Who: Tenth Doctor and Tara Smith (Tardis) What: Pizza party! When: Evening - Wen. Jan 16th Where: John Smith’s Hotel Rating: F for FUN. Status: Part 2 - Complete
Well. He wasn’t really sure that Tara had necessarily needed those skittles -- half a pizza and a ton of candy later, they were half way through the movie (it was pretty bad. In a good way. Like most pirate films, really.), and John was starting to worry a little bit about the stability of the fort in relation to just how much the girl beside him was juddling with energy.
Tara was just plain hyper. She definitely had a bit of a (okay, she had a BIG) sweet tooth, and often got... very juddly from that. She was sitting up at the moment in her blue onesie, hands folded in her lap (now that she had demolished her fair share of pizza and candy), looking like a kid (or a Jack Russell) who was trying to act like she wasn’t bubbling over with energy.
She turned to look at John once. Then she looked back at the TV. Then back to John. Then back to the TV. She was bored -- she’d forgotten just how terrible this movie really was. Tara made a face at the movie, though it turned out less like a scowl and more like a harumph.
Booooored.
John watched her from his peripherals for a moment, before turning his head completely to look at her. Of course she was bored, she’d just eaten her weight in candy. He wasn’t sure how she hadn’t just exploded yet, honestly.
While she was sitting, he was laying on his stomach, palms supporting his chin. “What’s the matter?” Like he needed to ask.
Tara flopped down dramatically over her legs, still sitting cross-legged, arms extended straight forward as if she were practicing yoga. She wiggled her arms a bit once she was in that position, and turned her head to look at John.
“This move is sooo bad,” she complained, though it was not to be taken wholeheartedly with the huge grin that spread across her face. “I’m so sorry I brought it.” She wasn’t that sorry, though. It was more just something to say.
She reached a hand over and poked John in the nose, still all smiles. “You’re fun. Let’s do something fun.”
John made a biting motion at her finger, because that was what you were meant to do when people poked you in the nose, right? Right.
He flopped over a little himself, onto his side (her floppiness was infectious, and he had always been a bit of a fidgety man, himself) and gave her a squint of a look, as if considering. “What do you want to do?” He asked, genuinely curious.
Tara put her hands under her shoulders and unfolded her legs from under her, kicking them back so she was laying down the same way as John. She laid flat on her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows. Her feet may or may not have been kicking while she watched John. Fidgety girl full of sugar alert.
“I don’t knooow,” she wondered aloud, turning back to the TV (making a face), then turning back to John. She raised her eyebrows. “Yooouuu’re the fun one. Tell me a story!”
He was the fun one? How did that even work? She was the fort one. John dropped his head down from his hand, chin now resting on a multitude of pillows. “Can’t we both be the fun one? Er. Ones.” A story? He made a thinky sort of face, considering. “Nope,” she told him straight away, shaking her head. “There can only be one designated fun one. The other has to be the party pooper. It’s just how life is. See, it’s like this:”
Tara proceeded to make a scowly face. She raised a hand and pointed at John as if reprimanding him. She was taking on the role of party pooper, clearly. “No fun is allowed ever. Boring is best.”
Letting the face drop, she smiled widely and nodded at him. “Now you can be the fun one.” Was she making sense? Nope. But life’s more fun that way.
No sense. At all. And John Smith would not have been John Smith if he didn’t look to exploit that at least a little bit. Completely. Yes, completely.
“But if you’re the party pooper,” he said slowly, thinking it out (considering. he liked considering, because it made him more considerate!), “why would you want me to be fun or have any fun at all? Shouldn’t you be, like, finding us a dictionary to read? Or taking away our alcohol?” What alcohol?
Indeed, what alcohol? Was there alcohol to be had? Interesting thought.
Tara assumed the party pooper face again, turning on her side so she wouldn’t strain her neck further. The movie was completely forgotten. “Yes, dictionaries must be completed by the end of day. And no alcohol is to be consumed to in order to study the English language properly. No funny business happening in the common room. And certainly no forts or wrestling matches.” She might have sounded a bit like a schoolteacher in that moment. Tara Smith, teaching the next generation. Good laugh.
But uugh, she totally couldn’t be a party pooper anymore. Too much effort. The face dropped and she smiled. She wasn’t very good at being a spoilsport. But that had been a little bit of fun.
John turned -- rolling over this way and that on the pillows until he was comfortable. And the pizza box was in reach, because he was currently inclined to pick the toppings off and eat only those. “When was there a wrestling match? Because I see forts. We’ve done forts. But there ain’t been no wrasslin’.” Americans talked like that, right? Sure.
Sure, if you say so. Tara laughed at John’s wiggling. It wasn’t the mean kind of laugh, but she was definitely amused. “Isn’t that part of what a party pooper is supposed to stop? Fights and wrasslin’?” she mimicked his accent on the last bit. Because clearly, all fun people had fights and wrestling matches. So the party poopers had to stop it at all costs.
Twisting a bit herself, Tara reached for her (nearly empty) bag of Skittles to help herself to more candy. Party poopers hated candy. And fun people, like Tara, loved candy. She would probably overdose from candy one day. That’s totally a thing. “Do you know what I like? Skittles. They’re just the perfect size of candy. And they’re delicious. Don’t you think?” He should probably take them away from her before she started running around the hotel on a sugar high.
But if he took them away, he would be the party pooper. And he just wasn’t sure that he fancied taking on a role like that. Even if it was possible that Tara might actually need it sometimes. He eyed the nearly empty economy sized bag of candies, that he was positive had been unopened when Tara had arrived. At this point, he wasn’t sure he could keep her from running around anyway.
“I like them,” he agreed, taking a few for himself -- if only because that meant it was a few less than she could devour in a sugary high -- “But there’s this other candy...I don’t remember what they’re called. Little semi-hard candies that are shaped like the fruits they taste like? I like those. Love the little banana.”
Tara swatted at his hand when he helped himself to some. They were hers, hello! “Think you can get those on a pizza?” she asked, meaning the banana candies of course. She grabbed a few Skittles and shoved them into her mouth all at once, big smile on her face as she chewed/inhaled them.
She popped up suddenly onto her hands and knees, crawling out of the fort and standing before looking back at him. “I love running, I feel like running. Let’s go have a race or something! First to the flagpole and back wins!” Without even checking that he would follow, Tara took off into the hotel hallways. On a race. Yes. He was taller, so he’d have the advantage anyway.
The sad part was -- even though he hadn’t shovelled a whole bag of candy into his mouth, John was actually kind of up for an idea like that. He wasn’t sure if it was the candy he had eaten, or just if Tara’s moods were kind of infectious. Being around her was kind of like being on a really weird rollercoaster.
So, okay, yeah. He’d race.
---
Tara always had fun ideas up her sleeve. They’d run around and gotten their energy out for a good while before they returned to the blanket fort disaster (that hopefully the hotel staff would ignore). John had won most of the races and games they’d played, but Tara wasn’t exactly competitive -- she just wanted to have fun.
Back in the meeting room, she had talked his ear off for a little while, and had some more pizza before promptly dozing off. And now she was sleeping in a pile of candy wrappers and pizza boxes. Weird that she felt comfortable enough with John to fall asleep in a blanket fort with him already.
John had to admit that she’d fallen asleep a little more quickly than he would have expected possible; but that could only be expected when that much sugar was in play. In many other situations, the writer might have felt it prudent to take photographic evidence of the scene before him. Or maybe wake someone up and send them on their way (or alternately, depending on the person, wake someone up and invite them to his bedroom). But Tara was different in all those regards. Instead of all the things he might usually do, he had a terrible urge to just lie down next to her and have a nap about it too. Until the hotel staff came and kicked them out, anyway.
For now, he was sitting a few feet away, just... watching. But not like a creep or anything. I mean, he wasn’t going to MURDER HER
No murder in blanket forts, please. Take that shit someplace less sacred. Thankyouverymuch.
Tara wasn’t asleep for long. She’d had a bit of a catnap, tuckered out from their adventure. She’d had a really weird dream while she was sleeping, though. John had been in it, and a really pretty blonde girl (she’d never met her before as far as she knew, but she really liked her) and some killer Christmas trees. It was crazy weird.
Stretching out lazily as she woke, the brunette turned her head around a bit to take in her surroundings. She spotted John and smiled sleepily, all warmth and happy.
“I had a dream about you.”
Apparently, he’d lost his chance at napping in the candy bar wrappers and pizza grease. Sigh. Giving a more subdued sort of smile, he moved a bit so that he could hug his knees while sitting. John rose an eyebrow. He was curious, but not particularly surprised, considering. “Did you, now?”
He could still nap in the mess of things and garbage they’d made in the meeting room. She liked naps. “I did,” she confirmed with a nod. Once she’d stretched enough, she rolled onto her side and tucked her legs in like a cat. “It was a weird dream. Involved evil Christmas trees and a pretty blonde girl. You were in your pyjamas the whole time, though.”
She grinned at that, tongue poking through her teeth. “It looked like fun.”
Not exactly the kind of dream description he had been expecting, honestly. If John had had to guess, he would have said something along the lines of endless hallways to run down, and then maybe some sort of... tube castle with a ball pit at the end. Bad guess, apparently.
“That’s a very weird dream,” he told her. Because clearly it was. “What were you doing in it? Climbing the tree?”
Tube castle would be great fun. Put that on their list of adventure. If they were allowed in, of course. After all, they were both very much adults and not children. But Tara wasn’t about to let that stop her fun having.
“I...” she hadn’t thought about that part, brows furrowing as she tried to put her role into words. “I don’t think I was there. I was just observing, mostly.”
She reached her arms out toward John and shrugged. “The blonde girl was your best friend, I think.”
John scooted forward a little, until he was within her arms’ reach (because he honestly couldn’t quite tell what she wanted. A hug? Probably a hug. Tara liked those). “Kind of weird. I don’t have a blonde girl as a best friend though, and I can’t say I ever had.” He gave a shrug of his own, waving it off a bit. “Skittles and pizza make for strange bedfellows?” Seriously. They did.
She definitely wanted a hug. Tara was big on touching. She scooted up a bit and put her arms around his calves, resting her head against them. “You want to share a bed with a blonde woman?” she asked, no heat in her tone, just curiousity. She had probably greatly misunderstood his use of bedfellow. She was probably still half-asleep, to be quite honest.
Was this a trick question of some sort? John frowned for a second, even as gave her hair a little bit of a pet. “Well, I never said that,” he said. It wasn’t really something a man could deny wanting either. At some point, it was probably that there would be a blonde-- you know. This was over thinking the matter. “I just meant that you get weird dreams when you -- you know. Eat weird food. Together.”
“Got it,” she smiled, nuzzling into his legs. “Weird food, weird dreams.” it was muffled because, you know, she was busy cuddling weird parts of John’s body. “You didn’t deny it though!” At that, she let her typical grin spread across her face. She was being all cute and sleepy and stuff, obviously.
She definitely could have been cuddling weirder parts. Laughing, his expression showed that he’d clearly been caught in that logic. “Welll,” he said, because what else could he say. “No one knows exactly what they’re going to do in the future. But at this time, I do not want to share a bed with a blonde woman.” Her obvious cute sleepy act was obvious, indeed. As obvious as it was, he was not sure what to do about it. So instead of doing anything, he just gave her hair another little pet.
Flopping onto her back in the pillows, Tara watched John upside down, arms stretched out above her. “Gooood logic,” she mused aloud, busying herself by kicking a pillow at the end of the fort. “It really was quite a weird dream. Weirder that you were in it, too. It was very real.”
She yawned, then, shutting her eyes for a moment. It was hard to look at people upside down. “In the end, you saved the day. And lost a hand,” she paused, wiggling her nose a bit. “But it grew back.”
“Well, that’s something anyway,” he said, because what else do you really say when someone tells you that you could re-grow limbs in their dreams? He flopped backward, half laying on a mass of pillows that had rearranged themselves from the floor of the fort. “I’d hate to have to learn to type one-handed.”
Tara was not one to turn down a good opportunity. She reached out again for John, putting her arms around him and burying her face into a good old fashioned nuzzle. He was warm and cozy and stuff. Yup. “It could be a good skill to have,” she pointed out, yawning and ready to fall back asleep. “Your books would take twice as long to write. Or they would be half as long.”
Wrapping an arm around her, John stared up at the ceiling, feeling quite sleepy, himself. “Mmhm,” he agreed. “Or I would have to find someone to dictate to. They could write it for me, and I could just talk all day long. Might be nice to ignore punctuation....”
“Don’t you already do that?” she asked, meaning talking all day long. She moved a bit when he rearranged and put his arm around her, placing her chin on his chest so she could look at him while they talked. She didn’t really want to fall asleep again just yet.
“How is your writing going, anyway? Any new adventures on the burner?” she smiled up at him.
“Hmm?” He asked, not fully paying attention now. But sort of. “Oh. Well, sort of. Maybe. I’ve always got some idea. Just not usually good ones.”
“I think you’ve got great ideas,” she told him, genuinely admitting it. John really was brilliant. Tara admired him for his ambition. She was very much looking forward to reading the book he was about to release -- and, really, all of his stories. Yawning again, she shut her eyes and laid her head back down comfortably on his chest. “When does your book come out? I’d very much like to read it.”
“Soon,” John said, closing his eyes as well. “Once my publishers get their advertising campaign finished up.” He crossed his ankles, and stretched out a little more. “But I can probably just email it to you if you want.”
“Advertising campaign,” she said, all like she was impressed. Which she was. But that was followed by an “ooooh” that was more teasing-sounding than anything. So she was teasing him a bit all at the same time.
Lifting herself up onto her elbows, Tara rearranged so she crossed her arms over his chest, settled her chin on them, and was basically half lying on top of the poor man. Well, not so poor man, if he appreciated it. “Wouldn’t you e-mailing it to me break some sort of Non-Disclosure Agreement?” She blew a piece of hair out of her face, watching him with a smile.
John open his eyes again, giving her a face about the teasing. He didn’t not appreciate her weird leaning, so there was no reason to consider a need for sympathy.
“Maybe,” he said. “That’s a lot of legal talk that I have no mind for. Would you publicize I did it? Sell it on your own? If that’s the case, I’m sorry, you’ll just have to miss your chance and buy it when it comes out.”
Tara laughed at that. “I’ll have a look at your contract if you’d like,” she said, because Legalese was apparently one of the languages she spoke. “Don’t want you getting into trouble. Well, unless you’d like to be troublesome.” Which he probably did. It was John she was speaking to, after all.
“I would like to read it, though,” she repeated, yawning a little dramatically. She was tired again, and he was warm and warm is dangerous around sleepy brains. She rearranged to lay her head on John’s shoulder, her arm draping across his chest as she nuzzled in. Her eyes were shut the moment she was comfortable. “What kinds of adventures do you write...?” She drifted off, though, due to her imminent unconsciousness. If John was going to answer, he’d get only a reply of steady breathing from a sleeping Tara.
Which was fine, honestly, because with all the sugar and pizza and running, John wasn’t sure how much longer he would have kept up the conversation, anyway. He took a short moment, listening to the way her breathing changed, and before he knew it he was asleep as well.
It wasn’t a very important conversation, else Tara would have made more of an effort to stay awake.
Sometime later, most likely when the hotel staff came in to check on the meeting room, he would wake to find that Tara had left at some point while he’d been sleeping. She was always very good at disappearing on him, it seemed. And leaving him with clean up duty. She did think to send him a text, however, telling him sorry she’d had to run. There was at least that.
There was, indeed, that. John, groggy, rubbed at his eyes (it was still late as opposed to early), and promised the staff he’d get the place cleaned up. That this was the second time he was stuck doing it after she’d ran off was not surprising to him, oddly. Nor was he all that bothered by it. She just seemed a very...impulsive sort. He was okay with that.