New DW Fic - Ockham's Razor 1/1
Title: Ockham’s Razor 1/1
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: The Doctor, Donna and the TARDIS
Word Count: 2,100
Warnings/Notes: Written for the tenth weekly drabble challenge with the prompt ‘confession’.
Summary: The Doctor’s had a big night. Shame he can’t remember any of it.
The Doctor groans and moves his head on the pillow. His mouth tastes as if he’s been sampling his socks again, but without the pesky threads that such a practice leaves between his teeth - was it is his fault that several planets in the Lechte galaxy demanded that each visitor consumed an item of clothing before they were allowed to leave?
He can’t help noticing that, in spite of the fact that he hasn’t yet dared to open his eyes, there seems to be a lot of brightness on the other side of his closed lids. He waves his hand in the direction of what he hopes is the movement-operated dimmer switch and is grateful when the brilliant illumination began to fade.
“Water,” he mutters to himself. “Or - no, tea. Best cure for rubbishy feelings.”
Struggling into an upright position, he finally cracks open his eyelids, only to drop back against the mattress as the room begins to spin.
“Ah,” he tells himself as he realises what’s wrong, “drunk.”
There’s a hum in his mind from the TARDIS that he takes as confirmation that he was, in fact, very drunk the night before. Not that there’s nights in the TARDIS, as such, but it’s so improper to get drunk during the day that he always determines that any point in time where he was drinking must have been evening. Therefore the painful period of recovery has to be morning. Preferably Sunday morning. That way he’s only wasting a day he generally avoids anyway.
“Did I,” he asks the TARDIS, “make an absolute, abject fool of myself last night? And is there tea?”
The mental silence suggests that the TARDIS is struggling with an appropriate answer to either or both of these questions.
“Tea,” he says firmly.
The heavenly aroma of the hot beverage assails his senses the next moment, but now he has to work out how he’s going to sit up and drink it. He’s trying to encourage his head not to spin quite so viciously when the door opens.
“Are you awake, Doctor?” Donna’s voice asks softly. “Or are you talking in your sleep?”
“Ha ha,” he snaps drily, still afraid to open his eyes in case the room decides to start spinning again. “When have you ever known me to talk in my sleep?”
“About as often as I’ve known you to drink yourself into a stupor,” she tells him smartly, and he winces. “Can I come in?”
“Must you?”
“Not at all! I can leave you there to rot if you’d prefer.”
“No, Donna, wait!” He opens an eyelid to peer at her, grateful that the room isn’t still on the move. “I didn’t mean I wanted you to go. It’s just - do you have to be so cheerful at this hour?”
“Oh, is that why you’re whispering?” Donna chuckles and steps into the room. “Got a bit if a hangover, have we?”
“Was I whispering?” He realises he’s still doing it. “Oh.”
“Still, you’re in a better state than Jack.” She sits on the only clear chair in the room. “He was dead by the time I dragged you away.”
“Dead drunk?”
“No, just dead. Passed out and hit his head on something. Probably broke his neck into the bargain. Don’t worry, though, Martha called before you woke up and she said he was fine. Oh, a bit fragile, of course, but only about as bad as you.”
She laughs in what the Doctor can’t help thinking is a particularly heartless manner.
“Are you going to sit up and drink your tea?”
“Not quickly,” he replies after several moments of thought.
Donna chuckles again and gets to her feet. “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen. I was thinking something nice for breakfast - lots of greasy bacon and a couple of nice fried eggs. Buttered toast. Maybe some baked beans.”
He feels his stomach twist painfully and glares at her. “Has anyone ever told you, Donna Noble, that you’ve got a very evil streak in you?” he demands, still whispering, which rather reduces the impact of his statement.
She grins and pats his arm in the condescending manner that the sober tend to use on the very hungover.
“Take your time, Doctor. After all, you have got a time machine, so it’s not as if we’ll be late to anywhere we might be going.”
He’s still trying to come up with a snappy retort when the door closes behind her.
Thankful that the room has decided not to resume spinning, he very slowly moves until he’s sitting almost upright. With one hand pressed against the bed head to keep him stable, he picks up the tea and slurps the first mouthful.
It’s not exactly hot anymore, but at least it serves to quell the urge to be violently sick that Donna’s descriptions of food had prompted. By the time he drains the mug, his head has begun to clear and he doesn’t need to hold himself up.
However he sways as he finally gets to his feet and his vision remains blurry as he stumbles in the direction of his bathroom.
The shower is cold and brisk and wakes him up - at least enough to realize that he’s still partially clothed. He swears as he yanks off his drenched tie and peels away his sodden shirt. He should be thankful that his suit didn’t end up in the same state…
Wait a minute.
He’s not wearing his suit.
Or his shoes.
Or his socks.
Did Donna undress him?
The Doctor groans and lets his head drop against the tiles, wishing desperately that he had any sort of memory of the events of the previous night.
The first clue comes as he turns off the shower and steps out. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he wipes the steam off the mirror - he thanks the TARDIS for turning on the hot water after he stripped off his wet clothes because the only use for a cold shower is instant sobriety, and he’s reached that stage now - and peers at his face.
His eyes are bloodshot and his mouth is blue.
At least he knows what he was drinking.
If it’d been yellow, he’d worry about having sung karaoke.
Green would mean very unattractive attempts at dancing.
Red would imply that he’d either cut himself when he fell over as a result of losing his co-ordination, or else he made lewd propositions.
Gold and he wouldn’t be standing up yet.
Blue just meant he’d said things that, if he could remember them, he’d regret.
He just hopes they weren’t directed at Donna.
On second thoughts, if they had been, she certainly wouldn’t have come in to check on him.
She’s probably have taken off in the TARDIS without him instead.
He groans, towels off quickly and dons his stripy bathrobe.
He’ll worry about his hair later.
For now, he wants to see what he can piece together about the previous night.
He returns to the bedroom, looking for anything that appears out of place.
The first thing that strikes him is a fancy masquerade-style mask hanging off his bedside lamp. Those sort of functions aren’t the type of thing that appeal to Captain Jack Harkness, so the Doctor assumes that he and Donna either went there before beginning the drinking bout or afterwards.
If it was afterwards, he’s probably got a lot of explaining to do.
And probably apologising.
He spots the blue-and-white chequered boxer shorts next. The ones that he thought he’d put on that morning. Which, as he peeps down to look, are no longer on him.
Now he’s desperately hoping Donna wasn’t the person who undressed him!
The yo-yo tangled around the ceiling fan probably wasn’t there the night before, but he’s not entirely sure.
However he’s positive that the large pink stuffed elephant is new.
Right, so they went to a masquerade ball and then a fairground before going drinking with Jack.
And he came back to the TARDIS and showed off his yo-yo skills.
Or lack of them.
Sighing, the Doctor takes one final look around before leaving his bedroom. If there’s anything else in there, he’s not sure he wants to see it.
However the first object to meet his eyes as he steps out into the hallway is a long string of plaited streamers. The sort of thing you’d find at a birthday party.
He wonders if this is where he and Jack had their drinking contest.
And whose party it was.
And if he’s got more apologies to make than he thought.
Closing his eyes, he turns his head away, but, as he wonders where the party fits into the masquerade ball and the fair, he stumbles over a small wooden box.
Okay, so the absolute strangest item, which definitely doesn’t belong anywhere on the TARDIS, is this small wooden box that he’s seen somewhere before. He picks it up and looks at it closely - and then a hazy memory swims back into his mind of a visit to St Peter’s Basilica. It was handy that that visit should have come just at the time when he was in need of a small wooden box to fix something on the TARDIS. And he’d always wondered where that little kneeling stool from the confession booth had gone.
He can’t help wondering how it’s come to be in the middle of the hallway right now.
He carefully puts it down and makes a mental note to go back to Rome as soon as he can. With any luck, no one will have noticed that it was gone.
And since he can remember it, perhaps that happened before the masquerade ball, and the party, and the fair, and the drinking with Jack, and the yo-yo skills (or lack of them).
This time, because he’s not paying attention, when he trips over something else, he ends up falling onto his hands and knees. He’s also staring at a pair of handcuffs. The kind with the pink feathers. He picks them up, dangling them from his index finger, and tries to imagine a situation in which they could have come to be lying on the floor outside his bedroom.
Shuddering, he flings them aside and decides he really doesn’t want to know.
The same goes for the random parts that he’s sure belong somewhere on the TARDIS console, rather than hanging from various places on the walls.
And he stares in disgust at the massive ball of fluff and threads that rolls out from behind the door that leads into the kitchen and dining room. He knows he’s cleaned too recently for that to have accumulated over time, so presumably it’s been brought in.
Probably by him.
He shudders again and heads into the kitchen where he finds Donna sitting at the bench reading a magazine.
“Morning,” she says cheerfully. “You look rather more like yourself.”
He slides uneasily around her and pops two pieces of bread into the toaster. He’s a little concerned by the abnormally bright tone of her voice. Usually it’s him being obnoxiously upbeat first thing, while she’s barely able to string a coherent sentence together until she’s had her first cup of coffee.
He can’t help thinking desperately of anything that might have happened the night before to make her this cheerful.
And he really hopes it doesn’t have to do with one or more of the things he’s laid eyes on so far this morning.
“Answer me one question,” the Doctor says slowly and deliberately, avoiding her gaze as he rescues his toast once it's cooked. “In your opinion, do I owe you an apology for anything I may have inadvertently said or done last night?”
Donna thinks for a moment and the Doctor feels his hearts sink.
“Honestly?” She shrugs. “You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.”
There’s a horribly long silence in the room. Then she reaches over and places her hand lightly on his.
“So - do you want me to tell you what happened last night?” she offers.
He gives her a pleading look. “I’d really rather not know.”
“Oh.” She shrugs, although he’s certain there’s a hint of disappointment in her eyes. “All right then.”
“Thank you,” he says in painfully distinct tones and buries himself in his dry toast and tea, his lips and teeth leaving blue marks on the toast and the rim of his cup.
Donna watches him for a moment before turning back to her own breakfast. Personally she can’t understand what’s so embarrassing about deciding to inventorize the contents of his pockets, but then she’s not a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord. Perhaps they’re more sensitive about things like that.
Next Part
Author: katherine_b
Rating: PG
Characters: The Doctor, Donna and the TARDIS
Word Count: 2,100
Warnings/Notes: Written for the tenth weekly drabble challenge with the prompt ‘confession’.
Summary: The Doctor’s had a big night. Shame he can’t remember any of it.
The Doctor groans and moves his head on the pillow. His mouth tastes as if he’s been sampling his socks again, but without the pesky threads that such a practice leaves between his teeth - was it is his fault that several planets in the Lechte galaxy demanded that each visitor consumed an item of clothing before they were allowed to leave?
He can’t help noticing that, in spite of the fact that he hasn’t yet dared to open his eyes, there seems to be a lot of brightness on the other side of his closed lids. He waves his hand in the direction of what he hopes is the movement-operated dimmer switch and is grateful when the brilliant illumination began to fade.
“Water,” he mutters to himself. “Or - no, tea. Best cure for rubbishy feelings.”
Struggling into an upright position, he finally cracks open his eyelids, only to drop back against the mattress as the room begins to spin.
“Ah,” he tells himself as he realises what’s wrong, “drunk.”
There’s a hum in his mind from the TARDIS that he takes as confirmation that he was, in fact, very drunk the night before. Not that there’s nights in the TARDIS, as such, but it’s so improper to get drunk during the day that he always determines that any point in time where he was drinking must have been evening. Therefore the painful period of recovery has to be morning. Preferably Sunday morning. That way he’s only wasting a day he generally avoids anyway.
“Did I,” he asks the TARDIS, “make an absolute, abject fool of myself last night? And is there tea?”
The mental silence suggests that the TARDIS is struggling with an appropriate answer to either or both of these questions.
“Tea,” he says firmly.
The heavenly aroma of the hot beverage assails his senses the next moment, but now he has to work out how he’s going to sit up and drink it. He’s trying to encourage his head not to spin quite so viciously when the door opens.
“Are you awake, Doctor?” Donna’s voice asks softly. “Or are you talking in your sleep?”
“Ha ha,” he snaps drily, still afraid to open his eyes in case the room decides to start spinning again. “When have you ever known me to talk in my sleep?”
“About as often as I’ve known you to drink yourself into a stupor,” she tells him smartly, and he winces. “Can I come in?”
“Must you?”
“Not at all! I can leave you there to rot if you’d prefer.”
“No, Donna, wait!” He opens an eyelid to peer at her, grateful that the room isn’t still on the move. “I didn’t mean I wanted you to go. It’s just - do you have to be so cheerful at this hour?”
“Oh, is that why you’re whispering?” Donna chuckles and steps into the room. “Got a bit if a hangover, have we?”
“Was I whispering?” He realises he’s still doing it. “Oh.”
“Still, you’re in a better state than Jack.” She sits on the only clear chair in the room. “He was dead by the time I dragged you away.”
“Dead drunk?”
“No, just dead. Passed out and hit his head on something. Probably broke his neck into the bargain. Don’t worry, though, Martha called before you woke up and she said he was fine. Oh, a bit fragile, of course, but only about as bad as you.”
She laughs in what the Doctor can’t help thinking is a particularly heartless manner.
“Are you going to sit up and drink your tea?”
“Not quickly,” he replies after several moments of thought.
Donna chuckles again and gets to her feet. “Well, I’ll be in the kitchen. I was thinking something nice for breakfast - lots of greasy bacon and a couple of nice fried eggs. Buttered toast. Maybe some baked beans.”
He feels his stomach twist painfully and glares at her. “Has anyone ever told you, Donna Noble, that you’ve got a very evil streak in you?” he demands, still whispering, which rather reduces the impact of his statement.
She grins and pats his arm in the condescending manner that the sober tend to use on the very hungover.
“Take your time, Doctor. After all, you have got a time machine, so it’s not as if we’ll be late to anywhere we might be going.”
He’s still trying to come up with a snappy retort when the door closes behind her.
Thankful that the room has decided not to resume spinning, he very slowly moves until he’s sitting almost upright. With one hand pressed against the bed head to keep him stable, he picks up the tea and slurps the first mouthful.
It’s not exactly hot anymore, but at least it serves to quell the urge to be violently sick that Donna’s descriptions of food had prompted. By the time he drains the mug, his head has begun to clear and he doesn’t need to hold himself up.
However he sways as he finally gets to his feet and his vision remains blurry as he stumbles in the direction of his bathroom.
The shower is cold and brisk and wakes him up - at least enough to realize that he’s still partially clothed. He swears as he yanks off his drenched tie and peels away his sodden shirt. He should be thankful that his suit didn’t end up in the same state…
Wait a minute.
He’s not wearing his suit.
Or his shoes.
Or his socks.
Did Donna undress him?
The Doctor groans and lets his head drop against the tiles, wishing desperately that he had any sort of memory of the events of the previous night.
The first clue comes as he turns off the shower and steps out. Wrapping a towel around his waist, he wipes the steam off the mirror - he thanks the TARDIS for turning on the hot water after he stripped off his wet clothes because the only use for a cold shower is instant sobriety, and he’s reached that stage now - and peers at his face.
His eyes are bloodshot and his mouth is blue.
At least he knows what he was drinking.
If it’d been yellow, he’d worry about having sung karaoke.
Green would mean very unattractive attempts at dancing.
Red would imply that he’d either cut himself when he fell over as a result of losing his co-ordination, or else he made lewd propositions.
Gold and he wouldn’t be standing up yet.
Blue just meant he’d said things that, if he could remember them, he’d regret.
He just hopes they weren’t directed at Donna.
On second thoughts, if they had been, she certainly wouldn’t have come in to check on him.
She’s probably have taken off in the TARDIS without him instead.
He groans, towels off quickly and dons his stripy bathrobe.
He’ll worry about his hair later.
For now, he wants to see what he can piece together about the previous night.
He returns to the bedroom, looking for anything that appears out of place.
The first thing that strikes him is a fancy masquerade-style mask hanging off his bedside lamp. Those sort of functions aren’t the type of thing that appeal to Captain Jack Harkness, so the Doctor assumes that he and Donna either went there before beginning the drinking bout or afterwards.
If it was afterwards, he’s probably got a lot of explaining to do.
And probably apologising.
He spots the blue-and-white chequered boxer shorts next. The ones that he thought he’d put on that morning. Which, as he peeps down to look, are no longer on him.
Now he’s desperately hoping Donna wasn’t the person who undressed him!
The yo-yo tangled around the ceiling fan probably wasn’t there the night before, but he’s not entirely sure.
However he’s positive that the large pink stuffed elephant is new.
Right, so they went to a masquerade ball and then a fairground before going drinking with Jack.
And he came back to the TARDIS and showed off his yo-yo skills.
Or lack of them.
Sighing, the Doctor takes one final look around before leaving his bedroom. If there’s anything else in there, he’s not sure he wants to see it.
However the first object to meet his eyes as he steps out into the hallway is a long string of plaited streamers. The sort of thing you’d find at a birthday party.
He wonders if this is where he and Jack had their drinking contest.
And whose party it was.
And if he’s got more apologies to make than he thought.
Closing his eyes, he turns his head away, but, as he wonders where the party fits into the masquerade ball and the fair, he stumbles over a small wooden box.
Okay, so the absolute strangest item, which definitely doesn’t belong anywhere on the TARDIS, is this small wooden box that he’s seen somewhere before. He picks it up and looks at it closely - and then a hazy memory swims back into his mind of a visit to St Peter’s Basilica. It was handy that that visit should have come just at the time when he was in need of a small wooden box to fix something on the TARDIS. And he’d always wondered where that little kneeling stool from the confession booth had gone.
He can’t help wondering how it’s come to be in the middle of the hallway right now.
He carefully puts it down and makes a mental note to go back to Rome as soon as he can. With any luck, no one will have noticed that it was gone.
And since he can remember it, perhaps that happened before the masquerade ball, and the party, and the fair, and the drinking with Jack, and the yo-yo skills (or lack of them).
This time, because he’s not paying attention, when he trips over something else, he ends up falling onto his hands and knees. He’s also staring at a pair of handcuffs. The kind with the pink feathers. He picks them up, dangling them from his index finger, and tries to imagine a situation in which they could have come to be lying on the floor outside his bedroom.
Shuddering, he flings them aside and decides he really doesn’t want to know.
The same goes for the random parts that he’s sure belong somewhere on the TARDIS console, rather than hanging from various places on the walls.
And he stares in disgust at the massive ball of fluff and threads that rolls out from behind the door that leads into the kitchen and dining room. He knows he’s cleaned too recently for that to have accumulated over time, so presumably it’s been brought in.
Probably by him.
He shudders again and heads into the kitchen where he finds Donna sitting at the bench reading a magazine.
“Morning,” she says cheerfully. “You look rather more like yourself.”
He slides uneasily around her and pops two pieces of bread into the toaster. He’s a little concerned by the abnormally bright tone of her voice. Usually it’s him being obnoxiously upbeat first thing, while she’s barely able to string a coherent sentence together until she’s had her first cup of coffee.
He can’t help thinking desperately of anything that might have happened the night before to make her this cheerful.
And he really hopes it doesn’t have to do with one or more of the things he’s laid eyes on so far this morning.
“Answer me one question,” the Doctor says slowly and deliberately, avoiding her gaze as he rescues his toast once it's cooked. “In your opinion, do I owe you an apology for anything I may have inadvertently said or done last night?”
Donna thinks for a moment and the Doctor feels his hearts sink.
“Honestly?” She shrugs. “You didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already know.”
There’s a horribly long silence in the room. Then she reaches over and places her hand lightly on his.
“So - do you want me to tell you what happened last night?” she offers.
He gives her a pleading look. “I’d really rather not know.”
“Oh.” She shrugs, although he’s certain there’s a hint of disappointment in her eyes. “All right then.”
“Thank you,” he says in painfully distinct tones and buries himself in his dry toast and tea, his lips and teeth leaving blue marks on the toast and the rim of his cup.
Donna watches him for a moment before turning back to her own breakfast. Personally she can’t understand what’s so embarrassing about deciding to inventorize the contents of his pockets, but then she’s not a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord. Perhaps they’re more sensitive about things like that.
Next Part