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Rose: My mum's here.
The Doctor: Oh, that's just what I need! Don't you dare make this place domestic!
Mickey Smith: You ruined my life, Doctor. [the Doctor turns and looks at him, irritated] They thought she was dead, I was a murder suspect because of you!
The Doctor: [looks at Rose] See what I mean? Domestic!
Doctor Who - Aliens of London
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They’re out of Jammy Dodgers.
It shouldn’t be a big deal, The Doctor knows this. It shouldn’t even be a little deal. He’s faced down Daleks and Cybermen, the genocide of his people and the lost of friends, loved ones and companions with barely a hitch in his step.
And yet, he went out to the kitchen to make tea, and there weren’t any Jammy Dodgers, and now he’s standing trapped in the TARDIS kitchen like he’s one of those helpless, ordinary humans.
Also, there might also not be any tea, for that matter. And also the milk was off.
He might have thought this whole “tea” plan out as well as he thinks out the rest of this plans.
Which is to say, not at all of course.
“So,” River says, voice teasing, hip propped up cheekily against the doorframe of the kitchen, eyes twinkling with kind mischief, “How’s the tea coming?”
And she is teasing, The Doctor knows this. River is many things, but cruel is not one of them. River doesn’t care that there isn’t any tea or biscuits.
But The Doctor does. Because, well…
He is so rubbish at domesticity. He told Rose it was the only adventure he’d never have, and perhaps that was for good reason, because he’s just been bollocking it up since the day River decided to stay, and he doesn’t understand women - no man does - but he thinks that this sort of thing is important to them, perhaps even important enough for it to be contingent for her to stay.
And he’s not good at it.
She’s going to leave him. Because there are no biscuits.
His panic must be more apparent than he will ever admit, because River’s eyes soften and she pops herself of the wall and makes her way to him, running her fingers through his mop of unruly hair in a comfort he knows he’ll never tire of.
“Oh sweetie,” his wife says, twinkle in her eyes, as she takes his arm and leads him to the control panel, stroking the TARDIS in a show of camaraderie, these two ladies who take care of him.
“I rather think marriage is more than tea and biscuits,” River says, her lips curled up with her very own brand of unholy mischief, “I think marriage should be about…cooperation. Two people helping each other to achieve the same goals.”
“I imagine you have a goal in mind?” The Doctor says, and tries to sound not like a pathetically glad drowning man being offered a lifesaver.
River’s “goals” always mean there will be running, and saving the day, and looking dashing and he’s excellent at that.
“Spoilers,” River drawls in that voice, and The Doctor finds himself smiling, like a conditioned reflex.
Oh yes, this promises to be fun.
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“You know,” The Doctor says casually, as he hefts the feet of a - currently - deceased man as River takes the shoulders, and they shuffle towards the TARDIS, “I feel like this happened a lot less before I met you.”
“And wasn’t that boring?” River says, entirely unrepentant, winking at him, entirely too saucy for a woman who just almost ruined her nails pulling rocks off a dead body for the last five minutes.
“There is that,” The Doctor says, with a mental shrug, because well, it was.
Madman with a box, after all.
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The sunsets are different here.
It is a small thing, Spock knows, and yet he cannot help but notice it. New Vulcan, the planet the Federation has found for their colonization is not without it’s own charms. There are cool lakes, acrid deserts and green grasslands abundant that his people can take refugee in, and try to rebuild something out of all they have lost.
And yet, this is not Vulcan, not his universe, and the sunsets are different.
Sometimes, Spock acknowledges, as he makes his way back to his home after his nightly walk, he feels very alone.
And then, he stops, and stares at an anomaly.
There is a large blue box sitting in his garden.
It is a strange sight, wood slatted doors and the word POLICE on it, something that Spock thinks he might have seen in one of Jim’s old books on 19th or 20th century Earth. And yet somehow, despite all logic, it does not look out of place in his small, tidy garden on the wrong world and the wrong time.
And then a man steps out of the box, and Spock, for the first time in his life thinks nothing at all, because the man is Jim.
“Spock,” Jim says, and impossibly it is the same Jim that left him a memo hologram telling him he didn’t want to wake him, and that he’d see him in no time at all after the Enterprise-B’s maiden voyage, and then the Nexus made a liar of him, and robbed Spock of the greatest happiness in his life, “Spock you need to come see this! It travels through time and it’s bigger on the inside!”
Spock wonders if this is what - pardon the oh so human phrase - going mad feels like.
But then another man and a woman step out of the strange blue box, both of them smiling in satisfaction and the man, who looks so young in his jacket and bow tie but Spock can tell is somehow older than he is or will ever be leans against the slats and says to Spock, “It’s a time machine.” And there is something in his eyes that is at the same time strangely amused, kind, and empathetic, “And as a friend of mine recently reminded me, sometimes there are happy endings.”
And then Jim comes up and brushes a hand against Spock’s face, and suddenly the how becomes utterly unimportant because Spock can touch him. Can feel the warmth of his skin under his own, the whispers of his mind, of bonds broken oh so long ago reawakening and rebuilding.
Jim is alive.
“I believe, Jim,” Spock says, looking between all of time and space and Jim, before making the only choice he will always make, twining his fingers with Jim’s because he finds he cannot not, “For once, I would rather spend my time re-exploring worlds already seen.”
“Why Mr. Spock,” Jim says, that oh so missed twinkle in his eyes shining bright, lips curled up into the smile only he can make, “I believe that is…quite logical.”
Spock finds he quite agrees.
And then, though he is loath to turn his eyes away from the miracle that stands before him, he does, only for a second as he notices the woman and her wild sunny hair re-enter the ship, and the man move to follow her, and Spock cannot let them go without even so much as a thank you.
“There are some things that can never be repaid,” Spock says to the man, grateful almost beyond words, but he is not his mother’s son if he does not offer at least something in return for the impossible, “But if there is anything at all?”
“Well,” the man says, running a hand through his hair with a thoughtful look on this face, “actually there might be one thing…”
“Anything,” Spock says, looking at Jim standing alive and whole beside him, a miracle made real, and means it wholeheartedly.
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“Tea,” The Doctor says, with a certain flourish, waving his hand at the steaming Vulcan tea and tiny, delicate biscuits, “and biscuits.”
“Just what I wanted sweetie,” River says, crawling into his lap, nuzzling her the side of her head and all that fabulous hair into the crook of his neck, before taking a dainty bite of a cookie.
The Doctor is amazing at domesticity.
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FIN
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