fic; Doctor Who: Better Living Through Domesticity. (1/2)
title: Better Living Through Domesticity. (1/2)
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: R/Mature? Language and sexy situations.
words: 12,293.
disclaimer: Fiction, with characters that are not mine, in case that, somehow, wasn't clear.
spoiler alert: Through Journey's End.
notes: I don't think I've ever written a 12,000-word fic before, and certainly not as my first entry into a fandom. That said, all I've been able to think about for weeks is life after Bad Wolf Bay and life stuck in one spot, and life stuck together (which I realize is several years after everyone else had these thoughts). And then I started lurking the fic, and by extension, the challenges at then_theres_us, which I'm going to assume is an OK thing to do? Enthusiastic challenge lurking? Hopefully? And -- this happened. Huge, terrific thank you to weasleytook for a lightning quick turnaround on a beta when I was two-thirds into the story and was worried no one would recognize the characters as I see them. (This fic is complete, it just had to be split into two parts for livejournal's character limits!)
The thing about traveling with all of time and space at her disposal is that Rose never had to do the same thing twice.
It was a life of firsts.
The first time she watched Columbus ask for money for a voyage across an ocean.
The first time she saw David Beckham kick a football, all childish grace and floppy blond hair, skinned knees and a too-big jumper.
The first time an alien hugged her, squeezing so hard her back popped, because he was just so happy she was alive.
The thing about settling down with a man whose whole life was built around having all of time and space at his disposal is that the firsts become so quiet, so slight, that she can't decide if it's worth it to note them at all.
(The thing about being human though, is that she does.)
&&.
On a zeppelin silently cutting its way through the clouds of a world that is not Rose's, and not the Doctor's, but is for now, at least, they hold hands.
This gesture, this tiny physical connection, is not a first, not with the Doctor, not even with this new, old, Doctor. She can still hear the way the sound of the TARDIS leaving slipped through the noise of the water crashing, over the noise of the blood in her ears -- but there's a new element, a little first knitted together within the clasp of body parts.
Their fingers are twined together. Normal Doctor/Rose hand-holding protocol dictates that their fingers go around, cupping and folded over. But they'd sat next to each other on the ship, facing a window, and then his hand was resting on her thigh, just barely touching, but with such a weight restrained behind it.
There was so much pressure sparking from his fingertips that she'd taken his hand just so she didn't have to watch it shake, almost hovering over the fabric of her trousers.
She'd laced their fingers together and rested them back down on her thigh.
"It'll be fine," Rose says, eyes fixed on some point beyond the window. Another zeppelin, maybe. She isn't concentrating.
Are these the first words she's spoken to him since the beach? She couldn't say.
He turns his head to look at her, she can see out of the corner of her eye, but he keeps his shoulders squared straight.
"Of course," he says.
And there, between their palms, is a first. The first time it's not just her sweat-slicked hand dampening their grip. It's his hand, too. Warm and wet and (part) human.
Things are easier to hold on to when they're dry, but as the ship begins its descent, Rose remembers she likes a challenge.
&&.
She's not going to live on a fucking manor. She was never going to live on a manor. That Jackie Tyler lives on a manor is confusing enough -- the image of her mother descending grand staircases in palatial homes, a constant reminder that this isn't their world. Not their real one.
So Rose had found a flat, a cozy little thing like she'd have rented at home, and she'd set about forcing it to be -- home, that is.
There are posters on the walls, pictures in frame, each precisely level. There are candles and knick-knacks and meticulously stocked shelves of food.
There is -- absolutely no heart.
Rose fits the key into the lock of her home and the Doctor shifts his weight behind her.
"This all right?" He says, and she can tell he's gestured at the door, at the space behind it and his intrusion on it.
"Why wouldn't it be?" She twists the doorknob and shoulders the door open, a little grunt as it sticks.
"Maybe you're used to living alone now." The Doctor's voice sounds normal, conversational even, and she's taken aback. If this is a game, this pretending it's not weird, not totally nuts, he's surely winning.
Rose hates to lose though.
"Eh," she shrugs. "Could use a man around, to do manly things. Like fix that bloody door, for one."
His hand goes to his jacket and then falls quickly. No sonic in there, not anymore.
Her heart flips and settles in her knees.
Rose offers to make something to eat, offers to let him be in charge of the telly, offers to buy him the best goddamn telescope in the whole (alternate) world, but he goes to bed.
"Human dreams, that'll be new!" And he's down the hallway, pointing a finger at the door of the spare room, a question in his eyes. She nods and he ducks inside.
&&.
It's been two cups of tea since the Doctor went to bed and Rose has flipped over the handful of words they've said to each other, this new man and her, a million times.
He loves her on the beach, he's quiet on the ship, he's enthusiastic in her flat.
What she really decides is: he's pretending.
The only thing she can pick up from any of their interactions is a current of restraint. He's holding something back. His anger at his other self. His anger at her. His sanity slowly cracking. Something.
And all of the sudden her temper swells.
She's pretty properly fucked here, too. No need to dance on eggshells around it. They can talk about this like grown ups.
Is he the man she loves? Is she worth being tied to a planet for? What are they going to do when they get old?
&&.
When he was gone, and she was stuck here, she wore a watch every day. Hung clocks in every room in her house. She thought about getting one tattooed on the smooth, pale skin on the inside of her forearm, but the fit Jackie would've thrown wasn't worth it.
Still, she'd forced order, forced reminders of linear time everywhere she could. Dedicated her life to saying 'Fuck you' to the Doctor. Fuck you for not finding a way around this. Fuck you for making me do all the work.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
She'd told him in home decor, wrist accessories, and, on days she felt fancy (or masochistic), a fob watch. She opened it and opened it, hoping for her life to fall out.
Time is everywhere, it is controlled and it is unwavering and she just hates him so fucking much.
She's standing in Tesco one night and she thinks, dumbly holding a sack of potatoes, that who she's really mad at, is herself.
She watches a little boy get his foot run over by a trolley and he screams, drops to his knees, rages at the wheels, and then stops to yell at his foot for hurting, too.
And there it is -- that what she's really mad about is that she will die and her flesh will become dirt (tattoo would have done, too) and he'll still be out there.
The watch she was wearing that day was some cheap thing. She'd gotten it for 20 quid at a shop down the way, but it normally kept time better than some of the ones she splurged on with Pete's money.
Even so, the battery was dying, hands getting stopped up, and it was cold on her wrist the whole way home. She'd taken it off that night, crushed it under her heel.
She'd look up when she was done, checking, and hoping. But the watch had died and time had continued.
(Because you can't stop time, and you can't bend it to your will.)
When the (new) Doctor wakes up the next morning, he walks in to see her in the kitchen, just his boxers on, clutching the clock from the wall in his room.
He extends his arm, fingers wrapped around the cheap plastic of the frame, "This can't be right, can it?"
&&.
Rose has triple-checked every clock in the house by the time he gets done showering. They're all telling perfect time.
(They're all wrong.)
When he joins her back in the kitchen, he's redressed in his blue suit and his hair is just the slightest bit off, feathered and light.
"What's with --" She gestures at the top of his head.
He rolls his eyes up, like he's trying to see, and she laughs before she means to.
"A cupboard full of hair grooming products and not one thing of wax."
"We'll buy you some today, we've got to go out anyway. You can't wear that suit for the rest of your life."
She does not think about how he only has one life now. She does not think about how he's spending it with her.
&&.
The interesting thing about this new Doctor, about this Doctor who has to be human now, even if he's not fully, is how he gets to decide the person he wants to be. More than most people, anyway.
He gets to decide if this man he is pushes past the bite and burn of good alcohol and into really appreciating it.
(They stop in a pub on the high street before shopping. He makes a face at almost every drink, but ends up downing two pints and a basket of chips anyway.)
He gets to decide if this man maybe dresses to the right instead of the left -- although Rose suspects this is something blokes just don't go around changing. That's probably a biology thing, right?
(Inside a store, the first pair of trousers he tries on is so tight, she can just see the outline of him underneath the zip. She blushes and tells him to try the next size up. He looks down at his crotch and back to her and his smile is so big, so embarrassingly big, that her stomach knots itself low in her abdomen and she doesn't think at all about the wardrobe room on the TARDIS, she doesn't think about anything except what that zipper would sound like as she lowered it.)
He gets to decide if he becomes the man he once was.
(At their last stop of the day, he'd bought a leather jacket. He'd shrugged, "Maybe I can be him again, too, now." It did and it didn't make sense all at once, and anyway, it was sad. Later, she finds it crumpled in the corner of the couch, tucked down into the cushions, like he'd thrown it there, and made himself comfortable, refusing to acknowledge the jacket anymore.
She wears it around after he goes to bed that night, just slightly too long, but not so baggy anywhere else to look silly. He's a lean little wanker. She wears it and it's almost like she's carrying around parts of all the men she loves, the one man she loves.
She sets it aside to return it, because this man is new.)
&&.
He changes his outfit four times the next morning, tearing through all the new clothes, a walking Ben Sherman advert, ripping tags off like he's claiming ownership. Slim black jumper and skinny fit corduroys, into a cardigan and almost-too-tight jeans, into plaid shorts and a t-shirt, and then back to the jumper and cords.
He's preening and his hair is perfect and he smells good, smells like alien and well-groomed human, and it's not an ache in her chest, but it's something like want.
Rose should go back to work, today, tomorrow, soon. She should go back to the shop, with its little back room passageway to Torchwood, and she should go back to her life. And she would, except this is her life now, and she has enough money to live until the end of it.
(Thanks, Dad.)
Instead, she sits next to the Doctor on the couch and watches as he flips through channels on the telly, all lanky grace and masculine sprawl. There's still something there, still something that has to break, but maybe they can just chip way at it. Maybe it'll dissolve on its own.
She's just zoned out when he nudges her shoulder, "Rose. Rose! This movie is about traveling trousers. Traveling trousers! Brilliant!"
Rose squints at the screen and watches as teenage American girls parade around in their outfits like the Doctor had done this morning.
"They're not even cute," Rose says. "The trousers, I mean."
The Doctor smiles and take a breath and Rose can feel it. He's going to tell a story, he's going to be the Doctor.
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that traveling trousers are a real thing and they're not so form-fitting or polite. Take control of your legs, run you into walls, not very nice, those trousers."
A few hours later and he's fallen asleep on the couch, legs bent at the knees and feet flat on the ground. He's slumping into himself a little bit, chin to chest and tilted some. She can't decide if she wants to give him a slap, or give him a hug, and she's not sure if either of those emotions are actually for him.
When he wakes, he does it slowly, a rarity for him -- normally startled and on his feet in seconds. He goes to rub his eyes and forget he's wearing his glasses. He smashes his fingers to the lens, leaving smudges in their wake.
She doesn't hug him, but she smiles.
&&.
It's that night, their third night in this flat, in this world, in this funny little relationship, that it spills over.
She's curled up in her bed, reading a book, when she sees it on the opposite wall.
A bug.
It's not that she's afraid of bugs, she's afraid of very few things, this new Rose Tyler, it's just --
This might not even be a bug, right?
(Or it might be one of those that bites you in your sleep.)
It looked like something she'd seen as a girl, crawling across the counter while her mum made tea. And if this were last week, or last month, or last year, she'd have dealt with it herself. But now she has him here, and what's the harm, right?
The bug skitters up the wall, toward the ceiling.
"If you don't stop moving before I can get the Doctor, I'll come after you myself, and I'm less forgiving," she tilts her head up toward the ceiling and makes her voice sound commanding.
Maybe the bug had heard about her, heard about the Daleks, because that just seems to make it move faster. It scrambles into a corner.
"Stay there," she says warningly, climbing slowly out of bed, out of her room and into the hallway.
She hesitates at the shut door in front of her, the door to her spare room. The Doctor's room. She taps quietly with her nail and waits.
Nothing.
She does it again, knuckles this time, and louder.
Nothing.
She turns the knob in her hand and inches in the room, standing just inside the jamb.
"Bug," she whispers and he doesn't respond. She gets closer and repeats herself.
He's snoring softly and she says it a final time, voice slightly raised.
"Bug."
The Doctor opens his eyes blearily, "What?"
"There's a bug. In my room," she tries to keep her tone level, like this is totally normal. Like this isn't the most domestic thing that's ever happened to them.
He climbs out of bed, clad only in his boxers again. He scratches the flat of his stomach, his hair, and Rose feels her skin go warm, pinpricks ghosting across it.
She leads him into her room, keeping her eyes cast down.
(Steadfastly ignoring his feet, the high arches of them, the light dusting of hair, the short, clean toenails. She doesn't even like feet, what's this all about? Doctor feet or no, she is not a hormonal child.)
He hesitates at the door, staring past into her bedroom, but she spots the bug again and grabs his hand, dragging him inside.
"There it is." She points with her free hand and tries to look concerned.
He tightens his grip around her, just for the briefest second, like she's almost imagining it, and then he squints at the bug and drops her hand.
"That, Rose Tyler, is a regular, Earth-variety spider. Not much special, except how they'll bite." He snaps his teeth down, clicking them together.
The noise makes her shiver and she almost decides she wants that spider dead. She wants to leave its little body on the small porch of her flat, to send a message. This is Rose Tyler's place and she is not to be fucked with.
Instead the Doctor walks to her night table, picks up and drinks from the water glass she'd left there. It's strangely intimate, the first time he'd had a part-human immune system and willingly exposed himself to her human germs.
(Well, the first time after that kiss -- which doesn't count as their first, she decides in a snap, still under the eyes of the other Doctor. Plus, growing from a hand, a Time Lord's severed hand, there's all sorts of regeneration -- generation? -- energy. He probably could've fought it off if she'd had a cold then.)
She turns back to the Doctor and he's just finishing the water, throat muscles working and Adam's apple bobbing, and she wants to lick at right there, bite down, but then he's pulling the glass back, wiping at his mouth with his hand.
He grabs a magazine sitting next to the table and lopes over to where the bug is. He cranes his neck and reaches up, trapping the bug under the glass and sliding the magazine between the glass and the wall. He tips the spider into the glass and It's carefully settled in the bottom now.
She follows as he walks into the living room, opening the door and setting the spider free on her send-a-message porch.
"Brilliant," she says. "Now it'll tell all its little bug friends that the Doctor's here and he's such a forgiving bloke, and they'll all come take up residence."
He blinks, something changing his face, "Ah, yes, forgiveness, such a bloody awful thing, right? We should all strive not to be so weak."
The Doctor turns on his heels and goes back to his room.
&&.
Rose waits a full 20 minutes, watching the minutes tick by on the clock in the kitchen, before she goes to his room.
She's not even sure what she's going to say, but they need to have a conversation, a real conversation. Maybe something about how now it seems like everyday is the worst day of her life, and the best day of her life, and not a day at all, but a series of fluid movements only marked by his new, constant presence in her life, by the absence of time travel and death.
When she opens the door, not even bothering to knock, he's sitting on the edge of his bed, feet on the ground, elbows on his knees, and head in his hands, like he was waiting for her.
He's still just wearing his boxers, but he's pulled his cardigan on, leaving it unbuttoned, his chest bare underneath. There's a draft in his room she hadn't noticed before. It's an interesting juxtaposition, like some sort of sexy professor (-- not the first time she's had that thought about that body, but the first regarding this incarnation of it), and she's almost taken aback, almost put off enough to forget that he's mad at her.
"Isn't your race big into knocking?" He looks up at her, dropping his hands to his knees.
"Your race, too, now," and it's out of her mouth before she can stop it. Probably not the best way to start this conversation, diving headfirst in.
"Right." He fixes her with a stare, his jaw clenching after the word.
"Listen, just tell me what I should ask for forgiveness for, and I'll do it," She crosses her arms around her stomach.
It's not what she wants, this giving in. She kind of wants to get into a row, a loud one, but since she can't figure out what she'd fight about with him, this him, this seems easier.
He barks out a short laugh, "You think I need to forgive you?"
"Well, what else would this be about? You need to forgive me for tearing universes apart, starting this whole thing. The Daleks -- " She trails off. "And now you're stuck here. And human."
Her breath comes out in a large exhale, she hadn't realized she was holding all that in, thought she'd buried it far enough in her conscience. Thought they could just -- forget.
The Doctor stands from his spot on the bed, crosses over to where she's standing and gently uses his hands to uncross her arms.
"Rose, I'm not going to forgive you for anything."
She sighs, "Your TARDIS, too. He has the TARDIS. I'm so sorry."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
He's still holding her hands, both of them sweating despite the chill in the air, and suddenly she's dizzy and frustrated.
"Then what is this?!" She yanks her hands away, gesturing back and forth between them. "What is the problem?"
And, ah, there it is. She can hear the row creeping around the edges of the room, waiting to strike.
"I'm trying to do this proper!" His Adam's apple bobs and this time she doesn't want to lick it, but she watches it anyway.
"Do what?"
"Be with you, be half-human, be me." He almost looks, fuck, he almost looks scared.
"You are you, Doctor." She tries to make the word, the name, heavy, make it seem like she means it.
(She does.)
"How can you know that? I only have one heart. I -- I can die. And I have almost a thousand years of memories spinning around in a body that, that, that I can't even control."
"What are you trying to control?"
"Do you know how inefficiently humans process liquid? I'm in the bathroom every other minute, it's mad."
He sounds so frustrated that she tries, she really does, not to laugh.
"You're upset because you're spending extra time in the loo?"
He must realize how bonkers that sounds, because the smallest of smiles pulls at his mouth before he sets it straight again.
"There's more -- you wore that skirt the other day, and when you sat on the couch, Rose -- that wasn't very ladylike, how you sat, I'm sorry -- and I felt, I saw," he looks at her chest, her waist, and flicks his eyes back to hers a second later.
Now she really has to laugh, and she does, huffing out a small, amused sound.
"I thought the meta-crisis was causing some sort of existential crisis and really you're just angry that you piss too much and you're attracted to the girl you're going to spend your life with?"
He looks startled for a moment, like he hadn't expected her to dismiss his fears so easily. He ducks his head, speaks softly, "Well, I miss the TARDIS, too."
She watches him toe at the carpeting and feels a rush of warmth.
"Of course you do, and probably Donna, as well," She studiously ignores the look that passes over his face on her name -- there's more to that story than she's heard, some horrible ending she can't foresee for Doctor Donna.
She charges back in, "What I love though -- "
There's another first, the first profession of love by her, to this new him. His eyes widen and she knows he caught it, too.
" -- What I love," she repeats, "It wasn't here," she sets her hand over where his second heart would be, feeling skin and the soft wool of the cardigan under her fingers, the absence of a heartbeat.
"Or here," she pats the space his sonic would've been kept.
"It was -- here." And she touches her fingertips to his temple, but that's not it, it's not enough.
She pulls her hand back, "It's here," she spreads her fingers apart and palms his face, feels his nose against her hand, feels it when he smiles before she pulls her hand away.
"This is a good one, isn't it? Better than those ears last time, that nose."
His face isn't what she was talking about, and she's sure he knows it, but she sticks up for it anywhere, the face of her first Doctor. "I liked those ears, and the nose."
"You're daft," he's smiling broadly now. "Did you know I was blond before? We could've passed for siblings, you and me. The snogging would get awkward though, for other people."
This isn't over, she knows, but it's enough for now. They don't need to talk about how she's worried he'll die, or get bored, or get hurt. How maybe he'll wake up and decide he isn't the Doctor, not anymore. They don't need to talk about all the things they could be doing, should be doing, now that they have this finite forever.
There'll be time later. She casts a glance at the clock on his wall and he looks guilty.
There are six extra hands.
&&.
She sleeps in late the next morning, struggling to keep her eyes open even as she finally crawls out of bed. She hears the Doctor across the hall, he must've just woken up, too. His door opens, then the one to bathroom.
It slams into her then, the most trivial parts of the conversation the night before, his bathroom habits. She realizes, startled, that he would pee standing up, like a man. She knew he'd used the washroom before -- he had, right? Or did she just assume? -- but now, apparently, he'll get up in the morning, and go to the bathroom. Like a normal person. She puts it together, the noise of him raising the seat, a flush a few moments later, the sound of washing up. The Doctor has a dick. He pees like a bloke. He is a bloke.
Her thought process is so, so fucked up.
By the time they meet up in the kitchen, she's forcibly stopped herself from thinking about his dick, and started realizing they have a little bit of a routine. First stop: the kitchen.
"What do you want to do today?" She figures he's probably itching to explore, have an adventure or something. They haven't left the flat much since they went shopping, only to pick up takeaway and DVD rentals. She's going a little crazy, too, cooped up, but it's the good kind of crazy, relaxed-on-a-holiday crazy.
"Eat a proper breakfast? Out?" He looks hopeful and she realizes they must be out of bread for toast.
"Sure, I'll even buy," she winks at him.
"I can b --" He stops, realizing he doesn't have any money. "I suppose I could rob a bank with the psychic paper. Money Inspector John Smith, eh?"
She watches him grin before she realizes what he's said -- not the crime part, that's just talking, but -- "You got the psychic paper?"
"'Course, I knew what he was going to do, my pockets are full of stuff. I haven't even looked, just emptied some drawers before we got to the beach."
"Let's save it," Rose blurts out, suddenly very excited. "Not the psychic paper, we'll come up with something for that, but the other stuff. Save it for Christmas or birthdays -- we'll know when they are now, mine at least. It'll be a great surprise!"
The Doctor practically beams at her.
&&.
By the time they've reached their table for breakfast, the Doctor has winked at no less than seven people.
He is just fucking winking at everybody.
"Do you have something in your eye or were you really flirting with the hostess, the cab driver and Mrs. Goodsmith from next door. She's 88, you know."
"Ah, just a baby then," and he winks at Rose.
"Seriously, what is this?" She points at his eye.
"You winked this morning, it was endearing. I thought I'd make it work for me. I'm a bloke who winks now," he ends with another wink.
"You've winked before, I'm sure of it." She flips back through her memories, but can't place one.
"Oh yeah, of course, but it was always spur-of-the-moment, fly-by winking. It's going to be a thing now, get ready, Rose Tyler." A third wink.
&&.
Two days after he'd started with the winking, he abruptly outgrew the prescription in his glasses. After an Abbott & Costello routine ("I need a doctor!" "You are the Doctor!") and a lot of teasing where she explained how closely related winking and poor eyesight was for half-human/half-Time Lords, they'd gotten him new glasses.
He'd tried desperately to keep his old frames, the ones he'd lovingly snuck out of the TARDIS in his breast pocket, but they weren't even crafted on Earth -- the alternate or the real one -- and they couldn't pop the lenses out. He'd end up with a brand new pair, thicker frames, thicker lenses, and she almost felt sad. Like they were losing a part of something already.
Then he'd dramatically whipped the glasses from his face, biting on the end of the stem and looking for all the world like a debonair scoundrel, and she'd laughed.
&&.
The weeks stretched on and suddenly it'd been almost a month since they'd arrived back here, together.
There'd been no kissing, no sex, nothing but a few lingering hugs, sweaty hand-holding, and once, at dinner, as he'd reached for the salt, a slight graze of her chest. He'd blushed furiously and she'd smiled, knocking her knee into his under the table. She wasn't counting that as a first, not as it related to her chest anyway, maybe as it related to the color of his face, though.
Work had called asking after her -- the work through the secret passageway, not the shop. And she'd consulted on a case, the Doctor hovering over her shoulder as she took down the details.
She'd been on the phone only a few minutes, with him mouthing questions for her to ask the agent on the other end, when she put the mobile down and turned on the speaker.
"I've got --"
Rose mouthed to the Doctor, "John Smith?" He'd shrugged.
"-- John Smith, a consultant visiting from -- " she made a noise of static with her mouth. "He'll be helping me on this."
"Ah, Smith, pleasure to meet you," the voice on the other end of the phone said. "Pete Tyler mentioned you'd be joining us."
"Did he?" The Doctor cocked his head, looked flattered? Maybe? Rose couldn't tell.
They solved the case out of their flat, refusing, even for all the toys in Torchwood, to go in there yet. Such a weird load of memories tied to that place.
When another case came down, just a few days later, the Doctor had taken the call himself, explained what they needed to do, and to call if they couldn't find the parts.
He hung up the phone and turned to Rose. "You know they call me Smith? That's a proper nickname. I've never had a nickname before."
"That's not a nickname, that's your name."
"But when I use that, what I used that name, people called me John. This is like -- it's like mates. I can't take them traveling through space and time, but we can still be mates," he was almost just talking to himself, looking thoughtful and pleased.
"You did just tell them how to construct a very classified and advanced piece of technology to stop the whole landmass of Greenland from becoming sentient."
"Eh. I think it's mates."
&&.
Turns out, the Doctor was right: mates it was. The weekend rolled around and a few male agents Rose recognized stopped by her flat to get the Doctor.
"Can Smith come out and play, Rose? We owe him a pint for the help."
"Oi! I helped, too!" But she could already hear the Doctor behind her, lacing his trainers up.
The men had the good sense to look nervous though.
"Just us blokes tonight, Rose," one spoke up and Rose recognized it as Mickey. She gave him a wide smile -- and she was going to give him a warning, something about how they didn't know how 'Smith' could handle his liquor anymore, but the Doctor was charging past her, clearly having heard Mickey.
"Mickey, Mickey, Mickey!" The Doctor shouted, changing his voice on each version, "C'mere, you brilliant idiot!"
Rose watched as he pulled Mickey into a tight hug, not very manly, but very sincere. Mickey grinned at Rose over the Doctor's shoulder, Look at this welcome!
The other agents looked surprised and the Doctor released Mickey with a rough pat on the head, "Oh, me and Mr. Mickey we go way back, we worked together in --" Rose coughed right on time and the Doctor winked at her.
She tapped at her eyes, where glasses would be, and he stuck his tongue out at her.
(The next morning, the Doctor adds 'human hangovers' to his list of Worst Things In All of Space and Time. She reminds him that when he'd come in, at a quarter to 4, he'd told her, slurring and drunk, that he didn't need two hearts anymore, because she was his other heart. He adds 'sappy, sloshed rambling' to the list, too.)
&&.
There's a new routine after that, more than just breakfast. It's a routine of making routines.
Sometimes in the morning he wakes up happy and sometimes he wakes up grumpy. It's so unpredictable, in such a specific way, that she finds herself endeared and frustrated all at once.
They try their hand at normal everyday stuff, human stuff. Well, he does. She tries her hand at easing back into human life, while watching a brand new, fully grown human careen off the walls of the planet.
Video games: Forget it. The Doctor plays a thousand titles, soundtracking them all with commentary on how a race like that could be brought down properly, how they'd never die so dishonorably. His skinny fingers flying across the buttons, all knuckles and tapping. She'd had boys play video games before, but never like this, never with the talking and the movements, and how he's always a second away from losing interest. She never feels like she has to strut around starkers to get his attention.
(Although that would probably get more of it.)
Music: He gets really into The Shins, very, very quickly. He talks about how they know something, Rose. All these songs, they're not from Earth. Not even from this Earth. And they are definitely not to be trusted.
"Kissing the lipless?" He says, pursing his own lips. "Let me tell you -- I have kissed the lipless," He pauses just long enough to arch his eyebrows at her -- "Jealous?" -- "And it's not something you'd write a song about. A dirty limerick, maybe. But a song? Never. And Saint Simon, what a stand up bloke. Pink bullets? Where'd you find those, you suppose? Not on Woman Wept, if that's what you're thinking. Come on, Rose, the past and pending? It's right in front of you!"
(She lets him into Torchwood late one night, the first time either of them have stepped foot in there, so he can use the database. The Shins come up clean. He seems put out.)
Coupons: He gets really wrapped up in coupons, Rose doesn't know how else to say it. "It's like a game, Rose! You have to figure it out! You have to figure out how you win and get biscuits for free!" When the cupboards start overflowing with those free biscuits, she begins to suspect, and takes his psychic paper.
"Not for robbing banks, not for duplicating coupons," but she's smiling when she says it.
Driving: He'd sit, anxious and fidgeting, like a complete nutter, in the passenger seat. He'd fiddle with knobs, switch the radio on and off, blink her hazard lights and crank the air. She trades in for a manual transmission and lets him drive.
Sometimes, still, he rolls the windows down and sticks his arm out, cutting hills and valleys in the air with his hand.
Home improvement: He fixes the front door, looks nice doing it. He tans like a man, the hair on his arms lightening, a burnt gold that's almost inhuman (is inhuman), and it makes his forearms look wiry and strong. When he clenches his fist around a normal screwdriver, knocking himself into the door jamb, muscles flaring under the skin, it feels like someone has knuckled her in the stomach. Or slightly lower.
There's other stuff, too, less definable, more like the quiet moments of other people's relationships. But this is Rose's relationship, with the Doctor, and it's changing every day.
She watches him watch TV, eyelids dropping closed. He squeezes them shut and pops them back open, trying to wake himself up. He rubs it at his eyes and turns it in to a rub at his nose, too, like he's trying to play it off, being knackered, like anyone is watching.
She's watching, she always is, but she can't tell if he knows.
The flat starts to look like a home, starting with clutter. Her shit is just -- all over. You live alone, you live confused and depressed, and you keep a meticulous house because it's something you can control. But when you're not alone anymore, and you're happy now, and you're Rose, stuff just starts pilling up. It's not dirty, not at all, just her stuff, spilling out everywhere.
She goes to clean it up one day and realizes his is mixed in. His button down. His trainers. His sweets wrappers. His glasses case.
The first time she curls into the couch and can smell him on the cushions, it's like something shifts in her chest. It doesn't click into place, it's always been there, now it's just making itself comfortable.
&&.
Part Two.
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: R/Mature? Language and sexy situations.
words: 12,293.
disclaimer: Fiction, with characters that are not mine, in case that, somehow, wasn't clear.
spoiler alert: Through Journey's End.
notes: I don't think I've ever written a 12,000-word fic before, and certainly not as my first entry into a fandom. That said, all I've been able to think about for weeks is life after Bad Wolf Bay and life stuck in one spot, and life stuck together (which I realize is several years after everyone else had these thoughts). And then I started lurking the fic, and by extension, the challenges at then_theres_us, which I'm going to assume is an OK thing to do? Enthusiastic challenge lurking? Hopefully? And -- this happened. Huge, terrific thank you to weasleytook for a lightning quick turnaround on a beta when I was two-thirds into the story and was worried no one would recognize the characters as I see them. (This fic is complete, it just had to be split into two parts for livejournal's character limits!)
The thing about traveling with all of time and space at her disposal is that Rose never had to do the same thing twice.
It was a life of firsts.
The first time she watched Columbus ask for money for a voyage across an ocean.
The first time she saw David Beckham kick a football, all childish grace and floppy blond hair, skinned knees and a too-big jumper.
The first time an alien hugged her, squeezing so hard her back popped, because he was just so happy she was alive.
The thing about settling down with a man whose whole life was built around having all of time and space at his disposal is that the firsts become so quiet, so slight, that she can't decide if it's worth it to note them at all.
(The thing about being human though, is that she does.)
&&.
On a zeppelin silently cutting its way through the clouds of a world that is not Rose's, and not the Doctor's, but is for now, at least, they hold hands.
This gesture, this tiny physical connection, is not a first, not with the Doctor, not even with this new, old, Doctor. She can still hear the way the sound of the TARDIS leaving slipped through the noise of the water crashing, over the noise of the blood in her ears -- but there's a new element, a little first knitted together within the clasp of body parts.
Their fingers are twined together. Normal Doctor/Rose hand-holding protocol dictates that their fingers go around, cupping and folded over. But they'd sat next to each other on the ship, facing a window, and then his hand was resting on her thigh, just barely touching, but with such a weight restrained behind it.
There was so much pressure sparking from his fingertips that she'd taken his hand just so she didn't have to watch it shake, almost hovering over the fabric of her trousers.
She'd laced their fingers together and rested them back down on her thigh.
"It'll be fine," Rose says, eyes fixed on some point beyond the window. Another zeppelin, maybe. She isn't concentrating.
Are these the first words she's spoken to him since the beach? She couldn't say.
He turns his head to look at her, she can see out of the corner of her eye, but he keeps his shoulders squared straight.
"Of course," he says.
And there, between their palms, is a first. The first time it's not just her sweat-slicked hand dampening their grip. It's his hand, too. Warm and wet and (part) human.
Things are easier to hold on to when they're dry, but as the ship begins its descent, Rose remembers she likes a challenge.
&&.
She's not going to live on a fucking manor. She was never going to live on a manor. That Jackie Tyler lives on a manor is confusing enough -- the image of her mother descending grand staircases in palatial homes, a constant reminder that this isn't their world. Not their real one.
So Rose had found a flat, a cozy little thing like she'd have rented at home, and she'd set about forcing it to be -- home, that is.
There are posters on the walls, pictures in frame, each precisely level. There are candles and knick-knacks and meticulously stocked shelves of food.
There is -- absolutely no heart.
Rose fits the key into the lock of her home and the Doctor shifts his weight behind her.
"This all right?" He says, and she can tell he's gestured at the door, at the space behind it and his intrusion on it.
"Why wouldn't it be?" She twists the doorknob and shoulders the door open, a little grunt as it sticks.
"Maybe you're used to living alone now." The Doctor's voice sounds normal, conversational even, and she's taken aback. If this is a game, this pretending it's not weird, not totally nuts, he's surely winning.
Rose hates to lose though.
"Eh," she shrugs. "Could use a man around, to do manly things. Like fix that bloody door, for one."
His hand goes to his jacket and then falls quickly. No sonic in there, not anymore.
Her heart flips and settles in her knees.
Rose offers to make something to eat, offers to let him be in charge of the telly, offers to buy him the best goddamn telescope in the whole (alternate) world, but he goes to bed.
"Human dreams, that'll be new!" And he's down the hallway, pointing a finger at the door of the spare room, a question in his eyes. She nods and he ducks inside.
&&.
It's been two cups of tea since the Doctor went to bed and Rose has flipped over the handful of words they've said to each other, this new man and her, a million times.
He loves her on the beach, he's quiet on the ship, he's enthusiastic in her flat.
What she really decides is: he's pretending.
The only thing she can pick up from any of their interactions is a current of restraint. He's holding something back. His anger at his other self. His anger at her. His sanity slowly cracking. Something.
And all of the sudden her temper swells.
She's pretty properly fucked here, too. No need to dance on eggshells around it. They can talk about this like grown ups.
Is he the man she loves? Is she worth being tied to a planet for? What are they going to do when they get old?
&&.
When he was gone, and she was stuck here, she wore a watch every day. Hung clocks in every room in her house. She thought about getting one tattooed on the smooth, pale skin on the inside of her forearm, but the fit Jackie would've thrown wasn't worth it.
Still, she'd forced order, forced reminders of linear time everywhere she could. Dedicated her life to saying 'Fuck you' to the Doctor. Fuck you for not finding a way around this. Fuck you for making me do all the work.
Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.
She'd told him in home decor, wrist accessories, and, on days she felt fancy (or masochistic), a fob watch. She opened it and opened it, hoping for her life to fall out.
Time is everywhere, it is controlled and it is unwavering and she just hates him so fucking much.
She's standing in Tesco one night and she thinks, dumbly holding a sack of potatoes, that who she's really mad at, is herself.
She watches a little boy get his foot run over by a trolley and he screams, drops to his knees, rages at the wheels, and then stops to yell at his foot for hurting, too.
And there it is -- that what she's really mad about is that she will die and her flesh will become dirt (tattoo would have done, too) and he'll still be out there.
The watch she was wearing that day was some cheap thing. She'd gotten it for 20 quid at a shop down the way, but it normally kept time better than some of the ones she splurged on with Pete's money.
Even so, the battery was dying, hands getting stopped up, and it was cold on her wrist the whole way home. She'd taken it off that night, crushed it under her heel.
She'd look up when she was done, checking, and hoping. But the watch had died and time had continued.
(Because you can't stop time, and you can't bend it to your will.)
When the (new) Doctor wakes up the next morning, he walks in to see her in the kitchen, just his boxers on, clutching the clock from the wall in his room.
He extends his arm, fingers wrapped around the cheap plastic of the frame, "This can't be right, can it?"
&&.
Rose has triple-checked every clock in the house by the time he gets done showering. They're all telling perfect time.
(They're all wrong.)
When he joins her back in the kitchen, he's redressed in his blue suit and his hair is just the slightest bit off, feathered and light.
"What's with --" She gestures at the top of his head.
He rolls his eyes up, like he's trying to see, and she laughs before she means to.
"A cupboard full of hair grooming products and not one thing of wax."
"We'll buy you some today, we've got to go out anyway. You can't wear that suit for the rest of your life."
She does not think about how he only has one life now. She does not think about how he's spending it with her.
&&.
The interesting thing about this new Doctor, about this Doctor who has to be human now, even if he's not fully, is how he gets to decide the person he wants to be. More than most people, anyway.
He gets to decide if this man he is pushes past the bite and burn of good alcohol and into really appreciating it.
(They stop in a pub on the high street before shopping. He makes a face at almost every drink, but ends up downing two pints and a basket of chips anyway.)
He gets to decide if this man maybe dresses to the right instead of the left -- although Rose suspects this is something blokes just don't go around changing. That's probably a biology thing, right?
(Inside a store, the first pair of trousers he tries on is so tight, she can just see the outline of him underneath the zip. She blushes and tells him to try the next size up. He looks down at his crotch and back to her and his smile is so big, so embarrassingly big, that her stomach knots itself low in her abdomen and she doesn't think at all about the wardrobe room on the TARDIS, she doesn't think about anything except what that zipper would sound like as she lowered it.)
He gets to decide if he becomes the man he once was.
(At their last stop of the day, he'd bought a leather jacket. He'd shrugged, "Maybe I can be him again, too, now." It did and it didn't make sense all at once, and anyway, it was sad. Later, she finds it crumpled in the corner of the couch, tucked down into the cushions, like he'd thrown it there, and made himself comfortable, refusing to acknowledge the jacket anymore.
She wears it around after he goes to bed that night, just slightly too long, but not so baggy anywhere else to look silly. He's a lean little wanker. She wears it and it's almost like she's carrying around parts of all the men she loves, the one man she loves.
She sets it aside to return it, because this man is new.)
&&.
He changes his outfit four times the next morning, tearing through all the new clothes, a walking Ben Sherman advert, ripping tags off like he's claiming ownership. Slim black jumper and skinny fit corduroys, into a cardigan and almost-too-tight jeans, into plaid shorts and a t-shirt, and then back to the jumper and cords.
He's preening and his hair is perfect and he smells good, smells like alien and well-groomed human, and it's not an ache in her chest, but it's something like want.
Rose should go back to work, today, tomorrow, soon. She should go back to the shop, with its little back room passageway to Torchwood, and she should go back to her life. And she would, except this is her life now, and she has enough money to live until the end of it.
(Thanks, Dad.)
Instead, she sits next to the Doctor on the couch and watches as he flips through channels on the telly, all lanky grace and masculine sprawl. There's still something there, still something that has to break, but maybe they can just chip way at it. Maybe it'll dissolve on its own.
She's just zoned out when he nudges her shoulder, "Rose. Rose! This movie is about traveling trousers. Traveling trousers! Brilliant!"
Rose squints at the screen and watches as teenage American girls parade around in their outfits like the Doctor had done this morning.
"They're not even cute," Rose says. "The trousers, I mean."
The Doctor smiles and take a breath and Rose can feel it. He's going to tell a story, he's going to be the Doctor.
"I'm sure I don't have to tell you that traveling trousers are a real thing and they're not so form-fitting or polite. Take control of your legs, run you into walls, not very nice, those trousers."
A few hours later and he's fallen asleep on the couch, legs bent at the knees and feet flat on the ground. He's slumping into himself a little bit, chin to chest and tilted some. She can't decide if she wants to give him a slap, or give him a hug, and she's not sure if either of those emotions are actually for him.
When he wakes, he does it slowly, a rarity for him -- normally startled and on his feet in seconds. He goes to rub his eyes and forget he's wearing his glasses. He smashes his fingers to the lens, leaving smudges in their wake.
She doesn't hug him, but she smiles.
&&.
It's that night, their third night in this flat, in this world, in this funny little relationship, that it spills over.
She's curled up in her bed, reading a book, when she sees it on the opposite wall.
A bug.
It's not that she's afraid of bugs, she's afraid of very few things, this new Rose Tyler, it's just --
This might not even be a bug, right?
(Or it might be one of those that bites you in your sleep.)
It looked like something she'd seen as a girl, crawling across the counter while her mum made tea. And if this were last week, or last month, or last year, she'd have dealt with it herself. But now she has him here, and what's the harm, right?
The bug skitters up the wall, toward the ceiling.
"If you don't stop moving before I can get the Doctor, I'll come after you myself, and I'm less forgiving," she tilts her head up toward the ceiling and makes her voice sound commanding.
Maybe the bug had heard about her, heard about the Daleks, because that just seems to make it move faster. It scrambles into a corner.
"Stay there," she says warningly, climbing slowly out of bed, out of her room and into the hallway.
She hesitates at the shut door in front of her, the door to her spare room. The Doctor's room. She taps quietly with her nail and waits.
Nothing.
She does it again, knuckles this time, and louder.
Nothing.
She turns the knob in her hand and inches in the room, standing just inside the jamb.
"Bug," she whispers and he doesn't respond. She gets closer and repeats herself.
He's snoring softly and she says it a final time, voice slightly raised.
"Bug."
The Doctor opens his eyes blearily, "What?"
"There's a bug. In my room," she tries to keep her tone level, like this is totally normal. Like this isn't the most domestic thing that's ever happened to them.
He climbs out of bed, clad only in his boxers again. He scratches the flat of his stomach, his hair, and Rose feels her skin go warm, pinpricks ghosting across it.
She leads him into her room, keeping her eyes cast down.
(Steadfastly ignoring his feet, the high arches of them, the light dusting of hair, the short, clean toenails. She doesn't even like feet, what's this all about? Doctor feet or no, she is not a hormonal child.)
He hesitates at the door, staring past into her bedroom, but she spots the bug again and grabs his hand, dragging him inside.
"There it is." She points with her free hand and tries to look concerned.
He tightens his grip around her, just for the briefest second, like she's almost imagining it, and then he squints at the bug and drops her hand.
"That, Rose Tyler, is a regular, Earth-variety spider. Not much special, except how they'll bite." He snaps his teeth down, clicking them together.
The noise makes her shiver and she almost decides she wants that spider dead. She wants to leave its little body on the small porch of her flat, to send a message. This is Rose Tyler's place and she is not to be fucked with.
Instead the Doctor walks to her night table, picks up and drinks from the water glass she'd left there. It's strangely intimate, the first time he'd had a part-human immune system and willingly exposed himself to her human germs.
(Well, the first time after that kiss -- which doesn't count as their first, she decides in a snap, still under the eyes of the other Doctor. Plus, growing from a hand, a Time Lord's severed hand, there's all sorts of regeneration -- generation? -- energy. He probably could've fought it off if she'd had a cold then.)
She turns back to the Doctor and he's just finishing the water, throat muscles working and Adam's apple bobbing, and she wants to lick at right there, bite down, but then he's pulling the glass back, wiping at his mouth with his hand.
He grabs a magazine sitting next to the table and lopes over to where the bug is. He cranes his neck and reaches up, trapping the bug under the glass and sliding the magazine between the glass and the wall. He tips the spider into the glass and It's carefully settled in the bottom now.
She follows as he walks into the living room, opening the door and setting the spider free on her send-a-message porch.
"Brilliant," she says. "Now it'll tell all its little bug friends that the Doctor's here and he's such a forgiving bloke, and they'll all come take up residence."
He blinks, something changing his face, "Ah, yes, forgiveness, such a bloody awful thing, right? We should all strive not to be so weak."
The Doctor turns on his heels and goes back to his room.
&&.
Rose waits a full 20 minutes, watching the minutes tick by on the clock in the kitchen, before she goes to his room.
She's not even sure what she's going to say, but they need to have a conversation, a real conversation. Maybe something about how now it seems like everyday is the worst day of her life, and the best day of her life, and not a day at all, but a series of fluid movements only marked by his new, constant presence in her life, by the absence of time travel and death.
When she opens the door, not even bothering to knock, he's sitting on the edge of his bed, feet on the ground, elbows on his knees, and head in his hands, like he was waiting for her.
He's still just wearing his boxers, but he's pulled his cardigan on, leaving it unbuttoned, his chest bare underneath. There's a draft in his room she hadn't noticed before. It's an interesting juxtaposition, like some sort of sexy professor (-- not the first time she's had that thought about that body, but the first regarding this incarnation of it), and she's almost taken aback, almost put off enough to forget that he's mad at her.
"Isn't your race big into knocking?" He looks up at her, dropping his hands to his knees.
"Your race, too, now," and it's out of her mouth before she can stop it. Probably not the best way to start this conversation, diving headfirst in.
"Right." He fixes her with a stare, his jaw clenching after the word.
"Listen, just tell me what I should ask for forgiveness for, and I'll do it," She crosses her arms around her stomach.
It's not what she wants, this giving in. She kind of wants to get into a row, a loud one, but since she can't figure out what she'd fight about with him, this him, this seems easier.
He barks out a short laugh, "You think I need to forgive you?"
"Well, what else would this be about? You need to forgive me for tearing universes apart, starting this whole thing. The Daleks -- " She trails off. "And now you're stuck here. And human."
Her breath comes out in a large exhale, she hadn't realized she was holding all that in, thought she'd buried it far enough in her conscience. Thought they could just -- forget.
The Doctor stands from his spot on the bed, crosses over to where she's standing and gently uses his hands to uncross her arms.
"Rose, I'm not going to forgive you for anything."
She sighs, "Your TARDIS, too. He has the TARDIS. I'm so sorry."
"You didn't do anything wrong."
He's still holding her hands, both of them sweating despite the chill in the air, and suddenly she's dizzy and frustrated.
"Then what is this?!" She yanks her hands away, gesturing back and forth between them. "What is the problem?"
And, ah, there it is. She can hear the row creeping around the edges of the room, waiting to strike.
"I'm trying to do this proper!" His Adam's apple bobs and this time she doesn't want to lick it, but she watches it anyway.
"Do what?"
"Be with you, be half-human, be me." He almost looks, fuck, he almost looks scared.
"You are you, Doctor." She tries to make the word, the name, heavy, make it seem like she means it.
(She does.)
"How can you know that? I only have one heart. I -- I can die. And I have almost a thousand years of memories spinning around in a body that, that, that I can't even control."
"What are you trying to control?"
"Do you know how inefficiently humans process liquid? I'm in the bathroom every other minute, it's mad."
He sounds so frustrated that she tries, she really does, not to laugh.
"You're upset because you're spending extra time in the loo?"
He must realize how bonkers that sounds, because the smallest of smiles pulls at his mouth before he sets it straight again.
"There's more -- you wore that skirt the other day, and when you sat on the couch, Rose -- that wasn't very ladylike, how you sat, I'm sorry -- and I felt, I saw," he looks at her chest, her waist, and flicks his eyes back to hers a second later.
Now she really has to laugh, and she does, huffing out a small, amused sound.
"I thought the meta-crisis was causing some sort of existential crisis and really you're just angry that you piss too much and you're attracted to the girl you're going to spend your life with?"
He looks startled for a moment, like he hadn't expected her to dismiss his fears so easily. He ducks his head, speaks softly, "Well, I miss the TARDIS, too."
She watches him toe at the carpeting and feels a rush of warmth.
"Of course you do, and probably Donna, as well," She studiously ignores the look that passes over his face on her name -- there's more to that story than she's heard, some horrible ending she can't foresee for Doctor Donna.
She charges back in, "What I love though -- "
There's another first, the first profession of love by her, to this new him. His eyes widen and she knows he caught it, too.
" -- What I love," she repeats, "It wasn't here," she sets her hand over where his second heart would be, feeling skin and the soft wool of the cardigan under her fingers, the absence of a heartbeat.
"Or here," she pats the space his sonic would've been kept.
"It was -- here." And she touches her fingertips to his temple, but that's not it, it's not enough.
She pulls her hand back, "It's here," she spreads her fingers apart and palms his face, feels his nose against her hand, feels it when he smiles before she pulls her hand away.
"This is a good one, isn't it? Better than those ears last time, that nose."
His face isn't what she was talking about, and she's sure he knows it, but she sticks up for it anywhere, the face of her first Doctor. "I liked those ears, and the nose."
"You're daft," he's smiling broadly now. "Did you know I was blond before? We could've passed for siblings, you and me. The snogging would get awkward though, for other people."
This isn't over, she knows, but it's enough for now. They don't need to talk about how she's worried he'll die, or get bored, or get hurt. How maybe he'll wake up and decide he isn't the Doctor, not anymore. They don't need to talk about all the things they could be doing, should be doing, now that they have this finite forever.
There'll be time later. She casts a glance at the clock on his wall and he looks guilty.
There are six extra hands.
&&.
She sleeps in late the next morning, struggling to keep her eyes open even as she finally crawls out of bed. She hears the Doctor across the hall, he must've just woken up, too. His door opens, then the one to bathroom.
It slams into her then, the most trivial parts of the conversation the night before, his bathroom habits. She realizes, startled, that he would pee standing up, like a man. She knew he'd used the washroom before -- he had, right? Or did she just assume? -- but now, apparently, he'll get up in the morning, and go to the bathroom. Like a normal person. She puts it together, the noise of him raising the seat, a flush a few moments later, the sound of washing up. The Doctor has a dick. He pees like a bloke. He is a bloke.
Her thought process is so, so fucked up.
By the time they meet up in the kitchen, she's forcibly stopped herself from thinking about his dick, and started realizing they have a little bit of a routine. First stop: the kitchen.
"What do you want to do today?" She figures he's probably itching to explore, have an adventure or something. They haven't left the flat much since they went shopping, only to pick up takeaway and DVD rentals. She's going a little crazy, too, cooped up, but it's the good kind of crazy, relaxed-on-a-holiday crazy.
"Eat a proper breakfast? Out?" He looks hopeful and she realizes they must be out of bread for toast.
"Sure, I'll even buy," she winks at him.
"I can b --" He stops, realizing he doesn't have any money. "I suppose I could rob a bank with the psychic paper. Money Inspector John Smith, eh?"
She watches him grin before she realizes what he's said -- not the crime part, that's just talking, but -- "You got the psychic paper?"
"'Course, I knew what he was going to do, my pockets are full of stuff. I haven't even looked, just emptied some drawers before we got to the beach."
"Let's save it," Rose blurts out, suddenly very excited. "Not the psychic paper, we'll come up with something for that, but the other stuff. Save it for Christmas or birthdays -- we'll know when they are now, mine at least. It'll be a great surprise!"
The Doctor practically beams at her.
&&.
By the time they've reached their table for breakfast, the Doctor has winked at no less than seven people.
He is just fucking winking at everybody.
"Do you have something in your eye or were you really flirting with the hostess, the cab driver and Mrs. Goodsmith from next door. She's 88, you know."
"Ah, just a baby then," and he winks at Rose.
"Seriously, what is this?" She points at his eye.
"You winked this morning, it was endearing. I thought I'd make it work for me. I'm a bloke who winks now," he ends with another wink.
"You've winked before, I'm sure of it." She flips back through her memories, but can't place one.
"Oh yeah, of course, but it was always spur-of-the-moment, fly-by winking. It's going to be a thing now, get ready, Rose Tyler." A third wink.
&&.
Two days after he'd started with the winking, he abruptly outgrew the prescription in his glasses. After an Abbott & Costello routine ("I need a doctor!" "You are the Doctor!") and a lot of teasing where she explained how closely related winking and poor eyesight was for half-human/half-Time Lords, they'd gotten him new glasses.
He'd tried desperately to keep his old frames, the ones he'd lovingly snuck out of the TARDIS in his breast pocket, but they weren't even crafted on Earth -- the alternate or the real one -- and they couldn't pop the lenses out. He'd end up with a brand new pair, thicker frames, thicker lenses, and she almost felt sad. Like they were losing a part of something already.
Then he'd dramatically whipped the glasses from his face, biting on the end of the stem and looking for all the world like a debonair scoundrel, and she'd laughed.
&&.
The weeks stretched on and suddenly it'd been almost a month since they'd arrived back here, together.
There'd been no kissing, no sex, nothing but a few lingering hugs, sweaty hand-holding, and once, at dinner, as he'd reached for the salt, a slight graze of her chest. He'd blushed furiously and she'd smiled, knocking her knee into his under the table. She wasn't counting that as a first, not as it related to her chest anyway, maybe as it related to the color of his face, though.
Work had called asking after her -- the work through the secret passageway, not the shop. And she'd consulted on a case, the Doctor hovering over her shoulder as she took down the details.
She'd been on the phone only a few minutes, with him mouthing questions for her to ask the agent on the other end, when she put the mobile down and turned on the speaker.
"I've got --"
Rose mouthed to the Doctor, "John Smith?" He'd shrugged.
"-- John Smith, a consultant visiting from -- " she made a noise of static with her mouth. "He'll be helping me on this."
"Ah, Smith, pleasure to meet you," the voice on the other end of the phone said. "Pete Tyler mentioned you'd be joining us."
"Did he?" The Doctor cocked his head, looked flattered? Maybe? Rose couldn't tell.
They solved the case out of their flat, refusing, even for all the toys in Torchwood, to go in there yet. Such a weird load of memories tied to that place.
When another case came down, just a few days later, the Doctor had taken the call himself, explained what they needed to do, and to call if they couldn't find the parts.
He hung up the phone and turned to Rose. "You know they call me Smith? That's a proper nickname. I've never had a nickname before."
"That's not a nickname, that's your name."
"But when I use that, what I used that name, people called me John. This is like -- it's like mates. I can't take them traveling through space and time, but we can still be mates," he was almost just talking to himself, looking thoughtful and pleased.
"You did just tell them how to construct a very classified and advanced piece of technology to stop the whole landmass of Greenland from becoming sentient."
"Eh. I think it's mates."
&&.
Turns out, the Doctor was right: mates it was. The weekend rolled around and a few male agents Rose recognized stopped by her flat to get the Doctor.
"Can Smith come out and play, Rose? We owe him a pint for the help."
"Oi! I helped, too!" But she could already hear the Doctor behind her, lacing his trainers up.
The men had the good sense to look nervous though.
"Just us blokes tonight, Rose," one spoke up and Rose recognized it as Mickey. She gave him a wide smile -- and she was going to give him a warning, something about how they didn't know how 'Smith' could handle his liquor anymore, but the Doctor was charging past her, clearly having heard Mickey.
"Mickey, Mickey, Mickey!" The Doctor shouted, changing his voice on each version, "C'mere, you brilliant idiot!"
Rose watched as he pulled Mickey into a tight hug, not very manly, but very sincere. Mickey grinned at Rose over the Doctor's shoulder, Look at this welcome!
The other agents looked surprised and the Doctor released Mickey with a rough pat on the head, "Oh, me and Mr. Mickey we go way back, we worked together in --" Rose coughed right on time and the Doctor winked at her.
She tapped at her eyes, where glasses would be, and he stuck his tongue out at her.
(The next morning, the Doctor adds 'human hangovers' to his list of Worst Things In All of Space and Time. She reminds him that when he'd come in, at a quarter to 4, he'd told her, slurring and drunk, that he didn't need two hearts anymore, because she was his other heart. He adds 'sappy, sloshed rambling' to the list, too.)
&&.
There's a new routine after that, more than just breakfast. It's a routine of making routines.
Sometimes in the morning he wakes up happy and sometimes he wakes up grumpy. It's so unpredictable, in such a specific way, that she finds herself endeared and frustrated all at once.
They try their hand at normal everyday stuff, human stuff. Well, he does. She tries her hand at easing back into human life, while watching a brand new, fully grown human careen off the walls of the planet.
Video games: Forget it. The Doctor plays a thousand titles, soundtracking them all with commentary on how a race like that could be brought down properly, how they'd never die so dishonorably. His skinny fingers flying across the buttons, all knuckles and tapping. She'd had boys play video games before, but never like this, never with the talking and the movements, and how he's always a second away from losing interest. She never feels like she has to strut around starkers to get his attention.
(Although that would probably get more of it.)
Music: He gets really into The Shins, very, very quickly. He talks about how they know something, Rose. All these songs, they're not from Earth. Not even from this Earth. And they are definitely not to be trusted.
"Kissing the lipless?" He says, pursing his own lips. "Let me tell you -- I have kissed the lipless," He pauses just long enough to arch his eyebrows at her -- "Jealous?" -- "And it's not something you'd write a song about. A dirty limerick, maybe. But a song? Never. And Saint Simon, what a stand up bloke. Pink bullets? Where'd you find those, you suppose? Not on Woman Wept, if that's what you're thinking. Come on, Rose, the past and pending? It's right in front of you!"
(She lets him into Torchwood late one night, the first time either of them have stepped foot in there, so he can use the database. The Shins come up clean. He seems put out.)
Coupons: He gets really wrapped up in coupons, Rose doesn't know how else to say it. "It's like a game, Rose! You have to figure it out! You have to figure out how you win and get biscuits for free!" When the cupboards start overflowing with those free biscuits, she begins to suspect, and takes his psychic paper.
"Not for robbing banks, not for duplicating coupons," but she's smiling when she says it.
Driving: He'd sit, anxious and fidgeting, like a complete nutter, in the passenger seat. He'd fiddle with knobs, switch the radio on and off, blink her hazard lights and crank the air. She trades in for a manual transmission and lets him drive.
Sometimes, still, he rolls the windows down and sticks his arm out, cutting hills and valleys in the air with his hand.
Home improvement: He fixes the front door, looks nice doing it. He tans like a man, the hair on his arms lightening, a burnt gold that's almost inhuman (is inhuman), and it makes his forearms look wiry and strong. When he clenches his fist around a normal screwdriver, knocking himself into the door jamb, muscles flaring under the skin, it feels like someone has knuckled her in the stomach. Or slightly lower.
There's other stuff, too, less definable, more like the quiet moments of other people's relationships. But this is Rose's relationship, with the Doctor, and it's changing every day.
She watches him watch TV, eyelids dropping closed. He squeezes them shut and pops them back open, trying to wake himself up. He rubs it at his eyes and turns it in to a rub at his nose, too, like he's trying to play it off, being knackered, like anyone is watching.
She's watching, she always is, but she can't tell if he knows.
The flat starts to look like a home, starting with clutter. Her shit is just -- all over. You live alone, you live confused and depressed, and you keep a meticulous house because it's something you can control. But when you're not alone anymore, and you're happy now, and you're Rose, stuff just starts pilling up. It's not dirty, not at all, just her stuff, spilling out everywhere.
She goes to clean it up one day and realizes his is mixed in. His button down. His trainers. His sweets wrappers. His glasses case.
The first time she curls into the couch and can smell him on the cushions, it's like something shifts in her chest. It doesn't click into place, it's always been there, now it's just making itself comfortable.
&&.
Part Two.