DW Fic - Simmer Dim (1/18)
Title - Simmer Dim (1/18)
Author - joely_jo
Characters - Ten/Rose, Mickey, OCs
Rating - R (for language and adult content)
Summary - With the events of Doomsday just a distant memory, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith make a discovery that they cannot leave alone. But what they find will take Rose on a journey she never expected. Will she come to terms with what she’s faced with, or will the carefully constructed life she’s built for herself come crashing down?
Author’s Notes - I confess to a little recycling with this fic. The idea for this story actually began with the fic I wrote for the OSK Summer Lovin’ Ficathon, The Storm Inside, which in turn was inspired by watching the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood. I thought it would be interesting to look at what happened to Rose post-Doomsday, but also to try to portray what I perceive to be the unconditional attraction between the Doctor and Rose. I swore I was going to scale down my DW writing after Myths and Legends, but here we are again… It’s another long one, so I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to my betas sensiblecat and most especially aibhinn without whose reassurance I may never have worked up the guts to post this.
Chapter One
Quite how Rose Tyler ended up as the mother of a budding yachtsman remained something of a mystery to her. She had never been fond of the ocean and, beyond standing on a pier and admiring the view, she had avoided the sea as far as possible. And yet here she was, watching her son sail confidently aboard a 420 sailing dinghy.
It was easy enough to pinpoint the innocent beginnings of this situation. Two years ago, while on a holiday to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, an early evening walk down to the harbour had found Jonny spotting a couple of sailors getting ready to launch their boat. He had watched, fascinated, as the two men prepared the vessel, then offered to take him out for a short sail. “Oh, please, Mum, please!” he’d begged and she’d reluctantly agreed, planting herself firmly on the edge of the jetty and trying not to bite her nails as her son lost himself in ecstasy for nearly an hour.
The next thing she knew, Rose was spending every spare moment down at the Llanishen and Cardiff Bay Sailing Centre and handing over a regular £15 so Jonny could exercise his skills with a competent instructor. It was the only way she could stomach the thought of her only child sitting with nothing but an inch of tempered plastic between him and the deep blue sea. But Jonny loved sailing and Rose loved to see him happy, so she wasn’t about to deny him this pleasure just because of her insecurity around water.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Rose’s life: she was highly respected in her job, had a four-bedroom detached house on the outskirts of the city, a BMW and took two holidays a year. It was the sort of dream she had never really dared to imagine for herself, least of all when she’d been growing up on a London council estate, and for the most part she was happy with her picture book lifestyle. She only wished that she’d been given a choice.
To some extent, though, she knew she had. It was just that what she’d chosen had wound up with her being a single working mother. She’d tried to do her best to live a fantastic life, just as he’d wanted her to, but the truth was that no matter what she did with her days, she always felt his absence. In the mornings when she danced through the monotonous routine of getting ready for work and school, wishing the Doctor was there to wow her with his latest amazing plans. During the day when she sat in her office at the ever-growing Torchwood Institute, repeatedly signing papers and studying tedious files. And in the evening, when she sat on the sofa after Jonny had gone to bed and realised that she was watching the same programme she watched every night, in the same position with the same cup of tea in her hand.
For years she’d silently cursed the cruel hand of fate. If she’d been asked at nineteen where she wanted to be in ten years time, she would never have said that she wanted to spend quiet evenings at home minding her child; oh no, Rose Tyler had wanted wild adventures on alien planets and the glorious uncertainty of life with the Doctor.
But, for the sake of her sanity and her son, Rose had resolved to make the most of what she’d got.
Jonny and his instructor Ben were now nothing more than a white shape shifting across the water at a speed she was convinced was unsafe, and she raised her binoculars to watch them. She watched nervously as Jonny, attached by trapeze wire, began to hang perilously over the side of the boat, tilting it to maintain its centre of gravity as the wind billowed in the sails.
He was just nine years old and looked no different from any other boy of that age, but when anybody spent time with him, it became obvious that he had a presence and intelligence far beyond his years, something Rose knew could only have be drawn from the Doctor. Jonny was independent and imaginative and had the sort of curiosity about the world that meant he was constantly getting himself into trouble, although he never meant to. In many ways, from his unruly brown hair to his ability to look at her and make her heart beat just a little faster, Jonny was his father’s son, even though every clandestine test Mickey had ordered on him had failed to establish anything more than a slightly hybridised DNA structure and an IQ of 147.
The harbour was filling with returning boats as the afternoon sank into evening. She lowered the binoculars. She was glad that Jonny had found this outlet for himself; before he’d had a significant hobby, he’d proven himself to be something of a challenge in the parenting stakes. Even now, if he didn’t get to sail because the weather was bad, he would be almost unmanageable, like a spring with too much potential energy, chattering madly and zooming about the house pretending to be on board some lightweight laser. But, although he sometimes tested her to her limits, Rose rarely found him tiresome, in fact, she actually enjoyed his enthusiasm and sometimes found herself getting swept up in it, just like she used to do with the Doctor.
Footsteps echoed on the jetty and she snapped out of her thoughts to turn towards them. “I take it by the fact that you’re here that Jonny behaved himself at school this week, then.” She laughed softly and patted the ground next to her. Mickey crouched down but did not sit.
“Well, we had one incident where he tried to set the teacher straight about the thermodynamics of copper, but other than that, yes, he’s been good. I think poor old Mrs. Evans is beginning to rue the day she pointed Jonny in the direction of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
Mickey chuckled, then was quiet. His eyes drifted upwards to where Ben and Jonny were taking a last leisurely circle around the harbour and he smiled. Rose watched him from the corner of her eye. She really was incredibly grateful for his continued presence in her life. Over the last nine years, Mickey had stood by her through the dark days after she’d been separated from the Doctor, when depression had threatened to drag her under and she’d faced criticism from her mother and Pete when she’d chosen to keep Jonny. And he’d been there for her son from day one, watching everything from first words to stuttering performances in primary school nativity plays, as good a surrogate father as she could ever hope for.
“Been busy?” Rose asked him, even though the question was largely redundant. It was rare that Mickey wasn’t busy. He’d worked behind a desk ever since he had picked up a back injury out in the field, and the promotions had kept rattling in - deputy director of Torchwood One, then seven months ago, director in charge of Torchwood Three. In short, Mickey Smith was the darling of the governing body.
“Oh yeah,” Mickey replied wearily. He stood up as his back began to niggle him and stretched. “I had three meetings before lunch today and I thought the last one wasn’t going to end. Some bloody bore from the City going on about figures I knew about two weeks ago.”
“Poor you,” Rose mocked. “I’d feel sorry for you but the six-figure salary kind of deflates my sympathy levels.”
Mickey smiled. “By the way, when I was down in London, I ended up talking to some bloke called Adam Sulkowski about you. He remembered you from way back.”
A frown crossed Rose’s face as she tried to remember. It was indeed a long while since she’d worked down in the capital, nine years to be exact, and now that she thought about it, there had been hundreds of names and faces from those days. She’d left after Jonny was born, unable to face the memories that Canary Wharf held, and headed to Cardiff, where she had been shocked but pleased to discover an alternate Jack in this world, a Jack who was all too willing to accept her as a colleague. “Hm,” she said. “I can’t honestly remember who he is, but…” She shrugged.
“Don’t worry about it, Rose,” he dismissed easily. “Probably just one of the many admirers you picked up back then. They were all a bit star-struck as I remember.” He elbowed her and winked and Rose blushed, dropping her head. She’d had a couple of partners after Jonny’s birth, one she’d thought she might marry, but none of them had ever really measured up to her memory of the Doctor and it had been years since she’d shared her bed with anyone except her son.
A companionable silence fell for a moment, then Mickey sighed, “Oh well, it might be worth looking this bloke up anyway. He seemed friendly.”
Rose glanced at Mickey. She knew what he was trying to do. He’d long given up hoping to persuade her to marry him, but every so often he tried to convince her that sampling the variety of men who expressed an interest in her was a good thing. “Mickey,” she began, then paused, wondering how best to explain to him what she felt. “I know you mean well, but I can’t… I won’t. I’ve done it, tried it all and nothing’s quite the same. You know that. I can’t be with someone who’s second best.”
Mickey simply nodded in resignation. “I know.”
The weeks from Canary Wharf to Darlig Ulv Stranden had found Rose on a mission. She’d searched desperately for a way to get back to the Doctor, convinced that if she just worked hard enough and long enough, she’d eventually find a way to break back through the barrier between the universes. But after the trip to Norway, and the Doctor’s fervent assurances that she would never see him again, something in her had died, to the point that Mickey had wondered where the vital and beautiful girl he knew and loved had gone to. He remained convinced that the only thing that had saved her had been the sudden realisation that the sickness and missed periods she was suffering from were caused by more than simple stress.
Despite the complicated feelings he had for the Doctor, Mickey would be forever grateful to him for leaving Rose with the tiny squalling bundle of joy that was Jonathan Michael Tyler, even if he never knew it.
The sound of a sail clinking caused them both to look up and Rose saw that Jonny and Ben were mooring the boat beside the jetty. She climbed to her feet and stood with hands on hips waiting for her son to finish up. Jonny was grinning from ear to ear as he slung the trailing ropes into the boat for Ben to coil up, then hopped onto the jetty and galloped towards Rose and Mickey. “Hey, Mum, were you watching?” he exclaimed, jumping up and down on the spot. “Ben said I was great. Wasn’t I, Ben?”
The brawny sailing instructor inclined his head of wavy blonde curls towards Rose and smiled tolerantly. “He was really good out there, Miss Tyler. If I didn’t know better I’d say that boy had the sea in his blood.”
Rose laughed at that. “Yeah, well, I can tell you right now that if he has he didn’t get it from me.”
“You should try going solo soon, Jonny,” Ben said, giving Jonny’s hair a tousle.
“Oh, really?” Jonny’s eyes became saucers. “Could I, Mum? Please?”
“I don’t know… maybe next year, when you’re a bit bigger. I don’t want you to hurt yourself out there.”
Ben nodded and began to walk away, wisely deciding to leave the difference in opinion well alone. Jonny seemed to sense that his mother was struggling with the concept of him taking charge of a boat on his own, so he ran ahead to use some of his pocket money buying ice-cream from the van on the bay road. Rose followed him, Mickey falling into step beside her.
“He’s a good lad, Rose,” Mickey said after a few moment’s silence. “He wouldn’t ask to do anything he didn’t think he could cope with.”
Rose said nothing for a moment. Jonny was growing up so fast and Rose couldn’t help herself considering whether he would continue developing as humanly as he had so far done. Jonny was obviously brighter than the other children his age, but he wasn’t yet unique enough to stand out too much from the crowd. But, every year that went past found Rose thinking more and more about how much easier this would be if Jonny had the Doctor’s knowledge and experience to learn from first hand, rather than just her vague tales of some mysterious alien who just happened to be his father.
She’d long ago come to accept that she was going to have to do the best job she could on her own. Jonny would never know his father, even though she had shown him all the pictures of him that had been on her phone when she’d been sucked into this universe and told him every story of their adventures she could think of. Rose had kept her stories honest by convincing herself that Jonny deserved the truth if he was never going to meet the Doctor, and Jonny was intelligent enough to understand that blabbing that his father was an alien to his school mates would be a Very Bad Thing.
But it was hard, and sometimes everything came tumbling down when she looked into her son’s bedroom and saw familiar lines in his sleeping face.
“Rose, you fancy having some dinner tonight?” Mickey’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I thought we’d grab some take away. Chinese, maybe? I know Jonny likes that.”
Rose turned to him and smiled. He really was far too good to them. “We’d love that, Mickey.”
As if on cue, Jonny came bounding back towards them, an already half-eaten ice-cream cone in his fist, still grinning. She flung her arm around her son’s thin, wiry shoulders and kissed his head, breathing in the smell of salt from the sea. “Hey, kiddo. Back so soon?” Mickey teased.
“Hey, Mickey,” Jonny replied, flashing Mickey the same broad smile he’d just shown Rose.
“Jonny, Mickey was just asking us if we wanted some take away tonight. Do you fancy that?”
Jonny nodded eagerly. “Can I have special chow mein?”
“You can have whatever you want.”
“Steady,” Rose warned Mickey. “I don’t want him being spoiled.”
“That’s not spoiling him,” Mickey objected. “I’m just being nice to him.”
Jonny grinned and Rose narrowed her eyes at him, already feeling her resolve melting. Just like his father, she never could resist that smile for long. She sighed. “All right, all right. But watch your eyes aren’t bigger than your belly. I don’t want to be eating heated up Chinese food for three days like we had to last time.”
Mickey and Jonny winked at each other conspiratorially. They’d reached where the cars were parked and Mickey disarmed the alarm on his Porsche and opened the door. “You wanna ride with me, Jonny?” he asked, to which Rose rolled her eyes and agreed. “You have to jump out and collect the food, though. Think you can do that?”
“Sure I can. I am nine you know,” Jonny admonished. He leaped into the passenger seat of the Porsche, strapped himself in and slammed the door shut.
Rose shot her son a warning look that told him to behave himself in her absence. Mickey grinned and leaned on the low-slung roof of the car. A moment of silence passed, then he spoke, “Rose, listen, will you do something for me?”
She stopped fishing around for her car keys in her handbag and looked at him. His face was serious and she frowned, wondering what he wanted. “Yeah?”
Mickey scuffed his shoe in the dust. “Will you pop into work tomorrow? I know it’s Saturday, but there’s something I have to talk to you about.”
“Can’t we talk about it tonight?” she asked, confused.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He paused and looked at the ground. “I need to talk to you alone. And there’s some things at the office I need.” Her frown deepened. “It’s fine, Rose,” he reassured. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
Rose stared at him for a moment, unsure of why he was insisting on this strange dance, but knowing that whatever it was, it was important to Mickey to do it this way. She nodded, “Okay, I’ll be there. Nine thirty?”
“Yeah, that’ll be good.” He cleared his throat, glancing back to Jonny, who was fiddling with the buttons on the dashboard of the Porsche. “Same as usual from the Chinese, yes?” he said as he stepped around the bonnet and moved to the driver’s side.
“Same as usual,” she agreed.
To be continued...
Author - joely_jo
Characters - Ten/Rose, Mickey, OCs
Rating - R (for language and adult content)
Summary - With the events of Doomsday just a distant memory, Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith make a discovery that they cannot leave alone. But what they find will take Rose on a journey she never expected. Will she come to terms with what she’s faced with, or will the carefully constructed life she’s built for herself come crashing down?
Author’s Notes - I confess to a little recycling with this fic. The idea for this story actually began with the fic I wrote for the OSK Summer Lovin’ Ficathon, The Storm Inside, which in turn was inspired by watching the episodes Human Nature and Family of Blood. I thought it would be interesting to look at what happened to Rose post-Doomsday, but also to try to portray what I perceive to be the unconditional attraction between the Doctor and Rose. I swore I was going to scale down my DW writing after Myths and Legends, but here we are again… It’s another long one, so I hope you enjoy it!
Many thanks to my betas sensiblecat and most especially aibhinn without whose reassurance I may never have worked up the guts to post this.
Chapter One
Quite how Rose Tyler ended up as the mother of a budding yachtsman remained something of a mystery to her. She had never been fond of the ocean and, beyond standing on a pier and admiring the view, she had avoided the sea as far as possible. And yet here she was, watching her son sail confidently aboard a 420 sailing dinghy.
It was easy enough to pinpoint the innocent beginnings of this situation. Two years ago, while on a holiday to Cowes on the Isle of Wight, an early evening walk down to the harbour had found Jonny spotting a couple of sailors getting ready to launch their boat. He had watched, fascinated, as the two men prepared the vessel, then offered to take him out for a short sail. “Oh, please, Mum, please!” he’d begged and she’d reluctantly agreed, planting herself firmly on the edge of the jetty and trying not to bite her nails as her son lost himself in ecstasy for nearly an hour.
The next thing she knew, Rose was spending every spare moment down at the Llanishen and Cardiff Bay Sailing Centre and handing over a regular £15 so Jonny could exercise his skills with a competent instructor. It was the only way she could stomach the thought of her only child sitting with nothing but an inch of tempered plastic between him and the deep blue sea. But Jonny loved sailing and Rose loved to see him happy, so she wasn’t about to deny him this pleasure just because of her insecurity around water.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with Rose’s life: she was highly respected in her job, had a four-bedroom detached house on the outskirts of the city, a BMW and took two holidays a year. It was the sort of dream she had never really dared to imagine for herself, least of all when she’d been growing up on a London council estate, and for the most part she was happy with her picture book lifestyle. She only wished that she’d been given a choice.
To some extent, though, she knew she had. It was just that what she’d chosen had wound up with her being a single working mother. She’d tried to do her best to live a fantastic life, just as he’d wanted her to, but the truth was that no matter what she did with her days, she always felt his absence. In the mornings when she danced through the monotonous routine of getting ready for work and school, wishing the Doctor was there to wow her with his latest amazing plans. During the day when she sat in her office at the ever-growing Torchwood Institute, repeatedly signing papers and studying tedious files. And in the evening, when she sat on the sofa after Jonny had gone to bed and realised that she was watching the same programme she watched every night, in the same position with the same cup of tea in her hand.
For years she’d silently cursed the cruel hand of fate. If she’d been asked at nineteen where she wanted to be in ten years time, she would never have said that she wanted to spend quiet evenings at home minding her child; oh no, Rose Tyler had wanted wild adventures on alien planets and the glorious uncertainty of life with the Doctor.
But, for the sake of her sanity and her son, Rose had resolved to make the most of what she’d got.
Jonny and his instructor Ben were now nothing more than a white shape shifting across the water at a speed she was convinced was unsafe, and she raised her binoculars to watch them. She watched nervously as Jonny, attached by trapeze wire, began to hang perilously over the side of the boat, tilting it to maintain its centre of gravity as the wind billowed in the sails.
He was just nine years old and looked no different from any other boy of that age, but when anybody spent time with him, it became obvious that he had a presence and intelligence far beyond his years, something Rose knew could only have be drawn from the Doctor. Jonny was independent and imaginative and had the sort of curiosity about the world that meant he was constantly getting himself into trouble, although he never meant to. In many ways, from his unruly brown hair to his ability to look at her and make her heart beat just a little faster, Jonny was his father’s son, even though every clandestine test Mickey had ordered on him had failed to establish anything more than a slightly hybridised DNA structure and an IQ of 147.
The harbour was filling with returning boats as the afternoon sank into evening. She lowered the binoculars. She was glad that Jonny had found this outlet for himself; before he’d had a significant hobby, he’d proven himself to be something of a challenge in the parenting stakes. Even now, if he didn’t get to sail because the weather was bad, he would be almost unmanageable, like a spring with too much potential energy, chattering madly and zooming about the house pretending to be on board some lightweight laser. But, although he sometimes tested her to her limits, Rose rarely found him tiresome, in fact, she actually enjoyed his enthusiasm and sometimes found herself getting swept up in it, just like she used to do with the Doctor.
Footsteps echoed on the jetty and she snapped out of her thoughts to turn towards them. “I take it by the fact that you’re here that Jonny behaved himself at school this week, then.” She laughed softly and patted the ground next to her. Mickey crouched down but did not sit.
“Well, we had one incident where he tried to set the teacher straight about the thermodynamics of copper, but other than that, yes, he’s been good. I think poor old Mrs. Evans is beginning to rue the day she pointed Jonny in the direction of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.”
Mickey chuckled, then was quiet. His eyes drifted upwards to where Ben and Jonny were taking a last leisurely circle around the harbour and he smiled. Rose watched him from the corner of her eye. She really was incredibly grateful for his continued presence in her life. Over the last nine years, Mickey had stood by her through the dark days after she’d been separated from the Doctor, when depression had threatened to drag her under and she’d faced criticism from her mother and Pete when she’d chosen to keep Jonny. And he’d been there for her son from day one, watching everything from first words to stuttering performances in primary school nativity plays, as good a surrogate father as she could ever hope for.
“Been busy?” Rose asked him, even though the question was largely redundant. It was rare that Mickey wasn’t busy. He’d worked behind a desk ever since he had picked up a back injury out in the field, and the promotions had kept rattling in - deputy director of Torchwood One, then seven months ago, director in charge of Torchwood Three. In short, Mickey Smith was the darling of the governing body.
“Oh yeah,” Mickey replied wearily. He stood up as his back began to niggle him and stretched. “I had three meetings before lunch today and I thought the last one wasn’t going to end. Some bloody bore from the City going on about figures I knew about two weeks ago.”
“Poor you,” Rose mocked. “I’d feel sorry for you but the six-figure salary kind of deflates my sympathy levels.”
Mickey smiled. “By the way, when I was down in London, I ended up talking to some bloke called Adam Sulkowski about you. He remembered you from way back.”
A frown crossed Rose’s face as she tried to remember. It was indeed a long while since she’d worked down in the capital, nine years to be exact, and now that she thought about it, there had been hundreds of names and faces from those days. She’d left after Jonny was born, unable to face the memories that Canary Wharf held, and headed to Cardiff, where she had been shocked but pleased to discover an alternate Jack in this world, a Jack who was all too willing to accept her as a colleague. “Hm,” she said. “I can’t honestly remember who he is, but…” She shrugged.
“Don’t worry about it, Rose,” he dismissed easily. “Probably just one of the many admirers you picked up back then. They were all a bit star-struck as I remember.” He elbowed her and winked and Rose blushed, dropping her head. She’d had a couple of partners after Jonny’s birth, one she’d thought she might marry, but none of them had ever really measured up to her memory of the Doctor and it had been years since she’d shared her bed with anyone except her son.
A companionable silence fell for a moment, then Mickey sighed, “Oh well, it might be worth looking this bloke up anyway. He seemed friendly.”
Rose glanced at Mickey. She knew what he was trying to do. He’d long given up hoping to persuade her to marry him, but every so often he tried to convince her that sampling the variety of men who expressed an interest in her was a good thing. “Mickey,” she began, then paused, wondering how best to explain to him what she felt. “I know you mean well, but I can’t… I won’t. I’ve done it, tried it all and nothing’s quite the same. You know that. I can’t be with someone who’s second best.”
Mickey simply nodded in resignation. “I know.”
The weeks from Canary Wharf to Darlig Ulv Stranden had found Rose on a mission. She’d searched desperately for a way to get back to the Doctor, convinced that if she just worked hard enough and long enough, she’d eventually find a way to break back through the barrier between the universes. But after the trip to Norway, and the Doctor’s fervent assurances that she would never see him again, something in her had died, to the point that Mickey had wondered where the vital and beautiful girl he knew and loved had gone to. He remained convinced that the only thing that had saved her had been the sudden realisation that the sickness and missed periods she was suffering from were caused by more than simple stress.
Despite the complicated feelings he had for the Doctor, Mickey would be forever grateful to him for leaving Rose with the tiny squalling bundle of joy that was Jonathan Michael Tyler, even if he never knew it.
The sound of a sail clinking caused them both to look up and Rose saw that Jonny and Ben were mooring the boat beside the jetty. She climbed to her feet and stood with hands on hips waiting for her son to finish up. Jonny was grinning from ear to ear as he slung the trailing ropes into the boat for Ben to coil up, then hopped onto the jetty and galloped towards Rose and Mickey. “Hey, Mum, were you watching?” he exclaimed, jumping up and down on the spot. “Ben said I was great. Wasn’t I, Ben?”
The brawny sailing instructor inclined his head of wavy blonde curls towards Rose and smiled tolerantly. “He was really good out there, Miss Tyler. If I didn’t know better I’d say that boy had the sea in his blood.”
Rose laughed at that. “Yeah, well, I can tell you right now that if he has he didn’t get it from me.”
“You should try going solo soon, Jonny,” Ben said, giving Jonny’s hair a tousle.
“Oh, really?” Jonny’s eyes became saucers. “Could I, Mum? Please?”
“I don’t know… maybe next year, when you’re a bit bigger. I don’t want you to hurt yourself out there.”
Ben nodded and began to walk away, wisely deciding to leave the difference in opinion well alone. Jonny seemed to sense that his mother was struggling with the concept of him taking charge of a boat on his own, so he ran ahead to use some of his pocket money buying ice-cream from the van on the bay road. Rose followed him, Mickey falling into step beside her.
“He’s a good lad, Rose,” Mickey said after a few moment’s silence. “He wouldn’t ask to do anything he didn’t think he could cope with.”
Rose said nothing for a moment. Jonny was growing up so fast and Rose couldn’t help herself considering whether he would continue developing as humanly as he had so far done. Jonny was obviously brighter than the other children his age, but he wasn’t yet unique enough to stand out too much from the crowd. But, every year that went past found Rose thinking more and more about how much easier this would be if Jonny had the Doctor’s knowledge and experience to learn from first hand, rather than just her vague tales of some mysterious alien who just happened to be his father.
She’d long ago come to accept that she was going to have to do the best job she could on her own. Jonny would never know his father, even though she had shown him all the pictures of him that had been on her phone when she’d been sucked into this universe and told him every story of their adventures she could think of. Rose had kept her stories honest by convincing herself that Jonny deserved the truth if he was never going to meet the Doctor, and Jonny was intelligent enough to understand that blabbing that his father was an alien to his school mates would be a Very Bad Thing.
But it was hard, and sometimes everything came tumbling down when she looked into her son’s bedroom and saw familiar lines in his sleeping face.
“Rose, you fancy having some dinner tonight?” Mickey’s voice broke into her thoughts. “I thought we’d grab some take away. Chinese, maybe? I know Jonny likes that.”
Rose turned to him and smiled. He really was far too good to them. “We’d love that, Mickey.”
As if on cue, Jonny came bounding back towards them, an already half-eaten ice-cream cone in his fist, still grinning. She flung her arm around her son’s thin, wiry shoulders and kissed his head, breathing in the smell of salt from the sea. “Hey, kiddo. Back so soon?” Mickey teased.
“Hey, Mickey,” Jonny replied, flashing Mickey the same broad smile he’d just shown Rose.
“Jonny, Mickey was just asking us if we wanted some take away tonight. Do you fancy that?”
Jonny nodded eagerly. “Can I have special chow mein?”
“You can have whatever you want.”
“Steady,” Rose warned Mickey. “I don’t want him being spoiled.”
“That’s not spoiling him,” Mickey objected. “I’m just being nice to him.”
Jonny grinned and Rose narrowed her eyes at him, already feeling her resolve melting. Just like his father, she never could resist that smile for long. She sighed. “All right, all right. But watch your eyes aren’t bigger than your belly. I don’t want to be eating heated up Chinese food for three days like we had to last time.”
Mickey and Jonny winked at each other conspiratorially. They’d reached where the cars were parked and Mickey disarmed the alarm on his Porsche and opened the door. “You wanna ride with me, Jonny?” he asked, to which Rose rolled her eyes and agreed. “You have to jump out and collect the food, though. Think you can do that?”
“Sure I can. I am nine you know,” Jonny admonished. He leaped into the passenger seat of the Porsche, strapped himself in and slammed the door shut.
Rose shot her son a warning look that told him to behave himself in her absence. Mickey grinned and leaned on the low-slung roof of the car. A moment of silence passed, then he spoke, “Rose, listen, will you do something for me?”
She stopped fishing around for her car keys in her handbag and looked at him. His face was serious and she frowned, wondering what he wanted. “Yeah?”
Mickey scuffed his shoe in the dust. “Will you pop into work tomorrow? I know it’s Saturday, but there’s something I have to talk to you about.”
“Can’t we talk about it tonight?” she asked, confused.
“No, I don’t think that’s a good idea.” He paused and looked at the ground. “I need to talk to you alone. And there’s some things at the office I need.” Her frown deepened. “It’s fine, Rose,” he reassured. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
Rose stared at him for a moment, unsure of why he was insisting on this strange dance, but knowing that whatever it was, it was important to Mickey to do it this way. She nodded, “Okay, I’ll be there. Nine thirty?”
“Yeah, that’ll be good.” He cleared his throat, glancing back to Jonny, who was fiddling with the buttons on the dashboard of the Porsche. “Same as usual from the Chinese, yes?” he said as he stepped around the bonnet and moved to the driver’s side.
“Same as usual,” she agreed.
To be continued...