down_in_glory (down_in_glory) wrote in bearandbarnacle, @ 2010-02-22 13:48:00 |
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Entry tags: | event, jackpost, noticing, topic |
Jack Harkness: Event: Something Odd (or, The Neighbors Wake Up and Smell the Coffee)
Jack is on very good terms with the neighbors … even after Val's thieving of their post, Val's inventive torment of the little dog belonging to the Fitzwilliams in the next house on the right, and the time they let Val give Moira Brown, the girl from the family that lives on the other side, the flu.
The Fitzwilliams are an older couple and Jack doesn't know if they've caught on, or if they, like some of his older customers, have somehow gotten the idea that he and Zel are brothers – but the Browns definitely know that Zel and Jack are … together (he's never quite sure what their shared adjective should be, though he's pretty much settled on “partner” for a noun). They don't seem to mind, as Jack still tends to half-expect. Zel is still tutoring Thomas in maths, anyway, though that might be less a matter of tolerance and more a matter of the difficulty of finding someone else who can do parabolic equations in his head.
More strange is the fact that none of the neighbors have ever asked which one of them Val belongs to, but today Karen Brown is standing in Jack's workshop, having come to return a screwdriver she borrowed for the construction of her second son's science-fair project, and is looking with a strange expression through the open door to where Val is playing with his rat in the backyard. Jack tries to remember his prepared answers.
“I really can't place Zelgadis' accent,” she says rather suddenly, requiring Jack to readjust his mental bearings a bit. “Or his name. Is it Indian?”
“Japanese, actually,” he tells her. He knows this is not actually true, but it's the only way to explain the occasional audible call of “Val-san!”
“Val must be his, then?” she asks.
“He's adopted,” Jack replies, which he can technically prove – Professor McGonagall sent away to her magical government to get them all the legal documents.
Mrs. Brown has a strange, abstracted look. “And the girl, Dora, she isn't …. You have a lot of people living here, Jack.”
“Dora is Iago's daughter, not ours. He owns that pub in town, the Bear and Barnacle. He's going through a nasty divorce. They're just staying with us until they find a new flat.”
“And the blonde boy?”
“With the braid? That's Ed. He's … probably just here temporarily.”
Her scrutinizing look is getting sharper. “Mrs. Fitzwilliam would tell you that this area really isn't zoned to be a youth hostel.”
Jack laughs. “We really aren't. Just helping out a few friends and they all happened to need a place to stay at once.”
“The pregnant teenager?”
“My friend Victoire.” His sense of propriety makes him add, “She and her fiancee had the baby in October.”
“Hmm.” She's looking more and more nonplussed.
“We have people over for dinner a lot,” Jack explains helplessly, his mind going down the list of frequent visitors she hasn't mentioned yet – Gaav being the most worrying.
Finally, Mrs. Brown says, shaking her head, “You and Zelgadis have a lot of very strange friends.”
Jack can only wholeheartedly agree.