Okay then. Sorry this has taken so long. I know I promised y'all a chapter at the beginning of this month, but with college work and everything else, I just haven't had the time or energy to write anything.
If anyone has any ideas on what they'd like to happen to Shareen and the Doctor, please let me know as, though I know of a few adventures I'd like them to have, I definitely think I need some more input from my readers.
And, speaking of readers, thank you to all of those people who've reviewed. I love you all!
Now...on with the story...
Hours could have passed; days, even. Well…not quite. Shareen imagined she would've noticed if the sun had decided to come up. But the tears had fallen for quite a long time, and her knees had turned red from cold, and numb to boot. Vaguely, she remembered a couple of drunken middle-aged men passing the gates of the play area about half an hour ago, but until it was deathly quiet once more, Shareen didn't think to look up. The last flickers of colour from some fireworks display down by the Thames were just hovering in the sky before falling and fading slowly, and she wiped away tear trails, blackened by running mascara, from her cheeks. If there had been anyone around, she would've cared that she looked an absolute state, with her miniskirt and bare legs, and her tear-stained cheeks, but nobody was, so the care was gone.
And she quite liked it that way. All her life, Shareen had been forced to look presentable by her father and grandfather, then to look sexy by her friends and boyfriends; sometimes it was just nice to let the real you shine out. Though, of course, in Shareen's view, she would've preferred it happen in the comfort of her own living room, and not when there was an 11-stone, 6-foot unconscious man lying on her sofa.
"Oh, bugger!" Shareen cursed, jumping up from the swing with alarming ferocity and scrabbling over the woodchips and tarmac to reach the path. The Doctor - well, that's if he was the Doctor - was still in her house. And knowing Bev, she'd be round in the morning to check on Shareen and coo over her while making her a cup of tea to cure that dreadful hangover that always seemed to follow a party. But Shareen was lucky, really, because she didn't actually suffer from hangovers all that much - well, except for the first time she'd taken Rose out for a smash-up at the pub, anyway. Really, Shareen just liked to feel cared for and loved, and liked the feeling of someone looking after her and making her cups of tea on command. It took all those pent-up acting techniques from drama classes of days-gone-by, but a cup of tea and breakfast in bed was so worth it.
Anyway, I digress.
Tearing up the road towards her apartment building, Shareen fingered the ring of keys in her jacket pocket and tried to pick out the pin-prick sharpness of her front door key. The last thing she needed right now was the police calling round to Number 14, only to check in on her own flat and find an unconscious man in the living room, a blue 1950s police box in front of the telly. That would take a lot of explaining.
Running in heels, she decided, was not the best idea she could've thought of. The balls of her feet were aching in protest and her toes, slowly defrosting from the cold, had started twinging in the tight leather. Pulling her jacket closer around her body, Shareen swept her hair out of her eyes one-handed and entered the apartment building by pushing on the door with the other. Almost-thankfully, she sighed as she reached the lift and the steady thump of the New Years Party down the hall could still be heard, even as the mechanisms started to heave the lift upwards. A high ping a few moments later dragged Shareen out of the half-tiredness-, half-alcohol-induced reverie she was in, and she exited onto the landing. Shoving the key haphazardly into the lock on her front door, Shareen twisted it and the doorknob just above the keyhole, and pushed inwards. The kitchen light was still on, and she could hear the whirr of the hot-water tank in the immersion cupboard.
Home sweet home.
Shrugging off her coat and shoes, Shareen poked her head around the door and caught a pair of deep brown eyes staring back at her.
"I wondered when you'd come back," A deep, Welsh accent came from the person's mouth, and she rolled her eyes and wandered in the general direction of the kitchen. It was at times like this that Shareen was glad she'd bought tea-bags the night before.
"Yeah, well, sorry, but I'm not used to people reincarnating in my living room." She picked two white china mugs out of the kitchen cupboard above the kettle and retrieved the tea, coffee and sugar pots from the shelf. "Do you drink tea, or is it strictly alien juice this time around?" As she dropped the teabag and two spoonfuls of sugar into her mug, Shareen heard a deep chuckle from the lounge, before hearing the serving-hatch open behind her.
"Tea will do just fine, thanks, Shareen."
"Good." And, she added mentally, even if it wasn't, it'd be tough luck, mate.
Oi. Watch it, a voice responded, and Shareen dropped the milk bottle (thankfully lidded) on the floor in shock. Spinning round on her heel, she glared in the Doctor's direction and picked the bottle up from the floor, ducking behind the small breakfast table in the middle of the room to do so.
"Get out of my head, and stay out. I don't want you reading my thoughts."
"Right-oh. Just testing the waters, you know?"
"If you aren't careful, Doctor, if that's really who you are, then I'll take that literally and we can go for a little swim in the bathtub, okay?" A little more forcefully than she perhaps intended, Shareen replaced the milk bottle in the door of the fridge and returned to the counter which held the kettle, refusing to turn and face the Doctor.
"Shareen, you know it's me, and if you don't mind, I'd really rather not 'go for a swim', as you so eloquently put it." As she poured boiling water into the two cups, Shareen dared a glance back in the Doctor's direction and raised an eyebrow as he picked a piece of invisible lint from the sleeve of his shirt. No, she reminded herself mentally. Not his shirt. The other Doctor's. Stirring the spoon noisily around the first mug of tea, Shareen nibbled on her lip and strained the teabag before turning to him again.
"Don't you think you ought to change? It's weird, seeing you in his clothes."
She heard a faint grunt and the shuffling footsteps retreat back into the lounge, and after straining the second teabag from the Doctor's tea, she walked back into the room after him, the two teas held tightly in her hands as she walked and tried to focus on not spilling them. Even though she worked at a restaurant, it had never been Shareen's forte. She suspected that the chefs were out to get her and kept hiding ball-bearings beneath the food to make it wobble dangerously close to the edge of the plates, but Lindsay had once told her to stop being stupid. Shareen put the two cups on the coffee table and, refolding the Doctor's jacket and coat over the back of one of the chairs, settled back onto the sofa. The remains of her first-aid box were littered over the floor and she could just spy a bottle of antiseptic lotion tucked behind the pot plant she kept on the mantle, but right now she was too lazy to bother picking them up.
"What do you think?"
Shareen glanced up and reached towards the coffee table for her cup of tea as the Doctor emerged from the TARDIS, cleanly-shaven and wearing a green jumper beneath a leather jacket, and a pair of jeans. Though she had to admit he didn't look half bad, it just didn't look right. Shaking her head, she took a sip of the hot, sweet liquid and swallowed, a thoughtful expression on her face.
"Get rid of the leather jacket. It doesn't suit. Though leather trousers; that'd look interesting."
A couple of minutes later, after Shareen had finished flicking through a magazine she'd found tucked beneath her cushion, the Doctor re-emerged wearing the suggested leather trousers and a deep purple shirt, unbuttoned just a little at the collar. Now she could see him in that outfit (and where he'd got it from, she didn't want to know), it didn't look as good as she thought. She wrinkled her nose disgustedly and returned to braiding her hair while the Doctor went in search of a new outfit.
"You know, this'd be a lot easier if you came in the TARDIS. I wouldn't have to keep walking so far, then."
Gazing up at the Doctor as though he was mad, Shareen cuddled a cushion to her stomach in that defensive manner that just screams, 'No way.' Undeterred by her protests, the Doctor grabbed her hand and dragged her from the sofa, grinning at her in a reassuring way and saying, "Come on, it's like nothing you've ever seen before."
"That's what I'm afraid of," she muttered as she stepped through the doors. Blinking, Shareen stumbled backwards a little and the Doctor tightened his grip on her wrist. "Shit," she swore, drinking in the interior of the TARDIS console with her eyes.
"Shit."