Wallpaper Nights
A quick little one-shot that bothered me for ages! A little interlude, because writing AGD is really time consuming and it's getting so ridiculously annoying! Hope you enjoy, and please review!
Disclaimer: It's not mine.
After a good three or four months without having to visit Jackie Tyler, it was only a matter of time, the Doctor mused, before they'd have to go and visit his companion's mother. His converse-clad feet resting on top of the TARDIS central column, cup of tea (milk, two sugars) in hand, he waited patiently for Rose to finish getting ready. She'd already been gone half an hour, and he knew that it would take time for her to get ready. She was always paranoid that she'd spot an old schoolmate or the like while out. The Doctor didn't think she needed all that time to get ready – she was beautiful without all that. Blushing at his thoughts, he knew that he would never, ever as long as Gallifrey had lived utter that notion aloud. He was brought back to the land of the living with a click in front of his face which made him jump a foot in the air. Rose's smirking face swam into focus once he'd sorted himself out, and he stood up and placed his mug down on the console, resting it between two switches.
"Away with the fairies, Doctor? What were you thinking of?" she asked, head cocked to one side, an expression of innocence that one would usually find on the face of a five-year-old on her face.
You. "Nothing," he said, a little too quickly. "Just some things that I need to tinker with in the TARDIS that have been bothering me for at least a decade!" he back-pedalled, smiling.
"Oh, OK," she said, buying it. The Doctor breathed an inaudible sigh of relief. "You ready to see Mum?" she said, a pink tongue poking between her teeth.
"Yes, actually. I've had about 5 cups of tea, so I'm ready for anything!" he said, walking out the TARDIS after an uneventful flight through the Vortex.
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"Wallpapering?"
"Yep. Now, I've got the paste, Rose, darlin', go and grab some of the paper? I've put it in your room …"
The Doctor couldn't believe his ears. Jackie had just blackmailed him into wallpapering the flat with her. He shook his head, he'd had 5 teas, and what for?
"You said you were ready for anything, Doctor," Rose whispered, having come up on his blind side. He turned around, and scowled at her.
"Anything, as in a slap, or such like. I never expected this," he said, a look of disgust gracing his handsome features as he held a long roll of wallpaper at arms' length. "It's just so domestic," he added, looking at Rose expecting to see sympathy, but only receiving an amused look.
"Come on, Doctor, it's not that bad," she said, "it's actually quite easy. I helped Mum do it when I was about seven, so for you it should be easy as anything,"
The Doctor looked at Rose, who had an eyebrow arched at him. He knew what she thinking – what kind of respectable Time Lord would he be if he couldn't put up wallpaper? Plus, she was using those eyes on him again, and he knew that he was a dead Time Lord, never mind a respectable one.
"Oh, I give up. Fine. Wall, meet wallpaper," he joked, feeling that this was going to one long day.
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It had been going well, with no major mishaps, only a few pieces of upside wallpaper to call a 'mishap'. Jackie stepped down from her ladder, after about half an hour.
"Listen, I've got to go pick Bev up and take her to the train station. I might pop into Tesco's while I'm out, since you've eaten the last of the digestives. You two will be alright by yourselves for an hour, won't you?" She said, grabbing a handbag from her room and smiling at them. "Don't do anything I would do! That includes blowing up the house!" She said merrily as she left the house.
The Doctor had a flabbergasted look on his face, while Rose just kept putting up the wallpaper. "Doctor," Rose said, clicking her fingers in front of his face again, "what's up?"
"She just left us! And it's her living room, as well!" he said, shaking his head.
"Get back to the wallpapering, Mister!" Rose said, handing him a fresh roll for him to put up on the walls.
They worked with banter going back and forth, over the music the TV was blasting out from some music channel that Rose had chose. After fifteen minutes, the Doctor had gotten bored, and decided that flicking wallpaper paste at Rose was much more fun than wallpapering.
"Eww, eww! What was that?" Rose exclaimed, having not seen the Doctor throw a glop of wallpaper paste at her cheek. She scraped it off, looking at it, and then at the Doctor, who was innocently putting up wallpaper, humming to the music. She smirked, and threw her own blob of paste as him, hitting him on the cheek and by pure luck getting some on his nose in the process. She smiled innocently at him when he looked at her, and a full on wallpaper paste fight followed.
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Jackie hummed, struggling to get up the last flight of stairs with about five bags of shopping. She heard loud, raised voices issuing from her flat, and she hurried up the last of the stairs and burst into her house, only to find she wished she hadn't.
The room was covered in wallpaper paste, which would probably never come off in a lifetime. The loud voices had come from the Doctor and Rose, who were now frozen solid and silent. The Doctor was laying out of the floor, with Rose straddling him, a handful of wallpaper paste in her hands. Both of them were covered in paste, and looked as though they had been having the time of their lives. She found herself, instead of being angry – which she was sure there would be plenty of later – a bubble of laughter threatening to explode out of her chest, and she let it, a bark of laughter shocking the occupants on the floor, whom had both expected her to shout herself hoarse at them.
"Come on, this is hilarious! And, you, Time Lordship or whatever you're meant to be, get up and help me tidy up! And you're not getting away either, Rose. Now, before we get tidying, who wants a cup of tea? I got chocolate coated digestives this time, too, for a bit of a change …" her voice became muffled as she walked through to the kitchen, Rose following behind her.
Well…, the Doctor thought, still on the floor although Rose had gotten off him and he could physically move again. He felt something jab painfully into his back, and he reached under and pulled out his broken glasses, which had fallen out of his discarded suit jacket and fallen underneath him, only to be trapped in the "fight". He sighed as Rose came back through to the living room with two cups of tea, waving the broken glasses about.
"I knew I should have gone to Specsavers!"