In With the New (5/5)
Beta: roxieflash
Pairing/Characters: TenII/Rose
Chapter Rating: PG
Word Count: ~2,000
Summary: Picks up where Journey's End left off with Rose and Human!Ten. Absolute fluff.
A/N: Written for the Spring Fling Fixathon at doctor_rose_fix
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Rose no longer lived with Pete and Jackie. Even with a complete wing of their manor to herself, she never felt like she had enough room. It came from lengthy travel through the vortex, she supposed; when you spent weeks at a time light years and millennia away from the nearest civilization, you learned to appreciate solitude.
Once she'd established a career at Torchwood (at a significant beginner's salary-first-hand experience in dealing with alien tech counted far more than A-levels), she found a place of her own on the city's outskirts, surrounded by a small copse of trees. The property wasn't large and the house wasn't too terribly impressive. It was small, two-story, with the bottom floor built partially into the side of a hill. It wasn't shabby or messy, it wasn't flashy or particularly well-kempt. It was nondescript.
Rose thought it absolutely perfect. If she'd learned anything from space travel, it was that outer appearances couldn't be trusted. Assumptions were an easy way to put yourself in danger of running for your life or getting chucked in prison. The TARDIS herself was testament to the folly of snap judgment.
And how Rose missed that glorious machine.
Initially, she'd been so overcome by the loss of the Doctor that she failed to process the homesickness. Once she did, Rose assumed it was the old apartment at the Powell Estate she so anxiously wanted to revisit. In desperation for something familiar, she had gone downstairs to the Engineering labs to see Mickey.
He was working on some audio tech (she steadfastly refused to use the word 'sonic') and the lab was full of assorted noises and sound systems in various states of disassembly. Rose sat on the table next to his workstation and drummed her feet on the support bar underneath her impromptu stool.
"I just don't know what it is," she'd told Mickey as he re-wired a speaker. "It's like I'm lost," Rose tried to explain, "and I can't remember where I live."
"Well, maybe you don't," he replied, his mind on the conversation but his eyes on his work.
"How d'you mean?"
"What I mean is, you didn't live in London, now, did you? Would you stop that banging, you're throwin' off the rhythm." He waved a wire cap at Rose's still tapping feet, and she ceased.
"Is that important?"
"'Course it's important, yeah. Sonic stuff and noise don't really mix, do they?"
"Not the noise, you berk." She smiled to take the sting from her insult. "Where'd I live but London?"
He waved his (completely non-sonic) screwdriver in a vaguely skyward direction, still intent on his project. "All over the place. Space ships, alien planets. Not here on Earth with the rest of us."
"But I didn't live those places."
"No, you didn't." He paused, then put down his tools and looked at her. "You lived in a time machine. This make you feel better?" He reached for a nearby toggle switch and flipped it with a flick of his finger. The speaker on the workbench began to hum softly, a pulsating buzz fading in and out of the emanating background noise. Clearly mechanical, but clearly alive.
Rose didn't know whether to laugh or cry. To hug Mickey or punch him. How many times had this hum lulled her to sleep as she traveled through the vortex? She was homesick for her room. Not the old one at the Estate-her room on the TARDIS. Her room with the unmade bed where she'd kicked off the comforter, some traditional alien festival robes draped over a chair, a stack of mascara and lip gloss tubes blocking the bottom bit of her mirror, candy wrappers on her bedside table.
Rose listened to the sound of the TARDIS' engines for nearly a full minute before speaking. "Can you put that on CD or something?" she asked quietly. "Might help me sleep."
Mickey presented a gleaming disc. "Thought as much," he said as he passed it over to Rose. "That's a two hour loop, that is. We're studying the sound, trying to reproduce it and see what type of equipment it's using. Probably help with the dimension thing."
"Yeah, cannon, they're calling it," Rose added, twirling her new treasure on her finger. "Not too keen on the name. But if I'm gonna get back, gotta be a bit daredevil, I suppose. Speaking of which, I'm late for the Monday-Friday. See you tomorrow for tea at Mum's?"
"Unless I'm here, yeah."
As she took the lift back to the conference room, she toyed with the disc, reflecting the elevator lights with its polished surface. The circles that flashed along the walls gave her another wistful feeling of home.
Rose was distracted during the staff meeting. Her presence was a formality, anyway. Though she'd appealed to be the one to use the cannon, she had no real input into its design or the money involved in making it. Instead, she doodled on the agenda-first, the circular pattern that lined the walls of the TARDIS, then her favorite chair from the library. She added tiny details in the corners of the paper like the fluted finials on the shower rod and the knob on the drawer of her bedside table. Little things she'd never looked at closely that now begged to be remembered.
That evening, she'd stopped by a few shops. The next evening, she stopped by a few more. She ranged further and further, searching for bits of home in person, on-line, even having a few items custom-made.
There were, after all, advantages to working in an R&D facility with unlimited funding.
And all of their work had paid off. Now, returning from her second trip to Bad Wolf Bay, she was walking up her front steps, hand-in-hand with the final piece. Her heart was finally home.
...
The Doctor was distracted. After spending what felt like a lifetime without any Rose-related sensory input, he seemed susceptible to mental wibblyness at the slightest touch. He wasn't sure if his fingers had always tingled when he held her hand or if he'd always developed a pleasant, glowing warmth whenever she rested her head on his shoulder, but he was perfectly fine with both of these things. He'd been functional all throughout their zeppelin ride over the North Sea, and very proud of himself for it.
Then they got in the car.
In that enclosed space, every fact he'd ever bothered to learn about human chemoreception imploded, and his entire existence revolved around Rose's hair. The Doctor hadn't intentionally memorized that particular fragrance, but he remembered, though fuzzily, the instant he realized he'd done so. New New York, their first off-world journey just after the Sycorax invasion. They'd landed the TARDIS on a rise overlooking the city, and had just walked down the control room's ramp and out the blue wooden doors when Rose asked about the smell.
He hadn't noticed a smell, and was about to admit so when he looked down at the surrounding flora. The Doctor immediately bit back his confession of olfactory non-observance when he made the connection. He explained to Rose about the plant life, and they'd lain there on his coat (which he now very much needed to replace) for hours, reminiscing about past adventures and getting to know one another again.
He remembered grinning like an idiot when Rose used the word 'date' and still cursed himself privately for not responding with anything more substantial than their choice of food that day.
"Well?" Rose prompted him, nudging him with her elbow and breaking him out of his reverie. He was still in her doorway, not yet having stepped across the threshold. "Anything to say?"
"Your hair smells like apple-grass."
After spending so long wishing he could tell Rose everything that came to his mind, he seemed to be unable to keep himself from doing so. He felt a growing concern that the condition would be irreversible.
Rose smiled and rested her forehead on his shoulder. "Anything else?" she asked, looking back up at him.
"I dunno, haven't smelled the rest of you, have I? Might get around to it sooner or later. Preferably sooner, inquiring minds want to know. Well, one mind. My mind."
The Doctor had expected Rose's house to look like an expanded version of her room back at the Powell Estate, all pink and pillows and laundry scattered about. The sight that greeted him held no such similarities, save the laundry.
"Also, your house looks exactly like the inside of the TARDIS. Rose Tyler, you are brilliant." He stepped inside, trailing his hand along the spheres embedded in the walls, turning familiar corners, testing the metal grating of the walkways with a thumbnail and nodding approvingly at the sound. Rose walked behind him, loving the way his eyes sparkled when he noticed a new detail. "How on Earth did you manage this? Is that the engine noise? They left out that annoying ping from the sixth dimensional transit, that's an improvement. I'd ask for the tour, but that would be-" He opened a door to find a broom cupboard. He stared for a moment at the vacuum cleaner, glanced up at the rack of cleaning supplies, and turned back to Rose. "Now that's just rude."
"What, keepin' a clean house? Wish you'd been rude."
"This is supposed to be my room. I can't bunk with a hoover!" He glared at the appliance as though it had mortally offended him. "What about books, where will I keep books?"
"The library's two doors down," Rose said pointing further up the hallway.
"And tea, where will I make tea?"
A smile played at the corners of Rose's lips. "Kitchen's two lefts and a right from here."
"And that lovely vase I got from Emperor Huang?"
"Using it as a bin in the downstairs toilet."
The Doctor made a mortified noise. Rose smirked in amusement.
"It's a replica and the color's a bit off, but I can't buy something that huge and not use it."
The Doctor covered the width of the hallway in one quick stride, throwing the door open opposite them. "Look there," he said, pointing, "your room? Exactly the same. Bed unmade, makeup on the vanity, clothes on the-hold on, are those Eventide robes from Coraxis IV? Well done. No sign of any intrusive cleaning supplies here. Not a drop of bleach, not a feather duster, not a-" The Doctor paused, one eyebrow nearly disappearing into his fringe. His brain had immediately derailed, conjuring a fairly lavish image that included Rose, feather dusters, and not much else. "Sorry, what was I saying?"
Rose closed the gap between them, peeking into her room to make sure it wasn't in too much disarray before shutting the door and leaning against it. "You were talking about being horribly jealous, because you're a bloke and my room is bigger than yours."
"Was not!"
"Was too." She stuck her tongue out at him. He stared at it hungrily for a few seconds before clearing his throat and meeting her eyes again. "I knew if you ever came back," she said quietly, reaching out one arm to pull him towards her by the hem of his shirt and abruptly shifting the mood of the conversion, "that I wouldn't want you any further away than you had to be."
As the Doctor leaned down to trace the line of her neck with his lips, Rose put her mouth to his ear and whispered. "Stay with me. Please."
He never could deny her anything she wanted, and he wasn't about to start now. Breathing deeply, registering her every heartbeat, and tracing the contour of her spine with his fingertips, he overwhelmed his senses with this magnificent creature that was his absolute soul.
Once again, he opened the door.