Fic: Teacup & Saucer (PG, Season 3, Martha and Rose)
Teacup & Saucer. Seriously, this is pretty much crack. Not that I generally label anything as "crack," but. So it's Season Three-ish, spoilers for everything, PG for like one swear.
Martha. Rose. Jack. Mobs with rocks. Little helmets with lights on them. Getting over your best friend's new girlfriend, and meeting new and interesting labor practices.
"I love grapes," Rose says, stupidly; and the Doctor gazes at her adoringly, as if she'd just invented kittens.
It's the clothes. Or the hair. Or the teeth- the teeth are killing her. She imagines taking her to a dentist's office and leaving her there and laughing maniacally all the way back to the TARDIS. She knows she'd have a delightful evil laugh, a rich throaty one, quite sexy really-
"Martha, you all right ?"
He's standing at the console, and she's there, with her horrid dyed hair sticking up at all angles and looking as if- yes. Yes. It's definitely been played with, recently, probably by an alien; one particular alien, whom Martha considers to be at this second a tremendous asshole.
"Yeah, you okay ?" pipes up Martha's blonde nightmare. She looks kissed, and the Doctor looks like a spoiled child caught at the cookie jar. Together, they form a perfect dopey circle.
"I'm fine," she hisses back, and wonders where her composure and her medical training went; well, the medical training remains, because she's considering how to remove Rose's spleen with a teacup and saucer. It would be almost too easy.
"Splendid !" the Doctor exclaims, too pleasantly; and Martha could swear his left eye's getting a twitch. Has that always been there ? "So, the planet of the Thermatrices. Always the perfect temperature, perfectly customised- no parkas, no unpleasant sweating; just good sunsets and the best grapes in the system. What do you say ?" He glances around to his companions, who are staring at each other.
"Sunsets. Yeah," Martha says. "Sounds good."
"I love grapes," Rose says, stupidly; and the Doctor gazes at her adoringly, as if she'd just invented kittens.
Martha leaves, to find that teacup.
It started well enough. They'd found a neat little hole in the universes and he'd muttered something about getting slapped by two generations, no, three; and Martha had assumed the story was a blood feud or an insulted prince and been intrigued at the prospect.
But it wasn't an indignant prince or a bitter blood feud, no; it was a perkily-bottomed demon woman with appalling taste in pop music and no appreciation for sushi and an uncanny ability to make the Doctor babble like a demented teenage brook.
Whew. Thoughts like that made Martha very, very tired.
Rose was all too happy to see them; hell, at the time, she'd been happy to see Martha, called her lovely things and hugged her warmly and invited her in for tea. It had all gone splendidly until the packing.
"You stay, and eat," Rose had said, not taking her eyes off of the Doctor (nor her hands, the nerve.) "I'll get packing. I don't want to keep that universe-knothole waiting." She'd winked and the Doctor had smiled dreamily and Martha had choked on her scone.
"She's, ah, coming with ?"
"Oh, yes," the Doctor had replied, watching the bottom in question retreat from the sitting room. "Oh, definitely." He leaned slightly for a better angle. "Did I- did I ever tell you about the time Rose saved me from the Nestene Consciousness ?"
"Twice," Martha had said; and that was the beginning of the end.
The adventuring had remained pretty much the same; except now, the running from danger portion of the program was neatly doubled by the running from additional danger that Rose seemed to scare up by breathing.
"We could," Martha pants, between breaths, "just- sell her to them- after all."
"What ?" the Doctor shouts back, clutching Rose's smudgy hand and pausing only to name various flora and fauna for the girl's amusement. "No, she'd never go for that !"
"That one's nice !" Rose calls out, pointing to a sentient, fanged bush. "I think it's pretty !" They stop to share a moment of bliss, and are neatly pelted with rocks.
Martha runs faster, in the hope that the mob will catch them both and eat them.
Back in the TARDIS, showered and bandaged and flipped back into the twenty-third century, things come to a head. Rose has draped her wet laundry over the railings and Martha has eaten the last of the lemon biscuits and both of them have been looking for an excuse, anyway.
"I imagined you- smarter," Martha snaps. Rose looks as if she considers several options, one of them probably fairly bloody; and Martha haughtily notes the length of time it's taking her to produce a retort.
"I imagined," she says finally, "that you'd be a boy." Martha stares at her. "I must be bloody psychic, cause-"
"Okay," the Doctor says, white as a sheet and backing slowly down the ramp. "Would anybody like breakfast ? Because there's a lovely little cafe half a mile down the road from here, with bagels made out of flour grown on the moon, not your moon but a moon, mind; quite delicious and incredibly good for the immune system-"
"Go," they snarl together, and he's a rabbit with a jetpack in the time it takes to blink.
"So."
"You first."
"Oh no, you go ahead, your ladyship."
"Is that a crack about my mum ?" Rose says, hands on hips; Martha mentally pictures the stage where Rose takes off her earrings and cocks her fists. It's gratifying. "Because if it is-"
"It's not. It's a crack about your mascara, which threatens to devour us all alive."
"Oh, that's rich," Rose snorts. "At least in my decade, we know to leave pleather alone."
"It's not-"
"Plus, I'm not the rude one trying to nip in and take another girl's er, alien-man."
"He's yours, is he ?"
"No." Rose pouts, in what is admittedly a pretty adorable fashion. "Er, for the purpose of the argument- yes. Yes." She frowns. Sighs. "Look, I know I'm no med student. But you don't have to treat me like a total vacant, you know ?"
"Yeah. Sure." Martha shuffles her feet. "I'm sorry. But you could act like I'm around, sometimes. I feel like a chaperone at a school dance around you two."
"I know, he's the rudest."
"You're no better." Martha leans against the railing, eyelashes fluttering a mile a minute. "Ooh, Doctor, isn't this just the loveliest flower ! Whoops, is my top button unbuttoned ?"
"Lord." Rose stares. "I thought I played it cooler than that."
"No way."
"Well, didn't you ? Try it ? Just once or twice." Rose giggles, running her tongue along her teeth. "You did, didn't you." Martha slumps against the console, arms folded.
"Caught."
"What was it ? The rescue ? I like to call that the swooning lady," she says, fluttering a hand at her forehead. "Or was it the I'm oh-so-brilliant ? You're a good one for that. Or the I-just-got-up-no-need-for-a-bra-yet ? And there's the hand-holding, and complimenting the TARDIS, and the your-lever-is-clever, and the post-rescue hug, and the pre-rescue hug-"
"Rose Tyler," Martha says, "you are an insane person."
"Oh, right," she says.
Martha, in that moment, comes dangerously close to liking her.
The Doctor sticks his head in the door, much later, just as they emit a particularly loud burst of laughter. He stares at them, sprawled cheerfully across the grating, munching on toast with jam and speaking in rapid chatter. They see him and giggle uproariously afresh.
"How," he murmurs, rubbing the back of his neck, "does this keep happening ?"
"Find anything good ?" Martha calls out, nudging Rose with an elbow. "You get your arse bit by a rat-plant again ?" They dissolve into mutual hysterics. The Doctor drops the twitch, in favor of cold sweats.
"Well, yes to the first," he admits, and Jack's head pops into the door-frame. "No to the second." He grins at Rose, who gives a little whoop of joy. She brushes the crumbs off and gets up; and in the meantime Jack winks at Martha.
"They get better and better, Doctor," he says, nodding at her.
"Finally," Martha sighs. "Intelligent life." There is a hug and some scuffling, and somebody's ass gets pinched.
Well, more than one somebody.
Trouble, as trouble inevitably does, calls on them quickly. They suit up and get nifty little helmets, compliments of the TARDIS, and stand around waiting for a plan. "Teams of two," the Doctor says, glancing at the small army he's now carting around.
"I'm with Rose," Martha says; she's rewarded with a cheeky thumbs-up from the blonde. "She always gets the good danger. You take the sex machine."
"You know I don't work for nobody but you," Jack croons, into a hairbrush. Rose, beside him, mouths is that my hairbrush ? Martha slaps him, gently, so as to indicate that he might be allowed to come around later. Hell, who knows, maybe he'll need something less subtle.
"Bull."
The Doctor coughs. It's sort of a new condition. Rose claps him on the back, for which he looks both grateful and mortified.
"Right." He makes a vaguely Napoleonic gesture at the doors. "Come on, my circus. Let's free some miners-"
"They're smelters, Doctor," Rose stage-whispers.
"Correctasaurus !" he continues, without breaking stride. "Hideous word. Let's free some smelters ! Smelting all day, without relief from their vicious, overly entitled, er, overlords !" He pauses for a second to peer across the tops of his glasses at Rose. "What the hell, by the way, are smelters doing on a planet that's eighty-three percent water ?"
"A very good job," Martha says. Rose laughs uproariously and the Doctor bangs his head against the wall and Jack; well, Jack pinches her bottom, but that's essentially in his nature and can't be helped. Martha has a sudden flash of love for them all. She thinks she'll let them live after all, mobs and hair dye and alien snottiness aside.
Just this once.
Martha. Rose. Jack. Mobs with rocks. Little helmets with lights on them. Getting over your best friend's new girlfriend, and meeting new and interesting labor practices.
"I love grapes," Rose says, stupidly; and the Doctor gazes at her adoringly, as if she'd just invented kittens.
It's the clothes. Or the hair. Or the teeth- the teeth are killing her. She imagines taking her to a dentist's office and leaving her there and laughing maniacally all the way back to the TARDIS. She knows she'd have a delightful evil laugh, a rich throaty one, quite sexy really-
"Martha, you all right ?"
He's standing at the console, and she's there, with her horrid dyed hair sticking up at all angles and looking as if- yes. Yes. It's definitely been played with, recently, probably by an alien; one particular alien, whom Martha considers to be at this second a tremendous asshole.
"Yeah, you okay ?" pipes up Martha's blonde nightmare. She looks kissed, and the Doctor looks like a spoiled child caught at the cookie jar. Together, they form a perfect dopey circle.
"I'm fine," she hisses back, and wonders where her composure and her medical training went; well, the medical training remains, because she's considering how to remove Rose's spleen with a teacup and saucer. It would be almost too easy.
"Splendid !" the Doctor exclaims, too pleasantly; and Martha could swear his left eye's getting a twitch. Has that always been there ? "So, the planet of the Thermatrices. Always the perfect temperature, perfectly customised- no parkas, no unpleasant sweating; just good sunsets and the best grapes in the system. What do you say ?" He glances around to his companions, who are staring at each other.
"Sunsets. Yeah," Martha says. "Sounds good."
"I love grapes," Rose says, stupidly; and the Doctor gazes at her adoringly, as if she'd just invented kittens.
Martha leaves, to find that teacup.
It started well enough. They'd found a neat little hole in the universes and he'd muttered something about getting slapped by two generations, no, three; and Martha had assumed the story was a blood feud or an insulted prince and been intrigued at the prospect.
But it wasn't an indignant prince or a bitter blood feud, no; it was a perkily-bottomed demon woman with appalling taste in pop music and no appreciation for sushi and an uncanny ability to make the Doctor babble like a demented teenage brook.
Whew. Thoughts like that made Martha very, very tired.
Rose was all too happy to see them; hell, at the time, she'd been happy to see Martha, called her lovely things and hugged her warmly and invited her in for tea. It had all gone splendidly until the packing.
"You stay, and eat," Rose had said, not taking her eyes off of the Doctor (nor her hands, the nerve.) "I'll get packing. I don't want to keep that universe-knothole waiting." She'd winked and the Doctor had smiled dreamily and Martha had choked on her scone.
"She's, ah, coming with ?"
"Oh, yes," the Doctor had replied, watching the bottom in question retreat from the sitting room. "Oh, definitely." He leaned slightly for a better angle. "Did I- did I ever tell you about the time Rose saved me from the Nestene Consciousness ?"
"Twice," Martha had said; and that was the beginning of the end.
The adventuring had remained pretty much the same; except now, the running from danger portion of the program was neatly doubled by the running from additional danger that Rose seemed to scare up by breathing.
"We could," Martha pants, between breaths, "just- sell her to them- after all."
"What ?" the Doctor shouts back, clutching Rose's smudgy hand and pausing only to name various flora and fauna for the girl's amusement. "No, she'd never go for that !"
"That one's nice !" Rose calls out, pointing to a sentient, fanged bush. "I think it's pretty !" They stop to share a moment of bliss, and are neatly pelted with rocks.
Martha runs faster, in the hope that the mob will catch them both and eat them.
Back in the TARDIS, showered and bandaged and flipped back into the twenty-third century, things come to a head. Rose has draped her wet laundry over the railings and Martha has eaten the last of the lemon biscuits and both of them have been looking for an excuse, anyway.
"I imagined you- smarter," Martha snaps. Rose looks as if she considers several options, one of them probably fairly bloody; and Martha haughtily notes the length of time it's taking her to produce a retort.
"I imagined," she says finally, "that you'd be a boy." Martha stares at her. "I must be bloody psychic, cause-"
"Okay," the Doctor says, white as a sheet and backing slowly down the ramp. "Would anybody like breakfast ? Because there's a lovely little cafe half a mile down the road from here, with bagels made out of flour grown on the moon, not your moon but a moon, mind; quite delicious and incredibly good for the immune system-"
"Go," they snarl together, and he's a rabbit with a jetpack in the time it takes to blink.
"So."
"You first."
"Oh no, you go ahead, your ladyship."
"Is that a crack about my mum ?" Rose says, hands on hips; Martha mentally pictures the stage where Rose takes off her earrings and cocks her fists. It's gratifying. "Because if it is-"
"It's not. It's a crack about your mascara, which threatens to devour us all alive."
"Oh, that's rich," Rose snorts. "At least in my decade, we know to leave pleather alone."
"It's not-"
"Plus, I'm not the rude one trying to nip in and take another girl's er, alien-man."
"He's yours, is he ?"
"No." Rose pouts, in what is admittedly a pretty adorable fashion. "Er, for the purpose of the argument- yes. Yes." She frowns. Sighs. "Look, I know I'm no med student. But you don't have to treat me like a total vacant, you know ?"
"Yeah. Sure." Martha shuffles her feet. "I'm sorry. But you could act like I'm around, sometimes. I feel like a chaperone at a school dance around you two."
"I know, he's the rudest."
"You're no better." Martha leans against the railing, eyelashes fluttering a mile a minute. "Ooh, Doctor, isn't this just the loveliest flower ! Whoops, is my top button unbuttoned ?"
"Lord." Rose stares. "I thought I played it cooler than that."
"No way."
"Well, didn't you ? Try it ? Just once or twice." Rose giggles, running her tongue along her teeth. "You did, didn't you." Martha slumps against the console, arms folded.
"Caught."
"What was it ? The rescue ? I like to call that the swooning lady," she says, fluttering a hand at her forehead. "Or was it the I'm oh-so-brilliant ? You're a good one for that. Or the I-just-got-up-no-need-for-a-bra-yet ? And there's the hand-holding, and complimenting the TARDIS, and the your-lever-is-clever, and the post-rescue hug, and the pre-rescue hug-"
"Rose Tyler," Martha says, "you are an insane person."
"Oh, right," she says.
Martha, in that moment, comes dangerously close to liking her.
The Doctor sticks his head in the door, much later, just as they emit a particularly loud burst of laughter. He stares at them, sprawled cheerfully across the grating, munching on toast with jam and speaking in rapid chatter. They see him and giggle uproariously afresh.
"How," he murmurs, rubbing the back of his neck, "does this keep happening ?"
"Find anything good ?" Martha calls out, nudging Rose with an elbow. "You get your arse bit by a rat-plant again ?" They dissolve into mutual hysterics. The Doctor drops the twitch, in favor of cold sweats.
"Well, yes to the first," he admits, and Jack's head pops into the door-frame. "No to the second." He grins at Rose, who gives a little whoop of joy. She brushes the crumbs off and gets up; and in the meantime Jack winks at Martha.
"They get better and better, Doctor," he says, nodding at her.
"Finally," Martha sighs. "Intelligent life." There is a hug and some scuffling, and somebody's ass gets pinched.
Well, more than one somebody.
Trouble, as trouble inevitably does, calls on them quickly. They suit up and get nifty little helmets, compliments of the TARDIS, and stand around waiting for a plan. "Teams of two," the Doctor says, glancing at the small army he's now carting around.
"I'm with Rose," Martha says; she's rewarded with a cheeky thumbs-up from the blonde. "She always gets the good danger. You take the sex machine."
"You know I don't work for nobody but you," Jack croons, into a hairbrush. Rose, beside him, mouths is that my hairbrush ? Martha slaps him, gently, so as to indicate that he might be allowed to come around later. Hell, who knows, maybe he'll need something less subtle.
"Bull."
The Doctor coughs. It's sort of a new condition. Rose claps him on the back, for which he looks both grateful and mortified.
"Right." He makes a vaguely Napoleonic gesture at the doors. "Come on, my circus. Let's free some miners-"
"They're smelters, Doctor," Rose stage-whispers.
"Correctasaurus !" he continues, without breaking stride. "Hideous word. Let's free some smelters ! Smelting all day, without relief from their vicious, overly entitled, er, overlords !" He pauses for a second to peer across the tops of his glasses at Rose. "What the hell, by the way, are smelters doing on a planet that's eighty-three percent water ?"
"A very good job," Martha says. Rose laughs uproariously and the Doctor bangs his head against the wall and Jack; well, Jack pinches her bottom, but that's essentially in his nature and can't be helped. Martha has a sudden flash of love for them all. She thinks she'll let them live after all, mobs and hair dye and alien snottiness aside.
Just this once.