Archive of Our Own ^beta

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It wasn’t an easy adjustment, nor was it a quick one. He supposed that was only natural given how long he’d been running, never really stopping. To sit in the little Chiswick terrace house day in and day out was arduous.  He was surrounded by arguably some of the best humans he’d ever known, but still it didn’t seem to assuage the feelings of guilt, or the undercurrent of anxiety that made him desperate to run until his body collapsed. He didn’t fit in here, didn’t belong. He’d made everyone so miserable, ruined everything, and still for some reason they were letting him live with them. The Doctor couldn’t understand why these people were still tolerating him.

“Doctor?” A voice pulled him out of his anxiety spiral, “alright, mate?” It was Shaun, good, kindhearted Shaun Temple.  He had a cup of tea in each hand, which for a moment seemed weird, but then the Doctor realised that he was supposed to take one.  He took the tea, wincing as his shaking hands slopped some of the hot liquid over the side, scalding the skin there. The pain was grounding, and he savoured it just as much as the warmth from the mug.  “Doctor?” Shaun was talking to him again, though the Doctor found that he couldn’t remember the question. “You want to come and sit down, then?”

He had taken to hovering at the window in the front room, you could see most of the way down the street in both directions, and with Christmas approaching he couldn’t help but feel a duty to keep watch, in case some alien bullshit hit the fan and he needed to do something about it. Donna had called it ‘hyper vigilance,’ one night after he had thought he’d seen something, and it had distressed him to the point that his respiratory bypass had malfunctioned and refused to kick in, leaving him gasping for air on the living room floor. That’d been embarrassing.

He followed blindly, choosing the single seater armchair, knowing that if he sat on the big sofa, and Donna came home from work and saw him like this, he wouldn’t be able to have any space. Come to think of it, there wasn’t any guarantee that she wouldn’t just glomp him in the recliner as soon as she came in.

It had been a bit awkward, Donna going back to work for UNIT, and Rose being back at school. It left an almost endless amount of hours in between for he and Shaun to ‘get to know each other.’ He was never left alone, they seemed to have planned that behind his back, and the Doctor genuinely couldn’t decide if it was a relief, or if it pissed him off. The urge to crawl into a deep pit and bury himself in depression and despair was almost overwhelming. The TARDIS seemed to be conspiring against him too, as she’d locked him out and only let him in if Donna was home. 

Once, early on, Shaun had found him panicking, sobbing and screaming as he tried to push his way in, pleading with her to open her damn doors. That hadn’t gone down well with the neighbours. Shaun Temple was a good man and had stayed calm and collected, and had somehow managed to get him inside. Donna and come home shortly after, and been informed of the incident, and had stormed right back out the door and down the street. Mrs McDonald never complained about the noise level again, after that.

If he were allowed to be alone, left to his own devices while to both of them went off to work , the Doctor knew that he absolutely would isolate himself like they were all so worried about, and could potentially be considered a danger to himself. Maybe he could be considered a danger to himself already, actually. He loved Donna, loved this family who had worked so hard to include him, but he still sometimes wondered if they wouldn’t be better off without him there to complicate their lives.

He let the tea go cold in favour of laying the recliner back and curling up, if he pretended to sleep for long enough there was every chance he’d actually pass out.

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She hadn’t expected the screaming. It’s not as if Donna couldn’t handle a nightmare, but oh my fuck she’s never heard a sound that horrible before. It was pure instinct that had her flying out of her bed, still mostly asleep. She was a mum above all else, and that was the kind of screaming that had all her mum-senses on fire. It wasn’t Rose this time though, her half asleep brain provided. Donna dropped to her knees beside the Doctor, who was knotted up like a pretzel on the settee. The blankets that had been his makeshift bed were all over the floor, and he was trembling, taut as a wire and dripping with sweat. His eyes were open, Donna noticed, but he didn’t acknowledge her, or really seem to see her. 

“Doctor? Come on now, Spaceman,” she crooned, carefully placing a hand on his back. He flinched hard, almost levitating off of the sofa he’d been sleeping on.

In all the awful things she’d heard in her travels with him, the sound of him wailing was one that she never wanted to hear again. She got up onto the sofa and sat bedside him,  

“Whatever you saw, Doctor, it’s alright now, it was just a dream,” Donna reassured her friend, gently untangling his hands from his hair, “don’t think you’d look very nice bald,” she murmured, rubbing his trembling extremities between hers.

”I was bald, once actually, for a minute,” the Doctor finally spoke, his voice trembling, as if he were having a hard time the words out  

“With ears like those? Must’ve been awful,” Donna jabbed playfully  She pulled him close to her. It was difficult, seeing him like this -Rose had been very prone to night terrors when she was little, but Donna got the feeling that these were actual terrors, replaying in her poor boy’s alien brain. Who knew what that had to be like. “You need to try and breathe, Doctor,” Donna encouraged, gently rubbing his chest, he was on the verge of hyperventilating, and the last thing anyone needed was for him to pass out. The Doctor sagged against her, like all the fight had gone out of him as he tried to regain control of his body.

“It’s alright, Doctor. You’re home now, safe as houses. I’m here, darling, just you breathe,” she ran her fingers through the sweaty mop of hair that had come to land on her chest. She’d promised the other doctor, (the cute one with the cheekbones and the ADHD) that she’d look after him, and she was determined to. It didn’t matter to her that things had turned out to be far worse than she’d anticipated, or that she’d been woken up every morning to him screaming bloody murder. She’d been saved by him so many times, and now she’d been given the opportunity to do the same in return.

The sun was beginning to rise before the Doctor seemed truly calm, and Donna was exhausted, but it was worth it to her, to see him feeling a bit better. 

“Thank you, Donna,” the Doctor broke the peaceful silence that had fallen over them. She kissed his temple.

“I love you. We all love you. It’s the least anyone of us can do, after everything you’ve done for us,” she told him, following it up with a yawn. She could tell by the look on his face, that the Doctor wasn’t convinced, but that was no matter. She’d just have to keep working on him. 

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Shaun, being the absolute gem of a human that he’d always been, had taken it all in his stride. From the screaming nightmares that had to wake him up, to giving up his job to stay home while Donna went to work. That was temporary at least, he supposed. Soon, Rose would be settled into her new school and the renovations would be finished and Shaun would start driving his taxi again.  It was equal parts a relief, and a great source of anxiety. The Doctor didn’t enjoy being such a wreck, didn’t find any pleasure in constantly feeling completely out of control. Shaun somehow managed to look past it all, when the Doctor himself was worried he’d be the catalyst for the Noble-Temple’s getting a divorce.  

Footsteps on the stairs told him that Shaun was finally up. 

“Morning, Doctor. Gonna put the kettle on,” Shaun said with a yawn, on his way down.

It’d been a difficult night for the Doctor. Donna, in her kindness, had slept with him on the settee again, seeing him through the worst of the nightmares as if it didn’t exhaust her. God, he loved her. She’d long since left for work, and the Doctor hadn’t been able to bring himself to try and sleep again. Instead he watched the street below the little, half blown up terrace house, hovering in the window as he sun rose over Chiswick. Though he’d never admit it, the hours between Donna leaving for work, and her husband getting out of bed felt incredibly lonely, and being separated from Donna, stupid as he knew it would sound if he ever dared tell anyone, was almost physically painful.

He’d felt alone all his life, and it was only now becoming obvious just how much he’d always relied upon his companions. It was only the act of slowing down, stopping for however long this would last, that had shown him how much he truly needed Donna and her family. The entire time she was at work, the Doctor longed for her return. When she returned, he couldn’t help but feel guilty about what a mess he’d made of all their lives. He couldn’t win. 

“You get any sleep?” the Doctor registered Shaun’s voice, and looked up to see the other man in front of him, hand outstretched, mug handle toward him. He took it, as the heat from his freshly brewed tea threatened to burn his palms. It was oddly grounding. Shaun sat down in his usual armchair opposite the Doctor. ”Doctor, you there?” Shaun was looking at him strangely, and it took a moment before the Doctor realised that there’d been a question among all this and that he was actually meant to come up with an intelligent answer. 

“Oh right, sorry.  Yeah… not great,” he sighed, his screaming had surely woken everyone up during the night, and Shaun had to have noticed Donna missing from their bed again. “Sorry, by the way.” The doctor sighed, looking down into his tea, poking at the lemon wedge boat floating around in its boiling hot tea ocean, oddly comfortable with the way it scalded his fingertip with each little push. 

“Rose had nightmares when she were little, bloody awful things,” Shaun shared. The doctor supposed that it explained why Donna was so good at settling him after his nightmares. “Donna loves you, Doctor. We all do, really. But she loves you, and you don’t need to worry about being too much,” Shaun smiled softly, “she looks after you the same way she did when Rose was a little ‘un.” Shaun finished his tea, and tucked his dressing gown around himself more tightly before getting up. “Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better, Doc. We’ll be here in between,” the surprisingly emotionally intelligent taxi driver promised, patting the Doctor on the shoulder as he walked past. 

The Doctor wasn’t sure what to do with that, but he wiped tears from his cheeks and took a sip of his tea. 

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They were standing shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen sink, doing dishes. Donna was washing up, and the Doctor was on drying duty. It was weirdly domestic, made even weirder by Shaun, flitting about the kitchen in the background, AirPods in.

“Never thought I’d be doing this,” The Doctor remarked, eyes focused on the tea towel and mug in his grip. “Living with humans, cooking, making tea. It’s really something.” He murmured, mostly to himself as far as Donna could tell. Donna glanced over her shoulder at Shaun, who seemed to be too deeply engrossed in his podcast to notice the conversation happening around him.

“Something good, I hope?” She gave him the lid of a casserole dish to dry. “It’s alright you know, you’re doing fine,” she reassured him gently, as uncertainty flashed over his face. “Doing dishes like a pro, you are,” she elbowed him playfully.

“Yeah, something good. Definitely.” He smiled, elbowing her back.

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He supposed that on a technicality, he wasn’t really travelling time and space by doing this. At least- not in the way that Donna had very clearly banned him from doing until he felt better. He was not feeling better, no way, not by a long shot. So he couldn’t jet off to Mars with Rose like he so desperately wanted to, and even taking Mels to New York had left him feeling like he’d been chewed up and spat out. Donna had a point, and he had tried so hard to take it, he really had. He wanted to be good, but he also wasn’t thick.  

Eventually they’d all be sick of him, they’d grow weary of their strange new flatmate who woke them all up with his nightly screaming breakdowns, and had panic attacks over nothing, and the migraines that made him so miserable and irritable that for days on end, he locked himself in the little bedroom Donna had allocated to him.

The overwhelming feeling of just how important it was that he run, run far away before he could hurt anyone he really loved,  and the desperate desire to stay, be part of a family and be loved and make real, proper memories, warred within him.

And so he did what he figured he’d be able to get away with, should Donna find him and want to murder him a little for breaking a promise and heavily relying on the wording of her request to do it.

The TARDIS floated several thousand feet above the little garden, and though it wasn’t actually space travel, it was as close as he’d be getting for a while, and it was bringing the quiet stillness that he wasn’t really aware he’d been missing so much. He sat on the floor in the doorway, and if he leaned right over he could just about make out the boundary to their backyard -you just had to locate the neighbour with the pool first and then it was easy. He’d have to come down eventually, but at least up here he could be properly alone.