"Brigadier, you're in... blue jeans," exclaimed the Doctor, astonished.
"Am I?" replied the Brigadier with dull surprise, glancing down at his comfortably snug denim casual trousers, which flared slightly from the knee. The Brigadier was almost surprised it had taken the Doctor so long to notice. "Apparently I am. I wonder how that happened?"
It had, in fact, happened that the Brigadier had somewhat grudgingly acquiesced to the Doctor's request that they meet in the TARDIS to spend the Brigadier's much-needed holiday weekend together, a wee little pity party of raucous man fun to celebrate his divorce from Fiona being made official. He was certain that this was absolutely the last thing he needed. Given his druthers, the Brigadier would likely have spent the weekend in the company of a fine single malt and absolutely no one and nothing else, but since the Doctor's arrival as UNIT's scientific advisor, nothing ever seemed to pass without incident.
It was all the Brigadier could do to hide his bemused disappointment, however, that of all the places in the universe the Doctor could have taken him, they seemed to have landed in what appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, the Lake District.
"So what exactly are we doing here, Doctor?" asked the Brigadier, casually poking at a nearby shrub with the toe of his boot.
"Don't touch that, Brigadier, it could be explosive!" exclaimed the Doctor, guiding the Brigadier out of harm's way.
"For god's sake, man, it's only a bit of shrubbery," protested the Brigadier, as the Doctor idly plucked a small stone from the ground, "surely, you're not telling me -"
The Brigadier's train of thought was quite rudely interrupted by the Doctor tossing said stone at the shrub, the resulting explosion catapulting them both several feet backwards.
"If that had been you, it could have singed your moustache clean off," said the Doctor with an obnoxiously convivial grin, brushing the gravelly dust from the Brigadier's smart safari jacket.
"Yes, thank you Doctor," eyerolled the Brigadier, surveying the landscape suspiciously. "Any other hazards you'd care to enlighten me about?"
"Just stay clear of the shrubs, my dear," assured the Doctor, leading the way. "I assure you, everything else here is quite safe."
"Why do I find that hard to believe?" sighed the Brigadier, shaking his head.
The separation had been Fiona's idea - she had announced one night, as they cleared the dishes from the kitchen table, that she had signed a lease on a two-bedroom flat in Guildford, and she and Kate would be moving out at the end of the month. He acquiesced without protest, without lip service to The Way Things Used To Be or hollow promises of change they both knew to be untrue. He told her he understood. It was all he could say. It was a Tuesday. They had had profiteroles. That Noel Harrison chap's song about windmills and circles was playing on the radio. The Brigadier had always rather liked that song, before.
The evidence that the Doctor had taken them further afield than the Lake District was becoming more transparent as they continued on their journey: exploding shrubs were the Brigadier's first clue, followed by the small dirt footpath the shade of saffron, and the now unmistakably visible second sun shining high above them in the sky, whose blue almost verged on a touch of purple, was pretty much a dead giveaway.
"Your shirt," observed the Doctor, watching him strangely, as though deeply puzzled.
"What," sighed the Brigadier, shrugging off his jacket in the midday heat.
"It's got Geneva written on it," the Doctor continued, squinting at the silkscreened word as though it were an unfortunate mustard stain.
"That's because it was given to me in Geneva," blinked the Brigadier. It was not the smartest shirt he owned, admittedly: a bit flimsy and a touch too snug, in tissue-thin pale yellow jersey, the word genève in minimalist lowercase lettering above some sort of abstract cluster of shapes that were probably meant to represent some mountains. It did not enjoy many public outings. "You know, most military staff are only actually in uniform when they're on duty, don't you?"
"Yes, yes, of course," agreed the Doctor, poking experimentally at the hem of the Brigadier's sleeve. "I suppose I've not really spent much time with you off duty, old chap. We should correct this."
"I'm fairly certain we're correcting it now," eyerolled the Brigadier.
"I meant, after we get back to HQ," clarified the Doctor, as the footpath inclined up a gentle grassy slope, dotted with little yellow wildflowers.
"Ah," nodded the Brigadier, attempting to envision the pair of them doing various social activities: pub quiz nights, cricket matches, beer and kebabs, sandwiches and Pimms, the cinema, the theatre, coffee shops, tea rooms, dimly-lit nightclubs playing god-awful music with the Doctor sipping cocktails with far too many of his shirt buttons undone, chess games, poker games, drinking games, the Doctor coming round on the Brigadier's one weekend a month with Kate and beaming with pride at sneaking a schematic of Bessie's engine onto the children's art gallery segment of Vision On. Somewhere, the vision had strayed into the territory of the decidedly odd; rather, thought the Brigadier, he could quietly go over reports or performance reviews while the Doctor tinkered with that motorcar of his. That, he thought, would be time well spent together. "Where did you say we were going again?"
"I know a very good spot for a picnic," replied the Doctor, hopping gracefully over a small puddle.
"I don't suppose you could have parked the TARDIS any nearer?" squinted the Brigadier.
"A minor miscalculation, my dear," shrugged the Doctor, as they neared a small, shady wood. "Besides, getting there is half the fun. Trust me."
