Written for scifigeekgirl this past Christmas, and beta'ed by callistawolf. As usual, all mistakes are mine.
"You sure you want to do this?" Rose asked, as he came out in nothing but his pants. And calling them that was a stretch.
The Doctor shrugged. "I photographed you last night. Why wouldn't I let you return the favour? Besides," he said puffing up slightly, "Why pass up the chance to immortalize this body with sexy photographs?"
"Because your ego doesn't need to be inflated more?" Rose asked, dryly. At his look she giggled. "Kidding. I'm just not good at photography, you know that."
He grinned, moving over to the bed. "You've just never had a good model before," He replied. "Well, Miss Tyler, do your worst." He smirked as he struck a pose.
She raised the camera, and the photoshoot began.
It was Christmas, so the household was hectic enough as it was. Jackie Tyler had enough on her plate, she didn't want to deal with the giggling help hired to decorate the mansion. Nothing but uni students, the lot of them; but Jackie knew what it was like to struggle through life, and these girls were desperate for a job. It was the least she could do.
Her charitable demeanour wasn't going to hold out, however, if all they did was take frequent breaks to ogle the centrefold in their magazine they'd brought with them.
Jackie didn't take the time to look, merely plucked it out of their hands. "There you are! The parlour still needs to be decorated, and don't think I noticed the tree isn't finished! You're paid by the quality, not by the hour, so if you want to make rent I'd suggest you shift." She said, firmly, but not unkindly. The girls scampered off, blushing, one looking nervously at her over her shoulder.
Now curious, Jackie peered at the images the girls had been drooling over. She immediately clapped the page shut and wished for brain bleach.
"DOCTOR!" She roared.
Across town, one human-Time Lord metacrises winced, a feeling of inexplicable doom washing over him.
Rose had stepped to the side to take a phone call, and returned ashen-faced. The Doctor frowned, ignoring a group of woman gawping at him as they passed. "You alright?"
"Doctor," she said, slowly, "Those photos that I took… what did you do with them?"
Confused, he replied, "They're in the same place you put them, in your nightstand. Why?"
Yet another group of women, loaded down with shopping bags, gaped at him as they passed. He looked at them blankly. What was with that? Normally, Rose was the one who got all the stares when they went out.
She took his hand and walked over to a stall. The vendor barely glanced up, absorbed in reading something in the local newspaper. The Doctor blinked as Rose grabbed a Playgirl magazine- the Christmas edition- and he grinned. "Rose," He said, "if you wanted eye candy, all you had to do was ask."
"That's not-" she began, then thrust the magazine at him. "Just look!"
He did. His eyes grew comically wide. "That's me!" He exclaimed, loud enough to draw a few people's attention, including the vendor. "But…" His eyes narrowed. "Rose, this isn't-"
"I didn't do it!" She interrupted. "I can barely keep women's hands off you as it is; you think I want to encourage them further?" Rose shoved the magazine back where she got it. "This is your fault."
He jogged to keep up with her. "How is it mine? I didn't touch those photos. And it was your idea! The only other person who could have had access to them was… Oh," he said, stopping and causing one irate shopper to run into him. "That makes sense."
Rose, exasperated, looked at him. "What?"
"Remember when we had Julia over last week? And she wanted copies of the Thanksgiving photos the office took?"
"I told her they were in my desk drawer," Rose replied. Then realization dawned. "You don't think she snooped?"
He nodded. "She was gone longer than she was supposed to be, right? We were going to find her but she reappeared, and left in a hurry. She must have taken the envelope."
"I haven't thought to check on the photos since then," Rose breathed. Then her expression turned fiery. "That… that woman! Oh, she's gonna hear it from me! Stealing from our flat, trying to get you for herself… This was probably an attempt to get us to break up!"
Bemused, he pulled her to the side so that she wouldn't alert half of London to what had occurred. "Taking me for herself? What are you on about?"
Rose met his gaze, incredulous. "She's had a crush on you ever since you started working at Torchwood! Haven't you noticed?"
The Doctor considered. "She does hover a lot, but I thought she was trying to be friendly. It was quite annoying, though, and I don't know how many times I've asked her not to hover. I don't like hovering, hovering makes me nervous, especially when I'm fine-tuning a nano transmitter and every extra sound can cause the homeostasis to be off by .0000001 of a degree, which can cause complete meltdown."
She sighed. "You are completely hopeless." Then she grinned. "Come on, let's get back. I need to rescue those pictures, and you, my Doctor, need to recuperate from the trauma of having your photos submitted to Playgirl against your will."
"I'm hardly in trauma," he began, until he saw the look in her eyes. "Oh. Quite right. Yes, having me in compromising positions wearing nothing but that on the centrefold is quite shocking. My single heart can barely take it."
Rose giggled as she hailed a taxi.
Once Jackie heard the story, she went into full on Tyler mode with righteous indignation, horror, and fury rolling off her in waves. "How dare her!" She exclaimed, stomping around the kitchen as she made tea. The decorators were hovering by the door, unashamedly eavesdropping. Jackie didn't notice, or if she did, she didn't care. "Snooping where she doesn't belong, selling pictures that aren't hers, lusting after a taken man." She side-eyed the Doctor, which caused him to squirm. "Maybe, if you two just got married…"
Rose cut her off. "Dad's already called her, mum, and she admitted to it without fuss. She's more terrified of losing her job, I think, and is being transferred to the States after Christmas. She's been, ah, advised to take a vacation until then. The pictures are going to be delivered to our flat by noon tomorrow, in person."
"Make certain himself isn't in the room," Jackie sniffed, then turned to scold Tony for spilling juice down his shirt.
Rose leaned against the Doctor, staring at the same group of photos he was. She wasn't entirely certain why the magazine had accepted the photos, besides the subject being drop-dead gorgeous. Still, he was a bit skinny and the amateur quality of the pictures was obvious; one even had her thumb in the corner. Another was blurry, and picture in the corner had his head missing entirely. But it had been an afternoon full of laughter and gentle teases, and was followed by a night of intense love making. It bothered her that the pictures had been stolen, yes; but it bothered her more that those happy, private memories that they made between them were shared with the world.
The Doctor already had problems with memories created before his genesis; he didn't need to worry about these, either.
"I can't really blame them for making me centrefold," he said, preening. "Just look at me!"
Rose focused on the spread again. With tousled brown hair and bedroom eyes, the Doctor had on nothing but a collar with jingle bells and a red scrap of fabric that just barely covered his bits. He was reclining on their bed, the dark blue comforter with white circles (it was custom made, an anniversary gift from him to her; their names, written out in Gallifreyan, combined in a way that to his culture meant they were eternal life-mates) making him stand out all the more. He was arranged in a variety of ways. Some outright sexual, some playful, but all with his dark eyes trained on her holding the camera, promising that once the camera was out of the way, he would demonstrate just how those positions could cause her to scream his name.
And he had. Several times, in fact. The memory made her breath hitch, but the knot in her stomach remained.
"Yeah," she finally replied, quietly. "I guess."
He looked down at her. "You alright?"
"'s just… those were between us, Doctor, something you and I created, together, with no one else. And then she… she just takes them, and shares them, and… it was supposed to be our memories, Doctor. Ours and no one else's."
It didn't take him long to realize where she was coming from. He left the magazine where it was after closing it, and gently led her to the sunroom, shooing the decorators off, who took one look at him and ran giggling from the room. Rose sat down on the sofa, and he pulled her to him once he settled. "I'm upset that she stole them too, Rose, but I was on the phone with the publisher earlier when you were telling Jackie the story. He had no idea that I hadn't given my permission for the photos to be used, and apologized profusely. They've already sent out a recall to all distribution centres and customers, and all copies they have on file are going to be deleted or mailed back to us. It won't stop some people, of course, but it helps."
She sighed and cuddled into him a bit more. "I know. I'm sorry."
"I understand," he said. "If your pictures had shown up in one of those magazines…" he trailed off. "Well. It didn't happen, so we need to just laugh and move on."
Rose smiled slightly and propped herself above him. "The good news, at least, is that she didn't get a hold of the nude photos."
"Nude photos?" he asked, confused. "What… Oh," he said, seeing her expression. He cleared his throat, and then in a smaller voice, squeaked, "oh," again.
Rose smirked. "Smile for the camera, Doctor," she whispered into his ear, and then dashed up the stairs to their temporary room. The Doctor wasn't far behind her.