The next morning was Sunday, and after sleeping in and texting Sophie, Kat headed out of the flat to run some errands. After walking her nextdoor neighbor's little dog, getting her mail, stopping in at the Wanderlust office, and finally getting her groceries, Kat arrived home at a leisurely two in the afternoon. Every Sunday, Kat ran her errands and spent a couple of hours maintaining the home, but every other Sunday, she went out with her team and played a football match, then had dinner with Sophie and Craig afterwards. It was actually how she had met Craig. Coincidentally, while Sophie worked at the same call center, Kat had joined the same local sports league.
She put away the groceries to the tune of an a cappella opera song coming from the bathroom. If his choice of showtunes was anything to go by, then the Doctor had complemented his French culinary training with classical Italian theatre. His voice was nice enough that she didn't mind listening, but she did admit she would probably be more impressed if he knew all the words rather than filling in the ones he didn't with improvised English adages.
When the kitchen was in order, Kat went to the bathroom door and knocked. She hadn't mentioned impending company the other day, but it seemed like the right thing to do since he was a bit occupied with his grooming. "Doctor?"
"Hello!" He called pleasantly through the sound of running water, having paused his performance.
"Just so you know when you get out, I've got a couple friends coming over for a bit. Craig and Sophie," she warned. Kat couldn't remember if she had mentioned Craig or not, but she knew she had told him Sophie was the previous tenant of his room. "They won't be here long."
The Doctor sounded contemplative when he loudly responded, "Oh, I like a good soak… but I get the feeling I should meet Sophie!"
Rather than pointing out that hadn't been why she told him, Kat shook her head slightly and walked away from the bathroom. The opera renditions resumed shortly after, but at least they weren't so loud from the living room. Kat turned on the news on the TV to help drown out the man's volume.
It was only on for a few minutes before there was a knock at the door to the flat. Kat hopped up excitedly and rushed to open her front door. Craig and Sophie were waiting in the hall, mid-conversation, but both paused when the door opened and Sophie's face turned into a huge smile.
"Soph!" Kat hurried to hug her blonde friend, who hugged back lightly.
"Oh, Kat, you look lovely," Sophie cooed flatteringly.
"Thank you, gorgeous," Kat replied, giving Sophie another quick hug. "Come on, it's alright. We can get drinks. Craig, get in here."
Sophie backed up to the doorframe while Craig and Kat hugged hello. "Kat, it's been a few days," the former commented friendlily as if they hadn't talked on the phone the night before.
"Yeah," she agreed, stepping back to leave the entry open. "Come on, I've got those crisps you like still."
The soulmates entered and Sophie automatically dropped her keys on the table by the door out of habit. She didn't seem to notice. The blonde looked around curiously but spotted nothing amiss, so while her partner busied himself with Kat's kitchen cabinets, Sophie asked, "So, where's this mysterious new lodger?"
"Singing in the shower about now," Kat replied with a shrug.
"Singing out the shower, actually!" The Doctor shouted from the hallway.
"Oh," Sophie remarked, taken aback. She looked to Kat and lowered her voice. 'He's very loud."
"Yeah," Kat agreed, "But friendly. Likes making friends." It sounded like he had decided on meeting Sophie over continuing his opera auditions, anyway. One of the hallway doors swung shut.
Craig found the single-serving Dorito packs and pulled one out for himself. Kat didn't like them, but she and Sophie always kept a few for when Craig would visit. Now that Sophie and Craig lived together, Kat figured she'd let Craig dwindle her supply. The pop of the crisps bag was almost overwhelmed by the thudding upstairs that sounded like a mix between the firing of a gun and the dropping of an adult-sized body. Sophie and Kat simultaneously sighed.
"What the hell was that?" Craig balked, putting the crisps down. "I know you said the guy was clumsy, but that sounded like a whole person falling."
"Sometimes I think he's trying to break through the floor," Kat grumbled.
"I'm gonna just go upstairs, see if he's okay," Craig decided, passing the women as he went back to the door.
Sophie cautioned, "Alright, but he doesn't really like to talk."
"It's alright, I just wanna make sure," her boyfriend insisted. "I'll be right back." He opened up the door, closed it lightly behind him, and a second later the second step on the stairs creaked a bit. It did that every time.
"I knew there was a reason you liked him," Kat said to Sophie with a completely straight face as she teased. "Good Samaritanism."
"It's all the rage," Sophie agreed with a smile.
She'd barely finished talking before another door creaked as it opened. The Doctor popped his head out around the corner of the hall with the bedrooms and bathroom and his hair was comically messy. "What was that?" He asked with a nod towards the flat door.
"Oh, Craig just ran upstairs a moment," the tenant explained. She could understand why hearing all the doors would elicit some questions. "He'll be right back."
"Oh." The Doctor's head disappeared for just a second before popping back around again, wide eyes this time almost as comical as his hair. "Sorry, what did you say?"
"I said he's just run upstairs," Kat repeated herself, pointing with her thumb over her shoulder. "He'll just be-"
The Doctor's head disappeared for a few more seconds this time and Kat furrowed her brows in confusion. Said confusion was replaced by absolute bewilderment when the Doctor came racing out of the hallway, naked except for a towel tied around his hips, still dripping water and clutching a buzzing toothbrush. The naked man charged past them and ripped the door open, running out into the hallway and yelling their friend's name.
"Oh," Sophie exclaimed, raising her hand to partially cover her eyes.
"Oh… no," Kat mumbled in embarrassment. She chose to give that man a key to her flat. Didn't that mean his actions reflected on her – even when they were wildly unpredictable and inappropriate?
"What happened? What's going on?" The Doctor demanded in a tone that, if Kat didn't know better, she would have called an interrogation.
Tiredly, she opened the door up wider for herself and Sophie to go into the hall. Craig was back down at the bottom half of the stairs and the Doctor was right at the end of the steps, his right arm up and wielding the toothbrush over Craig's shoulder. By the aqua color, Kat had a sinking feeling that she was going to want to replace her toothbrush, just in case.
"Doctor, can I have my toothbrush back, please?" She requested with all the patience she could manage.
He looked at his hand and seemed to realize what he was holding. "Ah. Right. Not what I thought I picked up. Here," he admitted, turning around and passing the toothbrush back to its owner. Kat clicked it off so the head stopped spinning. "You spoke to the man upstairs?" He asked Craig, immediately as intense as he had been before.
"Yeah, I did," Craig said with an awkward chuckle. "You alright?"
"What did he look like?" The Doctor pressed, sidestepping to get a glimpse up the stairs.
"More normal than you do, mate," Craig answered, making the Doctor step back as he came down the last of the steps. The second one creaked again. "What are you doing?"
The Doctor finally looked away from the upstairs landing and to Craig. As if only now seeing him, the Doctor looked at Kat's friend from head to toe and then head again. "I thought you might be in trouble."
"Thanks, then," Craig said, clearly weirded out but trying to recover. He laughed about it to dissipate the discomfort. "Well, if I ever am, I'll let you know and you can come save me with a toothbrush."
"Get your own toothbrush," Kat muttered.
Craig walked around the Doctor and past the women to re-enter the downstairs flat as his phone rang and he took it out of his pocket. The Doctor suspiciously looked back up the stairs and Kat briefly wondered what exactly he expected to see before dismissing it. The man wasn't exactly the picture of a sound mind, and if it hadn't been for the heroic intentions, she probably would be a lot more skeptical about keeping him in the flat.
"Ah, hello!" The Doctor turned his back to the upstairs at last and brightened at Sophie's wary face. "The Doctor," he said, gesturing to himself.
"Right," Sophie nodded.
"You must be Sophie!" The Doctor leaned towards her for some unprompted air kisses. Sophie looked as though she enjoyed it as much as Kat had, but the blonde was nicer about it and awkwardly giggled. After saying hello, the Doctor headed back into the flat, leaving the two of them to follow.
"He spent quite a bit of time with the French, I think," Kat offered as a partial explanation for the lack of modesty and the carefree affection.
Sophie tilted her head as she watched the Doctor go to the kitchen. He took a crisp from the open bag while Craig was looking at the pictures on the fridge and talking on the phone. The Doctor tried a Dorito, made a face, and dropped it in the trash bin.
"You're alright with a bloke prancing around naked?" Sophie asked her with a low, uncertain voice.
"I'm still forming an opinion," Kat replied in a similar sotto. "Come on."
Kat shut the door behind her and Sophie went to the kitchen with the two men, pulling out one of the stools by the narrow island to sit on. Kat went to her friend's side and stayed standing, leaning with her arms crossed on the island, and the Doctor turned his back to the counter beside the dishwasher, across the kitchen and only a few feet away from Craig.
"No," Craig said to whoever had called his cell. "Dom's in Malta, there's nobody around – wait, hang on a sec." He pulled the phone from his ear and covered the bottom with his hand. "Hey, uh, Doctor." Though there was amusement in his voice, he used the title seriously, and the Doctor cocked his head to show he was listening. "We've got a match today, pub league. We're one down, if you fancy it?"
Kat wasn't sure how she felt about the Doctor being invited along to her sports game, but was too polite to nix it. The Doctor had said he was an acquired taste, but the thing about acquired tastes was that Kat liked to acquire them slowly, not all at once. Still, she herself had said he was friendly.
"Pub league," the man repeated, looking at Kat to ask, "A drinking competition?"
"No," Craig clarified, "Football."
"The drinking competition's not 'til Friday," Kat dryly corrected.
"Oh, shush, you," Craig chided. "There is no drinking competition."
"Not officially," Kat said with a mischievous wiggle of her eyebrows.
"Football," the Doctor mused, repeating the name of the sport a couple times like he was testing how it felt on his lips. "Football, yes, blokes play football." The way he said that was almost like he was having a dawning realization, and he clapped his hands excitedly. "I'm good at football, I think."
"You've saved my life," Craig said appreciatively, uncovering and lifting his phone again. "I've got somebody. Yeah, alright, I'll see you down there."
"Same time?" Kat asked Sophie quietly while Craig said goodbye to his caller. "I've got my cleats by the door."
"Yeah, at the half after again," Sophie confirmed with an almost shy grin towards the Doctor, who gave her an energetic wave. "Just thought we'd come early and meet your new flatmate."
"Yeah, good thing we did, too," Craig said with relief, turning and talking to them all, off the phone. He missed the way that Sophie was… appreciating… the Doctor's state of undress. "Harry got called away by the firm."
"Do you play, Sophie?" The Doctor asked curiously.
Craig answered for her with a fond grin at the woman in question. "No, Soph just stands on the sidelines. She's my mascot."
Kat fought for her best friend playfully. "Excuse you, she's cheering for me."
"You're on the same team," Sophie scolded, driving her elbow lightly into Kat's upper arm. "I can cheer for you both. Mascot?" She repeated, turning a skeptical, joking glare onto her boyfriend.
He shrugged and defended his choice of words with a grin. "It's a football match, I can't take a date," he said defensively. "I can take a date to dinner after, though," he added to flirtily make it up to her, leaning across the island to bring their faces closer together.
"After a shower, you mean!"
"Yeah, I mean," he laughed at her prod before meeting her halfway in a kiss.
Kat feigned a yawn. She'd been rooting for the two to get there for ages, but now that they were, the near-constant displays of affection were both sweet and sickening. "I'd better get dressed," she said to excuse herself and give them a moment of privacy. "Doctor, I've got a spare jersey. Have you got any shorts?"
Craig stopped kissing Sophie, but the way he was still leaned into her space and inches from her lips suggested to Kat heavily that he was merely taking an interlude. "No, I've got my spare runners in the car. Elastic waist, don't worry."
"Why would I be worried?" The Doctor asked, his face looking perfectly innocent as if he hadn't noticed that Craig was both shorter and rounder.
Craig gave Sophie another fast kiss before pulling back and snorting. "Thanks, mate. I'll get those out, yeah?"
"Yeah," Sophie agreed to the rhetorical just so she could flirtily add, "Hurry up."
While he went to go get his extra football uniform out of his car, Sophie straightened her arms on the coutner and leaned across it, stretching her back. Kat cleared her throat pointedly and caught the Doctor's eyes. His casual nakedness had lasted long enough.
"What?" He asked obliviously.
"I'll point him to your room," Kat hinted none too subtly. "With the kit."
The Doctor looked down at himself with a frown, saw the towel, and figured it out. "Oh!" He grinned laughingly. "Right. Ha." He took the dismissal good-naturedly and walked around the two girls to go back to his bedroom and finish drying off. Kat did not miss the way Sophie turned her head a bit in his direction as he left.
"What do you think?" The brunette asked, raising her eyebrows at her friend. "Settled now? Reassured he's not a murderer?"
Sophie looked at Kat with delighted eyes and an almost disbelieving, naughty grin. "You didn't say he was gorgeous!" She accused in what sounded like a very noisy whisper.
Kat had to admit to herself that her eyes weren't the reason she'd shooed the lodger out until he had clothes on, but she wasn't going to say it out loud to Sophie, and especially not when the Doctor had already proven to have impressive hearing. "He's alright looking," she hedged, lifting one shoulder in a noncommittal shrug.
Craig's spare uniform was a pair of grey athletic shorts and a blue short-sleeved shirt with ironed-on patches. It wouldn't be reflected in the Olympics at any time (except, perhaps, that very dicey fashion cycle in the late 2300s), but it served the purpose. The shorts stayed up fine, though the shirt was a bit roomy. The Doctor twisted his neck to look at his back in the mirror and appreciate that, incidentally, the number ironed onto his makeshift jersey was an eleven.
"Look at that!" He crowed, pleased. "What a match."
His normal shoes were the way to go, largely since he didn't have any others. They looked a little funny with his bare shins and the ribbed white socks. What was most out of place, however, was his silver earpiece. The Doctor put it back in now that his hair was dried and ruffled it to cover his ears.
"So, I'm going out," he announced to Amy, keeping her appraised of the goings-on. "If I hang about the house all the time, him upstairs might get suspicious and notice me. Kat's friends invited me for football."
"Football?" Amy repeated judgmentally, then hummed. He could picture her slowly nodding. "Okay, well done," she approved with surprise. "That is normal."
"Yeah, football," the Doctor agreed. "All outdoorsy. Now, football's the one with the sticks, isn't it?"
In the second before she answered, the Doctor knew his friend well enough to envision her dropping her forehead into her hands. "No," she griped. "Football's the one with the ball that you kick with your foot. Ergo, football."
"That does make a certain amount of sense, doesn't it?" The Time Lord agreed, bouncing himself from foot to foot. This body felt more limber than those of the past, but he hadn't taken much interest in any organized sports since his fifth, and that was literal lifetimes ago. "Kat plays football," he said, thinking out loud. "She said she has cleats, and a spare jersey. She's on the team."
"It's not exactly unusual," Amy pointed out to him logically. "Sunday leagues are public. Whoever signs up."
"Yes," he agreed, looking at his own arms. Uniforms were supposed to be worn by everyone. This was promising. "Thinking more about how she won't be wearing sleeves." Good opportunities were abound this afternoon. There was no easier way to move forward with his silly, optimistic curiosities than by taking a peek at her soulmark and putting them to rest.
Amy made a loud, scandalized gasp in the TARDIS. "Just when I think you'll never be a typical bloke!" She lowered her voice as she went on, "Though, granted, excitement for arms seems a bit Victorian of you…"
"Oh, it's not like that," he snapped to her, but decided against revealing his specific intentions. Soulmates were considered private on Gallifrey and the Doctor had never quite shaken that instillment. He had no reason to; no soulmate to oppose it with. Besides, Amy knew that she was in danger and she wouldn't be comforted to know he was in any way distracted. He grumbled, "Pond, get your mind out of the gutter."
The four were able to get a great parking spot by the public park where they met for their pub matches, and between the four of them, no one had to carry much weight to get their blankets, clean towels, water, and food to the agreed-upon picnic space underneath a big and shady oak tree. Almost everyone else had already arrived, including Sean, the captain of their team, a tall black man who, Kat swore, had legs of steel – she had seen him run an eight-minute mile and barely break a sweat.
"What are you actually called?" Craig asked while Kat helped him to spread out their picnic blanket on the ground. "What's your proper name?"
"Just call me the Doctor," the Doctor cheerily requested, setting the snack basket down on top of the blanket. Sophie moved the ice chest to sit by the basket and then sat on the other side of both.
"It's on his ID," Kat commented to Craig, predicting that no matter what the professional caller said, he was going to wind up getting the same answer.
Craig took it in stride after frowning briefly in thought and got a laugh from it. "I bet you had the strictest parents," he said to the Doctor in jest. "Never any doubt what they wanted from you, was there?"
The Doctor grinned nostalgically. "And I let them down every time. I was the black sheep back home, believe it or not."
Sean jogged up to their space and Kat turned to say hello, tightening the straps on her wrist braces. No one else on their team wore them, but Kat liked them. She typed for her job, and liked to crochet as a pastime, so she wasn't willing to tempt fate to sprain her wrist. As a bonus, they covered up her soulmark and avoided any questions she didn't feel like fielding.
"Alright! Craig, Soph, Kat. Good to see you again." Sean had already been running laps to warm up. Kat was insanely jealous of his stamina, because he wasn't panting or gasping at all. He put a hand briefly to Kat. "Heard through the grapevine you got that promotion – congrats."
"Thanks," Kat said with a big smile. "I'm loving it. Creative freedom and all that."
"Hello!" The Doctor said, coming to Kat's side. The way he had followed her to the car, then to the oak tree, and now to say hi to her friends, he was starting to seem to her like a big, talkative, hyperactive puppy. "I'm Kat's new lodger. I'm called the Doctor!"
Just as he had done first to Kat and second to Sophie, the Doctor invaded Sean's personal space, presumably with only good intentions, and delivered a pair of air kisses to both sides of his face. Sean didn't see it coming in time to step out of the way and was too polite not to mask the distaste from his expression, but Kat could see the hints of it coming through, even though the Doctor didn't pick up on it. She mouthed a silent apology to her team captain.
"Alright then, Doctor," Sean said hesitantly, taking a step back. He was still within comfortable conversing distance, but the Doctor would not be delivering any more air kisses. "I'm Sean. So, where are you strongest?"
"Arms," the Doctor answered immediately before looking up and thoughtfully changing his response to legs. "I do a lot of running," he explained.
Craig chuckled but tried to hide it, since Sean didn't seem to find it all that funny. "No, he means what position you play on the field."
"It's been a while since you played, hasn't it?" Kat asked, crossing her arms with an arched brow. It was amusing how eager he had been to jump into the game when he clearly wasn't sure what he was doing, but she would have been lying if she said she didn't understand. Meeting her friends and joining her on an activity were exactly what she would do in his shoes if she'd moved to a new town and happened to be a desperately social creature.
The Doctor grinned and confessed in hyperbole, "Must be a couple hundred years or so."
"Let's put him in midfield." Kat said to Sean, suggesting boldly. They got on well with teamwork and Kat had been playing football since she was a child, so Sean listened. The Doctor said he was good at running – well, that could come in handy. Thing was, Harry wasn't a midfielder, so they'd have to shuffle a bit. "I can do AM," she volunteered, "And let's put Leo on striker, yeah?"
"Can't wait 'til Harry gets back, though," Sean accepted with a nod. "Just our luck to lose our second right before a game. Okay."
Kat grinned and shifted from foot to foot, feeling the firmness of the ground under her well-worn cleats. Her muscles were itching to go. "Well, Doctor, let's see how you do."
Rather than dropping him to the wolves, Kat stayed with the Doctor for a few minutes while Craig went to say hello to the rest of the team and Sean filled in the others on changed positions. The travel planner gave him a rundown of his role and how it related to his teammates so that he would know how to play within his bounds. She told him if he got confused he could follow Craig's lead, as the other man was another midfielder, albeit in a slightly different position.
Once the ref blew the whistle, Kat felt the most awake she had been all day. She was an aggressive player, but found she meshed better with her team and burned out more of her energy when she used her agility and speed against her opponents instead of her competitive thirst. She took advantage of her smaller size compared to the men who made up most of the other team – they were always a little more skittish to tackle or risk a steal, because if Kat was too quick, her team would win a penalty kick. She was very good at seeing a steal coming and defending the ball with her limbs, and not only did no one want a penalty, but no one wanted to accidentally hurt her, either.
She wasn't the only one good at the game. The Doctor did great on the field, after a few minutes of studying more passively how the game was played. He could leap into action at a second's notice and didn't seem to tire. His thrill and excitement for the game kept him on his toes, and even if it had been a while since he'd played, the ease with which he handled the ball between his shoes made him look like a pro. The only problem she saw with his playing was that he kept crossing the bounds and taking shots from his own teammates, especially Craig, who was positioned close by. Kat didn't think he was doing it intentionally, but she knew how frustrating that could be.
The league always did pretty well, but after their loss a couple weeks ago and the nerves about missing one of their teammates, the Doctor's ambitious performance gave morale a big boost. Their small crowd of fans – mostly just the friends and family of the teammates – started chanting his name in one repetitive cheer. Sophie joined in when the Doctor kicked a ball all the way to the other team's goal – after rushing the ball and stealing the shot before Craig could get to it. Kat noticed then that Craig didn't seem to be enjoying the game quite so much. While the ref called the goal, Kat caught Sophie's eyes and looked pointedly to Craig. Her friend understood right away and yelled her soulmate's name, cheering him on again.
The other team wasn't shabby either, but Kat's had a solid lead on them by the end of the first half. The referee whistled and called for a break at a quarter past. Kat gave a high-five to the other team's center-back and jogged back to the oak tree for their picnic blanket, where she collapsed down in the shade. Craig jogged to Sophie, who opened her arms to give him a brief hug, even though all the players were gross and sweaty. Now that was love.
Kat caught her breath, mopping sweat off her face and neck with one of the towels they'd had the foresight to bring. In between swipes, she sipped on a cold Gatorade from the ice chest. Once she was cool enough to stop panting, she reapplied sunscreen to her face and arms.
The Doctor joined her when there were a couple minutes left before the second half. He dropped down beside her, folding his long legs across each other. He was beaming, and for the second time in the hour, Kat was reminded of a very friendly, hyperactive puppy dog.
"You're great at that," she complimented, pleasantly surprised by his skill. "Bit aggressive, though," she added as a subtle hint. She hoped he'd pick up on it. They wanted to win, but it was just a pub game. "Next time you play you should ask to try for striker or AM."
"AM! Yes!" The Doctor agreed blithely. "Morning person, I am."
"No," she laughed. "Attacking midfielder. You're an aggressive player and got the skill to back it up. If you join a league, they should utilize that. Gatorade?" She offered, popping open the ice chest.
The man hummed and put a hand out to her to accept one, so Kat picked one of the bottles at random, cleaned the condensation and melted water off with a clean towel, and put it in his hand.
"Sean said you got a promotion," the Doctor mentioned curiously while unscrewing his drink. "You didn't say anything."
"Hasn't come up. I only met you yesterday," she pointed out before answering. It was nice of him to show interest. "Yeah, a couple weeks ago, my boss, Cass, she sort of levelled me up?" It came out as more of a question than she had meant it to. Kat shook her head briefly. "It's not a real promotion, no status or pay change, but now I can make my own packages, not just flesh out hers."
"What do you do, exactly?" The Doctor inquired, shuffling his legs so his knees were up higher and his calves crossed further.
"I plan and make arrangements for people to go on adventures," she explained with a wave of her hand. "Wanderlust Vacations. It's a travel company." The Doctor didn't answer, even though she had thought he'd get a kick out of her job after they'd talked about her desire to travel. She looked to see if she was boring him and found the man was looking at her with the same kind of surprise as he had the night before when they'd talked a bit about aliens. His lips were even parted slightly and his eyes darted across her face. "What?" She asked uncomfortably, running the towel over her cheeks, careful not to rub off her sunscreen. "You keep getting that look on your face…"
"Kathleen," the Doctor said, using her full name and a very solemn tone. It made her itch for the ref to blow the whistle so she could jump back up and get back to the game. No such luck, and the Doctor shifted himself to sit at an angle so he was able to look at her face easier. "There's something I think I ought to show you."
Though reluctant to indulge him when he suddenly seemed so serious, Kat didn't get much of a choice. Rather than digging for something in his pocket or asking her to go somewhere, the Doctor just turned his wrist out to her for her reading ease. The word wanderlust was marked on his pale wrist.
Now she understood the open-mouthed surprise. She was doing a bit of it on her own for a few seconds before she came to her senses and snapped her mouth closed, understanding. The night before, she had said the word of his soulmark, and now he learned she worked for a company with the same name.
Sympathy filled her to the brim, but she shook her head to him. She wouldn't lead him on, that wouldn't be fair, even if he wouldn't have demanded to see her own mark. When the words of a soulmark weren't so common, many people felt that coincidences could be less coincidental. Sometimes that was the case, but this was one time where it certainly wasn't. Even if the Doctor's native language wasn't English, he had no discernible accent and used British vernacular, so there was no way his first language was so demonstrably different from English that its alphabet consisted of lines and circles. A romance language, maybe, but not the possibly unearthly language that she had to bear.
"Look," she said haltingly. She'd never been in this position of having to let someone down about this. It sucked. "I'm sorry, but I'm not your girl."
Please don't ask how I know for sure, Kat suddenly wished. The last thing she wanted was to ruin her fun afternoon match by taking off her braces to show her flatmate her broken soulmark. Even if it wasn't broken, even if that language was out there, the odds that she would ever meet them were tiny – she couldn't imagine how improbable they became if she believed the tentative hypothesis that her match wasn't from Earth.
The Doctor slowly nodded with her, but didn't seem to give up. His eyes were piercing. "If I could just ask you something," he started to slowly say with a tone like he was bargaining, but to Kat's relief, he was interrupted by the shrill blowing of the whistle.
"Come on!" Kat leapt to her feet like she'd spotted a snake on the picnic blanket. "Next half's about to start!"
The Doctor was an expert at making hasty withdrawals from sticky situations. He had done it countless times. That was how he knew the look on Kat's face when he tried to press the issue, just to ask to see her mark. That was all he wanted. His soulmate's mark wouldn't be understandable to them, and all the lonely Time Lord wanted was to make sure that if his soulmate passed on him, it was at least done knowingly.
But the discomfort, almost panic, on her face… He was glad the referee had blown the whistle and started the game again. Kat used it as a distraction to get her feet back on solid ground, literally and emotionally, and the Doctor put it out of his mind, kicking the ball extra hard to make up for the frustration.
The rules of the game were still hazy to him, but judging by the glee on the faces of his team, he felt it was probably safe to assume that they had won the match. Sean and the captain of the rival team shook hands and talked for a few minutes while participants and spectators packed up their belongings. He and his flatmate lingered, Kat folding the picnic blanket slowly while they all talked together. Sean and Craig were friends outside of the league, evidently.
Pleasingly, the Doctor was socially accepted now that he'd done well in the game. Sean clapped his open hand on the alien's shoulder with a big grin. "Oh, you are so on the team! Next week, we've got the Crown and Anchor, and we're going to annihilate them!"
"Annihilate?" His mood sank. They had just been having fun, but he wasn't going to tolerate any unnecessary violence. He had lived through, seen, and lost too much to allow anyone getting hurt over some silly competition. "No, no violence, do you understand me? Not while I'm around. Not today, not ever. I'm the Doctor, the Oncoming Storm…" He stepped up closer to Sean, standing toe-to-toe with the bewildered human, who had to look down just a bit to meet the Doctor's eyes. As the Doctor stared right into his, fiercely making sure no one would be doing any harm, he realized that there wasn't bloodthirstiness, anger, or aggression in the other man's eyes – just confusion and some intimidatedness. "And – you basically meant beat them in a football match, didn't you?"
Sean hesitated and stepped back, leaning away from the Doctor. "Yeah."
Kat's eyebrows were both raised, and Craig looked concerned.
"You're gonna wanna take it down several notches," Kat advised.
"Maybe a full dozen?" Craig suggested.
Oops. Humans played fast-and-loose with language much more than other species did. He spent hundreds of years around them, but as their use of words kept evolving with the times, he still sometimes made a mistake like this one. Oh, well, humans were also good at playing pretend. Such as, pretending that hadn't happened.
"Lovely," he said, bouncing on his heels and grinning at Sean. "What sort of time?"
"Oncoming Storm," Craig asked, sneaking a can of energy drink from the ice chest. He was snickering. "Where'd you get that bit?" He pressed the tab on the can and gasped from the sudden spray of cold drink that flew up over his hand and to his face.
The uneasy feeling in his stomach knotted again. Craig's expression changed in reverse as the spray from the can flew back in. Rapidly, the scene reset to a few seconds prior.
"Oncoming Storm," Craig asked, taking the can out of the ice chest again while holding back his laugh. "Where'd you get that bit?" Like before, when he pressed the tab, the agitated mix sprayed up at him and made him gasp in shock.
The Doctor swiveled his head around as time reversed again. People were walking backwards, someone who'd been splashing water on themselves opened their eyes as water flew into an upended bottle, a car on the street reversed through the corner intersection and paused at the stop sign. Closer to him, Craig was putting the can back into the ice chest, Sean was putting his arm down with a guarded look on his face, Sophie was taking the picnic basket out of the trunk of the car, and Kat was looking confused.
"Oncoming Storm," Craig asked with the same tone, unchanged. "Where'd you get that bit?" He opened the can and it sprayed up at him, to his utter shock.
Reset. The Doctor had a good idea how long it would last and looked around for any other anomalies before the loop ended. The pattern he'd worked out was that time looped briefly in a localized area before the TARDIS took the brunt of the hit. Sean moved his arm. Sophie unpacked the basket. Craig became dry. Kat looked sick.
He darted his eyes right back to her. Sick? She'd looked confused a time ago. It hadn't been a huge change, Kat was still visibly confused, but now she was raising a hand to her head like she felt an ache or dizziness.
"Oncoming Storm," Craig snickered like before. "Where'd you get that bit?" He accidentally sprayed himself with the energy drink and gasped.
The gasp made Sophie look over and she laughed at him. Sean pointed, getting his amusement from it, too. Craig took it in good nature while wiping drink off of his face. The only one who didn't seem to be oblivious was Kat, who seemed perplexed and unsettled. Interesting. Could she be sensitive to the time distortion? Exposure and proximity could build a sort of tolerance over time, and the source of the distortion was directly over her head every night.
Before he had time to consider it further, Amy screamed in his earpiece. It had been so quiet that he'd almost forgotten he was wearing it, but the wheezing of the TARDIS and her echoing cloisters were impossible to miss. They were so loud he could have closed his eyes and imagined he was right there at the console. He raised a hand to cover his earpiece and walked away from the group to talk to her in an anxiously loud whisper.
"Amy?"
Amy screamed her response as the ship violently lurched and unbalanced her. "It's happening again! Worse!"
"What does the scanner say?" The Doctor asked with a sinking feeling. If he was right, then while Kat may have been building a tolerance, his TARDIS's shields were losing their strength. Ironically for a Time Lord, time was not on his side.
He had to give her a moment to get there, but she did, and she yelled over the noise of his not-quite-crashing ship. "A lot of nines!" She reported. The Doctor's eyes widened and he covered his mouth out of habit so his company wouldn't see him wince. "Is it good that they're nines? Tell me it's good that they're all nines!"
In general, Amy didn't appreciate being lied to, but in this case, if she panicked and didn't listen… lying was the lesser evil. "Yes, yes, it's good!" He lied in a hurry, rushing to instruct her. "Zigzag plotter, Amy, zigzag plotter!"
The sound of a small explosion put him on edge, especially as the TARDIS quieted. Small rattling and grating noises were still coming through, but it was hard to tell if the TARDIS were recovering or dying without seeing her with his own eyes.
"Amy?" He asked after a few seconds with no reply. "Are you there?"
He heard a long, drawn-out inhale. "Yes. Hello?"
"Oh, thank heavens," the Doctor breathed. The TARDIS had recovered. "I thought for a moment the TARDIS had been flung off into the vortex with you inside it, lost forever." There was always the chance that his sentient home would get smart with him about it and leave the coordinates, at which point the Doctor would just have to hope that Amy unintentionally triggered an emergency programme.
"What." Amy said very quietly. The Doctor was glad that she wasn't physically there with him, dangers aside, because if she were, he might be in the face of harm. "You mean, that could actually happen? Doctor, you have got to get me out of here."
"Working on it, Pond," he murmured, looking back to the four by the car. Craig now had a towel to clean himself off with, but the ice chest, blanket, and other towels were packed. He didn't have much longer and couldn't risk talking on scramble right next to them. "How are the numbers?"
"All fives," Amy reported in relief.
"Fives?" Down four was significant. Five was still a bit high, though. "Even better," he added.
"Doctor!" Sophie called out to him, giving him a wave. Kat made a beckoning sign with her hand. "Are you coming?"
The Doctor reached up and energetically waved back to Sophie. "Just a mo!" He gave her an enthusiastic thumbs-up sign before turning back around to finish up with Amy. "Still, it means the effect's almost unbelievably powerful and dangerous, but don't worry. Hang on, okay? I've got some rewiring to do."
"Yeah, sure," Amy irritably huffed as he raised a hand to his new friends and jogged to the car. Sean was walking back to his on the other side of the field. "Not like there's anything else I can do in here."
Craig and Sophie pulled the two new flatmates out to dinner after the football match ended. Kat usually didn't need much dragging, but after a sudden headache and an episode of general unease, her appetite had faltered and she wasn't sure about going for a whole meal. Sophie knew just what to say to convince Kat to take care of herself anyway, and the Doctor was very easy for Craig to convince to tag along, so they all gorged themselves at one of Sophie's favorite restaurants. The soulmates then dropped off their friends back on Aickman Road before driving themselves home.
Kat was so full and worn out from the game that she thought she could fall asleep as soon as they got home, but pushed herself to keep busy until at least the sun had gone down. In the spirit of enjoying the last of her weekend, she turned on the TV to a fantasy show and pulled out her crochet bag. It was a hobby she had picked up from her mother before moving out to university, and she tried to work on it for at least a few hours a week so she didn't lose the skills. Before she knew it, she had passed over an hour on the sofa creating multicolored diamonds to later stitch into one large afghan.
When the next episode ended, Kat finished off her slow-going glass of red wine and considered whether or not she was ready to call it a night. Fortunately, she didn't dread her Mondays so the idea of saying goodnight to a Sunday felt more restful than disappointing. She could still see peeks of sunlight streaming into the kitchen, though, so she decided to sit through one more episode. Five minutes into it, the Doctor scared the lights out of her.
"Hello!" He announced in response to a greeting between characters on the TV. A bright orange traffic cone was in one of his hands, for some unknown reason, and he had shed his jacket before going behind the sofa.
Kat hadn't even known he was there and shrieked. "Doctor!"
"Whoops," he said more quietly, looking contrite. "Sorry. Don't worry, I was in a world of my own down there."
"I didn't even know you were behind me," Kat said, heart racing. She loosened her fingers gradually from around the crochet needle – when he had startled her, she'd flipped it in her hand to grip as if it were just a very blunt knife. He was lucky she wasn't a knitter instead. "Ugh, that's so creepy. Don't do that… what are you doing?" She asked, unable to make a good guess as to why he was behind the sofa in the first place.
The Doctor lifted his other hand. He was holding onto half a dozen wires and cables that trailed in various directions. How did he get to all of those? The TV hadn't been that loud, so Kat was left with the only logical conclusion that her flatmate was secretly a ninja.
"Just re-connecting all the electrics," he said cheerfully. Kat didn't get a chance to ask since when they had been unconnected in the first place. "It's a real mess in here," he added with disapproval, looking at something behind the furniture where she couldn't see. She didn't think she wanted to. "Where's the on switch for this?" He asked just as suddenly, dropping the traffic cone with a small thud and holding up a flathead instead.
On switch? Kat looked over his face and other hand for any helpful clues, but there was nothing but electric cables in his other hand and his eyes were on the screwdriver. "For that in your hand?" She clarified.
"Yes."
"It's… a screwdriver," she slowly answered, tilting her head. "They don't come with on switches…"
"Oh." The Doctor said simply, holding it closer to his face. He frowned at it after closer inspection and threw it over his shoulder. "Well, that's a bit rubbish."
The man ducked back behind the couch to resume his shenanigans. The screwdriver almost hit the chair but landed instead with a thunk on the carpet. Kat winced, just glad that the bladed end hadn't gone through the wall.
Now that she knew he was behind the couch, Kat struggled to relax the way she had before. Her brain was too preoccupied to follow along with the complex plotline of the telly programme and though she was able to crochet another diamond, the familiar motions weren't decompressing her nerves. The lodger kept coming and going from the bedroom hall now that she was sitting to keep an eye on the doorway, but even when he was out of the room, Kat couldn't reclaim the sense of peace after he'd snuck up on her and thrown hardware.
It sounded bad when she thought about it like that. She put her yarn away and rubbed her face. A lot about the situation sounded dubious at best when she thought about it seriously. How far could she trust her judgment on his character before evidence demanded she think twice? The Doctor had assuaged Sophie's concerns, but time was waning Kat's certainty.
With a couple trips to the Ryman's and some geniusly ingenious uses of household appliances, the Doctor managed to rig a basic scanner comparable to those from the thirty-second century. It wasn't anything close to his sonic, but it was much lower-tech and less detectable. It also took up most of his room, so it was a good thing he had already slept a couple days prior and didn't have the tall, bushy hair to catch in the clothes line.
With care, the Doctor precariously balanced the traffic cone at the edge of the small shopping cart, its narrow top just centimetres beneath the spinning spokes of a single bike wheel. As he stepped back, the cone stayed put, the moving parts continued to move, and the rake wasn't scraping the paint off the wall.
"Ah! Right. The shield's up, that should do it." He announced his victory to Amy through the earpiece. When he was in his room with the safety of privacy and scramble mode, he kept the communication line on so she could tell him straight away if anything changed in the TARDIS. "Let's scan."
In moments, he had a rudimentary answer. His sonic would have given him more detail in a matter of seconds. It was like having to settle for antibiotic and a bandage when nanogenes were so close within reach. At the thought, he looked for his sonic and made sure it was where he had left it. There was no need to repeat that embarrassing scene where he had mistakenly grabbed a toothbrush in his haste.
"What are you getting?" Amy asked after a short while, sounding no happier than he was about having to rely on slower technology.
"Upstairs…" the Doctor checked the clothes line as it trekked along the room, plucked by the rake and pulled by the wheel. "No traces of high technology," he reported, frowning. "Totally normal." His frown deepened and the Doctor shook his head. "Normal? No, no, no." He repeated it a few more times for good measure. "That can't be. It's too normal."
"Only for you could too normal be a problem," Amy complained with exasperation.
The Doctor resisted the urge to swat his scanner for giving him false results. There was some sort of cloaking mechanism defeating its purpose. Whatever was interrupting the flow of time was not totally normal.
"You said I could be lost forever." The redhead reminded him. "Just go upstairs!"
"Without knowing what it is and get myself killed?" He asked her rhetorically with a huff. "Then you really are lost."
He felt bad for the anxiety in her voice and wished guiltily that he could have been more effective in his assurances. Part of him still saw her as the little girl he had met, and hearing her fear made him ache to do a better job protecting her from the nastiness in the vast universe. Another part reminded him she was, by her species' standards, an adult to be entrusted with her own choices, and Amy knew how dangerous traveling with him could be. He hadn't predicted that she'd be stranded in a distressed TARDIS, of course not, but she also knew there was no guarantees she would be safe. The best he could promise was that he would do all he could to prevent her from coming to harm, but even he had limits. This was one of them – he could not ensure her safety if he went upstairs before he had a plan.
"If I could just get a look in there… hold on." There were ways through the door besides a scanner. Buildings had windows. He looked through the window of his own room and saw the tabby grooming itself on the low brick wall between this property and the next. "Use the data bank," he instructed Amy, having shown her how to use it months before to keep her busy. "Get me the plans of this building. I want to know its history, the layout – everything."
The neighbor from the next house, wearing a visor and carrying a weedwhacker, walked past his line of sight but paused to give the cat a few pets behind the ears. His mouth moved, saying something to the cat. The Doctor couldn't hear the words, but that gave him an idea. People talked to animals all the time. It was amazing what people would let slip when they didn't think they were understood.
"Meanwhile," he murmured, tilting his head, "I shall recruit a spy."
As the last part of her weekend, Kat tidied for about an hour, running through a checklist of things to touch up. Thankfully, it wasn't time yet for another deep cleaning. She set the dishwasher running, wiped down all the counters and tables in shared spaces, swept and vacuumed, and took the trash outside to the bin.
Before calling it and heading to her room, Kat looked around the kitchen and parlor to make sure she hadn't missed anything. Her eyes caught on the discolored spot on the ceiling. It looked darker and significantly larger than it had been two days ago when Sophie pointed it out. Looking at it made Kat uneasy. Anything that worsened that quickly deserved a scowl and a call.
She briefly considered that the Doctor had said he'd take care of it. "Rotmeister," she repeated with a cynical scoff. "Yeah, I think not." One guy could only wear so many hats, so to speak, and in any case, she'd feel better if that were taken care of by someone with a license.
But first… was she in danger? Or the upstairs neighbor? The way it was darkening, Kat wasn't sure she could trust the ceiling to stay up. She'd heard a story from a friend once of how a water leak damaged the ceiling to the point that a huge piece of the ceiling had just fallen with no warning. Thirty seconds sooner and it would've landed right on her friend's head.
Being responsible sucked, but Kat didn't want to risk herself or the Doctor getting seriously hurt because of the ceiling falling apart. Possibly worse, what if the neighbor stepped in the wrong spot and the floor gave out underneath him? The planner grabbed a kitchen chair and carried it awkwardly to the corner so the legs didn't scratch up the floor, then went and got a paper towel from the kitchen. Slowly, in case the chair wobbled, she climbed up on top of it to reach the ceiling.
She just stared at it critically at first, squinting her eyes. It didn't look like there was anything on the ceiling, like a mold would look. Rot it was, then, for sure. She looked down to fold up the paper towel and wrap it long-ways around her knuckles as a barrier between the stuff and her skin. Toxic mold or not, she didn't want it touching her. She reached up and carefully prodded the corner to feel if the ceiling was soft and giving out.
There was no softness or flexibility to the ceiling, but through the tissue, it hurt her knuckles. Kat hissed and withdrew her hand quickly. The only think she could liken it to was the sensation around the site of a bee sting right after being stung. The paper towel had also darkened where it had touched. She took it off her hand quickly. There was no mark on her skin, but it still felt like she'd just gotten… almost burned, somehow, by the rot.
"What the hell?" She mumbled, hurrying back to the kitchen to drop the paper towel in the new trash liner.
The woman ran her knuckles underneath water as cold as she could get from the tap until the stinging, burning sensation had been replaced with a prickly numbness, then dried off with a dish towel that she then put straight into the washing machine to be cautious. She moved the chair back where it belonged, but the whole time, she wracked her brain trying to think of a rot that burned and couldn't come up with anything. Knowing that immediate injury meant it was anything but benign, Kat resolved to call an expert – possibly even the health department – first thing in the morning.
In the meantime, her bed was as soft and warm and welcoming as she had been imagining it to be ever since the match ended at the park. What wasn't quite so comforting was a soft but persistent rattling coming from the wall she shared with the Doctor. It was loud enough to be a bother, but quiet enough that she didn't quite feel justified going over to ask him to knock it off. The red letters on her digital clock stared back at her while she watched them count up, laying still and inviting sleep.
Kat must have dozed off, because she didn't remember closing her eyes, but she opened them quickly when a flash of heat rushed through her. Her clock said a couple hours had passed. In spite of the heat, Kat was shivering. The numbness had worn off and her hand hurt worse than it had before. Her knuckles were positively throbbing. She felt hazy and sweaty, fever clouding her mind worse than the time she'd caught the flu strain that went around two years back.
Shit, her hand hurt so badly. Maybe she really had burned it? Maybe it was blistering? She didn't think she could drive herself to an emergency clinic, but she was thinking clearly enough to know that her pain wasn't normal. Moving sluggishly, a bit at a time, she untucked her arms from the blankets and drew up her hands. Her room was almost completely dark except for the red glow from her clock and the faintest light from between her window blinds. Kat put out her right arm towards her clock, painfully extending her fingers to see how bad her knuckles looked.
They were fine, she realized with surprise, before realizing with a sickening wave of nausea that her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. She wasn't blistered or swollen, but the faint, red-tinted light was showing green running from her knuckles into her hand. The green wasn't some pale color like someone about to hurl. It was bright and looked to follow her veins, like something incredibly toxic had passed into her blood and was slowly spreading out.
Kat almost, almost started to heave. She probably would have if it weren't for the fact that she couldn't focus on anything for longer than a few seconds at a time. The fear woke her up and helped her to move a little faster, but she was so dizzy that she couldn't get her bearings well enough to kick both her feet out of the blankets.
She needed a hospital, immediately. The rot on the ceiling must've been poisonous. As lethargic, weak, and hot as she felt, fear for her very life pressed Kat to struggle out of bed for help. As she righted herself, she wobbled and tilted her head, trying to correct the bleariness of her vision. She couldn't remember where her phone was. It wasn't by the clock. She blinked a few times, hard, trying to force the wooziness to pass.
When she opened them again, she scanned her surfaces for her phone. She saw what looked like a small thing on the desk, reflecting some tiny bit of light. Maybe that was it? What else would it be? With the screen dark it was hard to be sure. Damn, this was pointless. She needed help. Sophie was…
Sophie was… not home? Kat was forgetting something… right. Sophie moved out. Screaming wouldn't work, even if she could manage to open her mouth without throwing up.
Kat managed to touch her feet to the floor at the same time and stand up, one hand heavily down on her bedside table. The ground tilted underneath her feet and she swayed like a surfer clinging to her board. Her shaking increased without the blankets, and she was now extra aware of the pulsating, throbbing pain shooting up from her hand. It felt so stiff that she could barely move her wrist.
Her step missed. Kat thought the ground was shifting again, but figured out a moment too late that she was falling. The carpet rushed to her head and smacked her in the temple. Although she couldn't remember closing her eyes, she definitely didn't have the strength to open them before she blacked out again.
A new day dawned and the Doctor rose with the sun – lots to do in lovely weather. Blending in, resolving the problem of the upstairs resident, and getting to the bottom of this supposed coincidence with Kat. Coincidence could certainly be all it was, but he wanted, needed to be sure before he hopped back in his ship and left Aickman Road for good. So it probably hadn't helped that he had so clearly ruffled her at the match when he'd started to ask to see her soulmark…
The Time Lord didn't need Amy's guidance to know that Kat wasn't feeling the most comfortable with him, and given the choice, she would likely avoid him until she was sure he had dropped the subject. He didn't miss that she hadn't tried to make conversation or invite him to join her in watching the telly the evening before. The first step to figuring out if she was his soulmate or a true coincidence was to un-ruffle her feathers. Easy. Humans could be so easily placated and distracted.
He paused by her door as he passed, but the light remained off and there wasn't any noise coming from inside. Knowing he had time, then, the Doctor went to the kitchen and was delighted by all the groceries. He took his time mixing and cooking pancakes, scrambling some eggs, frying some bacon, and finally squeezing out some fresh orange juice. At the last second, he decided to fill and put on the kettle for some tea. Even if Kat didn't want any, it sounded lovely. He popped some bread into the toaster while he rinsed off the dishes he'd used, humming cheerfully with a dish towel over his shoulder.
Breakfast made, he plated everything up and set it all on a grey plastic trey he had found in one of the cabinets and set off to Kat's room. There was the sound of an alarm coming from through her door now and he smiled at his timing. Perfect. He knocked on the door.
"Kat?" He said loudly to be heard over her alarm.
Nothing. The alarm didn't stop, either. The Doctor checked his wristwatch and frowned at the specific time. In his experience, humans set their alarms to be on the hour, half past, or at a quarter of, but if that were the case, then Kat's alarm had been ringing for several minutes already. He still didn't hear a response from her.
"Kathleen?" He tried again with growing concern. "Breakfast! It's normal," he promised, looking down at the lopsided pancakes. "Mostly…" There was still nothing. The Doctor counted to ten before he decided that something was wrong. "Kat? Kat, if you don't answer, I'm coming in!"
He gave her fair warning, but when she still didn't reply and the alarm just kept blaring, the Doctor carefully balanced the tray on one hand to twist the door handle with the other. The door opened into a cozy bedroom decorated with shades of purples and reds. The time on Kat's clock was blinking as it screamed, and on the floor from behind her bed, there was a peek of skin – a hand reached out towards the desk.
The Doctor put the tray down on the bed while rushing to get to her. She was unconscious and overly pale, her hair partly covering her face. The Time Lord pressed his fingers to her neck to check for a pulse and sighed softly in relief when he found it, slow but steady. As he rolled her carefully to her back, he saw a bruise forming at the side of her head where she had evidently fallen. Her arm fell from her side to the carpet, palm facing up and showing her forearm, through which he could see poisonous green tracing the veins under her skin.
"Oh, Kat." He sighed, partly in sympathy and partly in frustration. No one ever listened to him. "I told you not to touch it… but no, what's that? It's an unfamiliar and obviously poisonous substance. Oh, I know what'd be really clever, I'll stick my hand in it!" While he ranted, he got his hands underneath her shoulders and pulled her partly up, stepping over and around her legs to awkwardly move her to lean with her back against her bedframe. He puffed. "Come on, Kat, help me here."
Though he wasn't certain she could hear, he also didn't want to assume that she could neither hear nor respond to him – but if she could, she was doing a remarkable job of feigning absolute obliviousness to the entire world. Her head lolled to the side and rested on her shoulder, back slouched and only kept up by the metal frame. He felt her pulse again and gently swatted at her face. Even this close to her, he could barely feel her breath.
"Come on now, Kat, breathe," he coaxed. "You've got healthy young footballer lungs, don't let them go to waste."
Kat blearily blinked open her unfocused eyes. It was a lucky thing for her, too, considering his next move would've been to lean her forward and pound her back to stimulate her heart. She looked at his face briefly, but then past him aimlessly, struggling to understand what she was seeing.
She hardly moved her lips, but the Doctor saw and leaned in to hear her. "Doctor," she mumbled.
"Yes, I'm here," he reassured her. "You're going to be alright." Fortunately, he could be much more useful to her than to Amy. While he hoped Amy would be safe, he knew that Kat would be, although he didn't like to think of the prognosis if he hadn't decided to make her breakfast.
"No." She protested, but her voice was barely above a whisper, so her protest sounded halfhearted at best. "Need one… 999," she slurred the hotline numbers.
"Shh." The Doctor put his thumb briefly over her lips. "I'll be right back," he promised, standing up to his full height and striding over her legs.
The kettle was just beginning to whistle in the kitchen, but the noise ceased as soon as the alien lifted the lid off. He grabbed up the box he'd taken down for his tea and grabbed a handful of the bags to stuff right into the open kettle. It looked like more could fit, so he tried another handful and only had to put a couple back onto the counter. He put the top back on and picked it up off the stove with an oven mitt, swirling it a few times to agitate the water through the mesh bags.
On the hurried walk back to her bedroom, the Doctor kept swirling the small pot. It was basic chemistry. Kat looked like she'd lost consciousness again, leaning in an uncomfortable slouch with a slack jaw. He crouched down beside her and pinched her cheeks, hand against her chin to open her mouth and prevent her from closing. That made her eyes flutter open as she shifted her head away.
"Here," he said cheerfully, tipping the kettle so the highly-concentrated tea poured from the spout right into her mouth. Kat started fighting harder to move away from the hot water and the Doctor imagined that the taste wasn't very welcome, either, but he held firmly to her chin and explained himself while forcing more down her throat.
"Reverse the enzyme decay and excite the tannin molecules. Regular Monday, that's all. Just like medicine." It occurred to him she probably had no idea what he was talking about, and may not even remember once she was lucid, but he didn't want to just assault her without an explanation. When he figured that she had unwillingly gulped and choked down at least a cup, the Doctor straightened the kettle, put it down on his other side, and let her close her mouth.
She took rasping breaths, panting with her mouth open to soothe her throat from the heat. "Hospital," she croaked, again pleading.
"No hospital," the Doctor kindly corrected. He stepped over her again to move the breakfast tray across the room to the desk, giving her a full explanation as he did so. "It was a slow-acting poison, works by crippling the chemical activity in the body. Now your proteins will be kicking into overdrive and running it all out. Easy. You want to go all the way to a hospital for a cup of tea? Ha!" He snorted.
Kat was already nodding off again when he turned back to help her onto the bed. She did need rest while her body recovered, at least until her fever broke. The Doctor looked down at the brunette while her head nodded down to her chest, rolled up his sleeves, and caught her under her arms, hefting her up as gracefully as he could. Once her hips were higher than the edge of the bed, he gave her a gentle push back onto it and turned her upper body until her head was on one of her several pillows.
"Cass," Kat mumbled, unable to even open her eyes or form a sentence.
She didn't fully need to. She had mentioned Cass at the park, so the Doctor knew that was her boss at the travel agency. Honestly, why humans felt the need to work themselves to death was beyond him. Even among the most pompous Time Lords, the needs of the body were respected. Looked down upon as an inconvenience, certainly, but at least illness and injury were given time to heal.
"You're more than a worker at the office," the Doctor whispered to her, unsure if she were listening. It didn't seem like he would have to argue much to keep her in bed, anyway. "You're going to be fine, Kathleen. I'm going to make sure of it."
Though her level of coherence was questionable at best, what little tension she was strong enough to hold in her muscles melted away once back in the comfort of her bed. She bent her knees and turned her head to the side as if she were usually a side sleeper but couldn't quite summon the energy to get all the way there. Kat even pulled her hands up beside her head.
Her gloves were off.
He glanced at her face, but her eyes were closed and her breathing was evening out. She wouldn't be awake for very long, if she still was at all. A betrayal of trust, perhaps. But if she wouldn't know one way or the other, what harm did it do to put the notion out of his head? In fact, wouldn't it be the more responsible choice, enabling him to focus on the upstairs tenant and his TARDIS in distress?
The Doctor was self-aware enough to know he was rationalizing it to himself because he knew it was a low move to check her soulmark while she was vulnerable and unable to stop him, particularly after she had rebuffed him on the subject just the day prior. But he was also very weary. He had been waiting hundreds of years to meet his match, and the prospect of having done so was both nerve-wracking and exhilarating. He had to know. Living with hope, knowing his odds and what he deserved after the Time War, was not something he could endure for long.
Gently, he turned her right hand over to see her bare wrist. In place of a human language, the familiar script of inscribed circles tattooed her skin. In one breath, the Doctor lost all the air from his lungs and yet felt like he'd become more alive. His suspicions and his hopefulness were validated, and yet, the nerves that had been building in his gut remained, albeit in a slightly different form.
Kat had Gallifreyan on her wrist. There wasn't a direct translation for wanderlust, but it was close enough. His soulmate. He stroked the tips of his fingers over the language that had been lost to the war that ended worlds and wondered, in awe of his small human soulmate.
Was this why his ship had kicked him out? Had she somehow sensed Kat was nearby and given him the nudge to get here? Or was it merely one of those delightful, serendipitous occurrences when where he was needed turned out to be exactly where he wanted most to be?
Not that it was one hundred percent wonderful, at least, not at the moment. He felt his hearts deflate slightly. He didn't mind a human soulmate. From the English emblazoned on every skin he'd filled, he'd known for a long time his soulmate was another species and was grateful that she was a member of a race capable of such greatness. Gallifreyans sometimes had soulmates from other planets. It happened; for humans, it likely didn't. It wasn't heard of often for several more centuries, when humans truly began to spread out in the stars and join the vast galaxy of interplanetary life. Kat could be completely unprepared, or scared off. She might not want to join an alien on a spaceship and run around having adventures, and if he were being honest with himself, the Doctor would never be able to settle somewhere for long – not even for his soulmate.
There were too many unknown variables at this point to truly be calmed, although the Doctor didn't regret checking her mark, even in the emotionally fraught seconds afterwards. He put her hand down. Kat was his soulmate. Now he knew, and now he could respond accordingly – once she was healthy and lucid. At least there was no more lifelong wondering about when, or if, they would meet, or what she would be like.
Kat's breathing had deepened enough that she made a soft snoring sound. The pull at her throat made her unconsciously summon up the energy to actually move onto her side. She pushed her hands up higher, underneath her pillow, under the pressure of her head, and bent her knees up higher. The Doctor smiled tenderly at her face as she relaxed in comfort again.
He kept his promises. She would be alright, he knew it. Already he could see that the green furthest up her arm had begun lightening and backing down the veins. Hopefully she wouldn't feel too upset that he had provided effective home remedies rather than taking her to human doctors, as she'd wanted – but even if he hadn't suspected she were his soulmate to take particular care of, the Doctor didn't like what the outcome might have been if she'd had to wait for human physicians to figure out how to treat a toxin that wasn't terrestrial in origin.
Thinking again of the tea, the Doctor bent down and picked up the kettle. It was still hot. He put it on the table beside her alarm – hopefully she would take notice and drink more once she roused. Though, he took a sniff of the spout and made a face at the smell. Drinking that would not be pleasant. He looked around and spotted the breakfast tray on the desk, brightened, and brought over the glass of orange juice to wash it down.
Then he unplugged the alarm clock from the wall so it would finally stop shrieking. It had blended into the background at some point, but the Doctor didn't want to risk it waking Kat up before she was fully rested. He couldn't tell how long she had been unconscious, but in any case, fevered unconsciousness was not restful for the body. He covered her up with the blanket that she looked to have kicked off the side of the bed at some point before he'd found her. Kat didn't respond at all, but the Doctor noted the blanket was very soft and hoped that would also give her some comfort when she woke up. Lastly, he closed the blinds so the sun wouldn't be as much of a nuisance.
"Sleep well, Kathleen," he whispered quietly, picking up the tray from her desk and leaving as silently as he could.
In her early adulthood, Kat trained herself to wake up quickly to her alarm clock. So, on the few occasions when she didn't set an alarm, she woke up at roughly the same time as she did every other day, but more slowly and with a wandering mind. It took her a few minutes to realize that she was awake, and without her alarm, she laid still, contemplating going back to sleep. It was only the brightness in her room that made her reluctantly turn over to see her clock.
As she turned, her shoulder and hip ached. Kat suddenly remembered falling in the middle of the night, and as her eyes landed on the clock, she saw that her alarm should have gone off almost eight hours ago.
She sat quickly, lurching herself upright so suddenly that the muscles in her stomach tightened uneasily. Her stomach rumbled and her hip throbbed as her weight pushed it harder into the firmness of her mattress. Her phone was still across the room on her desk – she hadn't made it there. So… how did she end up in bed?
She looked to her alarm clock again, wincing as her head pulsed with a blood rush. "Oh, that's a headache." Tenderly, the woman touched her head. Near her hairline and to the left, a particular spot was sensitive and hard where she'd hit it on the floor. Her eyes drifted from the alarm to the plate on the table in front of it. A couple pieces of toasted bread sat together and the plate was pinning down a piece of note paper. Next to the toast were a mug and a glass of orange juice.
Kat reached for the orange juice first and swallowed a few sips. The sourness made her scowl automatically, but the coolness felt amazing going down her throat. She put that down to pull the note out from under the plate.
It was from the Doctor, she realized dimly. It must have been. He said that he came to offer breakfast and let himself in after he got worried – but not to worry herself, because he'd taken care of everything, and she should really force down some of the tea.
Now, looking back, it was like the note brought some fevered memories to the surface. They were patchy, but she vaguely remembered the man's face looming over her and the sensation of being moved. Checking her arm, she saw that there was no sign of the green color anywhere on her limb, and just to make sure, she checked the other arm, too. Other than the bruises from falling down, she seemed completely unharmed.
Maybe the Doctor called himself that because he actually was a doctor.
The travel planner decided to give him the benefit of the doubt and picked up the mug of tea. It was cold by now, and she got it within a few inches of her nose before she smelled it. The Doctor must never have made tea before. She took a sip to see if it was as bad as it smelled, and it was, especially cold, so she put it aside and instead sipped on the orange juice while nibbling on the toast. Her stomach rumbled again as if thanking her for it.
When she was finished, she wiped off her hands on a tissue and checked her phone. It was too late now to run in to work, but her boss deserved an explanation as soon as possible. When she opened her phone, she saw a missed call and a voicemail from Cass. Her heart sank and her stomach twisted as she dialed up her voicemail, but to her pleasant surprise, she was able to relax.
"Kath, it's Cass," her boss's voice said, sounding distant from the phone, like she'd been using the speaker. "Your flatmate called and said you were really sick. You take as long as you need and get better. Just let me know you're alright, please. Oh, and if you'll be out longer than a week, go on and send your most recent notes if you can."
Her shoulders relaxed. Kat whispered, "Thank God," up to her ceiling, then it occurred to her that there was someone else to thank, too.
Leaving her bedroom, she found herself in a quiet and dim apartment. All the lights were off and nothing was turned on except for something that was making a repetitive, quiet thumping sound from the Doctor's room. Kat looked in the parlor and kitchen first, but the only thing the Doctor had left out was a box of tea bags with a note underneath them reading have some! with a smiley face. The kettle was even out beside it.
With the lodger absent, she went to knock on his bedroom door. She didn't get any reply except for the rhythmic thumping. Her curiosity got the better of her and she tried the handle. It swung open easily and showed a mess. Half of the room was taken up by some mechanized thing of misfit parts and homekeeping tools. A mop bucket was being turned around on its three-sixty wheels and every time it finished the turn, an upturned mop knocked on the side of the wall, making the thumping sound. A rake was beside the wall and its outer tine dragged on the drywall. A white clothes line crossed the room almost all the way, blocking the door from opening entirely. A lone bike tire spun as the line caught and pulled between its treads, and somehow a traffic cone, an umbrella, and the shade off his bedside lamp were all incorporated.
She stared at the mega-gizmo for a few moments, looking between the tilted cone and the thumping mop. There was no clear indicator as to what, exactly, any of it was supposed to do, other than make noise and take up space. If anything, it sort of reminded her of a kid's experimental mismatching of objects, putting them together just to see what they would do. But that didn't work as an explanation, given that the Doctor was far from a kid.
"I'm living with some sort of mad scientist," she concluded, pulling the door shut and deciding that as long as it stayed in his room – and didn't progress to the level of Tesla's death ray – she would permit it. He'd taken care of her in a crisis, after all. She could turn her cheek in return.
A/N: I meant to post yesterday but things came up. I didn't think to mention this in a previous chapter, but in case it's not already obvious, I'm American. Kat is meant to be English. I did my best to use British vernacular but I probably missed some spots, and I know there are plenty of spelling differences. I appreciate you all for suspending your disbelief :)