Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (21/27-ish)

[earlgreytea68]

Title - Chaos Theory on Dimensionally Stable Objects on Earth College Campuses (21/27-ish)
Author - earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Characters - OCs
Spoilers - None
Disclaimer - I don't own them and I don't make money off of them, but I don't like to dwell on that, so let's move on. (Except for the kids. They're all mine.)
Summary - Brem goes to university.
Author's Notes - Thanks to jlrpuckfor the beta, which took place at an ungodly hour!

Many, many, many thanks to Kristin, for all the ideas. Thanks also to bouncy_castle79  bouncy_castle79, who once again gave it the first outside-eyes read-through.

The gorgeous icon was created by swankkat  swankkatfor me, commissioned by jlrpuckfor my birthday.

My sister is getting married tomorrow! So the comments may take me a bit to answer.

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Chapter Twenty-one

To say Kate missed Brem wasn’t accurate.

 

Because what she did was miss him desperately.

 

They had no classes together, and there was really no reason, on Harvard’s large campus, that they should ever cross paths. And she made sure they didn’t. She didn’t read his columns, and she avoided the frowning women who kept trying to corner her so they could berate her for breaking up with him. Their beloved Bremmy, and she wondered what they would say if she told them that he had two hearts and triple-helixed DNA and was born on a spaceship. Of course, it wasn’t like any of them had actually had sex with an alien. No, no, that was her unique accomplishment.

 

The truth was that the farther she got from Brem’s proclamation, though, the less alarming it seemed. So he was an alien, and he didn’t have all the same parts, and he had some incredible story about traveling space and time. But, when it came right down to it, what did that actually change about him?

 

And, if she was going to be completely honest, the thing that she had fallen in love with, with Brem, was his alienness. It was not a word she had ever thought to use, when she had been describing Brem, but what she had said about him, to every friend who had wanted to know why him, was: He’s not like anyone else I’ve ever met, was what she had said. She had spotted him across the room in Twentieth-Century Novel, and it hadn’t been those deep, alluring eyes or the absurdly sexy hair, not the elegance of his slouch or the slight pucker to his lips or the furrow between his eyebrows. None of the things that made Brem attractive had been the reason why he had caught her eye, and she knew it. It had been the sense clinging to him, the aura he carried, that he was different. Not so much that he didn’t belong, but that this world did not belong to him, that he was just a casual, indulgent, enthusiastic observer, that this was all just a grand adventure. The slight off-ness to him—the slightly archaic manners, his confusion over what he ought to do when, what her assumptions would be, his sidelong references to things and places that made no sense to her—she had found all of it ridiculously charming. She had loved him for it. And then he had explained where it came from, where he came from, this entire package of things she had loved, and she had backed away from him in horror.

 

It was so terribly unfair of her. She had rattled off all the things that would have been less shocking—outrageous things, like he’d cheated on her, or had found out he was her brother—and, in actuality, he had shared with her the least shocking thing of all: He was who he was, and nothing he had said had changed anything about him.

 

She even missed his double heartbeat.

 

********

Brem was hiding in the Crimson offices, because he needed to finish his column, and he didn’t have an idea for beginning his column, and his dorm room had seemed to be busy with an endless round of visitors. That seemed to happen sometimes, in dorms, and Brem would need to take off and find someplace quiet where he could hear his own thoughts. He was trying desperately to look busy, although what he was frantically typing onto the computer he’d commandeered was “Bremsstrahlung” over and over again, because it gave the impression of major words being written.

 

“Brem!” called someone from across the room. “You’ve got a visitor!”

 

“I don’t want a visitor,” he muttered at his screen. Hadn’t he left the dorm room for precisely that reason? He pushed away from the desk, leaning to the side so he could see toward the front of the offices.

 

Where Kate stood, holding two Tealuxe to-go cups, in her bright red winter coat and her hair caught up under a wool cap, and she flickered a hesitant smile at him. “Hi,” she said, barely audible across the room.

 

He stared at her, open-mouthed, for a very long moment, before he realized that maybe he ought to move. “Oh!” he exclaimed, forcing himself out of the chair. “Hi. Hi.” He walked over to her. “Hi.”

 

They stared at each other for a second, before she broke the gaze and looked down to hand him one of the cups, which he took automatically.

 

“It’s, um, Evergreen Estate Ceylon. I didn’t think you’d ever tried this one before. I mean, unless you have in the…” She cleared her throat. “Anyway, should be enough sugars. I hope.”

 

“I’m sure it’s fine,” he said, still staring at her. He had no intention of worrying about the bloody tea at the moment.

 

She looked up at him finally. The wisps of her hair were trapped by her hat but she reached to push them away anyway, in a nervous habit. “Can we talk?”

 

“Yeah,” he said, breathlessly. “Yes. Do you want to go for a walk?”

 

“Do you want to get your coat?”

 

“I’ll be fine.”

 

“Get your coat, Brem.”

 

Cursing mentally, Brem rushed to where he’d thrown his coat. He left his document of the many “Bremsstrahlung”s open on the computer and hurriedback over to where Kate was waiting, shrugging the coat on one-handed, shifting the cup from hand to hand.

 

They silently left the Crimson offices together, outside, and walked for a few steps in the same silence, before Kate turned to him abruptly, looking up at him. “I’m sorry, Brem,” she said. “I am. I’m so sorry.”

 

He didn’t know what to say. Tongue-tied, he gaped down at her, trying to think of something brilliant to say in return. He was reminded of when he had first tried to ask her out and had been speechless.

 

“Can you…” continued Kate, when he stayed silent, forging forward. “I mean, I don’t know what you’re…But I’m sorry. And I love you. And I think…I mean, don’t you think we…Could we try again? I mean, I think we’ve…I love you. I love everything about you. And I know that I didn’t…I mean, I couldn’t…”

 

Brem, dimly, reached to the side, where there was a newspaper box stacked with Improper Bostonians, and placed his cup of tea down, then reached out, cupped Kate’s head, and pulled her in for a kiss. Kate made a small noise of surprise before kissing him back, one hand tangling into his hair. He did not finish kissing her for an indecently long time, pulling back finally the tiniest amount. “I should have told you earlier,” he said. “I know I should have. But I was so worried you wouldn’t—”

 

“You were worried I’d do exactly what I did,” she commented, dryly. “I’m so sorry for that, Brem. It turns out that—” She broke into a sudden grin – “Dammit, I think it’s possible I love you because you’re an alien.”

 

He grinned back at her. He felt so jubilant it was impossible to put into words, even Gallifreyan words. He’d no clue what he was going to write in his journal about all this. She loves everything about me. “That is the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

 

She laughed. “You’re impossibly cute.” She placed her cup of tea next to his on the newspaper box and reached under the coat he’d never buttoned, one hand over each of his hearts. “Impossibly cute, with two hearts,” she said.

 

“I love you,” he said, and leaned forward and kissed her again. And then he murmured, “What kind of tea are you drinking? It tastes fabulous.”

 

“Oh, you’re so British,” she told him.

 

********

 

She was never going to get tired of listening to those two hearts, she thought, fascinated, laying across his chest while the rhythm thrummed through her. Brem was reading, holding the book up over both of them, turning the pages at an impossibly fast rate.

 

“You read quickly, don’t you?” she realized.

 

“I’m actually reading very slowly at the moment,” he answered, distractedly.

 

She listened to his hearts beat for a little while longer. The room was darkening. He would need light to read by soon, and she was loathe to move. She’d missed him so very desperately, laying curled against him like this. Against that skin that always seemed just a touch too cool. Alien, she thought. He was an alien.

 

“You don’t sleep, either,” she concluded, suddenly, realizing that she’d never really seen him sleeping.

 

“That’s not true,” he responded, absently. “I sleep about an hour a week.” He turned a page of the book he was reading.

 

She shifted, crawling up his body a bit so she could nuzzle under his jaw. “Breeeeeeeeeem,” she murmured.

 

“Mmm?”

 

“I want to know everything.” She propped herself up so she could look down at him.

 

“About what?”

 

“You!”

 

Brem shifted his attention away from the book. “What about me?” he asked, cautiously.

 

“That’s not fair, Brem. I want to know all about you. For instance, I’ve been thinking.”

 

“When have you been thinking?” he asked. “We’ve been busy since getting back together.”

 

“Have you been trying to keep me from thinking?”

 

“Not entirely.”

 

“When we were broken up, and I had a lot of time to just mull over in my head everything you’d ever said to me. The story about your mother going missing. You said she was trapped on another world. And you meant that. You literally meant it.”

 

“Let’s not talk about that,” said Brem. “Let’s talk about anything but that.”

 

Kate paused. “Yeah. Right. Okay.” She snuggled back against him, as he lifted his book back up. “What are you reading, anyway?”

 

“My Spanish book,” he replied, grimly.

 

Kate was silent for a moment. Noticeably silent.

 

He lowered the book with a sigh. “Say it.”

 

“Why are you taking another semester of Spanish?”

 

“Because I didn’t do well enough to place out,” he answered, and then lifted his book again.

 

She burst into delighted laughter, rolling about on the bed next to him.

 

He frowned. “It isn’t funny, Kate.”

 

“You’re right, it’s hilarious.”

 

“I’m supposed to have a translation circuit,” he sulked. “In my head. The TARDIS has shut it off.”

 

“What’s happened?” she asked, curiously.

 

“The TARDIS is…” He sighed, realizing he had to start from the beginning. “The ship is called the TARDIS, right? My family’s ship? And it has a built-in translation circuit, translates every language in the galaxy for us.”

 

“Really?”

 

“Really.”

 

“That’s awesome.”

 

“Very awesome. Except that it isn’t working for me.”

 

“Why? Is it broken?”

 

“No, it doesn’t want me to cheat.”

 

Kate burst into more laughter.

 

“Yes, my father thinks it’s hilarious, too.”

 

“What’s your father look like?” she asked, curiously.

 

He looked at her. “Like me. Why?”

 

“I don’t know. He’s an alien.”

 

“He looks exactly like me. Humans, you know, evolved to be like Time Lords. We’re the template for the entire universe.”

 

“Of course you are. I wouldn’t be sleeping with just any alien species.” She kissed the tip of his nose. “Except you don’t sleep.”

 

“I don’t, no. Because I have a superior biology.”

 

“You do have that, yes.”

 

He laughed as he tossed the book aside, rolled her onto her back, and then looked down at her. “I missed you desperately, Kate Bonneville.”

 

“Did you?”

 

“Desperately.”

 

“Why?”

 

“What do you mean, why?”

 

She combed her hands through that sexy-as-hell hair of his. “You’re the most extraordinary man I’ve ever met, Brem. So why me?”

 

“Why you? Because you’re you. You’re Kate, and I fell in love with you across a room one day, and you made me every thought in my head go still, because you’re so beautiful, and clever, and remarkable—”

 

“Brem, I am just an ordinary human being.”

 

“Oh, Kate, there is no such thing.” He leaned down and kissed her.

 

“Can I ask you something?” she asked, around his kisses.

 

“Not just now,” he answered, shifting to pay attention to her jaw.

 

“Should we be doing something differently? For birth control? Am I going to have, like, an alien baby or something?”

 

“We’re fine. We’re perfect. We’re…” He lifted his head suddenly, frowning. “Oh, bloody hell. Who the hell am I going to ask about that? Because I am not going to ask my father.” He considered, reasoning it through. “We’re fine. We’re absolutely fine. Yes. We’re fine.”

 

“Wait a second, when you said your sister had a thing for guys with tentacles, you literally meant tentacles, didn’t you?”

 

“Kate.”

 

“What?”

 

“I don’t often say this, but: stop talking.”

 

********

 

“I thought maybe,” ventured Brem, which was Kate’s cue to stop studying and look up at him. Whenever Brem spoke with hesitation, it was because he was telling her something that meant a lot to him. Words came easily to Brem, except for when they didn’t, and it was the times when they didn’t that meant the most. They were in Tealuxe, tucked in the corner in the very back, while she highlighted a text on the Industrial Revolution and Brem journalled furiously in what she now knew was an alien language. Gallifreyan, he’d said. The language of his father’s people. He said it was an extremely beautiful, incredibly complex language, untranslatable to other languages. The TARDIS never translates Gallifreyan, he’d said, and she took all this as an interesting truth now. My, life was a strange thing.

 

Brem ruffled at his hair. “I thought maybe you might want to meet my sister. I mean, properly. We could go to dinner. She’d kind of really like to meet you, and I thought maybe—”

 

“That’s a wonderful idea!” said Kate.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Absolutely. Are you going to make me plan where we’re going?”

 

She always planned their dinners for them now. “But you’re so good at it,” he protested.

 

“What kind of food does your sister like?”

 

“Axisonian,” he answered, honestly.

 

In the end it had to be both sisters. “I can’t just invite one,” he told Kate. “I’ll feel bad about excluding Fortuna. Are you okay with that?”

 

“Brem, it’s fine,” she assured him, while wondering if there was some reason she ought to be feeling nervous about this. “You could invite everyone.”

 

“Oh, not my parents,” he said. “Not yet. They’re…they’re…forceful personalities.”

 

“Shocking, that two forceful personalities would raise someone as shy and retiring as you,” she told him.

 

“I know,” he said, apparently not getting the joke.

 

Having gotten clearance from Kate, he called Athena. Both sisters had dropped by less frequently this semester. He thought his family was still trying to tread carefully around boundaries he knew they hadn’t realized he had.

 

“How’s it going?” she asked, lazily, as she answered the phone.

 

“Fine,” he answered. “I thought you might want to drop by, go to dinner.”

 

“Sure. When?”

 

“With me and Kate.” He’d told Athena that Kate had gotten over the human-Time Lord hybrid obstacle. She loves everything about me, he’d said. The thought still astonished him.

 

He felt Athena’s interest sharpen. “Really? We’re allowed to, like, meet her?”

 

“Well, you are. And Fort, too. I know you want to meet her, and I think she’d like to meet you.”

 

“Me and Fort? We’ll absolutely be there.”

 

“Keep it quiet, yeah?”

 

“Well, naturally, Brem,” she retorted, sounding offended that he’d think she’d have to be told that.

 

Kate planned the evening, deciding on Border Café, because she thought it was a lucky place for them. It had been lucky on their first date, and lucky when his namesake Jack had been in town. Perhaps its luck would hold.

 

It was one of those gray, dreary days when it felt cold enough for snow but was nonetheless miserably raining, and Kate huddled into her coat, fighting to keep the umbrella upright as she crossed the Yard to Brem’s. One of the guys in Brem’s dorm let her in on his way out, with a smile, and she smiled back in thanks before heading to Brem’s room. The door was open, and a young blonde girl was enthusiastically playing a video game with Matt. Brem was sprawled on his bed, while the sister she’d already been introduced to, Athena, was in his desk chair. She’d clearly just asked him a question of some sort, because Brem was responding to her.

 

“Wellllll,” he was saying, “you’d have to take the birdu circuit—”

 

It was Athena who saw her first. She turned on Brem’s desk chair and grinned. “Kate! Excellent! How are you?” Athena leaped up and embraced her in an enthusiastic hug that momentarily tipped her off-guard. “Give Fort two seconds,” continued Athena, releasing Kate, “until she dispatches Matt there.”

 

Fortuna laughed without even taking her eyes off the TV screen.

 

“Hi,” Brem said, having rolled himself out of his bed and brushing a quick kiss over her lips.

 

“Hi,” she replied.

 

“And I’m hoping you remember my sister Athena, who clearly remembers you,” he went on, drolly.

 

“I do,” she said, smiling at Athena.

 

Matt, on the bed, groaned, to accompany Fortuna’s cry of “Aha!”

 

“Someday I’ll beat her,” Matt told Kate, as Fortuna fiddled with the game console and then leaped off the bed.

 

“Hi,” she said to Kate. “I’m Fortuna. And I’m chuffed to finally be meeting you.”

 

“Uh, same here,” Kate said, guessing that “chuffed” might be an accurate description of how she felt.

 

“Shall we go?” Brem asked, shrugging on his coat.

 

“Are you coming, Matt?” inquired Fortuna.

 

“I’d better not,” said Matt. “I’ve actually promised some people I’d meet them at 8.”

 

“See you later, then,” Kate said, as Brem took her hand.

 

“Where are we going to dinner?” he asked, as they headed down the hallway together.

 

“Border Café,” said Kate.

 

“That’s where we went on our first date,” Brem told his sisters, then paused and turned to Kate. “I’m right about that, right?”

 

She laughed. “Yes. Our first date. And lunch with Jack.”

 

“Jack?” echoed Athena. “Jack Harkness?”

 

“I think so,” answered Kate.

 

“When did Uncle Jack come visit you?” asked Fortuna, as they stepped outside into the cold.

 

Brem scratched the back of his neck. “Oh, I don’t know. A few months ago.”

 

“How is he?” asked Athena. “We haven’t seen him in forever.”

 

“Oh, he’s, you know, the same.” Brem waved his hand about.

 

Athena grinned at Kate. “How outrageously did he flirt with you?”

 

Kate laughed. “Brem didn’t give him a chance. He kept cutting him off every time he tried to say something.”

 

“That’s not true,” Brem protested.

 

“I was disappointed, though, because I wanted to hear all sorts of humiliating baby stories about Brem.”

 

There was a moment of silence.

 

“Brem wasn’t really that kind of baby,” Athena said, finally, thoughtfully.

 

“But we’ve got lots of stories about him when he was a little boy,” contributed Fortuna, grinning wickedly.

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