A/N: My secret santa fic for hermitinthetardis on tumblr! Hope you enjoy!
Prompt: Tentoo forced to look after child while Rose is gone. Mess and mayhem ensue, but all is right by the time Rose gets back.
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who or anything related. That all goes to the BBC.
Trigger Warning: Brief mentions of a cancer scare.
"What!?"
Rose rolled her eyes. "You heard me, Doctor."
"Not correctly," he argued.
"Why are you acting like this is brand new information? I told you three months ago about mine and Mum's plans for her birthday."
The Doctor flopped himself on their bed, earning him a frown from his wife for disrupting the clothes she had just folded for her trip. "Yeah, but I thought you were just mentioning it in passing, suggesting it as an idea."
Hands on her hips (and looking every bit her mother's daughter, though the Doctor would never say that to her face), she responded, "How is me saying, 'just so you know, Doctor, my mum and I are booking a weekend away in Brighton for her birthday,' a suggestion?"
"Roooose..."
"It's one weekend, Doctor. I think you and Finn can live without me for one weekend."
His eyes widened. "One weekend. You want me to take care of Finn alone for an entire weekend?"
"You take care of 'im alone all the time, you nutter!" she told him, moving to their en suite to collect her makeup bag and hair products.
"Sure for a few hours here and there," he countered, following her into the loo, "but I've never been alone with him over night. That was our agreement after he was born, remember? No late nights or over night trips."
She sighed. "Of course I remember, I was the one who suggested it. But at the time he was so colicky and I was still breastfeeding, we both needed to be home. That's not the case now. He's a healthy, happy one and a half year old and I haven't breastfeed him in months." She moved past him and back into their room. "Honestly, I'm not sure what has you so concerned. We share all the duties; bedtime, mealtime, everything. It's not like we have a routine where only one of us performs these tasks and it's going to throw him off."
The Doctor leaned on the door from. "It'll throw me off," he sulked.
"Fine." She slammed the if of her suitcase down and picked up her phone.
"What are you doing?"
"Calling my mum."
"Are you canceling?"
"No! I'm calling to see if you and Finn can go stay with Dad and Tony at the manor."
The Doctor's eyes widened and he quickly grabbed the mobile from his wife's hand. "Excuse me, but I do not need to be babysat by your father!"
"Then what do you need?" she snapped. "I'm sorry you weren't paying attention when I told you months ago about this trip. Maybe I should have communicated more about it, but you nodded your head and said, 'no problem, Rose,' so I thought it was fine, that there would be no problems, but clearly there is. So just tell me, what would make you feel better about this weekend? Because I will not cancel this trip with my mum. After everything that happened this last year with her health..."
The Doctor closed his eyes. Several months ago Jackie had discovered a lump on her breast. Suddenly there was a flurry of tests and appointments. It was a rough few weeks for the Tyler clan, Rose especially. Thankfully the lump was benign and Jackie Tyler was given a clean bill of health with a suggestion that both she and Rose make sure to get checked twice a year in the future. Now that Jackie was back to her old self, of course Rose would want to spend a weekend away with her. And the Doctor was acting worse than Finn throwing one of his rare tantrums.
"I'm sorry, Rose," he apologised. "So sorry. I'm being silly. Go. Go, enjoy the time away. Finn and I will be fine."
She bit her lip nervously. "Are you sure?" she asked. "I could call Jake and see if he could come stay with you guys. Not to babysit! Just to be here if anything happens and you need an extra set of hands."
The Doctor shook his head. "Not necessary."
"Okay, but if need anything you can call me, yeah? Or Dad. Or Jake. Best keep Owen's number on hand too just-"
"Rose! Don't worry. I have everyone's numbers in my mobile. Please, just go and have a nice weekend with Jackie."
Rose grinned. "Have I mentioned recently that I love you?"
"Hmmm..." He wiggled his eyebrows. "Not for an hour at least. On that note, how long until the car comes to pick you up?"
"About an hour."
"Really? Well, Finn won't be up from his nap for at least fifteen minutes. Wanna shag?"
Rose threw her head back and laughed. "Seriously? We're at the point now? No fancy word play and innuendos? No trying to seduce me? Might as well have asked me if I wanted to fu-"
The Doctor quickly covered her mouth with his hand. "I promise, when you come home, we'll have a night out just the two of us where I will wine and dine you, but right now we've got less than fifteen minutes before our toddler wakes up and will want our undivided attention."
With a chuckle, his wife began unbuttoning her jeans. "You make a good argument. Let's go!"
Two hours later and the Doctor was seriously regretting not taking Rose up on the offer of calling Jake over for a second pair of hands. Sure, there was no reason he couldn't still call the other man himself, but Rose had started to regret going away as soon as the hired car had come to pick her up. Finn had clutched his mother tearfully, as if sensing she was leaving him for a time, which only made Rose herself weepy. Despite his earlier grumblings about being alone with his son, in that moment the Doctor had to be confident and assure Rose that he and Finn would be just fine on their own. If he called Jake now, Rose might hear about it, and he doesn't want her to worry at all about Finn or his own abilities to care for their son.
Finn apparently thought his Da's abilities were hilarious.
"Why?! You love cheesy noodles! I turned away for three seconds! Why wold you dump the bowl on your head?" the Doctor asked, furiously trying to scrub cheese out of his son's wispy blonde hair. "There's no use. Looks like bath time is coming early, mate." Carrying the boy to the loo, the Doctor began stripping him out of his clothes. Once down the the pull up nappy, the Doctor groaned. "How did you get noodles in your pants!?"
The boy's only response was to giggle and give a cheeky grin, so very similar to his mother's.
It was two in the morning and the Doctor was just beginning to doze off when something pulled him back to wakefulness. It sounded like Finn. He should have known something was coming. Getting the young boy down for bed had been far too easy, much easier than normal even. Heaving himself out of his own bed, he shuffled his way into son's room, just in time to see that Finn standing in the middle of the room. Right above a puddle of vomit.
One whimper from the lad and the Doctor was racing into the room, mindful of the vomit, and scooping him up. "Oh, my poor boy." Checking him over, the Doctor determined that Finn had a minor fever, most likely caused by a molar coming in. He and Rose had discovered the small white bump a day ago, so he really should have seen something like this coming. "Come on. Let's get you back into bed and then Daddy will you get you some medicine."
Finn merely began crying and clutching the Doctor tighter. Looking down into the toddler bed, he realized why. It seems that before he crawled out, Finn had vomited there as well.
"Right." He nodded. "Into Mummy and Daddy's bed then while I get this cleaned up." With the boy settled, the Doctor reentered his son's room and began stripping the bedding. "If the TARDIS could see me now," he mumbled under his breath. If he thought cleaning cheesy noodles out of his son's nappy was bad, it was nothing compared to cleaning up cheesy noodles that had been regurgitated at two in the morning.
The next morning dawned early and bright and by Finn's exuberant behaviour and hearty appetite, one would never know that just hours earlier the boy had been throwing up. The Doctor shook his head as he watched his son literally bounce off the walls. Knowing that the perfect solution would be to take the boy for a walk down to the park, the Doctor got them bundled up in hats and scarves (just like Rose would want). Just as they were heading out the door, the weather proved to have other plans as the skies opened up and a steady rain began to fall... and continued falling for the entire day. Right. Onto Plan B.
Later, after Finn was once again tucked into bed for the night, the Doctor surveyed the damage inflicted upon the house throughout the day's activities, used in an effort to keep the part Time Tot occupied
The first activity had been finger painting. All was going well until the Doctor bent down to pick up a dropped paper. When he righted himself he realised those few seconds were all Finn needed to push aside the newspapers that had been laid down so he could paint the kitchen table instead. The Doctor shook his head. The finger paint was washable, but he knew it was going to take him at least an hour to get the table back to it's original color.
The next activity had been baking. He sees now that that idea was doomed from the start. He wasn't sure how the toddler had found away to cover every inch of the kitchen in flour, but he did. Even the top of the refrigerator was coated in the powder. That mess was going to take him at least two hours to clean.
Then came nap time. The Doctor had hoped that he could get a bit of cleaning done then, but no luck. It seems Finn didn't feel the need to sleep any longer than ten minutes. Wizard.
And so the pattern went for the rest of the day and evening. There were various toys spread across the living room floor (including several legos - the Doctor's foot was still aching from where he learned that the hard way!), crayon marks on the walls (he had wrongly assumed that crayons would be less messy than finger paint), and a loo that looked like a hurricane had passed through (the Doctor made a mental note to never pour more than the recommend amount of bubble soap into the bath!).
He sighed heavily. It was going to take him almost the entire night to get everything cleaned up. Rose wasn't due home till sometime around noon the next day, but the Doctor knew he needed to get the majority of it cleaned before Finn woke up. Then the challenge would be keeping it clean!
Rose opened the front door with a smile. She had enjoyed the time away with her mum and was happy they'd been able to get away, but she had missed Finn and the Doctor desperately and was happy to be home. To be honest, she expected to find a disaster zone waiting for her, and she wouldn't have been mad about it one bit. Her son had every bit of his father's energy and she knew the risk she was taking leaving the two of them alone for the weekend. Instead of chaos though she was met with silence. And the distinct smell of lemon cleaner.
Moving her way into the living room, she had to hold back a giggle at the sight she was met with. There was her son, happily sitting in the play pen that hadn't seen much use in recent days, with a book in hand... or rather his mouth (thankfully it was one of his plastic books). The Doctor was sitting next to him on the floor, back against the sofa with his own book in hand and his head tilted back... sound asleep.
"Mummum!" Finn exclaimed happily.
Rose smiled and held a finger to her lips. "Shhhh. Seems like you wore Daddy out, my boy!" She picked up and held him tightly against. "Oh, I missed you so. Did you and Daddy miss me?"
"Yeeeessshhh."
"Poor Daddy must not have got a lot of rest. What do you think he will do when there's two of you?" she whispered in his ear.
The Doctor let out a loud snore, making Finn giggle.
Rose nodded. "I agree. Best keep this between the two of us for now. Now how about Mummy makes some lunch, yeah? How do cheesy noodles sound?"
Later the Doctor woke to the sound of his wife exclaiming, "No, Finn! Cheesy noodles do not belong on your head!"