(no subject)
in good spirits, ten II/rose, pg-13.
"Give me a month," she says. "In a month, I'll know what to say." 3275.
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A. Beginnings
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Then.
On the zeppelin home from Norway, Rose sits in a seat by the window and contemplates a tiny bottle of booze.
It’s vodka, she knows, though it isn’t called vodka here. She and Mickey had spent ages trying to figure out why, trying to trace the difference back to the original divergent point between their universe and this one. They had never found it; now Mickey was gone and they never would.
“I don’t suppose,” the Doctor says as he slips into the aisle seat, “that you might consider sharing that?”
She holds the bottle out over the empty seat between them. “You can have it. We’ve got plenty.”
“Good to know,” he says, and tucks it into his pocket. He taps his fingers against the armrest, eyes fixed on the seat in front of him. He’s nervous, she realises, and it’s a comfort to learn that she isn’t the only one. He clears his throat. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She watches his profile, pale skin glowing pink in the light of the window. She manages a smile. “I think,” she says, “that I might need some time.”
He nods. “Time it is, then.” He sits back in the seat, a deliberate relaxation. Settling in for the slow path. “You and me, Rose Tyler, we’ve got all the time in the world.”
“We don’t, actually.” She reaches out and weaves her fingers through his. “That’s sort of the point.”
The armrest digs hard into her side as she leans across the empty seat. He squeezes her hand, almost too tightly, but she doesn’t think about letting go. Doesn’t think about moving closer. She looks out the window, at the sky.
“Give me a month,” she says. “In a month, I’ll know what to say.”
They spend the rest of the night in silence, a seat apart.
++
Now.
The chains shriek a little as she plops down onto the swing, the rusty bits grinding against other, rustier bits, and she hangs forward, her hair brushing her bare knees. Slips her thumbs into the links of the chains and lets herself sway.
“I have not,” she says, “been this drunk,” she says, “in a very, very long time.”
There’s a streetlamp in the park, above her head, and it looms yellow against the darkness, casting shadows of swing and swing set and swinger. She turns her head at an angle and sees her silhouette on the soft dirt beneath her feet, the swoop of her nose and the exaggerated curve of her chin. She frowns.
“Doctor? Is my face always this weird?”
“Yes,” says a familiar voice from outside the glow of the streetlamp. “Yes, your face is very weird. The weirdest.” There’s a sound like a tall, drunk man stumbling blindly into a roundabout, barking his shin, and falling in a heap onto the grass. “Bugger. I’m never letting your mum mix a drink for me ever again.”
“New Year’s resolution number one,” Rose agrees, digging her toes into the dirt under the swing. “Numero uno. Nombre un.”
“Rose,” the Doctor says from the dark shape of the roundabout, “it’s July.”
He’s right; she’s wearing a summer dress, with sandals. Though she’s lost the sandals. And the car keys. And the car. She’ll lose the dress next, and then where will she be? Naked, in the park, in the summer, without a car.
Important question: where will they shag if they can’t find the car?
Rose leaps off the swing, trips, and staggers into the dark. After a moment’s searching she barks her shin against the roundabout and falls in a heap onto the grass. And the Doctor.
“Your knee,” the Doctor says, “is in a very delicate place.”
Rose considers this for a moment, unmoving. “Good delicate or bad delicate?”
“I try not to qualify these things in absolute terms,” he says. She jiggles her knee experimentally, and he squeaks. “Bad delicate,” he says. “Bad bad bad.”
She rolls off him with a sigh. The grass is damp and summer soft against her calves, the backs of her arms. She wriggles a little, until her shoulder is against his. “Doctor,” she says, “where will we shag if we can’t find the car?”
The pause that follows isn’t so much pregnant as contraceptive. The Doctor turns his head and stares. “What?”
“I had a plan,” she says, mournfully. “It was a good plan, with romantic music and surprise oral sex, but now we’ve lost the car. And while like any good plan it allowed for a certain number of unanticipated obstacles, like a sudden alien invasion or the slightly less likely but not entirely remote possibility that my mum might serve something spicy at dinner, every one of my contingency seductions involves the car.” She pauses. “Also, I’ve lost my sandals.”
“Your sandals,” the Doctor says, and it seems as if he’s about to say more on the subject when his train of thought is suddenly derailed. “Oral sex?”
Rose spreads her hands in the air and wiggles her fingers at him. “Surprise!”
The Doctor sits up, suddenly, then suddenly lies back down. He presses his open palms to the grass and blinks at the night sky. “I am either much too drunk for this conversation,” he says, “or not drunk enough.”
She shrugs. “Six of one, half dozen of the other.” She thinks of something, taps him on the shoulder. “You don’t think we could have sex in my mum’s spare bedroom, do you? ‘Cause I’d eliminated that possibility early on, for obvious reasons - trauma, years of therapy, chenille dressing gowns - but now I think it might be our best option.” She raises herself up on one elbow and looks down into his eyes. “We’re much too drive to drink home, you know.”
He swallows, and she watches with great interest as his Adam’s apple bobs in time. “Rose, I’m a little confused.”
“That’s okay,” she says, throwing one leg over him and straddling his hips. “Most of it should be instinctual, and I’ll explain the rest.”
He snaps upright, his fingers circling her wrists before her hands can reach his face. “I know how to have sex,” he says, and though his mouth is a serious, unsmiling line, there’s something like laughter in his eyes, laughter and a little relief and oh - anticipation. That’s what she likes to see. “Exactly how much have you had to drink?” he asks, and she tips her head back, looking up and remembering.
“Buckets,” she says. “Buckets and buckets and those two shots Jake and I snuck while you weren’t looking.” She drops her head forward and it bounces a little, like a nod. “You never answered my question.”
“I never understood your question.”
“Yes, well,” Rose says, somewhat pityingly, “you are rather drunk.” She slips her hands free from his grip, slides her arms around his neck and settles, definitively, in his lap. “So drunk you seem to have lost track of time.” She touches her mouth to his ear. “It’s been a month, genius,” she says, and grinds a little against him.
His eyes seem to glaze for a moment - it’s hard to tell, in the dark. His hands fall to her waist, fingers clutching, twining in the thin fabric of her dress. Their foreheads touch. “I thought we were going to wait,” he says, breathless. “And, you know - talk.”
She wrinkles her nose. “About our feelings and stuff?” She hops up onto her feet, staggering back into the roundabout. “All right. I suppose we can if you really want to.” She reaches down, grabs his hands, and pulls him upright. “I would prefer the sex,” she says, “but I’m trying to be sensitive to your emotional needs.”
“My emotional needs,” he says, or starts to say because then she’s dragging him back to the swing set, to the yellow glow of the streetlamp. She likes seeing him in the light - likes seeing him in anything, come to think of it - his blue suit a little worn at the elbows and knees, the indefatigable enthusiasm of his hair and the freckles on his nose. He has more freckles now than he did, before; has spent time in the sun since stumbling into this universe with only the shirt on his back and her hands, holding him still and pushing him away. Now he has freckles and the slightest touch of sunburn and she doesn’t think she loves him more for the changes, but she’s certain she doesn’t love him less.
“Thinking deep thoughts?” he says, sounding very much like he’s trying not to sound very worried. Rose considers biting his chin, affectionately; instead she shoves him onto a swing.
“Childish fancies,” she says, sitting on her own swing and pushing herself backward with her toes. “They’ll keep you young.”
“I thought that was bathing in the blood of virgins.”
She lifts her feet and swings forward. “That works too.”
He watches her. “I thought we were going to talk about it,” he says. The word finally is unspoken, but implied.
She drops her feet, and her heels skid in the dirt. She turns until she straddles the wooden seat, leaning into the chain and meeting his eyes. “Okay. Let’s talk.”
“Okay.” He folds his arms across his chest. “You’re angry.”
She nods. “I was. I was angry with him, and angry with you because you are him and therefore would have done exactly the same thing in exactly the same way, which was why I was angry.” She sticks her finger through a link in the chain and wiggles it at him. “All of which you already knew.”
“I don’t know,” he says slowly, carefully, “that I entirely understand why you were angry.”
So attractive, yet so very dense. She pulls her finger from the chain and sighs. “You may not have noticed, but I don’t particularly enjoy it when you make huge, life-altering choices on my behalf without bothering to consult me first.” She raises her eyebrows. “Sound at all familiar?”
“Ah,” he says. “The Game Station.”
“And about forty-seven other times, yeah.” She looks down at her feet; her toes are filthy. “Were you angry? That he left you here?”
He chuckles, and she looks up, surprised. He smiles at her, his face open and easy and yellow-warm in the light. “That’s not quite how it happened, Rose.”
“Oh,” she says, blinking. “All right.”
He takes a few small steps to the side, drawing his swing closer to hers. “What did you think?” he asks, still smiling, his voice low. “That I was just making the best of a bad situation? That I was being punished?”
She bites her lip. “He said-”
“I know what he said. I would’ve said it too, in his position.” He touches her cheek, his fingers still chilled by the metal of the chain. His thumb brushes the corner of her mouth. “I am,” he says, “precisely where I want to be.”
She feels his gaze like a paralyzing pressure against her temples, her chest. An expectation. Give me a month, she’d said. In a month, I’ll know what to say. But it’s been a month and all she knows is that he fits into her life in a way she wouldn’t have expected and yet she still can’t find the words she thinks he needs to hear - a reversal that makes her dizzy from more than drink.
She’s been quiet for too long.
The Doctor lifts his feet, and the chains swing him back into place, to his side of the swing set. He looks out into the darkness of the park, jaw clenched. “What I want to know,” he says, “is why you drank buckets and buckets and two shots with Jake if you had some grand plan to shag me tonight.”
She scuffs her heels in the dirt. “Don’t know. I just - we were having a good time, weren’t we?”
He sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “We were.” He stands, hands shoved in his pockets. “Think I’ll go back to Jackie’s and sleep on the sofa. You can have the spare room, if you want it.”
He walks away, fading into the dark.
For a moment, she does nothing. Does nothing and says nothing and she wonders when she became this person, this white-knuckled woman so afraid to say the wrong thing that she won’t say anything at all.
She leaps off the swing and runs after him.
And then, shortly after, runs into him. Her eyes are still adjusting to the dark and she barrels into him at full-speed, knocking them both to the ground in a jumble of arms and legs. She lands sprawled across his chest, her face against his collar.
“Doctor?” She lifts her head. “You were coming back?”
He raises his arm, wincing; two shoes dangle from his fingers. “Found your sandals.”
“Thanks,” she says, and kisses him.
It’s brief, at first, a question more than a kiss, and for all her doubts it never occurred to her before now that he might not want this - her mouth to his and the subtle pull of something deeper. She hears her sandals hit the grass and then his hands are on her face, cupping her cheeks and gently pushing her away.
“Rose, I’m still a bit fuzzy from your mum’s mystery margaritas-”
“Part of me hated you,” she says. “That first day. You looked like him and you sounded like him and you-” She stops. Looks away. “And you felt like him, but I didn’t trust it. All I could see was the man walking away.” She slides off him, sitting up. “That’s why I didn’t want to talk about it then. I was afraid I’d say something I couldn’t take back.”
He sits upright, pushing himself up on his hands. “And now?”
Slowly, she grins. “Now I just wish we could find the car.”
Without looking away from her face, the Doctor reaches into his inner breast pocket, pulls out his keys, and pushes a button. Down the street, headlights flash. “New feature,” he says. He stands, staggering a little, and pulls her to her feet. “Installed it last week.”
She sways into him, her arms slipping around his waist. “Molto bene.” His fingers twine into her hair and she tilts her head back, kisses the underside of his chin. “Allons-y?”
“Your pronunciation is horrible.”
She pinches his side, and he squeaks. “Shut up and get me to the car so I can take off your trousers with my teeth.”
He blinks. “Terrifying, yet arousing. Human sexuality is a strange thing.”
“Oh, honey,” she says, “you don’t know the half of it.”
++
She should’ve bought a bigger car.
“It just figures,” Rose says, “that your trousers would have the galaxy’s most stubborn zip.”
The Doctor wriggles, half beneath her and half falling off the seat. “I think I’ve impaled myself on a croquet hoop.” He raises his head. “Why do we have a croquet hoop in the backseat of our car?”
“Yeah, because between the two of us I’m the absurdist packrat.” She gives the zipper another hard tug - with her fingers, this time - and he hisses. “Sorry.”
“No, no, it’s all right. I have an idea.” He twists to the side and falls off the seat entirely. “That wasn’t my idea.”
She turns over and lies on her back, her bare feet hanging out the window. “I think we should just admit it. We’re doomed to never have sex.” She turns her head and meets his eyes. “I used to be good at this, you know.”
He props his chin on his hand and sighs. “Me too.”
She raises an eyebrow.
“I was!” He clambers out from the narrow space between the seats and crawls over her. She spreads her legs obligingly, and he kneels between them. He rolls his shirtsleeves to his elbows and grins down at her, looking disheveled and a little deranged in the half-light. “Do you know what we need?”
“More tequila?”
He wrinkles his nose at her. “Your blood alcohol concentration just fell to a reasonable level about a half an hour ago; I don’t think-”
She narrows her eyes. “How on earth could you know that?”
He stares blatantly at her mouth and licks his lips, once.
She grabs his nose between two knuckles and pulls his face down to hers. “And once again you walk the fine line between strangely attractive and flat out strange.”
“Well,” he says, rather nasally, “you know me. I live on the edge.” His mouth stays open slightly as he breathes, and Rose takes it as an invitation. She arches into him, her lips catching his in a chaste, almost casual kiss. He hums into her mouth, and she remembers to release her grip on his nose. The kiss ends with a soft sound. “What we need, Rose, aside from a bigger car and the rest of this croquet set, is more tequila.”
She lets her head fall back against the seat. “You’re a genius.”
He brushes his lips over her jaw, follows a path along the curve of her throat. “Trouble is,” he says, reaching the loose collar of her dress, “we don’t have any more tequila.”
The skin at the back of his neck is warm, heated and slightly damp. She slips her fingers into his hair and smiles. “Whatever will we do?”
He presses a kiss to the skin just above the fabric of her bra, between her breasts. “Suit coat, left side pocket. Just under the box of rare fishing lures.”
He’d tossed his blue suit coat into the front passenger seat; she grips his shoulder for balance and stretches her arm until she can snag a sleeve and pull the coat toward her. One of the Doctor’s hands slips under the hem of her dress, skimming along her thigh. She gives him an arch look. “Are you trying to be smooth?”
He looks up from her breasts. “Me? Never.” His hand inches higher, and he smirks. “You know me - ancient alien bachelor. I hardly know what goes where.”
She rolls her eyes and rifles through the left side pocket of the coat, reaching past the box of rare fishing lures to find a tiny glass bottle of something a lot like but not quite vodka. She holds it up to the light, gripped between her thumb and forefinger. She meets his eyes. “You kept it?”
He leans on one elbow, the fingers of his other hand cool against her hip. “If I were the sort of man who noticed these things - which I’m not, by the way - I would point out that it’s more or less our one month anniversary.”
She stares at him. “Our anniversary.”
“More or less.”
She waves the bottle. “And this is what? A memento from our first date?”
“Our second first date.” He pauses, frowning. “Or would that third first? Second second first?”
She tucks the bottle back into his suit coat pocket. “If you were the sort of man who noticed these things.”
“Which I’m not.” He moves up her body again and kisses her, deeply. His fingers span the curve of her ribs, and she touches his face, keeping him close with hands and mouth and hips and in the hot, soft breaths against her lips she hears what he cannot say. Hears the echo of other things gone unsaid.
She pulls away, panting into his mouth. “I am, you know.” She swallows. “Glad you’re here.”
He grins, eyes bright. “Good to know,” he says.
It is.
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