Donna Noble and the Attack of the AU
Pairing: Tenth Doctor x Reader
Summary: Donna’s matchmaking daydreams expand to alternate universes. Loudly. A Lot.
Donna Noble tapped a finger against her chin, ignoring the chatter around her. The Doctor was whizzing off God-knows-what about alien plate tectonics, and you were listening intently, trying to work your way through sub-gravitational-whosie-ma-whatsies as you sipped on a smoking beverage. You were all tucked into a booth in a tea shop near Eta Ursae Majoris. It was nice spot, she supposed, to relax after your recent run-in with a rather nasty squadron of little green men—whose completely massive, spongy heads Donna had found hilariously funny, straight out of an arcade game, until they’d tied her upside down to a tree. Now, breathing and right-side-up, Donna found herself wondering aloud. Loudly aloud.
“What if,” she began; the words slowly punctuated your conversation, “Y/N worked at a tea shop?”
You turned to her. The Doctor looked up. You both seemed lost, but her thoughts were busy, picking up to a roaring speed.
You propped your elbow on the table, sat down your drink. “… Not that they aren’t lovely, but I think I prefer the TARDIS to a tea shop, all jobs considered.”
“Is this a job to you?” The Doctor asked. Leaning back in his seat, he seemed only half-serious.
Your mouth tugged upward. “Only when you make it one.”
Donna ignored you both. “But you’d work in the tea shop, and the Doctor would be the customer who always gets a massive cup of tea and lets it go cold while he’s reading, then asks you to reheat it, just so he could talk to you again.”
The Doctor’s nose scrunched up. “I—what?”
“No, no, listen,” Donna waved a biscuit shaped like the Big Dipper at him (horribly tourist-y, the Doctor had patronized earlier). “You come in, only once a week at first, but she keeps putting cute little question marks on your tickets because she can never figure out your name—Doctor who?—and you start leaving your books with your tip so that she can borrow them!”
The Doctor cleared his throat. “Yes, right. Thank you, Donna.” He paused. “That was… disturbingly in depth.”
Donna deflated, but her teeth were still working at her bottom lip. Face finally settling into a blank expression, she stared straight ahead, somewhere over your head, before swatting the Doctor’s mug over.
The man shrieked—hardly dignified for a man who bragged so much—and shot to his feet, dripping hot tea. “Donna! What are you—“
“Oh, no!” she shouted over him. “Clumsy of me, wasn’t it? Y/N, help him with his shirt!”
“What?” you stammered, hands full of napkins.
“Hot—hot!” the Doctor hissed, fanning his torso and looking very much like a bird.
Donna also flailed but at you. “No, don’t bother with that! Put ‘em down! Just take it off!”
“His shirt! Take off his shirt! Don’t cause a scene, we know you want to!”
She found herself ducking a barrage of tiny, frosted Big Dippers, and had to apologize to a two-headed patron who’d had both of its mouths smacked by the Doctor’s wildly spinning elbows.
Donna added the tea shop to the ever-growing list of establishments in the universe from which she was banned.
prguitarman
theartofmadeline
blakekathryn
tangentwithtanner
andulkaphoto
ellievsbear
janainaart
gummygunk
kianamaiart
dailybridgerton
