fic: the man who [eleven, mels]
Title: The man who
Rating: Somewhere between PG-13 and M.
Characters/Pairing: Eleven, Mels (Technically sort of Mels/Doctor, implied Eleven/River)
Wordcount: ~2700
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Summary: The Doctor winds up undercover as a teacher in Leadworth, and finds out a bit more about 18-year-old Mels's obsession than he wants.
A/N: For a prompt at eleventy_kink. De-anoning because of reasons.
Basically: Eleven is curious about Melody Pond before she was his River Song, travels to her high school years in Leadworth, and winds up undercover as substitute teacher (he sure looks the part) a la Ten in School Reunion.
Mels is 18. There’s no actual smut, but they’re still teacher and student.
~
Mels had been on time.
It was his fifth day of temping, and Mels had been on time. It was definitely, definitely, definitely time to leave.
The Doctor ran his hands through his hair, tugged at some choice parts.
He was in Leadworth.
He was in an office. In a school. In Leadworth. In an office.
There was an alien bothering the village - unfortunately she was also human, and his future wife.
He’d only meant to glean some insight into Mels’s life, pretend to ask for directions or sell hoovers or something similarly brilliant. By happenstance, he’d wandered into a little shop, got a lottery ticket, borrowed someone’s smartphone, hacked into the school’s records, slipped the ticket into a history teacher’s letterbox at midnight… and temping was nearly the same thing as gleaning insight, except a little bit different.
He blamed the village; he couldn’t think in this village.
Bar the future wife thing, this was exactly like helping Rose with her homework, finding Mickey’s football, and coming back for Amy. This was a cheap trick and a social call. That was what he told himself, anyway.
When the lottery was won, he got himself a job. He called himself Mr Bess. He had earned that name, after all. He wore his glasses, hoping to throw off any conditioned kill-on-sight response his bespoke psychopath might have lied about (and glasses always did the job in films). Besides, he figured, if he was going to meet Mels, he might as well send some data back to the TARDIS; she’d like that. And he looked cool.
Had to be cool for school.
“And finally,” the Head Teacher said, clutching her mug, “We have Mels. Year 13, taking A-levels in biology, physics, and history. Mels is… our little project.”
Meaning the exact opposite, thought the Doctor. “Always good to have a project. Me, I knit.”
“She is - can be - a bit of a bother. On occasion.”
The Doctor offered to help, of all things.
He’d come by bus. Had left the TARDIS with Craig and Sophie and Alfie in Colchester; having Mels stumble on it would be… so very, very not good not even a bucket of Teselecta could fix it. He’d got a room at a B&B and was spending his boring nights on a boring, ladder-less bed looking at infomercials. And people said they envied him. Well, one person. And not in those words exactly. But still.
“The Doctor,” said one of his new colleagues, “Is a character some of the children made up. First there was a girl - you’ll meet her sooner or later - and then Mels went along with it, and then this poor boy started to… Long story short, Mels didn’t grow out of it.”
The Doctor swallowed. He’d been having such a nice tea break. “What does that have to do with… school?”
“The Doctor wasn’t there to stop it,” said five of the others at once; their voices were rather devoid of feeling.
“To stop what?”
The man in the polo-neck shrugged. “Anything. Everything.”
“The Titanic sinking,” supplied a woman.
“The dinosaurs dying,” said someone else.
“The World Wars.”
“The extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.”
“The Black Death.”
“All right,” said the Doctor, draining his tea. That was a bit worse than he’d expected. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
And, oh, those A-levels. The better to kill him with.
Amy and Rory had the flu this week, or so Amy’s diary had informed him. (If it was on a shelf in the sitting room, it counted as a book.) He’d considered leaving a scone or two outside their houses, but he figured they might start to suspect something, sick or not.
Mels was forty-seven minutes late the first time she met him. “Hell-o! Where’s Ms Moore?”
“Lottery,” he said. “Won it. Left for Copacabana. Completely normal.”
“Lottery? But-”
“Run-of-the-mill kind of thing. Scratchy scratchy or numbery numbery, your choice.”
“And who are-”
“Read the board or text a friend. Now sit down and shush while I resume teaching!”
“Mr Teacher?” Mels claimed her seat aggressively; the legs of the chair slid on the floor. It was a normal, school-ish sound… and yet, the rest of the class turned toward her, toward the centre; turned their necks or their torsos, looked up or out of the corners of their eyes.
The Doctor straightened shoulders, bowtie, and expression. “Yes?”
“You’re okay with Mr Teacher, then?”
“Oh, yes! Like a name that says what I am; makes everything easier. I’ll also accept ‘you there’, ‘hey, handsome‘, and ‘Mr Cool’.”
She held her pencil like it was a gun, aimed it at his chest. “What is it you’re teaching, handsome?”
“You were late. I’m not telling, you have to guess.”
She leaned forward; it may have been only two point four centimetres, but it was a forward motion. Then she smiled, lazily, and it was not the kind of smile the Doctor had aimed for, but he’d take it. He could work with almost anything. He could turn a frown upside down, and he could definitely turn a smile that was skirting far too near flirtatious to one that was admiring… or at least one that was a little bit less flirtatious.
The office was a tiny room; barely enough space for the desk, a pair of chairs, and a clunky grey computer monitor. He couldn’t straighten his legs without hurting one set of toes on the rubbish bin under the desk and the other set on the computer case. The office smelt like toner and stale coffee. The office was very beige. And his chair creaked. Why did he always get the creaky chair?
He and Mels were still at opposite ends of… everything, while everyone else was gloriously normal, moseying along on a different axis. If these days in Leadworth had taught him anything, it was to forgive River utterly and completely for being rude to his former self.
But Mels was still River, and he couldn’t just not care. Sometimes River would cling to him in her sleep, she would scream, dig her nails into his chest… and she was separated from 1969 by yet another lifetime.
He was a stupid, selfish man. Always had been, and demonstrating both sitting in this office.
The thing was; if he fixed Mels, River wouldn’t be… his River. She had found herself, she had made herself, and he was damned if he’d interfere with that. Still, he had to know who she’d been. He couldn’t possibly make things worse.
“So, Pompeii. The Pompeii. Why did it happen?” He sat on a table in the classroom they’d given him, drummed his fingers against the top. She deserved some solidarity from him, even if she didn’t recognise it. “Mels?”
“Because…” She paused, giving her mates time to look at her, “Because the Doctor wasn’t there to stop it.”
“Really. What about cause and effect? What about free will?”
“What?”
He crossed his ankles, met Mels’s gaze properly. “How should he have stopped it? Does he have some sort of magical wand? How about a water pistol?”
“He didn’t stop it, because he didn’t want to, because he wanted people to suffer.”
His colleagues wanted him to teach Mels. Because Mels liked him. Because Mels didn’t put salt in his tea or steal his car or call him at three in the morning to blow him a kiss. Because Mels handed in assignments on the Space Race due five years ago when he asked her to.
And now, now there was a knock on his door.
Mels. Of course it was. She wore her entire uniform, and even that was impressive. Her hair was down; the curls nearly reached her shoulders.
Oh, well. If she tried anything, he could always escape through the window. There was an unfortunate bush outside, but he would manage. He straightened his lapels. “Have a seat, Mels.”
“Nice office.”
“Not really, no.”
Mels took the other chair; the one opposite the desk. It didn’t creak. She stuck a hand into her leather bag, and withdrew a glossy red apple. “My friend suggested this.” She put it next to the monitor. It still had a sticker from the shop.
“Thank you, love an apple! So! How’s it going? Any more assignments you’ve just happened to find under a cupboard?”
“What’s with the song and dance?”
“Sorry?”
“They’re only trying to salvage their reputation before I’m out of here.”
“Well, obviously. Might want to help them with that. I was talking to some of the others - why did you steal Mrs Potts’ car?”
“Borrowed it. Felt like it.”
“Yes, why?”
She pushed a strand of hair behind an ear. “I needed a restaurant. The shops were closed, none of my mates were home. I was hungry! I wasn’t going to starve.”
The Doctor swallowed; there was an ‘again’ left unsaid. “You could have been hurt.” She wasn’t listening to him, and he could see it in her face; not the normal fearlessness of youth, but the certainty that she’d get another go if she kicked it. And another. And another. Just like all other Time Lords. “Why did you come here?”
She put her heavy boots up on the desk (okay, not the entire uniform), wiggled the toes. “When’s Ms Moore coming back?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a temp. When’s she coming back?”
“I’m not sure. Was that all?”
She reached into the bag again, and produced a very thin, very blue folder. “Bio assignments, so far.”
The Doctor accepted the folder, opened it, and picked the topmost paper up. “What’s this?”
“Essay.”
“On?”
“I’m not telling. You’ll have to read it.”
The Doctor sighed. The first line was: ‘The man who waged war against time and space.’
He swallowed, but read bravely on.
‘The most terrible man in the Universe. The man who could have stopped every bad thing that has ever happened or ever will happen. The man with the silver tongue and the long fingers. The living, breathing man, who sure as hell isn’t a monk. The man who always gets away, tied up with his own shirt.
She’s on his lap. She’ll end the war.
She’ll make him come once for every sin he’s committed, for every time he’s done nothing, for every time he’s done too much. He will, because he likes a challenge, because he’s married her, because he loves her.
She’ll kiss him, eventually.
His skin is cool, but his core temperature will rise. She strokes his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, and’
The Doctor covered one eye with a hand and flipped the page. That didn’t help much, because he could still read with one eye and that side was even worse. He was getting a bit of a queasy feeling. Someone made a noise and it was probably him.
It was never going to be a gun for you.
The Doctor closed his eyes. He could get in the TARDIS right now and find a universe in which Madame Kovarian was still alive, and… The hand with the paper in it twitched, and he looked up, remembered where he was, when he was.
Mels grinned at him, no doubt misinterpreting the twitch.
“This is not an essay,” he said, choosing his words carefully, clutching the paper. “This is pornography.”
“It’s about a physical response attributable to hormones, properly punctuated, written on a computer, and submitted on time. It’s an essay.”
“No, it’s not.” The doctor wiped his mouth and willed the colour to leave his cheeks. He shouldn’t be surprised; it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen River’s dreams, hadn’t heard them in her own voice. “What would he say if he saw this?”
“The Doctor? If he’s imaginary, what does it matter?” She leant back. “It’s all guesswork anyway. He’s an alien.”
“Oh, he’s an alien,” he said. “See, I never got that part.”
“He’s probably fantastic.”
“Well… No!”
“Like a machine.”
He put the so-called essay back into the folder, and pushed that as far away as possible. “I don’t think this is a conversation I want to have.”
“You said you were going to humour me!”
“Did I?”
“You’re thinking about the essay.”
“No, I was thinking about this whole other… thing. I was thinking about… texting. And balloons. Yes, that’s it.”
“Come on. You want to know more about the Doctor.”
He pushed his hair back. “Fine. Tell me. Who is the Doctor?”
“The most evil man in the universe. He has a time machine and sometimes he shows up and saves the world and sometimes he doesn’t.” She smiled, picked at the hem of her skirt. “And he’s funny.”
“That’s it? What does that have to do with that… essay?”
“He seduces people. That’s what he does, see? People everywhere, praising the Doctor.”
“All right, Mels, listen to me. You don’t need to talk about him anymore. You certainly don’t need to write... things.” And I, he thought, need to shut it.
“What do you think his cock looks like?”
“How could that possibly be relevant? I don’t think ‘cock’ is even the proper word if we’re talking biology. Erect reproductive organ, maybe.”
“Boring.” Mels reached for the folder, opened it, flipped through the contents. She smiled to herself, and suddenly her thoughts were very apparent.
And the Doctor was accidentally eavesdropping and in her head and - he was looking up at darkness, at a void, someone’s pulse echoed, there was a cloying suggestion of terror and triumph…
The scene shifted and he saw a laughing Mels, in front of a bright and console-less orangey blur that looked rather like the bedroom he’d put Amy in that night before her wedding...
Another shift and he looked at the outside of the TARDIS, but the shade of blue was wrong and the scale was even more wrong; it reminded him of cardboard, and it was huge. He blinked, and Mels was there. She ran her hands through a man’s dark hair, pushed him against the door of the wrong-TARDIS. The man was in a tattered blue shirt; faceless, except for the cruel line of a mouth, and now her hands were poised to gouge out his hearts… but he bent his head and she raised hers and they pressed their lips and tongues and teeth together. She slipped her fingers into the gaping holes in his shirt and wound the fabric around her fists...
The Doctor tore his mind from Mels’s, pressed a hand to his chest and pushed as far back against his chair as possible. Melody Pond was looking for a monster and here it was, peering into her head. He couldn’t change himself. Well, wouldn’t - River had told him not to dare, and he didn’t, with relief. At least he knew for sure she didn’t recognise him like this. It really, really, really was time to leave.
He scrutinised Mels’s face for any sign of her having noticed the psychic pull, but she kept rifling through her papers, kept smiling. “This is my last day,” he said. “Just remembered that, forgot about it until now. And this chair is really very noisy.”
Mels looked up, and for a second she made the face River made when she wasn’t ready to go back to Stormcage…
He scratched a cheek. “Sorry.”
She closed the folder, rolled her eyes. “You’re a temp, stupid. Leaving is your job. I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Bus. I’m just going to leave an explanatory Post-it for the Head Teacher.”
Leadworth was green and warm and filled with tiny flowers and overenthusiastic birds, neither of which made it any less utterly boring.
Halfway through the park, Mels told him to stop. When he did, she grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged him toward her, pressed her lips and a bit of tooth against his cheek. Then it was over, and she pulled back. “Hm, you’re real. Are you coming back?”
The Doctor really should have known better… at least there wasn’t a car door around. He put his hand on hers and eased her grip, as gently as possible. Her nails were painted blue; the varnish was chipped at the tips. “Yeah. Count on me.”
She wound her arms around his neck and he took big handfuls of her leather jacket and lifted her up, gave her a little spin. She smelt different and the same. “Mels,” he said, lowering her to the ground, “Remember -”
“Enjoy the apple. Later!” She turned on her heel and strode back down the path, arms folded. Some part of him hoped she’d go to Amy’s house.
He saluted her back, took off his glasses, and headed for the bus stop.
Rating: Somewhere between PG-13 and M.
Characters/Pairing: Eleven, Mels (Technically sort of Mels/Doctor, implied Eleven/River)
Wordcount: ~2700
Disclaimer: I don't own Doctor Who.
Summary: The Doctor winds up undercover as a teacher in Leadworth, and finds out a bit more about 18-year-old Mels's obsession than he wants.
A/N: For a prompt at eleventy_kink. De-anoning because of reasons.
Basically: Eleven is curious about Melody Pond before she was his River Song, travels to her high school years in Leadworth, and winds up undercover as substitute teacher (he sure looks the part) a la Ten in School Reunion.
Mels is 18. There’s no actual smut, but they’re still teacher and student.
~
Mels had been on time.
It was his fifth day of temping, and Mels had been on time. It was definitely, definitely, definitely time to leave.
The Doctor ran his hands through his hair, tugged at some choice parts.
He was in Leadworth.
He was in an office. In a school. In Leadworth. In an office.
There was an alien bothering the village - unfortunately she was also human, and his future wife.
He’d only meant to glean some insight into Mels’s life, pretend to ask for directions or sell hoovers or something similarly brilliant. By happenstance, he’d wandered into a little shop, got a lottery ticket, borrowed someone’s smartphone, hacked into the school’s records, slipped the ticket into a history teacher’s letterbox at midnight… and temping was nearly the same thing as gleaning insight, except a little bit different.
He blamed the village; he couldn’t think in this village.
Bar the future wife thing, this was exactly like helping Rose with her homework, finding Mickey’s football, and coming back for Amy. This was a cheap trick and a social call. That was what he told himself, anyway.
When the lottery was won, he got himself a job. He called himself Mr Bess. He had earned that name, after all. He wore his glasses, hoping to throw off any conditioned kill-on-sight response his bespoke psychopath might have lied about (and glasses always did the job in films). Besides, he figured, if he was going to meet Mels, he might as well send some data back to the TARDIS; she’d like that. And he looked cool.
Had to be cool for school.
“And finally,” the Head Teacher said, clutching her mug, “We have Mels. Year 13, taking A-levels in biology, physics, and history. Mels is… our little project.”
Meaning the exact opposite, thought the Doctor. “Always good to have a project. Me, I knit.”
“She is - can be - a bit of a bother. On occasion.”
The Doctor offered to help, of all things.
He’d come by bus. Had left the TARDIS with Craig and Sophie and Alfie in Colchester; having Mels stumble on it would be… so very, very not good not even a bucket of Teselecta could fix it. He’d got a room at a B&B and was spending his boring nights on a boring, ladder-less bed looking at infomercials. And people said they envied him. Well, one person. And not in those words exactly. But still.
“The Doctor,” said one of his new colleagues, “Is a character some of the children made up. First there was a girl - you’ll meet her sooner or later - and then Mels went along with it, and then this poor boy started to… Long story short, Mels didn’t grow out of it.”
The Doctor swallowed. He’d been having such a nice tea break. “What does that have to do with… school?”
“The Doctor wasn’t there to stop it,” said five of the others at once; their voices were rather devoid of feeling.
“To stop what?”
The man in the polo-neck shrugged. “Anything. Everything.”
“The Titanic sinking,” supplied a woman.
“The dinosaurs dying,” said someone else.
“The World Wars.”
“The extinction of the Tasmanian tiger.”
“The Black Death.”
“All right,” said the Doctor, draining his tea. That was a bit worse than he’d expected. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
And, oh, those A-levels. The better to kill him with.
Amy and Rory had the flu this week, or so Amy’s diary had informed him. (If it was on a shelf in the sitting room, it counted as a book.) He’d considered leaving a scone or two outside their houses, but he figured they might start to suspect something, sick or not.
Mels was forty-seven minutes late the first time she met him. “Hell-o! Where’s Ms Moore?”
“Lottery,” he said. “Won it. Left for Copacabana. Completely normal.”
“Lottery? But-”
“Run-of-the-mill kind of thing. Scratchy scratchy or numbery numbery, your choice.”
“And who are-”
“Read the board or text a friend. Now sit down and shush while I resume teaching!”
“Mr Teacher?” Mels claimed her seat aggressively; the legs of the chair slid on the floor. It was a normal, school-ish sound… and yet, the rest of the class turned toward her, toward the centre; turned their necks or their torsos, looked up or out of the corners of their eyes.
The Doctor straightened shoulders, bowtie, and expression. “Yes?”
“You’re okay with Mr Teacher, then?”
“Oh, yes! Like a name that says what I am; makes everything easier. I’ll also accept ‘you there’, ‘hey, handsome‘, and ‘Mr Cool’.”
She held her pencil like it was a gun, aimed it at his chest. “What is it you’re teaching, handsome?”
“You were late. I’m not telling, you have to guess.”
She leaned forward; it may have been only two point four centimetres, but it was a forward motion. Then she smiled, lazily, and it was not the kind of smile the Doctor had aimed for, but he’d take it. He could work with almost anything. He could turn a frown upside down, and he could definitely turn a smile that was skirting far too near flirtatious to one that was admiring… or at least one that was a little bit less flirtatious.
The office was a tiny room; barely enough space for the desk, a pair of chairs, and a clunky grey computer monitor. He couldn’t straighten his legs without hurting one set of toes on the rubbish bin under the desk and the other set on the computer case. The office smelt like toner and stale coffee. The office was very beige. And his chair creaked. Why did he always get the creaky chair?
He and Mels were still at opposite ends of… everything, while everyone else was gloriously normal, moseying along on a different axis. If these days in Leadworth had taught him anything, it was to forgive River utterly and completely for being rude to his former self.
But Mels was still River, and he couldn’t just not care. Sometimes River would cling to him in her sleep, she would scream, dig her nails into his chest… and she was separated from 1969 by yet another lifetime.
He was a stupid, selfish man. Always had been, and demonstrating both sitting in this office.
The thing was; if he fixed Mels, River wouldn’t be… his River. She had found herself, she had made herself, and he was damned if he’d interfere with that. Still, he had to know who she’d been. He couldn’t possibly make things worse.
“So, Pompeii. The Pompeii. Why did it happen?” He sat on a table in the classroom they’d given him, drummed his fingers against the top. She deserved some solidarity from him, even if she didn’t recognise it. “Mels?”
“Because…” She paused, giving her mates time to look at her, “Because the Doctor wasn’t there to stop it.”
“Really. What about cause and effect? What about free will?”
“What?”
He crossed his ankles, met Mels’s gaze properly. “How should he have stopped it? Does he have some sort of magical wand? How about a water pistol?”
“He didn’t stop it, because he didn’t want to, because he wanted people to suffer.”
His colleagues wanted him to teach Mels. Because Mels liked him. Because Mels didn’t put salt in his tea or steal his car or call him at three in the morning to blow him a kiss. Because Mels handed in assignments on the Space Race due five years ago when he asked her to.
And now, now there was a knock on his door.
Mels. Of course it was. She wore her entire uniform, and even that was impressive. Her hair was down; the curls nearly reached her shoulders.
Oh, well. If she tried anything, he could always escape through the window. There was an unfortunate bush outside, but he would manage. He straightened his lapels. “Have a seat, Mels.”
“Nice office.”
“Not really, no.”
Mels took the other chair; the one opposite the desk. It didn’t creak. She stuck a hand into her leather bag, and withdrew a glossy red apple. “My friend suggested this.” She put it next to the monitor. It still had a sticker from the shop.
“Thank you, love an apple! So! How’s it going? Any more assignments you’ve just happened to find under a cupboard?”
“What’s with the song and dance?”
“Sorry?”
“They’re only trying to salvage their reputation before I’m out of here.”
“Well, obviously. Might want to help them with that. I was talking to some of the others - why did you steal Mrs Potts’ car?”
“Borrowed it. Felt like it.”
“Yes, why?”
She pushed a strand of hair behind an ear. “I needed a restaurant. The shops were closed, none of my mates were home. I was hungry! I wasn’t going to starve.”
The Doctor swallowed; there was an ‘again’ left unsaid. “You could have been hurt.” She wasn’t listening to him, and he could see it in her face; not the normal fearlessness of youth, but the certainty that she’d get another go if she kicked it. And another. And another. Just like all other Time Lords. “Why did you come here?”
She put her heavy boots up on the desk (okay, not the entire uniform), wiggled the toes. “When’s Ms Moore coming back?”
“Excuse me?”
“You’re a temp. When’s she coming back?”
“I’m not sure. Was that all?”
She reached into the bag again, and produced a very thin, very blue folder. “Bio assignments, so far.”
The Doctor accepted the folder, opened it, and picked the topmost paper up. “What’s this?”
“Essay.”
“On?”
“I’m not telling. You’ll have to read it.”
The Doctor sighed. The first line was: ‘The man who waged war against time and space.’
He swallowed, but read bravely on.
‘The most terrible man in the Universe. The man who could have stopped every bad thing that has ever happened or ever will happen. The man with the silver tongue and the long fingers. The living, breathing man, who sure as hell isn’t a monk. The man who always gets away, tied up with his own shirt.
She’s on his lap. She’ll end the war.
She’ll make him come once for every sin he’s committed, for every time he’s done nothing, for every time he’s done too much. He will, because he likes a challenge, because he’s married her, because he loves her.
She’ll kiss him, eventually.
His skin is cool, but his core temperature will rise. She strokes his shoulders, his chest, his stomach, and’
The Doctor covered one eye with a hand and flipped the page. That didn’t help much, because he could still read with one eye and that side was even worse. He was getting a bit of a queasy feeling. Someone made a noise and it was probably him.
It was never going to be a gun for you.
The Doctor closed his eyes. He could get in the TARDIS right now and find a universe in which Madame Kovarian was still alive, and… The hand with the paper in it twitched, and he looked up, remembered where he was, when he was.
Mels grinned at him, no doubt misinterpreting the twitch.
“This is not an essay,” he said, choosing his words carefully, clutching the paper. “This is pornography.”
“It’s about a physical response attributable to hormones, properly punctuated, written on a computer, and submitted on time. It’s an essay.”
“No, it’s not.” The doctor wiped his mouth and willed the colour to leave his cheeks. He shouldn’t be surprised; it wasn’t like he hadn’t seen River’s dreams, hadn’t heard them in her own voice. “What would he say if he saw this?”
“The Doctor? If he’s imaginary, what does it matter?” She leant back. “It’s all guesswork anyway. He’s an alien.”
“Oh, he’s an alien,” he said. “See, I never got that part.”
“He’s probably fantastic.”
“Well… No!”
“Like a machine.”
He put the so-called essay back into the folder, and pushed that as far away as possible. “I don’t think this is a conversation I want to have.”
“You said you were going to humour me!”
“Did I?”
“You’re thinking about the essay.”
“No, I was thinking about this whole other… thing. I was thinking about… texting. And balloons. Yes, that’s it.”
“Come on. You want to know more about the Doctor.”
He pushed his hair back. “Fine. Tell me. Who is the Doctor?”
“The most evil man in the universe. He has a time machine and sometimes he shows up and saves the world and sometimes he doesn’t.” She smiled, picked at the hem of her skirt. “And he’s funny.”
“That’s it? What does that have to do with that… essay?”
“He seduces people. That’s what he does, see? People everywhere, praising the Doctor.”
“All right, Mels, listen to me. You don’t need to talk about him anymore. You certainly don’t need to write... things.” And I, he thought, need to shut it.
“What do you think his cock looks like?”
“How could that possibly be relevant? I don’t think ‘cock’ is even the proper word if we’re talking biology. Erect reproductive organ, maybe.”
“Boring.” Mels reached for the folder, opened it, flipped through the contents. She smiled to herself, and suddenly her thoughts were very apparent.
And the Doctor was accidentally eavesdropping and in her head and - he was looking up at darkness, at a void, someone’s pulse echoed, there was a cloying suggestion of terror and triumph…
The scene shifted and he saw a laughing Mels, in front of a bright and console-less orangey blur that looked rather like the bedroom he’d put Amy in that night before her wedding...
Another shift and he looked at the outside of the TARDIS, but the shade of blue was wrong and the scale was even more wrong; it reminded him of cardboard, and it was huge. He blinked, and Mels was there. She ran her hands through a man’s dark hair, pushed him against the door of the wrong-TARDIS. The man was in a tattered blue shirt; faceless, except for the cruel line of a mouth, and now her hands were poised to gouge out his hearts… but he bent his head and she raised hers and they pressed their lips and tongues and teeth together. She slipped her fingers into the gaping holes in his shirt and wound the fabric around her fists...
The Doctor tore his mind from Mels’s, pressed a hand to his chest and pushed as far back against his chair as possible. Melody Pond was looking for a monster and here it was, peering into her head. He couldn’t change himself. Well, wouldn’t - River had told him not to dare, and he didn’t, with relief. At least he knew for sure she didn’t recognise him like this. It really, really, really was time to leave.
He scrutinised Mels’s face for any sign of her having noticed the psychic pull, but she kept rifling through her papers, kept smiling. “This is my last day,” he said. “Just remembered that, forgot about it until now. And this chair is really very noisy.”
Mels looked up, and for a second she made the face River made when she wasn’t ready to go back to Stormcage…
He scratched a cheek. “Sorry.”
She closed the folder, rolled her eyes. “You’re a temp, stupid. Leaving is your job. I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Bus. I’m just going to leave an explanatory Post-it for the Head Teacher.”
Leadworth was green and warm and filled with tiny flowers and overenthusiastic birds, neither of which made it any less utterly boring.
Halfway through the park, Mels told him to stop. When he did, she grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged him toward her, pressed her lips and a bit of tooth against his cheek. Then it was over, and she pulled back. “Hm, you’re real. Are you coming back?”
The Doctor really should have known better… at least there wasn’t a car door around. He put his hand on hers and eased her grip, as gently as possible. Her nails were painted blue; the varnish was chipped at the tips. “Yeah. Count on me.”
She wound her arms around his neck and he took big handfuls of her leather jacket and lifted her up, gave her a little spin. She smelt different and the same. “Mels,” he said, lowering her to the ground, “Remember -”
“Enjoy the apple. Later!” She turned on her heel and strode back down the path, arms folded. Some part of him hoped she’d go to Amy’s house.
He saluted her back, took off his glasses, and headed for the bus stop.