Never Quite Normal

By: Jessa L'Rynn & Olfactory Ventriloquism

This work is a collaborative effort. If it had been just me, this story wouldn't be right at all, so big round of applause for my co-author, Olfactory Ventriloquism. -Jessa

Disclaimer: We don't own Doctor Who. We have abducted him and are trying to get him to sign himself over. OV has managed to contract some sort of inner ear problem. She refuses to call it an infection, because that is something only children get. She has been milking this for all it's worth, claiming dizzy spells in which she needs support from the nearest gorgeous time traveler. At this rate, the papers are more likely to dropped during one of these "episodes" and trampled than signed. Jessa has requested the Doctor "cure" her. By whatever means necessary. Although none of us are too sure about the look Jack got over that suggestion.

Please note: This story carries an "M" rating for a lot of very good reasons.

Chapter 36:

They spent a cheerful afternoon out on the grounds, mostly listening to Joshua tell stories about the Rehab Center and the people he'd met here. The Brigadier shook his head with some bemusement as his nephew finished explaining about how he'd been taught to play video games by some young punk rock star and Rose mentioned they'd have to see if they could find the system for him when he came back to London.

It was amazing to him the effect the young woman had on the Doctor. He smiled around her - he laughed. The Brigadier had known the man for years even before the War and the Doctor had never been one for simple, light-hearted pleasures such as laughter. Back when all this had started, the Brigadier had thought that the act of being in love would be good for the Time Lord, but he'd never thought - never dared to hope - that it would be this good for him. She was good for him.

What did it matter, really, if they were all going to go mad before this was over trying to keep secrets within secrets? Even the Doctor couldn't just walk away from a relationship like this one was turning out to be, surely? He'd asked for two years, and unless World War Three broke out in that time, the Brigadier meant to see to it that he had every minute of it. Rose didn't look to be planning on going any where any time soon, and Joshua obviously wasn't keen to let her out of his sight.

It had felt so strange at first, not to mention dangerous, to take the Doctor in and call him family. Not that the alien hadn't always been welcome, because he had. That upstairs bedroom that Joshua called his had been set aside long before this. Maybe they had had to replace every mirror in that part of the house (the Doctor shattered most of them with a fist, but the Brigadier still didn't know for sure how he'd broken the first one). Maybe they were experiencing varying levels of terror over the uncertainty about what the Time Lord would and could do. In the end, however, it was worth it to see the alien eyes shining as they looked with humor out on the world around him.

Since so many families were present that day, there were quite a few amusing activities, including the rather interesting water gun battle that the adolescents and their guardians got to indulge in on the lawn. As near as Joshua could tell it was kids versus adults, with the kids getting the upper hand more often than not from simple sneaky tactics and vindictive and clever little minds.

Of course, they couldn't escape completely without being reminded they were in Rehab and, over a rather nicer than usual Tea, pamphlets on living with them were handed out to family members. Rose, he noticed, neatly tucked hers away while Uncle Alistair immediately perused his copy for pertinent information before shrugging and pocketing it while they relocated themselves to the common room.

Then, there was Harry. "How are you doing?" Dr. Sullivan wanted to know, drawing him off to the side while Rose and John entertained his aunt and uncle with an odd conversation about the various problems of the retail center in London where John's Gym was located.

"No adverse reactions. Can't get a handle on the damn dreams, but I did manage to talk them out of prescribing something."

"That's probably for the best, but I am sorry about that."

"Don't have 'em as much as long as I go to bed exhausted."

"How do you manage that?"

"Running," Joshua said proudly. "Lots and lots of running." He didn't add that he usually stayed awake for days at a time - Harry didn't need to know that any more than Bill did, though for entirely different reasons.

Speaking of the devil. "'Lo, Bill," Joshua said to the little psychiatrist who was circulating the room. He seemed to be trying to be available for questions. "Dr. Sullivan, meet Dr. Hendy."

They were off, chattering at each other in a language that, while Joshua understood it completely, he found he was utterly disinterested in participating. Since they weren't talking about him, but apparently about the practice of medicine in general, he turned back to the others and let the meeting of medical minds have fun with itself. "That's Bill," he told the others, "my shrink."

"He's... pink," Rose said warily.

Joshua grinned. "Seems like, yeah," Joshua agreed. "You should hear him talk. It's painful. We're playing chess, only he doesn't know."

John snorted and Aunt Doris shook her head at him. "You behave, Joshua," she ordered, but there was a light, teasing quality to her tone as she said it.

"I try," he said. "An' honestly, Bill doesn't bother me so much anymore. He's a decent bloke if you can get around his voice. Besides, he let me watch your DVD in peace."

Bill came over to return Harry after a few minutes and Joshua introduced him around. He was particularly interested in the Brigadier, of course, and Rose. Uncle Alistair, who seemed to have decided that the psychiatrist was entirely too fluffy to be taken seriously was distantly polite, in a manner that only those present were aware was completely condescending. Aunt Doris chided him after the fact, but he put her off with a quick, "Nonsense."

Rose, meanwhile, was as kind and friendly as ever, but Joshua thought she rather regarded the little man with the same sympathy she regarded any of the other denizens of this place. He chuckled when Bill walked away, looking quite bewildered. Joshua supposed Bill had probably expected to find something obviously off about Rose. He also supposed they'd end up talking about it tomorrow.

In the meantime, he had only a few more moments with her until they were back to the world of phone calls and waiting. He took her hand, stroking her fingers gently, and thinking that the end of June couldn't get here fast enough.

"Reluctance" wasn't a strong enough word to describe Rose's attitude towards leaving that evening. Neither were "begrudging", "recalcitrant", or "loath", but they gave the general idea.

However, night's lilac trumpeters were streaming across the sky, heralding their master's arrival, and in the morning, work would beckon forbiddingly. The Brigadier went to pull the despised van around and Doris quickly shooed the boys out in front of her.

Even so, Rose and Joshua lingered over good-bye, exchanging tender words and even more tender kisses, saying the words "good night" at least six times apiece. Their last kiss for now was a heart-breaking thing because Rose couldn't help wondering how long it would be before she could see him again.

She watched from the window long after he was away from her, long after Springwood itself had faded from sight. She didn't know now and hoped she never had to find out how she would ever leave him again.

Joshua, having never needed a clock in his life, was starting to seriously entertain the notion that Springwood Hospital had been pulled into a temporal anomaly. Someone had poured treacle into the hourglass; the sand had become so reluctant to surrender to gravity that he imagined the little grains clinging to each other for purchase to fight their inevitable slide into the past. "Hours crawled by like years," to quote Alfred, Lord Tennyson, and even the turn of the Earth felt desultory and weary.

He found himself spending quiet hours over the poem for Rose he had started after Beltane, and passed more time than he would have liked to admit staring at the maintenance workers. One or two of them seemed to turn up every where he was, except outside, so he spent a lot of time up his tree, making notes, trying to find some conclusion that would allow him to at least determine their planet of origin.

So far, he'd decided that neither Earth's sunlight nor intense florescent light agreed with them. That tended to suggest they were from a world under a hotter, paler sun. That they'd been here approximately four to six months, which information he owed to Rose, allowed him to eliminate certain goals common to both visitors and invaders.

The plastic thing annoyed him to no end. He'd caught more of them nibbling at the so-called cutlery, but what was really surprising was the one who'd eaten Sherry's teaspoon after breakfast Tuesday hadn't been seen since.

He decided that Miss Carstairs was entertaining a crush on him. It was the only possible explanation for why the woman was hovering over him all the time, even going so far as to brush at his jacket from time to time and once, he'd be willing to swear he'd felt her hand toying with his hair. He'd walked out on her, only to be chased down by an overly helpful Greg who was, apparently, trying to make peace between them.

His talks with Rose were the only thing convincing him that time was still passing apace in this place. The fragile truce she and Jackie had going seemed to be holding for the moment and he was glad for her although he had to admit that he didn't mind her having an excuse to spend the night in his flat, in his bed.

Maybe their bed. That would be fantastic.

Bill was having him work on his goals for after Rehab and Joshua had, so far, not managed to come up with a lot. Stay sober, stay busy, stay out of the pub. He hadn't mentioned aloud, though he definitely thought it, that "keep Rose Tyler naked in my arms" was a very, very good goal, even if it would be very hard to keep. She had a job and a life, after all and, although she might find it a good idea herself, she would inevitably feel that she needed to keep to her responsibilities.

Some nights, he entertained the notion of finding a good reason to blow up Henrick's Department Store.

Bill had finally surrendered his bishop and point blank asked Joshua about Rose's age. Joshua had toppled a pawn to admit that eighteen had seemed a bit young to him at first, but Rose herself had laid those fears to rest with her ready acceptance of their different stages in life.

He didn't cash in the Queen to tell Bill he was almost certain he would still lose her eventually. He understood the root of that fear - a lifetime of loss and grief had led with near inevitably to abandonment issues.

He did decide, in the early dawn of a particularly long and sleepless night that he was going to break another very bad habit he'd had all his life. The time he had with Rose Tyler might be limited and he didn't want to waste one more minute of it.

Looking back on the days that followed her weekend visit with Joshua, Rose was always willing to concede that time had ground most of the way to a screeching halt. It was all go to work, come home, eat chips, and go to bed. If it hadn't been for the phone calls from him each night, she thought she might have gone completely spare.

Doris called her on Wednesday with a slight reprieve - an invite to dinner for the weekend. Rose looked forward to it, mostly. Joshua's family were the nicest sort of people, who never looked down on her for her station in life and had welcomed her. As far as it was possible for her complete outsider status, they had tried to make her comfortable with them.

She just wished her mum could return some semblance of the same courtesy. Jackie Tyler wasn't roundly damning Joshua at every interval, and she hadn't done anything so stupid as get back together with James or bring home another sibling for her, but the truce was definitely fraying at the edges. Jackie was staying out of the pub and Rose never went any more and, as near as Rose could tell, they were sort of driving each other spare just from spending too much time together.

Shireen, blessed, wonderful, fantastic Shireen, came up with the solution that saved the day, at least for a little while longer.

Rose was at Joshua's flat again, thumbing through her newest selection of library books - these on post-traumatic stress disorder - when Shireen rang her and demanded that she join "the gang" after work tomorrow. Rose had been set for this argument, ready to put her foot down, when Shireen informed her that, instead of the pub, they were all meeting at the coffee shop.

Rose could have cried with relief. To find a place where her friends could and would still hang out, to have a way to not spend the evening watching telly with her mum, and to know that Shireen was thinking of Rose when she planned these little get-togethers, it was all almost overwhelming.

What was more, Keisha would come to this place, too. Keisha hadn't been down the pub more than once a month in a year and they'd all missed her. Mickey complained about it constantly, in fact. If Rose didn't know better, she'd swear he had a crush on the tiny girl. Mind, he might have done and decided to entertain it now that he knew Rose was lost to him.

Of course, Rose and Shireen were both still convinced that Trent had a crush on Mickey but they'd, neither one of them, ever said.

Rose was so excited about the whole idea of the get-together, in fact, that she invited Wilson to come along. She'd never considered inviting him to the pub - he wasn't completely posh, Wilson, but Jenny's place wasn't exactly his sort of thing.

Wilson, while he'd been gushy and thrilled with the invite, had to bow out as he had a date that night. Rose told him he was getting to be just like her mum and they'd had a bit of a balled up tissue fight that had only been interrupted by Stephanie being... Stephanie.

And then, once the shrew had cleared out, Wilson dropped a bomb-shell on her.

"I dunno if you've thought about it, Rose. I wouldn't have even suggested it when you first started working here, but now... you've just... you've become more self-confident, and I think you'd need a lot of self-confidence to succeed at something like this."

He handed her a pamphlet from City College about getting her A-levels. Rose stared at it in shock. "Just think about it," he said. "You don't have to do it now, obviously, but if you sign up while you're still eighteen, you don't have to pay most kinds of fees and stuff."

She would never have thought of this, never even considered it, not before. She might not want to do it now, either, because it wasn't, she didn't think, this kind of education that she really wanted out of life. But by the same token...

"Look, talk it over with Joshua. I'd suggest your mum, but she'd probably just tell you we're all giving you airs. Talk to him, he's got a clearer head where you're concerned."

Rose thought about the tree. She thought about the dark, sensual promises. She thought about the fact that she was going to explode from wanting him before June was over, and that he didn't seem too far behind her on that, although now that she thought about it, him behind her was...

"Earth to Rose!" Wilson said, laughing teasingly at her while what was very probably a crimson blush crept up her cheeks. "I meant he's got a more realistic attitude about your future. Your mum, from everything you said, seems determined to keep you on the Estate all your life."

Rose thought about saying something true, but the cheeky come back was already out of her mouth. "Nah, all mums want their daughters to marry a prince on a white horse. Mine never did read her fairy tales very well."

"What's that got to do with it?"

"The bloke on the white horse? He don't rescue shop-girls, he rescues princesses."

Wilson chuckled. "Bet Joshua would rescue you," he teased.

Rose smiled. "Probably. Depends on how much trouble the princess was in, I guess." She shook her head. "Never mind, though. His horse? It'd be black."

"Black?" Wilson asked.

Rose shrugged. "Yeah. Or, I dunno, some color a horse usually isn't."

They talked for the rest of their break, and then it was back to folding sweaters, and trading veiled insults with Stephanie for the rest of the day. Rose was learning quite a lot of very good words being around Joshua and doing all that reading. She'd gotten to the point now that she could say quite a few very insulting things without the other girl even catching on. Quite aside from the satisfaction of getting one up on Stephanie, there was the joy of knowing that one of them might be a dumb blonde, but it wasn't Rose Tyler.

Joshua groaned in frustration and sank back against the tiled wall of the shower stall. He wasn't going to survive another three weeks without Rose. He was beginning to doubt he was going to make it another week.

On their last phone call, she cheerfully informed him that she'd slept at the flat on Friday night, slept in his bed. Then she'd told him what she wore to bed - one of his t-shirts and her knickers. Finally, because she did too have a way with words, after all, the minx, she let him know exactly how turned on it got her, lying there, thinking of lying there with him, letting every single burning promise he had made her go drifting through her memory.

He went to bed with an almost painful erection and then, to seal his doom, he dreamt of Rose. And now, he couldn't get the images out of his mind.

Rose, lying alone in his big bed. Coming home to find Rose, wrapped in nothing but his blankets and his scent. Covering her beautiful body with nothing that hid her from him - his hands, his kisses, his own long, lanky body. Bathing her with his tongue, laving each unsurpassed little part of her with tiny, worshipful strokes. Bowing humbly before her - between her parted thighs - the warmth of her welcome all the heat he would ever need, the only home fire he would ever want. To never have another taste in his mouth that wasn't spiced with Rose and desire and love.

His slender, calloused hand reached to cut the water temperature. A wicked impulse, however, had that hand wrapped around his shaft, instead, stroking slowly. He shook his head and smiled a little deprecatingly. She did this to him, made him want things he hadn't wanted in what felt like eons, made him feel things. It was almost a tribute to her power over him, to give in to this, for once, to imagine.

He imagined kissing her mouth, and feeling her body rise to him in the frenzied meeting of softly parted lips. Gasps, moans, words would litter the air around them. Touch her, taste her, take her, mark her. Claim her forever, and be claimed in return.

A long, slow stroke, a twist of the wrist. A vivid, gifted imagination substituting his own cool fingers with the hot little hand that had never been there before. His real senses told him he was alone in the room. His lying ones told him, if he just closed his eyes, he could see her before him.

She would be exquisite, like the moonlit rain she smelled of, like the stars she completely outshone, like... like Rose. A goddess made mortal and brought to Earth to wait for him, to be worshipped by him alone.

Old sinner that he was, he would never be worthy, and she loved him anyway.

He stifled a groan as his hand tightened to a nearly punishing grip. His strokes became faster. He just needed the release, just this once, to let it go. She was a fire in his blood and a balm to his soul, all at once, and he just needed this moment, just to know... something other than waiting.

He let his hips move to match his hand's rhythm, imagined his Rose, wrapped around him, enclosing him. He thought of all the ways he could make her scream for him, cry out for him, shatter under him.

His mind was awhirl with so many perfect, illusory images that the climax built like a tidal wave and washed him under in only moments. His orgasm was a silent ecstasy, an indulgence that he longed to share with her.

He let the warm water wash over him and couldn't imagine how he was going to wait so long to show her everything she did to him.

"Hey, Joshua," Zed's voice rang out over the dining room.

Joshua went over and took a seat across from Zed, next to Jamal. Saturday breakfast was never worth touching and he wasn't having it today, no matter what anyone said.

"Did you hear the news?" Son asked.

"What news?" Joshua wondered warily.

"Greg's quit," Zed said. "Well, they said he quit. I dunno."

"Greg?" Joshua asked, surprised. "But I thought he sorta liked the place or something.

"That's just it," Son agreed. "No one knows why he quit or anything."

Joshua frowned. Not good.

"Rumor has it he didn't even turn in a notice," Sherry added.

The frown deepened to a scowl. Really, really not good.