fic: romantic (with a lowercase r)
Title: Romantic (With A Lowercase R)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose, alt!Donna, Jake
Genre: Humour, romance, fluff
Spoilers?: Yeah yeah, 4x13
Summary: In which Jake and Donna enjoy the romantic ineptitude of the Doctor and Rose.
Excerpt:Besides, Rose was quite certain if there’d ever been a human celebration crafted to make the Doctor uncomfortable, it was probably Valentine’s Day.
Author's Note: Set in the Gingerbread universe shortly after Revolution, but all you really need to know is that alt!Donna exists as a Vitex accountant. And is awesome.
Also, Valentine's Day is over, but too bad.
Her mobile skittered back and forth across the desk as it rang, and Donna rolled her eyes even as she reached over to flip it open.
“You do realize some of us have proper jobs, right?”
“I’ve got a job,” came the Doctor’s voice on the other end of the phone, with a matter-of-fact ambivalence suggesting his attention was focused elsewhere.
As usual.
“Swanning in and out of Torchwood whenever you feel like it because you’re shagging the boss’ daughter is not a job.”
She snuck a covert glance around the office and ducked her head a little lower behind her computer monitor. Being the rookie accountant who frequently hung out with the fabulously wealthy owner’s daughter went hand-in-hand with a weird reputation. Some of her coworkers seemed to fear her, like she was some sort of spy; others seemed to expect her to spy on their behalf, to reveal the glamorous secret life of the Vitex heiress.
Only a few months ago, a gossip magazine had run a photo of the Doctor and Donna together, effectively twisting an entirely innocent lunch into something of a scandal. Rose had been the only one to truly find it funny; the Doctor was offended by the implications of his infidelity, and Donna was offended by the implication that she would ever consider going anywhere near the Doctor without several decent layers of clothing between them.
Donna Noble was not one to point fingers, but she was not above a well-practiced glare in the direction of a particular customer service representative.
“It’s a job if I get paid for it, isn’t it?” There was a pause. “I think I get paid. Probably. There is the definite possibility that I get paid.” Another pause. “I signed some forms once, I think that-“
Donna rolled her eyes. It was probably best to stop this while she could. “Did you want something?”
The answer, she knew, would be “yes”. Since admitting to her the rather bizarre details of how he’d come to be, he’d clearly begun to see her as an endless source of knowledge when it came to all things human.
“Oh! Oh, yes, I had a question - I called Rose, but she wouldn’t answer-”
“Smart woman,” Donna muttered.
“I was meant to get a bag of milk - honestly, a bag of milk, this universe is mental-”
“There’s nothing wrong with bagged milk,” Donna found herself insisting, defensive as always at the implication that her world was “wrong”.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I was calling to ask if you know why everything’s...” He trailed off, seemed to deliberate what adjective to use, and then said (in a highly suspicious manner): “...pink.”
“Your milk is pink?”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. But there’s an entire aisle of... pink and red and all sorts of... bears and things.”
She could picture it as he said it, the Doctor on his mobile in the middle of an aisle, holding a teddy bear in the same cautious way one might hold a highly explosive device.
She sent a smug look at her computer.
“Well, I’m no genius, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say probably because it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, you dolt.”
“Oh. Oh!” From the phone there was silence, and then: “But that’s in February.”
Donna snorted. “Not on this planet, mate.”
“Hm.” There was a silence as the Doctor digested this new universal quirk, and then he asked, “Does this mean I should get something for Rose?”
Across the room, Donna saw the curious eyes of the customer service representative peek around her own computer, either disrupted or intrigued by Donna’s sudden burst of laughter.
“What sort of stupid question is that?” With a pointed stare across the room, Donna swiveled her chair around. “I’m guessing you didn’t do anything last year, then.”
She heard a sniff of indignity. “I didn’t know! We’d only been here a month, I was preoccupied!”
“What about February, then?”
The resounding silence made it very easy for Donna to imagine his uncomfortable shift in posture.
“You are so thick,” she said conversationally, delighted - as always - by the rare opportunity to know something the Doctor didn’t. “I don’t know why Rose puts up with you. Of course you need to do something, you idiot. She puts up with you trailing around after her like a puppy, the girl deserves flowers, at least.”
“Right, yes, flowers, of course. And... bears?”
“Not much of a romantic, are you?”
“Sure I am. Worlds in grains of sand, nightingales, lonely clouds, stately pleasure-domes-”
Donna leaned back in her chair and twirled her pen between her fingers, thoroughly enjoying herself. “You’ve got no idea what to do, have you?”
“Well... ah... no, as it happens.”
She snickered. She could practically hear the piteous look on his face.
“You’re not going to help me, are you?”
Donna laughed into the phone. “Not a chance.” She spun her chair back towards her desk and grinned. “But you’re a clever bloke, Johnny, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Now, unlike some people, I’ve got actual work to do, so I’m hanging up now.”
“But-”
“I’ll talk to you later, Doctor.” Before she flipped the phone shut, she raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.”
--
The primary difference, Rose always thought, between what she did for Torchwood and what she’d done with the Doctor years ago, was not so much the distinct lack of time-and-space travel. It wasn’t even the paperwork, although the thought of ever filling out accident reports on board the TARDIS was plenty ridiculous.
It was that, quite honestly, aliens just didn’t attack Earth as often as the TARDIS found trouble.
Or maybe it was the occupants who found the trouble - the Doctor’s dubious ability to pilot his own ship left that question up in the air.
Still - while Rose had to admit it was a good thing that this world didn’t fall under constant alien attack, she had certainly never missed having days like this, workdays that were undeniably, unequivocally boring.
“Hard at work, again, I see, Miss Tyler.”
The sound made her jump, and she looked up from where she was doodling a tree to see Jake standing in the door to her office, clearly amused. She dropped the pen and rubbed her hands over the side of her face, attempting to massage some sort of life back into herself.
“Please tell me something good,” she said, not bothering to mask the boredom-induced desperation in her voice, “like -“
“Like a big imposing spaceship just crashed into the Thames?”
Rose perked up.
“No such luck,” Jake went on. “Although it’s good to know you’re eagerly awaiting the end of the world.” He walked closer to her desk and grinned. “You could skip out early, you know.”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, tossing her pen onto her desk. “I can’t. I don’t want people thinking I just do whatever I want because I’m a Tyler.”
“As opposed to just doing whatever you want because you’re the Doctor?”
Rose pulled a face. It would probably have been daft to expect the Doctor to ever settle into anything resembling nine-to-five, but that didn’t prevent her from being well aware of the irritation most of Torchwood reacted with. “Exactly.”
Jake picked up her paperweight and tossed it back and forth. Rose rather suspected he was about as bored as she was.
“Any plans for tonight, then?” he asked, setting the paperweight down.
Her brow furrowed. “No. Should there be?”
And then Jake said the one thing he could say to make Rose feel as stupid as possible.
He said, “Well, it is Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s what?” She sat up straight and put a hand to her head, mentally running through her calendar. “But it’s only the thirteenth!”
“Yep. August 13th, every year.” Jake raised his eyebrows, totally entertained. “It’s been quite a few years, now, Rose, you ever gonna catch onto these things?”
Growing up, Rose had never been the sort to either love or loathe Valentine’s Day - it was nice enough, she’d always figured, if you were with someone, and if you weren’t, well, at least it meant discounted chocolate. It was only after winding up in this universe that she’d come close to understanding the sheer resentment some people held for the holiday, and so she’d done her best to let the day go unnoticed year after year, burying herself in work.
With a groan, she ran her hands over her face and shook her head. “It should be the fourteenth,” she insisted stubbornly. After a second’s consideration, she added, “it should be in February.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Jake called over his shoulder as he moved to the door, “I’m willing to bet the Doctor’s got no idea.”
Watching him leave, Rose had to admit that he was probably right. Unfortunately, she found that only added another dimension to her dilemma.
--
Really, Rose thought, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
It was entirely likely that, regardless of whether or not the Doctor knew it was Valentine’s Day right now, he would find out at some point. It would hardly be fair to say, “Well, I assumed you’d forget, so I didn’t bother.” Still, she knew giving him something if he had nothing for her would only exacerbate the rubbish-as-a-human complex that worried her.
Besides, Rose was quite certain if there’d ever been a human celebration crafted to make the Doctor uncomfortable, it was probably Valentine’s Day. Rose held no delusions about him being the sort to enjoy candlelit dinners or long talks about feelings - he was, after all, still the man who’d said “quite right too”.
In the end, she settled on a card, hoping that if she kept it tucked safely in her purse she could choose what to do with it - give it or keep it hidden away - depending on how the night unfolded. Even purchasing the thing felt strange, as though even after a year her brain couldn’t connect the Doctor with mundane things like Valentine’s Day cards. It was the same disconnect she felt with the word “boyfriend”, which Rose thought sounded more like fifteen-year-old love notes and less like building Dimension Cannons.
She thanked the cashier as she left the little store, ignored the hint of accusation as the woman at the counter said “last minute?” and slid the card into her purse.
Valentine’s Day, she thought, was more work than it ought to be.
--
Coming home on the days the Doctor did not follow her to work was always something of a wildcard. Sometimes she’d come home to find the remnants of some electronic device he was determined to “improve” scattered across every surface imaginable; sometimes she found him working on something she couldn’t begin to understand, designed to help along their growing TARDIS. On one memorable occasion, she’d come home to find him discovering first-hand that his alcohol tolerance was not, in fact, something that had carried over from his Time Lord physiology. Generally, living with the Doctor, she was prepared for just about anything.
Nonetheless, when she stepped into her flat that evening, the first words out of her mouth were “oh my God.”
There were candles lit on just about every surface area that wasn’t the floor - the table, kitchen counters, windowsills and the coffee table. A centrepiece of roses sat in the middle of the table, but from her spot by the door she could see three other bouquets at least, in vases and paper, scattered seemingly randomly. A giant white teddy bear holding a gaudy red heart smiled at her eerily from the sofa; around him, smaller bears and dogs and cats with their own smaller, gaudy hearts sat lopsidedly, like some mismatched family of mass-produced cheer.
Foil balloons of pinks and reds scraped the ceiling of the flat, where matching streamers intertwined in a complex and slightly bizarre web. Boxes of assorted chocolates sat alongside cinnamon and conversation hearts and chocolate-dipped strawberries. A series of cards was stuck to the fridge, varying from the animated sort with puns as punch lines to the sort with pictures of flowers and beaches with stilted poetry inside.
In the middle of it all was the Doctor, holding two bears stuck together by their magnetized noses. His head jerked up as she spoke, and he sent her a nervous smile. “Hello!”
Rose stared at him a second longer, stunned, and then doubled over in hysterics, clutching her sides.
The whole flat looked like somewhere a Hallmark had come to die.
“...Rose?” she heard him ask through her laughter.
She straightened and leaned back heavily against the door, still laughing. “Oh my God!” she said again, once she managed to stifle the giggles.
The Doctor regarded her with complete and endearing confusion as he set the stuffed bears on the table.
“It’s just…” Rose cast around for something to say, waving one hand as she did so. “I mean, it’s just...” Her brow scrunched. “Is that Celine Dion playing?”
And then she was laughing again.
“I take it this... isn’t what you were expecting,” he said.
She bit her lip, holding back the laughter again, and then smiled. “Nope.” She looked around the room again and swallowed back another giggle. “I think... I think all those candles are a fire hazard.”
“I thought so too,” the Doctor admitted. He pointed beside the refrigerator. “I got out the fire extinguisher.”
Rose opened and closed her mouth a few times, quickly establishing that she had no idea what to say to that. She pushed herself away from the door and walked closer to him, pulling on one of the balloon strings as she did so. “How much did you spend on all of this?” When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “Just... I mean... it’s sort of... overkill, yeah?”
He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Well, Donna said flowers, so I got the roses, but then I thought, roses, how many people must have given you roses? So I got the tulips as well, and the lilies, but then I saw the orchids, which reminded me of that time on Traxis V, do you remember? Then the lady at the shop said I should get chocolates, but all their boxes were assorted, and with assorted chocolates half of them are always rubbish anyway, so I--“
“Doctor,” she said abruptly, sure she saw where the rest of the explanation was going and not entirely sure she needed to hear it all.
“Anyway, you lot, you’ve got so many different ways of communicating the same basic idea, and I didn’t know whether you’d prefer bears or balloons so I just thought... well, I just thought I’d get them all. You know. To be safe. Cover my bases, and all that.”
“That little bit of Donna didn’t help, then?”
“No.” The Doctor frowned. “And neither did the full-size one.”
She smiled sympathetically at him, so out of his element, and shook her head. “You really don’t understand any of this stuff, do you?”
The Doctor hesitated, unwilling for a moment to admit his complete incomprehension. Then he grabbed the kissing bears from the table and waved them back and forth; they pivoted at the nose.
“They’re bears, Rose. And they’ve got little magnets to stick their noses together like - like they’re kissing.” He raised his eyebrows, holding the bears up to her eye line. “Bears. Kissing! Bears don’t kiss.” He lowered the bears and stared at her, perplexed. “How do magnetized bears represent anything about how I feel about you?”
Rose looked at the bears, looked at the Doctor, then plucked them from his hands and tossed them to the floor. “You do know I don’t actually want kissing bears, right?”
He blinked, and gestured with one hand towards the helium-filled heart. “D’you prefer balloons?” He tugged the string, and the balloon bopped around against the ceiling with a crackle.
Shaking her head, Rose dropped her purse beside the bears and closed the gap between them, looping one arm around his waist and resting her free hand on his chest.
“I don’t need any of it, I mean,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders. “S’nice, I suppose - though it sort of looks like a... a cinnamon heart factory exploded all over our flat - but it’s not...” She chewed her lip as she wondered how to go on, one finger tapping to the beat of his heart. She grinned. “S’like... well, I still consider it a big accomplishment that I’ve gotten you to use the l-word.”
“Oi!” His arms found purchase around her back and tugged her a little closer. “Are you implying that I’m not romantic?”
Rose rolled her eyes up mischievously. “Well...”
“I bought you kissing bears! From what I understand, that’s the height of romance.” He peered down at her, plainly trying to appear serious and failing. “I could write you an ode to your favourite type of bird, if you’d prefer.”
“Shut up,” she said cheerfully, her hand sliding up from his chest to the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss.
He gripped her tighter but pulled back after a moment, eyes still closed. “It’s just - sometimes I - it’s not fair, to you, that you miss out on all these, these human things just because I haven’t got any bloody idea what I’m doing, and I thought-”
“Doctor?” she said, and his eyes snapped open. “Shut up.”
He kissed her then with a renewed vigour, and it was only when she stumbled over something that might have been a bear with a magnetized nose that Rose had the sense to pull back.
“Doctor?”
“Mmm?”
“We should probably put out these candles first.”
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose, alt!Donna, Jake
Genre: Humour, romance, fluff
Spoilers?: Yeah yeah, 4x13
Summary: In which Jake and Donna enjoy the romantic ineptitude of the Doctor and Rose.
Excerpt:Besides, Rose was quite certain if there’d ever been a human celebration crafted to make the Doctor uncomfortable, it was probably Valentine’s Day.
Author's Note: Set in the Gingerbread universe shortly after Revolution, but all you really need to know is that alt!Donna exists as a Vitex accountant. And is awesome.
Also, Valentine's Day is over, but too bad.
Her mobile skittered back and forth across the desk as it rang, and Donna rolled her eyes even as she reached over to flip it open.
“You do realize some of us have proper jobs, right?”
“I’ve got a job,” came the Doctor’s voice on the other end of the phone, with a matter-of-fact ambivalence suggesting his attention was focused elsewhere.
As usual.
“Swanning in and out of Torchwood whenever you feel like it because you’re shagging the boss’ daughter is not a job.”
She snuck a covert glance around the office and ducked her head a little lower behind her computer monitor. Being the rookie accountant who frequently hung out with the fabulously wealthy owner’s daughter went hand-in-hand with a weird reputation. Some of her coworkers seemed to fear her, like she was some sort of spy; others seemed to expect her to spy on their behalf, to reveal the glamorous secret life of the Vitex heiress.
Only a few months ago, a gossip magazine had run a photo of the Doctor and Donna together, effectively twisting an entirely innocent lunch into something of a scandal. Rose had been the only one to truly find it funny; the Doctor was offended by the implications of his infidelity, and Donna was offended by the implication that she would ever consider going anywhere near the Doctor without several decent layers of clothing between them.
Donna Noble was not one to point fingers, but she was not above a well-practiced glare in the direction of a particular customer service representative.
“It’s a job if I get paid for it, isn’t it?” There was a pause. “I think I get paid. Probably. There is the definite possibility that I get paid.” Another pause. “I signed some forms once, I think that-“
Donna rolled her eyes. It was probably best to stop this while she could. “Did you want something?”
The answer, she knew, would be “yes”. Since admitting to her the rather bizarre details of how he’d come to be, he’d clearly begun to see her as an endless source of knowledge when it came to all things human.
“Oh! Oh, yes, I had a question - I called Rose, but she wouldn’t answer-”
“Smart woman,” Donna muttered.
“I was meant to get a bag of milk - honestly, a bag of milk, this universe is mental-”
“There’s nothing wrong with bagged milk,” Donna found herself insisting, defensive as always at the implication that her world was “wrong”.
“Anyway,” he went on, “I was calling to ask if you know why everything’s...” He trailed off, seemed to deliberate what adjective to use, and then said (in a highly suspicious manner): “...pink.”
“Your milk is pink?”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous. But there’s an entire aisle of... pink and red and all sorts of... bears and things.”
She could picture it as he said it, the Doctor on his mobile in the middle of an aisle, holding a teddy bear in the same cautious way one might hold a highly explosive device.
She sent a smug look at her computer.
“Well, I’m no genius, but if I had to hazard a guess I’d say probably because it’s Valentine’s Day tomorrow, you dolt.”
“Oh. Oh!” From the phone there was silence, and then: “But that’s in February.”
Donna snorted. “Not on this planet, mate.”
“Hm.” There was a silence as the Doctor digested this new universal quirk, and then he asked, “Does this mean I should get something for Rose?”
Across the room, Donna saw the curious eyes of the customer service representative peek around her own computer, either disrupted or intrigued by Donna’s sudden burst of laughter.
“What sort of stupid question is that?” With a pointed stare across the room, Donna swiveled her chair around. “I’m guessing you didn’t do anything last year, then.”
She heard a sniff of indignity. “I didn’t know! We’d only been here a month, I was preoccupied!”
“What about February, then?”
The resounding silence made it very easy for Donna to imagine his uncomfortable shift in posture.
“You are so thick,” she said conversationally, delighted - as always - by the rare opportunity to know something the Doctor didn’t. “I don’t know why Rose puts up with you. Of course you need to do something, you idiot. She puts up with you trailing around after her like a puppy, the girl deserves flowers, at least.”
“Right, yes, flowers, of course. And... bears?”
“Not much of a romantic, are you?”
“Sure I am. Worlds in grains of sand, nightingales, lonely clouds, stately pleasure-domes-”
Donna leaned back in her chair and twirled her pen between her fingers, thoroughly enjoying herself. “You’ve got no idea what to do, have you?”
“Well... ah... no, as it happens.”
She snickered. She could practically hear the piteous look on his face.
“You’re not going to help me, are you?”
Donna laughed into the phone. “Not a chance.” She spun her chair back towards her desk and grinned. “But you’re a clever bloke, Johnny, I’m sure you’ll figure it out. Now, unlike some people, I’ve got actual work to do, so I’m hanging up now.”
“But-”
“I’ll talk to you later, Doctor.” Before she flipped the phone shut, she raised an eyebrow. “Good luck.”
--
The primary difference, Rose always thought, between what she did for Torchwood and what she’d done with the Doctor years ago, was not so much the distinct lack of time-and-space travel. It wasn’t even the paperwork, although the thought of ever filling out accident reports on board the TARDIS was plenty ridiculous.
It was that, quite honestly, aliens just didn’t attack Earth as often as the TARDIS found trouble.
Or maybe it was the occupants who found the trouble - the Doctor’s dubious ability to pilot his own ship left that question up in the air.
Still - while Rose had to admit it was a good thing that this world didn’t fall under constant alien attack, she had certainly never missed having days like this, workdays that were undeniably, unequivocally boring.
“Hard at work, again, I see, Miss Tyler.”
The sound made her jump, and she looked up from where she was doodling a tree to see Jake standing in the door to her office, clearly amused. She dropped the pen and rubbed her hands over the side of her face, attempting to massage some sort of life back into herself.
“Please tell me something good,” she said, not bothering to mask the boredom-induced desperation in her voice, “like -“
“Like a big imposing spaceship just crashed into the Thames?”
Rose perked up.
“No such luck,” Jake went on. “Although it’s good to know you’re eagerly awaiting the end of the world.” He walked closer to her desk and grinned. “You could skip out early, you know.”
She sighed and leaned back in her chair, tossing her pen onto her desk. “I can’t. I don’t want people thinking I just do whatever I want because I’m a Tyler.”
“As opposed to just doing whatever you want because you’re the Doctor?”
Rose pulled a face. It would probably have been daft to expect the Doctor to ever settle into anything resembling nine-to-five, but that didn’t prevent her from being well aware of the irritation most of Torchwood reacted with. “Exactly.”
Jake picked up her paperweight and tossed it back and forth. Rose rather suspected he was about as bored as she was.
“Any plans for tonight, then?” he asked, setting the paperweight down.
Her brow furrowed. “No. Should there be?”
And then Jake said the one thing he could say to make Rose feel as stupid as possible.
He said, “Well, it is Valentine’s Day.”
“It’s what?” She sat up straight and put a hand to her head, mentally running through her calendar. “But it’s only the thirteenth!”
“Yep. August 13th, every year.” Jake raised his eyebrows, totally entertained. “It’s been quite a few years, now, Rose, you ever gonna catch onto these things?”
Growing up, Rose had never been the sort to either love or loathe Valentine’s Day - it was nice enough, she’d always figured, if you were with someone, and if you weren’t, well, at least it meant discounted chocolate. It was only after winding up in this universe that she’d come close to understanding the sheer resentment some people held for the holiday, and so she’d done her best to let the day go unnoticed year after year, burying herself in work.
With a groan, she ran her hands over her face and shook her head. “It should be the fourteenth,” she insisted stubbornly. After a second’s consideration, she added, “it should be in February.”
“If it makes you feel better,” Jake called over his shoulder as he moved to the door, “I’m willing to bet the Doctor’s got no idea.”
Watching him leave, Rose had to admit that he was probably right. Unfortunately, she found that only added another dimension to her dilemma.
--
Really, Rose thought, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t.
It was entirely likely that, regardless of whether or not the Doctor knew it was Valentine’s Day right now, he would find out at some point. It would hardly be fair to say, “Well, I assumed you’d forget, so I didn’t bother.” Still, she knew giving him something if he had nothing for her would only exacerbate the rubbish-as-a-human complex that worried her.
Besides, Rose was quite certain if there’d ever been a human celebration crafted to make the Doctor uncomfortable, it was probably Valentine’s Day. Rose held no delusions about him being the sort to enjoy candlelit dinners or long talks about feelings - he was, after all, still the man who’d said “quite right too”.
In the end, she settled on a card, hoping that if she kept it tucked safely in her purse she could choose what to do with it - give it or keep it hidden away - depending on how the night unfolded. Even purchasing the thing felt strange, as though even after a year her brain couldn’t connect the Doctor with mundane things like Valentine’s Day cards. It was the same disconnect she felt with the word “boyfriend”, which Rose thought sounded more like fifteen-year-old love notes and less like building Dimension Cannons.
She thanked the cashier as she left the little store, ignored the hint of accusation as the woman at the counter said “last minute?” and slid the card into her purse.
Valentine’s Day, she thought, was more work than it ought to be.
--
Coming home on the days the Doctor did not follow her to work was always something of a wildcard. Sometimes she’d come home to find the remnants of some electronic device he was determined to “improve” scattered across every surface imaginable; sometimes she found him working on something she couldn’t begin to understand, designed to help along their growing TARDIS. On one memorable occasion, she’d come home to find him discovering first-hand that his alcohol tolerance was not, in fact, something that had carried over from his Time Lord physiology. Generally, living with the Doctor, she was prepared for just about anything.
Nonetheless, when she stepped into her flat that evening, the first words out of her mouth were “oh my God.”
There were candles lit on just about every surface area that wasn’t the floor - the table, kitchen counters, windowsills and the coffee table. A centrepiece of roses sat in the middle of the table, but from her spot by the door she could see three other bouquets at least, in vases and paper, scattered seemingly randomly. A giant white teddy bear holding a gaudy red heart smiled at her eerily from the sofa; around him, smaller bears and dogs and cats with their own smaller, gaudy hearts sat lopsidedly, like some mismatched family of mass-produced cheer.
Foil balloons of pinks and reds scraped the ceiling of the flat, where matching streamers intertwined in a complex and slightly bizarre web. Boxes of assorted chocolates sat alongside cinnamon and conversation hearts and chocolate-dipped strawberries. A series of cards was stuck to the fridge, varying from the animated sort with puns as punch lines to the sort with pictures of flowers and beaches with stilted poetry inside.
In the middle of it all was the Doctor, holding two bears stuck together by their magnetized noses. His head jerked up as she spoke, and he sent her a nervous smile. “Hello!”
Rose stared at him a second longer, stunned, and then doubled over in hysterics, clutching her sides.
The whole flat looked like somewhere a Hallmark had come to die.
“...Rose?” she heard him ask through her laughter.
She straightened and leaned back heavily against the door, still laughing. “Oh my God!” she said again, once she managed to stifle the giggles.
The Doctor regarded her with complete and endearing confusion as he set the stuffed bears on the table.
“It’s just…” Rose cast around for something to say, waving one hand as she did so. “I mean, it’s just...” Her brow scrunched. “Is that Celine Dion playing?”
And then she was laughing again.
“I take it this... isn’t what you were expecting,” he said.
She bit her lip, holding back the laughter again, and then smiled. “Nope.” She looked around the room again and swallowed back another giggle. “I think... I think all those candles are a fire hazard.”
“I thought so too,” the Doctor admitted. He pointed beside the refrigerator. “I got out the fire extinguisher.”
Rose opened and closed her mouth a few times, quickly establishing that she had no idea what to say to that. She pushed herself away from the door and walked closer to him, pulling on one of the balloon strings as she did so. “How much did you spend on all of this?” When he didn’t answer, she shook her head. “Just... I mean... it’s sort of... overkill, yeah?”
He reached up to scratch the back of his neck. “Well, Donna said flowers, so I got the roses, but then I thought, roses, how many people must have given you roses? So I got the tulips as well, and the lilies, but then I saw the orchids, which reminded me of that time on Traxis V, do you remember? Then the lady at the shop said I should get chocolates, but all their boxes were assorted, and with assorted chocolates half of them are always rubbish anyway, so I--“
“Doctor,” she said abruptly, sure she saw where the rest of the explanation was going and not entirely sure she needed to hear it all.
“Anyway, you lot, you’ve got so many different ways of communicating the same basic idea, and I didn’t know whether you’d prefer bears or balloons so I just thought... well, I just thought I’d get them all. You know. To be safe. Cover my bases, and all that.”
“That little bit of Donna didn’t help, then?”
“No.” The Doctor frowned. “And neither did the full-size one.”
She smiled sympathetically at him, so out of his element, and shook her head. “You really don’t understand any of this stuff, do you?”
The Doctor hesitated, unwilling for a moment to admit his complete incomprehension. Then he grabbed the kissing bears from the table and waved them back and forth; they pivoted at the nose.
“They’re bears, Rose. And they’ve got little magnets to stick their noses together like - like they’re kissing.” He raised his eyebrows, holding the bears up to her eye line. “Bears. Kissing! Bears don’t kiss.” He lowered the bears and stared at her, perplexed. “How do magnetized bears represent anything about how I feel about you?”
Rose looked at the bears, looked at the Doctor, then plucked them from his hands and tossed them to the floor. “You do know I don’t actually want kissing bears, right?”
He blinked, and gestured with one hand towards the helium-filled heart. “D’you prefer balloons?” He tugged the string, and the balloon bopped around against the ceiling with a crackle.
Shaking her head, Rose dropped her purse beside the bears and closed the gap between them, looping one arm around his waist and resting her free hand on his chest.
“I don’t need any of it, I mean,” she went on, shrugging her shoulders. “S’nice, I suppose - though it sort of looks like a... a cinnamon heart factory exploded all over our flat - but it’s not...” She chewed her lip as she wondered how to go on, one finger tapping to the beat of his heart. She grinned. “S’like... well, I still consider it a big accomplishment that I’ve gotten you to use the l-word.”
“Oi!” His arms found purchase around her back and tugged her a little closer. “Are you implying that I’m not romantic?”
Rose rolled her eyes up mischievously. “Well...”
“I bought you kissing bears! From what I understand, that’s the height of romance.” He peered down at her, plainly trying to appear serious and failing. “I could write you an ode to your favourite type of bird, if you’d prefer.”
“Shut up,” she said cheerfully, her hand sliding up from his chest to the back of his neck and pulling him down for a kiss.
He gripped her tighter but pulled back after a moment, eyes still closed. “It’s just - sometimes I - it’s not fair, to you, that you miss out on all these, these human things just because I haven’t got any bloody idea what I’m doing, and I thought-”
“Doctor?” she said, and his eyes snapped open. “Shut up.”
He kissed her then with a renewed vigour, and it was only when she stumbled over something that might have been a bear with a magnetized nose that Rose had the sense to pull back.
“Doctor?”
“Mmm?”
“We should probably put out these candles first.”