Title: Accidentally Spiders
Rating: K+ (purely because... SPIDERS)
Synopsis: Left to his own devices, the Doctor tracks a pair of lost and enormous spiders to a flat in London. There he meets the flat's disagreeable occupier, who makes the job of rescuing both spiders and taking them safely home considerably more difficult...
I don't actually know what I was trying to achieve with this, but I'm going to share it anyway. Woo. (Set in London, naturally, because 60% of the newWhoniverse is the UK, and most of that is either London or Cardiff)
Harry was not having a good day.
It had been a bad day when he got up, because it had been one of those getting-ups when he just wasn't ready to face the day - a getting-up like mentally heaving himself across broken glass, when the floor was icy to the touch, and his hair was wild, and his eyes remained foggy with sleep for an unreasonable amount of time.
And it had been a bad day when a very large, very overheated gentleman leaned heavily on him in a Tube carriage all the way to work, despite much prodding and jabbing with elbows and increasingly loud sighs of exasperation.
It hadn't got much better in the library because there was a sprawling group of schoolchildren visiting, who didn't understand the concept of being quiet in a library and ignored all his frustrated shushes; the teachers threw him the occasional apologetic look, but he replied with glowers and angrily busied himself with shelving returned books, rattling his trolley away between shelves.
It had been a bad day when he overheard his co-workers discussing a day out he hadn't been invited to, and not for the first time, and when they'd all been completely unabashed about having been caught in the act of exclusion. Generally, Harry had been a brooding, faintly menacing presence in the library all day, stamping books with all the aggression he could muster and sending great thuds echoing out across the chamber-like rooms, burying himself in his current read whenever he had a free moment, and communicating only in frosty mono-syllables with anyone who attempted to do more than ask a question his job required him to answer. Children shied away from his desk, and the various querulous students who trickled in and out of the building were always relieved to escape his contempt and annoyance.
However, by far - by far - the worst thing about his day, much worse than any aggravating members of the public or self-obsessed co-workers, was the four-foot-long spider waiting for him when he got home.
He froze in the doorway, key in one hand, War and Peace in the other. His feet seemed to be rooted to the carpet and an unpleasant tingling sensation shot up and down his back. He swallowed gingerly, afraid to startle it. It had definitely seen him - as he'd opened the door, it had been a startling blur of motion, spinning around to face him. Now it stood raised to its full height - which reached above Harry's shins - with its dozens of blank red eyes all trained on him. They looked like glass beads filled with smoke, except that they were alive - that was the most shocking and hideous thing about the spider. It was observant, staring unblinkingly. Or perhaps the fuzzy torso was the worst thing - gently swaying, with breath or natural unsteadiness Harry couldn't tell, but again very alive; it was a proper spider, this one, with a proper body, a real substance to it, not a skinny, fragile little frame. Or quite possibly, the worst thing was the legs - spider legs, undoubtedly the most unpleasant sight of the entire universe! This spider had proper legs, too - no spindly thread-like limbs for this monster. Every now and then it would shift its weight from one set of legs to another, its feet (or whatever the horrible spider equivalent was) adjusting their positions slightly. Harry felt faint just looking at it.
His mind grappled with the issue before him. It was patently impossible that a spider should grow so large, and even if it could, it would have little to no reason to be in his flat. But there was indeed a gigantic spider in his flat, right in front of him, and he didn't want it to be there; and if it had to be there, he didn't want to be there with it.
The spider hissed. Harry turned his attention back to it, slightly alarmed that he'd almost managed to forget it. The spider's hisses grew more intense, and it even started to rear up slightly as though about to launch an attack; panic reared inside Harry alongside the creature. His heart thundered in his chest and his feet twitched as he desperately tried not to break into any sudden movements. He wished there was someone he could call to for help, but there was no one around; everyone else in his building seemed to be absent, leaving him alone with the horrible creature…
His panicked, garbled stream of thoughts was unpleasantly interrupted. Its hiss rose into a growl, and the spider leapt, faster than Harry had expected, so that he'd barely had time to register the increased threat it was presenting, and leaping higher than he thought spiders could leap, going for his throat; with a very shrill scream he might have been embarrassed about in another situation, he stumbled backwards, instinctively flinching away. Both his hands seemed to have locked onto his very heavy, very blunt novel, and without much thought he swung it upwards with all the force he could muster, slamming into the head of the screeching, mid-air arachnid, and sending it spiralling back the way it had jumped. He didn't particularly care, however, because he had come into physical contact with the spider, and the memory of its unpleasant bristly fur brushing against his hand was very fresh in the front of his mind.
With a shuddering, horrified gasp, he dropped the book and flung himself outside and back down the stairs from his flat with indecent haste, terrible images of pursuing spiders making his back prickle with sweat. He fled at such speeds that he doubted he'd ever be able to stop, forced on by his own momentum. He threw the door open wide, still with no clear plan in mind, just wanting to get as far away as possible before anything caught up with him - and bowled directly into the man who was hunched over on the doorstep, holding a long thin instrument to where the lock had been before Harry had wrenched it, and the door, back.
"What are you doing?" he found himself blurting out, still mentally fumbling with what had just happened, and feeling a flash of panicky irritation at this man who had blocked his escape route; he dodged past the stranger and stumbled further into the street as he spoke, thrown into confusion.
"Oh, don't mind me!" the man replied cheerily, wholly unperturbed, "I was just - you know. Checking."
Harry frowned at him, still getting his breath back and readying himself to deliver further questioning or threats about police. The stranger continued to smile at Harry, his hair falling in a most ridiculous fashion over his bemused pale blue eyes. Harry continued to be unenlightened; the stranger's hand darted like lightning into an inside pocket of his tweed jacket, fishing out a battered wallet. He flipped it open and held it up for inspection.
"Oh!" Harry cried before he could speak, with immense relief and some annoyance that no explanation had been given before. "You're pest control!"
"Am I?" the man asked, apparently quite surprised by his profession, turning his wallet around to examine the card himself. "Oh! Well - I suppose I am!"
He shoved the wallet away again and then clasped his hands together, bowing forward slightly, with the air of someone about to make a launch into a long explanation.
"Sorry to interrupt whatever it was you were doing - I'm the Doctor. Just passing by on a routine patrol, been getting some reports of -"
"Giant spider!" Harry interrupted, pointing emphatically up the stairs. "In my flat! It attacked me!"
"Ah. Yes. That's exactly what I've been getting reports of," the man responded sagely. "Though perhaps 'exactly' isn't the right word, I wasn't getting a report of a giant spider attacking you in your -"
"It's enormous!" Harry interrupted again, growing slightly panicked as he recalled. "Size of a Labrador, at least!"
"Oh, well, that's not too bad!" the man in the bowtie exclaimed, flinging up his hands. "When I heard some spiders from a Metebelis colony had got lost somewhere in time and space, I thought they might mean the Metebelis 5 spiders; size of a van, and not very friendly either! Although really I should've worked it out when I found their crashed shuttle, not nearly big enough for a pair of Metebelis 5 spiders. Must be getting old," he concluded, as though revealing something that was confidential.
Harry gaped at him, stunned into silence.
"So, where is this spider? I'd like to take a look - up this way, is it?" the Doctor asked cheerily, pushing past Harry and bounding up the stairs with bizarre enthusiasm.
With far more trepidation, Harry followed, hanging back a little and scanning the ceiling in case it was crawling overhead - an idea that made him shudder. He heard a cry of dismay from his flat, quite unexpectedly since he had imagined a pest control officer would be taking more caution and approaching a giant spider slowly, not charging in haphazardly and at such speed. Harry went pale, and his feet stuttered on the carpet as he hesitated between turning and running back the way he'd come or going to the pest control man's aid. After a few instants of this, he clenched his jaw and rushed the last few steps to his doorway, not exactly sure what he was planning to do or why he hadn't just scarpered; and he didn't relax very much when he saw that this Doctor was unharmed, because the spider's presence overrode any relief there might have been.
"It's dead!" the Doctor called as Harry approached, sounding deeply disappointed.
"Is it?" Harry asked, creeping nearer gingerly.
The spider was lying on its back, its legs curled over its body, already very stiff with rigor mortis - the spider was, indeed, quite dead. The Doctor was kneeling beside it, his hands probing gently as though still seeking a pulse. Harry grimaced involuntarily.
"What happened?" the Doctor asked, still aghast, though his tone darkening, as though he had discovered a murder victim and was beginning to have his shock replaced with righteous fury.
"Well, I - it jumped at me, and I hit it with my book," Harry replied indignantly, gesturing to the novel he'd cast aside. "It was self-defence, and - well, there was a giant spider in my flat, what else was I going to do? Are you even listening to me?"
The Doctor watched Harry's face as he spoke, followed his hand as he pointed, and focused on the novel before Harry had finished his sentence, not seeming to hear the rest. He seized the text and held it close to his face for examination, as though this might help him to understand what had happened.
"You killed it," he said reproachfully, lifting his face to meet Harry's gaze. "It was lost and scared and you killed it!"
"It was trying to kill me!" Harry cried, exasperated. "Who knows what the venom of a spider that size could do to me? And besides, I'm arachnophobic! If I see a spider, I lash out!"
The Doctor sighed and cast a last despairing glance over the cadaver. Then in one motion he leapt unexpectedly to his feet, dropping the novel to the carpet carelessly, and without pausing began to look around the room, spinning absurdly on the spot, craning his neck wildly. Harry only stared, too bewildered to interrupt.
"And you just hit one spider with your book?" the Doctor clarified, coming to a wobbly halt facing Harry, pointing at him with both hands.
"Yes, one spider," Harry replied, adding a heavy sigh afterwards to indicate his growing impatience.
"And you didn't see any other spiders?"
"No, thankfully! Why, do they travel in packs?" he asked sarcastically.
"Yes, actually," the Doctor answered vaguely, turning to examine the room again; all colour drained from Harry's face.
"Why didn't you say that before?" he hissed, hovering in the doorway on his heels, unsure whether to risk coming into his flat or to strike out on his own.
"I was distracted by the one you killed. It didn't seem important to tell you at that very moment."
"But they're aggressive! If there's another one it might be waiting to attack us!"
"Oh, they're not all that bad," the Doctor disagreed airily. "Once you get to know them. Some alien spiders - well, alien to you anyway - can be a bit unpleasant, true, but we're lucky we've only got this species."
"It's already tried to kill me!" Harry protested, his voice rising to a piercingly shrill tone.
"Well, you probably scared it, didn't you? Burst in on it, took it by surprise…"
"It's my flat! What kind of pest control officer are you?"
The Doctor paused to grin a bafflingly wide grin at Harry.
"The very best kind!"
Harry barely had time to form the first sarcastic syllable of 'Is that your company motto or something?' when the Doctor's gaze slid upwards and over his shoulder, fixing on something behind him, his smile only slipping slightly. He wasn't focusing on Harry anymore - and Harry was no longer focusing on him. He couldn't see it, but he knew right away what the Doctor was looking at, and he knew he didn't want to have his back to it for even a moment longer.
Harry dived further into his flat, stumbling to a halt behind the Doctor, just in time; he heard the sound of something heavy hitting the floor with an unpleasant thud, and a now familiar hissing. He felt slightly ill as he regarded it, and wished hopelessly that the entire situation would just go away and inflict itself on someone else.
This spider was more or less exactly the same as the other one - just as big and just as hideous. The only differences were that its many eyes were green, and that it looked distinctly angry. It was rearing up and snarling (Harry reflected, feeling strangely detached from the situation, that he didn't know spiders could snarl. He supposed rather dizzily that one of this size must have more developed vocal chords than a normal spider), baring those two furry, oval-like fangs tarantulas sometimes have.
"Oh, you're gorgeous," the Doctor murmured, sounding as though he was struggling to contain his delight.
"No it isn't!" Harry shrieked. "Hurry up and - pest control it! That's what you do, isn't it?"
"Not in the way you mean," he replied sternly; the spider squealed again and moved as if to begin a charge. "Oh, hold on, wait a second! Don't attack us! We mean you no harm!"
"Yes we do! Don't we?" Harry asked, bewildered.
"Of course not! We're just here to help - we want to help you get back home," the Doctor said, pausing only to shoot Harry a dark look.
The spider growled, its many eyes glittering unpleasantly in the rapidly fading light of the day.
"I know he did, and I am sorry, but he was attacked first," the Doctor said reasonably, as though conversing with the enraged spider before him. "You'd defend yourself if attacked, wouldn't you? She was in his territory, she lunged at him…"
"What on Earth are you-?" Harry began, but was shushed rather irately with much hand waving.
"I was told only two of you got lost. That right?" the Doctor resumed, clasping his hands together again.
There was a slight pause, and then he broke into a wide smile and continued.
"Well then, there's no problem! I can give you a lift back to your home planet easily - and I'll bring your friend back too, of course," he added more sombrely.
Harry's confusion was wearing off, to be replaced by a sense of alarm and infuriation. This madman had posed as a pest control officer to get inside the flat, and now, for reasons known only to himself, he thought he could fly a supposedly alien arachnid across the galaxy? While he was busy chatting away, that spider was probably drawing all the venom it could into its fangs… Harry began to glance around for some kind of a weapon as surreptitiously as he could. His gaze fell on the old cricket bat he'd somehow managed to forget about, and had stashed beside the sofa for just these kinds of situations - well, perhaps he had intended it more for situations involving very human home invaders, but an invader was an invader. If these things could be killed with what was essentially a wodge of paper (he felt a mournful little sting as he realised he wouldn't want to touch the book again now that it had been in contact with a humongous spider), he imagined they wouldn't do very well against a length of wood that had been specifically created to be hit against things very hard.
As the Doctor continued to negotiate with the eight-legged fiend, Harry carefully began to edge over to the sofa, wanting to close the gap between himself and the bat before he made a lunge for it. The spider, though still hissing quietly, seemed somewhat mesmerised by the Doctor's speech and erratic hand movements, and the Doctor was preoccupied with trying to talk to the creature out of its obvious hostility. Neither of them noticed as Harry gradually shifted to within a few feet of the weapon. He licked his dry lips, glancing rapidly between the spider and the bat; and then the spider noticed. Harry could see its many eyes turn to look at him, at first with nothing more than what he almost thought was a residual resentment, but then with sudden anger as it realised what he planned to do. It rose back up to its full height, issuing a horrible scream like the sound of metal scraping together, its eyes flashing as they passed through a particularly strong beam of greying sunlight; the Doctor spun around, and Harry saw the concern in his expression turn to a muted horror. With a yell of uncontrollable alarm, Harry dove for the bat, ignoring the Doctor's outstretched arm and the beginning of a frustrated command on his lips; his hands wrapped securely around the handle, and he whirled back around again, wielding it as though it were a sword. For a brief moment, he felt powerful, in control, almost triumphant - but then the spider screamed again and hurtled across the room toward him, so that it was just a terrifying black blur and a mass of feverishly scuttling legs, and all his feelings of jubilance faded with his confidence, hysteria bubbling up in his throat and threatening to manifest itself as another girlish scream. He raised the bat above his head, fully intending to bring it down on the spider's back as hard as he could, smiting the thing there and then - but then the Doctor was suddenly in the way, and the room was suddenly spinning about him as he became the victim of a rugby tackle, and he hit the floor hard, the cricket bat slipping out of his grasp. Dazed, Harry lay where he was, his mouth hanging open moronically.
The crash of breaking glass disturbed his reverie, and at that he struggled to sit up, propping himself on his elbows. One of his windows was completely broken where the spider had hurtled through it and vanished out of sight. It was a moment before relief flooded through him, and another (shorter) moment before fury followed suit. He rose to his feet, using the arm of the sofa for support, readying himself for to launch a verbal onslaught on the Doctor, who was already on his feet and leaning out of the window desperately, his hands placed on the windowsill despite the shards of glass littering it.
"Right," he began, allowing the full force of his fury to flood his tone. "You."
The Doctor spun on his heels to face Harry; there was anger in his eyes too, and it was far more potent than any Harry could muster. He faltered, thrown off balance.
"Never mind me! What do you think you're doing?" the Doctor demanded, advancing menacingly on Harry, glass crunching under his boots.
"I - I was trying to -" Harry stammered, attempting to regain his composure and failing.
"Kill it? Whack it with a cricket bat? Yes, I got that much!" the Doctor interrupted sarcastically. "But why were you going to do that? It wasn't doing anything to you!"
"It was hissing!" Harry protested feebly.
"We were having a perfectly nice telepathic conversation - which she elected to leave you out of, and quite rightly too - and then you had to go and ruin it all with an attempted cricket bat attack!" the Doctor cried despairingly, waving his hands around again to emphasise his point. "We're lucky she just bolted out the window, within her planet's law she would've been quite within her rights to have bitten your face off!"
"A telepathic conversation?" Harry echoed, mocking, recovering himself a little. "That was a spider. It was a big, ugly, stupid arachnid! It isn't telepathic, and it can't form sentences! And it certainly can't have come from another planet."
"Oh, really? And how do you know that?"
"It's common sense," Harry snorted.
"And having spiders the size of Labradors in your living room - is that common sense?" the Doctor asked somewhat belligerently, leaning in and folding his arms behind his back. "Spiders like that being on planet Earth, does that fit in with your common sense, hmm?"
"Well, no -" Harry began pompously, but he was cut short.
"Then shut it!" the Doctor commanded, now more annoyed than anything. "You don't really know what's going on here - or rather you do but you're refusing to accept it - and unfortunately I still need your help to talk that spider into my TARDIS!"
"Excuse me?" Harry asked, incredulous that this stranger could still be coming up with more nonsense.
"What's your name?" the Doctor asked, in the same tone of voice as his previous statement, as though the topic hadn't been changed at all.
"Er - Harry. Harry Rickman. But what -"
"Harry? Good name, good name. Shame about your personality - I used to know another Harry once, he was much better. Bit of an imbecile sometimes, but definitely much better," the Doctor said distractedly, shushing Harry with hand gestures again. "Come on then, Harry the Second Who I'd Much Rather Not Have to Hang Around With But Never Mind!"
He clapped Harry on the shoulder with a surprising amount of enthusiasm, given how angered he had been just moments ago, and especially considering what his next statement was going to be; he bent in, forcing Harry to bend closer to hear, and spoke in a low voice, in a manner suggestive of someone describing a real treat.
"Let's go and catch us a giant alien spider."