Another entry for the Doctor Who Fest over on tumblr. Prompt was "shall we dance" and this is crossposted to my writing tumblr.
I do not own Doctor Who, though I do have a desire for Series Eight to be appropriately subtitled "Cosplaying in Time and Space" and have everyone get in on that action.
It had been worth it, the Doctor thought, just to watch the look on Danny's face when they had first stepped out of the TARDIS. The younger Pink sibling, well, she had to study for exams and was therefore time-and-space grounded, but he had used this opportunity to request a trip that did not involve rubbish-bin aliens coming at him with plungers and whisks or laser beam-wielding potatoes or even lady-lizards and their ninja-maid wives (though, to be completely fair about things, he was grateful they had been present during that trip to the Yuan Dynasty). So the Doctor, being the caring and accommodating spaceman he was, decided to make Danny eat his words and plopped them right in the middle of Imperial Russian Court.
During preparations for a ball.
When the two teachers had been decidedly dressed for an evening strolling the French Riviera (which they had been promised).
This didn't even get into the fact that the TARDIS was almost parked on the still very new Empress Elizaveta as she oversaw the progress.
Pinkie's face looked great.
"Christ, Doctor, what did you do…?" Danny whispered. His eyes remained locked on the selection of shocked Slavs staring back at them. "We're dead."
"Nonsense; the dear's not one for execution. Elizaveta! My apologies for being late. Just had to pick up my traveling companions—you understand."
Danny's face became even more pricelessly confused when the party preparations continued and the Empress turned her attention from startled to cheery. He had almost become used to the way the Doctor effected people, but every now and then he was still caught off-guard. A Russian Empress, reigning for less than a year from the looks of it, referring to the Doctor as a trusted confidant was definitely something he wasn't expecting.
"Traveling companions… humph…" Clara frowned as she stepped out of the TARDIS. "See if I share next time I decide to do some baking."
"Clara, has he brought you here before?" Danny asked. Clara simply shook her head.
"No, but that doesn't mean that he hasn't been here before. I can't believe him. Traveling companions. The nerve."
"What, would you rather be his daughter? Nurse? Travel agent?"
"You're just cross because you wanted the French Riviera; number one rule around here, Danny, is that the Doctor lies."
"Is the second rule that he flirts with all the women?" Danny winced slightly in horror as the Doctor Flashed the Empress a smile and kissed the back of her hand.
"No, although, it might as well be."
Not too long after the TARDIS had landed, Danny and Clara had been whisked away to be appropriately outfitted for the ball. They only saw one another three hours later, when they were brought to a room where the Doctor was thumbing through a worn paperback while waiting for them. Danny had arrived first, in a waistcoat, breeches, and a long coat all in deep blue with white accent. It was an uncomfortable suit, riding funny in certain places and making him feel like he should be in some lurid period-dress novel, but at least he had avoided the wig they had wanted him to wear by claiming the powder in it would kill him outright (instead of just his dignity).
"You know, when I said I wanted to be able to take in some good music, I was hoping for maybe some jazz or an early The Who concert, not classical," Danny muttered as he played with the jacket cuffs and tried to roll his shoulders. "I mean, that stuff's good too, but I'd prefer to not stick out like a sore thumb."
"You don't," the Doctor said. "To them, you merely resemble one of the Empress's favored major-generals in a vague sort of way… that is if he's not that already."
"Uh-huh…" Danny nodded, a burning jealousy at the Doctor's lack of a wardrobe change beginning to form inside the pit of his stomach. He was so concentrated on testing his range of motion in the new suit that he nearly did not see Clara walk dressed in a pale green gown with a large skirt and the most unpleasant look on her face Danny had ever seen.
"You had to do it," Clara hissed, the tight curls her hair was brought into shaking with irritation. "You had to pick a time period where long-waisted corsets were mandatory, didn't you?"
"Can you breathe, my dear?" the Doctor asked as he closed his book and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. Clara nodded, though uncomfortably. "Then I have to talk to you quickly before we're summoned to be presented—Elizaveta believes there is something wrong about a few members of her court not acting their normal selves. She thinks it's a coup, I think it's Zygons."
"Doctor, we're both in sort of impractical clothing to be running around chasing Zygons," Clara frowned. "Look at us; we're both in heels."
"I'm not asking you to do any running—I'm telling you so that you watch your backs. You know what a Zygon is, right Pinkie?"
"Yeah, one of those chameleon aliens with the funny-shaped heads," Danny replied. "You said they almost destroyed London a while back while doing their best Skrull impression."
"Yeah, well, for some reason it seems like they're at it here," the Doctor frowned. "Now I know we're going to be separated, so I will need you both to watch your backs. Don't leave one another's side. Come up with a code phrase. Do something to protect yourselves in case I cannot. We don't need another Acapulco on our hands."
"Okay, come on, I got lost once, and it was dark," Danny groaned.
"…but your sister didn't get lost and that's what's we take away from this," the Doctor replied. Clara watched as her boys became locked in a contest of glares that was only going to become very petty very quick (the Doctor was right that Danny needed to be more cautious, but in his defense that also was more than a few adventures ago at this point). She cleared her throat and stepped between them, disrupting the argument.
"Gentlemen, behave," she said firmly. They both stopped; at least it was obvious neither of them had been replaced while they were apart. "Pop culture references, yeah? I think we can do that." The two men nodded in agreement.
"What happens if I find one of these Zygons? How will I be able to stop it?"
"Just come get me, okay?" the Doctor requested. "Normally I'd let you knock it over the head with a bat or something but we're not exactly dressed in cricket whites are we?"
"Fair enough." Danny nodded, knowing that he was going to have quite the story to tell his sister after she sat her exams.
Danny was pretty sure he had waltzed with every woman on the dance floor, but still no sign of any aliens other than the intergalactic granddad who seemed to be very good at occupying the Empress's attention if anything. It was bad enough that the three of them had to be introduced as "Smith of Gallifrey" but whoever it was doing the announcing made it sound like Danny and Clara were his wards despite being very clearly adults themselves. The women all seemed super-interested in Gallifrey though and where it was located and if Danny was in the line for some sort of inheritance.
The only other time he had felt so wanted, there'd been a scavenger hunt during school and he held business cards with clues on them.
"Find anything yet?" Danny asked quietly as he and Clara bowed to one another and began dancing.
"Not a thing," Clara frowned, pursing her lips in irritation. "This is really beginning to get on my nerves—where is the Doctor? I haven't seen him in a while and it's starting to worry me."
"He can take care of himself. What's really beginning to worry me is how the Empress keeps staring at me like I'm her next victim now that she's not ready to claw into the Doctor."
"Well, you do look nice."
"I feel like I'm in some Austen… thing… or something. It's weird."
"Nonsense; if anything you're in a Pushkin novel."
Danny rolled his eyes and chuckled—of course Clara would be able to come up with something to make him laugh. Their adventures sometimes ran the entire gamut between ridiculous and tense, and the two humans had now become experts at making one another feel like they weren't alone in the Doctor's antics. She smiled cleverly at him and they had to change dance partners. Danny watched Clara as long as he could, making sure she made it to her next stop safely. He turned his head back to look at his next dancing partner and almost jumped at the Doctor appearing inches from his face and latching on for a dance.
"Pinkie, have you found anything?" the Doctor growled.
"No…? Clara hasn't either." Danny, wide-eyed in uncomfortable terror, tried to edge himself away from the Time Lord, who did not seem willing to let go. He expected this kind of behavior at this point when the owl-man was with Clara and they were being oddly flirty (how Clara seemed to flirt with both of them at the same time was nice, though beyond comprehension), but this had frankly come out of the blue. A bit of warning would have been nice.
"I'd watch out for the gentleman over there in the red—the once with the lace cuffs," the Doctor half-whispered into Danny's ear. Yeah, okay, now Danny knew he was just doing it to irritate him.
"Half the men here have lace on their cuffs."
"…but only one of them has red and lace. Do keep up please."
"If I kill you right here right now, will you do the glowy thing Clara told me about and come back as someone a bit more agreeable? You can still be Scottish, but I don't know be… Ewan MacGregor or Craig Ferguson or someone like that… just not, whatever this is. Do you come in ladies' sizes?"
"That's a question to be answered another day," the Doctor said. It was time to change dance partners again and the Time Lord scurried off into the crowd of partygoers. A confused noblewoman looked at Danny, gesturing towards the direction the Doctor glided off to in hopes of an answer. Danny silently shrugged and bowed, just grateful that he hadn't needed to run yet in what were becoming increasingly uncomfortable shoes.
Just before the dance began an explosion rocked the room from down the hall and some vaguely Scottish shouting came filtering in through the sounds of chaos.
He had thought too soon.