Nerd Flirts XII

Adam

"Check it out!"

"Wow, babe, that's…" He paused and looked at her, and then his face fell.

"You don't like it."

"No, it's just – you know, it's a car. Another one."

"Yeah, but… I mean, if you don't like it-"

"Mitchell, it's your car. You know me, I don't really have any opinion whatsoever on cars," she shrugged, "You get a new car if you want a new car."

"I traded in the Ferrari," he explained, standing next to it, "The 458."

"I didn't think you liked that Ferrari particularly much anyway," she said, and she was right, he didn't – he much preferred the Porsche 911. He was waiting for her to say something nice, or constructive, and she eventually realised this as she stood in the TARDIS garage next to the dilapidated ruin of his yacht. "I… like the colour?" she suggested, "The, um… I don't really know anything about it."

"It's a Tesla Roadster, from 2020," he explained, "It's electric, runs on a lithium battery." It was also white, a limited-edition colour he had paid quite a bit extra for in spite of his colour-blindness, and gorgeous. The second most gorgeous thing in the room, after Oswin.

"Oh," she realised, "Well, that is cool, now you've told me that. I do always think it's funny how you have so many petrol cars but you put so much money into helping the environment. And you get that weird recycled toilet paper that isn't even soft."

"What have you been touching the toilet paper for? You don't use the toilet."

"Literally because I wanted to see if it was soft," she said.

"It's got four seats," he nodded at the car, "And it can do nought-to-sixty in one-point-nine seconds. Although, that's probably not impressive to you, you did build that spaceship..."

"Mmm, Georgia can reach light-speed in half a second."

"Did you…? Name it?"

"Did I name the amazing spaceship I built from scratch? Of course I did. Christened by my own fine hands using industrial lubricant and engine grease. Don't tell Jenny, she has no idea, she'll find out if she ever has to take a look at the warp drive for general maintenance," Oswin explained, "Wrote her name in there. And you're one to talk, Mr I-Named-My-Yacht-After-A-Dragon."

"Who's it named after?"

"Nobody, I just like the name. Anyway, carry on telling me about your big, sexy car," she nodded at the Roadster.

"Oh. Well. It's no spaceship."

"Is it not? I hadn't noticed," she said dryly, "Four seats, electric, very fast, anything else?"

"Heated seats, actually. And what they call a 'biological warfare mode.' Which is where it activates a HEPA filter, really. But if the car's not doing it for you, I've got something else."

"It's not very hard to find stuff that does it for me, to be fair," she pointed out jokingly, watching him open the passenger door of the Roadster, "Anything phallic and I'm there." He pulled a plastic bag out of the car, where it had been sitting on the chair.

"I would have, uh, wrapped it, but, um… it's just that, earlier you were saying it was May to you, and… I think I missed Valentine's Day for you."

"I'm not too big on Valentine's Day," she said.

"It's just an excuse because I wanted to do something nice," he said, holding out the bag to her. She limped the step or two closer to bridge the gap and took it from him, giving him a suspicious look. He, on the other hand, could feel his cheeks burning. This sensation was psychosomatic, he was quite sure, since he was frozen, but that didn't make it less uncomfortable. And after sleeping next to Oswin for so many weeks – who frequently awoke experiencing sharp, phantom pain in her left leg which was no longer there – he didn't brush off 'imaginary' feelings so easily.

"Is this…?"

"Yeah," he said as she pulled a pretty basic, nondescript teddy bear out of the plastic bag, "I hope I didn't, I don't know, overstep or something. It's just that you were saying this morning about losing… are you crying? Oh my god, I didn't mean to make you cry!" Adam Mitchell was immediately horrified and regretted what he had done. What had he been thinking, getting her a teddy bear? What a truly abominable idea… When he stepped closer to try and do something to mitigate his grave error, she surprised him by hugging him tightly, throwing her arms around his neck. He couldn't work out if he had done something good or bad, but heard her sniff, and hugged her back.

"Thank you," she mumbled, then she let him go and wiped one of her eyes, wobbling with only her cane for balance. "This is one of the sweetest things anyone's ever…" she couldn't finish her sentence. "Sorry, sorry…" she shook her head, "I'm being stupid."

"You're not."

"It's just that… my dad got me Exabyte," she confessed, "It was the only thing I had to remember when he, you know… and I know he's… and I saw him, just… and the voxo…" she was in such a state she forgot to automatically replace the future-word 'voxo' for 'phone', which she always did the rest of the time. But now he knew why the bear had meant so much to her.

"Oh. Well…"

"I'll call him Zettabyte," she decided, still with damp eyes. "He's sharing the bed with us from now on, so you better get used to it."

"I'm fine with that. Just don't bring Sprite to bed, I've had enough nightmares about centipedes in my life…" And he had had multiple bad dreams about centipedes; he really didn't like them. Oswin looked at the bear she held in her hands, smiling, thinking. "So, you… you do like it?"

"I love it," she said, staring at it. Then she looked at him. "And I love you. I need to sit down – how about those heated seats?"

"Oh, um, sure," he said, fumbling with the keys in his pocket and unlocking the car, "And I was thinking, by the way, if you don't mind, maybe working out some biometric locks for this car? I just really don't want anyone taking it and driving it and crashing it. Or having sex in it, like Amy and Rory were doing in my Hudson Commodore…" he glared at the bright red Commodore he no longer wanted anything to do with. Maybe he should sell that, too… in retrospect, buying it was a terrible mistake. It was gaudy and awful to drive. He opened the door for Oswin before going and sitting down in the driver's side himself.

"I could do you biometrics," she offered, "In exchange for something."

"For what…?" he asked guardedly, starting the car so that the heated seats would turn on. It was very quiet.

"I just want you to meet my dad. Soon. After all this wedding chaos is over. I'm serious. And I'm not saying that you have to introduce me to your parents too, because you don't, not if you don't want to – I know you don't speak to them and about everything with Ellie. But I just want you to meet him, and him to meet you, he'd think you're great. And he's nowhere near as intimidating as Fyn. He's nearly as tall as Fyn, but he's not sarcastic and dry-humoured and pretentious. And Fyn likes you, anyway, so…"

"Okay," he said finally, "Since it's so important to you. But after the wedding, I need time to prepare. Mentally."

"You'll be fine, I promise. It'll be good, and you can see the Venusian colonies, they're gorgeous. I wouldn't make you do something that would turn out horrible, baby. I would never do that. I wouldn't do that to anyone."

"What about last week? When you got Clara that water and you told her it was cold water, but it was actually boiling water, and then you watched her drink it?" he said, and she laughed involuntarily and then pretended she was just coughing. Holograms didn't cough, though.

"…That was a mistake," she blatantly lied, "And anyway, that's Clara, she doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"Because, you know… she was fine. It was hilarious. Forget about that. I wouldn't do anything like that to you, you're an angel. When am I ever mean to you?" she challenged him, and he genuinely couldn't think of a response. Contrary to popular belief, Oswin was nowhere near as horrid as she seemed to want people to think. Not that he had ever thought that.

"So, um… Landon Briggs… he was from your century." Adam changed the subject.

"Yep."

"And he knew who I was."

"I guess."

"…Did you know who I was when you met me? I mean, I had no idea that I might be famous, or something. Or have a legacy, but – if he knew – and I'm really that important – then-?"

"Yeah, you're right, I've been a gold-digger all along, after your money," she said, then sighed, "No, I didn't know who you were. I had no idea, you know that, I didn't know until you started going on about the architect who built your fancy glass mansion. I think we'd been together for three days, give or take. I honestly… well, first of all, you have quite a boring name, I hate to point out. Apart from the 'Aloysius' part I didn't know about until this morning-"

"Yeah, yeah."

"If I knew who you were then I wouldn't have pretended not to. And besides, these achievements of yours he was talking about? I don't know a thing about that. I've never looked you up, and you lived three-thousand years ago. You don't know any key innovators from three-thousand years before you were born. And I'm not very interested in, you know, ancient history. Fossils. You're a fossil."

"Thanks."

"Why are you fussed?" she questioned, frowning, "You want to know if I've been a groupie all along?"

"No…" he said, unconvincingly. She raised her eyebrows.

"Well I think you're great, so you can consider me a groupie if you want. Though personally, I think a girlfriend is better than a groupie," she shrugged and smiled at him, still holding the bear. Then she looked out of the front window of the car as though they were actually driving anywhere. He wouldn't drive around in that garage though, it was cramped, there were all kinds of cars in there, and spaceships, and motorbikes. Even two or three mopeds. He wondered how many of them the Doctor had actually stolen.

"You never looked me up?"

"I don't want to know about your future," she said, "Not until we're together for long enough that I'm there to see it happen myself. Y'know, spoilers and all. And don't you go getting tempted to look stuff up about yourself. I know all about your nasty track record of breaking the laws of time travel; I'm keeping an eye on you, Mitchell." He thought she was actually being serious, and truthfully, he did have the desire to run an intertemporal search of himself. "You can make your own history, you don't need a guide."

"I'd feel better with a guide."

"Life's not as simple as that," she advised him, "If you're that excited to see what kind of amazing leaps forward in technology you're going to make, you'd better just get to making them. If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick."

"Mud."

"Excuse me?"

"It's 'mud.' If you throw enough mud at the wall, some of it will stick. Not shit."

"I'm pretty sure it's the same principle," she said, indifferent, "As substances, they're both plenty sticky."

"They're… okay…"

"And hard to wash out from underneath your fingernails."

"I could write a book of all the disgusting things you say. And I doubt there was a lot of mud on a spacestation."

"There wasn't. That's why I mentioned shit."

"This is not a conversation I want to have…" he did not want to know if she was being serious.

"Look, I've changed a lot of nappies. I've got five little brothers. I haven't been fisting anyone."

"You really don't have to-"

"I've literally never fisted anyone, my whole life," she continued to speak even though he would very much like if she would close her mouth and never speak again. In a bid to combat this he started fidgeting with the car radio, which was connected wirelessly to his phone and his iTunes library (the wonders of technology from seven years in his own personal future – cars with wifi becoming standard) and put on some music to drown her out. She thought that was funny. "You're so adorable," she said loudly, and he turned it down enough to hear her properly. Adam was looking at the speaker. "What's up?"

"I have a mini-fantasy about one day making out with a girl while this song played*." She laughed.

"God, if only there was a girl here who loved kissing you."

"If only," he said, looking at her lips.

"Tell you what I have a fantasy about. Having a boyfriend who sees himself as the amazing, wonderful person I've always seen him as, that would be good," she said.

"Pretty vanilla."

"Vanilla? You dirty little hypocrite, I can't believe I'm hearing this," she said as he laughed. "I'll tell you about Clara's sexual fantasies, that'd show you. Or worse, Jenny's."

"How do you know what Jenny's sexual fantasies are?"

"She butt-dialled me once in a compromising situation. But given your reaction to my one stray remark about fisting, I really don't think you want to hear about anything Jenny asks Other Clara for. What's hilarious is Other Clara flat-out told her to fuck off. Wants nothing to do with it. Clara's a big fan of nurses, though."

"Brilliant. More answers to questions I wouldn't ever ask. I'm never going to look at Jenny the same way again."

"I hate to reveal anything personal about Jenny, but I did once see quite a lot of handcuffs and ropes in her room over her shoulder."

"Right… are you being serious?" She didn't answer, just smirked. He didn't want to know if she was being serious, and he also knew he was never going to be able to hold a conversation with Jenny ever again for as long as they knew each other. From what he had just heard, she was a surprisingly misleading girl. Deceptive. Pretty much the opposite of Oswin in terms of her relationship with utter filth, considering Oswin talked a big game but was actually lying for shock value ninety-nine percent of the time. Then again, what did he really expect from the ex-wife of Captain Jack Harkness? People reported hearing all kinds of noises coming from their room when they were actually together... "Can I put the song back to the beginning?"

Oswin laughed, "Sure. And then you can change it to something else because I'm not really a fan, but – it's your car. Your car, your exciting day, so sure. Whatever you want. Make out with a girl in a car. Maybe later you can find a girl to make out with you in a bed, and wouldn't that be thrilling. Careful not to blow it too early."

"Just a few minutes ago you said you were never mean to me."

"Whatever. You love it really." And he kind of did, he thought, as he leant over to kiss her, thinking that this could well be the best moment of his entire life so far ever. It was hard to imagine it getting any better.

*I didn't want to put in the actual narrative, but if anybody's interested the song he put on is "Henrietta" by The Fratellis. Although feel free to imagine whatever song, that's just the one I was thinking of.

AN: SO you knew this was coming, but it's time for me to go on term break. Probably around a month and a half before I can come back, but I'm writing Spook Watch, and it's an interesting storyline which involves Ravenwood in a big way, and more specifically her status as a vampire. And Jenny will probably be in it too. It's really all four of them, because I think their little group is fun to write about.