Title: Of Pioneers And Puddocks
Pairing: Zoe/Isobel, Zoe/Jamie, Zoe/Everybody really...
Rating: 12 for implications
Prompt 285: Zoë Heriot. Scientific and systematic exploration of sexuality
Disclaimer: These characters, they are not mine, I''m only borrowing them for non-profit adventuring
A/N: I suspect I should warn for excessive use of Scots as there's more of that than there is any really sexual stuff...Written for the lgbtfest ficathon
Everything is different here. There's a whole universe out there for her to explore and analyse. If she thought about it too hard, she suspects she might go mad from the vastness.
As much as she teases Jamie that he comes from such a backwards time and place, she knows in her heart that her own life has been just as sheltered. Closeted on her Wheel, spinning above the Earth, her life has been devoted to the attainment of knowledge, never looking to her fellow students for anything more than companionship and intellectual debate. Earth in the nineteen sixties is every bit as much of a culture shock to her as it must have been for Jamie the first time. He's blasé about cars and girls in short dresses after so much practice, whereas she can't stop herself from staring at things. Clothes, cars, girls, boys. People stare back too. People in the mid twentieth century are so much more open about looking at each other, performing their complex rituals of mating out there in public. Spending time with Isobel had been a revelation, all long legs and enthusiasm, throwing herself so passionately into her work that Zoë had been so distracted she hadn't worried about the Doctor and Jamie's penchant for getting into trouble for several hours. Even the soldiers with their firmly regulated lives were more open than her old colleagues. Clearly this merited deeper investigation. Just as soon as they defeated those terribly persistent Cybermen.
Research, theorise, experiment, discuss. This has been her mantra throughout her education, so here; in the face of the vastness of space it shall be her guide once more. So much to learn and experience she could get lost so easily. Logic is all she's ever known so she clings to it resolutely in the face of almost everything. Applying the same logic and practicality that stands her in such good stead in the face of strange aliens and monsters, to her interactions with the friendlier peoples of the different times and places she visits.
As they spin across time and space together in that unlikely blue box of the Doctor's she meets a surprisingly large number of boys and girls willing to take part in her experiments. She keeps detailed notes of her experiments, not selecting her subjects by gender or species or skin tone (a beautiful woman is a beautiful woman regardless whether her skin is smooth and pink, covered in tan fur or green with scales) is all very well and good but such things need to be noted in order to ascertain if patterns emerge. Species where gender is optional or non-existent give her slight pause but they just become another category to be explored, and tend to take better to inappropriately timed enquiries. They're generally every bit as fascinated by her gender as she is by their lack thereof. On one memorable occasion she manages to enlist Jamie in her project satisfying one of her subjects near insatiable curiosity about humans, while adding a different time period into her data and calculations. Ever the scientist she is meticulous in both her explorations and her later evaluations. Somehow though she can't figure out just how to share her findings with her fellow travellers.
She worries, sometimes, about what the Doctor and Jamie think of her adventures. They tease her sometimes about her dalliances, not that they'd call them that, in their own rude way they're far too polite. More often than not though it will end with the pair of them tormenting each other's failings in the wooing stakes. She feels sometimes like she's invading them, getting in the way of the comfortable bond that binds her two companions together. Other times she wonders if they keep her around as a buffer to keep their too-close friendship crossing lines that neither is willing to face.
She's getting there though. Her experiments are leading somewhere, though as yet she's unsure of quite where. The path seems ridiculously long and lonely at times, with every step forwards followed by several quickly back again. She just needs time to figure everything out in her own head. Strangely, though, travelling in a time machine, time seems to be something she never has enough of. She's tried to the Doctor about it, but he never seems to understand what she's talking about. Simply insisting that it's quite all right and that he loves both her and Jamie in exactly the same way. Up until recently she's thought he was rather missing the point, perhaps intentionally, but having found a quiet corner of the ship to hole up in and think properly she's beginning to wonder. Part of why she'd been drawn to them in the first place was their open-ness, their affection. Until she'd met the pair of them she could count the number of times someone had hugged her or that she'd hugged someone else on her fingers, and knew that her colleagues regarded her as being a bit overly touchy. Sometimes she wondered if she'd ever get used to the easy way the pair of them touched and grabbed and hugged and clung to each other and to her at the slightest provocation. If she'd ever stop feeling a thrill at being accepted into that, of being able to cling and hug and touch in return without worrying that they might think her strange. Sometimes she's so happy with them that she feels she might drown in the joy, other times she pulls up a front of bossiness to keep her feelings in check, not knowing how else to whether the waves of affection, pride and exasperation that she feels from and for them. She can still feel the soft burn of where the Doctor had kissed her forehead earlier. Sometimes she thinks she knows exactly what her role in their little team is, others, like today, she's at an utter loss to where she fits in.
"Zoë?" Jamie's voice invades her hidey-hole before he does, and she's oddly grateful for the interruption. "Why're you hidin doon here like a wee puddock?"
"Jamie…" she begins, and then stops. Unsure of quite how to go on. She waits while he settles himself down beside her, struggling to drag her thoughts into some sort of coherent order. A fold of his kilt falls against her leg as he pulls his legs up to mimic her sitting position; she fiddles with the errant piece of plaid, its rough texture somehow comforting. "Before I met you two, everything in my life was straight-forward. I had a job to do, things to learn and each day followed the other in a predetermined manner. Everything in my life was defined by logic, and it was fine, really it was, but underneath it all there was this little piece of me that hated it all. All the rules and regulations, the way the only time we ever so any real emotion in anyone was if they went space crazy. The way emotional attachments were looked down upon as weaknesses, things which got in the way of work. I don't think I realised until I was out her with the pair of you, just how lonely I was. I wanted to learn about things that weren't in books, and my goodness I have being. Every new planet, every new species, its as though everything I thought I knew about human nature, about the universe even, is being over-turned. Yet always among the variety and diversity of universe, still people want to put things into nice safe little categories. By gender, by species, by planet of origin, by choice of sexual partner. I'm not even sure where I fit into it all in myself, never mind how to explain that to other people." She feels herself trail off, unable to look up at her friend, or even to find a way to better explain her confusion. "There's so much I haven't figured out yet, so much I don't understand."
"Oh Aye," he comments, his voice tinged with the scepticism she knows she would see written across his face if she could bring herself to meet his eyes. "Weil, be sure an let us ken when you dae. The Doctor could nae doot dae wi kennin tha."
"Doesn't it ever get to you Jamie? The, vastness of it, the sheer size and variety and... and…" the words slip and slide just out of reach, and her hands gesture futilely. She can feel Jamie's shoulders move as he shrugs his closeness as surprising and comforting as always.
"Mibbe, at first, ah wisnae ayeways sae sure o masel. Ah used tae look at Ben an' Polly an' they whir sae sure o themsels, but fir aw thir wardly cherms oot there aboot the stars they got as feart as onyone. Thirs sae much oot there tha no even the Doctor unnerstauns. He blethers on an on tae hide it, ye kens tha'. An yince ah realised tha', weil somehow ma cares seemed sae sma as tae be best forgotten. 'Twer na for the Doctor I'd ne'er hae met you, ne'er hae seen the folks as live aboot those stars, mibbe I'd hae ca'd those as told me o them fools. But ah would hae bin the fool, an we'd be fools tae judge fir nae bein sure wither you'd rather dance wi lads or lassies. Sic a carfuffle o'er somethin' sae sma. Fir aw you've a muckle brain in yir wee heid its no half fu o daft ideas. Whaur thee finds them ah dinnae ken. Fancy thinkin' the Doctor an me'd haud who you like tae kiss abin who you are tae us? Ach, ye daft wee puddy, cam here," his arm is round her shoulders and her head is falling onto his, "ye dinna hae to unnerstaund everythin. Some thins just are."
There's so much she wants to ask him about the things he and the Doctor have seen and done, she doesn't quite know where to begin. So she starts with something simple.
"Jamie? What is a puddock anyway?"
His laughter fills the tiny anti-room as he pulls her to her feet and off along the endless corridors towards the console room. Calling nonsense about hunting giant puddocks to the Doctor who, as they reach him, suggests a quick trip to Paris to pick up some escargot to go with them. Jamie wrinkles his nose in disgust and the Doctor berates him about needing to be more open to new experiences. She tunes out as they fall into easy banter around the merits, or lack there of, of eating snails and other invertebrates, wrapped securely in the comforting blanket of the nonsense they're spouting. Watching for a moment the undercurrent of friendly touches, facial expressions and significant looks that mark so much of their conversation, no doubt conveying the jist of her earlier conversations to each other. Slowly but surely she's drawn back into their orbit, spinning and laughing around them and between them. She can't imagine how she ever thought she could leave all this behind. There's so much she doesn't understand yet, but she understands this. Whoever she is, was or will be, she belongs here, with them.