Erin Ptah (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
ptahrrific) wrote2008-12-15 12:02 am
ptahrrific) wrote2008-12-15 12:02 am
Entry tags:
Fake News/Doctor Who: A Truthy TARDIS Crew's Christmas, part 2
Title: A Truthy TARDIS Crew's Christmas (2/5)
Rating: PG-13 (off-panel sexings)
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything DW/TW/SJA is fair game.
Summary: Our heroes attempt to shower, bake gingerbread cookies, figure out what the deal is with Stephen, and not annoy the supercomputer in Sarah Jane's attic, with varying degrees of success.
Beta by the merrystellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.
A Truthy TARDIS Crew's Christmas
Part Two
13 Bannerman Road: December 22.
It felt like late morning when Jon next woke up, but the little clock radio on the end table between the beds proclaimed the time to be half past one. Getting to sleep tonight was not going to be fun.
Stephen was still passed out on the other bed, lying on his stomach on top of the covers, drooling lightly on the pillow.
Jon kept very quiet as he found his suitcase and extracted a fresh set of clothing. No matter how helpful it might be, he never could bring himself to disturb a sleeping Stephen.
⇔
After a good hot shower, a freshly washed and brushed Jon paused at the door of the room when he heard muttering inside.
The voice was Stephen's, and when he stopped talking Jon waited to hear who would reply. All he got was a few seconds of silence before Stephen spoke again. It was too low to make out the words, but the tone was one of frustration.
Expecting to find the man talking in his sleep, Jon nevertheless rapped lightly on the door with his knuckles before pushing it open.
Stephen was sitting up on his bed, looking shocked and a little guilty. "Hi, Jon! Uh, how long have you been out there?"
"Not long. Just got out of the shower. Who were you talking to?"
"Nobody! Thinking out loud. Hey, you showered? That's a good idea. I should do that." Stephen scrambled to his feet.
Jon decided not to press the issue. Nothing too odd about talking to yourself once in a while. Besides, he had something else on his mind. "Hang on a minute. What's our story?"
"Our what?"
"You introduced me as 'the guy who hosts the show before mine'," Jon reminded him dryly. "I like to think I'm a little more than that."
⇔
"It makes sense, though!" insisted Maria, cracking an egg on the side of the bowl and adding it to the sugar-and-shortening mixture.
"I didn't say you were wrong," protested Luke, who was stirring together baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and flour. (They had co-opted the kitchen, partly to make gingerbread cookies and partly to have a conversation that Sarah Jane wouldn't hear. So far, so good.) "I just want to know where you got the idea."
"Well, think about it. Sarah Jane said she used to travel with him, right? And who else did she travel with, when she was younger?"
"The Doctor," said Luke promptly. "But Stephen isn't him. Is he?"
"Ne-ga-tive, Mas-ter Luke," chimed in K-9. "Mas-ter Ste-phen is not the Doc-tor."
"I sort of figured that," agreed Maria, adding molasses to her mixture. "But I bet Stephen traveled with the Doctor. I bet they were all on the TARDIS together. When Sarah Jane brings any of them up, she gets the same sort of faraway look in her eyes. Am I right, K-9? Also, what's the next step?"
"Af-fir-ma-tive, Mis-tress Ma-ri-a. Mix one half ta-ble-spoon vi-ne-gar with e-nough milk to pro-duce one half cup."
"Good dog," said Maria. K-9 wagged his ears appreciatively.
"But you don't necessarily fancy someone just because you've time traveled with them," said Luke.
"But it's not just that. Remember the look on his face when she said you were her son? He looked horrified! He didn't realize you're adopted, so he must've thought she'd gone off and had a kid. What now, K-9?"
"Add al-ter-nate a-mounts of the two smal-ler mix-tures to the lar-ger one. Mas-ter Luke, this is the time to grease the coo-kie sheets."
"Right." Maria held out her hand for the small bowl Luke had been holding, then launched back into her speech without missing a beat. "And then she said 'Mr. Smith', and he doesn't know that's a computer, and it was even worse! Now, why would someone get so upset, thinking an old friend had gotten married and had a kid, unless he were carrying a torch for her?"
Luke considered this solemnly as he greased the first baking sheet. "So . . . when someone else loves the person you love, you get angry?"
"Sometimes, yeah," agreed Maria, stirring the full mixture vigorously. "If it's a romantic kind of love. Because you get jealous."
"And you think Stephen is angry because he's jealous over Mum. Because he's in love with her."
"Only reason I can think of."
"And that makes you angry," continued Luke pensively.
"What?"
Luke nodded towards her hands. Only then did Maria notice how furiously she was thrashing the cookie dough.
"So," he concluded, "does that mean you're in love with Mum?"
The bowl hit the floor with a crash.
⇔
Stephen squirmed. "I'm sorry. I just . . . ."
"Listen, if we're not going to be out while we're here, so be it," said Jon. "I just need to know what you're comfortable saying, so we're at least consistent when we lie. Although I thought part of the reason we came here was because Sarah Jane has known the truth since, what, 1980?"
"It is. She has. But, Jon, I didn't know she was going to have a teenage boy in the house! He's at a very impressionable age right now. I don't want to . . . to warp him!"
"Come on, Stephen. We're two grown adults in a loving, consensual, faithful relationship. We're not going to 'warp' anyone."
Stephen set his jaw in a manner that made clear he wasn't going to budge on this one. "I'm not taking that risk."
Jon sighed. "Fine. Back to the original question, then. What's our story?"
"We're . . . co-workers," replied Stephen, heading for his suitcase to retrieve a change of clothes of his own. "And friends. We'd have to be close, or it won't make sense that I'm having you meet my family. Close friends who met at work."
"Wait, when did meeting your family come into this?"
"What?"
"You just said . . . ." Jon trailed off as he saw Stephen's puzzled frown. "Never mind."
There was already too much going on for him to figure out, Jon thought with some frustration as Stephen left for the shower. This was the man who had proposed a few weeks ago! Was he ready to be out to the world, or wasn't he? (He couldn't possibly have some kind of secret wedding in mind. Could he?)
Best to find something else to think about for a while. Jon began unpacking his laptop.
⇔
Sarah Jane couldn't help smiling as she led the quaking Jon into the attic. "I promise you, it's all right. Mr. Smith! I need you!"
The fireplace split open with the usual dramatic fanfare, revealing the screens, wires, and controls of the machine built into the wall. Jon's mouth dropped open, awe momentarily overwhelming his terror.
"Hello, Sarah Jane," said the computer cordially. "Hello, Jon Stewart."
"H-how does it know my name?" stammered Jon.
"Facial recognition software," explained Sarah Jane. "Your picture's all over the Internet. Mr. Smith, a few minutes ago you disabled a computer, correct?"
"Yes, Sarah Jane. There Was An Unauthorized Attempt To Access My Network. A Warning Was Delivered, And The Offending Machine Has Been Shut Down."
"I'm sorry!" Jon seemed to shrink in on himself: no easy feat for a man of his stature. "I was just trying to check my email, I swear!"
Sarah Jane put a calming hand on his shoulder. "He's officially authorized," she told the computer. "Put his machine back to rights, please. And I think you owe the man an apology for scaring the living daylights out of him."
"Done," said Mr. Smith. "I Am Sorry, Jon. May I Call You Jon?"
Jon gulped. "Sir, as long as you unwipe my hard drive, you can call me anything you want."
⇔
After dinner that evening, a spontaneous Scrabble game broke out: Jon and Maria working together against Luke, with K-9 (who had, along with recipes, an official Scrabble dictionary in his memory banks) as referee. The others watched for a while, but at some point Sarah Jane looked up to find that Stephen had drifted away.
He turned out to be kneeling by the tree, gently turning over gifts one by one.
"Hoping for anything in particular?" asked Sarah Jane gently.
"Nah," said Stephen, without looking up. "Just wondering where my present from Jon is. I went through his luggage twice and didn't find it."
"I suppose that explains why he shipped it ahead last week, then."
That, at last, got Stephen's attention. "He did what?"
"And don't you dare turn this house upside-down in search of it. It's with Mr. Smith, and I've given him explicit permission to defend it with his lasers."
"You're ruthless," said Stephen. But he gave her a weak smile, and when she settled down on the couch, he got off the floor and took a seat next to her.
It was dark and cozy in this part of the room. There were warm yellow lights on over by the game, and a lamp shining on the cold street outside, but neither was intense enough to take away from the array of colored bulbs on the tree.
"Luke's still winning," remarked Sarah Jane, breaking the silence. "But the others are putting up a good fight. Well, as good as they can, against Luke."
"They're getting it handed to them," said Stephen bluntly. "I don't know how Luke's doing it. I mean, Jon's good. Not that your son wouldn't have good genes, of course, but . . . ."
"He has good genes, all right. But they're not mine."
And she laid out the story of how Luke had come into her life. Stephen only interrupted a few times ("Wait, he's actually three?"). This was followed up with a few brief sketches of some of the adventures they had had since, the times she and a handful of local kids had saved the world.
At last Stephen sat back. "Wow," he said. "Sounds like you've been busy, even without . . . you-know-who . . . around."
"He's been in the area, actually. I ran into him a couple of years ago. I think it was your first Doctor, too. Tall, skinny, sharp features, thing for pinstripes?"
Stephen perked up. "That's him!"
"Wonderful! He was the one who gave me this K-9, with a bunch of other items inside. In fact, one of them was meant for you."
She got up, Stephen's eyes following her as she went over to a bookshelf and slipped the blue leather bus pass holder from between two volumes. Returning to the couch, she flipped it open. "You do still have the Wørd, don't you?"
Letters flickered into being on the surface of the paper: You Better Believe It!
"I see you haven't changed!" laughed Sarah Jane. "Now you'll be able to communicate with Jon directly, without Stephen acting as an intermediary."
"Um," said Stephen.
The papilløn spelled it out. Jon Doesn't Know Yet.
"I see," said Sarah Jane uncertainly. "You do plan to tell him, don't you?"
"Of course I'll tell him. At some point. Soon. Maybe."
I'm Doomed.
⇔
They went to bed at a normal hour, local time. Of course, neither of them was actually ready to sleep.
Rating: PG-13 (off-panel sexings)
Series: The Colbert Report, Doctor Who
Spoilers: Anything DW/TW/SJA is fair game.
Summary: Our heroes attempt to shower, bake gingerbread cookies, figure out what the deal is with Stephen, and not annoy the supercomputer in Sarah Jane's attic, with varying degrees of success.
Beta by the merry
stellar_dust. Table of contents, and footnotes, here.A Truthy TARDIS Crew's Christmas
Part Two
13 Bannerman Road: December 22.
It felt like late morning when Jon next woke up, but the little clock radio on the end table between the beds proclaimed the time to be half past one. Getting to sleep tonight was not going to be fun.
Stephen was still passed out on the other bed, lying on his stomach on top of the covers, drooling lightly on the pillow.
Jon kept very quiet as he found his suitcase and extracted a fresh set of clothing. No matter how helpful it might be, he never could bring himself to disturb a sleeping Stephen.
After a good hot shower, a freshly washed and brushed Jon paused at the door of the room when he heard muttering inside.
The voice was Stephen's, and when he stopped talking Jon waited to hear who would reply. All he got was a few seconds of silence before Stephen spoke again. It was too low to make out the words, but the tone was one of frustration.
Expecting to find the man talking in his sleep, Jon nevertheless rapped lightly on the door with his knuckles before pushing it open.
Stephen was sitting up on his bed, looking shocked and a little guilty. "Hi, Jon! Uh, how long have you been out there?"
"Not long. Just got out of the shower. Who were you talking to?"
"Nobody! Thinking out loud. Hey, you showered? That's a good idea. I should do that." Stephen scrambled to his feet.
Jon decided not to press the issue. Nothing too odd about talking to yourself once in a while. Besides, he had something else on his mind. "Hang on a minute. What's our story?"
"Our what?"
"You introduced me as 'the guy who hosts the show before mine'," Jon reminded him dryly. "I like to think I'm a little more than that."
"It makes sense, though!" insisted Maria, cracking an egg on the side of the bowl and adding it to the sugar-and-shortening mixture.
"I didn't say you were wrong," protested Luke, who was stirring together baking soda, cinnamon, ginger, and flour. (They had co-opted the kitchen, partly to make gingerbread cookies and partly to have a conversation that Sarah Jane wouldn't hear. So far, so good.) "I just want to know where you got the idea."
"Well, think about it. Sarah Jane said she used to travel with him, right? And who else did she travel with, when she was younger?"
"The Doctor," said Luke promptly. "But Stephen isn't him. Is he?"
"Ne-ga-tive, Mas-ter Luke," chimed in K-9. "Mas-ter Ste-phen is not the Doc-tor."
"I sort of figured that," agreed Maria, adding molasses to her mixture. "But I bet Stephen traveled with the Doctor. I bet they were all on the TARDIS together. When Sarah Jane brings any of them up, she gets the same sort of faraway look in her eyes. Am I right, K-9? Also, what's the next step?"
"Af-fir-ma-tive, Mis-tress Ma-ri-a. Mix one half ta-ble-spoon vi-ne-gar with e-nough milk to pro-duce one half cup."
"Good dog," said Maria. K-9 wagged his ears appreciatively.
"But you don't necessarily fancy someone just because you've time traveled with them," said Luke.
"But it's not just that. Remember the look on his face when she said you were her son? He looked horrified! He didn't realize you're adopted, so he must've thought she'd gone off and had a kid. What now, K-9?"
"Add al-ter-nate a-mounts of the two smal-ler mix-tures to the lar-ger one. Mas-ter Luke, this is the time to grease the coo-kie sheets."
"Right." Maria held out her hand for the small bowl Luke had been holding, then launched back into her speech without missing a beat. "And then she said 'Mr. Smith', and he doesn't know that's a computer, and it was even worse! Now, why would someone get so upset, thinking an old friend had gotten married and had a kid, unless he were carrying a torch for her?"
Luke considered this solemnly as he greased the first baking sheet. "So . . . when someone else loves the person you love, you get angry?"
"Sometimes, yeah," agreed Maria, stirring the full mixture vigorously. "If it's a romantic kind of love. Because you get jealous."
"And you think Stephen is angry because he's jealous over Mum. Because he's in love with her."
"Only reason I can think of."
"And that makes you angry," continued Luke pensively.
"What?"
Luke nodded towards her hands. Only then did Maria notice how furiously she was thrashing the cookie dough.
"So," he concluded, "does that mean you're in love with Mum?"
The bowl hit the floor with a crash.
Stephen squirmed. "I'm sorry. I just . . . ."
"Listen, if we're not going to be out while we're here, so be it," said Jon. "I just need to know what you're comfortable saying, so we're at least consistent when we lie. Although I thought part of the reason we came here was because Sarah Jane has known the truth since, what, 1980?"
"It is. She has. But, Jon, I didn't know she was going to have a teenage boy in the house! He's at a very impressionable age right now. I don't want to . . . to warp him!"
"Come on, Stephen. We're two grown adults in a loving, consensual, faithful relationship. We're not going to 'warp' anyone."
Stephen set his jaw in a manner that made clear he wasn't going to budge on this one. "I'm not taking that risk."
Jon sighed. "Fine. Back to the original question, then. What's our story?"
"We're . . . co-workers," replied Stephen, heading for his suitcase to retrieve a change of clothes of his own. "And friends. We'd have to be close, or it won't make sense that I'm having you meet my family. Close friends who met at work."
"Wait, when did meeting your family come into this?"
"What?"
"You just said . . . ." Jon trailed off as he saw Stephen's puzzled frown. "Never mind."
There was already too much going on for him to figure out, Jon thought with some frustration as Stephen left for the shower. This was the man who had proposed a few weeks ago! Was he ready to be out to the world, or wasn't he? (He couldn't possibly have some kind of secret wedding in mind. Could he?)
Best to find something else to think about for a while. Jon began unpacking his laptop.
Sarah Jane couldn't help smiling as she led the quaking Jon into the attic. "I promise you, it's all right. Mr. Smith! I need you!"
The fireplace split open with the usual dramatic fanfare, revealing the screens, wires, and controls of the machine built into the wall. Jon's mouth dropped open, awe momentarily overwhelming his terror.
"Hello, Sarah Jane," said the computer cordially. "Hello, Jon Stewart."
"H-how does it know my name?" stammered Jon.
"Facial recognition software," explained Sarah Jane. "Your picture's all over the Internet. Mr. Smith, a few minutes ago you disabled a computer, correct?"
"Yes, Sarah Jane. There Was An Unauthorized Attempt To Access My Network. A Warning Was Delivered, And The Offending Machine Has Been Shut Down."
"I'm sorry!" Jon seemed to shrink in on himself: no easy feat for a man of his stature. "I was just trying to check my email, I swear!"
Sarah Jane put a calming hand on his shoulder. "He's officially authorized," she told the computer. "Put his machine back to rights, please. And I think you owe the man an apology for scaring the living daylights out of him."
"Done," said Mr. Smith. "I Am Sorry, Jon. May I Call You Jon?"
Jon gulped. "Sir, as long as you unwipe my hard drive, you can call me anything you want."
After dinner that evening, a spontaneous Scrabble game broke out: Jon and Maria working together against Luke, with K-9 (who had, along with recipes, an official Scrabble dictionary in his memory banks) as referee. The others watched for a while, but at some point Sarah Jane looked up to find that Stephen had drifted away.
He turned out to be kneeling by the tree, gently turning over gifts one by one.
"Hoping for anything in particular?" asked Sarah Jane gently.
"Nah," said Stephen, without looking up. "Just wondering where my present from Jon is. I went through his luggage twice and didn't find it."
"I suppose that explains why he shipped it ahead last week, then."
That, at last, got Stephen's attention. "He did what?"
"And don't you dare turn this house upside-down in search of it. It's with Mr. Smith, and I've given him explicit permission to defend it with his lasers."
"You're ruthless," said Stephen. But he gave her a weak smile, and when she settled down on the couch, he got off the floor and took a seat next to her.
It was dark and cozy in this part of the room. There were warm yellow lights on over by the game, and a lamp shining on the cold street outside, but neither was intense enough to take away from the array of colored bulbs on the tree.
"Luke's still winning," remarked Sarah Jane, breaking the silence. "But the others are putting up a good fight. Well, as good as they can, against Luke."
"They're getting it handed to them," said Stephen bluntly. "I don't know how Luke's doing it. I mean, Jon's good. Not that your son wouldn't have good genes, of course, but . . . ."
"He has good genes, all right. But they're not mine."
And she laid out the story of how Luke had come into her life. Stephen only interrupted a few times ("Wait, he's actually three?"). This was followed up with a few brief sketches of some of the adventures they had had since, the times she and a handful of local kids had saved the world.
At last Stephen sat back. "Wow," he said. "Sounds like you've been busy, even without . . . you-know-who . . . around."
"He's been in the area, actually. I ran into him a couple of years ago. I think it was your first Doctor, too. Tall, skinny, sharp features, thing for pinstripes?"
Stephen perked up. "That's him!"
"Wonderful! He was the one who gave me this K-9, with a bunch of other items inside. In fact, one of them was meant for you."
She got up, Stephen's eyes following her as she went over to a bookshelf and slipped the blue leather bus pass holder from between two volumes. Returning to the couch, she flipped it open. "You do still have the Wørd, don't you?"
Letters flickered into being on the surface of the paper: You Better Believe It!
"I see you haven't changed!" laughed Sarah Jane. "Now you'll be able to communicate with Jon directly, without Stephen acting as an intermediary."
"Um," said Stephen.
The papilløn spelled it out. Jon Doesn't Know Yet.
"I see," said Sarah Jane uncertainly. "You do plan to tell him, don't you?"
"Of course I'll tell him. At some point. Soon. Maybe."
I'm Doomed.
They went to bed at a normal hour, local time. Of course, neither of them was actually ready to sleep.