Written For: LJ community if-we-let-go challenge (scent)
Author: avoria in LJ (that's me, by the way)
Rating: K+
Genre: Romance, Suspense, Senses
Characters: Ninth Doctor, Rose
Disclaimer: The only things I own are a battered David Tennant & Billie Piper poster and this crummy laptop that runs as if it's as old as I am. You can see why I am slightly miffed about all of these points, no?
Summary: The Doctor's sense of smell is more than we give him credit. He always seems to know how others around him feel. Perhaps this is why.
Author's Note: I saw the word "challenge" and couldn't resist. Don't ask me where this – quite frankly – bizarre idea came from, I've really no idea. I don't even know if I like it that much, but I like what happens during the course so I suppose that's all right. Slight spoilers for the episode "Dalek", though given the name, it's not anything you didn't know anyway. This is written for the new community I've joined on livejournal and, for one reason or another (please don't make me explain - I might just go insane), the thing won't post on that website. Not that I wasn't going to post it here anyway.
Cherry Trees and Storm Clouds
It is said that dogs can smell fear. What it means, of course, is that dogs happen to have a highly perceptive notion of the hormones and chemicals given off when one is under considerable strain. Fear is, of course, the most common. There's all these toxins and chemicals mixing and combining, and to someone with a sensitive nose, it's not surprising that it just screams 'Fear'. It's also very easy to see when someone is scared – really terrified, rather than just a little shocked. However, dogs are fairly poor at recognising the physical aspects of fear, and it is only thanks to their sensitive noses that they can pick up on the chemical induced reaction to begin with. They really have no idea what "fear" itself smells like. It's just another scent that drives them wild.
The Doctor knows what fear smells like. He knows what all of the basic emotions smell like – happiness, joy, misery, anger, jealousy, lust, love and, yes, fear. It doesn't mean he can recognise the increase in pulse or realise the release of certain toxins, though he can that as well. No, he can actually smell them. It's like having all sorts of different varieties of sauces one might use with pasta. You have your bolognese, tomato, cheese, cream, curry, chili – and from these, endless more concoctions of the same branch. It depends on the ingredients; no two sauces are ever quite the same. Different ingredients, different pastas, different cooking times.
It's the same with emotions. They are all different from each other, and they all smell different depending on whose emotion his scent picks up on.
Some, like the people of the planet Xyon, smell absolutely completely and utterly foul. Misery tends to be all right, that's just soft like dust in a musty attic. Anger, now there's an emotion an a half. It emanates off them putrid and vile, like rotten food that has been left in a warm cupboard with a family of rats for two years on end. It's a pity that most of the race spend the better part of their lives at war with each other. They're an angry race, fighting with neighbours, relatives, strangers – it's the only way to survive. Of course, each emotion on each individual smells that little bit different – what with the difference in ingredients – but the general likeness still applies.
The Doctor could spend the rest of his life finding descriptions for what it is he can smell on other beings, but it's a sense he's grown up with and has become used to. He doesn't even notice, most of the time, unless he makes the effort to. Or unless the emotion is stronger than it should be.
See, now, humans he loves. Quite apart from the fact that they're funny in their little quirks, and that they're argumentative, curious, cunning and so on, the emotions they feel are the most beautiful thing the Doctor has ever had the pleasure to realise. When he first stumbled across the planet, he was so overjoyed with everything that came to him he stayed there for an entire week, drinking up whatever he could get his finely-tuned nosed on.
Of course, now he is used to it and barely stops to think – he still loves it, though. Grief smells fresh and crisp, like the damp air just before a thunderstorm. It is alive and full and has almost a sweetness to it. Then there's happiness, and it smells like a daisy chain on an innocent child's head, bright and light and so very full of life that it offers hope to all. Oh, hope, now there's an emotion he loves. Hope is subtle on humans, which is perhaps what he loves about it. Other races, it's blindingly obvious when they hope, throwing it around everywhere, not bothering to try and cherish it. Humans, on the other hand, very rarely hope out in the open. It is secretive and intimate, and what the Doctor smells when he's next to hope is like cold breath on winter air, small and brief but ever-spreading to wherever it can reach. It's like frozen snow, freshly fallen, lazing on a lawn that's just been cut. Oh, yes, he likes Hope. Amongst others.
He is so used to others' emotions these days that he barely picks up on them anymore. Something particularly vibrant always catches his attention, but generally, he leaves well enough alone. There are other senses, after all, and though his preference to them changes through each regeneration, smell is always the one constant. Sometimes it is more acute than others, but he always has and always will have that power. He is glad of it.
His nose isn't particularly sensitive in other things. It is more the concept of his mind, understanding the emotions that little better, than his nose picking up on anything. Humans – in fact, most other races – could do it too, if they let themselves, but they wouldn't have the capacity to make sense of it.
The Doctor considers the magazine that has made him ride this train of thought so far. It is one of Rose's, a cheap thin-sheeted paper from a stand back in London. He hadn't meant to read it, but she'd happened to have left it open over the console and as he had gone to move it, his eyes had drifted to those words. Curious as to why a 'girly' magazine was discussing dogs and fear, he had raked his eyes briefly over the pages to find out why. Something about 'how to attract a man by showing you aren't afraid' came into it. He frowns at it now, closing the pages with mild distaste and wondering who on Gallifrey would ever take it seriously, because it is the most ridiculous thing he has ever come across.
Then again, he adds as an afterthought with a smirk, perhaps it isn't so inaccurate after all. In the brief moments when he feels describing Rose with words will do her justice, he perhaps might call her 'Fearless' – and look at how she attracts him so?
No.
He pushes rogue thoughts out of his mind, bringing the heel of his hand up to his eyes as if to physically extract the thoughts. He cannot think that way about her, even if he can't help but do so.
Oh, Rose.
He sighs and leans against the TARDIS wall, shaking his head in self pity and slight amusement. For the lack of a better way to describe her, he is sure that he has never been around one singular being who has given off enough to intoxicate him as she has. He drowns in her happiness, loses himself in her courage, drinks in her joy and revels in her trust towards him. Trust was the first thing he noticed, right after he'd pulled her away from those Autons all those months ago. She hadn't known him, had never met him, yet even then, she trusted him completely. She hadn't even known his name, yet she had trusted him with her life.
Most wouldn't trust their lives in his hand after years of knowing him. She will.
Her trust in him had almost made him giddy when it hit him the first time – it reminded him of a rustic, metallic sort of smell, like alcohol and barley and a hint of sugar. If he closes his eyes and tries to pick it out when she's around him, it's always there, underlying everything else she feels. An undercurrent of trust, that's what she has, and it has never made the Doctor happier. He wonders why.
Well, part of him knows why, but he doesn't listen to that bit, pushing it away from the front of his mind as he would push a reluctant child into their first day of school.
Child... Rose is a child, to him. Or she should be. Nineteen years old – how can ever forgive himself?
The Doctor lets out a despondent groan and rests his head back against the wall, eyes closed in defeat. Every word is somehow connected to her, and it isn't fair because more often than not, he has to pretend that he's numb, like he can't sense the emotions and feelings from her, like he doesn't care about her so much. It's a difficult job, but someone has to do it.
"Doctor?"
He raises his head, only slightly startled. He hadn't heard her come in, but then, she always is good at sneaking up on him like that. He likes it, sometimes, when he's working and suddenly she's there with a fleeting hand on his shoulder, a gentle touch that he will cherish and remember for as long as he lives.
He recoils from the wall with an exaggerated bounce, slapping his hands together and grinning with devilish glee.
"So, where to today?" he grins, looking at her expectantly.
She folds her arms and raises an eyebrow.
"You're the alien, you tell me."
He pauses for a moment, wondering whether to comment, wondering whether to tell her that actually, she is alien to him, and considering this is his ship, she is the one who is out of the norm. But he lets it slide, despite the brief pang of reluctant hurt that threatens to sweep through him. He quells it and turns on his heel, fiddling with controls that do nothing but make him look impressive.
The Doctor looks up with pride and that same grin, almost daring her to dare him to do something else. She just stands there, watching him.
He darts quickly to the other side of the column, hitting a button, pulling and pushing levers, tapping into his keyboard and fiddling with dials. His face relaxes into concentration as his eyes roam the screen.
"Rose, hold that button there, will you?"
He indicates briefly but does not look up, too focused on the job in front of him.
Rose doesn't move.
He looks up, to ask why, to repeat himself – but the look she's giving him, the way she's watching him, body weight shifted onto one leg, arms still folded but a pleasant smile over her face, it startles him because she's usually so obedient. Well, all right, she's not, but it is still strange.
He frowns, looks down at himself (just in case: there was only that one time when he forgot to put a jumper on before finding their next planet), then back again.
"What?" he asks belligerently, feeling like he is being judged.
Rose shakes her head in silent laughter.
"'S nothing. You just carry on as you are."
His forehead pulls up in the middle, his frown turning confused. He catches a whiff on the air, something that is more than her subtle perfume and woodland smell of Rose. He likes to think she smells like a wood, all leaves and bark and dirt and the fresh stream that babbles through it when there has been enough rain.
This time, there is something else. Something bitter like orange peel, but spicy and sweet like cinnamon. Oranges and cinnamon, but bitter rather than anything he can put his finger on. He knows that emotion and wonders why she feels it now. He meets her eye, brings a hand up from the controls to his hip.
"You're laughing at me," he says softly, not quite meaning it as an accusation, but not quite joking either.
Rose puts her hands up to his surrender, palms outwards towards him.
"I'm not!" she defends – but there is a wide grin on her face.
"You are," he points out defiantly.
"Not."
"Are!"
"How would you know?" she challenges good-naturedly, slipping her hands by her sides.
The Doctor hesitates, wondering if he should tell her, wondering if he could tell her. There is so much about him she doesn't know, so much she just assumes is human. He is far from human.
"Like you said, I'm an alien," he shrugs, biting back his bitter edge to the term. He hates that term. Rose is alien to him, but he doesn't feel it. She's just Rose, his friend, his companion and his partner. When you get down to technicalities, the magic of what they have breaks up. Thing is, it's the technicalities that make them so different in the first place.
He doesn't know how – because he has always been good at hiding things – but as he watches, he can see that something in his comment changes her. She tilts her head, gives the smallest of sighs that he might not notice had he not made sure he learned everything about her. She walks towards him, and though part of him tells him to run away and hide, he doesn't. He just stands and watches as she pulls up closer until she is right in front of him, gazing up into his face just centimetres from him. Most, when they are this close, cower in his shadow, terrified; he never gets this close when he isn't angry or threatening.
This is different, though. He watches her with a blank face, lips together, eyebrows only slightly tipped up in mildest of curiosity. He can sense the difference in the air, not quite smell, not quite taste, somewhere between the two. Something new that he hasn't sensed before. As he watches her, he feels the barrier in his eyes begin to shift. He tries to hide as much about himself as he can, because letting anybody in will spell the death of him. He knows it.
But with Rose so close, just standing there and looking up at him with large eyes, he feels time come to a standstill. She may have only been there a few seconds. It may be a few minutes. For once, he doesn't know, and he especially doesn't care. What he can smell in the air, radiating off her like heat waves in a desert, is something he knows to be love. It is the type of love one always feels for one's friends – a deep caring of not wanting to see them hurt, of wanting them to live, of wanting to share with them what makes you happy. He has known it before, from other companions, and it is the way in which he loves them all too, to an extent. It is the same with every one of them, because you cannot spend this sort of life with someone and not grow those feelings.
This may be the same as the others – but it's still love.
And he's never caught the scent quite like this before.
He knows love – sweet like cherries from a newly blossomed tree; love is ice-cold water and cherries and a drop of honey to balance it together. But in this, in front of him now as Rose watches, there is something... else. It's love, oh yes, but in his mind's eye of cherry trees and glasses of water dripping with condensation from the hot day and a dab of honey on his fingertip... there is something in the sky, looming overhead. It is a blue sky, bright and deep like all summer days, and usually, it is empty when he paints the picture of love in his mind.
Not this time. This time, as he stands there breathing and smelling that new scent, there is a large cloud darkening and deepening above the horizon of the cherry tree, thunderous and dangerous and always threatening to break but never quite managing it. It is huge and writhing, almost alive, and very, very strange against the deep blue of the sky.
He wonders what it means, what that smell of danger and raw thundercloud means when he smells love now.
Rose notices the expression on his face change, for just a minute, and flicker into uncertainty. He is back to himself again in no time, standing there watching with a drawn face. She takes in a breath and he smells in the air a tang of bravery, the momentary burnt crispness of courage. He never usually notices this intimately, but he's concentrating now and he's curious, and the two combined make him more aware than he has been in a very long time.
She is playing with her hands nervously – oh, nervousness, he smells that too, very much like chemicals of the human planet: paint, to be exact. Strong, white paint is Rose as her charred courage wanes and he can see uncertainty across her. Why, why is she feeling all these things like this?
He knows he did not ask the question aloud, but it is answered when her courage returns in all its glory, and it soon turns from burnt charcoal to a roaring fire. Before he can ask, her hand is drifting deftly across his cheek and she's standing on tiptoe, closing her eyes and leaning into him.
His hand tightens on the console beside him, because he knows what is coming and he can't seem to stop it.
Rose presses her lips softly, gently against his and his eyes slip closed. He does not retaliate, as such, because doing so would mean far too much for both of them. This is her choice and her point, and if she has to use him to make it worthwhile, then so be it, but he is not going to encourage it.
She lingers there for a second or two, just pressing against him tenderly, joining her lips with his. He hears her take in a breath through her nose and then her lips withdraw and he opens his eyes. The hand at his face slides away and she fiddles with her hair, turning her head away from him as a warm blush seeps through her cheeks.
The Doctor licks his lips and tastes moisture there, moisture he knows isn't his own and that excites him just a little. But he holds it at bay because this isn't his battle to win.
She looks back to him curiously, then opens her mouth and swallows. The Doctor's eyebrow pulls up, ever so slightly, and still he's standing there with one hand on the console, one by his side, watching her. He cannot quite smell anything now, his other senses taking over into normality.
He still thinks her brave, though, when she meets his eye and gives a small nod.
"I don't think of you as an alien," she murmurs quietly and he knows she is trying to justify her reason for kissing him. Then again, perhaps her reason for kissing him was to prove she does not think of him as an alien. Catch twenty-two, or something there abouts; his mind isn't quite functioning in the same way yet.
Those words, from her – he isn't quite sure whether to be happy and spin her around the room in a dance, or scold her and remind her that they are far too different for him not to be alien to her.
Somewhere between the two should suffice, he decides.
The Doctor takes in a small breath and offers her a smile. She returns it, but it fades at his words.
"Perhaps you should, Rose."
She blinks, obviously hurt. He doesn't need his acute sense of smell to tell him that.
"Oh. Yeah. I guess."
He smiles again with amused humour, because she does not yet understand the meaning of his words. He wants to cup her cheek and comfort her, but he knows that doing so – for now, at least – will be a foolish step.
"I don't think of you as an alien either, Rose," he offers as compensation and he has to force his smile not to turn into a grin as her confused face becomes more perplexed. She frowns and he chuckles, meeting her eye with as much honesty as he feels is safe to offer at this moment in time. "You're so... right... that sometimes I forget I picked you up from that planet all those months ago. I forget that you haven't always been by my side and that I haven't always been showing you the universe. I forget that I'm the only one. I don't usually forget things, Rose."
It doesn't sound like he is finished; it sounds like there should be more sentences hanging in the air, more words from his lips – but he says no more.
She has to ask, though, and he knows she will. Perhaps that's why he left it unfinished.
Rose's eyes seem to intensify as she questions with a look, but when he offers nothing, words will have to do.
"What does that mean?"
He swallows audibly, then looks her dead in the eye, right through everything she has ever pretended and into the very being of her essence.
"I don't know."
She nods, more to herself, then steps away from him and begins to circle the console. When her back is sufficiently turned, the Doctor closes his eyes for a moment and sighs, releasing his mind so he can think clearly again.
He opens his eyes and grins at her, the weighted conversation already falling into the past.
It's not the only thing that's falling, something irritating in his mind tells him, but he pushes it away again and makes for a lever.
Something interrupts them. The TARDIS can feel it and so can he. Something is screaming out, desperate and pleading and he almost has to recoil from the physical pain that suddenly shoots through him, right through his muscles. He flinches, trying to block it out, and lets out a single, strangled pant. It is gone again in an instant, but Rose has noticed, is at his side in a second just in case he needs the support.
He doesn't, but he leans on her anyway.
"Doctor!" she sounds panicked and her eyes are large and worried, searching his face. Oh, worry – he could spend hours describing its scent, but there are more important matters at hand and he pushes it back. "Doctor, what is it? What's happened?"
He takes in a breath and leaves her side, tapping in data and coordinates into a keyboard as he checks what he is sure he's just felt.
When the confirmation comes positive, he looks up at Rose, his eyes surging with empathy.
"There's something calling," he explains. "Something shouting out for help. It's alone and it's scared and the signal is very concentrated. But I've got it now, got it on my radars."
Rose grins at him with happiness. "We're gonna rescue it then, yeah?"
He echoes the smile two-fold, pleased with himself for making her smile and pleased for finding the signal in the first place. "Yeah. You an' me, we'll rescue it and then we'll set it free. It's trapped and scared, but it needn't be for long. Up for it?"
"Definitely," she smiles, wandering over to him. As she peers over his shoulder, trying in vain to understand the strange patterns and symbols on the screen, her hand slips into his. He smiles contentedly as their fingers entwine with each other, and he realises quite abstractly that they are always holding on to each other like this. He watches the screen too, until he sees something that confuses him. He points.
"That. Right there. That's strange."
Rose's head angles up towards him in wondrous confusion. "It is?" she asks, though she knows he would explain it anyway.
"This signal's coming from Utah."
"What's that?" Rose asks, scrunching up her nose in thought. "Don't tell me it's some really weird planet that, I dunno, makes you walk backwards or something."
He blinks, frowns, turns to look at her then tightens his grip on her hand. Then he notices she isn't joking. And he laughs.
"Doctor!" she scolds, hitting him on the arm. He recoils and tries to subside his amusement, because he doesn't like to hurt her. Even if she insists on being so funny.
"Oh, Rose," he laughs, reaching with his free hand to play discreetly at her hair, clearing it away from her face.
She gives him an odd smile that somehow portrays that she is not impressed but is willing to listen.
He bites back a further snort of laughter and shakes his head before dropping his hand back to his side.
"Rose, Utah is a place on Earth. It's in America."
Her face falls, and even though he knows she's trying to hide her embarrassment, it leaks from her in a gentle aroma of lavender and rosemary and something that smells vaguely dairy. Quite the odd combination, and it makes his stomach churn slightly.
"Oh," she says quietly, looking away from him to the wall. Then she looks back at him suspiciously and is entirely serious in her next question. "They don't walk backwards there, do they?"
He tries to fight, oh he does, but he laughs again, eyes falling closed as it rattles through him. There is another hit on his arm and he straightens, smirking and trying to hide it well. Oh, his Rose – she is so very funny. When he dares to use words to describe her, that is.
He lets go of her hand, working in exact coordinates for this strange basement in Utah. His curiosity is flaring again, because Earth is not ready for aliens that plead for escape in 2012. He goes anyway, though, because he can help. He is the Doctor, after all.
He feels Rose's gaze on him as he presses the last button and they descend through the Vortex. He looks up with a gentle smile.
She answers before he can ask.
"You care about everyone, everything, so much, don't you Doctor? Everyone in all the planets in the whole universe: you care about them all."
She knows him far too well for his own good, but he grins and nods happily, because he is pleased that she does.
"Some more than others," he replies with a modest shrug. "But generally, yeah, I do."
He feels the TARDIS land. Whatever has been calling out, it can rest in the knowledge that it's about to be rescued.
He turns to the doors, about to open, before Rose stops him.
"That really is amazing," she breathes quietly, and curiously, he turns back.
"What is?"
"Well... there's just so many people in the universe. I mean on Earth, I couldn't stand to have to care about everyone in London. How do you do it?"
"Like I said – " Not quite sure why, he meets her gaze and holds it " – some more than others."
Oh, he can smell it again. Love. Cherry trees and glasses of water and drips of honey. And that large, black cloud. It's surrounding him again and he grins, because part of her loves him for loving everything and everyone else. Forget him – she is the amazing one.
He stretches out his arm and wiggles his fingers, flashing his brows upwards daringly.
"C'mon then, my little cherry tree," he grins.
She smiles and frowns at once and steps towards him, linking their hands in warmth. "What?"
He laughs and shakes his head. "Never mind."
They pull open the door and begin to cross the threshold. Just as they do so, Rose's hand suddenly tightens on his and she whispers something quietly, something he's not sure if he's supposed to hear, but it's a bit daft for her to say it out loud if he isn't.
"You really are fantastic, Doctor."
She squeezes his hand tightly, and it's in that moment he knows that she meant him to hear.
It's also in that moment that the cloud above his cherry tree decides it's going to break. It splits in half, opening the heavens, and suddenly there is fresh, damp rain beating through his senses, wild and ferocious and strong. It promises both darkness and strength, promises roars of thunder and lightning and he is dizzied by it, unknowing of its how or why or when. He just knows. It is enough.
And somewhere, hidden deep in the pits of this underground base, the tiny cry for help becomes a glimmer of victory. It laughs, and it doesn't know why. It senses the change, senses that what it has fears has become weak like everything else.
The monster – it knows, too.
And it will use it against him. Because even the Oncoming Storm has a weakness. The weakness to fall in love.
End