Fic - Doctor Who - The Hypothetical Love Affair
The Hypothetical Love Affair
Doctor/Donna
Rating: um...I don't know. R, probably
Spoilers: through 4x10 'Midnight'
After they were addressed as a couple for the fourth time, the non-existent love affair became a running joke, something fun to pass the time between adventures. Well, after the fourth time and two arguments, that was.
First, Donna accused him of staring at her in untoward ways when she wasn’t looking. He denied it and swore up and down that he’d never do that. He’d told Donna the truth. He hadn’t been looking at her oddly, at least not any more oddly than he looked at anything else. This regeneration happened to have a bit of a lazy eye, was that his fault?
It took some convincing and then, after he somehow managed to offend her, it took the admission that yes, okay, on occasion he had found himself gazing fondly at her breasts - he wasn’t blind, after all. But there it was, and eventually, once she’d gotten him to admit to the very thing she was mad at him for in the first place, Donna accepted that it was not the Doctor’s fault that everyone thought they were a couple.
“Thank you,” the Doctor said, with disbelief more than anything else.
“Well, it’s certainly nothing I’m doing,” Donna grumbled, threw herself down on one of the worn seats.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the Doctor offered, straightened his jacket a little. After ten straight minutes of arguing about her breasts, the Doctor was finding it hard to look at her for fear that his gaze might accidentally be misinterpreted. “Shall I set her to random?”
Donna rolled her eyes at his obvious attempt to change the subject. She went along though.
“Any where, any when,” she agreed, echoing words he’d said many times before. He grinned, and looked at her long enough to wink before turning his concentration to the safety of the familiar console.
**
Later, once things started to become complicated, the Doctor was quick to remember that Donna started it all. The entire thing began as an attempt to get back at Donna’s mother.
“He’s too thin for you,” the Doctor overheard Sylvia telling her daughter. He continued to fiddle with Wilf’s telescope. It was becoming clear that he should have insisted on staying with the TARDIS, let Donna do her visiting on her own, but the Doctor enjoyed Wilf’s company, and so he let Donna persuade him to step out the TARDIS door onto her mother’s front stoop. Not literally. They’d landed a few blocks away, but it amounted to the same thing.
“You’ll need to diet if you plan to stay with a man that skinny.”
Usually Donna would brush her off, or agree, say he’s really too thin for anyone. Instead she said, “oh, I forgot to mention. We’re engaged.”
Wilf rolled his eyes at the Doctor. It wasn’t always like this. The Doctor had seen Sylvia and Donna get along in the past. He’d seen tender moments between them. He’d seen Sylvia be brilliant in the face of danger, and he’d seen her act as a loving parent, but in the end each time it boiled down to this, whatever this was.
“What?” Sylvia asked. The Doctor didn’t need to look at her to know that her mouth was hanging open.
“Engaged,” Donna repeated and then nudged him hard in the side. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Oh!” The Doctor said and knocked his glasses on the side of the telescope in his attempt to stand up. He hadn’t realized he’d be expected to participate in the charade. “Engaged! Yes, of course. Sweetheart. I proposed on -“ he was going to come up with someplace amazing, someplace fantastic, and then he saw Wilf eyeing him and remembered that Sylvia had no idea what sort of traveler he really was - “on an airplane. To um, Nashville.”
“Nashville?”
“Yeah,” Donna defended. “Nashville.” She looked at him, exasperated, and then mumbled something about tea and she and Sylvia started back toward the house.
“He’ll leave you for the first young blonde thing that flounces past, you know. Does he even have a name?”
**
The next time was in Italy, circa 1501.
They’d been arguing about which hallway to go down when they were interrupted by a throat clearing behind them. It had been two minutes, they’d almost forgotten he was there.
“Have you set a date for the wedding?” Leonardo da Vinci asked, a twinkle in his scared eyes. He was holding his temporarily crippled hands to his chest.
“Oh, not you too, da Vinci,” the Doctor sighed. He shook his head, shocked that da Vinci could ask such a question at a time like this. He was just about to open his mouth and deny deny deny when Donna cut him off -
“I was thinking October. I love October, don’t you?”
The Doctor gaped at Donna for a moment, grabbed da Vinci’s arm and said, “this way!” sending them all down the corridor that Donna had insisted was the way out. Turned out it was.
In the end they managed to stop the Neteebe from powering their planet with da Vinci’s immense talent and all was right in the world once more.
Eight minutes ago they’d been on Earth, Italy, 1501. Now, back on the TARDIS the Doctor turned to Donna and said, “October?”
“You’re a June wedding kind of bloke, aren’t you,” Donna sighed. “I knew it.”
“What?”
Donna smiled. “You shoulda seen the look on your face. Leo had no idea what to make of you.”
“Leo?”
“Seriously, Leonardo da Vinci? You’re sure you’re not looking at me funny? At all?”
“No!” the Doctor said and hit a few buttons on the console. Even he was starting to wonder though. He couldn’t remember the last time he and a companion had been mistaken for lovers this often. It always happened once or twice. Two people, traveling through the universe. It was occasionally understandable, but this consistently - it was odd.
“Well,” Donna reasoned. “If they insist on pairing me up with you, we might as well have fun with them, yeah?”
**
By now, the Doctor had caught on, and the charade was in full swing.
It was Donna, of course, who escalated it to the next level, calling him pet names even alone on the TARDIS, once even going so far as to pinch his backside when he wasn’t paying attention, laughing when he yelped. They’d forget about it for weeks, until someone would ask, until something happened that would get them both down for days, and then the Doctor would say “Donna, darling, can you hand me that mallet?” and Donna would roll her eyes and make a big show of handing it over.
It was nice, the Doctor thought, their silly fake love affair. It was fun having someone to have these small personal jokes with again.
He always talked about how he liked traveling alone. Most of the time it was a lie. He wanted to share the universe, and he enjoyed sharing it with Donna Noble. Lucky for him, she seemed to enjoy seeing it. She didn’t expect much in return, just friendship, which he would have given her gladly no matter what. When he looked at her he couldn’t help but hope that she would stay with him for a good long while. His companions always left him too quickly, especially in recent years. He dreaded the day that she honestly told him she wanted to go home.
Sometimes he really thought that he needed her.
**
Eventually, it was the Doctor who took things just a little too far.
It was a rough couple of days after they left the Library. They didn’t speak much. They went to the beach, tried to relax.
“I should have kept that book,” the Doctor mused into the large frothy concoction he’d been nursing. “Kept it locked away in the TARDIS. You never know.”
Donna’s eyes were shaded behind her large dark glasses. He couldn’t tell, but he thought she might have rolled them. “You think the shadows might teach themselves to read and come after you? That library is the safest place for that book.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed.
“Besides, one day you’d get bored and read it,” Donna reasoned. “Or I would. Anyway, a moratorium on Library talk. What do you think?”
“Moratorium,” the Doctor repeated. It was one of those words he’d always liked the sound of.
Donna sighed and scanned their surroundings.
Folletta 6, a planet covered almost entirely by a shallow sea. Folletta Beach was located on the planet’s only island, predictably named Folleta Island (but with only one ‘t’, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure why). The island was a mere 50 kilometers wide. A person could stand on the periodot beach and see nothing but blue in any direction.
Naturally, the Follettans built a resort, hundreds of quaint bungalows nestled in along the shoreline of the encompassing sea.
“This is nice,” Donna noted. “It’s like my honeymoon was supposed to be. With Lance. I’d reserved one of those bungalows in the South Pacific. The ones out over the water on stilts, you know? I almost went without him, figured I deserved it. Then I cancelled at the last minute and ended up in Egypt instead.” She shrugged and downed the rest of her drink.
The Doctor didn’t ask what she and Lee had done on their honeymoon in the Library’s hard drive. She’d called the moratorium before mentioning the honeymoon on purpose, he could tell. Still, the story made him glad they’d come. She deserved some luxury. They both did.
Donna pushed her sunglasses up on her head.
“I’m going down to the beach,” she announced, pushing up and away from the table. “You going to be all right here without me for a bit?”
The Doctor smiled. “I’ll probably survive,” he said and waved her off, watched her head down the slope. The green sand sparkled under the twin suns.
The Doctor finished his drink alone, tried not to think about River Song, about Donna’s lost Lee. When that didn’t work, he chatted up some tourists, looked around for Donna, and then decided to retire for the night.
He really just wanted to stay on the TARDIS, but Donna insisted that they try one of the beach bungalows. She registered them as the Doctor and Mrs. Smith before anyone even tried to make the connection.
By the time he found their bungalow in the maze of tiny huts she was already there, curled up in one of the two beds - well, hammocks really, supported by sturdy looking wooden frames.
“There you are, dear,” Donna said. She was reading through a travel brochure.
He smiled and crossed the room, kissed her forehead and stood there awkwardly when he realized how strange that probably was for them.
“One too many frothy drinks, perhaps?” Donna asked, followed by a slow exaggerated wink. He thought she was probably one to talk.
“Oh,” the Doctor said, looking around. He poked the toe of his trainer into the sand. “No floor.”
“Yeah, you’re going to end up with sand in your hammock,” Donna warned. “There aren’t any bugs on this planet though. I do like that.”
“I was looking for you,” the Doctor said, kicked a little at the sand. “Wanted to introduce you to my new friends. Herbert and Niblitz. Wonderful couple. It’s their first vacation without the whole gaggle.”
“I went dancing,” Donna smiled. “You should go. Tomorrow.”
The Doctor frowned. “Dancing. I don’t - I’m not a dancer.”
**
“I’m glad that you’re traveling with me,” the Doctor said. He knew he never said these things enough, not to anyone. He also knew that Donna, being Donna, probably already knew. Maybe it was the island air that made him confessional. Maybe he was becoming more of a sap the older he got. All he really knew was that right now he needed her. He needed her to get through the Lithigibrithigarithigy (there was no moratorium on Gibberish, which was probably unfortunate) just as he had needed her in Pompeii (or Pithigompithigeii, as it were). She’d been so right that Christmas when she’d told him as much.
“Your mood is turning around,” Donna observed. She linked her arm with his. “Sea air must be as good as they say.”
The Doctor breathed deeply. It was true. Each moment that passed the Library felt farther away. He’d saved River Song the only way that he knew how. It still scared him though. It scared him that she was waiting for him somewhere in time, around any corner. He wasn’t ready for her. Not yet.
“Oh,” Donna said. “And now you’re frowning again.”
“I just wish we could find Herbert and Niblitz.” the Doctor rubbed his free hand through his hair. They’d been roaming around for an hour and no sign of the pair. Donna would love them, he just knew it.
They saw a small crowd of people pushing in around one of the open bungalow doors.
“What’s going on?” Donna asked one of the spectators.
An orange gentleman with antennae, a species the Doctor was sure he’d met once before but couldn’t quite place, informed them of the disappearance of two high profile guests. “Left all their things. Just up and disappeared.”
“It’s odd,” Donna said shortly after they sat down in a restaurant that seemed to cater almost exclusively to the elderly. “That couple disappearing and us not being able to find your new friends.”
“Probably just a coincidence,” the Doctor said, closing his menu and setting it aside. “Family troubles off planet. Something like that, I suspect.” It was hard to imagine nefarious plots brewing on a place like Folletta 6.
“You ever notice that trouble just sort of follows you around?”
“It’s been pointed out before, yeah,” the Doctor said.
She changed the subject then, talked about the sauna she’d visited the day before, the massage that had her feeling relaxed for hours, the evening of dancing. The sea air was doing her some good as well. And even when she was accusing him of not taking advantage of all the island had to offer, even then the Doctor could hear happiness seeping back into her voice.
He worried sometimes. After things like the - well, it was hard to enforce a moratorium on thoughts, wasn’t it? Still, he thought about how he’d worn Martha down, those weeks in 1969, the month as a human, and then that entire year. He tried not to think much on that year. There was definitely a moratorium on that subject.
Martha had been brilliant through it all, of course. So strong, but in the end he thought maybe it was just a bit too much for her, this life. And he didn’t help. He hadn’t been ready for her, not so soon after Rose. Maybe if the timing had been different it all would have been less of a complicated mess. Maybe she would have traveled with him a bit longer.
The timing seemed better now for Donna, or maybe she made the timing suit her. She forced him to talk about the things he’d rather suppress, made him face things he’d become so good at running away from.
He was fond of her. So fond of her. He looked at her sometimes, now when things were looking up, going well, and thought that perhaps he could be too fond. Maybe he was starting to care too much, rely on her too much. It wouldn’t be that unusual. It had happened before.
“What is going on with you now?” Donna asked. He’d stopped listening to her, had been sitting there staring at her like the village idiot. Oh, and look, their food had arrived.
“Oh,” he said. “The food.”
Later they participated in Follettan beach games and then Donna tried to force feed him those frothy beverages, and though he resisted, she still somehow managed to con him into dancing with her of all things.
At the close of the evening, as they were walking back to the bungalow, he pushed a damp bit of hair from her forehead and he kissed her.
It was only a small kiss, nothing really. Spontaneous and quick, a warm brush of lips. Afterward she looked so surprised, almost as though he’d slapped her, and he wondered suddenly if maybe he was the one that was about to get smacked.
She didn’t hit him. She stared at him for a moment, mouth open, and then she leaned in and returned the kiss, a perfect mirror of his. She pulled away and smiled, one of her quiet smiles, no teeth, and then she patted him on the back and gave him an affectionate little shove toward their bungalow.
The bungalow doors were all labeled and they stopped and looked at their own sign for a moment.
The Doctor and Mrs. Smith.
“I think maybe it’s time to quit joking with this,” Donna suggested. “Before we get too convincing, I mean.”
The Doctor nodded. “Best idea we’ve had all day.”
He’d never been very good at charades.
**
He woke up to Donna shouting. Loudly.
“What is it now?” he asked, moving to sit up and finding that his legs felt unusually heavy. He looked down and saw that except for the very corner, his hammock had disappeared into the sand, along with the lower half of his body. “What?!”
“It’s quick sand,” Donna shouted at him. She was holding out a coat tree for him to grab. He looked over and saw that Donna’s hammock was nowhere to be found.
“Green quick sand!” Donna shouted again.
“I can see that!” the Doctor said, and grabbed for the coat rack. After a bit of a struggle, during which Donna shouted words at him that the Doctor had never heard from her before, he was free of the sand. The hammock, however, was not as fortunate, and the poor coat rack had broken in two.
“It’s a good thing you don’t weigh anything,” Donna observed, breathing heavily with the Doctor sprawled over her.
“Quick sand,” the Doctor said and looked around the room. Nothing was disturbed except for the hammocks. “That’s - that’s just weird.”
“Tell me about it,” Donna agreed. “Do you know how hard you are to wake up? I was shouting at you for fifteen minutes, at least. I almost drowned in that -“ She stopped speaking abruptly, her mouth opened and then closed once wordlessly and then she glared up at him.
“What?” The Doctor asked.
“Stand up,” Donna ordered.
“What?” He scrambled off of her and she glared at his pants pocket.
“You tell me.”
“Oh,” The Doctor said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his screwdriver. “Sorry.” He flipped the screwdriver in his hand. “Lucky I didn’t lose this.”
She huffed a little and straightened her clothes and he looked around the room. All of their belongings were exactly where they’d left them. Nothing had been disturbed except the hammocks and the coat rack. Their coats lay in a heap on the floor.
“Donna,” the Doctor started. “I think there are nefarious plots brewing on Folletta 6.”
**
Folletta Beach, as it turned out, was falling into the sea. It was literally caving in on itself. The Folletans, knowing that they’d soon have to abandon the planet entirely or at least invest in some larger boats, had decided to take advantage of the situation by pick pocketing their tourists of all things. Well, pick pocketing and murder, really. They studied the beach for unstable areas, slapped a bungalow down over them, and then waited for the tourists to disappear, leaving all or at least most of their valuables behind, unclaimed.
“Trouble really does follow you everywhere,” Donna said, once the mess had been sorted out.
“Poor Herbert and Niblitz,” the Doctor said, taking one last look at Folletta Beach before shutting the TARDIS doors.
**
Nothing seemed all that different until he noticed that she had stopped hugging him. It wasn’t like they hugged all that often. They weren’t those sort of obnoxious huggy people. The Doctor couldn’t stand that - people going around and hugging strangers. He liked genuine hugs, not hugs turned into the equivalent of a handshake. No, they weren’t that breed of obnoxious huggers, but they were huggers. The Doctor loved hugs, so when he was reunited with Donna after she had spent eight hours in the clutches of the Panascone and she approached him bubbling over with stories about her escape (“I wasn’t about to sit around waiting for you to rescue me!”) but stopped just short of hugging him only to stand there awkwardly smoothing the wrinkles in her jacket, the Doctor was bound to notice. His arms were out, ready, so that he had to compensate by pretending that he was adjusting the fit of his coat.
Once the change had been brought to his attention, he started noticing other things. Donna was pulling away. Donna was spending more time on her own. Donna wandered off.
It was coming. Any day now she was going to ask to be dumped back in London, back with her cruel mother and her wonderful grandfather, back to life the way it probably should be.
Fact was, the Doctor wasn’t stupid. He knew he’d crossed a line. A line they’d both made clear right at the start. And in his gut he knew that if she decided she’d had enough of him then all the breathtaking places in the universe probably wouldn’t change her mind.
He took her to the Water Rise, and then to the Kostoven Peninsula. And even then, she saved him from being sacrificed to a blubberous god demon, but when he held her tightly in thanks he felt her hesitation to reciprocate. Everything up to this had been so easy with Donna, and now he was losing her. There was tension in the TARDIS again.
Still, he took her to New York to show her the canal system that was put into place as sea level continued to rise. He showed her the ways that humans found to adapt.
“A little like Venice,” he said. There were a lot of Venices in the world in this century.
He took her to see the Towers of Eve and to tour the Melga Province, and none of it, no matter how fantastic, stopped the feeling he had in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he’d already lost her. Another brilliant companion, gone all too soon.
He asked her once how long she planned to travel with him, ignored the echoes of the last time he’d spoken that question out loud.
“Sick of me already?” She’d joked. It wasn’t an answer. Sometimes they were too much alike, other times not at all.
None of it stopped either, the assumptions that they were a couple. No one understood that their nonexistent love affair had gone through a fake breakup as well.
**
She finally confronted him in the main console room, her hair fiery and her face determined.
“Back to Earth, then?” the Doctor asked, resigned.
Donna scoffed a little and rolled her eyes, grabbed the arm of his shirt and pulled him away from the monitor. And then before the Doctor was able to really process what was happening, they were kissing.
This was the complete opposite of the kiss on Folletta 6. They clung to one another, hands gripping, pulling, demanding. Her fingers were in his hair, on his neck, at his waist. His jacket fell to the floor and his fingers skimmed the bare skin of her back beneath her blouse. And then they were moving, nearly tripping over his discarded garment they stumbled down the hall, stopping to trade feverish kisses along the way. And before he’d determined where they were headed they were in his room, his shirt unbuttoned and his tongue tasting Donna’s gorgeous breasts.
They were uncharacteristically silent, as though a word from either of them might break whatever spell they’d put themselves under. The Doctor would have guessed that in the unlikely event that they allowed something like this to happen surely Donna would have a running commentary on his knobby knees, his thin frame. Instead she said nothing, showed no sign that she disapproved of him at all as she explored with her fingers, her mouth.
It had been some time since the Doctor had last engaged in this sort of intercourse and as he thrust inside her he worried that he might have lost that essential rhythm, that urgent song. But Donna moaned and gasped and moved with him, hands splayed on his back, then fingers digging in with just the right amount of pressure. He buried his face in her warm fragrant neck, moaned into her skin and listened as she panted in his ear. He resisted the urge to place his fingers at her temples, told himself he didn’t need that extra connection. It felt invasive unless it went both ways. This was enough.
Even afterward, sprawled together across the Doctor’s small bed, they seemed hesitant to speak. Donna, relaxed, smiled lazily when she saw the Doctor looking at her. She reached over and brushed his hair off his forehead, traced patterns on the back of his shoulder with her fingertips.
The Doctor was already thinking about what this meant for tomorrow, for the next day. There were reasons that the Doctor didn’t do this with his companions. They ended up in parallel worlds. They expected things that he couldn’t give. They left him before he was ready. They did those things without even tossing in the complicated element of sexual intercourse.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Donna said, breaking the spell. Sometimes all she had to do was look at him to read him like an open book. “We’re both adults here. We enjoyed it and I think we’ll be better for it, but it doesn’t have to mean - well. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. Of course it meant something.
“It’s like what my grandmother always said,” Donna continued. “A man and a woman can’t be friends, not really, until they get this out of the way first.”
He didn’t agree with that either. He’d been close with many women, his companions, and he loved them each in their own way, but rarely had he gone this far with any of them. He didn’t think that said anything about their friendship.
“You woo people with time and space,” Donna said, her voice a little quieter now. “And then you are surprised when it works and they fall in love with you.”
That part he could agree with.
“But not Donna Noble,” he said, filling in the blank.
She smiled. “We know each other too well for that anyway, yeah? We’re best like this. Partners, friends. Wouldn’t want to screw up a good thing.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, and then admitted what had been pulling at his mind, at his hearts since they left Folletta. “I thought we already had. Screwed it up, I mean.”
“Well,” Donna said, in a way that made it clear exactly who she was impersonating. He suppressed a smile and raised his eyebrows. “It’s not surprising. You may be nine hundred and some odd years old, but you have the emotional maturity of a fourteen year old boy. For someone so clever, you’re a complete dunce about some things, aren’t you?”
Fourteen? Really? He’d met fourteen year old human boys and wasn’t sure the comparison was an apt one.
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest and Donna quickly placed her fingers over his lips, then replaced her fingers with her mouth. It was a slow lazy kiss, the kind the Doctor loved, but rarely had the time to engage in. It was over too soon and Donna was sitting up and plucking her blouse from the floor.
It took a moment before the Doctor realized she’d started talking again.
“ - moratorium on kissing would be best, don’t you think?” she was saying. “Starting now.”
He’d always liked the sound of the word. Sometimes the meaning annoyed him a bit, but he’d expected it. He agreed.
“A moratorium,” the Doctor repeated. “You still want to travel with me then?”
Donna laughed as though the possibility of her leaving was never even a question and for the first time in days, the Doctor believed that it wasn’t.
**
“Here we are then,” the Doctor said, pushing himself away from the console. “The planet Midnight. Covered in diamonds that no one can touch. Protected for eternity by the extonic sun. And the sapphire waterfall - well, I’ve told you about the sapphire waterfall.” He grinned, giddy. “I can’t wait.”
Donna was poking at the ripped fabric on one of the seats. “I don’t understand why you don’t reupholster this.”
The Doctor shook his head and grabbed her hand, pulling her up to stand. “Diamonds, Donna! Who cares about holes in the seat?”
“I’m just saying,” Donna continued. “You probably just have to press a button on that thing.” She gestured toward the console. “You wouldn’t even have to bring a man in.”
The Doctor stopped Donna, hands on her shoulders. “A waterfall of sapphires,” he said, slowly in case she hadn’t comprehended the times he’d told her before.
“Oh, I heard you,” she laughed, and opened the door of the TARDIS. Just as she was about to step out, she stopped short, stared at the wall of water up to their knees that the TARDIS was preventing from cascading inside. It appeared that they’d landed in some sort of pool. At least they were indoors. The TARDIS would have protected them from the extonic sunlight as long as they stayed inside, but still. The Doctor poked his head out and looked up at the large skylight.
“Pretty,” he observed. “Very blue.”
Donna was still staring at the water. They were thirty feet from the only dry platform in the room.
“Never get it entirely right, do we?” she asked.
“Well,” the Doctor said. He nudged Donna affectionately and shut the doors. “Once in a while.”
Doctor/Donna
Rating: um...I don't know. R, probably
Spoilers: through 4x10 'Midnight'
After they were addressed as a couple for the fourth time, the non-existent love affair became a running joke, something fun to pass the time between adventures. Well, after the fourth time and two arguments, that was.
First, Donna accused him of staring at her in untoward ways when she wasn’t looking. He denied it and swore up and down that he’d never do that. He’d told Donna the truth. He hadn’t been looking at her oddly, at least not any more oddly than he looked at anything else. This regeneration happened to have a bit of a lazy eye, was that his fault?
It took some convincing and then, after he somehow managed to offend her, it took the admission that yes, okay, on occasion he had found himself gazing fondly at her breasts - he wasn’t blind, after all. But there it was, and eventually, once she’d gotten him to admit to the very thing she was mad at him for in the first place, Donna accepted that it was not the Doctor’s fault that everyone thought they were a couple.
“Thank you,” the Doctor said, with disbelief more than anything else.
“Well, it’s certainly nothing I’m doing,” Donna grumbled, threw herself down on one of the worn seats.
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” the Doctor offered, straightened his jacket a little. After ten straight minutes of arguing about her breasts, the Doctor was finding it hard to look at her for fear that his gaze might accidentally be misinterpreted. “Shall I set her to random?”
Donna rolled her eyes at his obvious attempt to change the subject. She went along though.
“Any where, any when,” she agreed, echoing words he’d said many times before. He grinned, and looked at her long enough to wink before turning his concentration to the safety of the familiar console.
**
Later, once things started to become complicated, the Doctor was quick to remember that Donna started it all. The entire thing began as an attempt to get back at Donna’s mother.
“He’s too thin for you,” the Doctor overheard Sylvia telling her daughter. He continued to fiddle with Wilf’s telescope. It was becoming clear that he should have insisted on staying with the TARDIS, let Donna do her visiting on her own, but the Doctor enjoyed Wilf’s company, and so he let Donna persuade him to step out the TARDIS door onto her mother’s front stoop. Not literally. They’d landed a few blocks away, but it amounted to the same thing.
“You’ll need to diet if you plan to stay with a man that skinny.”
Usually Donna would brush her off, or agree, say he’s really too thin for anyone. Instead she said, “oh, I forgot to mention. We’re engaged.”
Wilf rolled his eyes at the Doctor. It wasn’t always like this. The Doctor had seen Sylvia and Donna get along in the past. He’d seen tender moments between them. He’d seen Sylvia be brilliant in the face of danger, and he’d seen her act as a loving parent, but in the end each time it boiled down to this, whatever this was.
“What?” Sylvia asked. The Doctor didn’t need to look at her to know that her mouth was hanging open.
“Engaged,” Donna repeated and then nudged him hard in the side. “Isn’t that right, dear?”
“Oh!” The Doctor said and knocked his glasses on the side of the telescope in his attempt to stand up. He hadn’t realized he’d be expected to participate in the charade. “Engaged! Yes, of course. Sweetheart. I proposed on -“ he was going to come up with someplace amazing, someplace fantastic, and then he saw Wilf eyeing him and remembered that Sylvia had no idea what sort of traveler he really was - “on an airplane. To um, Nashville.”
“Nashville?”
“Yeah,” Donna defended. “Nashville.” She looked at him, exasperated, and then mumbled something about tea and she and Sylvia started back toward the house.
“He’ll leave you for the first young blonde thing that flounces past, you know. Does he even have a name?”
**
The next time was in Italy, circa 1501.
They’d been arguing about which hallway to go down when they were interrupted by a throat clearing behind them. It had been two minutes, they’d almost forgotten he was there.
“Have you set a date for the wedding?” Leonardo da Vinci asked, a twinkle in his scared eyes. He was holding his temporarily crippled hands to his chest.
“Oh, not you too, da Vinci,” the Doctor sighed. He shook his head, shocked that da Vinci could ask such a question at a time like this. He was just about to open his mouth and deny deny deny when Donna cut him off -
“I was thinking October. I love October, don’t you?”
The Doctor gaped at Donna for a moment, grabbed da Vinci’s arm and said, “this way!” sending them all down the corridor that Donna had insisted was the way out. Turned out it was.
In the end they managed to stop the Neteebe from powering their planet with da Vinci’s immense talent and all was right in the world once more.
Eight minutes ago they’d been on Earth, Italy, 1501. Now, back on the TARDIS the Doctor turned to Donna and said, “October?”
“You’re a June wedding kind of bloke, aren’t you,” Donna sighed. “I knew it.”
“What?”
Donna smiled. “You shoulda seen the look on your face. Leo had no idea what to make of you.”
“Leo?”
“Seriously, Leonardo da Vinci? You’re sure you’re not looking at me funny? At all?”
“No!” the Doctor said and hit a few buttons on the console. Even he was starting to wonder though. He couldn’t remember the last time he and a companion had been mistaken for lovers this often. It always happened once or twice. Two people, traveling through the universe. It was occasionally understandable, but this consistently - it was odd.
“Well,” Donna reasoned. “If they insist on pairing me up with you, we might as well have fun with them, yeah?”
**
By now, the Doctor had caught on, and the charade was in full swing.
It was Donna, of course, who escalated it to the next level, calling him pet names even alone on the TARDIS, once even going so far as to pinch his backside when he wasn’t paying attention, laughing when he yelped. They’d forget about it for weeks, until someone would ask, until something happened that would get them both down for days, and then the Doctor would say “Donna, darling, can you hand me that mallet?” and Donna would roll her eyes and make a big show of handing it over.
It was nice, the Doctor thought, their silly fake love affair. It was fun having someone to have these small personal jokes with again.
He always talked about how he liked traveling alone. Most of the time it was a lie. He wanted to share the universe, and he enjoyed sharing it with Donna Noble. Lucky for him, she seemed to enjoy seeing it. She didn’t expect much in return, just friendship, which he would have given her gladly no matter what. When he looked at her he couldn’t help but hope that she would stay with him for a good long while. His companions always left him too quickly, especially in recent years. He dreaded the day that she honestly told him she wanted to go home.
Sometimes he really thought that he needed her.
**
Eventually, it was the Doctor who took things just a little too far.
It was a rough couple of days after they left the Library. They didn’t speak much. They went to the beach, tried to relax.
“I should have kept that book,” the Doctor mused into the large frothy concoction he’d been nursing. “Kept it locked away in the TARDIS. You never know.”
Donna’s eyes were shaded behind her large dark glasses. He couldn’t tell, but he thought she might have rolled them. “You think the shadows might teach themselves to read and come after you? That library is the safest place for that book.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed.
“Besides, one day you’d get bored and read it,” Donna reasoned. “Or I would. Anyway, a moratorium on Library talk. What do you think?”
“Moratorium,” the Doctor repeated. It was one of those words he’d always liked the sound of.
Donna sighed and scanned their surroundings.
Folletta 6, a planet covered almost entirely by a shallow sea. Folletta Beach was located on the planet’s only island, predictably named Folleta Island (but with only one ‘t’, the Doctor wasn’t quite sure why). The island was a mere 50 kilometers wide. A person could stand on the periodot beach and see nothing but blue in any direction.
Naturally, the Follettans built a resort, hundreds of quaint bungalows nestled in along the shoreline of the encompassing sea.
“This is nice,” Donna noted. “It’s like my honeymoon was supposed to be. With Lance. I’d reserved one of those bungalows in the South Pacific. The ones out over the water on stilts, you know? I almost went without him, figured I deserved it. Then I cancelled at the last minute and ended up in Egypt instead.” She shrugged and downed the rest of her drink.
The Doctor didn’t ask what she and Lee had done on their honeymoon in the Library’s hard drive. She’d called the moratorium before mentioning the honeymoon on purpose, he could tell. Still, the story made him glad they’d come. She deserved some luxury. They both did.
Donna pushed her sunglasses up on her head.
“I’m going down to the beach,” she announced, pushing up and away from the table. “You going to be all right here without me for a bit?”
The Doctor smiled. “I’ll probably survive,” he said and waved her off, watched her head down the slope. The green sand sparkled under the twin suns.
The Doctor finished his drink alone, tried not to think about River Song, about Donna’s lost Lee. When that didn’t work, he chatted up some tourists, looked around for Donna, and then decided to retire for the night.
He really just wanted to stay on the TARDIS, but Donna insisted that they try one of the beach bungalows. She registered them as the Doctor and Mrs. Smith before anyone even tried to make the connection.
By the time he found their bungalow in the maze of tiny huts she was already there, curled up in one of the two beds - well, hammocks really, supported by sturdy looking wooden frames.
“There you are, dear,” Donna said. She was reading through a travel brochure.
He smiled and crossed the room, kissed her forehead and stood there awkwardly when he realized how strange that probably was for them.
“One too many frothy drinks, perhaps?” Donna asked, followed by a slow exaggerated wink. He thought she was probably one to talk.
“Oh,” the Doctor said, looking around. He poked the toe of his trainer into the sand. “No floor.”
“Yeah, you’re going to end up with sand in your hammock,” Donna warned. “There aren’t any bugs on this planet though. I do like that.”
“I was looking for you,” the Doctor said, kicked a little at the sand. “Wanted to introduce you to my new friends. Herbert and Niblitz. Wonderful couple. It’s their first vacation without the whole gaggle.”
“I went dancing,” Donna smiled. “You should go. Tomorrow.”
The Doctor frowned. “Dancing. I don’t - I’m not a dancer.”
**
“I’m glad that you’re traveling with me,” the Doctor said. He knew he never said these things enough, not to anyone. He also knew that Donna, being Donna, probably already knew. Maybe it was the island air that made him confessional. Maybe he was becoming more of a sap the older he got. All he really knew was that right now he needed her. He needed her to get through the Lithigibrithigarithigy (there was no moratorium on Gibberish, which was probably unfortunate) just as he had needed her in Pompeii (or Pithigompithigeii, as it were). She’d been so right that Christmas when she’d told him as much.
“Your mood is turning around,” Donna observed. She linked her arm with his. “Sea air must be as good as they say.”
The Doctor breathed deeply. It was true. Each moment that passed the Library felt farther away. He’d saved River Song the only way that he knew how. It still scared him though. It scared him that she was waiting for him somewhere in time, around any corner. He wasn’t ready for her. Not yet.
“Oh,” Donna said. “And now you’re frowning again.”
“I just wish we could find Herbert and Niblitz.” the Doctor rubbed his free hand through his hair. They’d been roaming around for an hour and no sign of the pair. Donna would love them, he just knew it.
They saw a small crowd of people pushing in around one of the open bungalow doors.
“What’s going on?” Donna asked one of the spectators.
An orange gentleman with antennae, a species the Doctor was sure he’d met once before but couldn’t quite place, informed them of the disappearance of two high profile guests. “Left all their things. Just up and disappeared.”
“It’s odd,” Donna said shortly after they sat down in a restaurant that seemed to cater almost exclusively to the elderly. “That couple disappearing and us not being able to find your new friends.”
“Probably just a coincidence,” the Doctor said, closing his menu and setting it aside. “Family troubles off planet. Something like that, I suspect.” It was hard to imagine nefarious plots brewing on a place like Folletta 6.
“You ever notice that trouble just sort of follows you around?”
“It’s been pointed out before, yeah,” the Doctor said.
She changed the subject then, talked about the sauna she’d visited the day before, the massage that had her feeling relaxed for hours, the evening of dancing. The sea air was doing her some good as well. And even when she was accusing him of not taking advantage of all the island had to offer, even then the Doctor could hear happiness seeping back into her voice.
He worried sometimes. After things like the - well, it was hard to enforce a moratorium on thoughts, wasn’t it? Still, he thought about how he’d worn Martha down, those weeks in 1969, the month as a human, and then that entire year. He tried not to think much on that year. There was definitely a moratorium on that subject.
Martha had been brilliant through it all, of course. So strong, but in the end he thought maybe it was just a bit too much for her, this life. And he didn’t help. He hadn’t been ready for her, not so soon after Rose. Maybe if the timing had been different it all would have been less of a complicated mess. Maybe she would have traveled with him a bit longer.
The timing seemed better now for Donna, or maybe she made the timing suit her. She forced him to talk about the things he’d rather suppress, made him face things he’d become so good at running away from.
He was fond of her. So fond of her. He looked at her sometimes, now when things were looking up, going well, and thought that perhaps he could be too fond. Maybe he was starting to care too much, rely on her too much. It wouldn’t be that unusual. It had happened before.
“What is going on with you now?” Donna asked. He’d stopped listening to her, had been sitting there staring at her like the village idiot. Oh, and look, their food had arrived.
“Oh,” he said. “The food.”
Later they participated in Follettan beach games and then Donna tried to force feed him those frothy beverages, and though he resisted, she still somehow managed to con him into dancing with her of all things.
At the close of the evening, as they were walking back to the bungalow, he pushed a damp bit of hair from her forehead and he kissed her.
It was only a small kiss, nothing really. Spontaneous and quick, a warm brush of lips. Afterward she looked so surprised, almost as though he’d slapped her, and he wondered suddenly if maybe he was the one that was about to get smacked.
She didn’t hit him. She stared at him for a moment, mouth open, and then she leaned in and returned the kiss, a perfect mirror of his. She pulled away and smiled, one of her quiet smiles, no teeth, and then she patted him on the back and gave him an affectionate little shove toward their bungalow.
The bungalow doors were all labeled and they stopped and looked at their own sign for a moment.
The Doctor and Mrs. Smith.
“I think maybe it’s time to quit joking with this,” Donna suggested. “Before we get too convincing, I mean.”
The Doctor nodded. “Best idea we’ve had all day.”
He’d never been very good at charades.
**
He woke up to Donna shouting. Loudly.
“What is it now?” he asked, moving to sit up and finding that his legs felt unusually heavy. He looked down and saw that except for the very corner, his hammock had disappeared into the sand, along with the lower half of his body. “What?!”
“It’s quick sand,” Donna shouted at him. She was holding out a coat tree for him to grab. He looked over and saw that Donna’s hammock was nowhere to be found.
“Green quick sand!” Donna shouted again.
“I can see that!” the Doctor said, and grabbed for the coat rack. After a bit of a struggle, during which Donna shouted words at him that the Doctor had never heard from her before, he was free of the sand. The hammock, however, was not as fortunate, and the poor coat rack had broken in two.
“It’s a good thing you don’t weigh anything,” Donna observed, breathing heavily with the Doctor sprawled over her.
“Quick sand,” the Doctor said and looked around the room. Nothing was disturbed except for the hammocks. “That’s - that’s just weird.”
“Tell me about it,” Donna agreed. “Do you know how hard you are to wake up? I was shouting at you for fifteen minutes, at least. I almost drowned in that -“ She stopped speaking abruptly, her mouth opened and then closed once wordlessly and then she glared up at him.
“What?” The Doctor asked.
“Stand up,” Donna ordered.
“What?” He scrambled off of her and she glared at his pants pocket.
“You tell me.”
“Oh,” The Doctor said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his screwdriver. “Sorry.” He flipped the screwdriver in his hand. “Lucky I didn’t lose this.”
She huffed a little and straightened her clothes and he looked around the room. All of their belongings were exactly where they’d left them. Nothing had been disturbed except the hammocks and the coat rack. Their coats lay in a heap on the floor.
“Donna,” the Doctor started. “I think there are nefarious plots brewing on Folletta 6.”
**
Folletta Beach, as it turned out, was falling into the sea. It was literally caving in on itself. The Folletans, knowing that they’d soon have to abandon the planet entirely or at least invest in some larger boats, had decided to take advantage of the situation by pick pocketing their tourists of all things. Well, pick pocketing and murder, really. They studied the beach for unstable areas, slapped a bungalow down over them, and then waited for the tourists to disappear, leaving all or at least most of their valuables behind, unclaimed.
“Trouble really does follow you everywhere,” Donna said, once the mess had been sorted out.
“Poor Herbert and Niblitz,” the Doctor said, taking one last look at Folletta Beach before shutting the TARDIS doors.
**
Nothing seemed all that different until he noticed that she had stopped hugging him. It wasn’t like they hugged all that often. They weren’t those sort of obnoxious huggy people. The Doctor couldn’t stand that - people going around and hugging strangers. He liked genuine hugs, not hugs turned into the equivalent of a handshake. No, they weren’t that breed of obnoxious huggers, but they were huggers. The Doctor loved hugs, so when he was reunited with Donna after she had spent eight hours in the clutches of the Panascone and she approached him bubbling over with stories about her escape (“I wasn’t about to sit around waiting for you to rescue me!”) but stopped just short of hugging him only to stand there awkwardly smoothing the wrinkles in her jacket, the Doctor was bound to notice. His arms were out, ready, so that he had to compensate by pretending that he was adjusting the fit of his coat.
Once the change had been brought to his attention, he started noticing other things. Donna was pulling away. Donna was spending more time on her own. Donna wandered off.
It was coming. Any day now she was going to ask to be dumped back in London, back with her cruel mother and her wonderful grandfather, back to life the way it probably should be.
Fact was, the Doctor wasn’t stupid. He knew he’d crossed a line. A line they’d both made clear right at the start. And in his gut he knew that if she decided she’d had enough of him then all the breathtaking places in the universe probably wouldn’t change her mind.
He took her to the Water Rise, and then to the Kostoven Peninsula. And even then, she saved him from being sacrificed to a blubberous god demon, but when he held her tightly in thanks he felt her hesitation to reciprocate. Everything up to this had been so easy with Donna, and now he was losing her. There was tension in the TARDIS again.
Still, he took her to New York to show her the canal system that was put into place as sea level continued to rise. He showed her the ways that humans found to adapt.
“A little like Venice,” he said. There were a lot of Venices in the world in this century.
He took her to see the Towers of Eve and to tour the Melga Province, and none of it, no matter how fantastic, stopped the feeling he had in the pit of his stomach, the feeling that he’d already lost her. Another brilliant companion, gone all too soon.
He asked her once how long she planned to travel with him, ignored the echoes of the last time he’d spoken that question out loud.
“Sick of me already?” She’d joked. It wasn’t an answer. Sometimes they were too much alike, other times not at all.
None of it stopped either, the assumptions that they were a couple. No one understood that their nonexistent love affair had gone through a fake breakup as well.
**
She finally confronted him in the main console room, her hair fiery and her face determined.
“Back to Earth, then?” the Doctor asked, resigned.
Donna scoffed a little and rolled her eyes, grabbed the arm of his shirt and pulled him away from the monitor. And then before the Doctor was able to really process what was happening, they were kissing.
This was the complete opposite of the kiss on Folletta 6. They clung to one another, hands gripping, pulling, demanding. Her fingers were in his hair, on his neck, at his waist. His jacket fell to the floor and his fingers skimmed the bare skin of her back beneath her blouse. And then they were moving, nearly tripping over his discarded garment they stumbled down the hall, stopping to trade feverish kisses along the way. And before he’d determined where they were headed they were in his room, his shirt unbuttoned and his tongue tasting Donna’s gorgeous breasts.
They were uncharacteristically silent, as though a word from either of them might break whatever spell they’d put themselves under. The Doctor would have guessed that in the unlikely event that they allowed something like this to happen surely Donna would have a running commentary on his knobby knees, his thin frame. Instead she said nothing, showed no sign that she disapproved of him at all as she explored with her fingers, her mouth.
It had been some time since the Doctor had last engaged in this sort of intercourse and as he thrust inside her he worried that he might have lost that essential rhythm, that urgent song. But Donna moaned and gasped and moved with him, hands splayed on his back, then fingers digging in with just the right amount of pressure. He buried his face in her warm fragrant neck, moaned into her skin and listened as she panted in his ear. He resisted the urge to place his fingers at her temples, told himself he didn’t need that extra connection. It felt invasive unless it went both ways. This was enough.
Even afterward, sprawled together across the Doctor’s small bed, they seemed hesitant to speak. Donna, relaxed, smiled lazily when she saw the Doctor looking at her. She reached over and brushed his hair off his forehead, traced patterns on the back of his shoulder with her fingertips.
The Doctor was already thinking about what this meant for tomorrow, for the next day. There were reasons that the Doctor didn’t do this with his companions. They ended up in parallel worlds. They expected things that he couldn’t give. They left him before he was ready. They did those things without even tossing in the complicated element of sexual intercourse.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Donna said, breaking the spell. Sometimes all she had to do was look at him to read him like an open book. “We’re both adults here. We enjoyed it and I think we’ll be better for it, but it doesn’t have to mean - well. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything. Of course it meant something.
“It’s like what my grandmother always said,” Donna continued. “A man and a woman can’t be friends, not really, until they get this out of the way first.”
He didn’t agree with that either. He’d been close with many women, his companions, and he loved them each in their own way, but rarely had he gone this far with any of them. He didn’t think that said anything about their friendship.
“You woo people with time and space,” Donna said, her voice a little quieter now. “And then you are surprised when it works and they fall in love with you.”
That part he could agree with.
“But not Donna Noble,” he said, filling in the blank.
She smiled. “We know each other too well for that anyway, yeah? We’re best like this. Partners, friends. Wouldn’t want to screw up a good thing.”
“Yeah,” the Doctor agreed, and then admitted what had been pulling at his mind, at his hearts since they left Folletta. “I thought we already had. Screwed it up, I mean.”
“Well,” Donna said, in a way that made it clear exactly who she was impersonating. He suppressed a smile and raised his eyebrows. “It’s not surprising. You may be nine hundred and some odd years old, but you have the emotional maturity of a fourteen year old boy. For someone so clever, you’re a complete dunce about some things, aren’t you?”
Fourteen? Really? He’d met fourteen year old human boys and wasn’t sure the comparison was an apt one.
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest and Donna quickly placed her fingers over his lips, then replaced her fingers with her mouth. It was a slow lazy kiss, the kind the Doctor loved, but rarely had the time to engage in. It was over too soon and Donna was sitting up and plucking her blouse from the floor.
It took a moment before the Doctor realized she’d started talking again.
“ - moratorium on kissing would be best, don’t you think?” she was saying. “Starting now.”
He’d always liked the sound of the word. Sometimes the meaning annoyed him a bit, but he’d expected it. He agreed.
“A moratorium,” the Doctor repeated. “You still want to travel with me then?”
Donna laughed as though the possibility of her leaving was never even a question and for the first time in days, the Doctor believed that it wasn’t.
**
“Here we are then,” the Doctor said, pushing himself away from the console. “The planet Midnight. Covered in diamonds that no one can touch. Protected for eternity by the extonic sun. And the sapphire waterfall - well, I’ve told you about the sapphire waterfall.” He grinned, giddy. “I can’t wait.”
Donna was poking at the ripped fabric on one of the seats. “I don’t understand why you don’t reupholster this.”
The Doctor shook his head and grabbed her hand, pulling her up to stand. “Diamonds, Donna! Who cares about holes in the seat?”
“I’m just saying,” Donna continued. “You probably just have to press a button on that thing.” She gestured toward the console. “You wouldn’t even have to bring a man in.”
The Doctor stopped Donna, hands on her shoulders. “A waterfall of sapphires,” he said, slowly in case she hadn’t comprehended the times he’d told her before.
“Oh, I heard you,” she laughed, and opened the door of the TARDIS. Just as she was about to step out, she stopped short, stared at the wall of water up to their knees that the TARDIS was preventing from cascading inside. It appeared that they’d landed in some sort of pool. At least they were indoors. The TARDIS would have protected them from the extonic sunlight as long as they stayed inside, but still. The Doctor poked his head out and looked up at the large skylight.
“Pretty,” he observed. “Very blue.”
Donna was still staring at the water. They were thirty feet from the only dry platform in the room.
“Never get it entirely right, do we?” she asked.
“Well,” the Doctor said. He nudged Donna affectionately and shut the doors. “Once in a while.”