(no subject)
Pins and Needles: Part 2, AU Ten/Rose (pg-13)
“Are you insinuating that my deducting skills aren’t what they ought to be?” 4,156
( Feeling Electric -- Set Me On Fire -- Pins and Needles Part 1 -- Part 2 -- Static )
It’s astonishing, how big of an impact he had on her in a single summer.
Despite having lived her whole life in the same town, all of a sudden she can’t turn a street corner without encountering a ghost from their time together. Every square inch in a twenty mile radius seems completely saturated in memories of him. She turns her head whenever a blue car drives past; hears the distinctive, wheezing drone of his constantly-on-the-verge-of-dying engine everywhere she goes.
The phone calls have dwindled, now that he’s started classes and is busy with club meetings every evening.
And she knows it’s stupid, but she worries that he’ll come back changed. Not that he’ll meet someone else-he’s like a magnet and he doesn’t even know it, he’ll have met tons of people and not realized at all-but that he won’t be her Doctor anymore. She imagines a stranger, with longer hair and a tweedy bookishness; eyes she doesn’t know how to read. (And maybe her concept of how college changes a person are a little bit outdated, but she’s always been more of a Hogwarts girl, herself.)
She takes to hanging around the comic book store where they met, curling up with old Young Justice trades in her favorite corner. She never buys anything, but the workers know better than to give her a rough time.
“Oh god, would you stop moping? The puppy eyes are unbearable. You look like a suicidal muppet.”
Well. Most of them, anyway.
“Hi, Donna,” says Rose, giving her a tired smile.
“You look awful,” the redhead says without preamble. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just… I haven’t heard from the Doctor in a while, and I’m starting to miss him. I think he might’ve lost his phone, actually. He’s always doing that.”
Donna nods sagely. “I’ve never seen him hold onto a cell for more than three months. He’s always dropping them in the toilet or forgetting them on the train or-”
“-leaving them on a small island in the middle of a lake. Yeah.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Rose blinks. “What d’you mean?”
“E-mail? Facebook? Carrier pigeon? There’s more than one way to get in touch with a person, you know. Even space cadets like him.”
“I…” Rose trails off, consciously making an effort to keep the self-pity out of her voice. “He’s busy. I shouldn’t… it’d be selfish to make him pencil me into his schedule when he has so much going on. If he can’t find the time, then I’m not gonna chase after him.”
Donna gives her a Look. “And you think fading into the background is the way to make him think of you? That’s sweet. Rose, if you want his attention, get it. Remind him why he fell in love with you in the first place.”
The word love falls so easily from Donna’s lips that Rose’s jaw nearly drops. Not a hint of doubt or even a slight tone of making fun. For whatever reason, Donna considers it a fact.
Rose wonders what on Earth he’s said to her.
-
Rose Tyler
You online? I have a favor to ask
Jack Harkness
A sexual favor?
Rose Tyler
lol
no, just the normal kind
Jack Harkness
how vanilla.
Whats up?
-
The words Bad Wolf are following him everywhere.
It’s been happening all day. It’d started out small: scrawled in messy handwriting on the whiteboard on his bedroom door. But then he’d found it drawn in chalk on the big set of steps leading to the academic quad; then carved into his usual desk at his Physics lecture. He finds it spray painted in the theater parking lot, written on the blackboard when he goes early to French III, and-this probably happened first, but he doesn’t notice it until he’s grabbing dinner-scribbled in Sharpie on the side of his sneaker.
It’s starting to drive him crazy.
When he finally gets back to the dorm room, he finds Jack’s legs dangling down from the top bunk, and his cell phone set neatly on his own pillow.
He yanks on Jack’s foot.
“You found my phone?”
Jack shrugs.
“It was here the whole time?”
“Nah, Tosh found it. You know how she works in the library? Apparently, it was shoved between the pages of a re-shelved copy of Death in the Clouds.”
“Oh yeeeeeeeah,” the Doctor drawls as it all comes back to him. “I didn’t have a bookmark, so I decided to use my phone, and then… well I guess I must’ve gotten distrac…ted… right!” he laughs, jamming his thumb down on the speed dial.
There’s a muffled buzz and the click of being picked up.
“Where are you?” the Doctor blurts excitedly before Rose can even fit in a hello.
“Um. In my room? Where else would I be?”
His face falls. “I… nowhere. I just, um…”
“Haven’t heard from you in a while. Did you lose your phone?”
“Yeah, but Jack’s friend Toshiko found it, so everything’s hunky-dory. …Please forget I said that. Anyway, you’ll never believe where I-but I’m digressing. You’re really on the east coast?”
She’s giggling at him. “If I were out there, wouldn’t I tell you?”
“I thought you were telling me! I’ve been seeing Bad Wolf all over campus!”
The laugh he’d been expecting never comes. “How mysterious,” she comments dryly instead. “I wonder how that happened.”
“Rose Tyler!” he admonishes though a smile. “That’s vandalism of private property! And using accomplices, no less! For shame.” He sounds positively delighted.
“Dunno what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, sure. So go on-spill. Who were your co-conspirators?”
He imagines her rolling her eyes at him. “Typical Superman fan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s so unrefined. Using your x-ray vision to peek in the box. Sometimes the box is lined with lead, Doctor. Be the World’s Greatest Detective.”
“Are you insinuating that my deducting skills aren’t what they ought to be?”
“Figure it out,” she teases back, then hangs up.
He’s stricken. How could he have forgotten how clever she is?
“Jack,” he asks slowly, “this may sound like a weird question, but… did you write Bad Wolf all over campus last night?”
Jack shrugs, supremely uninterested. “Gwen and Ianto helped.”
“Jinkies,” the Doctor mutters sardonically. “A clue.”
(Rose, he realizes with a sudden, sharp pang, would have laughed at that.)
He flips open his phone to call her back.
-
The phone thing, they realize quickly, isn’t going to work.
It wouldn’t have been a problem but for the fact that their renewed efforts to keep in touch accidentally spiral into… near-constant communication. When Jackie catches sight of Rose’s long-distance bill, she actually threatens to cancel her number.
Luckily, the Doctor has never been one to give up easily.
“It’s called Skype,” he explains in a chipper voice, using their Supervised Telephone Minutes to talk her through the installation process. “Free phone calls using an online chat service. How brilliant is that? It means I can type to you, if Jack’s trying to sleep, but you can still talk back to me. Not to mention: no phone bill. Are you signed in yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m trying to find you so I can send you my contact info… aha. Hello!” (She’d bet herself five dollars that he’s waving at the screen, but she’s never been the gambling sort.) “D’you see me?”
“Yeah. Should I hang up?”
“Yes. I’m going to call you back.”
In the time it takes for her to put her phone away, her computer has started playing the strangest ring tone she’s ever heard in her life-a tuneless melody interspersed with what sound like happy, bursting bubbles.
“How’s your sound quality?” the Doctor asks the second she accepts the call. “Can you hear me now?”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” she chuckles, shaking her head.
“Oh, you sound great! And you know, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery-”
“‘Jiggery-pokery?’ That a technical term?”
“Yeah, I got an A in Jiggery-Pokery. Didn’t you?”
“Nah; I failed Hullaballoo.”
“You probably forgot to-there we are! Hello!” His beaming, pixelated face pops up on her screen, and he waves. (Again.)
“Hello. I, um. I don’t have a webcam, you know.”
“I know. Happy un-birthday! The Fed-Ex tracking number says it should reach your house in the next two days.”
“Doctor! You didn’t-”
“I did. I got you a headset, too, just to be thorough. Isn’t it sharp?” He holds up his own. “Wait til you see me put it on; I feel like a secret agent.”
She wonders if there will ever come a time when she will stop falling in love with him and just… be in love with him. If there’s some kind of bottom she can reach.
On days like this, she doubts it.
They quickly settle into a routine, resuming their sleepy, late-night conversations of the past. (“What do you think reality television will be like, a few centuries from now? D’you reckon they’ll actually just start… killing people, at some point?”) She has a tendency to fall asleep on him, which he finds adorable, but it’s only because she’s pretty sure he never sleeps at all. If he does, she never sees it. Between the three-hour time difference and fact that she has to get up early whereas he doesn’t have class before noon (“I’m a college student, Rose; we’re civilized”), they end up spending most of her night together-the Doctor buzzing with energy as she’s first climbing into bed, and quietly, unfailingly present when she wakes up in the morning: checking his e-mail or working on an essay or any one of a thousand things.
In a way, it’s the most intimate they’ve ever been.
It becomes her favorite daydream, this coast-to-coast love story of theirs; her secret escape from boring classes and duller shifts at work. She thinks about phone lines, and cables across the country-bringing words from his future to her past-and it feels a little bit like time travel.
-
“Did I miss anything good?” she asks blearily one morning, waking up to the drone of her alarm clock, the heat of her laptop against her belly and the Doctor softly tapping away at his keyboard.
He shrugs. “The sun rose.” After a moment’s contemplation, he breaks into a wide grin. “The sun, Rose! Hee.”
“Did you just giggle?”
“What? No! That was a… manly grunt of satisfaction.”
“Ah. Yeah, I can see how I might’ve gotten the two mixed up.” She licks her lips, shaking her head in amusement. “The sun, Rose. Honestly. I should have named you the Dorkter.”
He barks out a laugh. “Saying that makes you the cool one? Right. Because portmanteaus are so much cooler than comma-insertion puns.”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Get out of bed, slacker.”
“Get in bed, insomniac.”
They grin at each other for truly absurd length of time before Rose’s snooze alarm startles them back to reality.
-
The year goes by surprisingly quickly, when all is said and done.
On Halloween they wear complementary costumes, intent on synchronizing their trick-or-treating experiences despite nay-sayers protesting they were too old (Jackie and Shareen) and frustrated friends who just wanted to go to a party, was that too much to ask? (Jack and, once again, Shareen). It takes weeks of planning. On the night of the 31st, she texts him a picture of her poodle skirt, and he in turn sends a video of him waggling his eyebrows, hair done up in a ridiculous pompadour-and for a moment, the distance between them disappears.
It’s too expensive for him to fly home for Thanksgiving with winter break looming so near, so he ends up attending a pot-luck for left-behinders at the Dean’s house-which he insists he doesn’t mind, as “the Brig is magnificent.” (How a former Brigadier-General ended up Dean of Students, she’ll never understand.) The Tylers in turn invite Sarah Jane over for turkey, not wanting her to end up alone. Watching their guardians bond over green bean casserole recipes and favorite anecdotes from their youth, Rose tries to be subtle as she checks her phone under the table, her inbox rapidly filling with a list of everything he’s thankful for.
On Christmas Eve, he steps into her foyer wearing his suit, a long overcoat and a hesitant smile. Time-for once-is obedient and stands still.
Winter break ends far too quickly for their tastes, but spring semester goes by in a blur-a soul-crushing series of standardized tests and mind-numbing lectures from every single one of her teachers about how it’s vitally important that she and her classmates start looking at colleges, like, last year. (She hardly sees the point; she knows exactly where she’s supposed to be. Whether she has the grades for it is another thing entirely.) Their respective spring breaks are a week and a half apart, and they spend their time off like two ships passing in the night. Rose comes out the other side feeling even more deprived and bereft than usual, hating that she’d come so close just to miss out on his company due to something as silly as school.
Somehow, before she’s able to get her bearings, it’s April and all anyone can talk about is prom.
-
“I know it’s stupid, but just… you’re my boyfriend and I don’t want to go with anyone else, you know? So what do you say? Are you up for tux rental fees, awkwardly posed pictures in the foyer and a night of bad food and worse music? Bet you can’t sweep me off my feet.”
“I can’t.”
“Well if you’re not even going to try,” she laughs, grinning. “Don’t be like that; it won’t be that bad. The world doesn’t end because the Doctor dances.”
“No, I mean, I can’t. I have finals.”
She frowns. “I thought you were done on the tenth?”
“That’s just my last test. I still have an outstanding history paper due after that, and unless I stay on campus to write it I’ll never be able to concentrate.” (If I’m around you, he doesn’t say.)
“History paper,” she repeats dully.
“Yeah. It’s on Madame de Pompadour.”
“Who?”
“Madame de Pompadour! Jeanne Antoinette Poisson; nicknamed Reinette? Later Madame D’Etoiles, later still mistress of Louis XV, uncrowned Queen of France? Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan…” he trails off, sensing he’s not getting anywhere. After a moment, he tentatively adds, “fantastic gardener?”-as if that will be the key detail that has her smacking her head going ‘Oh! That Reinette Poisson!’
Honestly.
“Never heard of her,” she says instead.
“Well, she’s a fascinating figure in French history.”
“Good for her.”
“… you’re upset.”
“No, I’m not ups-it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, yeah? I have to… I gotta go. Good luck on your paper.”
She flops onto her bed, faceplants into her pillow and stays there, feeling wretched.
-
Prom ends up a thoroughly unremarkable affair.
She goes with Mickey, and she has fun-she really does. Only she can’t fight the nagging feeling, as she tests out How Low She Can Go and indulges in sneakily-spiked punch, that she’s forgetting something. (She anxiously glances over her shoulder so often that Shareen makes a joke about starting a new dance move that, as all embarrassing truths are wont to do, instantly becomes their entire circle of friends’ New Favorite Thing.) She just… keeps expecting him to burst through the doors halfway through Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick or something.
He doesn’t.
Three hours later Mickey’s dropping her off at the corner, and she stretches and yawns before starting the final trek back to her house. She’d asked him to let her walk because the warm spring air had seemed incredibly enticing compared to the awkward silence of their limo-taking the scenic route home with her high heels in her hands, she has trouble thinking she made the wrong choice. She tries a languid twirl or two, just to revel in the cliché for a bit, and breathes in and out lazily, remembering another walk home under golden streetlights.
(“Superman isn’t as alien as you’re making him sound. He’s fallible.”
A snort. “’Course he is. He can’t see through lead and he’s allergic to kryptonite.”
“I’m not talking about that. All that stuff you said about needing people, that’s the same. Kryptonite isn’t Superman’s weakness; not really.”
“Oh?” she’d laughed. “What is, then?”
A squeeze of the fingers. “Lois Lane.”)
The TARDIS is sitting in her driveway.
The TARDIS is sitting in her driveway, and the Doctor is perched on the hood-occasionally glancing from the stars to his watch and back again.
He’s wearing a tuxedo.
She starts running.
(Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she registers her empty hands and the thump of plastic hitting the pavement. That doesn’t seem quite right, but she honestly cannot bring herself to care.)
Seeing her out of the corner of his eye, he grins hugely, jumps down from the car and opens his arms just in time for her to plow straight into him. He lifts her into the air, humming contentedly to himself, and she giggles and kicks like a schoolgirl, completely unable to control her overly enthusiastic reactions.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he murmurs when he finally puts her down, still swaying from side to side. “I meant to be here five and a half hours ago. But then my flight was delayed, and Sarah Jane was stuck in traffic, and when I finally got home I couldn’t find my dress shoes…” he looks down, and she glances at his feet-he’s wearing black Converse. “Well, anyway. I’m here now. It’s a good lesson: always give me a five and a half hour window.”
“Five and a half hours,” she repeats dutifully, unable to stop grinning at him.
“It’s not my fault, really. The tux is cursed. I wore it on the plane, and I think it jinxed me.”
“You wore it on the…”
“I wanted to surprise you!” he squeaks, defensive. He leans away from her, getting a good look for the first time. “You look beautiful. Did… did you have a good time?”
She kisses him soundly. “I will now,” she murmurs against him when they stop for breath. Her hand wanders up his chest to stop at his collar. “Why the bowtie?”
“Oh, you know,” he says in a strained voice as she presses kisses lower and lower, “seemed appropriate. And bow-bow-oh, god-” he groans, tilting his head, “bowties are cool.”
She tugs on it; it doesn’t budge. “Can you get it off?” she growls, biting his ear in lieu of getting access to his neck.
He gulps. “It’s a clip-on.”
She reaches up to unclasp it, and he captures her hand in his. “Not yet,” he says. “I want… inside.”
Beaming, she takes a step back and starts leading him down the street by their linked hands.
(“Rose? When I said inside, I meant your house.”
“Yeah, but I-um. I kind of dropped my shoes.”)
-
Once they get through the front door, though, he drags her straight to the kitchen.
“Doctor, shouldn’t we be taking this… upstairs?” Rose asks as he buries himself in her refrigerator.
“Not yet,” he says, emerging with cream cheese and cucumbers. “Do you have chives?”
“Um. Maybe? Not fresh, though. Check the pantry.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Dried chives? Rose; please.” He dives back into the fridge, rummages, and finally selects a jar of bacon bits.
Rose perches on the counter as he starts washing the cucumbers at the sink. “So,” she drawls, trying to sound nonchalant, “whatcha doin’?”
“Nibbles!” he announces, putting the cucumbers on a bit of paper towel. She watches, amused, as he starts opening every cupboard in succession. “Just because I missed your prom doesn’t mean we can’t have the prom experience.”
“So you’re making hors d’oeuvres?”
“Yep!” he confirms, popping the p. “Now, where do you keep the-?”
“Chopping boards are in the one to the left of the sink; the good knives are in that case above the stove.”
He beams at her. “This won’t take but a minute. You want to pick us some music?”
She puts on Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and waits for him to get the hint as he sucks the cream cheese from his fingers, grabs her hand and twirls her around the kitchen.
-
He’s leading her in dreamy circles to “Moonlight Serenade” when she finally hits her breaking point, two plates of cucumber nibbles and most of a Best Of album later. She stands on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his ear. “What was that you were sayin’ earlier, about the tux being jinxed?” she asks, hoping she sounds at least something slightly like seductive.
“Mmmmn,” he hums, pulling her closer. “It’s a travesty, really. Terrible bad luck.”
“Then we’d best get it off of you immediately, don’t you think?”
The Doctor stops dancing abruptly, jerking away so that he can get a proper look at her. Taking in her hooded gaze and flushed cheeks, a confident smirk blossoms on his face.
He leans down for a seductive whisper of his own: “Run.”
Making it to the front hall is a sloppy affair, but what they lack in fine motor control they make up for in pure enthusiasm. He loses layers steadily as they (rather unsteadily) mount the stairs-bumping into banisters and tripping over steps as she pulls off his bowtie, jacket, cummerbund and shirt in succession, leaving them strewn on the hallway carpet-but somehow they make it to the second floor with a minimum of bruising.
He backs her against the wall. “Won’t your mom-?” he asks into the curve of her neck, more out of a sense of duty than any real motivation to go back and pick up after her.
“Huh?” Rose whimpers, eyes blissfully shut.
He makes the immediate executive decision not to care about Jackie Tyler at the moment.
With concentrated effort, they manage to open and stumble through her bedroom door, quite reluctant to break any sort of physical contact. Once inside, though, the stale air and sleepy darkness of the familiar space gives him a rush of clarity, and he gently reaches to still her hands as she gropes blindly at the zipper of her dress.
“Hold on,” he murmurs, nuzzling at her temple, “let me.” Their height difference is so great that he finds he has to get down on his knees to get a good angle on the zipper, but he doesn’t mind that-he unwraps her like a present, and falls in love all over again with every inch of skin exposed.
The dress drops to the floor, and his breath hitches.
He’d be the first to admit that he’s not the foremost expert in women’s undergarments-that in fact, the great majority of his knowledge comes from embarrassing instances of folding Sarah Jane’s laundry. He’d expected boned spandex and lycra torture devices that left angry red marks on her skin, designed to flatten and tuck the body into unachievable ideals. He’d fantasized about all things lacy and sheer, in varying degrees of comfort and practicality.
He had never dreamed of Batman boxer-briefs.
“D’you like them?” Rose asks, biting her lip.
He doesn’t know how to answer that question. She’d probably had to buy them at the Little Boy’s section of Target, or something, and as he tries to regain use of his tongue he realizes that this is simultaneously the least erotic and most sexy thing he’s ever seen her wear.
“Rose…” he breathes, looking up at her in something a lot like awe, and she smiles.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she quotes, and it is only now that it truly hits him that she expected him to be here. That she had put these on before posing for awkward pictures with Mickey; that they’d been lurking all night under that exquisite dress as she’d eaten mediocre food and danced to mediocre music and-if her breath is any indication-gotten the slightest bit tipsy on smuggled-in mediocre booze. A gift for him, just in case, when she’d had no reason to believe or hope he’d actually show up.
If it weren’t for the fact that he returned it with his whole heart, he thinks he’d have trouble imagining that kind of faith.
He kisses the inside of her thigh. “I love you,” he informs her seriously, looking up at her from his knees.
She threads her fingers through his hair and gives a wicked grin. “So what’re you going to do about it?”
As fantastic as they looked on her, he thinks much, much later, the underoos looked even better on the floor.
“Are you insinuating that my deducting skills aren’t what they ought to be?” 4,156
( Feeling Electric -- Set Me On Fire -- Pins and Needles Part 1 -- Part 2 -- Static )
It’s astonishing, how big of an impact he had on her in a single summer.
Despite having lived her whole life in the same town, all of a sudden she can’t turn a street corner without encountering a ghost from their time together. Every square inch in a twenty mile radius seems completely saturated in memories of him. She turns her head whenever a blue car drives past; hears the distinctive, wheezing drone of his constantly-on-the-verge-of-dying engine everywhere she goes.
The phone calls have dwindled, now that he’s started classes and is busy with club meetings every evening.
And she knows it’s stupid, but she worries that he’ll come back changed. Not that he’ll meet someone else-he’s like a magnet and he doesn’t even know it, he’ll have met tons of people and not realized at all-but that he won’t be her Doctor anymore. She imagines a stranger, with longer hair and a tweedy bookishness; eyes she doesn’t know how to read. (And maybe her concept of how college changes a person are a little bit outdated, but she’s always been more of a Hogwarts girl, herself.)
She takes to hanging around the comic book store where they met, curling up with old Young Justice trades in her favorite corner. She never buys anything, but the workers know better than to give her a rough time.
“Oh god, would you stop moping? The puppy eyes are unbearable. You look like a suicidal muppet.”
Well. Most of them, anyway.
“Hi, Donna,” says Rose, giving her a tired smile.
“You look awful,” the redhead says without preamble. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. It’s just… I haven’t heard from the Doctor in a while, and I’m starting to miss him. I think he might’ve lost his phone, actually. He’s always doing that.”
Donna nods sagely. “I’ve never seen him hold onto a cell for more than three months. He’s always dropping them in the toilet or forgetting them on the train or-”
“-leaving them on a small island in the middle of a lake. Yeah.”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
Rose blinks. “What d’you mean?”
“E-mail? Facebook? Carrier pigeon? There’s more than one way to get in touch with a person, you know. Even space cadets like him.”
“I…” Rose trails off, consciously making an effort to keep the self-pity out of her voice. “He’s busy. I shouldn’t… it’d be selfish to make him pencil me into his schedule when he has so much going on. If he can’t find the time, then I’m not gonna chase after him.”
Donna gives her a Look. “And you think fading into the background is the way to make him think of you? That’s sweet. Rose, if you want his attention, get it. Remind him why he fell in love with you in the first place.”
The word love falls so easily from Donna’s lips that Rose’s jaw nearly drops. Not a hint of doubt or even a slight tone of making fun. For whatever reason, Donna considers it a fact.
Rose wonders what on Earth he’s said to her.
-
Rose Tyler
You online? I have a favor to ask
Jack Harkness
A sexual favor?
Rose Tyler
lol
no, just the normal kind
Jack Harkness
how vanilla.
Whats up?
-
The words Bad Wolf are following him everywhere.
It’s been happening all day. It’d started out small: scrawled in messy handwriting on the whiteboard on his bedroom door. But then he’d found it drawn in chalk on the big set of steps leading to the academic quad; then carved into his usual desk at his Physics lecture. He finds it spray painted in the theater parking lot, written on the blackboard when he goes early to French III, and-this probably happened first, but he doesn’t notice it until he’s grabbing dinner-scribbled in Sharpie on the side of his sneaker.
It’s starting to drive him crazy.
When he finally gets back to the dorm room, he finds Jack’s legs dangling down from the top bunk, and his cell phone set neatly on his own pillow.
He yanks on Jack’s foot.
“You found my phone?”
Jack shrugs.
“It was here the whole time?”
“Nah, Tosh found it. You know how she works in the library? Apparently, it was shoved between the pages of a re-shelved copy of Death in the Clouds.”
“Oh yeeeeeeeah,” the Doctor drawls as it all comes back to him. “I didn’t have a bookmark, so I decided to use my phone, and then… well I guess I must’ve gotten distrac…ted… right!” he laughs, jamming his thumb down on the speed dial.
There’s a muffled buzz and the click of being picked up.
“Where are you?” the Doctor blurts excitedly before Rose can even fit in a hello.
“Um. In my room? Where else would I be?”
His face falls. “I… nowhere. I just, um…”
“Haven’t heard from you in a while. Did you lose your phone?”
“Yeah, but Jack’s friend Toshiko found it, so everything’s hunky-dory. …Please forget I said that. Anyway, you’ll never believe where I-but I’m digressing. You’re really on the east coast?”
She’s giggling at him. “If I were out there, wouldn’t I tell you?”
“I thought you were telling me! I’ve been seeing Bad Wolf all over campus!”
The laugh he’d been expecting never comes. “How mysterious,” she comments dryly instead. “I wonder how that happened.”
“Rose Tyler!” he admonishes though a smile. “That’s vandalism of private property! And using accomplices, no less! For shame.” He sounds positively delighted.
“Dunno what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, sure. So go on-spill. Who were your co-conspirators?”
He imagines her rolling her eyes at him. “Typical Superman fan.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“That’s so unrefined. Using your x-ray vision to peek in the box. Sometimes the box is lined with lead, Doctor. Be the World’s Greatest Detective.”
“Are you insinuating that my deducting skills aren’t what they ought to be?”
“Figure it out,” she teases back, then hangs up.
He’s stricken. How could he have forgotten how clever she is?
“Jack,” he asks slowly, “this may sound like a weird question, but… did you write Bad Wolf all over campus last night?”
Jack shrugs, supremely uninterested. “Gwen and Ianto helped.”
“Jinkies,” the Doctor mutters sardonically. “A clue.”
(Rose, he realizes with a sudden, sharp pang, would have laughed at that.)
He flips open his phone to call her back.
-
The phone thing, they realize quickly, isn’t going to work.
It wouldn’t have been a problem but for the fact that their renewed efforts to keep in touch accidentally spiral into… near-constant communication. When Jackie catches sight of Rose’s long-distance bill, she actually threatens to cancel her number.
Luckily, the Doctor has never been one to give up easily.
“It’s called Skype,” he explains in a chipper voice, using their Supervised Telephone Minutes to talk her through the installation process. “Free phone calls using an online chat service. How brilliant is that? It means I can type to you, if Jack’s trying to sleep, but you can still talk back to me. Not to mention: no phone bill. Are you signed in yet?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m trying to find you so I can send you my contact info… aha. Hello!” (She’d bet herself five dollars that he’s waving at the screen, but she’s never been the gambling sort.) “D’you see me?”
“Yeah. Should I hang up?”
“Yes. I’m going to call you back.”
In the time it takes for her to put her phone away, her computer has started playing the strangest ring tone she’s ever heard in her life-a tuneless melody interspersed with what sound like happy, bursting bubbles.
“How’s your sound quality?” the Doctor asks the second she accepts the call. “Can you hear me now?”
“I can’t believe you just said that,” she chuckles, shaking her head.
“Oh, you sound great! And you know, with a little bit of jiggery-pokery-”
“‘Jiggery-pokery?’ That a technical term?”
“Yeah, I got an A in Jiggery-Pokery. Didn’t you?”
“Nah; I failed Hullaballoo.”
“You probably forgot to-there we are! Hello!” His beaming, pixelated face pops up on her screen, and he waves. (Again.)
“Hello. I, um. I don’t have a webcam, you know.”
“I know. Happy un-birthday! The Fed-Ex tracking number says it should reach your house in the next two days.”
“Doctor! You didn’t-”
“I did. I got you a headset, too, just to be thorough. Isn’t it sharp?” He holds up his own. “Wait til you see me put it on; I feel like a secret agent.”
She wonders if there will ever come a time when she will stop falling in love with him and just… be in love with him. If there’s some kind of bottom she can reach.
On days like this, she doubts it.
They quickly settle into a routine, resuming their sleepy, late-night conversations of the past. (“What do you think reality television will be like, a few centuries from now? D’you reckon they’ll actually just start… killing people, at some point?”) She has a tendency to fall asleep on him, which he finds adorable, but it’s only because she’s pretty sure he never sleeps at all. If he does, she never sees it. Between the three-hour time difference and fact that she has to get up early whereas he doesn’t have class before noon (“I’m a college student, Rose; we’re civilized”), they end up spending most of her night together-the Doctor buzzing with energy as she’s first climbing into bed, and quietly, unfailingly present when she wakes up in the morning: checking his e-mail or working on an essay or any one of a thousand things.
In a way, it’s the most intimate they’ve ever been.
It becomes her favorite daydream, this coast-to-coast love story of theirs; her secret escape from boring classes and duller shifts at work. She thinks about phone lines, and cables across the country-bringing words from his future to her past-and it feels a little bit like time travel.
-
“Did I miss anything good?” she asks blearily one morning, waking up to the drone of her alarm clock, the heat of her laptop against her belly and the Doctor softly tapping away at his keyboard.
He shrugs. “The sun rose.” After a moment’s contemplation, he breaks into a wide grin. “The sun, Rose! Hee.”
“Did you just giggle?”
“What? No! That was a… manly grunt of satisfaction.”
“Ah. Yeah, I can see how I might’ve gotten the two mixed up.” She licks her lips, shaking her head in amusement. “The sun, Rose. Honestly. I should have named you the Dorkter.”
He barks out a laugh. “Saying that makes you the cool one? Right. Because portmanteaus are so much cooler than comma-insertion puns.”
“Oh, definitely.”
“Get out of bed, slacker.”
“Get in bed, insomniac.”
They grin at each other for truly absurd length of time before Rose’s snooze alarm startles them back to reality.
-
The year goes by surprisingly quickly, when all is said and done.
On Halloween they wear complementary costumes, intent on synchronizing their trick-or-treating experiences despite nay-sayers protesting they were too old (Jackie and Shareen) and frustrated friends who just wanted to go to a party, was that too much to ask? (Jack and, once again, Shareen). It takes weeks of planning. On the night of the 31st, she texts him a picture of her poodle skirt, and he in turn sends a video of him waggling his eyebrows, hair done up in a ridiculous pompadour-and for a moment, the distance between them disappears.
It’s too expensive for him to fly home for Thanksgiving with winter break looming so near, so he ends up attending a pot-luck for left-behinders at the Dean’s house-which he insists he doesn’t mind, as “the Brig is magnificent.” (How a former Brigadier-General ended up Dean of Students, she’ll never understand.) The Tylers in turn invite Sarah Jane over for turkey, not wanting her to end up alone. Watching their guardians bond over green bean casserole recipes and favorite anecdotes from their youth, Rose tries to be subtle as she checks her phone under the table, her inbox rapidly filling with a list of everything he’s thankful for.
On Christmas Eve, he steps into her foyer wearing his suit, a long overcoat and a hesitant smile. Time-for once-is obedient and stands still.
Winter break ends far too quickly for their tastes, but spring semester goes by in a blur-a soul-crushing series of standardized tests and mind-numbing lectures from every single one of her teachers about how it’s vitally important that she and her classmates start looking at colleges, like, last year. (She hardly sees the point; she knows exactly where she’s supposed to be. Whether she has the grades for it is another thing entirely.) Their respective spring breaks are a week and a half apart, and they spend their time off like two ships passing in the night. Rose comes out the other side feeling even more deprived and bereft than usual, hating that she’d come so close just to miss out on his company due to something as silly as school.
Somehow, before she’s able to get her bearings, it’s April and all anyone can talk about is prom.
-
“I know it’s stupid, but just… you’re my boyfriend and I don’t want to go with anyone else, you know? So what do you say? Are you up for tux rental fees, awkwardly posed pictures in the foyer and a night of bad food and worse music? Bet you can’t sweep me off my feet.”
“I can’t.”
“Well if you’re not even going to try,” she laughs, grinning. “Don’t be like that; it won’t be that bad. The world doesn’t end because the Doctor dances.”
“No, I mean, I can’t. I have finals.”
She frowns. “I thought you were done on the tenth?”
“That’s just my last test. I still have an outstanding history paper due after that, and unless I stay on campus to write it I’ll never be able to concentrate.” (If I’m around you, he doesn’t say.)
“History paper,” she repeats dully.
“Yeah. It’s on Madame de Pompadour.”
“Who?”
“Madame de Pompadour! Jeanne Antoinette Poisson; nicknamed Reinette? Later Madame D’Etoiles, later still mistress of Louis XV, uncrowned Queen of France? Actress, artist, musician, dancer, courtesan…” he trails off, sensing he’s not getting anywhere. After a moment, he tentatively adds, “fantastic gardener?”-as if that will be the key detail that has her smacking her head going ‘Oh! That Reinette Poisson!’
Honestly.
“Never heard of her,” she says instead.
“Well, she’s a fascinating figure in French history.”
“Good for her.”
“… you’re upset.”
“No, I’m not ups-it’s nothing. Don’t worry about it, yeah? I have to… I gotta go. Good luck on your paper.”
She flops onto her bed, faceplants into her pillow and stays there, feeling wretched.
-
Prom ends up a thoroughly unremarkable affair.
She goes with Mickey, and she has fun-she really does. Only she can’t fight the nagging feeling, as she tests out How Low She Can Go and indulges in sneakily-spiked punch, that she’s forgetting something. (She anxiously glances over her shoulder so often that Shareen makes a joke about starting a new dance move that, as all embarrassing truths are wont to do, instantly becomes their entire circle of friends’ New Favorite Thing.) She just… keeps expecting him to burst through the doors halfway through Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick or something.
He doesn’t.
Three hours later Mickey’s dropping her off at the corner, and she stretches and yawns before starting the final trek back to her house. She’d asked him to let her walk because the warm spring air had seemed incredibly enticing compared to the awkward silence of their limo-taking the scenic route home with her high heels in her hands, she has trouble thinking she made the wrong choice. She tries a languid twirl or two, just to revel in the cliché for a bit, and breathes in and out lazily, remembering another walk home under golden streetlights.
(“Superman isn’t as alien as you’re making him sound. He’s fallible.”
A snort. “’Course he is. He can’t see through lead and he’s allergic to kryptonite.”
“I’m not talking about that. All that stuff you said about needing people, that’s the same. Kryptonite isn’t Superman’s weakness; not really.”
“Oh?” she’d laughed. “What is, then?”
A squeeze of the fingers. “Lois Lane.”)
The TARDIS is sitting in her driveway.
The TARDIS is sitting in her driveway, and the Doctor is perched on the hood-occasionally glancing from the stars to his watch and back again.
He’s wearing a tuxedo.
She starts running.
(Vaguely, in the back of her mind, she registers her empty hands and the thump of plastic hitting the pavement. That doesn’t seem quite right, but she honestly cannot bring herself to care.)
Seeing her out of the corner of his eye, he grins hugely, jumps down from the car and opens his arms just in time for her to plow straight into him. He lifts her into the air, humming contentedly to himself, and she giggles and kicks like a schoolgirl, completely unable to control her overly enthusiastic reactions.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” he murmurs when he finally puts her down, still swaying from side to side. “I meant to be here five and a half hours ago. But then my flight was delayed, and Sarah Jane was stuck in traffic, and when I finally got home I couldn’t find my dress shoes…” he looks down, and she glances at his feet-he’s wearing black Converse. “Well, anyway. I’m here now. It’s a good lesson: always give me a five and a half hour window.”
“Five and a half hours,” she repeats dutifully, unable to stop grinning at him.
“It’s not my fault, really. The tux is cursed. I wore it on the plane, and I think it jinxed me.”
“You wore it on the…”
“I wanted to surprise you!” he squeaks, defensive. He leans away from her, getting a good look for the first time. “You look beautiful. Did… did you have a good time?”
She kisses him soundly. “I will now,” she murmurs against him when they stop for breath. Her hand wanders up his chest to stop at his collar. “Why the bowtie?”
“Oh, you know,” he says in a strained voice as she presses kisses lower and lower, “seemed appropriate. And bow-bow-oh, god-” he groans, tilting his head, “bowties are cool.”
She tugs on it; it doesn’t budge. “Can you get it off?” she growls, biting his ear in lieu of getting access to his neck.
He gulps. “It’s a clip-on.”
She reaches up to unclasp it, and he captures her hand in his. “Not yet,” he says. “I want… inside.”
Beaming, she takes a step back and starts leading him down the street by their linked hands.
(“Rose? When I said inside, I meant your house.”
“Yeah, but I-um. I kind of dropped my shoes.”)
-
Once they get through the front door, though, he drags her straight to the kitchen.
“Doctor, shouldn’t we be taking this… upstairs?” Rose asks as he buries himself in her refrigerator.
“Not yet,” he says, emerging with cream cheese and cucumbers. “Do you have chives?”
“Um. Maybe? Not fresh, though. Check the pantry.”
He wrinkles his nose. “Dried chives? Rose; please.” He dives back into the fridge, rummages, and finally selects a jar of bacon bits.
Rose perches on the counter as he starts washing the cucumbers at the sink. “So,” she drawls, trying to sound nonchalant, “whatcha doin’?”
“Nibbles!” he announces, putting the cucumbers on a bit of paper towel. She watches, amused, as he starts opening every cupboard in succession. “Just because I missed your prom doesn’t mean we can’t have the prom experience.”
“So you’re making hors d’oeuvres?”
“Yep!” he confirms, popping the p. “Now, where do you keep the-?”
“Chopping boards are in the one to the left of the sink; the good knives are in that case above the stove.”
He beams at her. “This won’t take but a minute. You want to pick us some music?”
She puts on Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood” and waits for him to get the hint as he sucks the cream cheese from his fingers, grabs her hand and twirls her around the kitchen.
-
He’s leading her in dreamy circles to “Moonlight Serenade” when she finally hits her breaking point, two plates of cucumber nibbles and most of a Best Of album later. She stands on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his ear. “What was that you were sayin’ earlier, about the tux being jinxed?” she asks, hoping she sounds at least something slightly like seductive.
“Mmmmn,” he hums, pulling her closer. “It’s a travesty, really. Terrible bad luck.”
“Then we’d best get it off of you immediately, don’t you think?”
The Doctor stops dancing abruptly, jerking away so that he can get a proper look at her. Taking in her hooded gaze and flushed cheeks, a confident smirk blossoms on his face.
He leans down for a seductive whisper of his own: “Run.”
Making it to the front hall is a sloppy affair, but what they lack in fine motor control they make up for in pure enthusiasm. He loses layers steadily as they (rather unsteadily) mount the stairs-bumping into banisters and tripping over steps as she pulls off his bowtie, jacket, cummerbund and shirt in succession, leaving them strewn on the hallway carpet-but somehow they make it to the second floor with a minimum of bruising.
He backs her against the wall. “Won’t your mom-?” he asks into the curve of her neck, more out of a sense of duty than any real motivation to go back and pick up after her.
“Huh?” Rose whimpers, eyes blissfully shut.
He makes the immediate executive decision not to care about Jackie Tyler at the moment.
With concentrated effort, they manage to open and stumble through her bedroom door, quite reluctant to break any sort of physical contact. Once inside, though, the stale air and sleepy darkness of the familiar space gives him a rush of clarity, and he gently reaches to still her hands as she gropes blindly at the zipper of her dress.
“Hold on,” he murmurs, nuzzling at her temple, “let me.” Their height difference is so great that he finds he has to get down on his knees to get a good angle on the zipper, but he doesn’t mind that-he unwraps her like a present, and falls in love all over again with every inch of skin exposed.
The dress drops to the floor, and his breath hitches.
He’d be the first to admit that he’s not the foremost expert in women’s undergarments-that in fact, the great majority of his knowledge comes from embarrassing instances of folding Sarah Jane’s laundry. He’d expected boned spandex and lycra torture devices that left angry red marks on her skin, designed to flatten and tuck the body into unachievable ideals. He’d fantasized about all things lacy and sheer, in varying degrees of comfort and practicality.
He had never dreamed of Batman boxer-briefs.
“D’you like them?” Rose asks, biting her lip.
He doesn’t know how to answer that question. She’d probably had to buy them at the Little Boy’s section of Target, or something, and as he tries to regain use of his tongue he realizes that this is simultaneously the least erotic and most sexy thing he’s ever seen her wear.
“Rose…” he breathes, looking up at her in something a lot like awe, and she smiles.
“I wanted to surprise you,” she quotes, and it is only now that it truly hits him that she expected him to be here. That she had put these on before posing for awkward pictures with Mickey; that they’d been lurking all night under that exquisite dress as she’d eaten mediocre food and danced to mediocre music and-if her breath is any indication-gotten the slightest bit tipsy on smuggled-in mediocre booze. A gift for him, just in case, when she’d had no reason to believe or hope he’d actually show up.
If it weren’t for the fact that he returned it with his whole heart, he thinks he’d have trouble imagining that kind of faith.
He kisses the inside of her thigh. “I love you,” he informs her seriously, looking up at her from his knees.
She threads her fingers through his hair and gives a wicked grin. “So what’re you going to do about it?”
As fantastic as they looked on her, he thinks much, much later, the underoos looked even better on the floor.