Work Text:
Donna spent the weekend cleaning. It’s something of a byproduct of her need to get rid of the anxious energy she has, which is certainly something she’s picked up from John. Or at least, John’s the cause of it, with all the worrying nonsense he does every damn day of the week, but whatever. The point is, when she left for work this morning, the kitchen was nearly spotless, a sight that would make even her mother shed a brief tear before quickly wiping it away and pointing out how she forgot to wipe down the interior of the fridge.
And then Donna came home.
She sets her purse down on the coffee table when she walks in, and automatically goes to the kitchen in the hopes of finding something quick and simple to eat before falling asleep on the sofa while watching trash telly, because work today was a bit of a nightmare and she really wants to relax a bit, for once.
Instead, all she gets is high blood pressure when she walks into the kitchen to find the table cloth tossed onto the floor and flour strewn all over the table. There’s a pot of water boiling away rapidly on the stove, the smell of garlic coming from the oven, and egg shells left on the counter. John’s got his sleeves rolled up to his elbows, and he’s currently working a sticky mass of egg and flour into something like a dough.
He doesn’t notice that she’s even there until she clears her throat and demands, “What the hell have you been doing?”
His head jerks up, and a smile appears on his face the moment he sees her standing there, arms crossed over her chest. “Hallo Donna!” He glances down at the mass of dough in his hands. There’s bits of it and flour reaching up onto his forearms, and how did he manage that. “I’m making pasta.”
She appreciates the unprompted explanation, but it doesn’t make her any less upset at the sight of the kitchen. “Did we not – why didn’t you just use boxed spaghetti?”
“I… was told this was better?”
Whoever told him that must not have thought about how awful it is to breathe the flour that’s currently in the air. She walks over to the table, and pokes at the dough. It’s soft and pliable, but not exactly a pleasant texture for her. She wipes her finger on her pants. “And you didn’t even bother to consider how much of a mess it’d be?”
He looks around the room like he’s seeing it for the first time. “Oh.” His shoulders deflate slightly. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, John,” she says, not too kindly, before she grabs a tea towel and walks over to the oven. There’s a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil inside, and a couple slices of buttered bread on top, just beginning to go from toasted to very toasted. She pulls the sheet down and places it on a free spot on the stove. The pot has been boiling water for a bit too long, so she adds a bit more water from the sink and reduces the temperature.
She glances over to John, and finds that he’s got his hands resting on the ball of dough, but he’s stopped working it in favor of staring at her. “Aren’t you going to finish that spaghetti?” she asks. “I’m not making dinner.”
He blinks. “Uh, right.” He goes back to kneading the dough, stretching it out with the heel of his hand before folding it over and repeating the motion again and again. He seems oddly skilled at it, never stuttering or pausing to think about what he’s doing. “Sorry,” he says again, while he works. “I just – I got off work early, and I knew you were going to be late and probably would just… eat a bowl of cereal and pass out on the sofa, so I wanted to make something a bit… nicer.”
That’s… spot on. She always underestimates how well he knows her. She lets herself relax a bit, reconsiders the mess that is the kitchen. “Oh. Thanks, John.”
He grabs a rolling pin from the drawer behind him and rubs a bit of flour on the wood and on the table again. “I should be letting this rest for a bit. Thirty minutes or so,” he says. “But I’m impatient and I don’t think it’ll make the pasta bad or anything, so.”
“And the water’s already starting to boil again,” she adds. She watches him start to roll out the dough. “We don’t even have a pasta maker. How are you going to cut it?”
“With a knife?” He shrugs. “It’ll be uneven, but it’ll be food. And good. Good food. Hopefully.”
“Works for me,” she says. Nothing else to do but wait, she puts the kettle on, pulls down two mugs from the cupboard, and goes about making some tea for the two of them. Or maybe she should make hot chocolate.
John’s started to cut out thin strips of dough when she asks, “Hot chocolate or tea?”
“Hot chocolate,” he answers immediately. She should have figured. He’s got such a sweet tooth, he practically dumps a whole cup’s worth of sugar into his tea anyway. Might as well go for the sugary stuff right away.
The cocoa tin is toward the back of one of the cupboards, and she has to stand up on her toes to reach it. The rest is easier, and soon she's setting a mug of hot chocolate down on the floured table, just as John gathers up what's now raw spaghetti noodles. He turns around, drops them in the pot, and gives it a quick stir.
Donna takes a sip of her cocoa, and watches how John’s face lights up when he sees his own sitting on the table. “So when you say you got off work early,” she starts. “Do you actually mean you were allowed to leave early, or did you just skip out before you had to start cleaning up your mess.”
He glances down at the mug in his hands, held close to his face as if savoring either the aroma or the warmth or both, and sets it back down on the table. “Ah, well, you know how it is at the lab. Saida’s always going on about proper procedure and how I have to ‘actually watch’ what I’m doing.” He makes air quotes as he talks.
“So she didn’t let you go home early, she sent you home,” Donna realizes.
He frowns, confused. “Uh, yeah. Is there a difference?”
“How many times now has she sent you home?”
“Uh…” He looks down at his hands, makes a funny motion like he’s counting fingers. “A lot.”
She sets her mug down and looks at him, the direct eye contact making him fidget. “John,” she says. “There’s a big difference between being allowed to go home early, and being sent home from your job. Saida might start wondering why she even hired you, given all the hassle you apparently cause, and then where will you be?”
“Wait, wait, wait, you think Saida might be thinking about firing me?” he blurts out.
She shrugs stiffly. “She could be.”
John has that particular look on his face again, like she’s just broke his entire thought process behind how employment in the UK works. “Oh my God, she could fire me.”
Oh, it’s awfully mean, but she can’t help but snicker at him. “I can’t believe you,” she says.
He blinks, before whining, “ Donna. I can’t get fired, what do I do if she fires me?”
“I don’t know, do what anyone else does and get another job? Preferably not in a lab, probably, if you can't keep it together with this one.”
“There’s plenty of places to work,” Donna continues over dinner. John managed to not overcook the pasta, or severely undercook it from a lack of patience, so now they’ve got plates of unevenly cut spaghetti in front of them. The sauce isn’t anything to write home about, but she refuses to admit that the homemade noodles are actually really good, out of principle. John did make a mess of the kitchen. Though, the garlic bread is good, so she lets him have that.
“Not any places where I’d know what I’m doing,” he says, picking at the food on his plate without interest. Sometimes she wishes he'd eat more. Even if he's a freaky alien who can go days to weeks without a meal.
“They’d train you,” she reasons. “Or it’d be easy enough to where you could pick it up quick. Like… retail’s like that.”
“Retail?”
“Service jobs. Working at Tesco’s, or clothing stores, that sort of thing. I used to work plenty of those.”
“Are they… nice jobs?” he asks, looking up at her.
“No, absolutely not.”
He frowns. “Then why would I want to work in retail?”
“Because then you'd have a job if you get fired from this one? Because we've got rent to pay, and I refuse to put up your skinny arse when we agreed to split the cost in the lease?”
He hums. “I mean, yeah. But I think I'd rather keep working at Saida's lab.”
“For the best, probably,” Donna says. “You'll have to actually – you know, work, though.”
John grimaces. “I'm sure I can figure it out.”