Categorization and Classification
by Shadowesque13
Chapter: 1 of 2
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Summary: Breaking down the Doctor. Unwittingly unraveling him through senses, one not normally thought of. His companions seem good at this. Rose's chapter.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything of Doctor Who (and Talrin IIIis a randomly made-up planet). Er, don't ask where the BPAL bit came from. I don't own it, either (which you should look up if you don't know).
A/N: Challenge for an LJ comm.

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Rose wondered if the leather jacket had something to do with it.

Whenever she was around the Doctor, there was something about the way he smelled—like any normal person would notice, going into someone's house for the first time or three, someone putting on a new scent of perfume, that kind of normal (as normal, perhaps, as the situation would allow)—but this wasn't normal.

Which she felt sounded a bit unfair. It was something familiar and close, yet so radically different; the scent itself was welcome, but on a person it was just…odd. Very odd. There was a smell that lingered all through the TARDIS, again like anyone else's home having its own unique scent, but she'd started to grow so used to it that it mattered little to her what the small, vague, wafting scent was. It was somewhat like him, yet, like a person and their home, was different from the person, just similar. This was ignored for a time. It was when she got next to him, held his hand, hugged him that it caught her attention—so close to smell something underneath the leather. She knew what leather smelled like, so it was something else, something under that. Once she had been tempted to ask about some alien cologne, if perhaps he wore some, and then maybe hope to get a fun story out of that, but she then got distracted, and it never really bothered to cross her mind again.

It was something dark, she decided. Though dark was such an awkward word to use with a smell. She tried associating words one used to describe various BPAL scents, like the kind she read on the forums (while hogging Mickey's computer) before ordering some, when she could. Dark was too vague. Heavy—no. It wasn't heavy, it was very light. Barely there beneath the leather. Ignore the leather, she told herself, and it was something else altogether. Which, to her, seemed weird, that it would be dark yet not heavy, but then, they didn't really have to go hand in hand, necessarily. Not sweet, either—she would have found that very strange on him anyway—and not heavy. Something warm, very warm. Woody, even. Earthy, though she immediately mentally disposed of the word, the irony of it distracting. Deep, drawing her in, yet it wasn't heavy. Why did he have to be so full of contradiction and confusion in everything, even the things that should be so simple as smell? In the times when he held her close, so close, she became tempted to lick the skin of his neck, just a bit, just to see if, perhaps, taste would help clear things up anymore. She always refrained, of course.

But it was something slightly mossy, rough. Rough like bark on a tree, not like jagged edges. Which was something sort of surprising to her; she had always expected that something about him would be sharp other than his words and personality (at times), but it was only rough. It was oddly clean, though, not dirty like the image her adjectives conjured up. No, mossy was, also, the wrong word; it was too wet a word, and this was dry. Not desert dry, and not storm wet. Perhaps between?

It was frustrating, all of these words that didn't seem at all to describe smells as it did some forest scene. It wasn't that he smelled of one, not really; it was more than that; it was different, but when she pondered about it, really let her mind wander, her mind came up with memories of falling leaves and brightly coloured ones still on trees, a chilly breeze, that smell of autumn. Something about theautumn came into her head, something rather close to that. Walking down the street with some crunching leaves beneath her feet, and Shareen getting her to stay out a bit later instead of going home to jump into some piles in the park, and the scarf wrapped around her neck. Something about autumn.

Which was comforting and irritating all at the same time, because how, then, would one describe that scent? And wouldn't it change throughout the world, too? How could she find the words to describe a London October? And even if she could find said words, that description wouldn't be right, not quite, not really—the Doctor didn't smell like October, it only made her think of October; there was more, there was a difference.

This, she finally decided, was attributed to him being alien. Because why would he smell like something she knew, anyway? He ought to smell different and alien. Except she always forgot that, and it was a rather comforting smell in any event.

A London October with something else laced in it. She didn't want to give up, and she probably wouldn't, anyway. Rose was normally bound and determined when she set her mind on something, and one of those things was on figuring out the Doctor as much as she could. This, apparently, included his smell. October and leather and something else, maybe a lot else, maybe it was something akin also to the marketplace of Talrin III—eclectic. But not confusing. Less foody smells, more just the mix of things, and really, he did smell a little like there anyway, but that was, she reasoned, because they had only just come from there two days (days, hours, minutes, weeks) ago, so they all faintly smelled of there.

She wouldn't be truly happy until she knew exactly what else made up this smell, of course. Well, that wasn't quite true…she was truly happy just being around him and not in danger. She would just have that irritating little hum of questioning until she found out. Just plain saying 'it's because he's alien' didn't exactly cut it for the moment. She knew that was the reason she couldn't figure it out (or she assumed so, anyway), but he couldn't just smell like that and leave something about it a mystery—she liked unraveling his mysteries when she could. Maybe he was just a mix of things, a mix of all places, all species. He was a wanderer, after all, so why wouldn't he smell like various items? It wasn't like she had anyone to compare his scent to…maybe he was unique just because he was an amalgamation of all things. And perhaps, then, she would pick him apart.