(no subject)
Light My Fire, Ten/Rose, AU, adult.
He think though that it’s probably because she’s a spark who just hasn’t found something to ignite. She hasn’t had her chance to burn bright. 2, 239
He catches the door with his briefcase, pushing with just enough force to get him through before the Jubilee line doors slide to close, and the train lurches to a start. He can feel his glasses slipping down his nose, and pushes them up as he navigates his way towards a free seat.
She’s there again, like she has every other time he’s taken this train in the last few weeks. Hair tucked behind her ear as she bites at her lip, frowning at the screen of her mobile.
He knows it’s wrong, the way his heart speeds and his palms sweat at the sight of her. She’s not even old enough to be a grad student he’d work with he reckons, which says things about him he’s sure he doesn’t want to examine. He tells himself he'll stop, that today he'll read a novel, or maybe just close his eyes and rest. But his eyes slide over her way again and again, no matter how hard he tries to divert his attention elsewhere.
It’s maddening really. He’s not exactly sure what it is that piques his fascination so; maybe it’s because he can tell just by looking at her, that she’s a girl who has no idea just how pretty she is. Maybe it’s the fact that she always offers her seat to people she think need it more. He think though that it’s probably because she’s a spark who just hasn’t found something to ignite. She hasn’t had her chance to burn bright. He can see it in the tired look of her eyes; the way her fingers draw a lazy pattern along her jean covered thigh.
It’s a feeling he connects with; that feeling like there is something missing. That you’re running on half the potential your life could have.
Then again, maybe it’s all just a means to justify being almost overwhelmingly attracted to someone he’s never met. It’s not that he’s shy; people who know him would right out laugh at the suggestion that he was, it’s just that this is different. He doesn’t want to break the beautiful illusion he has of her. For a few minutes he just wants to sit and get lost in it all. He wonders what she does, assumes it’s retail of some kind from the name tag always pinned to her clothing. He wonders how her day was; what her night will be like; what makes her laugh; what her favourite Jelly Belly flavour is.
The train comes to a stop as it pulls into Southwark Station and the moment breaks. He watches her sling her bag over her shoulder and pocket her mobile; watches the way she pulls her hair, long and blonde and he’s sure soft to the touch, over to one side of her neck and exits with a tired sigh. His stop is just two behind her's, but the ride feels so much longer when she’s gone for some strange reason.
He almost always smuggles work home; schematics from the lab or formulas on the processes of orbital theory from the latest project, all stuffed into his brief case. Sometimes he’ll bring things to tinker with on the ride home; combustion parts and the side projects he’s got built up on his desk.
Sometimes, more frequently than not lately, she’ll catch him gazing at her. There’s a voice that always urges him to look away, to shake it off on the pretense of reading the advert above her head or something equally as daft. But then this little smile will tug at her lips and she’ll meet his eye for a few moments before breaking contact and returning to what she was doing. It’s always just within the boundary of friendly and polite, but once and awhile he gets the feeling that maybe she’s flirting with him; baiting him somehow.
It’s a thrilling, but terrifying thought. He really should introduce himself.
He catches the last train home tonight, so caught up in work now that the European Space Agency is going to place his sonic mechanical equipment on the International Space Station. It’s a huge deal, a really huge deal. The kind of deal he’s been working his whole career towards. He pulls out his programmed screwdriver, finally focused on fixing the glitches in his new work mobile that he almost doesn’t notice her.
The car fills, people scurrying to catch the last train home from a night out in the city. It’s that loud, boisterous drunk noise he can normally block out, but someone is laughing so hard it breaks through his fog. Screwdriver caught between his teeth, his heart leaps to his throat when he looks up.
She’s sat right in his line of vision, an embarrassed smile on her face as her two friends laugh even harder now. She’s got too much cheap kohl and mascara on, but that’s unnoticeable in comparison to the shape of her legs, and the way her Lycra cotton blend skirt hugs her hips and thighs like second skin. He tugs at his ear, swallowing harshly as he watches her uncross and re-cross her legs, and tries desperately not to think about how long it’s been since he last got laid. He's not quite sure what kind of man he was before, but he's rapidly coming to the conclusion that he might be a leg man from this moment onward. He looks away quickly, he has to, but out the corner of his eye he catches her leaning in to whisper something to the girl sat next to her.
When he looks up again she’s staring right at him, no quick catch of the eye or coy smile like all the countless other times they’ve done this. This has purpose, the way she switches the position of her legs slowly, like she knows exactly what he’s been staring at. The sonic screwdriver tumbles from his mouth and he scrambles to catch it as all three girls giggle now. He can sense her getting up, taking the empty seat across from him and he pushes at his glasses again, feeling fourteen instead of the considerable older years he actually is.
“Hello,” she says, cheeks rosy and eyes bright. He can’t tell if it’s because of the drinks she’s had tonight, or if it’s just her.
“Yes, hello,” he replies rather eager and quickly, wincing the moment the words leave his mouth. He scratches at the back of his head. “We meet at last, I guess.”
“Yeah,” She smiles, teeth tugging at the corner of her lip. He swallows again. “I’m Rose. Rose Tyler.” She stares at him expectantly for a moment before his brain catches up.
“Oh yes, the Doctor, that’s me.” Her brows furrow like he’s said something wrong, and he shakes his head, “No sorry, that’s not my actual name-”
“No, I think I like Doctor more. It’s much better than a real name.” She grins, tongue poking out. It’s so enticing. He smiles back at her, this buzzing adrenaline rushing through him. “Look Doctor, whoever you are,” she says, “I’ve been waiting for you to come over and chat me up for weeks now, so...” she reaches for the mobile in his lap, punching something in before handing it back, “why don’t you ring me some time when you’re not busy doing,” she make a vague reference to the gizmos in his lap with her hands, “whatever it is you’re doing, and maybe we’ll get a drink or something.”
The overhead voice announces the stop for Southwark and her friends call her, both noticeably more drunk than she seems to be.
“Right,” he calls out as Rose makes her way back them. “Brilliant, okay. Molto Bene.” She throws him one last wide grin over her shoulder as she steps onto the platform, and he watches her retreating form till the train plunges back into darkness and that rush swallows him whole.
They meet at a pub he favours, a middle ground between her in Peckham and his new flat in Bermondsey. He makes her laugh as they neck back pints of lager, and she wraps her hand around his arm to steady her stool. He loves it, the way she laughs with her whole body, the way her hands fly around when she really gets into whatever she talks about, the way she seems to focus so completely on what he says, her wide brown eyes so warm and inviting. He loves the way their knees brush against each other until finally they’re intertwined, and he can feel the heat of her skin seeping through his trousers.
It's the heady tingle of discovering; of learning who each other is, and letting that attraction carry you away.
And they talk. They talk about anything and everything, and slowly a picture of exactly who Rose Tyler is begins to form in his head. Her mistakes in life and love; her dead end job at Henriks folding clothes and dressing mannequins; her aspirations of going back to school and getting a real job where “I can really help people, y’know”. He gets to ask those questions he’s always longed to know. Like how her favourite Jelly Belly flavour is strawberry and that she adores chips. He learns about her mum, her dad, her mates and all the other aspects of her life.
When they get around to his life, which is basically his work, she’s engaged and interested. She asks questions about what an aeronautical engineer does, makes him clarify and slow down when he gets caught up in his head. She listens to him spew about the bureaucratic shite researchers have to go through at Imperial College, about program prioritization and the rest. She laughs at his terrible jokes; is eager to agree when he declares his fanatic love for telly (those terrible reality programmes for her and sci-fi for him).
At some point they switch to slammers when the pints lose their appeal, and then they laugh some more when he pulls out all the half finished gadgets he’s got in his coat pocket. The laughter increases when they realize they both know all the words to Paradise by the Dashboard Light when it plays over the speakers.
Eventually they shuffle out at final rounds and head out into the cold night air, that laughter still on their lips, as Rose tells a tale about her mum and a disastrous mix up with a karaoke machine at New Years.
“I should probably call it a night,” Rose mumbles, her arms wrapping around herself.
He scratches at his head, the heel of his trainers dragging along the pavement. “Yes, that’s probably best.” He pauses, courage racing through him from the booze, “or, you could come back to mine for a cuppa or something. If you want.”
Rose bites at her lip, a shy blush crawling up her cheeks. He’s just about to retract the offer, sure that she’s about to tell him to get stuffed, when she nods. “Yeah, all right,” she says. “Maybe just a cuppa.”
“You know,” he mumbles out, half as a gasp as Rose pulls his shirt tails out from the waist of his trousers, her hips rocking into his so that the buckle of her belt scrapes against his pelvis. “This really isn’t what I’d planned on. I mean, I know that’s what all...” her tongue soothes a bite she’s just placed right where his neck meets his shoulder and he groans, pushing himself down harder against her. “Ha, oh Christ, wait... I mean I know that most blokes play the innocent card, but I really just had the intention of sharing a cup of tea with you.”
Her lips latch onto his and her hands slide up to the nape of his neck, her fingers tugging at the hair there. He gets his knee up in between them, her breathy gasp against his own groan when grinds down against him, and they share the air between them.
“Uh-huh,” she mindlessly replies as his hands push the material of her shirt up her ribs to expose her skin to his touch.
“I just don’t want you to think that-”he begins again as her lips skim the hollow of his throat, and his hands skate along her spine.
“Doctor” she sighs in exasperation, “stop talking.” Her mouth seeks his out again, her teeth pulling at his bottom lip.
“Right,” he mumbles against her lips.
He never expected them to shag on his scruffy couch, but they do, and he gets to rebuild his newly formed idea of who Rose Tyler is. He gets to learn the curses she favours as they escape in breathy gasps when his thumb meets her clit and she arches beneath him. He gets to catalogue the way she comes apart, the way she laughs with her release; the way her hair really is as soft as he’s always thought it would be. He lets himself fall into the pull of her bottomless brown eyes, and the rather spectacular angle of her jaw.
He grabs at her thigh, hooks his hand under the bend of her knee and pushes it forward, groaning at the feel of her; at the way her hands grip at his hair and she cries out in earnest now; at the way his heart is racing so wildly he can feel it pounding on the other side of his chest.
He feels alive, like maybe he could be what she’ll set ablaze. He wants her to; wants to be that person she’ll become better with. He thinks he could do that.
When it’s all said and done, they laugh again: a sated, embarrassed chuckle as they untangle their bodies and stumble into his messy bedroom hand in hand. He wraps her up in him, sure that he can squash this nervous energy that’s building again with the feel of his body against hers. She turns into him, her face pillowed into the crook of his neck, before she mumbles that they'll never last like this. He's far too boney.
“This question’s pretty late," she mumbles, "but what’s your actual name?”
He smiles, feels her smile too against his neck. “John Smith.”
She giggles, “That’s a terrible name. I was right, the Doctor’s much better.”
He turns his head to look at her, smooths the hair back from her face and really looks at her: flushed cheeks, swollen lips, and those bright, dark eyes. “Yes,” he says softly, “I think you’re right.”