multiple recs, tenth doctor
Organized by ep they come after/have spoilers for. All are Ten'n'Martha, varying from gen to shippy.

Smith & Jones

UST, by calapine.
PG. Like star-crossed lovers. Only not.
"Now first things first: wardrobe."

"Something wrong with my clothes?" asked Martha.

"Well, you can't go out in that little..." He realised that in-between the pointing finger and eyebrow movement, he was staring somewhere significantly lower than her eyes. "You can't go out like that," he said as he turned away to look very intently at the console. "It'll probably be cold or raining or volcanic."

"Volcanic?"

"Yeah...we probably shouldn't go outside if it's volcanic."


A Planet Near Arcturus, by nostalgia_lj.
R. If he doesn't intend to keep her then there's nothing to stop him sleeping with her.
"So," she says, stretching on that bed that isn't hers and never will be, "Earth girls are easy?"

Oh, they're not. They're terrifyingly complex and their emotions are enough to confuse even a man who had to negotiate his way through the labyrinthine courtships of Gallifrey (no, don't think about her, don't think about any of them) and who won a game of postal chess against an unbeaten planet-sized AI (that's better).

So, "Yeah, a bit."

Martha doesn't mind one bit, because he hasn't yet taught her to expect too much. He is careful not to make a promise when he kisses her (don't make one to her either), because she isn't staying and is mere nerve-endings.



Remorse for Any Death, by doyle_sb4.
G. One last kiss.
It’s sad and it’s terrifying and wonderful every time, that moment when he feels his cells pass the point of no return, that feeling like sliding into sleep and the knowledge that this is the last time he’ll be seeing through these eyes.

And the very last thing he sees is always different. The Earth sky. Gallifrey turning to ash. People he’s loved and left behind.

This time it’s Martha Jones.


Five Times After Goodbye, by misscam.
PG-13. Twenty years after she said one goodbye, she wonders if this is a second.
There is no mistaking the sound of the TARDIS - ancient, timeless, sounding a little bit like someone forgot to oil it. Even so, Martha is rather convinced she is hearing things - right up until the TARDIS materializes in her living room and the Doctor steps out, smiling at her as if they only saw each other yesterday.

Then again, for him twenty years might be yesterday.

"Martha Jones!" he beams. "I was... Hang on, did you redecorate? Blimey, you are fast. Thought about entering the Universe Games? You might get a bronze. Well, if you lose your affinity for green."

She stares at him and he stares back for a moment, eyes very brown, browner than she remembers.

"I haven't been gone five minutes while you tried to calm your mum," he says after a moment.


The Shakespeare Code

Breathing Space, by calapine.
G. Martha blows the candle out, but the Doctor's still awake.

"I've been rude, haven't I?"

The Doctor stole a sideways look at Martha, able to see her really quite well in the darkness, but she hadn't moved. He couldn't see her face, but guessed from her breathing that she was still very much awake.

"Rose," he said, "Rose would have told me I was being rude. And she'd have told me to apologise." Martha still didn't move, and her breathing hadn't changed. Maybe she was asleep after all. "I'm sorry, Martha."


Gridlock

Second Invitation, by parrotfish.
G. Twice in one day. However obliquely, Martha knew that the Doctor had invited her twice.
’Does the Tardis end?’ is not a simple question?”

“Well, no. It depends what you mean by ‘end.” If you mean, ‘At any given point in time and space, does the Tardis occupy the universe in its entirety?’ then the answer is, ‘No.’ But if you mean, ‘Does the Tardis encompass infinite possibilities the execution of which can result in the presentation of infinite simultaneous manifestations relative to known configurations of existence?’ the answer is, ‘Yes.’”

“What the hell does that mean?”

The Doctor grinned, looking truly relaxed for the first time in hours. “It means it’s bigger on the inside.”


The Long Road to Nowhere, by calapine.
G. Glimpses of the past (or Martha finds out stuff about the Doctor's deep Time Lord emo.)
"One of your people?" asked Martha.

The Doctor nodded.

"What happened to her?"

Martha couldn't see what had changed, but suddenly the Doctor was standing there, framed in white, his eyes bright as they fixed on hers, and she felt like she had noticed the precipice far, far too late. Martha held her breath, and found she couldn't look away.

"She fought the war," he said, "and the war won."


Nothing But Flowers, by violetisblue.
NC-17. There's flowers, sex and breakfast in bed, but the honeymoon's still over.
"Look, just say you're not answering, that I'm a horrible rude bint and I don't get any more sweets--"

"I didn't say I wasn't answering, just didn't know the question was tormenting you so." He cocked an eyebrow at her, hair fanning straight up from his scalp like a featherdress. "I mean, I must have sex, right? What's the alternative?"

"How about asexual reproduction, just for starters? Parthenogenesis. Gemmules. Cell regeneration, there's a obvious guess--"

"Darling wee itsy-bitsy time-babies woven on great big clackety-clacking looms--"


Placebo, by iamsab.
PG? (no author rating.) Ten and Martha after the conversation at the end of Gridlock.
The Doctor looks away. “So!” he leaps to his feet. “To space and time we go?”

“Not yet,” says Martha, but she stands. What she knows about him is that he’s angry, terribly angry and almost as lonely. That Rose was a palliative but not a cure, and that she, Martha, didn’t sign on as his doctor to heal his lonely soul. Goddamned broken men, always ruin the best girls, Martha thinks. None of us can resist the urge to fix ‘em.


Inevitable, by chicklet73.
G. The Doctor is absolutely positively sure that it's time for Martha to go home. Immediately. Maybe. One trip, one story, one pair of platform shoes. Will he be snookered again?

If she did fancy him, it was really all her own fault (and reason number six million and two that they needed to part ways, pronto). It’s not as if he was encouraging it at all. Not in the least. Not once in the short time they’d known each other; not since the moment they met in the hosp--

Something occured to him and he abruptly turned, grinned at his reflection, and winked.

Oh.

That was rather endearing. Charming, even.


The Lazarus Experiment

Our Lack of Social Skills, by zauberer_sirin.
R. The pretty clothes made them do it.
“This started because…” he murmurs. She takes his hand and puts it behind her, on her back, her fingertips over her spine one two three as if counting vertebrae. “Oh, right,” a bit distracted, but kissing her again.

He feels soft and edgy, all bones under her touch –she wonders if Time Lords need to shave, how it´s the hair growth in his species; she catches herself wondering about the colour and taste and feel of his blood when she bites his lower lip a bit too much - hey -sorry -no, it´s fun and he bites back, softer.

She has to admit it: there will always be a (great) part of microscope-curiosity in her desire for him.


42

Closer to Fine, by Etherati.
PG. The Doctor is very good at pretending that he’s fine, but he’s running on fumes, and hiding in the shadows is no way to replenish your light.
It had started with the ice skating, the frozen-blue mineral lakes. No monsters, no crazy experiments or ancient enemies or great threats to the fabric of the universe, thankfully, but that planet was freezing — not intolerably so, but definitely enough to chill her to shaking.

And she’d skated, and he’d made an attempt, and he’d tried to keep the smiling mask in place. It had slipped here and there. Not enough to see what was underneath it; just enough to see that something was there, writhing and hurting and white-hot. The happiness had only been genuine for a moment, when they were tired and red-faced from the wind and wobbling from too long spent in the awkward skates and he’d let himself fall into a nearby snowdrift, sending a great puff of blue powder up around himself. He grinned at the night sky as the flakes fell and caught on his eyelashes, frosting his pale skin, and he’d laughed, and she’d laughed, and for just a second, everything had been all right again.


Contact, by chicklet73.
G. This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship. Or, at least, a cup of warm milk.
She came over to sit beside him. “Are you OK? I thought I heard you shouting...”

“Ah. Well. Yes. I was just working on a bit of problem-solving, tweaking some of the TARDIS software, and we had a bit of what you could call a ‘critical error’ but I was calling it something more colorful and maybe tapping the console gently with a mallet and then I hit my own finger in the process and might have raised my voice about that which is probably what you heard and I hope you don’t mind that we might not have any hot water for your next three showers and actually, I’m lying. I couldn’t sleep. Well, I could sleep. I did sleep. Had a rather unpleasant dream.” He took a deep breath, unsure of exactly how that had slipped out but relatively sure it was Martha’s fault. The girl was like truth serum in cute boots (or food-festooned sleepwear, for that matter).


The Wind's Will, by eve11.
G. On Kurhan, the Doctor learns that neither he nor Martha are very good skaters.

"I was sure I was better at this, once," the Doctor says, staring up at the black, star-specked sky.

Really, he doesn't mind the fall. This expanse of cold, entropic space at his back is just what he needs. Sky above, sky below; the mineral ice is clear as glass. The only break is from the distant bluish snowdrifts, winds hollowing out the space underneath the tips until they look like waves about to break. And if he closes his eyes...

Rage. Burning, screaming--

"--long has it been?"


Human Nature

Huntsman, by lizbee.
PG-13. "A passing huntsman heard Red Riding Hood's cries..." Martha knows where fairy tales come from. She just never expected to be part of one.
It was the same dream, every night. Why had she only realised that now? Because she was traveling through time and space with an alien, and that wasn't exactly a lifestyle conducive to long, introspective conversations about dreams.

The same dream, about a corridor and a door. Where had she seen that before? It was so vivid, like something from her childhood. She used to have recurring dreams about swimming pools. A corridor and a door and a secret on the other side---

She shot to the surface. "Bloody Harry Potter," she said.

It was nothing at all, she'd just been plagiarising Jo Rowling in her dreams.

It didn't mean anything.

She submerged again.

The water was getting cold.


The Future in Sepia, by lizbee.
PG-13. Martha has seen the future, a sepia picture of mud, death and wire.
Martha has seen the future, a sepia picture of mud, death and wire. It horrified her when she was little, an old-fashioned vision of Hell. It horrifies her now, bacteria in trench mud eating away at feet, lungs consumed by mustard gas, a generation of men crushed by a machine they couldn't understand.

But she's starting to get used to the idea.


Family of Blood

Oversight, by fyrdrakken.
PG-13. It was simply untrue that he'd never considered the possibility that "John Smith" might fall in love.
It honestly never occurred to him that if he fell in love as a human it wouldn't be with Martha.

And there was something so safe about letting Martha Jones and John Smith work things out for themselves. Because they both knew it wasn't really him, not the Doctor -- it was a safe normal human. If Martha stopped being interested, or they managed to completely cock things up between them, then all she had to do was open the watch and undo it all. He'd go back to being the Doctor, and they could both pretend John Smith had never happened.

And if things went well...

There was no hurry on opening the watch, really.

Of course the universe needed the last Time Lord.

But he could take a little sabbatical.


Blink

And Jelly Babies, by gnimaerd.
PG. A little snippet of domestic life as the sole breadwinner in a house with a hungry doctor to support.
“Oh, brilliant,” he grins, examining his handful, “lovely – green ones. I like green ones. Do you like green ones? I’ve got red in here as well, you know, they’re always good. And yellow. And black – yuck. I don’t like black. I used to, but not anymore. But the green ones are good. Do you want a green one?”

“No, Doctor,” she can’t help but feel fonder of him than she should. She wants to ruffle his hair, all of a sudden, as he rests one elbow on the counter and selects a green jelly baby from the pile to proffer to her.

“Sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“Your loss,” he bites off its head and continues to grin at her as he chews.



Implied Big Bad Spoilers

The Game of Making, by ionlylurkhere.
R. Martha discovers what the Doctor really likes.
Here is how the game is played:

She tells him an early memory, a formative experience. He explains to her how he could manipulate it to change her personality.

They both become excited.

At the crucial moment, he asks "Are you sure this is what you want?"

And she says "Make me, Time Lord."