"The Honeymooners"


Chapter 4
"If You Like Piña Coladas"

ADDITIONAL DISCLAIMER: "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" belongs to Rupert Holmes.


After going back to their suite to change, they went out to sit on the resort's patio. Lights were strung from trees, giving the outdoor bar a festive air. There was a cool breeze and a lovely view of the ocean in the darkness. Far in the distance, they could see the lights of distant ships.
The waiter set two frosty glasses of thick white liquid garnished with pineapple wedges in front of them. Sarah Jane picked up her drink and toasted the Doctor with it before drinking deeply. Their words on the beach still hung between them, but neither seemed willing to address the subject just yet.
"Don't you think we should head back, Sarah Jane?"
"Why?" she asked with a shrug. "UNIT's paid for the whole week, and they won't get any money back if we check out early. Besides, with all the running around we do, I could use a nice relaxing holiday!"
"All right," he agreed. He pulled the pineapple garnish off of the rim of his glass and gnawed on it thoughtfully. "Shall we do the tour of the Royal Pavilion tomorrow?"
"Why not?" she said with a smile.
"And I heard there's a fantastic Cajun restaurant over on – "
"Cajun?" she asked, laughing. "In Brighton? All right. I'm up for anything you can throw at me." His eyebrows went up.
"Really?" he asked, his voice suddenly changing. She hesitated for a moment, and then reached across the table and took his hand. He looked down at their joined hands. "You know, we don't have to keep up the married couple charade," he told her seriously.
"I'm not," she said quietly.
"Ohhh... well… in that case, I think I should – "
"You said I should make an informed decision," she reminded him. "Well, the Rani's informed me of a great deal, hasn't she?"
"Not everything," he said with a sigh, sipping his drink. "I told you, I'm not like you, Sarah Jane."
"Oh here we go again," she said, sounding bored. "The old 'I'm A Time Lord' speech."
"Yes!" he suddenly exclaimed. "And you don't understand what it means, not really."
"So explain it," she said simply. He was quiet for a long while.
"We don't love, Sarah Jane," he finally said. "Not the way you humans do… men and women… romantically."
"Really?" she asked. She leaned forward, fascinated. "So where do – "
"Baby Time Lords come from," he finished for her. "Yes, I remember you asked." He took another sip of his drink, and then leaned back in his chair. "A long time ago – "
"In a galaxy far, far away," Sarah Jane could not resist adding. He gave her a look.
"Are you going to let me talk?"
"Sorry," she said contritely. He finished off his drink, motioned the waiter for another round, and began talking. He talked through another piña colada and part of a third before he was finished. And at the end, Sarah Jane was wide-eyed, dumbfounded, and more than a little drunk.
"So let me get this straight," she said when he'd finished. "Time Lords are woven like rugs? So you don't have a mother and a father, you have a loom?"
"Oh dear," he sighed, and motioned to the waiter again. Sarah Jane did not have a Gallifreyan metabolism and wisely declined another drink. The Doctor had two more while he told her about the Time Lord who had defied custom and tradition and disgraced his house and his family name all for the human woman who loved him and who had borne him a son, his pride and joy. "But it just didn't work between them. She loved my father with all her heart. But my father didn't… he couldn't love her, not the way she wanted. And so she got someone to take her back to Earth. She left a note, explaining. And neither of us ever saw her again."
"That's terrible! Leaving you must've nearly killed her!"
"She was a very practical woman. She did what she had to do," he said with a shrug. "She knew I was better off among my father's people." He sipped his drink. "And I very nearly duplicated his mistake."
"You – "
"When my first body was still quite young, I met a human woman and began a physical relationship with her. She broke it off after a couple of months."
"Were you sad?"
"I don't know," he admitted candidly. "I cared deeply for her… still do. But not the way she needed me to care. I can feel affection for another person. And I can feel sexual desire. But the blend of the two that humans know as romantic love is foreign to me."
"And I would need to decide if I could handle getting involved with someone who can't love me back the way I'm expecting," she said, summing it all up. "An informed decision."
"Exactly."
"You know, Doctor," she began, and gave a sad little laugh. "I was already half in love with you before we set out on this trip."
"Yes, I know."
"Do you… is there…" Her eyes filled with tears. She reached across the table and grabbed his drink, taking several quick gulps as though for courage. She took a deep breath. "Do you feel – "
"You want to know if I feel anything at all for you, don't you?" he asked gently. She nodded. He reached over and took her hand. "I feel deep affection for you. And today for the first time, I felt sexual desire for you. So yes… as much as I am capable, I do feel for you, Sarah Jane. But the affection… the sexual desire… they don't overlap as they do in humans. It's not quite the same."
"Oh!" she sighed, her eyes filling with fresh tears.
"I've made you cry," he said, dismayed.
"No," she said, laughing through her tears. She used her free hand to wipe her cheeks. "It's all right. I'm crying because I'm happy!"
"Happy?"
"I thought you were going to say that you thought of me as a friend… like you do Harry or the Brigadier!"
"My feelings for you are quite a bit different," he assured her dryly. She shook her head, smiling. She picked up his glass and finished his drink.
"I never knew," she suddenly sang.
"You never knew what?" he asked, puzzled.
"That you like piña coladas," she sang, giggling. "And getting caught in the rain." Now she was laughing so hard that he could barely make out her words. "And the feel of the ocean, and the taste of champagne!"
"Welllll…" he drawled, grinning as he added his voice to hers. "If you like making love at midnight in the dunes on the cape, you're the lady I've looked for – come with me and escape!" A few of the other guests seated on the patio applauded their spontaneous performance, and the Doctor stood up and bowed comically. "Yes, thank you very much," he called out cheerfully. He picked up his empty glass and saluted them with it. "Anyone who applauds my singing must be far drunker than I am!" he exclaimed, though of course with his metabolism, he wasn't a bit drunk. Sarah Jane stood up.
"And anyone who's far drunker than I am should probably go right to bed!" she added, getting a laugh from their audience.
"Are you ready to go right to bed, my little Necco Wafer?" he asked.
"I most certainly am!" she said with feeling. She took his arm and together they exited the patio to the sound of more applause.
"Always leave them wanting more, that's my motto!" the Doctor told her.
"Oh really?" she asked, her eyebrows going up. "I think I'd better not say what I'm thinking!" He laughed.


The Doctor was sitting on the edge of the bed when Sarah Jane emerged from the bathroom in her pink nightgown.
"It's the only one I brought," she said apologetically, smoothing down the soft material with one hand. "I thought we were only going to pretend to be the honeymooners!" He grinned.
"Pow! Straight to the moon, Alice!" he said in a fairly credible American accent, slamming his fist into his open palm. She laughed.
"I suppose that means Harry's Ed Norton," she said thoughtfully. "Or maybe the Brigadier…" She walked over the bed and put her hands on his shoulders, bending her head close to his. "What do you think?" she whispered in his ear.
"Haminahaminahamina!" he stammered, still in character as Ralph Kramden.
"Oh you!" she said, laughing. She gave his shoulder a friendly shove. He surprised her by grabbing her around the waist and falling backwards onto the bed, dragging her down on top of him. She lay with her face against his shoulder, giggling. Some of her soft dark hair had fallen across his face, releasing a scent like fresh apples.
"Lovely," he said close to her ear. He reached up to stroke her hair. "Good enough to eat." This statement sent her into another fit of giggles. After a moment, she planted her hands on either side of his body, hoisting herself up a bit to look down at him.
"This isn't very comfortable, you know," she told him. "My legs are hanging off the edge!" He put his arms around her and sat up, placing her gently back on her feet. He repositioned himself on the bed and patted the space beside him.
"Plenty of room," he told her, giving her one of his megawatt grins.
"You'd think they'd put a tiny little bed in the Honeymoon Suite," she mused, lying down beside him.
"Why's that?" he wondered. He was lying on his back, looking up at the ceiling.
"Well," she said, assuming the same position, "newlyweds probably sleep all snuggled together. It's the ones who've been married awhile who'd appreciate a giant bed like this one! Look, there's room for another person in between us!" Suddenly he was on his side, facing her, quite close.
"Now there's not," he said in a very low voice.
"Yes, I see," she agreed, rolling onto her side to face him. They lay together that way for a few moments, studying each other intently. After a bit, she reached up to touch his hair. It was softer than she thought it would be, and the texture was different from human hair in a way she couldn't really pinpoint. "I've wanted to do this since the first time I saw you after you regenerated," she admitted as she gently combed her fingers through his curls. "Such lovely hair." He put an arm around her waist and drew her close. Her hand slipped to the back of his head, her fingers tangling in the soft curls there.
"Sarah Jane," he said a bit unsteadily, and kissed her. She kept her eyes open, watching his face. She had secretly dreamed of this more times than she cared to admit, and was now almost unable to believe that it was actually happening. When he finally opened his eyes, they were luminous and dilated, with only the faintest sliver of blue rimming his pupils. Oh my, she thought. When these people finally do get going, they don't mess about! With his arm still around her waist he rolled onto his back, pulling her over to lie on top of him. A thought suddenly occurred to her.
"You've told me your history," she whispered in his ear. "It's only fair that you should know mine. There was a boy when I was at college – "
"I don't care," he said, running a hand through her hair.
"It's just that I didn't know what you'd think… I mean, I'm not a virgin – "
"I didn't expect you to be, Sarah Jane."
"Oh." She didn't know what else to say to that, whether or not she should be insulted. She crossed her arms on his chest, pushing herself up to stare at him. "I hope you don't think – "
"I'm trying very hard not to think at the moment," he said, still stroking her hair. "If you've slept with one man or one hundred, it makes no difference. It's in the past. What matters is right now." She nodded.
"All right." She watched the grin spread across his face, slow and lazy. He was not, she decided, a man that any woman would consider handsome in the way such things were conventionally measured. He was not Paul Newman by any stretch of the imagination, nor was he one of those men whose features only just escaped handsomeness by one tiny flaw; no, the Doctor's features were an odd jumble of too many teeth, a too big nose, and enormous eyes that threatened to pop out of his head. This unfortunate combination was crowned with a mop of unruly brown curls that, had they been bright orange, would have made a perfect wig for Bozo the Clown. But somehow, on him, it all just seemed to work.
"What are you thinking about?" he suddenly asked. "I hope you're not worrying that I think you're a woman of loose virtue."
"Are you?" she asked seriously.
"No." He grinned again. "But I was rather hoping you were!" Her mouth fell open in an expression of scandalized shock.
"You're terrible!" she exclaimed, laughing.
"So I've been told." He pulled her down for another kiss.
"Oh my," she whispered, and kissed his cheek, his ear, his neck. His skin was cold under her lips, and when she opened her mouth where his neck met his shoulder, she found that his skin did not taste of salt and musk as her previous forays into carnal pursuits had led her to expect. Beneath her lips she could feel the double pulse of his hearts in the major artery of his neck, strong and very rapid. I've done that to him, she thought with a smile, and continued kissing her way down to his throat, under his chin, lower. She suddenly sat up, straddling his abdomen. He made a sound she couldn't identify as she began unbuttoning his white shirt, slowly, button by button, deliberately drawing out the process. His cheeks were flushed, his eyes were half closed, his lips slightly parted. He doesn't look much like the distant, high and mighty Time Lord now! she thought, and felt a thrill at the realization that she had evoked this change in him, that it was her body and her mouth that had done this to him.
"Brought me down out of the clouds, haven't you? Pulled me down out of my ivory tower!"
"I – " she began. She both felt and heard him chuckle.
"You forgot I've got a bit of telepathic ability, didn't you? And you're transmitting at full volume… arousal tends to do that to a person, you know."
"Oh dear," she said, wondering what other images she's inadvertently sent him. She took a breath. "It doesn't seem fair that it only works one way!"
"Life isn't fair, is it?" he replied. "It's certainly not fair that you've got my shirt half off me while you sit there fully clothed!"
"Life isn't fair, is it?" she mimicked wickedly, bending to kiss him. She moved down his body, kissing his neck, his chest, his stomach. As she went, he kept his grip on her nightgown so that it rode up around her waist.
"Ah ha!" he said triumphantly, pulling it off over her head.
"Ooo, you're going to get it for that!" she promised.
"I certainly hope so!" he agreed. "After all, this is supposed to our honeymoon!"
"Well, in that case – " Her fingers worked nimbly at the front of his trousers. "Oh my goodness, look what I've found!" she exclaimed in a tone of very poorly feigned surprise. His reply was incoherent. "You know, I'd always wondered if the Time Lords circumcised their sons," she said in a thoughtful tone as she continued her explorations.
"Always glad to contribute to the intellectual advancement of another species," he managed.
"I'll just bet!" She sat up and pulled his trousers and underwear off in one smooth motion. "Ha, how do you like that?"
"Oh, I like it!" He shifted slightly, ridding himself of his shirt.
"I guess that just leaves me," she said. She stood up and stepped out of her underwear, blushing when she realized that he had turned his head to watch her.
"Hmm, very nice," he said in a musing tone, making her blush even more. "Are you planning to come to bed soon, my little Honeypot?"


Later, she lay next to him in the darkness, staring up at the ceiling and listening to the even rhythm of his breathing. As she finally drifted off to sleep, he turned on his side and put an arm around her, and she unconsciously moved her left thumb to touch the gold ring that still circled the third finger of that hand.


CONCLUDED IN "Epilogue: Curse of the Rani"