Touch The Sky: Doctor Who/Studio C [Book 3]

No Such Thing as an Easy Way Out

No Such Thing as an Easy Way Out

(Original Story: Part 6)

A month passed. It became tradition—hot afternoons were battled by a swim that was, more often than not, accompanied by a singular story for the Year. Donna joined them on occasion, and those days there was no such story, but after a few times she seemed to realized she was encroaching and gave up on coming.

Every three or four days, they would switch off, and Matt would tell her of one of his adventures with the Doctor and Donna, but Mallory had twelve times the content he did, so for that reason alone it was usually her.

She didn't tell him everything. She glossed over their intimacy, she didn't speak of Aka and Koban or the baby she'd lost there, and except for the abbreviated version of the Master's defeat she had given him right after the Year was reversed, she said nothing about anything that had occurred after they separated in Budapest. But, one story at a time, he was getting the rest out of her.

They had not gone swimming that day, thanks to the rain that had started before dawn and still continued now well after sundown. While it had cost her what she had to admit had become her favorite pastime here, the quiet drum on the roof had lulled her into an easy half-doze.

Mallory had been at the end of her twenty-first week when they arrived—now she was at the beginning of her twenty-sixth, and found it hard to reconcile what felt like an increasing resemblance to a house with the fact she still had three months left to go. As she'd guessed, the baby seemed to take great delight in pummeling her, which wouldn't be so bad if he didn't seem to enjoy doing it most when she was trying to sleep.

The front door clicked, startling both her and the baby judging by the way he jumped inside her. Her eyes flicked open, meeting Matt's gaze from across the room.

"You're back," she murmured.

"So it seems." She couldn't read his expression through the flickering firelight, but it was easy enough to see he was soaked through and his shoulders were slumped with exhaustion. He and Cyndi had gone to check the distortion field again, though Mallory wondered why they couldn't have waited another day or two for the rain to clear up.

"I was starting to get worried."

"The weather slowed us down," he answered, shucking his jacket. "Has Donna gone to bed already?"

"Yeah," Mallory answered. "Are we still on track for another week or so?"

"That's what Cyndi says." Matt headed for the fireplace, holding out his hands and letting out a sigh. "You know what I always end up missing most when we end up in places like this? Showers."

"It always seems to come back to that, doesn't it?" she asked, before squirming and wincing. "I need your magic touch again." She wasn't sure what it was, but somehow the baby always seemed to settle much better for Matt than he did for her, though she hadn't the slightest clue how the little one knew.

Matt glanced at her from the corner of his eye and turned away from the fire. "Mal, I'm going to dry off and go to bed."

She looked up at him with wide eyes, blinking twice. He might feign exasperation when she requested something baby-related from him—and she knew him well enough to know it was feigned—but he'd never abjectly refused her before. Especially not giving her five minutes of his time for something she knew for a fact he enjoyed. "Okay," she said, trying to bury the hurt in her tone. "Night, then."

He didn't answer, just pulled open the end-table-turned-dresser at the end of the couch and dug through for a fresh set of clothing as she got to her feet.