Hello, y'all. I realize I've been a bit dead lately, but I've been sick with mono (glandular fever, for those of you across the pond.) I thought I should probably stick something up here before you all give up on me. Say hi to Fitz. He's a companion who appears in almost all of the Eighth Doctor Adventure novels, and now an audio play as well! (Squee.) He's from 1963, I believe, and he smokes and plays guitar and is a bit sexist and totally a lovable loser. This is set post-Ancestor Cell, so the Doctor has a beard and amnesia, AGAIN. For those of you unfamiliar with the EDAs, they're the dark side of canon, and terribly awful things happen to Fitz and the Doctor. Fitz/Doctor is semi-canonical, yayz. And Nine's jacket was totally Fitz' first.


"Fitz, wake up!" This was followed by a loud banging on his door. "Fiiitttz!"

"Sflwzg," Fitz mumbled. He'd been having a nice dream. Well. Sort of nice. At first it had involved that green-skinned space babe whose planet they'd saved last week, but then she'd somehow morphed into the Doctor. Naked. It wasn't fair. Not even his subconscious would back him up in the I'm Not Into Blokes, Really argument. And now someone was banging on his door. Well, at least this time he wasn't hung over.

"Fitz! Come on! We're going fishing!"

It took him a moment to process that, and then he sighed. Fishing. OK then. He fell out of bed with a groan, sheets tangled around his legs. Now at least half awake, he managed to pull on his usual dashing attire: jumper, jeans, and battered leather jacket. Something was tragically wrong with the world, he thought as he opened the door. It wasn't even eight in the morning yet and already he needed a ciggie.

The view which greeted him did not greatly improve his mood. The Doctor was standing there, the usual bemused yet cheerful grin plastered all over his damnably pretty face, but he had a long metal fishing pole over one shoulder and instead of his usual elegantly anachronistic velvet-and-lace ensemble he was wearing- was wearing-

Fitz blinked. "Christ, that thing is so ugly it should be illegal."

The blithe smile wavered somewhat. "Well, actually it did get me banned from several planets, and on Arterius XVII they declared it a psychological war weapon-"

"Yeah, yeah," Fitz said. "What's this about fishing?"

The Doctor blinked. "That's all you've got to say about the coat?"

Fitz frowned. "You wore it just to provoke me?"

"No," the alien replied, and looked away, almost guiltily. "I just felt like... I just wanted to do something different today."

Something felt tight in Fitz' chest at that, because it was a sign of Things Not Being All Right, and fuck it, he'd promised Iris or Brenda or whatever her name was that he'd look after the Doctor, that was what he was there for after all, the silly git'd get himself killed in a second if Fitz wasn't there, and Fitzgerald Michael Kreiner always kept his promises. Well. No he didn't. Not even really important ones. But fucking Christ he was going to keep this one.

"Okay," he said eventually, exhaling like he'd just sucked in a deep lungful of cigarette smoke. "That's- that's fine, you can wear the coat if you like, we can go fishing if you want. It- it sounds like fun."

"Okay," the Doctor repeated, in imitation almost, and the stupid word sounded so strange in the Doctor's vaguely upper-class British accent.

"Okay," Fitz said again, feeling like the biggest idiot ever, and then he went to have breakfast, ie jam on toast and a fag. And a beer, for good measure.

The Doctor wandered in after a while and stared at him disapprovingly.

"Shouldn't you be getting out the tackle or whatever it is?" Fitz snapped guiltily.

The Doctor shook his head, sadly, and left again. Fitz gulped down a huge swallow of beer.

The door of the TARDIS opened up onto a very ordinary lake. Fitz's mother had never taken him on holidays in country, so he'd never actually been somewhere like this, but he recognized it vaguely as the quintessential English pond, ie, muddy and wet. As the final finishing touch it began to rain, half-heartedly.

"Come on!" the Doctor cried, all manic again, running outside, umbrella raised. For a moment all Fitz could do was stand and watch him. The Doctor moved like a flat stone skipping across still water, a momentary defiance of gravity; right now he was flying and it was brilliant, but eventually he was going to sink.

Fitz pried his clenched fingers from the familiar wood of the door frame and followed. It was all he could do really.

The Doctor was standing on an old dock, rotting wood and green moss. There was a boat tied up there, one that was a pale blue once, but now the paint was peeling and flaking off. Fitz groaned. "Please tell me we're not getting in that thing," he told the Doctor.

The Doctor blinked innocently. "We're not getting in that thing."

"Really?"

"No," and he stepped in and stood on the bottom of the thing, wobbling back and forth alarmingly, that ridiculous coat flapping, and so Fitz just had to clamber in after him and shout at him and pull him down onto the splintery wooden seat, and by that time the tricky bastard had pushed them out onto the water with the tip of his fishing pole.

"Wait," Fitz cried, "the oars!"

The oars were back at the dock.

Fitz looked at the Doctor accusingly. The stupid alien widened his pretty brown eyes innocently, and shrugged.

"Great," Fitz moaned, "now we're stuck."

The Doctor smiled. "How about some fishing?"

…

It was actually quite peaceful, Fitz thought, to just be lying here, staring up at the gray sky, aimlessly, the gentle rocking motion of the boat all around him. The rain had stopped and the clouds were beginning to clear, illuminating each strand of the Doctor's mop of curls, and Fitz noticed how each one was a slightly different color.

It was silly of him, he knew, to think the Doctor needed him. The man had somehow managed to survive his reckless escapades for over a thousand years before Fitz had come along. And yet he could remember, with vivid clarity, all the times the game had turned too real, when his arms had wrapped around that velvet jacket, pulling his best friend out of harm's way. And maybe that was all he needed, really- someone to drag him out of the way, someone who wouldn't let him stand there and watch in wonder as destruction approached. And, well, Fitz was happy to do that.

But, well, this was very awkward and unmanly but sometimes he thought that maybe the Doctor needed more than that. Maybe they both did. He remembered waiting outside of a locked door with cooling tea by his foot and nothing in the air but sadness. When he played his guitar lately, no songs came forth, only awful twanging chords like he was some angsting teenager emoting through instrument torture.

We can't go on like this, Fitz thought, as a hint of a breeze played its fingers through that hair and teased at the technicolor coat.

"Fitz!" the Doctor cried suddenly, as much in motion now as he was still a moment before. "Fitz, I've got something on the line-"

He stood up, which Fitz suddenly knew was a very bad idea, and the boat began to rock, back and forth- the line was being tugged from the Doctor's hands, and he was tugging right back- and Fitz cried out and lunged forward, hands reaching, stretching, longing-

And somehow they both ended up in the water. Which was cold, slimy and generally disgusting.

…

The Doctor was shivering when they got back to the TARDIS. Fitz frowned at that. The Doctor's core temperature was several degrees lower than a human's, so a swim through a puddle shouldn't have bothered him.

Fitz' jumper was clinging to his chest and the jacket would probably never be the same again, but he was more concerned with the shivering. "Go take a shower, all right?" he said, and couldn't resist adding, "You idiot."

Fitz took a shower himself. There was no sign of the Doctor when he emerged. He looked at the jacket regretfully before putting on a new stunningly original jeans-and-jumper combination. He considered getting a trench coat. It might make him look more mysterious and dashing.

At least the Doctor's horrid patchwork coat was forever consigned to the bottom of a lake. He cheered up at the thought.

He eventually settled down in the study with two mugs of tea. It took him an embarrassingly long time to get the fire going, but eventually it began to crackle grumpily, and he collapsed into an armchair with a vague feeling of discontent. He shivered a little, and hoped his hair would dry soon. It would be nice to blow dry it, but that would be acting too much of a girl.

He was sure the Doctor blow-dried his hair. There was no other reason for it to look so soft and pretty and was he really thinking this much about a bloke's hair? God, he needed a smoke.

The door opened quietly and Fitz felt his mouth fall open and his brain break because there was the Doctor, in a bathrobe, with his hair all damp and ringlet-y and rivulets of water running down his bare chest and fuck it Fitz really was queer, wasn't he. Nnnngk. Some detached part of his mind was thinking that this was kind of a shame, considering how many girls he got to shag on their adventures, even if he did compare them all to the Doctor which was weird now that he thought about it, but most of his mind was just repeating like a broken record "wet hair, wet chest, wet Doctorrrrr.... eeeeeee..."

"Um," he said vaguely. "Would you like some tea?"

The Doctor looked at him. Then he looked at the tea. "Thank you, that would be very nice," he said vaguely. He sat down on the couch and gingerly took the cup and saucer that Fitz handed to him. Fitz found himself vaguely disappointed that their fingers didn't touch.

The Doctor stared at the tea for a while as though he had forgotten what it was. He gently placed it down on the coffee table, and looked up.

There was a long, awkward silence.

"I'm sorry, Fitz," the Doctor said.

"Um," Fitz said, and drank his tea to cover his confusion. He drank it too fast and had to cough a bit, and then he said, "What, for the boat? No, that was, um, that was fun. Really. I've always wanted to splash around in a muddy pond. One of my childhood dreams." He became aware that he sounded a bit like an idiot, and shut his mouth with a snap.

The Doctor closed his eyes. "I didn't mean that," he said.

"No," Fitz muttered quietly, "no, I didn't think you did."

...

..

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