Fic: À Deux
For the sake of completion, here's my entry in the hearts_in_time Run! ficathon.
Title: À Deux
Author: nina_ds
Rating: Teen (Honestly, I tried, they just went all shy on me in the end!)
Gift for: prchung
Beta: wendymr (Great thanks, as ever!)
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, just playing.
Summary: In which a simple visit home after the events of "The Long Game" becomes a series of unexpected challenges for our intrepid duo, Rose proves resourceful with the tools of her trade, and much mock is made of the Doctor's driving. It's compliant with "Father's Day", but somewhat pre-empts "The Doctor Dances".
Warnings: Skirts perilously close to songfic in a couple of places, but the songs made me do it.
Prompt: At end to avoid spoilage.
À deux
The plastic seat is unyielding beneath her, and the fluorescent lights harsh after the misty darkness, now lumbering by outside windows clouded by condensation. Leather brushes against the bare skin of her shoulder, and she can feel the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise as her body reacts to the accidental touch. She can feel his tension radiating like heat from his body. Her eyes slide cautiously to him, the cut of his cheekbone like diamond in the hard light. The shadow moves along his jaw as the muscles tighten.
She closes her eyes, the bumptious motion of the bus distantly familiar, in odd counterpoint with the music blasting from the boombox in the back. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime ago that she travelled like this on a daily basis. The song’s riff gets under her skin like itching powder, igniting a pulsating series of images and sensations lingering on her skin, behind her eyelids…
Dig, if you will, the picture…
Eyes like crystals of ice, clear and brilliant, reflecting her as she leans breathlessly over him, lips parted, hands trembling…
“Quick, off!” Her hands skim along his ribs as she pushes up his jumper, jerking it over his head triumphantly, even as she shivers slightly in the chill in only her lacy bra…
The sweat of your body covers me…
His big hands steady her hips, his long thighs taut between hers. His cool breath strokes her cheek…
His long thumb brushes the skin of her belly…
Feel how it trembles inside…
He lifts his thighs sharply beneath her bum, and her breath catches in a soft shriek as the shift of angle sends a shockwave of warm pleasure radiating through her body…
Their eyes lock.
They feel the heat, the heat between me and you…
***
Three hours earlier
She held the large, ornate gold earring to her ear and giggled. Definitely not her style. Nor, really, were the black satin and velvet peasant skirt and and blouse she’d found, rooting around in the wardrobe while the Doctor fussed with the TARDIS. He was still in a bit of a black mood - well, dark grey - after dumping Adam at home with his ventilated head, and Rose had thought that, discretion being the better part of valour, she should probably let him blow off some steam with his favourite pastime. She was still glowing, on a high from his declaration, “I only take the best. I’ve got Rose.” He’d been so complimentary all through Satellite Five, really, telling Cathica, “Rose asks the right sort of questions.”
When they had first left Adam at home, she’d been excited and bouncy, eager to spend some time with the Doctor, to revel in that spark of excitement she’d felt when they were together on the station. Something seemed to be opening up between them; there was still the sense of fun that had been there from the beginning, but it now had a depth that had come from not just enjoying each other’s company but from three close brushes with death in succession. The connection seemed to strengthen most particularly from the encounter with the Dalek. Afterward, Adam had been underfoot, in the way, and she felt a little guilty that she was so glad to be rid of him. But the Doctor’s subdued, slightly withdrawn reaction to her on their return to the TARDIS had surprised her, hurt a little.
She had sought refuge here, in the wardrobe room, in part because her own room seemed peculiarly empty. And as she had played with the all the extraordinary things she found here, her mind had been doing some reflecting despite her best efforts at distraction. With a bit of embarrassment, she realized that, to a great extent, the Doctor’s praise had not been for her, but for the benefit of those like Adam and Cathica who didn’t open their eyes and hearts to what was around them. That, at least, she could do.
She picked up a red scarf edged with a fringe of small bronze coins. It was vivid, surprisingly light and silky, and she folded it over, draping it over her hair.
“Rose?”
“Back here!” she called, tying the scarf in a knot on the side of her head.
She could hear his boots on the spiral staircase, and she met his eyes in the mirror as he came onto the balcony.
“Well?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips and posing with a grin.
His expression was pricelessly transparent, and he opened his mouth to make a comment, then shut it again.
“It’s okay,” she laughed, hitching up the skirt and pushing the full sleeves back up from her wrists. “I feel like I’m in fancy dress as my mother. She used to wear stuff like this when I was a kid.”
The Doctor gave a dramatic shudder, and she laughed, coming to him and taking the hand he held out. “Hungry?” he asked, long, freshly washed fingers closing around hers.
She nodded, realizing it had been quite a few hours since her beef slush puppy, and her stomach growled in response. “Doctor?”
“Yeah?” His eyes caught hers with that unnerving intensity that he sometimes - often - conveyed.
“Look, you can say no, but…” She caught her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, and her eyes took a quick tour of the immediate area before returning to his. “Would it be okay if we visit Mum? It’s just - we were just in 2012, we must be so close.”
The silence stretched out for eons - well, seconds, anyway - and she noted that the pressure of his lips thinned their fullness slightly but didn’t disguise the delicate arabesques of their shape. Distracted for a moment, she then took a deep breath and rushed forward, “You wouldn’t have to come to dinner if you didn’t want to, though I’m sure Mum would be really happy if you did - but we could get fish and chips and have a picnic in the park, maybe?”
He could be so unnervingly still, she felt as if she were being pulled into the well of his gravity, waiting for his response. When it came it was sudden. “One condition.”
“Okay,” she agreed cautiously. “What?”
He reached out and plucked the red scarf from her head. “Just not a fan of that look,” he teased.
Her relieved laughter came quickly, and she caught the scarf with her free hand as he tossed it up, pulling her down the stairs with him.
***
“So much for the picnic.” Rose shivered as they stepped out into a dark, misty alleyway, lit by an insufficient lamp a few metres down. The TARDIS was in a cramped corner by some overfilled skips. Rose had to sidle sideways to get through, as they had landed with the door close to the nearest skip, and the hobo bag, with her wallet, make-up bag, and cellphone, that she had snagged on the way out the door banged against the metal resoundingly. “Are you sure this is the Powell Estates?”
He was locking the door and moved sideways toward her with an odd, easy grace before turning and pointing up to their left. “Yep.”
The familiar blocks of cement and light stretched up into the heavy night, and she wrinkled her nose, tying the scarf around her waist in part because she didn’t want to carry it and in part because the oversized blouse was letting in tendrils of the cool night air. Something didn’t seem quite right.
He took her hand, and they headed toward the towers but, rounding the corner, they were confronted by a large, unfamiliar building in the courtyard. A number of colourfully dressed people streamed in through the open orange fire doors, a banner stretched over them proclaiming,
“Winter Blast 1984!”
They both stopped and stared up at it.
Rose looked up at him curiously.
He looked worried, and a wee bit embarrassed. As the sounds of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” blasted out of the doors, Rose grinned impishly, squeezed his hand, and dragged him in.
***
Sheena Easton was belting out “Strut”, and Rose moved unconsciously to the insistent beat, looking around in amazement and amusement. A DJ was set up on the far end of the community hall, a VariLite in each corner aimed at a mirrorball hanging from the ceiling by a fairly precarious-looking cable. Most of those crowded onto the gymnasium floor were in their teens and twenties, wearing big shoulders and big hair (boys as well as girls), with bold, artificial colours that practically glowed in the dark. The look was exaggerated and extravagant, but it had energy and a kind of retro futurism that struck Rose as almost quaint, and maybe even a bit glamorous. Her gypsy get-up didn’t exactly fit in, but she grinned to herself as she realized her hair - still in a high ponytail but suffering greatly from the humidity and a close encounter with the scarf earlier - was almost in style.
The music changed, and Tina Turner warned “Better Be Good to Me.” Rose felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if she were listening to one of her mother’s old mixtapes, the ones Jackie used to sing aloud to, teaching her little girl the songs and the dance moves. A twinge of nostalgia pricked the back of her nose.
“Dance with me?” She turned and took both of the Doctor’s hands in hers, pulling him with her as she backed toward the dance floor. He hesitated, suddenly tensing, and Rose turned to see a group of young men congregating a few feet away, watching them warily. One of them made a gesture toward his hair, and the others nodded in agreement, something about the exchange making Rose’s stomach churn even before she fully understood, looking up at the Doctor with his close-cropped hair, Doc Martens, and leather gear.
Deciding instantly, she let go of one hand to pull him through the crowd toward the bathrooms at the end opposite the DJ. As usual, there was a line of girls snaking out the door of the women’s rooms, and Rose took a deep breath, pushing into the men’s room.
Other than a boy passed out in one corner, the place was blessedly empty and not even terribly smelly, and Rose ducked into the first stall, pulling him with her.
“Jacket, off,” she commanded, her voice soft but intense, just beneath the dull thud of the music through the walls, and he just looked at her in amazement as she propped her hobo bag on the cistern, tugging at the knot she had made in the scarf.
“Off!” she demanded more emphatically, crossing her arms over herself to pull off the peasant blouse, and he was still removing his jacket as her hands skimmed up beneath his dark blue jumper, pushing it up.
Only as hands trembling with adrenaline slid over soft hair and taut nipples did she realize what she was doing. She hesitated, looking up into his eyes, almost colourless in the fluorescent overhead lighting, but blazing with intensity nonetheless.
Her mouth was dry, and she had to swallow before she half-whispered urgently, “I don’t suppose you can grow your hair out suddenly?”
“Not without taking some pretty drastic measures,” he admitted wryly, raising his arms for her to rid him of the jumper.
Standing there, a breath apart in the stall, Rose felt a blush creep over her cheeks, down her throat to spread over her breasts. She was aware of the black lace of her bra against her skin as she realized he was exposed to her view for the first time. He was surprisingly narrow, lean and wiry, his collarbone and ribs almost too delineated against his pale skin. Traces of old bruises shadowed the area around his ribs and diaphragm, yellowish with only a trace of violet in their centres, and she fought a wave of nausea as she realized where those had come from. Silky hair, almost the same colour as his skin, softened his breastbone, extending like a cross on his torso, darkening as it stretched downward into the waistband of his jeans.
Not thinking about that, not thinking about that, she told herself firmly, and thrust the peasant blouse at him, taking the jumper for herself and pulling it over her head. With a little tug, it slid off one shoulder, and her fingers were at the buckle of his belt before she allowed herself to think about it.
“Rose!” he protested, but she just looked up at him as she whipped the belt out of his beltloops with a bit more force than necessary.
“Look,” she whispered urgently, belting the jumper loosely around her waist, arranging the buckle against her hip for an asymmetrical effect. “Those guys out there - they’re of one tribe, and they think you’re of another, and I know enough to know that they might be wearing eyeliner and hair mousse, and they might be harmless, but they might also just try to kill you. Put it on.”
He hesitated for a moment, looking stubborn, then, remarkably, tugged the blouse over his head.
Thank goodness he was as narrow as he was. The peasant blouse actually fit him pretty well, just about meeting the top of his jeans. Large ruffles framed the front placket, and she tugged at the shoestring laces, loosening them as much as she could, then put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around and pushed him down on the seat. Sliding astride him, she reached up for the hobo bag, her breath catching as his big hand in the small of her back steadied her. She looked down, realizing a fair expanse of soft flesh bared by his jumper and her bra was practically brushing his cheek.
She wondered if he could hear and feel her racing heart. She wondered if he knew how much of it was fear for him, and how much his nearness.
She wasn’t sure she knew herself. Swallowing against her dry mouth, she settled astride his long thighs, a subtle shiver passing over her skin as his big hands came to rest on her hips. “Tilt your head back,” she whispered as she pulled her make-up bag from the larger one. Resting it in the space between her belly and his ribs - convenient, protective - she pulled out her tools. “Trust me?”
He nodded, slightly, and she went to work, swiftly and efficiently. Lip-liner to accentuate the surprisingly pretty curves of his mouth - a bit too pink, not enough peach for his skin tone, no one was going to notice in the dim light; blush to follow the sharp line of his cheekbones, and a little stab of jealousy as she lamented her chipmunk cheeks. And the eyes…
“Close your eyes,” she whispered, gazing down into eyes that looked glacial ice in the light, but for the heat they generated. He obeyed, his head tilted back, throat exposed, lips parted, and she had to stop for a moment to keep her hand from shaking as she lined his eyelids, leaving a sharp angle at the outer corners of his eyes. A touch of mascara, and she realized his sandy eyelashes were longer than she’d ever noticed.
The bang of the men’s room door startled her, her hand slipping, and her elbow hit the partition with a thud that may or may not have folded into the reverberations from the initial incidence. Even as she saw stars from the strike to her funnybone, instinct slapped her hand firmly over his mouth, and he snatched his knees up to hide his feet, the shift of balance trapping her between the hardness of his belly and thighs.
The voices outside were loud, adolescent, and brash, friendly insults melting into a single texture as he held her fast, his strength and balance astonishing in their precarious position. His hand had slipped up beneath the jumper and belt as they shifted, his long thumb pressing into the soft flesh of her belly, just above the loose waistband of the skirt.
As he eased his instinctive grip, the soft caress of his thumb soothed the bruising pressure, sending shocks of electricity to the bundle of nerve endings presently situated right above his jeans button, and her eyes opened, focusing on his. His pupils had dilated, reflecting her flushed and breathless face, and somehow his irises had become the fierce blue of a gas flame.
Neither of them moved but for the slow, insistent movement of his thumb, their breath mingling as they fought for steadiness. Her hand slipped away from his mouth, fingertips lingering against his lips just a fraction too long as the herd of boys finished their business and left as loudly as they had arrived…
The Doctor eased his feet down to the floor, his hands on her hips holding her steady as the balance shifted again, and she had to close her eyes against the flush of pleasure that swept through her. “Rose,” he whispered, that long thumb, warm from her own belly, brushing against her cheek as he cupped her head.
She dragged her eyes open, an eerie shiver slipping down her spine at the first full view of him in the make-up. She wouldn’t have thought it would have suited him. He wasn’t a pretty boy.
Wrong on all counts.
Everything focused on the eyes.
“Gotta get out of here,” he reminded her in a whisper, and she nodded, forcing herself to slide back off his knees onto her own shaky feet, trying not to react as his hand slipped over her bum, smoothing down the skirt.
As she helped him back into the leather jacket, she turned him around so that she could tighten the buttoned belt on the back, giving the silhouette a bit of a waist. They had to press together to get the stall door open.
Two young men were entering the bathroom as they emerged, and Rose moved closer to the Doctor, sliding her arm around his waist under the jacket. He put a protective arm around her shoulders as the two young men leered knowingly at them. Rose met their eyes with a raised eyebrow, her hand ostentatiously sliding into the back pocket of the Doctor’s jeans as they left the bathroom, down the crowded hallway to the gym. Even more dancers were gyrating on the dance floor, and Rose looked up at him hopefully.
He looked down at her, then bent down to speak into her ear. “Do you really want to stay? We can be in 2006 in five minutes.”
“You won’t dance with me? Just once?” Her disappointment slipped out before she could stop it.
He looked at the dance floor, clearly hesitating, as the music changed to a light reggae beat with a thunderous backbeat and a rolling baseline, the gospel piano riff setting off a ripple of memories in her. “Oh, please!” She grabbed both of his hands, pulling him toward the dance floor. “I love this song! Mum used to play it all the time, it was her favourite. Please?”
He softened so obviously, she fought the impulse to throw her arms around his neck and hug him. Instead, she drew him out among the dancers, as her voice instinctively joined the recording. She closed her eyes, the sheer pleasure of singing rising up from her diaphragm, through her vocal cords and out her snapping fingertips, as her feet moved and hips swayed to the beat.
I hear a lot of stories, I suppose they could be true,
All about love and what it can do to you.
High is the risk of striking out, the risk of getting hurt,
And still I have so much to learn.
I know, ’cause I think about it all the time.
I know, that real love has quite a price.
The memories of singing into a hairbrush in her Mum’s bedroom, laughing, rolling on the bed and tickling washed over her as the release built to the chorus, and she was grinning broadly as she opened her eyes for the chorus. She remembered the choreography and repeated it playfully:
(Point) And a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
(Cross arms to clasp shoulders) True love, the lasting kind.
(Point) A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
(Clasp hands over her heart) So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
She faltered for a moment, realizing the resonance of the words with her own feelings, as she saw it in his face. A surge, almost of defiance swept away her incipient embarrassment, and she took a deep breath, singing along with less giddiness and more warmth.
My expectations may be high, I blame that on my youth,
Soon enough, I’ll learn the painful truth.
I'll face it like a fighter, then boast of how I've grown.
Anything is better than being alone.
I know, ’cause I learn a little every day.
I know, ’cause I listen when the experts say,
Instead of the choreography her mother had taught her, she reached out to take his hands, realizing that he had been dancing with her all along, not extravagantly, but his lean body clearly felt the beat.
That a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
True love, the lasting kind.
A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
As I reflect on all my childhood dreams,
My ideas of love weren't as foolish as they seemed.
If I don’t start looking now, I'll be left behind.
And a good heart these days, it’s hard to find.
Rose felt a deep twinge of belated understanding as she remembered the many times her mother had told her - in whispers, in laughter, in tears, in wine - that this was the song that was playing when she met Rose’s father. And Rose suddenly realized that her mother had been even younger than she was now, just seventeen. By the time Jackie was Rose’s age, she was already a mother and just a few weeks from becoming a widow.
She blinked away tears, and looked up at the Doctor, taking a deep breath to sing almost with defiance.
I know, it’s a dream I'm willing to defend,
I know, it will all be worth it in the end.
And a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
True love, the lasting kind.
A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
As the song glided to the end on the gospel-flavoured vocals, he reached out to take her hands, pulling her closer. Not quite an embrace, though her hands slid beneath his jacket to rest on his narrow waist as they moved to the beat.
The music changed to something with a quieter, slinkier beat, a saxophone skirling bluesily over a delicate synthesizer soundscape. Lifting his chin decisively, he took a step away, still holding her hand, and turned to bow to her slightly as a clear baritone sang seductively,
Passion take the wind
and break me from this tie
Without hesitation, she stepped into his arms, and he turned her deeper into the dance floor, bringing her lower body lightly against his.
I haven’t got a thing.
but what I give to you
is all that I could bring.
I'll give you all my time,
that's everything to me;
You know my only crime
is this flight of fantasy.
Rose found it impossible to take her eyes off his, his taut body relaxing more than she thought possible, moving with subtle rhythm against hers. Beneath the intensity of his gaze, she thought she saw something almost pleading there. She caught a breath, convinced that she must be imagining the longing, suggested by the song.
Because I've nothing else here for you,
and just because it's easier than the truth,
oh, if there's nothing else that I can do,
I'll fly for you
As the song swung into its middle eight, she caught her breath as he pushed her out into an easy spin, reeling her into his body with the melodramatic release. Her thigh slid between his as he held her closer than before, and his hand spread low in the small of her back as his eyes refused to let her go.
She felt the regret gathering as the song spun into its out chorus, knowing that the end was coming, and he seemed to feel the tension in her body, loosening his hold, which escalated her regret.
His eyebrow raised in a clear question, “Ready to go?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. A soft smile quirked his lips, reminding her with unexpected force of drawing the wand of the lip-liner against the elegant curves, and his hand tightened briefly on hers.
The beginning of Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” heralded a definite change of mood, and she couldn’t help the slightly naughty smirk creeping over her face as he turned to lead her through the crowd toward the door.
“Hey, Jacks, wait!”
The hand on her arm surprised her, but not as much as the face as she was spun around.
“Oh, sorry,” said the petite brunette with the short haircut and impossibly young face. “Thought you were someone else. Sorry.”
“’S okay.” Rose’s smile felt frozen on her face, her voice breathless as the girl rushed off. Her heart was pounding as the implications rushed in on her.
The Doctor stepped closer to her, his arm sliding around her waist as he spoke in her ear over the music. “Are you all right, Rose?”
“Yeah.” She turned to him, dazed. “I think my parents are here. They meet here. Tonight. Like, two songs ago.”
The Doctor’s jaw tightened, his fierce features overwhelming the softening effect of her make-up job, and he pulled her tighter against his side, striding toward the door.
“Can’t I just look?” she asked, struggling to keep up with his long legs, and he shook his head sharply, hustling her out of the building.
The cold, damp air hit her, and she shivered involuntarily as the moved against the tide of people heading into the dance. When they’d turned the corner, he stopped, and shucked off his jacket, holding it out for her.
“Why can’t I just look?” she asked, unlooping the hobo bag from her shoulder so that she could slip into the jacket.
“It’s too dangerous.” His statement brooked no argument, but she dug in her heels.
“Well, my mum’s friend Bev just saw me.”
“She’ll forget, it won’t be a big deal.” His voice gentled slightly, his hand on her shoulder as she pulled the jacket around her and turned back to look up at him.
“She’s younger than me,” she mused in wonder. “I’ve known her since I was a baby, and she’s younger than me.”
“That’s what time travel will do for you.” His voice was almost hollow, his hand curving tenderly to her cheek. The haunted look in his eyes seemed intensified by the eyeliner, and she put her hand over his, giving him a slightly shaky smile.
Her stomach rumbled at that moment, and his thumb lightly tapped her cheek as he grinned.
“Fish and chips?”
“This time o’night?” she asked in astonishment.
“I think the TARDIS can provide,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the alleyway to the skips where they had left the big blue box.
Where there was now a series of empty skips, a blank brick wall, and no big blue box.
He stood so still that she thought for a moment that perhaps time had stopped. She looked up at him, registering the shock on his face, and worse, the hollowness in his eyes.
***
“It’s going to be all right.”
Rose repeats the mantra for what seems the thousandth time in the last hour, her fingers tightening around his. He stares ahead at the city street through the metronomic sweep of the bus’s windscreen wiper, ignoring the music blasting from the boombox in the back of the bus.
While he had cycled through shock, disbelief, giddy laughter, anger, bitter frustration, and an almost childlike sense of loss, she had held his hand, murmured words of sympathy and encouragement, and sat on the kerb watching with surreptitious amusement until the moment - about ten minutes into his performance - he remembered his sonic screwdriver and got a bead on the TARDIS’s homing signal.
When he had mentioned the river, Rose’s unexpected reunion with Auntie Bev jogged her memory and she remembered where they’d gone when Bev’s boyfriend had dumped her father’s favourite chair and Rose, Jackie, Rodrigo, and Bev had gone down to retrieve it.
He’d been ready to set off on the seven miles at a trot, but she had dragged him down to the bus stop, stopping to pick up the small card on the pavement. “Oh, brilliant, we just need one more.” Scrounging in the bin on the corner had turned up another unexpired travelcard, and she’d snatched the sonic screwdriver away from him, returning it to its pocket, as the bus had rounded the corner.
She studies his face in the harsh, uneven light of the bus. The cosmetics accentuating his cheekbones and eyes are very odd, but strangely beautiful, and she feels the mid-range riff of “When Doves Cry” coming from the back of the bus thump in her ribcage, shivering along her nerve endings. She closes her eyes as she remembers, like a series of flash photographs strobing in rhythm with the song…
Dig, if you will, the picture…
Eyes closed, lips parted, throat arched…
Thighs hard and tense beneath her bum…
The sweat of your body covers me…
Short hair still, somehow, ruffled by the quick passage of the jumper…
Soft, pale hair across flat, hard muscles, a darker trail leading downward…
Feel how it trembles inside…
The strip of pale skin stretched taut over his hipbone between jeans and blouse…
Cool breath caresses the curve of a breast heaving above black lace…
Their eyes lock.
They feel the heat, the heat between me and you…
His knee bounces impatiently, and she reaches out instinctively, even with her eyes closed, to still him. He turns to look at her with a look both sheepish and hopeful. She’s almost embarrassed that she’s been so aroused by the memories, and she squeezes his knee comfortingly.
“It’s going to be all right.”
***
She pulls the jacket closer around her, slinging the hobo bag over her shoulder as they get off the bus down near the river. He alights beside her, looking around as the bus pulls away, leaving them in a quiet neighbourhood, sparsely lit. He turns her, pulling her toward him by the lapels of his jacket, and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to kiss her.
She’s embarrassed and a little giggle escapes her as he reaches into the breast pocket to retrieve his sonic screwdriver. The back of his hand brushes her breast, through her bra, through his jumper. It’s just an accident, she insists to herself.
But he is already checking the screwdriver’s signal and does not even look at her, just reaches instinctively for her hand as he heads down the pavement. She trots a couple of steps to catch up, grateful for the exertion in the increasingly cold, clammy night.
They stop at the next corner, and he turns, checking the street signs.
“Down this way.” He indicates the smallest of the three streets at this awkward intersection, and she’s crowds close to him as they follow a weathered board fence, then a chain-link fence, through which she can see towering mounds of rubbish.
“Is the TARDIS inside?” she asks, tightening her hand around his.
“Yeah. Come on.” He backtracks to the wooden section of the bench and pulls open a loose section of board, holding it up for her to duck inside the yard.
She wrinkles her nose at the smell, wrapping the long sleeve of his jacket around her hand and pressing it over her nose and mouth as he comes through the fence. He takes her other hand, and they follow a dirt path between piles of old appliances toward a section which seems to be the source of the pungent aroma. Turning around a large, fresh mound of rubbish, they find the TARDIS. Lying on one side, half-covered by boxes.
He releases Rose’s hand, squatting down beside the blue box, resting one hand on the side - now on top - and one on the front panel, his forehead resting against the wood. Rose chews her lower lip, resting her hand on his bowed head, his close-cropped hair soft and tickling against her palm.
“How are we going to get it right side up again?” she asks, not daring to ask the more crucial question - is the TARDIS injured?
But he just looks up at her with a bright smile in the dim light. “No need.” He takes the key from his hip pocket and unlocks the door, lifting it open.
Rose bends down to look inside, astonished to see the console room, same as always, but at a ninety-degree angle. The column of the rotor pulses up and down, slowly, and the mallet resting on the console where he’d left it, apparently defying gravity.
“Go on in,” he urges.
“H-how?” She feels a bit queasy at the prospect.
“You want me to go first?” he asks, his hand on her - his - sleeve in concern.
He reads the answer in her eyes and slides inside with an unexpectedly graceful move, leaning/lying against the inside of the other door, then reaching up for her. As she puts her hand in his, she gives her balance to him, trusting him and he draws her in, into his arms as her stomach whirls and her knees buckle.
“Close your eyes,” he murmurs against her temple, holding her against him as she hears the door slam shut behind her.
His hand strokes her hair back as she clings to him, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Another deep breath.” She obeys, feeling her stomach settle. She can feel the coolness of his skin and soft hair between the laces of the peasant blouse against her cheek, and she brings one hand up to his chest as his hand cups her head.
“Open your eyes.”
She obeys, blinking as the world reorients around her. “Wow.” She’s stepped away from him almost before she realizes it, turning to take in the console room. It looks exactly the same as it always did, and her stomach is firmly back in its place.
“All right?” he asks, stepping toward her.
“Yeah.” She turns toward him with a smile. “Is the TARDIS still on its side?”
“’Course it is,” he says with a grin, tossing the key up before catching it and returning it to his jeans pocket. In the pale green light, he looks almost devilish with the eyeliner and the unusual attire. “What, you can accept bigger on the inside, but not at a ninety-degree angle?”
“I s’pose when you put it that way…” she laughs, and he slides both hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he stops, a breath away from her. Her smile fades a little as arousal, never far away on this night, flares again.
“How about a shower, and I’ll meet you back here for a midnight picnic in an hour.”
“But it’s already at least midnight,” she points out.
“I’m sure I can find somewhere where it’s midnight,” he retorts.
“I guess I’ll go get my sunglasses and tanning oil,” she teases, and he gives her an offended,
“Oi,” with a slap to her bum as he turns her and pushes her toward the interior of the ship.
She giggles and trots down the corridor, realizing that a shower sounds really appetizing after their long day.
***
She steps outside onto the softness of knee-high grass, covering a plateau that dropped away some twenty metres ahead to a calm sea. Her clean hair, loose around her shoulders, stirs in the soft breeze that ripples the grass in an echo of the ocean lapping at the shore. The air smells pleasantly of salt and something sweet, like a vanilla candle, and it’s warm against her bare arms and legs. She had put on a t-shirt and her denim mini-skirt, too tired to choose anything more complicated, and carried his jacket, belt, and jumper back to the Doctor in the console room. He was freshly showered himself, hair still a bit damp and face scrubbed clean, dressed in jeans and a v-necked navy t-shirt, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.
“Little less Duran Duran, a little more Clash,” she had teased as he’d left his armour on the chair and pushed her out the door.
The sky above them is a deep blue, but in addition to the barrage of stars, three moons illuminate the night. One is the size of Earth’s moon, a little more cratered and a darker blue, over the mountains that stretch out in the distance behind them; the other two are much larger, crowding the sky over the sea, one as gold and full as a harvest moon, the other a dark red crescent with an edge of salmon as its curve echoes the harvest moon.
“This is beautiful.” She turns in a circle, wondering at the view, as he brings out a basket and a folded blanket.
“I thought you might like it,” he says gruffly, spreading the blanket on the soft cushion of grass.
She turns to look at him, kneeling on the blanket and opening the basket, and her tongue flirts with the inside of her cheek as she asks, “Is it really midnight?”
He looks at his watch, and she can see the little bit of embarrassment before he covers with a gruff, “’Course.”
The surge of affection makes her laugh, and she comes over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him. “Really?”
“Well.” He presses his lips together as he busies himself in the basket. “Maybe a little later. It’s hard to gauge these things relatively, when every celestial body has a different orbital and rotational cycle.”
“So what time is it?” She reaches out to catch his wrist. Not that she can really read his watch - it looks normal until she’s actually trying to read it, and then it seems to swirl and twist into impossible configurations.
“About two a.m., local time,” he admits, the tips of his ears visibly blushing, and she slides her hand down over his to link her fingers with his.
“It’s lovely,” she says softly, and he looks up at her with that open expression that sometimes seems to escape him. Normally, he tries to hide it quickly, but right now, it persists, and in the overlapping shadows and light of the three moons, she thinks he has never seemed so alien or so beautiful. In a way far more natural than the cosmetics, the odd illumination highlights the stark bone structure of his face, and his eyes seem to capture all the available light.
“It doesn’t matter to me, you know.” She’s rising to her knees before she realizes it, and with a few movements, she’s astride his thighs, echoing their position of earlier. “If we’d arrived at 6 am or 9 pm or 114 years from now, or a million years ago - you always make anywhere worth seeing.”
He swallows visibly as she settles against him, her fingertips lightly tracing the large curves of his ears. “Thank you.” She kisses his forehead, his hands coming hesitantly to her hips. “Thank you.” She kisses the tip of his nose and bows her head.
His hands tighten, and he starts to protest, but she breathes, “Please shut up and let me do this,” before she kisses his mouth.
His lips are full and soft, a little chapped, cooler than she’s used to but warmer than she’s imagined, and his big hands spread on her back, holding her closer as she brushes his lips apart, her tongue lightly caressing…
“Rose,” he breathes. “I’m trying to be careful here.”
“I know.” She lifts her head just enough to look into his eyes. “And it’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She caresses his freshly shaven cheek with the backs of her curled fingers, following the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“I know,” he murmurs. “And that’s why I’m being careful.”
“Don’t be so careful.” She feels strangely calm and dips her head, breathing a final plea before their lips meet.
“Fly for me.”
**********
Prompts: Prompt 1: 80s music/the 80s; Prompt 2: Dinner at 2 a.m; Prompt 3: Public transportation by necessity
Featured songs: "When Doves Cry" by Prince and the Revolution; "A Good Heart" by Maria McKee, as performed by Feargal Sharkey; and "I'll Fly for You" by Gary Kemp, performed by Spandau Ballet.
Title: À Deux
Author: nina_ds
Rating: Teen (Honestly, I tried, they just went all shy on me in the end!)
Gift for: prchung
Beta: wendymr (Great thanks, as ever!)
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit, just playing.
Summary: In which a simple visit home after the events of "The Long Game" becomes a series of unexpected challenges for our intrepid duo, Rose proves resourceful with the tools of her trade, and much mock is made of the Doctor's driving. It's compliant with "Father's Day", but somewhat pre-empts "The Doctor Dances".
Warnings: Skirts perilously close to songfic in a couple of places, but the songs made me do it.
Prompt: At end to avoid spoilage.
À deux
The plastic seat is unyielding beneath her, and the fluorescent lights harsh after the misty darkness, now lumbering by outside windows clouded by condensation. Leather brushes against the bare skin of her shoulder, and she can feel the tiny hairs on the back of her neck rise as her body reacts to the accidental touch. She can feel his tension radiating like heat from his body. Her eyes slide cautiously to him, the cut of his cheekbone like diamond in the hard light. The shadow moves along his jaw as the muscles tighten.
She closes her eyes, the bumptious motion of the bus distantly familiar, in odd counterpoint with the music blasting from the boombox in the back. It’s only been a few months, but it feels like a lifetime ago that she travelled like this on a daily basis. The song’s riff gets under her skin like itching powder, igniting a pulsating series of images and sensations lingering on her skin, behind her eyelids…
Dig, if you will, the picture…
Eyes like crystals of ice, clear and brilliant, reflecting her as she leans breathlessly over him, lips parted, hands trembling…
“Quick, off!” Her hands skim along his ribs as she pushes up his jumper, jerking it over his head triumphantly, even as she shivers slightly in the chill in only her lacy bra…
The sweat of your body covers me…
His big hands steady her hips, his long thighs taut between hers. His cool breath strokes her cheek…
His long thumb brushes the skin of her belly…
Feel how it trembles inside…
He lifts his thighs sharply beneath her bum, and her breath catches in a soft shriek as the shift of angle sends a shockwave of warm pleasure radiating through her body…
Their eyes lock.
They feel the heat, the heat between me and you…
***
Three hours earlier
She held the large, ornate gold earring to her ear and giggled. Definitely not her style. Nor, really, were the black satin and velvet peasant skirt and and blouse she’d found, rooting around in the wardrobe while the Doctor fussed with the TARDIS. He was still in a bit of a black mood - well, dark grey - after dumping Adam at home with his ventilated head, and Rose had thought that, discretion being the better part of valour, she should probably let him blow off some steam with his favourite pastime. She was still glowing, on a high from his declaration, “I only take the best. I’ve got Rose.” He’d been so complimentary all through Satellite Five, really, telling Cathica, “Rose asks the right sort of questions.”
When they had first left Adam at home, she’d been excited and bouncy, eager to spend some time with the Doctor, to revel in that spark of excitement she’d felt when they were together on the station. Something seemed to be opening up between them; there was still the sense of fun that had been there from the beginning, but it now had a depth that had come from not just enjoying each other’s company but from three close brushes with death in succession. The connection seemed to strengthen most particularly from the encounter with the Dalek. Afterward, Adam had been underfoot, in the way, and she felt a little guilty that she was so glad to be rid of him. But the Doctor’s subdued, slightly withdrawn reaction to her on their return to the TARDIS had surprised her, hurt a little.
She had sought refuge here, in the wardrobe room, in part because her own room seemed peculiarly empty. And as she had played with the all the extraordinary things she found here, her mind had been doing some reflecting despite her best efforts at distraction. With a bit of embarrassment, she realized that, to a great extent, the Doctor’s praise had not been for her, but for the benefit of those like Adam and Cathica who didn’t open their eyes and hearts to what was around them. That, at least, she could do.
She picked up a red scarf edged with a fringe of small bronze coins. It was vivid, surprisingly light and silky, and she folded it over, draping it over her hair.
“Rose?”
“Back here!” she called, tying the scarf in a knot on the side of her head.
She could hear his boots on the spiral staircase, and she met his eyes in the mirror as he came onto the balcony.
“Well?” she asked, putting her hands on her hips and posing with a grin.
His expression was pricelessly transparent, and he opened his mouth to make a comment, then shut it again.
“It’s okay,” she laughed, hitching up the skirt and pushing the full sleeves back up from her wrists. “I feel like I’m in fancy dress as my mother. She used to wear stuff like this when I was a kid.”
The Doctor gave a dramatic shudder, and she laughed, coming to him and taking the hand he held out. “Hungry?” he asked, long, freshly washed fingers closing around hers.
She nodded, realizing it had been quite a few hours since her beef slush puppy, and her stomach growled in response. “Doctor?”
“Yeah?” His eyes caught hers with that unnerving intensity that he sometimes - often - conveyed.
“Look, you can say no, but…” She caught her lower lip between her teeth for a moment, and her eyes took a quick tour of the immediate area before returning to his. “Would it be okay if we visit Mum? It’s just - we were just in 2012, we must be so close.”
The silence stretched out for eons - well, seconds, anyway - and she noted that the pressure of his lips thinned their fullness slightly but didn’t disguise the delicate arabesques of their shape. Distracted for a moment, she then took a deep breath and rushed forward, “You wouldn’t have to come to dinner if you didn’t want to, though I’m sure Mum would be really happy if you did - but we could get fish and chips and have a picnic in the park, maybe?”
He could be so unnervingly still, she felt as if she were being pulled into the well of his gravity, waiting for his response. When it came it was sudden. “One condition.”
“Okay,” she agreed cautiously. “What?”
He reached out and plucked the red scarf from her head. “Just not a fan of that look,” he teased.
Her relieved laughter came quickly, and she caught the scarf with her free hand as he tossed it up, pulling her down the stairs with him.
***
“So much for the picnic.” Rose shivered as they stepped out into a dark, misty alleyway, lit by an insufficient lamp a few metres down. The TARDIS was in a cramped corner by some overfilled skips. Rose had to sidle sideways to get through, as they had landed with the door close to the nearest skip, and the hobo bag, with her wallet, make-up bag, and cellphone, that she had snagged on the way out the door banged against the metal resoundingly. “Are you sure this is the Powell Estates?”
He was locking the door and moved sideways toward her with an odd, easy grace before turning and pointing up to their left. “Yep.”
The familiar blocks of cement and light stretched up into the heavy night, and she wrinkled her nose, tying the scarf around her waist in part because she didn’t want to carry it and in part because the oversized blouse was letting in tendrils of the cool night air. Something didn’t seem quite right.
He took her hand, and they headed toward the towers but, rounding the corner, they were confronted by a large, unfamiliar building in the courtyard. A number of colourfully dressed people streamed in through the open orange fire doors, a banner stretched over them proclaiming,
“Winter Blast 1984!”
They both stopped and stared up at it.
Rose looked up at him curiously.
He looked worried, and a wee bit embarrassed. As the sounds of “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go” blasted out of the doors, Rose grinned impishly, squeezed his hand, and dragged him in.
***
Sheena Easton was belting out “Strut”, and Rose moved unconsciously to the insistent beat, looking around in amazement and amusement. A DJ was set up on the far end of the community hall, a VariLite in each corner aimed at a mirrorball hanging from the ceiling by a fairly precarious-looking cable. Most of those crowded onto the gymnasium floor were in their teens and twenties, wearing big shoulders and big hair (boys as well as girls), with bold, artificial colours that practically glowed in the dark. The look was exaggerated and extravagant, but it had energy and a kind of retro futurism that struck Rose as almost quaint, and maybe even a bit glamorous. Her gypsy get-up didn’t exactly fit in, but she grinned to herself as she realized her hair - still in a high ponytail but suffering greatly from the humidity and a close encounter with the scarf earlier - was almost in style.
The music changed, and Tina Turner warned “Better Be Good to Me.” Rose felt a strong sense of déjà vu, as if she were listening to one of her mother’s old mixtapes, the ones Jackie used to sing aloud to, teaching her little girl the songs and the dance moves. A twinge of nostalgia pricked the back of her nose.
“Dance with me?” She turned and took both of the Doctor’s hands in hers, pulling him with her as she backed toward the dance floor. He hesitated, suddenly tensing, and Rose turned to see a group of young men congregating a few feet away, watching them warily. One of them made a gesture toward his hair, and the others nodded in agreement, something about the exchange making Rose’s stomach churn even before she fully understood, looking up at the Doctor with his close-cropped hair, Doc Martens, and leather gear.
Deciding instantly, she let go of one hand to pull him through the crowd toward the bathrooms at the end opposite the DJ. As usual, there was a line of girls snaking out the door of the women’s rooms, and Rose took a deep breath, pushing into the men’s room.
Other than a boy passed out in one corner, the place was blessedly empty and not even terribly smelly, and Rose ducked into the first stall, pulling him with her.
“Jacket, off,” she commanded, her voice soft but intense, just beneath the dull thud of the music through the walls, and he just looked at her in amazement as she propped her hobo bag on the cistern, tugging at the knot she had made in the scarf.
“Off!” she demanded more emphatically, crossing her arms over herself to pull off the peasant blouse, and he was still removing his jacket as her hands skimmed up beneath his dark blue jumper, pushing it up.
Only as hands trembling with adrenaline slid over soft hair and taut nipples did she realize what she was doing. She hesitated, looking up into his eyes, almost colourless in the fluorescent overhead lighting, but blazing with intensity nonetheless.
Her mouth was dry, and she had to swallow before she half-whispered urgently, “I don’t suppose you can grow your hair out suddenly?”
“Not without taking some pretty drastic measures,” he admitted wryly, raising his arms for her to rid him of the jumper.
Standing there, a breath apart in the stall, Rose felt a blush creep over her cheeks, down her throat to spread over her breasts. She was aware of the black lace of her bra against her skin as she realized he was exposed to her view for the first time. He was surprisingly narrow, lean and wiry, his collarbone and ribs almost too delineated against his pale skin. Traces of old bruises shadowed the area around his ribs and diaphragm, yellowish with only a trace of violet in their centres, and she fought a wave of nausea as she realized where those had come from. Silky hair, almost the same colour as his skin, softened his breastbone, extending like a cross on his torso, darkening as it stretched downward into the waistband of his jeans.
Not thinking about that, not thinking about that, she told herself firmly, and thrust the peasant blouse at him, taking the jumper for herself and pulling it over her head. With a little tug, it slid off one shoulder, and her fingers were at the buckle of his belt before she allowed herself to think about it.
“Rose!” he protested, but she just looked up at him as she whipped the belt out of his beltloops with a bit more force than necessary.
“Look,” she whispered urgently, belting the jumper loosely around her waist, arranging the buckle against her hip for an asymmetrical effect. “Those guys out there - they’re of one tribe, and they think you’re of another, and I know enough to know that they might be wearing eyeliner and hair mousse, and they might be harmless, but they might also just try to kill you. Put it on.”
He hesitated for a moment, looking stubborn, then, remarkably, tugged the blouse over his head.
Thank goodness he was as narrow as he was. The peasant blouse actually fit him pretty well, just about meeting the top of his jeans. Large ruffles framed the front placket, and she tugged at the shoestring laces, loosening them as much as she could, then put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around and pushed him down on the seat. Sliding astride him, she reached up for the hobo bag, her breath catching as his big hand in the small of her back steadied her. She looked down, realizing a fair expanse of soft flesh bared by his jumper and her bra was practically brushing his cheek.
She wondered if he could hear and feel her racing heart. She wondered if he knew how much of it was fear for him, and how much his nearness.
She wasn’t sure she knew herself. Swallowing against her dry mouth, she settled astride his long thighs, a subtle shiver passing over her skin as his big hands came to rest on her hips. “Tilt your head back,” she whispered as she pulled her make-up bag from the larger one. Resting it in the space between her belly and his ribs - convenient, protective - she pulled out her tools. “Trust me?”
He nodded, slightly, and she went to work, swiftly and efficiently. Lip-liner to accentuate the surprisingly pretty curves of his mouth - a bit too pink, not enough peach for his skin tone, no one was going to notice in the dim light; blush to follow the sharp line of his cheekbones, and a little stab of jealousy as she lamented her chipmunk cheeks. And the eyes…
“Close your eyes,” she whispered, gazing down into eyes that looked glacial ice in the light, but for the heat they generated. He obeyed, his head tilted back, throat exposed, lips parted, and she had to stop for a moment to keep her hand from shaking as she lined his eyelids, leaving a sharp angle at the outer corners of his eyes. A touch of mascara, and she realized his sandy eyelashes were longer than she’d ever noticed.
The bang of the men’s room door startled her, her hand slipping, and her elbow hit the partition with a thud that may or may not have folded into the reverberations from the initial incidence. Even as she saw stars from the strike to her funnybone, instinct slapped her hand firmly over his mouth, and he snatched his knees up to hide his feet, the shift of balance trapping her between the hardness of his belly and thighs.
The voices outside were loud, adolescent, and brash, friendly insults melting into a single texture as he held her fast, his strength and balance astonishing in their precarious position. His hand had slipped up beneath the jumper and belt as they shifted, his long thumb pressing into the soft flesh of her belly, just above the loose waistband of the skirt.
As he eased his instinctive grip, the soft caress of his thumb soothed the bruising pressure, sending shocks of electricity to the bundle of nerve endings presently situated right above his jeans button, and her eyes opened, focusing on his. His pupils had dilated, reflecting her flushed and breathless face, and somehow his irises had become the fierce blue of a gas flame.
Neither of them moved but for the slow, insistent movement of his thumb, their breath mingling as they fought for steadiness. Her hand slipped away from his mouth, fingertips lingering against his lips just a fraction too long as the herd of boys finished their business and left as loudly as they had arrived…
The Doctor eased his feet down to the floor, his hands on her hips holding her steady as the balance shifted again, and she had to close her eyes against the flush of pleasure that swept through her. “Rose,” he whispered, that long thumb, warm from her own belly, brushing against her cheek as he cupped her head.
She dragged her eyes open, an eerie shiver slipping down her spine at the first full view of him in the make-up. She wouldn’t have thought it would have suited him. He wasn’t a pretty boy.
Wrong on all counts.
Everything focused on the eyes.
“Gotta get out of here,” he reminded her in a whisper, and she nodded, forcing herself to slide back off his knees onto her own shaky feet, trying not to react as his hand slipped over her bum, smoothing down the skirt.
As she helped him back into the leather jacket, she turned him around so that she could tighten the buttoned belt on the back, giving the silhouette a bit of a waist. They had to press together to get the stall door open.
Two young men were entering the bathroom as they emerged, and Rose moved closer to the Doctor, sliding her arm around his waist under the jacket. He put a protective arm around her shoulders as the two young men leered knowingly at them. Rose met their eyes with a raised eyebrow, her hand ostentatiously sliding into the back pocket of the Doctor’s jeans as they left the bathroom, down the crowded hallway to the gym. Even more dancers were gyrating on the dance floor, and Rose looked up at him hopefully.
He looked down at her, then bent down to speak into her ear. “Do you really want to stay? We can be in 2006 in five minutes.”
“You won’t dance with me? Just once?” Her disappointment slipped out before she could stop it.
He looked at the dance floor, clearly hesitating, as the music changed to a light reggae beat with a thunderous backbeat and a rolling baseline, the gospel piano riff setting off a ripple of memories in her. “Oh, please!” She grabbed both of his hands, pulling him toward the dance floor. “I love this song! Mum used to play it all the time, it was her favourite. Please?”
He softened so obviously, she fought the impulse to throw her arms around his neck and hug him. Instead, she drew him out among the dancers, as her voice instinctively joined the recording. She closed her eyes, the sheer pleasure of singing rising up from her diaphragm, through her vocal cords and out her snapping fingertips, as her feet moved and hips swayed to the beat.
I hear a lot of stories, I suppose they could be true,
All about love and what it can do to you.
High is the risk of striking out, the risk of getting hurt,
And still I have so much to learn.
I know, ’cause I think about it all the time.
I know, that real love has quite a price.
The memories of singing into a hairbrush in her Mum’s bedroom, laughing, rolling on the bed and tickling washed over her as the release built to the chorus, and she was grinning broadly as she opened her eyes for the chorus. She remembered the choreography and repeated it playfully:
(Point) And a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
(Cross arms to clasp shoulders) True love, the lasting kind.
(Point) A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
(Clasp hands over her heart) So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
She faltered for a moment, realizing the resonance of the words with her own feelings, as she saw it in his face. A surge, almost of defiance swept away her incipient embarrassment, and she took a deep breath, singing along with less giddiness and more warmth.
My expectations may be high, I blame that on my youth,
Soon enough, I’ll learn the painful truth.
I'll face it like a fighter, then boast of how I've grown.
Anything is better than being alone.
I know, ’cause I learn a little every day.
I know, ’cause I listen when the experts say,
Instead of the choreography her mother had taught her, she reached out to take his hands, realizing that he had been dancing with her all along, not extravagantly, but his lean body clearly felt the beat.
That a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
True love, the lasting kind.
A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
As I reflect on all my childhood dreams,
My ideas of love weren't as foolish as they seemed.
If I don’t start looking now, I'll be left behind.
And a good heart these days, it’s hard to find.
Rose felt a deep twinge of belated understanding as she remembered the many times her mother had told her - in whispers, in laughter, in tears, in wine - that this was the song that was playing when she met Rose’s father. And Rose suddenly realized that her mother had been even younger than she was now, just seventeen. By the time Jackie was Rose’s age, she was already a mother and just a few weeks from becoming a widow.
She blinked away tears, and looked up at the Doctor, taking a deep breath to sing almost with defiance.
I know, it’s a dream I'm willing to defend,
I know, it will all be worth it in the end.
And a good heart, these days, is hard to find,
True love, the lasting kind.
A good heart, these days, is hard to find,
So please be gentle with this heart of mine.
As the song glided to the end on the gospel-flavoured vocals, he reached out to take her hands, pulling her closer. Not quite an embrace, though her hands slid beneath his jacket to rest on his narrow waist as they moved to the beat.
The music changed to something with a quieter, slinkier beat, a saxophone skirling bluesily over a delicate synthesizer soundscape. Lifting his chin decisively, he took a step away, still holding her hand, and turned to bow to her slightly as a clear baritone sang seductively,
Passion take the wind
and break me from this tie
Without hesitation, she stepped into his arms, and he turned her deeper into the dance floor, bringing her lower body lightly against his.
I haven’t got a thing.
but what I give to you
is all that I could bring.
I'll give you all my time,
that's everything to me;
You know my only crime
is this flight of fantasy.
Rose found it impossible to take her eyes off his, his taut body relaxing more than she thought possible, moving with subtle rhythm against hers. Beneath the intensity of his gaze, she thought she saw something almost pleading there. She caught a breath, convinced that she must be imagining the longing, suggested by the song.
Because I've nothing else here for you,
and just because it's easier than the truth,
oh, if there's nothing else that I can do,
I'll fly for you
As the song swung into its middle eight, she caught her breath as he pushed her out into an easy spin, reeling her into his body with the melodramatic release. Her thigh slid between his as he held her closer than before, and his hand spread low in the small of her back as his eyes refused to let her go.
She felt the regret gathering as the song spun into its out chorus, knowing that the end was coming, and he seemed to feel the tension in her body, loosening his hold, which escalated her regret.
His eyebrow raised in a clear question, “Ready to go?”
She took a deep breath and nodded. A soft smile quirked his lips, reminding her with unexpected force of drawing the wand of the lip-liner against the elegant curves, and his hand tightened briefly on hers.
The beginning of Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” heralded a definite change of mood, and she couldn’t help the slightly naughty smirk creeping over her face as he turned to lead her through the crowd toward the door.
“Hey, Jacks, wait!”
The hand on her arm surprised her, but not as much as the face as she was spun around.
“Oh, sorry,” said the petite brunette with the short haircut and impossibly young face. “Thought you were someone else. Sorry.”
“’S okay.” Rose’s smile felt frozen on her face, her voice breathless as the girl rushed off. Her heart was pounding as the implications rushed in on her.
The Doctor stepped closer to her, his arm sliding around her waist as he spoke in her ear over the music. “Are you all right, Rose?”
“Yeah.” She turned to him, dazed. “I think my parents are here. They meet here. Tonight. Like, two songs ago.”
The Doctor’s jaw tightened, his fierce features overwhelming the softening effect of her make-up job, and he pulled her tighter against his side, striding toward the door.
“Can’t I just look?” she asked, struggling to keep up with his long legs, and he shook his head sharply, hustling her out of the building.
The cold, damp air hit her, and she shivered involuntarily as the moved against the tide of people heading into the dance. When they’d turned the corner, he stopped, and shucked off his jacket, holding it out for her.
“Why can’t I just look?” she asked, unlooping the hobo bag from her shoulder so that she could slip into the jacket.
“It’s too dangerous.” His statement brooked no argument, but she dug in her heels.
“Well, my mum’s friend Bev just saw me.”
“She’ll forget, it won’t be a big deal.” His voice gentled slightly, his hand on her shoulder as she pulled the jacket around her and turned back to look up at him.
“She’s younger than me,” she mused in wonder. “I’ve known her since I was a baby, and she’s younger than me.”
“That’s what time travel will do for you.” His voice was almost hollow, his hand curving tenderly to her cheek. The haunted look in his eyes seemed intensified by the eyeliner, and she put her hand over his, giving him a slightly shaky smile.
Her stomach rumbled at that moment, and his thumb lightly tapped her cheek as he grinned.
“Fish and chips?”
“This time o’night?” she asked in astonishment.
“I think the TARDIS can provide,” he said, taking her hand and leading her down the alleyway to the skips where they had left the big blue box.
Where there was now a series of empty skips, a blank brick wall, and no big blue box.
He stood so still that she thought for a moment that perhaps time had stopped. She looked up at him, registering the shock on his face, and worse, the hollowness in his eyes.
***
“It’s going to be all right.”
Rose repeats the mantra for what seems the thousandth time in the last hour, her fingers tightening around his. He stares ahead at the city street through the metronomic sweep of the bus’s windscreen wiper, ignoring the music blasting from the boombox in the back of the bus.
While he had cycled through shock, disbelief, giddy laughter, anger, bitter frustration, and an almost childlike sense of loss, she had held his hand, murmured words of sympathy and encouragement, and sat on the kerb watching with surreptitious amusement until the moment - about ten minutes into his performance - he remembered his sonic screwdriver and got a bead on the TARDIS’s homing signal.
When he had mentioned the river, Rose’s unexpected reunion with Auntie Bev jogged her memory and she remembered where they’d gone when Bev’s boyfriend had dumped her father’s favourite chair and Rose, Jackie, Rodrigo, and Bev had gone down to retrieve it.
He’d been ready to set off on the seven miles at a trot, but she had dragged him down to the bus stop, stopping to pick up the small card on the pavement. “Oh, brilliant, we just need one more.” Scrounging in the bin on the corner had turned up another unexpired travelcard, and she’d snatched the sonic screwdriver away from him, returning it to its pocket, as the bus had rounded the corner.
She studies his face in the harsh, uneven light of the bus. The cosmetics accentuating his cheekbones and eyes are very odd, but strangely beautiful, and she feels the mid-range riff of “When Doves Cry” coming from the back of the bus thump in her ribcage, shivering along her nerve endings. She closes her eyes as she remembers, like a series of flash photographs strobing in rhythm with the song…
Dig, if you will, the picture…
Eyes closed, lips parted, throat arched…
Thighs hard and tense beneath her bum…
The sweat of your body covers me…
Short hair still, somehow, ruffled by the quick passage of the jumper…
Soft, pale hair across flat, hard muscles, a darker trail leading downward…
Feel how it trembles inside…
The strip of pale skin stretched taut over his hipbone between jeans and blouse…
Cool breath caresses the curve of a breast heaving above black lace…
Their eyes lock.
They feel the heat, the heat between me and you…
His knee bounces impatiently, and she reaches out instinctively, even with her eyes closed, to still him. He turns to look at her with a look both sheepish and hopeful. She’s almost embarrassed that she’s been so aroused by the memories, and she squeezes his knee comfortingly.
“It’s going to be all right.”
***
She pulls the jacket closer around her, slinging the hobo bag over her shoulder as they get off the bus down near the river. He alights beside her, looking around as the bus pulls away, leaving them in a quiet neighbourhood, sparsely lit. He turns her, pulling her toward him by the lapels of his jacket, and for a moment, she thinks he’s going to kiss her.
She’s embarrassed and a little giggle escapes her as he reaches into the breast pocket to retrieve his sonic screwdriver. The back of his hand brushes her breast, through her bra, through his jumper. It’s just an accident, she insists to herself.
But he is already checking the screwdriver’s signal and does not even look at her, just reaches instinctively for her hand as he heads down the pavement. She trots a couple of steps to catch up, grateful for the exertion in the increasingly cold, clammy night.
They stop at the next corner, and he turns, checking the street signs.
“Down this way.” He indicates the smallest of the three streets at this awkward intersection, and she’s crowds close to him as they follow a weathered board fence, then a chain-link fence, through which she can see towering mounds of rubbish.
“Is the TARDIS inside?” she asks, tightening her hand around his.
“Yeah. Come on.” He backtracks to the wooden section of the bench and pulls open a loose section of board, holding it up for her to duck inside the yard.
She wrinkles her nose at the smell, wrapping the long sleeve of his jacket around her hand and pressing it over her nose and mouth as he comes through the fence. He takes her other hand, and they follow a dirt path between piles of old appliances toward a section which seems to be the source of the pungent aroma. Turning around a large, fresh mound of rubbish, they find the TARDIS. Lying on one side, half-covered by boxes.
He releases Rose’s hand, squatting down beside the blue box, resting one hand on the side - now on top - and one on the front panel, his forehead resting against the wood. Rose chews her lower lip, resting her hand on his bowed head, his close-cropped hair soft and tickling against her palm.
“How are we going to get it right side up again?” she asks, not daring to ask the more crucial question - is the TARDIS injured?
But he just looks up at her with a bright smile in the dim light. “No need.” He takes the key from his hip pocket and unlocks the door, lifting it open.
Rose bends down to look inside, astonished to see the console room, same as always, but at a ninety-degree angle. The column of the rotor pulses up and down, slowly, and the mallet resting on the console where he’d left it, apparently defying gravity.
“Go on in,” he urges.
“H-how?” She feels a bit queasy at the prospect.
“You want me to go first?” he asks, his hand on her - his - sleeve in concern.
He reads the answer in her eyes and slides inside with an unexpectedly graceful move, leaning/lying against the inside of the other door, then reaching up for her. As she puts her hand in his, she gives her balance to him, trusting him and he draws her in, into his arms as her stomach whirls and her knees buckle.
“Close your eyes,” he murmurs against her temple, holding her against him as she hears the door slam shut behind her.
His hand strokes her hair back as she clings to him, taking a deep, shuddering breath. “Another deep breath.” She obeys, feeling her stomach settle. She can feel the coolness of his skin and soft hair between the laces of the peasant blouse against her cheek, and she brings one hand up to his chest as his hand cups her head.
“Open your eyes.”
She obeys, blinking as the world reorients around her. “Wow.” She’s stepped away from him almost before she realizes it, turning to take in the console room. It looks exactly the same as it always did, and her stomach is firmly back in its place.
“All right?” he asks, stepping toward her.
“Yeah.” She turns toward him with a smile. “Is the TARDIS still on its side?”
“’Course it is,” he says with a grin, tossing the key up before catching it and returning it to his jeans pocket. In the pale green light, he looks almost devilish with the eyeliner and the unusual attire. “What, you can accept bigger on the inside, but not at a ninety-degree angle?”
“I s’pose when you put it that way…” she laughs, and he slides both hands into the back pockets of his jeans as he stops, a breath away from her. Her smile fades a little as arousal, never far away on this night, flares again.
“How about a shower, and I’ll meet you back here for a midnight picnic in an hour.”
“But it’s already at least midnight,” she points out.
“I’m sure I can find somewhere where it’s midnight,” he retorts.
“I guess I’ll go get my sunglasses and tanning oil,” she teases, and he gives her an offended,
“Oi,” with a slap to her bum as he turns her and pushes her toward the interior of the ship.
She giggles and trots down the corridor, realizing that a shower sounds really appetizing after their long day.
***
She steps outside onto the softness of knee-high grass, covering a plateau that dropped away some twenty metres ahead to a calm sea. Her clean hair, loose around her shoulders, stirs in the soft breeze that ripples the grass in an echo of the ocean lapping at the shore. The air smells pleasantly of salt and something sweet, like a vanilla candle, and it’s warm against her bare arms and legs. She had put on a t-shirt and her denim mini-skirt, too tired to choose anything more complicated, and carried his jacket, belt, and jumper back to the Doctor in the console room. He was freshly showered himself, hair still a bit damp and face scrubbed clean, dressed in jeans and a v-necked navy t-shirt, looking more relaxed than she’d ever seen him.
“Little less Duran Duran, a little more Clash,” she had teased as he’d left his armour on the chair and pushed her out the door.
The sky above them is a deep blue, but in addition to the barrage of stars, three moons illuminate the night. One is the size of Earth’s moon, a little more cratered and a darker blue, over the mountains that stretch out in the distance behind them; the other two are much larger, crowding the sky over the sea, one as gold and full as a harvest moon, the other a dark red crescent with an edge of salmon as its curve echoes the harvest moon.
“This is beautiful.” She turns in a circle, wondering at the view, as he brings out a basket and a folded blanket.
“I thought you might like it,” he says gruffly, spreading the blanket on the soft cushion of grass.
She turns to look at him, kneeling on the blanket and opening the basket, and her tongue flirts with the inside of her cheek as she asks, “Is it really midnight?”
He looks at his watch, and she can see the little bit of embarrassment before he covers with a gruff, “’Course.”
The surge of affection makes her laugh, and she comes over to him, dropping to her knees in front of him. “Really?”
“Well.” He presses his lips together as he busies himself in the basket. “Maybe a little later. It’s hard to gauge these things relatively, when every celestial body has a different orbital and rotational cycle.”
“So what time is it?” She reaches out to catch his wrist. Not that she can really read his watch - it looks normal until she’s actually trying to read it, and then it seems to swirl and twist into impossible configurations.
“About two a.m., local time,” he admits, the tips of his ears visibly blushing, and she slides her hand down over his to link her fingers with his.
“It’s lovely,” she says softly, and he looks up at her with that open expression that sometimes seems to escape him. Normally, he tries to hide it quickly, but right now, it persists, and in the overlapping shadows and light of the three moons, she thinks he has never seemed so alien or so beautiful. In a way far more natural than the cosmetics, the odd illumination highlights the stark bone structure of his face, and his eyes seem to capture all the available light.
“It doesn’t matter to me, you know.” She’s rising to her knees before she realizes it, and with a few movements, she’s astride his thighs, echoing their position of earlier. “If we’d arrived at 6 am or 9 pm or 114 years from now, or a million years ago - you always make anywhere worth seeing.”
He swallows visibly as she settles against him, her fingertips lightly tracing the large curves of his ears. “Thank you.” She kisses his forehead, his hands coming hesitantly to her hips. “Thank you.” She kisses the tip of his nose and bows her head.
His hands tighten, and he starts to protest, but she breathes, “Please shut up and let me do this,” before she kisses his mouth.
His lips are full and soft, a little chapped, cooler than she’s used to but warmer than she’s imagined, and his big hands spread on her back, holding her closer as she brushes his lips apart, her tongue lightly caressing…
“Rose,” he breathes. “I’m trying to be careful here.”
“I know.” She lifts her head just enough to look into his eyes. “And it’s a risk I’m willing to take.” She caresses his freshly shaven cheek with the backs of her curled fingers, following the sharp line of his cheekbone.
“I know,” he murmurs. “And that’s why I’m being careful.”
“Don’t be so careful.” She feels strangely calm and dips her head, breathing a final plea before their lips meet.
“Fly for me.”
**********
Prompts: Prompt 1: 80s music/the 80s; Prompt 2: Dinner at 2 a.m; Prompt 3: Public transportation by necessity
Featured songs: "When Doves Cry" by Prince and the Revolution; "A Good Heart" by Maria McKee, as performed by Feargal Sharkey; and "I'll Fly for You" by Gary Kemp, performed by Spandau Ballet.