December 8:th - So Much Mulled Wine
Doctor Strange was reading in his bedroom when he heard a call from a voice he could identify after a moment. The Doctor who wasn't a medical doctor, just an unspecified one without a first name. With a sigh, he resigned himself to rising.
He found the other Doctor in the hallway, talking to the cloak as if it could reply, much as he himself did on occasion. The difference being, of course, that the other man didn't seem at all concerned about the fact that someone had entered and found him talking to a cloak.
"Doctor Strange" the not quite stranger greeted with a grin, sidestepping the curious cloak trying to get closer as he talked "I am sorry for disappearing so suddenly last time - a crisis appeared". The TARDIS blinked happily at the cloak behind him.
Doctor Strange stepped up to collect his cloak, judging that The Doctor needed to be saved. "I know the sort of thing" he assured the other doctor, more gracefully than he would have before the injury. He had since learnt the value of not judging good people needlessly.
"Is there any tea?" The Doctor perked up at the idea. "No" Strange replied, with some inner bemusement at this British obsession. "But there's mulled wine. Christmas cookies, too. If you like that kind of thing, feel free to decorate them!" At the other man's raised eyebrow, he held his hands up. Even when just held still, they visibly trembled. "Nerve damage" he explained, a bit in passing, as he led the other doctor into the kitchen, cloak still trying to touch him. Just a few months ago, he would have been too bothered to allude to it so casually, but he was now.
"Cake!" The Doctor exclaimed as he entered the kitchen, seeing the chocolate cake which was cooling at the kitchen table. "Oh, that was an experiment" Doctor Strange noted absently, stepping up to the stove and reaching for a wine bottle. "It is probably cool enough for you to have some, if you like tripple chocolate". The expression on the other man's face confirmed that he really did like tripple chocolate.
Doctor Strange stood at the stove, watching as the other doctor fought with his cloak, which kept wanting to poke at him, mulling wine, pouring suger into the heating drink. Of course, by the time Doctor Strange came back to the table with two large cups of warm, mulled wine, and the Doctor had managed to finally cut himself some of the cake, the Cloak was draped over his shoulders and the man was adorable about it.
At the first cup of mulled wine, the two doctors talked about what they did, in a polite but superficial manner. At cup two, they had moved on to, in a slightly more friendly fashion, discussing infinite dimensions.
"Oh, but dimensions" The Doctor was saying. "There's an endless amount. I just stay in this one". "Good plan" Doctor Strange agreed, drinking the last from his cup and rising to go get some more, mulling the wine slightly less properly this time, shuddering at the thought of his brief brush with another dimension. Namely, dying, over and over again - he'd rather not repeat that experience. Any more, anyway.
Drinking their third mug, the kind you'd normally drink hot cocoa or the like in, now with decidedly higher alcohol content that the two previous servings, as Stephen payed the process far less attention this time, they discussed portals through time and through space.
"Sling ring?" The Timelord raised an eyebrow characteristically, the cloak now abandoning him to curl up in Stephen's lap. "Can you travel through time with that?" At a headshake, he went into a detailed explanation of why timetravel had rules.
At cup four, Doctor Strange was caressing his still present cloak, and his fellow doctor was getting slightly maudlin about the TARDIS.
"Time" The Doctor explained to the other doctor, of the MD variety, over cup five, "does not move in a straight as arrow fashion, like you might think. It is all more of a wibbly wobbly thing, time, and you humans are not even close yet to understanding it. It doesn't seem broken to me, either, so you probably got away with it. You weren't meddling with decided events, so you be calm". After that, by cups six, seven and eight, the conversation did not make a whole lot of sense any longer.
When Doctor Strange finally went up to his bedroom, and the Doctor moved into the closest guest room, they were both up for some pretty spectacular hangovers the next day. The TARDIS blinked for itself in the hallway, and the cloak flew over to its human's bedroom, lowering itself down over the already sleeping human, who had forgotten his blankets.
My Doctor Who consultant tells me that the Tenth Doctor, played by David Tennant, is very fond of cake, and isn't that fond of kittens, until they're climbing all over him, when he is suddenly decidedly fond and completely adorable. Never say I don't listen to my expert! :)
I do not own anything you recognise - I don't even know where some of it is from!
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