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Lee and the Doctor watch from their hidden table as the two ex-royals join in an embrace, finally kissing for the first time in three years. Sometimes the achievement isn't saving the world from destruction, but saving two people from misery. And if it strikes another blow in dismantling the monarchy then so much the better, Lee thinks, sipping his fancy tea.
The Doctor's staring at them, looking happy, prideful and something much less definable. Her coffee - which took Lee five minutes of memorising her octuple-hyphenated order and three 'are you definitely sure's from the waiter to order - is untouched and growing cold.
The lovers' kiss becomes uncomfortably passionate for a public walk outside a harborside café, and Lee gives the Doctor a kick on the shin under the table. Just because they're getting carried away, doesn't mean she has to watch.
Her eyes meet his, and he pointedly glances down at her coffee. The Doctor picks it up, swallows half of it in two gulps, and almost immediately her eyes start drifting back to the couple. Lee kicks her again, on the other shin this time, for the sake of balance.
"Stop perving." He hisses.
"Just looking." She replies, without a hint of shame, and leans over and nicks his shortbread. Damn her, he likes a Garibaldi.
"Yeah, we have a few words for that, one of which is 'perving'." Lee mutters. She hands him back one of the dead-fly-biscuits and he dunks it before she can change her mind. "Not like you've never seen anybody snog before."
"I know, done enough of it, but it's such a human thing. You think it's universal but it really isn't. It's an expression of passion unique to your biology - only a human could have invented snogging. All those nerve-endings in your lips, your tongue. Human wants to understand something, what do they do? Try to put it in their mouths, including if that thing is another person."
"Can I not come down from an adventure-high without you getting weird. Just for once. Besides you lick things and stick 'em in your mouth all the time, Time Lord."
"Well, I'm very human-socialised. And have a superior sense of taste. And I deliberately practice."
"If this is leading up to anything, the short answer is no, and the long answer is nooooo..." He holds the sound until his breath runs out, and the Doctor politely applauds.
"How do Time Lords 'express their passion' then?" Lee asks, wiggling his eyebrows. Hey, he's ruled out kissing-practice, not flirting-practice.
"Oh. Well, procreation is more of a genetic-soup based affair, and unnecessary physical contact frowned upon, so it's a bit more 'leave them a well-worded note to express how well they filed Form A3019'. I think. That's probably it. I didn't get out much."
"Must've been weird being among your own species - them essentially Vogons and you a handsy snogging-enthusiast." The Doctor looks like she wants to correct him, but then shrugs and downs the rest of her coffee.
"Pretty much."
"So, are you like a Time Lord Tarzan to them?"
"I guess. Except my Janes are gorillas. Or tigers, or pythons."
The Doctor's gaze alights on the couple again, and this time - despite burning with second-hand embarrassment - he leaves her to it, and tries to focus on his remaining tea instead.
So he's travelling with an alien with a human fetish. Could be worse.
'Or tigers, or pythons'. That was the important part of that exchange, and he completely skimmed over it.
'Cus it's not just humans. Of course it isn't. That would be too simple.
Lee's starting to get why the Time Lords thought the Doctor was some kind of deviant. Not that he's casting stones. He's wanked to weird stuff and felt a bit 'what the fuck was that' afterwards - that's a fairly normal experience from what the internet tells him, nothing odd about her having it too.
The only difference is, this isn't a theoretical tentacle monster. This is an actual tentacle monster.
In her defence, it doesn't appear to be the hentai-appendages themselves the Doctor seems enthralled by, but rather their randomly jutting fangs. And eyes.
She has a blush stained high on her cheeks and forehead, curling down her neck, her pupils blown so wide they're reflecting its scattered luminescent scales like stars, her mouth slightly open as if she's having to fight not to lick its teeth.
Lee on the other hand, is the opposite of aroused. Which for anyone interested, would be the feeling of trying to keep yourself from both throwing up and violently shitting yourself at the same time.
"Well, hello..." It's such a simple word, but she draws it out into a wealth of promises. A million eyes blink in a wave that cascades around its body and back again.
"If you can't reason with it you can't flirt with it!" He gabbles. Screams. Somethings.
It keens in what's less a noise, and more the sensation of having a coded foreign language encyclopedia of erotica rammed unlubed into his ear canal.
The Doctor purrs a stream of circles and lines at it, and its tentacles start rolling, dividing, weaving through each other.
"Don't fuck it!" Lee somethings desperately.
"I wouldn't know where to begin..." The Doctor replies, in a way that sounds distinctly like she's going to give it her best shot though.
Lee's not sure what sexuality this is, but he's betting the flag is a hazard-yellow triangle on black, emblazoned with two freshly torn out hearts.
The horror gurgles from a mouth that doesn't exist, the ground melts and reforms, and every star in the sky fades out and back in. The Doctor tells it to do it again.
"What would the TARDIS think?!" He yells in a last ditch attempt at - well definitely not sanity, but whatever the next level down is from the existential scream his life has become.
It does seem to give the Doctor pause. She bites on her knuckle, conflicted.
"You're already in a relationship with one eldritch abomination, what if they don't like each other? What if it's carrying something and you pass it on to the TARDIS? Or vice versa? What if they want to fuck each other and we're stranded here and you're stuck watching them them writhing and climaxing like supernovas to the sounds of the universe blowing to bits around us- THAT IS NOT A GOOD THING!"
The Doctor's moaning around the finger in her mouth and looking between the TARDIS and the squirming mass of terror. Tentacles start sliding towards her, fangs gouging the earth and strings of eyes winking at her.
Lee tries to call a warning, but his voice is apparently done now, and all that comes out is a croaky, "Ech." He's not entirely sure when he ended up on the floor, but if those things start coming towards him, his current plan is to curl up tight enough to form a singularity and hide in the space between electrons.
The Doctor slinks between the sliding limbs, keeping her hands to herself, her motion something between dancing and stalking, learning their rhythm and staying just out of their reach while she thinks. She looks torn, calculating, hypnotised, or hypnotising - he's not sure who's in control here. It certainly isn't him.
One tentacle deviates from the rest, crossing in front of her to block her step. It hangs in front of her eyes, undulating, while its end curls back behind itself. The iridescent skin bulges, and a gleaming tooth pierces it, the rest of the tip slipping wetly through the wound in a rush. A glistening eyeball hovers in front of her lips. The Doctor groans and he wonders if she can see her debauched reflection in its fathomless pupil.
Lee rolls onto his knees and vomits.
The Doctor raises her hand, fingers tucked into a fist and skims her knuckles against the pearlescent fang like a gentle, slow-motion punch. She stops just shy of the clear, viscous ooze that seeps from the soft flesh at its base. A pink streak marks the tooth, following the path of her fist. He watches her lick the blood like honey from her grazed knuckles.
With a liquid swirl of colour its limbs take on a distinct shade of deep red and black, as if enticing her to taste them too.
The Doctor steps forward.
In one motion the whole thing heaves like a tide. A deep evolutionary memory informs him he is about to be swallowed alive, and he screams into the black.
The world slowly loads into existence, starting from the pain in his lower back and unfolding outwards. Lee finds himself in one of the TARDIS chairs, and is fairly certain he was just dropped in it.
Rather than the usual faffing about for five minutes, the Doctor brusquely jabs two buttons on the console and pulls a lever. The engine breathes into life.
"That'll do. You're fine - no shock, drink liquids, I'm just going to go-" Thankfully he doesn't hear what she says as she hastens into the corridor without looking at him. Not that he can't guess. Obviously going to go do her taxes.
Lee leans forward and runs his hands down his face. His mouth tastes disgusting.
"Any chance of a pick-me-up, ma'am?" He mumbles into his hands, knowing the TARDIS is reading his thoughts anyway. Closing his eyes and reopening them nets him nothing. The old-fashioned way it is then, he thinks, getting to his feet with a groan. Must be something in this ship that can bleach the memory right out of a brain. If it doesn't do it itself naturally, that is. He's fairly certain the human mind isn't capable of holding onto what he just experienced, just like he can't remember the pain of the Doctor's life-saving injection, or getting his arm broken and re-set when he was ten.
Lee peers left and right down the corridors.
"A medicine cabinet? One of those Men In Black flashy things? A distillery? At least tell me which way's opposite to the way she went."
The TARDIS remains silent. Clearly she's got better things to do.
People to do.
The lights start to flicker and he tries very determinedly not to think about what that might mean, choosing instead to synchronise his blinks to the power-outs to pretend they're not happening.
So he's travelling with an alien with a monster fetish. And a human fetish. A generally-non-Time-Lord fetish.
Oh god, she's an alien with an alien fetish.
But at least when it comes down to the wire, he now knows she'll choose saving him over fucking the unfathomable creature of the dark abyss.
So it's definitely bad, but still, could be worse.