Jamie wouldn't describe himself as broken. No, not ever, not even if you held facts and evidence up and shook them in his face. He knew who he was, and what he was, and it had nothing to do with him that the rest of the universe seemed to sing a different tune.

Had the thought ever strayed across his mind? Unasked for? Oh, aye, yeah.

Had he taken to the habit, lately, of stretching out in his room on the TARDIS and thinking about what was off kilter about him? Well, he'd never admit to it - if Zoe, or heaven forbid the Doctor, asked him about what he'd been up to on one of those ponderous afternoons aboard the TARDIS while the others were occupied with all their big smart activities, well, he'd tell them he had a nap. Or brush off the question altogether, turn it around on him. Or her rather. Zoe was likely to ask him questions about anything and everything, the nosey wee lass. The Doctor... well, Jamie never could predict what the Doctor might think or say or notice. Sometimes he asked Jamie an endless array of questions he didn't half understand. Other times they would navigate days and adventures out of the TARDIS with barely a word between them, but being able to read exactly what was going on in each other's eyes.

What him and the Doctor had going on was weird, right? Jamie didn't know. A part of him didn't want to know. He almost felt like if he ever spoke to the Doctor about it, if he put words to the things they were, that it would all become too much to bear. It was better to play on the edges of things, and just be the Doctor and Jamie.

It was more than that though; if he was forced to hold it up to the light, and properly look all over his own fear, it was that he didn't know that he could commit to anything, whatever the Doctor might be considering as the answer to what they were to each other. It's not that he wasn't capable of loyalty or kinship, no! He was more than proud to say he had both of those in spades. But it was a more fundamental brokenness - he couldnt count on himself to feel the right things, to want the right things.

Some days Jamie wanted it all. Passion and touch. A whirlwind romance. But most days he was content, more than content, to just be him and the Doctor. He wouldn't measure up, in any case, as a lover to whatever the Doctor was. But the Doctor was like him, wasn't he?

Usually, Jamie knew how to play the game. He'd had his share of experiences, kissing and the sort. He knew what people liked, he mostly knew what he liked. He knew when to apply a soft touch, be the right amount of charming and flirtatious. He'd had good luck with girls in the past.

But things were different with the Doctor. For one thing, when he held onto the Doctor, or his hand happened to brush against him, Jamie somehow felt like he was. Hmm. Connecting with the Doctor in some way. He knew it was a bit of a daft idea but he felt like it had to be true. He'd first noticed it early on, when he'd put an arm around the Doctor as he asked a question, and as the Doctor answered he realised that something, somehow, was clearer than it otherwise would be. Not that he could suddenly make head or tail of whatever it is the Doctor was saying, it wasn't like that. But it was like he could understand him better somehow, like he was getting something of the way the Doctor saw things beamed into his mind. So he'd taken to the habit of touching the Doctor whenever he asked him a question, and feeling that strange comfort as the usual confusion in his mind eased a little. He liked it, and he was glad the Doctor hadn't commented on it. Surely he'd noticed, but he still allowed Jamie to touch him.

Well, there had been that one time. The two of them had sat down, exhausted after a long day trekking across an alien world, and still with a few things to take care of but they were taking a break, having made sure Victoria had gone happily to bed. Jamie had meant to only rest a few moments but instead he'd fallen asleep, and waking up bleary eyed not long after he found himself curled into the Doctor's shoulder, arms draped across him. He barely had the chance to feel embarrassed before he noticed the look on the Doctor's face, and realised what had woken him was the Doctor trying to push Jamie's arm away from him. Jamie had just looked at him for a minute, the skin of his hand still touching that of the Doctor's, and he'd realised that blooming fresh in his mind was an intimacy with the man, thought and feeling unfurling from the prolonged touch between them, blissful in a way that the brief grabs and touches hadn't been able to betray.

The Doctor had looked at him warily, and Jamie had withdrawn his hand, but then, curious, of course, and trusting the Doctor with everything he was, reached up and touched the Doctor's face, wondering how it would feel, how his mind would feel against his palm.

There was a second, the merest second, of softness and song passing between them, and Jamie parted his lips, desperate to say something, anything, but then the Doctor removed Jamie's hand from his face, and stood up and away from him. Jamie had been crestfallen, watching the Doctor babble about the work they still had to do, blustering on as if nothing had happened. He'd picked himself up though, and folllowed the Doctor, of course he did. And he'd decided to follow his cue and not say a thing. But he wouldn't forget how it had felt.

One of the earliest things Jamie could remember from his tiny life was sitting on a hill watching the sun rise slowly through the trees, light branching out and filling the sky with a comforting brightness, and singing his wee heart out at the sight of it. Sometimes the memory played in his mind when the TARDIS took them somewhere extraordinary, like he was still that little boy entranced by something simple and wonderful. Sometimes being with the Doctor felt like that, like the world was magical and endless and soft and safe. Just like it had in that moment between them.

Looking at the Doctor and thinking I'm not meant to be like this you have made me something unlike myself. But then it's not as if he could've told you who he was before the Doctor. He'd always been on the outside looking in.

In the depths of the TARDIS, the Doctor was hard at work, attempting some maintenance. He passed much of his time like this, mostly during what his companions on the TARDIS took as the equivalent of nighttime.

He built it up, one thing then another, it all came cascading. He knew he could never afford a normal life, not in any manner of the concept. He was a renegade from his own people and unlike them but he could not have a human life either. He modelled some level of domesticity on the TARDIS and found comfort in it. But ultimately it was all a facade

Now, there were a lot of things that confused him about Jamie. There was of course the matter, early on, of that business with the Chameleons. He'd been separated from Jamie, and Ben and Polly of course, but Jamie had had, hmm, what was the right word... A romance, perhaps, with that girl Sam. The Doctor didn't have a problem with that of course, and had only glimpsed the edges of it. The Doctor simply wondered why, in the aftermath, with Ben and Polly deciding to return to their own time, and Jamie so attached to them both, and having made that very human connection with Sam, he hadn't chosen to stay behind on Earth himself. It wasn't Jamie's time of course, but it wasn't as if Jamie would have fit in if they ever managed to return to the Highlands. Even back then, Jamie had been changed beyond recognition from the boy Polly had brought onto the TARDIS. Though really that was nothing but the Doctor's fault. On the more difficult days the Doctor felt immense guilt for the way he had warped Jamie - none more so than right after Ben and Polly had left, and they'd chased after the TARDIS and gotten embroiled in a sadistic Dalek plot. He kept casting his mind back to the start of that whole affair, of him and Jamie waiting in that quaint diner. He'd been struck, then, of how, though Jamie wasn't from this time, how well he should fit in here, among people his age, who dressed like him, who he could come to understand, yet instead Jamie sat with the Doctor, commiserated with him, threw his lot in entirely with him. Oh it was certainly comforting, the Doctor couldn't deny that. But the memory still felt melancholic, to him, and even more so given what had followed. He and Jamie had never truly talked about it, of the Daleks forcing the Doctor to experiment on Jamie for their own ends, of his helplessness, his callousness, of the fight they'd had when Jamie thought he understood what was going on. Jamie's words still rang in his mind, after that long long night; You and me, we're finished. What had he meant, really, by that? They'd never talked about it, didn't have the chance, at the time, as they were corralled to Skaro and fought for their very lives, losing so many in the process and then charged with the care of Victoria afterwards. Oh, Victoria. The Doctor paused, briefly, in his tinkering and thinking, and simply closed his eyes, holding her there for as long as he could.

He missed her dearly, whenever she wandered back into his vision, and her leaving, his failing of her, of keeping her safe and happy, never failed to weigh him down. He and Jamie had fought then too, and Jamie had barely spoken to him for days in the aftermath. He hadn't understood how he could've let her go, saw that as the greater failing than the fact that she'd felt she had to leave them. But that was the heart of the problem, wasn't it? They always left, they could never stay, and them staying was almost the greater tragedy. Those who stayed only became more like him. He should've been concerned that Jamie had stayed as long as he had, stayed longer than anyone for a long time in fact. He should've been concerned, to all rights, but he was so selfish.

Susan had known, well, perhaps not everything. But she had known what they two had left behind and what was at stake if they were discovered. And that had only put her at odds with him, in his insistence on protecting her, until he finally realised he had to let her forge her on path on the Earth. It had been far better with Vicki, who’d known nothing and treated him as family anyway. But even she had left.

He couldn't dwell too much on it. Life in the TARDIS had always been a stopover for his companions on the way to something better, a return to normality. And some people - his throat felt dry, raw, suddenly - there had been no choice. The hiss of an airlock door. The onslaught of time rushing forward without mercy.

He screwed his eyes shut now. He tried not to think of the precious cargo he had aboard the TARDIS right now; couldn't allow himself to consider what could happen to Jamie, to Zoe, if he wasn't vigilant, if he failed them like so many before them. He

For there he was.

end with touch telepathy?