Hello there, and welcome to the prologue of With a Little Help from Flowers!
This is my first foray into the world of writing adult fanfiction. Okay, basically writing any fanfiction-but I really like smut!. My writing (I am an English major at a prominent university in Canada) is not typically of a sexual nature, so I greatly appreciate comments and advice.
This story may start out a little slow for smut-lovers-it's somewhere between PWP and a very developed story, just the way I prefer it!
Disclaimer: If I owned Doctor Who, I wouldn't need to write Fanfiction. Rose and Ten would just bang all the time.
The cloister bell rang.
For the 24th time that week, the cloister bell rang.
Its rushed, desperate, 4-note clanging noise echoed mercilessly throughout the TARDIS, worrying one of the blue box's inhabitants but just plain annoying the other.
Rose Tyler grabbed the cushion next to her from the couch on which she glumly sat, shoved it into her face, and groaned. "JMFT UMGR UT," pled her muffled voice from behind its fluffy captor. The Doctor didn't need to hear her clearly to know what she said. "TRM UT URFF."
"I can't just ignore it," he called to her from the control room. "Nor will I turn it off. It's the cloister bell. Something's wrong."
That's how it was supposed to work, anyway. The cloister bell—the TARDIS equivalent of a fire alarm—was supposed to ring whenever there was horrible danger afoot for the TARDIS or its inhabitants. Lately, though, it seemed to ring at least 3 times a day for no apparent reason other than to drive Rose mad.
"Nothing was wrong the last million times," Rose chastised with a deep breath, putting the cushion where it belonged and flopping backwards on the couch with another groan. "The only thing that's got anything wrong is your bell. Get it fixed. Please, PLEASE get it fixed."
"I'm fixing it!" the Doctor reminded her, calling probably more loudly than needed. His voice came from a compartment of the TARDIS's circular control panel under which the he usually lay to rip apart random wires and throw them against other ones or whatever it was he did to fix things when something went wrong.
The "Fix-It Station," which Rose affectionately called it, was a station that, in Rose's opinion, the Doctor had been spending entirely too much time in lately. About 4 hours a day of too much time. And each of those 4 hours, he let the cloister bell ring. Could he override it manually? Of course. Just plain turn it off? Yes sir. But he chose not to, despite Rose's protests. He didn't want to turn it off just in case, on the off chance, there was something hugely wrong. Sound reasoning, of course; they were in space, and anything could happen. But Rose was not thinking about potential emergencies; rather, she was mentally tallying the numerous ways she could stop the ringing herself. Most of those ways involved an axe or similarly destructive object, began with a maniacal and violent sense of noise-oriented vengeance, and ended with her being disallowed from ever setting foot in the TARDIS again. She reluctantly stood up and headed through the large, domelike doorway into the control room where the Doctor was under the table, obscured from Rose's vision but presumably fiddling with various funny-looking objects.
"This is impossible," the Doctor observed aloud. For all his good points—his boundless genius, his optimism, his generosity, his elegantly-disheveled hair, his intense brown eyes, his…various other things—there were a few parts of the Doctor that Rose found supremely frustrating. One of them was his perpetual state of disbelief.
How he was utterly convinced so many things were impossible, Rose would never know: he was a time-and-space traveler who moonlighted as a hired genius. He'd saved races from extinction, he'd destroyed interplanetary villain masterminds in less time than it took Rose to write an exam, and he'd even found a way to wear an all-blue suit without looking like a grossly out-of-touch father visiting his daughter's school dance. But despite all this, he still insisted the universe consisted of impossibilities. Granted, the Doctor's "What?-It-Can't-Be!-That's-Impossibles" were usually reserved for more unprecedented matters—the Daleks returning, for example (although perhaps that was now with a few precedents), or the discovery of a planet that lacked in any sort of gummy candy—but Rose never expected him to be quite as shocked over what she chalked up to be roughly the same as a faulty car engine light (okay, perhaps SLIGHTLY more potentially deadly, but all Rose's attempts to be fair and reasonable went out the window after the 4th instance in the week of that infernal NOISE.) How could so great a mind be so utterly boggled that something that happened over a dozen times in a week still be happening?
Rose leaned against the wall, biting the inside of her cheek, and watched the control table with crossed arms. "Nothing appears to be wrong," he said, pulling himself out from under the control panel and pushing his time-to-be-smart glasses back up the bridge of his nose. Once more, he looked over the TARDIS's readings. "The engine is fine. The TARDIS is stable. There's no oncoming asteroids or anything. Power is fine, speed is fine, oxygen levels are fine, Main Logic Junction is—"
"Fine," continued Rose sharply, glaring daggers through the Doctor's head. "Stability is fine, steering is fine, N67G is fine, we're fine. Everything is fine, yeah?" She wasn't even really sure what an N67G was, but it was fine the last hundred times the Doctor said his list aloud.
"Let me reiterate for you, Doctor: the only thing that's not completely how it's supposed to be on this ship, apart from my very shortened temper and your questionably thick skull, is that cloister bell of yours. Now stop being a typical, stubborn, stupid ape of a man and get it fixed." She repeated the order through gritted teeth, tapping her foot impatiently. The cloister bell rang in tandem.
"I'm fixing it," seethed the Doctor. He smacked his hands against the cool metal of the control panel and looked up at Rose. His brow was furrowed and his eyes seemed to burn in the corners, as they usually did in childlike indignation whenever someone questioned his ability to do—well, anything, or worse, implied he was typical. Their gaze lingered for only a couple of seconds before his eyes flicked back to the readings, and his eyes softened to a grim concern. Rose could swear the TARDIS was getting more affection lately than she was.
"No, get it fixed. As in, have someone else fix it for you. As in, all your gadgets and gizmos and genius know-how aren't working, Doctor," Rose shot back. The Doctor clicked his tongue.
"That's bloody stupid, Rose; of course this is working—will work! This will work and don't you question me when you don't know the first part of how to—PARTS!"
"Parts," Rose repeated back to him. She sensed a tangent coming.
"Parts, parts, parts," the Doctor whispered to himself, walking in small circles with his finger to his lip. There was that tangent. "Parts of the cloister bell. Cast metal resonator, Main Logic Junction, clapper, destabilization detector, IDTT-inference reader, crish-crashy-warnybob, Auxitian-built pressure re—Ah-HA!" He smacked the circular table again, smile booming, then rubbed the table in tender circles. "There, there, girl; we'll get you fixed."
"What?" Rose snapped impatiently. The Doctor bounded around the table, flipping switches and pressing buttons until the cloister bell's caterwauling ceased. "Well, what?"
"It just needs a new part," explained the doctor, beaming proudly and leaning against the wall of the TARDIS, giving another affectionate rub. His grin, which Rose could only describe as "shit-eating," was something she was damn ready to wipe off his face by force of hand or flamethrower.
"It took you THAT long to figure out that something BROKEN needed something to be REPLACED? Aren't you a genius? Are you MAD? I could have told you that. I could have. In fact, I did. I DID tell you that, Doctor."
"Well, it's not that simple," the Doctor said plainly with a very persistent grin. "Normally, she doesn't need new parts. Built quite a bit of this ship myself, you know; modified quite a bit of the rest. And I have an extensive collection of extra parts in her utility room and workshop. One of the few parts on this ship I didn't make or change was the Auxitian-built pressure relay. I've modified most of the ship to be comparably self-sustaining, but the relay must be more prone to wear-and-tear—and though it looks fine, something could be wrong with the sensor, which can lead to inactivity, or in our case, overactivity."
"Auxitian-built pressure relay," Rose echoed monotonously. "And what's that?"
"Well, it's a pressure relay. Built by Auxitians." He looked at her like she was a stupid ape, but at least the grin was gone.
"Yes, thank you for that, Doctor. What does it DO?"
"Ah! Yes! Well, in simple terms, if the IDTT-inference reader infers there is or may be Immediate Danger To TARDIS, the crish-crashy-warnybob, which is made of a stretchy sort of rubberlike polymer, swells. The higher the presumed danger, the more it swells. The pressure relay converts the amount of pressure with which the warnybob is stretched to a specific strength. With that strength, it moves the clapper. If the clapper moves enough, it hits the resonator, at which point the cloister bell is programmed to repeat those actions over and over until something's done about the immediate danger. There are about 23 more parts for the cloister bell, but those are the major ones."
Rose was silent. Normally she'd incur some form of further conversation at this point, but after receiving the explanation, she relished the silence. It was welcome. Relieving. Good for her headache.
Turning sharply on her heel and without another word, Rose headed back to the couch, fully intent on a well-deserved nap.
The Doctor seemed unaffected by this, smiling up at the roof of his TARDIS, taking Rose's dismissal as though it meant 'please, oh please, Doctor, tell me where we're going!'
"To Auxitia!" the Doctor answered the silence, bounding around the control panel yet again in an enthusiastic dance rivalled only by that of a kid in a candy store with a whole lot of money.
Rose smiled face-down into the couch. For all his rough points—his manly bullheadedness, his perpetual state of disbelief, his tendency to treat Rose like an idiot for suggesting he acquire assistance—there were a few things about the Doctor that Rose found absolutely lovable. One of those things was his excitement. And that wasn't just lovable; it was contagious.