If I had to choose one word to describe the feeling I had, staring into my mirror ten minutes before I had to leave for our first official 'date', I would have chosen one that was both colorful and wildly inappropriate. Now I think I might use 'bizarre' or 'peculiar'. I was in my tight black jean capris, underneath which I was wearing a very sheer black lace pair of panties with a matching bra (which the disgusting creep of a register sneered at when I checked out), but no shirt.

And that was simply because I couldn't decide for the life of me what to wear. Now, I'm not generally the kind of person that worries too much about what she wears. And I don't usually freak out about it when I do worry about such trivial matters.

But this was the Doctor.

And I had eight minutes.

Yellow? Yellow, I decided, rushing towards my closet.

And then, of course, my mum just sort of came into and through the doorway. Into and through being one motion.

And I stood there like the idiot I am, mouth open, as she gaped (at least she had the grace to close the door).

Before I could open my mouth to insist for the trillionth time that knocking, while an acquired skill, was one that my mother greatly needed to indulge in, she kicked in with a roar.

"WHERE do you think you're going like THAT?!"

"I wasn't going anywhere like this, mum, I wasn't done dressing…"

"THAT BRA WOULD SHOW THROUGH ANYTHING!"

"MUM! Shush! Dad's just downstairs and I don't think he'd 'preciate Tony askin' him what a bra was jus' yet-"

"DO NOT BACKTALK ME, YOUNG LADY!"

I swallowed in defiance.

"You're going out, aren't you. With that… that…"

I waited to see what her newest word for the Doctor was.

So far I'd heard 'shit-eating homewrecker', 'dirty pirate' (which was actually kind of attractive. I ended up trying very very hard not to think of him wearing an eyepatch. Only an eyepatch.) and various other randomly scattered, generally not vague pseudonyms.

"Revolting half-human rubbish!" That was a new one, and, I decided, had gone a bit too far. I felt it was my duty to avenge the death of his reputation, whatever that had been.

"He's not revolting and he's certainly not rubbish, mum, he's-"

"HE ABDUCTED YOU! TWICE!"

She has it hammered into her mind that the Doctor is not, as I've tried explaining, a scholarly, lonely god of the universe but is in fact an over-the-hill tease with an annoying taste in young and impressionable women.

The last two were sentiments that I had to agree with. That is, the tease and tastefulness things.

So I knew better than to argue with her, instead skillfuly building my ruse.

"But he brought me back, didn't he?" She blinked and thought about it. A rare moment of lucidity.

"An' no, I'm not goin' to see him. I'm out to be with Shareen and Yvonne," I corrected, veling my gaze and not letting uncertainity show. "They're goin' date huntin', or so hey say."

This struck a chord.

"God knows you could use some gettin' out, Rose. But change the outfit!"

How easily my mother is decieved.

I should probably work on that.

In any case, she left me alone to contemplate my wardrobial doom, with a minute and a half before I was supposed to meet him at the back gate of the huge estate where my parents and I and Tony, my little brother lived. And it was defenitely still strange that I was technically old enough to be Tony's mother, though I'd only mentioned that in passing to Dad once, who'd shrugged it off.

I tactfully slipped on a short skirt over the jeans (so that they looked more like leggings) and donned the yellow hallter I had planned on- which had ruffles and a few buttons, so when I threw on a sweater that matched the skirt my mother practically waved me out the door.

I trotted down the gravel pathway, past the bend of old trees, my old neon trainers digging up pebbles as I did.

I was four minutes late when I finally drew up to the gate, gasping for breath.

But was he there? No.

Of course not.

I decided that even if I'd been stood up, I was going out into town to have some fun even if it killed me, and then, unthinkingly, slipped out of the skirt to leave me in my jeans. Just as I started to shrug off the sweater, I heard a rustle.

I froze.

I head peeked out of the rose bush a few feet away- a head I recognized.

His wild brown hair was sticking out in every direction and had leaves and twigs entangled in it. He looked sufficiently both impressed and shell-shocked, his mouth forming a perfect 'o' and his eyes wide before he tumbled out onto the asphalt on the other side of the gate.

I couldn't help my instinct- I pushed my face through the bars of the gate and watched, concerned, as he sat up. The rest of him was just about proportionate to his face. Leaves and petals and twigs everywhere.

Assured, I tossed the now disgarded skirt into the bushes and shrugged off my cardigan.

He practically leaped to his feet.

"That, erm, won't be nessecary."

"What?"

"Oh."

He'd thought I was… wait, what had he thought I was doing?

"Idiot," I murmured affectionately, tossing the cardigan to lay with the skirt,

"You thought this was about you. That was my disguise."

He swallowed, blinked, looked around.

"Ah."