Fic: A Little Healthy Competition 1/1
Title: A Little Healthy Competition
Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith.
Rating: Teen-ish.
Spoilers: Series two, baby.
Summary: "A little healthy competition never hurt anyone." The Doctor and Mickey have a disagreement. Rose is unamused. Set between The Girl in the Fireplace and The Rise of the Cybermen.
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Rose was playing draughts against herself (and losing) when the Doctor slammed into the TARDIS study.
“This,” he said, his voice echoing grandly in the large room, “has gone too far.” The effect was marred somewhat by his petulant expression. He seemed seconds away from stomping his foot and demanding an ice cream as compensation.
Rose leaned over the draughts board, chin resting in the palm of her hand, and studied the pieces carefully. “Oh. Has it?”
“Yes!” he shouted, and she was quite proud of him when he managed not to squeak. Much. “Your boyfriend, delightful little idiot that he is - an idiot, mind, who just this morning I rescued from certain death at the jaws of the dishwasher-”
Rose looked up. “Mickey was using the dishwasher? Really?”
The Doctor paused, frowning. “Well, no. That’s why it tried to eat him. Poor thing was famished.”
She nodded. “Right. Sorry, continue.” She turned back to the game.
He scratched his chin. “Where was I?”
“Dramatic entrance, shouting, unnecessary emphasis on the word boyfriend, man-eating dishwasher.” She rested one finger on her red king, but didn’t move it. “Have I missed anything?”
“No. Yes!” He strode over to the desk and placed his hands on either side of the draughts board. “You will never believe, Rose, what he said to me.” He slammed a hand down on the desk, and the pieces rattled. “Never.”
She met his eyes. “I’m sure I won’t.” Without breaking eye contact, she added, “What did you say to him, Mickey?”
Lounging in the doorframe, Mickey chuckled. “I said that I know you better than he does.”
The Doctor smirked. “Which is entirely preposterous, of course.”
Rose shrugged. “Well, he has known me longer.”
The Doctor stepped back from the desk, gaping at her. “You’re joking. You are, aren’t you?” He shook his head in amazement. “No, you can’t possibly mean that. You’re having a go, pulling my leg, taking the mickey-” As if suddenly reminded of his presence in the room, he whirled around to face the other man. “I’ve known her longer. Rose Tyler met me for the first time when she was six months old.”
Mickey rolled his eyes. “Please. Jacks used to watch me when my gran went to church. At three months Rose tried to gnaw the bonnet off my favourite Hot Wheels car.” He swallowed hard, a faraway look in his eyes. “My Torino Tornado with the Thermal Colour Change paint. Old girl never was the same after that.”
Rose sighed. “Well, if you hadn’t waved it in my face-”
“You had those stubby little arms! How was I supposed to know you were some sort of baby ninja?”
The Doctor stepped in close to Mickey and stared him down, milking his slight height advantage for all it was worth. “You do not,” he said in the sort of even tone that makes the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, “know Rose better than I do.”
Mickey’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you think?”
The Doctor gave him an infuriatingly superior smile. “I do.”
“All right, then.” Mickey grinned. “What’s her favourite colour?”
“Red.”
“Favourite time of year?”
“On Earth? The first week in June.”
“Favourite food?”
The Doctor snorted. “Chips, obviously.”
Mickey’s grin widened and he turned to Rose. “Well?”
“The correct answer is ‘anything made from a potato and then fried,’” she said without looking up from her game, “but I’ll allow it.”
Mickey folded his arms across his chest. “Those were easy. Just a bit of trivia.”
The Doctor smiled and titled his head to one side, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Why don’t we step things up a bit, then?”
“Blimey,” she muttered under her breath, “you two should just whip ‘em out, measure, and be done with it.”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the issue at hand, Rose.”
She met his eyes, her expression solemn. “You know, you’re right. I don’t think I do.” She spun the draughts board and began to play black.
Self-satisfaction came off Mickey in waves. “You,” he said, poking the Doctor in the chest, “just can’t admit that anyone might know more than you and your mighty alien brain.”
The Doctor slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto his heels, still smiling at Mickey. “I know just about everything there is to know about anything, Mickety Mick, and that includes Rose - who, you might recall, is extraordinarily fond of me and often says so without any provocation whatsoever.”
Mickey laughed. “Oh, you mean like this morning at breakfast when she called you a jam-obsessed maniac with the table manners of a particularly twitchy marmoset?”
The Doctor beamed. “You may not know this, Mickey my man, but even under the best of circumstances our Rose isn’t what you’d call a morning person. And-” he paused with the air of a man anticipating the sweet taste of victory, “and she can be positively vicious during her menses. Which began, let’s see…” He studied the watch he wasn’t wearing. “Approximately twenty-three hours and fourteen minutes ago.”
Rose sent him a needle-sharp glare. “Oi! Do you mind?”
Mickey blanched for only a moment before recovering. “Yeah, well, when Rose got her period for the first time, she phoned yours truly to make a run to the shop and bring her some of those pad things.”
The Doctor frowned at her. “You needed sanitary napkins and you phoned your boyfriend?”
Rose felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “He wasn’t my boyfriend at the time,” she said, her voice sounding a little too loud to her own ears. “We were just mates.” He continued to stare at her until she broke with an explosive sigh. “I was fourteen and all the other girls in my year were already using tampons, all right? And just who was I supposed to ask, exactly? My mum?” She sat back in her chair and scowled. “Yeah, because that wouldn’t have been at all embarrassing.”
All three took a moment to consider this scenario and shuddered.
Rose swung her feet onto the desk. “You know, between the two of you, you probably know just about every stupid, embarrassing thing about me. I don’t see why it matters who knows more.”
“Oh, it does,” Mickey and the Doctor said in unison. They glared at each other for a long moment, unblinking. There was silence.
Mickey fired the first shot. “I taught her how to drive.”
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah? Well, I taught her how to fly a transdimensional time capsule.” He hesitated. “A little. In case of emergencies.”
Mickey stepped forward. “I knew her back when her favourite song was Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1.”
“I took her to see the first performance of Don Giovanni in 1787,” the Doctor countered. “She was so overcome by the denouement of the second act that she nearly fainted right there in her seat.”
“Yeah,” Rose muttered, “because I was starved half to death and you’d eaten all the snacks.”
“I was with her when she got pissed for the first time,” Mickey said, hands on his hips. “Five shots of tequila and she puked into her own shoes.”
“I was with her when she got anti-gravity sickness for the first time. The vomit went right up her nose.”
Mickey blinked. “What, really?”
The Doctor nodded and gave him a toothy grin. “It was brilliant.”
Rose slouched in her chair and glowered at them. Not that they noticed, of course - too caught up in their own cleverness, the both of them. The only way the conversation could possibly be more humiliating was if-
“I’ve had sex with her,” Mickey said. “A lot.”
The Doctor’s expression was a strange, unreadable thing. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Well,” he said slowly, “I happen to know that she’s mildly allergic to pine nuts.”
“Yeah,” Mickey said, his voice gentle with a definite undercurrent of smug, “but that’s not quite the same thing, now is it?”
The Doctor would not meet her eyes. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
Rose dropped her feet to the floor and sat up. “Doesn’t count.”
Mickey turned on her. “What? Of course it counts! In a fight over who knows you better, I think the fact that I’ve, you know, known you and he hasn’t counts for an awful lot!” He paused, his eyes widening. “He hasn’t, has he? I mean, you and Big Ears never-”
The Doctor flushed and made a small choking sound in the back of his throat. Rose stood, scattering draughts pieces onto the floor. “The Doctor,” she said, pointing to the man in question, “was there for my first near-death experience.”
“And most all of them since,” the Doctor added proudly, having somewhat regained his composure.
Mickey stepped forward and poked him in the chest. “I was the first bloke she ever kissed.”
The Doctor poked him back. “I was the first alien.”
Rose bit her lip and decided not to correct them. Some delusions were better left intact.
Mickey took another step forward. “I helped her sneak her dead cat off the Estate and bury him by the playground so we could tell Jackie he’d run away.”
The Doctor arched an eyebrow. “That would be Mr. Tibbetts, the ginger tabby she dressed in doll clothes when she was small and who gave her those scars on the inside of her left ankle?”
Mickey frowned. “I know that she has a birthmark on her thigh, shaped like-”
“A blobby sort of swan thing,” the Doctor finished. Off Mickey’s look, he said with a grin, “Well, I am her doctor.”
For a moment Mickey was at a loss, and the Doctor’s victory seemed sure. Then a slow smile spread across Mickey’s face, and he uttered the fatal words: “I know her middle name.”
The Doctor stepped back, his expression wary. “Don’t be daft. Rose doesn’t have a middle name.”
Mickey laughed. “And who told you that?”
The Doctor turned to her slowly, eyes wide, the very picture of a man betrayed. “Rose,” he gasped, as if he were too horrified to say any more.
Rose plopped down in her chair and gave Mickey a nasty look. “That,” she said, “you’re going to pay for.”
The Doctor slumped against the desk. “You’ve had a middle name all this time and I never knew?” He shook his head. “Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.”
“That’s a bit rich coming from you,” she said. “And anyway, can you blame me? It’s always, ‘Rose Tyler this’ and ‘Rose Tyler that’ - if you’d known my middle name, that would’ve been three more syllables you’d have been compelled to shout out when I was being attacked by giant marshmallows or whatever, and who has that kind of time?” She stubbornly met his stare. “It was an act of self-preservation.”
The Doctor turned to Mickey. “Three syllables?”
“Marion,” he said, savouring each one of them.
“Rose Marion Tyler,” the Doctor tried, and grinned. “Oh, that’s lovely. I like it.”
Rose’s head hit the surface of the desk with a thump.
“So what about it, Doctor?” Mickey said. “I’ve known her longer and I know her better. Do you admit defeat?”
“Never!” the Doctor cried, slamming his fist down on the desk. Rose squeaked, and he reached over to pat her gently on the head. “Except, yeah, I think just this once I’d probably better.” He stuck a long finger in Mickey’s face. “Temporarily, mind you. We’ll be having a rematch soon, don’t you doubt it.”
Mickey chuckled. “Yeah, we’ll see.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and skipped out the door, whistling.
The Doctor’s fingers found their way back to her hair, and he tugged lightly at the shell of her ear. “Blimey. Am I that nauseatingly smug when I’m right?”
“No,” she said to the surface of the desk. “You are much, much worse.”
“Oh.” His fingertips walked a path from her ear to the nape of her neck. “Rose-”
“Doctor, we’re not going back to 1987 so you can shake my little baby hand as I come out of the delivery room.”
He paused, his fingers tickling her scalp. “What if I gave you a little high five?”
She sat up, and his hand fell away. “Look. I’ve known Mickey my whole life, and he’s been there for pretty much every daft thing I’ve ever done. But, you know, I’m not done doing daft things. I figure I’ve got at least a few more years of embarrassing stories left in me, and those years, Doctor - they’re all yours.” She gave him a hard look. “All right?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling slightly. “All right.”
“Good.” She laid her head back down on the desk and sighed. “I lost at draughts.”
“I noticed,” he said, and they smiled.
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Characters: Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mickey Smith.
Rating: Teen-ish.
Spoilers: Series two, baby.
Summary: "A little healthy competition never hurt anyone." The Doctor and Mickey have a disagreement. Rose is unamused. Set between The Girl in the Fireplace and The Rise of the Cybermen.
++
Rose was playing draughts against herself (and losing) when the Doctor slammed into the TARDIS study.
“This,” he said, his voice echoing grandly in the large room, “has gone too far.” The effect was marred somewhat by his petulant expression. He seemed seconds away from stomping his foot and demanding an ice cream as compensation.
Rose leaned over the draughts board, chin resting in the palm of her hand, and studied the pieces carefully. “Oh. Has it?”
“Yes!” he shouted, and she was quite proud of him when he managed not to squeak. Much. “Your boyfriend, delightful little idiot that he is - an idiot, mind, who just this morning I rescued from certain death at the jaws of the dishwasher-”
Rose looked up. “Mickey was using the dishwasher? Really?”
The Doctor paused, frowning. “Well, no. That’s why it tried to eat him. Poor thing was famished.”
She nodded. “Right. Sorry, continue.” She turned back to the game.
He scratched his chin. “Where was I?”
“Dramatic entrance, shouting, unnecessary emphasis on the word boyfriend, man-eating dishwasher.” She rested one finger on her red king, but didn’t move it. “Have I missed anything?”
“No. Yes!” He strode over to the desk and placed his hands on either side of the draughts board. “You will never believe, Rose, what he said to me.” He slammed a hand down on the desk, and the pieces rattled. “Never.”
She met his eyes. “I’m sure I won’t.” Without breaking eye contact, she added, “What did you say to him, Mickey?”
Lounging in the doorframe, Mickey chuckled. “I said that I know you better than he does.”
The Doctor smirked. “Which is entirely preposterous, of course.”
Rose shrugged. “Well, he has known me longer.”
The Doctor stepped back from the desk, gaping at her. “You’re joking. You are, aren’t you?” He shook his head in amazement. “No, you can’t possibly mean that. You’re having a go, pulling my leg, taking the mickey-” As if suddenly reminded of his presence in the room, he whirled around to face the other man. “I’ve known her longer. Rose Tyler met me for the first time when she was six months old.”
Mickey rolled his eyes. “Please. Jacks used to watch me when my gran went to church. At three months Rose tried to gnaw the bonnet off my favourite Hot Wheels car.” He swallowed hard, a faraway look in his eyes. “My Torino Tornado with the Thermal Colour Change paint. Old girl never was the same after that.”
Rose sighed. “Well, if you hadn’t waved it in my face-”
“You had those stubby little arms! How was I supposed to know you were some sort of baby ninja?”
The Doctor stepped in close to Mickey and stared him down, milking his slight height advantage for all it was worth. “You do not,” he said in the sort of even tone that makes the hairs on the back of your neck prickle, “know Rose better than I do.”
Mickey’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, you think?”
The Doctor gave him an infuriatingly superior smile. “I do.”
“All right, then.” Mickey grinned. “What’s her favourite colour?”
“Red.”
“Favourite time of year?”
“On Earth? The first week in June.”
“Favourite food?”
The Doctor snorted. “Chips, obviously.”
Mickey’s grin widened and he turned to Rose. “Well?”
“The correct answer is ‘anything made from a potato and then fried,’” she said without looking up from her game, “but I’ll allow it.”
Mickey folded his arms across his chest. “Those were easy. Just a bit of trivia.”
The Doctor smiled and titled his head to one side, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Why don’t we step things up a bit, then?”
“Blimey,” she muttered under her breath, “you two should just whip ‘em out, measure, and be done with it.”
The Doctor shook his head. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the issue at hand, Rose.”
She met his eyes, her expression solemn. “You know, you’re right. I don’t think I do.” She spun the draughts board and began to play black.
Self-satisfaction came off Mickey in waves. “You,” he said, poking the Doctor in the chest, “just can’t admit that anyone might know more than you and your mighty alien brain.”
The Doctor slipped his hands into his pockets and rocked back onto his heels, still smiling at Mickey. “I know just about everything there is to know about anything, Mickety Mick, and that includes Rose - who, you might recall, is extraordinarily fond of me and often says so without any provocation whatsoever.”
Mickey laughed. “Oh, you mean like this morning at breakfast when she called you a jam-obsessed maniac with the table manners of a particularly twitchy marmoset?”
The Doctor beamed. “You may not know this, Mickey my man, but even under the best of circumstances our Rose isn’t what you’d call a morning person. And-” he paused with the air of a man anticipating the sweet taste of victory, “and she can be positively vicious during her menses. Which began, let’s see…” He studied the watch he wasn’t wearing. “Approximately twenty-three hours and fourteen minutes ago.”
Rose sent him a needle-sharp glare. “Oi! Do you mind?”
Mickey blanched for only a moment before recovering. “Yeah, well, when Rose got her period for the first time, she phoned yours truly to make a run to the shop and bring her some of those pad things.”
The Doctor frowned at her. “You needed sanitary napkins and you phoned your boyfriend?”
Rose felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “He wasn’t my boyfriend at the time,” she said, her voice sounding a little too loud to her own ears. “We were just mates.” He continued to stare at her until she broke with an explosive sigh. “I was fourteen and all the other girls in my year were already using tampons, all right? And just who was I supposed to ask, exactly? My mum?” She sat back in her chair and scowled. “Yeah, because that wouldn’t have been at all embarrassing.”
All three took a moment to consider this scenario and shuddered.
Rose swung her feet onto the desk. “You know, between the two of you, you probably know just about every stupid, embarrassing thing about me. I don’t see why it matters who knows more.”
“Oh, it does,” Mickey and the Doctor said in unison. They glared at each other for a long moment, unblinking. There was silence.
Mickey fired the first shot. “I taught her how to drive.”
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. “Yeah? Well, I taught her how to fly a transdimensional time capsule.” He hesitated. “A little. In case of emergencies.”
Mickey stepped forward. “I knew her back when her favourite song was Spice Girls’ 2 Become 1.”
“I took her to see the first performance of Don Giovanni in 1787,” the Doctor countered. “She was so overcome by the denouement of the second act that she nearly fainted right there in her seat.”
“Yeah,” Rose muttered, “because I was starved half to death and you’d eaten all the snacks.”
“I was with her when she got pissed for the first time,” Mickey said, hands on his hips. “Five shots of tequila and she puked into her own shoes.”
“I was with her when she got anti-gravity sickness for the first time. The vomit went right up her nose.”
Mickey blinked. “What, really?”
The Doctor nodded and gave him a toothy grin. “It was brilliant.”
Rose slouched in her chair and glowered at them. Not that they noticed, of course - too caught up in their own cleverness, the both of them. The only way the conversation could possibly be more humiliating was if-
“I’ve had sex with her,” Mickey said. “A lot.”
The Doctor’s expression was a strange, unreadable thing. He opened his mouth, and then closed it again. “Well,” he said slowly, “I happen to know that she’s mildly allergic to pine nuts.”
“Yeah,” Mickey said, his voice gentle with a definite undercurrent of smug, “but that’s not quite the same thing, now is it?”
The Doctor would not meet her eyes. “No,” he said. “It’s not.”
Rose dropped her feet to the floor and sat up. “Doesn’t count.”
Mickey turned on her. “What? Of course it counts! In a fight over who knows you better, I think the fact that I’ve, you know, known you and he hasn’t counts for an awful lot!” He paused, his eyes widening. “He hasn’t, has he? I mean, you and Big Ears never-”
The Doctor flushed and made a small choking sound in the back of his throat. Rose stood, scattering draughts pieces onto the floor. “The Doctor,” she said, pointing to the man in question, “was there for my first near-death experience.”
“And most all of them since,” the Doctor added proudly, having somewhat regained his composure.
Mickey stepped forward and poked him in the chest. “I was the first bloke she ever kissed.”
The Doctor poked him back. “I was the first alien.”
Rose bit her lip and decided not to correct them. Some delusions were better left intact.
Mickey took another step forward. “I helped her sneak her dead cat off the Estate and bury him by the playground so we could tell Jackie he’d run away.”
The Doctor arched an eyebrow. “That would be Mr. Tibbetts, the ginger tabby she dressed in doll clothes when she was small and who gave her those scars on the inside of her left ankle?”
Mickey frowned. “I know that she has a birthmark on her thigh, shaped like-”
“A blobby sort of swan thing,” the Doctor finished. Off Mickey’s look, he said with a grin, “Well, I am her doctor.”
For a moment Mickey was at a loss, and the Doctor’s victory seemed sure. Then a slow smile spread across Mickey’s face, and he uttered the fatal words: “I know her middle name.”
The Doctor stepped back, his expression wary. “Don’t be daft. Rose doesn’t have a middle name.”
Mickey laughed. “And who told you that?”
The Doctor turned to her slowly, eyes wide, the very picture of a man betrayed. “Rose,” he gasped, as if he were too horrified to say any more.
Rose plopped down in her chair and gave Mickey a nasty look. “That,” she said, “you’re going to pay for.”
The Doctor slumped against the desk. “You’ve had a middle name all this time and I never knew?” He shook his head. “Unbelievable. Simply unbelievable.”
“That’s a bit rich coming from you,” she said. “And anyway, can you blame me? It’s always, ‘Rose Tyler this’ and ‘Rose Tyler that’ - if you’d known my middle name, that would’ve been three more syllables you’d have been compelled to shout out when I was being attacked by giant marshmallows or whatever, and who has that kind of time?” She stubbornly met his stare. “It was an act of self-preservation.”
The Doctor turned to Mickey. “Three syllables?”
“Marion,” he said, savouring each one of them.
“Rose Marion Tyler,” the Doctor tried, and grinned. “Oh, that’s lovely. I like it.”
Rose’s head hit the surface of the desk with a thump.
“So what about it, Doctor?” Mickey said. “I’ve known her longer and I know her better. Do you admit defeat?”
“Never!” the Doctor cried, slamming his fist down on the desk. Rose squeaked, and he reached over to pat her gently on the head. “Except, yeah, I think just this once I’d probably better.” He stuck a long finger in Mickey’s face. “Temporarily, mind you. We’ll be having a rematch soon, don’t you doubt it.”
Mickey chuckled. “Yeah, we’ll see.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and skipped out the door, whistling.
The Doctor’s fingers found their way back to her hair, and he tugged lightly at the shell of her ear. “Blimey. Am I that nauseatingly smug when I’m right?”
“No,” she said to the surface of the desk. “You are much, much worse.”
“Oh.” His fingertips walked a path from her ear to the nape of her neck. “Rose-”
“Doctor, we’re not going back to 1987 so you can shake my little baby hand as I come out of the delivery room.”
He paused, his fingers tickling her scalp. “What if I gave you a little high five?”
She sat up, and his hand fell away. “Look. I’ve known Mickey my whole life, and he’s been there for pretty much every daft thing I’ve ever done. But, you know, I’m not done doing daft things. I figure I’ve got at least a few more years of embarrassing stories left in me, and those years, Doctor - they’re all yours.” She gave him a hard look. “All right?”
“Yeah,” he said, smiling slightly. “All right.”
“Good.” She laid her head back down on the desk and sighed. “I lost at draughts.”
“I noticed,” he said, and they smiled.
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