The following is the product of trying to write while half asleep and having the TV on a ball game, because being an American Whovian who honestly adores sports is suffering. I tried to make the story as user-friendly as possible though, since I understand not wanting a particular overarching setting to be a deterrent due to a lack of setting knowledge. If you have any questions about my logic, feel free to PM me. I don't bite.
Shout out to Kat (ffn:Kataoi/tumblr:randomthunk) for being so enthusiastic about this and making sure it didn't suck.
Rated M for language, which is not too terribly explicit but goes over the one-free-fuck limit.
The first chapter is already on my writing tumblr, and the next parts will be crossposted there as well.
Who's on First?
One
The Doctor rolled from his side onto his back, looking blankly up at the bit of ceiling above his bed. His arms, spread wide across the mattress, were cold. His shoulders, just out of reach of his blanket, were cold. His feet, poking out at the end of the covers, were cold. Everything that wasn't covered by blanket was damn fucking cold.
Of all the days he did not want to get out of bed.
He looked at the clock on the nightstand—twenty-five after four in the morning. It was always difficult for him to sleep when power hung in the balance, and lately the power was hanging rather precariously. Things were… how to put it… tumultuous since he had flat-out quit his previous job as a hitting coach for the Rays in order to put in his resume to manage one of the new and experimental expansion teams. After years and years of knocking around the minor leagues and scrapping about for jobs that ended up being two-bit and behind-the-scenes, the Doctor finally had a chance to write his name down as someone who was actually in charge of something in an official capacity.
He was now a Major League Baseball manager. Now if only he knew the rest of the staff was going to be as solid as he was.
On the nightstand, his phone buzzed. The Doctor picked it up and looked at the caller—Foreman. He answered.
"Yes?"
"I am sorry to bug you so early in the morning, but I have some interesting news to share with you."
"Don't worry about it; I was already up."
"It sounds like the commissioner rejected the hiring of Smith."
The Doctor bolted upright, now sitting in his bed. "He what?!"
"Claims of nepotism according to Susan; she tried explaining that you're no relation of his, but he wouldn't have it. We apparently are only allowed to hire one John Smith a season and I'm sorry but you're it."
Fucking hell, the Doctor swore internally. He had met the other John Smith at an arts museum in New York City of all places, and the young man had instantly recognized him as a former player and longtime coach. This had impressed the Doctor, prompting what turned into a long conversation and discovering the bow-tied lad with an abnormally-strong jaw not only had the same name as him but was also great with numbers. No, he was excellent at numbers. One of those fantasy league wizards with a keen eye and a sharp mind and an ability to see the potential in people: that's who he was. Before the day was out, the Doctor had been on the phone with Ben J. Foreman, owner of the yet-to-play Quad City Gallifreyans, and a contract had been drawn within the week. All it had been down to was making sure his application passed the league commissioner's approval, since the team was so new they were in this odd sort of probationary period.
"Did she try telling him I'm Scottish and he's English?"
"Nothing she said did any good," Foreman said. "Listen, John, he's going to appoint a general manager to the organization today. Then that'll be the end of that for the entire season."
"Can he even do that?"
"I don't know. What I do know is that we've gone through four GMs and our inaugural season hasn't even started yet. They want to see someone who will stay put."
"We didn't even have a full Spring training schedule because the suits were messing with our staff." The Doctor swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood up; there was no use going back to sleep at this point. "I understand they want to try experimenting with the whole idea of a smaller market but this is getting out of hand."
"I know, I know, but there's no turning back now, is there?" Foreman sighed. "I wanted you to be the first to know, since you're the one that had the most riding on Smith's approval. You don't exactly warm up to people easy."
"So when do we meet him?"
"Today, noon, at the TARDIS. Please wear a tie this time."
"Too punk for a tie, you know that."
"Be there, John."
The call cut and the Doctor was left listening to a dial tone.
"That tit," he grumbled, tossing the phone down on his bed and running his hand over his face. He wanted to tell Foreman that they were being had, but he couldn't even work up the ability to swear at the old man.
Four teams, each projected to supply small but loyal fanbases, were new this season. Knoxville, Montreal, Davenport, and Portland… they were experiments and pet projects of rich old men with money to burn and not a care in the world how they spent it. At least Ben Foreman, owner of the Quad City Gallifreyans, was halfway to wanting the venture to be a success and a legacy he'd be proud to pass on to his granddaughter. That child was clever, an unearthly sort of clever. If there was anyone else other than Ben the Doctor would follow, it was Susan. Was it because he personally taught the young woman everything she knew about baseball? The Doctor stepped into the shower and shook all thought from his mind.
Yeah, probably.
The Doctor took most of the morning to putter around his empty house; he really needed to get some furniture or a cat or something. March 27th, three days before Opening Day, and he was being assaulted with a new general manager. Fuck. He ate breakfast slowly while reading the Quad City Times. The sports section was an absolute mess of speculation and hype and distrust—everything he had thought it would be. Shit, should he call Martinez about that dropped swing? No, leave Martinez alone. After three straight weeks of screaming at the athletes he knew it was best to keep his promise and leave them alone until they opened, leaving him isolated from his players. The radio and television stations all regurgitated the same trite analysis and stunned confusion as to why four new teams were slapped together haphazardly, and why one of them sounded more like he should be managing a soccer team than a baseball team.
Football, it was called football, you brain-dead and loutish children, and frankly he knew the game of baseball better than anyone he knew. So what if he saw his first game working concessions at Shea at the age of fifteen? That was still forty years ago and forty years is a long time to dedicate one's self to a game. None of them had to study and scrape and absorb so much about something completely foreign to their upbringing that they turned into a literal miracle-worker with the analytical prowess akin to a man with a time machine by the age of thirty. So what if he was Scottish? That just meant he could drink them under the table and destroy their playoff brackets before the All Star Game break. He wasn't called 'the Doctor' for nothing, after all.
…and to think there were people who wondered why he didn't just naturalize and get American citizenship already. Fuckall.
The Doctor finally got around to dressing, slacks and a shirt with a cardigan instead of a tie, and drove over to work. Even though he had found a house in Illinois, the Training and Recreation District's Innovative Stadium, or TARDIS, was over on the Iowa side of the river, on the border of civilization and edging on snow-crusted cornfields. The blue steel-and-concrete building was nowhere near a district of any sort, but Susan had really wanted to name it the TARDIS. It was a young person thing, he imagined, and shivered violently all the way to the offices.
"You are late," sang Jack Harkness, the ever-cheery marketing manager, as the Doctor walked by his door. The offices were small at this point, with a barebones staff and too few people to keep occupied. The Doctor popped his head into the cramped room.
"You wouldn't feel like coming in either if you had the rug pulled out from underneath you for the fourth time."
"Again? The Foremans didn't tell me I had to drop the 'Smith and Smith' campaign so soon."
"They were probably waiting on the replacement that's coming today from Mission Control. Fucking suits are out to sabotage us from the start."
An intern slid around the Doctor and brought Jack some coffee and a stack of papers. The man gave the intern a coy smile as she walked away, snickering.
"I hope you know this means I'm not going to sleep the next three days coming up with new promotional material, right?" Jack asked.
"As long as you don't sleep with an intern again on the fourth, I don't give a fuck," the Doctor grumbled. He left the office and quickly found his own. Papers and mail and whatnot littered his desk; he was going to have to figure out his lineup for Opening Day, send nonaggressive emails to those starting so they weren't broadsided, shuffle around his starters, make sure everything was flexible enough in case the new GM decided to trade off his men… it was a nightmare.
Thankfully, no one disturbed him until it was time to head on over to the board room. There, he found Ben Foreman, already sitting in his chair at the head of the table. The Doctor had immense respect for the man, having become like a second son to him thanks to years better left to ancient memory. Foreman was the one who found Smith scrounging around Shea with no money and no home and such a dislike for what he ran away from that he couldn't even give his real name. The Doctor would do anything for him, hence why he ditched his last job at the drop of a hat despite the snow and uncertainty that came attached.
"You didn't tell Jack," the Doctor said as he took a seat next to his boss. Foreman, dressed in his laughably-old-fashioned suit, shrugged.
"You didn't wear a tie."
"I'm meeting a common man, not the future King." The Doctor looked around the room. "Just us?"
"Susan is picking up the replacement from the airport right now, and I've got Mickey and Jaime running around ragged as-is," Foreman sighed. "Jack's only out of the loop because I want him to enjoy his last hours of fun before the storm." He poured himself some coffee from the carafe on the table and drank pensively.
"You're worried," the Doctor said.
"Maybe. When I put in an offer to build an expansion team somewhere, I thought it would be when they finally decided to expand internationally, not in the middle of farmland."
"They gave Montreal their team back."
"Only so that they'd stop trying to swarm Rogers Centre," Foreman scoffed. The door to the board room opened and Susan walked in alone. She went to her grandfather and gave him a hug hello.
"Oswald will be in shortly; has to get past Jack first."
"The second guy didn't make it past Jack."
"I've got a good feeling about this one," Susan said, taking her seat on the other side her grandfather. She looked the Doctor dead in the eyes, holding his gaze. "Now behave, alright? We're stuck with Oswald until at least the end of the season and the last thing we need is the two of you fighting."
"As long as this guy is capable and lets me do my own thing, I'm sure we'll get on," the Doctor grumbled. He folded his arms and leaned back in his chair, just as another woman came walking into the board room. Did they need to replace more interns? Christ, Jack went through a lot of them. "Oh, good, you here to take notes for Harkness for his campaign so he doesn't have to show?"
The woman looked at the Doctor and raised her eyebrow. "That friendly gentleman down the hall? No, but at least you didn't ask if I was here to get you more coffee." English… northern English by the sounds of it… not even thirty and built small enough to blend in at the local middle schools.
Confused, the Doctor and Foreman both looked at Susan. She smiled and leaned into the table. "Grandfather, Doctor, I'd like to introduce Clara Oswald, our new General Manager straight from Headquarters."
"How do you do?" Clara smiled, holding out her hand. The Doctor sat there, staring slightly slack-jawed and very brow-furrowed at her, while Foreman stood up and walked over to shake her hand. Even the relatively short old man towered over her.
"Glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Oswald. I'm Ben, the owner, and this is our manager John. Everyone calls him…"
"The Doctor, yes, I was told," Clara said. She held out her hand towards the Doctor again, expecting him to shake it. "What? Is something wrong?"
Yes, actually, there were several things very wrong, but the Doctor was unsure of how to answer that without sounding like he possessed the largest double standard in the world.
"You're not what I expected," the Doctor answered. That was safe. That could have meant any number of things.
"Clara's a computer whiz, great with numbers and programs and things," Susan said. "She's got an eye for talent too; last year she interned with the Yankees organization and was actually the mastermind behind the Nicks-Perez-Batavia trade."
"No… really…? I don't believe it," the Doctor marveled. Clara dropped her hand down to her side.
"What, because I'm a girl? Because I'm English? Because I'm young?"
"If I had a problem with girls in baseball, I wouldn't be in this organization," the Doctor said, gesturing vaguely in Susan's direction. "The guy whose job you took was a Midlands boy, and yeah he's still a boy since he was your age, so I don't have problems with the English or youth."
"Then what's the matter?"
"…I just don't understand why the commissioner would send you, is all."
"What did you expect? A cowboy? One of the reasons I was chosen was because I'd fit in, being that Mr. Foreman's parents were English, you're Scottish, as is your social media manager, not to mention the fact your team name sounds like some sort of Irish bogeyman…"
"Honestly, I think it is," Foreman pondered. "It was just a name given to us by the league. It makes less sense than the Phillies' mascot."
"See? I've got the credentials, I fit in, so what's the matter?"
"Christ, you are bossy," the Doctor scowled.
"Was your Midlands boy bossy too or was he a go-getter like boys tend to be, hmm?"
"Oh, come off your high horse; yes I was expecting a tall, broad-shouldered man with an accent from the Americas and old enough to have a kid in the high school down the road. That doesn't exactly mean I'd like him either."
"Both of you, calm down," Foreman warned. Unfortunately, that fell on deaf ears.
"Oh, and who would you have liked?"
"The Midlands boy."
"…and why him?"
"…because I actually knew I'd get on with him, unlike you… you little…"
"Uncle John, stop," Susan ordered, slamming her hands on the table and standing up. Both the Doctor and Clara snapped their heads in her direction, the latter confused and the former indignant. "Now I am still President and CEO of this ball club and if either of you have that big of a problem with what the commissioner has decided on I will purposely file an injunction on both of you. Do I make myself clear?"
Silence permeated the room, so heavy and thick the click of the furnace could be heard through the air vents.
"Good. Now, shake her hand, Doctor, and you can be on your way," Susan frowned. "I'm sure you still have a load of work to do."
The Doctor grunted and stood up, towering over Clara more than Foreman did. He shook her hand brusquely and stormed out of the room.
It just wasn't right.
It took the rest of the day for Clara to become acquainted with the rest of the major staff members of the Gallifreyans' front office. Everyone else was warm and friendly, very much unlike the Doctor, and there wasn't very many of them. Compared to the Yankees' front office, which was packed to capacity with people, the Gallifreyans only had the barebones essentials and little else. In fact, they barely had what the new general manager would consider bare bones. Susan claimed it was the nature of the small-market ball club, but Clara had a difficult time wholly believing that. She had seen more attention given to college teams though that was neither here nor there. By the end of the day she was sitting in her new office, looking out over the nearby fields.
'It must be pretty in the summer,' she thought. What grew here? Corn? Wheat? Would the fields remain fallow for the season? All she knew is that she was in a different place than this time the year prior, when she was surrounded by the tall skyscrapers and city lights of New York City. America was bigger than she expected… well, to say it was bigger was not wholly the truth. More like no matter how far west she went, the vastness of everything boggled her mind. She knew of places similar to this in England, but they could be crossed in a few hours by car. America could take days, weeks, to cross properly—no wonder things were larger here.
A knock on her door and Clara spun her chair to face it. "Who is it?" The door opened and the Doctor came in, prompting Clara's face to fall. "Come to apologize?"
"No. I came to give you this," he said, placing a piece of paper on the empty desk. Clara picked it up and looked at it; handwritten directions and an interestingly detailed map.
"What's this?"
"Directions to my house from your hotel," the Doctor said plainly. "We need to go over the active roster, as well as our farm system and who we have options on. I also want to discuss your management background and what direction you're thinking about for my players."
"Can't we do that here?" Clara asked.
"Harkness is officially in Panic Mode and here after-hours is the last place you want to be when he's panicking."
"My hotel has a restaurant, with private booths."
"This is a work meeting, not a date. Besides, a crusty old man like me going to a young woman's hotel room? The media here hate me enough as it is."
"You coming to me is suspicious but me coming to you isn't?" Clara was skeptical.
"If they know who you are, then they know it's a work meeting. If they don't know, then it is a voluntary get-together on your part that no way looks forced by me," the Doctor said. He tapped the desk with one of his long and bony fingers. "Eight o'clock. My cell phone number's on the back."
"Oh, yes, I should probably give you my mobile too." Clara took a business card from inside her bag and handed it to the Doctor. "You know that's what we say."
"What…?"
"Mobile. We call it a mobile," Clara said. The Doctor rolled his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets.
"I've experienced the past forty years of technological breakthroughs surrounded by cell phones and home French presses and SUVs that take gasoline and I will call them what I want. Now are you going to come tonight and try to act like we're going to be working together closely for at least the next six months or are you going to force me to make gossip column headlines for visiting your hotel?"
"Fine, eight o'clock," Clara grumbled. She watched as the Doctor silently spun on his heel and left the office. Susan had warned him that he would be the most abrasive, but she had no idea that he would be sour enough for the whole office.
Shaking her head, Clara gathered up her things and left the TARDIS. She ate dinner at the restaurant on the bottom floor of the hotel before going back up to her room and unpacking some more of her things. Finding a place to live was certainly high on the priority list, she decided. After making sure her clothes made it through the flight mostly unwrinkled, Clara took her work bag and the hand-written directions and set off in the rental car Susan had left her with.
It took a while to find, but Clara was finally able to locate the Doctor's house. It was blue, just like the TARDIS, and sat on the outskirts of some town she already forgot the name of. A copse of trees hid the two-story structure from the surrounding farmland, making it well suited for what seemed like a secluded grouch of a man. Clara parked the car and walked up to the door. The Doctor opened it before she even had the chance to knock, having been waiting patiently for her.
"Come in," he said, half-ordering. Clara stepped into the house cautiously, careful to take in her surroundings. The walls were white, the floors were walnut, the ceilings vaulted, and it echoed something fierce; barring the stools by the kitchen bar and an armchair near a television set, the house was nearly devoid of decoration and furnishings. Some cardboard boxes sat in a small pile in the living room, a couple having been opened and picked through.
"Your wife is moving in later, I take it?" Clara asked. The Doctor looked at her, expressionless.
"I'm not married."
"Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that your ring…"
"Rather, I used to be married and the ring keeps distractions at bay," the Doctor said. He began to walk into the kitchen. "Tea or coffee?"
"Tea, please." Clara sat down on one of the stools and watched the Doctor put together tea from across the kitchen island. He silently passed a steaming mug over the counter and made himself some instant coffee. "So… um… live here long?"
"Three months."
"Ah. So no wife, but any kids?"
"No. I was young, but not stupid."
This made the hair on Clara's neck bristle. "Children aren't stupid."
"You just say that because you're still one yourself."
"I say that because I actually have a degree in early childhood development," Clara snapped. "I may have brokered that big trade, but I came on for the Yankees to work with their children's promotional material."
"Then why suddenly switch to operations?" the Doctor asked. Clara could hear in his voice that he was trying to be nice, but was far from being any good at it.
"I was in the right place at the right time, I guess," she answered. "I'm really good at it. I love working with kids but this… this is where I excel." She put down her tea and began to take a laptop computer and a large binder file out of her bag. Flipping open the binder, she thumbed the divider tabs until she came to the one marked Gallifreyans.
"You have paper files on all the teams?" the Doctor mused. "Here I thought you'd be all digital with the computer and a tablet and your phone."
"All thirty-four; paper doesn't need recharging," Clara said idly, paying more attention to the information she was running her finger over than anything else. "Now, let's talk the bullpen—I'm thinking we might need to consider optioning Kanzaka if his ERA is anything like Spring Training."
"Clark's just a nervous kid; all he needs is a good couple bollockings and he'll be a star," the Doctor responded. Clara looked up from the binder, unconvinced.
She knew it was inevitable, but that was how the entire meeting went. As soon as Clara suggested one thing, the Doctor turned it on its head and tried to do another. They were only ever really able to agree on a couple of things: one being that their closer was a primadonna, and the other that they did not see eye-to-eye on everything else.
After finishing off her sixth cup of tea, Clara looked at the clock on her computer and groaned. "Oh no… it's two in the morning…"
"Is it? I can go until at least four. Not ready for the major leagues of sleep loss, are you?"
"No, not that… I just need to rest or it will come back to bite me later," Clara frowned. "The past twenty-four hours did involve flying halfway across the country to be paraded around the office. I napped before coming over, but that's not enough."
The Doctor groaned, rubbing the back of his neck. "Do you need to stay here?" Clara looked at him, blindsided.
"What…?"
"Do you need to stay here until it's light enough to drive back? I don't know if you're the right person for this job, but that doesn't mean I'm a cruel man."
Clara paused and thought about it. She hadn't even been at her new job for a full twenty-four hours but so much had happened that even someone as collected and level-headed such as herself had no choice to be even slightly overwhelmed. Susan had said he was nice enough, given time, and this was certainly a better way to end a work meeting than when they first met that afternoon. It was a genuine, if reluctant, nice gesture.
"Thank you, that's very kind," she replied. The Doctor nodded and walked over to the armchair, allowing himself to fall into it.
"Good night then."
"…and where am I supposed to sleep? The floor?" Clara asked, a mixture of confused and insulted. The Doctor merely pointed upwards at the ceiling.
"Bed's up there and the door locks from the inside. Good night."
Clara stared at the back of the armchair, cautious. He didn't seem to move anymore, so she crept through the house and found the stairs. There were three bedrooms, but only one had an actual bed in it. The door indeed locked from the inside, with no keyhole out that would make the entire thing redundant. Clara looked around as she hung her jacket on the back of a chair and took off her already-loose tie—it was just as sparse as the rest of the house. At least the other rooms had boxes and totes and promise of life and impending personality. This room at least should have felt lived-in, but it wasn't despite the Doctor's claims. Three months was a long time to keep a room as spartan as this. She finished undressing and crawled into the still-made side of the bed. Before putting her phone alarm on, Clara sent Susan a text message.
'I know you're asleep, but if I don't show up for work in the morning have them check the wood by the Doctor's house,' it read. She locked the phone and put it on the floor next to her.
At least the bed was comfortable.
A few hours passed and, after checking to make sure she was alive and not dismembered in the woods, Clara quickly dressed and went down the stairs back to the main of the house. The Doctor was still in his armchair, a blanket covering his entire body.
"Doctor…?" Clara asked quietly. The mass of blanket did not reply, though the area Clara assumed to be his chest was rising and falling softly. Still breathing, okay, but she needed to get back to her hotel where she could freshen up and change clothes. "Thank you, for letting me stay. I'll be going now."
After leaving a note and gathering up her things, Clara quietly left the house and got in her car. She made it back to the hotel without a problem and quickly showered and changed her clothes. By nine-thirty she was sitting in her office, writing up emails and taking notes on minor league prospects.
Play it normal. Just pretend that was not the weirdest night you've had since your first semester at university and it'll be fine. He could have had kids your age, for goodness sake… probably missing the idea of being fatherly and chivalrous a quarter century too late…
A knock at the door made Clara jump back from her wandering thoughts, inhaling sharply. "Come in." Susan entered the room with a concerned look on her face.
"Are you alright?" she asked. "You didn't really think you'd get chopped up into tiny bits, did you?"
"I just wanted to be sure," Clara sighed. "Hey, can you please get Mrs. Smith-Jones to send me a medical report on all those who were treated for anything while down at Spring Training? The emails I sent keep on bouncing back."
"No problem," Susan smiled. She turned around to leave the room again, but paused and looked over her shoulder. "Clara?"
"Yeah?"
"…oh, it's nothing. I'm just glad you're fitting in."
"Thanks."