A/N: And this is the conclusion. Just a short little thing.

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Chapter 2: Confrontation

She wasn't that lucky. Ten minutes later, Alex sat, armed with a cup of tea fixed with lemon and honey, facing Matt on the hotel bed. He sat across from her on the desk chair, body slumped forward. Although he had prepared the tea whilst she cleansed herself of chunks of vomits (and deliberated on softly finishing the disgusting act) under the showerhead, his hands remained devoid of his own mug. He stared at her, face resting on the palms of his hands, arms supported by his knees.

He sat with the languidly of a teenage boy. At any other time, his lack of decorum would have brought a smile to her lips. Television husband and wife sat in silence long enough Alex's tea went tepid even though she reluctantly sipped it. After purging again, for the first time in years, she still had half a mind to finish vomiting proper and shy away from food until it no longer disgusted her. Even the offence of honey was too much to handle. Logically she knew, nutrient or calorie wise, it didn't add anything substantial. Her stomach still felt knotted, and she'd rather not return to those awful sensations again. She grimaced.

"Do you need me to contact anyone?" Mat asked. His tone was grave and the severity of it made Alex want to curl up in a little ball. All of his flirtatious goofiness vanished, leaving a man whom looked every bit his thirty some odd years. Alex thought of Florian, and with all the issues they were trying to resolve internationally, then she thought of Salome, far too young to contend with this… plus the trepidation it would be passed down to her… She thought of her Mum and Dad here in England, and she shook her head. She couldn't bother them with this again, especially not at this hour.

"No," she choked out.

"No?" He clasped his hands to his knees. "Are you sure?" His tone questioning and she struggled to rearrange the grimace lining her face to something uplifting, anything a modicum more reassuring.

Her throat tightened. "Yes, I'm sure. I can't. I just…" She felt tears leak out of her eyes and she hurriedly glanced down at her tea cup. "I'm sorry." Her voice cracked between words.

A hand cupped her chin, raising her gaze to meet Matt's grey eyes flecked with blue, green and hints of brown. Matt kneeled with one knee on the bed remaining a polite distance away from Alex, clad only in only a bath robe and her underclothes. His lips quirked upwards and his eyes softened from steely insistence and a glimmer of his personality shined through. "Well, at least we know I'm right." His resolve hardened again. "You're definitely not okay."

Alex scooted over so Matt could sit comfortably on the bed. Her face crumpled and she wanted to jerk her chin out of Matt's grasp. Tears trickled over her cheeks and she nestled in the knowledge she looked as pathetic as she felt. "Matt, I didn't want you involved," she said, and the warm presence of Matt's hands on her chin left, leaving a numb coldness in its wake.

"You didn't want me involved?" He repeated back to her, carelessly straightening his legs out and flopped over on his side to continue staring at her. "Why? Were you afraid I would care? That I'd be concerned?" His words were spoken with an undercurrent of anger, and Alex found herself vehemently protesting.

"No, no, no! I don't want you worried about poor Alex who still can't manage to eat properly. It's horrid, okay? I'm supposed to be over this, not…not hiding away in a hotel loo sicking up like a kid my daughter's age!"

Matt propped his head in his hand, quietly ruminating on this novel information about his co-star who lived a whole life before he had reached the age of maturity. "Is this about that fan?" he ventured. "If you weren't okay with it—"

Alex cut off his bumbling attempt to protect her. "Yes, no. Not really, Matt. It's not that simple." She pressed a hand to her face. "You saw her. Right, skinny thing."

"She looked terminal," Matt agreed. He muttered, "Anorexic, even."

Alex snapped, "Because she is! She idolizes me. This anorexic child looks up to me, and I'm—I'm just…" She trailed off to recollect herself. "She's my daughter's age and in recovery, Matt."

Matt placed a hand on Alex's shoulder, a nice safe place, but still intimate enough to express his empathy. "I didn't know you had an eating disorder."

Alex cupped her hands around the mug of tea. "I don't like to think I do anymore, but… It sneaks up on you, you know." She stared into the thick dredges of tea leaves at the bottom of the mug. "It's been years since I've done that," she said in allusion to the scene Matt stumbled upon in the lavatory.

"When, when my first marriage ended," Alex paused, and when Matt nodded, aware, she continued, "I was distraught. I felt worthless, ugly. Here was a handsome man women were ready to drop their knickers for, and…And he didn't want me."

"But," Matt gulped, "You're gorgeous. I'd be lucky to look half as good as you when I'm your age." He took the mostly empty tea mug from her hands, and set it on the side table as her eyes lit up in humor.

"Thanks for the reminder, darling," Alex quipped, before her voice flattened as she carefully selected words to describe how narrow her world view was as a recently divorced woman in the mid-1990s (when, she reminded herself, Matt Smith was barely in secondary school). "He had an affair, an outright romance, for years with this woman almost twice my age, and I internalized all that. I always felt, ah, dissatisfied with my body, and when I heard about bulimia, it seemed appealing. You know, being able to eat whatever you want, no consequences."

"But, didn't you know the risks?" Matt asked as he rubbed his eyes. Alex intuited what question he meant; in the late 1990s, eating disorders were part of media, the controversial storyline in dramas, let alone the abundance of knowledge…

She leaned against the headboard. "I was upset and naïve. I thought: that won't happen to me." She tossed him a smile. "My family and friends put a stop to it fairly quickly, so I suppose that's good."

"You still do it, though." Blunt, and awkward as all hell. Typical Matt.

She exhaled loudly, blowing breath against her upper lip. She turned to Matt, tears announcing their return as a burning at the edges of her eyes. She covered her mouth, a vain attempt to stifle a sob. A hand curled around her shoulders as Matt sat up to embrace her in a one-arm hug. She shuddered against him, wheezing and not quite able to catch her breath. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she mumbled between choking gasps.

Matt squeezed Alex's shoulder. He leaned over, letting her head rest against his chest, which vibrated against her as he spoke. "You, of all people, don't need to apologize. Alex—?" Her sobs continued past his declaration.

"It's been years, Matt! It's nothing." She hugged her knees to her chest as he embraced her fully, reaching over with his other hand to entrench her in his arms. She felt him shaking his head against her damp mane of curls.

"You wouldn't be like this if it was nothing." Her breath hitched at the simple statement.

She tossed him a grin, tilting her head up to look at Matt with tear-blurred vision. "I don't know why I'm so upset," she confessed, her voice as unsteady as her smile.

"Bad day?" Matt guessed.

Alex mopped the remaining tears from her eyes with her robe sleeve as she extricated herself from his arms. "Bad month," she muttered.

She wasn't looking at him, but the sudden intense heat tickling her shoulders as he continued to occasionally squeeze her gave her an inkling of his crinkled brow and narrowed eyes. "Thought you had a dull summer after Macbeth?" Matt asked.

She sucked in a steadying breath. "Lots of publicity," she said after a long pause.

He furrowed his brow deeper, and she elaborated, endeavoring to explain the turmoil coiled in the relative quiet of August after a famed start to summer, "All the work is over here." She specified, "For me. It's just hard to tell people over and over I can't get parts because I don't look the right way."

"Sod 'em." Matt crossed his arms. "They don't deserve you."

A small smile graced her lips. "Well, that's very sweet, but it's the truth. And it's never easy to hear." It was a dilemma Matt was still too young to understand, she reflected silently to herself.

Her expression must've let slip several of her thoughts, because Matt looked at her with those steely eyes of an equal. "You're beautiful, Kingston. You were gorgeous in Moll Flanders, and you're gorgeous now."

The flirtatious innuendo slipped out before she comprehended thinking it, reverting to her usual banter with her Doctor Who co-star, "Oi! Is that what you do in your spare time? Nevertheless, I'm afraid my arse doesn't agree."

"Stop that!" he shouted, and the sensual smirk slipped off her face. "You'd think we're having a laugh," he mumbled, in part, to himself, then continued his tirade to Alex. "It's not a joke. I came here and—and my co-star, no, my friend—I find you doing that to yourself, and… I don't understand." He swiped at his face before looking into her eyes, and Alex felt something break off and shrivel up in her stomach.

"Oh my god, Matt, I didn't realize." She pointedly kept her gaze at his chin as she ignored the lone tear snaking a path down his red-flushed cheek. "Darling, it really isn't a big deal."

She halted his next diatribe with an upraised hand. "You're right; it is a problem. I should've done something about it before it, well," she gestured to the lavatory, silently adding: before it escalated.

"You could've come to me." Matt's voice conveyed his tears, and the small tenor reminded Alex fondly of Matt's first days on set—a nervous young star with the grace of a child.

She spoke in a voice she often used with Salome as she dropped her off with her father before a months' long gig, "The last time I…" She trailed off, intent to wave a hand at the lavatory door again, when Matt prompted, "Purged, Alex."

"Right," she said in a strained voice, "the last time I purged was, god—" She cut herself off in contemplation. "I might've done it twice, if that, at the beginning of Who?" She peered at Matt with slightly quirked lips. "David might've still been the Doctor, darling. So you'll have to forgive me if I didn't immediately think of you."

"Fair point," Matt said as he stretched his arms above his head. He turned to face her with a serious expression. "Next time, you can call me, yeah?"

"I'm hoping there won't be a next time. Honestly, all that rubbish this summer and then tonight. I think that fan got under my skin more than I should've let her."

Matt hid a yawn behind his hand, shrugging his shoulder sheepishly. "So, what, you were triggered?"

"I think so. And I wasn't eating mindfully." Alex flexed her toes on the duvet. She wriggled down against the bed, a brighter smile than any she'd had since early summer lit up her face, as Matt nestled down into the bed after her, exhaustion catching up to both of them.

"I don't think any of us were. Eating or drinking mindfully, I mean. Never thought I'd see David Tennant pissed." He wagged his eyebrows at her. "I think I respect him more now." He sighed happily and let his head drop to the bed.

Alex patted his head, momentarily surprised by the lack of fringe to thread her fingers through when her hand touched slight fuzz. "It's a bit different, darling." When she looked over at him after he neglected to respond, she realized (with a quiet snore on his part) Matt was fast asleep. She reached over to shut the lamp off and settled under the duvet, covering both herself and her younger television husband, lips quirking in another easy smile.

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A/N: Huge thanks to sassawho for providing inspiration for Alex's flirtatious rejoinder (about her arse)!