book for Fortuna.
“Lead on,” she said. “I could go for some food.”
He took her to a tiny place below street level, with only one piece of proper food on its menu-a sandwich called a medianoche. Kate, smiling as she sat down, said, “I love this place.”
And, indeed, she did appear to be a regular, the waiter greeting her by name. She introduced Brem very casually, and Brem tried not to feel like every single person in the restaurant was staring at them. But the sandwiches were delicious, and they chatted about books they had read, and which other bookstores he could recommend, and he relaxed and had, as he usually did when he was with Kate, a spectacular time.
The café was the kind of place where you could easily linger, and where even Time Lords could lose track of time, and it was swinging toward darkness when they emerged. They were both juggling so many bags that it was impossible to hold hands, an absence he felt. But they headed as one to Tealuxe, for their thing, where they were now practically regulars as a couple-a thought so astonishing he couldn’t wrap his mind around it. He tried yet another type of tea, and thought how he really had to buy tea leaves from here one of these days, but he was always so caught up in Kate that time flew and the place was closing before he knew it.
“A movie tomorrow night?” she asked, as he walked her home.
“Yes,” he answered, readily. “Absolutely.”
“Good.” She was silent for a second. “Unless you don’t want to?”
He looked at her in surprise. “Why wouldn’t I want to?”
It was one of her unusual shy moments. They were infrequent, but they did happen, and he always found them terribly endearing. “I don’t know…” she said, trailing off.
“No, I want to. A movie would be fun.”
“I’ve got to do some homework tomorrow,” she said. “Should we meet around 7?”
“Perfect.” They had reached her dorm. He stood, awkwardly, looking at the bags of books he was still holding. What was he supposed to do with them?
“Would you mind much carrying them to the room for me?” she asked, solving his problem.
“No. Not at all.”
She opened the door for him, and he followed her in, and up to the second floor, and a little way down the hall. She stuck her key in the door and opened it. He caught a glimpse of a dark room before she closed the door again, turning back to him with a frown.
“Sorry,” she explained. “My roommate’s sleeping, I don’t want to wake her up or I’ll never hear the end of it.” Nudging the door open a crack, she set her bags of books down just inside it, and took the bags he was carrying and set those down as well, before closing the door again.
Brem, watching her, had the oddest feeling that he was being watched as well, the hairs standing up on the back of his neck. He turned, looking down the hallway.
“Brem?” she queried, curiously.
He bought his attention back to her, ignoring the sensation. “I’ll fix your bookcase later.”
“Yes,” she grinned. “I can’t wait to see this ‘science’ you’re going to perform.”
“It’s impressive science.”
“Impossibly cute science, I’m sure.”
Brem ruffled his hair, realized he was ruffling it, and dropped his hand. He had a sneaking suspicion that maybe he was supposed to be kissing her. Then again maybe he wasn’t. Did women really want to be kissed out in hallways? And who was he supposed to ask about where women wanted to be kissed? Maybe there was a book out there somewhere that-
“Brem,” she interrupted his racing thoughts.
“Yeah,” he said.
She gave him the most dazzling smile. “Why don’t you kiss me?”
“Oh,” he responded, stupidly. “Oh. Yes. I’d love to.” He took a step closer to her, considered for a moment where to start.
“Good,” she said, still smiling, just closer to him now.
“Good,” he repeated, because he didn’t know what else to say.
She put her hands on his shoulders, delicately, almost the way you would brush your finger over a petal of an alymnis plant on Fork (the planet, not the utensil) to watch it curl up in reaction, and stretched onto tiptoe to brush her lips over his. And then, just like that-like it was the simplest, easiest thing in the world-he was kissing Kate Bonneville.
He knew that he sometimes had a tendency to step back from things that were happening to him, to look at them the way he planned on chronicling them in his journal. He didn’t do that just now. Not that he could have anyway. Every intense, magnified Gallifreyan sense was being flooded with input, and for once his thoughts were silent as he tried to process everything and take everything in and-
A door slammed somewhere down the hall, hard, and something in the back of his mind not just enjoying the kiss clicked uneasily. He lifted his head up abruptly, looking down the hallway.
“Did you hear that?” he asked.
“Brem,” said Kate.
He swung his gaze back to her. She was very, very close, filling his vision.
“The kiss wasn’t quite done,” she said.
Forget about the door, he told himself, and grinned at her. “Of course. Yes. Sorry.”
She laughed at him a bit, and he took a risk and leaned in to cut off the laughter with another kiss, which worked out well if the enthusiasm with which she kissed him back was anything to go on, and he thought he might possibly be doing this correctly. She pulled back finally, leaning her forehead against his. Her arms were around his neck, her fingers threaded into his hair.
“Is the kiss done now?” he asked, hoarsely, and he thought he was glad it was done because he didn’t quite have his breath caught.
She chuckled. “Yes,” she said, sounding just as breathless. “You just need to give me a second.”
“Gladly.” He wondered what he was supposed to say during this second. “Thanks very much for that.”
She laughed, full-out. “Oh, impossibly cute,” she said, and ruffled his hair as she pulled back.
He ducked his head, instinctively, to protect the perfect tousle of it, a reaction she noticed and that caused her to quirk her lips.
She didn’t comment on it, though. “Tomorrow night,” she said.
“Yeah,” he affirmed.
“Good night, Brem.”
“Night,” he responded, as she ducked into her room with one last smile at him.
Brem stood for a second, then reached up and ruffled his hair again. He turned from the door and looked down the hallway, and then walked down it slowly, reading the names on the doors. They were written construction paper insects: ladybugs and dragonflies and bumblebees. Three doors down from Kate he found what he was looking for. Yunny scrawled across a cheerful green dragonfly. Brem stood in front of it, hands in his pockets, and looked back toward Kate’s closed door, then back at Yunny’s. He thought of slammed doors while he kissed Kate, and the hair on the back of his neck telling him he was being watched. He thought he was being silly. Owtvfa made him uneasy, but there was no reason for them to stalk him, really. Even if he was an unusual species they couldn’t place, why should they develop an obsession about him? And there was especially no reason for them to do anything to Kate, so he was overreacting to be standing in front of Yunny’s room feeling cold and uncertain.
Yes. Surely he was.
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