The Way of Things, Chapter 11
Title - The Way of Things (11/45)
Author - jlrpuck
Rating - K+
Pairing - Peter Carlisle/Rose Tyler
Spoilers - For both Blackpool and S2 of Doctor Who.
Disclaimer - Characters from Blackpool and Doctor Who are the property of the BBC, and are used with the greatest of love and respect; no profit is intended from the writing or sharing of this story.
Summary - A post-Doomsday story, set in the Alt!Verse. It's been over three years since Rose and the Doctor said goodbye. What happens when she not only meets his doppelganger, but has to work with him?
Author’s Notes - Rose and Peter have cleared the air, and Rose at least has apologised. Can they now work together in peace? The story really starts rocketing along, chronologically, at this point, so buckle yourselves in for some time jumps.
earlgreytea68 and arctacuda are brilliant betas; any mistakes lurking in here are the result of my going in and tinkering after they worked their magic. rosa_acicularis’s comments and input have been greatly appreciated, as well (even if I can’t stop humming “Henry the Eighth”). Thanks as well to misssara11 who encouraged me to start writing in the first place, and who read over my early efforts at this story.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42 | Chapter 43 | Chapter 44 | Epilogue
Rose propped her feet up on the small coffee table, leaning back against the flowery upholstery of the wing chair in her guest room and enjoying the peace and quiet. Mickey and Jake were at the local just down from the station, with Carlisle and Penington; she had had a pint with them before deciding that she really needed some time alone and away from the DI to think.
Another week had come and gone, and although they had made some progress, she felt they still had a ridiculously small amount of information to go on. The interviews of the people rounded up by vice had taken two days, and so far had yielded precious little in the way of information relevant to the hunt for McGreevy. A few new names had surfaced, and they were only waiting for those people to be found so they could be interviewed. Rose was still very, very close to crossing McGreevy’s lifestyle choices off the list of possible motives.
Philippa, the fiancée, had retained a solicitor, making it rather difficult to obtain new information from her. They never had got an answer to the question of what she had been looking for in McGreevy’s car, her solicitor saying that unless his client was under arrest, she’d not be speaking with them. That didn’t prevent them from sifting through her past with a fine-toothed comb, and their patience had been rewarded Thursday when Penington triumphantly informed them of a male companion she had been seen with. The man’s name was Jerald Swinson, and there were high hopes that he would be the mysterious ‘J’ referenced in McGreevy’s journal. He was a shadow partner in the engineering firm for which Philippa once worked, and anecdotal evidence indicated that he and Philippa had been romantically involved in the past; it had been implied that a huge falling out between the two of them was the reason she had left the firm. Swinson was a hard man to find, however, and they were still looking for clues regarding his location. If he was Philippa’s ex-and assuming he was the mysterious ‘J’-why would McGreevy meet him at a warehouse? Further, where was this warehouse?
A search of McGreevy’s records showed that he held title to only one building, and that was his house. Philippa owned a small flat in Keswick, but had apparently spent most of her spare time at McGreevy’s. The team (and a team they were slowly becoming) had discussed at length the possible reasons why they had found no evidence of her in his house when they’d gone searching, and had finally concluded that, whatever Philippa was hiding, they would never figure it out merely by sitting around speculating about it. With her solicitor in the way, however, they were having a hard time coming up with more than that. A tertiary search of Philippa, Swinson, and McGreevy’s backgrounds was currently being conducted in the hope that they’d discover a convenient alias or offshore corporation being used by any of the individuals. Jacques was handling that, and Rose knew that if there was anything to find he’d find it.
They had also combed through the additional CCTV footage from around the lab and around the haunts McGreevy had listed in his diary; the long slog through hours of footage had threatened to turn into a dead end, but earlier that day their luck had finally turned. They weren’t quite sure what they were seeing on the screen, but it was unusual enough that the group were planning to work over the weekend to try to determine what it was.
She rubbed her hands over her eyes, raising her head to look around her surroundings before once again leaning back and closing her eyes. The week had seen a thawing in the relations between her and the Inspector, and she felt a bit better about working with him. Mickey, Jake, and Carlisle had become, if not friends, then at least comfortable acquaintances while she had been down to London, and their effortless interaction had made it easier for her to let her guard down. She’d been amused by their camaraderie that evening; when she’d left the pub, the men had been arguing the merits of some obscure football player from decades before. Just another Saturday night in the pub, Rose thought to herself. The faces might change, but the actions never did.
Watching and listening to the four of them-Jake, Mickey, Penington, and Carlisle-interact had also helped to illuminate the character of the lead investigator. He was still sarcastic, still cynical; he clearly had no respect for his chain of command, thinking them to be either too dim-witted for the post or politicians out strictly for personal gain. He did not suffer fools gladly, although Rose had figured that out within her first day working with him. It had surprised her to learn that he had a wickedly delightful sense of humour, being just as quick to mock himself as anyone else. Rose had noticed, too, that he was incredibly observant, which probably accounted in no small part for his cynicism; minutely observing the darker side of humanity was bound to wear on a person’s optimism. Beneath the rumpled, devil-may-care persona he cultivated, he was extraordinarily intense when it came to working on his case (and Rose had acknowledged it was probably best for team harmony to just let him call it such), showing passionate regard for ensuring justice was done. Just tonight she’d discovered him to be a huge football fan, and had been somehow unsurprised at his depth and breadth of knowledge about something that interested him. She thought that he was not a man who had ‘casual’ interests.”
She had still managed to avoid working with him, partnering with Jake in reviewing footage or running down bits of information that Jacques and James had fed them out of London. As she sat there, thinking, she had to acknowledge that at this point, it had less to do with his resemblance to the Doctor, and almost everything to do with the tension that seemed to lurk between them. Whenever they were in a room together, she was hyper-aware of where he was, what he was doing, what he was saying. If he looked at her, she could feel a tingle run down her spine; if he was near her, the hairs on her arms stood on end. It was distracting in the extreme, and she fuzzily wondered if it was a remnant of the animosity between them that first week.
She must have dozed off at that point, as the next she knew she was awakened by the sound of Jake and Mickey, giggling outside her door. She sleepily stood and walked over to let them in; they practically fell through the door when it opened. She gave them a tolerantly exasperated look as they righted themselves and staggered in, more than a little drunk.
“Rose, we missed you!” Mickey flopped down in the chair she had been occupying a moment before. Jake flopped on her bed, spread-eagle, leaving her with the floor.
“What, with all of your footie talk? Don’t lie, Mickey. If you weren’t talking footie, then you and Jake were making eyes at each other,” she teased, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth.
Mickey looked as though he was thinking of an appropriate reply when Jake raised his head off the bed. “Micks might not have missed you, but I reckon the Inspector did.” His head fell back onto the bed with a soft thud.
Mickey nodded vigorously. “He left not long after you-right in the middle of my brilliant argument about the brilliant fielding of the ’64 team.” Mickey grinned.
“If he left, it’s probably because you bored him with the details.” She smiled as she teased him. The two men in front of her were absolutely pissed; she looked for a clock, and noted she’d been back for a few hours. “What trouble have you two been causing down there by yourselves?” She dreaded the answer, sure it would involve poor Penington and copious quantities of alcohol. She wasn’t far off the mark.
“Penny implied that we Londoners weren’t able to hold the local brew,” Mickey slurred out. Jake exerted himself to lift his head off the bed, this time raising himself enough to rest on his elbows.
“Where’s Penington?” She hoped the poor man had a ride home. She’d seen Mickey and Jake outdrink half of Torchwood over the years; it was remarkable how being on a field team seemed to require an ability to drink heavily at times.
“Aw, he lives down by the pub, don’t worry ’bout him. He did pretty well, actually.” Jake seemed to be quite a bit more coherent that Mickey. She’d seen the two of them play someone at a bar before, and it occurred to her that Jake had probably acted the lightweight while Mickey had done the serious drinking.
Rose got up from the floor, ducked into the en-suite for a moment, and came back out with two glasses of water.
“From the tap, but it’ll do. Drink up.” She handed one each to Mickey and Jake.
Mickey blearily looked at his, trying to determine what it was before taking a cautious sip. “’s water!” he exclaimed happily, gulping it down. Having finished his drink, Mickey leaned back in the chair. He was snoring in seconds.
Rose leaned over to claim the glass from his slack hand, noticing Jake watching her from the bed as he sipped his water.
“What’s on your mind, Jake? Out with it.”
“Carlisle really did clam up when you left.” Another sip of water.
Rose blushed. “I’m sure it’s just from the long week, Jake. The man can’t stand me.”
Jake looked at her like she was stupid. “Are you kidding?”
“No?” she replied, not sure what Jake was getting at.
“Blimey, Rose! The man can’t stop trying to winkle information out of Mickey and I! He’s almost obsessed with trying to find stuff out about you! And don’t even get me started on how you two act around each other-even a desensitised idiot would be able to feel the tension in the room when the two of you are together. It practically flashes ‘unresolved sexual tension’ in hot pink neon!”
Rose blinked, speechless. She’d figured the DI wouldn’t be satisfied with the information Jacques had fed him-especially after he found out that what he’d seen had been Torchwood approved. She wasn’t quite ready, however, to acknowledge that Jake’s comment about their interaction struck frightfully close to her earlier thoughts. He was watching her, waiting for a reply; she gave him a nervous laugh and shake of her head.
Mickey let out a loud snore from the chair, drawing her attention away from Jake and buying her a little bit of time to come up with something more coherent. After making sure Mickey was still out, she turned back to Jake. “C’mon, Jake. The DI doesn’t trust me. He’s only tolerating me because we have to work together; of course there’s tension. It’s not like we exactly hit it off, not at all.” She gave a rueful grin. Jake gave her a steady look.
“Do you think that’s what it is?” he asked, tilting his head just to the side.
She couldn’t tell if he was having her on or not, and decided to reply as if it were the former. “No, Jake, not at all. It’s that he finds me irresistible, while I secretly pine for him.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. The twinkle in her eyes balanced the tartness of the statement. “I think of nothing but how I’d like to shag the DI morning, noon, and night, and practice writing ‘Mrs. Peter Carlisle’ on train schedules and other spare bits of paper.”
Jake smiled as she grew more ridiculous. “He is a bit of alright, you know. Always thought the Doctor was, too. But they’re different, those two.”
Rose nodded in agreement. While she’d taken great pains to avoid working with the Inspector directly, whenever they were thrown together she had exerted a concerted effort to focus on him, in the here and now, and listen to what he had to offer. The more she had done so, the more she had noticed that he was very much his own man.
Mickey snored, snorted, then started. He raised his head blearily and looked around him before leaning his head back against the chair. Jake sighed, standing from his position on the bed. “I’d best get this lump of male hotness to bed before he drools all over your chair. See you at breakfast?”
Rose laughed as Jake wrestled a half-conscious Mickey up from the chair. “Lunch, more like. Don’t forget to give him ibuprofen and lots of water.” She kissed Jake on the cheek as he helped Mickey through the door. “Thank you for caring, Jake. See you in the morning.”
~ - ~
Peter sighed and leaned forward into the hot shower spray, hoping to calm his thoughts. It had been a late night at the pub and he’d slept in much later than he normally would have, even on a Sunday. He’d been surprised when Rose had joined the group for a drink the night before-on an off day, no less-and had found himself distracted by her far more than he wanted to admit. When she’d left after a pint he’d lost interest in arguing football with Mickey, and he’d made his excuses shortly thereafter. He’d lain awake, thoughts racing through his head, before finally falling asleep sometime in the early morning.
Two weeks of working with the Torchwood trio had miraculously passed without him completely losing his temper or getting fired. It wasn’t that Jake or Mickey were difficult to work with-in fact, the three of them had been getting along like best mates this past week, generally grabbing a pint together at the end of the workday. It certainly didn’t hurt that he’d checked out with Torchwood security, thereby allowing the two male members of the field team to relax around him completely; since Rose had passed the word on to them that he had cleared the background check, it had been smooth sailing working with them. No, the main issue lay, as it had the weekend before-as it had since the very beginning, he admitted-with Rose Tyler.
Peter leaned an arm against the tile of the small shower stall, continuing to let the hot water sluice over him, running from the crown of his head, down the back of his neck, following his spine down to his bum, before carrying on its merry way down his legs to the pebbled floor. The shower was, oddly enough, one of the reasons he’d bought the house; he enjoyed a good bath, but generally only if there was a woman in it with him. No, for everyday use he preferred the shower with its calming noise of water raining down, the mist rising and swirling in the small enclosed space. He’d found early on that he did some of his best thinking just standing under the stream of warm water. He’d replaced the boiler a few years prior, and had yet to encounter a time when the hot water ran out before his thoughts did.
Rose Tyler. Just thinking the name caused him to heave a deep sigh. She was driving him mad, plain and simple. Things had almost been easier in the first week of their working relationship, when she would either ignore him, or stare at him and see...well, certainly not him. Someone else, but he still wasn’t sure who. That Rose had come in Monday morning and apologized to him for her actions in the first week had gone a long way towards easing the tension. She’d been sincere, and embarrassed, and he’d accepted her apologies without fuss; he rubbed his face as it occurred to him he’d never really apologized to her for losing his temper that rainy Sunday. Squeezing his eyes shut, he blew a deep breath out of his mouth, a small spray of water erupting from his lips as he turned, the water continuing to flow over his head. He leaned forward a little bit, the length of both forearms against the wall of the shower stall, the steady pounding of water now working to loosen the muscles in his neck and back.
Since their argument the previous weekend, their working relationship seemed to have shifted. If their first week had been filled with tension and anger, the second week of working with Rose Tyler had been almost like a sigh of relief. Since her apology, Rose had made an effort to look Peter in the eye when she spoke with him, or when he was reporting out at the end of the day’s activities. She was still being careful about something around him, but since their visit to Shap Monday morning (and what the hell had he been thinking, taking her out there? It was his place to think, his place to hide) she had yet to lapse into one of the distant gazes that had peppered their first week of working together. She was polite to a fault, but there was always a wariness to it. Rose still held herself slightly distant from him; she made a point of working where he was not, ensuring that it was Mickey that he was usually teamed with.
Mickey had chattered even more openly with him since his clearance had come through, and Peter had learned that Mickey and Rose had been friends for almost their entire lives; he thought he’d caught a hint that they’d even dated at some point. And yet, Mickey would say nothing specific about their lives before the incident with Lumic and Cybus Industries. It was odd, and Peter continued to grow more and more curious about the big secret that apparently lurked in both Rose’s and Mickey’s pasts.
He couldn’t help it; he was growing more and more intrigued with the attractive blonde that fate (and criminal intent) had sent his way. It wasn’t just the huge gap in her background which, admittedly, fascinated him. He kept asking Mickey and Jake questions about Rose whenever he got the chance-Mickey would dodge the questions, but Jake would generally give him a speculative glance and then ask why he was interested. The two of them weren’t going to share anything on Rose that she didn’t want known. Thus, in his spare time, he’d been trying to find other answers to those questions, to find out why she just didn’t seem to exist until three years ago. No one, no matter how powerful or wealthy, would have been able to shelter a young, intelligent-and attractive-daughter so effectively; and yet, they had. The private tutors whom Pete Tyler had employed to educate his daughter couldn’t be found, and there were simply no pictures at all of Rose prior to a Vitex event three years earlier. The media had gone mad, as surprised as everyone else that Pete Tyler had a grown daughter; as a result, the pictures and articles from that event were easy to come by.
Even beyond the background, though, was Rose herself. She always had an air of sadness to her, but when she smiled, her face lit up and her caramel-coloured eyes practically glowed. She was petite, and quite fit-he understood from Mickey and Jake that a large part of their job involved running for their lives-but still had curves in the right places. She had the most distracting habit of poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth when she was winding someone up; he’d seen her do it to both Mickey and Jake on several occasions this past week.
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. The shower was not where he wanted to think about curvy attractive blondes named Rose Tyler; his thoughts were his own, but once unleashed, no matter the location, they would be impossible to contain. Best to think, instead, of the case that was still unsolved. He stood up straight, hand arrested midair as he reached for the shampoo: Why was he thinking he’d have thoughts like that about her, anyway? Surely he wasn’t interested in her as anything other than a colleague? He wasn’t blind, he could acknowledge a pretty woman when he came across one; surely that’s all he was doing when thinking about Rose Tyler. He squeezed a bit of shampoo into his hand and began to work lather up in his hair, turning once again to face the spray of water. Yes, that’s all it was. He was acknowledging that Rose was a very attractive member of the opposite sex. That didn’t mean that he wanted to kiss her, no. Nor did it mean he wanted to pull her against him, run his hands through her hair, see her gaze up at him with longi- He opened his eyes in shock, the shampoo stinging them as water rinsed the suds out of his hair. He blinked furiously, trying to clear not only the soapy substance out of his eyes but also the images of him doing very un-professional things to Rose Tyler out of his mind. He was not going to have these thoughts. He couldn’t; once they started, he’d have them running through his head every time he looked at her.
Hair rinsed (he noted it might be time to visit the barber-he could see his fringe in front of his eyes as the water ran through it), he turned his back once more to the spray, picked up a cake of soap, and began to wash. Think of anything...anything at all, the rational part of his mind pled. McGreevy, where could he be? The warehouse? How about Philippa? When will Penington learn how to understand sarcasm? Are Mickey and Jake a couple? Does Rose have a man back in London? He nearly threw the soap against the wall in frustration; his subconscious was being most uncooperative today.
Closing his eyes once again, he focused on thinking of nothing at all as he rinsed the soap from his body. He especially was not going to think of Rose Tyler as he rinsed below his waist...he pulled himself up short. Going that route would be greater madness than thinking the thoughts he already had. Considering himself rinsed enough, he shut the taps off with a fierce flick of his wrist, water still running off his dark hair and pale skin as he opened the small door to the stall. The blast of cold air helped to bring his thoughts back to the here and now, and to cool his body off slightly. He yanked a towel off the rack just a bit harder than necessary, the end snapping him on the chin as it came off the towel bar. He winced at the slight sting, bringing his right hand up to rub the spot just below his chin. Serves me right, he ruefully thought. Back to reality, my boy.
~ - ~
Chapter Twelve
Author - jlrpuck
Rating - K+
Pairing - Peter Carlisle/Rose Tyler
Spoilers - For both Blackpool and S2 of Doctor Who.
Disclaimer - Characters from Blackpool and Doctor Who are the property of the BBC, and are used with the greatest of love and respect; no profit is intended from the writing or sharing of this story.
Summary - A post-Doomsday story, set in the Alt!Verse. It's been over three years since Rose and the Doctor said goodbye. What happens when she not only meets his doppelganger, but has to work with him?
Author’s Notes - Rose and Peter have cleared the air, and Rose at least has apologised. Can they now work together in peace? The story really starts rocketing along, chronologically, at this point, so buckle yourselves in for some time jumps.
earlgreytea68 and arctacuda are brilliant betas; any mistakes lurking in here are the result of my going in and tinkering after they worked their magic. rosa_acicularis’s comments and input have been greatly appreciated, as well (even if I can’t stop humming “Henry the Eighth”). Thanks as well to misssara11 who encouraged me to start writing in the first place, and who read over my early efforts at this story.
Chapter 1 | Chapter 2 | Chapter 3 | Chapter 4 | Chapter 5 | Chapter 6 | Chapter 7 | Chapter 8 | Chapter 9 | Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14 | Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 | Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Chapter 21 | Chapter 22 | Chapter 23 | Chapter 24 | Chapter 25 | Chapter 26 | Chapter 27 | Chapter 28 | Chapter 29 | Chapter 30 | Chapter 31 | Chapter 32 | Chapter 33 | Chapter 34 | Chapter 35 | Chapter 36 | Chapter 37 | Chapter 38 | Chapter 39 | Chapter 40 | Chapter 41 | Chapter 42 | Chapter 43 | Chapter 44 | Epilogue
Rose propped her feet up on the small coffee table, leaning back against the flowery upholstery of the wing chair in her guest room and enjoying the peace and quiet. Mickey and Jake were at the local just down from the station, with Carlisle and Penington; she had had a pint with them before deciding that she really needed some time alone and away from the DI to think.
Another week had come and gone, and although they had made some progress, she felt they still had a ridiculously small amount of information to go on. The interviews of the people rounded up by vice had taken two days, and so far had yielded precious little in the way of information relevant to the hunt for McGreevy. A few new names had surfaced, and they were only waiting for those people to be found so they could be interviewed. Rose was still very, very close to crossing McGreevy’s lifestyle choices off the list of possible motives.
Philippa, the fiancée, had retained a solicitor, making it rather difficult to obtain new information from her. They never had got an answer to the question of what she had been looking for in McGreevy’s car, her solicitor saying that unless his client was under arrest, she’d not be speaking with them. That didn’t prevent them from sifting through her past with a fine-toothed comb, and their patience had been rewarded Thursday when Penington triumphantly informed them of a male companion she had been seen with. The man’s name was Jerald Swinson, and there were high hopes that he would be the mysterious ‘J’ referenced in McGreevy’s journal. He was a shadow partner in the engineering firm for which Philippa once worked, and anecdotal evidence indicated that he and Philippa had been romantically involved in the past; it had been implied that a huge falling out between the two of them was the reason she had left the firm. Swinson was a hard man to find, however, and they were still looking for clues regarding his location. If he was Philippa’s ex-and assuming he was the mysterious ‘J’-why would McGreevy meet him at a warehouse? Further, where was this warehouse?
A search of McGreevy’s records showed that he held title to only one building, and that was his house. Philippa owned a small flat in Keswick, but had apparently spent most of her spare time at McGreevy’s. The team (and a team they were slowly becoming) had discussed at length the possible reasons why they had found no evidence of her in his house when they’d gone searching, and had finally concluded that, whatever Philippa was hiding, they would never figure it out merely by sitting around speculating about it. With her solicitor in the way, however, they were having a hard time coming up with more than that. A tertiary search of Philippa, Swinson, and McGreevy’s backgrounds was currently being conducted in the hope that they’d discover a convenient alias or offshore corporation being used by any of the individuals. Jacques was handling that, and Rose knew that if there was anything to find he’d find it.
They had also combed through the additional CCTV footage from around the lab and around the haunts McGreevy had listed in his diary; the long slog through hours of footage had threatened to turn into a dead end, but earlier that day their luck had finally turned. They weren’t quite sure what they were seeing on the screen, but it was unusual enough that the group were planning to work over the weekend to try to determine what it was.
She rubbed her hands over her eyes, raising her head to look around her surroundings before once again leaning back and closing her eyes. The week had seen a thawing in the relations between her and the Inspector, and she felt a bit better about working with him. Mickey, Jake, and Carlisle had become, if not friends, then at least comfortable acquaintances while she had been down to London, and their effortless interaction had made it easier for her to let her guard down. She’d been amused by their camaraderie that evening; when she’d left the pub, the men had been arguing the merits of some obscure football player from decades before. Just another Saturday night in the pub, Rose thought to herself. The faces might change, but the actions never did.
Watching and listening to the four of them-Jake, Mickey, Penington, and Carlisle-interact had also helped to illuminate the character of the lead investigator. He was still sarcastic, still cynical; he clearly had no respect for his chain of command, thinking them to be either too dim-witted for the post or politicians out strictly for personal gain. He did not suffer fools gladly, although Rose had figured that out within her first day working with him. It had surprised her to learn that he had a wickedly delightful sense of humour, being just as quick to mock himself as anyone else. Rose had noticed, too, that he was incredibly observant, which probably accounted in no small part for his cynicism; minutely observing the darker side of humanity was bound to wear on a person’s optimism. Beneath the rumpled, devil-may-care persona he cultivated, he was extraordinarily intense when it came to working on his case (and Rose had acknowledged it was probably best for team harmony to just let him call it such), showing passionate regard for ensuring justice was done. Just tonight she’d discovered him to be a huge football fan, and had been somehow unsurprised at his depth and breadth of knowledge about something that interested him. She thought that he was not a man who had ‘casual’ interests.”
She had still managed to avoid working with him, partnering with Jake in reviewing footage or running down bits of information that Jacques and James had fed them out of London. As she sat there, thinking, she had to acknowledge that at this point, it had less to do with his resemblance to the Doctor, and almost everything to do with the tension that seemed to lurk between them. Whenever they were in a room together, she was hyper-aware of where he was, what he was doing, what he was saying. If he looked at her, she could feel a tingle run down her spine; if he was near her, the hairs on her arms stood on end. It was distracting in the extreme, and she fuzzily wondered if it was a remnant of the animosity between them that first week.
She must have dozed off at that point, as the next she knew she was awakened by the sound of Jake and Mickey, giggling outside her door. She sleepily stood and walked over to let them in; they practically fell through the door when it opened. She gave them a tolerantly exasperated look as they righted themselves and staggered in, more than a little drunk.
“Rose, we missed you!” Mickey flopped down in the chair she had been occupying a moment before. Jake flopped on her bed, spread-eagle, leaving her with the floor.
“What, with all of your footie talk? Don’t lie, Mickey. If you weren’t talking footie, then you and Jake were making eyes at each other,” she teased, her tongue poking out the corner of her mouth.
Mickey looked as though he was thinking of an appropriate reply when Jake raised his head off the bed. “Micks might not have missed you, but I reckon the Inspector did.” His head fell back onto the bed with a soft thud.
Mickey nodded vigorously. “He left not long after you-right in the middle of my brilliant argument about the brilliant fielding of the ’64 team.” Mickey grinned.
“If he left, it’s probably because you bored him with the details.” She smiled as she teased him. The two men in front of her were absolutely pissed; she looked for a clock, and noted she’d been back for a few hours. “What trouble have you two been causing down there by yourselves?” She dreaded the answer, sure it would involve poor Penington and copious quantities of alcohol. She wasn’t far off the mark.
“Penny implied that we Londoners weren’t able to hold the local brew,” Mickey slurred out. Jake exerted himself to lift his head off the bed, this time raising himself enough to rest on his elbows.
“Where’s Penington?” She hoped the poor man had a ride home. She’d seen Mickey and Jake outdrink half of Torchwood over the years; it was remarkable how being on a field team seemed to require an ability to drink heavily at times.
“Aw, he lives down by the pub, don’t worry ’bout him. He did pretty well, actually.” Jake seemed to be quite a bit more coherent that Mickey. She’d seen the two of them play someone at a bar before, and it occurred to her that Jake had probably acted the lightweight while Mickey had done the serious drinking.
Rose got up from the floor, ducked into the en-suite for a moment, and came back out with two glasses of water.
“From the tap, but it’ll do. Drink up.” She handed one each to Mickey and Jake.
Mickey blearily looked at his, trying to determine what it was before taking a cautious sip. “’s water!” he exclaimed happily, gulping it down. Having finished his drink, Mickey leaned back in the chair. He was snoring in seconds.
Rose leaned over to claim the glass from his slack hand, noticing Jake watching her from the bed as he sipped his water.
“What’s on your mind, Jake? Out with it.”
“Carlisle really did clam up when you left.” Another sip of water.
Rose blushed. “I’m sure it’s just from the long week, Jake. The man can’t stand me.”
Jake looked at her like she was stupid. “Are you kidding?”
“No?” she replied, not sure what Jake was getting at.
“Blimey, Rose! The man can’t stop trying to winkle information out of Mickey and I! He’s almost obsessed with trying to find stuff out about you! And don’t even get me started on how you two act around each other-even a desensitised idiot would be able to feel the tension in the room when the two of you are together. It practically flashes ‘unresolved sexual tension’ in hot pink neon!”
Rose blinked, speechless. She’d figured the DI wouldn’t be satisfied with the information Jacques had fed him-especially after he found out that what he’d seen had been Torchwood approved. She wasn’t quite ready, however, to acknowledge that Jake’s comment about their interaction struck frightfully close to her earlier thoughts. He was watching her, waiting for a reply; she gave him a nervous laugh and shake of her head.
Mickey let out a loud snore from the chair, drawing her attention away from Jake and buying her a little bit of time to come up with something more coherent. After making sure Mickey was still out, she turned back to Jake. “C’mon, Jake. The DI doesn’t trust me. He’s only tolerating me because we have to work together; of course there’s tension. It’s not like we exactly hit it off, not at all.” She gave a rueful grin. Jake gave her a steady look.
“Do you think that’s what it is?” he asked, tilting his head just to the side.
She couldn’t tell if he was having her on or not, and decided to reply as if it were the former. “No, Jake, not at all. It’s that he finds me irresistible, while I secretly pine for him.” Her tone dripped with sarcasm. The twinkle in her eyes balanced the tartness of the statement. “I think of nothing but how I’d like to shag the DI morning, noon, and night, and practice writing ‘Mrs. Peter Carlisle’ on train schedules and other spare bits of paper.”
Jake smiled as she grew more ridiculous. “He is a bit of alright, you know. Always thought the Doctor was, too. But they’re different, those two.”
Rose nodded in agreement. While she’d taken great pains to avoid working with the Inspector directly, whenever they were thrown together she had exerted a concerted effort to focus on him, in the here and now, and listen to what he had to offer. The more she had done so, the more she had noticed that he was very much his own man.
Mickey snored, snorted, then started. He raised his head blearily and looked around him before leaning his head back against the chair. Jake sighed, standing from his position on the bed. “I’d best get this lump of male hotness to bed before he drools all over your chair. See you at breakfast?”
Rose laughed as Jake wrestled a half-conscious Mickey up from the chair. “Lunch, more like. Don’t forget to give him ibuprofen and lots of water.” She kissed Jake on the cheek as he helped Mickey through the door. “Thank you for caring, Jake. See you in the morning.”
~ - ~
Peter sighed and leaned forward into the hot shower spray, hoping to calm his thoughts. It had been a late night at the pub and he’d slept in much later than he normally would have, even on a Sunday. He’d been surprised when Rose had joined the group for a drink the night before-on an off day, no less-and had found himself distracted by her far more than he wanted to admit. When she’d left after a pint he’d lost interest in arguing football with Mickey, and he’d made his excuses shortly thereafter. He’d lain awake, thoughts racing through his head, before finally falling asleep sometime in the early morning.
Two weeks of working with the Torchwood trio had miraculously passed without him completely losing his temper or getting fired. It wasn’t that Jake or Mickey were difficult to work with-in fact, the three of them had been getting along like best mates this past week, generally grabbing a pint together at the end of the workday. It certainly didn’t hurt that he’d checked out with Torchwood security, thereby allowing the two male members of the field team to relax around him completely; since Rose had passed the word on to them that he had cleared the background check, it had been smooth sailing working with them. No, the main issue lay, as it had the weekend before-as it had since the very beginning, he admitted-with Rose Tyler.
Peter leaned an arm against the tile of the small shower stall, continuing to let the hot water sluice over him, running from the crown of his head, down the back of his neck, following his spine down to his bum, before carrying on its merry way down his legs to the pebbled floor. The shower was, oddly enough, one of the reasons he’d bought the house; he enjoyed a good bath, but generally only if there was a woman in it with him. No, for everyday use he preferred the shower with its calming noise of water raining down, the mist rising and swirling in the small enclosed space. He’d found early on that he did some of his best thinking just standing under the stream of warm water. He’d replaced the boiler a few years prior, and had yet to encounter a time when the hot water ran out before his thoughts did.
Rose Tyler. Just thinking the name caused him to heave a deep sigh. She was driving him mad, plain and simple. Things had almost been easier in the first week of their working relationship, when she would either ignore him, or stare at him and see...well, certainly not him. Someone else, but he still wasn’t sure who. That Rose had come in Monday morning and apologized to him for her actions in the first week had gone a long way towards easing the tension. She’d been sincere, and embarrassed, and he’d accepted her apologies without fuss; he rubbed his face as it occurred to him he’d never really apologized to her for losing his temper that rainy Sunday. Squeezing his eyes shut, he blew a deep breath out of his mouth, a small spray of water erupting from his lips as he turned, the water continuing to flow over his head. He leaned forward a little bit, the length of both forearms against the wall of the shower stall, the steady pounding of water now working to loosen the muscles in his neck and back.
Since their argument the previous weekend, their working relationship seemed to have shifted. If their first week had been filled with tension and anger, the second week of working with Rose Tyler had been almost like a sigh of relief. Since her apology, Rose had made an effort to look Peter in the eye when she spoke with him, or when he was reporting out at the end of the day’s activities. She was still being careful about something around him, but since their visit to Shap Monday morning (and what the hell had he been thinking, taking her out there? It was his place to think, his place to hide) she had yet to lapse into one of the distant gazes that had peppered their first week of working together. She was polite to a fault, but there was always a wariness to it. Rose still held herself slightly distant from him; she made a point of working where he was not, ensuring that it was Mickey that he was usually teamed with.
Mickey had chattered even more openly with him since his clearance had come through, and Peter had learned that Mickey and Rose had been friends for almost their entire lives; he thought he’d caught a hint that they’d even dated at some point. And yet, Mickey would say nothing specific about their lives before the incident with Lumic and Cybus Industries. It was odd, and Peter continued to grow more and more curious about the big secret that apparently lurked in both Rose’s and Mickey’s pasts.
He couldn’t help it; he was growing more and more intrigued with the attractive blonde that fate (and criminal intent) had sent his way. It wasn’t just the huge gap in her background which, admittedly, fascinated him. He kept asking Mickey and Jake questions about Rose whenever he got the chance-Mickey would dodge the questions, but Jake would generally give him a speculative glance and then ask why he was interested. The two of them weren’t going to share anything on Rose that she didn’t want known. Thus, in his spare time, he’d been trying to find other answers to those questions, to find out why she just didn’t seem to exist until three years ago. No one, no matter how powerful or wealthy, would have been able to shelter a young, intelligent-and attractive-daughter so effectively; and yet, they had. The private tutors whom Pete Tyler had employed to educate his daughter couldn’t be found, and there were simply no pictures at all of Rose prior to a Vitex event three years earlier. The media had gone mad, as surprised as everyone else that Pete Tyler had a grown daughter; as a result, the pictures and articles from that event were easy to come by.
Even beyond the background, though, was Rose herself. She always had an air of sadness to her, but when she smiled, her face lit up and her caramel-coloured eyes practically glowed. She was petite, and quite fit-he understood from Mickey and Jake that a large part of their job involved running for their lives-but still had curves in the right places. She had the most distracting habit of poking her tongue out the corner of her mouth when she was winding someone up; he’d seen her do it to both Mickey and Jake on several occasions this past week.
He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts. The shower was not where he wanted to think about curvy attractive blondes named Rose Tyler; his thoughts were his own, but once unleashed, no matter the location, they would be impossible to contain. Best to think, instead, of the case that was still unsolved. He stood up straight, hand arrested midair as he reached for the shampoo: Why was he thinking he’d have thoughts like that about her, anyway? Surely he wasn’t interested in her as anything other than a colleague? He wasn’t blind, he could acknowledge a pretty woman when he came across one; surely that’s all he was doing when thinking about Rose Tyler. He squeezed a bit of shampoo into his hand and began to work lather up in his hair, turning once again to face the spray of water. Yes, that’s all it was. He was acknowledging that Rose was a very attractive member of the opposite sex. That didn’t mean that he wanted to kiss her, no. Nor did it mean he wanted to pull her against him, run his hands through her hair, see her gaze up at him with longi- He opened his eyes in shock, the shampoo stinging them as water rinsed the suds out of his hair. He blinked furiously, trying to clear not only the soapy substance out of his eyes but also the images of him doing very un-professional things to Rose Tyler out of his mind. He was not going to have these thoughts. He couldn’t; once they started, he’d have them running through his head every time he looked at her.
Hair rinsed (he noted it might be time to visit the barber-he could see his fringe in front of his eyes as the water ran through it), he turned his back once more to the spray, picked up a cake of soap, and began to wash. Think of anything...anything at all, the rational part of his mind pled. McGreevy, where could he be? The warehouse? How about Philippa? When will Penington learn how to understand sarcasm? Are Mickey and Jake a couple? Does Rose have a man back in London? He nearly threw the soap against the wall in frustration; his subconscious was being most uncooperative today.
Closing his eyes once again, he focused on thinking of nothing at all as he rinsed the soap from his body. He especially was not going to think of Rose Tyler as he rinsed below his waist...he pulled himself up short. Going that route would be greater madness than thinking the thoughts he already had. Considering himself rinsed enough, he shut the taps off with a fierce flick of his wrist, water still running off his dark hair and pale skin as he opened the small door to the stall. The blast of cold air helped to bring his thoughts back to the here and now, and to cool his body off slightly. He yanked a towel off the rack just a bit harder than necessary, the end snapping him on the chin as it came off the towel bar. He winced at the slight sting, bringing his right hand up to rub the spot just below his chin. Serves me right, he ruefully thought. Back to reality, my boy.
~ - ~
Chapter Twelve