1. Mickey will follow you anywhere
Rose sat on the park bench, scuffed her shoe amongst the cigarette butts at her feet and sniffed. Stupid Shareen, stupid Trisha, stupid bloody Jimmy Stone! It was only a month since Jimmy had taken off with that stupid tart, taking all their rent money with him and forcing Rose back to her mums. Shareen had decided that what Rose needed to cheer her up was to spend new years eve in the pub with her mates. This might have worked if the bouncers hadn't been asking for ID on the door. Shareen had flashed her older sisters drivers license and disappeared into the bar with a wink at Rose and an "I'll call you in the morning, babes."
"Stupid Shareen," Rose muttered to the cold night air.
"Yeah, I never liked her neither," Rose turned to see Mickey Smith heading towards her. "Is it alright if I..." he looked awkwardly at Rose's bench and she scooted along to make room for him. Mickey had lived on the estate for as long as Rose could remember, although until recently all she'd really known about him was that he was a mate of Rob Delaney's and that Shareen thought he was fit. He was pretty fit, Rose was staring to think, in that unassuming sort of way that it took you a while to notice. Plus he was a nice bloke, the sort of guy who almost certainly wouldn't swan off to Spain with some slapper and all your savings.
"Mickey, I thought you were in the pub?"
"I was, Rob said he saw you getting knocked back at the door so I thought I'd smuggle you out a drink," he handed her one of the bottles of lager he'd brought out.
"Thanks," Rose accepted the bottle and took a drink, "this might actually be the nicest thing anyone's done for me in ages."
"That's me, all round nice guy," Mickey said grinning. They sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking and not really looking at each other.
"D'you want to go back into the pub?" Rose asked, aware that it was freezing and that Mickey had probably only come out to give her the drink.
"Oh, Sorry," Mickey shuffled to his feet, "you probably want to be alone."
Actually the last thing Rose wanted was to be alone. She'd spent enough time alone, crying, in that bed-sit before the landlord had come to kick her out for not paying the rent.
"'S freezing out here was all I meant."
"Here you go," Mickey shrugged off his puffy anorak and handed it to Rose.
"My hero," Rose joked, slipping it around her shoulders. "You cold?"
"No," Mickey said, shivering in a thin blue t-shirt.
"You lying?"
"Yeah," Rose grinned and shuffled along the bench so she was sitting close to Mickey, her body pressed against his. He slipped an arm around her.
"When I was little," Rose said, looking up into the clear night sky, "I used to look up at the stars and imagine I was up there, it was like I could imagine I was so far away that nothing could reach me. That probably sounds daft."
"No, its like," Mickey stopped and looked down at his trainers, "nah, mine is rubbish."
"Go on. I told you mine, you have to tell me yours, that's how it works."
"It's like me and engines, like when I'm lying under a car and if I can fix this one little thing that's broke then it doesn't matter if I can't fix anything else in my life. Told you it was rubbish."
"No, it's good," Rose nudged him reassuringly, "bit blokey, but good."
It was one of those clear; crisp nights where the moon and the stars were startlingly clear even in the middle of London but the lack of cloud cover also meant that it was bloody cold. Rose was wrapped in Mickey's coat and was huddled next to him with one of her legs curled up underneath her. She turned to say something to him and found him looking at her intently, face very close to hers.
"Jimmy Stone's an idiot," Mickey said.
"Yeah, couldn't agree more," Rose said, shifting so she could look at Mickey's face without hurting her neck. He had a nice smile, how come she'd never noticed that before?
"I'd never do anything like that to you..." Mickey hooked a strand of blonde hair behind Rose's ear. She remembered that she'd been knocking back all her mum's offers to do her roots.
"Yeah, I know you-"
There was a loud explosion directly overhead. Mickey jumped almost straight off the bench and Rose flinched slightly. They both looked up at the fireworks going off above them.
"Guess that's midnight then," Rose said.
"Suppose so, Happy New Year."
"Yeah, Happy New Year," Rose agreed. She'd been dreading new years since before Christmas. New Years was a time for people with flats and jobs and boyfriends, it wasn't for unemployed people who were living with their mothers after their loser boyfriends had buggered off. She looked at Mickey who was looking a bit frantic as he tried to work out how to get the moment back and decided to take the decision out of his hands, after all new years was meant to be a time for new starts as well.
Rose leaned forward and kissed Mickey squarely on the lips, just for a second, before she pulled away and hopped up from the bench. "I'm gonna go down to the high street and watch the rest of the fireworks," she held her hand out to Mickey, "d'you want to come with me?"
Mickey grinned at her like this was the best offer he could imagine ever getting, "course I do."
2. Mickey has never driven Jackie to violence
Rose wandered into the living room, picked up the remote and aimed at the TV, nothing happened. Still broken then.
"Mum, I though you were going to get this fixed."
"I am," Jackie bustled into the living room with a cup of tea, "I've got someone coming round today."
"Sure," Rose said, rolling her eyes, "that's what you said yesterday."
"I have," just then the doorbell rang. "I told you, open the door and let them in, would you, sweetheart."
Rose grudgingly got up from the couch to open the door. "Oh, hello," she said upon finding Mickey Smith standing on her doorstep.
"Hi, your mum asked me to look at your telly," Mickey held up the box of tools he'd brought with him.
"Oh, right," Rose said, smiling at Mickey.
"Yeah," he was grinning right back at her.
"Okay." Rose and Mickey hadn't spoken to each other since New Years Eve, although to be precise they weren't so much speaking to each other now as they were grinning inanely.
"Rose!" Jackie called, "will you shut that door, you're letting the draft in."
"It's through here," Rose said, finally getting around to stepping aside and letting Mickey enter.
"Mickey, hello!" Jackie said with more enthusiasm than Rose was really comfortable with, "fancy a cuppa?"
"Yeah, cheers."
"Rose, go and make a cup of tea." Rose harrumphed but went and switched on the kettle anyway. Back in the living room she could here Jackie gabbing away to Mickey, God knows what she was saying to him. If there was one thing that she could happily live without it was the Jackie Tyler approach to matchmaking.
She walked back into the living room in time to hear Jackie finish up, "-but he was always a nasty piece of work."
Rose cleared her throat loudly and placed Mickey's tea on the table, keeping the other cup back for herself. "There you go."
"Right, I'm off to the shops." Jackie said, "I'm sure you two will be fine all by yourselves." Rose blushed and avoided looking at Mickey, while he busied himself digging through his toolbox.
"Oh," Jackie whispered to Rose on her way past, "I do love a man who knows how to handle his tool."
"Mum!" Rose hissed in utter mortification.
"Alright, I'm going, I'm going. Ooh, he has got a lovely bum, hasn't he?"
Rose shoved Jackie towards the door and turned back to Mickey, who was bent over unplugging the TV at the socket. Rose tilted her head and considered the way Mickey's jeans stretched across his backside. She had to admit it, her mum had a point...
3. Mickey is not a jealous bloke
"Come on, it's time you showed me round the rest of this place," Mickey said, taking Rose's hand and leading her from the console room.
"Do you think he's okay?" Rose asked, thinking of the Doctor alone in the console room. She didn't know what exactly had happened back in eighteenth century France, but it seemed to have hit him hard.
"Yeah, he said he was, didn't he," Mickey pointed out. "Plus, he kinda seemed like he wanted to be on his own for a bit."
"I'm going back," Rose turned her back on Mickey and took a step back towards the Doctor.
"Hang on," Mickey caught her wrist, "you can't go and leave me here. I'll never be seen again," he gestured around the junction they were standing in. There were three corridors heading off to the left, two heading off to the right, a spiral stair case led the way to rooms directly above and below. There was also what looked like a water slide that headed down into the bowels of the TARDIS.
Rose looked pained and hopped on the spot for a second, torn between staying with Mickey and running back to make sure the Doctor was alright.
"C'mon," Mickey took Rose's other hand in his, "this is the TARDIS, you've been telling me for ages how amazing this place is, d'you really want to miss the chance to show off. The Doctor will be alright, he always is, said so himself."
"Yeah, alright," Rose said, bouncing slightly at the idea of showing off the TARDIS. She pulled one of her hands out of Mickey's in order to point down one of the corridors. "Right, that's the way to the kitchen. That is the way to the cloisters, I'll take you to the cloisters later, it's a bit good. Up there's the way to the wardrobe room-"
"What's in the wardrobe room?" asked Mickey.
"Scarves mainly, and Victorian dresses."
"Any blokes clothes? Only I didn't exactly get to pack before I got in this thing."
"I did see a kilt up there once." Rose though for a moment, "although with your knees..."
"Oi! Okay, what else?"
"There's a garden down there, and the swimming pool is the first left down that way. Oh, and I'm down here," she headed down the spiral staircase leading Mickey along by the hand.
Rose's bedroom was a startling relief from the weirdly organic alien environment of the TARDIS. The room was dominated by a double bed covered with a pink duvet, clothes were strewn all across the room and the shelves were littered with magazines books and CD's. Mickey was sprawled across the bed reading the track listing on the back of an Oasis CD that wouldn't be released until 2009.
"I've gotta remember to buy this one," Mickey dropped the CD back onto the table next to the bed. "This is your room, yeah?"
"Yeah," Rose agreed, kicking a pair of dirty jeans under the wardrobe, picking up a half finished cup of cold tea then putting it down again upon realising there was nowhere to stash it. There hadn't been a whole lot of time for housekeeping recently.
"What about yours?"
"What about my what?" Mickey grinned up cheekily from the bed.
"Your bedroom, where is it?"
"I dunno," Mickey shrugged, trying to look like he wasn't bothered. "Don't think I've got one."
"Well, where did you sleep last night?" Rose sat down on the bed next to Mickey.
"Found a room full of books with a couch and pitched up in there."
"Right," Rose sprang off the mattress, grabbed Mickey's hand and hauled him to his feet, "that's what we'll do then. We'll find you a bedroom."
In the seventh bedroom they found Mickey picked up one of the bottles of perfume on the dresser and commented, "he seems to have travelled around with a lot of girls, the Doctor."
"Shut up," Rose ordered, picking up the nearest item (which turned out to be a balled up dress which had been left on the bed) and chucking it at Mickey's head.
Mickey exhaled deeply and tried to look as dignified as he could given that some pretty dodgy eighties fashion had just landed on his head.
They eventually found Mickey a pretty gender neutral bedroom between the kitchen and the console room. It was pretty plain, uncluttered, with bright white walls and a plain white bed. The few personal items were limited to a number of easels with pretty good (in Rose's amateur opinion) renderings of landscapes and a few blazers in the wardrobe.
"I reckon you could do something with this," Rose said.
Mickey shrugged and kicked off his trainers, they thudded against the wall. Making the room his own already, "as long as it's got a bed I don't care. I'm knackered after today"
Rose had to admit that he had a point, what with the nearly been killed by the clockwork robots and all it had been a pretty long day. Rose toed out of her own shoes and lay on the bed next to Mickey looking up at the ceiling. She found the bland alieness of the room slightly disconcerting. She didn't remember her own room ever feeling so frosty. The sooner Mickey got around to personalising it the better.
Mickey stretched an arm around Rose and she curled up against him, finding Mickey's warm familiarity a comfort from their characterless surroundings.
"What about the Doctor, then?" Mickey asked.
"What about him?" Rose said, stifling a yawn.
"Well, if I've got a bedroom and you've got a bedroom, where's his?"
"I don't think he has one," Rose said thoughtfully, "I don't think Time Lords really need to sleep like we do. Although I have found him curled up underneath the console a couple of times. And," she chuckled, "there was this one time he sparked out right in the middle of breakfast, ended up face down in a bowl of porridge."
Mickey laughed sleepily, "So if I'm looking for him in the middle of the night I'll just look in your room."
"Why would he..." Rose must have been more knackered than she'd though because she only just then understood what Mickey was getting at. "That's none of your business!"
"I knew it! I knew you'd shagged him!" Mickey said triumphantly.
"Aren't you bothered?"
"Trisha Delaney, The Doctor, I reckon neither of us can throw stones."
"You reckon the Doctor and Trisha are the same thing?"
"Well obviously I'm going to have to shag the first alien queen we come across. Y'know, just to make things even."
"Shut up," Rose said, poking Mickey in the ribs.
"I'm going to sleep now," Mickey said, rolling over in such a way that it was now impossible for Rose to jab him in the ribs.
"Yeah, me too. I'll just go back to my room."
"Right," said Mickey.
"Fine," yawned Rose.
"Bye, then."
"You're comfy."
"You too."
It was twelve hours later and they were still asleep when the Doctor popped his head round the bedroom door and demanded to know, "exactly how many alien planets were you two planning on missing?!"
4. Aliens almost never try to kill you when you're going out with Mickey
There was no football in the alternate world, or Pete's world as Rose had taken to calling it in memory of the Doctor. There were many things Rose loved about her new world, having her whole family together, her fantastic baby brother, her new job at Torchwood. But her favourite thing was that football wasn't a popular game, in no way popular enough to be on TV. This, at least meant that she could go to the pub with Mickey and Jake without worrying that it was going to be ninety minutes of Mickey trying to explain the offside rule.
Of course this wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind as an alternative.
Rose dived over the bar, narrowly avoiding the blast from the laser gun that struck just over her head, drenching her in vodka, gin and broken glass. She could hear the creature walking around, glass crunching under its huge webbed feet.
She crawled along underneath the bar until she came to a miraculously unbroken bottle of sambuca, she searched her pockets and cursed herself for stopping smoking years back. She caught sight of a coat rack just through the doors, where the staff must leave their belongings. Brilliant, all she needed was a lighter and she'd have a fully loaded weapon, at least she would if films hadn't been lying to her all these years.
Rose crawled on her hands and knees, careful not to present a target to the creature on the other side of the bar when she heard the cry. It sounded a bit like a war cry from a movie or a documentary or something and was followed by the words- "C'mon, I'm over here, come and get me!"
This was quickly followed by Jake diving over the bar, narrowly avoiding a laser blast and joining Rose in her hiding place.
"Hi," he offered cheerfully.
"Hello," Rose replied, they could both hear the crunch of alien footsteps coming closer to the bar. Rose clutched her bottle of sambuca, Jake fumbled among the broken glass until her found a suitably large and sharp and sliver.
Rose and Jake exchanged a look as they broth braced themselves for a final, futile attack when an explosion shattered the silence of the bar-room and they both found themselves showered with lumps of alien gunk. They both stood and were greeted with the sight of alien bits splattered over all nearby appliances and Mickey standing in the middle of the devastation aiming an oversized gun at the greasy spot in the middle of the room that had, until a moment ago, been the most recent invading alien.
"Can't take you anywhere, can I?" Rose said, wringing monster slime out of her hair.
"Suppose a thank you is too much to ask for," Mickey said, hoisting the gun.
"Man, I had everything under control," Jake said, "I was just about to take it out when you arrived."
"Yeah, course you were." Rose ignored the boys being boys and focused instead on removing the slime, which was turning green and congealing, from her clothes and hair.
"That's a good look on you, Rose," Mickey said.
Rose didn't dignify Mickey with a response. Instead she picked up a particularly nasty smelling alien part, which had landed on the bar and flung it in Mickey's direction. Mickey dodged to the side and it hit the wall behind him with a splat.
"Oi," he said.
"Cool, goo fight!" exclaimed Jake, scooping up some slime from his shoulder and chucking it at Rose.
5. Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith: Defenders of the Earth
8:55 am and Rose Tyler and Mickey Smith were walking up the stairs in Torchwood tower on their way to Rose's office on the 27th floor. Usually they would have taken the lift but it had vanished into a temporal paradox the other day and wasn't due back till a week on Thursday, so the stairs it was.
At 8:58 am Rose grabbed the back of Mickey's jacket and tugged him back from being caught in the customary morning explosion that blasted out the door of the research and development department. She had always been a bit curious about what they were doing in there, but she'd also been a bit scared to ask. Mickey caught Rose around the waist.
"Where would I be without you?"
Rose glanced at the scorch mark on the wall opposite, "well, burned to a crisp for one thing."
"Doing anything interesting today?" Mickey asked, still holding on to Rose.
"Nah, reports to finish up on that Silurian business from the other day."
"You'll be around for lunch then?"
"I'm not going anywhere," Rose said. Meaning a lot more than that she was going to be in the building around noon.
Mickey leaned in to kiss Rose, and it was actually turning into a pretty decent and utterly inappropriate for work snog when they were interrupted by Jake bounding up to them, "get a room you two. There are single people about."
Rose pulled back from Mickey, leaving her arms looped around his neck and grinned at her friend, "like you couldn't get any bloke you wanted. What are you two up to today anyway?"
"Oh, y'know, the usual. Being generally heroic and fantastic," Jake said.
"Right, try and not get locked in any broom cupboards this time," Rose said.
"Once, once that happened," Mickey complained.
Rose's beeper went off before she could taunt the boys more; paperwork awaited. She kissed Mickey once more quickly before heading over to her office, leaving the boys to debate exactly whose fault that broom cupboard thing had been.
So this was it then, the normal life. On one planet, in one time, with a normal boyfriend, a semi normal family and an almost normal job. And it was, Rose considered her phrasing for a moment, it was fantastic.