FICLET: Freedom and Wonder ~ Doctor Who/Harry Potter ~ Doctor 10/Harry ~ General

[batsutousai]

Title: Freedom and Wonder
Fandom: Doctor Who/Harry Potter
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: General
Pairing: Doctor 10/Harry Potter
Summary: The Doctor and Harry stop for a coffee break on an alien space station. (Or, well, as close to coffee as they can find.)

A/N: Every winter season, I send out cards to anyone willing to give me their address, and I decided three winters ago to start adding fic to the cards. This year's prompt was coffeeshop.

The idea for this ficlet is what led to me picking the coffeeshop prompt.

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"You've brought me to a coffee shop," Harry said in as unimpressed a tone as he could manage.

"An alien coffee shop!" the Doctor insisted, motioning towards where the barista, who had four tentacle arms, was manipulating what was probably the most complicated coffee machine Harry had ever watched someone struggle with. Not that he'd watched a great many baristas in his time, but he was fairly certain most machines only required two hands to operate.

Handling the money transactions was a humanoid who looked a little like a very thin bear, and another tentacled alien was washing used dishes in some sort of neon blue liquid. There had to be someone working beyond the little pass-window, too, because food would appear to be handed off to customers, but Harry had yet to see any sort of appendages on the other side of the window.

The clientele, like the employees, were an eclectic array that would never be found on earth, no matter how welcoming the city. Somewhat unsurprisingly, given how many of them Harry had noticed since they'd left the TARDIS, the tentacled aliens made up most of the customers, but there were three other aliens seated around the shop with food or drinks, including one that looked to be the same species as the money tender, though Harry had learnt early on not to assume similar aliens were the same race.

In the Doctor's defence, it was a pretty cool place, not quite like any of the other alien wonders he'd dragged Harry to see over the years. But, well, Harry had challenged him to amaze him, and he couldn't very well make it easy for the Doctor. So he said, "If I wanted coffee, I'd go home; Hermione absolutely swears by a muggle shop just 'round the block from the Ministry's visitor entrance."

The Doctor shook his head, rather clearly amused, and caught Harry's hand to pull him along, up to the counter. "We'd like two zetflang, strong for me, mild for my companion, and a basket of biscuits to share."

"Any specific biscuits?" the bear-like alien asked, a slight hint of a growl to his voice.

"Surprise us!" the Doctor said, handing over some of the credits he'd found hidden in the very back of one of the kitchen cabinets the day before. They had, so far as Harry could tell, been his inspiration for this particular trip.

"What," Harry asked as they moved over to the pickup station, "are zet– No, I'm not going to bungle that for your amusement," he decided when the Doctor ducked his head in that way he had that Harry had determined meant he was trying very hard not to show he was laughing inside at Harry mangling yet another word that the TARDIS didn't translate into English.

"Alien coffee, of course," the Doctor explained.

"Right." Harry nodded like that made sense, even though it...really kind of didn't. "Why am I getting a mild one?"

The Doctor considered him, looking a bit like he was debating whether to answer truthfully or crack a joke. "I'm not completely certain how your biology will handle it," he finally said.

Harry was a bit tempted to ask for more information, but the tentacled barista waved their drinks and the basket of oddly-shaped biscuit-like things at them, and Harry stepped forward to help the Doctor carry everything to an empty table.

"Just a slow sip, at first," the Doctor cautioned as he handed Harry one of the cups. "Also, it is a bit hot, but cooler than you'd expect coffee to be."

"Why?" Harry asked, eyeing the drink a bit uncertainly. "Is it cooler, I mean?"

"Some species don't enjoy burning away their taste buds at the first sip," was the Doctor's dry response, and Harry suspected there was a story there.

Rather than chasing after a story he'd hear (or not) when the Doctor was ready, Harry took a careful sip of his alien coffee. A sense of euphoria filled him, not unlike flying, and he closed his eyes to better enjoy it, though it didn't last long.

"Not a bad reaction, then," he heard the Doctor say as he went in for another, much fuller mouthful.

It was around his third proper mouthful that Harry realised how addictive and potentially dangerous the drink was, and he set it down with a bit of regret and picked out a biscuit instead. "How is that not a controlled substance?" he muttered before biting into the biscuit. Not quite shortbread, but close enough in taste and texture that Harry could imagine it was.

"It doesn't affect all species the same, doesn't even always affect all members of a single species quite the same, though there's usually an underlying theme," the Doctor explained with a shrug. "It heightens a strong emotion, sometimes good, sometimes not. And you do develop a tolerance for it, not unlike caffeine or alcohol."

Harry considered that for a moment. And, while it felt a little like asking what someone saw in the Mirror of Erised, he had to ask, "What's it for you?"

The Doctor quirked one of his little sideways smiles. "Wonder."

Somehow, that seemed to fit what Harry knew of the Doctor and his otherwise extinct race. "Freedom," he offered of his own drink, because after experiencing it a bit, he was pretty sure it was more specifically that, than just joy.

The Doctor held out his cup. "To our much happier biologys," he said.

Laughing, Harry picked up his own cup and clinked it against the Doctor's, then took another drink.

Not that either of them really needed the drink, Harry considered as he picked out another biscuit to wash down the addictive taste, not when they were so very capable of providing wonder and freedom for each other.

Still, there was something to be said for sitting together in a coffee shop and feeling like they were out having another adventure, and the Doctor's grin as he started telling Harry about some of the aliens around them, said he felt rather the same.

.