thisisgallifrey:
Wow, thanks, mate! I’m pleased you liked that moment, and so flattered that you liked it enough to want to expand on it! If you feel like doing a drabble inspired by it, then sure, go right ahead. Just make sure you send me the link when you post it, yeah? ;D
“Doctor?”
Wait. Hold on. What. Did he actually just say that? Did that word just leave his mouth? He didn’t even… that REALLY wasn’t what he meant, really, he meant David, so he can’t have just said…
But David is looking at him with this huge grin slowly spreading over his face like the sun fucking beaming through clouds, so he must have said it.
Shit. He must be more exhausted than he thought, that cold midway through filming must have really done him in, he was still getting over it, so really he can be forgiven for a slip up like that…
“You called me Doctor,” and David still has that face-splitting smile, honestly, how can anyone have a smile that big? as he accepts the styrofoam cup of piss-poor coffee, couldn’t remember why he was even offering him any, except to be nice.
John offered a nervous smile in return, “Yeah, it seems I have,” and for a mad second he quirks his eyebrow at him, slipping into character, “what of it, Doctor?” What was he thinking?! Teasing David Tennant, the bloody fucking Doctor incarnate and he was his Master and oh he really didn’t want to think about those implications right now, not in this moment of personal conflict.
Dave, (oh Dave was it now, John? You really are tired, you should just go to bed and save yourself the embarrassment), just grinned wider though (how was that even possible?), “Aw, thanks, John,” he says as he takes a polite sip of the pathetically weak coffee. John is simultaneously grateful he doesn’t continue the ridiculous roleplay, and there’s a tiny, foreign, but not unpleasant, swell of pride when he says that, his name, just his name.
Until this point he’d been John Simm. John Simm, the great actor from Life on Mars (David’s words, not his), John Simm, his foil, John Simm, his scene partner. This was in part because John Barrowman was also on set and they had to keep them straight somehow, so Barrowman was Dave’s John. But now he was Dave’s John, John, his mate who hands him coffee, John, his mate who occasionally, teasingly, calls him ‘Doctor’, John, his mate who wasn’t totally averse to having his massive Doctor Who chin nuzzled against his face while he sobbed for the dead Master.
John found he liked the sound of that.