(no subject)
Kimo’s Rules, Ten/Rose, PG-13
For a week after the Olympics they kept getting caught in storms. 3,454 words
A/N: the premise for this fic came from one of Kimo’s Rules and then somehow wound up incorporating all of them somehow :P
~*~
(Never judge a day by the weather.)
For a week after the Olympics they kept getting caught in storms.
First it was a sentient electrical storm on Desumo that threatened to wipe out every living creature on the planet, then a world that lived underground because of the ferocity of the tornadoes - daily whirlwinds tearing at the already fragile crust. Then there was the endless tropical rainstorm that nearly drowned them both, a firestorm on Guardia, a swarm of alien locusts wiping out villages on Mina 7, a meteor shower near the Blue Nebula, and even a time storm on Tjal which they had to neutralise or risk the universe falling into an eternal time loop.
In a seemingly last ditch effort to get away from it all, the Doctor flew them back to Earth for some early jazz only to discover that he had somehow managed to land them in New Orleans - not in the 1920’s as he had planned (goals are deceptive - the un-aimed arrow never misses), but in 2005.
The aftermath of one of the worst hurricane’s in history was enough to keep them busy for a while. Rose of course wanted to help out and flat out refused to leave - partially on the grounds that she’d missed the year that the disaster had taken place in because of him.
“Least I can do is help out now,” she snapped when he tried to talk her into going back to the TARDIS and leaving the clean up for someone else. “It might not’ve been our fault but they still need our help.”
“I hate cleaning up,” the Doctor had muttered and he continued to be bad tempered and irritable for the rest of the long week and a half that they spent flying around the south eastern coast of America offering help to those who needed it and comfort to those who had suffered losses.
(He who dies with the most toys - still dies.)
“So what’s your problem then?” Rose demanded once they were safely rotating in the Vortex again.
The Doctor barely even looked up at her as he put his feet up on the console one at a time so he could unlace his trainers. “Who says I’ve got a problem?” he said icily and Rose watched contemptuously as he peeled off his socks and began to wring them out.
“The TARDIS is gonna get pissed at you for getting water everywhere.” She commented after a moment and the Doctor, resigned, flung the offending articles of clothing onto the jump seat before coming to stand in front of her, shoeless.
“Who says I’ve got a problem?” he demanded, hands firmly on his hips.
“Me,” Rose mirrored him, stumping her hands on her hips too. “You’re all...cranky. You’ve been acting like some little kid who’s been put in time out since we landed back in New Orleans.”
The Doctor scowled at her and busied himself with the console. “Maybe that’s because I was kinda hoping for some jazz music and instead I got a Hurricane.” He said sulkily. “Which you then insisted we help clean up after...”
“It’s not like you had to help!” Rose blared. “If I knew you felt that way I would’ve told you to stay in the TARDIS!”
“Oh and let you go out and stop looters by yourself?” the Doctor demanded. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it could have been Rose? We were lucky we didn’t get robbed. Or shot.”
Rose scowled. “You’re making it sound like they were turning into monsters. They were just tryin’ to survive.”
The Doctor shrugged grimly and went to retrieve his socks. “Desperate times Rose. People do all sorts of crazy things to stay alive after natural disasters. You don’t know how dangerous your own species can be.”
“So, what then?” Rose followed him. “We should’ve just left them buried under the rubble?”
The Doctor stopped where he was, leant over the jump seat. “No.” He said eventually, his head bowed.
“Look,” Rose said, quieting. “I’m sorry Doctor. But I just thought...we’re here, right? We might as well make something of it instead of wasting a trip.”
The Doctor was silent and Rose pressed on hopefully.
“I mean, maybe someone we saved...maybe they turn out to be the person who cures cancer? Or...fixes global warming or something. I dunno...”
She trailed off and the Doctor smiled faintly. “I’m pretty sure that I’m the one who sorts out global warming actually.”
Rose stared. “What, seriously?”
“Deadly,” the Doctor turned to her, straightening, and abruptly enfolded her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he told her, pushing his nose endearingly against her shoulder - as though he could burrow inside her jacket if he just tried hard enough.
“What for?” she asked, a little startled but all too willing to hug him back. His nose was cold on her neck for a moment and her stomach jolted before slowly settling back down.
“I have been cranky.” He admitted to her clavicle. “It’s just...all these storms we keep landing in the middle of. It’s like the universe is trying to tell me something.”
Rose was silent for a moment and then she squeezed him a little tighter. “This is about that storm you said was coming. Isn’t it?”
(Tell the truth - there’s less to remember.)
The Doctor said nothing and Rose hesitated before pulling back. She didn’t get far - the Doctor kept hold of her, his hands at her back and she came to a compromise by leaning back from her waist and placing her hands on his shoulders.
“Storms don’t have to be all bad.” she told him.
“This one is.” he said, all hollow eyed and darkness.
Considering him for a moment, Rose reached up a hand and nearly touched his cheek before she lost her nerve and instead grasped one of his lapels. Her other hand followed suit, gently smoothing out his pinstriped jacket before stepping out of his arms.
“Right!” she said loudly before bounding up to the console. “Time for me to take you somewhere Mister Lord-of-Time-and-the-known-universe.”
She pulled the view screen around to her and fussed with it a little. The Doctor followed slowly, a slow grin forming on his face.
“You’re gonna fly the TARDIS?”
“Nope.” She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “You’re gonna help me.”
“Am I?” he joined her. “And where exactly are we going.”
“Vale of Glamorgan,” Rose said instantly. “Wales. July 20th 1996.”
The Doctor blinked. “That’s pretty specific.” He said before glancing down at his bare feet. “Am I allowed to get some dry shoes first?”
Rose merely smiled.
~*~
The sky seemed to stretch out to the edges of forever, the grass beneath it cut into a jigsaw puzzle of farms. Overhead a massive cumulonimbus cloud hunkered down low over the landscape, a harbinger of bad weather. But then, far off on the horizon, was a splash of golden light, a place where the clouds had cleared and let the sun shine through. As they watched, lightning began to crackle off in the opposite direction and then came the ominous rumble of thunder.
“About two and a half miles...” The Doctor murmured contemplatively. Rose looked up at him in confusion.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, taking her hand and looking back out on the storm. “What were you saying?”
“Every summer holidays mum’d take me down to Cardiff for a week.” Rose’s voice came softly, almost whipped away by the wind. The Doctor squeezed her hand to let her know that he was listening. “It was all we could afford usually.” She continued (there are two ways to be rich - make more or desire less). “But after a few years I got bored of the city. This one trip I found all these brochures in the reception of the hotel, so I asked if we could go look at the castles and things instead. We ended up getting stuck out here at some farm. Car broke down an’ we couldn’t get back. That’s when I saw it.”
There was a flash of light followed by a low rumble of thunder and the Doctor inhaled the heady scent of wet earth and electricity and Rose.
“The biggest storm ever,” she continued as the Doctor turned to find the colours in her hazel eyes dulled by the reflection of the clouds. “Rained for a whole week. Mum tried to keep me inside so I wouldn’t get sick but...I couldn’t do it. I used to climb out the window and run round the fields in my wellies.” She laughed then, and even if he’d not been looking at her, the Doctor would have heard the smile in her voice as she continued. “I never thought rain was beautiful till then. When it rains in London...it’s just like...grey an’...cold. It was different out here. The storm was different.”
The Doctor continued to stare at her, unfathomable woman that she was, until Rose realised and then she looked endearingly self-conscious.
“What?” she asked, brushing a wisp of blonde back from her face. The rain was just beginning, large fat drops slapping the ground and turning the shoulders of both of their jackets brown-and-red-but-almost-black.
The Doctor watched Rose watching her favourite rainstorm watching him and couldn’t help but marvel. How was it that this girl, this working class girl from one of the biggest and most anonymous cities on her planet could be so surprising to him? How was is that she was equally as prone to epiphanies of the kind that he’d come to expect from philosophers and great thinkers as she was to take him to relive a rainstorm from her childhood in order to make him feel better about some unknown impending doom that was creeping up on him like a bad Earth horror flick.
How did she do that?
(Beauty is internal - looks mean nothing.)
“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said, shaking his head in amazement. “You astound me. Constantly with the things that come out of your mouth.”
She smiled then, one of those slow smiles she had that grew until her whole face was just one great big grin. The rain came down in buckets on them both until it had washed the air between them clean and then the Doctor laughed out loud and Rose giggled as she asked, “So that’s a good thing then?” over the sudden roar of rain.
“Oh yes!” he called back. “Definitely!”
As he ran them across the field, hand in hand, her hair streamed out behind her like a golden banner. It reminded him of a goldfish, orange tail flashing bright through murky water, or maybe one of the Golden Dragons of Angmark. The mascara puddles beneath her eyes spilled onto her cheeks and honestly it should have looked terrible; but when she stopped and let go of his hand so she could spin and spin and spin and spin and spin with her eyes towards the heavens until she became dizzy and fell down heavier than a sack of potatoes...
She laughed aloud at her clumsiness and he was so struck by her (mascara puddles and all) that he couldn’t help but laugh too.
Later, shivering in the shelter of a disused stable they divested themselves of jackets too damp to wear comfortably. He began to sonic them dry but she stopped him in favour of standing and watching the downpour instead. She was wearing her old Union Jack t-shirt underneath her jacket, a relic of adventures long past. He smiled to see it appear from underneath the layer of damp cotton.
(Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.)
“That’s an old one,” he noted but she only smiled vaguely.
“Yeah,” she said jokingly. “I’m running out of clean stuff. I’ll have to start getting the TARDIS to do my washing for me if we don’t drop past home soon.”
“Isn’t your mother out here somewhere in this?” the Doctor squinted out into the rain as though expecting the silhouette of Jackie Tyler to rear out of nowhere like some phantom. “You could go and find her. Well, if it wasn’t going to involve a major paradox and Reapers tearing apart the fabric of reality you could.”
Rose laughed and caught his hand, sliding her fingers into his so that their hands meshed together and she gave him one of those tongue-tip smiles (you know the ones) and before he quite knew what he was doing, the Doctor was stepping up to kiss a very damp Rose Tyler in an abandoned stable in South Wales.
She looked surprised but not upset when his lips finally fell away from hers. Neither of them stepped back, resulting in a slightly squirmy moment of awkwardness.
“Was that...?”
“Did you...?”
They both stopped and laughed and he was about to step back and let that be that when Rose, (his amazing, spectacular Rose) kissed him again and oh those were her hands on his face...and just like that, all prior awkwardness was gone. This was just touch and the need to be touched and touching. He felt a hand over his left heart, then one on his hip and he mirrored her, felt her blood thundering underneath the Union Jack on her chest and then...
“Oh,” he said, a little startled at where her hands had moved to. “Are we...?”
“Well,” Rose flushed and took her hands away. “I mean, if you want to...”
“Not exactly an ideal location.” The Doctor said, uncomfortably eyeing their surroundings even as his hands fluttered longingly over her back.
“Kidding?” Rose said breathlessly, looping her arms around his neck so he couldn’t get away. “This place is perfect. Miles from the TARDIS, massive storm to stop anyone from coming out and catching us...”
“Rose Tyler,” he admonished. “Anyone would think that you’d planned this.”
“You kissed me,” she reminded him, worrying the buttons on his shirt until the top one slipped through the buttonhole as though by accident. The Doctor swallowed as she bared his throat and touched delicate fingertips to his skin. Slowly she worked her way down and her hands were as cold as his when she ran one finger down his naked breastbone and then placed her palm flush against his stomach.
It was at this point that he panicked.
“Rose...” he flinched away from her touch, tried to close his shirt, to hide the pale thinness of his body away and in return she looked like for all the world like he’d just punched her in the side of the head. “I’m...I can’t...I’m sorry.”
“I know.” her words were resigned and for a moment she looked like she might back down. But then she brushed a hand over his eyes and leant up to whisper to him. “But I can.”
The Doctor shivered at the devious smile in her voice. “Rose...”
“Shh!” her breath was hot against his ear. “Jus’ close your eyes Doctor. Listen.”
He could have stopped her then. Could have told her that he was too old, too alien, too dangerous for her. (Age is relative - when you’re over the hill, you pick up speed.) Instead he did as she asked, focused on the sound of the rain and the feel of her cold hands as she prised his arms away from his midsection and then gently pushed the shirt from his shoulders.
Exposed and deprived of her touch, his confidence wavered but then her hand was on his shoulder, reassuring him. A rustle of fabric and the warm, damp smell of Rose filled his senses a moment before she filled his arms. He inhaled sharply at the feel of her skin against his, nipples cold and hard against his abdomen.
“S’okay.” She assured him and he realised that he was trembling a little as she took his arms and wrapped them around her body. But even that wasn’t enough. Pulling back, he placed his hands so as to cup her face and he kissed her with all due reverence, his eyes still firmly shut. She was still wearing her trademark hoop earrings and one of his fingertips slipped through it as he kissed her again, as his other hand reached between them briefly, only to withdraw.
It was Rose’s hands who took over that duty then, undoing buttons and flies and reaching in to stroke him with caution and care.
“Nothing I should know before...?”
“Nothing too different. Hopefully.”
The Doctor was very glad a moment later that he hadn’t gone hunting for dry trainers first and had instead opted to stay barefoot for their little excursion. It might have made for very cold feet, but it was a lot easier to divest oneself of trousers without any shoes on.
Rose was not so lucky. After a long, expectant moment he finally opened his eyes to find her struggling with jeans and boots and couldn’t help but laugh at her, even as he bent to assist her. There really wasn’t an appropriate surface for the ensuing act either - a small bench was hastily padded with their damp clothing but he refused to allow either of them to lie back on it lest it create spinal difficulties. Instead, he sat and she straddled, her strong thighs resting outside his, and then she took his hand and placed at against her.
“Oh...” he said, then, “Ohhhhhoh...”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up, although whether it was at his reaction or his touch he couldn’t decide. She was burning hot beneath his fingers, so much warmer than the rest of her had ever been. His skin tingled where it touched her, the way it did when submerged in water just that little bit too hot and when she took hold of him and sank her warm weight onto him he nearly fell off the damned bench.
It was heavenly being inside her like this - the warmth and softness of her increased tenfold from the usual areas of her body that he frequently touched. Pulling his arms around her, he held her to him as they moved together and afterwards they didn’t part until she grew too cold for comfort.
“All right?” Rose asked as they gathered their scattered clothes. She very carefully was not looking at him and the Doctor made a point of taking her hand when he answered her.
“Yeah. We are.”
Still naked (what good were clothes going to do now?) they walked back to the TARDIS through the rain and shook themselves dry at the door before raiding the wardrobe room for something warm and dry. Wrapped up in ermine trimmed dressing gowns, they ended up playing Scrabble in the library until Rose crashed out on the couch.
Leaving her to it, the Doctor dressed and headed back to the console room in his usual pinstripes so he could launch them into the vortex. The external camera still showed the rainy field they had landed in and he smiled as it faded from view.
Rose had been right - as always. Not all storms were necessarily bad, you just had to make something good out of it.
The next day, Rose Tyler went outside to play and found a perfectly flattened square of grass in one of the outer fields of the farm they were staying at. She edged it with stones so she could play house and returned to it every day.
She never wondered about how it might've gotten there.
(The best things in life aren’t things.)
A week later, Jackie Tyler muscled her daughter into a car and prepared to leave the farm that had become their home while they waited out the rain and the parts for the dodgy little car. She’d never liked driving much and the rental had been expensive, but Rose had whinged and whinged until she’d promised to take her out into the countryside. At least the rental company had waived the extra six days of fees due to the engine trouble they’d encountered. The phone had been all but blistering by the time Jackie Tyler had been finished with them.
“Sorry we didn’t get to see any of the castles love,” she apologised as they took off in their tiny rental car. “Maybe next time?”
Rose however was too preoccupied with looking out the window. She gasped and near leapt out of her window, startling Jackie so much she nearly crashed the car.
“Mum, mum - look there!”
Jackie glanced over and sighed irritably. “Oh for-Rose it’s just a rainbow.”
Rose merely grinned, bouncing in her seat a little as she kept her eyes trained on the skies.
“Best storm ever.” She proclaimed before finally sitting back for the journey back to Cardiff.
(No Rain - No Rainbows)
For a week after the Olympics they kept getting caught in storms. 3,454 words
A/N: the premise for this fic came from one of Kimo’s Rules and then somehow wound up incorporating all of them somehow :P
~*~
(Never judge a day by the weather.)
For a week after the Olympics they kept getting caught in storms.
First it was a sentient electrical storm on Desumo that threatened to wipe out every living creature on the planet, then a world that lived underground because of the ferocity of the tornadoes - daily whirlwinds tearing at the already fragile crust. Then there was the endless tropical rainstorm that nearly drowned them both, a firestorm on Guardia, a swarm of alien locusts wiping out villages on Mina 7, a meteor shower near the Blue Nebula, and even a time storm on Tjal which they had to neutralise or risk the universe falling into an eternal time loop.
In a seemingly last ditch effort to get away from it all, the Doctor flew them back to Earth for some early jazz only to discover that he had somehow managed to land them in New Orleans - not in the 1920’s as he had planned (goals are deceptive - the un-aimed arrow never misses), but in 2005.
The aftermath of one of the worst hurricane’s in history was enough to keep them busy for a while. Rose of course wanted to help out and flat out refused to leave - partially on the grounds that she’d missed the year that the disaster had taken place in because of him.
“Least I can do is help out now,” she snapped when he tried to talk her into going back to the TARDIS and leaving the clean up for someone else. “It might not’ve been our fault but they still need our help.”
“I hate cleaning up,” the Doctor had muttered and he continued to be bad tempered and irritable for the rest of the long week and a half that they spent flying around the south eastern coast of America offering help to those who needed it and comfort to those who had suffered losses.
(He who dies with the most toys - still dies.)
“So what’s your problem then?” Rose demanded once they were safely rotating in the Vortex again.
The Doctor barely even looked up at her as he put his feet up on the console one at a time so he could unlace his trainers. “Who says I’ve got a problem?” he said icily and Rose watched contemptuously as he peeled off his socks and began to wring them out.
“The TARDIS is gonna get pissed at you for getting water everywhere.” She commented after a moment and the Doctor, resigned, flung the offending articles of clothing onto the jump seat before coming to stand in front of her, shoeless.
“Who says I’ve got a problem?” he demanded, hands firmly on his hips.
“Me,” Rose mirrored him, stumping her hands on her hips too. “You’re all...cranky. You’ve been acting like some little kid who’s been put in time out since we landed back in New Orleans.”
The Doctor scowled at her and busied himself with the console. “Maybe that’s because I was kinda hoping for some jazz music and instead I got a Hurricane.” He said sulkily. “Which you then insisted we help clean up after...”
“It’s not like you had to help!” Rose blared. “If I knew you felt that way I would’ve told you to stay in the TARDIS!”
“Oh and let you go out and stop looters by yourself?” the Doctor demanded. “Do you have any idea how dangerous it could have been Rose? We were lucky we didn’t get robbed. Or shot.”
Rose scowled. “You’re making it sound like they were turning into monsters. They were just tryin’ to survive.”
The Doctor shrugged grimly and went to retrieve his socks. “Desperate times Rose. People do all sorts of crazy things to stay alive after natural disasters. You don’t know how dangerous your own species can be.”
“So, what then?” Rose followed him. “We should’ve just left them buried under the rubble?”
The Doctor stopped where he was, leant over the jump seat. “No.” He said eventually, his head bowed.
“Look,” Rose said, quieting. “I’m sorry Doctor. But I just thought...we’re here, right? We might as well make something of it instead of wasting a trip.”
The Doctor was silent and Rose pressed on hopefully.
“I mean, maybe someone we saved...maybe they turn out to be the person who cures cancer? Or...fixes global warming or something. I dunno...”
She trailed off and the Doctor smiled faintly. “I’m pretty sure that I’m the one who sorts out global warming actually.”
Rose stared. “What, seriously?”
“Deadly,” the Doctor turned to her, straightening, and abruptly enfolded her in his arms. “I’m sorry,” he told her, pushing his nose endearingly against her shoulder - as though he could burrow inside her jacket if he just tried hard enough.
“What for?” she asked, a little startled but all too willing to hug him back. His nose was cold on her neck for a moment and her stomach jolted before slowly settling back down.
“I have been cranky.” He admitted to her clavicle. “It’s just...all these storms we keep landing in the middle of. It’s like the universe is trying to tell me something.”
Rose was silent for a moment and then she squeezed him a little tighter. “This is about that storm you said was coming. Isn’t it?”
(Tell the truth - there’s less to remember.)
The Doctor said nothing and Rose hesitated before pulling back. She didn’t get far - the Doctor kept hold of her, his hands at her back and she came to a compromise by leaning back from her waist and placing her hands on his shoulders.
“Storms don’t have to be all bad.” she told him.
“This one is.” he said, all hollow eyed and darkness.
Considering him for a moment, Rose reached up a hand and nearly touched his cheek before she lost her nerve and instead grasped one of his lapels. Her other hand followed suit, gently smoothing out his pinstriped jacket before stepping out of his arms.
“Right!” she said loudly before bounding up to the console. “Time for me to take you somewhere Mister Lord-of-Time-and-the-known-universe.”
She pulled the view screen around to her and fussed with it a little. The Doctor followed slowly, a slow grin forming on his face.
“You’re gonna fly the TARDIS?”
“Nope.” She looked over her shoulder at him and grinned. “You’re gonna help me.”
“Am I?” he joined her. “And where exactly are we going.”
“Vale of Glamorgan,” Rose said instantly. “Wales. July 20th 1996.”
The Doctor blinked. “That’s pretty specific.” He said before glancing down at his bare feet. “Am I allowed to get some dry shoes first?”
Rose merely smiled.
~*~
The sky seemed to stretch out to the edges of forever, the grass beneath it cut into a jigsaw puzzle of farms. Overhead a massive cumulonimbus cloud hunkered down low over the landscape, a harbinger of bad weather. But then, far off on the horizon, was a splash of golden light, a place where the clouds had cleared and let the sun shine through. As they watched, lightning began to crackle off in the opposite direction and then came the ominous rumble of thunder.
“About two and a half miles...” The Doctor murmured contemplatively. Rose looked up at him in confusion.
“What?”
“Nothing,” he said, taking her hand and looking back out on the storm. “What were you saying?”
“Every summer holidays mum’d take me down to Cardiff for a week.” Rose’s voice came softly, almost whipped away by the wind. The Doctor squeezed her hand to let her know that he was listening. “It was all we could afford usually.” She continued (there are two ways to be rich - make more or desire less). “But after a few years I got bored of the city. This one trip I found all these brochures in the reception of the hotel, so I asked if we could go look at the castles and things instead. We ended up getting stuck out here at some farm. Car broke down an’ we couldn’t get back. That’s when I saw it.”
There was a flash of light followed by a low rumble of thunder and the Doctor inhaled the heady scent of wet earth and electricity and Rose.
“The biggest storm ever,” she continued as the Doctor turned to find the colours in her hazel eyes dulled by the reflection of the clouds. “Rained for a whole week. Mum tried to keep me inside so I wouldn’t get sick but...I couldn’t do it. I used to climb out the window and run round the fields in my wellies.” She laughed then, and even if he’d not been looking at her, the Doctor would have heard the smile in her voice as she continued. “I never thought rain was beautiful till then. When it rains in London...it’s just like...grey an’...cold. It was different out here. The storm was different.”
The Doctor continued to stare at her, unfathomable woman that she was, until Rose realised and then she looked endearingly self-conscious.
“What?” she asked, brushing a wisp of blonde back from her face. The rain was just beginning, large fat drops slapping the ground and turning the shoulders of both of their jackets brown-and-red-but-almost-black.
The Doctor watched Rose watching her favourite rainstorm watching him and couldn’t help but marvel. How was it that this girl, this working class girl from one of the biggest and most anonymous cities on her planet could be so surprising to him? How was is that she was equally as prone to epiphanies of the kind that he’d come to expect from philosophers and great thinkers as she was to take him to relive a rainstorm from her childhood in order to make him feel better about some unknown impending doom that was creeping up on him like a bad Earth horror flick.
How did she do that?
(Beauty is internal - looks mean nothing.)
“Rose Tyler,” the Doctor said, shaking his head in amazement. “You astound me. Constantly with the things that come out of your mouth.”
She smiled then, one of those slow smiles she had that grew until her whole face was just one great big grin. The rain came down in buckets on them both until it had washed the air between them clean and then the Doctor laughed out loud and Rose giggled as she asked, “So that’s a good thing then?” over the sudden roar of rain.
“Oh yes!” he called back. “Definitely!”
As he ran them across the field, hand in hand, her hair streamed out behind her like a golden banner. It reminded him of a goldfish, orange tail flashing bright through murky water, or maybe one of the Golden Dragons of Angmark. The mascara puddles beneath her eyes spilled onto her cheeks and honestly it should have looked terrible; but when she stopped and let go of his hand so she could spin and spin and spin and spin and spin with her eyes towards the heavens until she became dizzy and fell down heavier than a sack of potatoes...
She laughed aloud at her clumsiness and he was so struck by her (mascara puddles and all) that he couldn’t help but laugh too.
Later, shivering in the shelter of a disused stable they divested themselves of jackets too damp to wear comfortably. He began to sonic them dry but she stopped him in favour of standing and watching the downpour instead. She was wearing her old Union Jack t-shirt underneath her jacket, a relic of adventures long past. He smiled to see it appear from underneath the layer of damp cotton.
(Speak softly and wear a loud shirt.)
“That’s an old one,” he noted but she only smiled vaguely.
“Yeah,” she said jokingly. “I’m running out of clean stuff. I’ll have to start getting the TARDIS to do my washing for me if we don’t drop past home soon.”
“Isn’t your mother out here somewhere in this?” the Doctor squinted out into the rain as though expecting the silhouette of Jackie Tyler to rear out of nowhere like some phantom. “You could go and find her. Well, if it wasn’t going to involve a major paradox and Reapers tearing apart the fabric of reality you could.”
Rose laughed and caught his hand, sliding her fingers into his so that their hands meshed together and she gave him one of those tongue-tip smiles (you know the ones) and before he quite knew what he was doing, the Doctor was stepping up to kiss a very damp Rose Tyler in an abandoned stable in South Wales.
She looked surprised but not upset when his lips finally fell away from hers. Neither of them stepped back, resulting in a slightly squirmy moment of awkwardness.
“Was that...?”
“Did you...?”
They both stopped and laughed and he was about to step back and let that be that when Rose, (his amazing, spectacular Rose) kissed him again and oh those were her hands on his face...and just like that, all prior awkwardness was gone. This was just touch and the need to be touched and touching. He felt a hand over his left heart, then one on his hip and he mirrored her, felt her blood thundering underneath the Union Jack on her chest and then...
“Oh,” he said, a little startled at where her hands had moved to. “Are we...?”
“Well,” Rose flushed and took her hands away. “I mean, if you want to...”
“Not exactly an ideal location.” The Doctor said, uncomfortably eyeing their surroundings even as his hands fluttered longingly over her back.
“Kidding?” Rose said breathlessly, looping her arms around his neck so he couldn’t get away. “This place is perfect. Miles from the TARDIS, massive storm to stop anyone from coming out and catching us...”
“Rose Tyler,” he admonished. “Anyone would think that you’d planned this.”
“You kissed me,” she reminded him, worrying the buttons on his shirt until the top one slipped through the buttonhole as though by accident. The Doctor swallowed as she bared his throat and touched delicate fingertips to his skin. Slowly she worked her way down and her hands were as cold as his when she ran one finger down his naked breastbone and then placed her palm flush against his stomach.
It was at this point that he panicked.
“Rose...” he flinched away from her touch, tried to close his shirt, to hide the pale thinness of his body away and in return she looked like for all the world like he’d just punched her in the side of the head. “I’m...I can’t...I’m sorry.”
“I know.” her words were resigned and for a moment she looked like she might back down. But then she brushed a hand over his eyes and leant up to whisper to him. “But I can.”
The Doctor shivered at the devious smile in her voice. “Rose...”
“Shh!” her breath was hot against his ear. “Jus’ close your eyes Doctor. Listen.”
He could have stopped her then. Could have told her that he was too old, too alien, too dangerous for her. (Age is relative - when you’re over the hill, you pick up speed.) Instead he did as she asked, focused on the sound of the rain and the feel of her cold hands as she prised his arms away from his midsection and then gently pushed the shirt from his shoulders.
Exposed and deprived of her touch, his confidence wavered but then her hand was on his shoulder, reassuring him. A rustle of fabric and the warm, damp smell of Rose filled his senses a moment before she filled his arms. He inhaled sharply at the feel of her skin against his, nipples cold and hard against his abdomen.
“S’okay.” She assured him and he realised that he was trembling a little as she took his arms and wrapped them around her body. But even that wasn’t enough. Pulling back, he placed his hands so as to cup her face and he kissed her with all due reverence, his eyes still firmly shut. She was still wearing her trademark hoop earrings and one of his fingertips slipped through it as he kissed her again, as his other hand reached between them briefly, only to withdraw.
It was Rose’s hands who took over that duty then, undoing buttons and flies and reaching in to stroke him with caution and care.
“Nothing I should know before...?”
“Nothing too different. Hopefully.”
The Doctor was very glad a moment later that he hadn’t gone hunting for dry trainers first and had instead opted to stay barefoot for their little excursion. It might have made for very cold feet, but it was a lot easier to divest oneself of trousers without any shoes on.
Rose was not so lucky. After a long, expectant moment he finally opened his eyes to find her struggling with jeans and boots and couldn’t help but laugh at her, even as he bent to assist her. There really wasn’t an appropriate surface for the ensuing act either - a small bench was hastily padded with their damp clothing but he refused to allow either of them to lie back on it lest it create spinal difficulties. Instead, he sat and she straddled, her strong thighs resting outside his, and then she took his hand and placed at against her.
“Oh...” he said, then, “Ohhhhhoh...”
Rose’s eyebrows shot up, although whether it was at his reaction or his touch he couldn’t decide. She was burning hot beneath his fingers, so much warmer than the rest of her had ever been. His skin tingled where it touched her, the way it did when submerged in water just that little bit too hot and when she took hold of him and sank her warm weight onto him he nearly fell off the damned bench.
It was heavenly being inside her like this - the warmth and softness of her increased tenfold from the usual areas of her body that he frequently touched. Pulling his arms around her, he held her to him as they moved together and afterwards they didn’t part until she grew too cold for comfort.
“All right?” Rose asked as they gathered their scattered clothes. She very carefully was not looking at him and the Doctor made a point of taking her hand when he answered her.
“Yeah. We are.”
Still naked (what good were clothes going to do now?) they walked back to the TARDIS through the rain and shook themselves dry at the door before raiding the wardrobe room for something warm and dry. Wrapped up in ermine trimmed dressing gowns, they ended up playing Scrabble in the library until Rose crashed out on the couch.
Leaving her to it, the Doctor dressed and headed back to the console room in his usual pinstripes so he could launch them into the vortex. The external camera still showed the rainy field they had landed in and he smiled as it faded from view.
Rose had been right - as always. Not all storms were necessarily bad, you just had to make something good out of it.
The next day, Rose Tyler went outside to play and found a perfectly flattened square of grass in one of the outer fields of the farm they were staying at. She edged it with stones so she could play house and returned to it every day.
She never wondered about how it might've gotten there.
(The best things in life aren’t things.)
A week later, Jackie Tyler muscled her daughter into a car and prepared to leave the farm that had become their home while they waited out the rain and the parts for the dodgy little car. She’d never liked driving much and the rental had been expensive, but Rose had whinged and whinged until she’d promised to take her out into the countryside. At least the rental company had waived the extra six days of fees due to the engine trouble they’d encountered. The phone had been all but blistering by the time Jackie Tyler had been finished with them.
“Sorry we didn’t get to see any of the castles love,” she apologised as they took off in their tiny rental car. “Maybe next time?”
Rose however was too preoccupied with looking out the window. She gasped and near leapt out of her window, startling Jackie so much she nearly crashed the car.
“Mum, mum - look there!”
Jackie glanced over and sighed irritably. “Oh for-Rose it’s just a rainbow.”
Rose merely grinned, bouncing in her seat a little as she kept her eyes trained on the skies.
“Best storm ever.” She proclaimed before finally sitting back for the journey back to Cardiff.
(No Rain - No Rainbows)