dr_robchase | (no subject)

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the doctor

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Since he was just a child, Chase had been brought up to learn that God punished the wicked and the wicked earned such a punishment for their sins. Even though he never had the faith to make it through seminary, he couldn't quite shake the notion that bad people deserved penance. It hadn't exactly been helped by having to watch his mother drink herself down a dark hole. Bad actions make good people into sinners.

This, more than anything, was why Chase was feeling uneasy. He worked at the Compound, he saw the changes on a day-to-day basis and the latest one he'd witnessed when picking Nate up from the Children's Office had him slightly uneasy. He sent Nate off to play when he returned to the Treehouse -- or, rather, the Victorian estimation of the thing -- and leaned on the bedroom door. "You have a minute?" he asked, of the Doctor. "I wanted to talk."

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The Doctor heard Nate's chatter to himself as he trotted down the hall towards the nursery. He was beginning to suspect Nate had an imaginary friend. At least, he hoped the friend was indeed imaginary; around here, you never could tell.

He looked up as Chase looked around the doorjamb, lifting both brows and pushing the (appallingly period) specs up his nose. "Sure," he said, setting down the notes he'd been writing on the areas of this-London he'd visited so he could look into where they were in his world, as some were entirely familiar. Then he frowned, noticing the expression on Chase's face. "Hey, what's up?"

The expression, coming from someone dressed as he was, was startlingly anachronistic.

"The Children's Office has a new babysitter," he murmured, wandering inside and sprawling into the nearest chair to stay close to the Doctor. "She has a record. On the island," he stressed, considering he was still trying to figure out how he thought about that.

The Doctor wasn't overly fussed about 'a record', unless it was violent (and he doubted even Tabula Rasa would apply to getting a gig in the Children's Office then). On the island was a different matter.

"Really?" he asked, brows going up slowly. "What kind of record?"

He figured he would have heard about something violent.

"Nothing terrible," Chase was quick to reply. He didn't want to start acting like the boy who cried wolf over nothing. He was concerned, yeah, but he wasn't ready to start a lynch mob. "It's just...well, it's a record," he admitted, since that was a rare thing on the island. "Theft. Multiple items."

Or a posse. The Doctor had been the subject of a posse once. It hadn't been particularly fun, at least not as fun as it sounded.

"Theft, here?" he asked, even further confused and bewildered by the idea. "So theft for the sheer joy of it?" In a place where nearly everything was free, and people didn't tend to own a whole lot, the idea was something he had a hard time comprehending. "What came of the convictions?"

"I assume?" he said with a lift of his shoulders. After all, it wasn't like he really knew what had gone through the woman's mind when she had done it. "She was sentenced to community service. I don't know where it was served or when, but I just...can't really reconcile the notion of someone with a record with Nate."

"Community service within the Children's Office, or elsewhere?" The Doctor tried to remember the situation, but failed. It must have been kept rather quiet, for the scuttlebutt not to reach him. "Anyhow...I don't know what to think."

"I'd have to check," Chase said, considering he didn't know the details. He blamed his upbringing for this, blamed a moral-system that still went true-north even when doubt was applied. "There's other people there. Or, maybe, it's time that I stop working so much," he admitted.

"I could take more shifts," said the Doctor, meeting his gaze over the rims of his spectacles once more. "Stop wandering so much, be home more..."

Chase wasn't the only one with latent guilt.

Chase knew, at some point, this was going to eat at him. His father, absent. His mother, alcoholic. So now that he had a son, he knew that he was going to hit a wall where he was going to hate himself if he followed in his parents' footsteps. "I'll administrate more, take one less shift at the Psych office so I can be home for him." He gave the Doctor a pained look, brows knitted together. "I really want to be home for him."

"I will as well," the Doctor said, swallowing. "Wander a little bit less, I promise. He should always have someone, you're right." Curbing his instinct to roam, that he could do, if only because he loved Nate, loved Chase desperately. The thought of disappointing either made him hurt.

Chase cleared his throat, staring down at his feet. "I don't want to be my parents," he said, the words nearly too quiet to hear -- but there they were. And maybe, unconsciously, he had been doing that by allowing the Children's Office to help. It had been small increments, but inevitably, it had become too much. "And you don't have to wander less. Maybe just...take him with you?" he suggested. "You need companions, don't you, Doctor?"

"I know," the Doctor agreed. He slowly rose to his feet, pushed his specs up his nose, and walked over to Chase, putting his hand on his shoulder. "And yeah, I do. I will, take him with me that is. And no running for his life while he's still little, I promise."

"That implies you're going to take him running for his life when he's older," Chase pointed out with an incredulous look on his face, a bemused laugh lingering under his breath. "Doctor..." Chase warned. "Low level apocalyptic events only. And only when he's sixteen."

"It's an important life skill," the Doctor retorted, "emphasis on life. And I can't make that promise, not when we live here on the island. I promise not to intentionally bring him into low-level apocalyptic events, yeah?"

"If ever you get your TARDIS working, I want you to promise me you'll take him somewhere vaguely safe," Chase said, knowing they couldn't control the whims of the island, so he would try and do the next best thing. "Deal?"

"That goes without saying," said the Doctor, but his hand tightened on Chase's shoulder and he looked him in the eye. "You make it sound like you wouldn't be coming with, yourself."

After a moment, he added, more quietly, "Please do."

Chase leaned into the Doctor's body, pushing his weight up against his shoulder as a fond smile came over his face. "Of course I'd come. Can't let you go running about without me. I know you call yourself the Doctor, but an actual medical professional on board wouldn't hurt," he pointed out.

"More than that," the Doctor pointed out, smiling slowly. "You said it yourself, I'd need a companion. And Nate's lovely, but you're a bit different a person to travel with, you know."

He wrapped his arm around Chase's shoulders. "Come on, let's go find some tea and some coffee. Nate will be clamouring for cakes. We'll figure out the Children's Office thing later."

"I'm horrible to travel with," Chase said, but there was a hint of acquiescence in his tone. There was no way he'd let the Doctor just sail off without him if he had the option. "I need coffee too often and I'm late, a lot. Plus, I can't go anywhere if I don't have my hair perfect."

"You'll soon figure out how to manage," said the Doctor, though it was possible that he would learn to manage around Chase needing to have his hair done properly. He couldn't exactly go around SAYING so, though.

"Will I?" Chase asked, bemused. "Well, you manage to somehow have your hair in perfectly fashionable disarray, so I'm going to assume there's a hair salon hiding in the halls of the TARDIS."

"All natural," the Doctor retorted, giving Chase That Look because it was true. Products were for humans. He was wash and wear.

"I know it," Chase said with a smirk. "I mean, I'd like to assume so because I've tugged on it more than a few times," he said, giving said hair one more tug.

"You devil." The Doctor winked at him and spun out of his grip with a nearly boneless move, brushing a kiss across his jaw as he did. "I'm going to take that as innuendo rather than juvenilia, now did you want a cake or did you want a shag while our son is looked after by magical island ghosts? Victorian steampunk ones, I might add."

"...well, now I worry that the Victorian ghosts are going to be talking about us like we're some kind of fiends," Chase said, wrinkling his nose. "And really, why can't we just have both? I mean, cake. Sex. We can do both, right?"

"We are fiends, to them. And it gets messy," the Doctor pointed out, "and then the enjoyment of both is a bit lessened...wait, you didn't mean cake and sex at the same time, I'm thinking."

He smiled broadly--maybe more of a smirk--and winked.

"No, I didn't mean them both at the same time," Chase agreed, though the frosting part of the cakes wouldn't go entirely amiss. "Maybe cake, then a bit of bed. Or the other way around, I'm not really picky about the scheduling."

"Well, if the cake comes first, we can work off the calories after that," said the Doctor. He winced a little. "I swear, the food here is giving me indigestion as well as putting on weight. I'd forgot how hardcore they were in this time."

Well, this sort of time.

"You need the weight, Doctor," Chase pointed out with a sympathetic look on his face. "I mean, I love you, I do. But when we first met, you sort of reminded me generally of a stringbean. And I don't mean that in a sexy way."

"Perhaps," the Doctor conceded, "but this stuff just goes to my belly and sits there like...like a metaphor that I can't think of right now but is probably distasteful." He held out a hand to Chase. "Come on. Tea time. At least that's a treat."

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