"I'm telling you, it won't work! Your hair is too dark. It'll come out orange." Rose wiped her nose with the back of her arm and sneezed when she got another whiff of the strong hair dye. The Doctor laughed again. "Sorry 'bout that. But believe me, I've been there before. When I was sixteen, I dyed my hair black - just to make mum freak out - and I regretted it the instant I saw how pale it made me look." She ran her fingers through his hair, checking for dry spots. She streaked another spot with the dye and rubbed it in with her glove. "Tried dyeing it back blond, but I ended up with a bright bronze color. Not exactly flattering, having black hair and blond roots for six months," she finished, doubling over with laughter when the Doctor snorted at the idea.
"How long do I have to keep this on? It stinks." The Doctor had the large paper with instructions folded out in front of him, and he quickly located the timing chart. "Ah, here we go – twenty minutes should do it." He set the egg timer and laid it on the kitchen counter. "Come on, Rose, it's just hair. The Time Lord you used to know may have been vain about his hair, but I'm not."
Without thinking he ran his own fingers through his hair and came out with a hand full of dye. Rose laughed at him and he turned around and wiped it on her face. She gasped and rubbed her dye-covered gloves over the front of his shirt, sprinting away before he could react. He chased her through their flat, covering each other in hair dye – Rose even picked up the bottle of leftover dye and used it to squirt his clothes – until they collapsed together on their bed, stomachs aching from the laughter.
"Y-you've got red on you," the Doctor gasped to Rose between giggles. He wiped a drop off of Rose's cheek with his thumb and kissed her. Rose rolled on top of him and kissed him harder. Suddenly their clothes couldn't come off fast enough.
::-::-::
"Oh, this color will never come out of these sheets." Rose was admiring a pattern of spots on the sheet from the dye – the Doctor's hand prints on either side of her buttock print. Nice.
"I like it, it's like our own personal tie-dye job. Just, don't let your mother see this one." The Doctor checked out his reflection in their bedroom mirror for the hundredth time since he and Rose got out of the shower. His hair was now a lovely shade of copper orange; perhaps he had left the color in a bit too long while he was preoccupied with Rose. The dye had gotten everywhere, all over the apartment, but since they owned it, they could always repaint it. The issue of their furniture, they had not yet approached.
"I told you the color wouldn't turn out right. But hey, you've always wanted to be ginger. Now's your chance." Rose's blond hair had not avoided the dye either. It was streaked and spotted with the same orange color in the Doctor's hair; she had admired it as the beginning of a fashion trend and decided to keep it until it grew out.
She noticed the Doctor tugging at the front of his hair, spiking it up like his Time Lord counterpart would do. "There, much better," he stated, smiling at Rose in the reflection. Rose wondered if there would ever be a time that she could see that smile and not feel her stomach flop or her heart race.