![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisTitle: The Man in the Brown Tweed Jacket
Characters/Pairing(s): Twelfth Doctor/Liz Shaw
Rating: Teen
Word count: 4,585
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Beta:platypus
Summary: Though Liz is surrounded by men in brown tweed jackets at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference, there's one man who stands out from the crowd.
Author's Notes: Way back at the beginning of S10, someone mentioned to me that Twelve's time on Earth would overlap with Liz and Three, and I've wanted to write something with Twelve/Liz ever since. (Although this story takes place somewhat after Liz has left UNIT.)
::xposted to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dwfiction and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and Archive of Our Own
The Many Worlds Theory holds that every action, no matter how small, allows history to branch off into an entirely new world based on that decision point. Every choice Liz Shaw had made in her life, and every choice every other person had made, had led her to this exact moment in time, and every choice they hadn't made would have led her elsewhere.
Somewhere, there was a world where Liz was at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference. She was giving the keynote address. Ninety percent of the audience were women. The remaining men cowered in their hornrims and tweed jackets, murmuring shyly to each other about how much they had yet to learn.
Or perhaps she was in a second world, where she was at the conference, but she was attending the keynote instead of giving it. Fifty percent of the audience were women. The men in their hornrims and tweed jackets discreetly pointed at Liz, and she overheard one whisper, That's Liz Shaw. The Liz Shaw.
But unfortunately, Liz was in World Number Three. She was at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference. The keynote was over, and had been delivered by a man in hornrims and a tweed jacket. She was surrounded by men in hornrims and tweed jackets in the full colour spectrum from beige to dark toast. Four of her supposed colleagues had already asked her to fetch them cocktails. Two had leered pointedly at her legs, and one of those had found his whisky unexpectedly spilt all over his trousers.
Liz downed her own whisky and picked at the bland cheese cubes on the buffet, palming the toothpicks as she finished each cube. After all, a girl never knew when she was going to have to fend off the handsy American with the ridiculous muttonchop whiskers. A bootheel to the foot could easily be passed off as clumsiness, but there was a certain satisfaction in a poke with a sharp object, especially if she chose to reciprocate one inappropriate grab with another.
Six toothpicks ought to be enough for a little while, which meant it was time to refill her drink and make one more circuit of the room to see if Professor A or Dr. B or any of the various Tweedledums or Dees had anything useful to say to her before she gave up and ordered a steak and another whisky from room service.
Behind the bar, a weedy man with a puff of silvery hair was pouring the whisky, the vodka, the Dutch gin, a drop of maraschino cherry juice, and a splash of cider into a plastic cup and garnishing it with what appeared to be most of the bar's olives and lemon wedges. "And that," he said to the man in a staff uniform fuming beside him, "is how you make a proper Valtrusian punch. Cheers!" He placed a lemon wedge in his mouth, took a swig, half-choked. "Perfect," he said, and gestured with the cocktail towards Liz. "You want to try one?" He paused, stared. "Liz? Liz Shaw?"
He'd crossed to the front of the bar and wrapped her in a hug before she'd even processed he'd moved. "Liz!" he cried. "It's so good to see you."
"Do you mind?" She struggled and pushed him away. "Look, if you admire my work, I'm pleased, but –"
"Liz," he said. "Liz, it's me. It's the Doctor."
"… Doctor?" The Brigadier had said to her years ago that his friend once wore a different face, and though Liz had never discussed it with the Doctor himself, the concept had seemed eminently reasonable considering the man had two hearts and a time machine. The man in front of her now had marginally better fashion sense, or at least had foregone an opera cape for the night, and the hair … well, the tangled grey swallows' nest was certainly familiar.
"Right, then," Liz said. She swung behind the bar and grabbed the bottle of whisky. "Charge it to his room," she said to the bartender. "Come along, Doctor. We've got a lot of catching up to do."
* * *
The room service steak was tough though properly medium rare, the chips were flabby but large, and the whisky, if nothing else, was plentiful, which made the conversation easier.
"I suppose I could have let you spread your wings a bit more," said the Doctor.
"Did you mean, 'I suppose I could have tried not being a complete arse'?" Liz stabbed at a chip. They went ever so well washed down with whisky. "Did you mean 'I suppose I could have let you do your job without undermining your authority'?" Another chip, this one pointed directly at him. "Did you mean … oh, never mind, I'm out of insults for now. And also out of whisky. Pour me another."
"You're going to regret that in the morning." But he poured.
"On the list of moments in my life I'm going to regret," Liz said, swirling the glass, "this doesn't even come close to the top."
"And what does?"
He knew, of course, and she knew he knew, but she was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she swallowed another glug of whisky, peat burning all the way down her throat. "I think I'd rather let you guess," she said, and the half-smile on his face told her that he had.
"You've been doing well, then, have you?"
"I'm presenting a paper tomorrow on theoretical algorithms for assessing proto-linguistic patterns in gamma-ray bursts. It's remarkable what I can accomplish when I'm allowed to run my own laboratory and experiments." Another swallow. How could her glass be nearly empty already? She poured one more splash. "Though of course, I fully expect Carter or Asquith or another one of those painfully ordinary tweeds to try and bury the work. They always do." Probably she should be eating something to wash down the whisky, but another chip or two would do her, assuming she could stab it with a fork. Never mind. Fingers were perfectly acceptable.
"Men," she continued, pointing at him with the chip, which lolled in her fingers like a … well, maybe she'd consider that with him later. Not that she hadn't idly considered it with the other one as well, but this one had a certain angular sensuality that suggested possibilities she would consider more often at conferences were not the pickings so likely to brag about their conquest in the morning. "Did you know how useless and annoying you are?" she said. "Always so certain you know more than the rest of us, no matter how many degrees we've got or how far ahead we are in our field. Well, you're not." Punctuating the last few words with the chip, then biting it, and her tongue. "Ow." More whisky, that'd fix it, assuming she could locate her mouth.
The Doctor gently moved the bottle away from the room service trolley and over by the television, well out of Liz's reach. Bastard, as always.
"What are you even doing here?" she asked. "It's not as though you're going to learn anything. Come here to point and laugh, did you?"
"I won't if you won't." He rubbed his face and looked away. "Would you believe I'm here in the name of 'professional development'? Been spending a bit of time here on Earth, just for jollies, you know, teaching at Bristol University. But they've hired this new personnel director, and she's got all sorts of modern ideas about training requirements. She even sent a minder to make sure I attended. As if I'd wander off!"
"Oh, no, certainly not. You? Disobey an order? Wander off? Unthinkable." Liz pushed her food away and quite suddenly considered the possibilities inherent in a good lie-down. Oh, yes, the bed. It had seemed so hard when she'd checked in, but now it looked like the most comforting, welcoming space she'd seen all day, one that could only be improved if it stopped spinning round for a few minutes.
"You now have my official permission to wander off. I'm going to sleep," she said, slowly and with immense dignity. "If you're good, I'll point you to the talks least likely to bore you to tears. Tomorrow."
"I look forward to it, my dear girl."
She was flat on her stomach and snoring before he'd finished the sentence, but she fell asleep with a hint of a smile on her face.
After all, she'd known how his sentence was going to end.
* * *
There was a pounding on the door that was entirely different from the pounding in Liz's head, and why couldn't the two synchronise? Was life really that cruel? She groaned and rolled off the bed, bracing herself with an arm on the side table, and slouched towards the door.
"Good, you're awake," the Doctor said, wheeling in a new room service trolley. "Coffee, tea, full English, and, of course" – he scrambled in a jacket pocket – "a hangover patch." Which was slapped against the side of her neck without her permission, though since her headache had almost completely dissipated before her brain was capable of forming the sentence "Do you mind," she chose not to object.
It took most of a cup of coffee and several forkfuls of eggs and sausage before her eyes could focus enough on the clock. Nine … thirteen? Fifteen? Some two digits after the nine, probably beginning with a one?
"Oh, bollocks," she said. "My talk's at ten, and I smell like … well, never mind what I smell like." Down went the last of the coffee and a spoonful of beans and grilled mushroom. "You need to go," she said, gesturing to the Doctor with her coffee cup. "It's bad enough half my neighbours probably think you spent the night."
"Spent the night? What would be the problem with … ah. I see."
"It's not that you're not …"
"No, of course not. And it's not that you're not …"
"And hangover patch or not, I'm still not sober enough to have this conversation, Doctor."
He poured the remainder of the coffee into his cup until it nearly overflowed. "I'll just take this to the first session, then."
"Yes," Liz said, bracing herself against the bathroom doorway until her head stopped spinning. "You do that."
* * *
"And that," Liz said, clicking over to the last slide, "concludes my presentation. Are there any questions? Yes – you in the brown tweed jacket. No, you in the brown tweed jacket in front of me. You in the brown on the other side, you're after them."
"Excuse me," said Brown Tweed Jacket #1, "I have a question. Well, it's more of a comment, really. When I was a lad – goodness, that was quite some time ago, you probably weren't even born yet, my dear – and I first started studying the gentlemen's science of physics …"
Several minutes later, with a man's history of manly pursuits in the manliest of Sciences having safely passed through Liz's brain without stopping along the way, Brown Tweed Jacket #2 chimed in.
"I'd like to add a comment on what the esteemed gentleman had to say," he began. "Sir, if I may, that was a load of twaddle."
"I say!" responded Jacket #1.
"My dear fellows," boomed Brown Tweed Jacket #3, "must we argue over the work of a lady scientist? Surely one of us can refine this rough draft of hers and draw it to a full conclusion."
"Rough draft? Rough draft?" Liz found herself wishing for toothpicks in her fists. "Sir, this is the culmination of three years of research by a lady scientist who was the former scientific advisor to UNIT. If you find my work wanting, I will be happy to discuss it with you to explain exactly how ill-informed you are."
But by then, the conference management had called time on the session, and Liz, still fuming, stomped off to the next one, stopping only for a cup of coffee and a rather cranky stir of sugar along the way.
* * *
At the 11am session, the uncontrollable laughter began twenty-two minutes in and let up only when a navy-blue and silver-haired blur wheezed its way out of the room.
At lunch, the Doctor held court beside several tweed-jacketed gentlemen who one-by-one got up, their heads shaking, only to be replaced by more gentlemen in a shifting series of incredulity.
At the 3pm session, Liz overheard a stifled yell and saw the Doctor being elbowed outside the room by a short balding man with what looked like an uncommonly strong grip.
At the 4pm session, she found the Doctor scowling at the title on the poster parked outside the door – "Towards a Theory of a Tenth Planet" – and he stalked away before she had a chance to say hello.
By 5pm, she was more than ready for the cocktail hour. So were the rest of the attendees, most of whom had formed a less-than-orderly queue at the bar, with the remainder cramming in chicken divan vol-au-vents while making subtly cutting remarks about their colleagues' presentations. Professor Boothroyd was showing off a beige brick from which he could make telephone calls – "Anywhere in the world! Right at my fingertips! Though you do sometimes have to shout to be heard" – Armstrong was whispering in a corner with DeVane and Lowell, no doubt about the open faculty position they hadn't yet advertised, and the handsy American – well, at least he was talking astrophysics with two square-shouldered male graduate students with no fear of finding the American's fingers unexpectedly wandering across their buttocks.
Liz and a double whisky eventually made their way over to the Doctor, who was balancing a paper plate of cheese and crackers on top of a glass of white wine.
"You survived, I see," Liz said through a mouthful of cheese she'd just stolen from him.
"Though I might yet die of starvation if someone keeps nicking my Brie."
"You'll live. Besides, we only have to stay long enough for me to hear exactly how catty Professor Dunstan gets about the Stephens Lab session, and then we can duck out to the Italian place next door."
"No, you may not," said the short, round-faced tweedy gentleman Liz had seen escorting the Doctor earlier. "Tonight's the closing banquet. Mrs. Thackeray was very keen that you attend all events." He shoved two crackers and at least two more crackers' worth of artichoke dip into his mouth, then turned back to the buffet table to gather several new scoops of dip.
"And who is this?" Liz said to the Doctor.
"My minder. I'm sure he's got a name, but I've been calling him go away, you useless prat."
"Frndlklnd," mumbled the man through another mouthful of dip. His left eyebrow twitched in time with his chew. "Franklin. Alan Franklin. Pleasure to meet you. I say, does either of you know what this dip is made out of? It's spectacular."
Liz chose not to shake the dip- and crumb-covered hand, which disappeared back into Franklin's mouth with more food anyway. The twitch spread to his right eyebrow, which took up its own rhythm in a wholly irregular time signature.
"I promise I'll bring him back before the closing address, Mr. Franklin," Liz said. "Believe me, I understand why he might need someone to keep an eye on him."
"Excuse me," said the Doctor, "I am standing right here. And I believe it's artichoke dip."
"Hmm, artichokes. Do you know, I've always been told I'm allergic – but what a way to go if I am. Could you hold my plate for a moment? There's a good chap." Franklin swiped the entire white ceramic bowl of artichoke dip from the table, plopped it on his plate, and began scooping it directly into his mouth. "Thack- Thack- Thackeray didn't tell mmmmm… me the food would be so gooooood."
Now his whole head was twitching. And was that … was that smoke rising from his collar?
"Mr. Franklin," Liz said. "Are you all right?"
"I - I - I am ffffffff- fine … fine … fine …" A jerk of his head. "More … more … more dip. More dip. MORE DIP. MORE DIP. MORE. MORE. MORE. MORE."
The Doctor finally peered closer at his minder. "Look, Liz, I haven't been to very many of these conferences, but this isn't the typical reaction to artichoke dip, is it?"
"Of course not, Doctor. We've got to help him!"
"DIP. DIP. MOOOOOOOOOORE. MORE DIP. MORE DIP." A snap of bone, a crunch of gears grinding together, and Liz leapt backwards from the minder, from whom a now alarming quantity of smoke was rising.
"Everyone stay back!" yelled the Doctor. "He's going to blow!"
The ceramic dip bowl, empty, dropped to the floor and spattered mayonnaise glops across the paisley carpet. And Franklin –
Franklin's head exploded in a puff of smoke and sparks that left gasps and shrieks throughout the room.
A deep, metallic voice ratcheted its way through the silence. "I AM THE MINDER. I SHALL REQUIRE THE DOCTOR. I SHALL ALSO REQUIRE MORE DIP." The smoke slowly began to clear, revealing what had once been Franklin, but was now a squat sooty robot in a torn tweed jacket and dingy white shirt, and also sporting what looked very much like a set of laser guns in its chest.
"Oh," said the Doctor. "Oh. He's a MIndER."
"I know that! Now explain why he's a robot pointing bloody great guns at us!"
"I told you! He's a MIndER – a Mobile Independent Enforcement Robot, here to keep an eye on me for a couple of days, is that it, Franklin? What's Thackeray been up to while I've been away, eh? Besides forgetting to remind you that an artichoke allergy means don't eat the artichoke dip."
"DIP. DIP. DIP. DOCTOR. DIP. MORE. DOCTOR. DIIIIIIIIIIP." A laser beam sputtered from one of the gun barrels and knocked aside a two-foot-tall centrepiece of daylilies and baby's breath in a shower of blue sparks and fluttering white petals. The scientists, for once, were quiet, cowering below the tiny tablecloths on the bar tables.
"Right," said the Doctor, "enough of that." He moved in front of Franklin and withdrew the sonic screwdriver from his jacket pocket. "You'll leave these people alone." The screwdriver glowed and whirred; the Doctor frowned, then pointed it at the robot again. Franklin continued to advance, and the Doctor took two steps back.
"It's not working. It works on everything! Well, everything except for wood. And deadlocks. And occasionally bamboo. It must be the organo-metallic body parts –"
"Doctor, I don't care why it's not working; we need a solution!"
"What we need is a remote control. Anyone have a walkie-talkie, a radio, a …"
"… a mobile phone," Liz said. "Professor Boothroyd, I'm going to need your little toy."
"And what, pray tell, are you going to do with it, woman? This cost nearly three thousand pounds!"
"I promise we'll bury it with you if this doesn't work," Liz snapped, snatching the phone from him with one hand and catching the sonic in midair with the other. "Doctor? Any idea what frequency the MIndER uses?"
"None," he said, still backing towards the service hallway that led to the kitchen. "We'll tune it with the screwdriver as we go. Just focus on setting up an overload signal."
The phone came apart easily – "Stop whimpering, Boothroyd! UNIT will buy you another one!" – and though Liz had never examined a mobile closely, the circuitry was familiar. Op amps, audio processors, an amplifier set to run up to 905MHz, though she'd adjust that with the sonic if she needed to; the component only had to last long enough to send its shutdown message. She began shifting wires, cursing as one slipped free of its new connection.
"DIP. DIP. DOCTOR."
"Yes, yes, I'm right here, and won't one of you imbeciles check the buffet for more dip? No, not the waitstaff, you're not paid enough for this; go back to the kitchen and barricade the doors. I mean you, you overstuffed, overeducated, undersocialised lot – one of these tables has got to have more artichoke hearts smothered in grease."
"Nearly there, Doctor!" Liz called out.
Another centrepiece vanished into floral confetti. "DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP."
"A little faster won't kill you, Liz," the Doctor said. "And it certainly won't kill me. Ah, you with half a grain of common sense, thank you for digging up the last half-bowl of dip. Look, Franklin! More dip!"
"DIP. DOCTOR. DIIIIIIP. DIIIIIIIIP."
"Well," the Doctor shrugged, "since you asked so nicely."
The ceramic bowl went flying, smashing to bits on the MIndER's laser array and scattering shreds of artichoke heart and globs of parmesan-encrusted mayonnaise across its chest and shoulders. The MIndER stumbled backwards, startled.
"Now, Liz! If you can!"
Liz pointed the sonic at the phone's LED display, now re-tuned to show the current frequency. The numbers leapt up 50MHz, down 20, up another 30. Franklin continued staggering, lasers sputtering in the gloopy dip, though a thin, weak beam made it all the way to the ceiling to nick a wing from a plaster-cast cherub.
Down 40Mhz. Up 2. Up 76, and the display started to blink. "DIP," cried Franklin. "D- D- D- DOC- D- D-" The whine of a laser powering up even through a mayonnaise plug, and Liz shrank behind the bar, waiting for the shot.
Instead, there was silence, then the clatters and thumps of something large, heavy, and metallic hitting a thinly carpeted floor.
Slowly, Liz rose from behind the bar. The Doctor was already at Franklin's side, ear to the robot's chest listening for hums or whirs. He sat back and nodded his head, satisfied.
"Good job, Miss Shaw," he said. He reached into Franklin's breast pocket, removed a billfold, and riffled the notes within. "Now, if you don't mind taking Mr. Franklin to the kitchen deep-freeze – there's more than enough here to pay for a short rental – I'm going to call the university and have a word with the personnel department."
* * *
The Doctor was unable to get through to Bristol University's personnel department or the person whom he called his usual minder – lowercase "m," he'd been very clear about that – though the front desk had returned messages to share after dinner.
"Everything's fine," read the first one.
"Hang on, gone to check the vault," read the second, timestamped less than a minute after the first.
"There's a woman trapped in the containment field – says her name's 'fuck off,' but I think she's Mrs. Thackeray," read the third message.
"Right," said the Doctor on the way to Liz's room, "no need to head back this evening, then. Any chance of a lift to Bristol in the morning?"
"Let me guess. Would I be hauling a frozen, deactivated killbot in my boot?"
"Maybe." He paused in front of Liz's door. "Well. Definitely."
"I thought so." She slumped against her doorway. It was the last night of the conference, and even a floor up from the banquet and hallway revelry, she could hear her colleagues whooping and shouting and, if they were shockingly fortunate for a band of astrophysics nerds, pulling.
Why not her, then? And why not this man, who'd been warm and friendly and had given off vibrations of possibly more only a few years ago, even though he looked different now? But he still had the same billow of salt-and-pepper hair, the same sparkling blue eyes, the same difficult personality coupled with irresistible wit.
"Doctor," she said, snaking an arm along his shoulder, resting her fingers lightly on his neck. His face dropped closer to hers. "You know, I've missed this a bit," she continued. "You and me. Something other than passing you test tubes and beakers."
"You could stay in Bristol with me for a little while," he said. "There are a couple of people I'd like you to meet."
"Leave my lab? I don't think so."
"Not a permanent vacation. More of a sabbatical."
"Science waits for no woman, Doctor. Science really doesn't wait for us, in fact." Her fingers crept into the curls at the nape of his neck, rubbing softly across his scalp. "I don't enjoy waiting for my due, Doctor. Or for anything else. So if you wanted to stay here tonight … I don't think I'd object."
"I don't understand, Liz, I'm not asking you to … oh. You mean what you said everyone thinks –"
She smiled wryly. "That's their issue. You're perfectly welcome to say goodnight to me, and I'll see you in the morning, killbot in the boot and all."
He paused before responding, but dipped his head even closer, until their noses were nearly touching. Liz caught a breath and held it.
"I could say goodnight," he said. "Or we could delay that until … say, tomorrow?"
"Yes," Liz said, letting go of her breath. "Yes."
From somewhere further down the hall, she thought she heard the faint sound of applause as the Doctor's lips touched hers. But the two of them were through her doorway in a moment, and after that, she heard nothing more than his voice, and her own sighs, and the slow creak of her bed.
* * *
Liz didn't return to Cambridge for another two days. After all, Bristol had secret, high-security vaults with renegade Time Lords, and slightly less secret but high-security timeships with equally renegade Time Lords, and Liz began to consider whether Lethbridge-Stewart's open invitation to return to UNIT at a higher pay grade was perhaps worth discussing after all. "Somewhere out there," the Doctor had said, "I've left Earth already, probably – is it the 1970s still? Or are we in the 1980s by now? All these middling years run together – but anyway, I'm out there, and I might have been there sooner if only I hadn't been a complete idiot who ran you off."
"You were," Liz had replied. "And there comes a time when a scientist needs more in her life than complete idiots."
"I've got many other good qualities, you know. My unparalleled good looks and ability to think my way out of any sticky situation. My debonair dress sense and my sparkling conversational skills."
"All of those are important."
"I should think so."
"But none of those are what's truly important to me right now."
"Really? Oh, of course. You must be thinking of all the scientific knowledge you could gain from working with me again."
"You'd think, but no." The TARDIS hummed at Liz, a sound she'd almost forgotten; the reminder of shared afternoons passing tools back and forth, a sunbeam warming a corner of her memory. "It's that you're the most charming idiot I know. And one of my dearest friends. And I'm so glad we found each other again."
"As am I, Liz," he said.
He covered her hand with his, and his smile warmed her as much as her memories.
Characters/Pairing(s): Twelfth Doctor/Liz Shaw
Rating: Teen
Word count: 4,585
Spoilers: none
Warnings: none
Beta:
platypusSummary: Though Liz is surrounded by men in brown tweed jackets at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference, there's one man who stands out from the crowd.
Author's Notes: Way back at the beginning of S10, someone mentioned to me that Twelve's time on Earth would overlap with Liz and Three, and I've wanted to write something with Twelve/Liz ever since. (Although this story takes place somewhat after Liz has left UNIT.)
::xposted to
dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and Archive of Our OwnThe Many Worlds Theory holds that every action, no matter how small, allows history to branch off into an entirely new world based on that decision point. Every choice Liz Shaw had made in her life, and every choice every other person had made, had led her to this exact moment in time, and every choice they hadn't made would have led her elsewhere.
Somewhere, there was a world where Liz was at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference. She was giving the keynote address. Ninety percent of the audience were women. The remaining men cowered in their hornrims and tweed jackets, murmuring shyly to each other about how much they had yet to learn.
Or perhaps she was in a second world, where she was at the conference, but she was attending the keynote instead of giving it. Fifty percent of the audience were women. The men in their hornrims and tweed jackets discreetly pointed at Liz, and she overheard one whisper, That's Liz Shaw. The Liz Shaw.
But unfortunately, Liz was in World Number Three. She was at the Thirteenth Annual Astrophysical Society Conference. The keynote was over, and had been delivered by a man in hornrims and a tweed jacket. She was surrounded by men in hornrims and tweed jackets in the full colour spectrum from beige to dark toast. Four of her supposed colleagues had already asked her to fetch them cocktails. Two had leered pointedly at her legs, and one of those had found his whisky unexpectedly spilt all over his trousers.
Liz downed her own whisky and picked at the bland cheese cubes on the buffet, palming the toothpicks as she finished each cube. After all, a girl never knew when she was going to have to fend off the handsy American with the ridiculous muttonchop whiskers. A bootheel to the foot could easily be passed off as clumsiness, but there was a certain satisfaction in a poke with a sharp object, especially if she chose to reciprocate one inappropriate grab with another.
Six toothpicks ought to be enough for a little while, which meant it was time to refill her drink and make one more circuit of the room to see if Professor A or Dr. B or any of the various Tweedledums or Dees had anything useful to say to her before she gave up and ordered a steak and another whisky from room service.
Behind the bar, a weedy man with a puff of silvery hair was pouring the whisky, the vodka, the Dutch gin, a drop of maraschino cherry juice, and a splash of cider into a plastic cup and garnishing it with what appeared to be most of the bar's olives and lemon wedges. "And that," he said to the man in a staff uniform fuming beside him, "is how you make a proper Valtrusian punch. Cheers!" He placed a lemon wedge in his mouth, took a swig, half-choked. "Perfect," he said, and gestured with the cocktail towards Liz. "You want to try one?" He paused, stared. "Liz? Liz Shaw?"
He'd crossed to the front of the bar and wrapped her in a hug before she'd even processed he'd moved. "Liz!" he cried. "It's so good to see you."
"Do you mind?" She struggled and pushed him away. "Look, if you admire my work, I'm pleased, but –"
"Liz," he said. "Liz, it's me. It's the Doctor."
"… Doctor?" The Brigadier had said to her years ago that his friend once wore a different face, and though Liz had never discussed it with the Doctor himself, the concept had seemed eminently reasonable considering the man had two hearts and a time machine. The man in front of her now had marginally better fashion sense, or at least had foregone an opera cape for the night, and the hair … well, the tangled grey swallows' nest was certainly familiar.
"Right, then," Liz said. She swung behind the bar and grabbed the bottle of whisky. "Charge it to his room," she said to the bartender. "Come along, Doctor. We've got a lot of catching up to do."
The room service steak was tough though properly medium rare, the chips were flabby but large, and the whisky, if nothing else, was plentiful, which made the conversation easier.
"I suppose I could have let you spread your wings a bit more," said the Doctor.
"Did you mean, 'I suppose I could have tried not being a complete arse'?" Liz stabbed at a chip. They went ever so well washed down with whisky. "Did you mean 'I suppose I could have let you do your job without undermining your authority'?" Another chip, this one pointed directly at him. "Did you mean … oh, never mind, I'm out of insults for now. And also out of whisky. Pour me another."
"You're going to regret that in the morning." But he poured.
"On the list of moments in my life I'm going to regret," Liz said, swirling the glass, "this doesn't even come close to the top."
"And what does?"
He knew, of course, and she knew he knew, but she was damned if she was going to give him the satisfaction. Instead, she swallowed another glug of whisky, peat burning all the way down her throat. "I think I'd rather let you guess," she said, and the half-smile on his face told her that he had.
"You've been doing well, then, have you?"
"I'm presenting a paper tomorrow on theoretical algorithms for assessing proto-linguistic patterns in gamma-ray bursts. It's remarkable what I can accomplish when I'm allowed to run my own laboratory and experiments." Another swallow. How could her glass be nearly empty already? She poured one more splash. "Though of course, I fully expect Carter or Asquith or another one of those painfully ordinary tweeds to try and bury the work. They always do." Probably she should be eating something to wash down the whisky, but another chip or two would do her, assuming she could stab it with a fork. Never mind. Fingers were perfectly acceptable.
"Men," she continued, pointing at him with the chip, which lolled in her fingers like a … well, maybe she'd consider that with him later. Not that she hadn't idly considered it with the other one as well, but this one had a certain angular sensuality that suggested possibilities she would consider more often at conferences were not the pickings so likely to brag about their conquest in the morning. "Did you know how useless and annoying you are?" she said. "Always so certain you know more than the rest of us, no matter how many degrees we've got or how far ahead we are in our field. Well, you're not." Punctuating the last few words with the chip, then biting it, and her tongue. "Ow." More whisky, that'd fix it, assuming she could locate her mouth.
The Doctor gently moved the bottle away from the room service trolley and over by the television, well out of Liz's reach. Bastard, as always.
"What are you even doing here?" she asked. "It's not as though you're going to learn anything. Come here to point and laugh, did you?"
"I won't if you won't." He rubbed his face and looked away. "Would you believe I'm here in the name of 'professional development'? Been spending a bit of time here on Earth, just for jollies, you know, teaching at Bristol University. But they've hired this new personnel director, and she's got all sorts of modern ideas about training requirements. She even sent a minder to make sure I attended. As if I'd wander off!"
"Oh, no, certainly not. You? Disobey an order? Wander off? Unthinkable." Liz pushed her food away and quite suddenly considered the possibilities inherent in a good lie-down. Oh, yes, the bed. It had seemed so hard when she'd checked in, but now it looked like the most comforting, welcoming space she'd seen all day, one that could only be improved if it stopped spinning round for a few minutes.
"You now have my official permission to wander off. I'm going to sleep," she said, slowly and with immense dignity. "If you're good, I'll point you to the talks least likely to bore you to tears. Tomorrow."
"I look forward to it, my dear girl."
She was flat on her stomach and snoring before he'd finished the sentence, but she fell asleep with a hint of a smile on her face.
After all, she'd known how his sentence was going to end.
There was a pounding on the door that was entirely different from the pounding in Liz's head, and why couldn't the two synchronise? Was life really that cruel? She groaned and rolled off the bed, bracing herself with an arm on the side table, and slouched towards the door.
"Good, you're awake," the Doctor said, wheeling in a new room service trolley. "Coffee, tea, full English, and, of course" – he scrambled in a jacket pocket – "a hangover patch." Which was slapped against the side of her neck without her permission, though since her headache had almost completely dissipated before her brain was capable of forming the sentence "Do you mind," she chose not to object.
It took most of a cup of coffee and several forkfuls of eggs and sausage before her eyes could focus enough on the clock. Nine … thirteen? Fifteen? Some two digits after the nine, probably beginning with a one?
"Oh, bollocks," she said. "My talk's at ten, and I smell like … well, never mind what I smell like." Down went the last of the coffee and a spoonful of beans and grilled mushroom. "You need to go," she said, gesturing to the Doctor with her coffee cup. "It's bad enough half my neighbours probably think you spent the night."
"Spent the night? What would be the problem with … ah. I see."
"It's not that you're not …"
"No, of course not. And it's not that you're not …"
"And hangover patch or not, I'm still not sober enough to have this conversation, Doctor."
He poured the remainder of the coffee into his cup until it nearly overflowed. "I'll just take this to the first session, then."
"Yes," Liz said, bracing herself against the bathroom doorway until her head stopped spinning. "You do that."
"And that," Liz said, clicking over to the last slide, "concludes my presentation. Are there any questions? Yes – you in the brown tweed jacket. No, you in the brown tweed jacket in front of me. You in the brown on the other side, you're after them."
"Excuse me," said Brown Tweed Jacket #1, "I have a question. Well, it's more of a comment, really. When I was a lad – goodness, that was quite some time ago, you probably weren't even born yet, my dear – and I first started studying the gentlemen's science of physics …"
Several minutes later, with a man's history of manly pursuits in the manliest of Sciences having safely passed through Liz's brain without stopping along the way, Brown Tweed Jacket #2 chimed in.
"I'd like to add a comment on what the esteemed gentleman had to say," he began. "Sir, if I may, that was a load of twaddle."
"I say!" responded Jacket #1.
"My dear fellows," boomed Brown Tweed Jacket #3, "must we argue over the work of a lady scientist? Surely one of us can refine this rough draft of hers and draw it to a full conclusion."
"Rough draft? Rough draft?" Liz found herself wishing for toothpicks in her fists. "Sir, this is the culmination of three years of research by a lady scientist who was the former scientific advisor to UNIT. If you find my work wanting, I will be happy to discuss it with you to explain exactly how ill-informed you are."
But by then, the conference management had called time on the session, and Liz, still fuming, stomped off to the next one, stopping only for a cup of coffee and a rather cranky stir of sugar along the way.
At the 11am session, the uncontrollable laughter began twenty-two minutes in and let up only when a navy-blue and silver-haired blur wheezed its way out of the room.
At lunch, the Doctor held court beside several tweed-jacketed gentlemen who one-by-one got up, their heads shaking, only to be replaced by more gentlemen in a shifting series of incredulity.
At the 3pm session, Liz overheard a stifled yell and saw the Doctor being elbowed outside the room by a short balding man with what looked like an uncommonly strong grip.
At the 4pm session, she found the Doctor scowling at the title on the poster parked outside the door – "Towards a Theory of a Tenth Planet" – and he stalked away before she had a chance to say hello.
By 5pm, she was more than ready for the cocktail hour. So were the rest of the attendees, most of whom had formed a less-than-orderly queue at the bar, with the remainder cramming in chicken divan vol-au-vents while making subtly cutting remarks about their colleagues' presentations. Professor Boothroyd was showing off a beige brick from which he could make telephone calls – "Anywhere in the world! Right at my fingertips! Though you do sometimes have to shout to be heard" – Armstrong was whispering in a corner with DeVane and Lowell, no doubt about the open faculty position they hadn't yet advertised, and the handsy American – well, at least he was talking astrophysics with two square-shouldered male graduate students with no fear of finding the American's fingers unexpectedly wandering across their buttocks.
Liz and a double whisky eventually made their way over to the Doctor, who was balancing a paper plate of cheese and crackers on top of a glass of white wine.
"You survived, I see," Liz said through a mouthful of cheese she'd just stolen from him.
"Though I might yet die of starvation if someone keeps nicking my Brie."
"You'll live. Besides, we only have to stay long enough for me to hear exactly how catty Professor Dunstan gets about the Stephens Lab session, and then we can duck out to the Italian place next door."
"No, you may not," said the short, round-faced tweedy gentleman Liz had seen escorting the Doctor earlier. "Tonight's the closing banquet. Mrs. Thackeray was very keen that you attend all events." He shoved two crackers and at least two more crackers' worth of artichoke dip into his mouth, then turned back to the buffet table to gather several new scoops of dip.
"And who is this?" Liz said to the Doctor.
"My minder. I'm sure he's got a name, but I've been calling him go away, you useless prat."
"Frndlklnd," mumbled the man through another mouthful of dip. His left eyebrow twitched in time with his chew. "Franklin. Alan Franklin. Pleasure to meet you. I say, does either of you know what this dip is made out of? It's spectacular."
Liz chose not to shake the dip- and crumb-covered hand, which disappeared back into Franklin's mouth with more food anyway. The twitch spread to his right eyebrow, which took up its own rhythm in a wholly irregular time signature.
"I promise I'll bring him back before the closing address, Mr. Franklin," Liz said. "Believe me, I understand why he might need someone to keep an eye on him."
"Excuse me," said the Doctor, "I am standing right here. And I believe it's artichoke dip."
"Hmm, artichokes. Do you know, I've always been told I'm allergic – but what a way to go if I am. Could you hold my plate for a moment? There's a good chap." Franklin swiped the entire white ceramic bowl of artichoke dip from the table, plopped it on his plate, and began scooping it directly into his mouth. "Thack- Thack- Thackeray didn't tell mmmmm… me the food would be so gooooood."
Now his whole head was twitching. And was that … was that smoke rising from his collar?
"Mr. Franklin," Liz said. "Are you all right?"
"I - I - I am ffffffff- fine … fine … fine …" A jerk of his head. "More … more … more dip. More dip. MORE DIP. MORE DIP. MORE. MORE. MORE. MORE."
The Doctor finally peered closer at his minder. "Look, Liz, I haven't been to very many of these conferences, but this isn't the typical reaction to artichoke dip, is it?"
"Of course not, Doctor. We've got to help him!"
"DIP. DIP. MOOOOOOOOOORE. MORE DIP. MORE DIP." A snap of bone, a crunch of gears grinding together, and Liz leapt backwards from the minder, from whom a now alarming quantity of smoke was rising.
"Everyone stay back!" yelled the Doctor. "He's going to blow!"
The ceramic dip bowl, empty, dropped to the floor and spattered mayonnaise glops across the paisley carpet. And Franklin –
Franklin's head exploded in a puff of smoke and sparks that left gasps and shrieks throughout the room.
A deep, metallic voice ratcheted its way through the silence. "I AM THE MINDER. I SHALL REQUIRE THE DOCTOR. I SHALL ALSO REQUIRE MORE DIP." The smoke slowly began to clear, revealing what had once been Franklin, but was now a squat sooty robot in a torn tweed jacket and dingy white shirt, and also sporting what looked very much like a set of laser guns in its chest.
"Oh," said the Doctor. "Oh. He's a MIndER."
"I know that! Now explain why he's a robot pointing bloody great guns at us!"
"I told you! He's a MIndER – a Mobile Independent Enforcement Robot, here to keep an eye on me for a couple of days, is that it, Franklin? What's Thackeray been up to while I've been away, eh? Besides forgetting to remind you that an artichoke allergy means don't eat the artichoke dip."
"DIP. DIP. DIP. DOCTOR. DIP. MORE. DOCTOR. DIIIIIIIIIIP." A laser beam sputtered from one of the gun barrels and knocked aside a two-foot-tall centrepiece of daylilies and baby's breath in a shower of blue sparks and fluttering white petals. The scientists, for once, were quiet, cowering below the tiny tablecloths on the bar tables.
"Right," said the Doctor, "enough of that." He moved in front of Franklin and withdrew the sonic screwdriver from his jacket pocket. "You'll leave these people alone." The screwdriver glowed and whirred; the Doctor frowned, then pointed it at the robot again. Franklin continued to advance, and the Doctor took two steps back.
"It's not working. It works on everything! Well, everything except for wood. And deadlocks. And occasionally bamboo. It must be the organo-metallic body parts –"
"Doctor, I don't care why it's not working; we need a solution!"
"What we need is a remote control. Anyone have a walkie-talkie, a radio, a …"
"… a mobile phone," Liz said. "Professor Boothroyd, I'm going to need your little toy."
"And what, pray tell, are you going to do with it, woman? This cost nearly three thousand pounds!"
"I promise we'll bury it with you if this doesn't work," Liz snapped, snatching the phone from him with one hand and catching the sonic in midair with the other. "Doctor? Any idea what frequency the MIndER uses?"
"None," he said, still backing towards the service hallway that led to the kitchen. "We'll tune it with the screwdriver as we go. Just focus on setting up an overload signal."
The phone came apart easily – "Stop whimpering, Boothroyd! UNIT will buy you another one!" – and though Liz had never examined a mobile closely, the circuitry was familiar. Op amps, audio processors, an amplifier set to run up to 905MHz, though she'd adjust that with the sonic if she needed to; the component only had to last long enough to send its shutdown message. She began shifting wires, cursing as one slipped free of its new connection.
"DIP. DIP. DOCTOR."
"Yes, yes, I'm right here, and won't one of you imbeciles check the buffet for more dip? No, not the waitstaff, you're not paid enough for this; go back to the kitchen and barricade the doors. I mean you, you overstuffed, overeducated, undersocialised lot – one of these tables has got to have more artichoke hearts smothered in grease."
"Nearly there, Doctor!" Liz called out.
Another centrepiece vanished into floral confetti. "DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIP."
"A little faster won't kill you, Liz," the Doctor said. "And it certainly won't kill me. Ah, you with half a grain of common sense, thank you for digging up the last half-bowl of dip. Look, Franklin! More dip!"
"DIP. DOCTOR. DIIIIIIP. DIIIIIIIIP."
"Well," the Doctor shrugged, "since you asked so nicely."
The ceramic bowl went flying, smashing to bits on the MIndER's laser array and scattering shreds of artichoke heart and globs of parmesan-encrusted mayonnaise across its chest and shoulders. The MIndER stumbled backwards, startled.
"Now, Liz! If you can!"
Liz pointed the sonic at the phone's LED display, now re-tuned to show the current frequency. The numbers leapt up 50MHz, down 20, up another 30. Franklin continued staggering, lasers sputtering in the gloopy dip, though a thin, weak beam made it all the way to the ceiling to nick a wing from a plaster-cast cherub.
Down 40Mhz. Up 2. Up 76, and the display started to blink. "DIP," cried Franklin. "D- D- D- DOC- D- D-" The whine of a laser powering up even through a mayonnaise plug, and Liz shrank behind the bar, waiting for the shot.
Instead, there was silence, then the clatters and thumps of something large, heavy, and metallic hitting a thinly carpeted floor.
Slowly, Liz rose from behind the bar. The Doctor was already at Franklin's side, ear to the robot's chest listening for hums or whirs. He sat back and nodded his head, satisfied.
"Good job, Miss Shaw," he said. He reached into Franklin's breast pocket, removed a billfold, and riffled the notes within. "Now, if you don't mind taking Mr. Franklin to the kitchen deep-freeze – there's more than enough here to pay for a short rental – I'm going to call the university and have a word with the personnel department."
The Doctor was unable to get through to Bristol University's personnel department or the person whom he called his usual minder – lowercase "m," he'd been very clear about that – though the front desk had returned messages to share after dinner.
"Everything's fine," read the first one.
"Hang on, gone to check the vault," read the second, timestamped less than a minute after the first.
"There's a woman trapped in the containment field – says her name's 'fuck off,' but I think she's Mrs. Thackeray," read the third message.
"Right," said the Doctor on the way to Liz's room, "no need to head back this evening, then. Any chance of a lift to Bristol in the morning?"
"Let me guess. Would I be hauling a frozen, deactivated killbot in my boot?"
"Maybe." He paused in front of Liz's door. "Well. Definitely."
"I thought so." She slumped against her doorway. It was the last night of the conference, and even a floor up from the banquet and hallway revelry, she could hear her colleagues whooping and shouting and, if they were shockingly fortunate for a band of astrophysics nerds, pulling.
Why not her, then? And why not this man, who'd been warm and friendly and had given off vibrations of possibly more only a few years ago, even though he looked different now? But he still had the same billow of salt-and-pepper hair, the same sparkling blue eyes, the same difficult personality coupled with irresistible wit.
"Doctor," she said, snaking an arm along his shoulder, resting her fingers lightly on his neck. His face dropped closer to hers. "You know, I've missed this a bit," she continued. "You and me. Something other than passing you test tubes and beakers."
"You could stay in Bristol with me for a little while," he said. "There are a couple of people I'd like you to meet."
"Leave my lab? I don't think so."
"Not a permanent vacation. More of a sabbatical."
"Science waits for no woman, Doctor. Science really doesn't wait for us, in fact." Her fingers crept into the curls at the nape of his neck, rubbing softly across his scalp. "I don't enjoy waiting for my due, Doctor. Or for anything else. So if you wanted to stay here tonight … I don't think I'd object."
"I don't understand, Liz, I'm not asking you to … oh. You mean what you said everyone thinks –"
She smiled wryly. "That's their issue. You're perfectly welcome to say goodnight to me, and I'll see you in the morning, killbot in the boot and all."
He paused before responding, but dipped his head even closer, until their noses were nearly touching. Liz caught a breath and held it.
"I could say goodnight," he said. "Or we could delay that until … say, tomorrow?"
"Yes," Liz said, letting go of her breath. "Yes."
From somewhere further down the hall, she thought she heard the faint sound of applause as the Doctor's lips touched hers. But the two of them were through her doorway in a moment, and after that, she heard nothing more than his voice, and her own sighs, and the slow creak of her bed.
Liz didn't return to Cambridge for another two days. After all, Bristol had secret, high-security vaults with renegade Time Lords, and slightly less secret but high-security timeships with equally renegade Time Lords, and Liz began to consider whether Lethbridge-Stewart's open invitation to return to UNIT at a higher pay grade was perhaps worth discussing after all. "Somewhere out there," the Doctor had said, "I've left Earth already, probably – is it the 1970s still? Or are we in the 1980s by now? All these middling years run together – but anyway, I'm out there, and I might have been there sooner if only I hadn't been a complete idiot who ran you off."
"You were," Liz had replied. "And there comes a time when a scientist needs more in her life than complete idiots."
"I've got many other good qualities, you know. My unparalleled good looks and ability to think my way out of any sticky situation. My debonair dress sense and my sparkling conversational skills."
"All of those are important."
"I should think so."
"But none of those are what's truly important to me right now."
"Really? Oh, of course. You must be thinking of all the scientific knowledge you could gain from working with me again."
"You'd think, but no." The TARDIS hummed at Liz, a sound she'd almost forgotten; the reminder of shared afternoons passing tools back and forth, a sunbeam warming a corner of her memory. "It's that you're the most charming idiot I know. And one of my dearest friends. And I'm so glad we found each other again."
"As am I, Liz," he said.
He covered her hand with his, and his smile warmed her as much as her memories.
no subject
on 2017-12-01 08:32 pm (UTC)I've not seen enough Third Doctor episodes, so I don't know Liz very well, but you have Twelve's voice, as usual. When does this take place, though? That was the one bit I didn't follow.
no subject
on 2017-12-01 11:24 pm (UTC)Ha! No, I just wanted a British name that sounded vaguely upper-crust, and that popped into my head. Probably my subconscious at work.
Anyway, I'm very amused that you asked when this took place, because of the meta-joke in the story where the Doctor isn't sure if it's the 70s or the 80s -- that's because there's longstanding debate about when the UNIT stories take place, so though this one is set a few years after Liz left Three's lab, I didn't assign a specific year to it. That said, there was no mobile network in Britain until 1984, even though the first mobiles were sold in 1983 (the things you learn while doing fic research!), and in my head, the story takes place around 1984. But I admit that the vagueness of the actual date entertains me purely for meta reasons.
(You should totally watch Liz's episodes, btw. They're all great, and I suspect you'll really like her as the Section Leader in "Inferno.")
no subject
on 2017-12-01 09:28 pm (UTC)This was where I lost it.
OBLIGATORY UNIT DATING JOKE IS A++++
And this is so terribly nice, I love it.
I suppose Nardole would pout if Liz invited the Doctor to come to Cambridge as her assistant.
no subject
on 2017-12-01 11:28 pm (UTC)I'm glad the fade-to-black worked for you, too. I realized halfway through the story that tonally, something more explicit wouldn't work, and though I always feel like I'm copping out a bit when I don't actually write the sex scene, sometimes it really is the right choice.
no subject
on 2017-12-02 10:20 am (UTC)I never realized that there was a UNIT dating controversy. I always thought they'd taken place more or less when they were broadcast.
no subject
on 2017-12-02 02:18 pm (UTC)... although of course, there are many of us who prefer to think of the UNIT Dating Controversy as a more literal question of who was sleeping with whom.