[for perfect_shoes] your best friend I've come to be
Dorothy's had a weird couple of weeks. It started with the Doctor (tall, pinstripes, hair that does that thing) showing up in the middle of a meeting in Oz, sitting her down and telling her he's scared he's turning evil, and maybe they shouldn't be together anymore, which was very much a low point in... several months, actually. Once that was
( Read more... )
He's never thought he'd hear such a request coming from Dorothy, but he supposes that it shouldn't be terribly surprising, as someone who seems naturally attuned to the idea of dancing. Unlike him. Most definitely unlike him.
"I wouldn't know myself very well if that were true," he informs mildly as though he isn't completely terrified she's going to drag him out of his chair and make him look a fool. "Any type of dancing in particular? The 20s are nice for some swing. The 1920s, that is, though it does make a bit of a comeback later on." He looks at her with quiet desperation that she'll drop the subject.
Reply
"Why don't you want to dance with me?" Since he will in the future. Enthusiastically.
Reply
He has no idea what she'll have to say to the fact that he actually doesn't know how to dance, does not dance period, but he's sure it'll be accompanied with fits of giggles and a round of mocking he's never really quite prepared for with an ego he needs to step sideways to fit through a door.
"It's not that I don't want to dance with you, Dorothy," he says with sigh, sinking a bit behind the pages of his book. "Erm, I'm afraid I just don't like dancing very much." The words seem a bit useless even to him, but it's better than admitting that as a nine hundred year old Time Lord who knows everything, he doesn't know how to dance.
Reply
And yet here he is, dithering. His younger selves, she notes, do tend to do that. Why a person wouldn't just say what they mean is usually beyond Dorothy-- it's the way she was raised, and her life in Oz has made it necessary to be as clear as she could about things, as the odd nature of its inhabitants lent itself towards causing confusion. Normally she puts up with it, talks around it, just ignores the obfuscation. Now, when she makes it crystal clear that she wants something, not understanding precisely why she's not going to get it is just annoying.
"Why wouldn't you? It's not like you're lousy at it." She waits for a beat, then: "...Are you?"
Reply
He knows in some distant, far, reasonable part of him that he is being terribly see-through, though not so much about the thing he's hiding, more the fact that he's hiding it. Dorothy's human, and he certainly knows what humans are like when they see something that's hidden. In the end he realises he's not backing himself up to a corner, he's already settled in one, stacking up boxes to make himself a little home. It's very much a lose/lose situation for him at the point. If he continues to be vague and overly circumlocutory, she'll press until he has to tell her (or she'll figure it out on her own and he'll have to blusteringly deny it), or he can save face and tell her now and admit that he can't dance.
Neither of those seem comfortable enough with his conscience.
Why can't he dance? He can ride motorcycles, keep Jelly Babies fresh in his pockets for months, but dancing, no.
Steps and memorisations, beats to understand and some poor sap to move with and it was all so meaningless and saccharine and frivolous that he almost for a minute wants to admit that no, he can't dance because he can't imagine why anyone would want to.
He can't imagine how Dorothy would take that, but not very well springs easily to mind.
"Really, you wouldn't want me as a dancing partner," he says, flipping a page despite the fact he has completely failed to read the one he was on.
Reply
"I just said I do. What part of that is confusing you?"
There's a beat, and then Dorothy quickly crosses the distance between them and squats down on the balls of her feet next to his chair. Putting on her very best of puppy-dog pouts, she blinks widely up at him.
"Doctor. Tell me the truth, now. You just don't like dancing, do you."
Reply
His nose is brushing against the binds of the book as he tries to block out the sight of her.
"I believe I've already said that. But if you need me to repeat it, then no, Dorothy, I don't like dancing."
Reply
Don't even bother, Doctor. The power of the puppy-dog pout can penetrate books, glass, lead, and solid rock. It's made of sterner stuff than even a first edition can shelter you from. It's inescapable. Give in. Give innnn.
Reply
He slumps back into his chair like that's final and glances at her nervously from the sides of his hard cover where she's still got her eyes trained on him like he's going to crack any second and he's not. Not at all. He's the Doctor, he is absolutely not swayed by companions pouting their lips a little and staring at him forlornly and he's obviously not that great of a liar in his own head either.
Reply
That's about when it strikes her that maybe, at this point in his life, he really doesn't dance. Maybe it's just his future selves that do. Maybe something has to happen to change that. It's food for thought, and she kneels there silently for a minute, thinking it over. What's the odds that she'll be the one that flips that switch? The idea has occurred to her before, in idle contemplation, that maybe her own influence on his past affects his influence on her future. Or past, or present. She still doesn't totally understand the complexities of Time. It all just seems like magic to her, the kind that's just out of reach. And it seems stupid to sit there and wonder whether or not, when she can reach out and...
Dorothy pops to her feet abruptly, grabs the Doctor by the wrist, and pulls him up out of his chair.
"I think," she grins, "it's about time that changed." And she does not appear to be giving him much of a choice.
Reply
"Dorothy, I don't think this is a good idea," he says, hesitantly desperate, his hand hovering at her waist but reluctant to touch. "Wouldn't you, erm... prefer to do this with someone who enjoys it? Much more ah... entertaining, I find, doing things you like with other people who like doing it. Unlike doing it with someone who doesn't."
He thinks that maybe perhaps he shouldn't have taken off his coat before he sat down, feeling vulnerable and exposed as having two left feet. And if she hasn't noticed now, she will when he manages to break all the bones in her toes at least.
Reply
"I don't see anyone else here, do you? And anyway, it's not like it's gonna hurt you any. You don't have a problem running around on the feet you've got, dancing on 'em isn't much harder."
She steps backward, pulling the Doctor away from the chair a bit and easing them to a more spacious area. If the idea of being concerned about her toes has occurred to her, she's dismissed it-- silver slippers are made of sterner stuff, after all.
Reply
He yelps it out in a rush, sounds blurring together in his haste to get it out as open spaces quite suitable for dancing loom just that much closer. Perhaps it had also been a bad idea to have a console room with such vast amounts of space, just being there for situations like this. Then again, most of his other companions thought he was just being a killjoy whenever he declined offers of dancing.
He wrenches his wrist from her grip and then stands there looking awkward and out of place in the middle of the floor (on his own ship no less), because he really hadn't thought or planned much after 'stop Dorothy from making big mistake' and 'panic'.
Reply
"What do you mean, you can't? You mean you're not any good at it, or that... you really just don't know how?" She frowns. "How could you not know? You know in the future... well enough to keep up with me, anyway. You're sure about this?"
She seems... just a tiny bit taken aback by this! She doesn't seem to be nearly as physically forceful with him anymore, though, so at least there's that.
Reply
If he had been a man more unrefined (as it seemed he would be in the future), he would have looked down and scuffed his soles against the dark floor. Instead, he observes the shine of them in the combined light of the candles, console, and the general ambient light of the TARDIS.
He fingers his cuffs. "As strange and as odd as my life can be, I'm afraid dancing's just never come up. Hardly a necessary trade in life. Particularly my life."
Reply
"Well, it's come up now, so we're just gonna have to teach you some steps. You can't go through life being afraid to try something just because it's unfamiliar or new. Right? So."
Dorothy holds out her hands to him expectantly and waits for him to step forward and take them. It appears, at least in this, she's not going to force him. Probably best if he decides to do it for himself anyway.
Reply
Leave a comment