"So where are we? London?"
"Close."
Rose waited for him to elaborate on this, but when he made no signs of further communication, she walked right up to the centre of the room and placed herself firmly between him and the controls which were so strongly holding his attention.
"How about when?"
"Uh-huh." He tried to continue tinkering, reaching around her.
"Doctor, where are we?" she grabbed the tool (a spanner that seemed to accommodate all different shapes, somehow, and had zappy things at the end of it, she noted) from his hand, and he finally acknowledged her increasingly irritated presence.
He stepped back, folding his arms, a slight frown forming on his face.
"Well, we're close."
"You said that."
"Couple of months early, few miles away."
Rose threw her hands up in the air, dropping the zappy spanner, and stalked off towards the doors of the TARDIS, muttering something about blood and stones under her breath.
"You've left your phone, and your key, in the kitchen," he stated calmly, without looking up from the control desk.
She screeched, turned, and stomped out of the main control room, heading out into the kitchen and slamming the door behind her.
"I'll just sort it out on my own then, shall I?" the Doctor called after her. "That's fine, really. You just relax."
She laughed as she sat down; the more argumentative (one-sided or otherwise), her relationship with the Doctor was, the more fun it was. She reached for her phone, and tucking her legs up under her on the chair, phoned home. There was no reply, so she scrolled through her phonebook, and called her mum's mobile. It was off.
"Weird," she said to herself, absently taking a biscuit from a nearby packet, making to take a bite and missing her mouth completely, as she dialled Mickey's number.
"'Lo?"
"Mickey?"
"Rose! H… I – Hey!"
"How are ya?"
"Good, yeah." There was a pause. "You?"
"Oh, really great. Fantastic." She beamed in spite of herself. "Listen Mickey, is anything up with my mum? I've been trying to get hold of her and her phone's off and all…"
"Jackie? Oh they left a coupla days ago. Be gone two weeks, I think."
"Gone where!"
"You mean she hasn't told you? She's met some bloke, absolutely minted. Taken her off to some posh resort place somewhere. Caribbean or something."
"Blimey. What's he like?"
"Rich. Loaded."
"Oh not you as well. You said that already, what's he like?"
She could practically hear his shrug.
"I dunno, do I? I don't notice these things."
She snorted, biting back a Doctor style comment on what Mickey was likely to notice.
"Alright, see ya then Mickey." She hung up.
"Doctor!" Rose came running into the room, phone in hand, looking slightly put out. "Don't move us."
"Eh?"
"She's not there, my mum. Mickey said she's gone on holiday. Met some bloke…"
"Mickey?"
She waved her phone in front of his face.
"You're not quite on top of things today, are you Doctor." It wasn't really a question.
"Watch it." He pointed the spanner at her as if he were wagging a finger in reprimand. "I'm the one with the big spaceship, remember."
"And the big spanner," she said, not paying attention. "Erm. Type, thing…" She reddened under his disdainfully amused raised eyebrow.
She grabbed the offending object.
"What is it, anyway?"
He considered. "Pretty much a big spanner type thing."
Now that he had managed to vaguely humble her, he felt able to take charge of the situation again.
"Shall we?" with a grin he held out an elbow, which she took, and out they went.
It was boiling hot outside. The heat rushed at the pair and enveloped them as they stepped out of the TARDIS, both blinking in the bright sunlight that greeted them.
They looked at each other.
"Shall we try that again?"
Rose nodded, "lets."
And back inside they went.
Rose quickly changed into an old denim skirt, short enough to make movement possible, a pair of white converse trainers and a plain white vest.
She was pulling her hair up out of her face when she emerged into the hall, and walked smack into the Doctor, who was wearing…
She did a small double take. He was wearing jeans and a dark green t-shirt. No jumper, no leather jacket. She grinned.
"We should visit heat waves more often."
She felt, as well as saw him look her up and down, and with anyone else she'd have made a fuss, slapped him or yelled a bit, but with him it didn't seem to matter. It wasn't like that between them, not physically; their relationship seemed to defy any label she could think of. But whatever they were, wherever and whenever they were, she always had this underlying feeling that she belonged to him. Maybe it was because he'd saved her life so many times; because he'd given her life when she'd been merely existing.
But then, she'd saved his life too, so what did that mean?
She'd been thinking all this in the split second it had taken for her eyes to get caught in his, for her to get completely caught off guard by the look he gave her. He was still standing awfully close.
"Yeah, we should. Much more often."
He turned and walked off to the main control room so quickly that Rose wondered if she'd just imagined the whole little exchange.
"So, do you like music, Rose Tyler?"
She blinked.
"Yeah… Mickey was always taking me to these drum'n'bass gigs…"
"You call that music?"
She laughed. "Not really, no."
They were holding hands as they exited the TARDIS for the second time. He looked down at her, smiling his "fantastic" smile.
"Reading festival, summer 2005. No idea why we're here, but if we've nowhere else to be in a hurry…"
She grinned.
"Let's go."