[for rude_not_ginger] what you see will defy explanation

[galeforcehero]

When someone like Dorothy Gale is faced with a situation almost entirely beyond her control, it brings with it an obscene amount of stress. When it involves someone she cares about, it triples. And because she is the way she is, it stays internalized, churning around inside the pit of her stomach, and keeping her up at night. Since the Doctor

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[rude_not_ginger]

He's out in the vortex. Sometimes, he just sits out here, the TARDIS in stasis, and thinks. Sometimes, he sits in the library and reads and lets his mind go off to a variety of places, just remembering the things he does.

And sometimes, he plays ping-pong. He's set the table up near the console room so he can bounce the ball off of the wall and play with himself over and over and over again and not think at all. It's a brilliant strategy, until he hears the blip of an incoming message. He misses the ball's return and it hits him squarely in the forehead.

"Ow."

He picks up the phone and before he's even really registered it, he's set the TARDIS for Kansas. Dorothy's bedroom, to be precise.

[galeforcehero]

The TARDIS starts to materialize inside her bedroom, which is unusual even by Dorothy's standards of the word, but she doesn't hurry overmuch in what she's doing-- putting her jeans on, one leg at a time. By the time the familiar blue box has fully appeared, she's standing ready, her little silver key in her hand.

"You're out of your mind, landing inside the house." She closes the door behind her and strolls up the ramp, hanging her knapsack up on the coatrack as she passes, almost like an afterthought. When she pats the console hello and gives its pilot a great big hug, it's much more deliberate. "No way my Aunt and Uncle didn't hear that. I'm gonna have to explain to them what you were doing in my bedroom."

[rude_not_ginger]

He hugs her back, taking a little longer before he lets go than normal. He's missed her. He's missed her more than he'll probably admit to her. He gives her a smile, then a teasing shrug.

"Just as long as you don't tell them the truth," he says.

[galeforcehero]

"Oh, the tales I'll tell," she grins back, and pulls back just far enough to take his hands in hers and give them a squeeze. There's a beat of silence, then, where she momentarily considers what exactly she could say that Auntie Em would accept as truth. Uncle Henry would eventually conclude he just doesn't want to know.

"So, here's the deal, Stringbean," Dorothy declares with a mock grandiosity, leaning her hip against the console and gesturing gracefully around the room. "Obviously you and I both go a little cuckoo without each other around, and don't bother denying and trying to tell me that you're always cuckoo, I mean more so than usual. That's clearly not gonna work for either of us, so I propose we don't do that anymore. The being-apart-for-too-long, I mean. I've been thinking, and I really believe it's the best thing for our mental health."