Work Text:
The employees have stopped asking Clara if she needs help.
She's been sitting in the lobby of the Heartshaven Museum of Contemporary Art for an hour and fifteen minutes. She's taken sixty-three pictures, eaten three-fourths of her bag of trail mix, and changed positions five times. She's re-read the feature on the museum in Blueprint twice, and flipped through the rest of the magazine, and tried to unravel the uncomfortable, unsettled feeling this space is giving her. She figures if she just stays long enough, she can sort of - unpack and absorb it.
She wants to hate it. She really, really does. It's harsh and monolithic, a heavy, alien thing. There's too many right angles, too much unbroken concrete. The foot traffic flows are all wrong - a bottleneck by the lifts, a clearly-demarcated path almost entirely ignored, people backtracking and circling around with baffled expressions.
But there's something about the way the light filters through the entrance hall, the shadows cast by the staircase. Something about the way the room changes as the sun sets. An odd, unexpected sort of peace. The acoustics are superb - not the echoing cacophony she'd expect, given the size of the space and the amount of people - but a low comfortable hum on the floor, the announcements cutting neatly through above.
The security guards are still giving her suspicious looks. A young woman, alone, fidgeting, not paying the entrance fee. She would like to reassure them: her intentions are noncriminal, she has previously bought a ticket, the exhibits are lovely but not currently her concern. This is unnecessary information. They don't really care, and a well-dressed white woman can go essentially wherever she pleases - still, she practices what'd she'd say, should any of them ask.
The day, the crowd drifts past. She half-heartedly sketches the cantilevered ceiling over the bank of lifts before sighing, packing up her things. Knees and back stiff after sitting for so long on such an un-ergonomic bench. The sun setting, shadows lengthening; she leaves with her head held high. Catches the tube back to the studio during rush hour, which she should remember to avoid by now (happens the same time, every work day: fifteen minutes smushed on all sides by people considerably taller than her, her nose so close to so many armpits, and why had she moved here again?).
She makes it back just in time for everyone to have left aside from Danny. She thinks maybe he'd been waiting for her. Possibly she likes that. Alternately: he'd just been getting work done, hustling to make a deadline, and she's letting her ego do the thinking again. Either way, though. She appreciates that he's here.
"How was the field trip?" Danny glances up briefly, then hunkers back down over his laptop.
"Confusing. Probably pointless. Did I miss anything?"
"Not much. Spray booth hood's broken again. Four calls for you from TARDIS Group."
"Four?" She slumps down at her desk, staring blankly at the while-you-were-out slips tucked under her Eiffel Tower paperweight. Four fucking calls. "That's a lot of phone calls in such a short period of time."
"Yeah. Right? I told them you'd already confirmed the meeting, and then re-confirmed on your behalf - if anyone asks, I'm your secretary - and then just told them to stop. Gonna be a wild ride, this gig."
"I should go home," she says, not moving. "Get some rest."
"Or we could. You know. A drink? At a...place." Danny stretches to hide his cringe, but she saw it.
Oh, she saw it. Possibly she likes it. "I'd love to. Just give me an hour to change, I've got modernist pretension clogging my pores." She launches herself out of her chair, flashes him a grin and then very deliberately sashays out.
A place, she can hear him whispering to himself. For the people-drink. Tarzan like Jane. Jesus Fuck.
(A few drinks in and they've accidentally started talking about work again.
"D'you think we did the right thing? Going for such a big, high-profile project. It's stretching us pretty thin. And I kind of liked the speed we were at, before. Does it - kind of, almost - feel like a mistake to you?" Danny runs his forefinger around the rim of his pint glass.
"Honestly? I dunno. But it's the big time, you know? How could anyone resist?"
"Pretty easily, actually. Just don't fling yourself directly at the sun." He smiles awkwardly, not sure if the joke landed.
Clara narrows her eyes. "Are you implying that you're the Daedalus in this metaphor? Because you being my metaphorical dad would make this a little weird.")
The London office of the TARDIS Group is on the 21st floor of the Prydon Tower, a perfunctory blob of 60's modernism she's never been particularly fond of.
The meeting is scheduled for 11 am, she shows up at 10:55. Hungover but holding on, coffee in hand. The secretary waves her in to the office at 11:15 on the dot. It's as bleakly brightly-lit as the rest of the floor, white walls and avant-garde shelving stocked with minimalist knick-knacks. And John Smith, the vaunted Doctor himself, completely fucking ignoring her.
She waits, and waits, and then sits down on the chair in front of the desk. A Wassily, probably vintage Bauhaus considering the money flowing through here. It folds her up awkwardly, knees bending at the wrong place for this to be a functional sitting device. Her feet don't quite touch the ground. She feels like an awkward child and, frankly, doesn't quite care.
She purses her lips, raises her eyebrows, clears her throat.
After what feels like an eternity, he stops shuffling through papers and looks up, peering owlishly at her over his glasses. Those standard-issue architect specs, square black thick-framed things. All he's missing is the black turtleneck. "Who are you?"
"Clara Oswald. Your 11 o'clock." She smiles brightly, and sticks her hand out.
He looks at it for a beat, and another beat, then finally shakes it, a little too roughly and with a slightly wrong sort of finesse. "Ah. The woman who's doing the benches for the Arcadia project." He says the word 'benches' like a wine snob would say 'Moscato', or like her dad said the name of the boy she'd dated when she was 17. Benches.
"The entire park, actually," she says, grin slipping slightly towards grimace. "And you're the man who's competing to design the hall." The word 'competing', of course, emphasising the fact that Thascalos + Chang were currently in the front running. "I was hoping we could have a chat, get an initial feel for where the other's headed. I received the renderings but-"
He glares at her again and grabs her portfolio from her hands, starts flipping through. "Yeah, yeah yeah, fine, right, okay." He snaps the portfolio closed - he can't have possibly taken any of it in, she clings desperately to the last remnants of her positive, cheery disposition - and tosses it at her. "Consider me brought up to speed. My secretary will be in touch."
"That's it? You don't want to talk about what your plans are, at least?"
"I don't. My work speaks for itself. If you need help understanding the blueprints, consider picking up a copy of Architecture for Dummies."
She feels the warning signs of an impending angry outburst, her back ramrod-straight, hands clenching into fists, nostrils flaring, probably little puffs of cartoon smoke emerging from her head. "The hall and the park are supposed to be a cohesive whole. This is a big project, it deserves more care and respect than just emailing slideshows back and forth. Forgive me for wanting to do my job properly."
"Well, it was supposed to be my job, but now it's yours, so go off back to whatever post-granola Google imagitorium you popped out of, and put together something I can actually work with. Then we'll talk about - feelings."
She's seething. He's blank-faced and sorting manila folders into a neat pile.
"Fine. My secretary will call your secretary. See you at the groundbreaking ceremony." Clutching her purse and portfolio to her chest, she stalks out, just barely resisting the impulse to slam the door.
(She pours herself a glass of wine and practices her breathing exercises over the sink. She's angry, and it's that special kind of angry where she might, possibly, be angrily attracted to the scrawny grey-haired twat, which makes her angrier. She pours another glass.)
Starchitects put too much of themselves in their buildings; the Heartshaven main building is as angular and unapproachable as the bastard who designed it. So she's got some thoughts about the bastard's competition. Who makes an office complex like this? All Gaudi curves and vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows. Too busy, too much - nice, possibly, to look at, but to work in? She ponders the possibility of charming her way onto the upper floors, to check if the organic near-chaos devolves into generic cubicles.
It's melodramatic and self-important and there's a choke-point by the water fountain. Pseudo-Catholic touches, niches filled with fake plants.
"Everyone's so busy building cathedrals," she mutters. "What am I even supposed to be in awe of, anyway?"
"The gods of light and space, I suppose," says the woman who's just popped up in her peripheral vision.
Clara turns with a start, a slight but undeniable blush crawling up her neck - talking to yourself was not the best of habits. She gives the woman a thorough once-over: curly black hair in an improbable updo, dark purple wool power suit, kitten heels, sharp cheekbones and eyes like lasers. She's gorgeous, in a sharp-edged sort of way. Clara squashes down the part of her that currently seems determined to develop crushes on intimidating Scottish middle-aged architects. She really should take Danny up on his offer for a second not-date-just-drinks-at-a-place.
"The gods of capitalism, of conspicuous consumption. And of course, all great buildings are monuments to architecture itself. Which, if I create them, would make me a sort of god, wouldn't it? I'm Missy, by the way." She raises her arms up triumphantly, theatrically, and does a quick little twirl. "And this is my cathedral."
"Uh. Clara Oswald. This is my proposal, for the Arcadia Hall park." She hefts her portfolio. "We might be working together. You are Melissa Thascalos, right? I thought we could-"
"Yes, I would love to do lunch." Missy beams and grabs Clara by the arm, dragging her out the door.
Melissa Thascalos is a force of nature. Fresh back from a year in Qatar, overseeing the construction of a skyscraper funded by dubious capitalists, the sort who just ambiguously make money appear, rather than run actual businesses. She's primly poking at a salad composed of vegetables Clara has never seen before in her life. And she's talking, oh, she's talking. Like she'd die if she stopped.
"It just strikes me as backwards," Clara says, determined to make her way into this one-sided conversation. With a wrecking ball. "Call me old-fashioned, but I feel like buildings, and objects, should serve the needs of the users. Or at least make them happy. The amount of self-serving ego on display, it's disheartening. Disillusioning."
"All architects are egotists. You need to be, to think the world would benefit from your vision. To think governments and companies should pay you millions of pounds to knock down perfectly serviceable buildings and put giant statues of yourself in their place. That's what these things are, love. No one comes to me with their own ideas and personalities. They come for me, they want a Melissa Thascalos of their very own. What people actually want or need hardly factors into it at all."
"All due respect, that's a terrible attitude to take. Fine, I get it, I'm just a designer, I couldn't possibly understand, but -"
"Ooh, you're a designer, that's even worse. To assume that the world needs your product, to plunder the earth's resources and contribute to pollution and global warming and landfills, just so you can put little avatars of yourself on the shelves. Tell me, what needless thing are you mass-producing in China this week? What problem did you invent just so you could be the one to solve it? Don't tell me, let me guess: a tea infuser, shaped like a bird. Am I close?"
The most recent Egg Design output had been tea cozies printed with illustrated swans. That wasn't a detail Clara needed to admit to.
"Do you know what would solve it? Nothing. No giant skyscrapers, no useless tat, no cars, no factories. Back to basics, livin' on a farm, whittlin' our own ploughs out of driftwood and makin' clothing out of Tesco bags, just like our dear old Nans used to do. Throw out your iPhone, throw out your laptop, go build a yurt on the M8."
"That's awfully severe. And impractical." And stupid, she thinks.
"Of course it's stupid. There is no solution. It's too late, darling, the world's already ending. The best we can do is go out with a bang." Missy grins wolfishly and stabs the last bit of artisanal greenery off her plate.
Her work mobile rings. Restricted number. She sighs - if it's another telemarketer, she'll throw the damn phone out the window - and picks up. "Egg Design."
"Egg? You named your company Egg? What sort of name is that?" It's the Doctor. Unless there's another angry Scottish man she's recently given her number to.
She sighs again and pinches the bridge of her nose. "Long story. Which is on our website, if you really care and aren't just trying to wind me up. What do you want?"
"It sounds like an avant-garde brunch restaurant."
"Doctor."
The line goes silent. She's about to check if he's hung up when there's an extended rustling noise and a muffled curse, and:
"I wanted to apologize. For the other day, how I acted. It was uncalled-for. Unprofessional. I'm sorry."
She allows herself to bask in the sweet, sweet vindication for a moment, then tilts back in her chair, twirls around a bit, puts her game-face on. "Good start. You wanna finish the job, you'll buy me coffee."
"Coffee."
"But not at your office, that place gives me the heebie-jeebies. You know that cafe across the street from you?"
"The twee one?" His disapproving frown is audible.
"Meet me there in an hour. And don't say you're busy, I know you can make the time." Which isn't true, but she's assuming, and hoping, and she's worried that giving him back the upper hand will mean losing her nerve.
An hour and a bit later, she's sitting in a scuffed wooden booth, pretending to check her phone, mostly surreptitiously watching the Doctor fumble through the basic interactions required to purchase coffee. She allows herself five seconds, no more, to appreciate him: silver hair in an expensive, flattering cut, neatly-tailored monochrome outfit broken by what he probably thinks is an adventurous flash of red lining on his coat. And fuck him for having a face like that. Weird obnoxious stick-insect man. And fuck her, while she's at it, for having a libido that sometimes can't tell the difference between anger and arousal.
He's putting sugar in his coffee. She's watching his hands, lean and spidery, and having thoughts.
"I was hoping we could talk about something besides work," she says. Crosses, uncrosses, recrosses her legs.
"What else is there?" He's still putting sugar in his coffee. That's seven packets, by her count.
"Hobbies? Family? You know, the usual getting-to-know-you stuff."
"You want to get to know me?"
"Yeah, I do." She leans forward, smiling suggestively, before she remembers - somewhat too late - that she really shouldn't be flirting with him. Considering their professional obligations, considering the ring on his finger. But he's looking at her like he has no clue what she's doing. Maybe he doesn't. She pulls back, buttons her cardigan up all the way. Regroups, quickly. "I can't imagine there's anyone in this industry who doesn't."
He huffs out something presumably meant to be a laugh. "Believe me, I've made my fair share of enemies."
"Well, I'm not one of them. Not yet, at least. So tell me. There has to be something else besides work."
"And if not?"
"Then that's a sad life to be living."
He maybe-laughs again, hides his face behind his paper cup of coffee-flavored sugar water. "It's my life. And that's all you need to know."
(She pours herself a glass of wine and downs it more quickly than is prudent. Then another, which she stares at and sets down on the counter, untouched. She takes a shower, turning the water cold at the end, trying to shock herself out of this. Whatever this is. And in bed, clean on clean sheets, getting dirty all over again: think about anyone else other than aggravating Scots. Danny, or the girl who works at Waterstones, or literally anyone else.
She bites her lip and gives in, but it's all right because it's just this once, just one time to get it out of her system. She wonders what sort of expression the Doctor would have, bent over his desk, face held down against the 14-ply birch. The sounds he'd make, begging.)
Finding out that the ring doesn't indicate a current state of romantic attachment isn't helping matters.
My ex-wife hated it, he says, in regards to a particularly 90's bit of po-mo nonsense. He's been showing her his older work, for reasons she won't let herself guess too wildly at. Probably just wants to impress her. Must be rare for someone like him, working with someone who doesn't fawn over every fart of a building.
"It is ugly," she agrees. "Wait. Ex-wife? Is that information about your personal life? My goodness, you're slipping."
He looks like he's about to snap off a cutting or at least defensive remark, but it's swallowed up by an odd, uncomfortable vulnerability. "One of them, anyway."
"How many ex-wives do you have? Do you collect them? Like stamps?"
He turns abruptly and busies himself with a model of the Arcadia project, fiddling with a bit of cardboard that doesn't need fixing. "Four. The first was out of mis-placed obligation, the second for lust confused with love. The third on accident. The last, well." He smiles, almost, and twists his wedding band briefly before going back to his minute adjustments of the tiny little paper people in the tiny paper mezzanine.
She shouldn't push. She does anyway. "What happened? To her, I mean. The one in the photograph, right?" She nods towards the single picture on his desk, of him (looking oddly young, though it couldn't have been taken more than a few years ago) with a big-haired, broadly-smiling woman.
He's still fixated on the model but his hands have stilled. A miniature mother-with-baby-carriage resting gently in his palm. Maybe it's shaking, a little. "She died," he says curtly. "In an accident. A while back."
"I'm so sorry," she says, because that's what you say when people hand you information like that.
"You're not. You didn't know her. You don't know me. It's just-" He puts the paper figure down carefully on the model's front lawn. "Something that happened."
And maybe he has been correctly interpreting the signals she's been sending, because now he looks like he does know what's happening here, like he knows that she's just a little bit glad the ring doesn't mean what she thought it did, a little bit happy to find out that he's single. He looks like he knows what he's doing when he steps away from the table and towards her, looming over her, looking down at her with those pale, bright eyes.
So he knows what it means when she breathes in deep and curls her hands around the hem of her jumper to keep from brushing the hair out of her eyes or the lint that isn't there off his lapel. He knows what this silence is, what this tension means. Her shallow breaths and the fact she's not even bothering to keep from staring at his mouth.
"We should end it there. I've got a meeting," he says. Softly but firm. Closing himself off, almost visibly.
"So do I," she says. She doesn't, but it's a decent enough excuse.
(She takes the tube during rush hour again and spends fifteen minutes with her face mashed up against an impressive, matronly, anonymous set of breasts. Her flat seems so small and quiet, when she finally stumbles through the doorway. Two hours of work and three hours of nature documentaries on Netflix and then bed, where she lies for a while staring up at the ceiling before finally drifting off to sleep.)
There's no real reason for her to be here. She's done enough research, that part of the project is pretty much definitively over. It's nose-to-the-grindstone time. CAD, prototypes, sketches, fuck, a goddamn mood board would be more productive than faffing around taking pictures of TARDIS Group buildings.
And maybe it's because she's so frustrated with herself that this is making her so mad. This bleak concrete tower, already crumbling at the edges. Grey and depressing and, shit, who let this be built in the 21st century? Who still thought this was an acceptable way for people to live? What washed-up old man still worshiping at the feet of Mies Van der Rohe inflicted this monstrosity on the working class of London?
A rhetorical question. She knows precisely which washed-up old man did this. This - this monotony, mediocrity, this imposing of will. The lack of empathy. Twenty floors and the only human warmth is a hastily-scrawled piece of graffiti.
So she goes, as you do when you're mad and trying to outrun your latent feelings of being a hypocritical failure, she goes to his office. Fuck appointments, he'll see her now - she pounds on his door until he opens it, looking confused and owlish and obnoxious behind his probably-hilariously-expensive designer glasses.
Without preamble, breathless, she says: "D'you know, I'd almost started to believe you were a decent human being."
"I get the feeling that I've missed something." He moves aside to let her in, stands warily in front of his precious cardboard model.
"Thought I'd check out your attempt at council housing. See how you dealt with public works, you know, things the average person uses. Not just multi-millionaires. And can I say? It's an abomination."
His eyebrows skyrocket. "It's a building. Granted, it's been almost completely destroyed by the pudding-brained vandals determined to write their names on every wall they can get their grubby little hands on, and what thankfully-little of the interior decor I've seen is atrocious, but that's hardly my fault."
"It's bullshit. And it is your fault. Modernism failed - "
"Through no inherent flaw - "
"And it failed again. You're supposed to learn from the mistakes of the past, not repeat them hoping for a different outcome."
He rolls his eyes, folds his arms. "Let me guess. You watched Koyanisqaatsi at an impressionable age."
"And you watched The Fountainhead."
"I did. But I would like to note that I have no lingering sexual fantasies about skyscrapers. Or jackhammers. Ornament and cheap sentiment do no one any favors. Honesty to the materials, simplicity of form, that's what matters." This exasperated tone, like why can't she just understand?
"But you don't really believe that, do you. I've seen your house, that spread in ID, your unbearably pretentious interview where you went on and on about how simply you lived, how humble and minimal your surroundings were. But how much did you pay to have it built? How much did you spend on your streamlined fucking kitchen and your Herman Fucking Miller reproduction Breuer chairs?"
"They're originals, actually," he tries to interrupt, but she isn't really listening.
"Your minimalism is a luxury. Don't you dare compare how you live to how you expect people to live in your soulless buildings, their tiny little box exactly the same as everyone else's tiny little box, just one more way the world tells them that they're not special, that they're not worth anything more than basic necessities. You have zero right to mock them for trying to bring in some little piece of themselves, their culture, something with meaning, no matter how kitschy or tacky you think it is. The kid writing his name on your wall is reclaiming it, breaking your hermetic seal over all those messy human failures. Maybe it's just dumb vandalism, but I'd rather a thousand shitty pieces of graffiti than yet another bland polished-concrete wall."
"Anything else?" He rocks back on his heels, eyebrows up, hands raised in a placating gesture; she wants to punch him.
"No," she says, breathing hard. Fists clenched and eyes bright. "Wait. Yes. Those pictures of you in ID made you look like a constipated owl. And you're probably going to lose the Arcadia contract to Thascalos." In retrospect, she should have omitted the first bit, it was petty and implied that she noticed and/or cared what he looked like. Which she doesn't.
"According to whom."
"According to anyone with a finger on the pulse of the committee. I guess that leaves your firm out, huh." Nailed it. She smiles as smugly as she knows how, then leaves at a deliberate pace.
(Rush-hour tube back to the studio, thinking of all the other things she might have said. Thinking about punching him and breaking his dumb glasses. At least not thinking about fucking him, finally, thankfully. That boat sailed and was sank by a broadside.
After hours, after-after-hours, armed with the bottle of whisky Danny keeps stashed in his desk (she'll replace it), she discreetly slips a file through to the CNC machine, lines up a piece of scrap plywood in the frame, and watches with a deep and expansive pleasure as the robot arm whirrs slowly around, carving out the words 'SANCTIMONIOUS PRICK OF THE YEAR 2014' in Comic Sans. She spray-paints it hot pink, coats it in glitter, and sends it off via bike messenger the next morning.)
Clara is defiantly hungover the next morning for her meeting at TARDIS Group. She's got 70 hours worth, from the past week alone, of her work tucked under her arm; it's not that she doesn't care about the project, just that she doesn't care about him.
She's slumped in the waiting room, sunglasses on, when Missy swoops in. Looking impeccable and untouchable and unfuckwithable, as per usual.
"Rough night, darling?"
"I've had worse." She sways up and takes her sunglasses off, staring at Missy with thinly-veiled, bloodshot distaste. "Shall we?" Gesturing to the Doctor's - no, bollocks to that stupid name, to John Smith's office. After you.
She hadn't expected Missy to show up, and wasn't entirely certain what it meant, but at this point she was content to sit back and eat popcorn while Godzilla and Mothra went at it.
"Melissa," he says, in a tone that makes Clara suspect Missy was one of the ex-wives.
"Doc-torrr," Missy drawls. "Still hoping for a miracle?" She gestures at the model of the Arcadia project, now with an extra wing duct-taped to the side.
"Still preparing, yes," he says blandly. "What, do you think DLK has a chance? Aside from them, and they really did blow it with that PR disaster, I see no reason why TARDIS shouldn't get the contract."
"You're a terrible liar, love. Always were." Missy swoops in close to him, altogether too close. Hair's-breadth, a wild look in her eyes. "We're evenly matched, and you know it. You're just still angry I won the Stirling Prize instead of you. Twice."
Oh, he's properly mad now. Eyebrows furrowed into a furious caterpillar, fists clenched. Clara settles back with her metaphorical popcorn.
"I'm angry because you're shite. You don't make buildings, you make facades. You make glass baubles, that can't even be properly cleaned, and then you shoehorn in some cut-and-paste, boring little rooms. The lobby looks good in photographs, but it all falls apart beyond that. Go into those offices, they're just the same as offices anywhere else. Go into the sub-basement, it's like something out of a post-apocalyptic film, because you couldn't be bothered to plan for plumbing. Who cares about things like drainage when you're busy - "
"You've been in my basement?" Missy purred, like that was the only part of what he'd said she had heard.
"Yeah, I've been in your basement. And I know, you'd love to make that into something sexual, but trust me, it's not. Unless you want to be compared to a cold, dripping, cavernous loading dock."
"You've compared me to worse," Missy says, winking. Like it's cute. Like this is all just a game, with no consequences she cares about. That they care about.
And with that, Clara starts feeling sick to her stomach. Starts feeling like a piece of shit, if she's honest, because this project is important and she cares, she's suddenly remembering just how much she cares, and how dumb it is something as lovely as a community park is being reduced to petty, self-indulgent squabbling.
So she puts her sunglasses on, gives them both a long hard stare, and says, "Whichever of you ends up with the contract, I sincerely hope you'll act like a professional and not a petulant child. This is a real thing, in the real world, that real people will use and rely on. Not a trump card in whatever is happening between the two of you." She catches Smith's gaze, narrows her eyes, holds until she's certain she can see his shame, then turns and leaves.
The tube, and she's ahead of rush hour for once. Space to sit down, even. She sits and clutches her bags and fumes.
She wants to leave smudges on the glass walls and fingerprints all over his tastefully-framed De Stijl prints. She wants to knock the 500-pound bowl of monochrome mints onto the floor. She wants to fuck him on that birch-ply-and-tube-steel desk, wants to make him sweat, wants to get her smell all over him and put scuff marks on his mirror-polished shoes, cum stains on his trousers. She wants him messy and undone and down-to-earth, down-in-the-gutter human, and then she wants to burn the building down.
Maybe not that last part. Maybe she'll just invite some friends to wheat-paste posters over the entrance.
A few drinks in and Clara accidentally starts talking about work again.
"He drives me crazy," she says, gesticulating. "Absolutely fucking mental."
"You have seemed a little stressed," Danny says noncommittally.
"He's just - ugh. You know?"
He sighs. "No, I don't know, you haven't actually told me what's going on. But I can guess. I've known men like him. They'll run you over, use you, step on your back and expect you to say 'thank you.'"
"He's not using me," she insists. Words starting to slur. "I'm using him."
"He's got your time and your energy and your attention. We might be riding his coattails but if you can't go on a date with a charming, attractive man without it being all about work. Who's really got the upper hand?"
A very shitty part of her is thankful he's not leaping to the obvious conclusion. Because it would be sort of true, wouldn't it. It's not strictly professional, whatever this thing is between her and Smith.
"Sorry," she says, giving him an apologetic smile. "You're right. Moratorium on shop talk. Again."
(Smith calls, she ignores it. Leaves a message, she deletes it. Rinse and repeat until it's 11:30 at night and she's feeling, what. Pity? The urge to grind the boot heel in? So she picks up.
"'Sorry' is inadequate, I know," he says. "To be honest I'm not even sure if I am sorry. But I do... I feel badly, about how I acted."
Shame, that's what that tone of voice is. He's ashamed and embarrassed, and it's delicious.
"Apology accepted," she says.)
She shows up a little late to their next meeting. Just a little, just enough to make him wait.
He's fiddling with a piece of foam, a rough sketch of something or other. Glasses off, now, and he seems less severe without them. Or maybe that's what he looks like with his tail between his legs. But still: something softer, almost boyish about his face. She gets the feeling he wants her to like him. Why, she couldn't guess.
"I could never get any work done in here," she says, plopping herself down on the chair behind his desk. "I'd be so scared to get glue on the carpet. And the lighting - it's like a dentist's office."
"I don't actually work here. This is just for meetings. For, you know-" he waves his hands around vaguely - "Impressing the clients. I couldn't get anything done in this fishbowl either. My real office is down the block."
"You have two offices." She folds her arms, swiveling around to face him.
"In London, yes."
She wants to say something about having redundant real-estate when the homeless are shunted out of the city, and the great class divide, but instead she finds herself saying: "Show me, then. Show me where the award-winning starchitect Doctor works on his plans for a brighter tomorrow."
He stares hard at her, like he's trying to work out if she's making fun of him. Presumably he decides she's not, or at least that he's willing to humor her, because he sighs and makes a 'come on, then' gesture and stomps off in the direction of the lifts.
A cab ride, a short walk. She's not watching the awkward way he hustles along, the uncoordinated mess of limbs. It's not a building she would have picked out for him, old-fashioned and homey. Chip shop on the first floor, pub across the way. Expensive, to be sure, but fewer airs put on. A staircase that squeaks, and she's not watching his weird skinny arse as he heads up in front of her.
"Home sweet home," he says. Presumably sarcastic but she thinks there is a sort of truth to it.
"Bit of a mess," she says. "Not what I was expecting." 'Bit of a mess' being an understatement: books all over the everywhere, bits of paper littering the floor, an ancient chalkboard. Boxes of things, all sorts of things, potato ricers and pieces of Lego and ice-cube trays.
"And what were you expecting?"
"Black leather and five carefully-vetted novels on some 'minimal' bookshelf that's shite at actually holding a book collection? Kraftwerk on the thousand-quid stereo? Not, you know." She gestures.
"It is slightly - I've got assistants, you know, at the main office. To keep up with things. I had a cleaning service here but. It felt like too much of an intrusion."
And he looks at her like he thinks maybe she's a bit of an intruder as well, but also like maybe he doesn't entirely mind. For her part, she's not sure what to think, so she just smiles tentatively and asks, "Got anything to drink?"
(Turns out he's got quite a bit to drink but she doesn't, she doesn't get drunk in the messy second office of a man she's determined to dislike. Doesn't fall beside him on the comfortable, ugly couch that's a slap in the face of everything he stands for, doesn't let her shoulder rest against his arm, her legs against his. Doesn't acknowledge the way he looks at her from the corner of his eyes. She politely enjoys a beer or three and then she leaves. 9 pm but the tube is still crowded, and her apartment is as empty as ever.)
Turnabout is fair play. He showed her his, she'll show him hers. The Egg studio, in all its cheap-rent middle-of-nowhere glory.
"Quaint," he says, and what he means is it's small and cramped and all the furniture is from Ikea.
"Just a place to get stuff done," she says. "Not an edifice to myself."
He looks at her like, oh, you've got an ego too, and don't act like I don't see it. But he's distracted: the bench (part of an entire park, thank you, it's more than just benches), first prototype. He dashes over and plunks himself down.
"It's terrible," he says. His knees are at the wrong angle, he's the wrong scale. "Is everyone in your company as tiny as you? Because I'm not even that tall and I feel like I'm sitting in children's furniture."
"No, we're not all - it's a prototype, I haven't even brought it to the group yet." She sits down on the opposite end from him. "Aside from that, though."
"Hard to judge, given that it's the size of a matchbox."
"C'mon. Use your imagination."
He runs his hand over the arm rest slowly, ring scratching audibly against the wood, then jumps up. He turns to face her, backing up and stepping forward in an odd sort of almost-dance, head tilted. He's absent-mindedly biting his thumbnail and she is not, she is not staring at that, at his lips and teeth.
"The color is awful."
"It's fun," she says.
"It's red."
"It's fun," she insists. "Not everything has to be drab, Mr Birch-Steel-Concrete."
"If you were wearing orange, you'd look terrible. Or green. People would get headaches looking at you."
"'Make it big or make it red' is my motto," she says. "Make an impact, stand out. No sense wasting this project on something no one will notice."
"I thought design was about users? Not your desire for attention?"
"Yes, well, I also have a business to run." She's more than a little exasperated.
"So you're compromising, then. You should never do that." He stands up, hands in his pockets. Looking like he's somehow obscurely disappointed in her.
"D'you even remember what it's like to not be rich and famous and all-powerful? Because the little people can't always afford the luxury of your convictions."
Eyebrows raised, lips pursed. "You're at a crossroads, Ms. Oswald. Integrity on the right, mass-market appeal on the left. You'll have to make a choice."
"And if I keep going straight?"
He shrugs. "That way lies mediocrity." He glances pointedly at the bench.
"It's not mediocrity, it's life," she says, steaming. "It's the real bloody world. And for the record I am fantastic at what I do."
A silence, briefly.
"I should go, shouldn't I," he says. Baffled? Hurt? Whichever, whatever, she doesn't care.
She gestures to the door. "I've got a lot of work to do."
He goes. She stands still in the middle of the studio, teeth and fists clenched.
(Three hours later, her phone vibrates. A phone call - the Doctor - she stares at the screen until the call goes to voicemail. Two hours after that, once she's gone home, changed into sweatpants, had a glass or three of wine, she listens to the message.
For the record: I agree, you are fantastic at what you do. Frankly, I find you mildly intimidating. I've been an arse, I know. Bad habit I can't quite seem to shake. TARDIS got the contract, by the way, there's some exclusive breaking news for you. I'm sure you're terribly pleased to have to keep working with me. But perhaps we can have a truce? At least until all this is over.)
Egg's next meeting with TARDIS Group is that Wednesday, an uncharacteristically warm and sunny afternoon. She could send Adrian, who's a touch airheaded but excellent at taking notes and blithely cutting through bullshit. Or Danny, who'd likely hate Smith and escalate this beyond the point of no return, which is tempting. She sends herself, though, because she's got a variety of points to prove.
She whistles cheerfully on the elevator ride up, smiles at the secretary, breezes into Smith's office.
He's startled, fumbling at a clipboard, and she savors that, oh, she does. The look on his face, bless.
"I intimidate you?" Not bothering with a hi-how-are-you-what-about-that-weather-huh preamble.
He stares at her, wide-eyed, brows in attack-mode. And then deflates, and regroups, and stops meeting her gaze. "You're young and talented, you're charming, you know how to make people like you. A little time, a little experience, you could be unstoppable. And depending on which way you go-" He pauses, shrugs. "You'll either save the world or destroy it because you gave up caring. If you can figure what it is you want. Your generation isn't particularly decisive."
"Says the man from the generation that seems determined to fuck the planet over. You people started this, you can't blame us for floundering in your wake-"
He holds a hand up, like he wants to grab her arm, settling instead for an odd, hovering gesture. Something tired behind the brusqueness. "Clara. Please. Can we have a conversation, for once, that doesn't devolve into a fight?"
"I don't know, can we?"
"If we can't, the next few months are going to be extremely difficult."
She hesitates, relents. "Truce, then." She sticks out her hand, and he takes it gingerly, twitching once before dropping his arm back to his side.
"So. Right. Not that I want to reopen recently sutured wounds, but. I'd meant. What I'd..." He works his jaw like that'll work the words loose, hands fluttering. "You need to know what you want to do. I need to know, otherwise these meeting are completely pointless. So what is it you're trying to achieve? What is it you're trying to say?"
He means the work. It's always about the work. Of course it is. But he's giving her a searching look, she's noticing the thin set of his lips again, there's a tension here that has nothing to do with professional pride.
"No, no." She shakes her head, wags her finger. "You blew your chance to ask me that. It's your turn now."
"What do I want to achieve?" He smiles like it's a nervous tic, weaves his hand through his hair. "Ah. Well. Buildings are machines for living in. They can, and should, be graceful - beautiful, even - but form after function. Complexity without complication." He searches her face, checking to see if she's getting it.
She's not getting it. She picks up one of the little cardboard people from his model, now gone a bit dingy and soft-edged. "Surely 'function' includes not making people miserable."
"Better to be idealistic and fail then give up and win," he says. "And yes, that is me admitting that some of my buildings are failures."
"So learn from your mistakes. Forget about your imaginary people." She puts the man-in-hat figure back onto the model. "Picture real people, Doctor, actual human beings. Your friends, your family, the guy you buy your coffee from."
"You can't make a multi-million-pound building for individuals, Clara. A chair, maybe, but something like this - there's no room for it. You can't design for actual people. That's not what mass production is. That's not public architecture."
She resists pointing out that he's talking very much like someone who has, in fact, decided to compromise. "No. But you can give them space to be themselves, you know? Allow them a little wiggle room, let them fuck up and do things wrong and do things right in ways you couldn't plan for. Let people surprise you."
"Yeah," he says softly. Looking at her like she was the surprise they were talking about.
She holds her breath; the pause stretches out. She exhales. Nothing happens. He's not looking at her anymore, is buttoning his coat and turning away. She gets the feeling she just let an opportunity sail by.
(He doesn't get to ask the question, but she can: what is it she wants to say? She eats her lunch in a nearby square, the stone of the bench cold against her stockinged legs. Pigeons wandering, an old man tossing them bits of bread from a plastic shopping bag. Two women holding hands in an uncertain second-date sort of way, ambling down the path. Kids kicking a football between themselves as they pass through.
She knows it's him. No one else would be that forward and that awkward, sitting down just a hair too close to her and saying nothing.
"I want to help people do the things they want to do," she says.
"And you will. They're nice benches," Smith says gruffly. "And I'm sure it'll be a fine park. People will like it. It's good work." He stands up, hesitates for a moment, and then leaves.
She doesn't see him much after that.)
Clara blinks and it's five months later. Metaphorically speaking, although a time machine would come in handy. She wakes up and she's still tired, is always tired. Nose to the grindstone. Hour after hour after hour.
They break ground on a cold, dreary day. A cheap bottle of champagne is half-heartedly popped, and then it's off, done, essentially out of their hands. No more fixing or tweaking, just overseeing.
Something about that makes her feel oddly empty. Still, plenty of work on the docket. Nevermind the headache of making sure the thing actually gets built to spec. It's just - this has been a thing, in her life.
Smith doesn't even bother to say hello, just nods in her general direction before being swept off by an assistant.
"That's fine. That's nice. Great to see you, thanks." She's talking to herself.
"I'd say talking to yourself is a sign of madness, but then of course you've been driven mad."
Fuck, she knows that voice. She steels her self and affixes a pleasant smile before turning. "Missy, hello. Fancy seeing you here."
"That man would drive anyone mad. And yes, I'm a sore loser, what of it?" She huffs, delicately pulls her skirt up away from the dirty ground. "I want him to see me. He might have won the battle, but he has not won the war."
"It's just a building, Missy. Not armed conflict. Both of you, you take this stuff way too seriously."
Missy stares at her, affronted. "Of course we take it seriously. So do you, obviously you do, how could you not? We're changing the world here, Clara, for better or for worse. What we do matters. Even that - that horrid, godforsaken eyesore the Doctor is about to inflict on the world, that matters."
"I've got - " Clara hooks a thumb over her shoulder. "Things to do. Very, very important meeting that I'm late for. But we'll be in touch." She dashes off as quickly as is socially acceptable.
"I'll call you," Missy is yelling after her. "We'll do lunch."
It's a beautiful day outside, and she's been plugging away at the same damn rendering for entirely too long, and she hates her work now, hates everything about it, would happily set a fire and run away to Tunisia or wherever and collect the insurance money.
"So," she says, leaning back from her computer, scrubbing at her eyes. "Let's have a pow-wow. Ideathon. Assorted buzzwords. Oh, god, my brain is leaking out of my ears."
"I don't think you're supposed to point out that we use a lot of buzzwords," Adrian says. "It ruins the illusion."
"Right," Danny chimes in. "We believe everything we say. Isn't that right, Clara?" He's been a little bitter lately, understandably so. She's flaked on a few too many social plans lately.
She winces. "How's the press release coming?"
Adrian brightens. "Coming, it's coming, you know it's important to capture the, the zeitgeist of-"
"Fantastic. Mr. Manufacturing, how's that - "
There's a knock on the door, or more specifically a frantic pounding. Clara jumps.
"Are we being robbed?" Adrian, who is always slightly concerned that they'll be robbed. Or possibly excited at the prospect.
"Doubtful. I'll get it, just. Oh, stop, I can hear you, I'm coming." She stomps over to the door and yanks it open.
"Hi," Smith says tentatively. Shuffling his feet, almost shy.
"One second, please." She closes the door. "Right, sorry, I have to deal with this, won't be a minute."
"It's him, isn't it." Time has not improved Danny's opinion of Smith. And, reasonably, he disapproves of the thing he thinks is happening between Smith and Clara.
"There's nothing - it's not like that," she says as she re-opens the door and slips into the hallway.
"I thought we were ignoring each other."
Smith shrugs. "We were. I got bored. D'you want to go on a field trip?"
"Absolutely. And I want a pony, and a million dollars, and a nap, but we can't always get what we want."
He laughs, genuinely laughs and it's kind of an odd sound coming from him. "I want to show you something," he says. "C'mon. Won't take long. You'll be back banging your head against the wall before you know, I promise. Come on."
She's protesting but it's half-hearted, and she lets him grab her by the arm and drag her out the door, not letting go until they're in a cab. She tries not to draw attention to the fact that it's the first time he's touched her aside from perfunctory hand-shakes. But he has to have realized it himself, the way his boyish enthusiasm snaps without warning into something closed-off and sharp. He spends the cab ride as far away from her as the space and his body will allow. She's not sure what's happening here.
Something soft, albeit guarded, returns to his face when they finally reach their destination. He jumps out of the cab before it's even stopped moving, spreads his arms wide - tah dah! - and looks at her expectantly.
She looks up. It's a church. "It's a church," she says.
"Cathedral," he corrects. "Southwark. Come on."
She sighs and shrugs and then she's on a tour, the Doctor talking a mile a minute, pointing out every arch and buttress, pressing her hand to crumbling stone, opening gates to areas that the public probably aren't meant to enter. Eventually, having exhausted every historical fact in his not-inconsiderable arsenal, he pulls her inside. Still doing that thing where he breaks physical contact like he's dropping a hot pan.
The dim light and cool air is a shock after the uncharacteristically bright and sunny day. She blinks, eyes adjusting. "Why are we here, Doctor?"
"You seemed like you were in danger of losing your faith," he says, like it was obvious, like that wasn't a strange thing to be telling someone you barely knew.
"In God?"
"In whatever you find in this world that makes life worth living. In whatever makes you want to create instead of churning out landfill fodder."
"It's just stuff, Doctor. Not a metaphysical experience." She purses her lips. He's just - he's a bit much, sometimes. Like there's dramatic music playing in his head whenever he talks like this. She's tired and her feet hurt and she's going to be late for her 4:00 meeting, and she's not sure she has the patience to deal with whatever he's trying to do.
"No, no no no. Don't. Don't say that. The second you start thinking like that, 'oh, it's just a park, it's just a building', that's the precise moment when you should quit. Because you're right. The world doesn't need more useless, thoughtless junk. It doesn't need car parks and novelty whisks. If that's where you think you're going, then get out, now. Get out and don't look back. But I think you're better than that. I think you know that you are. You just need to be reminded."
"Don't tell me what I need," she says, but her heart's not in it. She slumps down in a pew and stares up at the ceiling. "I don't believe in God, for the record." She wraps her arms around herself, conscious of how loud her voice is in the still air. "So this is probably wasted on me."
He sits down in the pew in front of her, arms draped along the back. "I don't either. Or. Well. It's complicated. But that's not the point. Ignore the iconography, just feel the - the geometry, the balance. The weight of the stone." He turns his head, not enough to look at her but enough so she can see something pass over his face, a deep and oddly intimate expression, like he is, for just a second, perfectly in tune with the universe.
And something about that makes her relent. She tries to relax, to see what he sees.
He's turned all the way around now, chin resting on his arm. She thinks maybe bodies shouldn't be folded like that, and she latches onto that thought, instead of the other thought, which is mostly about how earnest he is right now, and how different his face looks when he's not frowning as hard as he can.
"Everything should have a purpose. Everything should have an ethos. Even benches and tea-cozies. This cathedral, my buildings, your park. They're all the same thing. People like us, Clara, we make the choices that others don't even realize exist. We tell them where to go, when to go, how to sit, how to live. Even if it's just for an hour or a few minutes, we determine the paths of people's lives. That's a privilege, Clara. Don't waste it." He reaches out as if to touch her, but thinks better of it, stands up instead. He heads down the aisle.
She follows.
"So we don't believe in God." He crosses himself anyway, reflexively. "Then call it a hymn to humanity. To your indomitable spirit."
"You're human too, John."
"That's what they tell me." He raises an eyebrow, like he doesn't quite believe it. A tiny, self-deprecating grin, or maybe she just imagines that.
"Bit egotistical, don't you think? Worshiping ourselves?" She would like very much to be flippant and unaffected, but her voice comes out so quietly, and it's not that she's lying as such, only - not saying what it is she's thinking. He's just so close, all of a sudden.
And closer, slowly, with shuffling little steps, like he's scared she'll startle and run off if he moves too quickly. "Not ourselves, fine. Maybe just the simple beauty of light through colored glass." But he's not looking at the stained-glass windows, or the streaks of blue and red they leave stretched across the walls; he's looking at her. Like she's the only thing in the world worth looking at.
"I've been thinking about what it is I want," he says softly.
There's a moment, a held breath, and then she's kissing him. What else was she meant to do? It's not like she hasn't been waiting for this. She stretches up on tip-toes, one hand on his chest for balance, the other running through his hair. She's aiming for chaste but his hands land on the small of her back and she goes too eager, too quick. He doesn't seem to mind, judging by how easily his mouth opens under hers, the noise coming out of him that could be classified as a moan.
She's in a church. She's snogging in a church. That has to be some sort of general Catholic rule, thou shalt not become aroused while in a place of worship. She pulls away, wipes delicately at her lipstick. "John."
"Yeah."
"We can't do this," she says. She steps back, straightening her coat.
His face falls. "Yeah," he says again. "Of course. No, no, I understand. It could never - I know."
"Not here," she clarifies. "People are watching. Baby Jesus is watching. I'm a lot of things, but 'exhibitionist' isn't one of them." She smiles and strides off, stopping once to turn and beckon him over.
The cab ride back to her flat, he keeps his distance again. But she rests her hand on the seat between them, and after a while he takes it. She watches him swallow nervously, against whatever anxieties he's keeping locked down tight. She's not sure whether she wants to fuck him or wrap him up in blankets, or smack some sense into him.
On balance, she mostly wants to fuck him. She valiantly refrains from fucking him in the cab - she's not necessarily desperate but it has been a while since she's slept with anything not requiring batteries, and he does look good in that suit. Fifteen blocks and a lift ride later, they're in her flat, and she's locking the door and shoving him up against it.
"Clara-"
"Shut up. Tired of talking." She kisses him for good measure, cutting off any retort he might be tempted to make. Runs her hands down his narrow chest, over to his wrists, grabs on. Yanks him over to the sofa and plunks him down, straddling him.
He's startled, wide-eyed and pliant as she pulls his coat over his shoulders. His breath hitching as she undoes the top few buttons of his shirt, leans over to deposit what she hopes will be a truly embarrassing hickey. She sits back to admire her work.
"It's been a while for me," he says, apropos of not much. "So. And I know I'm not..." He gestures vaguely at himself, head ducked to hide an incipient blush. "Are you sure you want this?" Are you sure you want me, is what he probably means.
"Nobody's perfect. We've had this conversation like ten times already, have you really been paying that little attention?"
He frowns, still motionless. She rolls her eyes, reaches for his hands, settles them on her waist.
"Yes," she says firmly. "I want this. I very rarely do things I don't want to do, you should have figured that out by now. So can you please, please just fuck me already? It's been over a year, I feel like I'm in a Regency novel." She grinds her hips against his, hoping that's enough emphasis.
Eyebrows raised, hands sliding up her back. "Yes ma'am," he says.
(He tugs her down, keeping her on top. Limbs crowded between the arms of the sofa. Probably not the best place to do this, but this is where it's happening.
All the tension falling out of her, and a different sort of tension in its place. So that's how he looks, then, when he's needy and mussed. The undignified squeaks he makes. She'll have him begging later, but this is a good start.
The sun setting, light filtering through the small window. Low-slung shadows, and an unassuming sort of peace.)