Title: Vault Incident: Handcuffs
Series: Doctor Who
Character/Pairing: Nardole, Twelfth Doctor/Gomez!Master, implied past Twelfth Doctor/River Song
Genre: Gen? romance? crack
Rating: PG
Theme/Prompt: Kinktober 2017 prompt "06: Bondage"
Wordcount: 702
"No, no, no no no, don't go!"
Nardole pauses in the Vault door, having spun around to exit upon encountering the scene now behind him.
"Sir, you are very obviously occupied" he says, staring out at the basement ceiling.
"It's not as bad as it looks."
"Please leave."
Both the Doctor and Missy reply at the same time, and there's a pause as they presumably look at each other before the Doctor continues, "I was experimenting with the handcuffs."
"Sir, you aren't convincing me that you aren't occupied. River did say you often got tied up in this sort of thing." She had. There was an entire, quite descriptive, section in her diary about it too.
"This isn't a joke. This is me trying to see if I could quantumly entangle them in order to appropriately detain our-" There's a long, heavy pause and Nardole almost leaves, certain the Doctor is otherwise occupied.
"Guest." The word is carefully measured, as if the Doctor is afraid their prisoner would bite him if he used any other word. She probably would, Nardole thinks and then shudders, remembering the various bodily threats she's issued.
"He wants to take me for walkies."
It takes a moment for the meaning of the Mistress's stage whisper to parse. Then he's storming into the Vault to where the Doctor is kneeling with her leg over his shoulder, their arms locked around one another.
"You want to take her out for a walk? It's not even been sixty years. You can't just take her out now!"
"I could. If she was properly detained with me escorting her," the Doctor says, those eyebrows of his set in a stubborn straight line.
Nardole reins in the temptation to get angry at the Doctor, yell and shout, maybe throw some furniture. It wouldn't work, not after their guest did that for eight years. (He has a spreadsheet. He's been keeping track.) Instead he just breathes heavily at the Doctor while frowning. That works, the Doctor crumbling after half a minute, dropping his gaze and deflating under the pressure of Nardole's disappointment.
"Keys," he demands, still glaring at the Doctor.
"Sonic. Lower inside left hand pocket. Inverse the current setting."
Missy's smiling at him as Nardole reaches around the Doctor to retrieve it. She's being impish about the entire thing, eyes bright with mischief, making Nardole suspicious.
Logically, he thinks as he clicks the inverter on, she had no reason to divulge the Doctor's plan - she would want to get out of the Vault. Narrowing his eyes as he points the sonic at first the Doctor's and then Missy's wrists, Nardole concludes that getting the Doctor into trouble must have been Missy's goal, regardless of whether she proposed the idea in the first place.
He's not fond of being a pawn in their pranks on one another, so Nardole holds out a hand for the handcuffs once they've untangled themselves.
"I'll take those if you please. And," he adds, indicating the screwdriver, "I'll be keeping this for the rest of the month."
That takes the wind out of the Doctor's sails entirely, Missy smiling benignly when he looks at her as if she could fix the situation. The smile confirms his suspicion that this has been orchestrated to humiliate the Doctor. Her telling on him was payback in whatever little game they play together. Leaving him without a tool to retaliate with almost makes Nardole feel sorry for the Doctor. Almost.
"Do you need anything else sir?" Nardole asks mildly, feeling a little smug about putting a halt to their games. Or at least preventing them from escalating.
"No, that'll be it for now."
"I'll leave you to it then." Nardole nods a farewell at the Doctor, shooting a glare at the Mistress who's straightening her skirt.
"Have fun!" she says, a smile on her face as she drops a glance to where the handcuffs dangle from his hand.
Nardole bites back his outrage, sniffing instead to dismiss her innuendo before turning sharply to leave. The last few meters of his exit is definitely not a scurry as he hears a thump behind him that sounds suspiciously like someone being pushed onto a bed.