A/N: In which Rose tries very hard to be normal and the Doctor proves once and for all why we can't have nice things.
After meeting all twelve versions of the Doctor and helping him to freeze his home planet away in a single second of time instead of burning it and killing billions of his people, Rose begrudgingly had to admit that she was longing for a scene that was a little bit more domestic for once. That's how she ended up making plans with the Maitlands for Christmas dinner, and effectively ensuring that she and the Doctor would spend their first holiday reunited in this universe together on Earth, just like the old days (though hopefully without the added threat of an alien invasion, this time).
However, the Doctor couldn't be persuaded into sticking around for the preparations, and Rose seemed to have forgotten that a normal Earth Christmas included cooking a full turkey dinner for her small family of five. George was also out of the house on some sort of last-minute business for the entirety of the day, so that left Rose alone with nothing more than a disaster of a kitchen and two obstinate, unhelpful teenagers.
"There's absolutely no way that thing is going to be done in time," Angie muttered pessimistically as Rose opened the oven and poked at the underdone turkey for the fifth time in as many minutes.
"Are you sure you followed the instructions?" Artie asked curiously as he peered over her shoulder.
"Yes! Of course I did! Of course I followed the instructions!" Rose lied, letting the door to the oven slam back shut and burying her head dejectedly into the oven mitts that were currently covering her hands. "This is a complete and utter disaster," she groaned into the padded gloves. She had had a lifetime and a half, now, to learn her way around a kitchen - but it seemed that she was still just as absolutely useless at cooking as ever.
"What are we going to eat, then?" Artie piped up as he eyed the rest of the half-prepared meal that Rose was still artlessly attempting to cobble together.
"There's no way I'm eating a bite of that turkey," Angie added snidely. "Probably get bird flu or something."
"That's not how bird flu works, Angie," Artie muttered with a roll of his eyes. His older sister opened her mouth to begin to argue the point, but Rose tossed off her oven mitts and shooed them both from the kitchen before they could really get into dissecting the finer points of avian-related illnesses.
As soon as she was alone once more, she immediately grabbed the super cell phone that the Doctor had left her with and dialed the one number that he had pre-programmed into it.
"Hello, the TARDIS!" his familiar voice greeted her brightly after a total of six terribly extended rings.
"Emergency. Looks like I'll be needing my boyfriend after all," Rose replied frantically as she glanced at the mess of food around her.
"Well, which is it this time? Landscaping or nannying?" the Doctor asked pointedly.
"What?" Rose demanded, furrowing her brows at the overdone vegetables before her in confusion.
"Is it a landscaping emergency or a nannying emergency?" the Doctor clarified with a small, annoyed huff. "Which boyfriend am I supposed to be this time?"
"Neither," Rose growled as she stabbed a spoon into the lumpy mashed potatoes sitting in a bowl on the counter near her. "No landscaping, no nannying. What I really need is a terribly handsome, time traveling boyfriend who can cook a whole roast turkey in about ... oh, let's say one hour."
"Good luck finding one of those," the Doctor muttered ruefully.
"I guess I'll just have to make do with you, then," Rose snapped pointedly. "Please, Doctor. I need you," she added a bit more desperately.
"I'll have you know that I am actually very busy at the moment!" he replied, his voice suddenly coming out a bit more frantic than it had been just a minute ago. "There's lots to do - I'm investigating this strange signal, and there are these enemy ships, and ..."
"But Doctor, it's Christmas!" Rose cut him off insistently.
"Yes, and I'm currently trying to avoid being shot out of the sky by a rogue cyberman fleet!" the Doctor replied just as insistently.
"Well, can't we do both?" Rose begged as she opened the oven once more to look at the pale, raw fowl inside.
There was suddenly a loud explosion from the Doctor's end of the call, but then he grunted in response, "Yeah, why not?" before the line was abruptly cut off and Rose was left all alone once more with her Christmas dinner lying in shambles around her.
Rose was elated to hear the familiar sound of the TARDIS landing outside only a few minutes later, but she was decidedly less pleased when she burst through the old ship's doors to find her bondmate waiting for her excitedly with not a stitch on him.
She let out a startled shout despite herself the Doctor threw his hands into the air without even a hint of shame and exclaimed, "Rose! There you are!"
Rose let out another small yelp of surprise as he moved forward as if to embrace her before she fell into a fit of helpless giggles, making sure to hold her hand up to him in order to keep him from coming within reach of her. "Doctor! What do you think you're doing?" she demanded, barely able to speak through the uncontrollable laughter that was bubbling up from within her.
"What's the matter? What's wrong?" he asked, his brow furrowing in confusion as he let his arms fall dejectedly back to his sides.
"Doctor, where are your clothes?" Rose insisted breathlessly as she reached up to wipe tears of laughter from her eyes.
"Took them off," the Doctor replied with an unaffected shrug. Then, winking at her flirtatiously he added, "I wondered if you'd notice."
"Bit hard not to," Rose replied, propping her hands on her hips as she shook her head at him with a long-suffering sigh. "I called you to ask for your help with Christmas dinner. You can't come into the house like ... that."
The Doctor rolled his eyes at her as though she were the one who was being completely ridiculous, and then stepped forward to press a few buttons and flip a few switches near the monitor on the TARDIS console. In a flash of gold, Rose blinked and suddenly the Doctor was in his old jacket and bowtie once more.
"Better?" he asked, throwing his arms out once again as he impatiently awaited her approval.
"What did you just do?" Rose asked suspiciously, stepping closer but still not running into his arms the way that he clearly wanted her to.
"Hologram clothes," the Doctor replied loftily, "projected directly onto your visual cortex."
"No, no, no, that is not what I meant," Rose chided him. "Doctor, this is Christmas dinner. Angie and Artie are home - they're in the house right now. You can't come in unless you put real clothes on!"
The Doctor sighed loudly and rolled his eyes once more as he finally took the initiative to bridge the last few steps of space between them, wrapped his hands around the back of Rose's neck, and pressed a long, hard kiss to her lips.
She hummed in amusement against his mouth and tried very hard to fight back the giddy smile that she could feel stretching across her features, but she knew that she was failing to keep her enjoyment hidden as the Doctor's thoughts quietly brushed up against her own and he murmured directly into her mind, Only because you asked so nicely ...
Rose reached up to grab the lapels of his jacket and draw him in closer, but she discovered that hologram clothes were just as deceiving as they sounded, and her fingertips brushed against nothing more than cool, Time Lord skin instead. "Alright, this is really weird," she declared as she finally stepped back and forced her lips away from his. "Real clothes. Now. Then you can help me with the turkey."
"Ah, you're no fun," the Doctor grumbled under his breath as he hit another button on the console and his clothes instantly blinked out of sight once more.
"Oh, I'll show you just how fun I can be," Rose replied teasingly as she gave him a pointed once-over and tugged suggestively against his thoughts.
The Doctor's face immediately lit up as he eagerly returned her mental touch and smiled widely back at her.
"Doctor! It's Christmas!" she reminded him once more, pretending to be scandalized as she fought to hide her girlish blush from him.
He chuckled as he pressed a quick kiss to the crown of her head and then darted past her and headed deeper into the TARDIS towards wherever he had stashed his real clothes. Neither of them bothered to acknowledge out loud the silent promise that they made over their mental connection to continue where they had left off at another time. As with most things, they found that they were of a similar mind on the matter, and the anticipation had always been part of the excitement for both of them, anyway.
Thankfully, the Doctor seemed to have a solution for Rose's turkey problem. However, her dreams of an idyllic Christmas dinner were quickly dashed as the Doctor insisted that they track down the source of the mysterious signal that he had been tracking in her absence, and they soon ended up onboard what he referred to as "the Papal Mainframe".
"Swallow this," the Doctor commanded, turning to place a small, pink tablet into Rose's palm as he piloted the TARDIS forward towards the large, glowing ship that seemed to be guarding the mysterious planet and the source of the signal below.
"What is it?" Rose asked, narrowing her eyes on him suspiciously. She hadn't liked the way that the Doctor so casually addressed the Mother Superious and his seeming familiarity with the futuristic, religious sect was making her nervous.
"Your hologram projector," he replied easily, making a general sweeping motion towards her with his hands, "you can't go to church with your clothes on."
"That's why you were naked, earlier?" Rose asked in frustration.
"Just trying to get to the church on time," the Doctor replied blithely as the TARDIS set down and he immediately reached for his bowtie, his nimble fingers quickly unraveling it and tossing it to the ground between his feet.
"But ... what's the point of being naked if we make it look like we're wearing clothes?" Rose insisted, still trying to wrap her mind around the entire situation as she clutched the small pink tablet in her hand.
"Well, you know religions and their rules," the Doctor replied breezily, letting his jacket fall from his shoulders next and then chucking it unceremoniously to the floor alongside his bowtie. "Come on, then. Don't want to be late," he added, gesturing to Rose once more as he unclipped the chain on his waistcoat and then removed the gold watch that he always wore on his left wrist.
Rose grumbled as she unwillingly placed the small tablet on her tongue and then forced herself to swallow. She glared at the Doctor from across the console as she slowly toed off her shoes, watching as he did the same with much more enthusiasm.
The holograms kicked in about half-way through their rushed disrobing, but it did nothing to ease Rose's intense discomfort. "I don't feel like I'm wearing anything," she hissed as she tugged at the hem of the new yellow jumper which she knew, in reality, wasn't there.
"I know - relaxing, isn't it?" the Doctor replied with a wide, easy smile as he straightened a bowtie that also wasn't real. However, his smile quickly faded into a petulant scowl as he narrowed his eyes at her and added, "Oi, it's all clothes. You can't go to church in your knickers."
Rose stared in open-mouthed shock as she glanced from the Doctor's annoyed expression to her seemingly-clothed body and back again. "What ...? How ...?" she demanded awkwardly.
"You didn't think a hologram was going to work on me, did you?" the Doctor asked haughtily, rolling his eyes as he slipped around the console to stand in front of her with his arms crossed pridefully against his chest. "Perception-altering devices like that only work on less evolved species," he reminded her pointedly.
Rose's gaping mouth immediately snapped shut as she tightened her jaw and glared up at the Doctor's glinting, mischievous eyes. "Yeah, keep it up, why don't you?" she hissed venomously as she moved to unhook the bra that she had left on in an attempt to feel just a little less exposed. "I'll show you where you can shove your Time Lord arrogance. It's not winning you any favors, you know. I'm not going to forget this!"
He arched a thoughtful brow in her direction as Rose bent to step out of her knickers as well and muttered lowly under his breath, "Yeah, neither will I."
Rose slapped him hard on the arm and glowered in his direction as she moved to pull her fake skirt as far down as she could get it to go in an attempt to cover her modesty. The Doctor hid his amused smile in her hair as he leaned forward to press another quick kiss to her forehead, but Rose could feel his pleased smugness over their bond and she filled his thoughts with nervous irritation in return.
However, if she thought that standing in front of the Doctor on the TARDIS in her hologram clothes had been awkward, that was nothing compared to the walk down the long, dark aisle that they had to make in order to reach the Mother Superious, who was waiting for them with a cool, imperious air at the top of a small set of stairs.
"Hey, babes," she greeted them casually after they had been formally announced and the Doctor had made another long, sweeping bow at her feet.
Rose curled up her nose in distaste as she watched the Doctor effortlessly flirt his way into the woman's (who he fondly referred to as Tash) good graces. The fact that Rose knew that they were standing at the center of the church's attention and wearing absolutely nothing made her even more irritated than normal with her bondmate's casual banter.
"Tash," the Doctor announced grandly as he swept his arms out in Rose's direction, "this is my ..." His words trailed off into awkward silence and his eyes grew large as the breathless seconds ticked by and he simply stared at Rose and struggled to find a word that encapsulated all that she was.
"Clara," Rose finally finished for him, smiling up at Tasha as kindly as she could as she silently filled the Doctor's mind with all of the curse words that she knew that she shouldn't speak out loud in a church. "I'm his Clara. Clara Oswald."
The Mother Superious flashed her an awkward, welcoming smile, before turning to give a dismissive nod to the line of soldiers flanking her. "We'll go to my chapel," Tasha commanded without hesitation, motioning for Rose and the Doctor to follow her deeper into the ship.
I'm so going to make you pay for this, Rose reminded her bondmate silently as she pulled at the hem of her hologram jumper once more and crossed her arms uncomfortably against her chest.
Will that be with or without the hologram projections? the Doctor replied teasingly. Rose slapped him again and firmly shoved him out of her mind in response, not wanting him to catch on to the way that his flirtatious words affected her when she was trying very hard to be cross with him.