DAY 140

When It's Time

Oswin

What an astonishingly productive phone call to Jenny that had been, she thought, annoyed that her bid to find out exactly how Jenny was (as was her secret job entrusted to her by Thirteen) had been hijacked by Jenny's desire to – eurgh – speak to her father. And ask him some arbitrary question about pig sex Oswin was sure was very dull. Oswin dropped her phone back into the pocket of her boyfriend's dressing gown, which she spent most of her time lounging around in those days, and took it upon herself to at least stick her head back into her own room and talk to him. She'd barely seen him all day, and for a lot of the day before after the pathetic verdict of flu had been passed on the Time Lords; she'd been holed up in her laboratory. He had made her coffee that morning, and she had vanished off again to continue her obsessive study of Liam Kent's blood samples.

She didn't walk in on what she expected to walk in on, though, which would be Adam Mitchell playing video games on his fancy-schmancy computer or his equally ostentatious television, perhaps with the online company of Esther Drummond. No, she walked in to hear music, acoustic music, and it wasn't coming out of a speaker. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, Oswin was aware that her boyfriend could play the guitar*, but she had never seen him do so. He was just as bad with that as her sister was with her piano, in that she had never seen him play. But she had also never seen him in the vicinity of a guitar, so maybe that was why, rather than shyness. To go with this new-found musical streak, the boy was singing, too, and he was actually singing well. Very well, in fact. Not that she recognised the song. They didn't have remotely similar tastes in music.

"All I want is you to understand, that when I take your hand, it's cos I want to," Adam was singing, and Oswin was stunned and forced to stand there and listen by desire, "We are all born in a world of doubt, but there's no doubt, I've figured-"

"Blood samples finished analysing, Miss Oswald," the voice of Helix's handset interrupted, quite loudly, from Oswin's other, large pocket, declaring that her latest simulated experiment on Kent's blood had completed running. It unfortunately also declared that Adam Mitchell's song had 'completed running,' because he abruptly stopped what he was doing, sitting on the sofa, and turned around to stare at her, aghast.

"Will you stop sneaking up on me!?" he exclaimed, blatantly embarrassed, and Oswin was embarrassed, too, for her own lack of subtlety.

"I didn't do it on purpose! I just came to say hi before I had to go back to the lab," she said, lurking by the door, feeling a little outcast. He clenched his jaw and put his guitar down, leaving it propped up against the arm of the sofa, looking at her over the back of it.

"How long were you stood there for?"

"Not that long," she said truthfully. Given the opportunity, she would have listened to the whole song through, and whatever songs came after it, in complete, devoted silence. "Why do you mind? You're really good." He made a face like he didn't believe her, like she was telling him that as part of one of her usual, fond jeers. "I'm telling the truth."

"Right."

"I didn't know you could sing, Mitchell," she said, walking towards the sofa to sit on his left, the other side to the guitar. He wouldn't trust her to go near it, she was sure. He would think she would break it, and perhaps she would, though she had never really seen one in person before. Nobody had ever brought one to her house.

"How are your experiments going?" he asked quickly, raising his eyebrows in an attempt to look more intrigued than he actually was. She nearly gasped.

"Don't try to change the subject away from how talented you are!" she said, a grin sneaking onto her face, her very amused and enamoured by his embarrassment over this new side of his personality. She shuffled closer to him on the sofa, and he shifted uncomfortably and moved away slightly.

"I'm showing an interest in your afterlife," he shrugged.

"You're interested enough without going to extra effort. And I don't know how they're going, I haven't been able to check the most recent results yet, considering I only got them about a minute ago and I've been in here the entire time."

"Maybe you should go do that, then? Go check?" he suggested hopefully, and she narrowed her eyes.

"Just because you're embarrassed about me seeing you sing? Why should you be embarrassed about that? We've been going out for months, and you don't want me to hear you sing?" she asked, and she was genuinely a little downtrodden about that. What did it mean? He was uncomfortable around her? With her? He must have been able to tell she was somewhat put out, going by what he said next.

"You frightened me."

"I didn't mean to. I just got distracted when I came in." Adam sighed, ran a hand through his hair, but didn't speak. "Where did you learn to sing?"

"I… don't laugh," he pleaded.

"Laugh? Why would I laugh?"

"Because I was in an all boys' choir," he said, and Oswin steadily found herself beaming, "I said don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing! I'm smiling. It's cute."

"And now you're patronising me."

"I'm not patronising you, Mitchell. You shouldn't be embarrassed just because you can sing well," she said, "I can't sing. Or play any instruments."

"So, what? You're impressed?" he asked her incredulously.

"My boyfriend sings and plays the guitar very well, of course I'm impressed! You shouldn't be embarrassed about telling me things, babe. If you tell me the right things at the right times, you might never have to tell them to any other girl," she told him.

"That's putting me under a lot of pressure when it comes to talking," he mumbled.

"You need more confidence," she said.

"Why? Because you pity me?" he questioned. He still wasn't happy about all this, was still recoiling from her catching him singing like she had caught him doing something as blue as touching himself.

"I do not pity you, I'm in love with you, and I really like that you're musical! What are you so worried about? That me hearing you sing would be the world's biggest turn-off and I'd just decide to leave you on the spot?" she asked, and he couldn't think of anything to say in response, just opened and closed his mouth uselessly a couple of times. "What song was that?"

"Just Green Day. You don't like them," he said stiffly, crossing his arms.

"Maybe I like them when you play them," she told him, "I feel like I've been missing out all this time not being able to hear you sing. I'm deprived. You're going to have to make up for it, with… performances, or something."

"Oh, you wish," he said, smiling the tiniest amount.

"I do wish, that's why I said it." He scowled.

"…I'll think about it. Maybe. If you don't laugh."

"I won't, I haven't laughed at all," she pointed out, "I do have some integrity. I'm not a complete arsehole. Maybe about ninety-five percent arsehole, ninety-eight at a push, but never a complete one. So you can play the guitar and sing, and on top of that you're a rich, charitable, attractive genius, and you have glasses, and you can cook? It's getting to the point where I'm not even entirely sure that you exist, babe; I could still be trapped in perfect illusion on the Dalek Asylum and I wouldn't be surprised. You not being real is the only way you wouldn't have dumped me yet."

"Why would I dump you?"

"Um, well," she said, lifting up her hand to count the reasons on her fingers, and he rolled his eyes in response, "First of all, I'm insane; second of all, I'm dead; third of all, I'm insane; fourth, I can be really, unnecessarily cruel sometimes; fifth, I'm a Dalek; sixth, I'm insane; seventh, I'm far too co-dependent on my sister; and finally, eighth, did I mention I'm insane?" As she made this list, putting up the correlating finger until she reached the magic eight, his expression gradually changed to a smile he was trying to fight off.

"You've never been very good at putting me off," he remarked. She put her hands down in her lap.

"Well that's your problem, when you realise I'm awful. It's only a matter of time."

"Time could be forever."

"Uh-huh."

"Maybe I'll just never realise."

"Then I really would pity you."

"Why?"

"Having to be with me for that long, deluding yourself that I'm actually a good person to fall for." After she said that there was a very uneasy pause. She said things like that a lot, and he would always try and shower her with compliments, which would never work at making her thing she wasn't a messy, shell of an individual. Instead of letting that happen (again), she changed the subject, "I was just on the phone to Jenny."

"Oh, really? How is she?" Adam asked, "Did she say anything about when she's coming back to the TARDIS?"

"No. I heard the end of an argument between Sally Sparrow and Ravenwood, though, something to do with pig sex."

"Not that thing about Animal Farm being gay again? Your sister needs to get a grip."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious. But yes, that exact thing, then Jenny made me put her father on the phone so that she could get him to end the argument. So they're both happy, or something," she grumbled, and he frowned at her, intrigued by her annoyance at Jenny and Eleven.

"What's wrong?" he asked, "Why are you dead-set against those two being on good terms?"

"I just don't like him, he's overrated."

"The Doctor is overrated?"

"Yes!" she argued, "Very! What's so great about him?"

"He's got a really cool spaceship," Adam shrugged.

"Oh, I didn't realise you base peoples' value on their material possessions, Mitchell," she snapped, and he gave her a flat stare on the sofa. She looked away from him and back at his fancy, black, acoustic guitar. "Let me play with your guitar."

"No, definitely not," he said guardedly, and she gave him a pleading look, "Don't do that. You're not touching her."

"Her?" Oswin's jaw dropped.

"Yes. She's called Caroline."

"Oh my god. You have a guitar who is a girl called Caroline?"

"Well I'm not going to name it after a boy, am I?" he questioned. She shrugged.

"Far be it from me to judge if you swing both ways. Who do you love more? Me or Caroline?" she questioned.

"You didn't cost me almost four grand," he commented.

"Oi! You're supposed to say me!"

"But I don't pay for you."

"If you take that tone anymore then the only way you'll have anything to do with me will be if you pay," she snapped.

"And what are you going to do with money?"

"Maybe I don't mean pay with money. Maybe I mean… sexual favours, or something."

"Okay, so, I pay for sex with sex?"

"Yes."

"And that makes sense to you, does it?"

"Perfect sense."

"Sure."

"More sense than naming a guitar Caroline," she retorted.

"Jenny names all of her guns!" Adam protested in defence of himself.

"Yeah, so what? I'm not defending her for it, I think that's weird, too. Why would you name it? It's inanimate. I haven't named my leg," she said, nodding at her prosthetic appendage.

"But if you did name it, I wouldn't judge you for it."

"I'm just a very judgemental person, you ought to be used to it by now. Who's it named after? An old flame of yours?"

"No. A song. By another rock band you tell me you hate."

"Aw. That's nowhere near as interesting as a mysterious ex-girlfriend," Oswin said, "Why do you never tell me anything about your exes?"

"Because, Oswin, they all pale in comparison to you." She would have liked not to blush at that, but she did, and she despised her hologramatic programming for allowing such a crass display of – blech – emotion. God, she hated being in love.

*chapter 730