[fic][doctor who] The Thing About Lips
Right now I'm reading everything with an English or Scottish accent, so I'm no good for SPN fic. Got a half-finished version of my help_haiti fic for ficangel, who won me (thank you so much, dear!) sitting on my harddrive and I'll give it another run after I watch the episode tomorrow night.
To translate the above rambling, I just watched two Ten/Martha episodes and the entirety of Series 1 (or Series 27) today. You can imagine how brain-fried I am.
So, a run at Doctor Who fic! This will surely be horrible since it's my first go, so really, don't bother to read it unless you're insane.
I don't ship Doctor/Donna, I swear, but I still had to write this. Fics where Donna pines after the Doctor bug the hell out of me, but the other way around amuses me as a concept.
The Thing About Lips
Doctor/Donna (one-sided), PG, humor
Set directly after 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', because the oppurtunity was too good to pass up.
Donna kissed him. She grabbed his head and mashed their lips together so hard he felt the press of his teeth behind the half-chewed walnuts and anchovies, holding him there while he reeled, not fully in control of his own limbs.
It was inelegant, close-mouthed, and awkward. It was also quite the surprise and precisely what he needed.
He staggered back when she let him go; the cyanide, rendered into foul-smelling but otherwise harmless fumes (and for all the Doctor knew, the smell could be the combination of walnuts, anchovies, and ginger beer and not the no-longer-cyanide compound at all), poured out of his mouth in a noxious burp and left him feeling refreshed if a little bit peaky. He cleared his throat and looked about the room, at the shocked servants, a wide-eyed Agatha Christie, and of course, Donna's expectant expression. "Ahh," he sighed, wiping his sleeve across his mouth to get rid of a bit of hanging anchovy. "Detox. Must do that more often."
Donna's face took on that reproachful look that meant he was uncomfortably close to a yell or possibly a slap, and he hurried to clarify, "I mean, the detox." Donna's expression softened a fraction, but if she had anything to say about it, Agatha interrupted her.
And then they were off again, rushing to stop the killer, but in the midst of all the thoughts about transmorgifiers and murderers and giant wasps and jewel thieves, the Doctor had to admit - maybe a little - that it wasn't just the detox he meant.
*
Not because the kiss was anything, well, particularly wonderful on the scale of snogs. After all, this particular incarnation had been snogged by Madame de Pompadour - and to be perfectly honest, it would be hard to top that, especially with a kiss filled with the taste of ginger beer and cyanide. No, rather it was that she saved his life; he found himself astonished by the simple love of the action. Humans were a brilliant lot, so full of emotion and life and adventure and connections, and Donna was the most brilliant of them all. And maybe it would be a little nice to snog her proper, but he could accept that would never happen. He believed, anyway.
He didn't mean to dwell on it, but while Donna got her requisite eight hours of sleep the Doctor ended up doing maintenance in the control room and repairing burned out transdimensional wires just couldn't keep his mind busy enough. Donna was exactly the kind of mate he needed, and liked, and wanted. When she laid her hands on his in Pompeii, he'd been staggered, and again when she insisted he save a few paltry lives from the subsequent destruction. He'd had a lot of companions over the years, many of them wonderful, beautiful people, but that simple act of sharing his burden, well--! He thought he might love her for that. Or maybe that was too strong a word in English, the way it was used in the early 21st century. Or maybe not: how many people would be willing to kiss anyone with ginger beer, walnuts, and anchovies in their mouth?
He thought about Rose, which still made his hearts ache and his teeth clench; he reminded himself that it would all end in heartbreak, and that Donna would eventually leave, and that she didn't even find this incarnation attractive, and that really, all he wanted was a mate - nothing complicated or difficult or unrequited. And eventually that brought him back around to the fact she'd kissed him while he had anchovies in his mouth, and really, he had to at least say something nice in return.
"Absolute rubbish with this nonsense," the Doctor complained aloud. "But I should probably thank her. Definitely thank her. Think she'll take it the wrong way, old girl?"
The TARDIS gave an answering creak. "Yeah, I suppose you're right," the Doctor grinned.
*
Funny thing about words. The Doctor knew 5 billion languages, dead, living, and not yet born; the English language was a relatively simple one. But somehow, saying 'thank you' to Donna Noble was proving entirely too difficult.
He caught her in the TARDIS kitchen in her bathrobe and jammies with a mug of tea at the table, so he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leaned in the doorway. "So, about the kiss," he started, which was absolutely the worst possible way to start.
"Yeah? What about it?" Donna's lips pursed and her fingers tightened on her mug. "You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking."
"I'm not," the Doctor hastened to protest. "Well, I mean, I don't know because I don't know what you're thinking, but I don't think I'm thinking about what I think you're thinking about!"
Donna's eyebrows rose, one after the other just slightly out of sync, then drew together as she worked out what he'd just said. "Well, good," she decided. "Because it took six brushings and three rounds of mouthwash just to get the taste of anchovies out! I hate anchovies."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor apologized while Donna took a sip of her tea, but when she lowered the mug, she was smiling.
"Honestly? Salt was too salty?" she asked, and laughed. "What did you think I was gonna bring you, with you miming shaking a pepper pot at me!?"
Oh, pepper pots - something the Doctor would have been happy to never think about again. He threw out his hands in exclamation and protest. "And what about you? Harvey Wallbanger!?"
"Oi! I was panicking," Donna protested, and her cheeks went a tad ruddy with the acknowledgement. "You'd just been poisoned! And you're rubbish at charades! When someone doesn't get the hint you're supposed to come up with a new one," she pointed out, but a corner of her mouth started to quirk upwards. "See if I ever ask you on my team for game night."
"Well, you're rubbish at charades too," the Doctor shot back, but he started to smile back. "I'll tell you where we're never going, and that's Yoreesh Devalannia. Totally silent planet - nobody has ears. You wouldn't survive five minutes."
"Fine by me," Donna declared, and sipped her tea again. "Nobody would understand you and I wouldn't understand anybody. Fine pair we'd make."
The Doctor happened to be fluent in the sign language of Yoreesh Devalannia; he opened his mouth to say so, and Donna put up her hand. "No! Enough about the deaf planet we're never going to. You wanted to say something about the kiss?"
That was Donna all right, never one to let him go off on tangents for too long. It was a little annoying but also a little nice, since this incarnation tended to run at the mouth a bit. Well, some. Well, a lot. Which was probably why he said, "Well, I don't even think that counted as a kiss. I'm actually quite good at it without the anchovies and the poisoning."
"Excuse me," Donna said, pointedly. "I don't really care if you've snogged the Queen of England, Space Boy, or if she loved it!"
"Right," the Doctor said, and swallowed as he shifted his weight uncomfortably. "That wasn't what I meant to say, not really."
"Then what did you want to say?" Donna shot back rapid-fire, a line between her brows indicating waning patience with his alien word games. When he hesitated, she gave a little shake of her head. "What? The great Time Lord at a loss for words? I never thought I'd see the day!" And now her small smile was laughing at him.
"No!" he protested, leaning forward. "I mean, yes! No, wait, I mean, what I wanted to say was, thank you!" Donna blinked and raised her eyebrows, visibly surprised; the Doctor pressed on, having finally gotten around to the right words. "You were brilliant back there, absolutely saved my life. So thank you, Donna Noble." He grinned now, enjoying her gobsmacked expression. "Best kiss of my life." Or one of the more important ones, at any rate.
Donna shook her head again at that, and gave him a smug, amused smile. "Worst of mine." She put down her mug and rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her fists. "Gonna make it up to me, Space Man?"
Oh, she's asking for it, the Doctor thought. And he thought about it. And for a long, long moment - specifically five point two-eight seconds - he wondered what Donna Noble's lips would taste like without walnuts and cyanide and ginger beer (probably, he realized, like the orange tea she was drinking) in the way, which was just long enough for her to start to frown.
He stuck his hands in his pants pockets, bent forward at the waist, and smiled at her. "How would you like a little sunbathing? I know a beautiful place off the Medusa Cascade, with purple seas and green sand. Amethyst seas! You'll love it."
Donna sat up and beamed. "Really? A beach!? It'll be just like a holiday!" She got up from the table, taking the mug with her. "And maybe a proper holiday this time, with none of this saving the universe business. Think you can manage that?"
The Doctor straightened up and twisted to let Donna by as she exited the kitchen, not even waiting for an answer, and watched her go down the hall with a grin. The best thing about Donna's lips, he decided, was seeing them in the shape of a smile.
fin
To translate the above rambling, I just watched two Ten/Martha episodes and the entirety of Series 1 (or Series 27) today. You can imagine how brain-fried I am.
So, a run at Doctor Who fic! This will surely be horrible since it's my first go, so really, don't bother to read it unless you're insane.
I don't ship Doctor/Donna, I swear, but I still had to write this. Fics where Donna pines after the Doctor bug the hell out of me, but the other way around amuses me as a concept.
The Thing About Lips
Doctor/Donna (one-sided), PG, humor
Set directly after 'The Unicorn and the Wasp', because the oppurtunity was too good to pass up.
Donna kissed him. She grabbed his head and mashed their lips together so hard he felt the press of his teeth behind the half-chewed walnuts and anchovies, holding him there while he reeled, not fully in control of his own limbs.
It was inelegant, close-mouthed, and awkward. It was also quite the surprise and precisely what he needed.
He staggered back when she let him go; the cyanide, rendered into foul-smelling but otherwise harmless fumes (and for all the Doctor knew, the smell could be the combination of walnuts, anchovies, and ginger beer and not the no-longer-cyanide compound at all), poured out of his mouth in a noxious burp and left him feeling refreshed if a little bit peaky. He cleared his throat and looked about the room, at the shocked servants, a wide-eyed Agatha Christie, and of course, Donna's expectant expression. "Ahh," he sighed, wiping his sleeve across his mouth to get rid of a bit of hanging anchovy. "Detox. Must do that more often."
Donna's face took on that reproachful look that meant he was uncomfortably close to a yell or possibly a slap, and he hurried to clarify, "I mean, the detox." Donna's expression softened a fraction, but if she had anything to say about it, Agatha interrupted her.
And then they were off again, rushing to stop the killer, but in the midst of all the thoughts about transmorgifiers and murderers and giant wasps and jewel thieves, the Doctor had to admit - maybe a little - that it wasn't just the detox he meant.
*
Not because the kiss was anything, well, particularly wonderful on the scale of snogs. After all, this particular incarnation had been snogged by Madame de Pompadour - and to be perfectly honest, it would be hard to top that, especially with a kiss filled with the taste of ginger beer and cyanide. No, rather it was that she saved his life; he found himself astonished by the simple love of the action. Humans were a brilliant lot, so full of emotion and life and adventure and connections, and Donna was the most brilliant of them all. And maybe it would be a little nice to snog her proper, but he could accept that would never happen. He believed, anyway.
He didn't mean to dwell on it, but while Donna got her requisite eight hours of sleep the Doctor ended up doing maintenance in the control room and repairing burned out transdimensional wires just couldn't keep his mind busy enough. Donna was exactly the kind of mate he needed, and liked, and wanted. When she laid her hands on his in Pompeii, he'd been staggered, and again when she insisted he save a few paltry lives from the subsequent destruction. He'd had a lot of companions over the years, many of them wonderful, beautiful people, but that simple act of sharing his burden, well--! He thought he might love her for that. Or maybe that was too strong a word in English, the way it was used in the early 21st century. Or maybe not: how many people would be willing to kiss anyone with ginger beer, walnuts, and anchovies in their mouth?
He thought about Rose, which still made his hearts ache and his teeth clench; he reminded himself that it would all end in heartbreak, and that Donna would eventually leave, and that she didn't even find this incarnation attractive, and that really, all he wanted was a mate - nothing complicated or difficult or unrequited. And eventually that brought him back around to the fact she'd kissed him while he had anchovies in his mouth, and really, he had to at least say something nice in return.
"Absolute rubbish with this nonsense," the Doctor complained aloud. "But I should probably thank her. Definitely thank her. Think she'll take it the wrong way, old girl?"
The TARDIS gave an answering creak. "Yeah, I suppose you're right," the Doctor grinned.
*
Funny thing about words. The Doctor knew 5 billion languages, dead, living, and not yet born; the English language was a relatively simple one. But somehow, saying 'thank you' to Donna Noble was proving entirely too difficult.
He caught her in the TARDIS kitchen in her bathrobe and jammies with a mug of tea at the table, so he shoved his hands deep into his pockets and leaned in the doorway. "So, about the kiss," he started, which was absolutely the worst possible way to start.
"Yeah? What about it?" Donna's lips pursed and her fingers tightened on her mug. "You better not be thinking what I think you're thinking."
"I'm not," the Doctor hastened to protest. "Well, I mean, I don't know because I don't know what you're thinking, but I don't think I'm thinking about what I think you're thinking about!"
Donna's eyebrows rose, one after the other just slightly out of sync, then drew together as she worked out what he'd just said. "Well, good," she decided. "Because it took six brushings and three rounds of mouthwash just to get the taste of anchovies out! I hate anchovies."
"I'm sorry," the Doctor apologized while Donna took a sip of her tea, but when she lowered the mug, she was smiling.
"Honestly? Salt was too salty?" she asked, and laughed. "What did you think I was gonna bring you, with you miming shaking a pepper pot at me!?"
Oh, pepper pots - something the Doctor would have been happy to never think about again. He threw out his hands in exclamation and protest. "And what about you? Harvey Wallbanger!?"
"Oi! I was panicking," Donna protested, and her cheeks went a tad ruddy with the acknowledgement. "You'd just been poisoned! And you're rubbish at charades! When someone doesn't get the hint you're supposed to come up with a new one," she pointed out, but a corner of her mouth started to quirk upwards. "See if I ever ask you on my team for game night."
"Well, you're rubbish at charades too," the Doctor shot back, but he started to smile back. "I'll tell you where we're never going, and that's Yoreesh Devalannia. Totally silent planet - nobody has ears. You wouldn't survive five minutes."
"Fine by me," Donna declared, and sipped her tea again. "Nobody would understand you and I wouldn't understand anybody. Fine pair we'd make."
The Doctor happened to be fluent in the sign language of Yoreesh Devalannia; he opened his mouth to say so, and Donna put up her hand. "No! Enough about the deaf planet we're never going to. You wanted to say something about the kiss?"
That was Donna all right, never one to let him go off on tangents for too long. It was a little annoying but also a little nice, since this incarnation tended to run at the mouth a bit. Well, some. Well, a lot. Which was probably why he said, "Well, I don't even think that counted as a kiss. I'm actually quite good at it without the anchovies and the poisoning."
"Excuse me," Donna said, pointedly. "I don't really care if you've snogged the Queen of England, Space Boy, or if she loved it!"
"Right," the Doctor said, and swallowed as he shifted his weight uncomfortably. "That wasn't what I meant to say, not really."
"Then what did you want to say?" Donna shot back rapid-fire, a line between her brows indicating waning patience with his alien word games. When he hesitated, she gave a little shake of her head. "What? The great Time Lord at a loss for words? I never thought I'd see the day!" And now her small smile was laughing at him.
"No!" he protested, leaning forward. "I mean, yes! No, wait, I mean, what I wanted to say was, thank you!" Donna blinked and raised her eyebrows, visibly surprised; the Doctor pressed on, having finally gotten around to the right words. "You were brilliant back there, absolutely saved my life. So thank you, Donna Noble." He grinned now, enjoying her gobsmacked expression. "Best kiss of my life." Or one of the more important ones, at any rate.
Donna shook her head again at that, and gave him a smug, amused smile. "Worst of mine." She put down her mug and rested her elbows on the table and her chin on her fists. "Gonna make it up to me, Space Man?"
Oh, she's asking for it, the Doctor thought. And he thought about it. And for a long, long moment - specifically five point two-eight seconds - he wondered what Donna Noble's lips would taste like without walnuts and cyanide and ginger beer (probably, he realized, like the orange tea she was drinking) in the way, which was just long enough for her to start to frown.
He stuck his hands in his pants pockets, bent forward at the waist, and smiled at her. "How would you like a little sunbathing? I know a beautiful place off the Medusa Cascade, with purple seas and green sand. Amethyst seas! You'll love it."
Donna sat up and beamed. "Really? A beach!? It'll be just like a holiday!" She got up from the table, taking the mug with her. "And maybe a proper holiday this time, with none of this saving the universe business. Think you can manage that?"
The Doctor straightened up and twisted to let Donna by as she exited the kitchen, not even waiting for an answer, and watched her go down the hall with a grin. The best thing about Donna's lips, he decided, was seeing them in the shape of a smile.
fin