Title: They Can't Take This
Author: Angel Leviathan
Spoilers: Anything, everything.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who, characters, concept, etc, aren't mine.
Notes: Excuse the random song lines I wrote, she had to be singing something briefly. Set pretty early in the series, certainly before Jack appears.
He didn't know she could sing. Well, didn't know she did actual singing, having only heard her occasionally humming a tune under her breath, sometimes belting out a harmony as her CD player filled her room with deafening music.
"The melody and harmony where we became blinding sunlight; you probably wont fall, but I'll accept it this time…"
When the Doctor found Rose sitting on the small couch beside the TARDIS console, quietly singing and painting her toenails, he realised just how domestic they had become, despite his desperate avoidance of everything so obviously so. Maybe it had crept up on him when he wasn't looking. …Or maybe the situation was comfortable enough not to seem so domestic…it was the fact that everything was so comfortable that worried him a little. Perhaps they were both playing house in the TARDIS and neither of them realised.
"Where are you? The starlight memory that keeps the hope alive; another new day, I wanted it so much, but we're still on the same song…" Rose heard the shuffle of feet, followed by the clang of boot on metal, and looked back at him, smiling, "Too much of a racket for you?"
"Nah, you're alright," the Doctor shoved his hands into the pockets of his leather jacket and wandered up to the main console.
She stretched out on the couch, screwing the top back on the bottle of nail polish, "What's with you?" she asked casually, lying down and closing her eyes.
He sauntered round and did a couple of circuits of the console before he answered her, "What would you do if I asked you to fetch my pipe and slippers?"
Rose opened one eye, "I'd say you don't smoke and you certainly don't wear slippers. Though I did see you eyeing my pink bunny ones the other day."
"What about a cup of tea?"
"I'd say 'get it yourself, you lazy git'," she sat up, frowning, "What's wrong?"
The Doctor didn't answer her, doing another circuit of the console, as he looked everywhere but at her.
"Out with it," she sighed, "Before I have to drag you down a bar and get you catastrophically pissed."
He mock glared at her, "Its just…" he shook his head and looked away, "Don't you ever get the impression we're livin' in here like we were in a two bedroom semidetached down in Cornwall?"
"I'd say it had more than two bedrooms."
"You know what I mean. And one day you're gonna find a nice young man and you're gonna look at me with that expression and those eyes like you always do and ask if we can keep him. And I'm gonna have to say 'yes' because I can't say 'no' when you pull that look on me, and before you know it, there're nine kids runnin' around in here-"
"Twelve at least," Rose corrected him, managing to keep the smile off her face.
"-and I'm havin' to read bedtime stories and repair grazed knees and make sure their ties are on straight whilst your lout of a husband-"
"Who says he's a lout?"
"-goes off down the pub again."
She was silent, just staring at him for several long moments when he finished, "You done now?"
"I think so," the Doctor replied, uncertainly. He gazed almost sullenly back at her, wondering just how she was going to react.
Rose stood up and did a slow circuit of the console herself, "I don't want a semidetached down in Cornwall. I never have and I never will. You see, there's this big blue police box and I 'appen to live in it with this crazy guy who's really as insecure as anything and is terrified we're gettin' domestic. 'Cause he says he doesn't do that, but he does when even he's not lookin', and so do I, but what he doesn't get is that I don't wanna do domestic either. I wanna see the stars and planets and yell and grab his hand when we screw up again. He doesn't get that makin' cups of tea and doin' laundry, painting toenails, doesn't make us domestic. And if it does, then who cares? Nobody's keepin' a log," he hadn't moved the whole time she had been speaking, so she walked up behind up and stood up on her tiptoes to drape her arms over his shoulders, "And he's a nice young man, well, maybe not that young, nine hundred years, but who's counting?" she smiled. Rose let go of him and nudged him as she walked past, "But he ain't gettin' nine kids outta me. Four at the most. And if he's down the pub again, I'll be right there with him, like always," she turned round and shot him a grin, "Right?" she winked.
It was as she wandered from the control room that he realised that, whatever was going on in the TARDIS, and between them, it certainly wasn't domestic. It was more frightening like that.
It might be love.
Fin