"I thought next we'd maybe go see the Perfectly Ordinary Mountains," the Doctor called out from where he was doing repairs under the TARDIS console as soon as he heard Rose – fresh from a lengthy nap – stepping out onto the grating nearby. "They're not actually perfectly ordinary, of course, or I wouldn't be bothered with showing them to you. The man who christened them just had quite a healthy sense of irony. Well, at least he did right up until his fellows got tired of it and hung him by his toes until he repented. Imagine never being –"
He stopped mid-sentence.
Very few things had the power to shut the Doctor up once he was on a roll. But when he got a glimpse of Rose as he slid out from under the console and sat up, words caught on his tongue, which suddenly felt as dry as the great desert of Giatoma.
"Never bein' what?" Rose asked curiously, as if nothing were out of the ordinary.
"What?" the Doctor asked stupidly. "Was I saying something?"
He certainly hadn't been thinking anything... other than perhaps 'nnffgwah'.
"Is there ever a time when you're not sayin' somethin'?" Rose smiled teasingly, and somehow his ability to think actually decreased at the sight of her tongue peeking out. He distractedly wondered whether this was what humans felt like, only being able to focus on one thing at a time, their minds moving so slowly they might as well be going in reverse.
Though if he had to focus at length on only a single thing, he could certain do worse in his choice.
The jeans Rose had chosen for today's outing were more hole than denim, and the Doctor honestly couldn't be sure he would have been able to drag his eyes away from the bared patches of skin even if a battalion of Cybermen marched into the TARDIS right at that moment.
It was just her legs, he tried to tell himself. He saw Rose's legs every day, except for that one time when he'd temporarily made most of her body turn invisible (not that he'd admitted to that being his fault, of course).
And it certainly wasn't as if he wasn't accustomed to the sight of human skin. Why, there was a whole century where Earth grew so hot that its occupants decided en masse that all clothing should be declared out of style and entirely optional.
Yet this was Rose. It was different.
She'd rarely so much as bared her ankles since coming on board the TARDIS. And even if he had seen her uncovered legs more often, there would still just be something about her standing before him now technically clothed from hip to toe that left him feeling as though he were being granted a peak at something which was forbidden, and which was all the sweeter for it. And he could hardly overlook the fact that those jeans appeared so threadbare that they might fall clean off her body at any moment. He was practically holding his breath waiting for that to happen, in fact, even though his rational mind – if he could properly re-engage it right then – would realise that it wasn't about to happen.
The most insistent consideration, though, was how this strange oral fixation that this regeneration seemed to have picked up meant the Doctor couldn't seem to stop thinking about how he might drop to his knees in front of her and map out every line of revealed skin with his tongue, paying particular attention to that one tiny freckle he could see standing out against the otherwise pale skin high on her thigh, while Rose's hands clenched reflexively in his hair and encouraged him to keep doing that, never to stop, to touch her just there...
"Doctor!" The impatience in Rose's voice led him to believe she'd had to call his name more than once before he'd actually heard her.
"Sorry," he said. "I was just..."
"Should I take these off?" Rose asked, gesturing at the jeans.
"Um," was all the Doctor could say, because actually, that sounded like a very good idea indeed, but he wasn't sure he should say so.
"I mean, mountains, altitude; it all brings cold to mind, and I'm not exactly dressed for extreme weather here. I should probably change, yeah?"
Mountains. Right. He'd been making plans before his mind and body both went all haywire for no good reason.
"No," the Doctor was quick – probably too quick – to say. "The planet has an artificially regulated environment, at least in the millennium that we'll be visiting. No need to cover up."
Damn. He was pretty sure he'd actually meant to say 'bundle up'.
If Rose noticed anything peculiar about his choice of words, she didn't show it. She simply said, "I don't s'pose it'll matter anyway. I'll warm up quick enough when we end up havin' to run for our lives. Not as if you'd ever be able to land us somewhere peaceful for once."
"Hey!" the Doctor said, the assault on his piloting skills finally enough to snap him out of his daze. "I'll have you know that I'm perfectly capable of navigating the TARDIS to avoid conflict. Remember that picnic on top of the glass roof of the Alassar observation tower?"
"The one where a bomb nearly blew the glass out from under us and plummeted us thousands of feet to the ground?"
The Doctor pouted. "But it didn't. We were fine! Not a scratch on either of us. And that explosion had nothing to do with us anyway."
"Sure it didn't."
"Oh, just wait. I'll show you, Rose Tyler," the Doctor said. "I'm a precision pilot, make no mistake. It's all about skill and planning and superior intelligence and frankly being pretty marvellous, and I have all that in spades."
"Good thing it doesn't come from bein' humble, then," Rose remarked.
The Doctor glared. "Come on. I'll prove it to you. We're going to have a perfectly ordinary and uneventful trip."
Of course, much like the man who named the mountains, the universe seemed to be fond of contrariness.
Later he would only admit it under heavy protest, but the Doctor had once more ended up so distracted by Rose's attire that it took him a very long while to actually notice that they really should be either ducking for cover or running for their lives. In retrospect, he decided that the way they'd drawn gunfire without even trying didn't have anything to do with his supposedly below-par piloting skills. Honestly. They'd have been left perfectly alone if it wasn't for Rose.
After all, any alien within miles would have been immediately drawn to her like a magnet as long as she was wearing those jeans.
~FIN~