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The thing about lies is remembering all the details every time you have to fall back on them. Remembering who he's told what and when, and adjusting accordingly. The problem with lying about his age is that he keeps forgetting to be consistent.
"Stop laughing," he says, arms crossed and pouting.
Donna laughs harder. Tears, actual tears of laughter are sliding down her face.
"You look completely undignified, you realize that," he tells her.
"Oh, god. Oh, god. Can't breathe," she says, hand pressed to her chest, trying to contain herself. She looks at him, cracks up again, and falls off her chair, still laughing at him.
The Doctor fumes.
This all started because he was distracted. Sloppy. He'd been explaining something very important and Donna's eyes had glazed over about ten seconds in but that only made him want to explain it more, and he'd gone on about having nine-hundred years of travelling experience and how that clearly made him the most expert expert in the galaxy, and Donna had said:
"Wait a minute. Nine hundred years? Thought you were nine hundred and three? What, you left home still in your nappies?"
The Doctor had frozen, mouth open, finger raised mid-pontificate.
"You're gonna catch flies," Donna told him. And then a look of sheer glee came over her face. "Oh my god. You're kidding. Ha!" She cackled. "How vain are you! Lying about your age!"
And that was when she started laughing until she fell off her chair.
"I've had enough of this," he says, and stomps off. He's going to get her for this. Somehow, someway, Donna Noble will pay.
A few minutes later, she's tracked him down in the library. "Aw, don't be like that," she tells him, somewhat appeasing and vaguely apologetic. But only just. She's still fighting a smile.
"I'll be however I like," he says, stubbornly.
"Oh, come on," she says, and punches him lightly on the arm. Well, sort of lightly. "How old are you really? You can tell me."
The Doctor rub his arm and gives her a glare for good measure.
"All right, all right," Donna sighs. "I'm sorry. Really."
The Doctor relents, if only because he knows she won't stop pestering him until he spills. She's an expert badgerer if there ever was one. "I've forgotten," he says, embarrassed.
"You what?"
"I lost count," he says, hating that his cheeks feel hot. He's never going to hear the end of this. At least she doesn't know how completely rubbish he is as a Time Lord.
Donna laughs, then forces herself into a straight face. "You're serious," she realizes.
The Doctor considers his personal timeline. It's beyond tangled by this point, bits out of order, a total mess. "It's been a few centuries at least since I was anywhere under a thousand," he admits. "It's all a bit... complicated."
"Can't be that hard to figure out. When's your birthday?"
"That's also complicated," he says. For any number of reasons, the least being that Gallifrey existed outside of normal time. The most being that Gallifrey doesn't exist for him to measure himself against.
Donna gives him a somewhat pitying look. "No birthday? Now that's just sad."
The Doctor huffs. "There's nothing sad about not being trapped in something as repetitive as a cyclical calendar--"
But Donna's already grabbing him the arm and dragging him back to the console room. He sputters in protest, but she ignores him.
"You're gonna beam us down, and I'm gonna get you proper drunk. That's the way you spend a birthday."
"But--"
"And no arguments!"
And that is how the Doctor came to be spending the evening in Donna's favourite pub, with Donna buying all the drinks with his tab. And that is why he is now very, very drunk. And still drinking.
"Nerys lied about her age," Donna tells him, sneering on the name. "Kept saying she was twenty nine. She was never twenty nine."
"Not even once?" the Doctor replies.
"Well, all right, once. But that's it." Donna makes a cutting motion with her hand. "My mum said she was thirty nine for years. Mid-life crisis, that was. You know what I think?" she says, pointing at him.
"I think you're going to tell me anyway."
"I think nine hundred's like thirty nine for Martians," Donna says. "You're middle-age!"
The Doctor, who had been mid-gulp, spits out his beer and has to use his respiratory bypass to stop coughing. When he looks up, Donna is looking at him with renewed glee.
"I'm gonna have so much blackmail material out of this," she says, and starts laughing all over again.