Crossover Fic: On the Relative Fineness of Leather Jackets (Life On Mars/Doctor Who)
Title: On the Relative Fineness of Leather Jackets
Author: Evilawyer
Rating: PG
Shows Crossed: Life on Mars, Doctor Who
Characters: Sam Tyler, Ninth Doctor
Summary: Home is where you make it.
Disclaimer: The characters are the intellectual property of the BBC and/or persons affiliated with it. The writer of the following story realizes no financial benefit from it.
Notes: (1) I've been feeling prickly lately, but no matter what I set out to write --- sarcastic, scary, sad, etc. --- everything seems to come out ending on a hopeful or happy note. I figure I might as well roll with it. (2) It might not seem like it from this (see note 1 re: prickliness), but I actually think John Simm, from what I've seen of him, is a fine actor. Same for Christopher Eccleston.
For as out of place as he felt in it, Sam Tyler missed 2006. He missed its conveniences. He missed its DVD players, its BlackBerries, its Pizza Hut restaurants that knew he was going to order pineapple and anchovies the minute his Virgin Mobile number popped up on their caller IDs and spared him the muzziness and heartache of having to feel enough to decide on his take-away order and to be connected enough to reality to tell it to the obnoxious, adolescent-minded punk on the other end of the line. It didn't help matters that he kept thinking that he was actually still in 2006 but had been conked on the head and spirited away to a little pocket of 1973 retro-worship that didn't quite get it right. Red corduroy trousers, yeah, okay, but shiny polyester shirts? Shiny polyester shirts didn't become a fashion statement until more like 1975, did they? It was little things like that that threw the whole thing off and left Sam feeling like he was walking through a field of someone's dreamed anachronisms.
Even so, Sam hadn't been so happy to see the particular anachronism now before him since the days when his five year old self sat happily in front of the telly, listening to his mum belt out “I Woke Up In Love This Morning” in the kitchen while he ate jelly babies and watched his favorite hero save the universe in the company of a plucky girl reporter who whimpered instead of screamed when she was menaced by monsters and a pretty darn brave but not overly endowed in the common sense department naval surgeon who was, for some unexplained reason, attached to UNIT --- which itself rather inexplicably drew its all-white, all-male membership exclusively from the ranks of the British Army even though every other United Nations task force drew its members from numerous, well...nations.
The illusion of political inclusiveness was something else Sam missed about 2006.
At first, Sam contented himself with caressing the police box's splintered wooden sides and giving it a sweet little kiss, but the sudden image of the late Anthony Ainley doing the same in Time Flight that swept over him soon had him kneeling in front of the door, face anguished and eyes misted over in that way that enhanced his sex appeal immeasurably. Just ask Annie. Or Gene Hunt. And Sam would bet dollars to donuts that Ray wasn't exactly immune to the amber-hued, “come-comfort-me” charms of Sam's wet, tortured eyes --- big, swinging cojones or, Sam suspected, not.
Sam found himself staring at a pair of dark-clad legs when the door swung open abruptly. “Excuse me,” a rough, gruff, I'm-taking-no-crap-from-the-lowly-likes-of-you Northern accent said in an indisputably irritated tone, “but would you mind not doing that?”
Sam composed himself. This involved sniffing, swallowing, wiping at his eyes with the back of his hand just enough to smear the tears around his eye sockets just so (What? Could he help it if he had such pretty, expressive eyes? His eyes were right up there with Peter O'Toole's soulfully-blue-and-not-incognizant-of-the-feelings-of-others-but-still-a-little-loony-if-not-downright-psycho-killer-crazy Lawrence of Arabia and Night of the Generals eyes if he put enough eyeliner on and had someone like Omar Sharif --- or, to put it in twenty-first century terms, that pretty actor from Casanova who's name Sam could never remember --- to pine/lust after. He wasn't supposed to use an asset like that? Didn't Max Bialystock once say “Flaunt it, baby! Flaunt it!”? As far as Sam was concerned, that instruction was more than sufficient validation for his shameless use of his eyeballs to pull at people's heart strings. And the strings attached to other visceral organs generally located further down than the heart. At least he could do more with his eyes than big-eyed staring.) and getting his low, raspy, let-me-share-my-soul's-pain-while-telling-you-absolutely-nothing voice on to ask the knees in front of him “Doing what?”
“Sniveling and snorking all over my TARDIS,” the voice huffed.
Jeans. The legs were wearing black jeans straight out of 2005. Sam wanted to hug those eye-level knees from sheer relief at not seeing bell bottoms at the end of those legs. A glance upwards brought a black leather jacket into his vision --- a beautiful, weather-beaten, time-worn, black leather jacket that looked so much lovelier and so much more at home on its wearer than his own did on him. Shame, really. The one nice thing about 1973 so far had been the ability to wear leather jackets without having hard-core, twenty-first century vegans look at him like he was evil, murdering scum. It would have been nice if he had turned out to be able to look good wearing them. Life any time just never saw fit to give him any breaks, did it? Sam did notice, however, that the stranger's buzz cut was doing nothing for his overall look. Sam's own misguided adoption of a “put a bowl on my head and make me look like Moe Howard” 'do at Annie's insistence that it would make his hair look longer and fluffier like everyone else's was the pinnacle of style compared to the “shave my head like a prisoner of war” look Mr. Leather Jacket had going for him. And, good God, those ears! Ears like that didn't come from sleeping funny. This bloke should really think about some sort of hat. Didn't Mr. Spock wear hats or caps to cover his ears when they beamed down to twentieth century Earth?
“What,” Mr. Leather Jacket asked as he rubbed at the skin around his mouth. “Do I have banana all over my face?”
Sam shook his head slightly and refocused. “No.”
“Then why're looking at me with that thousand yard stare?”
Sam slid his eyes downward as he smiled abashedly. “You just...remind me of home.”
Mr. Leather Jacket looked completely flummoxed. “What?”
“You remind me of home,” Sam repeated quietly.
The man from the police box folded slowly to his knees, then sat down with his back against the door jamb. “I find that hard to believe,” he said distantly.
“Well, you do,” Sam said. “Maybe I am mad, because I know it's crazy. I know you're not Doctor Who. No scarf, for one thing, not even velvet, and not nearly enough hair. But you still remind me of him. It isn't just the police box. You seem...good. And compassionate, if a bit rude. Seeing you's a bit like watching him on Saturdays when I was little. It's like being back home. It's like being safe and cared for by the people around, like they know me and ….” Sam stopped talking. He was embarrassed enough to be on his knees in front of a police box confessing his innermost thoughts ---- thoughts would have to do, because “feelings” was too strong a word ---- to a total stranger. He didn't need to add to it by prattling on about a children's television show.
The stranger gave a sarcastic snort that was at odds with the blank look on his face. “Safe and cared for is like being back home, is it?”
Sam didn't know how to answer, so he didn't.
“I shouldn't remind anyone of home,” the stranger said bitterly, but Sam thought the ire in the stranger's tone sounded self-directed. Then, as though he hadn't said a word, the stranger wrinkled his brow. His ears, Sam noticed, wiggled when he did. “What year is this,” the stranger asked distractedly.
Sam cleared his throat. “It's 1973.”
“1973,” the stranger repeated fondly. “I liked 1973. There were lots of good people then.” He glanced at Sam. “You remind me of one of them.” He looked Sam up and down with a critical eye. “Not entirely sure why. Maybe it was the kissing my TARDIS. No, that was later. And not that he was good, really, but it was good to see him again. Made me realize how much I'd missed him.” At Sam's quizzical look, the stranger hastened to add, “Lots going on in 1973. Lots of progress being made.”
“Really?” Sam slid from his knees to sit down cross-legged beside the man. “I've been finding it all depressingly backward.”
“All times are backward,” the man responded impatiently. “And all times are fantastic. Or they can be. Every time is terrible and wonderful all at once. Every time is hideous and beautiful. You just have to look around to see both sides and find where you fit in.”
Sam looked around at the surroundings he thought of as dismal and dingy. “I don't fit in here.”
“Do you want me to drop you back in 2006?”
Sam didn't even think to ask how the man knew he was from 2006 or how the man proposed to “drop” him back there before saying “I don't fit in there, either,” with a sorrowful bark of a laugh. “There's all these things in both places for me to enjoy, all these people for me to … Maybe there's beauty around me, wherever I am, but I don't feel it.” He looked at the ground in front of him. “I don't feel anything.”
“Do you wanna come with me,” the man asked in a voice that was more gentle than Sam would, based on appearances so far, have thought him capable of being. “There'll be all sorts of experiences and emotions you'll be able to try on for size. It won't be safe, but I can promise you it will be the trip of a lifetime.
Sam looked at the man. The answering look from the man's eyes told Sam that his companion may well not believe a single word he had just said ---- in fact, Sam got the distinct impression that he didn't ---- but that he was committed to living as though he did. The man's eyes weren't nearly as pretty as Sam's own. They weren't even as pretty as David Tennant's (Yes! That was his name!) eyes, but they shone with the strength of that commitment. Sam could do with a little bit of that strength, even if it never grew into something solid that he could have and say was his. “Yeah. I want to come with you.”
“Let me introduce myself, then. I'm the Doctor.” The Doctor stood, then extended his hand down to Sam. “Welcome aboard, Sam Tyler,” he said as he pulled Sam to his feet. “By the way...nice jacket.”