Grey's Anatomy/Doctor Who - "The Doctor Blues"
Title: The Doctor Blues
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy and Doctor Who
Characters: Mickey Smith, George O’Malley, Rose Tyler
Date Written: May 2006
Timeline: Somewhere between “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Rise of the Cybermen” for DW. Some point in first season for GA.
Word Count: 1753
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The characters of Grey’s Anatomy do not belong to me. They belong to ABC and their creator and whoever else has stock in them. Likewise, the characters of Doctor Who do not belong to me. They belong to BBC and whoever else owns them. I’m just borrowing them for a little fun.
Summary: Having the doctor blues isn’t ever easy. Mickey and George know that first hand.
*****
Seattle, Washington, United States. When Mickey had decided to join Rose and the Doctor on their trips in the TARDIS, he had never imagined he would wind up here. In Seattle. In the United States. In the bloody twenty-first century. He always figured it would be some far off place like Mars. Or Saturn. Or, at the very least, some decently exotic country on Earth, like Peru. This never happened in the comics.
In fact, Mickey supposed, this was probably as far from the comics as you could get. It was like being in London all over again, with the rainy weather and the cloudy sky. Just, in place of sensible driving on the right side of the road, you had a crazy herd of bicyclists nearly running you over when you attempted crossing. You had indistinguishable accents - nearly as bad as that Captain Jack fellow - and indistinguishable currency.
He should have expected it when Rose and the Doctor had run off only minutes after the TARDIS had landed in the far right corner of the parking lot of some American hospital in Seattle. Together. Without giving Mickey a second thought. Nope, none at all. There they went, on some mad sight seeing trip that in absolutely no way included Mickey Smith.
And here he was, alone. Told to watch the TARDIS and make sure no daft American poked their nose in where it didn’t belong. They bloody well didn’t need him to watch the TARDIS. It was just an excuse. An excuse so Rose could run off just like she always did. And the Doctor would run after her, just like he always did. Watching the TARDIS was their way of telling Mickey to stay out of the way. Who needed the tin dog in Seattle, anyway?
So, Mickey Smith had done what he had quickly grown accustomed to, since that trip to that 51st century spaceship weeks ago. Ignoring the Doctor’s orders, he had locked up the TARDIS and wandered off. Alone. In a strange city in a strange country but not that strange. It wasn’t Raxacoricofallapatorious. Or that New Earth place Rose had briefly mentioned a few days ago. No, not at all. It was Seattle. And at that, Seattle 2006.
This never happened in the comics.
The pub hadn’t looked half bad and Mickey had been able to find some dollar bills in the pocket of one of the pairs of trousers the Doctor kept in one of the many rooms on the TARDIS. It wasn’t far - mind the TARDIS, Mickey - and he could see the blue police box from the bar’s window. When he bothered to look out the window. Not that busy or full and after a couple bottles of Bass ale, he’d be able to forget all about her. And all about him.
“Joe, I need another. Please.”
Mickey looked up from the bar counter where he had been inspecting a notch in the counter surface. The man that had spoken didn’t look all that much older than him, with floppy brown hair and a frown that Mickey could more than relate too. When the bartender - Joe, Mickey assumed - returned with another beer for the man, Mickey held up his own bottle and nodded. “Cheers, mate.”
“Mate? Huh?” The other man blinked slowly, craning his head to look at Mickey. “Hey, you’re from England, aren’t you? Stopping through?”
“Something like that,” Mickey replied, draining the rest of the ale. He placed the bottle on the bar with a satisfied clunk next to the other brown empty bottle of Bass. Following the other man’s lead, he flagged over the bartender, a rather tubby man he assumed was named Joe. “Another, Joe?”
By the time Joe came back with another bottle of beer, the other man had shifted down a few barstools closer to Mickey. “I don’t usually come here alone, you know. I mean, actually, um. Forget it.”
Mickey was slightly confused by that and the subsequent mumbling about embarrassing and someone named Izzie Burke. The look on his face made it clear. Nothing in his adventures with the TARDIS lot had prepared him as to what to do when encountering mumbling Americans. Only the arrogant and cocky ones. Not even any of the life lessons his grandmother had tried to instill on him helped right now.
Lucky for Mickey, however, the strange American man spoke louder, and in a more definitive tone. Now it was something only slightly more intelligible. Something about a…Burke Bailey was it now? And mutterings of a Doctor McDreamy.
Doctor McDreamy. Sounds like something Rose might actually call him if she continued on this dark path of getting closer and closer to the Doctor. Well, maybe not to the Doctor’s face, but behind his back certainly. At least, that’s what Tina had led him to believe.
“So you have one too, eh?” Mickey finally cut in with, after the man had left him with enough of a speech gap to cut in. He tipped his Bass ale bottle forward a slight bit and some of the liquid dribbled in to his mouth. “A Doctor that just won’t bleeding go away no matter how much you want him too.”
The other man - George O’Malley, Mickey had found out through a fast and fleeting introduction - nodded. He nodded long and hard, holding his own beer bottle up and waving it in unison with his head nod.
“Doctor McDreamy she calls him,” he repeated again. “I don’t know what’s so McDreamy about him. Izzie says it’s because my genitals are on the outside. Sometimes I think,” George declared, waving the bottle again, “Izzie just needs to shut up.”
Mickey was confused again, but this time he doesn’t bother letting it show. “It’sworse,” he slurred, sipping at the ale in between words. “She was my girlfriend. And he just showed up one day, outta the blue. The Doctor, he called himself. And next thing I know, she’s left to travel around the universe with him. Him. She barely even knew the bloke.”
“I feel you, man. Guys like us don’t stand a chance. It’s the Alexes and the McDreamys and that doctor of yours of the world that get all the girls. We’re jus’ second place.” George shook his head and then paused for a moment to shut his eyes and brace his head against the dizziness. “Izzie keeps saying I need to ask her out. When she has McDreamy, I don’t see the point.”
“Who?” Mickey blinked. “Izzie?”
“No. Meredith. Meredith,” he echoed, sighing and smiling. “Sorta like your…”
“Rose.”
“Yeah, Rose. Perfect. Absolutely perfect and absolutely unattainable. Not with these doctors in our way.”
“Yeah.” This time it was Mickey echoing. “Yeah. An’ what’s he got that I don’t got? Aside from the sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS and…oh. Oh.”
As a wave of self-pity washed over him, Mickey buried his face in his hand. That was it, wasn’t it? The Doctor could offer her the universe and he could just offer her, well. Absolutely sodding nothing.
“Dimples and perfect teeth and dreamy hair,” George continued, unaware that Mickey had stopped talking. Vaguely aware of what he was saying, George came to a quick halt in speech and blushed, burying his own face in his own hands. “Or, um, at least that’s what Izzie and Meredith claim.”
“I never should have come here,” Mickey muttered into his hands. “Shoulda just stayed in London, the sometimes boyfriend. Then I wouldn’t have to see them together every day. An’ it’s worse when that Cap’n’s around. Cap’n Jack. What sorta name is that?”
“Beats Mc-hic-Dreamy. I mean, McShep- Sheppard. Doctor Derek Sheppard.” George frowned and drained the last of his beer, leaning his head back and holding the bottle mouth above his until the last of the drops had dripped through. “I still don’t get it.”
“Me neither.”
“He’s her boss.”
“Hanging around him’s only gonna get us killed.”
“I really, truly care for her.”
“So do I.”
“Then what are we sitting around here for?” George lifted his head up and banged his empty bottle against the bar surface, earning a startled look from Mickey and a glare from Joe. After a brief and mumbled apology, George turned to look at Mickey again. “No, really. What are we sitting around here for? These are the best years of our lives and we’re just sitting at a bar wasting them cause of a couple of Doctors.”
“Yeah,” Mickey replied, his brown eyes widening and growing bright. “Exactly!”
“Yeah. So…so I think we need to go out and do something. Win them back or for the first time or, uh, whatever the case might be.”
Mickey grinned brightly and nodded. “Brilliant. Bloody brilliant, mate. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
With another toothy smile, he slapped George on the back and stumbled out of the barstool. He dug into his jeans pockets and pulled out a wad of American dollars, British pounds, and one coupon redeemable at the quickimart on Europa Nine. He fumbled through the American bills - they all look exactly the same; are these people daft? - and finally selected enough to cover the three beers.
“Think I’m gonna go and do this now. Show Rose Tyler that there’s more to Mickey Smith that meets the eye.”
“Good luck!”
He nodded and grinned at George again, nearly tripping over the barstool as he began to walk away from the bar counter and right smack into a certain, familiar blonde. Mickey blinked and took a step back as Rose came to focus in front of him. She stood there, arms over her chest with a cross look on her face.
“Mickey, we’ve been looking all over for you. You were supposed to remain by the TARDIS. C’mon,” she said, pulling at his arm and towards the door. “The Doctor thinks there might be Martians in Seattle!”
George watched silently from his seat as Mickey was dragged out of the bar by the blonde English girl. As the door opened to let Mickey and his friend - Rose? - out, another couple walked in, nearly hit in the rush. George looked from Meredith to Sheppard and back to Meredith’s smiling face again before sending a silent thanks to whatever force was currently looking over him. And allowing him to remain invisible from certain doomful confrontations.
“At least it’s not Martians. Can’t beat someone who knows Martians.”
Or, at least, that’s what all the comics implied when he was a kid.
Fandom: Grey’s Anatomy and Doctor Who
Characters: Mickey Smith, George O’Malley, Rose Tyler
Date Written: May 2006
Timeline: Somewhere between “The Girl in the Fireplace” and “Rise of the Cybermen” for DW. Some point in first season for GA.
Word Count: 1753
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: The characters of Grey’s Anatomy do not belong to me. They belong to ABC and their creator and whoever else has stock in them. Likewise, the characters of Doctor Who do not belong to me. They belong to BBC and whoever else owns them. I’m just borrowing them for a little fun.
Summary: Having the doctor blues isn’t ever easy. Mickey and George know that first hand.
*****
Seattle, Washington, United States. When Mickey had decided to join Rose and the Doctor on their trips in the TARDIS, he had never imagined he would wind up here. In Seattle. In the United States. In the bloody twenty-first century. He always figured it would be some far off place like Mars. Or Saturn. Or, at the very least, some decently exotic country on Earth, like Peru. This never happened in the comics.
In fact, Mickey supposed, this was probably as far from the comics as you could get. It was like being in London all over again, with the rainy weather and the cloudy sky. Just, in place of sensible driving on the right side of the road, you had a crazy herd of bicyclists nearly running you over when you attempted crossing. You had indistinguishable accents - nearly as bad as that Captain Jack fellow - and indistinguishable currency.
He should have expected it when Rose and the Doctor had run off only minutes after the TARDIS had landed in the far right corner of the parking lot of some American hospital in Seattle. Together. Without giving Mickey a second thought. Nope, none at all. There they went, on some mad sight seeing trip that in absolutely no way included Mickey Smith.
And here he was, alone. Told to watch the TARDIS and make sure no daft American poked their nose in where it didn’t belong. They bloody well didn’t need him to watch the TARDIS. It was just an excuse. An excuse so Rose could run off just like she always did. And the Doctor would run after her, just like he always did. Watching the TARDIS was their way of telling Mickey to stay out of the way. Who needed the tin dog in Seattle, anyway?
So, Mickey Smith had done what he had quickly grown accustomed to, since that trip to that 51st century spaceship weeks ago. Ignoring the Doctor’s orders, he had locked up the TARDIS and wandered off. Alone. In a strange city in a strange country but not that strange. It wasn’t Raxacoricofallapatorious. Or that New Earth place Rose had briefly mentioned a few days ago. No, not at all. It was Seattle. And at that, Seattle 2006.
This never happened in the comics.
The pub hadn’t looked half bad and Mickey had been able to find some dollar bills in the pocket of one of the pairs of trousers the Doctor kept in one of the many rooms on the TARDIS. It wasn’t far - mind the TARDIS, Mickey - and he could see the blue police box from the bar’s window. When he bothered to look out the window. Not that busy or full and after a couple bottles of Bass ale, he’d be able to forget all about her. And all about him.
“Joe, I need another. Please.”
Mickey looked up from the bar counter where he had been inspecting a notch in the counter surface. The man that had spoken didn’t look all that much older than him, with floppy brown hair and a frown that Mickey could more than relate too. When the bartender - Joe, Mickey assumed - returned with another beer for the man, Mickey held up his own bottle and nodded. “Cheers, mate.”
“Mate? Huh?” The other man blinked slowly, craning his head to look at Mickey. “Hey, you’re from England, aren’t you? Stopping through?”
“Something like that,” Mickey replied, draining the rest of the ale. He placed the bottle on the bar with a satisfied clunk next to the other brown empty bottle of Bass. Following the other man’s lead, he flagged over the bartender, a rather tubby man he assumed was named Joe. “Another, Joe?”
By the time Joe came back with another bottle of beer, the other man had shifted down a few barstools closer to Mickey. “I don’t usually come here alone, you know. I mean, actually, um. Forget it.”
Mickey was slightly confused by that and the subsequent mumbling about embarrassing and someone named Izzie Burke. The look on his face made it clear. Nothing in his adventures with the TARDIS lot had prepared him as to what to do when encountering mumbling Americans. Only the arrogant and cocky ones. Not even any of the life lessons his grandmother had tried to instill on him helped right now.
Lucky for Mickey, however, the strange American man spoke louder, and in a more definitive tone. Now it was something only slightly more intelligible. Something about a…Burke Bailey was it now? And mutterings of a Doctor McDreamy.
Doctor McDreamy. Sounds like something Rose might actually call him if she continued on this dark path of getting closer and closer to the Doctor. Well, maybe not to the Doctor’s face, but behind his back certainly. At least, that’s what Tina had led him to believe.
“So you have one too, eh?” Mickey finally cut in with, after the man had left him with enough of a speech gap to cut in. He tipped his Bass ale bottle forward a slight bit and some of the liquid dribbled in to his mouth. “A Doctor that just won’t bleeding go away no matter how much you want him too.”
The other man - George O’Malley, Mickey had found out through a fast and fleeting introduction - nodded. He nodded long and hard, holding his own beer bottle up and waving it in unison with his head nod.
“Doctor McDreamy she calls him,” he repeated again. “I don’t know what’s so McDreamy about him. Izzie says it’s because my genitals are on the outside. Sometimes I think,” George declared, waving the bottle again, “Izzie just needs to shut up.”
Mickey was confused again, but this time he doesn’t bother letting it show. “It’sworse,” he slurred, sipping at the ale in between words. “She was my girlfriend. And he just showed up one day, outta the blue. The Doctor, he called himself. And next thing I know, she’s left to travel around the universe with him. Him. She barely even knew the bloke.”
“I feel you, man. Guys like us don’t stand a chance. It’s the Alexes and the McDreamys and that doctor of yours of the world that get all the girls. We’re jus’ second place.” George shook his head and then paused for a moment to shut his eyes and brace his head against the dizziness. “Izzie keeps saying I need to ask her out. When she has McDreamy, I don’t see the point.”
“Who?” Mickey blinked. “Izzie?”
“No. Meredith. Meredith,” he echoed, sighing and smiling. “Sorta like your…”
“Rose.”
“Yeah, Rose. Perfect. Absolutely perfect and absolutely unattainable. Not with these doctors in our way.”
“Yeah.” This time it was Mickey echoing. “Yeah. An’ what’s he got that I don’t got? Aside from the sonic screwdriver and the TARDIS and…oh. Oh.”
As a wave of self-pity washed over him, Mickey buried his face in his hand. That was it, wasn’t it? The Doctor could offer her the universe and he could just offer her, well. Absolutely sodding nothing.
“Dimples and perfect teeth and dreamy hair,” George continued, unaware that Mickey had stopped talking. Vaguely aware of what he was saying, George came to a quick halt in speech and blushed, burying his own face in his own hands. “Or, um, at least that’s what Izzie and Meredith claim.”
“I never should have come here,” Mickey muttered into his hands. “Shoulda just stayed in London, the sometimes boyfriend. Then I wouldn’t have to see them together every day. An’ it’s worse when that Cap’n’s around. Cap’n Jack. What sorta name is that?”
“Beats Mc-hic-Dreamy. I mean, McShep- Sheppard. Doctor Derek Sheppard.” George frowned and drained the last of his beer, leaning his head back and holding the bottle mouth above his until the last of the drops had dripped through. “I still don’t get it.”
“Me neither.”
“He’s her boss.”
“Hanging around him’s only gonna get us killed.”
“I really, truly care for her.”
“So do I.”
“Then what are we sitting around here for?” George lifted his head up and banged his empty bottle against the bar surface, earning a startled look from Mickey and a glare from Joe. After a brief and mumbled apology, George turned to look at Mickey again. “No, really. What are we sitting around here for? These are the best years of our lives and we’re just sitting at a bar wasting them cause of a couple of Doctors.”
“Yeah,” Mickey replied, his brown eyes widening and growing bright. “Exactly!”
“Yeah. So…so I think we need to go out and do something. Win them back or for the first time or, uh, whatever the case might be.”
Mickey grinned brightly and nodded. “Brilliant. Bloody brilliant, mate. Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”
With another toothy smile, he slapped George on the back and stumbled out of the barstool. He dug into his jeans pockets and pulled out a wad of American dollars, British pounds, and one coupon redeemable at the quickimart on Europa Nine. He fumbled through the American bills - they all look exactly the same; are these people daft? - and finally selected enough to cover the three beers.
“Think I’m gonna go and do this now. Show Rose Tyler that there’s more to Mickey Smith that meets the eye.”
“Good luck!”
He nodded and grinned at George again, nearly tripping over the barstool as he began to walk away from the bar counter and right smack into a certain, familiar blonde. Mickey blinked and took a step back as Rose came to focus in front of him. She stood there, arms over her chest with a cross look on her face.
“Mickey, we’ve been looking all over for you. You were supposed to remain by the TARDIS. C’mon,” she said, pulling at his arm and towards the door. “The Doctor thinks there might be Martians in Seattle!”
George watched silently from his seat as Mickey was dragged out of the bar by the blonde English girl. As the door opened to let Mickey and his friend - Rose? - out, another couple walked in, nearly hit in the rush. George looked from Meredith to Sheppard and back to Meredith’s smiling face again before sending a silent thanks to whatever force was currently looking over him. And allowing him to remain invisible from certain doomful confrontations.
“At least it’s not Martians. Can’t beat someone who knows Martians.”
Or, at least, that’s what all the comics implied when he was a kid.