Title: Did You Try Talking?

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I own nothing that you might recognise.

Summary: Rose and the Doctor almost don't have a life together because for some reason the concept of talking to each other is beyond them.

Notes: So, I was going to make this longer, but then it would be either the most gratuitous angst-fest you've ever seen, or it would have been an attempt at being funny, punctuated by gratuitous angst. That said, the idea wouldn't leave me alone, and if anyone wants to expand on this, they may feel free. In other things, the ungrammatical capitalisation of words in the section titles is deliberate. I'm calling it melodrama.

It was stupid.

Day One

They hadn't exactly had a moment alone to talk or consider or bask in each other's presence. It was all getting off the beach and finding a cab and catching the zeppelin and Jackie and Pete and racing through traffic.

By the time they got to Rose's flat they were both past mere fatigue into shattered to bits, and Rose thought they shouldn't leap headlong into a relationship that they'd never properly had. So she'd installed the Doctor in her spare room and went to her own, collapsing into bed and falling asleep with a near audible thud from exhaustion.

The Doctor was twitchy and anxious and felt he'd got the message. He was now dependent on Rose the way she'd been dependent on him, she was saying without speaking. That wouldn't do at all, he vowed, eyes drifting shut. He'd make himself independent, prove to Rose he could be her equal in this new reality of one short life, domestics and humanity.

So stupid.

Week Two

The morning after, they'd gone to Torchwood, getting the Doctor legal ID, finding him a spot in the R&D section of the organisation, Rose was debriefed all day and the Doctor hastened to arrange for his paycheques and everything so that he could get himself a place of his own as quick as possible.

Rose first acted on her concerns about his wellbeing by trying to help him with the practicalities, shopping (he needed more than bananas, tea and jammy dodgers in the kitchen), decorating his new flat (why didn't he want to live with her?), his changed anatomy (it was too soon to gently tease about needing all that sleep he'd sneered at) and everything else he'd clearly been unable to cope with before.

"I'd have to settle down. Get a house or something. A proper house with . . . with doors and things. Carpets. Me, living in a house. Now that, that is terrifying."

"I do like the wall-to-wall carpeting," he said idly.

Rose thought of her flat with the solid wooden floors and one door mat and a bath rug, made that way in memory of the Doctor's fear of carpets and felt wrong-footed.

He seemed to be doing so well, already having a home and a mortgage of his own within less than two weeks. She thought of the full Time Lord Doctor. "That's me when we first met."

So she tried to be there for him, help with the loss of his TARDIS, his lifestyle, the loss of the last things of the last of the Time Lords.

"Do you think I can't handle myself?" he demanded angrily when she'd brought him a toaster as a housewarming gift (why didn't he want to see her at all?).

The Doctor was sure she was babying him because she didn't think he could hack it. Showing up at his new flat with a toaster, like he couldn't figure out how to purchase one. Following him everywhere, poking and prodding and it was galling that she seemed to think he was some sort of helpless child without her. He may have snapped at her a few times, feeling a little short-tempered, because it was bad enough that he was without his TARDIS for the year it would take him to grow the new one, bad enough he now had one half shoddy human genetics and really disturbing that he had to make nice with Jackie even more than he had before, he didn't need Rose acting like he was a toddler lost in the mall.

Still, it hadn't been nice of him and he'd needed another toaster, because toaster parts remained, somehow, the universal bits and bobs to fix everything with, and he'd already lost his last one to the baby TARDIS. So he apologised by playing nice and not whinging when they went to see her mother, ignoring the opportunities that Rose left him to escape with her and Tony because he was playing nice with Jackie and listening to an earful of unsubtle hinting about getting properly married.

You'd think it wouldn't be this stupid.

Fortnight Three

What Rose was beginning to feel certain of, was that the Doctor did not want to be anywhere near her. She tried to talk to him at Sunday dinner at her mum's, in private, and he didn't take a hint, just chattered away with her mum about . . . things. He'd hang out with Tony, babysitting him when her mum asked him, he'd have serious 'manly talks' with her dad when it came up.

When they were both at work at Torchwood he'd practically shoved her away. He was making friends in the canteen, couldn't she see that? He was 'on the clock' right now, couldn't leave his post. Rose changed her lunch break just to be off at the same time and maybe get a minute of him to herself, and he'd already sprinted off to somewhere on his break for some reason she couldn't be sure of.

Every day it felt like she only got to see him for a moment before he was running off, and Rose felt like she was losing him.

The Doctor had decided to take Jackie's hints. After all, Rose had promised him forever, hadn't she? That was practically a wedding ceremony on its own in some cultures. They were together and weren't ever planning on not being together, so why not have the wedding, which would make Jackie happy, and was the perfect excuse for a big party with music and dancing and cake with edible ball bearings.

So, he and Jackie got down to planning the wedding. Obviously they both had Rose in mind, and the Doctor knew from observing humans for so long that women, especially mothers and daughters, couldn't help but talk about these things. So, even though he hadn't directly talked to Rose about it, he trusted Jackie to have talked to Rose and to know what she wanted. Anyhow, it was completely obvious they were on the road to getting married, so why bring up the obvious?

It was the kind of stupid that made you think they probably didn't know how to tie their own shoelaces.

Month Four

By now Rose knew without a doubt that the Doctor didn't want her.

"If it's my last chance to say it, Rose Tyler . . ."

He'd been cut off in the middle, and at the time Rose had thought he'd simply run out of time before he could tell her he loved her. Now it was clear. Time Lord. He had known how much time he had left down to the millisecond. He'd waited it out, thinking that Rose ought to be let down easy with her too-human feelings for him. When she'd come back with the jumper that had messed up his plans to leave her behind somewhere now that she was getting too uncomfortably close.

When they'd been left on the beach, the metacrisis Doctor had clearly thrown himself into the breach, taking the shot for the Time Lord one, leaving him free and the metacrisis trapped here with her. Now that she'd taken the bait, though, now that there was no way for her to harry the full Time Lord, he'd been subtly telling her to shove off in not so many words. It all made sense even as it burned like fire. Rose spent an evening sobbing into her pillow when she realised it, then made the resolution the next day to leave him alone the way he clearly wanted. He'd been spending an inordinate amount of time with Dr. Patrice Wilcox anyhow.

The Doctor was working very very hard on his wedding present for Rose. He'd seen the little sneers everyone at Torchwood had for her, because she hadn't slaved away at a university for years to get a degree that still didn't teach you about aliens and their technology. Patrice was brilliant, and fascinated by the process of creating the new TARDIS. The Doctor expected to have his new ship done by the end of the year. It was to be a surprise for her. He had it all planned. They'd get married, he'd show her the new TARDIS, and then they'd both swan off, leaving Torchwood behind.

They were both working very hard, though. The Doctor had to spend every free second of his time with the TARDIS coral, with Jackie and the wedding plans and babysitting Tony. He looked forward every week to seeing Rose at her mum and dad's, hearing her voice at the table and just watching her as she talked and smiled, like the lovesick fool that he was.

You'd think a genius like Himself and the girl who built the Dimension Cannon couldn't be this stupid.

A Year Since Day One

Everything hurt. Not physically, no. But emotionally? Oh, how it all hurt. First there had been the discovery, Kincaid, the smug bastard in security had been the one to show her, smirking the whole while, that the new TARDIS was complete. That the Doctor had been travelling in it with Patrice bloody Wilcox. Even though she already knew he didn't want her, it had stung all over again. Her mum had been rabbiting on for weeks about some party or other, Rose hadn't heard the details, hadn't even got an invitation to it. Still, she'd mm-hmm'd and nodded in all the right places, letting the chatter drift over her. Rose had long since given up on asking her mum about the Doctor. Jackie had just talked right over her, convinced the Doctor was in love with Rose, despite the evidence Rose tried to present to the contrary.

Being ignored like that by both her mum and the man she hadn't yet stopped being in love with hurt rather a lot. In fact, just about the only person who treated her normally was Tony. And Rose had found her parents weren't asking her nearly as often as they used to, to babysit. With nothing to do in the evenings she just pretty much lived at work. There were showers and food and cupboards to keep things in, and it didn't have that horrible awareness the Doctor was one floor up in the flat he'd got himself just to get away from her.

Rose had a mountain of things to get through at work, actually. For some reason everyone had wanted everything she was doing done by that morning, so after the worst birthday party she'd ever had (a bunch of the girls from work and her mum giving her skimpy lingerie and making cracks about the sex life she'd never had and never would with the Doctor) Rose just went straight back to Torchwood to finish up. She'd slept on the couch in her office, then tried to log back into the system. Denied. Access denied. Again and again. Finally she made her way to HR, which was harder than it ought to be, because her ID had been cancelled too. She was worried it was a hack of some sort, but she needed access to places to figure it out.

HR told her that she'd been fired. Somehow, her contract with Torchwood had been terminated without warning or her knowledge. Numb and confused, Rose was escorted from the building. The Doctor was nowhere to be found. Neither was her dad. Still, where she once might have thought it was a plot, the fact was, almost no one at Torchwood had liked her, all of them thinking she didn't deserve the job. It was probably just a regular firing, and them knowing she wouldn't want to get into a court fight over it. She shut her phone off and went home to have a good cry before looking for a new flat (the condominium fees on hers were too much if she didn't have a high-paying job), and to see about finding a job.

The Doctor was eagerly bouncing as he woke that morning, his not-quite-as-superior-as-it-once-was-but-still-better-than-human genetics allowing him to easily shake off the bachelor party he'd had the night before. He hoped Rose had had as much fun at her bachelorette do. Though if Jackie had been there . . . that was a horrible thought.

He'd arranged for Rose's contract to wrap up in time for the wedding, so that he could surprise her and they could just run off together in the new TARDIS without delay. He was determined to finally make it to Barcelona. Patrice and he had gone on a few test runs of the new TARDIS, and he'd promised that once the honeymoon with Rose was over he'd bring her along on another trip. She was brilliant and just the sort he'd always liked to bring with him.

It all fell apart at the church. Rose never showed up.

Becoming progressively more panicked, they'd phoned her mobile. It was shut off. She wasn't at home when Pete went to check, and the Doctor began to feel more and more worried about what could have happened to her. A call to Torchwood told them that she'd been there that morning, apparently having stayed extra late to finish all her work up at the last minute.

It was pure happenstance that Pete found her at all, driving around in a near panic, he'd spotted her on the pavement outside a coffee shop near Piccadilly Circus. "Rose? Where have you been?" he asked, worried.

Her answer was so vague, "Just around," that it infuriated him.

Pete blew up at her about the money he'd spent on the wedding, her wedding, that she'd skipped for no apparent reason, and flung himself back into his car, meeting up with the Doctor, Jackie and Tony, the former pair of whom were feeling a strong sense of misuse.

"I don't understand it," the Doctor said, staring blankly into the fireplace at the Tyler home. "She promised me forever. Why . . ." he trailed off.

Jackie's lips were pressed together tightly before she grated out, "I'm going to have a word with her, you can count on it," she said. "But you didn't have any hint from her?"

"Nothing," the Doctor answered hollowly.

It was just . . . stupid.

A Year And A Day After Day One

Rose got lucky from an upturn in the housing market and some desperate buyers, and was able to collect back the money Pete had spent when he'd got her the condominium and car, having it all transferred straight to his account. She didn't want to see him while he was so angry. She didn't know why he was taking back the things he'd said were gifts, had insisted on giving her, but right now all that mattered was finding a cheap flat to rent and a job in a shop somewhere. She'd figure it all out after.

Patrice Wilcox took one look at her and dragged her into a coffee shop, sitting her down and asking bluntly, "Just answer me this. If you didn't want to marry the Doctor, why didn't you say something instead of just not showing up for the wedding?"

"What?" Rose asked, baffled. "What are you talking about? What wedding?"

"The one yesterday?" Patrice offered, filled with a sudden foreboding. She'd had some experience with the Doctor's ability to be completely daft and assume things, like that because he'd seen humans act one way repeatedly that it was representative of how they'd always act. Also with his inability to answer the bloody phone.

Rose blinked at her. "There was a wedding yesterday?"

"It's all the Doctor's been talking about for weeks," Patrice said.

"He didn't want to talk to me," Rose told her. "For so long he just . . . he kept telling me that I was stifling him and to leave him alone and . . . I figured if he wanted to talk to me, he would have. I just stayed out of his way."

"Oh Lord," Patrice muttered.

Jackie was still pressing the Doctor for any hints he might have had that Rose wasn't going to be turning up. "I mean, all those times you were babysitting Tony-"

"Why would the Doctor talk to Rose when I'm at his place?" Tony asked. "He doesn't live with Rose."

Silence fell. "What do you mean, he doesn't live with Rose?" Jackie asked slowly. "They live at the same address."

"Different flat, though," Tony answered.

Pete and Jackie turned to look at the Doctor. The words, 'basilisk stare' drifted across his mind for some reason. "You and Rose aren't living together?" Pete asked.

The Doctor felt vaguely like he may have made a mistake somewhere, but he wasn't sure where as he said, "She was acting like I couldn't take care of myself, like I was a millstone around her neck. I just needed to prove that I could do this, that we were equals in this." He gestured a little wildly to indicate their life in Pete's World.

"Did you tell her that, or did you just leave with never a by your leave?" Jackie demanded. "Because she's been saying a lot of things lately, I thought they were just cold feet before the wedding," a thought occurred to her. "How exactly did you propose? You never told me."

Rose's voice came from the doorway. "He didn't propose. Today was the very first time I'd heard the word 'wedding' from anyone, relating to me."

"You complete . . ." Jackie's vocabulary failed her here and she whacked the Doctor with a magazine instead.

"Ow! Jackie!" the Doctor flinched and tried to hide behind Rose.

But Rose wasn't getting between her mother and her mother's prey. "I thought you didn't love me," she told the Doctor. Everyone stopped. "You just . . . you left. I bought you a toaster and you yelled at me for it. Every time I tried to talk to you, you kept telling me you wanted to work, you were making friends, you had to meet up with Patrice." Her face twisted a moment in anger and jealousy. "I thought you'd made yourself a decoy to keep me here, so that I wouldn't go after the other you, because I hadn't taken a hint all those times you'd sent me away."

"Oh, no! No! No, no, no, nononononono!" The Doctor ran to her, wrapping his arms around her. "Rose, I'm sorry. I didn't realise . . . you'd promised me forever, you see. I just thought it was obvious. If we were forever, we'd be getting married." A thought occurred to him. "But I tried to talk to you about the wedding a few times. You kept leaving, telling me to do whatever I wanted."

She glanced away from him. "I thought . . . I was trying to leave you alone. I'd figured that you didn't want me, didn't want to be around me, and I just . . . it was easier if I didn't see you at all."

"I'm so sorry," he said, refusing to let go, now that he finally had her in his arms again. "I never meant to make you think I didn't want you. I'd hope that the wedding would prove that."

Rose shook her head. "I'm sorry too. I should have tried harder, maybe asked more questions."

"I love you," the Doctor said hoarsely. "Marry me, Rose? We'll do it right, this time."

"Yes," Rose answered, kissing him.

Jackie made a noise of disgust, throwing her hands into the air. "You're both completely stupid," she grumbled, stomping off.

Thankfully, stupid took a break for this one.

Two Years After Day One

The massive cathedral wasn't the venue for the wedding ceremony and the grand ballroom of London's most expensive hotel wasn't where the reception was held. The huge puffy dress with mountains of tulle that had been purchased using the measurements taken when Rose was being fitted for body armour at Torchwood was gone, as were the huge numbers of Torchwood employees, who for the most part didn't like either Rose or the Doctor because of their lack of protocol.

They couple were married on the London Eye, the place that marked the first time Rose had seen something the Doctor hadn't, right over the place where she'd swung on a chain to save his life. As many people as was safe had crammed into the one capsule with Rose, the Doctor and the Justice of the Peace, the rest watching at the reception hall, a planetarium with the seats taken out and part of the floor taken up with air mattresses so everyone could lie down and look up at the projected stars if they wanted.

Rose was wearing a white dress with red and orange designs on the skirt, in honour of Gallifrey, a hemline high enough to run in and white converse. The Doctor was wearing brown with blue pinstripes, a large brown coat that had once belonged to Janis Joplin and his own converse.

Jackie looked at the people lying on the floor at what was supposed to be a wedding reception, her daughter in runners at her own wedding, the Doctor animatedly talking about the time the spaceship Titanic had nearly crushed London in the other universe and Tony gamely trying to sneak onto the TARDIS off to the side, while Patrice and Jake taped strings of cans to the blue box.

"It's just bloody stupid," she muttered.