Author’s Note: After Doomsday I decided you all need cheering up. So I’m back with another Snarky!TARDIS fic! For Jillybean's love affair with snarky!TARDIS, Sparks' encouragement, Hedgewytch's giggling and everyone who’s read this series!

New Doctor - I couldn't think of anything else to write using Nine and Jack. Probably now I've used Ten I'll have lots of Nine plotbunnies...

This may have been done hundreds of times...but who can resist?

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ORAL FIXATION

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The new Doctor had some sort of oral fixation, Rose concluded. He was like a child. Anything that could be put into his mouth was, and every so often he’d absently suck on something that really shouldn’t be chewed, such as his sonic screwdriver. He didn’t know he was doing it most of the time, so Rose would usually have to retrieve the object before he did any serious damage to it.

She’d first noticed it just after his regeneration. He’d been very quiet and thoughtful, trying to access memories that had been pushed to his subconscious for protection whilst his body went through the changes. She’d come across him eating something, chewing on his fingers or even the arms of his glasses. Once she’d caught him with his hand in a marmalade jar, scooping the contents out and into his mouth. It would have been all right had it not been in front of the woman who owned the marmalade jar, and in her house.

Now he’d discovered lollipops. She supposed it was better than something that could be dented or scratched (or even broken, knowing him), but it was still very distracting. Lollipops required a certain amount of sucking and licking, and after she’d seen his tongue flicking out over the surface of the current favourite a few times she’d growled in frustration and left the room.

The next time she’d seen him with the stick poking out of his mouth as he rolled it from side to side, deep in thought, she’d confronted him about it.

“Do you have to do that?”

“Do what?”

“Do whatever it is you’re doing with that lolly!”

He’d feigned innocence, declaring he had no idea what she was on about. “It helps me think. If you want the TARDIS to be fixed in time for you to get home for your Mum’s birthday, then just let me carry on!”

She’d rolled her eyes at him, and that had been the end of the conversation. She’d tried again a couple of times after that but he always declared he needed it to help him think.

---

And he was doing it again. They were sitting in the control room of the TARDIS, Rose reading a book comfortably settled on the ‘sofa’ type piece of furniture and the Doctor sitting on the floor, legs braced against the console as he sucked at another lolly. He’d lick it thoughtfully, then sit and contemplate the uneven surface for a moment, before putting it back in his mouth for another suck. To Rose, who had read the same sentence about fifteen times because of his unavoidable distraction, it was all very serious. She didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone think so much about eating a lollipop before.

Every so often her mind would wander, but she quickly reined it in, not wanting to think of the other connotations of his fixation. TARDIS could sense the discomfort he was causing due to his obsession with the Earth sweets, and she had hidden his stash a few times, but he’d just go out and buy some more.

Rose was getting exceedingly fed up of this habit, and TARDIS agreed with her. The times that he’d tried to fix her with one of the sweets in his mouth, she’d had her innards poked with the end of the stick and even had one dropped into her, leaving a sticky mess on her wires. She’d refused to move until he’d cleared it up (much to Rose’s amusement) and then had proceeded to take much delight in transporting them to the nearest muddy planet, where the Doctor had been ejected out the door and straight into a mosquito-infested, smelly swamp. When TARDIS had thought he’d learned his lesson, she had allowed him back in but would not let him anywhere except the showers, where he’d stayed for the next few hours, cleaning the muck off him and tending to his mosquito bites. Revenge was sweet with TARDIS on your side.

But that had not deterred him, and a few weeks later he’d been back on Earth buying a new box of lollipops (his last stash had mysteriously disappeared).

So TARDIS was forming a new plan. If she and Rose couldn’t stop this annoying habit of his, then they’d give him something to think about.

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The Doctor wandered down the corridor to the control room, confused. He’d just bought a box of lollies and now he’d lost them. He usually hid them somewhere so Rose couldn’t find them, but this time he’d obviously hidden them so well he couldn’t remember where he’d put them himself.

He strolled over to the console and brought up TARDIS’s locator device. He’d found many a lost item with this device; even retrieving things from his past incarnations, including a dwindling stash of very old jelly-babies and a brightly coloured scarf that was twice as long as he was tall.

Tapping the screen lightly, he attempted to search for the lollipops but each try yielded no results. Either they were no longer on the ship or TARDIS was just refusing to tell him where they were. Sighing, he flopped back onto the ‘sofa’ seat, pulled out his glasses and started chewing on one of the arms.

As he sat pensively, he missed Rose’s light footsteps announcing her presence in the room, and didn’t feel her sit next to him until a few minutes later when he became aware of a slight noise. Turning his head, he realised Rose was curled by his side, nose buried in a book, and a lolly stick poking out her mouth. His eyes widened as he took in this sight, and Rose, feeling his gaze on her, glanced up long enough to rake her eyes over his face, down to the mangled arm of his glasses still half in his mouth and back up to his eyes again before looking back down at her book. Neither of them spoke, and even TARDIS was unusually quiet, almost as if she were holding her breath.

Never mind that Rose had a lolly. He could just go back to Earth and get some more whenever he felt like it. Well, TARDIS allowing. So he sat back and fell into thought again, his glasses serving as a suitable substitution for the sweet currently being savoured by Rose.

A few minutes later though, the noise started again. He turned his head slightly to see Rose’s tongue snaking out and licking the surface of the lolly repeatedly. He eyed the dark red ball of sugar, glinting in the light from TARDIS, licked his lips, then shook his head and stared at one of the columns. His teeth tightened ever so slightly on his glasses, leaving a dent, and he attempted to ignore her. But the noise continued, and every so often he’d let out his breath with a whoosh.

“Can I just –”

“No.”

Well, that was it then. He’d have to go somewhere else, away from Rose and her lolly-taunting tactics. But as soon as the thought had formed, he heard the distinctive sound of the doors being shut and locked by TARDIS. There was no escape. Obviously TARDIS and Rose were in it together, so he had to find a way either to ignore them for the duration of the lolly’s existence or attempt an escape.

Getting up, he paced the floor, tapped on the console and tried to find something that he could concentrate on. He would usually have his head half-inside the console trying to fix it, but today nothing seemed to be wrong, and when he did try to open a panel it refused to budge. TARDIS was obviously not going to be a source of distraction for him.

After a few laps of the room, there was a series of cracks, and a grunt of frustration from Rose as she crunched the last of the lolly. The Doctor smiled triumphantly, turning to announce his victory over her plan, but stopped short when he realised she was unwrapping a new lolly. Slowly. The wrapper discarded, she popped it into her mouth, rolled it round a couple of times as if to test it, then smiled and settled back down. Feeling his gaze on her once more, she looked up and grinned at him.

“Mmm. Cherry.”

Then she concentrated back on her book.

---

He could take it no more. This was the third lolly she’d taunted him with, and never mind what it was doing to her teeth, it was pushing him to the limits of his patience. He never realised what it was doing to her temperament when he sucked thoughtfully on a lollipop, but now he knew and it was very unfair the way she and TARDIS had decided to show him.

Suddenly, Rose’s teeth cracked lightly on the edge of the lolly, and the Doctor’s teeth gritted so hard on his glasses that the arm snapped, along with his patience. He threw the broken spectacles on the floor and launched himself at Rose, determined to steal the sweet. She squealed and tried to get up and away from him, but he was on top of her before she could move very far. Limbs flailed, hands grabbed, and Rose’s giggles mixed with the Doctor’s grunts as a stray foot caught him in the stomach.

“Give – the – lolly – to – me...” he managed, and tickled Rose’s side, gaining another high-pitched squeak.

“Not until you’ve learned your lesson!” she laughed breathlessly, wriggling away from his relentless fingers. The wrestling continued for a few more minutes, until TARDIS decided there would be no conclusion and became fed up with the two of them. There was a clanking noise, and the Doctor and Rose paused in the middle of their skirmish to watch a panel in the ceiling (which the Doctor later swore had never been there before) open and dump hundreds of lollies on top of them. They rolled to the floor, covered in the still-wrapped sweets, Rose hiccupping with laughter.

Dazed, the Doctor sat up, picking lollies out of his clothes and watched Rose shake out a few that had worked their way down her top.

So that was where TARDIS had hidden his stash.

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Author’s Note: I want a lolly now.