Fic: The Destination (1/1, Teen)
May. 18th, 2021 02:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nonelvisTitle: The Destination
Characters/Pairing(s): Tenth Doctor/the TARDIS
Rating: Teen
Word count: 2,161
Spoilers: none
Summary: His ship took him nowhere without a reason. And that reason was ... fake marriage. Or maybe even the real thing.
Author's Notes: Happy birthday,nostalgia!
::xposted to![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dwfiction and ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3
"Livonian Champagne," the Doctor said, sniffing the air as opened the TARDIS doors. "Belgian chocolate, ceramic poker chips, and just a smattering of jasmine air freshener. Interesting choices. I'd have gone with cinnamon myself."
The TARDIS had landed near the reception desk of a busy hotel lobby. The carpet, emerald green with gold swirls, looked like its accents had been hand-loomed by Ensonian artisans, an astonishing and expensive approach to something hundreds of people likely walked on all day. But the whole lobby, with its flower arrangements being swapped out just as a rose started to droop and waitstaff greeting every guest with the Livonian Champagne the Doctor had smelled, had the subtle but tasteful aura of a place that focused on catering to the extremely wealthy, who probably weren't even noticing that they were treading on a rug that took skilled craftspeople weeks to make, and would have to be replaced twice a year given traffic patterns.
His ship took him nowhere without a reason, so the first course of action was clearly to book a room.
The desk clerk's nametag read "HORQ," and he was nearly as tall, pale, and thin as the Doctor, but with a far weaker chin and a moustache almost indistinguishable from two quick jabs of a dark pencil. "Welcome to the Destination, sir. How may I help you?"
"The Destination, is it? Oh, very clever."
"I'll pass your compliments on to the marketing team, sir."
"Anyway," the Doctor said, "I'll need a room for ... let's say, a week? For one."
"Sir." Horq cleared his throat. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but the Destination is a couples resort. Multiples beyond two are welcome as well, of course."
"Oh. Yes, of course," the Doctor said. Usually there was a human, sometimes more than one, to serve as emergency spouse with varying degrees of enthusiasm he occasionally had to tamp down later, or not, depending on his own whims. But he was temporarily human-disadvantaged, which only left random strangers he suspected wouldn't be as willing to play along, or ...
Well. They'd always been close. Close enough for his companions to mock him about the attachment, and it wasn't as though this sort of thing was completely unheard of in very underground circles on Gallifrey, not that he was the sort of person who'd be seen in such company, mostly.
He leaned over, stroked the side of the TARDIS, fingers lingering at her perfectly sized windows. "This is – she's – well, she's my wife."
"Your wife," said Horq, "is a large blue box."
"And why shouldn't she be? She's got angles in all the right places, if you know what I mean. And she's always looked smashing in blue. Honestly, I'm not standing here poking fun at your spouse for – what, a ridiculous haircut? Chronically underseasoned shepherd's pie?"
"How did you ..."
"Never mind how, I'd just like a room, please. For two. With a single bed. For the extremely married couple we are."
Beneath his fingers, the TARDIS vibrated gently.
"Cheeky girl," he whispered.
* * *
The Doctor still wasn't sure why the TARDIS had brought them to the Destination, but they were here, and the view of the Million Multiball Mini-Moons – really, only about a hundred metre-wide globes rather than a million, all orbiting a kilometre above the city centre – was unparalleled, enough for him to calculate that the safest bet on their rotation was the 7:4 odds on the Sizzling Syzygy, which at this rate would occur in twelve and a half days, give or take an hour. If he were still here by then, it would probably be worth placing a small wager, assuming he could remember whether he had anything resembling money somewhere in his pockets.
Still, no point in wondering where he'd laid his last credit chip, much less whose bank account it was actually attached to, on an empty stomach. He loaded the room service menu on the room's video wall. There seemed to be an unusual number of digits before the decimal point for each dish, but this was a luxury resort, after all. Only the best for his, um, wife.
The room service chatbot bounced invitingly at the lower right corner of the wall.
"Hello!" the Doctor said. "I'd like the penne primavera, extra broccoli. And my wife will have – what's that, darling? – fifty thousand megajoules of your finest Rift energy. She's a bit peckish this evening. Yes, I'll hold."
Hold took more than five seconds, which is to say that it might as well have been forever. The Doctor hummed "The Girl From Ipanema" while a string-forward instrumental of "Wonderwall" played in the background. He calculated the precise formula that defined the metallic gold splatters on the ceiling tiles. He drafted an alternate ending to Hamlet in which Hamlet and Horatio finally consummated their love and honestly, he'd given the idea to Bill in the first place, why hadn't he gone for it?
A full minute passed before the chatbot returned. "We're very sorry, sir, but we're afraid we don't offer Rift energy. Perhaps your partner would enjoy our steak frites? Made from the finest vat-grown meat."
"Really?" the Doctor said. "Not even a kilojoule? Honestly, at these prices, you'd expect at least a small plate of it. All right, let's have – honey? Was that twenty? No? – twenty-five vegetarian mezze platters, heavy on the garlic hummus. Just pile it in buckets, no need for ceremony."
"Right away, sir," the chatbot said before closing itself and reloading the video wall's lock screen, a slideshow of hotel amenities.
By the time the slideshow had circled through one and a half times, the Doctor had pulled a dozen TARDIS conduit tubes into the bedroom, snaking them over the bed and setting up a vacuum pump to rapidly move hummus into the ship's energy converter. Protein and carbohydrates weren't as good as Rift energy, but matter was matter and largely transformable into energy and besides, the TARDIS was very fond of garlic.
Dinner involved much more slurping than usual, entirely due to the TARDIS' needs, though the Doctor double-dipped a pita into the baba ghanouj, telling himself that his ship wouldn't miss a tablespoon or two of aubergine. If she did, she didn't complain, though the fact that the Doctor spent the rest of the night sitting on the bed rebuilding the leftmost quantum displacement coil might have had something to do with that. He propped himself up against the fifteen variably sized pillows in the bed, the conduits vibrating over his shins as they sucked in mezze, and focussed on calibrating screw seating to ensure the most synchronised distribution.
It was a surprisingly soothing exercise. The hum of the conduit tubes across his legs; the trills and chirps of his sonic screwdriver; the nearly subsonic rumble of the TARDIS energy banks filling themselves up. He didn't mean to fall asleep. But when he woke in the morning, the conduits were quiet, and curled round his back and into his arms where he could cradle them.
* * *
The next three days were as quiet as the first. The Doctor scanned corridors (boring); the casino (boring only in that he knew how to beat every game, but the people-watching provided moments of entertainment); the nightclub (less "boring" and more "unconscionably loud, and also, there's really no need to dance quite so close to my nether regions"); even the ice cream shop (not boring at all, at least until they ran out of asterberry almond chip). The TARDIS had always been clever about bringing him where they both needed to go, but this time, her motive was as hidden as ... well, whatever it was she'd expected him to fix.
He gave the resort two more days – after all, the ice cream shop was restocking asterberry almond chip – but finally, when the most suspicious thing he'd identified was a small colony of Altarian mice lurking in a corner of the souvenir shop, he decided it was time to pack it in.
And then he found it, blindingly obvious on the final room tally.
"Horq!" he yelled, waving a datapad at the desk clerk. "So, this is your game, is it? Upcharges and surcharges and honestly, who charges by the olive on a mezze platter? This is theft! It's outrageous! I won't stand for it, and neither will your guests."
Horq tapped on his keypad. "I've removed the charge for one of the olives, sir. A green one, I believe. Consider it compliments of the house. Now, what sort of credit chip will you be paying with?"
"Horq! Did you hear a word I said?"
"Every one of them, sir. But sir: our guests know. And they don't care. Here, I'll show you." He took the datapad and swiped his finger across several virtual icons. "Our reviews. Number 796 of '35,000 Places You Must Visit Before You Die.' Five stars on GalacticTrips, PoshParties, and that site so exclusive their name is encrypted unless you've got enough money to buy it. I could go on, but they'll all say the same thing: we're worth every penny, no matter how we choose to charge people."
The Doctor scanned the results. Sure enough, there were pages full of positive reviews, without even a whiff of a problem.
"You must understand, sir," Horq said, lowering his voice and leaning in towards the Doctor, "rich people? The truly rich? The poshest of the posh? They don't even notice, because honestly, a lot of them simply aren't terribly bright. And the wealthy newlyweds utterly besotted with each other? Completely uninterested in the price tag as long as there's imported sparkling wine and enough staff to cater to their every ridiculous, overprivileged whim."
"It's still wrong, Horq," the Doctor said. "I could shut you down in an instant. A click of the fingers."
"You could, sir, but we'd find a way to reopen. My ancestors passed down an old saying from generation to generation: 'There's a sucker born every minute.' And eventually, they find their way here." Horq turned back to his computer. "Now, what sort of credit chip will that be?"
The Doctor swallowed a breath, raised a finger to make a point, and decided there was a simpler point to make. "My wife carries all the money in the family, because of course she does, eh? Anyway, just a mo, I'll be right back with that chip."
He was not.
* * *
Somewhere deep in the Crab Nebula, the Doctor reclined on the TARDIS jump seat and stared up at the coral matrix twining across the ceiling.
"Why did you take me to an overpriced wedding resort, old girl? We've much bigger problems to solve. Mind you, I could really go for some of that baba ghanouj right now."
The TARDIS hum shifted its pitch: a decline imperceptible to anyone other than him, with an unmistakable hint of hesitance.
"Really?" the Doctor said. He sat up, placed his hands on the console to sense the pitch shifts more accurately. "I mean. Hmm. We've. Um. That's ... a thing, that is." He scratched his chin, paused for a thought.
When he replaced his hand on the console, the TARDIS pitch had shifted again: slow, rhythmic, pulsing in time with his hearts.
Well. She always did know them better than he did himself.
"I didn't realize you felt that way," he said. "We've never had anything that formal before. Feels weird to put a name to it, you know?" He ran his finger along the edge of a control panel. "But if you must know ... I rather enjoyed calling you my wife."
The hum stuttered. "Don't laugh at me!" he said. "This was your idea, it was. Never mind if it's a good one."
They'd been together for so long. Longer than any of his humans, or his aliens, the hundreds of strays he'd picked up along the way to keep himself company – and in fairness, the TARDIS, too. And even if they weren't the last two of their kind, he couldn't imagine a time without her there to feel the same breezes wafting over them, share the sunrise over a newly born world, dig toes and pedestal into a sandy shore.
"I don't have a ring," he said softly. "Is a ring even important? I could wear one, if you like. And we haven't had a ceremony. But I suppose after the first seven hundred years together, a ceremony's a bit surplus to requirements."
Yes. This could work. It would work, because it had already worked, and they both knew it. He spun a control dial, fingers tapping out new coordinates. The Eye of Orion as the first stop, because every honeymoon should begin with a bombardment of positive ions, and after that? Who knew?
But they'd decide together, him and his ship. Or rather, his wife.
Characters/Pairing(s): Tenth Doctor/the TARDIS
Rating: Teen
Word count: 2,161
Spoilers: none
Summary: His ship took him nowhere without a reason. And that reason was ... fake marriage. Or maybe even the real thing.
Author's Notes: Happy birthday,
nostalgia!::xposted to
dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3"Livonian Champagne," the Doctor said, sniffing the air as opened the TARDIS doors. "Belgian chocolate, ceramic poker chips, and just a smattering of jasmine air freshener. Interesting choices. I'd have gone with cinnamon myself."
The TARDIS had landed near the reception desk of a busy hotel lobby. The carpet, emerald green with gold swirls, looked like its accents had been hand-loomed by Ensonian artisans, an astonishing and expensive approach to something hundreds of people likely walked on all day. But the whole lobby, with its flower arrangements being swapped out just as a rose started to droop and waitstaff greeting every guest with the Livonian Champagne the Doctor had smelled, had the subtle but tasteful aura of a place that focused on catering to the extremely wealthy, who probably weren't even noticing that they were treading on a rug that took skilled craftspeople weeks to make, and would have to be replaced twice a year given traffic patterns.
His ship took him nowhere without a reason, so the first course of action was clearly to book a room.
The desk clerk's nametag read "HORQ," and he was nearly as tall, pale, and thin as the Doctor, but with a far weaker chin and a moustache almost indistinguishable from two quick jabs of a dark pencil. "Welcome to the Destination, sir. How may I help you?"
"The Destination, is it? Oh, very clever."
"I'll pass your compliments on to the marketing team, sir."
"Anyway," the Doctor said, "I'll need a room for ... let's say, a week? For one."
"Sir." Horq cleared his throat. "I'm not sure if you're aware, but the Destination is a couples resort. Multiples beyond two are welcome as well, of course."
"Oh. Yes, of course," the Doctor said. Usually there was a human, sometimes more than one, to serve as emergency spouse with varying degrees of enthusiasm he occasionally had to tamp down later, or not, depending on his own whims. But he was temporarily human-disadvantaged, which only left random strangers he suspected wouldn't be as willing to play along, or ...
Well. They'd always been close. Close enough for his companions to mock him about the attachment, and it wasn't as though this sort of thing was completely unheard of in very underground circles on Gallifrey, not that he was the sort of person who'd be seen in such company, mostly.
He leaned over, stroked the side of the TARDIS, fingers lingering at her perfectly sized windows. "This is – she's – well, she's my wife."
"Your wife," said Horq, "is a large blue box."
"And why shouldn't she be? She's got angles in all the right places, if you know what I mean. And she's always looked smashing in blue. Honestly, I'm not standing here poking fun at your spouse for – what, a ridiculous haircut? Chronically underseasoned shepherd's pie?"
"How did you ..."
"Never mind how, I'd just like a room, please. For two. With a single bed. For the extremely married couple we are."
Beneath his fingers, the TARDIS vibrated gently.
"Cheeky girl," he whispered.
The Doctor still wasn't sure why the TARDIS had brought them to the Destination, but they were here, and the view of the Million Multiball Mini-Moons – really, only about a hundred metre-wide globes rather than a million, all orbiting a kilometre above the city centre – was unparalleled, enough for him to calculate that the safest bet on their rotation was the 7:4 odds on the Sizzling Syzygy, which at this rate would occur in twelve and a half days, give or take an hour. If he were still here by then, it would probably be worth placing a small wager, assuming he could remember whether he had anything resembling money somewhere in his pockets.
Still, no point in wondering where he'd laid his last credit chip, much less whose bank account it was actually attached to, on an empty stomach. He loaded the room service menu on the room's video wall. There seemed to be an unusual number of digits before the decimal point for each dish, but this was a luxury resort, after all. Only the best for his, um, wife.
The room service chatbot bounced invitingly at the lower right corner of the wall.
"Hello!" the Doctor said. "I'd like the penne primavera, extra broccoli. And my wife will have – what's that, darling? – fifty thousand megajoules of your finest Rift energy. She's a bit peckish this evening. Yes, I'll hold."
Hold took more than five seconds, which is to say that it might as well have been forever. The Doctor hummed "The Girl From Ipanema" while a string-forward instrumental of "Wonderwall" played in the background. He calculated the precise formula that defined the metallic gold splatters on the ceiling tiles. He drafted an alternate ending to Hamlet in which Hamlet and Horatio finally consummated their love and honestly, he'd given the idea to Bill in the first place, why hadn't he gone for it?
A full minute passed before the chatbot returned. "We're very sorry, sir, but we're afraid we don't offer Rift energy. Perhaps your partner would enjoy our steak frites? Made from the finest vat-grown meat."
"Really?" the Doctor said. "Not even a kilojoule? Honestly, at these prices, you'd expect at least a small plate of it. All right, let's have – honey? Was that twenty? No? – twenty-five vegetarian mezze platters, heavy on the garlic hummus. Just pile it in buckets, no need for ceremony."
"Right away, sir," the chatbot said before closing itself and reloading the video wall's lock screen, a slideshow of hotel amenities.
By the time the slideshow had circled through one and a half times, the Doctor had pulled a dozen TARDIS conduit tubes into the bedroom, snaking them over the bed and setting up a vacuum pump to rapidly move hummus into the ship's energy converter. Protein and carbohydrates weren't as good as Rift energy, but matter was matter and largely transformable into energy and besides, the TARDIS was very fond of garlic.
Dinner involved much more slurping than usual, entirely due to the TARDIS' needs, though the Doctor double-dipped a pita into the baba ghanouj, telling himself that his ship wouldn't miss a tablespoon or two of aubergine. If she did, she didn't complain, though the fact that the Doctor spent the rest of the night sitting on the bed rebuilding the leftmost quantum displacement coil might have had something to do with that. He propped himself up against the fifteen variably sized pillows in the bed, the conduits vibrating over his shins as they sucked in mezze, and focussed on calibrating screw seating to ensure the most synchronised distribution.
It was a surprisingly soothing exercise. The hum of the conduit tubes across his legs; the trills and chirps of his sonic screwdriver; the nearly subsonic rumble of the TARDIS energy banks filling themselves up. He didn't mean to fall asleep. But when he woke in the morning, the conduits were quiet, and curled round his back and into his arms where he could cradle them.
The next three days were as quiet as the first. The Doctor scanned corridors (boring); the casino (boring only in that he knew how to beat every game, but the people-watching provided moments of entertainment); the nightclub (less "boring" and more "unconscionably loud, and also, there's really no need to dance quite so close to my nether regions"); even the ice cream shop (not boring at all, at least until they ran out of asterberry almond chip). The TARDIS had always been clever about bringing him where they both needed to go, but this time, her motive was as hidden as ... well, whatever it was she'd expected him to fix.
He gave the resort two more days – after all, the ice cream shop was restocking asterberry almond chip – but finally, when the most suspicious thing he'd identified was a small colony of Altarian mice lurking in a corner of the souvenir shop, he decided it was time to pack it in.
And then he found it, blindingly obvious on the final room tally.
"Horq!" he yelled, waving a datapad at the desk clerk. "So, this is your game, is it? Upcharges and surcharges and honestly, who charges by the olive on a mezze platter? This is theft! It's outrageous! I won't stand for it, and neither will your guests."
Horq tapped on his keypad. "I've removed the charge for one of the olives, sir. A green one, I believe. Consider it compliments of the house. Now, what sort of credit chip will you be paying with?"
"Horq! Did you hear a word I said?"
"Every one of them, sir. But sir: our guests know. And they don't care. Here, I'll show you." He took the datapad and swiped his finger across several virtual icons. "Our reviews. Number 796 of '35,000 Places You Must Visit Before You Die.' Five stars on GalacticTrips, PoshParties, and that site so exclusive their name is encrypted unless you've got enough money to buy it. I could go on, but they'll all say the same thing: we're worth every penny, no matter how we choose to charge people."
The Doctor scanned the results. Sure enough, there were pages full of positive reviews, without even a whiff of a problem.
"You must understand, sir," Horq said, lowering his voice and leaning in towards the Doctor, "rich people? The truly rich? The poshest of the posh? They don't even notice, because honestly, a lot of them simply aren't terribly bright. And the wealthy newlyweds utterly besotted with each other? Completely uninterested in the price tag as long as there's imported sparkling wine and enough staff to cater to their every ridiculous, overprivileged whim."
"It's still wrong, Horq," the Doctor said. "I could shut you down in an instant. A click of the fingers."
"You could, sir, but we'd find a way to reopen. My ancestors passed down an old saying from generation to generation: 'There's a sucker born every minute.' And eventually, they find their way here." Horq turned back to his computer. "Now, what sort of credit chip will that be?"
The Doctor swallowed a breath, raised a finger to make a point, and decided there was a simpler point to make. "My wife carries all the money in the family, because of course she does, eh? Anyway, just a mo, I'll be right back with that chip."
He was not.
Somewhere deep in the Crab Nebula, the Doctor reclined on the TARDIS jump seat and stared up at the coral matrix twining across the ceiling.
"Why did you take me to an overpriced wedding resort, old girl? We've much bigger problems to solve. Mind you, I could really go for some of that baba ghanouj right now."
The TARDIS hum shifted its pitch: a decline imperceptible to anyone other than him, with an unmistakable hint of hesitance.
"Really?" the Doctor said. He sat up, placed his hands on the console to sense the pitch shifts more accurately. "I mean. Hmm. We've. Um. That's ... a thing, that is." He scratched his chin, paused for a thought.
When he replaced his hand on the console, the TARDIS pitch had shifted again: slow, rhythmic, pulsing in time with his hearts.
Well. She always did know them better than he did himself.
"I didn't realize you felt that way," he said. "We've never had anything that formal before. Feels weird to put a name to it, you know?" He ran his finger along the edge of a control panel. "But if you must know ... I rather enjoyed calling you my wife."
The hum stuttered. "Don't laugh at me!" he said. "This was your idea, it was. Never mind if it's a good one."
They'd been together for so long. Longer than any of his humans, or his aliens, the hundreds of strays he'd picked up along the way to keep himself company – and in fairness, the TARDIS, too. And even if they weren't the last two of their kind, he couldn't imagine a time without her there to feel the same breezes wafting over them, share the sunrise over a newly born world, dig toes and pedestal into a sandy shore.
"I don't have a ring," he said softly. "Is a ring even important? I could wear one, if you like. And we haven't had a ceremony. But I suppose after the first seven hundred years together, a ceremony's a bit surplus to requirements."
Yes. This could work. It would work, because it had already worked, and they both knew it. He spun a control dial, fingers tapping out new coordinates. The Eye of Orion as the first stop, because every honeymoon should begin with a bombardment of positive ions, and after that? Who knew?
But they'd decide together, him and his ship. Or rather, his wife.
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on 2021-05-20 03:35 am (UTC)no subject
on 2021-05-20 02:13 pm (UTC)