MADE OF WAX
Disclaimer: The BBC own the Doctor and Donna. All shops and brands mentioned are property of their respective...thingies. Bottom line is, I don't own anything.
Author's Note: I wrote this in response to a Doctor/Donna prompt. The prompt word was 'Lipstick.' It was a lovely Doctor n' Donna-shaped distraction from Philosophy revision. Reviews are welcome. They'll get me through my 'Religious Language' notes. :)
"Yeah, if you're over seventy-two," and going to the Knit and Natter Coffee Morning," Donna muttered to herself, wrinkling her nose at the tester of a sickeningly pink lipstick and shoving it back on its display shelf.
She rubbed at the stripe of colour that she'd drawn on the back of her hand, to test it, trying to get it off, but she succeeded only in smearing it into the other daubs of colour that covered her hand. There were shades of oily lipsticks; from a red so dark that it was almost black, to a transparent pearly shimmer, filling every available space from her baby finger to her wrist, so that it looked like she'd contracted some sort of nasty skin condition.
Testing lipstick was a messy business... but it had to be done.
She stood in front of the Maybelline make-up display, pulling a face at the freakishly beautiful, airbrushed models pouting up at her. She scanned the lipstick shelf, with the fancy, metallic lids, looking to see if there was one she hadn't tested yet. She picked one up, and turned it over to see what it was called: Psychedelic. Curious, she pulled off the lid and twisted it up…only to twist it back down and put it back almost immediately, as if it had burnt her. It was fluorescent fuchsia. Like something Toyah Wilcox might have worn in the 80's. Donna definitely couldn't carry it off; it was making her eye twitch, just looking at it.
She disregarded a trashy, jammy-red lipstick in a similar fashion, deciding that, if she wore that, she'd look like a dancer from one of Soho's dodgy clubs, and her mum would never speak to her again. Not that she took much pleasure from talking to her, anyway.
Brightening slightly, she seized upon a likely-looking tube. Raspberry Cream, it was called. Made her want an ice-cream sundae. She twisted it up, and examined it critically; it seemed all right. Not too tarty or sugary-sweet, and it'd probably go with her complexion. That was hard in itself; finding a lipstick that matched a fair complexion and freckles; didn't make her look too drained and ghoulish, but at the same time, didn't clash with her fiery hair. But where to test it? She'd run out of skin. Not one pigment more would be able to fit.
Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at two pre-adolescent girls, being silly over a Miss Sporty glitter-blue eye shadow, dressed far older than their ages; evidently trying to appear more grown-up and sophisticated than they actually were, and resisted the urge to roll her eyes at them and advise them that, if they bought it, they'd end up looking like a life-size version of those Bratz dolls that her niece was so fond of. Probably their intentions, if she thought about it.
Their giggling, excitable presence alerted her to the approach of a tall, thin man in a blue suit and long brown coat. He was looking round, eyes darting from aisles of shampoos, to hair-removal creams, and he looked very relieved when he spotted her.
"Donna!" he said urgently, upon reaching her at a quick stride. "We need-,"
Without waiting for him to finish, or even acknowledging his arrival, Donna grabbed the Doctor's hand in a business-like manner and drew a thick streak across the back of it in raspberry-coloured lipstick.
Dumbfounded and more than a little indignant, the Doctor tried to shake his hand out of her grasp, but she held on, persistently, her fingernails digging in to the thin skin of his inner-wrist.
"Oi! Keep still," she snapped at him impatiently, peering at the Doctor's hand, holding her own against it to compare the stripes of colour. "Yeah," she decided slowly. "Yeah, I think this one's ok."
The Doctor followed her to the till, shifting from foot to foot and bouncing on the balls of his feet, with all the jittery energy of a man who needed to be somewhere vitally important ten minutes ago, with a face like thunder.
"Donna, we really haven't got time…we need candles…" he implored her, nearly breathing down her neck as the cashier scanned the lipstick, twice keying in the wrong code, when the barcode wouldn't work.
"Candles?" repeated Donna, incredulously, as if he'd told her that they needed something completely obscure…like troll-blood or something. "What do we need candles for?" she hissed at him, as the woman finally put her lipstick and receipt in a small pink plastic bag and handed it over the counter. "Has the TARDIS-?"
The Doctor practically dragged her out of Superdrug, nearly banging in to the automatic door, their feet skidding on the linoleum floor, and out onto the busy High Street in Leicester, early September, 2002.
"That interroger-form that we've been tracking," he said to her in a low voice, pulling her to one side, away from the main body of shoppers. "It's allergic to wax-,"
"I know," replied Donna, calmly, but the Doctor didn't hear her.
"It acts as an enzyme inhibitor, in the same way as sedative works on a human-,"
"I know," tried Donna again, with a slight roll of her eyes, but he kept on babbling.
"Lob a tea-light at it, and it'd be out for the count faster than you plonking yourself in front of the scanner because the 2015 commemorative episode of the West Wing has started."
"You're kidding?" marveled Donna, her head snapping up, the bored-and-smug grin sliding off her face. She hadn't looked so delighted since he first agreed to let her come traveling with him. "They do another episode?"
"Oh, they do more than that just…you know?" frowned the Doctor, suddenly realising what Donna had said. Twice. He'd been extremely flippant, about to pull her in the direction of the nearest interior furnishings shop, squeezed between a Costas and the entrance to the small shopping centre, when her words had seeped through.
"What?" gabbled Donna, looking confused, still beaming like a little girl who has been presented with a gold star, at the prospect of the return of her beloved American drama. "Oh….oh right, yeah. I mean, I know it's allergic to wax."
She smiled at him, the corners of her mouth curling upwards, a mischievous yet kindly twinkle in her eyes that made her look the spitting image of her grandfather, in a 'I've-just-done-something-magnificent-and-you're-going-to-like-it,' sort of way that only Donna Noble knew how.
"This way, Spaceman," she told him, inclining her head in the direction of a narrow alley holding only industrial-sized bins, between Superdrug and Greggs and looping her arm through his.
He let her lead the way, a small yet unsure smile tugging at his lips. He felt a warmth of pride spread through him…the same pride he'd felt when she'd worked out the discrepancy with the ATMOS workers' sick days.
She'd been up to something, that Donna Noble. He didn't know what, but knew enough to trust her completely…and she was grinning away to herself like the cat who'd got the cream.
They stopped at the entrance to the alley and Donna nodded at a handsome, humanoid male lying slumped against the wall. The interroger-form. A few people had drifted towards the man, one of whom was crouched beside him, a mobile wedged between her ear and her shoulder, asking for an ambulance, one hand laid tentatively on the man's arm.
"I know it sounds ridiculous," they heard her say into her mobile, sounding quite irate. "But it's as if he's just nodded off…there doesn't seem to be anything physically wrong with him."
The Doctor gaped at the man, sure for a moment, that his eyes were playing tricks on him. He was dressed like any ordinary man; jeans, dark t-shirt, suede jacket and trainers. Slim. Dark blonde hair. Yet on his forehead…
His mouth and chin were smudged with pink residue, as if he'd been thoroughly kissed by someone wearing plumy-pink lipstick.
The same lipstick that had been used to write 'DOCTORDONNA' on his forehead in block capitals…
"There's wax in lipstick, you see," Donna informed him, with a gentle dig to his ribs, sounding quite self-satisfied.
"Donna…" said the Doctor, weakly.
Typical Doctor. He'd probably noticed everything on this crowded street, from the cracks in the walls beside the council-owned, large plant pots holding shrubbery in the middle of the concrete, to the young waitress having an argument with someone who was evidently her boyfriend, outside Pizza Hut, an almost-spent cigarette dangling from her hand.
Everything except the small detail that Donna had been wearing lipstick when he'd left her, three quarters of an hour ago, and now her lips were bare, with only faint traces of pink staining the creases.
Raising her eyebrows at the Doctor, she pulled out a plastic lipstick tube, from her jacket pocket, twisting it open to reveal that it had been worn nearly all the way down, as if it had been used like a board marker. "Why d'you think I was buying a new one?"
The Doctor sighed, looking at her, half impressed, half-exasperated as she veered to the left a bit, to drop a lipstick-marked tissue in the nearest bin. A tissue, that had evidently been used to wipe off smudged, untidy lipstick.
"Oh, don't look at me like that!" she huffed at him, like a teenager arguing with her parent, as she reached his side, her mouth set. " Two days you've had us running after him. It's because of that berk that I ended up in that sewagey stuff in the first place!" she insisted, obstinately, looking very fierce.
The Doctor seemed to consider this for a moment, before opening his mouth to argue over…technicalities, but Donna hit him on the arm.
"Cause and Effect," she reminded him, stubbornly.
The Doctor made a small noise, as if to say, 'Yes-all-right-if-that's-the-way-you-want-to-look-at-it,' and grinned. Widely.
They resumed walking, arm in arm, before the Doctor slowed down and looked at Donna, questioningly. "How did…?"
Donna sniffed and looked sideways at him, flicking a piece of hair out of her eyes. "Womanly wiles," she said at last, winking at him.
The Doctor chuckled at her and jostled her with his shoulder as the pair of them walked up the High Street, passing teenagers sharing packets of crisps, families, students, businessmen hurrying along with their mobiles glued to their ears, and Donna began to tell him exactly how she'd worked everything out.
Clever, brilliant woman.
"I've got this mate, Alesha, who works in Human Resources, and she did this thing about the ingredients in lipsticks…because if you think about it you're basically eating your lipstick, aren't you? And…"
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