Title: Necking
Author: betawho
Rating: G
Characters: 12th Doctor, Nardole, Bill Potts
Words: 617
Summary: Bill Potts walks in on the 12th Doctor doing something very strange to Nardole's neck...
"Sit still, Nardole," the Doctor groused.
"It tickles!"
The Doctor grabbed his head and turned it forward. "If you keep hunching up your shoulders like that, I'm going to have to take your head off to fix it," the Doctor warned.
"Can't you just disconnect the nerve endings until you're done?" his majordomo asked, pitifully.
"No." The Doctor scowled and pried the flat headed screwdriver down into the seam at the back of his neck.
"Seriously, how did you manage to bend the seating clamps?" The Doctor pried at a band of metal underneath the artificial skin. "What position have you been sleeping in?"
"Sitting up, mostly. It lolls if I lie down. I feel like the Elephant Man."
The Doctor craned his head and stared into the back of his neck. "Yes, well, the analogy is appropriate."
"Oh, well, Thank You!" Nardole turned his head to glare.
The Doctor grabbed him by the ear and shoved his head forward. "Don't move, I've almost got it."
The Doctor wrenched at the bent metal collar with the screwdriver. It slipped between the two halves and something in Nardole's head went, "Twing!"
Bill opened the door and something pinged off the door jamb beside her. She reared back in surprise.
She stared at the Doctor and Nardole. Nardole was sitting in the Doctor's desk chair. The Doctor hunched over his back, a screwdriver rammed into the back of his neck.
"Don't mind that, it was just a nostril." The Doctor waved off whatever had clattered to a stop under the desk. Bill decided she wasn't going to look.
"Should I come back later, after you've finished killing him?" she asked.
"I'm not killing him," the Doctor leaned sideways, pulling all his weight on the screwdriver as he pried. "I'm fixing his stiff neck."
"Hello, Bill," Nardole said cheerfully, his head tilted down. He wiggled his fingers at her.
Bill stared, her eyebrows working. "If you're going to pry his head off, I'm not staying."
The Doctor grunted, he leaned back as if he was using a crowbar. Nardole sat casually, as if he didn't feel the weight.
"Give us a hand here!" the Doctor shouted.
"Not on your life!" Bill gave him a scowl, then leaned sideways and looked under the desk, seeing the glint of a short, shiny, metal tube. So that's what a robotic nostril looked like.
The Doctor growled with a whine and leaned back with all his strength. The screwdriver gave way with a Pop!
The Doctor fell backward on his bum, the long screwdriver still clutched in one hand.
Nardole swiveled his head left and right with a smooth whirring noise. "Oh, that's much better!"
The Doctor gave him a glare from the carpet. "Glad to be of service," he said sardonically. He scrambled to his feet. Nardole reached back and smoothed down the artificial skin on his nape, sealing it.
Bill looked back and forth between the two of them, one eyebrow cocked. "So what's today's lesson? Chiropractic for robots?"
Nardole stood up and straightened his coat with dignity. "I am not a robot. I am a cybernetically enhanced individual."
Bill turned that eyebrow on the Doctor, behind him. The Doctor rolled his eyes as he stowed his screwdriver away in a junky old toolbox.
Bill slid the small tube out from under the desk with one shoe. It looked clean. She picked it up and handed it to Nardole.
"This is yours I believe?"
"Thank you." He took it and shoved it up his nose with one thumb.
"Will you be wanting tea?"
<> (More Stories...)