**Up, up, and away we go!**
3:35. The Doctor and Rose found a set of cushioned chairs outside their gate, gate 20, and watched airport workers through the window.
3:41. Rose was enthralled by the Doctor's tales of his previous encounters with airplanes. He never ended up naked, like Jack Harkness usually did, but he always seemed to encounter historical figures by accident. Orville and Wilbur Wrightbeing prominent examples.
"Had this companion in my, oh, fifth regeneration. Tegan Jovanka, her name was," the Doctor continued, his gaze becoming distant as he recalled days long gone. "She traveled with us by accident."
Rose furrowed her brown in confusion. Thanks to Sara Jane, she knew the Doctor had had companions before her, but he'd never hinted at how many. "Us?"
"Me, Nyssa, and Adric. Not the most peaceful of groups, though. There wasn't a day that went by where we didn't fight at one point or another. That's the bad part about lots of companions." He smiled at the memory. "Tegan wandered into the TARDIS by mistake and ended up traveling with us. Was there to see me regenerate into my fifth form, rescued us from the Master…but she demanded I take her back to Heathrow in 1981 so she could become a flight stewardess. Don't know if it was me or the TARDIS, but we kept missing the Heathrow Airport by a few decades. Once I accidently took her to the airport as it was in the 17th century, and it was a forest then."
Rose laughed at the image of a woman (who she imagined to have her mum's biting personality) walking out of the TARDIS doors expecting to see civilization, but being greeted by trees instead. But…five regenerations? What regeneration was he on now, if the Doctor was currently 900 years old? Rose wondered what the last of the Time Lords had looked like before he'd regenerated at all.
The Doctor's smile fell as he continued to stare at the space next to Rose's shoulder. "I wonder where she is," he muttered, so soft Rose could barely hear him. "How she is. If she's even still alive."
Rose closed her hand around his, and he gently squeezed it in gratitude. She wished she knew how to comfort him, but any words sounded inadequate in her head. How does one comfort a man who had lived the average human lifespan at least eleven times over?
4:13. They had managed to salvage a couple pounds from the depths of the Time Lord's pockets and had purchased a banana for the Doctor and a magazine for Rose. Then, with an excited hum, the Doctor pointed out that the plane was finally approaching their gate.
It was 4:50 and the Legendary Duo were finally seated in the plane, close to the back and on the left side. Rose had a tendency to take more trips to the loo while on an airplane, so she sat in the middle of the three seats and let the Doctor have the window seat. He didn't complain at her choice, since he so rarely saw planet Earth from this height.
But as he settled into his chair, the Doctor realized that maybe the window seat wasn't the best choice for his lanky body. His long legs were pressed into the back of the chair in front of him, and when he tried to lean his head back, the top of his head cleared the headrest. Not to mention the fact that the combined body heat of all the passengers made the cabin stifling for a Time Lord.
Rose, the Doctor noticed, was having no such problems, managing to fold and stretch her legs underneath her quite comfortably. And when another man slipped into the seat next to her, she was able to say a cheerful "hello" without any hint of nerves or stress.
"Hello, ma'am," the man replied. The Doctor was appraising him without even thinking about it. The man was American, judging by his accent, and a business man, if his wrinkle-free dark grey suit and teal-blue tie were anything to go by. He had blond hair, gelled so that it made a sweep across the top of his forehead, and wide blue eyes.
An honest face. A handsome face. A face that caused the Doctor to be filled with an uncomfortable feeling, like some dark and angry flush was seeping into his bloodstream. Suddenly he wanted this man as far away from Rose as possible. But why would he think that? This man looked nice enough, it was doubtful he was any sort of alien.
The answer was obvious, but the stubborn Time Lord refused to call such a feeling jealousy. Such breeds of envy were petty and low to members of the higher races and species, especially when one was feeling it over something as simple and rudimentary as jealousy over a mate.
But then Rose flashed the man one of her smiles, and the Doctor resisted the urge to snarl at his competition (at the human, he corrected himself). However, he did take pride in the fact that her smile to the American did not include her tongue. Those smiles must be reserved for him.
"What's your name?" she asked him.
"Stanley, Stanley Morgue, but my friends call me Stan."
Rose tilted her head slightly, like she was being playful. "And am I your friend?"
"Could be." Now he was flashing smiles at her, and the Doctor wanted nothing more than to grab Stanley Morgue by the coat lapels and throw him off the plane.
(No, no, that would be a very bad idea. Why am I feeling so hostile towards another human being? He's just being friendly. Come on, brain, get a hold of yourself.)
Stanley was talking again. "And what's your name?"
"Rose Tyler. And this," She leaned back in her seat to give the man a better view, "is the Doctor."
"Hello!" The Doctor said, grinning and shaking the American's hand like any other gentleman would. He hoped the daggers in his eyes weren't too noticeable.
As the rest of the plane filled with passengers, Rose seemed to decide that that was enough interaction with strangers for one day and returned to flipping through her magazine. But after at least five minutes of feeling the Doctor's eyes on her, she slipped the booklet into the pocket of the chair in front of her and turned to him. "What?"
The Doctor blinked in confusion and said, "You're so calm."
"Course I am. It's a plane flight." Rose's eyes widened. "You're scared of flying!"
"Am not!" the Doctor protested, but the pilot chose that moment to start up the plane.
Rose burst into laughter at the Doctor's panicked eyes and tense fingers as he clutched the arms of the chair. "You…you fly a police box that constantly needs to be repaired through all of time and space," she breathed between giggles. "And you're scared of being in a human airplane?"
"It's not—" He sucked in a breath as the plane began to move, and released it slowly. "It's not being in a plane that bothers me, it's that I can't see who's controlling it." Another bump, and the Doctor bunched his knees together, as if he was fully prepared to leap into the cockpit at the first sign of trouble. "How do you people cope?"
Rose finally let her chuckling subside. "Doctor, loads of people fly airplanes every day. The percentage of plane crashes per year isn't even big enough to reach 0.01%. Trust me, mum did her research." Overhead, the flight captain greeted the passengers through the intercom. "See? There's our captain."
"But there's no automated landing system, no back-up engines, hardly any protection from the outside…I'm telling you, Rose, there's a reason this technology becomes obsolete by the end of the 21st century. Everything's wrong, the material, the design, the—"
"Doctor." Rose grew serious. "Doctor, look at me."
He turned away from the window to face her, but with every bump his eyes flicked over to try and see what was happening. Only when Rose reached her right hand up to his cheek did he finally still. "Doctor, you'll be fine. We'll both be. To tell you the truth, I'm a bit nervous about this myself."
The Doctor frowned. The captain was listing all the safety guidelines for the aircraft but neither of them were listening. "You've never been on a plane?"
She shook her head. "Nope." She dropped her hand, and the Doctor fought the urge to grab her palm and return it to its rightful place.
"Then we'll sit this one through," he said instead. Another bump made the Doctor cringe, but this time, he wrapped his fingers around Rose's hand instead of the armrests. "Together."
As the plane's speed increased dramatically, Rose shut her eyes and bit her lip, while the Doctor refused to even blink once. Only when the infernal flying machine was safely above the cloud line did the Time Lord finally engage his respiratory bypass. With a few final words in English and Hindi (the Doctor could understand both even without the TARDIS translations), the captain ended his intercom speech with, "Please relax, and enjoy your flight."
Right, enjoy it, the Doctor mentally grumbled, Thanks for the tip.
Judging by the amount of laughter coming from his right side, it was clear that Rose had recovered from take-off, too. He turned to say something witty to her, but her head was completely turned away from him. And her hand was distinctly absent from his.
Then Stanley leaned forward a bit to address him. "Not fond of flying much, are you?" he asked. "Thought you were gonna rip off the armrests, there."
"I'm fine," the Doctor growled, but it was Rose's answering giggles that really riled him up. Two things were definite facts in this situation: one, like any man the Doctor had no wish to give any hint to this bloody American that he was weak or incompetent, and two…what did Rose think she was doing? Her interactions with this Stanley Morgue looked awfully similar to flirting. And if that flirting didn't happen between him and Rose (have they flirted?), then the Doctor didn't want her doing it with anyone else.
The Doctor still refused to label his feelings as jealousy, or as products of his slightly possessive side.
Rose, however, knew exactly what she was doing. She had had to sit through watching two different women, a waitress and an airport security guard, flirt with her Doctor. Was it so bad to want to give him a taste of how she had felt?
Regardless of the duo's feelings towards present situations and each other, the plane continued to soar past the clouds on its way to India.
