Welcome to Gaia! ::

Firstly, let me say, EIRWYN PUT ME UP TO IT!
She told me to start posting this.
Secondly, this is what I'd call a "character sketch." No action or explosions. Just a little exploration of relationships. So if you're looking for things that go "boom", you'll probably want to skip this thread.
EDIT: The first part of this story still has no explosions (just lots of snogging . . .), but the second part seems to be developing (GASP!) a plot in spite of all my best efforts. Still has lots of snogging, though. After all, DT is just so cute and tasty! heart
So if you're ready to join the David Tennant Reddi-Wip Brigade, read on . . . eek burning_eyes heart heart heart

Artifacts

“Oh, I am so sorry,” said Professor River Song as she knelt to retrieve the book she’d knocked out of the young man’s hands. “And look, I got coffee all over your shoe!” It was red, she noticed, and didn’t seem to match the rest of his clothing. Literature department, she guessed. She glanced at the book she’d picked up. It seemed to be a volume of poetry. A poet, she revised. Great. I’ve tripped over a poet.
She raised her head to meet the stranger’s gaze. A cute poet, she added, as he blinked owlishly at her with a pair of huge, dark eyes.
“I . . . I . . . I’m sorry, it’s my fault, really, I wasn’t looking where I was going, I was, um, distracted, and I really didn’t mean, oh, look, I’ve spilt your coffee, can I buy you another . . .”
All this poured out of the dark-eyed man’s mouth in one breath , as he retrieved a pair of reading glasses from the ground and perched them on his nose. “I mean it. Can I buy you coffee? Or tea? Or something?”
An adorable poet, Professor Song decided. She laughed and stood up, handing the book of poetry back to its discomfited owner. “Please, don’t feel bad.” He still looked rather shocked. “It’s my fault. I was so caught up in my work, I ran smack into you.” Now that they were both standing, she looked him over. He was tall, almost painfully thin, and wearing more layers of tweedy brown clothing than she’d expect anyone to wear on such a warm day. Grad student, she thought, never eats, only comes out of the Stacks to breathe once a week. No, wait, a grad student wouldn’t put that much gel in his hair. Undergrad? She studied his features. Could be 25, but, no, those eyes . . . 35? Older?
It suddenly occurred to her that she was staring deeply into the eyes of a complete stranger, and she hadn’t even introduced herself. Of course, he’s staring, too, she thought, and there was something very odd about his expression. He looked as if he’d been hit in the head. She decided she’d better say something.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, yes, fine, I think,” said the man, still staring.
“Do . . . have we met?” Professor Song asked; it occurred to her that the look on the stranger’s face might be a combination of recognition and surprise. Or he could always look like he’s just been caught in a spotlight, she mused.
“I, uh, well, I don’t know . . . Have we?”
The toxic side effects of academia, thought Professor Song. Probably hasn’t been out of the Stacks in a month! “I don’t think so. I think I’d remember meeting you,” she said. “Though you may have seen me on campus.” She extended her hand. “Professor River Song, Archaeology Department, University of Wallamaloo. Pleased to meet you.”
He took her hand and shook it eagerly, his pale face breaking into a grin. “Likewise, I’m sure. I’m the Doctor.”
“The Doctor?”
He nodded.
“That’s it? Just, ‘the Doctor’?”
“It’s what people call me.”
“What, like a pop star or a wrestler?” The shocked look returned to the Doctor’s face. “Just kidding,” said Professor Song. “I’ll call you whatever you like.” Puppy-Eyes comes to mind, she thought. “And, Doctor, if you really are serious about buying me another cup of coffee, I’ll take you up on that offer. If I’m so lost in my own little world that I’m tripping over tall, dark, handsome men without even seeing them, I need to take a break!”

“It’s this damned grant proposal,” she explained as they walked to the campus coffeehouse. “I’ve got to convince them I need funding for another dig, and it isn’t going to be easy. I mean, I could always go for the ‘we’ll find alien technology that’ll set science ahead a thousand years,’ angle, but then I’d have Torchwood breathing down my neck, and I couldn’t stand that.”
“Torchwood?” repeated the Doctor, eyebrows climbing to his hairline again. “That lot’s still in business?”
“Been around forever,” said Professor Song with a shrug, “can’t see they’ll ever go away. No, I’ve got to convince the finance committee that six weeks just wasn’t long enough, we’ve got to go back for another dig, keep clearing that one debris field. But all I’ve got in the lab . . . that is, all that no one else has . . . is a pile of mis-matched junk, a heap of speculation, and a whole lot of diddly-squat. Well, and the tachyon readings.”
“Tachyon readings?”
“Specific type of radiation. Localized to the debris field where we started finding the anomalous artifacts. It’s just I’m not sure even that will convince them. They’ll probably just call it a fluke. There’s so much background radiation on Ghehenna, the place practically glows in the dark. That’s why we can only dig for six weeks at a time, and in rad suits at that . . .” Professor Song realized that the Doctor had stopped dead in the middle of the sidewalk, eyebrows hiding under his cowlick. “Pardon?” she asked. “Is something wrong?”
“Did . . . did you say Ghehenna?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Yes.”
“You’ve excavated there?”
“Yes.” Professor Song laughed. “You must think I’m potty, putting on a pair of lead-lined knickers and mucking around in the dust chasing myths. Gods and monsters. Angels and devils. My boyfriend thought I was out of my mind. Tried to talk me out of going to Ghehenna. When he couldn’t, he dumped me . . .” She narrowed her eyes. “Say, Mercy in Anthro didn’t put you up to this? Running into me by accident, buying me coffee . . . She’s been trying to set me up with somebody ever since Roger left . . .”
“I assure you, I’ve never met Mercy in Anthro.”
“Pity. You’re cute. Wouldn’t mind being set up with you.”
“We were talking about . . . Ghehenna,” he said, as if he found the very name distasteful. “What, exactly are you looking for there? What did you find?”
“Well, what we found, mostly, was enough fragmented Dalek exo-armor to fill a space cruiser. But you can find that on hundreds of worlds, some of them much less dangerous to work on than Ghehenna. No, what we were hoping to find, and what we may have found, was . . . and please don’t laugh . . . proof of the existence of the Time Lords.”

(I will add more upon request . . . I'm up to page ten . . .)

I've already seen way past this. xd mrgreen
*wants more anyway*

Installment #3:

They arrived at the Department of Social Sciences and took an elevator to level B2. “Oh, you’ll need your pass to actually get into the lab, Doctor,” said Professor Song.
“My what?”
“Your campus ID.”
“I . . .I don’t have one.”
“You don’t?” asked Professor Song. “I thought you were a graduate student.”
“No, I’m, um, just visiting the campus.”
“Really? Where are you from? What do you do?”
“Well, I, ah, I travel . . . I’m sort of a . . .a troubleshooter. I solve problems. Wherever they turn up. I’m on holiday, at the moment.”
“Oh, you’re a geek!”
“Geek?” repeated the Doctor.
“A techie. Computer guru.”
“I do work with computers, sometimes. Had a lot of trouble with folks having upgrade problems, a while back.”
“Yes, isn’t that new OS a b***h?” said Professor Song. “I’m glad I was too lazy to install the software . . . Here we are. You can just come in as my guest. But I’m warning you–I saw you pocket that biscuit. Anything from this lab goes missing, I’m calling campus security, and you can have dinner with them, Pretty Boy.”
Before the Doctor could reply, she’d swiped a card through the door lock and was entering the lab. The Doctor followed.
“Jenkins!” Professor Song exclaimed, stopping dead only a few paces into the room.
“He’s at lunch,” said a female voice from a work station on the far side of the lab.
“He’s always at lunch,” said Professor Song. “Especially when he know’s I’m about to be cross with him.” She sighed. “Jenkins is my geek. He runs the scanners and computers. And he thinks he’s funny.”
Professor Song walked over to a large object standing on a platform. “This, Doctor, is very possibly the best re-constructed suit of Dalek exo-armor anywhere. And, as you can see, Jenkins likes to play jokes with it.” She removed a crudely lettered sign hanging from one of three extensions protruding from the metallic carapace. “Homeless–will kill for food,” she read.
“Actually, we all thought it was kinda funny,” said a thin, dark-skinned young man from another work station.
“I think,” said Professor Song, “that Jenkins is actually afraid of this thing. He’s always messing with it. Most mornings, I come in and find he’s hung a pair of pants over the eyepiece.” She gestured to the top extension. “Another time, he hung brassieres all over the sensor nodes. One day, he’d managed to get it into a mumu.”
The Doctor, who was still hanging back in the doorway with a decidedly nervous expression, chuckled slightly. “I think I like this Jenkins,” he said. “Whistling in the graveyard.”
“Come on in,” invited Professor Song. “I know Dilbert’s a bit intimidating to look at, but he won’t bite. Or shoot. The operator’s been dead a thousand years.”
“Dilbert?” the Doctor repeated.
“Dilbert the Dalek,” Professor Song explained. “Another of Jenkins’ ideas. Had a ‘Name the Dalek’ contest on campus. ‘Dilbert’ was the winning entry.”
“Are you certain it’s dead?” asked the Doctor, circling the Dalek warily.
“Oh, absolutely,” said Professor Song, reaching out to open the armor and revealing an empty cavity inside.
“Nothing, nothing biological, left of the operator, no cellular residue, no DNA strands?” the Doctor asked.
“Nope, nothing. And believe me, I’m sure. Exo-biology was all over this stuff like undergrads at a buffet line once we got it out of decon.”
“Um, Professor Song,” asked the young man at the worktable, “aren’t you going to introduce us to your friend?”
“I’m sorry,” she said, “this is the Doctor–nope, no other name, like a pop star–he’s a computer guru, he’s on holiday, and he’s visiting our campus. We ran into each other on the quad, and he expressed an interest in our work. Doctor, this is RayQuan.” She indicated the young man. “And this is Sally.” She indicated the woman. “They, along with the infamous Abernathy Jenkins, are my graduate assistants. They play with the Dalek bits when I’m not here. Now the good stuff’s all in the back, and I don’t let anyone near it when I’m not around.”
“Her time machine,” said RayQuan with a grin at the Doctor.
Professor Song scoffed. “Time machine shrapnel, if that much. But it’s enough to make you think.” She turned to key in a pass-code to unlock the door into the inner room of the lab. Sally, a round-faced blonde with glasses, came over and whispered to her: “Professor Song, who is this guy?”
“I told you Sally, he followed me home from the quad. I think I’ll keep him. I mean, he’s probably just trying to get a free meal out of me–I’ve already paid for his tea–but he’s cute, and he’s interested in our work, and I’ve been single way too long.”
“But Professor–what if he’s a thief? With an antiquities dealer or something?”
“Then if anything goes missing, I will personally strip him and give him a full-body cavity search.”
While they were talking, the Doctor had wandered over to RayQuan’s workbench. “Careful with that thing,” he said, indicating a rod-like assemblage the grad student had partially dismantled. “It might still hold a charge. Those things fire coherent plasma bursts. It’s like getting struck by lightning. You live just long enough to feel the searing pain, as if an elephant’s just stepped on your chest.”
“How would you know?” asked Sally, turning to face him.
“Uh, lightning strikes are pretty well documented,” said the Doctor quickly. “I’m just extrapolating.”
“I can’t imagine the weapon would be active after being buried over a millennium,” said Professor Song. “Still, RayQuan, don’t go waving it about. And tell Jenkins, when he comes back, not to go hanging things off Dilbert’s gun-arm, or he’ll think he’s been hit by lightning when I’m done with him! Now, Doctor, if you’ll come with me, I’ll show you the really interesting stuff.”
The inner lab was a much smaller room, with a central work table and rows of locked drawers along the walls. “Let me show you one of the better pieces of the translucent silicate material,” said Professor Song, opening a drawer and removing a circular piece of pale amber glass. “This is the only one we found intact, but we’ve got buckets and buckets of fragments. We have no idea what they are, of course. They might have been windows, or hatch covers, or lighting fixtures, or purely decorative. Would you like to hold it?”
Wordlessly, the Doctor extended his hands, and Professor Song placed the glass roundel in it. He leaned against the table and sighed: “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Nothing beside remains . . .”
Professor Song smiled gently. “I had to learn that poem in school, too,” she said. “It’s just stunning, isn’t it? A race so advanced they actually grew their ships, rather than building them–but now all that’s left is a field of sand and broken glass.”
“This . . this is all you found?” asked the Doctor, cradling the roundel in his hands.
“No, but it’s what let us know we were dealing with an as-yet undocumented technology. We’ve got opaque silicate, too, and circuitry, and wiring, as well as a few odd artifacts that may have been the property of the crew. Here, what do you think this is?” She reached into another bin and pulled out a t-shaped object.
“A handle,” said the Doctor flatly. “A lever.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I thought,” said Professor Song, replacing it in the drawer. “And why have handles if you don’t have hands? I really think we can prove the Time Lords were, at the very least, corporeal, if not humanoid, if we go back to Ghehenna. Oh, here, let me take that from you. It’s a bit heavier than it looks.” She lifted the glass roundel from the Doctor’s arms and placed it carefully back in its drawer. “Now, this is one of my favorite pieces. We aren’t sure what it is,” she added, opening another drawer, “but it’s quite beautiful. It looks like it’s all one piece, but scans indicate a very complex inner structure. I thought it was an ornament at first, a pendant of some sort, but after the scans, we wonder if it’s some kind of electronic . . .”
“Key,” finished the Doctor softly, as Professor Song handed him the object, a dark, metallic disk as wide as his palm with a deeply incised design on one face.
“Yes, a key. Or it could just be a pendant that used to light up when worn. We have no way of knowing. It’s beautiful, and it’s a complete mystery . . .” She paused as the Doctor brushed quickly at his eyes. “You’re crying!” she exclaimed. My goddess, she thought, I can’t believe there’s actually someone besides me moved to tears over this old rubbish!
“I, I’m sorry,” he said, his voice thick. “This is all just a bit . . . overwhelming.”
“Don’t apologize! Sometimes it makes me cry, too. And you see now, don’t you, why I want, why I need, to go back and keep excavating? We may have found all that remains of one of the greatest civilizations this galaxy has ever produced. And it’s crumbling into sand. It’s tragic!”
“Tragic, yes, a tragedy,” repeated the Doctor.
“This is why I became an archaeologist,” Professor Song continued. “To give faces to the faceless, voices to the silent. To remind the living of the debt we owe the dead.”
“You really are a remarkable woman,” said the Doctor with the ghost of a smile.
And you are the most incredibly attractive man who’s ever walked into my lab, thought Professor Song. What is it about those eyes of yours? I’ve never seen a man who could look beautiful crying! I swear, if you are a thief or a con artist, I’m likely to let you walk out with the pendant in your pocket and Dilbert under your arm, if I keep looking at those eyes!
“Thank you,” replied Professor Song, pulling her eyes away from the Doctor’s. “Now I need to put that back, I’m afraid,” she said, extending a hand for the artifact he still held. “It’s a beautiful design, though, isn’t it? I have no idea of its real significance, having no cultural context to place it in, but I like to think of it as ‘infinity embellished’.”
The Doctor handed the object back to Professor Song with a rueful chuckle. “Imagine the arrogance of a race thinking they could embellish infinity.”
Professor Song laughed in return. “Yes, that is a bit over-the-top, I suppose, but since it was found in the wreckage of a time machine . . . Anyway it’s pretty. I’m actually tempted to have it tattooed on my body somewhere.”
The Doctor’s eyebrows leapt back to the safety of his hairline at that comment. Professor Song opened another drawer, this one larger than most of the others, and, using, both hands, drew out an elongated donut shaped object of smooth, opaque silicate trailing bits of tube and wire. She set it on the worktable as the Doctor’s jaw dropped. “This is the largest single piece we’ve retrieved, and once again we have no clue what it is. RayQuan and I think it might be a collar for a space suit, Sally’s withholding judgement, and Jenkins, with his usual lack of propriety, claims it’s a toilet seat.”
“He’s right,” said the Doctor in a shocked tone. “It is a toilet seat.”
eek

Wanna join? mrgreen

Hmm... I'll think about it.

In the meantime, more story!
*is still adoring it*

And I agree with Ceribri, you should totally post this somewhere.

Thanks, everyone for all the compliments redface biggrin redface
Now, hold on to your hormones:

“You were right, you know,” said the Doctor from across the room. “About the nature of the silicate materials. These capsules were grown, from single crystals, like living things.”
Professor Song shut her mouth, only to have it drop open again. “This . . . you . . .where ?” She turned to place her hand on the wall, on one of a series of dozens of pale amber glass circles, each lit from within.
“It’s . . . it’s intact!” she gasped. “It’s intact, it’s whole, it’s . . . it’s still functioning! It’s on-line!” She moved away from the wall and approached the hexagonal console in the center of the room with something approaching reverence.
“Please, Professor, don’t touch . . . Well, all right, you can touch that, it’s just the door,” the Doctor said as Professor Song reached out to grasp a handle remarkably similar to the one in her lab. She shifted it back and forth a few times, looking over her shoulder to watch the doors open and shut.
“And, and, all this must exist somehow outside of regular space time, and the box, the door, is just a portal. An interface with reality,” she said.
Now the Doctor’s jaw dropped. “That’s brilliant!” he exclaimed. “You’re brilliant! I have never, repeat never, had anyone just walk in here and immediately grasp transdimensional engineering!”
“Well it’s rather obvious isn’t it?” said Professor Song. “I mean, you can’t very well fit this huge room in that little box, not in any Euclidean sense. For a race capable of time travel, this is child’s play.”
The Doctor just grinned like an idiot.
“And you . . .” Suddenly Professor song’s expression shifted from wonder to fury. “You’ve been toying with me! Me with my buckets of sand and broken glass, and my, my toilet! You’ve got the find of the century, no, the millennium, here, and you didn’t breathe a word!”
“I haven’t been toying with you, I swear!” said the Doctor, hands raised in apology.
“And where did you get it? I’ve never heard of a museum, or university, or even a private collector, with something like this . . . How come Torchwood doesn’t have it?”
“They probably know better than to try and take it from me.”
“You own this?”
“I live here. This is my home.”
Professor Song’s expression shifted back to shock. “Where in the galaxy did you find it? How did you get it running? How do you keep it running? How . . .”
“Hold on, hold on, Professor, one question at a time,” put in the Doctor. “In reverse order: with great difficulty, it was on-line when I took it, and I found it in a repair bay on Gallifrey long before the War.”
“You took it . . . before the war . . . Gallifrey? But . . . but that’s the mythical name . . .”
“It’s not a myth,” said the Doctor softly. “At least, it wasn’t. Not when I was born.”
This can’t be happening! Professor Song thought. She pinched her arm.
The Doctor caught her gesture and smiled. “You aren’t dreaming. I’m as real as you are. Here. Take my hand.”
She took his long, slender fingers in her own. They were cool to the touch.
“Long, long ago, my ancestors had metabolic processes and a body temperature equivalent to that of humans,” the Doctor explained, “but they altered themselves, slowing their base metabolism to extend their lifespan. ”
“How old are you?” Professor Song asked, staring into the Doctor’s eyes.
“Over 900 years. Now, place you hands here, and here,” he said, setting her palms on his chest.
“What am I . . . what . . . you’ve got . . . on both sides,” she said, eyes opening wide.
“Yes. Two hearts. And my species evolved with them. Can’t understand why more species didn’t.”
Professor Song drew her hands away. “I can’t believe . . .”
“But you can believe,” said the Doctor, “because you’ve seen and touched all this, and you know it’s real.”
“Why, why didn’t you say anything? In the lab? Oh my goddess, I feel such a fool . . .”
“You aren’t a fool, you’re a brilliant scientist with a great gift for making connections, so long as the evidence is trustworthy. I didn’t say anything in the lab because, if I had, if I’d said ‘Say, I'm a Time Lord, and I’ve got my time machine parked outside, wanna see it?’, you’d have called campus security to come out with the butterfly nets and an I-love-me jacket and hauled me away to the nearest psychiatric ward.”
“So you ask me to dinner?” Professor Song asked, incredulous.
“The offer still stands,” said the Doctor with a shy smile, “though I suppose whether or not you’ll accept it depends on your view of interspecies dating. Myself, I’ve had to adapt to it as a necessity.”
“How many of you are there?” asked Professor Song. “Time Lords, I mean.”
“You mean besides me? None,” said the Doctor sadly. “I’m an endangered species of one.”
Professor Song gasped. “And I just took you down into the lab, and . . . You must think I’m a ghoul! Ghehenna isn’t a ‘dig’ to you, it’s a tomb! And I’ve desecrated it . . .”
“No, no, I don’t feel that way, well, not exactly, not that you’ve done anything wrong. You’re just curious, and I don’t mind, really, I’m pleased that someone actually cares!”
“Is that why you came to the University? Because of my work?”
“To tell the truth, Professor Song, I had no idea I was going to meet you today, or what your field was. Actually, I think she,” he said, gesturing to the console, “had more to do with this than I did.”
“She?”
“The TARDIS. The ship. Name’s an acronym, stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space. She’s alive, and intelligent, and she probably sensed that pretty pendant you’ve got down in the lab.”
“You cried when you saw it–do you know what it is?”
“Yes . . . But I’m afraid I can’t possibly explain any more on an empty stomach,” the Doctor said, beginning to move around the central console, turning dials and flipping buttons. “Haven’t had anything but tea and biscuits for at least three days, can’t remember, I forget to eat sometimes when I’m working.”
“Yes, I’m the same way,” said Professor Song. “You said you were going to tell me about your work?” What sort of job would the last surviving member of a mythical race have, anyway? she wondered.And how can this be happening?
“Yes, yes, plenty of time to talk shop, but right now, I’m famished!” he said. “Oh, brace yourself, she’s feeling her age and gets a bit creaky when you roust her . . .”
“Ah!” cried Professor Song, putting her hands over her ears as the column in the center of the console began to rise and fall with a series of agonized wheezes.
“Oh, it’s not so bad as all that!” protested the Doctor. “There, there, girl,” he said, patting the console, “don’t take it personally. She’s a newb. Pretty soon, though, she’ll realize that’s the most beautiful sound in the universe!”
“What, because it means you’re leaving?”
“Hey!”
Professor Song laughed. “Sorry. I just have a feeling you’re about to complicate my life by a factor of about twenty.”
“Oh, much higher than that,” the Doctor admitted. “Now, let’s see, last time I was there was July, 1989, don’t want to run into myself, I was really out of shape and my girlfriend was the jealous sort, try October, same year, the service shouldn’t have gone down too much . . . You’ll love this place. They serve red wine in baby bottles.”
“Baby bottles?”
“Yes. No idea why, but it’s fun.”

“So, I says to Jack, I says, ‘if someone wasn’t compensating for something, why are the Daleks shaped like that?”
“Oh, no, you’re worse than Jenkins!” said Professor Song with a laugh. This can’t be happening, she thought for the thousandth time, but it is. And I’m loving every moment!
“But, but wait,” said the Doctor, gesticulating with a half-empty plastic bottle of wine. “So Jack says to me, ‘I thought I was the only person to think that about them.’ Then I say, ‘no, Jack, you’re just the first one to think that and then wonder if you can kill them all through exhaustion!’ And Jack, he says, ‘Whoa, hold on there Doctor! Even I have my standards. I’m pretty open minded, but I draw the line at Daleks!”
“I should hope so!” said Professor Song, giggling. “Here, there’s a bite of cheesecake left, do you want it?”
“Oh, no, no, I couldn’t possibly, no, well, maybe, just one more bite . . . Ooh, this is so good!”
“You’ve got chocolate on your face.”
“Where?”
“Right there.” She leaned close to him and dabbed his chin with a napkin. Those eyes! she thought.
“What are you thinking?” he asked her.
“That you have beautiful eyes,” she said honestly. “What are you thinking?”
“Well, first, that I’ve probably had too much to drink,” he answered, “since I’ve sunk to telling Jack Harkness stories. Second, that I’ve eaten so much tonight I won’t want to even look at food again for the next couple days. And third,” he said, looking deep into Professor Song’s eyes, “that I really, really, really want to kiss you.”
“So why don’t you?”
“This is only our first date.”
“Second. Remember the biscuit.”
“Mmm. Yes. The biscuit . . .”
His lips were cool, and soft, and tasted of chocolate and red wine. He wrapped his long arms around her and pulled her close. She found herself pressed against his lean body, running her hands through his hair, mildly surprised that whatever he used in it still left it soft enough to tousle.
Suddenly the Doctor pulled away from her. “I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what? That was amazing!”
“Really?”
“Of course, with 900 years experience and who knows how many women to practice on, you ought to be a good kisser.”
“Would you like to go dancing? I know a good club . . .” said the Doctor, hopping up from their booth.
Non sequitur much? thought Professor Song. “I was joking,” she said. “I didn’t mean to insult you. I mean, about the women. Or your age. If you’re sensitive.”
“No, no, I’m not insulted, it’s just . . . well, we could sit here and snog for the rest of the night, I mean if you want to, but it’s rather public, and . . .”
“I’d love to go dancing with you.” She smiled and took his hand.
“Wonderful,” he said, pulling her to her feet and drawing her back into his embrace. “Although I warn you, I’ve been told I resemble a giant chicken on the dance floor.”
“I’m sure I’ve danced with worse.” She stood on tip-toes, he bent forward, and they kissed again.
“Mmm . . . I thinks this works better when we’re sitting,” said the Doctor.
“Not my fault if you’re built like an extension ladder . . .Nice bum for a skinny white boy, though,” she added, giving it an experimental squeeze.
“Ah! . . . If we’re going to go, we’d better . . .”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Professor Song unwrapped her arms from the Doctor with a sigh. “Are you forgetting something?”
“My overcoat!” said the Doctor, retrieving it from the booth.
“And . . .”
“Uh, the rest of my clothes are still on, aren’t they?”
“For the moment, yes.”
“Then what . . . Oh, yes, money! . . . where did I . . .ah, here, my wallet!” he cried triumphantly, producing it from a trouser pocket. “And, look, there’s money in it, and it’s even French. Wonder how much I owe?”
“Beats me. Not my century. Not even my planet.”
The Doctor just threw a wad of bills on the table and laughed.

(but wait . . . there's more!) eek burning_eyes heart heart heart