A touch of Telepaths

Faint whirring noises could be heard just outside on this cold dreary autumn night in Bon Temps, Louisiana. A curious blue box appeared just on the edge of the parking lot; not that anyone was outside to see it, and no one inside could hear the whirring over the music from the juke box. When the whirring box stopped with a final thump, one of the double-doors opened and a man peeked out. He was tall, in a brown pinstriped suit and long coat, his hair in wild spikes going in every direction. His hair was so messy and untamed, it looked like someone had given him hundreds of noogies. Maybe they had, he didn't look particularly happy at the moment. If anything, he looked extremely irritated.

"This is definitely not the Venusian Salt Flats," he said, seemingly to himself, in his silky smooth voice and British accent. "Where the hell have you brought me now?" he grumped, stepping out of the box and closing the door behind him. He took a moment to breath and look around. "The cars would suggest early twenty-first century," he muttered to himself. He turned in the direction of the music and chatter, now looking less irritated and more curious. "'Merlotte's Bar and Grill', huh?" he read the bright neon lit sign. "Using one's own name to title their small business, how original." He sighed. He patted his pockets and pulled out a wallet. It just had a blank sheet of paper in it but he fished around behind it and pulled out a black credit card. "That ought to do it!" He smirked and made his way through the parking lot, to go inside and have a look.

It was a busy night at Merlotte's, well as busy as it could get in such a small town on a tuesday night. Sookie Stackhouse was making her rounds, checking all of her tables and making sure everyone had what they needed. She liked working as a waitress in Merlotte's. She got to see, meet and chat with everyone and it was the best way to stay up to date on all the gossip and news in town. Having her disability helped that as well. So noisy they all were inside her head. Couldn't people keep their thoughts to themselves? Especially the perverts who kept ogling her bum and bossom. Such vivid imaginations men had sometimes while staring at a woman's chest. She just hoped that the three drunks at the pool table would keep their hands to themselves, mostly because she didn't want one or all of them to get killed. Namely by her very own overprotective vampires, Eric and Bill, who were sitting at the bar drinking Trueblood. Her boss, Sam Merlotte; a shape-shifter, just ignored them and rolled his eyes whenever one of them slammed their bottle down, after taking one quick sip without looking away. They were basically having a staring contest that was more like a silent cock fight. Neither were mature enough to just let it be. They were both very adamant that Sookie was their's and neither of them would back down, even when Sookie informed them that she didn't belong to either one of them. You would think they would be much more mature, considering how old they both were.

An hour later, the night was growing older and quieter. Some of the patrons had left, leaving Sookie with just three tables to tend. Her co-worker, Arlene, had already left for the night, going home to her children. Eric and Bill were stilling having their stupid posturing contest at the bar, sitting between two other patrons; Jane Bodehouse and Andy Bellefluer. Sam was still tending bar and Lafayette was singing in the kitchen while flipping burgers. The door opened and Sookie turned to see a very attractive man walk in, it was someone she'd never met before. Good, she likes new faces. His entrance had gotten the attention of Sam and the vampires, who subtley sniffed the air in his direction. The man looked around for a moment, taking in the decor and looking increasingly thrilled with what was seeing. He smiled wider and wider, a smile that was so bright and charming, it was hard to look away. She made to walk over to him, plastering a smile on her own face. She was about five feet from him when she felt something in the back of her mind and she stopped short, staring at him a little suspiciously. Shaking herself, she finished her trip over to him to take his order. He saw her coming and smiled even wider at the sight of her.

"Welcome to Merlotte's! Table for one?" she asked cheerily.

"Oh, yes please!" he replied, equally as cheery in his beautifully accented voice.

Sookie found it hard to look away from him again, there was something about his eyes. They made him seem older than he was and he had such pride in his eyes while watching her and the others in the bar. Like the look a Grandfather would give to his grandchildren. "This way!" Sookie turned, grabbing a menu from the rack by the door, and led him to a table just beside the bar. She was pretty sure Sam would want to keep an eye on someone new. It also meant she was able to stay between him and the vampires, who were still sniffing the air and staring at him like he was an injured fawn lying in an open field. They might as well have been drooling with hunger. There was definitely something about this new stranger, who seemed older than he was, obviously smelled delicious and made her brain feel tingly. "Here you are!" she pulled the chair out for him and he sat down. She handed him the menu and stood beside him. "Let me know when you're ready to order!"

"Thank you, I will!" he said, still smiling brightly. He opened the menu and peered at the few choices there were.

Sookie went over to stand behind the bar to speak to Sam. "I saw you sniffing. Does he smell weird to you?" she asked softly, so only Sam and the vampires would hear.

Sam nodded. "A bit. He's definitely something new. I've never smelled anything quite like it."

"He smells divine." Eric muttered, staring at the stranger. "I don't know what he is, but he smells even better than you do, Sookie."

"It's taking an awful lot of willpower not to just go over there and drain him dry." Bill put in, which was an odd thing for Bill to say, even if he was hungry. He was usually a very courteous gentleman who watched what he said and tried to be as pleasant as possible to everyone, vampire, human and shifter alike. He showed respect to all supes, at least on the surface. And he never attacked without a reason and most certainly not just because he was hungry, Bill was far beyond the ravenous baby vampire stage at just over a hundred and fifty years old. Eric's reaction was even more surprising considering he was almost ten times older than Bill.

"Maybe I can find something out," Sookie said quietly. She went back around the bar and over to the stranger. He smiled as he saw her approach. "Have you decided yet?" she asked kindly. She dug into her telepathic abilities and tried to gently nudge her way into his mind to see what she could find out. As she did it, the man chuckled a bit and a voice came through into her own mind.

"It's kind of you to knock first," the voice said, the same silky smooth accented voice she'd heard with her ears when she greeted him. Sookie stood stunned for a moment, her mouth agape and a slight smile still in place. She realized his lips hadn't moved with the voice and she'd heard with her mind and not her ears. His lips hadn't moved at all, but his facial expressions matched perfectly as though he'd said it out loud.

"Are you alright?" the man asked out loud, smiling and trying not to laugh.

Sookie didn't even think about it first, she just pulled out the chair next to him and sat down, resting her hands on the table. She just stared at him, slack-jawed. He smirked and put the menu down, accidentally brushing their hands together. An electric charge seemed to course through their minds and bodies, and they both reacted the same way; they both gasped and jerked back almost violently away from each other. Sookie came close to falling out of her chair and let out a short shriek of pain and held her head. The man did fall out of his chair, tripping over it while trying not to fall flat on the floor, but failed miserably and smacked the side of his head on another table on the way down. Eric and Bill were out of their seats so fast, they looked like a blur. Bill went to Sookie to see that she was alright, Eric stopped beside her too, glaring at the man who jumped back up right away and started backing away toward the door. He was in a panic and had an obvious spooked look in his eye as he was making a hasty retreat. Eric and Bill were sniffing the air again, this time with their fangs out. A dribble of blood ran down the side of the man's face but he didn't seem to notice it.

Sookie looked up at the man she now seemed to know far too much about, she let a tear drop run down her cheek as she took in as much of the overload of information as she could. Most of it was sad and lonely, she pitied him and felt a growing affection for this strange man from another world. She watched as he backed up to the door, turned the knob and bolted out of it.

She jumped up and went to go after him. "Wait!" she yelled, running after him. "Wait! Stop, come back! I want to talk to you!" Out in the parking lot, the man was half way across it by the time Sookie got out the door. "Hey, wait a minute! Stop! Please stop!" She ran faster trying to catch up to him. "Come on, please wait!"

He ignored her pleas and continued running back to his blue box. He was about ten feet away from it, when suddenly Bill was in front of him and he skidded to a halt, gasping for breath as a drop of his blood landed on the gravel by his feet. He stepped back away from Bill, and backed into something that felt like a wall, and then something that felt like a vice wrapped around his arm. He quickly turned to see Eric standing behind him, smiling maliciously with his hand around his bicep.

"The lady asked you to wait." Eric said, smiling with his sharp fangs hanging down. The man tried to pull his arm from Eric's grip but failed, though Eric noticed he did seem stronger than a human but not as strong as a vampire, probably about the same as a werewolf.

"Let go of me!" he shouted, a dangerous edge to his voice that made the vampires a little amused and perhaps a little more excited.

Sookie caught up and Sam was just behind her, worried about his best friend and employee, and this stranger who was in obvious danger of being eaten. Sookie stood in front of him, smiling, glad he hadn't managed to disappear. His chocolate brown eyes locked onto her blue ones and Sookie felt a chill run down her spine, knowing what he was capable of.

"No need to glare at me like that, I just want to talk to you!" Sookie said, still smiling. "Eric, let him go!"

The vampire seemed reluctant to do so, but he did it anyway. "If you insist!" Eric smirked cheekily and ran his finger down the side of the man's face, scooping up some of the blood dripping from his head and then stuck it in his mouth and hummed appreciatively. "What are you?" he asked, rolling that little bit of blood around in his mouth.

The man just looked at him, a little disgusted, and ignored his question. He wiped the blood from his face and looked at it on his hand.

"Oh! I'm sorry!" Sookie said, finally noticing the blood. She stepped forward and wanted to fuss over him, but she was afraid of touching him again. "Come back inside and I can clean that up for you!"

"That's not necessary," he answered.

"Doctor, will you please just come inside and talk to me for a while?" Sookie asked.

The Doctor glared at her. "Why? What more do you want to know? You already know everything! I know everything about you and you know everything about me." He put his hand to the cut on his head, to staunch the bleeding and maybe get it to stop stinging so much.

"Well, you might be able to process the much information at once, but I can't! Most of it was lost in a blur and I want to know what just happened."

"A telepathic surge," the Doctor stated, matter-of-factly.

"A what?"

"A surge of telepathic energy causing an exchange of telepathic information. It can happen when two telepaths of different caliburs make physical contact while neither of them have any discernable mental shields in place. That was actually my fault, I didn't think you were that powerful of a telepath, so I didn't take any precautions. Sorry about that."

"I think we were both at fault." She smiled at him. "So, that means everything in my head went into yours and everything in yours went into mine?"

"Yes, I just said that."

Sookie shook her head and laughed. She knew he rambled and was confusing sometimes, but witnessing it first hand was just funny, realizing how accurately his friends have reacted to him explaining things in the past. "Well, like I said, I didn't catch all of that. Besides, you only had twenty-eight years of babble to take in and I had over nine hundred! My head hurts!" The Doctor frowned at her and scratched the back of his head. Bill, Eric and Sam just seemed surprised by his age, since he's not a vampire or a fairy. "Just come inside!" Sookie grabbed his hand and began dragging him back into the restaurant. He went with her without much fuss, just some grumbling. Bill, Eric and Sam followed; Sam was a little bewildered, but hey, this was Sookie they were talking about. Nothing ever made complete sense around her.

They went back inside, Lafayette had picked up the overturned furniture and was cleaning up the spilled condiments and seasonings that fell off the table that tipped over when the Doctor's head hit it. Everyone who was left in the bar, turned to look when they came back in, the customers peering curiously at the stranger who made a mess and ran away.

The Doctor's frown deepened, bordering on annoyed and looking very much a like a scorned child, as Sookie dragged him through the bar and into Sam's office in the back. Sam returned to his post behind the bar, allowing Sookie the space needed to figure things out. When Sookie sat the Doctor down on a chair in front of the desk and then turned to go and close the office door, she rolled her eyes when she saw Bill and Eric walking into the room. Knowing that she wouldn't be able to get them to leave, she just motioned for one of them to close the door, and Bill obliged as Sookie turned back around and went behind the desk to get the first aid kit out of Sam's desk drawer. She sat in the other chair in front of the desk and opened the kit, smiling at the Doctor, who was still frowning and biting his lip.

"Oh, relax. I'm only cleaning up your head wound, I'm not gonna come out with some kind of probe or something to figure out what makes your body work," she chastised, smiling at him. "Though, it would be nice to know how that whole... regeneration? ...thing works."

The Doctor shrugged. "It's complicated."

"I gathered as much," Sookie said, dabbing an alcohol swab on the Doctor wound, making him cringe and whine.

"Ow!" the Doctor complained, biting his lip again. "Good God, I will never understand you humans and your... frankly, painful medical practices."

"Quit your whining," she told him, smirking as she dabbed harder, making the Doctor hiss in pain.

"That's an interesting way of putting it," Eric chimed in. "'You humans', I mean. All supes are human in some form or another; vampires started as humans, fairies and elves only breed with humans, weres live as humans and revert to human form when they aren't hunting. So, what are you?"

The Doctor glances at the vampire and sighs, looking back at Sookie for help. Sookie just smiled and finished cleaning the wound and wiping away the blood with the alcohol swab.

"You might as well answer him, he won't leave you alone until he gets his answers," she said, smiling a little wider with a slight glint in her eyes. "He's very much like you in that respect." The Doctor scowled at her. "Don't give me that look."

The Doctor sighed. "I'm a Time Lord," he answered, not even looking at the vampires or showing any sign of elaborating. Sookie gave him a wry look as she put a couple butterfly strips over the cut on the side of his head. "What?" he asked her. "He asked what I was, not the specifics of what makes me what I am." He looked at her innocently, then got defensive. "I answered him!" he said shrilly, like a child justifying himself to his mother. Sookie smiled at him and shook her head.

"So, give me the specifics then," Eric said, smirking.

The Doctor groaned. "That... is a long conversation that I don't particularly feel like having."

"Too bad," Bill answered.

The Doctor turned to glare at them both. "What's it to you?!"

"I want to know what you are and if I need to worry about any more of you showing up in my territory," Eric answered him flatly. The Doctor frowned at him.

"Yeah, that's one of the bits of information that I did catch," Sookie said to no one in general, then turned her attention to Eric. "You don't need to worry about any more Time Lords showing up, Eric."

"Oh?" Eric questioned. "Why is that?"

"That's all you need to know!" the Doctor almost growled back to him. Eric raised an eyebrow and took a couple of menacing steps forward.

"Eric, don't!" Sookie said, putting the first aid supplies away. Eric stopped in his tracks and sighed in annoyance. "To put things simply," she started as she stood up and went around the desk to put the kit away. "He's an alien from outer space and he's now the only one of his kind. So don't eat him." Eric smiled at the last part.

Bill raised an eyebrow. "An alien? Seriously?" The Doctor glared at him. "An alien with a British accent?"

The Doctor sighed. "I spend a lot of time in London, okay? Something wrong with that? If I spoke with my mother language or even with just the accent you wouldn't understand a word I was saying."

"I bet I would!" Sookie said, slamming the desk drawer closed and smiling mischievously. The Doctor turned to her, his eyes bugging out. "I might have caught a bit of that beautiful language of yours. I couldn't speak it to save my life, but I bet I could understand what you say!"

The Doctor raised an intrigued eyebrow and spoke in a melodious and lilting language. "Your vampire friends are gigantic arseholes." Sookie burst out laughing and had to sit down in Sam's chair before she fell from her hearty guffaws. The Doctor smiled at her. "Understood that, then?"

Sookie nodded and snorted with laughter, trying to speak between gasps of air. "Oh... if only they... knew what you said... Eric might not care but... Bill would get so mad!... Don't say that in English! At least not to their faces!" Eric and Bill both scowled with offense, looking between the two of them. The Doctor watched the vampires for a second before he starts giggling as well.

"What did he say?" Bill asked.

Sookie shook her head and sighed, trying to get her giggles under control. "Nothing important!" Sookie wiped her tears, finally getting over the humor of someone daring to call these two particularly proud vampires 'arseholes' while said vampires were still in ear shot. "So!" She stood back up and went around to stand in front of the Doctor. "Can I meet her?"

The Doctor gave her an innocent look. "Meet who?"

"Doctor!" Sookie gave him a pleading look.

"Fine!" the Doctor sighed and quickly stood up, putting a hand to his head as the blood rushed to it from the simple movement. "Oh, stood up too fast..."

"Easy there!" Sookie took the Doctor's arm and pulled him towards the door. "Come on!"

"Who are you meeting?" Eric asked, stepping aside for Sookie to open the door, who then dragged the Doctor from the room. He and Bill followed the two of them, not trusting Sookie and this newcomer to be alone together.

Sookie made it back out to the bar, noticing that it must be past bar-close now as the place was empty, except for Sam and Lafayette, who was doing her closing duties. He must have taken care of her tables for her while she was taking care of the Doctor. She made a mental note to get him a gift or something as a 'thank you'.

"Where are you off to?" Sam asked as they passed him.

"To see something amazing with my own eyes!" Sookie answered as she almost ran out the door, dragging the Doctor with her, though the Doctor was smiling at her enthusiasm.

"Something amazing?" Eric asked, following. "I thought you were meeting someone!" Sam shrugged and went back to cleaning up the bar, as the door closed behind the vampires.

"Someone, something! Same difference!" Sookie called back to Eric, as she dragged the Doctor through the parking lot, over to his blue box.

Once they got there, Sookie waited impatiently for the Doctor to open the door, as she looked back to see the vampires strolling towards them through the parking lot at a leisurely pace. She smiled wickedly at them, as the door was opened and she quickly shoved the Doctor through the door, running in after him and slamming the door shut before the vampires could even register what she was doing. She locked the door with the knowledge she'd gained from the Doctor, then turned and looked around at the gigantic console room, snickering inwardly at the sounds of the vampires banging on the not-wooden door. The Doctor finally regained his balance, holding his head as he whirled to look at Sookie.

"What was that for?!" he asked incredulously.

"I didn't want Bill and Eric to follow me!" she said, smiling at the Doctor, then continuing to look around in wonder. "So?" she asked. "Could you have me back for my shift tomorrow?"

The Doctor looked at her and smiled slowly. "Oh yes!" he said, then starting running around the console, flipping switches and throwing levers. Sookie watched him, smiling brightly and bouncing a little in excitement.

Outside, Bill and Eric watched in horror as the blue box disappeared with their telepath still inside it.

END.