The Doctor slipped his hands into his pockets, allowing the silver TARDIS key to slip from his fingers and settle in the bottom of his tailor-made pinstriped, transdimensional pocket. He looked into the grass at something Sara couldn't see, and suppressed a smile. She sighed, and snapped a photo with her digital camera.
Sara still felt very conflicted about her feelings for the Doctor. She was so fond of him, but she couldn't reconcile her attraction with the fact that he was alien—two hearts, four livers, more-than-nine-hundred-years-old-and-still-young (by his species' standards, anyway) alien. She looked down at the display screen of her camera. She fiddled with the buttons and rendered the photo in black and white. She sighed again, more deeply this time. She looked up from the camera's screen and watched as the Doctor came toward her. His hair was wild and spiked, and being blown about by the breeze. That noticing part of her grew stronger, and the rabble of butterflies began their protestations in her gut.
"Lovely day, isn't it?" He said when he'd gotten close enough that he didn't have to raise his voice.
"Definitely," she said, turning off her camera and tucking it into the pocket of her leather jacket.
"I just saw a rather large beetle, over there," he said, pointing vaguely over his shoulder.
"John or Paul?" She grinned. The Doctor smiled back, and Sara tried not to think of how cheesy that joke was.
"Draxil Beetle," he said, "They're as big as plums—"
"I think I'll stay over here, then." She said lightly, but abruptly.
"Oh, you're not afraid of a teeny-weeny Draxil Beetle, are you?" He joked, throwing his arm over her shoulder and giving her a squeeze. "C'mon, how often do you get to come to Gilica 12?" He tried to guide her a step in the direction he'd just come from. "They're perfectly harmless." Sara resisted, and the Doctor's face turned serious. "You're not afraid of insects, are you?" He said in a mock-accusatory tone.
"No!" She said, with a perfect air of ten-year-old-who's-been-called-a-chicken. She paused, reconsidering, "Well, unless it's poisonous. Or it's a bee. I'm allergic to bees. So that's pretty reasonable. I don't like getting bitten and stung." The Doctor gave her another nudge toward the area of grass where he'd seen the Draxil Beetle, and this time she followed. "Or earwigs," she said, a little quieter this time. She made a pinching motion with the thumb and index finger of her left hand. "I don't like being pinched, either." She shuddered.
She was too busy staring ahead and running through her mental photo album titled, Insects I Don't Like, to notice the smile spreading across the Doctor's lips. "It doesn't sting, bite or pinch," he assured her. She was doing it again; chattering away. He'd recognized this pattern in the third week of their travels together. Sara only did it when she was a certain kind of nervous. Her bad-nervous meant concealed hand-wringing and making excuses to go to the toilet so she could run the tap and cover the sounds of hyperventilation. This chattering good-nervous seemed more like a voice-activated Rolodex of everything Sara had ever encountered. She could name brands of cereal, insects, dog breeds and movies like he could rattle off galaxies, stars, and alien species. Sara let out a small breath and gave a nod.
"Good," she was touching the fingers of her right hand to her thumb in turn, as if mentally re-checking her figures on disliked insects. That was when Sara realized that she'd been rambling, and she felt her cheeks grow warm as they were tinted pink by her embarrassment. She looked at the Doctor, and then followed his gaze to the spot in the grass. "Wow," she was stunned. The beetle was about the size of a plum, but it wasn't a dingy brown or slick black. It was a glowing blue.
"See how it hunts?" He pointed. Sara and the Doctor squatted down a short distance from the beetle and watched. It stood in the grass on its six little legs—well, its four normal legs and two outrageously long, curled front legs—and waited. It grew brighter and began emitting a quiet buzzing sound.
"Sounds like your sonic," Sara whispered so quietly she wasn't sure he'd heard. (He had). Small insects, attracted to the light and sound of the beetle, began flitting about around it. Then, quicker than the human eye could see, it cast out its long front legs and snatched the confused bugs from the air and ate them. After several minutes of watching, she turned her head to look at the Doctor. "He's a walking, snacking bug zapper," she said, beaming.
"The frequency it emits is specially designed to entice the size of insect it can most easily consume. As the beetle grows larger, the magnitude and wavelength of the sound changes, allowing it to attract larger and larger prey," the Doctor said.
"Wow!" she grinned at him, "So how big do they get?"
The Doctor tugged at his ear, "Round about the size of a basketball, I'd say."
"That's…that's just amazing," Sara said in awe. The Doctor rose to his feet and held out a hand to her. "Doctor?" she said hesitantly. "Would it be alright to take a photo of it?"
"Of course! Why wouldn't it be?"
"I dunno, something about the ethics of space-time travel? Chaos theory?"
The Doctor laughed, "Go on and take your photo," he smiled, "Then we'll get back to the TARDIS."