Chapter 10

They wandered around the town for a bit, doing some investigating into the police force and the rules and regulations of the place, and discovered that they'd need to mastermind a full plan of attack – or rather, a plan of how to secretly get past a top-rate security system and the forty-eight staff that were involved in guarding all the confiscated, unregistered vehicles and various other censored property – if they were going to successfully retrieve the TARDIS without hanging around and paying that huge fine...

Neither of them could be bothered to think of a plan right then, however, because they suddenly spotted a quaint little side street with interesting shops and market traders, and spent most of the day there instead, arm-in-arm...and on dangerous territory in terms of flirtatious remarks...

"I'm just saying, if Rita the Home Squad-er really wanted to help us, she ought to have gone all out and pointed us to the nearest registry office. We don't look the type to want a big, flouncy, expensive wedding do we? So the 'prices of weddings have soared this year' remark she made wouldn't be a problem," he pointed out.

"What, so you're saying that we should actually get married? Just for this silly charade we're doing?" Rose starting cackling with laughter, before dropping her voice low and mock-seductively saying, "So that we're not really 'living in sin?'"

The Doctor chuckled and stopped walking, picking up a pair of sunglasses from a stall. "Well, if we were actually living in sin, then maybe we ought to." He tried the sunglasses on and she continued to laugh at him. "Currently, we are very much not, in case you are unaware." He put the sunglasses back on the stall. They were orange, after all, and not at all his style.

Rose swallowed her laughter and looked at him sceptically, whilst flicking through postcards on a stand outside a souvenir shop with her free hand. "'Currently?' So is that, likely to occur in the future, do you think?" she teased.

"Who knows?" He waggled his eyebrows flirtatiously.

"What happens on Kalo..." Rose started, giggling into his arm. She pointed to a t-shirt proclaiming that very saying.

"Goes straight back onto the TARDIS and continues indefinitely," he finished, grinning madly. Bloody hell, he thought. I'm just asking for trouble, now. Will my brain start working properly at all today, I wonder?

"You're terrible," she tutted, shaking her head. Getting all my hopes up with your silly pretend little play-acting. I just wish you would mean it, you idiot.

"You started it," he snorted.

"What? How did I start it?" Rose asked in bewilderment.

"Well, you encourage it, you do," he informed her nonchalantly. What am I doing? Why am I telling her this? he asked himself.

"Encourage what exactly?" she scoffed. "Sorry to break this to you Doctor, but I'm not encouraging you to do anything. I'm just playing the part!" she grinned. Lies lies lies...

"You swore blind to that shopkeeper earlier that you'd need those, uh, those – things, um - " he gestured randomly in the air with his hand. "And if you were just playing the part, you wouldn't have made me keep them." He patted his pocket and winked at her. "You could've just...thrown them in the bin after you bought them."

Rose smirked, recalling her earlier improvisation with an eager salesman in a backstreet chemist's trying to sell them a certain form of contraception and the Doctor's accompanying deer-in-the-headlights face. "You don't fool me, Doctor. I know you know exactly what they are called. And anyway, who says I don't? Maybe that bit wasn't playing the part."

He glared at her. "Well, I should hope you're not planning an affair, Mrs Smith."

She grinned. "Wouldn't dream of it," she vowed playfully, unlinking their arms so that she could latch onto his hand.

Well, I should bloody hope not. "Good," he replied with a nod, intertwining their fingers. He'll have to accidently-on-purpose lose them, he decided. Or pretend that he'd lost them. Yes, that'd be better. Just in cas – no, stop it! Not. Going. To happen. Ever. At all. Unless - no. Shut up, self. NEVER.

"And that goes for you too, naturally," she told him, feigning the height of seriousness. Except she wasn't feigning it, not really, because she meant every word; as if he truly was committed to her. "No messing me around."

"Pfft," he remarked. "I could never do that." You know that, don't you? You must know that.

"Yeah, well that ice-cream girl was certainly giving you an eyeful earlier," she mumbled grumpily, remembering how the leggy brunette had shoved her chest in his direction whilst handing them their cornets.

"What do you mean?" he asked curiously. He hadn't even noticed.

"That girl that was chatting you up with her low-cut top and her have a niiice daaaayyy!" Rose reminded him, imitating the girl's sickingly sweet, chirpy voice.

"Oh, her?" he said, recognising the voice. "She was just being friendly," he defended.

"Yeah, and then you went and were friendly back and she wrote her number on the back of your hand!" Rose exclaimed, holding up the evidence.

"Oh yeah," he remembered, smiling sheepishly. "Well, what can I say, when you've got it..."

Rose snorted and licked her free thumb, before rubbing the number off with a triumphant, "Ha!"

"Rose, I barely remembered what you were going on about, you really thought I was going to actually ring the woman?"

"Well I don't know. You have been acting different since we got here. Maybe Kalo's making you all...dating and dancing-y," she muttered.

"If it is, then it'll be dating and dancing with you, not some random person I've only just met," he retorted.

Rose looked up at him with an arched eyebrow. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah," he replied, giving her hand a squeeze and staring down at her meaningfully for a moment. He cleared his throat. "No one else would put up with me the way you do."

"You don't know how lucky you are!" Rose agreed, tongue poking between her teeth impishly as she smiled.

"I do," he replied softly, absently stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. "I do know how lucky I am."

She pursed her lips to hide another smile, and then noticed something up ahead. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Oh, we have to get that!"

The Doctor let himself be pulled along by an excited Rose, but when he got to her destination – some sort of kitchen-appliance market stall – he groaned and wrinkled his nose in distaste.

"R-ose," he whined, groaning again when she picked the object up. "We do not have to get that!"

"Why not? It's brilliant! Look, it's half-whisk, half- um, other twirly thing that I think you twirl pasta with, and half-something else that I'm sure we'll discover at some point," she explained animatedly, realising she'd made a mathematical error but not caring because third-whisk et cetera didn't sound half so good.

"When are we gonna use it?" he pointed out. She only wants it 'cos it's pink. She doesn't even know what it does. Women!

"Well, we're stuck here for a bit, aren't we? Remember – we've got our own little flat and everything? Who knows how long it's going to take before we get the TARDIS back! We could use one of these!"

"I thought you didn't like all this domestic stuff," he muttered. "Next you'll be acting like some crazy housewife and ordering loads of meaningless crap from the Kalo shopping channel!"

"I won't be acting like a housewife at all, thanks very much – getting myself a job aren't I? To support you, I hasten to add!"

Not that they'd been to the job centre yet. They'd all but forgotten about it until now, to tell the truth.

"Yeah, well," he shrugged in response.

"Oh, please, Doctor..." she begged, fluttering her eyelashes and smiling in the way she knew always made him cave.

He looked at her, then looked away. He wasn't going to be tricked into agreeing with her by all her eyelash fluttering and flirtatious smile. He wasn't.

(He probably was.)

"Please?" she asked again, hugging his arm and resting her chin on his shoulder.

He risked a glance down at her. And gave up. "Oh, alright. Well, if we can afford it," he added as an afterthought. It was weird, having to think about things like the possibility of not having enough money for something. So far today they'd only bought inexpensive tiny trinklets and souvenirs from the stalls and little shops. Oh, and the condoms, 'just for a lark.' But nothing that cost too much.

"Yes!" she said triumphantly. "Thanks!"

The Doctor grinned as she gave him a huge hug. He was quite glad he'd said yes now. He checked his pockets for some money when she pulled back, and extracted a crumpled note that belonged to Kalo's currency.

Rose took it gratefully, and handed it over to the vendor.

The vendor shook his head. "Sorry, love. Not enough."

The Doctor was about to dig deeper and find some more money, but Rose flashed the man a winning smile and asked sweetly, "You couldn't just let me off, could you?"

The expression on his face changed. "Well...okay...seeing as you've got such a pretty smile," he grinned, and the Doctor felt a little irritated at the alien for being on the receiving end of a Rose Tyler smile. She's such a hypocrite! So much for not flirting with the locals, he thought grumpily.

"Thanks so much," she gushed, accepting her purchase. She turned back to the Doctor, swinging the bag happily in one hand while she looped her free arm through the Doctor's.

"Thought you didn't like stealing from strangers?" he teased, the urge to do so stronger than his jealous annoyance. He bumped their shoulders and took the bag off her, putting it safely in one of his bigger-on-the-inside pockets with the other purchases.

"Nothing wrong with a bit of haggling," she retorted, in a tone that reminded him eerily of Jackie, for a moment. He shuddered.

The Doctor didn't mention that all she'd had to do was smile at the man and she'd got something for half the price, and that that couldn't exactly be called haggling.

"Anyway," she continued. "I didn't reckon we had much money left, and I thought we could get something for you, too. Only fair," she shrugged nonchalantly.

He smiled down at her appreciation. "You're quite lovely, you are."

"Thanks," she grinned. "So...what do you want? A book? A technological thingamy-whatsit? A novelty hat with, uh, antlers?" She pointed to each object on various stalls around them.

"Nah, I'll just...have this!" he said delightedly, pleased with his discovery. "Look, it's magic!"

Rose shook her head in amusement. "Magic?"

"Weelll, not magic. Quite adorable though, don't you think?"

"It's a snowglobe," Rose stated blankly.

"Yeah, and it's nice, look – you shake it, and the snow floats down around the – uh," he paused, looking a little closer. "Person?" he asked her. He didn't have his glasses on.

Rose leaned in to look at the tiny figure inside. "Yep!" she laughed. "A woman. A very naked woman."

The Doctor's eyes widened and he dropped the offending article back on the stall in alarm. "Ah."

"It's alright," Rose shrugged, giggling. "Get it if you like. You can look at it more closely with your specs on."

He flushed and shook his head. "No, no. It's alright thanks. We'll save some money. Got to buy dinner, after all," he reminded her.

"Might be your only chance to see a naked woman, Doctor," she joked.

"Oi! It might not be," he countered, eying Rose up and down.

She blushed under his obvious gaze on her. "Well, only if you're very lucky," she smiled flirtatiously.

"Which we earlier established that I am," he reminded her with a wink.

Rose ignored this, suppressing a grin. "So, what do you want to do for dinner? I'm getting hungry."

He tilted his head, considering, before spotting an Indian restaurant up ahead. "Fancy trying the curry on Kalo?" he asked her temptingly.

"Ooh, yeah," she enthused, nodding appreciatively, and he grinned.

"Brilliant! It'll be lovely." Like a date, he thought to himself distractedly, before shaking his head and pretending to himself that he'd never thought such a thing.

...

A/N: Hiya! Sorry it's been a loooonnnnnnng time coming, but I hope you liked chapter 9 and 10 :D Thanks for reading and thanks to all of you who have reviewed so far with this story, I really appreciated hearing your thoughts. Keep on r&r-ing ;D

love Laura xxx