"Um, shouldn't we be using some sort of protection?" Donna mumbles lazily, her body relaxed and languid upon the cloudy soft bed covers.
The Doctor pauses in his meticulous devouring of her neck and rolls back onto his heels to regard her. "Beyond the fact that we're both fully clothed, you mean?" he asks curiously.
A slight frown creases Donna's brow. "Clothes come off don't they, they get tossed aside in the heat of the moment and the next thing you know, you're laying naked across the bed wearing nothing but a pair of black stiletto heels, passing a cigarette back and forth between you."
"I see," the Doctor says thoughtfully, "so, when you make love you turn into Greta Garbo."
"You know what I mean," Donna says, giving him a playful swat on the arm for added emphasis.
"Although I am definitely getting you a pair of black stiletto heels at the very next available opportunity."
"Doctor," Donna grumbles.
"Donna do you have any idea what the odds of a Time Lord actually impregnating a Human Being even are?"
Donna pulls a face. "Tallish are they?" she asks.
"Try astronomical," the Doctor says emphatically. "Now kindly shut up so I can get back to what I was doing."
With that he resumes his gentle exploration of her neck, brushing her skin with feather soft kisses. As he moves down to her collar bone and finally the top of her breast, Donna shivers with pleasure at the unexpected coolness of his touch.
"Doctor," she idly asks.
"Hmmm?"
"What were the odds that you and I would meet each other twice in one lifetime?"
She can feel his body go completely still against hers as he digests the question. With a heavy sigh he abruptly breaks contact and like a cat rising from a long nap, rolls away and hops off the bed in one fluid movement.
"Wait, where are you going?" Donna cries, sitting up.
The Doctor plucks his coat off the back of the desk chair and quickly shrugs into it.
"Out, for protection," he says somewhat crossly.
"What, you haven't got anything on you?" Donna cries, incredulous.
"No Donna," the Doctor says patiently, "I don't generally keep packets of condoms folded up in my wallet if that's what you mean."
"Why not? You're a man aren't you," she shrugs, "technically."
The Doctor's eyes narrow slightly in reply.
Donna grins. "Anyway, I was referring to your pockets. I saw you pull an entire fruit basket out of your coat last week. Surely there's a condom down in there somewhere."
"I don't think so."
"You're kidding! After 900 years? All those companions and not one condom?"
The Doctor looks suddenly abashed. "I'm not Captain Kirk," he says indignantly. "It isn't as if I hop into bed with every green-skinned hussy I happen to run across, you know."
"So you never?"
"No."
"With any of them?"
"No. Well, one, but she was President at the time, so it was more like an Executive Order."
"And Rose?"
"No. Never," he says it shortly and flatly, inviting no further discussion into that matter.
Donna's surprised by the admission, but the more she thinks about it the more she can see how the Doctor might have felt that a physical relationship with Rose might have felt too much like taking advantage of her youth and relative innocence.
She supposes she should feel flattered by his desire to pursue that kind of relationship with her, since it must mean he considers them equals.
"Humour me," she says smiling gently, "check them anyway."
The Doctor slowly shakes his head and heaves a good-natured sigh, then he turns out his coat pockets for her.
Several minutes later Donna is staring incredulously at a rapidly growing pile of increasingly improbable objects gathering on the bed.
Along with the usual sonic screwdriver and psychic paper, there's a signed leather bound first edition of Moby Dick and a complete set of wooden alphabet blocks. His glasses come next, then a plush penguin wearing a red bow tie, assorted tools, including a cast iron monkey wrench as long as Donna's arm and a complete silver tea service for six. Several unidentified gadgets that look as if they were cobbled together by a mad 11-year-old out of some weird alien toy box are added to the pile, followed by a cricket ball and bat, a pair of plastic wind up chattering teeth, an empty paper sack that smells of jelly babies, and finally a wooden flute.
"Blimey been looking all over for that," the Doctor delightedly exclaims upon retrieving it.
"You haven't got anything living in there have you?" Donna asks, eyeing the Doctor's frequently disappearing hand warily.
"Not in this coat, no," he says sounding a bit uncertain. "Unless of course we're counting synthetic biochemical life. Aha!" he cries in sudden triumph, his arm disappearing up to the shoulder, "I think I may have found something…"
His tongue peeks out between his teeth as he stretches even farther to retrieve something seemingly just out of reach.
Donna suddenly wonders if he's going to climb inside his own pocket and start handing daft things out to her.
"Yes, definitely onto something round and wrapped in plastic and oh. It's just a peppermint," he says dejectedly pulling it out and turning it over in his hand.
Donna resists the urge to laugh and takes him by the hand, pulling him down to sit beside her on the end of the bed.
"Mint?" he asks, offering it to her on the flat of his palm. She accepts it with a wistful smile.
"I never really thought about it before," she says thoughtfully unwrapping the sweet, "but your pockets, they're bottomless aren't they?"
The Doctor shrugs. "No not bottomless exactly, but definitely a lot bigger on the inside."
"So, how long would it take to empty them?"
"Oh not that long," he says, scratching the back of his head, "two or three...years."
"Two or three years?!" Donna cries, shocked.
"Give or take," the Doctor affirms with a thoughtful sniff, "provided you kept at it twenty-four hours a day of course."
"How do you do that," Donna asks, slowly shaking her head, "sew pockets inside a coat that are bigger than the room you're sewing them in?"
"I didn't," the Doctor says with a wan smile. "Time Lords are dimensionally transcendental."
"You're what now?"
The Doctor's smile turns to a grin. "Dimensionally transcendental," he says again. "It's just a posh way of saying that we're uniquely suited to traveling through time. Like a penguin is uniquely suited to life in the Antarctic," he says, making her a gift of the plush toy.
Donna's brow wrinkles in confusion. "Okay, but what's that got to do with the size of your pockets?"
He takes Donna's hand in his and barely brushes the tips of his fingers across it. The lightness of his touch combined with the coolness of his skin causes a pleasant tingle that makes the hairs on the back of her hand stand on end.
"Every living creature generates a low-level magnetic field," he explains softly, still holding her hand, "sort of like an invisible halo surrounding your body. Time Lords generate a temporal field as well. Perfectly harmless, but over time -"
"-over time," Donna says as understanding dawns, "it makes your clothes go dimensionally transcendental as well."
"Precisely," the Doctor says, beaming proudly at her.
"So your pockets," Donna says, trying to complete the thought, "occupy the same space as the rest of your coat, but in a different time."
"Have I told you lately how brilliant you are?"
Donna fondly rolls her eyes at him. "So, that's why you never change your clothes," she says suddenly.
"I don't change my clothes, because I like my clothes," he says, fastidiously smoothing the lapels of his jacket, "but yes, if I were to stop wearing them, the pockets would eventually shrink back to ordinary size."
She kisses him suddenly, deep and soft on the lips. He's momentarily caught off guard by the unexpected act, but relaxes almost immediately and pulls her into his embrace.
"Mmmm minty," he says wryly, after they part. "What brought that on?"
"I'm just happy, that's all," she says breathlessly.
"Me too," he says, burying his hands in her fragrant hair and holding her close.
"You know what would make me even happier though?" she asks sweetly.
"Me going down to that little shop in the lobby and getting a box of condoms?"
"You read my mind Spaceman."
~END~