FIC: Tea and Variable Resistance
Oct. 24th, 2007 05:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
prof_pangaeaTitle: Tea and Variable Resistance
Author: professor pangaea
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha, Ian and Barbara (a bit)
Spoilers: 42, Blink, and extremely vague oldschool mentions, so vague, in fact, that they only really exist in my brain, but just in case anyone has access to that I mention the possibility.
Summary:The Doctor hadn't mentioned any third eyelids, but he hadn't mentioned quite a lot of other things either.
Martha Jones groaned and rolled over, fumbling with the little alarm clock radio on the shabby end table at the head of her bed. She tilted it so the streetlight outside of her small window fell across the printed numbers. 2:08 a.m. She sighed. She was conscious enough now that if she didn't just go and pee she would lie awake wondering when she was going to need to pee. The human brain is a mysterious and fairly annoying organ, she thought, and swung her legs over the side of her bed.
Well, she called it her bed, but really it was a loan from the Chestertons, like most everything in the small flat she and the Doctor were sharing. There was only so much that you could pay for on a shop girl's wages and new mattresses were not high on that list. She opened her door and started to walk down the short corridor to the bathroom when she noticed that there was no light coming from the living room. She padded into the little room and for the first time since she and the Doctor had taken this flat there were no little exclamations and tinkering noises, no smell of burning circuitry, and no call of Look at this, you won't believe what I've been able to do by combining these ham radios and this stack of variable resistors.... Everything was quiet, and the lights were out, and she peered over the back of the under-sized sofa and there was the Doctor tucked up on it, asleep.
Martha had known that the Doctor did sleep, because she had asked him about it once after he had interrupted quite a nice dream she'd been having that somehow involved jumping around on a very bouncy planet in the company of a handsome young man in a kilt, just to tell her that he'd figured out how he was going to break them out of the dungeon they were trapped in, but not until dawn, so she might as well go back to sleep if she really needed it. But she had never actually seen him sleeping before.
She remembered watching Star Trek with her dad when she was a little girl, and hearing that Vulcans slept with their eyes open, because of their third eyelids. The Doctor hadn't mentioned any third eyelids, but he hadn't mentioned quite a lot of other things either. Dim greenish light filtered in from the street through the shabby venetian blinds, illuminating his lanky form on the tiny sofa, his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly, and really he just looked like anyone else did when they slept, except that his respiration was a bit more shallow. There was probably even a spot of drool on the cushion underneath his face. She stifled a laugh and then wondered briefly whether he might be cold without a blanket, but decided that if he was he would have got himself one. Then she realised that she was gazing at him while he slept, and decided that she should just go to the bathroom and then back to bed.
Martha was just falling back to sleep when a ragged cry jolted her upright. She blinked around her room for a few moments before silently jumping out of bed and cracking her door open. The living room was still dark, but she could see the Doctor sitting up on the sofa, his head cradled in his hands. She closed the door as quietly as she had opened it, and sat on the edge of her bed, and sighed, quietly.
Ten minutes later she opened her door again, making sure to create a bit of noise this time, and shuffled into the living room. All the lamps were lit, Radio 2 was playing quietly from one of the few disassembled pieces of equipment in the room, Radio 1 from another, and the Doctor was leaning over a fold-out table, a pile of wires and circuit boards in front of him and a soldering iron in his hand.
"Oh, hallo, Martha!" he called, without looking up. "I hope I haven't been keeping you awake."
"No, just a bit of insomnia." She watched his hands, engaged in their delicate work, but they seemed completely steady. "Figured I'd make a pot of tea, since reading hasn't helped. Would you like some?"
"Oh, you know me, never refuse a cuppa. Well, except Earl Grey. Oh, and never accept tea from the Viceroy of Endethemion, that never ends well, I should know..." and he continued on as Martha walked into the kitchen nook and started a pot of water.
Once, Martha had been in her room on the TARDIS, lying in bed reading far past the time she would normally have gone to sleep. She had found a chess strategy book by Gary Kasparov in the TARDIS library, which was something she could have found in any library in London, except that the author's notes included a reference to his time as president of Russia and his famous chess matches with the roving artificial intelligence known as StATIC. She was halfway through a paragraph on the possible connections between StATIC designers and the programming group responsible for the Great Hoax of 2017 when she heard a muffled yell. It took her a minute to find her pajama bottoms but as soon as she had jumped into them she ran out into the corridor, a heavy bookend in hand.
"Doctor, was that you? Is everything all right?" she called. "Doctor?" She stuck her head around a doorway and found him lounging on a great fluffy sofa, in front of a large viewscreen, sporting a truly horrible pair of pajamas and an ill-fitting t-shirt with a faded but extremely 80's looking print on the front. He had half a biscuit in his mouth.
"Hngh?" he'd said. Martha had stared at him with puzzlement.
"I... just thought I heard something. Someone. Yell a bit? Wanted to make sure you were okay." That's right. It had been just after the Torajii system, the ship, the living sun, and only hours before he had been calling out to her for help, had been holding onto her with desperation and fear.
He had raised his eyebrows at her.
"No yells from in here. I may have choked a bit at that last line of Blanche's, though..." he said, and motioned up at the viewscreen. Martha set the bookend down on the floor, then picked up the box that lay next to him on the sofa.
"The Golden Girls, the Complete Second Season Special Edition?"
He had smiled cheekily. "I quite like Betty White." He'd given her a slightly expectant look. "Have you never seen the Golden Girls, it's a wonderful show, would you like to watch for a while?" he'd asked, and something in his eyes had seemed to want her to stay.
"Budge over and give me a bit of room, then, Mr. Smith." He'd obliged and she'd made herself comfortable next to him. "Nice shirt," she'd said, eyeing the red and yellow... trumpets? Weird.
"Hm? Oh, thanks," and he'd grinned a little at it.
Martha searched through a few cramped cabinets for the sugar bowl. She wondered if the Doctor actively avoided sleep, or merely avoided it when she was around to witness it. She wondered if he had nightmares often. She wondered if they had to do with the living sun, or Rose, or Joan Redfern, or the war, or his people, or things she couldn't comprehend with the structure of her human brain.
The Doctor was still soldering leads when she brought the tea things back into the living room. He cleared a spot for her on the table, more or less, and she poured two cups while he tried to find a non-flammable surface on which to set the still-hot soldering iron. Eventually the radiator was chosen as a suitable resting place, but not before the Doctor had burned himself twice. He sat back down, nursing his thumb.
"Thanks," he said, accepting a proffered cup with his other hand. They both sipped their tea, and after a minute or so Martha realised that the Doctor was quiet. It was such a rare circumstance that she always noticed when he was silent for more than a few moments, as he was now, gazing into the depths of his teacup.
The last time had been just a few days before, when, on Martha's insistence, they had accepted an invitation for supper from the Chestertons. Barbara and Ian were very charming, and their baby, Lawrence, just four months old, was adorable. The Doctor had accepted eagerly when Barbara had asked if he wanted to hold the boy, and looked amazed when she had placed him in his arms.
"He's beautiful," he'd breathed. It was all the Doctor could say. Barbara had smiled and turned to ask Ian something about a loaf of bread, but Martha watched the Doctor staring at the child, and there had been something about the expression on his face that made her feel sure, absolutely certain, that he had once had children himself, and that they were all dead.
Now the Doctor sat next to her, sipping his tea, and seemed to remember that he had let a whole four minutes go by without uttering a word. He started a monologue on the merits of Venusian hothouse tea varieties, or he tried, before Martha stopped him.
"Why don't we just listen to the radio?" she proposed. "One radio, in fact. That would be nice."
The Doctor looked at her for a moment.
"All right." He leaned forward and turned off one of the radios, and then sat back onto the sofa, trying to settled himself as comfortably as he could on its ungenerous expanse. Martha settled herself next to him, eventually resting her head on his shoulder, and they both listened to Alistair Campbell's quiet voice explain the hippie movement in America.
*******
Martha felt herself being gently shaken.
"Mmgh?" she said, very articulately. "Hippies."
"You fell asleep," said the Doctor. It was still dark outside, but no remnant of steam was left about the teapot. "Which, you know, no problem for me, I've been pressed into service as far stranger things than a pillow, but I figured you wouldn't want a massive cramp in your neck for the rest of tomorrow. And possibly the week. Really this sofa wasn't designed for maximal human comfort."
Martha stood up, rubbing the back of her neck. She grimaced and hoped he didn't notice the tiny damp patch on his shoulder.
"Oh, you're right." She yawned. "I should go back to bed. Long shift tomorrow, but then I've got a couple of days off. Why don't we go to a concert or something? It's 1969, someone fantastic has to be playing pretty much every day in city like London."
"Excellent thinking, Martha Jones. I knew I liked you for a reason." He smiled up at her, and she suddenly felt very concerned for him, sitting out here by himself on the tiny sofa with only cold tea and dry BBC radio presenters for company.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like the bed tonight?" she asked. "I've only got a couple of hours to go until I have to get up, and you could probably do with a bit of sleep, right?"
"Nah, I'm going to keep working on these circuit boards for a while, and tomorrow I'm off on a scavenging hunt through a few of the second-hand shops. Transistors!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. She regarded him dubiously, but there was really nothing she could say.
"All right then," Martha said. "See you in the morning." She made her way towards her room.
"Thank you," the Doctor called, just before she reached the door. She turned around. "For the tea," he said.
"Anytime."
Martha closed the door behind her and climbed into bed, wrapping the blankets around her in a warm, comforting mass.
******
When she woke several hours later the sun was just beginning to rise, the radio was still on, the lights were off, and the Doctor was curled up on the sofa, asleep. Martha laid a blanket over him, just in case, and then went to work.
end.
Author: professor pangaea
Fandom: Doctor Who
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Martha, Ian and Barbara (a bit)
Spoilers: 42, Blink, and extremely vague oldschool mentions, so vague, in fact, that they only really exist in my brain, but just in case anyone has access to that I mention the possibility.
Summary:The Doctor hadn't mentioned any third eyelids, but he hadn't mentioned quite a lot of other things either.
Martha Jones groaned and rolled over, fumbling with the little alarm clock radio on the shabby end table at the head of her bed. She tilted it so the streetlight outside of her small window fell across the printed numbers. 2:08 a.m. She sighed. She was conscious enough now that if she didn't just go and pee she would lie awake wondering when she was going to need to pee. The human brain is a mysterious and fairly annoying organ, she thought, and swung her legs over the side of her bed.
Well, she called it her bed, but really it was a loan from the Chestertons, like most everything in the small flat she and the Doctor were sharing. There was only so much that you could pay for on a shop girl's wages and new mattresses were not high on that list. She opened her door and started to walk down the short corridor to the bathroom when she noticed that there was no light coming from the living room. She padded into the little room and for the first time since she and the Doctor had taken this flat there were no little exclamations and tinkering noises, no smell of burning circuitry, and no call of Look at this, you won't believe what I've been able to do by combining these ham radios and this stack of variable resistors.... Everything was quiet, and the lights were out, and she peered over the back of the under-sized sofa and there was the Doctor tucked up on it, asleep.
Martha had known that the Doctor did sleep, because she had asked him about it once after he had interrupted quite a nice dream she'd been having that somehow involved jumping around on a very bouncy planet in the company of a handsome young man in a kilt, just to tell her that he'd figured out how he was going to break them out of the dungeon they were trapped in, but not until dawn, so she might as well go back to sleep if she really needed it. But she had never actually seen him sleeping before.
She remembered watching Star Trek with her dad when she was a little girl, and hearing that Vulcans slept with their eyes open, because of their third eyelids. The Doctor hadn't mentioned any third eyelids, but he hadn't mentioned quite a lot of other things either. Dim greenish light filtered in from the street through the shabby venetian blinds, illuminating his lanky form on the tiny sofa, his eyes closed, his mouth open slightly, and really he just looked like anyone else did when they slept, except that his respiration was a bit more shallow. There was probably even a spot of drool on the cushion underneath his face. She stifled a laugh and then wondered briefly whether he might be cold without a blanket, but decided that if he was he would have got himself one. Then she realised that she was gazing at him while he slept, and decided that she should just go to the bathroom and then back to bed.
Martha was just falling back to sleep when a ragged cry jolted her upright. She blinked around her room for a few moments before silently jumping out of bed and cracking her door open. The living room was still dark, but she could see the Doctor sitting up on the sofa, his head cradled in his hands. She closed the door as quietly as she had opened it, and sat on the edge of her bed, and sighed, quietly.
Ten minutes later she opened her door again, making sure to create a bit of noise this time, and shuffled into the living room. All the lamps were lit, Radio 2 was playing quietly from one of the few disassembled pieces of equipment in the room, Radio 1 from another, and the Doctor was leaning over a fold-out table, a pile of wires and circuit boards in front of him and a soldering iron in his hand.
"Oh, hallo, Martha!" he called, without looking up. "I hope I haven't been keeping you awake."
"No, just a bit of insomnia." She watched his hands, engaged in their delicate work, but they seemed completely steady. "Figured I'd make a pot of tea, since reading hasn't helped. Would you like some?"
"Oh, you know me, never refuse a cuppa. Well, except Earl Grey. Oh, and never accept tea from the Viceroy of Endethemion, that never ends well, I should know..." and he continued on as Martha walked into the kitchen nook and started a pot of water.
Once, Martha had been in her room on the TARDIS, lying in bed reading far past the time she would normally have gone to sleep. She had found a chess strategy book by Gary Kasparov in the TARDIS library, which was something she could have found in any library in London, except that the author's notes included a reference to his time as president of Russia and his famous chess matches with the roving artificial intelligence known as StATIC. She was halfway through a paragraph on the possible connections between StATIC designers and the programming group responsible for the Great Hoax of 2017 when she heard a muffled yell. It took her a minute to find her pajama bottoms but as soon as she had jumped into them she ran out into the corridor, a heavy bookend in hand.
"Doctor, was that you? Is everything all right?" she called. "Doctor?" She stuck her head around a doorway and found him lounging on a great fluffy sofa, in front of a large viewscreen, sporting a truly horrible pair of pajamas and an ill-fitting t-shirt with a faded but extremely 80's looking print on the front. He had half a biscuit in his mouth.
"Hngh?" he'd said. Martha had stared at him with puzzlement.
"I... just thought I heard something. Someone. Yell a bit? Wanted to make sure you were okay." That's right. It had been just after the Torajii system, the ship, the living sun, and only hours before he had been calling out to her for help, had been holding onto her with desperation and fear.
He had raised his eyebrows at her.
"No yells from in here. I may have choked a bit at that last line of Blanche's, though..." he said, and motioned up at the viewscreen. Martha set the bookend down on the floor, then picked up the box that lay next to him on the sofa.
"The Golden Girls, the Complete Second Season Special Edition?"
He had smiled cheekily. "I quite like Betty White." He'd given her a slightly expectant look. "Have you never seen the Golden Girls, it's a wonderful show, would you like to watch for a while?" he'd asked, and something in his eyes had seemed to want her to stay.
"Budge over and give me a bit of room, then, Mr. Smith." He'd obliged and she'd made herself comfortable next to him. "Nice shirt," she'd said, eyeing the red and yellow... trumpets? Weird.
"Hm? Oh, thanks," and he'd grinned a little at it.
Martha searched through a few cramped cabinets for the sugar bowl. She wondered if the Doctor actively avoided sleep, or merely avoided it when she was around to witness it. She wondered if he had nightmares often. She wondered if they had to do with the living sun, or Rose, or Joan Redfern, or the war, or his people, or things she couldn't comprehend with the structure of her human brain.
The Doctor was still soldering leads when she brought the tea things back into the living room. He cleared a spot for her on the table, more or less, and she poured two cups while he tried to find a non-flammable surface on which to set the still-hot soldering iron. Eventually the radiator was chosen as a suitable resting place, but not before the Doctor had burned himself twice. He sat back down, nursing his thumb.
"Thanks," he said, accepting a proffered cup with his other hand. They both sipped their tea, and after a minute or so Martha realised that the Doctor was quiet. It was such a rare circumstance that she always noticed when he was silent for more than a few moments, as he was now, gazing into the depths of his teacup.
The last time had been just a few days before, when, on Martha's insistence, they had accepted an invitation for supper from the Chestertons. Barbara and Ian were very charming, and their baby, Lawrence, just four months old, was adorable. The Doctor had accepted eagerly when Barbara had asked if he wanted to hold the boy, and looked amazed when she had placed him in his arms.
"He's beautiful," he'd breathed. It was all the Doctor could say. Barbara had smiled and turned to ask Ian something about a loaf of bread, but Martha watched the Doctor staring at the child, and there had been something about the expression on his face that made her feel sure, absolutely certain, that he had once had children himself, and that they were all dead.
Now the Doctor sat next to her, sipping his tea, and seemed to remember that he had let a whole four minutes go by without uttering a word. He started a monologue on the merits of Venusian hothouse tea varieties, or he tried, before Martha stopped him.
"Why don't we just listen to the radio?" she proposed. "One radio, in fact. That would be nice."
The Doctor looked at her for a moment.
"All right." He leaned forward and turned off one of the radios, and then sat back onto the sofa, trying to settled himself as comfortably as he could on its ungenerous expanse. Martha settled herself next to him, eventually resting her head on his shoulder, and they both listened to Alistair Campbell's quiet voice explain the hippie movement in America.
*******
Martha felt herself being gently shaken.
"Mmgh?" she said, very articulately. "Hippies."
"You fell asleep," said the Doctor. It was still dark outside, but no remnant of steam was left about the teapot. "Which, you know, no problem for me, I've been pressed into service as far stranger things than a pillow, but I figured you wouldn't want a massive cramp in your neck for the rest of tomorrow. And possibly the week. Really this sofa wasn't designed for maximal human comfort."
Martha stood up, rubbing the back of her neck. She grimaced and hoped he didn't notice the tiny damp patch on his shoulder.
"Oh, you're right." She yawned. "I should go back to bed. Long shift tomorrow, but then I've got a couple of days off. Why don't we go to a concert or something? It's 1969, someone fantastic has to be playing pretty much every day in city like London."
"Excellent thinking, Martha Jones. I knew I liked you for a reason." He smiled up at her, and she suddenly felt very concerned for him, sitting out here by himself on the tiny sofa with only cold tea and dry BBC radio presenters for company.
"Are you sure you wouldn't like the bed tonight?" she asked. "I've only got a couple of hours to go until I have to get up, and you could probably do with a bit of sleep, right?"
"Nah, I'm going to keep working on these circuit boards for a while, and tomorrow I'm off on a scavenging hunt through a few of the second-hand shops. Transistors!" he exclaimed with enthusiasm. She regarded him dubiously, but there was really nothing she could say.
"All right then," Martha said. "See you in the morning." She made her way towards her room.
"Thank you," the Doctor called, just before she reached the door. She turned around. "For the tea," he said.
"Anytime."
Martha closed the door behind her and climbed into bed, wrapping the blankets around her in a warm, comforting mass.
******
When she woke several hours later the sun was just beginning to rise, the radio was still on, the lights were off, and the Doctor was curled up on the sofa, asleep. Martha laid a blanket over him, just in case, and then went to work.
end.
