Oswin

A Daydream Away

Her brother was absolutely no help. In fact, if anything, Frank had actually made it worse than it had been before he'd given his input, because what Frank had decided to tell her was that Flek's curious behaviour was all some dreadfully-executed attempt at flirtation. And then Oswin had kicked him out of her room (he'd been giggling at the time) and had sunk down against the back of the door pitifully, trying to disprove everything he had just told her in her head. That had not been what was happening, she was convinced. People usually had a far easier time of trying to flirt with Oswin, the last four bedroom guards had been enough proof of that, all of them being detached, chauvinistic, entitled, disgusting douchebags.

Yet now there was some stupid-hot girl sitting less than ten feet away from her every given hour of the day making remarks about having wet hands and bumping into things when Oswin looked at her. And none of those things could even be remotely construed as Flek having feelings for her, because Flek did not, because Oswin was convinced that if she did have… 'Those things', then someone such as Flek would have absolutely no trouble in the art of 'flirting'. All those reasons were why Oswin was completely and utterly set on the idea that Flek was some sort of Spore-spy sent to get close to her to make sure she wasn't planning on mutinying against them, so Oswin no longer trusted the girl. She never had, really… ("You're a terrible liar," Eleven sniggered, "How much more of this self-denial do I have to go through listening to?" "It's not self-denial, it's… I don't know, I'm not denying myself, it's Flek-denial. Something else." "Well does it last for much longer?")

That early month in 5117 – the spring-time, Oswin assumed, though spring didn't mean anything on a spacestation – had been a little before the Dust War had officially broken out. Tensions were running high between the Spores, the Alliance and the militias, not to mention the denizens themselves. Rosalind Sinclair had wanted an escape, and so, that year had been a particular set of circumstances Oswin had originally hated. Her mother wanted to go on holiday, to one of the bourgeois artificial beach resorts they had attached by singular, monitored spaceways. She remembered the arguments clearly. Her mother thought that Flek was entirely capable of keeping Oswin in check for the three days' absence she and all five of Oswin's brothers and the current step-father were going. Oswin was to be left alone, apparently undeserving of a holiday (of course, her mother spun various manipulative lies to make it look like a positive thing – a privilege, even – that Oswin was to be kept away from these things and left at home, but Oswin didn't care to repeat those).

"Hang on," Eleven began, "You were left alone in a house with her? Just you two?"

"Yes," Oswin told him. He stared, slack-jawed, at her, "What? Okay, as if I was pleased about you all dumping me in a hotel simulation with Mitchell for two bloody days – because that was definitely enjoyable, wasn't it?" she grimaced at the memory. The deceit more than anything was the unpleasant part, and so was the embarrassment she still got in waves every time she remember her behaviour over the course of those two days.

"You did fancy him."

"No I didn't, I didn't have feelings for him, and I still don't."

"But you've been dating him for the last month!"

"Irrelevant!"

"You live in his bedroom!"

"I do not. I have a bedroom of my own."

"Yes, and you haven't stepped foot in it in weeks. But anyway, on with the story," he said, sitting back and smiling. Oswin hoped his rash would come back, the way he was being so callous about her storytelling. No, it wasn't even her storytelling, it was the story itself. She may live in a time machine, but she couldn't change the past. Well, perhaps she could, but she knew how the story ended, and she wouldn't change it anyway.

Often, she wished for a ball she could bounce on the wall opposite and catch, or anything to amuse herself with, but she didn't have much. Well, she had her computer and its infinite hacked databases, but she was too antsy now to research pointless avenues of information (unless that information pertained to the deduction and identification of flirting techniques), instead she was trying to occupy herself enough to erase the daydreams circling through her head. ("Daydreams?" Eleven asked. "You really want to hear about the daydreams..?" Oswin asked slowly, "That's a little private. All you need to know is they were very time-consuming and distracting and involved kissing.")

The daydreams really did involve a lot of kissing, and looking back she was especially ashamed of her five-years-ago self. But she couldn't help it. Then again, she didn't try to help it, because she was still convinced Flek was plotting against her.

It was when one of these daydreams was in full-swing, a daydream specifically involving Oswin deciding to not care about anything or anyone - or leaving her door open so that the temperature became imperfect - and run out of her room and jump down the stairs and just kiss (like she said, there was a lot of that) the damn girl and then skulk away to privacy again, when there was a knock on the door and she fell off her bed. She'd been sitting with her head hanging off the edge, looking upside-down at the grey bedroom wall, but she made a start and didn't think about where she was moving (she more or less convulsed) and hit her face on the floor.

"What was that?" Flek asked from the other side.

"N-nothing," Oswin said, "I'm fine!" she scrambled to her feet. She had not been so immersed in a fantasy that she had had a terrible fright when it had been broken and injured herself. That wasn't at all what had happened – she was the smartest girl in the universe, and she wouldn't allow lust to overcome her better judgment.

She was still fixing her hair when she opened the door, looking everywhere but Flek, because to look at Flek was to blush uncontrollably, and she didn't want that to happen. Her imaginings caused enough blushing already, the presence of the girl would be enough to send her into fits if she didn't do something about it. The fact they were alone in the house wasn't helping her, either, there was no hope of random interruption from an obnoxious older brother or needy younger brother or neglectful parents.

"Oswin?" Flek asked.

"Hmm? Yes?" Oswin hadn't realised she'd been silently staring and not speaking, "Did you want something? I was just doing some calculations. They were very complicated, which is why I'm… Distant…" Sorry, I was just daydreaming about making out with you, and it was very distracting so sorry if I try to avoid your gaze or anything, was what she didn't say.

"Yeah, the thing is, I've run out of clothes…" Flek carried on speaking after that, but Oswin had zoned out again and wasn't listening particularly (Eleven then commented: "You were imagining her without clothes?" to which Oswin responded, "It is not a crime, and I was really trying not to do that.") Oswin was vaguely aware that Flek had stopped speaking by that point.

"…Yes," she answered, nodding and coming back to herself. Flek frowned.

"I asked which buttons you press on the washing machine," she said.

"I… Yeah. That's what I meant. I meant, yes, I'll tell you how to work the washing machine so that you have clothes," Oswin tried to cover for herself and her own stupidity. Flek probably didn't even believe all the people claiming Oswin was a genius. Oswin was entirely a genius, as long as there weren't pretty girls near her. "But you know, even if you don't, nobody's gonna see you." ("You actually said that?" Eleven snorted.) Oswin felt like she wanted to punch herself in the face immediately after saying those eleven words.

"Erm, won't you though..?" Flek asked. Oswin didn't know if it was some kind of weird pink-hair trick of the light thing, but she could have sworn that at that moment she saw Flek avert her eyes to the ground and blush.

"What? I don't leave my room," Oswin said quickly, "You're basically home alone. I wasn't thinking about me. I don't care if you have clothes on or not. We're all humans. We all have skin." However, she didn't move at all. She stayed loitering in her doorway, shifting weight from foot to foot almost every second to try and thwart off whatever new daydreams and lusts were threatening her standing as a credible genius.

"Are you coming?" Flek asked.

"You go first, there's not room on these stairs to not walk single-file. I'm sure you know where the washing machine is," Oswin said, "I mean, are. Where the washing machines are." She corrected herself because, in a house with seven people and then the Spore guard on top, one washing machine wasn't nearly enough. They actually had three.

All Oswin noticed when she was following Flek down two flights of stairs and into the laundry room as though she needed directions around her own home (perhaps she did, the amount of time she spent in the attic on her own) was that the girl smelt like cream soda, and that that was incredibly distracting, and now she had even more slivers of realism to accidentally add into her already vivid enough fantasies she was so prone to having. It took a lot of concentration to remember how to work the machine, and she was indubitably ashamed of herself, though she shockingly managed to do it all correctly without messing up and making a fool of herself (she'd made enough of a fool of herself already that day).

"So, that's just… Who's been doing your washing until now..?" Oswin asked. Flek had been in the house for the best part of a month by then, and Oswin thought it was unbelievable, to say the least, that she'd never had to wash clothes until then.

"Oh, um," Flek seemed to be thinking as she went, "Your brother."

"…Which one? There are five of them," Oswin reminded her.

"Oh, I don't know. I don't know their names," Flek said, and Oswin couldn't shake the feeling that she was lying. It was later on that Oswin actually discovered it had all been a rouse to try and talk to her, that Flek had been pacing at the foot of the attic stairs for about an hour trying to think of talking points and things to say, coming up with excuses to get her out of her room. But back then, Oswin did not know those things, and it seemed believable enough that she might not know the names of all the brothers. Though, after a month…

"I'll be going," Oswin said, deciding not to dwell on it. Not until she was alone and out of all danger of being overly-staring or anything, which she was very conscious of doing then. She turned around from the machine and was stunned straight away by how close behind her Flek had been standing as she'd been instructing her, and found their faces barely five inches apart, as were those intoxicating green eyes the girl possessed. "I'll…" Oswin stopped speaking, not finding words, edging closer and forgetting all her careful restraints.

Then the washing machine clattered loudly as it started to whir and she jumped and skittered away.

"Off back upstairs," she stammered, walking away from Flek, trying desperately to forget that she'd almost kissed her not ten seconds ago.

"Oswin?" Flek called, and Oswin turned back around, poorly attempting to act nonchalant.

"Yep?" she asked, as though nothing unusual had happened. Everything was fine and normal. She didn't want to kiss that girl. That hadn't happened.

"…Nothing. Thanks," Flek said. Oswin took her chance to leave before anything else could be said between them.

Eleven was guffawing in his chair at Oswin revealing she'd just run off instead of doing anything, and she herself was scowling at him as he made fun of her.

"Really!" he exclaimed, like he couldn't believe his ears. He'd seen evidence of her poor conduct around humans plenty of times, she was sure, her boyfriend was evidence enough of that. She wasn't nearly as bad with Flek anyway, she'd never injured her or constantly ridiculed her like she did to Adam. She didn't really know why she felt the need to insult him, but he wasn't any better, and she never actually meant anything she said.

"Okay," Oswin said loudly over the top of him, "Your wife is no better at all. You were not there when she met Sally Sparrow – she spent the whole time staring at her and saying random crap to sound impressive. I am not some fluke in the list of Clara's Echoes, we're both like that. Maybe I'm worse because, unlike her, I was kept locked up for years and socialised with about ten people. But the fact remains that she's equally pathetic."

"Hang on, what do you mean when she met Sally Sparrow?" Eleven asked seriously, and Oswin smirked, "Clara does not fancy-"

"Oh yes she does. She lied about being married and hid her left hand behind her back trying her luck, I'd ask her about it if I were you." Oswin didn't really know why she was dropping Clara in it, but she wanted to make a point about Clecho-Awkwardness to the high-and-mighty Time Lord, "Anyway, do you want to hear the end of this story or not?"