Title: Extracurricular Social Interaction For The Clueless And Inept
Fandom: Sarah Jane Adventures
Pairing: Clyde/Luke
Rating: PG (by my standards, anyway)
Word Count: 4710
Genre: Slash
Summary: Luke discovers that being grown by aliens in a lab for various nefarious purposes really doesn’t help when your best friend decides he’s got a crush on you.
Author’s Notes: Waiting for my bus ticket to the Special Hell to be posted to me for writing this, though I admit it was ridiculously fun. And entirely the fault of my friend Holly, who ruthlessly encourages plotbunnies that should probably be killed for the good of mankind. She’s only seen about half an hour of SJA and still encouraged me to write this (having said that I haven’t seen SJA since the last series ended so my characterisation is almost certainly off). So this is dedicated to Holly :D And I’ll quickly hold up a banner saying: They’re All Underage! to make it clear that it’s ok, it’s peer-group slashing and therefore not very creepy.



“You know,” Clyde begins cheerfully, “There was this film on last night where these evil aliens were all growing people in jars and stuff.”

“That’s like me,” Luke says.

Maria, who has, up until this point, been investigating her school lunch with a disgusted expression that even Luke can decipher, finally looks up. She raises an eyebrow at Clyde and he looks away quickly.

“Kind of,” he says, “But they were, like, evil murderous people clone things without proper eyes.”

Luke thinks about this. “But I’m not an evil murderous clone!” he protests.

Clyde nods. “Exactly.”

Maria is frowning, which tells Luke that for once he’s not the only one feeling confused. He decides to follow this until someone decides to explain what’s going on; sooner or later, someone usually does.

“Oh.”

Clyde shrugs. “What I think I’m trying to say is that I’m glad you’re not an evil murderous alien clone without proper eyes.”

By this time, Maria has her head in her hands and is murmuring “Boys”, though Luke has no idea what gender has to do with anything.

“Good,” he says, smiling.

+

Luke is perfectly aware of the concept of having friends, and he likes having Clyde and Maria and being able to talk to them and not have them frown in the concerned fashion that most people do when talking to him – Luke isn’t entirely sure why they look like that, but he thinks it’s probably best not to ask again, because the last time he brought it up Maria went very quiet and Clyde said he had to go and pick up his maths book that he’d left in the library, which he hadn’t because Luke was with him when they were doing homework and Clyde packed up everything and took it with him, so obviously Clyde was lying about it, though Luke still isn’t sure why.

His friends are always giving him tips on how to act more like a normal kid, like not putting up his hand in class every time he knows the answer, and just because he knows more than the teacher he probably shouldn’t point out every time that they’re wrong. Maria tends to explain things to him while biting her lips and not looking him in the eye, signs Luke has learned that mean she’s uncomfortable; though Luke doesn’t know why she would be because she’s being very helpful. Clyde, on the other hand, tends to kick him underneath the desk and mutter things like “put your bloody hand down” between his teeth; but the same sentiment is there.

And Luke is working on acting like everyone else; it’s just so very hard.

+

It’s taken Luke a while to learn what sports are for. He tried asking people but the answers were woefully inadequate. Even his mum, who is normally very helpful in telling Luke about the more confusing and silly aspects of life on Earth, didn’t really explain very well. And Maria’s dad was worse than useless, although perhaps that was because he was watching a football match on the television at the time and kept yelling incomprehensible things at the screen while trying to answer Luke’s question. Luke wasn’t sure why he was doing that, since the people at the football match wouldn’t be able to hear Maria’s dad’s opinions on the referee, but he remembered something Maria had told him about not pointing out things that seemed obvious to him but might offend other people, and gave up.

They have to play sports at school, something which Luke is not very fond of until he realises that football is basically just maths; it’s all about angles and Luke is very good at angles. He draws up an equation calculating how to win any football match ever, and shows it to Maria at break one day. She listens in silence while he explains it, gives him a huge grin, and then tells him not to show the other boys because they probably won’t be suitably impressed.

Luke obediently doesn’t show anyone but during the next PE lesson he scores six goals. From being one of the worst in the class, he’s suddenly better than everyone else. It’s a nice feeling, even if he’s still not entirely sure what the point of sport is.

“That was cool,” Clyde tells him, punching his shoulder as they walk back to the changing rooms. It’s a friendly punch, not the attack kind of punch, and Luke smiles a little tentatively.

“It was?”

“Very cool,” Clyde assures him, smacking his hand between Luke’s shoulder blades and then walking away to change back into his school uniform.

Luke feels proud of himself. He doesn’t think anything he’s ever done has been described as ‘cool’ before.

+

The best way to learn about life on Earth and the person he ought to turn into is to watch television, Luke decides. After all, different forms of society and all different kinds of people are shown, and if he’s going to start learning about being a proper person (his mum tells him not to refer to himself like that; of course he’s a proper person, he just doesn’t completely understand his surroundings yet) then it’s best to watch them in action. The best thing about television, Luke has realised, is that he can watch people to his heart’s content without any of them turning around and demanding: what the hell are you looking at, freak?

People on television shout at each other a lot more than most real people do, Luke decides, and they seem to find social barriers entirely optional. Most teenagers on television are throwing themselves on each other without a single thought as to whether the other person would like their personal space invaded, and Luke watches kissing with a confused sort of feeling. It doesn’t look entirely comfortable or entirely natural for people to touch each other like that, but considering the way kids giggle in the corridors at school and the pleased expressions of the people on television, Luke seems to be the only person thinking this.

After watching enough programmes that he’s fairly certain his mum wouldn’t let him watch if it weren’t for the fact she doesn’t know he’s watching them, Luke begins to wonder what it would feel like to let someone get that close. Obviously, the chances of ever getting that close to him seem rather small because of course most people seem to be scared of him, but it’s an interesting thought anyway.

“Don’t you have homework?” his mum asks, walking into their living room to find Luke sprawled on the sofa with the remote.

“I’m learning about life,” Luke replies cheerfully.

His mum looks doubtfully at the screen and then at him.

“… I don’t think you should learn about life from Hollyoaks,” she says carefully.

+

Maria gets a cold and has to stay at home while her immune system fights it. Luke misses her and goes around to tell her he hopes she gets better soon, although he can’t get too close to her in case he catches the illness himself. As his mum points out, they don’t actually know if he can get sick or not, but it’s best not to test it.

She still isn’t better the next day, so only Clyde and Luke walk home from school. Clyde is complaining loudly about the large pile of maths homework they have been given and how there is no way he can complete it, and anyway, how is maths at all relevant in real life?

“Actually,” Luke says, “Mathematics is in everything. Without maths there would be no physics and then our universe wouldn’t be able to hold itself together at all. Even little things like football rely on maths.” Clyde is making a face at him, so Luke adds: “I can do your homework for you, if you want. I like maths and it won’t take me very long.” Clyde is still silent, so he adds: “If you want,” one more time, since he’s not sure what else to say.

Clyde is just looking at him with an expression on his face, but Luke can’t decipher it. He desperately thinks back to that afternoon when he and Maria made flashcards with pictures on in an attempt to make reading other people’s emotions clearer, but Luke is 97.8% certain that this expression was not on the cards. It is concerning.

“Are you all right, Clyde?” he asks carefully.

Clyde seems to come back into himself again. “…Yeah.” He smiles. “Come on, if you come by my house I’ll see if I can find my old roller skates. Everyone has to have at least one roller skate related injury before they grow up.”

“Oh.” Luke frowns. “Is it mandatory?”

Clyde slings a casual arm around his shoulders, grinning.

“You know, mate, one day I’m going to get the hang of talking to you without feeling like I’m going mad.”

+

The subconscious is an interesting thing. It sorts together all the things you know and the things you’ve seen and the things you didn’t even know and then shuffles them together into dreams. Luke has always liked dreams, even the bad ones, because he finds it fascinating to find out what certain areas of his mind are thinking about without him even realising it.

A couple of days later, and he’s reliving the walk home with Clyde. They’re discussing things that don’t make sense, because that’s the point of dreams, but then Clyde is looking at him with the inscrutable expression again. But now Luke knows exactly what that look means, because he has seen it before – at least, he has on television. And in his dream he doesn’t tell Clyde about maths homework and Clyde doesn’t mention roller skates at all. This time, Luke remains quiet and Clyde’s expression doesn’t change at all. Instead, he stops walking and leans into Luke.

Luke can smell him, this close; Lynx body spray and the detergent Clyde’s mum uses on his school shirts and Wrigley’s mint chewing gum, and he can’t see anything because Clyde is so near to him; and very strangely, Luke finds his mouth opening, even though he doesn’t want to say anything at all.

He wakes up, frowning.

+

“I watched another film last night,” Clyde says.

“Do you ever do any homework?” Maria asks him, laughing. She’s brought lunch from home for once and therefore is not trying to eat the unusual food the cafeteria ladies see fit to serve up. Luke is poking at his own food in a hopeless fashion. He knows exactly how many millions of tastebuds he has on his tongue, and he knows that all of them are going to hate what he’s got for lunch today. It doesn’t help.

“Homework.” Clyde rolls his eyes. “Whatever.”

Maria laughs. “Do I even want to know what the film was about?”

“Well, there were these pod people-”

“More science-fiction?” Maria smiles.

“It makes me feel superior,” Clyde tells her, shrugging. “Now I’ve met, like, real aliens, I like laughing at how stupid the films are.”

“Productive,” Maria mumbles, in the tone of voice that Luke has come to realise means that she’s being sarcastic. Sarcasm is when someone says something but they actually don’t mean that, they mean the opposite. “What did the pod people do?”

“Well,” Clyde explains, “‘Cause they were, like, made rather than being actual people, they had no belly buttons. Weird, right?”

Luke stares at his disgusting school lunch, suddenly acutely aware that he has no navel either. Just an entirely smooth length of skin between his ribs and hips. He spends most of his time in the changing rooms terrified that someone will notice; though apparently Clyde hasn’t, so maybe no one else has either.

When he dares to look up, his cheeks still feeling hot and uncomfortable for reasons he is not entirely sure of, Maria is openly glaring at Clyde.

“You are not being subtle,” she hisses. “Remember, we talked about this?”

Luke has no idea what they are talking about, so he ignores them and takes a tentative bite of one of the carrots on his plate. It is weak and watery and has been cooked for too long. He chews and swallows with difficulty. Clyde shifts a few times in his seat, then picks up his tray.

“I have an essay I have to finish,” he shrugs. “‘Cause I wasn’t doing homework last night and all. I’ve got to go to the library.”

Luke nods and says goodbye but it takes Maria a minute longer to say goodbye to Clyde. She is still looking very intently at him and saying things with her eyes that Luke can make no sense of at all. Once Clyde has gone, she looks at the bad-tasting heap of lunch on Luke’s tray.

“Here,” Maria says, smiling, “I’ll share my lunch with you.”

+

Maria is staying late to help out with the school paper, mostly so she can come up with stories to hide the fact that aliens seem to keep invading their local area, which leaves Clyde and Luke to walk home again. Luke finds himself feeling nervous, which is strange because he knows that Clyde is not going to hurt him. Clyde is his friend, and just because Luke’s subconscious seems to be having unusual theories doesn’t actually make any difference at all.

“Did you get your essay done?” Luke asks.

Clyde looks confused for a moment as though he doesn’t know what Luke is talking about, and then nods. “Oh, right, yeah. ‘Course I did.”

It has been bothering Luke all afternoon, so he takes a breath and looks Clyde in the eye. “I don’t have a belly button,” he admits. That unusual heat arrives in his cheeks again, making Luke feel momentarily dizzy and very stupid.

“You don’t?” Luke can’t read the expression on Clyde’s face; he thinks part of it is surprise but he’s not sure if there’s disgust there too. People are so difficult.

“No,” Luke says. They’re walking onto one of the quiet suburban streets near Luke’s home, and there’s no one around, no cars or anything. Luke pulls his school shirt out from where it’s tucked into his trousers and raises it a few inches. “See?”

Clyde looks at the patch of skin revealed and blinks a few times. He seems to be having difficulty saying anything, and Luke wonders if he will lose a friend for something he can’t help; it’s not his fault the Bane didn’t give him a bellybutton.

“Wow,” Clyde murmurs at last. “Can I…?”

He runs the tip of the index finger of his right hand down Luke’s stomach, clearly looking for the little indentation that everyone else has. His touch is strange; Luke feels almost ticklish at the light contact, and even though it isn’t cold out here, for a second he has the strangest urge to shiver. Clyde pulls his hand away quickly, like he does in the science labs when he gets too close to the Bunsen burners, and looks away.

“You really don’t have a belly button,” he murmurs. Luke quickly shoves his shirt back into his trousers, and they start walking again.

“Does that mean I’m a pod person?” he asks after a moment, just to break the quiet. Clyde seems to be thinking very hard about something, but he smiles at Luke.

“I don’t think so,” he says. “Do you have any special powers?”

Luke has been watching television a lot lately, and is starting to learn little things about social interactions.

“I could kill you with my brain,” he offers.

Clyde turns to look at him, an expression Luke manages to identify as slight fear on his face. “Really?”

Luke grins. “No.”

Clyde smacks him on the arm, and although it’s not a friendly smack there’s a certain amount of affection there because Luke is aware that Clyde could probably really hurt him if he wanted to.

“Was that a joke?” Clyde asks, grinning again. “You know, you might not be entirely hopeless after all.”

+

A week later, and the three of them have plans to go to the park and relax on Sunday afternoon. At the last minute, Maria’s mum arrives to take her out to the cinema. Luke is not sure how he feels about Maria’s mum; she clearly thinks Luke is strange and doesn’t seem to have a lot of time for anyone but herself, and she’s so overpowering that on the few times he’s met her Luke has sort of wanted to curl up behind the sofa and hide until she went away. He has not ever said any of this to Maria though; he doesn’t think she would like to know.

Luke and Clyde still go and kick a football around for a while. Now he is good at football Luke is beginning to realise why it’s fun; it is fundamentally pointless but he likes that he is so much better at it than Clyde is. Clyde does not seem to be very happy about this.

“Is that one of your freaky alien powers?” he asks later, when they’re walking home again.

“I don’t have alien powers,” Luke tells him, feeling a little hurt. “I’m not an alien!”

“‘Course you’re not, mate,” Clyde replies quickly, smiling. “I’m just teasing you. You are really good at football though.”

“It’s all maths,” Luke replies simply. He remembers that they’ve had this conversation already. And he remembers his dreams about this conversation too.

From the way Clyde’s mouth has pressed into a tight line, Luke thinks that Clyde might remember their conversation too. They walk in silence until they come to the street corner where they part ways. It’s a cool, still early evening, and so quiet that Luke can hear the cars driving past, streets away.

“See you tomorrow,” he says carefully, because it is school tomorrow and he has come to understand that’s a normal way of saying goodbye to someone. He’s getting there.

Clyde looks nervous, which is strange, and then he sort of leans nearer. For a strange moment Luke isn’t aware if he’s awake or asleep and then it doesn’t matter because Clyde presses his lips against Luke’s.

Contact is a strange thing, Luke decides. Clyde’s closed mouth against his really shouldn’t feel any different to when their shoulders touch when they sit next to each other, and it shouldn’t feel more intimate than when Maria hugs him and most of their bodies touch. Somehow, though, it does feel different, and for some reason Luke’s stomach feels like an invisible hand is squeezing it really hard. Then, a split second later, when Clyde seems to realise what he’s doing and stumbles back a step, Luke’s stomach seems to disappear, like the invisible hand has taken it away completely.

Clyde kissing him has stolen Luke’s stomach and he tries to open his mouth and say something and finds that he can’t. Clyde himself is staring, wide-eyed, at Luke.

“Oh bloody hell,” he murmurs, and then goes running off down the road without looking back.

+

Luke is quiet all evening, telling his mum all about the football when she specifically asks but otherwise saying nothing. He hides up in his room a lot and does all the extra maths in the back chapters of the textbook because it helps make him calm.

“Something’s bothering you,” his mum says, coming in with a cup of tea for Luke. She always makes him tea and although Luke is not entirely sure what tea has to do with feeling better he likes the taste so he doesn’t mind.

Luke thinks about telling her all about Clyde and the way he looks at Luke sometimes and how he doesn’t know what any of it actually means. He wants to tell her that his stomach feels like it’s been crushed and he doesn’t know why. He thinks about trying to explain that Clyde kissed him for about three seconds on their way home today. But somehow all of that seems complicated and embarrassing and he instinctively realises that he can’t tell her. Anyway, he’s seen his mum angry, and if she got angry with Clyde she might not let him come around any more and then Maria would get sad and so would Luke.

“It’s nothing,” he says aloud, taking a big mouthful of tea. It’s a bit too hot and hurts his throat on the way down. “Everything’s ok.”

His mum smiles but although her mouth moves her eyes are still serious.

“You are turning into a proper teenager,” she says. She hesitates. “You do know you can talk to me, don’t you Luke?”

“I do.” He smiles at her again.

She nods. “Ok then.”

Then she leaves Luke to his maths and his complicated thoughts. It is the first time that algebra does not seem to be able to fix everything.

+

The next morning, in registration, Clyde does not sit next to Luke like he usually does. Instead, he is sitting with a large group of girls on the other side of the room, making them all laugh. Luke sits down and tries to work out what he should do. Obviously Clyde is not very happy that he kissed Luke and Luke wants to tell him that it’s fine, he doesn’t expect Clyde want to do it again and they’re still friends and Luke will never tell anyone ever. But Clyde doesn’t come over to him and Luke thinks that this might be one of those things that people don’t like talking about in public. Just in case, he keeps his head bowed and tries really hard to read his biology textbook.

By morning break, Luke has started writing out a formula based on hormone levels and exhaustion from playing football combined with potential temporary insanity in order to explain what Clyde did yesterday, because then he can show Clyde that it’s all fine and Clyde will look at him again. Clyde is still hanging around with the girls, talking about something and waving his hands around expressively. Maria is sitting with Luke and looking between him and Clyde anxiously.

“What did you do yesterday?” she asks.

“Played football,” Luke replies, adding brackets to his equation and starting a new line.

Maria sighs heavily and then walks over to Clyde. She pulls him back to where Luke is sitting with her hand clenched in his jumper.

“Something happened between you two,” she says, putting her hands on her hips and for a scary moment looking exactly like her mum. “Clyde is flinging himself at girls with no dignity at all-”

“Hey!” Clyde says, but Maria ignores him.

“-And Luke has been writing this equation for about an hour. I’m not sure which of you I’m more worried about.”

“There’s nothing to worry about,” Luke says evenly. He finishes the equation and finds that the answer is x over y to the power of m over p squared, which is good except that he realises he’s forgotten to give the letters corresponding real values. This has never happened to him before and it is a little distressing.

“Everything’s fine,” Clyde adds.

Maria is looking hard at Clyde again, and Luke wonders if maybe Maria knows what is going on. After all, she can read body language far better than Luke can and perhaps she has figured at least some of it out.

“You two are going to talk,” she says, looking terrifyingly determined for a minute. She pushes Clyde until he sits down next to Luke. “I am going to go and pretend to be interested in something else for four minutes, and then when I come back you will have talked and this will all be ok. Do you understand?”

They both nod meekly. Maria can be scarily like her mother at times. She walks away and Clyde turns to look at Luke. Luke wants to be the first to speak, and he wants to say something sensible and calm, like they do on television, but he can’t think of anything.

“You know,” Clyde says, “This is normal. Friends do this kind of thing all the time, and it’s, you know, normal.”

Luke looks at him. “Clyde, I was grown by the Bane for evil world-domination purposes and even I know that this isn’t normal.”

Clyde rolls his eyes. “I think I preferred you when you were naïve,” he says.

“I watch a lot of television,” Luke replies blithely. “It’s educational.”

“So we’re ok?” Clyde asks.

“Of course we’re ok,” Luke tells him.

When Maria comes back they’re chatting about nothing like they always do. On the whole, Luke thinks that this might be a relief.

+

They all go over to Maria’s after school to do homework, which Luke has discovered means not doing actual homework, but sitting around drinking a lot of carbonated drinks and eating biscuits and watching cartoons that were made for younger children. For some reason all the awkwardness between Luke and Clyde has gone, which is nice because Luke could tell it was upsetting Maria and it wasn’t very nice for him either. Eventually, Maria’s dad comes to tell them that they have to go home and do some actual geography, which implies that he does actually know that doing homework doesn’t have anything at all do with school.

Luke walks across the road and Clyde comes with him because he needs to borrow Luke’s history textbook; Clyde has left his at school and is, as usual, leaving his homework to the night before it is due in. Luke has told him many times that this is not sensible but Clyde doesn’t seem to care. It feels strange, just for a minute, to have Clyde in his room. It is not the first time that Clyde has been in his room but usually Maria is there and also it’s the first time Clyde has been in his room since Luke had his dreams about him. He takes his history textbook off the shelf where he keeps all his school things so he won’t lose them and turns around to find Clyde is standing really close to him. And Luke could ask him why he’s standing there but he doesn’t want to.

Clyde kisses him again and Luke drops the textbook. Clyde pulls away and stares at Luke, frowning a little.

“Are you looking like that because you’re freaked out and disgusted, or because you grew up in a jar and have no idea what to do next?”

Luke can’t get his brain to function for a moment, which is a strange feeling. “I didn’t grow up in a jar,” he manages.

Clyde laughs softly and then leans into him. He smells exactly the way he did in Luke’s dream and when their lips touch again Luke reacts instinctively and opens his mouth a little. Clyde does the same and a second later Luke suddenly understands exactly what it feels like to have another human being that close to him and also why the idea is so appealing.

It’s always nice to learn new things.

+

“So,” Clyde says at lunch three days later, picking at cold cafeteria chips, “I was watching this film last night…”

Maria rolls her eyes.

“And what was the film called?” she asks.

“Brokeback Mountain,” Clyde replies.

Maria chokes on one of her chips and then starts laughing uncontrollably. Clyde glares at her and, as usual, Luke has no idea what’s happening. When she’s finally calmed down a little, she lowers her voice and says:

“Clyde, if you’re trying to ask Luke out it might be better not to use a film that he’s never seen and that ends really tragically.”

“I’m not asking him out,” Clyde hisses, glancing around them. No one is listening; no one ever does. “I was just trying to explain that, you know, it’s ok if two guys decide that they like each other.”

Maria presses her face into her hand. “Boys,” she murmurs, giggling.

Luke still has no idea what gender has to do with anything. He just smiles.