Angelic Paranoia

"It must be the Master," the Doctor proclaimed. "He always did have a penchant for covering people in cake." He licked the back of his hand, where a trail of crumbs was attached with icing. "It's very good chocolate cake. Your best yet, I would say."

"Doctor, would you please stop doing that."

"Hmm?" He looked up, licking his lips and then back down. "Oh, sorry." In his enthusiasm he'd gone from licking his hand to licking Evelyn's. They were handcuffed together and chained to the wall, and it meant her right hand was very close to his left.

"Why aren't you more concerned?" she asked. "Here we are, chained up, covered in cake and I'm only in my cardigan. What sort of a person does that?"

"An insane one." The Doctor was avoiding looking at Evelyn. He just wasn't used to seeing quite so much of her, even though she was sitting curled up. It still didn't leave much to the imagination and he had a particularly good imagination.

At least the Master, or whoever had done this, had left him his coat and it was big enough to cover most of him. That he couldn't button it any more was beside the point. "All we have to do to escape is to use the buttercream icing as a lubricant to get us out of these chains. Unless you..." He looked up hopefully at Evelyn. Her refusal to make cake for an anonymous kidnapper was the reason they'd ended up in this position.

"Absolutely not," she replied. "Not after what he did to the last one."

"It is rather a waste of cake." He gave a wistful sigh at the amount of cake smeared around the cell, out of reach. At least it was while Evelyn was refusing to move off the bench they were both sat on. Only a maniac would waste cake when told he couldn't have any.

Since he was busy applying buttercream to his wrist, he missed Evelyn's eye roll. "I don't think you're taking this seriously."

He could only grunt a query, as he tried to pull the handcuff over his wrist. His hand was too big, but he'd rather die than admit it.

She sighed. "Honestly, if I wait for you to rescue me I'll wait all day." She stood up, unapologetically pulling on their shared handcuffs, and strode over to the wall. "Come here and pull on this." She got hold of the chain and looked over her shoulder at him.

Not that he really had a choice about following her. "It won't work, you know." But he did as she asked, just to humour her. Except with one pull, the chain detached itself from the wall. "Oh." He held it up and leaned down for a closer look at the wall. "How did you know it wasn't very secure?"

"There are mice." She gestured at the corner, where a brown mouse was sitting eating a cake crumb.

"Oh, well spotted." He grinned at her, but she put her hands on her hips. He frowned. "You don't want to get out of here before we're discovered?"

"I want an apology."

He thought back through their conversation, trying to think of what he could have said to upset her. "I don't know what for. I don't remember saying anything terrible and I have an excellent memory."

She shook her head. "Aren't you at all concerned about what happened to our clothes? Or how exactly the cake ended up all over us and this cell?"

"Well, maybe a little," he admitted. "But do you think we could have this conversation when we're back in the TARDIS and, well, dressed?"

"Fine." She still didn't look happy about it, though.

"I'll give you my coat." She did look cold, based on the parts of her he was prepared to look at, and he didn't want her to freeze. "It's a little cakey, but it'll cover you better than your cardigan."

She did looked appeased at the gesture and pulled his now-inside out coat around herself. Frankly, he was glad. There was something not quite right about seeing his companion - any of his companions - half-naked. Of course it meant he was now completely naked, but since he was a fine figure of a man, it didn't matter.

Of course escape wasn't that simple. The Master had forgotten to lock the cell door and for once, the TARDIS was where they'd left it, but...

"It's covered in cake!" The Doctor stopped and stared, horrified at the sight of the something yellow dripping down from the roof of the police box.

Evelyn stopped beside him. "It's not one of mine. It looks like lemon drizzle."

And Evelyn didn't make lemon drizzle cake. At least not for as long as he'd known her. Which even he was prepared to admit was only for a fairly short period of her life. For all he knew she used to make mountains of lemon drizzle cake, before discovering her future was in chocolate cake.

"It's even in the lock." Something he discovered when he tried to turn the key and pulled it back out to find it was covered in cake.

"Maybe you could eat that too."

He shook his head. "Can't abide lemon drizzle cake."

Evelyn rolled her eyes and used the cuff of his coat to wipe the cake away from the keyhole. When she attempted to do the same for the key he objected.

"That's my coat!" Even though it already had cake on it. But that had been Evelyn's chocolate cake and was therefore different.

She glared at him. "Well, either your coat can stay out here with us, or we can get a bit more cake on it and you can put another on once we're inside."

He sighed and relented.

Once they were in the cake-free console room, the Doctor flicked a few switches, taking them away from their prison. "Now for a bath and some clean clothes."

"Aren't you forgetting something?" Evelyn asked.

He frowned for a moment, until she waved her hand, jangling the handcuffs.

"Houdini taught me a thing or two about getting out of handcuffs. We just need a hairpin."

While he looked around the console to see if there was anything useful, Evelyn said, "Or a key?"

He paused to peer over his shoulder at her. "Which you happen to have?"

She shook her head. "No, but you have a cupboard full of them next to the wardrobe room. I've seen it. I got confused about which door it was," she explained.

He gave her his best smile. "Brilliant. One of the keys in there is bound to be the right size. It shouldn't take more than five or six hours to try them all." Evelyn's face fell and he patted her hand. "It could be worse. At least it's me you're handcuffed to."

She mumbled something that he pretended not to hear. After all, he was going to need her to bake more cake.

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