DAY 151

Mad About the Boy

Martha

Mickey and Martha were left in their bedroom with only the pregnancy test and Helix for company, when the situation all got a little too personal for even Jack's taste, and he and Ianto took their leave in order to let the two of them talk about… well, talk about everything, she supposed. That was the only way to put it. They needed to talk about everything. Martha lifted up her feet from the floor and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, Mickey still pacing around.

"Sit down," she bade him eventually, and he stopped walking and looked at her like he hadn't heard her properly. She nodded at the space on the mattress by her side.

"I don't know if I can sit," he admitted, "I feel like I need to keep moving, you know? Maybe I'm in shock. Am I in shock? What are the symptoms of being in shock?"

"You're not in shock," she said.

"I could be in shock."

"Alright, if you're in shock you definitely need to sit down. I'm sure I can find you a tinfoil blanket somewhere on this ship." He still didn't say or do anything. "Mickey, you're shocked but you're not in shock. Okay?" Eventually it clicked with him that she had asked him to come and sit down, and as he did she put the plastic test on the bed next to her, wondering if she ought to throw it away or not. It was a bit gross, since it had pee on it, but wasn't it a memento? She could not rightly tell if it would be weird. "…You do think we should keep it?"

"Of course I think we should keep it, Martha!" he exclaimed in horror.

"I'm not saying I don't want to! I'm just… worried, you know? About… a baby, and the quality of life it might have. What if it does get captured? Like River?"

"They were unprepared for that, alright? She never even told Rory she was pregnant, he had no idea," Mickey said, "And I don't think the Doctor was expecting all that… stuff. Nobody's going to try and kidnap a baby from a woman who can set things on fire with her mind. And… Rose and Amy can both see into the future, right? See danger coming? Plus, Jack's right about it being safer on the TARDIS…"

"Mickey, we can't raise a child on the TARDIS," she said, "Neither of us even want to live here, we've just been so caught up in everything for the last few months that… We both left for good reasons. And those good reasons were all still there, and now there's just one more very big good reason."

"Maybe until, you know, it's… here," he said awkwardly, "For the medical facilities, yeah? Since it's gonna be… um… weird. Those cats are weird enough and they're cats. Believe me, I don't want to raise a kid in space, either, but safety has got to be the most important thing. Plus, this is where the Doctor is, and if this baby is going to be a Time Lord, then, he'll be helpful."

"Oh my god, I'm gonna have to tell my mum that I'm pregnant and it's going to be an alien with superpowers…"

"Good luck with that."

"You'll be there too," she told him sharply, "I'm not telling her that on my own."

"She'll kill me."

"Probably."

"We're gonna have to think about nappies and baby food and toilet training… can you imagine it? Us? Changing nappies? Doing all that? Teaching someone how to speak, how to, you know, be a person? About our lives and the Doctor and all this stuff? Because we can't hide it, Martha. Not when they'll be a Time Lord as well. It'll need to be told."

"And baby names, and mum will want a proper christening, and… god, are we going to have to have a baby shower? How long do you have to be pregnant for to have a baby shower? And we're going to need to find somewhere to live! Somewhere secluded, maybe."

"Secluded?"

"A village."

"Us? In a village? We're both from the middle of London. We can't live in a village."

"I am not raising a child in London – do you care about the safety of your offspring at all?" she snapped, "Abduction capital of the UK, no thanks. We'll have to go somewhere out of the way, and safe, with… good schools."

"So now we have to be house hunting as well as thinking about raising a child?"

"We've got nine months! We can find a house in nine months. Adam Mitchell might buy us one – he bought Other Clara one, and she's not even a defenceless baby," Martha pointed out, but Mickey scoffed.

"I'm not asking Adam Mitchell to buy us a house."

"If things get desperate, I mean," she said, "A last resort."

"It had better be a last resort," he said bitterly, really not liking the idea of asking some nerd like Adam Mitchell for charity. Martha couldn't really blame him; she didn't like it, either, but would rather that then they end up back in their ill-suited one-bedroom flat – or worse, homeless, since they hadn't really been keeping up with the rent payments for the last few months…

"Maybe he'll buy you a sports car as well," Martha suggested to soften the blow.

"…Alright, maybe not a last last resort. But definitely not a first resort. Second-to-last resort, one up from going on Location, Location, Location. And then there's… godparents, and names – what are we going to call it, Martha? What if it's a girl? What if it's a boy? What if it's neither? Do we need a gender-neutral name?" Martha hadn't even thought about godparents, and in all honesty, she had never thought all that much about having children, not nearly enough to have a short-list of potential baby names. "What if we're bad parents?"

"Why would we be bad parents?"

"Just… what if we were? What if we split up? That always happens, they bring a kid into a marriage to early and-"

"We've been together for five years and married for most of those," she said, "It's not early days. We've been living in the same flat for almost as long, too, and working together. I think you'll be a great dad. Best dad in the universe, probably. And don't you remember what I said to you? Years ago?"

"You've said a lot of things to me."

"Remember, we were in that sewer and I said if we ever had kids we needed a really, you know, ordinary getting-together story," she said, smiling as she watched him remember.

"And you're still talking about it in relation to the sewer, which is the one thing you didn't want."

"Well we don't tell the baby about the sewer. It's not for children to hear about, anyway. But you remember the actual story?"

Five Years Ago

Martha Jones didn't get out of bed until round about three o'clock the following afternoon. It had been a long night, and she would have very easily stayed asleep until dinner time, if she didn't have some self-discipline. Funnily enough, it was one of the best sleeps she had experienced recently, after her hose-down and the following three showers she had put herself through that morning, one at the Torchwood base and then two more after Ianto had been commissioned to shuttle them all home one-by-one in the SUV. Except Mickey, who lived very close and normally walked to work, while Martha got taxis because the paycheques from Torchwood really were quite lucrative and afforded her this.

She was so exhausted from her very few hours of sleep and then going sewer-diving and showering so much she worried about making her skin bleed that she didn't even have another nightmare, didn't dream at all. It was very dark when she woke up, so dark she actually thought it was later than it was, but the bad weather was just because of a storm brewing. Incidentally, thunder from the storm was what had ultimately woken her up, and she was very grateful that Jack had given them the next day off work as well – though, she had a sneaking suspicion this was because he wanted Ianto to 'nurse him back to health', or something. It wasn't like any of them were going to complain about having a rest, and they'd be called back into work in a heartbeat if the Rift started to kick off.

Martha was shuffling around her flat in her dressing gown and slippers, wondering if there was anything good on TV lately she might want to catch up on since she had finally snatched some slithers of downtime. She had just finished making a cup of hot chocolate because she thought she deserved it after the day she'd had when her musings about television shows were cut short by someone ringing the buzzer for the flat downstairs. Seeing the pouring rain through the window, she hastened to answer it quickly. The speaker was broken though, so she was just letting someone up on blind faith. Not that she was putting herself at much risk, she did have a gun.

When they knocked on the door she kicked over an old plastic box and stood on it on tiptoes to see through the peephole; it was only Mickey. She would rather he had called ahead so that she could actually get dressed and make herself presentable, though. She'd barely even brushed her hair. But she couldn't exactly tell him to go away – after all, he was cute. So she pulled back the chain and turned the key to open the door and let him in. He was carrying quite a lot of stuff.

"God, look at you," she said, "You'd never guess that you were crawling around in sewage twelve hours ago." He smiled.

"I try my best." She opened the door enough to let him come inside, and he was looking at her so he didn't see the plastic tub she'd been stood on and tripped right over it.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she went to move it back to where she normally kept it, pushed up against the wall with some of her pairs of shoes, "Just a box I use to… um… the peephole is quite high up, alright?" she said defensively.

"Really!?" he exclaimed, "You can't reach to see out of the peephole?"

"No."

"Oh my god."

"Leave it out."

"It's adorable!"

"It's not adorable," she grumbled, "I've got a loaded gun in here somewhere, you know. I'll shoot you." He was just laughing as she locked the door behind him. "How do you know where I live, anyway? You've never been here before."

"I'm the computer guy, remember? Been sorting out files for the last few weeks?"

"You're stalking me?"

"I've brought you a housewarming present," he said, holding out a gift bag he had brought. He was soaked from being out in the rain. "Wanted to see this flat. It's nicer than mine." Martha thought it had too many windows. Windows along all the walls; she could see Cardiff for miles. The problem was just that she didn't think she wanted to see Cardiff for miles. It wasn't really the most striking skyline, and it had more or less no memorable buildings on the horizon.

"A housewarming present?" she asked incredulously.

"Have a look," he said, so she did, taking the bag, still self-conscious of the fact she was in her pyjamas.

"Oh, wow," she began sarcastically, "A bottle of wine that must have cost at least a tenner."

"It was a fiver, actually," he said, "I thought we could drink it together."

"You like wine?"

"Well, you know, if the company's right I'll drink anything, really."

"And Blossom Hill definitely constitutes 'anything,'" she said, "To be honest, all wine really tastes the same. Don't you think?"

"That's why I didn't splash out. There's something else, too," he said. He was not annoyed about her berating the rather unimpressive cheap white wine that probably contained more diluted cleaning solution than any actual grapes, and this was probably because his other housewarming gift was actually more thoughtful. It was a candle, but an expensive and large pillar candle set in glass.

"Oh, wow," she repeated herself, but this time without the sarcasm, "That's…"

"It's Soft Blanket smell," he said, "I just thought, you know, soft blanket, probably comforting, might help you calm down before you go to sleep. Stop the nightmares. Maybe."

"Okay, I forgive you for the cheap wine."

"I thought you might," he said, "Booze is booze, really, isn't it? And you seem like you might need a drink after this worm stuff. I know I need a drink."

"Right, so… today you've… what?"

"Slept for a bit, maybe five hours, then I've been out in this weather buying this stuff. Then I came here because I didn't really want to wait to see you."

"Couldn't even wait for me to get dressed?" she teased.

"I thought you'd have woken up ages ago!"

"I didn't, but even if I had, I fancy sitting in pyjamas for the whole day. Maybe watch Come Dine with Me."

"Are you gonna talk to me now, then?"

"Yeah – do you want to go out together some time?" she asked, taking him aback.

"Well – you – I was going to-"

"What?"

"I feel emasculated."

"Really? It's 2008, you need to get over yourself," she laughed.

"…I'd love to go out with you some time…" he admitted very resentfully, which she also thought was quite funny.

"I know," Martha said, "It's – what? Half three now? So why don't you go home for a bit and come back here at, like, seven, and we can get takeaway and drink this wine and make fun of people on TV."

"You don't want to go to a restaurant? Or the cinema? Or a romantic walk in a park?"

"In this thunder storm?"

"We could go to the theatre."

"Can you even tell me where the nearest theatre is? Or what's on? Because I haven't got a clue."

"…Seven, then? Your flat?"

"Yeah," she said. Then there was a flash of lightning outside and thunder followed after just a handful of seconds. A car alarm went off somewhere. "Or… erm… maybe you should just stay now. I'd feel a bit mean making you walk home and then all the way back here again when there's this storm on."

"Oh. Okay." He was trying not to sound like he was immensely excited about her suggesting that he stay at her house during the storm instead of going home. Clearly, though, he was over the moon. "So I should…?"

"I don't know, put the telly on, I have to get dressed," she said, "I'm paying for Sky, someone might as well use it since I hardly ever do."

"I thought you wanted some really fancy memory?"

"No. I just want a normal one. For once. Okay."

"But I sort of wanted-"

"Oh my god, I like you, okay? We can have more than one date, you know, if things go well. You can take me to a restaurant that's too posh for us both some other time, when it isn't raining."

"I'll hold you to that."

"I can't wait. I'm going to get dressed." She turned to leave.

"Just one more thing, though," he said, grabbing her hand. He tugged on her arm and when she turned around he had stooped to kiss her, knocking the breath out of her lungs and taking her by complete surprise. "…Thanks for protecting me from the worm."

"Don't really think I did an awful lot."

"Thanks anyway."

"I'm going to get dressed."

"What's the point? You might have to get undressed again later," he said when she again went to leave. He didn't grab her and kiss her this time, though. She flashed him a grin over her shoulder.

"Cheeky. Carry on like that and I'll kick you out."

"Yeah, right."

And, well, she never did kick him out. Not at any point in the next five years, and certainly not in any of the decades after that.