Title: And Another Hatbox
Author: Tess/teashadephoenix
Rating: Rated T for slight sexual themes
Word Count: 1645
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Spoilers: Through 4.07 The Unicorn and the Wasp
Summary: The Doctor introduces Donna to the TARDIS wardrobe before Lady Eddy's cocktail party.
Disclaimer: The canon stuff belongs to the Beeb and I'm borrowing it to play with. Everything else I made up for my entertainment.
Author's Note: Shameless Doctor/Donna bantering fluff for Ten Day. Please to enjoy. <3



"Oi, Spaceman!"

Only Donna could make a term of endearment sound like a thump to the head. That was just how she talked, even when she wasn't frustrated with him. All the same, sometimes she sounded so indignant that the Doctor wondered, ever so briefly, what he'd done wrong.

He dropped his head back, glancing upside down at her from the jump seat and preparing a retort that companions who took too long to change for cocktail parties got left in the TARDIS. Honestly, how long did it take to slip into a frock?

Of course, this was the same woman who hadn't been satisfied until she got a toga in Pompeii. This time she probably wanted period knickers as well.

Donna was standing in the arch at the end of the interior ramp, wearing nothing but a long flowing robe. The Doctor quite liked Donna's dressing gown, a delicate silk thing the color of spun honey. It wasn't so thin that he could see the silhouette of her through the fabric, but it fell in graceful sheets from her body, accentuating every one of her full curves and the soft lines of her legs.

Which was just as telling, really.

The Doctor gulped, felt his hearts quicken into an excited staccato in his chest. "What's the matter?"

"You said you've got a wardrobe, didn't you? First night, you were bragging about how you had clothes from every time period known to man, beast or Time Lord."

"Yeah," he mused. "I do. Why?"

"I need something to wear for the party," said Donna simply.

The Doctor gawped, and sat up, as indignant as Donna had sounded. "You complain that you need to change and then you haven't even got anything to wear?"

"I did," drawled Donna, at which she brought a white lacy-looking thing into view and held it up as if it were a slaughtered conquest. "I just, uhm, had a little accident."

"What sort of accident?"

She waved her hand dismissively. "A nasty one. I can't wear it, that's what matters. C'mon, we're wasting daylight. This was the only thing I've got that looks vintage."

"Donna," he struggled to keep a whine out of his voice, "nobody's going to bother about what you're wearing anyway. You don't see me changing."

"You've only got the one suit," she said dryly. She folded her arms. "It's vintage, or nothing. What'll it be? You don't want me going walkabout with my natural gifts on display for all and sundry to see, do you? Bet that would bother somebody."

He bit back the comment that in that robe she nearly already was, and said instead, "I ask because if it's not that bad, I can fix it."

With one eyebrow raised sceptically Donna glided up the ramp and stopped beside him. Up close he could smell her jasmine shampoo and, to his embarrassment, see the curve of her breasts. He envisioned what they would feel like in his palms, the precise weight and softness of them.

Yes, this just-mates thing was working out brilliantly.

He cleared his throat loudly, hoping she hadn't noticed where his gaze had drifted to, and took the mangled dress from her, dropping his eyes to that instead. In life it had been a pretty thing, a modern recreation of the flapper style in silk, with a lace overlay. But Donna had murdered it, and the ugly black wound burnt into its side at once gave up the weapon used: it was distinctly curling-iron shaped.

The Doctor clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle the laugh that immediately popped out. "What?!"

"Right, ha ha, I'm a klutz," Donna rolled her eyes. "I put my curling-iron down on my dress and left it; I wasn't paying attention."

"What was your dress doing anywhere near your curling-iron?" He sounded genuinely baffled and Donna shifted, looking a bit more intimidating now.

"Just get fixing, Mr. Wizard!"

Under her glare, he covered the last bit of giggles with a cough. With a slightly professional air, he slid his spectacles on, pulled the sonic out of his pocket and adjusted the settings, then went at it with careful diligence. Slowly the silken threads roped together, binding the hole closed; the black amber scorch marks ebbed away like ink washing off paper. Then he handed it back to her with a smile. "Good as new."

Donna returned the smile happily, held it up to admire it in the light of the console. "Wow, it actually is. Thanks."

The Doctor eyed her scrutinisingly. "Lovely as it is, would you like to have an authentic twenties era dress?"

Donna tipped her head, smirking at him in a rueful sort of way. "I thought nobody would notice either way?"

"Well, more for you, because you're so fussy about your clothes. And besides," the Doctor pursed his lips, looking nonchalant. "I notice more than you give me credit for."

"Really?"

His lips pressed together into a thin line automatically, his hackles rising at the unspoken uh-huh in her voice. Then he went to his feet and bounded down the interior ramp. "Challenge accepted. Come on!"

He heard an exasperated sigh behind him as his friend followed him round the corner. "Where are we going? I've got to get dressed, and touch up my make-up and do my hair--"

"You can't throw down the gauntlet like that and then try to slink out of it with the excuse that you've got to do your hair," he said playfully, stabbing a finger at his own tousled brown fringe. "Not to the man who spends thirty minutes a day doing his hair."

"I still don't believe that's what you're doing in your room every morning," muttered Donna, keeping pace with him easily. "I could do that to your hair blindfolded."

"I bet."

"What's so hard about it? What do you do, slick your hand down with hair gel and give it a quick run-through? Please." As they flipped a quick hairpin turn down a corridor, Donna clicked her tongue irritatedly. "You still haven't said where we're going."

"To the wardrobe," he told her, sliding underneath a stairwell. "Because I have got racks upon racks of vintage goodies that aren't nearly so... plain."

He turned his head to look at her; as she slid along the wall with him, her face flushed. He could see a yell brewing in her eyes, and grinned at her. "I mean that respectfully."

"I like simplicity," said Donna tersely. "Is that a crime?"

"Not at all. Look at me, suit and trainers. Never put much stock in complicated clothes, me-- well..." He stopped walking abruptly, remembering an old jacket he had once owned. And worn.

Outside. Where people could see it.

Several times, in fact.

"There was that... thing."

"What thing?" demanded Donna, annoyed at having bumped into him when he stopped.

He waved a hand dismissively and went on walking, ticking off the doors with his left hand. One, two... Fifth door on the left. "Never mind. Those were dark times, Donna. And I don't mean that you're plain, because you aren't. Just that someone as beautiful as you should show themself off a bit more."

The words fell out of his mouth so quickly that the Doctor couldn't stop himself. But, he reasoned, they were friends. Mates could do that, compliment each other. It didn't mean anything more than that. Moving right along.

"Someone as what as me?"

Or not. He paused, hand on the doorknob, swallowed hard, and turned to look at her. Donna's blue-gray eyes were wide, a bit startled, her lips parted in a doubtful little pout.

"Did you just say... you think I'm beautiful?"

She didn't believe him. As though he would say something like that if it weren't true.

"No, I said you are beautiful. No thinking about it."

He felt his ears burning. He was grateful, more and more these days now Donna was around and he tended to get embarrassed quite a lot, that his whole face didn't redden. Rather like hers had done now.

She was really cute when she blushed.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and the Doctor gave her a curt little nod, cleared his throat. Then he swung the door wide and slipped into the room in one fluid movement and held it open for her. He grinned.

"So, here we are. My wardrobe."

As Donna moved over the threshold, her face lit up, eyes roaming over the swirling thicket of clothes lining the circular room, and the thin spiral staircase in the middle of the room where a deep shadow of even more clothes waited. A tall mirror was placed at the foot of the stairs near the entrance.

"Oh wow."

"Dresses are on the second floor, the twenties are probably... toward the back along the right," he said pensively, his hand drawing lines of an invisible map in the air. "Course if there's anything else in here you like, you're welcome to it."

As he talked, Donna moved into the aisle past the mirror, pawing through some things hesitantly. She had already pulled out an old fedora and flapped it onto her autumn hair, and now she was drawing out a thick woollen scarf, and poking her fingers into the tops of a tall pair of leather boots.

The Doctor beamed, watching her pluck through the clothes, and his smile hit another notch when she turned to him; her face was like a child's, eager and pink and slightly awestruck. Her voice was soft.

"I can really have all of this?"

He nodded. "Anything you like."

She grinned at him. "You're probably going to regret this, Spaceman."

He laughed. "Probably. Right after your mother kills me for letting you come home with ten more suitcases of shoes."

Donna's laugh was carefree. "And another hatbox."

end