Kylie Lee | Slash fan fiction

Charley turned her head slowly in front of the mirror, the unaccustomed weight and heft of the tall wig making her careful, and watched the light play across the riot of delicately placed curls. She knew she could ride a horse while wearing the borrowed wig and clothing of a French diplomat's wife, because she'd done it yesterday.

"For good of king and country," she said in her haughtiest tone, and behind her giggled the French lady's maid, who spoke no English—a remnant of the woman she was impersonating.

"Merci, madamoiselle," Charley said, rising gingerly. She lost her footing as she stepped on her skirt, but she immediately caught herself, hand automatically going to the wig. Yes, it was still stable. She made a majestic gesture, as if receiving the accolades of an adoring crowd, and the girl giggled again. "You may go," she directed the girl, who merely smiled at her. "Oh, how do you say that in French? I can't remember. You go. Go. Shoo!" She made a waving motion with her hands, and the maid, finally understanding, bobbed a curtsey and disappeared.

Her face felt painted on. Powder underneath all, and color on her cheeks, lips, and eyelids; her eyebrows drawn on; her eyes lined with a tiny brush dipped into some kind of dark powder smeared into water. Mr. Fazackerly, an omnipresent aide who seemed to be the duke of Wellington's secretary, nursemaid, and butler all rolled into one, had proved adept not only at choosing clothes, but at making up faces. He'd been dismissed to go work with C'rizz, who would be playing the role of the French diplomat whom Charley was meant to be the wife of. Charley had thought that the costume the Doctor had selected for her in the TARDIS—was it only a few days ago?—for their sojourn into London in 1851 was uncomfortable, all voluminous skirts, ruffled petticoats, and ill-fitting shoes, but that was nothing compared to the riding dress of a French noblewoman who weighed at least twice as much as she did. She pulled her skirts back and peered over her padded stomach at her feet. At least her shoes fit, and somehow, that cheered her.

Still. "July," she muttered to herself. "A hot July, and I'm padded like an armchair."

She sighed and took a turn around the room, trying out her deportment and shoes, sneaking looks at herself in the mirror. It would do. She just needed to look down at her nose at everybody—no trick, that, because she'd be riding—and look aloof. She tried aloof in two modes in front of the glass and decided on a disinterested, icy aloof, as opposed to a slightly angry aloof. Her cover would be seen through in an instant if someone attempted a conversation in French, because Charley's vocabulary was extremely limited. Charley thought it prudent to scare off would-be conversationalists by an uninviting demeanor, although she wouldn't be surprised if the wig did it first.

The clock announced that she still had an hour to go before the horses would be brought around. "Time to find Arthur," she decided. She half-expected to hear fussy Mr. Fazackerly cry his correction, "Your Grace!", as was his wont, but of course Mr. Fazackerly was off tending to C'rizz. How Mr. Fazackerly thought he could make a wig stick on C'rizz's bald head was a mystery to Charley, but he seemed to relish the challenge.

The duke, however, was nowhere to be found. He wasn't in the morning room or his study, and Charley didn't dare knock on the door to his rooms, for all his pleasantness and kindness to her. She wandered about the main level and saw only servants. Unsure of how far the deception spread, she decided against talking to them to pass the time. The library held beautifully bound volumes, none of which she wanted to read, although she was convinced that even in this time, some of them would be quite valuable. She couldn't go out and walk in the garden; nor could she pop into Hyde Park, just a stone's throw away, and wander about. She'd see it soon enough—on horseback, alas.

Here she was in London in 1851, under the protection of Arthur Wellesley, the first duke of Wellington, in Apsley House, Number One, London, with its beautiful and valuable artworks and porcelain, not to mention the fabulous Waterloo Gallery, which she'd spent hours going through last night with C'rizz with an attentive Mr. Fazackerly as guide, and she was bored. Well, there was only one thing for it: she'd go offer to help Mr. Fazackerly with C'rizz.

She got her bearings and then mounted the stairs—Adam's Stairwell, with the Canova sculpture of a nude Napoleon at its foot, the gift of the British government a graceful allusion to the duke's success against that general in battle. Charley did not avert her eyes. She'd somehow managed to channel Madame Deroche, because her footsteps sounded uncommonly heavy and officious to her, just as if she were someone's determined little wife. "Ah, Christian!" she tried in her best French accent, and she wasn't too disappointed in the result.

Two corridors and one wrong turn later, she managed to find C'rizz's rooms. It said something about Monsieur and Madame Deroche's relationship, she thought, that their rooms were a corridor apart. Yet they had certainly seemed fond enough, from her brief remembrance of them, glimpsed through the TARDIS's scanner. "No doubt it's the dresses," she pondered, remembering the French lady's wardrobe. "They require so much room that poor Christian must keep his things elsewhere." And who knew where Christian slept? Perhaps here, or perhaps with his Madeleine.

"C'rizz, it's me, Charley," she called as she tapped his door with a knuckle. Without waiting for a response, she pushed open the heavy carved door, only to face an empty room. "Oh," she said, surprised, because she'd wanted to see C'rizz in Christian Deroche's clothing. Mr. Fazackerly had said he thought they were of a size.

She shut the door behind her automatically. Not only was the room empty, but the small dressing room to the side was as well. Wait, there were some signs of life: a man's set of clothing had been set out on the neatly made bed, a brown bottle of some awful-smelling sticky substance stood on the vanity, and a full-length mirror had been pulled out from against the wall. She started when she turned and saw a strange painted woman standing there—only of course it was herself, Charley grown old and stout, prone to wearing violent colors and absurdly tall hair.

"As long as I keep running about after the Doctor, I daresay I need not worry about gaining a few pounds," Charley mused. The wheeled mirror faced the vanity's mirror, and the endless reflections troubled her. "Oh, where is he!" she muttered as she tried to slide the mirror aside. She didn't know if she meant the missing Doctor or C'rizz. The mirror was heavier than she thought, and it took some muscle to shift it, despite its wheeled stand.

"—Charley's infatuation with the Doctor," she heard C'rizz's voice say as the door opened, and quick as thought, because clearly she wasn't thinking, Charley dived into the dressing room.

"He sounds a great deal older than her," a voice commented—Mr. Fazackerly, of course, a neat twentysomething man with the long sideburns fashionable in this age. Charley supposed he was handsome, but his repressive manner did not endear him to her.

"I don't know. I suppose so." A moment later, C'rizz and Mr. Fazackerly crossed her line of sight as she knelt behind the slightly opened door.

Charley mentally argued with herself. She ought to step out right now and say, "Oh, there you are! I was looking for you!" in a pleased voice, and offer to help.

She ought to do that...now.

She didn't move.

"I must say, you are awfully curious about us," C'rizz said, continuing a conversation Charley had clearly missed.

"Is it any wonder? Your travels seem...extensive," Mr. Fazackerly said ironically. He knew, of course, that they traveled in time because Arthur—the duke of Wellington, that is—had guessed it, and where the duke was, so was Mr. Fazackerly. "A girl from 1930 and a Eutermesan traveling with the mysterious Doctor. What things you must have seen!"

"What things indeed," C'rizz said, not altogether pleasantly. "I have discovered that I do not like to be looked at."

"That is indeed unfortunate, because today your role is precisely that: to be looked at." Mr. Fazackerly's tone was acerbic. "And may I say that you are an interesting sight. I for one cannot take my eyes from you."

C'rizz made no response to that remarkable statement as Charley hitched forward on her knees. They had crossed her line of sight. The slight adjustment she had made to the mirror had placed it in precisely the correct place to reflect them when they stopped near the bed. C'rizz, she saw, wore a dressing gown, and to her delight, Mr. Fazackerly had managed to affix a wig to his bald head, its longish hair covering up C'rizz's small, inhuman ears.

As if echoing her thoughts, Mr. Fazackerly said fussily, "Is the wig staying on all right? I can put more adhesive on it—"

"It's fine," C'rizz said firmly, waving Mr. Fazackerly's hands away. "I'm just glad we were able to get the adhesive you spilled off my skin. It itches terribly."

"You should have waited here while I fetched the rubbing alcohol," Mr. Fazackerly complained. "You gave the butler a start."

"I couldn't wait." C'rizz reached up to adjust the wig, thought better of it, and dropped his hands. He was clearly under orders not to touch.

"You said you could change your skin color?" Mr. Fazackerly prompted.

"Right." C'rizz concentrated, and as Charley watched, the color on his face began to bleach, blue fading into white that in turn shaded into a properly human color. She was familiar with this activity: C'rizz often practiced this particular skill.

Mr. Fazackerly seemed fascinated. "And you can do that over your whole body?" he asked, voice eager.

"Yes."

"What color?"

"Any color you like." C'rizz undid the dressing gown and let it fall to his feet. He wore nothing underneath. "Would you like to see?"

"My goodness," Mr. Fazackerly murmured after a long, shocked silence. Behind the door, Charley put her hand over her mouth to stifle an exclamation.

C'rizz's back was striped with poorly bandaged half-healed wounds, and bandages were bound around one thigh and an upper arm. But evidence of his hurt wasn't her focus. When she, the duke, and Mr. Fazackerly had rescued C'rizz from the showman who had kidnapped him and put him on display, C'rizz had been in chains, wearing nothing but a thong, the better to display his alien body to an incredulous audience. The thong had left little to the imagination. Still, a little was more than nothing—which is what Charley now faced. He did not resemble Canova's nude Napoleon in the least.

Her imagination had failed her. She had assumed that underneath, despite his alienness, C'rizz was like human men. Her youth meant that she had no personal experience of men beyond stolen kisses, but she'd inferred much from artwork and extrapolation from the little boys she'd cared for. Yet C'rizz was wholly inhuman. Like a little boy, he was hairless, yet she knew he was an adult. His genitalia were a much deeper shade of blue than the rest of his body. The slight ridges that characterized his head were echoed on his chest, playing down its center to his hips, then lower, framing a thick, heavy, smooth knob. He seemed to have no testicles. Jacob Crackles's thong had concealed a beautiful, flat flower, or perhaps a stone cast into water, sending it rippling.

"This is what you were trying to touch when you were tucking in this bandage yesterday," C'rizz said, ironic, as he briefly cupped himself, the pale blue of his hand contrasting with the dark blue of the flower. The bandage around his thigh intruded. "Perhaps you remember. I was chained and whipped."

"Yes," Mr. Fazackerly said faintly. Charley had to strain to hear him. "Yes, I remember. Jacob Crackles gave you this." He touched C'rizz's back gently, and under his hand, the skin turned from blue to red. "What did I do?" Mr. Fazackerly demanded, pulling back quickly. "I've hurt you."

"No, Jacob Crackles hurt me." C'rizz didn't sound angry. Rather, he sounded almost gentle. "You're curious. What happened?" He craned around to look over his shoulder. "Ah," he said when he caught sight of the red, as if he was unaware of what his body did when he wasn't looking.

"I am curious," Mr. Fazackerly admitted, his head very close to C'rizz's. "You haven't slapped my hand away," he added dryly. C'rizz had done that yesterday when Mr. Fazackerly and Charley were attempting to minister to his wounds, but C'rizz made a terrible patient.

"No, I haven't," C'rizz said levelly.

"Why not?"

"Because yesterday I was angry and in pain, and Charley was there. Today, I am neither, and Charley is not here."

Charley held her breath. Was C'rizz calling her out? Had he caught sight of her in the mirror, perhaps? Or had he sensed movement?

"Charley so affects you, then? Her opinion means so much?"

Neither was looking in her direction. She was safe behind the heavy door. She quickly glanced around. To her relief, she spotted a small door she hadn't noticed before, tucked behind a piece of furniture that held pairs upon pairs of men's shoes. A way out? And yet—they'd mentioned her name.

Behind her, C'rizz finally spoke. "Of course her opinion is important to me. She is my friend. That is not what I meant. She—inhibits me."

Charley crept back to the door, biting her lip in puzzlement. How could she inhibit him? Hadn't he just said he was her friend?

"And she's in love with this Doctor of yours? Not with—well, you?"

C'rizz gave a kind of laugh. "Most certainly not with me. Just as I'm not in love with her."

"Good."

She found the way that Mr. Fazackerly reached out and touched C'rizz's body most inappropriate, almost as if—no, he couldn't be—

"Beautiful," Mr. Fazackerly murmured. "To see you, I had thought the texture to be perhaps like snakeskin, but there are no scales, merely the suggestion of depth in the pigmentation." Red bloomed where he touched, like a wash of blood. Mr. Fazackerly traced C'rizz's shoulder, moved his hand along where a collarbone would be in a human, then down. He touched with his whole palm, not just with his fingers. He stopped when he reached C'rizz's side, and from underneath his hand bled a circle of hot red, shading into pink. "You have the most extraordinary eyes," he whispered, looking into them, aware of nothing but C'rizz, and Charley understood that she was witness to a seduction.

"I can't change them," C'rizz said.

"Good," Mr. Fazackerly said again. He pressed himself against C'rizz's back, and the two of them looked into the mirror, C'rizz ridiculous in Christian's wig, a Eutermesan playing at being human. As Charley watched, Mr. Fazackerly's hands came around to touch C'rizz's stomach, red trailing. "Why does it do that? Or do you do it?"

C'rizz smiled, suddenly utterly alien as the red flushed his face. "I'm doing nothing. You're doing it. My body is just responding."

"Ah," Mr. Fazackerly said, somehow emboldened, and Charley's breath caught as he reached lower, ribbons of red swirling, to take C'rizz's knob in hand.

The red ran riot as when Mr. Fazackerly caressed it. The red consumed C'rizz's body, swirls of depth and beauty emanating from his groin. The knob swelled and lengthened, not by much, and a horizontal slit opened like a mouth at the tip. When Mr. Fazackerly, staring at C'rizz in the mirror, touched it with his fingers, then opened it, C'rizz closed his eyes as if in pain—as if in pleasure—and grabbed Mr. Fazackerly's wrist.

"I think you'd best tell me what you might like," Mr. Fazackerly gasped, and as C'rizz turned around so they could kiss, Charley, face aflame, heart racing as if she'd just run a foot race, backed away from the crack in the door and sat against the wall, neatly pressed men's trousers brushing her wig.

She put her arms around her legs and buried her face in her knees. She hadn't known—but Mr. Fazackerly was a man—and C'rizz, dear C'rizz, who had lost his mate, L'da—and she had stopped all this happening yesterday by simply being herself, and she hadn't known—and Mr. Fazackerly, neat, tidy Mr. Fazackerly, with his incessant reminders of "Your Grace!" and his snippy remarks, wanting C'rizz—

"Get hold of yourself," she mouthed. On the other side of the door, she could hear sounds, rustling, little sighs, voices too low to make out words, but she put her hands over her ears anyway, because it was wrong of her to be here, wrong of her to see C'rizz like this, unguarded, wrong, wrong, wrong.

She'd been curious. She'd heard her name and had stayed, and then she'd stayed because she couldn't leave. At least one part of her curiosity had been satisfied: she'd seen a Eutermesan naked. It told her only that C'rizz was not remotely human. She had forgotten that, apparently. Her curiosity had led her here, and she was bitterly, bitterly sorry.

She didn't want to inhibit C'rizz. She wanted him to be himself. And apparently that was what he was doing right now: being himself with Mr. Fazackerly. She had seen the look on Mr. Fazackerly's face when he called up the red: he wanted to be close, as close as two people could be, just as Charley had held hands with the Doctor during their long, slow, endless walk, when she and he had become a single thing. She and the Doctor had been closer than two people could ever be, but there was nothing normal about what they had become, a new creature created of two separate entities fused together.

There it was: that desire to be one with...someone. Mr. Fazackerly felt it, and so did she.

And so did C'rizz.

She could not deny him that, no matter how much this troubled her.

On the other side of the door, C'rizz moaned and Mr. Fazackerly said breathlessly, "There?" and C'rizz said, "Yes, please, yes."

It could be her own desire. She understood. She tried to understand.

Charley pulled herself to her feet as quietly as she could.

She crept to the little door at the back of the dressing room and pulled aside the bookcase-like item that held the shoes, careful to lift so no sound of scraping could be heard. She pushed down on the small hook that acted as a doorknob and pulled. Careful of her wig, she ducked underneath and found herself inside a sort of closet.

Behind her, C'rizz's voice raised, pleading: Please. Yes. You.

Please. Yes. You. Under her hand the Doctor, swirls of red bringing them together, only he'd said no.

He'd said no.

Charley shut the little door firmly behind her and stood to her full height. Her eyes felt hot. She couldn't cry; she'd ruin her makeup. She had to ride sidesaddle today, with C'rizz and the duke of Wellington and Mr. Fazackerly. She had to pretend she knew nothing of the scarlet that moved across C'rizz's body, desire made manifest by Mr. Fazackerly's touch.

She was C'rizz's friend. Nothing he could do would change that.

Nothing.