I come bearing innaugaral fic
Title: Chat Lines
Author: moi!
Characters: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13, one curse word, alcohol-use, sarcasm
Warnings: Not-beta'ed, done at 1:30 in the morning, full of absurdist humour, written by someone with spotty grasp of early!Who canon and probably full of inadvertant Americanisms, also written by someone who's just joined the Comm.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is property of BBC not MEMEME. I do not own it, OR David Tennant, but I still check my local Comics and Sci-Fi Nerd Shop weekly for my very own Tenth Doctor with Sonic Screwdriver action figure.
Spoilers: The Christmas Invasion and um, probably anything you can learn from Wikipedia's helpful Doctor Who history.
Summary: "Listen, fella, you may be able to hoodwink some naïve little human girl into thinking you’re a mighty and all-powerful Time Lord, but I’m a bit more intelligent than that. I know about Time Lords, and there’s no WAY you’re a Time Lord...Time Lords ain’t gangly."
Looking back, Rose couldn’t really figure out how the Doctor had managed to get himself into a pub brawl. The Doctor had argued that it wasn’t really a pub brawl, that a pub brawl was what happened when someone insulted your favorite football team and you took a swing at them, and that this was merely a heated discussion between two well-balanced beings. Rose had told him he was delusional, and he had agreed, but still refused to recant his original statement.
How they ended up in a pub was much easier to explain than the actual nature of the brawl itself. Sure, intergalactic time travel was fun, but sometimes you wanted to do something a little more normal. Perhaps not long division or sorting your socks normal, but something that was more normal than the day-to-day life Rose usually had with the Doctor; the one chock-full of ghosts, aliens, werewolves, and multiple dimensions.
Consequently, Rose found that it was nice when the Doctor took her out for a drink somewhere. She never really admitted how much she enjoyed it, but it was often a real treat. She could listen to him for hours as he explained the local tastes or told an anecdote or two about what had happened on his last trip to this particular establishment. Sure she might be sharing a drink with a horned alien or two at some point, but it was still a nice change-of-pace.
The Doctor was always helpful when it came to drink choices as well.
“No, not that one, poisonous to humans, tastes like strawberries though, so it’s not a terrible way to go,” he’d offer or, “Oh, do try that one. Makes you smoke from the mouth and ears, tastes like roses and blueberries and I know that sounds fairly disgusting but it’s really quite good. Really strong though, so don’t have too many, I’m not carrying you back to the TARDIS.”
Other than a varied taste in beverages, Rose had learnt other things from these periodic trips. The point of pubs it turned out, even in the far-reaches of the universe, was to chat someone up. It was universal really, save for that one planet where instead of chatting someone up it was customary to squirt someone you fancied with green goo. The Doctor had almost drowned when an over-eager female had managed to spray some in his wind-pipe, a near-death experience that he took quite well.
“Tastes a bit like Jello,” he had said, back in the TARDIS, hours later, as he coughed up globs of green goo from his lungs into a handkerchief, “She was quite nice, though.”
”Nice?” Rose had asked incredulously, “You almost drowned!”
“Yes, but she had the best intentions. She said I was charming,” the Doctor had replied with a broad, toothy grin.
Rose had merely rolled her eyes.
See, that was another fun part of going to pub with the Doctor. Invariably one of them would get chatted up by a local and make the other jealous. Rose still vividly remembered the time the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver had ‘accidentally’ dropped out of his pocket, singing the fur of a young Grintaba male. Rose had thought about retaliating by spilling a drink on a Pritchurna female with green eyestalks, but she recalled a real accident where she had dropped drink on another alien somewhere, an incident that had resulted in the alien’s skin nearly being burnt off until the Doctor had graciously provided some medical assistance. Rose decided to forego retaliation until she knew more about alien biology.
This particular time Rose was being chatted up by a tall, muscular man who was roughly human save for the camouflage green skin and tufts of salmon pink hair that were all over his head. He smelled unpleasant and he was boring her to pieces, so she almost betrayed some sign of relief when the Doctor walked up to both of them.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Who asked you?” the burly guy asked gruffly, clearly upset that someone was interrupting his brilliant, innovative flirting.
“He’s with me, actually,” Rose said, deciding that she was too irritated to tolerate the other guy’s advances any longer, even if it did make the Doctor jealous.
“Really?” the alien asked, looking at her with such disbelief that you would think that Rose had just asserted that the Doctor could levitate farm animals with his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Rose answered a bit defensively, “What do you find so hard to believe about that?”
”Well, jus’,” the male started, “I thought you had taste.”
”Taste?” Rose asked, shocked and a bit peeved, instantly feeling the need to defend the Doctor, “Why for your information, the Doctor is three times the man, er, thing, er, sort of male creature that you’ll ever be. Got it? He’s a Time Lord.”
“Rose,” the Doctor started, shifting uncomfortably. It wasn’t something the Doctor usually encouraged her to throw around as it wasn’t quite conducive to being incognito and it could also be a one-way ticket to an asylum, or worse, a jail, in most cases. Rose shrugged. She must’ve been a bit more intoxicated than she’d let on.
The other man did not seem to have noticed any of this, mainly because he was laughing uproariously in a manner that finally made the Doctor snap at him, “What are you laughing at?”
“Listen, fella, you may be able to hoodwink some naïve little human girl into thinking you’re a mighty and all-powerful Time Lord, but I’m a bit more intelligent than that. I know about Time Lords, and there’s no WAY you’re a Time Lord,” the man explained, a smug grin spreading over his pale green face, revealing four rows of small, black teeth.
“Exactly right,” the Doctor began, “The mere presumption that I would be a Time Lord is ridiculous, and she didn’t mean it and-wait a tick. What’s so ridiculous about me being a Time Lord.”
“First off, they’re all dead,” the alien started, turning eagerly towards Rose, clearly wanting to impress, “Big chatty guy in a tunic tol’ me all about ‘em. Secondly, he’s all gangly. Time Lords ain’t gangly.”
“Gangly?” the Doctor sputtered, clearly affronted, “I’m not gangly! Am I?”
“Yeah, you are a bit,” Rose admitted, clearly amused by the whole thing, “Go on then, what do you know about Time Lords.”
“Well, they’re tall. Seven feet at least,” the alien began, ignoring the Doctor as he flexed his muscles and scowled at them, “And they’ve all got beards.”
”I suppose they also breathe fire and have glowing yellow eyes,” the Doctor mumbled dryly.
“Of course not! That would be stupid,” the man refuted.
“Right, then what’s the beard for, eh? By-product of The Great Time Lord Shaving Cream Shortage which resulted in The Day of a Thousand Razor Nicks? ”
“They’re wise,” the alien explained genuinely, leaning into the Doctor and poking him in the chest, “Everyone knows you can’t be truly wise unless you have a beard.”
“Riiight, and I suppose I don’t look wise.”
”Don’t get me wrong, you look right clever enough. You look sort of Librarian-clever, though, not Master of All Time and Space-clever,” he explained, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world.
The Doctor stood dumbfounded, fingering his tie as though he blamed it for his librarian look, for a second, while Rose shook furiously with silent laughter.
“Besides,” the man finished, “Time Lords are devilishly handsome.”
“I’m handsome!” the Doctor protested, “And I don’t know if I have the qualifications to use such adjectives, but I don’t think calling myself ‘devilishly’ handsome is too much of a stretch.”
”No way, fella, Time Lord’s is Romance-Holo-Cover handsome. All muscled and oily and clutching a young maiden to there chest.”
“All of them, I suppose?” the Doctor challenged, “Not an ugly one in the bunch.”
“All of them, it’s genetic,” the other man confirmed seriously.
“Well, for your information, I’ve met Time Lords who’ve looked like they’ve spent their entire regeneration having their head slammed into a wall, all smushed face and ugly-I mean hypothetically. If I were a Time Lord. This is what I would have seen,” the Doctor coughed, “but of course I haven’t seen that, because the Time Lord’s are dead, and this is preposterous and er, let’s go Rose.”
“No, I don’t think I’m quite ready yet,” Rose replied amusedly, waving her hand uninterestedly at the Doctor, “Tell me more about these fascinating Time Lords, would ya?”
“They can never die,” the man said, using dramatic tones as if this was the most fascinating revelation in the world.
“Ha!” the Doctor interjected suddenly, “I thought you said they were extinct? How can they be extinct if they can never die?”
“Well, er,” the man hesitated for a moment, “Someone killed them really suddenly. All of them. See if you tell them you’re about to kill them they can prepare for it and make sure you never do it.”
”Right,” the Doctor said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Is this a common sort of mortal combat on your planet? The one where you say, ‘Oh, pardon me, I think I’d rather like to murder you. Please stand still while I stab you. Thanks for your cooperation, I’ll be sure to tell your next of kin.’?”
“No,” the other alien argued defiantly, “But see, everyone respects the Time Lord’s enough to tell them what’s going to happen. Besides you couldn’t stab them.”
“Why not?” the Doctor asked, beginning to enjoy himself despite himself, “Are they made of rubber, too?”
“’Course not, it’s because they’re master swords-lords.”
”Swords-lords isn’t a word,” the Doctor mumbled.
“That bit might actually be true,” Rose reflected.
”All of it’s true,” the man asserted, “All they do on TimeLordLand is practice sword-fighting.”
”TimeLordLand? It’s called Gallifrey!” the Doctor protested.
“Sure,” the man replied patronizingly, “and I can shit amphibians from my arse.”
”You could if you had a cloaca,” the Doctor reasoned, apropos of nothing.
“See since you they’re really good swords-lords, they can’t be stabbed,” the man finished, pausing to sip his drink.
Rose sat mutely staring at the alien, in a state of hyper amusement that had pretty much forced her brain to cease functioning. The Doctor stood behind her, one hand absently curved around the back of her chair.
After a few seconds of silence, the Doctor finally broke it, “Well if I’m not a Time Lord, how come I’ve got two hearts?”
”Please, I have three pancreases,” the alien retorted.
“They’re all vestigial! Mine are important. Keep me alive. What have your pancreases done for you lately?” the Doctor asked smartly, eliciting a sharp cough of barely concealed laughter from Rose.
“Lots of species have two hearts,” the man replied defensively.
“But I’m a Time Lord! From ‘TimeLordLand’! My parents were Time Lords, their parents were Time Lords, their parents’ parents were Time Lords, their parents’ parent’s parents were a bit off their rocker, but still, Time Lords!” the Doctor protested petulantly, suddenly rather like an angry child losing an argument with an authoritative parent, foot stomping and slightly whining tone included.
“There’s another thing!” the alien began suddenly, completely ignoring the Doctor’s rant.
The Doctor moaned angrily and brought his hand to his face.
“Time Lord’s have pychcicness. Psychosis. Pyschicy. Er, they’re psychic.”
“Telepathic, actually,” the Doctor mumbled from behind his fingers, “Lucky for you, it’s a bit easier to conjugate that word.”
“Psychic,” the alien continued on, pointedly shooting a glance at the Doctor, “so even if they don’t defeat you with their swords, the great big ones they carry around, they’ll make you all distracted. I hear they make people think they’re small critters. And then they stab them.”
“Fascinating,” Rose finally sputtered.
“So, Mr. Time Lord,” the alien replied, clearly figuring he had impressed Rose enough to challenge the Doctor further, “Get in my mind, why don’t you?”
The Doctor licked his lips, smiled, and leaned over Rose to be closer to the alien as he spoke, “No thanks. I don’t know where it’s been, and the idiocy might be catching.”
Every body had its weaknesses. One body had had toes that broke easily. Another had actually enjoyed Vegemite. This one seemed to be doubly cursed. In addition to being near-sighted, the Doctor’s tenth form also apparently had a bit of a glass chin. One good pop to the chin and he was out like a rock. He tried to avoid this in serious life or death situations, as saving the world was often difficult when you were unconscious, and you always lost some menace when it was revealed that you could be knocked out easier than a drunken child. However, he had provoked this particular fellow into violence, so it came as no surprise that the first thing he saw after the large green fist hurtled towards him was Rose’s face swimming into view.
“Are you all right?” Rose asked sweetly, genuine concern and worry etched in her features.
“Where is he?” the Doctor asked, popping up so quickly he almost knocked head with Rose, “Where is he?”
“He went to the restroom,” Rose started, then grinned wickedly, “I told him you were my crazy brother, fresh out of a mental institution. He’d obviously worked you up a bit too much, and if we didn’t continue supporting the Time Lord delusion you might harm yourself.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, “You, Rose Tyler, are clever. Perhaps to clever for your own good, “ the Doctor nodded his head back towards a table, “Is that his drink?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to poison it are you?” Rose teased, “Can’t believe you got into a pub fight. Very weird.”
“Of course I’m not going to poison it,” the Doctor mumbled, “and it wasn’t a pub fight.”
“Then what was it?” Rose asked coyly, but the Doctor ignored her, stepping towards the drink and removing a pen from her pocket.
With a flourish, the Doctor downed the remainder of the other alien’s drink, clicked the pen, and began scribbling something on the napkin.
“Hang on,” Rose said, watching the Doctor writing, “That’s your Gallifreyan signature.”
”Mmmhmm.”
”And that other stuff is Gallifreyan writing.”
”Yes.”
”And I bet it says something rather rude.”
”Rude doesn’t quite cover it. Planet-shatteringly devastating sums it up.”
“Ah,” Rose grinned, “You’re not going to tell me what it says though, are you?”
“Never,” the Doctor replied, matching her smile and raising her a wink.
“No one else is going to no what it says either, though,” Rose pointed out.
“True,” the Doctor admitted reflectively, “But it makes me feel good. Now come on, enough excitement for one night. Back to the TARDIS.”
”Oh, I don’t know if I should follow you,” Rose snickered, “You might make me think I’m a furry creature.”
”Oh, you better watch yourself or I’ll put my swords-lordery to work on you,” the Doctor chuckled, throwing an arm around Rose and steering them towards where he’d parked the TARDIS as he exited the building.
“Seriously though, do you think I should grow a beard?”
Rose erupted in laughter and swatted playfully at the Doctor as he offered her a cheeky grin in response.
Author: moi!
Characters: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG-13, one curse word, alcohol-use, sarcasm
Warnings: Not-beta'ed, done at 1:30 in the morning, full of absurdist humour, written by someone with spotty grasp of early!Who canon and probably full of inadvertant Americanisms, also written by someone who's just joined the Comm.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who is property of BBC not MEMEME. I do not own it, OR David Tennant, but I still check my local Comics and Sci-Fi Nerd Shop weekly for my very own Tenth Doctor with Sonic Screwdriver action figure.
Spoilers: The Christmas Invasion and um, probably anything you can learn from Wikipedia's helpful Doctor Who history.
Summary: "Listen, fella, you may be able to hoodwink some naïve little human girl into thinking you’re a mighty and all-powerful Time Lord, but I’m a bit more intelligent than that. I know about Time Lords, and there’s no WAY you’re a Time Lord...Time Lords ain’t gangly."
Looking back, Rose couldn’t really figure out how the Doctor had managed to get himself into a pub brawl. The Doctor had argued that it wasn’t really a pub brawl, that a pub brawl was what happened when someone insulted your favorite football team and you took a swing at them, and that this was merely a heated discussion between two well-balanced beings. Rose had told him he was delusional, and he had agreed, but still refused to recant his original statement.
How they ended up in a pub was much easier to explain than the actual nature of the brawl itself. Sure, intergalactic time travel was fun, but sometimes you wanted to do something a little more normal. Perhaps not long division or sorting your socks normal, but something that was more normal than the day-to-day life Rose usually had with the Doctor; the one chock-full of ghosts, aliens, werewolves, and multiple dimensions.
Consequently, Rose found that it was nice when the Doctor took her out for a drink somewhere. She never really admitted how much she enjoyed it, but it was often a real treat. She could listen to him for hours as he explained the local tastes or told an anecdote or two about what had happened on his last trip to this particular establishment. Sure she might be sharing a drink with a horned alien or two at some point, but it was still a nice change-of-pace.
The Doctor was always helpful when it came to drink choices as well.
“No, not that one, poisonous to humans, tastes like strawberries though, so it’s not a terrible way to go,” he’d offer or, “Oh, do try that one. Makes you smoke from the mouth and ears, tastes like roses and blueberries and I know that sounds fairly disgusting but it’s really quite good. Really strong though, so don’t have too many, I’m not carrying you back to the TARDIS.”
Other than a varied taste in beverages, Rose had learnt other things from these periodic trips. The point of pubs it turned out, even in the far-reaches of the universe, was to chat someone up. It was universal really, save for that one planet where instead of chatting someone up it was customary to squirt someone you fancied with green goo. The Doctor had almost drowned when an over-eager female had managed to spray some in his wind-pipe, a near-death experience that he took quite well.
“Tastes a bit like Jello,” he had said, back in the TARDIS, hours later, as he coughed up globs of green goo from his lungs into a handkerchief, “She was quite nice, though.”
”Nice?” Rose had asked incredulously, “You almost drowned!”
“Yes, but she had the best intentions. She said I was charming,” the Doctor had replied with a broad, toothy grin.
Rose had merely rolled her eyes.
See, that was another fun part of going to pub with the Doctor. Invariably one of them would get chatted up by a local and make the other jealous. Rose still vividly remembered the time the Doctor’s sonic screwdriver had ‘accidentally’ dropped out of his pocket, singing the fur of a young Grintaba male. Rose had thought about retaliating by spilling a drink on a Pritchurna female with green eyestalks, but she recalled a real accident where she had dropped drink on another alien somewhere, an incident that had resulted in the alien’s skin nearly being burnt off until the Doctor had graciously provided some medical assistance. Rose decided to forego retaliation until she knew more about alien biology.
This particular time Rose was being chatted up by a tall, muscular man who was roughly human save for the camouflage green skin and tufts of salmon pink hair that were all over his head. He smelled unpleasant and he was boring her to pieces, so she almost betrayed some sign of relief when the Doctor walked up to both of them.
“What’s all this?” he asked.
“Who asked you?” the burly guy asked gruffly, clearly upset that someone was interrupting his brilliant, innovative flirting.
“He’s with me, actually,” Rose said, deciding that she was too irritated to tolerate the other guy’s advances any longer, even if it did make the Doctor jealous.
“Really?” the alien asked, looking at her with such disbelief that you would think that Rose had just asserted that the Doctor could levitate farm animals with his thoughts.
“Yeah,” Rose answered a bit defensively, “What do you find so hard to believe about that?”
”Well, jus’,” the male started, “I thought you had taste.”
”Taste?” Rose asked, shocked and a bit peeved, instantly feeling the need to defend the Doctor, “Why for your information, the Doctor is three times the man, er, thing, er, sort of male creature that you’ll ever be. Got it? He’s a Time Lord.”
“Rose,” the Doctor started, shifting uncomfortably. It wasn’t something the Doctor usually encouraged her to throw around as it wasn’t quite conducive to being incognito and it could also be a one-way ticket to an asylum, or worse, a jail, in most cases. Rose shrugged. She must’ve been a bit more intoxicated than she’d let on.
The other man did not seem to have noticed any of this, mainly because he was laughing uproariously in a manner that finally made the Doctor snap at him, “What are you laughing at?”
“Listen, fella, you may be able to hoodwink some naïve little human girl into thinking you’re a mighty and all-powerful Time Lord, but I’m a bit more intelligent than that. I know about Time Lords, and there’s no WAY you’re a Time Lord,” the man explained, a smug grin spreading over his pale green face, revealing four rows of small, black teeth.
“Exactly right,” the Doctor began, “The mere presumption that I would be a Time Lord is ridiculous, and she didn’t mean it and-wait a tick. What’s so ridiculous about me being a Time Lord.”
“First off, they’re all dead,” the alien started, turning eagerly towards Rose, clearly wanting to impress, “Big chatty guy in a tunic tol’ me all about ‘em. Secondly, he’s all gangly. Time Lords ain’t gangly.”
“Gangly?” the Doctor sputtered, clearly affronted, “I’m not gangly! Am I?”
“Yeah, you are a bit,” Rose admitted, clearly amused by the whole thing, “Go on then, what do you know about Time Lords.”
“Well, they’re tall. Seven feet at least,” the alien began, ignoring the Doctor as he flexed his muscles and scowled at them, “And they’ve all got beards.”
”I suppose they also breathe fire and have glowing yellow eyes,” the Doctor mumbled dryly.
“Of course not! That would be stupid,” the man refuted.
“Right, then what’s the beard for, eh? By-product of The Great Time Lord Shaving Cream Shortage which resulted in The Day of a Thousand Razor Nicks? ”
“They’re wise,” the alien explained genuinely, leaning into the Doctor and poking him in the chest, “Everyone knows you can’t be truly wise unless you have a beard.”
“Riiight, and I suppose I don’t look wise.”
”Don’t get me wrong, you look right clever enough. You look sort of Librarian-clever, though, not Master of All Time and Space-clever,” he explained, as though this was the most obvious thing in the world.
The Doctor stood dumbfounded, fingering his tie as though he blamed it for his librarian look, for a second, while Rose shook furiously with silent laughter.
“Besides,” the man finished, “Time Lords are devilishly handsome.”
“I’m handsome!” the Doctor protested, “And I don’t know if I have the qualifications to use such adjectives, but I don’t think calling myself ‘devilishly’ handsome is too much of a stretch.”
”No way, fella, Time Lord’s is Romance-Holo-Cover handsome. All muscled and oily and clutching a young maiden to there chest.”
“All of them, I suppose?” the Doctor challenged, “Not an ugly one in the bunch.”
“All of them, it’s genetic,” the other man confirmed seriously.
“Well, for your information, I’ve met Time Lords who’ve looked like they’ve spent their entire regeneration having their head slammed into a wall, all smushed face and ugly-I mean hypothetically. If I were a Time Lord. This is what I would have seen,” the Doctor coughed, “but of course I haven’t seen that, because the Time Lord’s are dead, and this is preposterous and er, let’s go Rose.”
“No, I don’t think I’m quite ready yet,” Rose replied amusedly, waving her hand uninterestedly at the Doctor, “Tell me more about these fascinating Time Lords, would ya?”
“They can never die,” the man said, using dramatic tones as if this was the most fascinating revelation in the world.
“Ha!” the Doctor interjected suddenly, “I thought you said they were extinct? How can they be extinct if they can never die?”
“Well, er,” the man hesitated for a moment, “Someone killed them really suddenly. All of them. See if you tell them you’re about to kill them they can prepare for it and make sure you never do it.”
”Right,” the Doctor said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, “Is this a common sort of mortal combat on your planet? The one where you say, ‘Oh, pardon me, I think I’d rather like to murder you. Please stand still while I stab you. Thanks for your cooperation, I’ll be sure to tell your next of kin.’?”
“No,” the other alien argued defiantly, “But see, everyone respects the Time Lord’s enough to tell them what’s going to happen. Besides you couldn’t stab them.”
“Why not?” the Doctor asked, beginning to enjoy himself despite himself, “Are they made of rubber, too?”
“’Course not, it’s because they’re master swords-lords.”
”Swords-lords isn’t a word,” the Doctor mumbled.
“That bit might actually be true,” Rose reflected.
”All of it’s true,” the man asserted, “All they do on TimeLordLand is practice sword-fighting.”
”TimeLordLand? It’s called Gallifrey!” the Doctor protested.
“Sure,” the man replied patronizingly, “and I can shit amphibians from my arse.”
”You could if you had a cloaca,” the Doctor reasoned, apropos of nothing.
“See since you they’re really good swords-lords, they can’t be stabbed,” the man finished, pausing to sip his drink.
Rose sat mutely staring at the alien, in a state of hyper amusement that had pretty much forced her brain to cease functioning. The Doctor stood behind her, one hand absently curved around the back of her chair.
After a few seconds of silence, the Doctor finally broke it, “Well if I’m not a Time Lord, how come I’ve got two hearts?”
”Please, I have three pancreases,” the alien retorted.
“They’re all vestigial! Mine are important. Keep me alive. What have your pancreases done for you lately?” the Doctor asked smartly, eliciting a sharp cough of barely concealed laughter from Rose.
“Lots of species have two hearts,” the man replied defensively.
“But I’m a Time Lord! From ‘TimeLordLand’! My parents were Time Lords, their parents were Time Lords, their parents’ parents were Time Lords, their parents’ parent’s parents were a bit off their rocker, but still, Time Lords!” the Doctor protested petulantly, suddenly rather like an angry child losing an argument with an authoritative parent, foot stomping and slightly whining tone included.
“There’s another thing!” the alien began suddenly, completely ignoring the Doctor’s rant.
The Doctor moaned angrily and brought his hand to his face.
“Time Lord’s have pychcicness. Psychosis. Pyschicy. Er, they’re psychic.”
“Telepathic, actually,” the Doctor mumbled from behind his fingers, “Lucky for you, it’s a bit easier to conjugate that word.”
“Psychic,” the alien continued on, pointedly shooting a glance at the Doctor, “so even if they don’t defeat you with their swords, the great big ones they carry around, they’ll make you all distracted. I hear they make people think they’re small critters. And then they stab them.”
“Fascinating,” Rose finally sputtered.
“So, Mr. Time Lord,” the alien replied, clearly figuring he had impressed Rose enough to challenge the Doctor further, “Get in my mind, why don’t you?”
The Doctor licked his lips, smiled, and leaned over Rose to be closer to the alien as he spoke, “No thanks. I don’t know where it’s been, and the idiocy might be catching.”
Every body had its weaknesses. One body had had toes that broke easily. Another had actually enjoyed Vegemite. This one seemed to be doubly cursed. In addition to being near-sighted, the Doctor’s tenth form also apparently had a bit of a glass chin. One good pop to the chin and he was out like a rock. He tried to avoid this in serious life or death situations, as saving the world was often difficult when you were unconscious, and you always lost some menace when it was revealed that you could be knocked out easier than a drunken child. However, he had provoked this particular fellow into violence, so it came as no surprise that the first thing he saw after the large green fist hurtled towards him was Rose’s face swimming into view.
“Are you all right?” Rose asked sweetly, genuine concern and worry etched in her features.
“Where is he?” the Doctor asked, popping up so quickly he almost knocked head with Rose, “Where is he?”
“He went to the restroom,” Rose started, then grinned wickedly, “I told him you were my crazy brother, fresh out of a mental institution. He’d obviously worked you up a bit too much, and if we didn’t continue supporting the Time Lord delusion you might harm yourself.”
The Doctor raised an eyebrow, “You, Rose Tyler, are clever. Perhaps to clever for your own good, “ the Doctor nodded his head back towards a table, “Is that his drink?”
“Yeah. You’re not going to poison it are you?” Rose teased, “Can’t believe you got into a pub fight. Very weird.”
“Of course I’m not going to poison it,” the Doctor mumbled, “and it wasn’t a pub fight.”
“Then what was it?” Rose asked coyly, but the Doctor ignored her, stepping towards the drink and removing a pen from her pocket.
With a flourish, the Doctor downed the remainder of the other alien’s drink, clicked the pen, and began scribbling something on the napkin.
“Hang on,” Rose said, watching the Doctor writing, “That’s your Gallifreyan signature.”
”Mmmhmm.”
”And that other stuff is Gallifreyan writing.”
”Yes.”
”And I bet it says something rather rude.”
”Rude doesn’t quite cover it. Planet-shatteringly devastating sums it up.”
“Ah,” Rose grinned, “You’re not going to tell me what it says though, are you?”
“Never,” the Doctor replied, matching her smile and raising her a wink.
“No one else is going to no what it says either, though,” Rose pointed out.
“True,” the Doctor admitted reflectively, “But it makes me feel good. Now come on, enough excitement for one night. Back to the TARDIS.”
”Oh, I don’t know if I should follow you,” Rose snickered, “You might make me think I’m a furry creature.”
”Oh, you better watch yourself or I’ll put my swords-lordery to work on you,” the Doctor chuckled, throwing an arm around Rose and steering them towards where he’d parked the TARDIS as he exited the building.
“Seriously though, do you think I should grow a beard?”
Rose erupted in laughter and swatted playfully at the Doctor as he offered her a cheeky grin in response.