Title: "Under the Influence"
Author: brokenheartedshipper/Dori
Characters, Pairings: Amy, Eleven, Amy/Eleven, random unimportant OCs
Summary: When the Doctor and Amy land in 1974 White Lake, NY, home of the Woodstock Festival, peer pressure abounds and the Doctor ends up "under the influence."
Warnings: AU Series 5; no mention of Rory
Rating: T for swearing and drug use (duh); please note that I do not advocate the use of marijuana in any way, I am merely utilizing it as a plot device.
Notes: (1) Not my best; (2) I came up with this concept, thought it was funny, and ran with it. It's a lighthearted humor fic—I don't want to say "fluff," because there are undertones of Eleven/Amy, but no established lovey-dovey happenings (at least none that I'm willing to inform you of now, before you've even read the damn thing!); (3) This is the first in a series of stories with the same light, funny tone. It is succeeded by "Neonic Fishnetties." (4) In order to understand this, you may need to understand some slang for "smoking pot." If you don't, it's all right, you'll catch on; (5) There is a shout-out to That'70s Show (if you don't get it, it's fine) and Nine.
*/*
"So," Amy said, skipping out of the Tardis with a gleeful smile, "Where are we this time?"
The Doctor winced slightly at this question, purely because Amy had taken to asking it any and all times they stepped out of the Tardis, regardless of whether he'd entered coordinates or not. Amy was beginning to figure out who was really the boss, and he could not give Sexy the satisfaction.
"I told you," he replied a bit grumpily, "I entered the exact date and time for the Reconstructed Roman Empire, 4021—it wasn't my fault the temporal valve went all wibbly-wobbly—" He stopped short, noticing that Amy's jaw had dropped and her eyes were nearly popping out of her head.
"Amy, listen to me," he instructed painstakingly, "I believe you're experiencing a fit of hebatomic shock, it's a byproduct of the nuclear radio waves in the RRE, just stay calm and—" But now Amy was rolling her eyes and shooing the Doctor's humming sonic screwdriver away from the vicinity of her face (he hadn't even realized he'd taken it out).
"Doctor, I'm fine," she assured him with a hint of exasperation. "It's just...look!" And she pointed straight ahead.
The Doctor looked. They were on a semi-busy street in what looked to be a relatively small town. Men with scruffy, unkempt beards and long hair blatantly clasped hands with makeup-less woman, both dressed in tie-dye and moccasins. A peace sign hung in nearly every window. The Doctor leaned over to peel up the corners of a poster in one of the shop windows that read "White Lake, New York: Home of the Woodstock Festival 1969."
"Doctor," Amy said excitedly, "it's the 1970's!"
The Doctor looked like he was not quite sure what to think of this.
Amy grasped her friend's arm, which was still holding up the poster, and as she leaned forward to view it the Doctor caught a whiff of her strawberry shampoo. The scent was gone just as quickly as he'd registered it.
"Woodstock!" Amy exclaimed, her eyebrows shooting up in joy. "D'you reckon we've arrived in time?"
"No, Amy, I believe we've missed it by about..." The Doctor bent over to pick up a stray newspaper a few strides from his feet. As he straightened back up, he bumped into a man in a shirt donning both a tie-dye pattern and a peace symbol.
"Whoa, man," the man said, holding up his hands.
"Sorry, sorry!" the Doctor clumsily apologized.
"Nah, dude," said Mr. Tie-Dye. "No worries. Peace out, all right? Remember...love is green." He patted the Doctor on the back, giving him a half-lidded goofy grin.
The Doctor was delighted to have met someone so very friendly. "Yes...yes, I'll remember that. Thank you!" he said as the man walked on, waving goodbye.
The Doctor held the forgotten newspaper in his hand, staring after his new best friend with a look of fond bewilderment.
"What a nice man!" he said to Amy. "1970's Americans are much more friendly than the current ones, I would say. So very—" He stopped when he saw Amy's expression. She was crossing her arms, smirking at him with one eyebrow cocked.
"Yes, well," the Doctor said, making his way toward her while straightening his bowtie. "No matter."
Amy snatched the newspaper from the Doctor's hands.
"1974," she said, shoulders slumping. "We're five years late." She gave him a look. "But at least it's not twelve."
He bowed his head.
Regretful of her cheap shot, Amy made it up to him by gently squeezing his arm, and greeting him with a brief tender smile when he turned his head up to look at her.
"But that doesn't matter," Amy continued, perking right back up again. She seized the Doctor's hand, gave it a squeeze and started out at a brisk pace down the sidewalk. "What matters is, where can we go to eat? I'm starving!"
The Doctor hopped a bit to keep up with her. "Oh, I'm sure there's a burger joint around here somewhere," he responded hastily. "The real question is, why on earth was that young man so damn nice to me?"
Amy laughed, assuming the Doctor's question was a joke. Not wanting to appear ignorant, he did not press the matter further.
*/*
"This is so exciting," Amy announced later, her mouth stuffed with chips (or, as their American waitress had called them, "French fries"; the Doctor could see no conceivable reason for this name, as the salted potato sticks had not originated in and were not affiliated in any way with the Republic of France). "Just look at us, we're in 1970's America. That's so brilliant." She reached for more chips to accentuate this point. "I mean," she illustrated, smothering a handful of French fries in ketchup and flicking one wrist out to the side, "we could be just like Eric and Hyde and Kelso and that lot, couldn't we?"
They were sitting in a booth near the window inside a diner called Sally's Fries and Pies, and Amy was eagerly enjoying an entire basket of chips while the Doctor nodded and mm-hmm'd while he people-watched from his side of the window.
Registering what Amy had just said, he tore his eyes away from the curbside where a particular interesting child was trying to guide a few ants back to their home, and he said to Amy,
"Eric and Hyde and who? What lot?"
"Oh, you know," said Amy, tossing a mushy chip aside, "it's this American sitcom that was on a few years ago. They still play re-runs on Channel 22?" The Doctor showed no signs of recognition. Secretly pleased that she knew of something the Doctor did not, Amy merrily launched into a further explanation, "It's this show about this group of sarcastic teens living in small-town America in the seventies, and they spend their time fooling around and being arses and what not…oh, and going into the basement to, you know..." Amy said, waving her hand as though this would aid her explanation. The Doctor's face remained blank, so Amy went on exasperatedly, "you know, 'hit the hay'?" Nothing. " 'Blow the roof'?" Still nothing. " 'Blast a roach'?" Now confusion tinged the Doctor's previously blank face. " 'Bite your lip'?" The Doctor bit his lip, and Amy shook her head, desperate now. " 'Drop smoke'? 'Get on'? 'Light up'?" The Doctor looked almost frightened now.
Amy sighed. "Smoke pot?" she hissed.
"Smoke pot?" the Doctor repeatedly loudly, and a few people looked round, though considering their current location, their expressions were mostly surprised approval and mild interest in personal gain rather than disapproval. Amy widened her eyes at him, shaking her head almost imperceptibly. The Doctor quieted down. "I've never done so myself, but I imagine it would be quite difficult to smoke a pot, would it not? But what the hell? I've seen much, much stranger things done in my day! Let's give it a go!" He looked absolutely overjoyed, very pleased with himself as he straightened his bowtie for the umpteenth time that day. Amy had to suppress a fond smile: she knew him well enough to know that he was desperate to try whatever it was she'd done that he hadn't.
"No, Doctor," she said. "By 'pot,' I mean marijuana."
The Doctor's eyes grew to the size of saucers (though Amy supposed that expression was debunked for her now, as she'd travelled the universe and never once seen a saucer).
"Oh!" he said. "Oh my. Well. The effect of that is, er, quite...daunting. Well, not daunting, I suppose, that is, I suppose I should say..." He allowed his sentence to trail off, and he cleared his throat in a very authoritative manner.
"Doctor," Amy said, and she shifted forward in her seat so she was closer to him, that devious smile upon her lips, "are you telling me you don't know what pot does to a person?"
"Of course I do," the Doctor insisted immediately. He paused. "I mean, mostly. Somewhat. A bit."
Amy leaned back in the booth, triumphant. "You don't know."
The Doctor quickly avoided her statement by taking four very long gulps of water. "Let's just say I haven't been as extensively educated on the matter as I have in some of my other areas of expertise."
Amy grinned at him, and he squirmed.
"Well, all right, I'll tell you," she relented, before realizing she wasn't at all sure how to explain the effects of marijuana. "It's like...okay, you know what LSD, er, acid does to you, right?"
"Lysergic acid diethylamide?" the Doctor clarified, thrilled to have found something he recognized in the conversation. "Of course I do! I was present on the night Ken Kesey wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest—he and his friends accepted me quite warmly into their circle; I think they assumed I too was under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide. I haven't the slightest idea why." In the duration of his speech, the Doctor fidgeted with the dessert menu, turned it inside out and around, then back again, after which he proceeded to scan his newly arrived slice of pie with his sonic screwdriver and take in the readings.
"I have," Amy muttered. The Doctor asked "What?" and she answered "Nothing," hiding her small smile by taking a sip of water.
"So anyway," the Doctor finished, "you were saying?"
"Right, well, you know how LSD makes you fidgety and creative and trippy and wired?"
"Yes."
"Well, pot basically does the exact opposite. It ... calms you down, chills you out...It makes you kind of…forget everything important, so everything's just really simple and funny. Everything kind of slows down and mellows out."
The Doctor looked positively appalled. "Who in the world would want to have that happen to them?"
"Quite a lot of people," Amy explained, resuming her chip consumption and nodding matter-of-factly as she stuffed her face.
"Humans and their strange infatuation with mind-altering substances." The Doctor shook his head, befuddled. "You know, in the culture of the Apalapachians, the idea of someone wanting to affect the way their brain functions is seen as absolutely ludicrous. In fact," the Doctor said, continuing his lecture while snatching a chip from Amy's bundle, "In fact, the act of 'doing drugs' in the Appalapachian culture is viewed as equivalent to one purposely maiming oneself."
"Oh, I don't know," Amy countered, shrugging. "It's fun!"
" 'It's fun,' you say," the Doctor griped. "You humans and your 'fun.' It's an excuse for anything, I think. 'But it's fun!' Ha!" He chewed his French fries crossly.
"It is, though," Amy shrugged.
"I can't believe this! You're telling me that you, Amelia Pond, blew a roach!"
If Amy had been drinking at the moment, she would have spat it out theatrically. However, she had not been prepared for this opportunity of dramatics, so she simply burst into an unbridled bout of laughter and snorting.
"Doctor," she said, "I think you mean 'blast a roach.' I did my fair share of the other thing in high school, but I assure you, never to a roach."
The Doctor began to speak, his finger out and ready for waggling, then had to pause, blush, and grimace when he realized Amy's innuendo.
"Amelia Jessica Pond!" he scolded. "You're not even a century yet! Where I come from it was hard to get a girl to do much at all before she was at least fort—" Amy's jaw dropped for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, her eyes wide with mischievous delight.
"Doctor!" she said. "What a naughty boy you were!" And she slapped his arm playfully, giving him a look that was a mixture of teasing and newfound respect.
The Doctor blushed redder still.
"I didn't mean—that's not to say that I—" The expression on Amy's face forced him to give up. He wisely sealed his lips.
Amy sensed his embarrassment and returned to the previous topic out of mercy. "And to answer your question, Doctor, yes, I smoked pot in high school. Everyone does, really, at least once or twice, and even more in college. Especially in America."
"Yes, but you're not from America, are you? You're just a Scottish girl in an English village, you're not some..." He waved his hand around once, signifying the diner they were in as though it were the perfect example, "urban hippie New Yorker with a taste for mind-altering substances."
"Oh, it's not like it's cocaine or heroin or acid. It's weed, Doctor."
The Doctor frowned. "What do dandelions or crabgrass have to do with marijuana?"
Amy fought back a grin, her lips twitching as she circled her fries in some mustard.
"Nothing, Doctor. Nothing at all."
"Quite right." The Doctor nodded triumphantly and re-buttoned his jacket, proud that he had taught his companion a valuable lesson in staying on topic.
"Now," he went on, "it's not the impact of the drug with which I take issue. About, oh, 420 years from today, humans figure out a way to eliminate all negative effects of drug use, so it doesn't have a very lasting effect on your race in the long run."
"420?" said Amy. "Really?"
"Yes, that's what I said," the Doctor replied, giving her a listen-more-carefully-next-time look. Amy just chuckled.
"Where we find my objection," the Doctor said, "is in the idea of someone wishing to impose laziness and lack of mind activity upon themselves. Whereas useful drugs like lysergic acid diethylamide promote creativity and alertness of the brain's serotonergic system, from what you're saying, marijuana only makes people want to...oh, I don't know, sit around and watch television." The Doctor wrinkled his nose as though he had instead mentioned cleaning an entire castle. Amy smiled a bit, and realized she was fond of the way the Doctor saw inactivity and downtime as the most terrifying thing in the universe. He was the opposite of almost everyone else she knew in that way. He was the opposite of everyone in a lot of ways.
"Oh, Doctor," she said, grasping his warm hand from the air where it had been waving around to illustrate his point. "Sometimes I remember how much I really, really like you." She offered him a wide, Amelia-Pond smile, and it said something about how much the Doctor loved her that Amy knew he would adore her smile just now, her mad-impossible-Amy-Pond smile. As another woman had once observed, he made her believe she was brilliant.
"Excuse me," came a voice. Amy looked over the Doctor's shoulder to take in the sight of a man with a failed goatee, loads of acne and droopy brown eyes, interrupting them smiling at each other. "I couldn't help but overhear your conversation, and I just wanted to let you know a couple of friends of mine are, uh...meeting up later tonight, if you wanna come with." He was looking straight at Amy, smiling suggestively, but now he turned his eyes toward the man whose hand she was holding. (That's one thing the Doctor noticed about American men: they were much more confident they could get the girl no matter what the obstacle, be it severe acne or lack of occupation or even the presumed
'significant other' being mere feet away. Not that he thought of himself as Amy's 'significant other,' not at all, it's just that they were holding hands and grinning dopily at each other and such, and you would think that would cause some hesitation on a potential suitor's part, especially a potential suitor with a face like a Connect-the-Dots puzzle and what not, but no-no, no-no. He was American, after all).
"You can come too, of course," Connect-the-Dots said to the Doctor, who blinked.
"We'll come," Amy jumped in immediately.
"Groovy," said Dotty, and he jotted down some directions for Amy on a napkin and left the diner with a very leisurely stride; all the while the Doctor was subtly shaking his head at Amy, fiddling with his hands, attempting to jump into the conversation, fingers ready for a waggling session (only to be halted by Amy, who strategically interrupted him every time).
Now Amy was beaming, tapping the underside of the table exuberantly.
The Doctor sat back and crossed his arms in protest. "We're not going," he announced.
"You are most certainly not in charge of me," Amy snapped at him. The Doctor briefly recalled a time when he had had a bit more say in the activities of his female companions, when it had taken a lot of persuasion and blonde puppy-dog faces to get him to agree to something unfavorable to him. It must've been the leather jacket, he thought. It definitely commanded authority.
The Doctor sighed, glancing gloomily at his skinny limbs and twenty-something body. He momentarily longed for his tall, broad form and monkey ears, before remembering that he wore a bowtie now, and bowties were cool, so all was well.
"Fine then," he revised, "I'm not going."
"Yes," Amy said simply, "you are."
"All right, but I'm not blasting any roofs!"
"Oh, you do enough of that already. You won't blast any roofs, I promise."
"Good," the Doctor replied, satisfied.
"But you will smoke marijuana."
The Doctor pouted. "Amy!" he protested. "This is peer pressure! I should avoid you, you're a terrible friend, you are—really, just terrible. I should stay 'above the influence' and all that." He flipped his wrist to animate this.
Amy grinned mischievously.
"Terrible friend," the Doctor muttered.