A/N: another meeting for you to consider.
Part Four
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"Okay, out with it! What's going on with all the kissing and that?!" Donna demanded to know as soon as they had separated, entered the flat and shut the front door firmly on the world outside.
The Doctor nervously considered his options and decided to stick to the truth… sort of. "I was warding off your mother." When Donna instantly laughed loudly, he continued, "I'm not joking. She's been flirting with me all morning."
"And you of course don't know how to deal with flirty young blondes," she mocked him, and then pretended to gasp. "Oh no! I forgot. You only like certain flirty young blondes."
"Donna," he warned her, "this is not the time to bring that up."
She glared at him. "Isn't it? I'd have said it was an ideal opportunity. Or would Rose have handled that differently too?"
"This has nothing to do with Rose!" he angrily insisted.
She merely snorted her scorn at him. "Surely it does. You've tried to drag her into everything else that has happened to us so far. No doubt you would have loved to have played house with her instead of me."
"I may have accidentally have mentioned her when we met Shakespeare," he agreed, and wanted to lash out when he saw her roll her eyes at him in exasperation. "But I have avoided the subject ever since."
"Oh yeah?! She's like the elephant in the room all the time," Donna spat out. "You do realise that Rose is almost young enough to be mistaken for our daughter, don't you? God knows what that says about you and your Lolita complex, but it makes me…" Her hurt voice faded away.
"What does it make you, Donna?" he softly asked as he approached her cautiously.
She turned away from him as she answered reluctantly, "Some old granny; that's what it makes me."
"Oh Donna," he crooned, and wrapped his arms around her to offer comfort. "You are nothing of the sort in my eyes. And you need to know that my relationship with Rose was nothing beyond being akin to a teacher-pupil one. It was never going to be more than that. Not every male preys on young girls."
She turned grudgingly within his embrace, and eyed him suspiciously. "Honest?" she queried.
"Absolutely," he tried to confirm for her. "Where's all this come from? For a second there I thought you were jealous of your own mother. It isn't like you to be so defensive with me."
She shrugged her shoulders. "It's an ageist, sexist world out there. At my interview they kept on asking what I'd do when my child got sick, among other things. I soon shot them down over that one. You should have seen the look on the office manager's face when I asked if I could wear trousers."
"Bad, was it?" he wondered, grinning mischievously.
"Scandalised," she supplied. "We do not tolerate inappropriate clothing in our department, Mrs Smith," she mimicked in a hoity-toity voice for him.
That gained an appreciative laugh.
"Well, you are a few years early with your women's lib viewpoint," he pointed out.
"I know," she agreed. "But I thought I'd try."
He placed a consoling kiss on her forehead. "It was worth the risk."
She raised her eyes to where his lips still rested against her temple. "There you go again with the kissing! Why are you doing it; and I want a proper honest answer this time."
A faint squeak came out as he sought a reasonable reply. "For a start, we're supposed to be married, and married people have been known to kiss on the odd occasion. Second, I genuinely thought kissing you would stop your mother from trying it on with me in the future; but I apologise if I've offended you. And third, not to put too fine a point on it, I had hoped you'd like it, since I sort of do."
"So we're doing all this as part of our charade," she reasoned. "Safety in numbers and all that."
"Definitely," he vowed.
"And how far exactly are we pushing this relationship?" she wondered.
"I was thinking of possibly including good night kisses and goodbye kisses, and the odd other one," he suggested hesitantly.
She quietly took that in. "Am I right in expecting the night cuddling to continue as well?"
"Only if you don't mind," he spluttered. "At least until we can afford some coal for the fire. It gets really cold in here at night."
"And you promise nothing more than that will happen?" she sought to confirm.
"Cross my hearts and hope to die," he immediately promised.
She smiled smugly back at him. "Then, my dear Doctor, we have an agreement, and you have a full time wife."
The smile he shot back at her was like the sun coming out; and she basked in it.
That evening the reality of what she had proposed struck home. She'd either have to freeze on the sofa or beg to join him in the bed, since it was his turn to have it. There could have been a moment when she played the helpless female and made him give up the bed; but she wasn't like that, and he wouldn't have let her get away with it anyway. Donna sighed. There was no other option open to her so, coyly glancing at him as they sat together reading the newspapers Wilf had let them have for free, she made her opening gambit.
"Doctor, I was wondering if I could… that's if you don't mind, of course, if I could… perhaps… share the bed tonight," she stammered out; and winced as she waited for his possible answer. It sounded horribly like she'd just appealed to his better nature to allow her to sleep with him, and she hated that it did.
For his part, the Doctor wanted to crow his elation that he would have another warm night with her thanks to her higher body temperature, and not for any other reason, he told himself. As it was, all he showed was a beaming smile. "Of course you can, Donna. But no taking advantage of my undressed state," he playfully warned. "A respected Time Lord has to be careful of these things."
She snorted her laugh. "I promise to restrain myself."
"Oh I didn't say you had to restrain yourself; just don't take advantage," he teased, adding in an eyebrow waggle.
Inevitably she swatted his arm for being a tart!
"So… which side of the bed do you want?" he asked as they both stood in their nightwear eyeing the bed as though it was enemy territory.
"My side," she decided, and climbed in, feeling less brave about this than she hoped it appeared.
Fortunately he made no comment as he too climbed in, and gazed at her as she fidgeted about getting the sheet, blanket and eiderdown to lay right. "Do I need to get my ruler out to double check the dimensions?" he wondered.
Anger momentarily flashed across her features. "No, smarty-pants! I'm just making sure we'll be comfortable."
"Is that part of being appropriate?" he pondered, making her smile.
"It makes you wonder if that office manager has to remove the stick up her backside before she goes to sleep," Donna added.
"Thank goodness you're not like that," he remarked, and drew her into his embrace. "I wouldn't be able to cuddle you for a start. And then where would I be? I'd be all cold and grumpy."
"You've been a little bit grumpy anyway," she commented next to his chest. "I'm so sorry that you've lost the TARDIS."
He tried to sniff his nonchalance, but she wasn't fooled by it; so she cuddled into him more, determined to offer him maximum comfort. She felt him press a kiss onto her temple, she reciprocated by placing one on his neck, and then she let sleep pull her down as she listened to his heartbeats.
As for the Doctor, he got the chance to indulge his need to stroke her hair until he too drifted off and slept soundly with her still in his arms. This was a situation he was more than willing to repeat.
It was two days later when Donna was also helping out in the shop for an hour late Saturday morning, and was about to finish her stint, that she spotted him. She couldn't help the gasp of anguish as she tried to avoid sliding to the floor. Needing to seek compassionate solace, she reached out to grab the Doctor's sleeve as he filled up a display near the counter. "You see him in the black leather jacket," she whispered as she gripped him tight, "that's my dad."
The Doctor had been anticipating this little scene, and peered with interest at the longhaired young man hovering anxiously near the magazines and darting little glances towards the shop counter. "Really?! That's Geoff?" he sought to quietly confirm. "Blimey! He changed a great deal. Why is he acting so strange?"
Donna rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Why d'you think, dumbo! He fancies Mum and is too shy to ask her out. He used to tell me about doing this."
"So what changed her mind and made her look at him?" he asked.
"It was something someone said to her, made her realise that he wasn't such an idiot for hanging around all the time," she explained.
"He has done an awful lot of standing around in here lately," the Doctor agreed. "Do you think we ought to nudge things along?" He smirked at her mischievously.
She giggled back at him; elevated from her previous angst. "Can't do no harm, can it?"
"Oi, you two in the sixpenny seats!" Wilf yelled out to the two of them huddled together like naughty puppies. "Leave all that for your own time."
"Sorry, Wilf!" the Doctor called back, and shared a conspiratorial smile with Donna. "We'll come up with a dad strategy later," he whispered to her.
"On that note, I'd better go and do us some lunch," she announced to him, and chastely kissed his lips. "See you in a minute."
He watched her go with more than a passing interest as she sashayed out the door. The public kissing plan was working a treat. Now all he had to do was get her to consent to it in private.
"How are we doing so far?" the Doctor asked Donna when he caught her contemplating the frugal contents of their cupboards.
She sighed before replying, "It looks like we'll be doing lots of eating beans or spaghetti on toast for a while longer, Spaceman. Did you get that broken tape recorder you wanted from the junk shop?"
He grinned gleefully back at her. "Yes! And I got the owner to throw in a box of bits and pieces too. Look!" And he grabbed the box sitting on the table to tip it towards her with pride.
It just looked like a load of old rubbish to her, but she knew he could build loads of different things from the contents. "Well done!" she encouraged him. "You'll soon have a Billy detector ready and waiting."
"Oh I plan to do a lot more than that before I finish," he boasted, and immediately sat himself down at the dining table and investigated his find. With great care, he laid out the box contents in neat piles.
"As long as we don't end up treading on all those little bits in the middle of the night, I'll be fine," she vowed, smiling fondly at his enthusiasm.
He was never happier than when he had a task to perform, and part of his recent grumpiness had been down to being tied to more domestic chores until they scraped together enough coppers to buy these few bits.
She walked over to ruffle his hair, and he gazed up at her with an adorable grin. "Shall I make us some tea?" she offered.
The fact he was so happy made her accept the small grateful kiss he instantly placed on her hand as it lay on his shoulder. Then she went over to the sink to rinse out some laundry items whilst the kettle boiled on the stove. It would take some getting used to, this lifestyle, but she was gradually getting there.
