ext_20790 (![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png)
sarkywoman.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wintercompanion2008-07-16 11:47 pm
sarkywoman.livejournal.com) wrote in wintercompanion2008-07-16 11:47 pm
Entry tags:
sarkywoman: A Different Kind of Academy Fic (Jack/10) [PG]
Title: A Different Kind of Academy Fic 2
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sarkywoman
Challenge: AU
Rating: PG
Warnings: Bad poetry.
Summary: Craack Highschool AU, part 2. The Doctor dangles from a fence, Rose finds out what TARDIS stands for, the Master hears the call to war, Jack and the Doctor do lunch, and the Doctor is pelted with Shakespearean sonnets.
A Different Kind of Academy Fic 1
A Different Kind of Academy Fic 2
The next day, at break time, the Doctor was still suffering the consequences of Jack’s little outburst. He was sitting with the Master on a wall, eating a stick of celery that Uncle Davison had thoughtfully put in his schoolbag. The Master was mucking about with a ‘laser screwdriver’, an implement of his own design that bore remarkable similarities to the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Unfortunately Uncle Eccle had confiscated it after his report from Gallifrey High.
A gang of girls giggled as they passed. The Doctor didn’t want to be paranoid about it, but Rose kept looking over at them as they went, so it was probably safe to assume they were giggling over the ‘banana’ incident.
The Doctor hadn’t been able to look up from the desk for the rest of biology yesterday. That had continued on throughout the whole of his first day as it became apparent the whole class was willing to jump on the bandwagon of mocking the new kid. At least he hadn’t had to sit by Jack in his other lessons and he had been able to sit beside the Master. The other Gallifreyan hadn’t even mentioned the banana incident, just said that Harkness was a twat and left it at that.
“Hey Doctor,” called a boy the Doctor believed was called Mickey. He was always with a blond boy called Jake. Both teens wandered over to them, mischief in their eyes. “Celery instead of banana this break? Jack’s banana doesn’t taste too good then?”
“Why don’t you ask your blonde girlfriend,” muttered the Master without looking up from his project. “She’s tasted it more than most. And, to clarify, I don’t mean the dumb blonde girlfriend you’re with now. The other one. The really really dumb one.”
Jake and Mickey clenched their fists and opened and shut their mouths like goldfish, searching for witty retorts that never appeared. Eventually Mickey snatched the laser screwdriver and threw it over the school’s tall fence. Then the two boys ran off laughing.
The Doctor huffed and began climbing the fence.
“Don’t be an idiot,” the Master snapped. “I’ll just make another one. Get down, you’ll fall!”
“I’m okay!” the Doctor insisted as he neared the top of the wire fence. “You were defending me so it’s my fault they threw it over.”
He thought he was doing rather well, until his laces got tangled halfway up the metal fence and his suit jacket got caught on the top. He tried to tug the pinstriped fabric off of the sharp fence, but only managed to get his tie tangled in it. He was officially stuck. “Um…Master, I might need a hand here.”
He awkwardly twisted so that he could see the other boy. The teen was watching him with a look of disdain. “I did tell you not to climb up there. What am I supposed to do?”
“Climb up and help untangle me?” The Doctor suggested hopefully.
The Master wrinkled his nose distastefully. “Do I have to? Are you sure you can’t get down yourself?”
“Uhh…” the Doctor tugged and wriggled and found himself more securely stuck than before. “I’m sure. Can you help?”
The Master huffed and folded his arms. “I didn’t want you to climb up there in the first place.”
“I know, but I’m stuck!”
“Are you okay up there?” called an irritatingly familiar American accent. Why did Jack Harkness have to show up now, of all times?
“I’m fine,” the Doctor grumbled. “The Master’s going to get me down.”
John Hart, who seemed to follow Jack like a puppy, raised an eyebrow. “What, Koschei? Have you seen him in PE? He can barely get both feet up the training wall,” sniggered the cruel boy.
“Shut up!” snarled the Master, shoving John roughly. John staggered back, then pushed the Master back even harder, sending the boy sprawling back against the wall.
“Stop it!” the Doctor yelled. He tried even harder to get free so that he could go to the Master’s aid, and ripped his jacket on the fence. The sudden freedom of his upper body cost him his balance and he toppled off of the fence. He didn’t hit the floor, though, just hung from his shoelaces. That wouldn’t last…
He grabbed the fence in a panic, but knew that being upside down meant that if he fell he would break his arms unless he let go, in which case he would break his neck.
At least John and the Master had stopped fighting to stare. “Don’t move,” the Master said to him, as if he needed telling. “Just…wait there, we’ll get a teacher or something. Okay?”
“I think my laces are about to break,” the Doctor whimpered. He could feel the strings giving way, a barely audible creak. He almost cried when the wind blew and shook the fence.
“Fuck getting a teacher,” Jack muttered. Then he began climbing the fence. Every step seemed to shake the whole construct, making the Doctor’s stomach churn. Soon Jack had climbed up past him. “I’m gonna untangle your laces, okay?”
“NO! My laces are keeping me up! I’ll fall and break my arms and my neck!”
“Trust me,” Jack said. His cocky confidence inspired none in the Doctor, who saw his young life flash before his eyes as Jack undid the knot holding him up on the fence.
Clutching onto the fence so hard that it was digging into his palms, only his lower body fell back, and that landed firmly on Jack’s brawny shoulder. “Told ya. You can let go now.”
Reluctantly, the Doctor released his death grip on the fence and let Jack carry him down fireman-style, feeling rather embarrassed about the whole thing. Jack set him down gently on the ground. “What were you climbing over for, anyway?”
“Mickey threw the Master’s laser screwdriver over there. I just wanted to get it back.”
Without saying anything more, Jack sprung back up the fence, jumping down the other side into someone’s back garden. He disappeared into the bushes for a moment, then came back holding a silver, metal tube. “This it?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” the Doctor said happily.
Jack smiled back at him and held the laser screwdriver in his mouth as he climbed back up the fence. Again he jumped down, landing graciously on two feet directly in front of the Doctor. “Here ya go,” he said, handing the screwdriver over to the Master.
The Master took it from him, looked at it for a moment, then threw it back over the fence. “Not worth it from you,” he said acidly. Then he turned and walked off. “Come on Doctor,” he called back as he went.
The Doctor didn’t run after him immediately, a little embarrassed by his friend’s behaviour. “I’m sorry about him, I didn’t think he would do that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack shrugged. “I only did it to see you smile.”
The Doctor wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was quite taken aback until he remembered that this was the same boy who had indirectly made his first day, and part of his second, a living hell. “If you wanted me to smile, having everyone make fun of me over our biology lesson wasn’t the best way to go about it.”
Jack sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I just thought it would be a funny thing to say. How was I supposed to know people would make fun of you over it? If I had known, I wouldn’t have said it.”
John sniggered. “It was funny, though.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes and ran off after the Master, who hadn’t stopped to wait for him. Jack Harkness might possess some redeemable features, but the people surrounding him most certainly did not. As long as they clung to Jack’s greatcoat, the Doctor wanted nothing to do with him.
Even if he had been rather dashing and heroic that break time.
*
Woodwork Technology was very different from Plastics. Their teacher, Miss Jabe, was awfully nice but quite strict and she kept a meticulous seating plan for all the students. The Doctor was slightly irritated to find out that Miss Jabe had sat the Master alone on purpose and would not let anyone else sit next to him. He was a ‘bad influence’, she said. Instead she sat the Doctor by Rose Tyler, who was rumoured to be a ‘very good influence’. Apparently the blonde girl would help him settle in.
It was nothing like Mr Nestene’s Plastics class, with the rioting and hazardous study conditions. Everyone sat and worked with quiet conversation and even queued up to use the tools. It was all rather peaceful.
Miss Jabe briefed him on their projects, then left him to design his own, telling him to put his hand up if he had any questions. In this basic unit, they would all be making small model homes. The Doctor began sketching plans for a model Tardis. Rose kept watching him work, none too subtly.
The fourth time that her saw stopped moving on the wood, the Doctor looked up and met her inquisitive gaze. “Yes?”
“It doesn’t look like a house,” she said, looking at his drawings.
“Well it’s not really a house, as such,” explained the Doctor. “It’s a Tardis. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It travels in Space. And Time.”
The girl stared at him for a long time. Then she said happily, “I’m making my house for my mum! Are you gonna give your…Tardis…to your mum?”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t have a mum. I live with my uncles. If I make a good replica, maybe I could give it to Uncle Hartnell.”
He and Rose looked over the various projects being created around them. They weren’t terribly impressive. “Um…what if it’s not good?” Rose asked.
“Then maybe I’ll give it to Uncle Tom. He might not be impressed, but he’ll give me a jelly-baby for effort.”
“Well that’s something,” the blonde girl agreed.
They carried on working in silence for a while until Mickey Smith wandered over to their desk under the pretence of asking to borrow a pencil. “Hey Rose,” the boy leered at the girl. “How’s life with banana-boy?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Banana jokes are so yesterday, Mickey. If you don’t really want to borrow a pencil, can you go back to your seat? I actually want to finish my project this term. For once.”
Mickey went away, adequately shamed by his girlfriend. The Doctor stared at her as she used wood-glue to stick a small window onto her block of wood. “Are banana jokes really out of fashion already?” he asked hopefully.
Rose nodded. “Oh yeah. Owen Harper said something at the end of break and Jack Harkness totally ripped him a new one for being so lame. He said it was like, only funny the first time and everyone was over-using it. So we stopped.”
“It sounds like he runs the place,” the Doctor said, labelling his diagram.
Rose giggled. “Nah, in his dreams maybe. But he is kinda…cool…you know?”
The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
“Well he seems to have taken quite a shine to you,” Rose said with a knowing smirk. “Lucky.”
The Doctor sighed. “Yes, lucky me,” he repeated sarcastically. He glanced up and noticed Jack sawing through a huge board across the room. He’d taken his coat off and rolled up his sleeves and was grunting with the effort of his work. Sweat shone on his brow and his blue eyes were intensely focused on what he was doing.
The Doctor breathed a slight sigh in tandem with Rose and felt a sudden urge to smack himself.
*
After Woodwork, they had Music with Ms Cassandra. Well, Lady Cassandra O’Brien Dot Delta Seventeen. But that was a bit of a mouthful, so the kids mostly referred to her as Ms Cassie. Which she disapproved of. She had been known to send children to the Naughty Room just for abbreviating her name. She also wore too much make-up and perfume, which was quite unfortunate for the Doctor as he and the Master were sitting right near her desk.
“Couldn’t you have sat near the back, like you normally do?” the Doctor asked his friend as his super-sensitive nose caught another whiff of perfume that made him gag.
“No, not in music. I get sick. Sometimes I have to go outside.”
The Doctor frowned, filling with concern for his new friend. “What kind of sick?”
“Headaches,” the Master said with a dismissive shrug.
“Because it’s so noisy?” asked the Doctor. Around them, the class were attempting to play blues-style rhythms on the keyboards. Nobody was very good at it.
The Master nodded. “It’s the drums that’s worst.”
The Doctor frowned and looked around the room. There were kids playing keyboards, some messing about with the flutes, John attempting the guitar…no drums. “Um…”
Suddenly the Master grabbed him by the shoulders, his eyes lit up with mania. “Can’t you hear it, Doctor? The constant drumming…”
“Now, now, Koschei,” Ms Cassandra said condescendingly, prying his fingers off of the Doctor’s shoulders. “If you can’t behave with someone sitting beside you, I’ll just have to send the Doctor to sit at the back.”
The Master nodded, strangely subdued, and spent the rest of the lesson tapping a single key on the keyboard in a repetitive, four-beat rhythm and muttering about ‘the call to war’.
The Doctor sat in nervous silence and composed his little symphony. He called it ‘The Doctor’s Theme’ and was rather proud of it.
So he was a bit miffed when Ms Cassandra said it lacked feeling and gave him a meagre pass mark.
*
That lunch time he and the Master had to go to the canteen, because although the Master had a packed lunch with him, the Doctor had forgotten his. He used his psychic paper to fool the dinner lady into thinking he had a free lunch card, then got a plate of chips and a banana milkshake.
Once he had his chosen lunch on his tray, he looked around for somewhere to sit. He couldn’t see where the Master had got to.
“Doctor!”
Jack waved him over and patted the empty seat beside him. The Doctor glanced around and, still unable to see the Master, realised he didn’t have a better option. He went and sat down beside Jack, who beamed happily at him. “You’ve met everyone, right? I know you know John, this is Owen Harper, you’ve met Rose, this is Suzie Costello, and that’s my little brother Gray.”
The Doctor nodded politely to the group. “Hello.”
“We sit together in Woodwork,” Rose said. “He’s making a Tardis for his Uncle Hartnell, or maybe his Uncle Tom.” Then she happily wolfed down her chips.
“Um…yes,” the Doctor confirmed, though he wasn’t sure how his Woodwork project was of any interest to anyone.
Jack feigned interest anyway. “Oh? What’s a Tardis?”
Rose intercepted. “Time And Radical Distortions Of Space.”
“Actually,” the Doctor corrected, “it’s ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.”
“I was almost right,” Rose pouted.
“Rose, we’re going to be late to netball,” Suzie said with obvious disdain for the ongoing conversation.
“Oh, right! Someone finish my chips and take the tray up?”
“I’ve got ‘em,” Owen said, switching the half-full plate of chips with his empty plate and tucking in once he had suitably drenched them in ketchup.
Rose and Suzie grabbed their bags and left the table in a hurry. Without them in the way, the Doctor could see the Master sitting a few tables away. Staring at him. He wondered how long the other boy had known he was sitting there.
Jack looked between them, sensing the tension. “Everything okay, Doc? He’s not been giving you any trouble, has he? If he has…”
“No! No, he’s been fine. If I’d known he was there, I would have sat with him. I just didn’t see him over there.”
Jack didn’t look too bothered. “Well, I’m glad you’re sitting with us instead. You’re better off in our company.”
The Doctor hesitated, his fork hovering over his chips. “Why? What’s your problem with him?”
Jack looked conflicted for a moment, as if debating whether to say what was on his mind. “Okay, listen. I know you think we’re just being mean, but Koschei’s kinda…dangerous, okay?”
“Dangerous,” the Doctor deadpanned. Was that the best they could come up with?
“Yeah. You seem like a nice kid and nobody wants to see you end up like poor Lucy Cole.”
The Doctor frowned. He hadn’t heard the name before. “Who’s Lucy?”
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by John. “It doesn’t matter. I’m bored to death of this shit. Let the Doctor make his own friends, Jack. I don’t remember him employing us as bodyguards or friend-police.”
“He’s only doing it because he wants into his pants,” Owen muttered, the quiet words somehow carrying around the table as the boy continued stuffing his face with chips. John agreed with him.
The Doctor flushed and couldn’t find the courage to see if Jack’s expression contradicted their words or confirmed it. He poked at a few chips on his tray before standing up. “I’m going to go and talk to Kos – the Master. I’ll see you all later, okay?”
Jack nodded silently, unusually subdued. Owen, John and Gray all responded with unenthusiastic grunts.
The Doctor dumped his tray in the hatch with a big smile at the dinner-lady, whose frown turned upside-down in response. Then he bounded over to the Master’s table. The boy had his packed lunch – looked like ham sandwiches. He hadn’t eaten a bite. They were unwrapped and on the table, but completely untouched. Theta sat across from his friend and smiled. “Hi! I thought you’d gone, I couldn’t see you.”
The Master didn’t smile back. “I was right here.”
“Well yes, I know that now,” the Doctor grinned, made a little nervous by the cold glare of the Master’s eyes. “But by the time I saw you I was already eating with Jack.”
“So Harkness is all forgiven now?” the Master asked acidly.
Honestly, the Doctor had almost forgotten about the banana thing. After all, Jack had saved his life (sort of) on the fence that morning and he’d stopped everyone from making banana jokes. “He’s redeemed himself. I still wouldn’t say he’s my friend though,” the Doctor added hurriedly. “I just didn’t know anybody else, so my options were quite limited, seat-wise.”
“If you’d known I was here…”
“I would have sat by you.”
The Master nodded, seemingly satisfied with this. He took a bite from his sandwich. When he’d swallowed the mouthful, he spoke again. “Quite right. We’re different from them. We’re equals. Look at the idiots and morons surrounding us. We could be Gods in this place.”
The Doctor smiled sadly. He couldn’t blame Koschei for that kind of wishful thinking, considering the bullying he had to put up with. He was just grateful that he had been excluded from the Master’s dreams of vengeance.
“Doctor?” At Jack’s voice, he turned to see the Immortal arrive at their table. “You forgot this.” He held out the Doctor’s lightweight bag, which had obviously been left at their table.
“Oh, thanks!” The Doctor took it from him. He wasn’t sure who was responsible for the slight lingering touch as the rucksack passed from hand to hand, but it made his skin tingle.
“Jack, come on, we’re gonna be late for football!”
Jack sighed as John’s voice carried across the canteen to them. He mock-saluted the Doctor and winked before running off after his friend.
The Master huffed. “I still say he’s a twat.”
*
After lunch, they had English with Ms Carrionite. He sat by the Master again and the other boy helped him get up to speed with what the class were studying. This half of the term was being spent reading Shakespeare.
“You’ve got to choose one of his works for your project,” Koschei explained. “I’m studying Macbeth.” He pulled out a huge folder full of papers and began rifling through them.
The Doctor thumbed idly through a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Maybe a comedy would suit his purposes. He wasn’t in the mood for tragedy…
A piece of rolled-up paper bounced off of his arm and landed on the floor. Curious, he picked it up and unfurled it.
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion
Someone was clearly working on the sonnets and was aiming for the bin with this projectile. The Doctor chucked it into the wastepaper basket and thought nothing more of it.
Until another one landed on his page. The Master raised an eyebrow at him, but was too absorbed in his work to pay it much interest beyond a comment that people should stop throwing their trash across the room. The Doctor unrolled the paper. A peril of sitting too close to the bin perhaps, getting everyone’s messed-up work.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Why would someone throw this away, though? There were no mistakes in it. The Doctor shrugged. Maybe it just wasn’t what they had wanted. He threw it into the bin to join the first.
The next one hit him on the back of the head. He glanced around angrily. Everyone was working except for John, who was glaring at Jack.
The Doctor picked up the paper ball and unfurled it. Another bit of another sonnet.
Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart.
The Doctor smiled. Not everyone could say they had spent their day being pelted by love poetry, even if it was just accidental. He looked around to see who might be throwing them and caught Jack’s eye. The boy’s hand was poised to throw a rolled-up paper ball, and he froze in place when he saw the Doctor was watching. The Doctor couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“Is something funny, Doctor?” Suddenly Ms Carrionite was in front of his desk, her pretty face decidedly less pretty for its sudden sternness.
“No, Miss,” he said meekly. He couldn’t get into trouble at this school. Uncle Colin had been very firm on that, as had Uncle Eccle. No disobedience would be tolerated. He would be home-tutored if he couldn’t behave himself here, and the thought of that made his blood run cold.
“I hope you have decided what you will be studying for your project.”
“Um…” he hadn’t. “The Merchant of Venice?” Beside him, the Master winced.
Ms Carrionite nodded. “Good. Get on with it.”
As she returned to her desk, the Doctor turned to the Master. “What’s wrong with the Merchant of Venice?”
The Master shrugged. “Each to their own. I prefer the tragedies myself.”
They got to work studying their books, occasionally discussing the meanings of a line or possible sources Shakespeare had used. The rest of the lesson flew by.
When the bell rang, Jack wandered over to their table. “Thanks for lending me your pen,” he said, pushing a biro over the desk.
The Doctor frowned. “I didn’t…” then he noticed the note folded and slipped between the lid and the pen. He quickly took it and put it in the pencil-case where the Master wouldn’t see. The boy really didn’t like Jack after all, he might have been upset that the Doctor was receiving messages from him.
He made the excuse of needing the bathroom and nipped to the toilet before their next lesson, where he shut himself in a cubicle. The Master’s suspicious glare wouldn’t reach him in here. He took the note from his pencil-case and unfolded it.
My love for you burns like the blazing sun;
A cliché I know, but that’s how I feel
Though no clichés, if I wrote ev’ry one,
Would show you that my love is deep and real.
For you I would scale a thousand fences,
I would take on the whole school for your smiles,
Would untangle a thousand shoelaces,
How could I not in the face of your wiles?
I’m sorry my failure at poetry
Can’t encompass your radiant beauty.
The Doctor couldn’t stop himself from saying “Aww” out loud. He hugged the poem then put it back into his bag. He had never been the focus of such attention before and he wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.
After much thought and re-reading of the sonnet dedicated especially to him, the Doctor decided firmly on his course of action.
He would, of course, do nothing.
Author:
sarkywomanChallenge: AU
Rating: PG
Warnings: Bad poetry.
Summary: Craack Highschool AU, part 2. The Doctor dangles from a fence, Rose finds out what TARDIS stands for, the Master hears the call to war, Jack and the Doctor do lunch, and the Doctor is pelted with Shakespearean sonnets.
A Different Kind of Academy Fic 1
A Different Kind of Academy Fic 2
The next day, at break time, the Doctor was still suffering the consequences of Jack’s little outburst. He was sitting with the Master on a wall, eating a stick of celery that Uncle Davison had thoughtfully put in his schoolbag. The Master was mucking about with a ‘laser screwdriver’, an implement of his own design that bore remarkable similarities to the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver. Unfortunately Uncle Eccle had confiscated it after his report from Gallifrey High.
A gang of girls giggled as they passed. The Doctor didn’t want to be paranoid about it, but Rose kept looking over at them as they went, so it was probably safe to assume they were giggling over the ‘banana’ incident.
The Doctor hadn’t been able to look up from the desk for the rest of biology yesterday. That had continued on throughout the whole of his first day as it became apparent the whole class was willing to jump on the bandwagon of mocking the new kid. At least he hadn’t had to sit by Jack in his other lessons and he had been able to sit beside the Master. The other Gallifreyan hadn’t even mentioned the banana incident, just said that Harkness was a twat and left it at that.
“Hey Doctor,” called a boy the Doctor believed was called Mickey. He was always with a blond boy called Jake. Both teens wandered over to them, mischief in their eyes. “Celery instead of banana this break? Jack’s banana doesn’t taste too good then?”
“Why don’t you ask your blonde girlfriend,” muttered the Master without looking up from his project. “She’s tasted it more than most. And, to clarify, I don’t mean the dumb blonde girlfriend you’re with now. The other one. The really really dumb one.”
Jake and Mickey clenched their fists and opened and shut their mouths like goldfish, searching for witty retorts that never appeared. Eventually Mickey snatched the laser screwdriver and threw it over the school’s tall fence. Then the two boys ran off laughing.
The Doctor huffed and began climbing the fence.
“Don’t be an idiot,” the Master snapped. “I’ll just make another one. Get down, you’ll fall!”
“I’m okay!” the Doctor insisted as he neared the top of the wire fence. “You were defending me so it’s my fault they threw it over.”
He thought he was doing rather well, until his laces got tangled halfway up the metal fence and his suit jacket got caught on the top. He tried to tug the pinstriped fabric off of the sharp fence, but only managed to get his tie tangled in it. He was officially stuck. “Um…Master, I might need a hand here.”
He awkwardly twisted so that he could see the other boy. The teen was watching him with a look of disdain. “I did tell you not to climb up there. What am I supposed to do?”
“Climb up and help untangle me?” The Doctor suggested hopefully.
The Master wrinkled his nose distastefully. “Do I have to? Are you sure you can’t get down yourself?”
“Uhh…” the Doctor tugged and wriggled and found himself more securely stuck than before. “I’m sure. Can you help?”
The Master huffed and folded his arms. “I didn’t want you to climb up there in the first place.”
“I know, but I’m stuck!”
“Are you okay up there?” called an irritatingly familiar American accent. Why did Jack Harkness have to show up now, of all times?
“I’m fine,” the Doctor grumbled. “The Master’s going to get me down.”
John Hart, who seemed to follow Jack like a puppy, raised an eyebrow. “What, Koschei? Have you seen him in PE? He can barely get both feet up the training wall,” sniggered the cruel boy.
“Shut up!” snarled the Master, shoving John roughly. John staggered back, then pushed the Master back even harder, sending the boy sprawling back against the wall.
“Stop it!” the Doctor yelled. He tried even harder to get free so that he could go to the Master’s aid, and ripped his jacket on the fence. The sudden freedom of his upper body cost him his balance and he toppled off of the fence. He didn’t hit the floor, though, just hung from his shoelaces. That wouldn’t last…
He grabbed the fence in a panic, but knew that being upside down meant that if he fell he would break his arms unless he let go, in which case he would break his neck.
At least John and the Master had stopped fighting to stare. “Don’t move,” the Master said to him, as if he needed telling. “Just…wait there, we’ll get a teacher or something. Okay?”
“I think my laces are about to break,” the Doctor whimpered. He could feel the strings giving way, a barely audible creak. He almost cried when the wind blew and shook the fence.
“Fuck getting a teacher,” Jack muttered. Then he began climbing the fence. Every step seemed to shake the whole construct, making the Doctor’s stomach churn. Soon Jack had climbed up past him. “I’m gonna untangle your laces, okay?”
“NO! My laces are keeping me up! I’ll fall and break my arms and my neck!”
“Trust me,” Jack said. His cocky confidence inspired none in the Doctor, who saw his young life flash before his eyes as Jack undid the knot holding him up on the fence.
Clutching onto the fence so hard that it was digging into his palms, only his lower body fell back, and that landed firmly on Jack’s brawny shoulder. “Told ya. You can let go now.”
Reluctantly, the Doctor released his death grip on the fence and let Jack carry him down fireman-style, feeling rather embarrassed about the whole thing. Jack set him down gently on the ground. “What were you climbing over for, anyway?”
“Mickey threw the Master’s laser screwdriver over there. I just wanted to get it back.”
Without saying anything more, Jack sprung back up the fence, jumping down the other side into someone’s back garden. He disappeared into the bushes for a moment, then came back holding a silver, metal tube. “This it?”
“Yeah, that’s it!” the Doctor said happily.
Jack smiled back at him and held the laser screwdriver in his mouth as he climbed back up the fence. Again he jumped down, landing graciously on two feet directly in front of the Doctor. “Here ya go,” he said, handing the screwdriver over to the Master.
The Master took it from him, looked at it for a moment, then threw it back over the fence. “Not worth it from you,” he said acidly. Then he turned and walked off. “Come on Doctor,” he called back as he went.
The Doctor didn’t run after him immediately, a little embarrassed by his friend’s behaviour. “I’m sorry about him, I didn’t think he would do that.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack shrugged. “I only did it to see you smile.”
The Doctor wasn’t sure what to make of that. He was quite taken aback until he remembered that this was the same boy who had indirectly made his first day, and part of his second, a living hell. “If you wanted me to smile, having everyone make fun of me over our biology lesson wasn’t the best way to go about it.”
Jack sighed and put his hands in his pockets. “I didn’t mean for that to happen. I just thought it would be a funny thing to say. How was I supposed to know people would make fun of you over it? If I had known, I wouldn’t have said it.”
John sniggered. “It was funny, though.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes and ran off after the Master, who hadn’t stopped to wait for him. Jack Harkness might possess some redeemable features, but the people surrounding him most certainly did not. As long as they clung to Jack’s greatcoat, the Doctor wanted nothing to do with him.
Even if he had been rather dashing and heroic that break time.
*
Woodwork Technology was very different from Plastics. Their teacher, Miss Jabe, was awfully nice but quite strict and she kept a meticulous seating plan for all the students. The Doctor was slightly irritated to find out that Miss Jabe had sat the Master alone on purpose and would not let anyone else sit next to him. He was a ‘bad influence’, she said. Instead she sat the Doctor by Rose Tyler, who was rumoured to be a ‘very good influence’. Apparently the blonde girl would help him settle in.
It was nothing like Mr Nestene’s Plastics class, with the rioting and hazardous study conditions. Everyone sat and worked with quiet conversation and even queued up to use the tools. It was all rather peaceful.
Miss Jabe briefed him on their projects, then left him to design his own, telling him to put his hand up if he had any questions. In this basic unit, they would all be making small model homes. The Doctor began sketching plans for a model Tardis. Rose kept watching him work, none too subtly.
The fourth time that her saw stopped moving on the wood, the Doctor looked up and met her inquisitive gaze. “Yes?”
“It doesn’t look like a house,” she said, looking at his drawings.
“Well it’s not really a house, as such,” explained the Doctor. “It’s a Tardis. Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. It travels in Space. And Time.”
The girl stared at him for a long time. Then she said happily, “I’m making my house for my mum! Are you gonna give your…Tardis…to your mum?”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t have a mum. I live with my uncles. If I make a good replica, maybe I could give it to Uncle Hartnell.”
He and Rose looked over the various projects being created around them. They weren’t terribly impressive. “Um…what if it’s not good?” Rose asked.
“Then maybe I’ll give it to Uncle Tom. He might not be impressed, but he’ll give me a jelly-baby for effort.”
“Well that’s something,” the blonde girl agreed.
They carried on working in silence for a while until Mickey Smith wandered over to their desk under the pretence of asking to borrow a pencil. “Hey Rose,” the boy leered at the girl. “How’s life with banana-boy?”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Banana jokes are so yesterday, Mickey. If you don’t really want to borrow a pencil, can you go back to your seat? I actually want to finish my project this term. For once.”
Mickey went away, adequately shamed by his girlfriend. The Doctor stared at her as she used wood-glue to stick a small window onto her block of wood. “Are banana jokes really out of fashion already?” he asked hopefully.
Rose nodded. “Oh yeah. Owen Harper said something at the end of break and Jack Harkness totally ripped him a new one for being so lame. He said it was like, only funny the first time and everyone was over-using it. So we stopped.”
“It sounds like he runs the place,” the Doctor said, labelling his diagram.
Rose giggled. “Nah, in his dreams maybe. But he is kinda…cool…you know?”
The Doctor shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a little.”
“Well he seems to have taken quite a shine to you,” Rose said with a knowing smirk. “Lucky.”
The Doctor sighed. “Yes, lucky me,” he repeated sarcastically. He glanced up and noticed Jack sawing through a huge board across the room. He’d taken his coat off and rolled up his sleeves and was grunting with the effort of his work. Sweat shone on his brow and his blue eyes were intensely focused on what he was doing.
The Doctor breathed a slight sigh in tandem with Rose and felt a sudden urge to smack himself.
*
After Woodwork, they had Music with Ms Cassandra. Well, Lady Cassandra O’Brien Dot Delta Seventeen. But that was a bit of a mouthful, so the kids mostly referred to her as Ms Cassie. Which she disapproved of. She had been known to send children to the Naughty Room just for abbreviating her name. She also wore too much make-up and perfume, which was quite unfortunate for the Doctor as he and the Master were sitting right near her desk.
“Couldn’t you have sat near the back, like you normally do?” the Doctor asked his friend as his super-sensitive nose caught another whiff of perfume that made him gag.
“No, not in music. I get sick. Sometimes I have to go outside.”
The Doctor frowned, filling with concern for his new friend. “What kind of sick?”
“Headaches,” the Master said with a dismissive shrug.
“Because it’s so noisy?” asked the Doctor. Around them, the class were attempting to play blues-style rhythms on the keyboards. Nobody was very good at it.
The Master nodded. “It’s the drums that’s worst.”
The Doctor frowned and looked around the room. There were kids playing keyboards, some messing about with the flutes, John attempting the guitar…no drums. “Um…”
Suddenly the Master grabbed him by the shoulders, his eyes lit up with mania. “Can’t you hear it, Doctor? The constant drumming…”
“Now, now, Koschei,” Ms Cassandra said condescendingly, prying his fingers off of the Doctor’s shoulders. “If you can’t behave with someone sitting beside you, I’ll just have to send the Doctor to sit at the back.”
The Master nodded, strangely subdued, and spent the rest of the lesson tapping a single key on the keyboard in a repetitive, four-beat rhythm and muttering about ‘the call to war’.
The Doctor sat in nervous silence and composed his little symphony. He called it ‘The Doctor’s Theme’ and was rather proud of it.
So he was a bit miffed when Ms Cassandra said it lacked feeling and gave him a meagre pass mark.
*
That lunch time he and the Master had to go to the canteen, because although the Master had a packed lunch with him, the Doctor had forgotten his. He used his psychic paper to fool the dinner lady into thinking he had a free lunch card, then got a plate of chips and a banana milkshake.
Once he had his chosen lunch on his tray, he looked around for somewhere to sit. He couldn’t see where the Master had got to.
“Doctor!”
Jack waved him over and patted the empty seat beside him. The Doctor glanced around and, still unable to see the Master, realised he didn’t have a better option. He went and sat down beside Jack, who beamed happily at him. “You’ve met everyone, right? I know you know John, this is Owen Harper, you’ve met Rose, this is Suzie Costello, and that’s my little brother Gray.”
The Doctor nodded politely to the group. “Hello.”
“We sit together in Woodwork,” Rose said. “He’s making a Tardis for his Uncle Hartnell, or maybe his Uncle Tom.” Then she happily wolfed down her chips.
“Um…yes,” the Doctor confirmed, though he wasn’t sure how his Woodwork project was of any interest to anyone.
Jack feigned interest anyway. “Oh? What’s a Tardis?”
Rose intercepted. “Time And Radical Distortions Of Space.”
“Actually,” the Doctor corrected, “it’s ‘Time And Relative Dimensions In Space.”
“I was almost right,” Rose pouted.
“Rose, we’re going to be late to netball,” Suzie said with obvious disdain for the ongoing conversation.
“Oh, right! Someone finish my chips and take the tray up?”
“I’ve got ‘em,” Owen said, switching the half-full plate of chips with his empty plate and tucking in once he had suitably drenched them in ketchup.
Rose and Suzie grabbed their bags and left the table in a hurry. Without them in the way, the Doctor could see the Master sitting a few tables away. Staring at him. He wondered how long the other boy had known he was sitting there.
Jack looked between them, sensing the tension. “Everything okay, Doc? He’s not been giving you any trouble, has he? If he has…”
“No! No, he’s been fine. If I’d known he was there, I would have sat with him. I just didn’t see him over there.”
Jack didn’t look too bothered. “Well, I’m glad you’re sitting with us instead. You’re better off in our company.”
The Doctor hesitated, his fork hovering over his chips. “Why? What’s your problem with him?”
Jack looked conflicted for a moment, as if debating whether to say what was on his mind. “Okay, listen. I know you think we’re just being mean, but Koschei’s kinda…dangerous, okay?”
“Dangerous,” the Doctor deadpanned. Was that the best they could come up with?
“Yeah. You seem like a nice kid and nobody wants to see you end up like poor Lucy Cole.”
The Doctor frowned. He hadn’t heard the name before. “Who’s Lucy?”
Jack opened his mouth to reply, but was cut off by John. “It doesn’t matter. I’m bored to death of this shit. Let the Doctor make his own friends, Jack. I don’t remember him employing us as bodyguards or friend-police.”
“He’s only doing it because he wants into his pants,” Owen muttered, the quiet words somehow carrying around the table as the boy continued stuffing his face with chips. John agreed with him.
The Doctor flushed and couldn’t find the courage to see if Jack’s expression contradicted their words or confirmed it. He poked at a few chips on his tray before standing up. “I’m going to go and talk to Kos – the Master. I’ll see you all later, okay?”
Jack nodded silently, unusually subdued. Owen, John and Gray all responded with unenthusiastic grunts.
The Doctor dumped his tray in the hatch with a big smile at the dinner-lady, whose frown turned upside-down in response. Then he bounded over to the Master’s table. The boy had his packed lunch – looked like ham sandwiches. He hadn’t eaten a bite. They were unwrapped and on the table, but completely untouched. Theta sat across from his friend and smiled. “Hi! I thought you’d gone, I couldn’t see you.”
The Master didn’t smile back. “I was right here.”
“Well yes, I know that now,” the Doctor grinned, made a little nervous by the cold glare of the Master’s eyes. “But by the time I saw you I was already eating with Jack.”
“So Harkness is all forgiven now?” the Master asked acidly.
Honestly, the Doctor had almost forgotten about the banana thing. After all, Jack had saved his life (sort of) on the fence that morning and he’d stopped everyone from making banana jokes. “He’s redeemed himself. I still wouldn’t say he’s my friend though,” the Doctor added hurriedly. “I just didn’t know anybody else, so my options were quite limited, seat-wise.”
“If you’d known I was here…”
“I would have sat by you.”
The Master nodded, seemingly satisfied with this. He took a bite from his sandwich. When he’d swallowed the mouthful, he spoke again. “Quite right. We’re different from them. We’re equals. Look at the idiots and morons surrounding us. We could be Gods in this place.”
The Doctor smiled sadly. He couldn’t blame Koschei for that kind of wishful thinking, considering the bullying he had to put up with. He was just grateful that he had been excluded from the Master’s dreams of vengeance.
“Doctor?” At Jack’s voice, he turned to see the Immortal arrive at their table. “You forgot this.” He held out the Doctor’s lightweight bag, which had obviously been left at their table.
“Oh, thanks!” The Doctor took it from him. He wasn’t sure who was responsible for the slight lingering touch as the rucksack passed from hand to hand, but it made his skin tingle.
“Jack, come on, we’re gonna be late for football!”
Jack sighed as John’s voice carried across the canteen to them. He mock-saluted the Doctor and winked before running off after his friend.
The Master huffed. “I still say he’s a twat.”
*
After lunch, they had English with Ms Carrionite. He sat by the Master again and the other boy helped him get up to speed with what the class were studying. This half of the term was being spent reading Shakespeare.
“You’ve got to choose one of his works for your project,” Koschei explained. “I’m studying Macbeth.” He pulled out a huge folder full of papers and began rifling through them.
The Doctor thumbed idly through a copy of the Complete Works of Shakespeare. Maybe a comedy would suit his purposes. He wasn’t in the mood for tragedy…
A piece of rolled-up paper bounced off of his arm and landed on the floor. Curious, he picked it up and unfurled it.
A woman’s face with nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion
Someone was clearly working on the sonnets and was aiming for the bin with this projectile. The Doctor chucked it into the wastepaper basket and thought nothing more of it.
Until another one landed on his page. The Master raised an eyebrow at him, but was too absorbed in his work to pay it much interest beyond a comment that people should stop throwing their trash across the room. The Doctor unrolled the paper. A peril of sitting too close to the bin perhaps, getting everyone’s messed-up work.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate.
Why would someone throw this away, though? There were no mistakes in it. The Doctor shrugged. Maybe it just wasn’t what they had wanted. He threw it into the bin to join the first.
The next one hit him on the back of the head. He glanced around angrily. Everyone was working except for John, who was glaring at Jack.
The Doctor picked up the paper ball and unfurled it. Another bit of another sonnet.
Mine eye hath played the painter, and hath steeled
Thy beauty’s form in table of my heart.
The Doctor smiled. Not everyone could say they had spent their day being pelted by love poetry, even if it was just accidental. He looked around to see who might be throwing them and caught Jack’s eye. The boy’s hand was poised to throw a rolled-up paper ball, and he froze in place when he saw the Doctor was watching. The Doctor couldn’t help it. He laughed.
“Is something funny, Doctor?” Suddenly Ms Carrionite was in front of his desk, her pretty face decidedly less pretty for its sudden sternness.
“No, Miss,” he said meekly. He couldn’t get into trouble at this school. Uncle Colin had been very firm on that, as had Uncle Eccle. No disobedience would be tolerated. He would be home-tutored if he couldn’t behave himself here, and the thought of that made his blood run cold.
“I hope you have decided what you will be studying for your project.”
“Um…” he hadn’t. “The Merchant of Venice?” Beside him, the Master winced.
Ms Carrionite nodded. “Good. Get on with it.”
As she returned to her desk, the Doctor turned to the Master. “What’s wrong with the Merchant of Venice?”
The Master shrugged. “Each to their own. I prefer the tragedies myself.”
They got to work studying their books, occasionally discussing the meanings of a line or possible sources Shakespeare had used. The rest of the lesson flew by.
When the bell rang, Jack wandered over to their table. “Thanks for lending me your pen,” he said, pushing a biro over the desk.
The Doctor frowned. “I didn’t…” then he noticed the note folded and slipped between the lid and the pen. He quickly took it and put it in the pencil-case where the Master wouldn’t see. The boy really didn’t like Jack after all, he might have been upset that the Doctor was receiving messages from him.
He made the excuse of needing the bathroom and nipped to the toilet before their next lesson, where he shut himself in a cubicle. The Master’s suspicious glare wouldn’t reach him in here. He took the note from his pencil-case and unfolded it.
My love for you burns like the blazing sun;
A cliché I know, but that’s how I feel
Though no clichés, if I wrote ev’ry one,
Would show you that my love is deep and real.
For you I would scale a thousand fences,
I would take on the whole school for your smiles,
Would untangle a thousand shoelaces,
How could I not in the face of your wiles?
I’m sorry my failure at poetry
Can’t encompass your radiant beauty.
The Doctor couldn’t stop himself from saying “Aww” out loud. He hugged the poem then put it back into his bag. He had never been the focus of such attention before and he wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.
After much thought and re-reading of the sonnet dedicated especially to him, the Doctor decided firmly on his course of action.
He would, of course, do nothing.
no subject
The Doctor frowned and looked around the room. There were kids playing keyboards, some messing about with the flutes, John attempting the guitar…no drums. “Um…”
Suddenly the Master grabbed him by the shoulders, his eyes lit up with mania. “Can’t you hear it, Doctor? The constant drumming…”
...
The Master nodded, strangely subdued, and spent the rest of the lesson tapping a single key on the keyboard in a repetitive, four-beat rhythm and muttering about ‘the call to war’.
I believe you get millions and millions of points for writing such massive win. :-D
And the ending! So very adorable and the last line is just so beautifully Doctor.
I'm really interested in Lucy, though. In such a fun fic, I like the nice subtle darkness that one little detail brought to it.
I'm so glad you've written more of this!