Of Satsumas and Biscuit Tins (1/1)
Title: Of Satsumas and Biscuit Tins
Rating: G
Characters/Pairing: Ten/Donna
Summary: A little treat for your Christmas stocking. The Doctor and Donna have a chat over midnight snacks.
Donna stumbled into the kitchen, rubbing her bleary eyes. Her slippers automatically made their way straight for the biscuit shelf like fluffy green homing pigeons narrowing in on their target.
Back home in Chiswick she’d never been a particularly kitchen person, but the TARDIS kitchen was another matter entirely. It was just so Doctor. Everything completely and endearingly mismatching; from the crookedly-hanging pop art prints and what she suspected were famous original paintings, to the bizarre cooking implements that she was loathe to use in case they were sonicked, to the fridge covered with souvenir magnets that the Doctor gleefully accumulated at every gift shop he visited.
Then there was the whole shelf of categorised tins, labelled in the Doctor's scrawling handwriting and saying things like “Biscuits” and “Other Biscuits” and “Miscellaneous Biscuits” and “Getting Slightly Soggy Now Biscuits” and “Swirly Jammy Biscuits” and “Broken Biscuity Bits” and “Chocolate Things That Fell Off Other Biscuits. So, Not Really Biscuits But Still Quite Good”. There was one that just said “Beware” and Donna always made sure to steer well clear of it, though she couldn't help wondering if that was where the Doctor hid all the good fudgy cookies.
Secretly she found it touching that the Doctor kept a tin on the end called “Biscuits Specially For Donna”.
Yawning, she unscrewed the lid and squinted into it.
Nothing inside except crumbs.
She groaned. So much for the label. Obviously he’d gotten there first. She checked the whole row of tins (except “Beware”) but they were all empty.
A sort of crunching sound began to register through her sleepy state. She turned slowly and did a double take as she saw the Doctor sitting at the table in his striped pyjamas, watching her and chewing away. Had he been there the whole time? He must have. She’d been so sleepy that she hadn’t even noticed.
“Had yourself a little midnight snack?” she said sarcastically, and the Doctor nodded, still chewing, obtuse to her annoyance. “Right then,” she said in resignation, dragging up another chair beside him. She noticed that he was hugging a tin to him the way an alcoholic lovingly clutches a bottle of beer. Donna knew that tin. It was the one labelled “Emergency Banana Biscuits” in big red letters. The Doctor always waved her away from it whenever she tried to pinch stuff out of it. She sighed and reached for the fruit bowl instead.
“Oh! You bought satsumas?” remarked the Doctor, swallowing his mouthful and peering over her shoulder.
“Yeah,” said Donna, taking one and glaring at him. “Couldn’t have left my biscuits alone and had one of these instead, could you?”
“Last time I had a satsuma ... must've been when I was with Rose.”
His voice was detached. Donna froze. What was he doing mentioning Rose? It was the one thing he never talked about. After their first meeting, her all wedding-dressed, she'd certainly never brought the topic up either. She eyed him, wondering if he was all right, and he must have noticed her expression because he continued quickly:
“Just reminded me, that's all. It was at Christmas. The one before I met you, actually. I was fighting a Sycorax.”
“You were fighting a whatsy-axe?”
He blew out a wistful sigh. “A Sycorax, Donna. Fighting it with a sword. And a satsuma.”
“With a sword,” she repeated incredulously. “And a satsuma. You, and a sword, and a satsuma. Fighting.”
“Yeah.” He paused, then held out the tin and rattled it. “Bickie?”
Now she knew he wasn’t all right. He never shared his emergency biscuits. She shook her head. The Doctor shrugged and put down the tin - well within reach - and picked up a satsuma instead, rolling it from hand to hand, looking at it but not really looking at it. He glanced at Donna, his eyes not leaving her as the satsuma continued to fly between his curling fingers. Donna stared back uncertainly. Finally she stuck her hand out and waggled her fingers in front of his eyes.
“Earth to Doctor. Or ... whatever planet you say for that.”
“Donna, am I a horrible, horrible, bad person?” asked the Doctor conversationally, satsuma still rolling.
“What? Of course not. Erm, what’s brought this on?”
He sighed, and the satsuma came to a halt under his palm.
“You.”
“Me! What’d I do?”
“Well, not you specifically. The satsuma. I just realised I haven’t even thought about Rose in - in ages, really. That's all.”
He started rolling the satsuma again, faster, nervously.
Donna placed her hand over his, stilling it. She smiled gently, benevolently.
Then she whacked him. Hard.
“Ow!”
“You haven’t even thought about Rose?” Donna whacked him again. “What the hell’s wrong with you?” This time she got the other arm. “You complete prat.” He shielded himself, curling up on his chair.
“Stoppit, stop hitting me! It was hard enough in the first place after she left, all right? It was getting tricky with us, what Rose wanted … her and me …”
Realisation dawned on Donna. She ceased hitting him - temporarily.
“Oh, I see. Should’ve known, really. That’s why you never talk about her, isn't it?”
“Yes,” said the Doctor, his face earnest. “Because she told me things - but I never - and the worst part is, Donna, she thought it was because I ran out of time, but it wasn’t. It was because I didn’t feel like that ...”
Looking at his scrunched-up face, all ideas of hitting flew out of Donna's head. She shoved her chair closer and wrapped the Doctor in a wordless hug, supposing that even Time Lords needed an agony aunt to spill their guts out to, on occasion.
“And then there was Martha,” went on the Doctor gloomily, spreading his hands in bemusement before bringing them to rest lightly on Donna's back. “What is it about me? You’re a woman. Tell me, do I attract women, Donna?”
His voice was plaintive, and she made sure to snort very sarcastically into his ear.
“Yeah, you’re a regular space Bond, you are.”
She felt him smile against her cheek.
“But then you shoved your way into my life,” he continued dreamily. “Donna Noble.”
She smiled at his typically him way of putting it. Her hand lifted to rub his neck, and with a sigh he leaned his head on her shoulder.
“Yeah,” she said softly. “And we’re fine. We’ll always be fine. We’re just mates.”
The words hung in the air between them. They didn’t sound quite right. She tried again:
“Good mates.”
The Doctor remained quiet, and the words still seemed rather inadequate, somehow.
“You were good mates with Rose and Martha,” pointed out Donna, and the Doctor finally made a noise of agreement. “Come on then, Spaceman. Aren’t we at least good mates too?”
“Very good mates, I’d say,” he mumbled. He sounded like he was going to say something more, but she heard him swallow and he promptly shut up. Donna wondered what he was thinking. She rubbed his neck comfortingly again, and his head snuggled against her like a bedraggled cat.
“When Rose left, you wanted to be miserable, didn't you,” said Donna with sudden insight. “Cos you thought she'd be miserable without you.”
The Doctor sighed, and his head on her shoulder felt weightier.
“Weeeeell. Something like that.”
“And now you’re miserable cos you only just realised you’ve finally moved on and you're not miserable any more. Bit twisted, isn’t it. Can't you just accept she'll have moved on with her life too? She's got to have. Don't beat yourself up about it.”
“Don't need to. You're pretty good at doing that for me.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Donna saw his hand lift surreptitiously to rub his arm. Her mouth twitched.
“Yeah yeah, Spaceman. You ask for it.”
“So - Rose'd want me to be happy,” continued the Doctor, lifting his head and looking at Donna, his face trusting. From the tone of his voice, Donna couldn't tell whether he was making a statement or actually asking her.
“Yes,” she agreed anyway, her hand pausing on the back of his neck, eyes inspecting him carefully. His eyes were all soft and brown and wide as they looked back at her. And, she thought, a bit questioning too. She could feel his breath coming and going lightly on her face, and suddenly noticed how close their faces actually were.
Donna stood up abruptly, her chair scraping back. So did the Doctor.
“I just have to go do the ... get the thing …” she stammered, and he nodded rapidly, gulping, his hand reaching out blindly and knocking over the biscuit tin. It rolled to the edge of the table and hit the floor with a metallic crash, followed by the plop of the satsuma. Neither of them noticed.
“Yep, of course,” he blabbered at top speed. “Course. Sorry.”
Donna nodded tensely in return. She did wonder why she wasn’t leaving, though. In fact, she was moving closer.
Come to think of it, so was he.
“Just cos she’s gone don’t mean you can just forget her,” she continued, as though their conversation hadn't ended.
“I know, I know,” said the Doctor, drawing a deep breath and running his hand through his hair. “It's just complicated, Donna. I never let myself feel like that - not with her, not with anybody ...”
“Really? Anybody?”
“Well, there sort of wasn't anybody like that, before,” said the Doctor unexpectedly, gazing at Donna.
“Wasn't?” she repeated, feeling her stomach flutter.
He didn't answer in so many words, placing his hands on her waist and stepping even closer. Donna swallowed and looked away, mentally taking back her “streak of alien nothing” comment. She forced herself to look at him. He was making no secret of the fact that he was staring quite interestedly at her lips, and she couldn’t help but stare at his too.
“Doctor?” she said faintly, trying to get the conversation back on track.
“Mmm?”
“Don’t forget her, yeah? She wouldn’t want you to. I don’t want you to either. She was your friend, and you can’t feel guilty if she felt like she did. People can’t help it if, well … you know.”
“No,” agreed the Doctor, his eyes searching hers. “No, I don’t think they can. Just … happens, doesn’t it?”
“Seems to,” said Donna, equally surprised.
The Doctor paused and smiled. Not one of his big manic grins or little secretive ones, but a genuine smile, the sort that Donna rarely elicited from him. She couldn't resist teasing him, though, raising her eyebrows in mocking amusement as he hesitated. He grinned self-consciously and closed the gap between them.
When his lips touched hers gently, then insistently, then when by mutual acquiescence the kiss deepened, Donna decided that he definitely tasted like biscuits and bananas and a hint of jam, and something else that was indefinibly him.
Lost in his mouth and wandering hands, she barely noticed as he pressed her backwards towards the table …
They crashed together to the floor.
“Oi!” exclaimed Donna, stunned, clutching at him.
“Satsuma,” said the Doctor in realisation, wincing, digging the fruit out from under his foot and tossing it up, catching it and shaking his head in resignation. “Always a satsuma.” He picked up the biscuit tin and rattled it against his ear. He frowned. “They sound broken.” He opened the tin and peered, dejected, at the contents.
“Talk of slipping on a banana peel,” said Donna, snorting. “Only you could manage to ruin the moment with a bloody banana biscuit tin.”
He beamed at her, lanky legs stretching out along the tiles as he leaned back against the table leg and crunched happily into a broken biscuit half, his other arm holding Donna tightly around her waist.
She dipped her hand into the tin too, smiling up at him. He didn't wave her hand away.