![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Title: Finding A Way Home: Kitchen Conversation
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
katherine_b
Rating: G
Summary: The Doctors are having a quiet chat.
Characters: The Doctor and the-Doctor-formerly-known-as-MC
A/N: This is part the Finding A Way Home series. While there is no precise order in which this series must be read (at least, not once you get past the first five parts), this definitely comes before Twenty Questions and thus before the half-human Doctor is dumped on the dark planet. I haven’t forgotten him, btw. We’ll go back to him quite soon…
A/N 2: This is to make up for how miserable my writing has made you all recently with The Skies Turn Dark. And becauseelfgirljen wanted white chocolate and raspberry cookies…
A/N 3: This is also a response to the twenty-third weekly drabble challenge with the prompt 'denial'.
A/N 4: I take no responsibility for any cravings you may experience for white chocolate and raspberry cookies as a result of reading this story.Nor will I admit that I've had a hankering for the darned things ever since I started it.
“Tag team?” the Time Lord suggests as the other Doctor appears in the doorway, doing up his tie.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” the half-human man retorts as he tucks the tie into the blue jacket of his suit, unable to help hearing how fake his protestation of innocence sounds.
The other man chuckles, swirling the last of his tea in his mug before gulping it down and carrying the cup over to the sink.
“So it's all just a big co-incidence that Donna heads off to bed and you appear five minutes later?” he suggests teasingly. “That Donna stays awake for almost exactly four hours after we get back from whatever we've been doing, even if she's barely able to keep her eyes open? That you disappear the moment we get back and reappear exactly four hours later, looking particularly well rested?”
He tilts his head to one side, and the man making himself breakfast is aware that he's being watched.
“I'm no fool, Doctor.”
“Never said you were.”
He pours some tea from the waiting pot into a mug standing on the bench and adds his usual amount of sugar, which is exactly half of what the Doctor has and twice what Donna usually has. He carries the mug over to the table and sits down, stirring his drink and staring at the floor. Then he looks up with a half-smile, knowing that there’s little point in continuing to deny something of which the other Doctor is clearly well aware.
“Does it bother you?”
“Honestly?” The Doctor rescues the toast and puts it on a plate in front the other man, sitting down with an answering smile. “No.” And then he arches an eyebrow. “Just as long as I'm not being babied by the pair of you.”
“Never!” the other man vows with absolute sincerity. “If I won't let her do it to me, I won't let her do it to you!”
“Let?” The Time Lord arches a sardonic eyebrow. “Sorry, when was the last time either of us let Donna do anything?”
“Touché.” The other Doctor spreads raspberry jam on his toast, scooping a little more out of the jar with his fingers and licking it off.
“Hey, don't eat it all,” the man opposite him protests. “I promised Donna we'd make her some biscuits with it.”
“Is this to make up for the fact that you polished off that packet of triple chocolate cookies last night – in spite of me warning you not to?”
“Oh, don't be such a know-all!”
Chuckling, the Doctor finishes off his breakfast with an air of smugness. After putting his dishes in the sink, he turns to the other man and suggests, “Shall we get started then?”
While the Time Lord turns on the oven and gets eggs and butter out of the fridge, the other Doctor fetches the dry ingredients and plugs in the electric mixer, starting to combine the butter and sugar while the other man sets the double boiler to warm up water in order to melt the white chocolate.
“Donna would do this so much better,” the Doctor remarks, nibbling on a piece of the chocolate with a somewhat surprising air of despondency as he breaks the confection into the metal bowl on top of the saucepan.
“Yeah, she would,” the other man agrees. “She'd add something really unexpected and make them amazing.
The next words are almost inaudible, but the Doctor catches them as he hunts for baking soda.
“I love her…”
“Cooking,” the other Doctor finishes for him as he rummages in the cupboard for the raspberry jam. “You love her cooking.” He’s somewhat disconcerted by the sudden silence in the room and pulls back to look up at the man standing at the stove. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” The Doctor’s voice is soft and doesn’t fool the other man for a second, even when he goes on briskly, “Yeah, ‘course I do. Yes.”
For an almost agonisingly long moment, the man with one heart stares at the man with two, who in his turn gazes at the melting chocolate pieces as if they could help him understand the mysteries of the universe.
Finally, it's the Doctor in blue who breaks the uncomfortable silence.
“You love her.” He leans against the cupboard and folds his arms over his chest. “No,” he goes on as realisation hits, “it’s more than that. You’re in love with her!” He tilts his head to one side. “Interesting.”
The other Doctor remains silent, stirring the white chocolate in the double boiler as if his life depended on it. “I am not,” he mutters almost angrily.
“Oh, you so are!” The Doctor shoves himself away from the cupboard and all but dances around the kitchen, pointing at the man from whom he had been made. “You are – you really are! Unbelievable! And,” he adds thoughtfully as he sees colour creep up the Time Lord’s cheeks until they’re glowing, “you’ve got the best case of denial I’ve seen in ages.”
“De Nile is a river in Egypt,” the Doctor says with an attempt at humour that falls flat.
“And you’re trying to change the subject – Class 1 Time Lord denial!” The other man grins again, unable to help loving his undeniably superior position.
“I don’t love her!” The man from Gallifrey shoves the double boiler off the gas so viciously that water slops onto the stove and extinguishes the gas with a hiss. However the culprit pays no attention to this as he spins on his heel to glare at his twin. “I can’t love her! Not like that! We’re mates!”
“Oh, save it for someone who’ll believe it!”
The other Doctor rolls his eyes as the man in brown turns back and switches off the gas, lighting it again to continue his cooking. The man by the bench, however, isn’t about to put up with being ignored.
“And you know I don’t believe it!” he mocks. “I know you too well!”
“And that's the problem.” The Doctor suddenly turns on his double, his eyes wide with what the other man can't help believing might just be panic. “She knows me, too – so how can she miss this?” He turns away again, his shoulders hunched. “It's going to ruin everything...”
“Rubbish!” The other man shakes his head in surprise that the other man hasn't understood what's happening. “Have you really not noticed, Doctor? Haven't you felt that Donna doesn't pick up on our emotions? That she's backed off to give both of us that mental space, just like we do with each other?”
“And you taught her how to do it,” the Time Lord suggests, although it's not really a question.
“No, I didn't.” The reply is almost instant, and the other man does a double take. “No, Doctor,” he adds seriously, “I never taught her. I never even talked to her about it. She did it all herself.”
A faint, proud smile flickers across the other Doctor's face. “She's brilliant,” he murmurs as he turns back to the stove just in time to save the chocolate from burning. “She really is.”
“Do you know how she feels?” the other man asks with point. “I mean, you could just dig a little into her mind to find out how she feels, but,” he adds as the other man gives a vehement shake of his head, “you know you won't because you don't think it's right.” He hesitates for a moment. “And Donna wouldn't do it for the same reason.”
Looking marginally happier – or at least hugely relieved – the brown-clad Doctor carries the melted chocolate over to the mixer and gently spoons it and then the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar before the man in blue sifts in the flour. While he begins mixing, the other Doctor prepares the trays, lining each with greaseproof paper.
“How do you feel about Donna?” he asks suddenly as he puts away the paper and then begins running hot water into the sink to do the dishes.
“I do love her,” the Doctor admits, adding the second half of the white chocolate, which has been chopped rather than melted, to the mix. “But,” he adds honestly, “not in the way that you do.”
Glancing over his shoulder, the Doctor sees that the other man is keeping his eyes fixed on the slowly growing pile of foam rising in the sink. That man has removed his jacket so it won’t get either wet or dirty, but that means the other Doctor can see the tension in his shoulders and the way his breathing has suddenly become light and nervous.
The half-human Doctor suddenly grimaces. “Besides,” he can’t help adding, honesty in his tones, “much as I love Donna, the thought of being in love with her is really, really weird. I mean, she’s kind of like my mother when you think about it!”
The man beside him sighs in what is clearly relief and finally turns away from the sink. “You were right,” he says after a moment's thought. “We aren't the same.”
“And a good thing, too,” comes the instant reply, and then, in response to a hurt look on the Doctor's face, “because it would be awfully boring if we were!”
As the man doing the washing-up chuckles, the Doctor begins spooning small amounts of the mixture onto the prepared trays and slides them into the oven.
The kitchen is silent for a long time, but it's not uncomfortable. And when the silence is broken, the man with one heart isn't surprised.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Could I stop you if I wanted to?” the Doctor chuckles as he begins putting things away.
“Probably not.” The other man arches an eyebrow, but the humour fades to concern. “I have to ask – does it bother you? That I feel this way?”
“Why should it?”
“Because,” the Doctor tugs uncomfortably on his ear, getting foam in his hair as he does so, “well, it might change things.”
“And it might not.” After wiping the table clean, leaving only the last of the chocolate and the raspberry jam for when the biscuits are cooked, the other Doctor brushes a bit of flour off his blue suit before looking up almost accusingly. “You're just using that as an excuse not to act on your feelings.”
“Huh!”
“Oh, you know it!” The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Pathetic!”
“I... I'm just trying...” The man in brown takes a deep breath and stops to gather his thoughts. “I'm trying not to think about me.”
“You never think about yourself!”
“I did.” The Doctor's voice is soft, somewhat guilty. “With Rose – that was all I did. I can see that now.”
“So what?” The other man arches an eyebrow. “Why shouldn't you do that now, too?”
“I can't.” He sighs deeply, before finally turning to look his twin in the eye. “Because, if I do, what happens to you?”
He stares at his progenitor. “Why should anything happen to me?” he asks in the end, his confusion obvious. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, imagining for one crazy instant that Donna feels the same way,” the Doctor says slowly, pulling out the plug to let the water drain, “wouldn’t you feel a bit – I don’t know – extraneous?”
“Oh.” The other man understands in a rush and stares at the floor, considering for a long moment before looking up. “Answer me this, Doctor. If things had worked out for the best with the Daleks and, after you dropped everyone else off, it was just you and Rose and Donna, would you have left Donna behind while you went off with Rose again?”
“No!” The answer comes almost before the question is finished, and the indignation is plain on the Doctor’s face. “Of course not!”
“But you don’t think Donna would,” he quotes the other man's words, even using the same tone, “feel a bit – I don’t know – extraneous?”
“Ah.” The other man nods slowly. “Okay, I get it.”
“Good.” He leans back against the cupboard and tucks his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” The reply is instant and full of power. “Of course not!”
The timer on the oven dings before anyone can reply, and the man at the table crosses the room to rescue the biscuits while the other Doctor turns to the sink and begins drying the mixing bowl.
While the biscuits cool, the man in blue melts the small amount of remaining white chocolate with a dash of oil to keep it smooth, and when that’s ready and the dishes are all dry, they both move to the table to finish their culinary efforts.
The man in brown spoons some of the jam onto each baked base while the other Doctor drizzles the melted chocolate over the biscuits and sets them aside.
“I have to say one more thing though,” the man with two hearts says suddenly. “You aren't going to tell her, are you?”
“Of course not!” The other Doctor is indignant. “It's none of my business! You'll tell her when you're ready.”
“If,” the other man corrects him immediately. “If I'm ready. If I can. Maybe. One day.”
The half-human Doctor chuckles. “You were right in what you said to the Dalek Emperor on Satellite Five,” he says with a grin. “You are a coward.”
“Considering what I might be facing, since I have no idea if she comes even vaguely close to reciprocating my feelings? Any day,” the other man agrees and they exchange knowing smiles as they turn back to their work.
Twenty Questions
Author:
katherine_b Rating: G
Summary: The Doctors are having a quiet chat.
Characters: The Doctor and the-Doctor-formerly-known-as-MC
A/N: This is part the Finding A Way Home series. While there is no precise order in which this series must be read (at least, not once you get past the first five parts), this definitely comes before Twenty Questions and thus before the half-human Doctor is dumped on the dark planet. I haven’t forgotten him, btw. We’ll go back to him quite soon…
A/N 2: This is to make up for how miserable my writing has made you all recently with The Skies Turn Dark. And because
elfgirljen wanted white chocolate and raspberry cookies…A/N 3: This is also a response to the twenty-third weekly drabble challenge with the prompt 'denial'.
A/N 4: I take no responsibility for any cravings you may experience for white chocolate and raspberry cookies as a result of reading this story.
“Tag team?” the Time Lord suggests as the other Doctor appears in the doorway, doing up his tie.
“I don't know what you're talking about,” the half-human man retorts as he tucks the tie into the blue jacket of his suit, unable to help hearing how fake his protestation of innocence sounds.
The other man chuckles, swirling the last of his tea in his mug before gulping it down and carrying the cup over to the sink.
“So it's all just a big co-incidence that Donna heads off to bed and you appear five minutes later?” he suggests teasingly. “That Donna stays awake for almost exactly four hours after we get back from whatever we've been doing, even if she's barely able to keep her eyes open? That you disappear the moment we get back and reappear exactly four hours later, looking particularly well rested?”
He tilts his head to one side, and the man making himself breakfast is aware that he's being watched.
“I'm no fool, Doctor.”
“Never said you were.”
He pours some tea from the waiting pot into a mug standing on the bench and adds his usual amount of sugar, which is exactly half of what the Doctor has and twice what Donna usually has. He carries the mug over to the table and sits down, stirring his drink and staring at the floor. Then he looks up with a half-smile, knowing that there’s little point in continuing to deny something of which the other Doctor is clearly well aware.
“Does it bother you?”
“Honestly?” The Doctor rescues the toast and puts it on a plate in front the other man, sitting down with an answering smile. “No.” And then he arches an eyebrow. “Just as long as I'm not being babied by the pair of you.”
“Never!” the other man vows with absolute sincerity. “If I won't let her do it to me, I won't let her do it to you!”
“Let?” The Time Lord arches a sardonic eyebrow. “Sorry, when was the last time either of us let Donna do anything?”
“Touché.” The other Doctor spreads raspberry jam on his toast, scooping a little more out of the jar with his fingers and licking it off.
“Hey, don't eat it all,” the man opposite him protests. “I promised Donna we'd make her some biscuits with it.”
“Is this to make up for the fact that you polished off that packet of triple chocolate cookies last night – in spite of me warning you not to?”
“Oh, don't be such a know-all!”
Chuckling, the Doctor finishes off his breakfast with an air of smugness. After putting his dishes in the sink, he turns to the other man and suggests, “Shall we get started then?”
While the Time Lord turns on the oven and gets eggs and butter out of the fridge, the other Doctor fetches the dry ingredients and plugs in the electric mixer, starting to combine the butter and sugar while the other man sets the double boiler to warm up water in order to melt the white chocolate.
“Donna would do this so much better,” the Doctor remarks, nibbling on a piece of the chocolate with a somewhat surprising air of despondency as he breaks the confection into the metal bowl on top of the saucepan.
“Yeah, she would,” the other man agrees. “She'd add something really unexpected and make them amazing.
The next words are almost inaudible, but the Doctor catches them as he hunts for baking soda.
“I love her…”
“Cooking,” the other Doctor finishes for him as he rummages in the cupboard for the raspberry jam. “You love her cooking.” He’s somewhat disconcerted by the sudden silence in the room and pulls back to look up at the man standing at the stove. “Don’t you?”
“Yeah.” The Doctor’s voice is soft and doesn’t fool the other man for a second, even when he goes on briskly, “Yeah, ‘course I do. Yes.”
For an almost agonisingly long moment, the man with one heart stares at the man with two, who in his turn gazes at the melting chocolate pieces as if they could help him understand the mysteries of the universe.
Finally, it's the Doctor in blue who breaks the uncomfortable silence.
“You love her.” He leans against the cupboard and folds his arms over his chest. “No,” he goes on as realisation hits, “it’s more than that. You’re in love with her!” He tilts his head to one side. “Interesting.”
The other Doctor remains silent, stirring the white chocolate in the double boiler as if his life depended on it. “I am not,” he mutters almost angrily.
“Oh, you so are!” The Doctor shoves himself away from the cupboard and all but dances around the kitchen, pointing at the man from whom he had been made. “You are – you really are! Unbelievable! And,” he adds thoughtfully as he sees colour creep up the Time Lord’s cheeks until they’re glowing, “you’ve got the best case of denial I’ve seen in ages.”
“De Nile is a river in Egypt,” the Doctor says with an attempt at humour that falls flat.
“And you’re trying to change the subject – Class 1 Time Lord denial!” The other man grins again, unable to help loving his undeniably superior position.
“I don’t love her!” The man from Gallifrey shoves the double boiler off the gas so viciously that water slops onto the stove and extinguishes the gas with a hiss. However the culprit pays no attention to this as he spins on his heel to glare at his twin. “I can’t love her! Not like that! We’re mates!”
“Oh, save it for someone who’ll believe it!”
The other Doctor rolls his eyes as the man in brown turns back and switches off the gas, lighting it again to continue his cooking. The man by the bench, however, isn’t about to put up with being ignored.
“And you know I don’t believe it!” he mocks. “I know you too well!”
“And that's the problem.” The Doctor suddenly turns on his double, his eyes wide with what the other man can't help believing might just be panic. “She knows me, too – so how can she miss this?” He turns away again, his shoulders hunched. “It's going to ruin everything...”
“Rubbish!” The other man shakes his head in surprise that the other man hasn't understood what's happening. “Have you really not noticed, Doctor? Haven't you felt that Donna doesn't pick up on our emotions? That she's backed off to give both of us that mental space, just like we do with each other?”
“And you taught her how to do it,” the Time Lord suggests, although it's not really a question.
“No, I didn't.” The reply is almost instant, and the other man does a double take. “No, Doctor,” he adds seriously, “I never taught her. I never even talked to her about it. She did it all herself.”
A faint, proud smile flickers across the other Doctor's face. “She's brilliant,” he murmurs as he turns back to the stove just in time to save the chocolate from burning. “She really is.”
“Do you know how she feels?” the other man asks with point. “I mean, you could just dig a little into her mind to find out how she feels, but,” he adds as the other man gives a vehement shake of his head, “you know you won't because you don't think it's right.” He hesitates for a moment. “And Donna wouldn't do it for the same reason.”
Looking marginally happier – or at least hugely relieved – the brown-clad Doctor carries the melted chocolate over to the mixer and gently spoons it and then the eggs into the creamed butter and sugar before the man in blue sifts in the flour. While he begins mixing, the other Doctor prepares the trays, lining each with greaseproof paper.
“How do you feel about Donna?” he asks suddenly as he puts away the paper and then begins running hot water into the sink to do the dishes.
“I do love her,” the Doctor admits, adding the second half of the white chocolate, which has been chopped rather than melted, to the mix. “But,” he adds honestly, “not in the way that you do.”
Glancing over his shoulder, the Doctor sees that the other man is keeping his eyes fixed on the slowly growing pile of foam rising in the sink. That man has removed his jacket so it won’t get either wet or dirty, but that means the other Doctor can see the tension in his shoulders and the way his breathing has suddenly become light and nervous.
The half-human Doctor suddenly grimaces. “Besides,” he can’t help adding, honesty in his tones, “much as I love Donna, the thought of being in love with her is really, really weird. I mean, she’s kind of like my mother when you think about it!”
The man beside him sighs in what is clearly relief and finally turns away from the sink. “You were right,” he says after a moment's thought. “We aren't the same.”
“And a good thing, too,” comes the instant reply, and then, in response to a hurt look on the Doctor's face, “because it would be awfully boring if we were!”
As the man doing the washing-up chuckles, the Doctor begins spooning small amounts of the mixture onto the prepared trays and slides them into the oven.
The kitchen is silent for a long time, but it's not uncomfortable. And when the silence is broken, the man with one heart isn't surprised.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Could I stop you if I wanted to?” the Doctor chuckles as he begins putting things away.
“Probably not.” The other man arches an eyebrow, but the humour fades to concern. “I have to ask – does it bother you? That I feel this way?”
“Why should it?”
“Because,” the Doctor tugs uncomfortably on his ear, getting foam in his hair as he does so, “well, it might change things.”
“And it might not.” After wiping the table clean, leaving only the last of the chocolate and the raspberry jam for when the biscuits are cooked, the other Doctor brushes a bit of flour off his blue suit before looking up almost accusingly. “You're just using that as an excuse not to act on your feelings.”
“Huh!”
“Oh, you know it!” The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Pathetic!”
“I... I'm just trying...” The man in brown takes a deep breath and stops to gather his thoughts. “I'm trying not to think about me.”
“You never think about yourself!”
“I did.” The Doctor's voice is soft, somewhat guilty. “With Rose – that was all I did. I can see that now.”
“So what?” The other man arches an eyebrow. “Why shouldn't you do that now, too?”
“I can't.” He sighs deeply, before finally turning to look his twin in the eye. “Because, if I do, what happens to you?”
He stares at his progenitor. “Why should anything happen to me?” he asks in the end, his confusion obvious. “I don’t understand.”
“Well, imagining for one crazy instant that Donna feels the same way,” the Doctor says slowly, pulling out the plug to let the water drain, “wouldn’t you feel a bit – I don’t know – extraneous?”
“Oh.” The other man understands in a rush and stares at the floor, considering for a long moment before looking up. “Answer me this, Doctor. If things had worked out for the best with the Daleks and, after you dropped everyone else off, it was just you and Rose and Donna, would you have left Donna behind while you went off with Rose again?”
“No!” The answer comes almost before the question is finished, and the indignation is plain on the Doctor’s face. “Of course not!”
“But you don’t think Donna would,” he quotes the other man's words, even using the same tone, “feel a bit – I don’t know – extraneous?”
“Ah.” The other man nods slowly. “Okay, I get it.”
“Good.” He leans back against the cupboard and tucks his hands into the pockets of his pants. “Do you want me to leave?”
“No!” The reply is instant and full of power. “Of course not!”
The timer on the oven dings before anyone can reply, and the man at the table crosses the room to rescue the biscuits while the other Doctor turns to the sink and begins drying the mixing bowl.
While the biscuits cool, the man in blue melts the small amount of remaining white chocolate with a dash of oil to keep it smooth, and when that’s ready and the dishes are all dry, they both move to the table to finish their culinary efforts.
The man in brown spoons some of the jam onto each baked base while the other Doctor drizzles the melted chocolate over the biscuits and sets them aside.
“I have to say one more thing though,” the man with two hearts says suddenly. “You aren't going to tell her, are you?”
“Of course not!” The other Doctor is indignant. “It's none of my business! You'll tell her when you're ready.”
“If,” the other man corrects him immediately. “If I'm ready. If I can. Maybe. One day.”
The half-human Doctor chuckles. “You were right in what you said to the Dalek Emperor on Satellite Five,” he says with a grin. “You are a coward.”
“Considering what I might be facing, since I have no idea if she comes even vaguely close to reciprocating my feelings? Any day,” the other man agrees and they exchange knowing smiles as they turn back to their work.
Twenty Questions
curious