The Private Universe (Part 1/3)
This is fourth in a series featuring Ten II and Rose, following immediately after Tenses and Pronouns. Obviously, there are spoilers for Journey's End. There is also adult content.
Thanks as usual to nonelvis and platypus, who provided their usual excellent beta input including much gnashing of teeth over the appropriate title. In the end, the title is borrowed from a Crowded House song, which does not feature at all in the story.
...
Part One
The Doctor woke from a deep sleep, fighting to surface from the drowsiness that sucked him back down. For a few moments, he tried to determine where he was, racing to identify different toxins in his system that could account for the grogginess.
As consciousness returned, the recognition of where he was and why he had such trouble waking up came back as well. He was naked, bathed in the early morning light and tangled in the bedclothes on a comfortable mattress with Rose curled up next to him. The disorientation eased, and he remembered everything. Especially, with a physical start that left him breathless, how they had come to be naked in bed together.
Awareness of the physical demands of his new human body, foremost his bladder, came next. He eased himself out of bed, provoking a soft snuffle from Rose, and padded quietly to the loo. With some uncharitable thoughts about the inefficient water cycling of the human anatomy, he urinated.
He washed his hands and scrubbed at his face and hair. His face, still the same with a touch more stubble, looked back at him from the mirror, belying all of the changes he felt in this unfamiliar body. Despite his assurance to Rose that he was the same man, he felt like a stranger to himself in a way that he never had before. When he changed, he changed - he adjusted to the new quirks and preferences of his personality along with the new physical form. This was something utterly new. His mind was constant, and his body, on the outside, was like enough to fool anyone.
It didn't fool him.
A little self-consciously, he used Rose's toothbrush and crept back to bed. While he was gone, Rose had sprawled out onto her belly, and he needed to squeeze against her to avoid hanging off the bed. Not that he minded. As he pressed into her side, he felt his new body concentrating his blood flow between his legs, stirring and rising and entirely involuntary, but very, very welcome. Some changes were more enjoyable than others.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, he began to kiss her neck. "Good morning," he murmured as he progressed to her jaw. "Did you sleep well?"
Her reply consisted entirely of consonants, but she shifted onto her side and tilted her head to expose more of her neck. He dropped kisses from her jaw to the point of her chin and then up to her mouth.
"I haven't cleaned my teeth," she said, turning slightly away from him.
"I have." He swiped his tongue along her lower lip and she laughed. There was a hint of sulfur in her breath that he didn't mind. When she opened her mouth, the touch of her tongue against his made him flush from head to toes and most especially between his legs, and by the time she drew the tip of his tongue into her mouth and sucked, he was fully erect and aching for more of her touch.
"You taste like toothpaste," she mumbled.
The toothpaste altered his taste perception in an unexpected way. Sodium lauryl sulfate, he mused, considering the possibilities. Rose lifted the sheets and pressed up against him, and all of the molecules dancing around in his head disappeared in a wave of heat. Well, there was only so much multitasking a human could be expected to do.
He focused and enjoyed the supremely physical sensations. How her lips felt alternately soft and firm. How surprisingly heavy her small breast was in his hand. How her skin prickled into gooseflesh when he traced his finger around her navel. How she breathed and moaned as he stroked her, fingered her, brought her to orgasm. How his blood pounded in his ears and in his groin.
Rose leaned over to retrieve the box of condoms, and he seized the opportunity to take a nipple in his mouth. He explored it thoroughly, feeling the contours of the areola with the tip of his tongue. Her arms bumped against his head as she tore open the packet.
"Lie back," she said, still breathing hard. He did.
She sat astride his legs, glorious in her nakedness, with her hair loose and wild around her face. He watched her roll the condom down. "Please," he said, and he hoped he didn't sound as needy as he thought he might.
When she slipped down around him, he almost couldn't bear the heat of her - of both of them. Her bum bounced up and down against his thighs as she rode him. He wanted to sit up and kiss her, but he found himself boneless, helpless, pinned to the bed like a butterfly on a card and unable to manage anything more complex than lifting his hips to meet her downward motion. His outstretched arms felt heavy and his head impossibly so, with a rising pressure inside him that choked him and made his breath come fast and shallow. It might have been terrifying if it hadn't felt so intensely, fantastically good.
There was a sound like a freight train in his ears, and he realised it was his own breathing. All of his thoughts squeezed down into something simple, animalistic and he cried out with the force of his climax, lost in the physical release of his body.
When he opened his eyes, Rose was leaning across him and smiling a very feline, self-satisfied smile. "Good morning," she said.
His mouth had gone completely dry, and he had to wet his lips before he could answer. "You look quite pleased with yourself."
She grinned and gave him another lingering kiss before rolling off him. In turn, he dealt with the rather messy aftermath of their lovemaking. He returned to the loo and dropped the condom in the toilet, realising that he wasn't sure where the one they had used last night had ended up.
He flushed and Rose squawked from the other room. "You didn't put it in the toilet, did you?"
"Um," he said, looking down at the swirl of water in the bowl.
"Oh, God," she groaned. "You can't do that. The plumbing in this house is awful."
"Sorry." He leaned against the doorframe and waited until she removed the pillow from her face. "Do you know where the other one went?"
"The other - oh. Oh.." She scrabbled around in the bed and came up with the offending item. "Here. Put it in the bin, okay?"
He wadded it up with a few tissues, disposed of it in the approved receptacle, and returned to bed. "Let's start that over. Good morning." He kissed her soundly and her arms slid around him, tugging him fully horizontal until they were once again wrapped around one another.
She made a contented sigh and rubbed her nose against his. "Good morning."
They were so close that he couldn't focus on her face, although in truth his vision was a little fuzzy at short range anyway. He noted that he had unconsciously matched his breathing to hers and felt the symmetry of their shared inhalations. The breath slipped into his nose, pooled in the back of his throat, filled his lungs and then pushed out into the small space between his face and Rose's. There she was, breathing in sync with him, her brain stem responding to the buildup of carbon dioxide in her blood. If she thought about her breath, she could consciously control it, and if she forgot again, her brain stem would gracefully pick up the beat and keep going.
It was quite an efficient system, except for that tiny, fragile, too-easily-blocked windpipe threading up her throat. Their throats. The single heart on the left side of his chest thumped a little harder in response to stressful thoughts. He'd known how fragile humans were, but always from the outside. Now he could feel how small his throat felt and how it drew tight as he swallowed.
"Doctor?" Rose asked.
"Breathe," he said, and watched as she inhaled almost reflexively.
"What?" Her fuzzy face drew farther away from his and she sharpened into focus. She looked concerned.
"I'm all right."
She raised one eyebrow and huffed in disbelief.
"I am," he said, a little more emphatically. "I'm just thinking."
"About?"
"Respiration. Honestly! I was listening to you breathe."
Her face softened and then, wonderfully, there was more kissing. When they separated, Rose burrowed into his side and nuzzled his neck. "Is it different? I mean, you've got the one heart, and it's got to feel strange."
"A little. Well, a lot. I don't know how it all works, yet." He considered his next statement before plunging ahead. "I was human for a while once."
"What? When?"
"After." He cleared his throat self-consciously. "Not like this - but isn't that obvious? Well. There were hunters, and I needed to hide for a bit. So my mind and memories were locked up, my body changed, and the TARDIS created a persona for this human. He - I - didn't remember anything except that fabricated life." He looked at the ceiling, finding this harder to tell than he had thought. This was what happened when he volunteered information.
"What was he like?" she asked after he had been quiet for a while.
He smiled. That would be what she asked. "Distracted. Intellectual." He paused. "Very, very brave."
"What happened?"
"He died."
They were quiet together, and the Doctor felt that he'd let the conversation take a much darker turn than he had intended. "I was trying to say that I remember what it was like to be human, but it was different. He didn't know to compare everything."
"So he wasn't you."
He drew her closer, tucking his chin onto the top of her head and circling his arms tightly around her. "No, but I was still there inside him." He hadn't meant to cause her to doubt him now, with his old mind transferred into a new form. "He dreamed about you, even when he didn't know who you were. Even when I wasn't myself, I wanted you."
There was a soft sound from the vicinity of his shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said, drawing back.
"No, don't be," she said, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. "I want you to tell me everything. I do. It just -" She broke off, snuffled, and gave him a lopsided smile. "We've got a lot to talk about, yeah?"
He didn't know if they would have enough time in their lives for all the stories that he could tell, and he also didn't know if he could bear the telling. Instead, he bent down and met her lips, kissing her tenderly.
They made love this time with exquisite slowness, the Doctor on top, pushing inside her as far as he could go before sliding out almost completely. He drew in a breath with each thrust and felt her hips rise to meet him, over and over again. Her hands splayed across his back and wound up into his hair as they kissed, open and wet and deep. Rose moaned beneath him and he swallowed back the urge to move faster.
He counted heartbeats, fractions of seconds, her breaths, and then let it all go into a timeless rush of sensation. The release of his time sense dizzied him and he groaned as much with the change in perception as from the tightness of her all around him. He focused on the here and now and shut out everything around him but her, her body moving against his and around him and he loved her, he did, and he couldn't -
When the rush of his orgasm faded, time returned. He had collapsed entirely upon her, and her limbs were slack and heavy around him except for one hand, which languidly stroked through the short hairs on the back of his neck. He shifted his weight to one side and tilted his head to give her better access.
"Like that, do you?"
He hummed affirmatively and enjoyed the scratch of her nails along the long column of his neck before he lifted again, withdrawing from her. She wiggled over to grab a handful of tissues off the end table and he obediently stashed the wad in the bin, wondering who exactly would be responsible for emptying it later on.
Rose sat up against the headboard and tucked the blanket around her chest. Feeling a bit overheated, the Doctor stretched out on top and put his head in her lap. She played with his hair again and her smile was sweet, looking down at him.
"Tell me about your life," he urged. A shadow crossed her face and he immediately recanted. "No, no, I didn't mean … I'm sorry. Please." He lifted up, kissed her briefly on the lips, and returned to his place in her lap. "Tell me about your friends. Where you like to eat lunch on Thursdays. Silly things about your mum or Tony." He watched her relax and felt the flutter of anxiety in his belly ease.
"I've got a flat," she ventured, and he nodded encouragement. "A flatmate, too, actually. Her name's Anna Weidley. She works for Torchwood."
A dozen questions popped into his mind at once, most centred around how she came to move away from her mum, but he chose an easy one to start. "Where?"
Apparently, that wasn't as innocuous as he had hoped, as the shadow returned. "Canary Wharf," she answered. "It's near work."
"That's … sensible," he finally offered, as neutrally as he could manage.
She studied him intently before continuing. "I thought it would be hard, working there day after day, after what happened, but it wasn't. Okay, yeah, it was at first, but then I realised …" Her hand moved in his hair, spreading out her fingers for maximum contact, and her eyes never wavered from his. "It was the last place I was with you, and we saved the world there."
He felt the grin burst from deep within him, pushing back most of the dread. "Not just the world. Two universes, Rose."
"Yeah," she said, grinning back. "So it was all right. Anna said the place was empty after her boyfriend moved out, and it was close, and - oh, it's a great flat. It's an old warehouse, loads of brick and glass, really posh."
This is what he had been hoping for: a sign that everything hadn't been lonely and desperate in her life without him. With some encouragement, she went on to tell him about the skylights in the reception room and stainless steel fixtures, interspersed with brief stories about Anna, who seemed to be a good friend.
"Mum didn't want me to leave here," Rose said at last, returning to a more serious topic. "I stayed until about six months after Tony was born. She kept saying that she didn't want me to feel pushed out, and I didn't. I just wanted … well, I wanted to keep working."
He nodded. Jackie, after the trip to Norway, would probably have viewed Rose's quest as tilting at windmills, and he imagined that their rows on that subject would have been intense. He didn't envy Pete. But, he considered, he wasn't being fair to Jackie, who had also leapt across worlds to safeguard the ones she loved, and who only wanted what was best for Rose, even when she didn't like it.
"Would you put my phone back together?" Rose asked, interrupting his thoughts. She looked guilty. "I haven't talked to Anna and I'm sure she's worried about me. I'm sure she knows I'm all right, but she'll know - well, she'll know about you. I really want to talk to her."
"Of course I will," he promised. When he sat up and looked at the pile of mobile phone debris on the dresser, he reconsidered. "Maybe you could use your mum's for now?"
…
The Doctor tiptoed down the stairs on a reconnaissance mission of the utmost importance: retrieve someone's mobile, or even a house cordless phone, with minimal engagement. Unfortunately, Jackie appeared as soon as he'd reached the ground floor, almost as if she'd been waiting for him.
"Morning," he said brightly. "Could I borrow a phone? Rose needs to make a few calls."
"Are you all right?" Jackie asked, her eyes fixed on him.
"Fantastic," he burst out before he could put the I didn't just shag your daughter filter in place. "Of course I'm -"
"I mean it," she said, hands on hips. "I'm asking about you. Not Rose."
He shifted uncomfortably and once again cursed his lack of pockets. Crossing his arms seemed so defensive. He forced them to dangle unthreateningly at his sides and assumed a cheery smile. "Right as rain," he said. "Do people say that here? I'll have to get used to new idioms. That could be fascinating, actually. Did you know -"
He was, of course, doomed never to finish a thought around Jackie Tyler. "People say all the same things, you loon! It's not that different. We've got a President, not a Prime Minister, but that's just the government."
"Zeppelins?" he asked hopefully. "That's different?"
"Toys," she sniffed. "They're pretty and all, but don't you go changing the subject!" She waggled a finger. "Your clothes came."
"My what?"
"Clothes. All those measurements from yesterday? You've got trousers and dress shirts and ties. It'll take longer for suits."
She fished in her pocket and produced a mobile, which she held out for him. When he reached to take it, she scooped him into a hug. He patted her awkwardly on the back, trying to balance his desire to run with his honest appreciation of her kindness. Jackie Tyler seemed to be the only person truly unfazed by his condition. Including, for that matter, him.
"Thanks," he said. When she released him, she didn't say anything further, just gave him a knowing smile and a nod. "I'll just be going now."
He retreated, his prize clutched securely in his hand.
Part Two
Thanks as usual to nonelvis and platypus, who provided their usual excellent beta input including much gnashing of teeth over the appropriate title. In the end, the title is borrowed from a Crowded House song, which does not feature at all in the story.
...
Part One
The Doctor woke from a deep sleep, fighting to surface from the drowsiness that sucked him back down. For a few moments, he tried to determine where he was, racing to identify different toxins in his system that could account for the grogginess.
As consciousness returned, the recognition of where he was and why he had such trouble waking up came back as well. He was naked, bathed in the early morning light and tangled in the bedclothes on a comfortable mattress with Rose curled up next to him. The disorientation eased, and he remembered everything. Especially, with a physical start that left him breathless, how they had come to be naked in bed together.
Awareness of the physical demands of his new human body, foremost his bladder, came next. He eased himself out of bed, provoking a soft snuffle from Rose, and padded quietly to the loo. With some uncharitable thoughts about the inefficient water cycling of the human anatomy, he urinated.
He washed his hands and scrubbed at his face and hair. His face, still the same with a touch more stubble, looked back at him from the mirror, belying all of the changes he felt in this unfamiliar body. Despite his assurance to Rose that he was the same man, he felt like a stranger to himself in a way that he never had before. When he changed, he changed - he adjusted to the new quirks and preferences of his personality along with the new physical form. This was something utterly new. His mind was constant, and his body, on the outside, was like enough to fool anyone.
It didn't fool him.
A little self-consciously, he used Rose's toothbrush and crept back to bed. While he was gone, Rose had sprawled out onto her belly, and he needed to squeeze against her to avoid hanging off the bed. Not that he minded. As he pressed into her side, he felt his new body concentrating his blood flow between his legs, stirring and rising and entirely involuntary, but very, very welcome. Some changes were more enjoyable than others.
Tucking her hair behind her ear, he began to kiss her neck. "Good morning," he murmured as he progressed to her jaw. "Did you sleep well?"
Her reply consisted entirely of consonants, but she shifted onto her side and tilted her head to expose more of her neck. He dropped kisses from her jaw to the point of her chin and then up to her mouth.
"I haven't cleaned my teeth," she said, turning slightly away from him.
"I have." He swiped his tongue along her lower lip and she laughed. There was a hint of sulfur in her breath that he didn't mind. When she opened her mouth, the touch of her tongue against his made him flush from head to toes and most especially between his legs, and by the time she drew the tip of his tongue into her mouth and sucked, he was fully erect and aching for more of her touch.
"You taste like toothpaste," she mumbled.
The toothpaste altered his taste perception in an unexpected way. Sodium lauryl sulfate, he mused, considering the possibilities. Rose lifted the sheets and pressed up against him, and all of the molecules dancing around in his head disappeared in a wave of heat. Well, there was only so much multitasking a human could be expected to do.
He focused and enjoyed the supremely physical sensations. How her lips felt alternately soft and firm. How surprisingly heavy her small breast was in his hand. How her skin prickled into gooseflesh when he traced his finger around her navel. How she breathed and moaned as he stroked her, fingered her, brought her to orgasm. How his blood pounded in his ears and in his groin.
Rose leaned over to retrieve the box of condoms, and he seized the opportunity to take a nipple in his mouth. He explored it thoroughly, feeling the contours of the areola with the tip of his tongue. Her arms bumped against his head as she tore open the packet.
"Lie back," she said, still breathing hard. He did.
She sat astride his legs, glorious in her nakedness, with her hair loose and wild around her face. He watched her roll the condom down. "Please," he said, and he hoped he didn't sound as needy as he thought he might.
When she slipped down around him, he almost couldn't bear the heat of her - of both of them. Her bum bounced up and down against his thighs as she rode him. He wanted to sit up and kiss her, but he found himself boneless, helpless, pinned to the bed like a butterfly on a card and unable to manage anything more complex than lifting his hips to meet her downward motion. His outstretched arms felt heavy and his head impossibly so, with a rising pressure inside him that choked him and made his breath come fast and shallow. It might have been terrifying if it hadn't felt so intensely, fantastically good.
There was a sound like a freight train in his ears, and he realised it was his own breathing. All of his thoughts squeezed down into something simple, animalistic and he cried out with the force of his climax, lost in the physical release of his body.
When he opened his eyes, Rose was leaning across him and smiling a very feline, self-satisfied smile. "Good morning," she said.
His mouth had gone completely dry, and he had to wet his lips before he could answer. "You look quite pleased with yourself."
She grinned and gave him another lingering kiss before rolling off him. In turn, he dealt with the rather messy aftermath of their lovemaking. He returned to the loo and dropped the condom in the toilet, realising that he wasn't sure where the one they had used last night had ended up.
He flushed and Rose squawked from the other room. "You didn't put it in the toilet, did you?"
"Um," he said, looking down at the swirl of water in the bowl.
"Oh, God," she groaned. "You can't do that. The plumbing in this house is awful."
"Sorry." He leaned against the doorframe and waited until she removed the pillow from her face. "Do you know where the other one went?"
"The other - oh. Oh.." She scrabbled around in the bed and came up with the offending item. "Here. Put it in the bin, okay?"
He wadded it up with a few tissues, disposed of it in the approved receptacle, and returned to bed. "Let's start that over. Good morning." He kissed her soundly and her arms slid around him, tugging him fully horizontal until they were once again wrapped around one another.
She made a contented sigh and rubbed her nose against his. "Good morning."
They were so close that he couldn't focus on her face, although in truth his vision was a little fuzzy at short range anyway. He noted that he had unconsciously matched his breathing to hers and felt the symmetry of their shared inhalations. The breath slipped into his nose, pooled in the back of his throat, filled his lungs and then pushed out into the small space between his face and Rose's. There she was, breathing in sync with him, her brain stem responding to the buildup of carbon dioxide in her blood. If she thought about her breath, she could consciously control it, and if she forgot again, her brain stem would gracefully pick up the beat and keep going.
It was quite an efficient system, except for that tiny, fragile, too-easily-blocked windpipe threading up her throat. Their throats. The single heart on the left side of his chest thumped a little harder in response to stressful thoughts. He'd known how fragile humans were, but always from the outside. Now he could feel how small his throat felt and how it drew tight as he swallowed.
"Doctor?" Rose asked.
"Breathe," he said, and watched as she inhaled almost reflexively.
"What?" Her fuzzy face drew farther away from his and she sharpened into focus. She looked concerned.
"I'm all right."
She raised one eyebrow and huffed in disbelief.
"I am," he said, a little more emphatically. "I'm just thinking."
"About?"
"Respiration. Honestly! I was listening to you breathe."
Her face softened and then, wonderfully, there was more kissing. When they separated, Rose burrowed into his side and nuzzled his neck. "Is it different? I mean, you've got the one heart, and it's got to feel strange."
"A little. Well, a lot. I don't know how it all works, yet." He considered his next statement before plunging ahead. "I was human for a while once."
"What? When?"
"After." He cleared his throat self-consciously. "Not like this - but isn't that obvious? Well. There were hunters, and I needed to hide for a bit. So my mind and memories were locked up, my body changed, and the TARDIS created a persona for this human. He - I - didn't remember anything except that fabricated life." He looked at the ceiling, finding this harder to tell than he had thought. This was what happened when he volunteered information.
"What was he like?" she asked after he had been quiet for a while.
He smiled. That would be what she asked. "Distracted. Intellectual." He paused. "Very, very brave."
"What happened?"
"He died."
They were quiet together, and the Doctor felt that he'd let the conversation take a much darker turn than he had intended. "I was trying to say that I remember what it was like to be human, but it was different. He didn't know to compare everything."
"So he wasn't you."
He drew her closer, tucking his chin onto the top of her head and circling his arms tightly around her. "No, but I was still there inside him." He hadn't meant to cause her to doubt him now, with his old mind transferred into a new form. "He dreamed about you, even when he didn't know who you were. Even when I wasn't myself, I wanted you."
There was a soft sound from the vicinity of his shoulder. "I'm sorry," he said, drawing back.
"No, don't be," she said, reaching up to cup his face in her hands. "I want you to tell me everything. I do. It just -" She broke off, snuffled, and gave him a lopsided smile. "We've got a lot to talk about, yeah?"
He didn't know if they would have enough time in their lives for all the stories that he could tell, and he also didn't know if he could bear the telling. Instead, he bent down and met her lips, kissing her tenderly.
They made love this time with exquisite slowness, the Doctor on top, pushing inside her as far as he could go before sliding out almost completely. He drew in a breath with each thrust and felt her hips rise to meet him, over and over again. Her hands splayed across his back and wound up into his hair as they kissed, open and wet and deep. Rose moaned beneath him and he swallowed back the urge to move faster.
He counted heartbeats, fractions of seconds, her breaths, and then let it all go into a timeless rush of sensation. The release of his time sense dizzied him and he groaned as much with the change in perception as from the tightness of her all around him. He focused on the here and now and shut out everything around him but her, her body moving against his and around him and he loved her, he did, and he couldn't -
When the rush of his orgasm faded, time returned. He had collapsed entirely upon her, and her limbs were slack and heavy around him except for one hand, which languidly stroked through the short hairs on the back of his neck. He shifted his weight to one side and tilted his head to give her better access.
"Like that, do you?"
He hummed affirmatively and enjoyed the scratch of her nails along the long column of his neck before he lifted again, withdrawing from her. She wiggled over to grab a handful of tissues off the end table and he obediently stashed the wad in the bin, wondering who exactly would be responsible for emptying it later on.
Rose sat up against the headboard and tucked the blanket around her chest. Feeling a bit overheated, the Doctor stretched out on top and put his head in her lap. She played with his hair again and her smile was sweet, looking down at him.
"Tell me about your life," he urged. A shadow crossed her face and he immediately recanted. "No, no, I didn't mean … I'm sorry. Please." He lifted up, kissed her briefly on the lips, and returned to his place in her lap. "Tell me about your friends. Where you like to eat lunch on Thursdays. Silly things about your mum or Tony." He watched her relax and felt the flutter of anxiety in his belly ease.
"I've got a flat," she ventured, and he nodded encouragement. "A flatmate, too, actually. Her name's Anna Weidley. She works for Torchwood."
A dozen questions popped into his mind at once, most centred around how she came to move away from her mum, but he chose an easy one to start. "Where?"
Apparently, that wasn't as innocuous as he had hoped, as the shadow returned. "Canary Wharf," she answered. "It's near work."
"That's … sensible," he finally offered, as neutrally as he could manage.
She studied him intently before continuing. "I thought it would be hard, working there day after day, after what happened, but it wasn't. Okay, yeah, it was at first, but then I realised …" Her hand moved in his hair, spreading out her fingers for maximum contact, and her eyes never wavered from his. "It was the last place I was with you, and we saved the world there."
He felt the grin burst from deep within him, pushing back most of the dread. "Not just the world. Two universes, Rose."
"Yeah," she said, grinning back. "So it was all right. Anna said the place was empty after her boyfriend moved out, and it was close, and - oh, it's a great flat. It's an old warehouse, loads of brick and glass, really posh."
This is what he had been hoping for: a sign that everything hadn't been lonely and desperate in her life without him. With some encouragement, she went on to tell him about the skylights in the reception room and stainless steel fixtures, interspersed with brief stories about Anna, who seemed to be a good friend.
"Mum didn't want me to leave here," Rose said at last, returning to a more serious topic. "I stayed until about six months after Tony was born. She kept saying that she didn't want me to feel pushed out, and I didn't. I just wanted … well, I wanted to keep working."
He nodded. Jackie, after the trip to Norway, would probably have viewed Rose's quest as tilting at windmills, and he imagined that their rows on that subject would have been intense. He didn't envy Pete. But, he considered, he wasn't being fair to Jackie, who had also leapt across worlds to safeguard the ones she loved, and who only wanted what was best for Rose, even when she didn't like it.
"Would you put my phone back together?" Rose asked, interrupting his thoughts. She looked guilty. "I haven't talked to Anna and I'm sure she's worried about me. I'm sure she knows I'm all right, but she'll know - well, she'll know about you. I really want to talk to her."
"Of course I will," he promised. When he sat up and looked at the pile of mobile phone debris on the dresser, he reconsidered. "Maybe you could use your mum's for now?"
…
The Doctor tiptoed down the stairs on a reconnaissance mission of the utmost importance: retrieve someone's mobile, or even a house cordless phone, with minimal engagement. Unfortunately, Jackie appeared as soon as he'd reached the ground floor, almost as if she'd been waiting for him.
"Morning," he said brightly. "Could I borrow a phone? Rose needs to make a few calls."
"Are you all right?" Jackie asked, her eyes fixed on him.
"Fantastic," he burst out before he could put the I didn't just shag your daughter filter in place. "Of course I'm -"
"I mean it," she said, hands on hips. "I'm asking about you. Not Rose."
He shifted uncomfortably and once again cursed his lack of pockets. Crossing his arms seemed so defensive. He forced them to dangle unthreateningly at his sides and assumed a cheery smile. "Right as rain," he said. "Do people say that here? I'll have to get used to new idioms. That could be fascinating, actually. Did you know -"
He was, of course, doomed never to finish a thought around Jackie Tyler. "People say all the same things, you loon! It's not that different. We've got a President, not a Prime Minister, but that's just the government."
"Zeppelins?" he asked hopefully. "That's different?"
"Toys," she sniffed. "They're pretty and all, but don't you go changing the subject!" She waggled a finger. "Your clothes came."
"My what?"
"Clothes. All those measurements from yesterday? You've got trousers and dress shirts and ties. It'll take longer for suits."
She fished in her pocket and produced a mobile, which she held out for him. When he reached to take it, she scooped him into a hug. He patted her awkwardly on the back, trying to balance his desire to run with his honest appreciation of her kindness. Jackie Tyler seemed to be the only person truly unfazed by his condition. Including, for that matter, him.
"Thanks," he said. When she released him, she didn't say anything further, just gave him a knowing smile and a nod. "I'll just be going now."
He retreated, his prize clutched securely in his hand.
Part Two