fic: in between time
Title: In Between Time
Author:
_starrystarry
Characters: Ten/Rose
Word Count: 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The in between time. If someone told the story of her life, like in a book or on TV or something, they would probably leave these bits out.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written while I was feeling a bit blue, so it's ridiculously happy as my effort to counteract that. Although "Warning: Excessive Happiness" sounds a bit weird.
In Between Time
If someone told the story of her life, like in a book or on TV or something, they would probably leave these bits out. And it would make sense to, really. She traveled through time and space and fought aliens and everything. Who would care about what happened in between? But it’s those moments that were the most precious time of all. It’s those moments that made it all really matter.
1.
“I’m the Doctor and this is Rose,” he says. Not to a family concealing an alien for once but to a rather chatty barman at a pub in the East End. Not the East End of London, mind, but some other city in some other world that also has a distinctive Eastern bit. Funny how similar everything is, really.
“And what’s your game?” asks the barman, pouring them both steaming purple drinks. Rose sniffs hers questioningly. The Doctor takes a big gulp.
“Ah!” he says, wiping his upper lip. “Travel. That’s my thing. Guided tours. You know.”
“So you spend your days escorting this pretty little lady around?” he asks, making eyes at Rose. “That must be quite the life.”
“Well, this ‘little lady,’” the Doctor swings his arm around her and tips onto the two back legs of his bar stool - if he falls, he’ll take them both down, “She’s the one who shows me around.” He takes another drink; now he’s balancing with no hands. “And it is quite the life,” he adds.
“It is,” Rose smiles. She feels his fingers clutch tighter at her shoulder and then they’re both falling, landing in a heap on the dusty floor with the remnants of the Doctor’s purple drink all over them. “Quite the life,” she says, sighing into his shoulder. “Though you’re a bit of an idiot.”
“Well, yeah,” he says, still not getting up. “But that’s all part of the fun!” The smile he flashes her is the brightest thing in the pub.
2.
She knows The Who are performing the last set at Glastonbury in 2007 because she saw an advert for it the last time she was home. And he takes her completely by surprise, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her out of the TARDIS just at the end of their sound check. It’s raining something dreadful, so much so that she vaguely worries that all the cables and TV screens will electrocute the band, but he clearly knew about the weather already because he hands her a pair of pink wellies with green aliens on and twirls one of those giant hotel doormen umbrellas between his fingers.
He snaps the umbrella up over both of them and pulls her close under its protection. Roger Daltrey starts the set by aiming the microphone more at the audience than at himself. “Can’t explain!” they both shout. Raindrops bounce off the umbrella and down around them like a halo.
3.
“South London. La la la!”The Doctor hops down the steps to Millennium Bridge, and Rose wanders about ten feet behind him, tucking her scarf against her neck and hoping nobody thinks she’s with him. He spins around. “Rose Tyler! Allons-y!” He points both arms at her and winks. Tourists and students give her odd looks; she never had a hope. Sighing, she catches him up. He bumps his shoulder against hers. “Time to get you some culture,” he says. Then he starts skipping.
The Tate Modern has a hum almost like the TARDIS. That must be why he likes it. If he has a thing for art he’s never mentioned it. “Building used to be a power plant,” he says, standing behind her near the ticket counter with both hands on her shoulders. “Human beings! Clever as anything. You recycle your olive jars and your buildings.” He smiles wide and pulls her toward the lifts. “And it’s free,” he adds, pressing the up button. “Smart. Things that are really good are usually free.” She thinks she could disagree with him, but she doesn’t have the desire to argue. The lift dings and he pulls her inside.
He stands in the middle of a room full of Rothkos and he just stares. If he were anyone else she’d say he was being a bit pretentious. Actually, “Bit of an arsehole” is what she’d actually say. Of course, if he were anyone else she’d say lots of things. But he isn’t anyone else. He’s the Doctor. She’s flipping through the catalogue, sitting on the black leather sofa in the middle of the gallery and he turns to her, nods to say he’s done.
“I’ll take you to Astratta, one day,” he says. They stroll down Bankside. “The whole planet is like a painting, and every different place you stand you see another image.”
Rose nods. “Bet they don’t bother with museums there,” she says, swinging her gift shop bag full of postcards. She won’t write them, she knows, but they’ll be nice to decorate her room with.
“Actually, they do,” replies the Doctor. “Horrible buildings, terrible architecture. Downright Stalinistic, even. And the galleries are just rooms with white walls. Empty rooms without colour.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And get this - they do charge for entry.”
For some reason she thinks that’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard and cracks up right there on the sidewalk. He starts laughing too and they’re clutching each other so as not to fall down on the pavement.
4.
Once, when he’s emptying out his pockets after visiting a particularly interesting planet that was so littered with marbles you almost couldn’t walk, he finds a deck of cards. It’s a pinochle deck. “I can teach you to play,” he says to Rose as he shuffles in the air.
She leans against the console, watching him. “I know how,” she responds. “Used to play with my granddad.”
He’s momentarily embarrassed for assuming she didn’t know and some of the cards escape his shuffle’s arc and clatter to the ground. He ducks down to gather them. “Well then,” he says, straightening up. “Fancy a game?”
_
After that they always play cards when they’re traveling. As the TARDIS spins suddenly his marriage in trump slides off the console. It’s one of their new rules - if your melded cards fall off, you lose the points. “Ha!” Rose crows. “70-20, me!” She wins the game shortly before all the cards fall off and both she and the Doctor go flying. They land in a heap by the door. “Did you let me win?” she asks, eyebrows raised earnestly.
He jumps to his feet and opens the door to the new world they’ve just arrived at. “Now Rose Tyler,” he says, ushering her through the door, “I am not that much of a gentleman.”
5.
It’s on Astratta that she tells him she loves him.
He was right, it’s spectacular, and he lines her up so everything she can see looks like Monet’s water lilies. When she was little she was dying to go to Giverny. She’s wondering how he knew to show her this, when even a centimeter’s difference would show Dali, Matisse, Lichtenstein. Except when she opens her mouth to speak “I love you” is what comes out. Funny how that works.
She turns to look at him, wondering if he’s even seeing the same image. He smiles at her, so wide she thinks it would hurt. He’s seeing her image. She makes her eyes a question. “Of course I love you,” he responds, swinging her hand in reassurance. “Come on, I’m not exactly ‘emotionally unavailable,’ or whatever your silly boyfriends were.”
He may hug her all the time but she means something different. “I’m in love with you,” she tries. Clarification is difficult when it comes to this subject. Course, she’s never had trouble with it before. But then against, she’s never felt exactly like this before. Thinking about it too much is dizzying. She looks forward. Their future is spread out before them like a wide, flower-strewn canvas.
“Ah,” responds the Doctor. He doesn’t drop her hand. “I thought that might happen. You know, I reckon this is the most attractive I’ve ever been. Still not ginger, though. Last of the Time Lords and I can’t even get the right hair colour. Suppose I could give your method a try -”
“Shut up a minute.” The Doctor’s eyes are getting that dreamy look and Rose wants to keep him in reality right now.
“Hmm?”
“Well -”
“What? Do you want to dye my hair?” He uses his free hand to rumple the back absently. He’s still holding on to her.
“No. I. I just told you I’m in love with you. Where’s your response?”
The Doctor looks worried. “Cool your jets, Rose,” he says. “Oooh, gotta love that phrase.” She narrows her eyes at him. “It’s alright,” he says, simply and a bit reassuringly.
“It’s alright that I’m in love with you?” Her tone is one of disbelief, just not over what he thinks.
“Course it is,” he shrugs and smiles. “I’m not that rude. At least not to you. That sodding museum security guard, on the other hand…”
Rose can’t quite come up with the words to tell him that wasn’t the response she wanted, and the moment is lost when he pulls her down the hill into a perfect Kandinsky.
6.
“Oi, what’s this? You want me to read you a bedtime story?” Rose is leaning in the doorway of the Doctor’s room. Lately they’ve been on the move so much that she can’t remember the last time they had a quiet night in the TARDIS, just softly orbiting. It’s as if time is running out and they have to find a way to go everywhere in the universe. Except she knows that both of those concepts are impossible. All the running has left her bone-tired, and of course, in this unexpected stretch of peace, she finds she can’t sleep. Ironic, that.
The Doctor pats his bed and she comes and sits cross-legged next to him. Her hair is scraped off her neck and her face is free of makeup. She wears white pyjamas with rainbow hearts on. The Doctor has covers up to his waist and a light blue t-shirt that reads “Columbia University” for some non-apparent reason. He has his glasses on and two books in his lap.
“I’m warning you,” he says, smiling at her, “If you want Goodnight Moon you’re out of luck. No moons where we are right now. I could try spicing it up a bit - Goodnight Juumine And Galaxy M-48. What do you reckon? Always fancied myself a bit of a writer. Of course, it’s kind of difficult to fit into this lifestyle. It tried keeping a journal once. A very masculine journal, mind you. ‘Dear Diary, today I refused to ask for directions and ended up stranded on a two-dimensional planet. But I’m such a manly man,’ and the like. Gave it up after the one day, of course. And -”
He keeps talking. Rose is asleep, stretched out at his side.
7.
The first time he kisses her it’s for an entire week.
They’re in her mother’s house, had just intended to drop by for a couple of hours but then it turned out to be Easter and Jackie was too excited at the prospect of a holiday with her daughter for Rose to disappoint.
The Doctor, on the other hand, is bored as peas and keeps fidgeting more than usual. Jackie is re-sewing all the buttons on his jacket, even though he asked her twenty-three times not to, mainly because he didn’t believe she could sew and was quite attached to the jacket. He looks different and somehow uncomfortable sitting on the couch in just his button-down and trousers.
Rose is peeling potatoes by the sink when he comes up behind her. He stills a hand over her chopping one, wrapping his fingers around hers. “Run for you life,” he whispers in her ear. He pulls her out of the house and down the stairs and across the street and down the road and into the TARDIS and she can hardly breathe because of the combination of running and laughing.
“That line still work for you then?” she asks, breathing heavily against the door as she pokes him in the chest.
He does a quarter turn to face her, placing one hand against the door to steady himself. He’s laughing all the way up to his eyes. He doesn’t answer the question, just says “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve had an unhealthy amount of time on your mother’s sofa to think about this,” before he ducks down and kisses her.
If she’s shocked for even a second she doesn’t show it, just reaches both hands up to his neck and kisses him back. She can feel his eyebrows raise - the skin on his cheeks stretches suddenly and his cheeks are almost pressed against her cheeks. She thinks, not for the first time, that kissing would be easier without noses. She pulls back a little and grins at his raised eyebrows. “What, didn’t think I’d snog you back?” she asks.
He might laugh; he’s certainly breathing like you do after laughing, desperately and happily. He speaks and the words graze her skin somewhere in the vicinity of her eyelashes. “This isn’t exactly the reaction I expected,” he says. “Hoped for, mind you. Just not expected.”
“Then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought,” she replies, hooking a finger in one of his belt loops to pull him closer and kissing him again.
_
Soon he’s pulling her to the center of the room. “Rose Tyler!” he kisses her again. “Rose Tyler!”
She laughs and grabs him and kisses the tip of his nose. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
He spins her around and grins at her. “I might. It’s a bloody great name.” He wraps both arms around her, lifting her off the ground and smiling into her hair as her legs swing back and forth and she yelps excitedly. “Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler, Rose -” he whispers, setting her back down and kissing her properly, with one arm around her waist and one hand smoothing her cheek and into her hair and one lip delicately in between her two. Everything is spinning ridiculously fast and she claws her fingers at his back to bring him closer.
_
He has no control on time now, so when she slaps one of her hands on his back to get his attention he doesn’t know if they’ve been kissing for ten minutes or ten days. She pulls back, both hands on his shoulders. “Oi,” she breathes, “we’ve got to get back to my mum.”
He sinks his head so his hair brushes against her forehead. “Bringing up Jackie Tyler is a sure-fire way to break the mood, Rose.”
She giggles, stepping out of his embrace but taking one of his hands in hers. “Sorry. But it’s Easter, and I was making dinner - it’s probably time to eat.”
He settles himself against the console, nodding. But when his eyes catch one of the screens he groans, jumping up suddenly and pulling her with him. “Oh, your mum is going to hate me.”
He opens the door for her and follows her outside, where it’s slightly warmer than when they were there last and the light is incrementally brighter. “Well,” starts Rose, “I propose we don’t tell her about the snogfest, and she won’t hate you any more than she already does.”
The Doctor grins. “Snogfest, eh?”
“Mmhmm.” Rose purses her lips.
“Well, I quite like the sound of that.” He pulls her forward so they’re almost running. “But there’s another, non-snogfest-related reason why she’ll hate me.”
“Which is?”
“Well, we’ve been gone for quite a bit.”
“It can’t be that long. I bet she’s held dinner. And she’ll hold it another two minutes so you can stop running.” Rose pulls him back sharply by the hand so he nearly collides with her. His fingers brush against her waist.
“Actually,” he says, fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt and grazing his fingertips against her hipbone, “we’ve been gone a week.”
“What? I haven’t been kissing you for a week.”
“No, you haven’t,” he says lazily, thumb now sliding under the waistband of her jeans. “Although we should give that a go sometime. Or, you know, immediately.”
Rose grabs his hand and holds it fast. “So how have we been gone for a week?” she asks sternly.
“Uh,” he meets her eyes. “We seem to have time-traveled a bit.”
“What?” Rose breaks into a run now, pulling the Doctor behind her.
“Er, all that spinning,” he explains as they sprint. “It was the TARDIS. Partly, at least.”
“Well you’re right,” she says, breathing heavily at the bottom of the stairs before they start to climb. “My mum is going to hate you.”
_
Jackie looks like she hasn’t washed her face in seven days. Her eyes are black - she never took off the day’s mascara, just added more. And when Rose and the Doctor appear in the doorway, out of breath, her stare is as black as her eyeliner.
“Where were you?” she snaps.
“We, uh, went out for a walk,” Rose starts. "We got lost, and uh, he wouldn’t ask for directions.” She pokes a finger at his arms, just to touch him.
The Doctor shrugs his shoulders embarrassedly. “Men. The same in every species, I’m afraid. So, how’re things?”
Jackie unleashes a stream of annoyances, from “It’s just plain rude to leave when you promised to stay for the holiday! I did not raise you to be rude, Rose.” To “All that leftover ham, I made Mickey eat it and don’t you know he got sick!” The Doctor takes Rose’s hand and traces patterns down her fingers and both of them are smiling more than is appropriate during Jackie’s yelling.
_
Later he makes them all scrambled eggs and toast while Rose and Jackie have a good natter in the living room. He listens to the excited sound of Rose’s voice and thinks about her.
8.
“I’m the Doctor and this is Rose,” he says as some door, somewhere, opens to their smiling faces. His hand is at the small of her back and she thinks that she’s going to hear those words forever.
I Love To Hear You Say My Name
The Who | You Better You Bet
When I say ‘I love you,’ you say ‘You better’
James Taylor | Your Smiling Face
Whenever I see your smiling face I have to smile myself because I love you
Elton John | I Need You To Turn To
You’re not a ship to carry my life
Author:
_starrystarry
Characters: Ten/Rose
Word Count: 3100
Rating: PG-13
Summary: The in between time. If someone told the story of her life, like in a book or on TV or something, they would probably leave these bits out.
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: Written while I was feeling a bit blue, so it's ridiculously happy as my effort to counteract that. Although "Warning: Excessive Happiness" sounds a bit weird.
In Between Time
If someone told the story of her life, like in a book or on TV or something, they would probably leave these bits out. And it would make sense to, really. She traveled through time and space and fought aliens and everything. Who would care about what happened in between? But it’s those moments that were the most precious time of all. It’s those moments that made it all really matter.
1.
“I’m the Doctor and this is Rose,” he says. Not to a family concealing an alien for once but to a rather chatty barman at a pub in the East End. Not the East End of London, mind, but some other city in some other world that also has a distinctive Eastern bit. Funny how similar everything is, really.
“And what’s your game?” asks the barman, pouring them both steaming purple drinks. Rose sniffs hers questioningly. The Doctor takes a big gulp.
“Ah!” he says, wiping his upper lip. “Travel. That’s my thing. Guided tours. You know.”
“So you spend your days escorting this pretty little lady around?” he asks, making eyes at Rose. “That must be quite the life.”
“Well, this ‘little lady,’” the Doctor swings his arm around her and tips onto the two back legs of his bar stool - if he falls, he’ll take them both down, “She’s the one who shows me around.” He takes another drink; now he’s balancing with no hands. “And it is quite the life,” he adds.
“It is,” Rose smiles. She feels his fingers clutch tighter at her shoulder and then they’re both falling, landing in a heap on the dusty floor with the remnants of the Doctor’s purple drink all over them. “Quite the life,” she says, sighing into his shoulder. “Though you’re a bit of an idiot.”
“Well, yeah,” he says, still not getting up. “But that’s all part of the fun!” The smile he flashes her is the brightest thing in the pub.
2.
She knows The Who are performing the last set at Glastonbury in 2007 because she saw an advert for it the last time she was home. And he takes her completely by surprise, grabbing her by the hand and pulling her out of the TARDIS just at the end of their sound check. It’s raining something dreadful, so much so that she vaguely worries that all the cables and TV screens will electrocute the band, but he clearly knew about the weather already because he hands her a pair of pink wellies with green aliens on and twirls one of those giant hotel doormen umbrellas between his fingers.
He snaps the umbrella up over both of them and pulls her close under its protection. Roger Daltrey starts the set by aiming the microphone more at the audience than at himself. “Can’t explain!” they both shout. Raindrops bounce off the umbrella and down around them like a halo.
3.
“South London. La la la!”The Doctor hops down the steps to Millennium Bridge, and Rose wanders about ten feet behind him, tucking her scarf against her neck and hoping nobody thinks she’s with him. He spins around. “Rose Tyler! Allons-y!” He points both arms at her and winks. Tourists and students give her odd looks; she never had a hope. Sighing, she catches him up. He bumps his shoulder against hers. “Time to get you some culture,” he says. Then he starts skipping.
The Tate Modern has a hum almost like the TARDIS. That must be why he likes it. If he has a thing for art he’s never mentioned it. “Building used to be a power plant,” he says, standing behind her near the ticket counter with both hands on her shoulders. “Human beings! Clever as anything. You recycle your olive jars and your buildings.” He smiles wide and pulls her toward the lifts. “And it’s free,” he adds, pressing the up button. “Smart. Things that are really good are usually free.” She thinks she could disagree with him, but she doesn’t have the desire to argue. The lift dings and he pulls her inside.
He stands in the middle of a room full of Rothkos and he just stares. If he were anyone else she’d say he was being a bit pretentious. Actually, “Bit of an arsehole” is what she’d actually say. Of course, if he were anyone else she’d say lots of things. But he isn’t anyone else. He’s the Doctor. She’s flipping through the catalogue, sitting on the black leather sofa in the middle of the gallery and he turns to her, nods to say he’s done.
“I’ll take you to Astratta, one day,” he says. They stroll down Bankside. “The whole planet is like a painting, and every different place you stand you see another image.”
Rose nods. “Bet they don’t bother with museums there,” she says, swinging her gift shop bag full of postcards. She won’t write them, she knows, but they’ll be nice to decorate her room with.
“Actually, they do,” replies the Doctor. “Horrible buildings, terrible architecture. Downright Stalinistic, even. And the galleries are just rooms with white walls. Empty rooms without colour.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. And get this - they do charge for entry.”
For some reason she thinks that’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard and cracks up right there on the sidewalk. He starts laughing too and they’re clutching each other so as not to fall down on the pavement.
4.
Once, when he’s emptying out his pockets after visiting a particularly interesting planet that was so littered with marbles you almost couldn’t walk, he finds a deck of cards. It’s a pinochle deck. “I can teach you to play,” he says to Rose as he shuffles in the air.
She leans against the console, watching him. “I know how,” she responds. “Used to play with my granddad.”
He’s momentarily embarrassed for assuming she didn’t know and some of the cards escape his shuffle’s arc and clatter to the ground. He ducks down to gather them. “Well then,” he says, straightening up. “Fancy a game?”
_
After that they always play cards when they’re traveling. As the TARDIS spins suddenly his marriage in trump slides off the console. It’s one of their new rules - if your melded cards fall off, you lose the points. “Ha!” Rose crows. “70-20, me!” She wins the game shortly before all the cards fall off and both she and the Doctor go flying. They land in a heap by the door. “Did you let me win?” she asks, eyebrows raised earnestly.
He jumps to his feet and opens the door to the new world they’ve just arrived at. “Now Rose Tyler,” he says, ushering her through the door, “I am not that much of a gentleman.”
5.
It’s on Astratta that she tells him she loves him.
He was right, it’s spectacular, and he lines her up so everything she can see looks like Monet’s water lilies. When she was little she was dying to go to Giverny. She’s wondering how he knew to show her this, when even a centimeter’s difference would show Dali, Matisse, Lichtenstein. Except when she opens her mouth to speak “I love you” is what comes out. Funny how that works.
She turns to look at him, wondering if he’s even seeing the same image. He smiles at her, so wide she thinks it would hurt. He’s seeing her image. She makes her eyes a question. “Of course I love you,” he responds, swinging her hand in reassurance. “Come on, I’m not exactly ‘emotionally unavailable,’ or whatever your silly boyfriends were.”
He may hug her all the time but she means something different. “I’m in love with you,” she tries. Clarification is difficult when it comes to this subject. Course, she’s never had trouble with it before. But then against, she’s never felt exactly like this before. Thinking about it too much is dizzying. She looks forward. Their future is spread out before them like a wide, flower-strewn canvas.
“Ah,” responds the Doctor. He doesn’t drop her hand. “I thought that might happen. You know, I reckon this is the most attractive I’ve ever been. Still not ginger, though. Last of the Time Lords and I can’t even get the right hair colour. Suppose I could give your method a try -”
“Shut up a minute.” The Doctor’s eyes are getting that dreamy look and Rose wants to keep him in reality right now.
“Hmm?”
“Well -”
“What? Do you want to dye my hair?” He uses his free hand to rumple the back absently. He’s still holding on to her.
“No. I. I just told you I’m in love with you. Where’s your response?”
The Doctor looks worried. “Cool your jets, Rose,” he says. “Oooh, gotta love that phrase.” She narrows her eyes at him. “It’s alright,” he says, simply and a bit reassuringly.
“It’s alright that I’m in love with you?” Her tone is one of disbelief, just not over what he thinks.
“Course it is,” he shrugs and smiles. “I’m not that rude. At least not to you. That sodding museum security guard, on the other hand…”
Rose can’t quite come up with the words to tell him that wasn’t the response she wanted, and the moment is lost when he pulls her down the hill into a perfect Kandinsky.
6.
“Oi, what’s this? You want me to read you a bedtime story?” Rose is leaning in the doorway of the Doctor’s room. Lately they’ve been on the move so much that she can’t remember the last time they had a quiet night in the TARDIS, just softly orbiting. It’s as if time is running out and they have to find a way to go everywhere in the universe. Except she knows that both of those concepts are impossible. All the running has left her bone-tired, and of course, in this unexpected stretch of peace, she finds she can’t sleep. Ironic, that.
The Doctor pats his bed and she comes and sits cross-legged next to him. Her hair is scraped off her neck and her face is free of makeup. She wears white pyjamas with rainbow hearts on. The Doctor has covers up to his waist and a light blue t-shirt that reads “Columbia University” for some non-apparent reason. He has his glasses on and two books in his lap.
“I’m warning you,” he says, smiling at her, “If you want Goodnight Moon you’re out of luck. No moons where we are right now. I could try spicing it up a bit - Goodnight Juumine And Galaxy M-48. What do you reckon? Always fancied myself a bit of a writer. Of course, it’s kind of difficult to fit into this lifestyle. It tried keeping a journal once. A very masculine journal, mind you. ‘Dear Diary, today I refused to ask for directions and ended up stranded on a two-dimensional planet. But I’m such a manly man,’ and the like. Gave it up after the one day, of course. And -”
He keeps talking. Rose is asleep, stretched out at his side.
7.
The first time he kisses her it’s for an entire week.
They’re in her mother’s house, had just intended to drop by for a couple of hours but then it turned out to be Easter and Jackie was too excited at the prospect of a holiday with her daughter for Rose to disappoint.
The Doctor, on the other hand, is bored as peas and keeps fidgeting more than usual. Jackie is re-sewing all the buttons on his jacket, even though he asked her twenty-three times not to, mainly because he didn’t believe she could sew and was quite attached to the jacket. He looks different and somehow uncomfortable sitting on the couch in just his button-down and trousers.
Rose is peeling potatoes by the sink when he comes up behind her. He stills a hand over her chopping one, wrapping his fingers around hers. “Run for you life,” he whispers in her ear. He pulls her out of the house and down the stairs and across the street and down the road and into the TARDIS and she can hardly breathe because of the combination of running and laughing.
“That line still work for you then?” she asks, breathing heavily against the door as she pokes him in the chest.
He does a quarter turn to face her, placing one hand against the door to steady himself. He’s laughing all the way up to his eyes. He doesn’t answer the question, just says “You’ll have to excuse me, but I’ve had an unhealthy amount of time on your mother’s sofa to think about this,” before he ducks down and kisses her.
If she’s shocked for even a second she doesn’t show it, just reaches both hands up to his neck and kisses him back. She can feel his eyebrows raise - the skin on his cheeks stretches suddenly and his cheeks are almost pressed against her cheeks. She thinks, not for the first time, that kissing would be easier without noses. She pulls back a little and grins at his raised eyebrows. “What, didn’t think I’d snog you back?” she asks.
He might laugh; he’s certainly breathing like you do after laughing, desperately and happily. He speaks and the words graze her skin somewhere in the vicinity of her eyelashes. “This isn’t exactly the reaction I expected,” he says. “Hoped for, mind you. Just not expected.”
“Then you’re an even bigger idiot than I thought,” she replies, hooking a finger in one of his belt loops to pull him closer and kissing him again.
_
Soon he’s pulling her to the center of the room. “Rose Tyler!” he kisses her again. “Rose Tyler!”
She laughs and grabs him and kisses the tip of his nose. “That’s my name, don’t wear it out.”
He spins her around and grins at her. “I might. It’s a bloody great name.” He wraps both arms around her, lifting her off the ground and smiling into her hair as her legs swing back and forth and she yelps excitedly. “Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler, Rose Tyler, Rose -” he whispers, setting her back down and kissing her properly, with one arm around her waist and one hand smoothing her cheek and into her hair and one lip delicately in between her two. Everything is spinning ridiculously fast and she claws her fingers at his back to bring him closer.
_
He has no control on time now, so when she slaps one of her hands on his back to get his attention he doesn’t know if they’ve been kissing for ten minutes or ten days. She pulls back, both hands on his shoulders. “Oi,” she breathes, “we’ve got to get back to my mum.”
He sinks his head so his hair brushes against her forehead. “Bringing up Jackie Tyler is a sure-fire way to break the mood, Rose.”
She giggles, stepping out of his embrace but taking one of his hands in hers. “Sorry. But it’s Easter, and I was making dinner - it’s probably time to eat.”
He settles himself against the console, nodding. But when his eyes catch one of the screens he groans, jumping up suddenly and pulling her with him. “Oh, your mum is going to hate me.”
He opens the door for her and follows her outside, where it’s slightly warmer than when they were there last and the light is incrementally brighter. “Well,” starts Rose, “I propose we don’t tell her about the snogfest, and she won’t hate you any more than she already does.”
The Doctor grins. “Snogfest, eh?”
“Mmhmm.” Rose purses her lips.
“Well, I quite like the sound of that.” He pulls her forward so they’re almost running. “But there’s another, non-snogfest-related reason why she’ll hate me.”
“Which is?”
“Well, we’ve been gone for quite a bit.”
“It can’t be that long. I bet she’s held dinner. And she’ll hold it another two minutes so you can stop running.” Rose pulls him back sharply by the hand so he nearly collides with her. His fingers brush against her waist.
“Actually,” he says, fiddling with the hem of her t-shirt and grazing his fingertips against her hipbone, “we’ve been gone a week.”
“What? I haven’t been kissing you for a week.”
“No, you haven’t,” he says lazily, thumb now sliding under the waistband of her jeans. “Although we should give that a go sometime. Or, you know, immediately.”
Rose grabs his hand and holds it fast. “So how have we been gone for a week?” she asks sternly.
“Uh,” he meets her eyes. “We seem to have time-traveled a bit.”
“What?” Rose breaks into a run now, pulling the Doctor behind her.
“Er, all that spinning,” he explains as they sprint. “It was the TARDIS. Partly, at least.”
“Well you’re right,” she says, breathing heavily at the bottom of the stairs before they start to climb. “My mum is going to hate you.”
_
Jackie looks like she hasn’t washed her face in seven days. Her eyes are black - she never took off the day’s mascara, just added more. And when Rose and the Doctor appear in the doorway, out of breath, her stare is as black as her eyeliner.
“Where were you?” she snaps.
“We, uh, went out for a walk,” Rose starts. "We got lost, and uh, he wouldn’t ask for directions.” She pokes a finger at his arms, just to touch him.
The Doctor shrugs his shoulders embarrassedly. “Men. The same in every species, I’m afraid. So, how’re things?”
Jackie unleashes a stream of annoyances, from “It’s just plain rude to leave when you promised to stay for the holiday! I did not raise you to be rude, Rose.” To “All that leftover ham, I made Mickey eat it and don’t you know he got sick!” The Doctor takes Rose’s hand and traces patterns down her fingers and both of them are smiling more than is appropriate during Jackie’s yelling.
_
Later he makes them all scrambled eggs and toast while Rose and Jackie have a good natter in the living room. He listens to the excited sound of Rose’s voice and thinks about her.
8.
“I’m the Doctor and this is Rose,” he says as some door, somewhere, opens to their smiling faces. His hand is at the small of her back and she thinks that she’s going to hear those words forever.
I Love To Hear You Say My Name
The Who | You Better You Bet
When I say ‘I love you,’ you say ‘You better’
James Taylor | Your Smiling Face
Whenever I see your smiling face I have to smile myself because I love you
Elton John | I Need You To Turn To
You’re not a ship to carry my life