Title: Excuses, Excuses
Author: Shen
Rating: PG-13 for innuendo
Setting/Spoilers: No spoilers. Post-reunion silliness.
Word Count: 661
Characters: Ten/Rose, Donna
Teaser: Donna walks in on a compromising situation. Awkwardness ensues. Crack!fic.
Author's Note: Real life has been beating me over the head with a frying pan, and writing hasn't been particularly forthcoming. So, when this crackbunny hit me, I thought it might do me good to get back into the feel of writing. And after I get the next 7.5 page paper out of the way, maybe I can work on "Settling In!"

Searching for the Doctor to ask him a question, Donna went through all of his usual haunts before finally finding herself in front of his bedroom door. Not thinking, she opened it.

A pair of yelps flew from the room: Rose's womanly squeal and the Doctor's only slightly less womanly cry of shock. Donna immediately slammed the door shut and whirled around, clamping a hand over her mouth in an attempt to smother her inane giggling. Sure, she was traumatised beyond all reason by the sight that had just burned itself into the back of her eyelids, but the looks of shock and embarrassment on her friends' faces almost made it worth it. Though now she realized that she couldn't picture the Doctor's horrified expression without also seeing where Rose's leg had been in relation to it. Donna hadn't realized that position was possible; she envied Rose's flexibility even as it seared itself into her brain as a permanent mindscar.

Two minutes later, the messily-dressed couple joined Donna in the kitchen, and she automatically added more water to the kettle. They immediately began to beg forgiveness without ever actually looking her in the eye.

"I'm sorry you had to-" Rose tried, scuffing her shoe on the ground.

"We should've-" the Doctor attempted to take over but failed, staring fixedly at the ceiling and rubbing the back of his neck. Rose looked up from the ground for a split second.

"Not that we were-"

"Right! She just had- there was a splinter."

"On my leg!"

"And Rose has to help me - it's kind of embarrassing - she puts ointment on this... rash of mine. On my back. Lower- really lower back. So that's why we didn't have trousers."

"Or pants. And he needs his shirt off because it's a large rash."

"And she, um... took hers off to be fair." The Doctor nodded sagely at his logic. Rose began to as well, before a downward glance made her notice that her own shirt's buttons were off by one. She quickly whirled around to face the wall and started to fix it. Meanwhile, the Doctor showed no sign that he noticed his tie was tied, not in any form of Windsor knot, but rather in a bow.

Donna stared at them with a look of utter incredulity on her face.

"Are you bloody serious?" she managed to ask after several moments of opening and shutting her mouth ineffectually. "Do you think I'm completely out of touch? Stupid, even? Blind? Not that I want to think about you two doing the nasty, but I saw it! No erasing that now. No, that's going with me to my grave. Thirty years on, I'll be sitting in a cinema, taking in a comedy, and that image will hit me, and I'll be paralyzed for five minutes, covering my eyes and weeping into my cola. So there's no use denying it happened." Rose blinked, by now having finished fixing her attire, and spoke.

"Yeah, I don't know. Sorry. That was a good ramble, though, wasn't it?"

"Smashing," agreed the Doctor. "I do like a good ramble."

"And what did we learn, children?" asked Donna primly. The pair gave her twin blank stares in return.

"Lying is bad?" tried the Doctor. Donna shook her head.

"Stories about splinters are never convincing?" Rose asked. "Though it could be worse. It's not as bad as... as..." She had apparently forgotten the expression.

"'She had something in her teeth?'" the Doctor finished for her.

"That's the one!" Rose beamed up at him, and he gave a silly grin back. Donna's gaze flew to the heavens, half exasperated at their sex-addled minds and half unable to ignore how disgustingly cute it was when they finished each other's sentences.

"Locks! You ninnies! You lock the door, and I'll knock in the future, and maybe we'll be able to look each other in the eye again sometime within the next year."

"Oh. Right."

END