Doctor Who Fic: A Redhead And A Brick
Title: A Redhead And A Brick
Author: lookatmoiye7
Rating: PG-13 (sexual references)
Characters: Rose/Ten II
Authors Notes: I randomly got inspiration for this after reading a fic with Ten II lamenting the fact he’ll never be ginger. I guess it struck me because technically, that’s not really true…
Summary: “For once, I just wanted to try being ginger. Is that so bad?”
~
Rose comes home to find the house quiet. Too quiet. The sound of her footsteps echoes down the hall, and there is no sign of the Doctor. They both work at Torchwood, but he always gets home first, because he likes being there to spoil her with dinner and ask about her day. He usually greets her at the door, or, if he’s in the middle of something, she can at least hear him working or whistling or murmuring to himself. Instead, there’s… nothing. This is not good. It’s not necessarily Not Good, yet, but still… not good.
“Doctor?” she calls, dropping her bag on the kitchen table as she passes by. “Are you here?” She pokes her head into his work room. His bench is covered with bottles and containers of various sizes, and a bowl containing what looks like a red paste is sitting on a towel on the floor next to a their bedroom mirror, but he’s nowhere to be found. “Doctor?”
“Rose!” she hears, and, suddenly, the Doctor is in front of her, clad only in towels - one around his waist, the other wrapped around his hair. “Hello!”
He sounds nervous. She narrows her eyes, immediately suspicious. “What did you do?”
“What? Me? Nothing!” His voice goes high and he clears his throat. “Nothing at all. I’ve simply been at home, minding my own business, working…”
“Right. Course.” She doesn’t like the way his eyes are skittering over her face, occasionally flitting to her eyes but never once holding her gaze, and it’s while she’s watching him that she notices something. “Doctor. Why does your towel have red on it?”
His hands immediately go to the towel around his head. “What? It does? Isn’t that just the pattern? I could’ve sworn it had pretty little red flow-“
“No. It doesn’t.” She crosses her arms and he takes a step back. “Doctor. Take. Off. The towel.”
“No!” He jumps back, this time, almost looking traumatised, and suddenly, in a moment of clarity, Rose realises what he’s done, and has to fight to keep a straight face. Life with the Doctor is always full of adventure, and the fact that a lot of it is domestic now causes her little grief at all.
She decides to play along. “Why not?”
“My… Er… Hair! It isn’t… Dry yet! It needs to dry completely under the towel, or else it looks… strange.”
“Bull. You usually put so much gel in it you can’t even tell what colour it is.” Her emphasis of the word ‘colour’ makes him flinch like she knew it would, which more than confirms her hunch.
“Excuse me, I resent that accusation! I use a perfectly normal amount of gel, thank you very much, no more than any other human male of this age. And it’s not like you can talk, Miss-dark-roots-and-bleach-Tyler! What about all the times you’ve-”
And then, mid-babble, when he’s least expecting it, Rose throws herself at him, pinning him against the wall, clamping her legs over his hips and forcing him to wrap his arms around her or she’ll fall. She rips the towel off his head, throwing it to the floor with a flourish, and they are both silent as Rose stares, bringing her hands to her mouth. This time, she can’t stop her laughter from surging forth, and she dissolves into giggles, slowing and then starting again every time she looks at his hair.
“I was aiming for ginger,” he says miserably, when she’s stopped cackling long enough for him to get a word in edgewise. “But all I got,” he gestures vaguely to his flaming red hair, “was this.”
“Oh, Doctor,” Rose says, touching it. It’s as soft as always, but instead of being beautifully brunette, it’s the colour of a fire truck from her old universe. “What did you do?”
“I just wanted to be ginger!” He finally lowers her to the floor and ducks into the bathroom. She follows him in to see him glaring at his reflection. “For once, I just wanted to try being ginger. Is that so bad?”
“Depends who you ask.” He transfers his mirror-glare to her, and she pats him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Doctor. It’s not permanent. We’ll fix it, yeah?”
With amazing speed, his expression cycles through to hopeful, and he turns to her, puppy-dog eyes on at full power. “You’ll help me?”
“Course I will! What else am I for?”
“Well,” his gaze drifts lower, to the top of her low-necked shirt, “you have other uses.”
“Occasionally.” He tries to lower his head to kiss her, but she just… can’t, not when he looks more like Elmo than the Doctor. If it goes any further, she might laugh at him while they’re… in the middle of the act, and that would do a lot more damage to his ego than temporarily abstaining. She gently pushes him back. “I’ll bring you back something tomorrow, okay? We’ll fix it.”
“Right.”
“Just… don’t ever try to make your own cosmetics again.” He nods. “How long did you leave it in for, anyway?”
He looks embarrassed. “Is three hours too long?”
~
Rose barely has the key in the lock when the front door is yanked open and the Doctor, dressed in a bathrobe and his motorcycle helmet, asks, “Have you got it?”
She fishes around in her bag before pulling out a box and rattling it. “Here we go. Gorgeous Ginger, number 47.”
“Lovely!” He snatches it from her and hurries back down the hall, careening into the bathroom.
She rolls her eyes. “How about you?” She steps inside and closes the door behind her. “You okay?”
“Yup!” He jumps back into the hall and whips off the helmet. “All bleached up!”
Rose gapes. If anything, it looks even more ridiculous than before. The bright white has completely washed him out, and he looks far more alien than he ever has before.
“I know, I know, I probably didn’t need it, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I used up what you had left, too, hope you don’t mind,” he continues, seemingly not registering her horror. “I don’t know how you do it so often, scalp felt like it was burning off! The torture planet Fulgitopia could learn a lot from using this stuff.”
Somehow, she finds her voice. “Er… right. Well. Have you got…” She tries to look at him, really, she does, but his hair. She shakes her head in an effort to focus. “Towels!” she forces herself to say. “Towels! We need towels, I’ll go and get some.” She moves to walk past him, but he grabs her wrist.
“I have towels! I’m all ready, just need you.”
“Right. Well, let’s get this over with, then.”
“Right!” He beams at her, so excited by the prospect of being ginger it melts most of her shock away. “Come on, then.” He drags her into the bathroom, where he’s put a chair from the kitchen in the middle of the floor, close enough for Rose to reach the sink, but leaving enough room around it so she can manoeuvre around his head. He throws himself into the seat and looks expectantly at her.
This time, she can’t help but smile, and as she puts the plastic gloves on and mixes the developer with the colour cream, she meets his eyes again in the mirror. They’re glittering with anticipation, his right leg jiggling madly as it always does when he’s excited or nervous.
Slowly, she squirts some of the dye into her palm and starts at his forehead, making her way around his hairline, occasionally glancing at his face. His eyes are closed, and he’s humming in pleasure.
“You’re really good at this,” he murmurs, his voice deep, resonating against the tiles.
“Yeah, well, used to do mum’s all the time.” She begins massaging his scalp, and he sighs, his shoulders relaxing as he gives himself completely over to the movements of her fingers.
“It feels brilliant. Hope your mum didn’t have the same reaction to it as me.” She rolls her eyes, and, as she moves around to his front, he opens his eyes again. “Really hope she didn’t feel like me,” he repeats, eyes on her chest. He starts snaking a hand up her stomach, but she elbows him out of the way.
“Stop it,” she scolds him. “I’m not done. Do you want this to work, or not?”
He pouts, but cooperates until she finishes and peels off the gloves, instructing him on what to do before ducking out of the bathroom with the promise of a good snogging when he’s ginger.
She waits for him to finish his shower feeling relatively nervous, knowing that this is the moment of truth. If he doesn’t like this, then all of his ginger dreams will have been shattered and it will take her quite a while to help him get over it. From the moment she hears the water turn off, Rose waits near the kitchen doorway, pretending to be doing something else, but really watching out for him. After fifteen minutes, she turns to fix up the rubbish and he moves up behind her and puts his hands over her eyes.
“Guess who?”
“Um. Prince Harry?”
“Ha ha. Turn around, and open your eyes.”
Taking a deep breath, she does so, and… It actually looks quite nice. He grins when she tells him so, proudly running a hand through it, letting it slip tantalizingly through his fingers before patting it back into place.
The thing is, though, it reminds her of Donna. It’s exactly her shade, and, when it’s dry and they’re watching a Spooks rerun later and he vehemently calls Adam a prawn, it’s just scary.
So, even though he gives her a massage that night, which usually always helps to get her in the mood, she distracts him with questions about thermodynamics until they both fall asleep.
~
Rose has forgotten her keys, so she knocks, three, solid raps on the treated wood. She waits for a few moments, but there’s nothing. Frowning, she knocks again.
“Doctor,” she calls, “I’ve not got my keys, can you let me in?” Still nothing. “Doctor. Doct-”
The door swings open suddenly, the Doctor standing in the doorway.
“Hi,” Rose says, relieved. “Thought you weren’t home, and I was going to…” She trails off she registers his demeanour. His shoulders are slouched, his eyes cast downward and his mouth downturned. Most pressing, though, is the fact that he is wearing a sombrero. She didn’t even know he had a sombrero. Now, she thinks, things are really Not Good.
“Nice sombrero,” she says, for lack of anything else.
He grunts and stomps inside. She follows him in, carefully formulating her next move. She has to be supportive, but not patronise or smother him. And whatever’s happened, even though it might seem trivial to her, she has to treat it with respect. Sometimes, she forgets that she’s had a lot longer to familiarise herself with the ups and downs of being human than he has.
She decides to just be there for him, and let him tell her what the problem is in his own time. He doesn’t like being pressured or forced into something he doesn’t want to do, instead preferring to come his own conclusions, even if it may take him a lot longer. So, rather than peppering him with questions, Rose goes into their bedroom and changes into her pyjamas before joining him in the bathroom as he scrubs hard at the sink, seemingly struck by the violent urge to clean. She pulls out her make-up remover and begins swiping it over her face, occasionally running her free hand over his shoulders. Eventually, she feels some of the tension there dissipate, and his frantic scrubbing slowly loses its vigour until, finally, he stops and looks at her so sadly she feels a powerful pang in her chest.
“I think I rather romanticised being ginger, Rose. You know all those times I said it would be wonderful? I was wrong. It was horrible.” His eyes go wide and she takes his hand in hers and squeezes it, letting him know she’s there. He squeezes back before continuing, “It was like one of those experiments they do on the telly, like when the beautiful people put on the fat suit to see what life is like for the other half.”
He looks at her, and she nods sympathetically. “Was it? How come?”
“People were just so… so… mean! It started when I was walking to the bus stop this morning, when these high-school lads started laughing and pretend-coughing insults, and it never once let up until I got back in the front door. Not even at work! Maybe they thought I was fine with it, but if that’s really what gingers have to put with in this universe then I’m surprised there are any of them left!”
“Why didn’t you tell them off?” she asks quietly. “Give them a bit of that Oncoming Storm slash Donna Noble combo, put them in their place?”
“I was going to, but it was just so… horrible! And then Mickey, of all people, tried to stick up for me, saying they were discriminating, but they just said to leave them alone, it’s the only legal form they have left! And then they made a joke about bricks getting laid more than redheads and…” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I just don’t understand the human race, sometimes, Rose.”
“You’re doing better than me, I never understand us.”
He turns to her, so vulnerable in his sombrero Rose is suddenly struck with the desire to go out and… and… and sonic everyone who made him feel this way. “I don’t think I want to be ginger any more.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Be back in a mo’, then.” She kisses him on the cheek before ducking into the hallway and slipping on her trainers at the door.
“Wait! Where are you going?” He watches helplessly as she grabs her purse from her bag. “I need… comfort, or sex, or both! I need you, here, not… where are you going?”
“I’m going, my Doctor, to get you some new hair dye from the 24-hour on the corner. Any more objections?”
His eyes light up, before he steps forward to envelop her in a giant hug. “Thank you,” he whispers.
“Love you.” She slips out of his embrace and out of the door, hearing a faint Love you, too behind her.
She comes back with something by L’Oreal, and this time there is absolutely nothing methodical about the way she applies the Beautiful Brunette to his hair, particularly since, by the end of it, she has nothing on except for his sombrero.
They have sex while waiting the allotted dye-setting time.
And then again in the shower as soon as the water runs clear.
And then again when his hair is dry.
~
Author: lookatmoiye7
Rating: PG-13 (sexual references)
Characters: Rose/Ten II
Authors Notes: I randomly got inspiration for this after reading a fic with Ten II lamenting the fact he’ll never be ginger. I guess it struck me because technically, that’s not really true…
Summary: “For once, I just wanted to try being ginger. Is that so bad?”
~
Rose comes home to find the house quiet. Too quiet. The sound of her footsteps echoes down the hall, and there is no sign of the Doctor. They both work at Torchwood, but he always gets home first, because he likes being there to spoil her with dinner and ask about her day. He usually greets her at the door, or, if he’s in the middle of something, she can at least hear him working or whistling or murmuring to himself. Instead, there’s… nothing. This is not good. It’s not necessarily Not Good, yet, but still… not good.
“Doctor?” she calls, dropping her bag on the kitchen table as she passes by. “Are you here?” She pokes her head into his work room. His bench is covered with bottles and containers of various sizes, and a bowl containing what looks like a red paste is sitting on a towel on the floor next to a their bedroom mirror, but he’s nowhere to be found. “Doctor?”
“Rose!” she hears, and, suddenly, the Doctor is in front of her, clad only in towels - one around his waist, the other wrapped around his hair. “Hello!”
He sounds nervous. She narrows her eyes, immediately suspicious. “What did you do?”
“What? Me? Nothing!” His voice goes high and he clears his throat. “Nothing at all. I’ve simply been at home, minding my own business, working…”
“Right. Course.” She doesn’t like the way his eyes are skittering over her face, occasionally flitting to her eyes but never once holding her gaze, and it’s while she’s watching him that she notices something. “Doctor. Why does your towel have red on it?”
His hands immediately go to the towel around his head. “What? It does? Isn’t that just the pattern? I could’ve sworn it had pretty little red flow-“
“No. It doesn’t.” She crosses her arms and he takes a step back. “Doctor. Take. Off. The towel.”
“No!” He jumps back, this time, almost looking traumatised, and suddenly, in a moment of clarity, Rose realises what he’s done, and has to fight to keep a straight face. Life with the Doctor is always full of adventure, and the fact that a lot of it is domestic now causes her little grief at all.
She decides to play along. “Why not?”
“My… Er… Hair! It isn’t… Dry yet! It needs to dry completely under the towel, or else it looks… strange.”
“Bull. You usually put so much gel in it you can’t even tell what colour it is.” Her emphasis of the word ‘colour’ makes him flinch like she knew it would, which more than confirms her hunch.
“Excuse me, I resent that accusation! I use a perfectly normal amount of gel, thank you very much, no more than any other human male of this age. And it’s not like you can talk, Miss-dark-roots-and-bleach-Tyler! What about all the times you’ve-”
And then, mid-babble, when he’s least expecting it, Rose throws herself at him, pinning him against the wall, clamping her legs over his hips and forcing him to wrap his arms around her or she’ll fall. She rips the towel off his head, throwing it to the floor with a flourish, and they are both silent as Rose stares, bringing her hands to her mouth. This time, she can’t stop her laughter from surging forth, and she dissolves into giggles, slowing and then starting again every time she looks at his hair.
“I was aiming for ginger,” he says miserably, when she’s stopped cackling long enough for him to get a word in edgewise. “But all I got,” he gestures vaguely to his flaming red hair, “was this.”
“Oh, Doctor,” Rose says, touching it. It’s as soft as always, but instead of being beautifully brunette, it’s the colour of a fire truck from her old universe. “What did you do?”
“I just wanted to be ginger!” He finally lowers her to the floor and ducks into the bathroom. She follows him in to see him glaring at his reflection. “For once, I just wanted to try being ginger. Is that so bad?”
“Depends who you ask.” He transfers his mirror-glare to her, and she pats him on the shoulder. “It’s okay, Doctor. It’s not permanent. We’ll fix it, yeah?”
With amazing speed, his expression cycles through to hopeful, and he turns to her, puppy-dog eyes on at full power. “You’ll help me?”
“Course I will! What else am I for?”
“Well,” his gaze drifts lower, to the top of her low-necked shirt, “you have other uses.”
“Occasionally.” He tries to lower his head to kiss her, but she just… can’t, not when he looks more like Elmo than the Doctor. If it goes any further, she might laugh at him while they’re… in the middle of the act, and that would do a lot more damage to his ego than temporarily abstaining. She gently pushes him back. “I’ll bring you back something tomorrow, okay? We’ll fix it.”
“Right.”
“Just… don’t ever try to make your own cosmetics again.” He nods. “How long did you leave it in for, anyway?”
He looks embarrassed. “Is three hours too long?”
~
Rose barely has the key in the lock when the front door is yanked open and the Doctor, dressed in a bathrobe and his motorcycle helmet, asks, “Have you got it?”
She fishes around in her bag before pulling out a box and rattling it. “Here we go. Gorgeous Ginger, number 47.”
“Lovely!” He snatches it from her and hurries back down the hall, careening into the bathroom.
She rolls her eyes. “How about you?” She steps inside and closes the door behind her. “You okay?”
“Yup!” He jumps back into the hall and whips off the helmet. “All bleached up!”
Rose gapes. If anything, it looks even more ridiculous than before. The bright white has completely washed him out, and he looks far more alien than he ever has before.
“I know, I know, I probably didn’t need it, but I didn’t want to take any chances. I used up what you had left, too, hope you don’t mind,” he continues, seemingly not registering her horror. “I don’t know how you do it so often, scalp felt like it was burning off! The torture planet Fulgitopia could learn a lot from using this stuff.”
Somehow, she finds her voice. “Er… right. Well. Have you got…” She tries to look at him, really, she does, but his hair. She shakes her head in an effort to focus. “Towels!” she forces herself to say. “Towels! We need towels, I’ll go and get some.” She moves to walk past him, but he grabs her wrist.
“I have towels! I’m all ready, just need you.”
“Right. Well, let’s get this over with, then.”
“Right!” He beams at her, so excited by the prospect of being ginger it melts most of her shock away. “Come on, then.” He drags her into the bathroom, where he’s put a chair from the kitchen in the middle of the floor, close enough for Rose to reach the sink, but leaving enough room around it so she can manoeuvre around his head. He throws himself into the seat and looks expectantly at her.
This time, she can’t help but smile, and as she puts the plastic gloves on and mixes the developer with the colour cream, she meets his eyes again in the mirror. They’re glittering with anticipation, his right leg jiggling madly as it always does when he’s excited or nervous.
Slowly, she squirts some of the dye into her palm and starts at his forehead, making her way around his hairline, occasionally glancing at his face. His eyes are closed, and he’s humming in pleasure.
“You’re really good at this,” he murmurs, his voice deep, resonating against the tiles.
“Yeah, well, used to do mum’s all the time.” She begins massaging his scalp, and he sighs, his shoulders relaxing as he gives himself completely over to the movements of her fingers.
“It feels brilliant. Hope your mum didn’t have the same reaction to it as me.” She rolls her eyes, and, as she moves around to his front, he opens his eyes again. “Really hope she didn’t feel like me,” he repeats, eyes on her chest. He starts snaking a hand up her stomach, but she elbows him out of the way.
“Stop it,” she scolds him. “I’m not done. Do you want this to work, or not?”
He pouts, but cooperates until she finishes and peels off the gloves, instructing him on what to do before ducking out of the bathroom with the promise of a good snogging when he’s ginger.
She waits for him to finish his shower feeling relatively nervous, knowing that this is the moment of truth. If he doesn’t like this, then all of his ginger dreams will have been shattered and it will take her quite a while to help him get over it. From the moment she hears the water turn off, Rose waits near the kitchen doorway, pretending to be doing something else, but really watching out for him. After fifteen minutes, she turns to fix up the rubbish and he moves up behind her and puts his hands over her eyes.
“Guess who?”
“Um. Prince Harry?”
“Ha ha. Turn around, and open your eyes.”
Taking a deep breath, she does so, and… It actually looks quite nice. He grins when she tells him so, proudly running a hand through it, letting it slip tantalizingly through his fingers before patting it back into place.
The thing is, though, it reminds her of Donna. It’s exactly her shade, and, when it’s dry and they’re watching a Spooks rerun later and he vehemently calls Adam a prawn, it’s just scary.
So, even though he gives her a massage that night, which usually always helps to get her in the mood, she distracts him with questions about thermodynamics until they both fall asleep.
~
Rose has forgotten her keys, so she knocks, three, solid raps on the treated wood. She waits for a few moments, but there’s nothing. Frowning, she knocks again.
“Doctor,” she calls, “I’ve not got my keys, can you let me in?” Still nothing. “Doctor. Doct-”
The door swings open suddenly, the Doctor standing in the doorway.
“Hi,” Rose says, relieved. “Thought you weren’t home, and I was going to…” She trails off she registers his demeanour. His shoulders are slouched, his eyes cast downward and his mouth downturned. Most pressing, though, is the fact that he is wearing a sombrero. She didn’t even know he had a sombrero. Now, she thinks, things are really Not Good.
“Nice sombrero,” she says, for lack of anything else.
He grunts and stomps inside. She follows him in, carefully formulating her next move. She has to be supportive, but not patronise or smother him. And whatever’s happened, even though it might seem trivial to her, she has to treat it with respect. Sometimes, she forgets that she’s had a lot longer to familiarise herself with the ups and downs of being human than he has.
She decides to just be there for him, and let him tell her what the problem is in his own time. He doesn’t like being pressured or forced into something he doesn’t want to do, instead preferring to come his own conclusions, even if it may take him a lot longer. So, rather than peppering him with questions, Rose goes into their bedroom and changes into her pyjamas before joining him in the bathroom as he scrubs hard at the sink, seemingly struck by the violent urge to clean. She pulls out her make-up remover and begins swiping it over her face, occasionally running her free hand over his shoulders. Eventually, she feels some of the tension there dissipate, and his frantic scrubbing slowly loses its vigour until, finally, he stops and looks at her so sadly she feels a powerful pang in her chest.
“I think I rather romanticised being ginger, Rose. You know all those times I said it would be wonderful? I was wrong. It was horrible.” His eyes go wide and she takes his hand in hers and squeezes it, letting him know she’s there. He squeezes back before continuing, “It was like one of those experiments they do on the telly, like when the beautiful people put on the fat suit to see what life is like for the other half.”
He looks at her, and she nods sympathetically. “Was it? How come?”
“People were just so… so… mean! It started when I was walking to the bus stop this morning, when these high-school lads started laughing and pretend-coughing insults, and it never once let up until I got back in the front door. Not even at work! Maybe they thought I was fine with it, but if that’s really what gingers have to put with in this universe then I’m surprised there are any of them left!”
“Why didn’t you tell them off?” she asks quietly. “Give them a bit of that Oncoming Storm slash Donna Noble combo, put them in their place?”
“I was going to, but it was just so… horrible! And then Mickey, of all people, tried to stick up for me, saying they were discriminating, but they just said to leave them alone, it’s the only legal form they have left! And then they made a joke about bricks getting laid more than redheads and…” He shook his head sorrowfully. “I just don’t understand the human race, sometimes, Rose.”
“You’re doing better than me, I never understand us.”
He turns to her, so vulnerable in his sombrero Rose is suddenly struck with the desire to go out and… and… and sonic everyone who made him feel this way. “I don’t think I want to be ginger any more.”
“Okay.” She nods. “Be back in a mo’, then.” She kisses him on the cheek before ducking into the hallway and slipping on her trainers at the door.
“Wait! Where are you going?” He watches helplessly as she grabs her purse from her bag. “I need… comfort, or sex, or both! I need you, here, not… where are you going?”
“I’m going, my Doctor, to get you some new hair dye from the 24-hour on the corner. Any more objections?”
His eyes light up, before he steps forward to envelop her in a giant hug. “Thank you,” he whispers.
“Love you.” She slips out of his embrace and out of the door, hearing a faint Love you, too behind her.
She comes back with something by L’Oreal, and this time there is absolutely nothing methodical about the way she applies the Beautiful Brunette to his hair, particularly since, by the end of it, she has nothing on except for his sombrero.
They have sex while waiting the allotted dye-setting time.
And then again in the shower as soon as the water runs clear.
And then again when his hair is dry.
~