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the--highlanders · 3 years

Text

Edge

On the edge of sleep, and on the edge of the world, Jamie wonders whether he should call the Doctor.

on ao3.

Something was ticking on the other side of the room. Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock, over and over again. He had heard it when he had first arrived that afternoon, of course, and earlier that night, when he had been stumbling into bed. How wrong he had been, to expect to fall into bed and be asleep before his head even hit the pillow. As soon as his eyes had closed, though, all that exhaustion had fallen away from him, replaced by an endless, nameless restlessness. And now, in the softness of the dark, that single, repetitive noise was so much sharper. Back and forth, back and forth.

A distant piece of machinery, perhaps? Something concealed within the thin walls of this flimsy little base? He scanned over them, their white surfaces turned blue by the moonlight, wondering where the contraption could be, only to find it in plain view. A clock, ordinary and unassuming. He should have know, he scolded himself gently. If he put his ear against the watch the Doctor had given him, it made the same sort of noise, though much more gently. Not that he was in the habit of putting his ear against it.

But there was another sound, beneath the first, not quite in time with it. Tick-tick, tock-tock, tick-tick, tock-tock. Like two heartbeats. Rolling over onto his back, he squinted up at the rickety shelves above his head – and sure enough, peeking over the edge was a second clock. How odd, he thought. Surely someone would only need one clock, especially in a room like this, where all you would do was sleep and change clothes. Maybe one had grown slow and unreliable, and someone had brought in another one without replacing the broken one. A funny thing to do, but who was he to judge what people did out here? Maybe the mundanity of a clock had been all that stood between the room’s previous occupant and the madness that could come from the screeching, whining drone of the wilds outside.

Flopping back down against the pillows with a huff, he drew the blankets up to his chin. He would pay for this tomorrow, he knew. But his sleeplessness was not for lack of trying. In fact, he was starting to wonder whether her had been trying too hard. Sometimes sleep needed to be crept up on, ignored until it looked away. Ambushed like an animal.

He closed his eyes again.

There was still a temptation to open them, though he did not know what his body imagined it might see. He knew perfectly well that there was nothing but white walls and empty shelves and a vaguely-cluttered bedside table, and two clocks. It might have been someone’s idea of a decoration, too, he thought. Just adding another clock. Out here, at the very edge of a planetary survey, he supposed they would not have been able to find much else.

Just as the sound was beginning to settle into his mind and become soothing – tick-tick, tock-tock, tick-tick, tock-tock, strangely familiar, like a warm embrace – one of the clocks paused to chime out a cheerful little tune. At the very end, it whistled once – twice – three times. Three in the morning, so long as the thing still kept time. Well, he thought, at least he was not up late anymore, only up early.

The clock that had chimed started again, a little more offset from its companion this time. Tick. Tick. Tock. Tock. Seconds dribbled on by, none of them helping him to get any rest.

He knew perfectly well that there was one way of putting himself to sleep. But it was far too late for that. Or early, he corrected himself. Any reasonable person would be asleep at this hour.

And yet – the Doctor was hardly a reasonable person, was he?

Even he had to be asleep by now, Jamie told himself. For all his talk about never sleeping, the Doctor did indeed sleep – only for a few short hours at a time, and only lightly, so he gave the appearance of not sleeping at all. He claimed that it was natural, though Jamie could not help but wonder if he did it on purpose, just to appear more mysterious to his human friends. But three in the morning was pushing his luck, even by the Doctor’s standards.

Huffing again, he nestled his head back against the pillow. Yes, his fingers were twitching with the urge to pick up the communicator on his bedside table, to thumb clumsily through its endless menus until he could fumble his way into calling the Doctor. But that was selfish – not to mention unnecessary. He could sleep perfectly well without hearing the Doctor’s voice. There was no need to bother him.

He closed his eyes for the millionth time, squeezing them shut. This time he would keep them closed, he told himself sternly. This time his thoughts would grow slower and duller until he slipped off into sleep without noticing, and woke up to the dusky grey light of the morning.

Just as consciousness was starting to float away from him, the communicator buzzed.

The sound made him spring up, whacking his head against the wall behind him with a crunch of slightly-less-than-solid plaster and wood against bone. Muttering curses and complaints under his breath, he scrabbled around for the accursed thing, his face scrunched up against the noise. Whatever commander was calling, sitting high and mighty in their tower back home, safe and far away from the dangers of the wilds – they could wait until morning.

His finger was hovering over the bright red button that would end the call when his eyes finally cleared enough for him to see the name stamped across the screen. The Doctor.

Slowly, tremblingly, he moved his finger over to the blue button instead. Almost as soon as he had pressed it down, the room was filled with crackling static, and he scrambled to lower the little box’s volume. He found the right tab on the side of the thing only a moment before the Doctor’s voice ran out, tinny and distant. “Jamie? Are you there?”

“A – aye.” He swallowed, willing his voice not to crack again, but something about hearing the Doctor had set a lump in his throat. “Aye, I’m here.”

“Jamie!” There was a rustling sound, like the Doctor was shuffling something around beside his communicator. “I simply had to call you -”

Something wheezed above Jamie’s head, and he jerked his neck back, searching for the source of the noise. It was the other clock, he realised, finally humming out three o’clock. The thing vibrated along with the noise, shaking its way slowly but steadily towards the lip of the shelf, and he shuffled further down the bed, pulling his head back so it would not hit him in the face if it toppled off the edge. But it stopped just short of falling, quietening for a second before carrying on its endless ticking. It was back in time with its fellow, now, the heartbeat restored. Tick-tick, tock-tock. Tick-tick, tock-tock.

“What was that?” came the muffled sound of the Doctor’s voice.

Crawling back up towards the communicator, Jamie flopped his chest back onto the mattress. “Nothin’,” he said with a grin. “Just a clock. Why did ye have tae call me?”

“Oh, I, ah -” For a moment, he wondered if the Doctor had forgotten entirely. “I simply had to,” he repeated. “I’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“Connected the solar extractor to the communications unit. Well, on a scale model, anyway, but – it ought to work at full scale.” He paused. “I’m sure it shall. Well, the point is that you should be receiving more power soon, so long as the cables aren’t interrupted.”

He carried on talking, babbling away about accelerated storage and low-loss transmission and whether there was any way he could send power without having to rely on the cables, but in truth Jamie was hardly listening to him. He would not understand it anyway, he reasoned – though he understood what it meant well enough, and at any other time he would have been beaming with the knowledge that the lives of everyone on the survey were about to get easier. But it was too late at night for him to manage more than a small smile. The excitement in the Doctor’s voice was far warmer in his chest. Flopping down onto his back, he lay the communicator on the bed beside him. He could almost imagine that the Doctor was right there. Well – if he ignored the faintness of his voice, and the lack of weight or the Doctor’s strange chill beside him.

And then he was laughing, soft and breathless, sending little huffs of vapour up into the air. How long had he been waiting to hear the Doctor’s voice again? Only a day or so, but it felt like months.

“So you see, if I add a second transformer -” The Doctor paused. “Jamie?”

Another burst of laughter bubbled out of Jamie’s chest. “Aye?”

“Are you quite alright?”

What must he sound like, on the other end of the call? “Aye,” he said, rolling over onto his side to curl around the communicator. The last echoes of his laughter died away at that, pressed down by the weight of his body, but his smile remained, wide and maybe a little silly. “Aye, I’m fine.”

“You’re not sick, are you?”

“Och, no, nothin’ like that.” Reaching over the communicator, Jamie rested his hand on the other side of it, like he was cradling it away from something. Idly, his fingers began to trace swirls against the sheets. “I was laughin’.”

“Laughing?”

“Mmhm.”

“Why?”

His hand lifted away from the bed, flicking outwards in half a shrug. But the Doctor could not see him, he remembered, and he let it fall back down again. “Dunno,” he said at last. “Just – why’d ye call me, I ‘spose.”

“Well, I’ve just got the thing working, Jamie. I had to tell someone.”

“Then tell the – the captains of the survey,” Jamie mumbled, turning his face over so his mouth was half-muffled by his pillow. They were tiresome, those three. If the Doctor wanted to pass his message onto them – well, he was not looking forward to it, to put it kindly. “It can wait ‘til mornin’.”

“Yes, it can,” the Doctor said. There was something patient in his voice, like he was waiting for some penny to drop, some realisation to spring on Jamie. It was probably completely obvious, Jamie thought, even to him. But the sound of the Doctor’s voice had eased the first fragments of tiredness into his head, and his brain was beginning to feel sluggish. “And I’m sure they’ll be very pleased to hear from me tomorrow morning.”

Jamie blinked. “You’re gonnae tell them yourself?”

“Yes, of course.” The Doctor’s voice was still infuriatingly blank.

“Then why are ye tellin’ me?”

“I told you. I’ve only just managed to make it work.”

He could just imagine the Doctor in the wee lab he had been given, realising that he had succeeded, bouncing around the cramped, cluttered space like gravity had been turned off. Spinning, twirling, jumping, a world away from the stiff hunch of his shoulders that would have frozen him in place as he worked. And he would be chattering away, too, telling everyone exactly what he had done, and how brilliant he was.

Ah. Penny dropped.

“Ye just wanted tae tell someone it had worked,” he said.

“Exactly!” There was a beaming smile on the Doctor’s face, there had to be.

“’Cause ye like showin’ off.”

“Quite – no! No, not at all. I, I – simply wanted to share it.”

“An’ it’s in the middle of the night, so ye had nobody with ye tae tell.” He grinned. “How many people did ye call before I picked up?”

“Ah -” Was that something bashful in the Doctor’s voice now? “Ah. You’re the only person I called.”

“Oh.” Jamie frowned. “But I dinnae understand all your technical stuff.”

“We-ell...” There was a touch of embarrassment, Jamie was sure of it. “I, ah, I don’t mind. I wanted to tell you.”

“How did ye know I’d be awake?”

“I, ah, I didn’t. But – I hoped.”

Something warm was spreading through Jamie’s chest, something that could not be dimmed by his draughty bunk room or leached away by the thin fabricated blanket drawn up over him. The Doctor had called him, before anyone else on the planet. “I’m glad,” he said, a little haltingly. “That ye called me, I mean.”

“Well -” From the sounds of it, the Doctor did not quite know what to say either. “Well, I’m very pleased to hear that, Jamie.” Another pause, then - “I didn’t want you, did I?”

“No.”

“Then you ought to get some sleep.” More rustling. “I’ll, ah, I’ll see you in a few weeks, hm?”

“Wait!” The word came out louder than Jamie had intended, and he winced, glancing up like he was expecting to see the occupants of the bunk rooms around his sticking their heads through the door to glare at him. “I’m no’ that tired, really.”

“Really.” It was not a question.

“Really. So maybe ye could -” His heart was pounding, and he swallowed, trying to force it back to a normal speed, as if the Doctor could hear the beat of it through the communicator. “Maybe ye could stay a while? Tell me more about what you’ve been doin’, or somethin’.”

“Oh – oh – oh, very well.” Jamie grinned to himself. The Doctor could never resist a chance to talk about how clever he was, or what a good job he had done. “So you see, I attached a second transformer – ah, I couldn’t convert directly between the two, so I had to introduce a third phase in between...”

He was almost tempted to do as he had said, to stay up and listen to the Doctor talk. Here was something about the Doctor’s enthusiasm that was infectious, even if he had no idea what half the words that came out of his mouth meant, let alone how the Doctor could string them together. And perhaps he might learn something – or better yet, remember something that the Doctor had told him before, and jump in to connect the dots, and the Doctor would be so proud. It was certainly an attractive thought. And there was something peaceful about this, too, the pair of them sitting in the dark, talking softly even though they were far away from each other. Like they were living in their own secret world that nobody else knew about.

But his eyelids were already growing heavy, and he knew he would regret it in the morning, if he decided to stay up. The sensible thing to do would be to let himself rest. And there was a temptation in that, too, the idea of curling up and letting the Doctor’s voice relax him, his already-tenuous grasp on the words growing weaker and weaker. Yes, he thought. That was just what he needed. Besides – if he could not see anything, then it would be easier to pretend that the Doctor really was beside him, chattering away in person rather than through a tinny little box.

He had almost forgotten about the clocks, the sound of them dulling down beneath the weight of the Doctor’s voice. But they were sharpening again now, as his eyes drifted closed. Tick-tick, tock-tock. Tick-tick, tock-tock. Like the Doctor’s double heartbeat, warm and rhythmic beside him.

Closing his eyes, he curled around the communicator, drawing it closer to himself until his cheek was pressed against the gold metal of its casing. “Goodnight,” he mumbled into the thing.

The Doctor did not reply, but simply kept on rambling.

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