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His body, sweaty and surprisingly heavy, presses her into the grass. He’s just collapsed against her, boneless, panting hard, as if he’s just run a mile at top speed. She buries her face against his throat, breathing in the scent of male skin and sweat and sex.
And then he stiffens, and draws back a bit. He looks down at her, and she can read the expression in his dark eyes with painful clarity.
His eyes say, very plainly, What the bloody hell just happened?
*****
An hour earlier
“What d’you think?”
Donna Noble whirls in front of the Doctor, showing off the lovely gown she found in the wardrobe room. It’s a sort of silvery-green color that looks simply smashing with her long red hair. She stops whirling, and is rewarded by a rather novel expression on his face.
He looks, quite simply, gobsmacked.
“Very nice,” he says, and his voice has a note in it that’s also novel. It’s sort of a bedroom voice, really. She’s never heard that out of him before, but she’s not displeased. Not that she wants to have sex with the Doctor, of course, but it’s nice to know that in the right kit, she can still impress blokes. Even skinny alien blokes.
“You look nice yourself,” she says, feeling generous enough to risk inflating his ego. And it's true-- a tuxedo is a good look on him, even if he insists on wearing black trainers with it. “Don’t know if you should really wear black, though. They say it’s slimming. Any slimmer, and people won’t be able to see you if you turn sideways.”
He looks at her a moment longer, then breaks out in laughter. “Oh, Donna Noble,” he says. “You do know how to give a compliment.”
She tosses her hair. “Don’t want you to get too full of yourself,” she says. “Already you have trouble getting that big head of yours through doors.”
He chuckles, and offers her his arm. “Shall we go?”
They’ve been through a lot lately—caught in a civil war on Perdenia, detained as spies on Silva III, helping the survivors of a plague on Ande—and he’s promised her a nice quiet trip so they can relax and enjoy themselves. A really posh party, he assured her. Drinks, dancing, the whole nine yards.
She’s looking forward to it. She steps toward him, but then hesitates.
“Oh," she says. "I forgot to put my new perfume on.”
“You don’t need it,” he answers. “You smell fine.”
“Typical bloke,” she answers, rolling her eyes. “I’m not going to a fancy party without a little perfume. Hang on, I’ll be right back.”
She turns and heads down the corridor for her bedroom. The small crystal bottle of perfume she picked up at an open-air market on Hamina V is still on her dressing table. She's never worn it before, but she loves the way it smells... flowery without being sweet, like a sunny spring day. She dabs a few drops of the liquid onto the appropriate places—throat, wrists, between her breasts-- then turns around and heads back to where the Doctor is waiting for her.
This is going to be so much fun.
*****
The first hint she has that something is not quite right comes when she notices that the Doctor is sweating. He never sweats. Well, almost never. His body temperature is lower than that of a human, and ordinarily he seems almost impervious to extremes of heat and cold. But there are big beads of sweat on his forehead, and his hair is growing damp.
“Bloody tuxedo,” he grouses, tugging at his collar with a finger. “It’s hot in here.”
“It feels fine to me,” she answers, sipping her drink—a lovely concoction that somehow contrives to fill her glass with layers of red, blue and gold. It tastes as gorgeous as it looks. The Doctor is holding one in his hand, but he’s not drinking it. He’s too busy grumbling.
“It’s hot,” he complains. “Too many bodies.”
He has a point. They’re in the planet’s Presidential Palace, a grand stone edifice filled with rococo paintings and ridiculously ornate architecture, and the building is filled with bodies—not just human ones, but all sorts of aliens. She’s been staring since they got here, while trying not to look as if she’s staring. She’s been around the galactic block enough to realise that she looks as odd to aliens as they do to her, after all. Some of the aliens look more or less human, but some of them—well, the purple cloud over there is certainly quite unusual, and then there’s the bloke who seems to flicker in and out of existence…
The Doctor sighs and squirms and twitches, looking like a cranky child about to throw a tantrum. “Can we go outside for a minute?” he says irritably.
She tears her eyes away from the throng, and shrugs. “If we must,” she sighs.
Outside, in the cool night air, he’s still twitchy. They stand together on the balcony that overlooks the castle’s grounds, gazing at the dimly lit gardens below, and the stars sparkling above. Sort of romantic, really, she supposes. If she had the right bloke to share it with.
Which she definitely doesn’t, she thinks, looking at the Doctor with a bit of annoyance. He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot, rubbing at the back of his neck, rolling his shoulders, and in general behaving as if he’s got an infestation of fleas.
“Are you all right?” she asks.
“Fine.” He scratches at his ear. “I’m just too warm.”
“It’s cool out here. Lovely breeze.”
“It’s hot as Hades in mid-July,” he grumps.
She turns toward him, frowning. “Doctor,” she says, “do you have a fever?”
“Don’t be absurd,” he growls. “Superior Time Lord biology. Don’t get fevers.”
Despite the denial, she reaches for his forehead and presses her hand to it, and sure enough, his skin feels warm. It ought not to. Ordinarily he’s cool to the touch. For him to feel warm against her hot human skin means that he’s running quite a substantial fever.
Oh, God, she thinks in sudden fear. That plague on Ande. He’d been so confident that he’d inoculated them both, protecting them—but what if he’d somehow got it anyway?
She starts to pull her hand away, but he catches her arm in a strong hand and brings her wrist to his nose, inhaling.
“I like your new perfume,” he says.
There’s that bedroom voice again. Apparently being infected with the plague makes him sound sexy. Maybe he’s developing a sore throat.
“Thanks,” she answers, and tries to pull her arm back. But he’s not letting go of it. He presses his nose right up against her skin, and his eyes flutter closed.
Oh, great. He’s obviously getting dizzy. She needs to get him back to the med bay before he passes out.
“Doctor,” she says, gently but urgently. “You’re sick. Let’s head back to the TARDIS, all right?”
His eyes open, and he looks at her in surprise. In the dimness, his eyes are as dark and deep as space itself. “Sick?” he echoes.
“Yes, sick. You have a fever. Maybe the Andean plague…”
He considers that, frowning a little. His forehead wrinkles in the rather adorable way it does when he thinks—not that she’d ever tell him she finds him adorable under any circumstances. But he appears to be thinking very, very hard, and he is undeniably very, very adorable.
“I don’t feel sick,” he says at last. “I feel good. Really good. But sort of… hot.”
“Doctor…”
She tries to pull away again. He lets go of her wrist, moves toward her, and bends, and suddenly his nose is pressed up right against her throat.
“Oi!” she yells, jumping backward. “What the hell are you doing?”
He straightens up and blinks at her innocently, as if surprised that she doesn't want his big conk right under her chin.
“I told you,” he says. “I like your perfume.”
“So?” She glares at him. “Like it from a distance, will you?”
He pouts a little—and that’s very, very adorable, too—and steps toward her. “Donna,” he says, in his be-reasonable-and-quit-yelling-for-once-in-your-life voice. “It smells good.”
He does have a tendency to sniff and lick things he shouldn’t, but he’s never gotten quite that close to her before. She stares at him, seeing the sweat glistening on his forehead, and the slightly glazed look in his dark eyes. He’s definitely ill.
So much for a nice time at a posh party. Of course she can’t just relax, have a nice drink, and do a little dancing. No. She has a loopy Time Lord to deal with.
She thinks with a touch of worry that she might have a lot more to deal with. If he’s really carrying the Andean plague, then they’ve just infected a large group of people, and they might be looking at another pandemic. But she can’t worry about that right now, because she’s no doctor. She’ll take him back to the TARDIS and put him to rights first, and then the two of them can cope with any possible outbreak on the planet.
She reaches out and takes his hand. “Come on,” she says. “Let’s go.”
He grins at her. His grins are always a bit on the daft side, but this one is definitely dafter than it ought to be. It makes him look slightly mad.
“Where’re we goin’?”
His normally precise accent sounds slurred—another sign that all isn’t as it should be. Concern for him settles in her chest, making her heart pound.
“Back to the TARDIS,” she says.
“Oh, I don’t wanna do that,” he complains, pouting again. He runs his hand through his hair, so it stands up wildly all over his head, and offers her his most endearing smile. “Less go for a walk in the gardens instead. S’pretty down there.”
“Okay,” she says, figuring that if she can get him to the ground floor, maybe she can confuse him into walking toward the TARDIS instead of the gardens. He’s obviously not at full power, mentally speaking, and it probably won’t be that hard to trick him. She tugs on his hand, and he follows along behind her, closer than he really ought.
“You smell good,” he says again.
“Thanks.”
He plants his feet, bringing her to a halt just before she enters the grand ballroom. She turns to ask him what the hell he’s doing, and then before she knows what's happening, he’s lowering his face to her throat again.
Only this time he’s licking her.
A noise of mingled outrage and—oh, hell, if she has to be honest about it—pleasure erupts from her throat, and she leaps backward like a scalded cat. "What the hell are you doing?”
He smiles at her, cheerful and oblivious. “You taste good, too.”
She stares at him. Her knees are trembling, whether from anxiety for his condition or sheer physical arousal she honestly isn’t sure. The touch of his tongue on her skin was—well. Totally inappropriate, she tells herself grimly. Kind of icky, really. Not at all sexy.
But she knows she’s lying to herself.
“Doctor,” she says more firmly, pulling him through the door and into the ballroom. “We have got to get you back to the TARDIS. Right now.”
He tilts his head on one side, then stares up at the ornately painted ceiling as if trying to pursue a lost thought. His forehead wrinkles more deeply than before as the cogs in his brain whir, almost audibly. At last he says, “But I thought we were goin' to the gardens.”
“You’re ill.” He opens his mouth, but she cuts him off. “No. Don’t argue. You’re sick, and there’s something wrong with you, and we have to go back to the TARDIS and check you out in the med bay, before you infect someone else. All right?”
He sighs and pouts again.
“All right.”
She takes his hand again and leads him through the throng, past the purple cloud and the bloke flickering in and out of existence and the green fellow with the eyestalks and everyone else. He follows along, still a little too close, but at least he’s not licking her. Yet.
In a moment they’re out in the darkness, on the close-cropped grass of the lawn, and she heads for the TARDIS. But he plants his feet again, yanking her to a stop.
“Gardens,” he says, firmly.
She sighs. It’s like dealing with a two-year-old. Stubborn and inarticulate. “If I let you see the gardens for a couple of minutes, will you come to the TARDIS?”
He grins, a little evilly. “Sure.”
She can tell he’s lying, in what he probably thinks is a clever and crafty way. But skinny though he is, he outweighs her by quite a lot, and there’s no way she can force him to go to the TARDIS. It’s not like she can toss him over her shoulder and carry him. So when he tugs on her hand, she lets herself be led into the gardens.
Everyone must really be enjoying the party inside, because the gardens are quiet, empty of people. Which is surprising, because they’re pretty. They truly are, and in other circumstances she’d be happy to stare for hours. There are just enough lights that she can see the shrubs cut into fantastical shapes, and the flowers that ring softly, like bells, as the breeze rustles them. Above the flowerbeds rise trees that seem to glow with a gentle golden light of their own. At the center of the garden there’s a pool and fountain, lit in changing shades of red, blue and gold, just like the drink she’d had earlier.
He looks at the fountain and beams like a small child. “Pretty, innit?”
“Yes,” she agrees. “Pretty.”
He turns around and looks at her, his eyes bright. “You’re pretty, too.”
Before she can do anything to stop him, he’s got her by the waist, and he’s pulling her against him, and his mouth is on her throat again. His long, lanky body moulds itself to hers, and—
Oh. That is definitely not his sonic screwdriver.
She pushes him away, very, very firmly.
Well… she means to push him away, anyway. But he’s doing this amazing thing with his tongue, somehow finding every single sensitive place on her throat and stroking it, and…
Well, her hands might actually be digging into his hair, just a little.
“Ohhhhhh.” The deep rumbling murmur against her throat sends shivers right down her spine. “You really taste good.”
He lifts his head, and his mouth finds hers. His lips brush over hers, gently, and then his tongue slips into her mouth. She can taste the perfume on his lips and tongue, and he’s right. It does taste good. Sort of like heat and need and flame. It burns her mouth.
It burns all of her.
He breaks away from the kiss, long before she wants him to, and lowers his head again. This time he’s exploring the drop or two of perfume she put between her breasts, inhaling, then lapping at the skin with his hot tongue. She shudders and clings to him, because she’s going to fall over if she doesn’t.
She wants… so many things. She wants to rip that tuxedo right off him, toss him naked into the fountain, and have sex with him right there in the brightly colored water. She wants to feel his mouth on her breasts and on her thighs and on her clit. She wants to put her hands all over his body, to feel his long, skinny form against hers, pressing her into the soft grass, filling her…
Sick, she thinks with the last sane part of her mind. I’m sick too. The Andean plague…
Vaguely, she seems to recall that the Andean plague caused digestive problems, not this frantic, burning need for physical contact. But she can’t linger on that thought, because his deft, talented fingers are unfastening the back of her gown, and his hot mouth is exploring everything he uncovers, and…
This is not sickness. Sickness doesn’t feel like this, like heat and fire and intensity all wrapped up in a hard and desperate male body against hers. She isn’t sure what this is, but it’s not a plague.
His mouth is against her belly and her breasts, and she’s undoing his trousers, her fingers fumbling with eagerness. She wants to uncover all of him, to strip him completely naked and to explore every inch of his skin, to trace her tongue over every plane and ridge on his body, but there is no possible way she can get him out of that damn tuxedo fast enough. His trousers will have to do for now.
She unfastens them, and slides a hand down inside. He’s hard and smooth and enough like human men that any minor differences don’t matter much.
She wraps her fingers around him, slips her thumb over the swollen, wet head, and a frantic sound rises from his throat. He sinks down on the grass, yanking up her skirts and dragging her knickers off. Then he’s pulling her down on top of him, and she guides him into her body with her hand. He’s hot, and she’s hot, and their bodies seem to burn with a desperate, feverish heat wherever they touch.
She sinks slowly down onto him, and they moan in unison.
Not sickness. Definitely not sickness. She’s filled with want and desire and a burning sensation that nothing can ease except him. She’s so wet that he slides into her easily, all the way, and she opens her eyes just a bit and sees his face twisted in an unfamiliar, but still terribly adorable, expression of intense pleasure. His fingers are clenched in the fabric that’s rucked up over her thighs, clinging to her as if he’s afraid she’ll get away.
But she’s not going anywhere. She couldn’t walk away from this if her life depended on it.
She rises up on her knees and slides down again, taking immense pleasure in every slow inch of him gliding into her body. He gasps and shudders beneath her, and his fingers tighten in the fabric as if begging her to go faster.
She’s burning inside, just as desperate as he is, but this is their first time, and some vestige of sanity is telling her to take it slowly, to enjoy every moment of it. She rises up slowly, slides down again just as slowly, and he makes a hungry, feral noise, a strangled growl deep in his throat.
And then he loses his patience. He grabs her arms and rolls her over, and suddenly she’s on her back, with him still buried deep inside of her.
He withdraws, then slams into her, hard. She cries out in pleasure, surrendering, giving into what her body needs so badly. When he thrusts again, her legs wrap around his hips, and her hands slide down to his bare arse, digging into his hips and begging silently, Faster, harder, more…
He thrusts fast and hard, just like she wants it, and she hears him gasping, sobbing for breath. She’s sweating—hot, so hot—and she’s never in her life been this wet, or ached so badly. She needs—she needs—
He’s moving inside her with desperation, his fingers digging into the grass on either side of her, his face set in a kind of intense concentration, almost the same expression he wears when he’s doing a very complex repair on the TARDIS, or working out a really complicated physics problem in his head. She feels the heat rush through her veins, feels pleasure begin to ripple along her nerves, and she throws her head back, crying out.
As she comes in long, hard spasms of sensation, her body squeezes his relentlessly, and he groans. His rhythm breaks, and he thrusts raggedly, a long sound of near-agony rising from him. She can feel him jerking deep inside, can feel the burst of heat inside her as he comes in a wild rush.
And then he’s collapsing on top of her, gasping.
A moment later he lifts his head, and…
*****
His eyes say clearly, What the bloody hell just happened?
She suspects her eyes say the very same thing.
She’s lying in the grass of an alien planet, clearly visible from the balcony above, to anyone who cares to look. Her skirts are rucked up around her hips, and a gangling but surprisingly heavy Gallifreyan is sprawled on top of her. She’s covered in sweat, and can’t tell if it’s his or hers. She sucks in a breath, inhaling the scent of sex, the scent of sweat, and above it all, a sweet and intoxicating fragrance…
“My perfume,” she says as realisation dawns.
He stares at her for a long moment, as if she’s speaking a foreign language, and then comprehension fills his dark eyes.
“Ah, yes,” he says in a professorial tone, as if he’s standing in front of a blackboard, rather than sprawled bare-arsed on top of his companion in the grass. “Must have some sort of odd effect on human and Gallifreyan sexual response.”
“An aphrodisiac, you mean.”
“Well…” He shrugs. “You could say that, but it’s just a convenient sort of label, really. Hard to say what the actual mechanism is without thorough laboratory testing…”
“I don’t care what the bloody mechanism is,” she growls. “What matters is that we just shagged.”
“Er. Yes.” He looks extremely uncomfortable. “We did. And it was… well… quite, er... nice.”
She considers slapping him, but quickly decides drowning him in the fountain is a far better option. “Nice?”
He apparently can hear the murder in her tone, because he backpedals rapidly. “I mean nice in the most entirely positive sense,” he assures her. “I mean, it was really, er… really quite spectacularly, er…”
“Nice,” she says between her teeth.
“More than nice! So much more than nice! Really!”
She takes pity on him, because the Doctor has a hard time navigating even simple social situations, let alone this dreadfully awkward mess they’ve found themselves mired in. Shagging your best friend is bad enough. Shagging your best friend under the influence of some sort of supercharged perfume is so much worse.
It wasn’t as if he’d wanted to shag her. He’d just been overcome by the damn perfume.
And of course, she reminds herself, she hadn’t wanted to shag him either, so that’s fine. Just bloody fine.
“Anyone could see us from the balcony,” she tells him. “Unless you want several hundred aliens from various planets checking out your arse—"
He leaps to his feet as if Daleks are after him, tucks everything back into place—definitely human-looking, she thinks involuntarily—and pulls his trousers up. She stands up, gets her dress fastened, and shakes her skirts back into place. Her knickers have somehow wound up several metres away. She retrieves them and pulls them back on, while he very carefully does not look.
“Um,” he says. “I suppose we’d better get back to the TARDIS and… well, you should shower. Very, very carefully.”
“Maybe we should go separately,” she says. “Just in case it, you know, affects you again.”
“Good idea.” He nods, and takes refuge behind the professorial tone again. “Apparently I’m affected by the odour as well as the taste of the perfume, whereas you seem to be affected only by actually ingesting it. More acute Gallifreyan senses, y’know. So you should be just fine.”
“I’ll go ahead, then.” She tries for a smile. “Time for a shower.”
“Right. I’ll join you in a few moments.” Something in her expression makes him add hastily, “Er, on the TARDIS, I mean. Not in the shower. Definitely not in the shower.”
I could still drown him in the fountain, she thinks, but turns away and makes her way toward the TARDIS. As she walks away, she notices that her thighs are wet.
So are her cheeks, and she’s grateful he’s not there to see it.
*****
Forty-five minutes later, she’s scrubbed herself to within an inch of her life. She emerges from her room, clad in an extremely asexual outfit of oversized sweat pants and a too-large t-shirt. He’s in the console room, and he’s clearly taken a shower too, just in case any of her perfume got on his skin. He’s no longer wearing the tux, presumably for the same reason. Instead of his usual brown suit, which he probably (and incorrectly) believes to be irresistibly sexy, he’s changed into jeans and a dark green t-shirt. His thick brown hair is still damp, and it flops untidily over his forehead in an adorable way.
Adorable. There she goes again, thinking of him as, well, cute.
But in the plain green shirt and jeans, and with his hair hanging in his eyes, he looks very young and strangely vulnerable. It’s hard to believe that he’s nine hundred-odd years old. He looks like any other bloke.
Well, any other bloke faced with the awkwardness of talking to the best friend he just shagged.
She approaches him, and he sniffs cautiously.
“All better,” he says at last.
“Good,” she says, and walks up to stand beside him. He’s twiddling levers on the console more or less at random. Since the TARDIS is parked, she knows he’s only doing this so he doesn’t have to meet her eyes. She waits for him to say something, but he’s silent.
Well. There’s a novelty.
“It was a nice party,” she says at last.
“We can go back if you like.” He carefully does not look up. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with the atmosphere or any of the food. And we definitely do not have the Andean plague. I’m quite certain the perfume was the problem.”
“The problem?”
He swallows, looking rather like a man picking his way through a minefield. “I mean, the, um… catalyst.”
She consciously tries to lower her hackles. Just because she's upset is no reason to pick a fight with the Doctor, who is almost certainly as upset as she is. “I don’t think I feel much like going back,” she says. She doesn’t think she can go back to that palace-- how many people saw us from that balcony? how many people heard us?-- and stand in that room without blushing as red as her hair. She certainly can’t dance with the Doctor. Just the idea makes her cheeks heat.
“No,” he admits. “Me neither.”
“Okay, then. Well…" Awkward, awkward, awkward. "It’s late.”
“Yes, it is.” He moves a lever back and forth idly. “Maybe we should go to bed.”
She gapes at him, and he reddens and stares at the lever, looking like he wants to slap himself in the forehead. “I mean… no. Not like that. I just meant, it’s time for bed. Beds. Separate beds. You know… sleep. Sleeping in beds. Just sleeping. That’s all I meant. Really.”
He’s so horrified and embarrassed that it’s suddenly all she can do not to laugh. The situation really is funny, she thinks. So ridiculous. And his awkwardness is quite…
She really wishes she could come up with a word other than adorable, but nothing else comes to mind.
“S’probably a good idea,” she says, as snarkily as she manage. “I reckon I tired you out.”
He turns his head and looks at her, as if trying to figure out if she’s teasing him or not. At last a small smile quirks the corners of his mouth.
“Takes more than that to wear out a Time Lord,” he responds at last, and she’s relieved to hear a hint of the Great Galactic Ego in his voice.
She snickers. “How would you know? You live like a monk.”
“Have to,” he says cheerfully, apparently taking his cue from her tone. “Otherwise I can’t take off. Too many women clinging to the outside of the TARDIS, trying to get at me.”
She giggles, and he lifts a lordly eyebrow. “You don’t believe me.”
“Hardly.”
“S’true.” He nods solemnly. “For example, the civilization of Hegema is entirely female, and I can assure you that my sexual prowess is absolutely legendary there.”
“Legendary.” She snorts.
“Legendary,” he confirms with great seriousness. “I’m practically a god in their eyes. In fact, they credit me with the creation of the universe.”
She cocks her head, not entirely sure he’s putting her on. With the Doctor, it can be hard to tell. “Really?”
“Yep.” He pops the P and grins. “They call me the Big Bang.”
She bursts into giggles, and he joins her, laughing freely. It feels good to laugh with him. They can get past the awkwardness, she thinks. They can. After all, two friends who’ve had sex together are still friends.
“I guess I’ll go to bed,” she says once her giggles have died down. “I really am pretty tired.” Let him read into that what he will. If he thinks he’s God’s gift to women… well, she’s not really inclined to argue, all things considered.
She turns and walks toward the corridor. His voice-- soft, hesitant, shaking with nerves-- stops her.
“Donna.”
She turns and looks at him.
“It really was so much more than nice,” he says softly.
“Yeah,” she answers, and smiles despite herself. “It was, wasn’t it?”
He nods. His eyes are watching her intently, as if he’s waiting for something.
“'Course,” she says, “that might have just been the perfume.”
“Might have been,” he agrees. “Could be that without the perfume, it wouldn’t be all that great between us.”
“Yeah. It’s hard to say, really.”
He shrugs, looking as if he’s trying for casualness, but his dark eyes are still very intent. “Only way to tell for certain,” he says, “would be to try a scientific experiment.”
She considers that. “You mean, try shagging without the aphrodisiac, and see how it feels?”
“Exactly.”
She hesitates a long moment, then walks toward him and slides her arms around his neck. He looks down at her through his untidy fringe of hair, and she can see a smile in his eyes.
“Let’s give that scientific experiment a try, Spaceman,” she says.
*****
“So,” he says in the darkness, a long time later. “What do you think? Was it… nice?”
She curls up against him and smiles at the faint trace of anxiety in his voice. Ancient and brilliant alien though he may be, Mr. Sexual Prowess is apparently just as capable of insecurity about his performance in bed as any other bloke.
“Better than nice,” she says. “”Definitely better than nice. In fact…”
“Yeah?”
She laughs softly, and presses a kiss to his cheek.
“It was legendary,” she tells him.
-The End-