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Fic: Dating the Cleverest Boy in the World. Chapter 30.
Yet another chapter that grew so long that I decided to split it. Which means you get one part now, and another within a few days... (It was when I realised that I had *two* songs lined up, that I figured I should probably break it up. I should probably worry.)
Fic index here if anyone wants to catch up, or just follow the tags. Also on AO3 and The Teaspoon.
Summary: Allison had always thought that university would be an adventure. But she'd not imagined that she'd end up dating Harold Saxon's son.
Setting: Winter/Spring 2029
Characters (this chapter): Allison, Toby, Troy, Andrew.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2300 approx
Feedback: Makes my world go round... No really. You have no idea.
Chapter 30
Winter 2029
It was after Christmas that Toby decided that she was ‘brooding too much’ and dragged her along to the small amateur orchestra he played in.
Troy had been nagging her of course, but she was getting better at tuning him out. But when Toby started she had no choice but to pay attention.
“You’re working too hard,” he said, and she’d tried to smile.
“I’m trying to cram a Master’s into a single year...”
“And you’re going to kill yourself doing it - and you can’t do a Doctorate if you’re half-dead. Plus you’re obviously still upset about Alex. You need a hobby, and there’s an orchestra all ready and waiting.”
“But the only thing I’ve ever played is the piano, and orchestra’s don’t have pianos.”
She’d never taken to her mother’s love of music, but had nevertheless absorbed a fair bit of knowledge one way or the other.
Toby just looked patient.
“I talked to Andrew already, and he’s quite excited to find out what a piano player could add to our ensemble.”
Despite not having played for... far too many years, Allison was nonetheless curious to meet the mysterious Andrew (he was the same guy who had been involved in the drinking game), so, despite half-hearted protests, she found herself in a cramped community centre on a wet January Thursday evening, surrounded by a group of people as far from her fellow university students as was possible. The majority seemed to be women ageing from about 40 and upwards, along with a few middle aged blokes, plus an acne-riddled teenage boy who looked so shy she didn’t dare talk to him. Not that she had a chance, as Toby dragged her along to meet ‘Our esteemed conductor, Mr Andrew Starbeck’, happily introducing them.
“Allison - pleasure to meet you, you’ll enable me to attempt quite a few things I’ve been wanting to try,” Andrew said, before suddenly smiling:
“You know, I was thinking - can I call you Al?”
“No!” she replied sharply, as a lifetime’s worth of dealing with her little brother reared its head.
Andrew was clearly taken aback, stuttering some sort of explanation involving The Ramones, and Allison forced herself to actually focus. She was getting entirely too good at just cruising along without paying attention to anything beyond her studies and the personal conundrums about her future. To the extent of being deeply rude to strangers...
As she did her best to apologise - explaining about Jimmy’s irritating habit and so forth - she noted down the fact that Andrew appeared to be about 30, with short-ish thick dark hair, and a small beard that had probably been fashionable ten years previously. He was wearing a colourful jumper over a stripy shirt and black jeans, and was generally so pleasantly ordinary-looking (the colour scheme apart) that on her own she’d never have spared him a second glance.
Feeling rather bad - both about her rudeness, as well as the way she had subconsciously dismissed him (the way she did mostly everyone lately) - she made a sudden decision.
“Actually - do call me Al! As long as you promise not to be harsh on me when it comes to my musical abilities. They’re pretty much zero.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing here, but falling out with the conductor on the first day would have been pretty fatal.
***
Afterwards, at the pub (this was a ironclad post-rehearsal ritual she swiftly discovered), she reflected on the experience.
It was obvious that Toby and Troy rather enjoyed all the attention from ‘the ladies’, who seemed to mother them intensively, although Troy claimed to be tone deaf and had assigned himself the role of ‘audience’. When she’d complimented him on his devotion to her brother (she could think of no other reason for willingly sitting through weekly rehearsals without something to do), he winked and merely said ‘Tight jeans. Great view!’ He was clearly incorrigible...
Her thoughts were interrupted by Andrew.
“Well Al, that wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting.”
She attempted a smile.
“Thank you. But you don’t have to patronise me.”
“I’m not,” he replied. “As your brother might have mentioned I teach in a High School, spending my days wondering how many more ways teenagers can make instruments create new and unexpected noises that no one should ever have to endure. And their musical tastes are atrocious.”
He chuckled, and had another mouthful of Guinness.
“OK, maybe I’m a little harsh - there are a few good ‘uns who make it all worthwhile, but sometimes I look back on my youthful dreams and wonder what the heck I’m doing with my life.”
A pause as she just looked at him, and he shrugged.
“Sorry, you’re all young and brilliant and have your whole future in front of you - please ignore me, I was never genius material. Go on - what is that you do? Some kind of science MA, right?”
At this Troy’s eyes went wide.
“Oh Andrew, you don’t know what you’ve done!”
“What?” Andrew asked, looking confused.
“Be prepared to not fathom a single thing she says for the next ten minutes or so...”
“Hey!” Allison said, and then attempted to explain to them what she was working on, in words they could understand.
She wasn’t sure she succeeded.
***
However - just as Toby had predicted - the little orchestra proved to be more or less the perfect getaway. She could lose herself in music, which required a completely different set of mind-skills than her MA, and afterwards there were drinks and good company.
Toby, Troy and Andrew had formed a lovely little trio of cameradie, with Andrew in a vaguely older brother/fatherly role towards the other two, except for how Troy never missed an opportunity for flirting with him and suggesting threesomes. Andrew (who was very straight) found the whole thing amusing, and seemed to regard Troy as something akin to an easily excitable puppy. They’d chat and joke and discuss whichever news headline had made Andrew cross that week, and it was a welcome breather from the intense focus of her studies.
Plus, it stopped her from thinking.
Because at the back of her mind, constantly, The Choice was ticking over.
Which world did she want?
What life would she be happiest with?
Her future, her life in the balance, and how on earth was she supposed to choose?
And at the heart of everything - Alex. The one everything turned around. The choice was different from before. Straightforward. Clear-cut, even. His world, or her own.
It was as if someone had pressed the pause button on her life. And until she’d made her choice it’d stay paused - and she didn’t even know how to begin choosing.
Obsessively she’d go over everything he’d said, even though it never made things easier. She wasn’t scared he would hurt her - not the way she had been initially - yet his whole world was equal parts wondrous and frightening....
Looking back on it now, she still shuddered. His was a world of beings who dealt in the fates of whole worlds and peoples as though it was their right... She had been frightened when she’d first understood his power, but glimpsing what lay behind it - the complexity underpinning his life, the impossible shades of light and dark, the realities of the men who were bringing him up - she was beginning to understand why he had built himself a whole world. (‘I. Am. Not. Yours!' he was saying in her mind, furious, and she now knew why. And loved him all the more for it.)
Yet she couldn’t have the wonder without the darkness. Couldn’t let herself love him, without accepting that whole other side of him - all the people who were an irrefutable part of his life.
The impossibility of the choice gnawed at her constantly, nibbling at the edge of her consciousness wherever she was, making her tune out everything unimportant.
At least she’d managed to wrangle her day-to-day life into submission. She worked harder than she ever had, became almost proficient in her piano playing, and even managed to be sociable to the point of somehow volunteering to do a talk at Andrew’s school to the kids who were about to choose their GCSEs in order to encourage more girls to take up the sciences.
(If she was honest, it was more a case of nodding along with an argument until she’d found herself somehow entangled, unable to escape.)
It all went rather well in the end, partly because of an obnoxious boy.
After she’d been introduced to the classroom full of 14 year olds, she decided to start off with a rather basic ‘Before I start, does anyone have any questions?’
The lad (his hair styled to within an inch and the teacher clearly smoothing down irritation or discomfort) held up his hand.
“Right, so, I was wondering - hasn’t it been proved, like, with studies and stuff, that women’s brains aren’t as good at maths and stuff? I’m not being, like, sexist, but isn’t that just a fact?”
Allison smiled sweetly, and five minutes later had the boy looking thoroughly flattened, while the girls in the class were nearly cheering out loud.
“Now, that was a very brief story of patriarchy - with a little Feminism 101 thrown in for free - but I just want to make sure that you are aware that Feminism isn’t about putting men down. It’s quite simply about equality. So - let me talk to you about science...”
At the end of it, when she reckoned she’d lost the best part of them again, thanks to technical stuff, she brought out her pièce de résistance - the planetarium Alex had given her.
Drawing the blinds, she explained: “I just want you to understand why I am half-killing myself studying. And why there’s a job waiting for me at NASA...”
She left them starry eyed, and hopefully inspired.
But although she’d enjoyed the experience, it had been very time-consuming all told. It couldn’t be a regular occurrence by any measure.
Plus, they’d asked about Adelaide (of course), and she’d done a little basking in reflected glory, since Adelaide was almost a household name thanks to Project Pitstop. Still, she once again berated herself for forgetting to asking Alex what the deal was. Why had they all looked at her like that? Of course she could just pick up the phone and ask, and yet...
By whichever strange logic ruled her at the moment, she didn’t want to speak to him until she’d made up her mind.
So she waited, studying as if her life depended on it, and couldn’t shake the feeling of her life being paused.
Chapter 31.
Fic index here if anyone wants to catch up, or just follow the tags. Also on AO3 and The Teaspoon.
Summary: Allison had always thought that university would be an adventure. But she'd not imagined that she'd end up dating Harold Saxon's son.
Setting: Winter/Spring 2029
Characters (this chapter): Allison, Toby, Troy, Andrew.
Rating: PG
Wordcount: 2300 approx
Feedback: Makes my world go round... No really. You have no idea.
Chapter 30
Winter 2029
It was after Christmas that Toby decided that she was ‘brooding too much’ and dragged her along to the small amateur orchestra he played in.
Troy had been nagging her of course, but she was getting better at tuning him out. But when Toby started she had no choice but to pay attention.
“You’re working too hard,” he said, and she’d tried to smile.
“I’m trying to cram a Master’s into a single year...”
“And you’re going to kill yourself doing it - and you can’t do a Doctorate if you’re half-dead. Plus you’re obviously still upset about Alex. You need a hobby, and there’s an orchestra all ready and waiting.”
“But the only thing I’ve ever played is the piano, and orchestra’s don’t have pianos.”
She’d never taken to her mother’s love of music, but had nevertheless absorbed a fair bit of knowledge one way or the other.
Toby just looked patient.
“I talked to Andrew already, and he’s quite excited to find out what a piano player could add to our ensemble.”
Despite not having played for... far too many years, Allison was nonetheless curious to meet the mysterious Andrew (he was the same guy who had been involved in the drinking game), so, despite half-hearted protests, she found herself in a cramped community centre on a wet January Thursday evening, surrounded by a group of people as far from her fellow university students as was possible. The majority seemed to be women ageing from about 40 and upwards, along with a few middle aged blokes, plus an acne-riddled teenage boy who looked so shy she didn’t dare talk to him. Not that she had a chance, as Toby dragged her along to meet ‘Our esteemed conductor, Mr Andrew Starbeck’, happily introducing them.
“Allison - pleasure to meet you, you’ll enable me to attempt quite a few things I’ve been wanting to try,” Andrew said, before suddenly smiling:
“You know, I was thinking - can I call you Al?”
“No!” she replied sharply, as a lifetime’s worth of dealing with her little brother reared its head.
Andrew was clearly taken aback, stuttering some sort of explanation involving The Ramones, and Allison forced herself to actually focus. She was getting entirely too good at just cruising along without paying attention to anything beyond her studies and the personal conundrums about her future. To the extent of being deeply rude to strangers...
As she did her best to apologise - explaining about Jimmy’s irritating habit and so forth - she noted down the fact that Andrew appeared to be about 30, with short-ish thick dark hair, and a small beard that had probably been fashionable ten years previously. He was wearing a colourful jumper over a stripy shirt and black jeans, and was generally so pleasantly ordinary-looking (the colour scheme apart) that on her own she’d never have spared him a second glance.
Feeling rather bad - both about her rudeness, as well as the way she had subconsciously dismissed him (the way she did mostly everyone lately) - she made a sudden decision.
“Actually - do call me Al! As long as you promise not to be harsh on me when it comes to my musical abilities. They’re pretty much zero.”
“Fair enough,” he said, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She still wasn’t sure what she was doing here, but falling out with the conductor on the first day would have been pretty fatal.
Afterwards, at the pub (this was a ironclad post-rehearsal ritual she swiftly discovered), she reflected on the experience.
It was obvious that Toby and Troy rather enjoyed all the attention from ‘the ladies’, who seemed to mother them intensively, although Troy claimed to be tone deaf and had assigned himself the role of ‘audience’. When she’d complimented him on his devotion to her brother (she could think of no other reason for willingly sitting through weekly rehearsals without something to do), he winked and merely said ‘Tight jeans. Great view!’ He was clearly incorrigible...
Her thoughts were interrupted by Andrew.
“Well Al, that wasn’t half as bad as I was expecting.”
She attempted a smile.
“Thank you. But you don’t have to patronise me.”
“I’m not,” he replied. “As your brother might have mentioned I teach in a High School, spending my days wondering how many more ways teenagers can make instruments create new and unexpected noises that no one should ever have to endure. And their musical tastes are atrocious.”
He chuckled, and had another mouthful of Guinness.
“OK, maybe I’m a little harsh - there are a few good ‘uns who make it all worthwhile, but sometimes I look back on my youthful dreams and wonder what the heck I’m doing with my life.”
A pause as she just looked at him, and he shrugged.
“Sorry, you’re all young and brilliant and have your whole future in front of you - please ignore me, I was never genius material. Go on - what is that you do? Some kind of science MA, right?”
At this Troy’s eyes went wide.
“Oh Andrew, you don’t know what you’ve done!”
“What?” Andrew asked, looking confused.
“Be prepared to not fathom a single thing she says for the next ten minutes or so...”
“Hey!” Allison said, and then attempted to explain to them what she was working on, in words they could understand.
She wasn’t sure she succeeded.
However - just as Toby had predicted - the little orchestra proved to be more or less the perfect getaway. She could lose herself in music, which required a completely different set of mind-skills than her MA, and afterwards there were drinks and good company.
Toby, Troy and Andrew had formed a lovely little trio of cameradie, with Andrew in a vaguely older brother/fatherly role towards the other two, except for how Troy never missed an opportunity for flirting with him and suggesting threesomes. Andrew (who was very straight) found the whole thing amusing, and seemed to regard Troy as something akin to an easily excitable puppy. They’d chat and joke and discuss whichever news headline had made Andrew cross that week, and it was a welcome breather from the intense focus of her studies.
Plus, it stopped her from thinking.
Because at the back of her mind, constantly, The Choice was ticking over.
Which world did she want?
What life would she be happiest with?
Her future, her life in the balance, and how on earth was she supposed to choose?
And at the heart of everything - Alex. The one everything turned around. The choice was different from before. Straightforward. Clear-cut, even. His world, or her own.
It was as if someone had pressed the pause button on her life. And until she’d made her choice it’d stay paused - and she didn’t even know how to begin choosing.
Obsessively she’d go over everything he’d said, even though it never made things easier. She wasn’t scared he would hurt her - not the way she had been initially - yet his whole world was equal parts wondrous and frightening....
At graduation, after they’d been thrown out of the Senate-House, he’d said something about ‘When my father ruled the world’.
The sentence had tripped her up, and she’d asked what he’d meant.
“Didn’t Matt tell you?” he asked, and she’d shaken her head.
“Tell me what? He told me about when he and Josh met your father - that whole thing about you being abducted - but that’s all.”
He’d done his thing of going very quiet, and then found a private spot to explain about... impossibility. Paradoxes and a world in slavery and warships ready to launch war on the universe and at the heart of it the boy she loved. The Prince of the universe - the child born to rule. Alexander the Great.
(The name made more sense in the light of all this, and she began to understand why he’d chosen a different name for himself and seemed to brandish his new identity as a shield.)
As she’d tried to wrap her mind around what it all meant, he’d smiled one of those smiles that wasn’t a smile at all.
“You know that funny story your family tell about how you cried when the President was shot, when you were only a baby? It’s not funny at all. It was the moment when time returned to its proper flow. Your cries had nothing to do with what they’d been watching on TV, and everything to do with having been dead, and suddenly being alive again. Maybe you sensed it somehow, who knows.”
“I died?” she’d asked, going cold all over, and he’d avoided her eyes.
“Even if you survived the culling on the first day, children didn’t last long in my father’s world.”
“Except you,” she replied, unable to help herself, and he’d looked up, shades of something in his eyes that she couldn’t fathom. Something hard, and damaged, and other:
“Ah now, that’s where it gets... interesting. As I explained to you, the Doctor reversed time - saving Earth, saving you all. Yet the only reason I’m still here is because those of us in the eye of the storm happened to somehow escape the effects of the time reversal. And it took me a long time to put the pieces together, but - there was no way he could have known that.”
His eyes drifted away from her face again, focus changed.
“My father realised immediately, and he’s never forgiven him. I... don’t know how I feel, if I’m honest. I’ve never spoken to the Doctor about it - but then how would I even begin to broach the subject about the fact that he was willing to sacrifice me to save the world? It’s a harsh lesson to absorb... And I think I was only eight or nine when I worked it out: I’m expendable. Just like everyone else. This is what makes the Doctor a far more dangerous man than you might think, far more dangerous than my father. Because the Doctor will do whatever it takes...”
A bitter smile.
“He’s a hero, you see.”
Looking back on it now, she still shuddered. His was a world of beings who dealt in the fates of whole worlds and peoples as though it was their right... She had been frightened when she’d first understood his power, but glimpsing what lay behind it - the complexity underpinning his life, the impossible shades of light and dark, the realities of the men who were bringing him up - she was beginning to understand why he had built himself a whole world. (‘I. Am. Not. Yours!' he was saying in her mind, furious, and she now knew why. And loved him all the more for it.)
Yet she couldn’t have the wonder without the darkness. Couldn’t let herself love him, without accepting that whole other side of him - all the people who were an irrefutable part of his life.
The impossibility of the choice gnawed at her constantly, nibbling at the edge of her consciousness wherever she was, making her tune out everything unimportant.
At least she’d managed to wrangle her day-to-day life into submission. She worked harder than she ever had, became almost proficient in her piano playing, and even managed to be sociable to the point of somehow volunteering to do a talk at Andrew’s school to the kids who were about to choose their GCSEs in order to encourage more girls to take up the sciences.
(If she was honest, it was more a case of nodding along with an argument until she’d found herself somehow entangled, unable to escape.)
It all went rather well in the end, partly because of an obnoxious boy.
After she’d been introduced to the classroom full of 14 year olds, she decided to start off with a rather basic ‘Before I start, does anyone have any questions?’
The lad (his hair styled to within an inch and the teacher clearly smoothing down irritation or discomfort) held up his hand.
“Right, so, I was wondering - hasn’t it been proved, like, with studies and stuff, that women’s brains aren’t as good at maths and stuff? I’m not being, like, sexist, but isn’t that just a fact?”
Allison smiled sweetly, and five minutes later had the boy looking thoroughly flattened, while the girls in the class were nearly cheering out loud.
“Now, that was a very brief story of patriarchy - with a little Feminism 101 thrown in for free - but I just want to make sure that you are aware that Feminism isn’t about putting men down. It’s quite simply about equality. So - let me talk to you about science...”
At the end of it, when she reckoned she’d lost the best part of them again, thanks to technical stuff, she brought out her pièce de résistance - the planetarium Alex had given her.
Drawing the blinds, she explained: “I just want you to understand why I am half-killing myself studying. And why there’s a job waiting for me at NASA...”
She left them starry eyed, and hopefully inspired.
But although she’d enjoyed the experience, it had been very time-consuming all told. It couldn’t be a regular occurrence by any measure.
Plus, they’d asked about Adelaide (of course), and she’d done a little basking in reflected glory, since Adelaide was almost a household name thanks to Project Pitstop. Still, she once again berated herself for forgetting to asking Alex what the deal was. Why had they all looked at her like that? Of course she could just pick up the phone and ask, and yet...
By whichever strange logic ruled her at the moment, she didn’t want to speak to him until she’d made up her mind.
So she waited, studying as if her life depended on it, and couldn’t shake the feeling of her life being paused.
Chapter 31.
no subject
PS: I loved the part about Allison taking down the 14 yo far more that someone my age probably should. A part of me even wishes you would have included her speech.
no subject
Thank you! (I'm not sure it deserves 'wonderful', but there will be more coming very soon - the next part is 98% done.)
The pacing and flow of it evoked the feelings Allison were experiencing. There were brief moments of engagement, but mostly time seemed to be flowing around her. In other words, the feeling of 'life on pause' seemed communicated via how the words flowed across the page. (My tired brain is probably not expressing this well, but rest assured this is meant to be a compliment.)
I know exactly what you mean, and I am so pleased because that's exactly what I was aiming for. I don't know if you're familiar with Roxette's 'Spending My Time', but that was the feeling I was going for... a sort of aimlessness, where she's stuck, and can't make herself engage with anything.
PS: I loved the part about Allison taking down the 14 yo far more that someone my age probably should. A part of me even wishes you would have included her speech.
I have parts of it worked out. Might post it just for you. :)