Author's Notes: Written for who_in_whoville for the following prompt: "Cloen has more than a bit of Donna attitude, and this leads to some knock down drag out fights with Jackie Tyler. Rose is caught in the middle."
The Doctor banged the blunt end of his knife against the table as, for the sixth time that evening, Jackie Tyler piped up to correct him on something. He knew the square root of pi to three thousand and four hundred decimal places, and he managed to fit that knowledge into a tiny human(ish) brain without the top of his head blowing off. Surely she couldn't really think that someone capable of that wasn't equally capable of draping his own napkin across his lap just as well as the waiter could, or figuring out what distance he wanted to leave between his chair and Rose's, or knowing whether a certain topic of conversation was appropriate for a crowded place where people were eating (though he supposed he could have been less descriptive about the mucus that dripped down the back hair of the Odenture species, since even Rose's expression had been a little incredulous at that).
The sudden clang of his silverware, barely muted by the tablecloth, made the low sounds of conversation from the three tables stationed directly around them dip for a moment as eyes sought out the source of the interruption before their owners apparently decided it wasn't worth their while and went back to their own business, where they should have stayed in the first place. Pete studied his napkin and Tony merely bobbed in his seat and giggled, oblivious to the tense atmosphere around him.
"Restaurant," Rose reminded him softly, reaching over to grip the hand that wasn't practically going white from clenching the knife handle so hard. "Posh crowded restaurant."
The Doctor exhaled and pasted a fake smile across his face. "I'm sorry, Jackie, I think I must have missed that bit. How exactly should I butter my bread roll, again?"
Rose squeezed his hand gratefully. The Doctor had to force himself not to squeeze back, knowing it would be more out of frustration than affection, and he'd probably end up making her wince in that way that it always nearly killed him to witness, let alone cause. It wasn't Rose's fault. He was the one who'd agreed to have dinner so that she could 'introduce' him to her parents, as if they hadn't already met multiple times and fought for their lives side by side. It had seemed like the sort of peculiar human custom that he should start getting used to now that he was, for most intents and purposes, human himself.
The next time his brain offered up the words 'human custom' as a description, he swore he was running in the other direction as fast as his feet would carry him. He'd make sure to grab Rose and pull her along with him as well, of course. He couldn't let her be subjected to any more of these thinly veiled torture sessions either, even if she had had longer to become used to the pitfalls of being human than he had.
"That's the wrong fork," Jackie offered as a plate was placed in front of the Doctor and he reached for a fresh set of cutlery.
He had no idea if it was being mostly human, or having bits of a red-headed fiery woman's personality infused into him, or just the fact that there was no person in any universe across all of time and space more aggravating than Jackie Tyler, but whatever the cause, there was one solid fact that was becoming clear to him.
They were clearly going to end up killing each other. Or perhaps they might just badly maim each other, if they were very lucky. Maybe they'd make it through this particular meal, and even the next one when he inevitably let Rose's pleading eyes sway him into agreeing to go through this madness all over again, but in pledging to spend his life with Rose, he'd also inexorably tied himself to Jackie for as long as they both should live.
Clearly one day his less-than-proper-Time-Lord-standard control was going to snap and he'd lash out. And then Rose would never even be willing to look at him again, let alone pull him in for one of those spontaneous kisses during which he sometimes worried (in a hazy way where he really couldn't care too much because everything outside that moment seemed unimportant) that his too-fragile human shell was going to melt under the intensity and he was going to end up just a useless puddle seeping into the ground at Rose's feet. As much as he didn't want to be a kiss-induced puddle, because it would mean no more kissing in future (and that prospect utterly horrified him), he wanted even less to remain a proper, fully-formed man but still not receive any kisses because the object of his affection hated him for leaping across a table and strangling her mother.
Rose, he reminded himself firmly. It was all so that he could be with Rose. For her, he could get through a couple of family meals.
Besides, he could have sworn that towards the end of their time together in that other universe he and Jackie had actually been capable of getting alone.
Maybe he'd just also adopted Donna's inability to get alone with her mother. Of course, that would mean he viewed Jackie as though she was like his mother, which was a thought that made the Doctor feel vaguely ill (but that the deepest recesses of his brain had to admit was unfortunately true).
"Did you just stick your finger in your mouth?" Jackie asked. "In a five star restaurant?"
The Doctor whimpered under his breath and wondered how much she'd complain if he hid under the table, or maybe banged his head repeatedly on the top of the table, in a five star restaurant. That would be sure to draw the attention of more than just the few people sitting closest to them, and wouldn't be nearly as easily dismissed. They'd probably end up in the tabloids and everything, knowing how closely people watched Pete Tyler and his strange ragtag little family lately.
In the end, he bit his tongue and hoped that the look on Rose's face meant he was going to be well rewarded for doing so.
"Hey," the Doctor greeted as he turned around to find Rose just inches from him. It was so much harder to tell when she was close now that her body heat wasn't significantly higher than his, burning across the distance between them like a beacon. Not that he minded her sneaking up on him so much, he decided as Rose fisted his jacket and pulled him towards her. Not at all.
He moaned into Rose's mouth, looping his finger into one of her belt loops and tugging her closer to bring the rest of their bodies into alignment as well. Her hands left his jacket and dipped lower. The clear sense of purpose to her movement was startling, given that they hadn't managed to get any further than hugging and relatively short-lived snogging up until that moment. The Doctor was all for encouraging diversity, though.
Her fingers reached the top of his trousers and then trailed inwards, between their bodies, seeking out his zip and (hopefully, the Doctor thought, please let her be willing to do that) what lay beyond it.
A loud knocking made them spring apart.
"Are you ready to go, Rose?"
"Go?" the Doctor asked, disbelieving. "Where? And now?" He looked down at his heaving chest and the obvious tenting of his trousers. Surely she didn't plan to leave him like this? Not when he had these human hormones that made his whole body thrum with the need to push her against the nearest surface right about now.
Rose shrugged. "I dunno," she whispered. They were quiet for a moment, listening, but when no further noise was forthcoming they mutually decided that they'd been granted some kind of reprieve and that Jackie was gone. The Doctor gently guided Rose's lips back to his collarbone and felt her smile against his skin as she darted her tongue out over his neck and then followed the same path with lips and teeth.
Another knock startled them apart again.
"What?" the Doctor asked as Rose pulled back. "What?"
"Rose?" Jackie called out, knocking even more insistently. "Come on, I need you to come shoppin' with me, and we'll end up runnin' too late for it to be worthwhile if we don't go now."
"What? Oh, no, that's it," the Doctor groaned, rolling off Rose's bed. "I'm going to kill her. I know she's your mother, Rose, but really, with the knocking and the shopping? She's driving me mad."
"Hey," Rose said. "If you go tearin' after her now, then I can't thank you for bein' so patient later, can I?"
The Doctor's hand was poised to rip the door open so that he could storm out after Jackie and tell her exactly where she could shove her bloody shopping trip (distantly he recognised how much like Donna that sounded, and his heart seemed to twinge a little at the reminder). At Rose's words, though, he felt like his legs were falling out from under him, and the urgent desire to do anything that would require him to leave the room vanished. "Thank me?" he repeated weakly.
"Oh yeah," Rose said as she crossed the room. When she reached him, she pressed herself right up into his personal space, breathing his air and ending up practically flush against him again, just where he'd wanted her to stay all along. "Trust me," she murmured, "it'll be worth it."
She reached towards him, and the Doctor's whole body tensed in anticipation. At the last moment, however, she veered her hand to the side and grasped the doorknob instead, turning it and pulling the door open.
"Sorry," she said, grinning. "Gotta go. I'll hurry back, though. Promise."
The door fell shut again behind her, and the Doctor was left alone in her bedroom.
"Nggh," was about the extent of what he was capable of saying about that just then.
"I'm movin' out," Rose announced flippantly.
The Doctor sloshed hot tea over his front. He'd known that Rose was planning on telling her parents, but he'd thought she'd gently lead into it so as not to shock them (or him, for that matter).
"Just like that?" Jackie asked. "And where exactly do you think you're goin', missy?"
Don't bring me up, don't bring me up, don't bring me up, the Doctor prayed. In vain, apparently.
"The Doctor and I are gettin' a place," Rose said. "Probably some kind of flat across the other side of the city somewhere, I'd say." She showed no signs of being aware that she'd just dropped a bomb. In fact, the Doctor really thought he should be diving behind some furniture for shelter right about then, if only he could get his body to stop acting as though it had suddenly been turned to stone.
There was a moment of silence, broken only by Pete's weary sigh. The Doctor agreed entirely with that sentiment. He could see what was coming a mile away.
That knowledge of impending doom didn't seem to stop his brain (stupid, slightly-too-human organ that it now was) from spiralling into a panic the moment that dreaded 'm' word came up. He had to fight not to follow his instincts and launch himself bodily out of the room the way he'd sworn up and down that he immediately would when faced with any alarming human customs like... like... marriage.
"Oi," the Doctor finally said, recovering himself after twenty straight minutes of Jackie rambling on and on about a wedding without seeming to ever pause long enough to take a single breath (and people said he talked a lot). "Who exactly said we're getting married? Ever?"
For the first time since she'd walked into the room and made her own announcement without a care, Rose looked alarmed. "Oh god," she said. Hearing that, for a moment the Doctor went into a very different sort of panic, worried that he'd hurt her. Did she want to get married? But when he caught the darkening look Jackie was shooting him, and when Rose added, "Now you've gone and done it," the Doctor understood that the problem had nothing to do with what Rose wanted from him (as if she didn't know that she only had to ask, anyway), and everything to do with the fact that he and her mother seemed to be about to come to blows.
After so much shouting that the Doctor literally ran out of breath (he missed his respiratory bypass), and Jackie had turned a colour that the Doctor hadn't realised human beings were capable of (which lent credence to his private theory that Rose's mother had to be some kind of mutant alien species), they lapsed into a sort of stalemate without any physical contact ever having occurred. Not even a single slap, to the Doctor's (and Rose's and Pete's, and probably Jackie's as well) astonishment.
Still, for all the effort he'd expended, he felt like the two of them had gone four rounds in a boxing ring. And he knew the fight was far from over.
He wished, in that moment, that one of the things he'd adopted from Donna could have been her persistent desire to get married.
Then again, he thought as the look Jackie was giving him made him want to start up all over again, he'd probably still have refused just to spite her.
Rose walked into the kitchen just in time to see the Doctor and Jackie with their reddened faces just inches from each other's, staring intensely and breathing heavily.
"Um, hi," she said.
"It's not what it looks like," the Doctor swore, leaping back. "Well, honestly, how could it be? It's Jackie."
"Oi," Jackie protested.
"Oi," the Doctor responded even more insistently.
Rose looked between the two of them. "So you two weren't about to finally start pummellin' each other? 'Cause that's what it looks like to me."
"Er..." the Doctor said.
"Do you have any idea how many nightmares Tony's gonna have after all those stories this one's been tellin' him? He deserves a good smack," Jackie said mutinously.
"Right, actually, yes," the Doctor said, going back to glaring at her. "It's exactly what it looked like. And I'm suddenly not sure it would be so wrong, either. She's hit me before, remember?"
"I seriously never thought I'd have to sit you down and explain why two wrongs don't make a right. Or why physical violence against humans is wrong, either," Rose sighed.
"Are we really sure she's human, though?" the Doctor asked, his words coming out as nearly a hiss from between gritted teeth.
Jackie stomped on his foot, and he jumped back away from her, howling.
"I take it back," the Doctor said. "Aliens I can deal with. She's something much worse."
"And don't you forget it, mister," Jackie agreed.
Rose merely rolled her eyes and left them to it.
Rose guided him so sit at the table and sat herself down across from him. She clasped her hands together in front of her and leaned slightly towards him, looking serious.
The Doctor had the mad thought that he was in one of those 'intervention' things that they always had on those soaps that he unfortunately couldn't seem to stop watching since coming to this universe (though they were still better than The T-Factor, to which he also seemed to be sadly addicted).
"I think you should consider goin' to Anger Management classes," Rose advised.
The Doctor's jaw went slack. Clearly his idea wasn't as crazy as he'd thought.
"W-What?" the Doctor asked, stunned enough that he stumbled a little even over that one simple syllable.
"I hate to say it," Rose said, "but this has gone on just about long enough now, and it obviously isn't about to go away on its own. Unless we move across the exact opposite side of the world from Mum – and I really don't wanna do that, by the way, before you go gettin' ideas – I think it's gonna come down to a choice between at least a couple of months of group meetin's and what all, or a lot of years locked up in prison for grievous bodily harm."
"You're right. I'm sorry," the Doctor said, hanging his head slightly. "Donna used to tell me about breaking down her boyfriends' doors and the like, and she had that same sort of knack for slapping people that your Mum seems so keen on. I think I might've picked up on a bit of that. And the temper. Don't forget the temper."
Rose snorted. "Yeah, sure. Blame Donna for that."
"What?" the Doctor asked.
"Admit it. You always had a bit of a temper. Not to mention the jealousy."
"Jealousy? I've got nothing to be jealous of," the Doctor said. Then he frowned. "Do I? Is there some other man in the picture that I don't know about? Oh, I bet Jackie set you up, didn't she?" He balled his fists up, prepared to surge up out of his seat and sprint all the way across town to give her a piece of his mind. How dare she?
Rose laughed. "Believe it or not, my Mum is not the source of all things that are bad in this universe."
The Doctor raised his eyebrows disbelievingly. He'd need proof to buy that.
"Anyways, I wasn't talkin' about a guy," she continued. "C'mon, you're the one with that great big brain, or so you always keep tellin' me. Don't you get it?"
The Doctor stared blankly at her.
Rose shook her head fondly. "For the biggest genius in this whole universe, and probably a lot of others besides, you can be such an idiot sometimes. You're jealous of my Mum, obviously."
The Doctor sputtered. He was so stunned, in fact, that he actually choked slightly on his own saliva. He hadn't realised that was even possible until then. "Jealous?" he wheezed between coughs. "Of Jackie?"
"Yeah," Rose said simply, as if the truth of it wasn't even in question. "She wasn't such a big presence in my life before, when it was just you and me jettin' around the universe and only needin' to come back to Earth when we ran out of milk, or to stop and invasion or three. Now she's there all the time, and she's tryin' to have more of a say in how we live, and you have to share me with her. I get it."
"I'm not jealous of Jackie," he muttered, though he was far too logical not to admit (albeit silently) that she had a definite point.
"What I'm tellin' you," Rose said, finally reaching across the table and grasping his hand, "is that you don't need to be. Mum's always gonna be a part of my life, sure." The Doctor winced at that idea. "But she's not the most important part. Not anymore. Not for a long while. I chose you over her once, didn't I? I was ready to never see her again, ever, so that I could stay with you. And I'd do it again. I just... I'd rather you didn't make me, yeah?"
The Doctor felt like something was caught in his throat. "Yeah," he agreed, glad that it didn't come out as an overly emotional croak. He stood up, circling the table without letting go of her hand, and pulled her into his arms. "I think I can manage that," he said. "You're certainly worth that and more, Rose Tyler."
He couldn't remember the last intervention he'd seen on the telly where they'd enthusiastically broken the table they'd been sitting at (the table Jackie had bought them, the Doctor realised with a smirk, though he kept the thought to himself, because he had decided to commit himself to trying to do better), but the Doctor found that he liked his and Rose's version better.
As they rolled about on the floor laughing for a long while, before dragging their bodies back together to finish what they'd started, the Doctor realised that right then he could probably get through ten dinners (and maybe even a wedding) with Jackie Tyler without his smile ever dimming.
He was that happy.
~FIN~