fic: the calm before
Title: The Calm Before
Author: Catey/beingfacetious
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Just borrowing from RTD and the Beeb.
Summary: "A storm's approaching," the Doctor said. But he's never been one to pay attention to a warning.
Author's Notes: Set during s2, after Fear Her. Written for challenge 43 at then_theres_us and also for a prompt given by professor_spork , to whom I hereby dedicate this fic. Beta'ed by the fabulous miracleofmercy .
Rose has clearly not thought about the storm since he first mentioned it that night under the London fireworks. She is the same as ever: her smile comes quickly, her laugh fills all the hidden corners of the TARDIS, she stands as near to him as is appropriate in any given situation (and often nearer than that).
When they’re together he goes along with her, day after relative day, the Doctor and Rose Tyler forever traveling in the TARDIS, because it’s the way she sees it and it’s the way it should be.
When he’s alone he begins to come undone.
He should think about protecting her, about avoiding or outrunning whatever is coming. He should try to figure out whether the warning he felt that night was even meant for him. Instead the question that thrums through his mind when he doesn’t fend it off is just this: can I live without her?
For quite some time, he can’t find an answer (not that he tries all that hard). But one night, while Rose is asleep and the Doctor is pausing outside her bedroom door on his way to anywhere else, a small voice somewhere inside him speaks up: yes, you can. That answer should have been obvious long before now. He lived without her for more than nine hundred years. His companions-his friends-have always come and gone. He realizes with a sinking heart that this change in the wind, this storm, was always coming. It is always coming. For everyone he meets. And that’s all right; it has to be all right. Of course he can live without her.
He moves aimlessly on down the dark hallway and finds himself in his own bedroom. He falls, fully-clothed, into his bed, pushes down the lump of protest that has lodged itself in his throat, and sleeps for the first time in weeks.
He wakes to Rose sitting heavily on his feet and bouncing slightly. “Rise and shine,” she says breezily, tilting her head and beaming at him. “Look, I know you think you’ve been fooling me, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that we’ve just been floating around in the vortex. For days.” She fixes him with an accusatory stare, eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest. “You’ve been having a sulk.”
The Doctor rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands before squinting at her with a frown. “What are you doing? How did you get in here? No one’s ever gotten in here before.”
She shrugs, looking put out that he hasn’t acknowledged her speech. “Dunno. I was looking for you and I just kind of…found your door.” She glances around her, apparently taking in the room for the first time. “This your bedroom, is it? Hmm. Thought it would be bigger.”
“Oy! It’s plenty big!”
She lets out a giggle before continuing. “I’m not going to ask what’s got you in such a pout, but I am going to insist that something be done. I’m so bored, and I know you must be as well. So let’s go!”
Her familiar enthusiasm is almost enough to make him forget the night before. He feels a grin pushing forward and works to arrange his face into a serious expression. “Might be right. Well then, Rose Tyler, where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know!” she is bouncing again, and he decides not to mention that his feet are asleep. “Take me somewhere amazing. Take me anywhere!”
And just like that, he realizes he was wrong. Maybe it’s the way he doesn’t mind that he couldn’t run at the moment if his life depended on it, or maybe it’s that he’s just noticed she hasn’t changed out of her pink pajama shorts, or maybe it’s the way she says “somewhere amazing” and “anywhere” as if they are synonymous-as though the entire universe is their personal playground and she can’t wait to explore every corner. He thinks of all the times he has felt the same way since Rose has been with him. And then he thinks about the prospect of exploring the universe-their universe-with anyone else.
“Somewhere amazing,” he replies, snatching her hand and squeezing it so hard her eyebrows shoot toward her hairline. “Coming right up.”
She pokes her tongue between her teeth and excitedly squeezes his blanketed knee, and he decides that his gut feeling is wrong; the clouds settling over London were just clouds, the “ominous warning” was just a cold snap, and she, with her “never ever will” and her fingers meshed with his, was right.
***
He takes her to Buirollan. He asks a young lady to dance, but the Buirollanians apparently prefer their men to have shaved heads. She wears a backless blue dress and dances most of the night with an all too handsome Buirollanian knight. He nurses a cuppa and pretends not to be jealous.
He takes her to Diaslora Seven. She finds a disposable camera in the TARDIS and fills it with pictures she insists on taking herself by standing quite close to him and holding the camera at arm’s length. She stands on her toes to press her lips to his cheek, and he hopes that at least that picture will come out.
He takes her to see the Heart and Soul Nebula from the TARDIS’ doors. She gasps. She stops breathing for so long that he starts to really worry. When he looks over at her and sees tears threatening at her eyelids, he slips an arm around her waist and decides to save the monologue he has prepared for later.
He takes her to meet Florence Nightengale, and Harpo Marx, and Pete Best, and the first king of the Fourth Republic of Evgenyamosov. He takes her to Gaspra, and Thooft, and Kottler, and Saturn. On each occasion, they end up running for their lives, dragging each other along and gasping to breathe around unbridled laughter.
He takes her to so many places in such a small amount of time that it seems to become a silent contest to see who will crack first and suggest a break. “Oh, I’ll never get tired of this,” Rose breathes as they step into New Korea, and if it’s a dare it’s one the Doctor happily accepts. Each new sight makes her gasp, makes him ramble, makes them cling to each other and laugh for no other reason than purest life. He doesn’t think about the storm over London. He doesn’t question that this whirlwind tour of the cosmos is destined to last forever.
And then she asks to go to a party, so he takes her to Amsterdam in the spring. “Clubbing!” he announces with a grand sweep of his hands. “That’s what Amsterdam does when they want a party. So we’ll go clubbing.”
Rose narrows her eyes at him skeptically. “You’re…taking me clubbing?”
“I am taking you clubbing.”
“Wearing that?”
“Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man, Rose.” The Doctor winks to emphasize the point and notes that she might roll her eyes, but she also can’t hold back a smile.
“I couldn’t find anything to wear in the TARDIS, though,” she says with a frown. “Nothing seemed exactly…club appropriate.”
He shrugs dismissively. “Probably doesn’t approve, stuffy old girl. Here.” He digs around in his pocket for a moment and produces a wad of bills. “Buy yourself something. Nothing too…”
The look on her face stops him in his tracks. “Nothing too what, Doctor?”
“Nothing too…nothing.” He coughs, and she rolls her eyes again before heading off to find an outfit while he does “anything other than clothes shopping, please.”
It turns out that exploring Amsterdam without Rose is much more boring than shopping with her. He is about to go back to the TARDIS library when a scrawled message on a wall to his left freezes him. It is hardly the graffiti that covers every other concrete surface in the city; this is a personal message, a note. He thinks of words that have followed him before, a message scattered across time and space. And then he remembers the storm. He turns his back on the wall and hurries back to the TARDIS.
When Rose returns much later she finds him sitting in a darkened room watching Casablanca. She leans in the doorframe, wearing what just might be considered a “too nothing” outfit. “It’s getting dark, are you ready?” she asks, tugging at the hem of her denim skirt.
He shakes his head, keeping his eyes trained on the television. “You were right: the pinstripes are decidedly not a clubbing outfit. I think I’ll just stay in tonight.”
“Oh. All right.” She hovers in the doorway for a moment, watching for a sign from him. Then she crosses the room and sinks onto the couch. “So what are we watching, then?”
He raises his eyebrows at her in surprise. “Oh, no, Rose, you wanted a party, you should-”
“Movie night is plenty party for me.” She curls her legs underneath her and leans into him. He lifts his arm to accommodate her and his fingers land on the skin of her exposed shoulder. She sighs and drops her head onto his shoulder, and he shifts his eyes sideways to take her in, glowing blue from the light of the TV and the sequins on her shirt. He thinks of the writing on the wall. And then he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath before turning back to the movie.
“Casablanca. We are watching the greatest movie of all time, Casablanca. Well, I say greatest, but that’s a hard thing to decide. There’s The Lion King. And, ooh, did you ever see Singing in the Rain? We’ll have to watch that next…”
***
He can’t look at her without thinking of the message on the wall, and he can’t think of the message without thinking of the storm, and he can’t think of the storm without thinking of himself alone. So he distances himself. They keep traveling-somewhere amazing, just like she asked, every day-but he walks just behind her, holds her hand loosely, studies landscapes instead of her face. She obviously notices and tries to overcompensate, by laughing too loud and running too fast and talking too much. He feels guilty, but he can think of no other way.
“Ooh, bit chilly here!” she exclaims as she steps out onto a planet he hasn’t yet told her the name of. She exaggerates rubbing her hands across her bare arms and glances at him, apparently hoping for a laugh or even a scoff.
He shrugs a small apology and tilts his head back towards the TARDIS. “I can go get you a coat, if you like.”
She drops her arms and nods, and he ignores the way her smile falters and the way she wordlessly accepts the coat he brings back.
They stand in silence, inches apart, taking in the sight: an expansive, undulating landscape, a thousand craggy formations, a sunrise over a pool of crystal water. “Is anyone here?” Rose finally breathes, cutting the stillness.
The Doctor shakes his head, a small smile forming on his lips. “Not yet. A few animals, but no people…This planet hasn’t been discovered.”
“It has now,” she argues, a trace of pride in her voice. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
He flashes the grin that means he’s pleased with her, but keeps his eyes ahead. “We’re here indeed.”
For another long while they don’t speak, don’t move, don’t touch. Finally she whispers, “it’s so beautiful.”
He takes a deep breath. Rose prepares herself for a rant about the benefits of uninhabited worlds and what a tragedy it is that people of every species are capable of destroying beauty. Instead, exhaling in a rush, he says: “how long are you going to stay with me?”
He looks at her then, and is nearly knocked over by all the wonder and joy in her eyes, and he can’t bring himself to doubt when she steadily replies, “forever.”
And he can’t bring himself to remember the storm when he turns to fully face her.
And he can’t bring himself to think of the last part of the message on the wall when he leans in to obey the first part.
Her lips are parted slightly in surprise but they soon respond to the pressure of his slightly chapped ones. They're soft and insistent and sweet and so Rose and his hearts feel as though they're bursting. He slips his hands around her waist and pulls her flush against him, and she lifts her hands to either side of his face. He clings to her and she sighs into his mouth and he is sure in this moment that this, this, is all the wonders of the universe.
The moment lasts forever and is over far too soon. “Rose,” he murmurs as they pull away, and he rests his forehead against hers, meeting her eyes.
Her smile is thrilled and hopeful and expectant, and then somehow forgiving when he closes his eyes and pulls her to him in another embrace, resting his chin atop her head this time. “Forever?” he whispers, and she runs her fingers across his back and repeats the promise, and he shuts out all the reasons not to and just believes her. And for once in his life, nothing else matters.
Author: Catey/beingfacetious
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Just borrowing from RTD and the Beeb.
Summary: "A storm's approaching," the Doctor said. But he's never been one to pay attention to a warning.
Author's Notes: Set during s2, after Fear Her. Written for challenge 43 at then_theres_us and also for a prompt given by professor_spork , to whom I hereby dedicate this fic. Beta'ed by the fabulous miracleofmercy .
Rose has clearly not thought about the storm since he first mentioned it that night under the London fireworks. She is the same as ever: her smile comes quickly, her laugh fills all the hidden corners of the TARDIS, she stands as near to him as is appropriate in any given situation (and often nearer than that).
When they’re together he goes along with her, day after relative day, the Doctor and Rose Tyler forever traveling in the TARDIS, because it’s the way she sees it and it’s the way it should be.
When he’s alone he begins to come undone.
He should think about protecting her, about avoiding or outrunning whatever is coming. He should try to figure out whether the warning he felt that night was even meant for him. Instead the question that thrums through his mind when he doesn’t fend it off is just this: can I live without her?
For quite some time, he can’t find an answer (not that he tries all that hard). But one night, while Rose is asleep and the Doctor is pausing outside her bedroom door on his way to anywhere else, a small voice somewhere inside him speaks up: yes, you can. That answer should have been obvious long before now. He lived without her for more than nine hundred years. His companions-his friends-have always come and gone. He realizes with a sinking heart that this change in the wind, this storm, was always coming. It is always coming. For everyone he meets. And that’s all right; it has to be all right. Of course he can live without her.
He moves aimlessly on down the dark hallway and finds himself in his own bedroom. He falls, fully-clothed, into his bed, pushes down the lump of protest that has lodged itself in his throat, and sleeps for the first time in weeks.
He wakes to Rose sitting heavily on his feet and bouncing slightly. “Rise and shine,” she says breezily, tilting her head and beaming at him. “Look, I know you think you’ve been fooling me, but don’t think I haven’t noticed that we’ve just been floating around in the vortex. For days.” She fixes him with an accusatory stare, eyebrow raised and arms folded across her chest. “You’ve been having a sulk.”
The Doctor rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands before squinting at her with a frown. “What are you doing? How did you get in here? No one’s ever gotten in here before.”
She shrugs, looking put out that he hasn’t acknowledged her speech. “Dunno. I was looking for you and I just kind of…found your door.” She glances around her, apparently taking in the room for the first time. “This your bedroom, is it? Hmm. Thought it would be bigger.”
“Oy! It’s plenty big!”
She lets out a giggle before continuing. “I’m not going to ask what’s got you in such a pout, but I am going to insist that something be done. I’m so bored, and I know you must be as well. So let’s go!”
Her familiar enthusiasm is almost enough to make him forget the night before. He feels a grin pushing forward and works to arrange his face into a serious expression. “Might be right. Well then, Rose Tyler, where would you like to go?”
“I don’t know!” she is bouncing again, and he decides not to mention that his feet are asleep. “Take me somewhere amazing. Take me anywhere!”
And just like that, he realizes he was wrong. Maybe it’s the way he doesn’t mind that he couldn’t run at the moment if his life depended on it, or maybe it’s that he’s just noticed she hasn’t changed out of her pink pajama shorts, or maybe it’s the way she says “somewhere amazing” and “anywhere” as if they are synonymous-as though the entire universe is their personal playground and she can’t wait to explore every corner. He thinks of all the times he has felt the same way since Rose has been with him. And then he thinks about the prospect of exploring the universe-their universe-with anyone else.
“Somewhere amazing,” he replies, snatching her hand and squeezing it so hard her eyebrows shoot toward her hairline. “Coming right up.”
She pokes her tongue between her teeth and excitedly squeezes his blanketed knee, and he decides that his gut feeling is wrong; the clouds settling over London were just clouds, the “ominous warning” was just a cold snap, and she, with her “never ever will” and her fingers meshed with his, was right.
***
He takes her to Buirollan. He asks a young lady to dance, but the Buirollanians apparently prefer their men to have shaved heads. She wears a backless blue dress and dances most of the night with an all too handsome Buirollanian knight. He nurses a cuppa and pretends not to be jealous.
He takes her to Diaslora Seven. She finds a disposable camera in the TARDIS and fills it with pictures she insists on taking herself by standing quite close to him and holding the camera at arm’s length. She stands on her toes to press her lips to his cheek, and he hopes that at least that picture will come out.
He takes her to see the Heart and Soul Nebula from the TARDIS’ doors. She gasps. She stops breathing for so long that he starts to really worry. When he looks over at her and sees tears threatening at her eyelids, he slips an arm around her waist and decides to save the monologue he has prepared for later.
He takes her to meet Florence Nightengale, and Harpo Marx, and Pete Best, and the first king of the Fourth Republic of Evgenyamosov. He takes her to Gaspra, and Thooft, and Kottler, and Saturn. On each occasion, they end up running for their lives, dragging each other along and gasping to breathe around unbridled laughter.
He takes her to so many places in such a small amount of time that it seems to become a silent contest to see who will crack first and suggest a break. “Oh, I’ll never get tired of this,” Rose breathes as they step into New Korea, and if it’s a dare it’s one the Doctor happily accepts. Each new sight makes her gasp, makes him ramble, makes them cling to each other and laugh for no other reason than purest life. He doesn’t think about the storm over London. He doesn’t question that this whirlwind tour of the cosmos is destined to last forever.
And then she asks to go to a party, so he takes her to Amsterdam in the spring. “Clubbing!” he announces with a grand sweep of his hands. “That’s what Amsterdam does when they want a party. So we’ll go clubbing.”
Rose narrows her eyes at him skeptically. “You’re…taking me clubbing?”
“I am taking you clubbing.”
“Wearing that?”
“Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp dressed man, Rose.” The Doctor winks to emphasize the point and notes that she might roll her eyes, but she also can’t hold back a smile.
“I couldn’t find anything to wear in the TARDIS, though,” she says with a frown. “Nothing seemed exactly…club appropriate.”
He shrugs dismissively. “Probably doesn’t approve, stuffy old girl. Here.” He digs around in his pocket for a moment and produces a wad of bills. “Buy yourself something. Nothing too…”
The look on her face stops him in his tracks. “Nothing too what, Doctor?”
“Nothing too…nothing.” He coughs, and she rolls her eyes again before heading off to find an outfit while he does “anything other than clothes shopping, please.”
It turns out that exploring Amsterdam without Rose is much more boring than shopping with her. He is about to go back to the TARDIS library when a scrawled message on a wall to his left freezes him. It is hardly the graffiti that covers every other concrete surface in the city; this is a personal message, a note. He thinks of words that have followed him before, a message scattered across time and space. And then he remembers the storm. He turns his back on the wall and hurries back to the TARDIS.
When Rose returns much later she finds him sitting in a darkened room watching Casablanca. She leans in the doorframe, wearing what just might be considered a “too nothing” outfit. “It’s getting dark, are you ready?” she asks, tugging at the hem of her denim skirt.
He shakes his head, keeping his eyes trained on the television. “You were right: the pinstripes are decidedly not a clubbing outfit. I think I’ll just stay in tonight.”
“Oh. All right.” She hovers in the doorway for a moment, watching for a sign from him. Then she crosses the room and sinks onto the couch. “So what are we watching, then?”
He raises his eyebrows at her in surprise. “Oh, no, Rose, you wanted a party, you should-”
“Movie night is plenty party for me.” She curls her legs underneath her and leans into him. He lifts his arm to accommodate her and his fingers land on the skin of her exposed shoulder. She sighs and drops her head onto his shoulder, and he shifts his eyes sideways to take her in, glowing blue from the light of the TV and the sequins on her shirt. He thinks of the writing on the wall. And then he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath before turning back to the movie.
“Casablanca. We are watching the greatest movie of all time, Casablanca. Well, I say greatest, but that’s a hard thing to decide. There’s The Lion King. And, ooh, did you ever see Singing in the Rain? We’ll have to watch that next…”
***
He can’t look at her without thinking of the message on the wall, and he can’t think of the message without thinking of the storm, and he can’t think of the storm without thinking of himself alone. So he distances himself. They keep traveling-somewhere amazing, just like she asked, every day-but he walks just behind her, holds her hand loosely, studies landscapes instead of her face. She obviously notices and tries to overcompensate, by laughing too loud and running too fast and talking too much. He feels guilty, but he can think of no other way.
“Ooh, bit chilly here!” she exclaims as she steps out onto a planet he hasn’t yet told her the name of. She exaggerates rubbing her hands across her bare arms and glances at him, apparently hoping for a laugh or even a scoff.
He shrugs a small apology and tilts his head back towards the TARDIS. “I can go get you a coat, if you like.”
She drops her arms and nods, and he ignores the way her smile falters and the way she wordlessly accepts the coat he brings back.
They stand in silence, inches apart, taking in the sight: an expansive, undulating landscape, a thousand craggy formations, a sunrise over a pool of crystal water. “Is anyone here?” Rose finally breathes, cutting the stillness.
The Doctor shakes his head, a small smile forming on his lips. “Not yet. A few animals, but no people…This planet hasn’t been discovered.”
“It has now,” she argues, a trace of pride in her voice. “We’re here, aren’t we?”
He flashes the grin that means he’s pleased with her, but keeps his eyes ahead. “We’re here indeed.”
For another long while they don’t speak, don’t move, don’t touch. Finally she whispers, “it’s so beautiful.”
He takes a deep breath. Rose prepares herself for a rant about the benefits of uninhabited worlds and what a tragedy it is that people of every species are capable of destroying beauty. Instead, exhaling in a rush, he says: “how long are you going to stay with me?”
He looks at her then, and is nearly knocked over by all the wonder and joy in her eyes, and he can’t bring himself to doubt when she steadily replies, “forever.”
And he can’t bring himself to remember the storm when he turns to fully face her.
And he can’t bring himself to think of the last part of the message on the wall when he leans in to obey the first part.
Her lips are parted slightly in surprise but they soon respond to the pressure of his slightly chapped ones. They're soft and insistent and sweet and so Rose and his hearts feel as though they're bursting. He slips his hands around her waist and pulls her flush against him, and she lifts her hands to either side of his face. He clings to her and she sighs into his mouth and he is sure in this moment that this, this, is all the wonders of the universe.
The moment lasts forever and is over far too soon. “Rose,” he murmurs as they pull away, and he rests his forehead against hers, meeting her eyes.
Her smile is thrilled and hopeful and expectant, and then somehow forgiving when he closes his eyes and pulls her to him in another embrace, resting his chin atop her head this time. “Forever?” he whispers, and she runs her fingers across his back and repeats the promise, and he shuts out all the reasons not to and just believes her. And for once in his life, nothing else matters.