Fic: The One Where Rose Tyler Gets Sonicked Out of Her Clothes. But Not Like That.
I feel like even putting a header on this would be giving it too much credit.
Title: The One Where Rose Tyler Gets Sonicked Out of Her Clothes. But Not Like That.
Author:
the_tenzo
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen
Summary: What it says on the tin. Extreme PG-rated fluff and at the end everyone eats kebabs.
A/N: I haven't written a single blessed word of fiction since July and then all of a sudden my brain went "WRITE TEN/ROSE FLUFF! DO IT NOW!" So I did. I feel very rusty, but it was nice having these two talk to each other in my head for a bit after all this time.
Yannis watched the clock.
His shift was over in five minutes and the night crew had already arrived, talking quietly amongst themselves in a corner of the hotel lobby.
The front door opened, and a man and woman entered, toting luggage and striding right over to the front desk. Yannis sighed. He would complete this check-in in under three minutes if it killed him. He skipped the usual greeting and went straight for, "Can I help you?" in English. He was rarely wrong about nationality.
"Right!" the man said, dropping his suitcase with a clatter. He reached into his moddish suit jacket (definitely English) and pulled out a leather wallet. "I think you'll find everything in order here," he said, handing it over.
Yannis was just happy that they seemed to be in as much of a rush as he. He wasn't sure he could bear twenty minutes of questioning about how often the maids called and where the best restaurants were and what on Earth is that smell?
"We've been expecting you, Mr Curtis," Yannis said, handing the man's identification back. "Mrs Curtis." He nodded towards the woman.
"Dr Curtis," the man corrected cheerfully.
"Welcome to the Hotel Kallista, Dr and Mrs Curtis."
"Actually," the woman looked up from her fumbling, "That's Ms Curtis."
With one minute left in his shift, Yannis couldn't be bothered to try to figure out what the difference was. He handed them their keys and rang for the bellhop. The night crew began to fan out to their various stations and he was home free.
***
"So, Greece, yeah?" Rose looked out the window at liquid sun setting over the perfectly blue sea dotted with quaint little fishing vessels.
The Doctor flopped onto the bed, testing it out for springiness. "I thought you might enjoy a sun holiday. I mean, after the ice caves and the... unpleasantness."
"And when are we?" She looked around, appraising the laminate wood panel and decor consisting of shades most aptly described as avocado, mustard and pumpkin.
"I just aimed for some place you could get a tan and enjoy a cocktail without the umbrella coming alive and attempting to implant itself in your epidermis."
"That was unexpected," Rose agreed.
"It was just trying to be friendly."
"That's what you say to all the girls."
"Anyway," he said, putting his hands behind his head, "I reckon we're at about 1972."
"That'd explain the carpeting." Rose had taken her shoes off and nearly sunk a foot deep into the green pile. "Could they have possibly made this place look any more like some pervy uncle's bachelor flat?"
"Well, most tourists like a touch of home when they travel. I mean, I take my whole house with me, so it's not like I can talk."
"Why aren't we just staying in the TARDIS, then?"
"Well," he drawled. That was the well of a man with a hidden agenda. She was already very familiar with that well. A smile crept across her face. That well meant an adventure.
"Spill it," she said, poking around the room, opening drawers and looking behind curtains.
"Well," he continued, "when you were in the loo, I popped out just to have a quick look around and I..." He looked a bit sheepish. "I smelled something."
"You smelled something. You sure that's not just the fish?"
"Certainly not," he sniffed haughtily. "I think I know a fish from the respiratory secretions of a biosymbiote. Give me a little credit."
"So this isn't just a holiday."
He grinned. "Is it ever?"
"And this smell of the secreting symbi-whatever... it came from this hotel?"
"Could be."
"So you thought we might as well check in, have a look around in between the bottles of ouzo?"
"Might do."
Rose strolled over to the credenza and examined a brochure laying there. "And you thought you'd just let the kid at the front desk take a look at the psychic paper and wham-bam, all sorted?"
"That's usually how it works, yes," the Doctor said, clearly growing impatient.
"So now we're Dr and Mrs Curtis?" She picked up the brochure and handed it to him.
"That's not such a hardship, is it?"
"Dr Phillip and Mrs Angelica Curtis?"
He sat up on the edge of the bed, looking just as rumpled as the sheets. "Or whomever," he said, taking the brochure but not really looking at it.
"Dr Phillip and Ms Angelica Curtis, leaders of the 'Groovy Kind of Love Married Couples' Encounter Weekend: Where couples will learn how to transform their marriages through the unique affirmations and self-transformations specially developed by the world-renowned Curtises?'"
"Oh."
***
The bath down the hall left a lot to be desired. Rose supposed she could have slipped out and gone back to the TARDIS, but by the time she discovered that the hot water was merely a suggestion and that she'd left her shampoo back in the room, she was already fully committed. She made the best of it ("the best" being defined in this instance as "the fastest").
The Doctor was still reclining on the bed when she returned to their room.
"All sorted?" she asked, rubbing her wet hair with a threadbare towel.
"I sent them off on a two-day cruise, complements of their adoring fans. They'll be back by the time their little encountery thing starts."
"Well that's that, then," said Rose. "So where do we start? I think I fancy some food before we get too deep into the smelly bio-whatsit. Somewhere nice, though, Doctor.... what?"
"What what?"
"You keep... looking at me."
"Not much else to look at in here, is there?"
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: Hair like drowned cat, skin a bit blue-ish from the cold water, and threadbare pink dressing gown hanging sloppily (not sexily) off one shoulder.
"Just turn around and let me get dressed."
He scratched his head awkwardly. "Turn... around? Dressed?"
"Unless you want to go out on the town with me in my dressing gown, then yes. And I'm not giving you any free shows, mate. My mum taught me better than all that."
He muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like, "Doubtful."
"What's that?"
"I said that I'll just, uh, go down to the lobby and meet you there." He did not actually make a move towards the door.
"Right," said Rose.
"Right," said the Doctor.
"Right," said Rose again. "Goodbye."
In one confused motion he crossed the room, yanked the door open, exited, and slammed it behind him again. Rose let out a long breath.
They'd never really had to share space like this before. The TARDIS seemed infinite and her room had everything she needed: ensuite bathroom with taps that gave out bubblebath of various scents and colours; walk-in closet with her own clothes plus costumes that changed depending on the whims of the ship; a vanity with all the make-up and bits and bobs she'd brought with her. Life on the TARDIS was less like a big slumber party and more like taking up in a luxury hotel. A luxury hotel that made regular stops at locations in which she was likely to be injured or killed, but at the end of the day there was no reason to go traipsing around the hallways in states of undress.
Not that she was shy, mind. She just never thought it'd be quite this awkward. This new Doctor was evidently as full of surprises as the old.
On top of it all, the clothes that the TARDIS had packed for her were, in a word, hideous. Shapeless polyester caftans in aggressively drab hues seemed to be the primary theme. This was going to be a long couple of days unless the Doctor's satisfied his olfactory curiosity quickly and she could spend the rest of their time masquerading as the Curtises in a swimsuit.
***
Haunting the lobby, the Doctor felt weirdly out-of-sorts. He couldn't smell anything at this particular moment, but he was sure there must be something in the air, some misplaced molecule lingering about. How else to explain why he felt like he was about to crawl out of his skin? He tapped his foot incessantly against the tile floor and kept catching disconcerting glimpses of himself in the reflection from the windows.
He barely noticed when someone sat down next to him on the wooden bench where he was uneasily perched. Until, that is, that person coughed quite loudly. The Doctor turned just as a red-faced man in a loud Hawaiian shirt stuck a hand out expectantly. The Doctor looked at the man's hand, then at the man, then back to his hand.
"You're not Greek, then, I can tell," the man said, still waving a single hand about in the space between them.
"Pardon?"
"I knew it! I was just saying to the missus," he used his plump hand now to gesture to a slender, bird-like woman standing by the front windows, "I was saying that chap over there looks English. I'm always right!"
"Oh, right," agreed the Doctor. "Right you are indeed. That's me: very English! Nothing unusually un-English about me, no sir."
"See, Phyllis!" the man called over to his wife. "I told you so!" He stuck his hand out once again, having apparently forgotten that he'd already attempted this once. "Name's Willard. Willard Brampton."
"Nice to meet you, Willard Brampton," the Doctor said, finally allowing his own hand to be gripped and shook so vigorously he nearly fell off the bench. "I'm the Doctor."
"And my wife's called Phyllis. Phyllis, come over and meet Dr... I'm sorry I didn't catch your surname."
"Curtis," said the Doctor, rolling the unfamiliar syllables around in his mouth. It wasn't a bad alias, as aliases go. He liked how clipped and sharp it sounded. Curtis. Curt-tis. "Dr Phillip Curtis, but really everyone does just call me the Doctor."
The man's jaw dropped a bit, and his wife was suddenly right there at his side, beaming with crooked teeth. "Oh, it's my pleasure indeed," she said, also sticking out a hand. "See, Will, I told you we should come a couple days early! Didn't I tell you?"
"A couple days... early?" The Doctor had a bit of a sinking feeling.
"Oh, Dr Curtis, we've read all of your books!" Willard Brampton said, matching his wife's grin tooth-for-tooth.
"How lovely," the Doctor said, looking around for escape routes.
"You and Mrs Curtis have changed our lives!" Phyllis said, eyes wide and unblinking. "Absolutely changed our lives! She's here too, isn't she? The brochure said it'd be you and Mrs Curtis together. That's why we decided to come all this way! Oh, we could have gone to your workshop on the Isle of Wight, but I simply had to meet Mrs Curtis as well. What a special woman she must be!"
"Who's special?" came a voice from around across the lobby. Rose appeared in some sort of flowing robe thing that was giving the Doctor flashbacks to his childhood, if he was honest. She'd done her hair up and drawn dark black outlines around her smiling eyes, her lips painted unnaturally pale. The effect was quite striking and he found himself wondering how she did that--transform so quickly from dripping, vulnerable and grouchy to this vision coming towards them now.
"Oh!" Phyllis exclaimed, clapping her hands together excitedly. "You look so much younger than your pictures!"
Rose inclined her head towards the Doctor, smiling with just a hint of wickedness, as if she'd been expecting this reception all along.
"Ha ha," laughed the Doctor stiffly. "May I present my lovely wife. Apparently."
"Charmed," said Rose, elegantly holding a hand out and waiting while Willard and Phyllis Brampton stumbled over one another to grasp it. Was she...? She was! She was enjoying the attention. The Doctor huffed.
"Anyway," he said, cutting Willard off from explaining precisely how many books of theirs he had read and in what quantities he had purchased them for friends. "We were just leaving."
"Going to supper?" Phyllis asked, but before getting an answer: "Us too! Oh, do join us!"
"That would be cracking, wouldn't it?" Willard echoed. "Yes, you must. We got a recommendation for a little place right down the seafront. It'd be our honour."
The Doctor looked at Rose.
Rose looked at the Doctor and raised an eyebrow.
"Anything to get out of the stench of this place," Willard added, and the Doctor's ears perked up. He'd almost forgotten why they were here in the first place.
"So you smell that too?" he asked, clapping Willard on the shoulder.
"How can you not? It's so ghastly in our room, we've asked to be moved but they said the place was sold out. Personally, I think they're lying. You know how these Greeks are." They moved as a unit towards the front doors. "Just between you and me, though, I don't think all the staff here really are Greek. I was just saying to Phyllis, there's some that've got this funny look about them, and they don't sound to me like they're talking Greek."
"Like you would know the difference," Phyllis said, shooting a glance to Rose to see if the matron of all things wifely approved of this level of sarkiness.
"Oi, I think I know the difference between Greek and whatever gobbledygook I heard outside our room last night! Not that I am in any way impugning your choice of hotel, Dr Curtis."
"No, of course not," the Doctor said. "It's just so hard to find good help these days. What room did you say you were in?"
***
Rose couldn't remember the last time she'd had seafood so fresh, and even the things with tentacles seemed beyond delectable. Their new friends, however, picked suspiciously at every dish set before them.
The Doctor pumped the Bramptons for information continually throughout the first course, but by the main it was clear that they had nothing more to say on the matter of the strange smells and possibly-not-Greek hotel staff.
"I don't want to overstep my boundaries Doctor," Willard began, clearly stepping wherever he pleased anyway, "but there is one thing I always wondered."
The Doctor began stammering immediately. Rose kicked him under the table. "Go on, Mr Brampton," she said with an encouraging smile. In two days the real Curtises would show up to impart whatever wisdom they had, and she and the Doctor would be long gone. There was no harm in playing along for an hour, surely.
"Well, you say in your book The Pleasurable Marriage that you can't harmonise with the vibrations of your spouse until you self-actualise and manifest your own feelings."
"I do?" the Doctor said. "I mean, yes, I do. Vibrating is very important. I've always thought that."
The Bramptons looked at one another quizzically but Willard continued: "I mean, do you think that one's spouse can help you self-actualise, or must that be something one does entirely on one's own, before encountering the marriage bed?"
Rose felt herself swallow hard, quite involuntarily. Was he asking what she thought he was asking? She pushed her chair back from the table a bit and waited for the Doctor to work out what was going on. He seemed to be simultaneously oblivious to the nature of the question and warming to the task of making up a load of utter tosh anyway. This might not end well.
"Well, I do think that beds are very good, yes" he mused pompously. "Take my own bed, for instance. I purchased it from quite a slippery character indeed, and I don't use it much, but I think I have gotten my money's worth. Not that I used actual money, you understand, it's just an expression. I find that I get just as much pleasure from jumping up and down on it as I do from sleeping on it. Angelica, how do you find your bed?"
Rose started, forgetting her assumed name for a moment and then feeling a bit embarrassed to be even talking to the Doctor about her bed. He'd never given the impression that he knew anything about what was behind the door to her room. She kind of liked it that way.
"It's all right I suppose," she said into her wine glass. "Soft. Er... silky."
"So, you two don't... I mean, you have..." Willard stammered.
"You have separate beds?" Phyllis asked, incredulous.
"Well of course we do, what with all the vibrating," the Doctor said, not missing a beat.
"Sounds... kinky," Willard said in a whisper, looking around at the other restaurant patrons.
"Yes, very," said Rose, forcing the corners of her mouth down again. "You have no idea."
The Bramptons both leaned forward in their chairs, nearly setting their eyebrows on fire from the candles on the table. Rose leaned in as well. "I think" she whispered conspiratorially, "that you will have to wait for the workshop."
Husband and wife Brampton both formed perfect little o's with their mouths.
***
"Doctor, I'm afraid that I'm just a little bit pissed," Rose said as she stumbled into their room after dinner. "Just a little bit. Can we wait to see about this smell thing? I mean, no one's dying or anything, are they?"
The Doctor looked disappointed. "I reckon not, but--"
"I'll just have a glass of water, yeah?"
"Well, they did say--"
"Now where do you think there's an ice machine? Wait, did they even have ice machines in 1972?"
The Doctor remained standing stiffly by the door. "I just wanted to go and take a look at --"
"Do they have ice machines in Greece?" Everything was spinning a little and she couldn't seem to locate an ice bucket or glasses or anything. "Or maybe we shouldn't drink the water at all?"
"Really, though, I'll just be a few--"
Rose sat on the bed, kicking her platform shoes off, sighing with relief. "You always say you'll just be a few minutes and you never are."
"But if we're just going to sit here and--"
"Just give me a minute!" Rose protested, probably a bit too loud. "We just got here, there's no need to go... to go..." The Doctor picked her shoes up off the floor and was staring at them curiously, like he was trying to figure out what nature of alien creature they were. She half expected him to get his sonic out and start buzzing it all over them. "...to go running off. Doctor, what are you doing?"
He dropped the shoes with a muffled thud on the rug. "What?" he squeaked. "Oh, nothing, just, you know... I always wondered with you lot, how do you even walk in those?"
"Us lot?"
"You know, you... human... female... lot."
"In your vast experience with us lot, you mean?" She collapsed back on the bed, unable to fight the spins any longer.
"Oi, I have nine hundred years of experience, thank you very much."
Rose made a snorting sound that was trying hard to be a jaunty laugh. "So much experience that you had no idea that poor man was trying to ask you about orgasms over his baklava."
With her eyes fixed on the ceiling (the one part of the room that wasn't moving precariously) Rose missed whatever it was the Doctor did in reply that resulted in a lot of thumping and clattering.
"That's what I thought," she said, before closing her eyes and giving in to the urge to pass out.
***
When Rose managed to pry her eyes open again, it was light. Not just light, but brighter than the surface of a sun (and she should know). She felt like every single photon was clattering against her brain, beating a tattoo of regret.
"Ugh," she moaned, wiping a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth. Lovely. Just how she'd always imagined it'd be after her first night in a shared bedroom with the Doctor. Shielding her eyes, she looked around from her vantage on the centre of the bed. No Doctor, of course, but he had left a bottle of water and another of paracetamol.
Had she really uttered the word "orgasm" in front of the Doctor?
Had he really fondled her shoes?
She was still in her ghastly dress of the night before, so at least there was that. There'd apparently been no mortifying flashing of knickers--thank goodness for small mercies. This whole sharing-space thing was not going at all well. She'd insist they go back to the TARDIS tonight, for the sake of everyone's dignity. Better yet, they should just abandon this whole holiday plan altogether. She should have known that "holiday" and "Doctor" weren't really meant to go together.
One little dip in the sea and then she'd find the Doctor in whatever rubbish skip he was probably knee-deep in looking for stinky aliens, and suggest that they go elsewhere. It'd be a shame to be right here on the beach without having a little of that. The sun was hot and bright and she could already feel it against her skin. A little dip and a spot of sun would set her right and then back to the comparatively safer realm of all of time and space. She contorted her arm behind her to catch the zip of her dress.
***
The Doctor slunk around hotel corridors, sniffing for both the biosymbiotes he'd smelled before as well as the overpowering aftershave of that Willard Brampton fellow. He'd rather not be questioned any further about bedroom activity.
This whole trip had turned out to be an exercise in discomfort.
He'd seen Rose in more varied states of undress in the previous 12 hours than he ever had during all of the many months of their travels together. It didn't seem to particularly bother her, but it gave him feelings of a very squirmy, hindbrain sort of nature. (This new body seemed to have quite a lot going on in the lymbic system all around.)
This, of course, had not stopped him from checking in on her--loudly snoring on their single hotel bed--at regular intervals during the night and early morning. The dress she wore clashed awfully with the duvet, there was a puddle of drool forming on her pillow, and her hair was even more wild than after she'd bathed the day before. She talked in her sleep, but it was all nonsense.
He found the scene absolutely entrancing. He couldn't stay away. Every twenty minutes he found himself sonicking the lock and quietly easing the door open a couple inches, just to get another look. Her eye make-up had smeared, and there was a run in her stocking, from the big toe on up to her single exposed knee. The creeping light of dawn slowly revealed deep creases on the skin of her face made by the pillow. He would drink it all in for just a moment, fearing she'd wake and see him peeking furtively through the gloom, and then return to pacing the hallways.
The biosymbiote odour was occasionally evident, but everything so far remained quiet. He skulked in corners and observed the staff that Willard Brampton had pointed out the evening before as "a bit funny, if you know what I mean."
They were Albanian.
The Doctor checked round back for suspicious activity for the eighteenth time, then returned to look in on Rose. The motions were automatic now, he barely thought about what he was doing, his mind only on what new revelation the morning light would bring.
But the bed was empty. His brain felt slow and thick, trying to process this information. She had been right there, in the bed, and now was not. He could see the indentation in the duvet from where she'd been. How does this work? Hadn't she been there forever?
No, but there she was, standing in the corner, struggling with her ugly dress. It was up over he head, but she'd clearly not unzipped it fully and it was stuck. She thrashed about, tangled blonde hairs sticking out of the top where her head should be. She stamped her stocking feet and cursed under her breath. Her knickers were showing and the Doctor felt torn between being a gentleman and just closing the door behind him as if he'd never been there, and offering help. His hands fluttered in the space around the doorknob.
There are some things they just don't teach you at the Time Lord Academy.
"Um," he said at length. Not really an opening line to write home about, that.
He heard Rose make a distressed squeaking noise from under her clothes and she thrashed around even harder.
"Wait, let me help!" He felt a sudden and familiar resolve take hold. He would save her. He would save Rose Tyler from this ugly dress! He was good at saving people, or at least passable, as saviours go. There was a script for this situation after all! "I've got you!" he said, puffing his chest out heroically.
She responded only with more flailing and muffled squeaking.
He located the stuck zipper and tried to pull it down further, but that just got her hair stuck in the teeth. She screamed and brought her hands up to her scalp, clutching it and whimpering.
"Hold on, I've almost got it," he said, fumbling with the sonic.
"Oh my god," Rose despaired. "I am being sonicked out of my own clothes."
"It's not that bad," the Doctor said. He turned her around to undo a couple clasps and told her to lift her arms. This garment was misleadingly complex. He'd have to have a word with the TARDIS about her sartorial choices for his companions.
"This is the worst day of my life," she said lamely.
"All in a day's work. Step forward a bit, into the light so I can see."
She stepped. She stepped again. She wouldn't stop stepping, blind as she was under all that polyester. She stepped on his toes, stumbled forward, and toppled them both onto the bed. The dress miraculously flipped up and over her head, freeing her at last, but covering the Doctor's face with a synthetic fabric that had been partied in, then slept in, then struggled with.
It smelled... well, quite frankly it smelled terrible. But wonderfully terrible. Terrible in some special way that he couldn't quite put a finger on. Rose pulled her arms through the sleeves and was finally completely free of the blasted thing. She threw it aside with a roar of triumph, seemingly unconcerned for the moment that her rescue ended with her in her underthings, straddling the Doctor on a Greek bed.
His amygdala was going absolutely mad.
Sun streamed through the window, turning everything golden. Time slowed, then stopped. Rose focused her black and red rimmed eyes on him, her hair spread out around her like a halo. He tried to reach a hand up to touch it but found he was rather pinned. He also found that he had no problem with this fact.
There was the audible sound of a clock ticking.
There was a jarring, wood-splittingly loud knock at the door.
Rose jumped off the bed and grabbed her dressing gown, putting it on upside-down and inside-out. The Doctor, dazed, found that his shirt was untucked and his tie quite askew. The knock came again, even more insistent this time. With Rose still trying to figure out what was what with her problematic clothes (again), the Doctor opened the door a crack to find Willard Brampton, smiling from ear to sunburnt ear.
"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said. He looked past the Doctor and saw Rose trying to cover up in whatever way she could. "Oh."
"We were just, um..." the Doctor said.
"Harmonising our vibrations," said Rose peeking around the closet door. "Very important for the married couple, as you know."
"Too right," said Brampton, nodding vigorously. "I'll leave you to it then, shall I?"
The Doctor gaped. Was he expecting to be invited to join in? Not bloody likely.
"Sorry," said the Doctor.
"I understand completely, Dr Curtis." He winked at Rose. "Mrs. Curtis. Completely. But I thought you should know, I smelled that smell again, just this morning. Right down in the lobby, it was. You seemed interested, so I thought I'd let you know."
"Yeah, ta for that." The Doctor was shutting the door again before the last syllable was out. "We'll catch up later! Loads to do now though!" he shouted through the wood.
Rose came out from behind the closet door, her dressing gown still not quite right.
"Your, uh," the Doctor pointed to where the hem of it was hitched up inside the sleeve.
She responded by just taking the thing off and flinging to the floor along with the ugly dress. "Nothing you haven't seen now. Here's my knickers, here's my bra--they don't even match--take a good look."
"Sorry," he said again. "I'll just be going now."
"What, no harmonising of your vibrations, Dr Curtis?"
"I don't even know what that means."
"Well, I reckon that it's about being on the same wave-length, really. And, like, appreciating what the other person has to offer."
"Someone had to write a whole book about that?"
She shrugged. "People are funny. It's nice, though, when you feel like you're in harmony with someone. If the real Curtises felt that way, I can understand why they'd want to tell the world. Wouldn't you?"
"I suppose I would." He sat back down on the bed, watching the dust motes have their flea circus in the shafts of sunlight. "I might come all the way to Greece in 1972, even."
There was nothing but the sound of seabirds.
"Doctor, are we having a moment?" Rose asked, breaking the silence with a whisper. "Hung over and with my mascara running is not quite how I'd imagined it."
He couldn't imagine her looking any other way. The Rose Tyler he thought he knew was actually just one of many. He wanted to know them all.
"Actually, I think you look quite... self-actualised."
"The Curtises would be so proud," she laughed, her nose wrinkling with mirth. "Now get lost so I can put my bathing suit on and do something about all this actualisation in my hair."
The Doctor stood, brushing his suit off. He did feel like he was vibrating rather. Or harmonising. Or something. It was nice. Warm. It even had a bit of a scent--
"Wait wait wait!" He tilted his nose to the air and took a long sniff. "That's it! Do you smell that?"
Rose made a face. "Yeah, 'course I do."
"The respiratory secretions of a biosymbiote! I'd know that smell anywhere!"
"Doctor, that's--"
"That must mean they're here, in the room!" He fell to the floor and picked up the bedskirts. A bit dusty under there, but nothing more. The closet! He rushed over and flung it open, but there was nothing.
"Doctor, what are you doing?" Rose stood aside and watched him tear the room apart. If they were so in harmony, why wasn't she helping?
"They've got to be nearby, maybe just in the next room!"
"Doctor, wait!" Rose cried, grabbing his sleeve before he broke down the door to the next room and roust those rapscallions from their little nest.They certainly did not belong here and were doubtless up to no good. He'd never known a biosymbiote to be up to anything that could be described as good.
"It'll just take a minute, if you could just let go of me!"
"Doctor, that smell." She tugged him back into the room and shut the door, chaining it as well for good measure. Pulling back the sheer window blinds, she pointed at something on the pavement outside. Is that where they were? Could she see them, his brilliant Rose Tyler? He ran over to look.
"That smell is garlic. Look!" Right below their window was a cart being pushed by a very old, very hunched man selling kebabs. Extremely garlicky kebabs from the smell. "Have you been smelling garlic this whole time?"
The Doctor rubbed his head furiously. It couldn't be. Could it? He'd never be fooled. Would he?
"Well I--"
"You've been hot on the trail of a kebab cart?"
"I don't know about--"
"Just admit it, Doctor. We can call a draw on humiliation for the day, yeah?"
He sulked, poking at the ugly carpet with the toe of his trainer. How things do turn about, from the sublime to the stupid.
Rose attempted to pull a comb through her hair, wincing. The old man selling kebabs outside gave a few wheezy calls about their freshness and bargain prices. "Just go down and get me some nice garlicky prawns, would you? I'm starving."
How could he possibly say no to the girl he'd just sonicked the clothes right off of and then harmonised his vibrations with? And those kebabs really did smell brilliant.
Title: The One Where Rose Tyler Gets Sonicked Out of Her Clothes. But Not Like That.
Author:
the_tenzo
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen
Summary: What it says on the tin. Extreme PG-rated fluff and at the end everyone eats kebabs.
A/N: I haven't written a single blessed word of fiction since July and then all of a sudden my brain went "WRITE TEN/ROSE FLUFF! DO IT NOW!" So I did. I feel very rusty, but it was nice having these two talk to each other in my head for a bit after all this time.
Yannis watched the clock.
His shift was over in five minutes and the night crew had already arrived, talking quietly amongst themselves in a corner of the hotel lobby.
The front door opened, and a man and woman entered, toting luggage and striding right over to the front desk. Yannis sighed. He would complete this check-in in under three minutes if it killed him. He skipped the usual greeting and went straight for, "Can I help you?" in English. He was rarely wrong about nationality.
"Right!" the man said, dropping his suitcase with a clatter. He reached into his moddish suit jacket (definitely English) and pulled out a leather wallet. "I think you'll find everything in order here," he said, handing it over.
Yannis was just happy that they seemed to be in as much of a rush as he. He wasn't sure he could bear twenty minutes of questioning about how often the maids called and where the best restaurants were and what on Earth is that smell?
"We've been expecting you, Mr Curtis," Yannis said, handing the man's identification back. "Mrs Curtis." He nodded towards the woman.
"Dr Curtis," the man corrected cheerfully.
"Welcome to the Hotel Kallista, Dr and Mrs Curtis."
"Actually," the woman looked up from her fumbling, "That's Ms Curtis."
With one minute left in his shift, Yannis couldn't be bothered to try to figure out what the difference was. He handed them their keys and rang for the bellhop. The night crew began to fan out to their various stations and he was home free.
***
"So, Greece, yeah?" Rose looked out the window at liquid sun setting over the perfectly blue sea dotted with quaint little fishing vessels.
The Doctor flopped onto the bed, testing it out for springiness. "I thought you might enjoy a sun holiday. I mean, after the ice caves and the... unpleasantness."
"And when are we?" She looked around, appraising the laminate wood panel and decor consisting of shades most aptly described as avocado, mustard and pumpkin.
"I just aimed for some place you could get a tan and enjoy a cocktail without the umbrella coming alive and attempting to implant itself in your epidermis."
"That was unexpected," Rose agreed.
"It was just trying to be friendly."
"That's what you say to all the girls."
"Anyway," he said, putting his hands behind his head, "I reckon we're at about 1972."
"That'd explain the carpeting." Rose had taken her shoes off and nearly sunk a foot deep into the green pile. "Could they have possibly made this place look any more like some pervy uncle's bachelor flat?"
"Well, most tourists like a touch of home when they travel. I mean, I take my whole house with me, so it's not like I can talk."
"Why aren't we just staying in the TARDIS, then?"
"Well," he drawled. That was the well of a man with a hidden agenda. She was already very familiar with that well. A smile crept across her face. That well meant an adventure.
"Spill it," she said, poking around the room, opening drawers and looking behind curtains.
"Well," he continued, "when you were in the loo, I popped out just to have a quick look around and I..." He looked a bit sheepish. "I smelled something."
"You smelled something. You sure that's not just the fish?"
"Certainly not," he sniffed haughtily. "I think I know a fish from the respiratory secretions of a biosymbiote. Give me a little credit."
"So this isn't just a holiday."
He grinned. "Is it ever?"
"And this smell of the secreting symbi-whatever... it came from this hotel?"
"Could be."
"So you thought we might as well check in, have a look around in between the bottles of ouzo?"
"Might do."
Rose strolled over to the credenza and examined a brochure laying there. "And you thought you'd just let the kid at the front desk take a look at the psychic paper and wham-bam, all sorted?"
"That's usually how it works, yes," the Doctor said, clearly growing impatient.
"So now we're Dr and Mrs Curtis?" She picked up the brochure and handed it to him.
"That's not such a hardship, is it?"
"Dr Phillip and Mrs Angelica Curtis?"
He sat up on the edge of the bed, looking just as rumpled as the sheets. "Or whomever," he said, taking the brochure but not really looking at it.
"Dr Phillip and Ms Angelica Curtis, leaders of the 'Groovy Kind of Love Married Couples' Encounter Weekend: Where couples will learn how to transform their marriages through the unique affirmations and self-transformations specially developed by the world-renowned Curtises?'"
"Oh."
***
The bath down the hall left a lot to be desired. Rose supposed she could have slipped out and gone back to the TARDIS, but by the time she discovered that the hot water was merely a suggestion and that she'd left her shampoo back in the room, she was already fully committed. She made the best of it ("the best" being defined in this instance as "the fastest").
The Doctor was still reclining on the bed when she returned to their room.
"All sorted?" she asked, rubbing her wet hair with a threadbare towel.
"I sent them off on a two-day cruise, complements of their adoring fans. They'll be back by the time their little encountery thing starts."
"Well that's that, then," said Rose. "So where do we start? I think I fancy some food before we get too deep into the smelly bio-whatsit. Somewhere nice, though, Doctor.... what?"
"What what?"
"You keep... looking at me."
"Not much else to look at in here, is there?"
She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror: Hair like drowned cat, skin a bit blue-ish from the cold water, and threadbare pink dressing gown hanging sloppily (not sexily) off one shoulder.
"Just turn around and let me get dressed."
He scratched his head awkwardly. "Turn... around? Dressed?"
"Unless you want to go out on the town with me in my dressing gown, then yes. And I'm not giving you any free shows, mate. My mum taught me better than all that."
He muttered something under his breath that sounded a lot like, "Doubtful."
"What's that?"
"I said that I'll just, uh, go down to the lobby and meet you there." He did not actually make a move towards the door.
"Right," said Rose.
"Right," said the Doctor.
"Right," said Rose again. "Goodbye."
In one confused motion he crossed the room, yanked the door open, exited, and slammed it behind him again. Rose let out a long breath.
They'd never really had to share space like this before. The TARDIS seemed infinite and her room had everything she needed: ensuite bathroom with taps that gave out bubblebath of various scents and colours; walk-in closet with her own clothes plus costumes that changed depending on the whims of the ship; a vanity with all the make-up and bits and bobs she'd brought with her. Life on the TARDIS was less like a big slumber party and more like taking up in a luxury hotel. A luxury hotel that made regular stops at locations in which she was likely to be injured or killed, but at the end of the day there was no reason to go traipsing around the hallways in states of undress.
Not that she was shy, mind. She just never thought it'd be quite this awkward. This new Doctor was evidently as full of surprises as the old.
On top of it all, the clothes that the TARDIS had packed for her were, in a word, hideous. Shapeless polyester caftans in aggressively drab hues seemed to be the primary theme. This was going to be a long couple of days unless the Doctor's satisfied his olfactory curiosity quickly and she could spend the rest of their time masquerading as the Curtises in a swimsuit.
***
Haunting the lobby, the Doctor felt weirdly out-of-sorts. He couldn't smell anything at this particular moment, but he was sure there must be something in the air, some misplaced molecule lingering about. How else to explain why he felt like he was about to crawl out of his skin? He tapped his foot incessantly against the tile floor and kept catching disconcerting glimpses of himself in the reflection from the windows.
He barely noticed when someone sat down next to him on the wooden bench where he was uneasily perched. Until, that is, that person coughed quite loudly. The Doctor turned just as a red-faced man in a loud Hawaiian shirt stuck a hand out expectantly. The Doctor looked at the man's hand, then at the man, then back to his hand.
"You're not Greek, then, I can tell," the man said, still waving a single hand about in the space between them.
"Pardon?"
"I knew it! I was just saying to the missus," he used his plump hand now to gesture to a slender, bird-like woman standing by the front windows, "I was saying that chap over there looks English. I'm always right!"
"Oh, right," agreed the Doctor. "Right you are indeed. That's me: very English! Nothing unusually un-English about me, no sir."
"See, Phyllis!" the man called over to his wife. "I told you so!" He stuck his hand out once again, having apparently forgotten that he'd already attempted this once. "Name's Willard. Willard Brampton."
"Nice to meet you, Willard Brampton," the Doctor said, finally allowing his own hand to be gripped and shook so vigorously he nearly fell off the bench. "I'm the Doctor."
"And my wife's called Phyllis. Phyllis, come over and meet Dr... I'm sorry I didn't catch your surname."
"Curtis," said the Doctor, rolling the unfamiliar syllables around in his mouth. It wasn't a bad alias, as aliases go. He liked how clipped and sharp it sounded. Curtis. Curt-tis. "Dr Phillip Curtis, but really everyone does just call me the Doctor."
The man's jaw dropped a bit, and his wife was suddenly right there at his side, beaming with crooked teeth. "Oh, it's my pleasure indeed," she said, also sticking out a hand. "See, Will, I told you we should come a couple days early! Didn't I tell you?"
"A couple days... early?" The Doctor had a bit of a sinking feeling.
"Oh, Dr Curtis, we've read all of your books!" Willard Brampton said, matching his wife's grin tooth-for-tooth.
"How lovely," the Doctor said, looking around for escape routes.
"You and Mrs Curtis have changed our lives!" Phyllis said, eyes wide and unblinking. "Absolutely changed our lives! She's here too, isn't she? The brochure said it'd be you and Mrs Curtis together. That's why we decided to come all this way! Oh, we could have gone to your workshop on the Isle of Wight, but I simply had to meet Mrs Curtis as well. What a special woman she must be!"
"Who's special?" came a voice from around across the lobby. Rose appeared in some sort of flowing robe thing that was giving the Doctor flashbacks to his childhood, if he was honest. She'd done her hair up and drawn dark black outlines around her smiling eyes, her lips painted unnaturally pale. The effect was quite striking and he found himself wondering how she did that--transform so quickly from dripping, vulnerable and grouchy to this vision coming towards them now.
"Oh!" Phyllis exclaimed, clapping her hands together excitedly. "You look so much younger than your pictures!"
Rose inclined her head towards the Doctor, smiling with just a hint of wickedness, as if she'd been expecting this reception all along.
"Ha ha," laughed the Doctor stiffly. "May I present my lovely wife. Apparently."
"Charmed," said Rose, elegantly holding a hand out and waiting while Willard and Phyllis Brampton stumbled over one another to grasp it. Was she...? She was! She was enjoying the attention. The Doctor huffed.
"Anyway," he said, cutting Willard off from explaining precisely how many books of theirs he had read and in what quantities he had purchased them for friends. "We were just leaving."
"Going to supper?" Phyllis asked, but before getting an answer: "Us too! Oh, do join us!"
"That would be cracking, wouldn't it?" Willard echoed. "Yes, you must. We got a recommendation for a little place right down the seafront. It'd be our honour."
The Doctor looked at Rose.
Rose looked at the Doctor and raised an eyebrow.
"Anything to get out of the stench of this place," Willard added, and the Doctor's ears perked up. He'd almost forgotten why they were here in the first place.
"So you smell that too?" he asked, clapping Willard on the shoulder.
"How can you not? It's so ghastly in our room, we've asked to be moved but they said the place was sold out. Personally, I think they're lying. You know how these Greeks are." They moved as a unit towards the front doors. "Just between you and me, though, I don't think all the staff here really are Greek. I was just saying to Phyllis, there's some that've got this funny look about them, and they don't sound to me like they're talking Greek."
"Like you would know the difference," Phyllis said, shooting a glance to Rose to see if the matron of all things wifely approved of this level of sarkiness.
"Oi, I think I know the difference between Greek and whatever gobbledygook I heard outside our room last night! Not that I am in any way impugning your choice of hotel, Dr Curtis."
"No, of course not," the Doctor said. "It's just so hard to find good help these days. What room did you say you were in?"
***
Rose couldn't remember the last time she'd had seafood so fresh, and even the things with tentacles seemed beyond delectable. Their new friends, however, picked suspiciously at every dish set before them.
The Doctor pumped the Bramptons for information continually throughout the first course, but by the main it was clear that they had nothing more to say on the matter of the strange smells and possibly-not-Greek hotel staff.
"I don't want to overstep my boundaries Doctor," Willard began, clearly stepping wherever he pleased anyway, "but there is one thing I always wondered."
The Doctor began stammering immediately. Rose kicked him under the table. "Go on, Mr Brampton," she said with an encouraging smile. In two days the real Curtises would show up to impart whatever wisdom they had, and she and the Doctor would be long gone. There was no harm in playing along for an hour, surely.
"Well, you say in your book The Pleasurable Marriage that you can't harmonise with the vibrations of your spouse until you self-actualise and manifest your own feelings."
"I do?" the Doctor said. "I mean, yes, I do. Vibrating is very important. I've always thought that."
The Bramptons looked at one another quizzically but Willard continued: "I mean, do you think that one's spouse can help you self-actualise, or must that be something one does entirely on one's own, before encountering the marriage bed?"
Rose felt herself swallow hard, quite involuntarily. Was he asking what she thought he was asking? She pushed her chair back from the table a bit and waited for the Doctor to work out what was going on. He seemed to be simultaneously oblivious to the nature of the question and warming to the task of making up a load of utter tosh anyway. This might not end well.
"Well, I do think that beds are very good, yes" he mused pompously. "Take my own bed, for instance. I purchased it from quite a slippery character indeed, and I don't use it much, but I think I have gotten my money's worth. Not that I used actual money, you understand, it's just an expression. I find that I get just as much pleasure from jumping up and down on it as I do from sleeping on it. Angelica, how do you find your bed?"
Rose started, forgetting her assumed name for a moment and then feeling a bit embarrassed to be even talking to the Doctor about her bed. He'd never given the impression that he knew anything about what was behind the door to her room. She kind of liked it that way.
"It's all right I suppose," she said into her wine glass. "Soft. Er... silky."
"So, you two don't... I mean, you have..." Willard stammered.
"You have separate beds?" Phyllis asked, incredulous.
"Well of course we do, what with all the vibrating," the Doctor said, not missing a beat.
"Sounds... kinky," Willard said in a whisper, looking around at the other restaurant patrons.
"Yes, very," said Rose, forcing the corners of her mouth down again. "You have no idea."
The Bramptons both leaned forward in their chairs, nearly setting their eyebrows on fire from the candles on the table. Rose leaned in as well. "I think" she whispered conspiratorially, "that you will have to wait for the workshop."
Husband and wife Brampton both formed perfect little o's with their mouths.
***
"Doctor, I'm afraid that I'm just a little bit pissed," Rose said as she stumbled into their room after dinner. "Just a little bit. Can we wait to see about this smell thing? I mean, no one's dying or anything, are they?"
The Doctor looked disappointed. "I reckon not, but--"
"I'll just have a glass of water, yeah?"
"Well, they did say--"
"Now where do you think there's an ice machine? Wait, did they even have ice machines in 1972?"
The Doctor remained standing stiffly by the door. "I just wanted to go and take a look at --"
"Do they have ice machines in Greece?" Everything was spinning a little and she couldn't seem to locate an ice bucket or glasses or anything. "Or maybe we shouldn't drink the water at all?"
"Really, though, I'll just be a few--"
Rose sat on the bed, kicking her platform shoes off, sighing with relief. "You always say you'll just be a few minutes and you never are."
"But if we're just going to sit here and--"
"Just give me a minute!" Rose protested, probably a bit too loud. "We just got here, there's no need to go... to go..." The Doctor picked her shoes up off the floor and was staring at them curiously, like he was trying to figure out what nature of alien creature they were. She half expected him to get his sonic out and start buzzing it all over them. "...to go running off. Doctor, what are you doing?"
He dropped the shoes with a muffled thud on the rug. "What?" he squeaked. "Oh, nothing, just, you know... I always wondered with you lot, how do you even walk in those?"
"Us lot?"
"You know, you... human... female... lot."
"In your vast experience with us lot, you mean?" She collapsed back on the bed, unable to fight the spins any longer.
"Oi, I have nine hundred years of experience, thank you very much."
Rose made a snorting sound that was trying hard to be a jaunty laugh. "So much experience that you had no idea that poor man was trying to ask you about orgasms over his baklava."
With her eyes fixed on the ceiling (the one part of the room that wasn't moving precariously) Rose missed whatever it was the Doctor did in reply that resulted in a lot of thumping and clattering.
"That's what I thought," she said, before closing her eyes and giving in to the urge to pass out.
***
When Rose managed to pry her eyes open again, it was light. Not just light, but brighter than the surface of a sun (and she should know). She felt like every single photon was clattering against her brain, beating a tattoo of regret.
"Ugh," she moaned, wiping a bit of drool from the corner of her mouth. Lovely. Just how she'd always imagined it'd be after her first night in a shared bedroom with the Doctor. Shielding her eyes, she looked around from her vantage on the centre of the bed. No Doctor, of course, but he had left a bottle of water and another of paracetamol.
Had she really uttered the word "orgasm" in front of the Doctor?
Had he really fondled her shoes?
She was still in her ghastly dress of the night before, so at least there was that. There'd apparently been no mortifying flashing of knickers--thank goodness for small mercies. This whole sharing-space thing was not going at all well. She'd insist they go back to the TARDIS tonight, for the sake of everyone's dignity. Better yet, they should just abandon this whole holiday plan altogether. She should have known that "holiday" and "Doctor" weren't really meant to go together.
One little dip in the sea and then she'd find the Doctor in whatever rubbish skip he was probably knee-deep in looking for stinky aliens, and suggest that they go elsewhere. It'd be a shame to be right here on the beach without having a little of that. The sun was hot and bright and she could already feel it against her skin. A little dip and a spot of sun would set her right and then back to the comparatively safer realm of all of time and space. She contorted her arm behind her to catch the zip of her dress.
***
The Doctor slunk around hotel corridors, sniffing for both the biosymbiotes he'd smelled before as well as the overpowering aftershave of that Willard Brampton fellow. He'd rather not be questioned any further about bedroom activity.
This whole trip had turned out to be an exercise in discomfort.
He'd seen Rose in more varied states of undress in the previous 12 hours than he ever had during all of the many months of their travels together. It didn't seem to particularly bother her, but it gave him feelings of a very squirmy, hindbrain sort of nature. (This new body seemed to have quite a lot going on in the lymbic system all around.)
This, of course, had not stopped him from checking in on her--loudly snoring on their single hotel bed--at regular intervals during the night and early morning. The dress she wore clashed awfully with the duvet, there was a puddle of drool forming on her pillow, and her hair was even more wild than after she'd bathed the day before. She talked in her sleep, but it was all nonsense.
He found the scene absolutely entrancing. He couldn't stay away. Every twenty minutes he found himself sonicking the lock and quietly easing the door open a couple inches, just to get another look. Her eye make-up had smeared, and there was a run in her stocking, from the big toe on up to her single exposed knee. The creeping light of dawn slowly revealed deep creases on the skin of her face made by the pillow. He would drink it all in for just a moment, fearing she'd wake and see him peeking furtively through the gloom, and then return to pacing the hallways.
The biosymbiote odour was occasionally evident, but everything so far remained quiet. He skulked in corners and observed the staff that Willard Brampton had pointed out the evening before as "a bit funny, if you know what I mean."
They were Albanian.
The Doctor checked round back for suspicious activity for the eighteenth time, then returned to look in on Rose. The motions were automatic now, he barely thought about what he was doing, his mind only on what new revelation the morning light would bring.
But the bed was empty. His brain felt slow and thick, trying to process this information. She had been right there, in the bed, and now was not. He could see the indentation in the duvet from where she'd been. How does this work? Hadn't she been there forever?
No, but there she was, standing in the corner, struggling with her ugly dress. It was up over he head, but she'd clearly not unzipped it fully and it was stuck. She thrashed about, tangled blonde hairs sticking out of the top where her head should be. She stamped her stocking feet and cursed under her breath. Her knickers were showing and the Doctor felt torn between being a gentleman and just closing the door behind him as if he'd never been there, and offering help. His hands fluttered in the space around the doorknob.
There are some things they just don't teach you at the Time Lord Academy.
"Um," he said at length. Not really an opening line to write home about, that.
He heard Rose make a distressed squeaking noise from under her clothes and she thrashed around even harder.
"Wait, let me help!" He felt a sudden and familiar resolve take hold. He would save her. He would save Rose Tyler from this ugly dress! He was good at saving people, or at least passable, as saviours go. There was a script for this situation after all! "I've got you!" he said, puffing his chest out heroically.
She responded only with more flailing and muffled squeaking.
He located the stuck zipper and tried to pull it down further, but that just got her hair stuck in the teeth. She screamed and brought her hands up to her scalp, clutching it and whimpering.
"Hold on, I've almost got it," he said, fumbling with the sonic.
"Oh my god," Rose despaired. "I am being sonicked out of my own clothes."
"It's not that bad," the Doctor said. He turned her around to undo a couple clasps and told her to lift her arms. This garment was misleadingly complex. He'd have to have a word with the TARDIS about her sartorial choices for his companions.
"This is the worst day of my life," she said lamely.
"All in a day's work. Step forward a bit, into the light so I can see."
She stepped. She stepped again. She wouldn't stop stepping, blind as she was under all that polyester. She stepped on his toes, stumbled forward, and toppled them both onto the bed. The dress miraculously flipped up and over her head, freeing her at last, but covering the Doctor's face with a synthetic fabric that had been partied in, then slept in, then struggled with.
It smelled... well, quite frankly it smelled terrible. But wonderfully terrible. Terrible in some special way that he couldn't quite put a finger on. Rose pulled her arms through the sleeves and was finally completely free of the blasted thing. She threw it aside with a roar of triumph, seemingly unconcerned for the moment that her rescue ended with her in her underthings, straddling the Doctor on a Greek bed.
His amygdala was going absolutely mad.
Sun streamed through the window, turning everything golden. Time slowed, then stopped. Rose focused her black and red rimmed eyes on him, her hair spread out around her like a halo. He tried to reach a hand up to touch it but found he was rather pinned. He also found that he had no problem with this fact.
There was the audible sound of a clock ticking.
There was a jarring, wood-splittingly loud knock at the door.
Rose jumped off the bed and grabbed her dressing gown, putting it on upside-down and inside-out. The Doctor, dazed, found that his shirt was untucked and his tie quite askew. The knock came again, even more insistent this time. With Rose still trying to figure out what was what with her problematic clothes (again), the Doctor opened the door a crack to find Willard Brampton, smiling from ear to sunburnt ear.
"Hope I'm not interrupting anything," he said. He looked past the Doctor and saw Rose trying to cover up in whatever way she could. "Oh."
"We were just, um..." the Doctor said.
"Harmonising our vibrations," said Rose peeking around the closet door. "Very important for the married couple, as you know."
"Too right," said Brampton, nodding vigorously. "I'll leave you to it then, shall I?"
The Doctor gaped. Was he expecting to be invited to join in? Not bloody likely.
"Sorry," said the Doctor.
"I understand completely, Dr Curtis." He winked at Rose. "Mrs. Curtis. Completely. But I thought you should know, I smelled that smell again, just this morning. Right down in the lobby, it was. You seemed interested, so I thought I'd let you know."
"Yeah, ta for that." The Doctor was shutting the door again before the last syllable was out. "We'll catch up later! Loads to do now though!" he shouted through the wood.
Rose came out from behind the closet door, her dressing gown still not quite right.
"Your, uh," the Doctor pointed to where the hem of it was hitched up inside the sleeve.
She responded by just taking the thing off and flinging to the floor along with the ugly dress. "Nothing you haven't seen now. Here's my knickers, here's my bra--they don't even match--take a good look."
"Sorry," he said again. "I'll just be going now."
"What, no harmonising of your vibrations, Dr Curtis?"
"I don't even know what that means."
"Well, I reckon that it's about being on the same wave-length, really. And, like, appreciating what the other person has to offer."
"Someone had to write a whole book about that?"
She shrugged. "People are funny. It's nice, though, when you feel like you're in harmony with someone. If the real Curtises felt that way, I can understand why they'd want to tell the world. Wouldn't you?"
"I suppose I would." He sat back down on the bed, watching the dust motes have their flea circus in the shafts of sunlight. "I might come all the way to Greece in 1972, even."
There was nothing but the sound of seabirds.
"Doctor, are we having a moment?" Rose asked, breaking the silence with a whisper. "Hung over and with my mascara running is not quite how I'd imagined it."
He couldn't imagine her looking any other way. The Rose Tyler he thought he knew was actually just one of many. He wanted to know them all.
"Actually, I think you look quite... self-actualised."
"The Curtises would be so proud," she laughed, her nose wrinkling with mirth. "Now get lost so I can put my bathing suit on and do something about all this actualisation in my hair."
The Doctor stood, brushing his suit off. He did feel like he was vibrating rather. Or harmonising. Or something. It was nice. Warm. It even had a bit of a scent--
"Wait wait wait!" He tilted his nose to the air and took a long sniff. "That's it! Do you smell that?"
Rose made a face. "Yeah, 'course I do."
"The respiratory secretions of a biosymbiote! I'd know that smell anywhere!"
"Doctor, that's--"
"That must mean they're here, in the room!" He fell to the floor and picked up the bedskirts. A bit dusty under there, but nothing more. The closet! He rushed over and flung it open, but there was nothing.
"Doctor, what are you doing?" Rose stood aside and watched him tear the room apart. If they were so in harmony, why wasn't she helping?
"They've got to be nearby, maybe just in the next room!"
"Doctor, wait!" Rose cried, grabbing his sleeve before he broke down the door to the next room and roust those rapscallions from their little nest.They certainly did not belong here and were doubtless up to no good. He'd never known a biosymbiote to be up to anything that could be described as good.
"It'll just take a minute, if you could just let go of me!"
"Doctor, that smell." She tugged him back into the room and shut the door, chaining it as well for good measure. Pulling back the sheer window blinds, she pointed at something on the pavement outside. Is that where they were? Could she see them, his brilliant Rose Tyler? He ran over to look.
"That smell is garlic. Look!" Right below their window was a cart being pushed by a very old, very hunched man selling kebabs. Extremely garlicky kebabs from the smell. "Have you been smelling garlic this whole time?"
The Doctor rubbed his head furiously. It couldn't be. Could it? He'd never be fooled. Would he?
"Well I--"
"You've been hot on the trail of a kebab cart?"
"I don't know about--"
"Just admit it, Doctor. We can call a draw on humiliation for the day, yeah?"
He sulked, poking at the ugly carpet with the toe of his trainer. How things do turn about, from the sublime to the stupid.
Rose attempted to pull a comb through her hair, wincing. The old man selling kebabs outside gave a few wheezy calls about their freshness and bargain prices. "Just go down and get me some nice garlicky prawns, would you? I'm starving."
How could he possibly say no to the girl he'd just sonicked the clothes right off of and then harmonised his vibrations with? And those kebabs really did smell brilliant.