A/N: Thank you so much to everyone who's been reading, especially to those of you who left me a review :') Just a word about a plotty bit I should have mentioned with the previous chapter: that one deleted scene from Journey's End is canon in the context of this fic – you know the one, with Ten giving Tentoo a piece of TARDIS, and Donna reassuring Rose that Ten won't be on his own.
Also, small PTSD warning for this chapter. And possibly some UST warning, too *cough*
Enjoy!
CALLUSES
V.
With his head still ringing with Jackie's less-than-entirely-friendly words, the Doctor settles in the armchair while Rose is in the bathroom.
After experimenting with a couple of positions, he finds one that seems quite believable, getting to work with pretending to be asleep. The way he sees it, once Rose is done showering, she'll find him 'asleep' on that chair and get into bed, avoiding any awkward 'what should we do about this one bed situation' talk.
He won't have to fake for long either, remembering how quickly his former companion can succumb to slumber, having once conducted a proper experiment in which he monitored and recorded the exact time it took her to fall asleep – forty-three seconds being her fastest time to date.
When Rose finally opens the bathroom's door, he's fairly confident that he's beginning to master this 'even breathing' thing without a bypass system. Unfortunately for him, nothing goes as planned.
Although she's opened the door, she doesn't move out of the bathroom. He cannot tell for certain that she's looking at him, his eyes being closed and all, yet he swears he can feel the weight of her stare, like tiny needles prickling the back of his neck.
His wonderfully even breathing staggers a bit.
"I've spent half the night watching you sleep," she says. "You're gonna have to do better."
He reopens his eyes, ready to say something back – anything, really, as long as it's witty, but the words never make it passed his throat.
Standing in the doorway, half-concealed by the door, Rose is not wearing much.
Well, there's a towel wrapped around her body, and the door does hide a good amount of her corporal mass, but he's finding it awfully hard to think about anything beside the fact that the towel is the only thing between the air and Rose's skin.
Rose's naked skin.
Even from where he sits, his eyes manage to find the smallest, tiniest droplets of water as they slowly trail down that naked, flushed skin of hers.
Out of nowhere, his head becomes filled with a jumble of images, all extremely vivid and oddly sensory driven, given the lack of actual senses involved, except maybe for that traitorous sight of his, but even that one is quickly lost to the flow of warm visions that flash across his eyes. Every single one of them involve him swiftly leaving this armchair – save for one or two in which she joins him on the armchair; for the most part, Rose ends up firmly pinned to the doorjamb, with him doing all of the pinning, her towel swiftly crumpling at their feet.
What
Whaaat what what what wh-
Before he can embarrass himself more than he already has today, Rose speaks again.
"I don't suppose that blue jacket of yours happened to have psychic paper in it, did it?"
She unfortunately starts nibbling on her lower lip, the gesture evidently contemplative in nature, but there is something very, very wrong with his brain.
He blinks a couple times, forcing his gaze up from her lips to her eyes.
Psychic paper.
Paper that is psychic.
Right.
"As a matter of fact it did, and does!" He manages to answer, a tad too eagerly. "The TARDIS automatically refills all of my suit jackets with the bare necessities – psychic paper, glasses, sonic screwdriver, a couple of bananas." He sounds surprisingly like himself. And if he doesn't…
Well, he guesses they've already covered why in the past few hours. She doesn't need to know this particular 'why' is him in the midst of discovering yet another aspect of what it means, to be a partially human male.
"Oh good," Rose says with a relieved sigh, slumping a bit more against the jamb.
Rose, against that jamb.
Oi! A stern voice rings in his hormone-filled head, a voice that eerily sounds like both Donna and Jackie, forcing him to refocus and actually look at her, instead of merely fantasising about all the things he could be seeing, or doing, or tasting, finally taking in her strain features.
"How d'you feel about using it to test out our hotel's hospitality, see if they'll mind us using their machine and dryer? I can't bring myself to put those clothes back on now that I've washed. I think there's grime from about six different universes on them."
If someone had once told the Doctor that going hunting for a washing machine would someday sound like a wondrous adventure, he might have had to push them into a black hole.
But looking at Rose's pale face, he realises that he would have happily washed all of her dirty clothes himself with a toothbrush, if there had been no other option.
Within the next three minutes, he's a man on a mission.
He barely has to use the psychic paper at all, although as always, it does help with the small matter of not having to explain the finer details – or the bigger ones, at that. It's also a good opportunity for him to test his language skills without his ship's translation matrix to back him up. The receptionist he talks to at the front desk seems receptive to him and his 'peculiar accent', quickly accepting the bag of dirty clothes without a fuss, assuring him they'll call his room when everything's ready.
Unsurprisingly, by the time he makes it back upstairs, Rose is sound asleep, perfectly wrapped up in the comforter, like a cosy burrito…which is not quite enough for him to forget the fact that she's rather very much naked under there.
With his head now full of glares from a couple women he would hate to scorn, he dutifully sits back on the armchair, content to watch her sleep for a few hours, even if all he sees are strands of wet hair, one closed eye, half a nose, and the top of a cheekbone.
All body parts that are highly underrated, if you ask him.
…
She's awakened by the thrill sound of a ringing phone.
As per usual, Rose's response is to bury herself even more under the covers, until not a single inch of her is exposed to the air, grunting her disapproval. She hears a muffled voice, his, and her foggy brain briefly wonders when the TARDIS' phone started working.
His voice is suddenly a lot closer, still on the other side of the linen, yet close enough for her to make out words.
"I'm off to get our clothes. I estimate that you have about…five minutes and thirty-seven seconds to get decent before I come back in."
By the time she's figured out most of what he meant and peeked her nose out from under the comforter, he's already left the room…which is not part of the TARDIS at all, unless he's redecorated while she slept and decided to make it look like a fair-priced hotel room.
The realisation of where she is – and more importantly with whom, is not as off-putting as it would have been only hours ago. She's still comfortable enough for her sleep-heavy brain to suggest she should simply go back to doing more of that, the sleeping…until his words come back to her, something about having five minutes to 'get decent'.
Oh.
She's rather naked, isn't she?
This alone is a testament to how tired she'd been, to crawl completely starkers into bed, knowing full well how much she moves in her sleep, rarely ever staying under the covers.
Again, the emotion that grows in her chest at the idea that she might have unintentionally exposed herself is not what she'd call unpleasant. Her body feels more relaxed and supple than it's been in weeks, and her thoughts are unfocused yet sharp, briefly imagining what would happen if she stayed put until he came back into the room; surely coaxing him into joining her into this warm cocoon wouldn't be hard at all, especially if he's as aware as she is of her state of nakedness.
She spends at least two and a half of those five minutes letting her mind wanders in that direction, before she forces herself out of bed, hoping the colder air will be enough to drain the heat from her cheeks, having just been reminded that she's very much human, too.
By the time he's coming back in, she's wrapped the towel securely around herself again, back to standing in the bathroom's doorway, so that all she has to do is grab the warm clothes he's holding out with a small 'thanks', avoiding his gaze altogether, before locking herself in there to dress.
"I asked the front desk to call us a taxi," he eventually says from the other side of the door. "Hope that's alright."
"Good thinking," she says, putting the last of her clothes on, before going to the sink to take a look at herself. "What time's it anyway?"
She guesses she's looked worse. Her hair is a real mess, almost entirely dry now, if not for some dampness at its roots, but considering how she let it dry, it's sticking out in wild, unruly directions. The circles under her eyes have become less visible, although she suspects it will take more than a good nap for her body to recuperate from what she's put it through this past month alone. She obviously doesn't have a hint of makeup left, and no way of applying more – not that she cares about that, not the way she did five years ago.
In any case, the natural warmth in her cheeks is doing more for her complexion than any powder ever did.
"It's mid-afternoon," the Doctor answers, sounding like he's moving around the room himself. "Well, I guess late-afternoon would be more accurate, now. It's almost four."
Rose tries to tame her hair, quickly giving up and tying it into a loose ponytail, before (pointlessly) splashing cold water on her face, her skin just as flushed when she leaves the bathroom.
He's standing a few meters away, near the window, hands in his pockets, his outfit once more complete with his crimson shirt. She notices the dark undertone now shading the lower half of his face, needing a second to understand that this is the premise to a stubble. She briefly pictures him with a few days old scruff, and the image is more appealing than it ought to be.
Rose quickly averts her eyes and goes looking for her shoes, a distraction that doesn't work as well as she hoped, feeling his gaze on her, how it seems to seep underneath both clothing and skin. It would appear that, while she'd been too drained a few hours ago to properly acknowledge him, physically speaking, allowing her body some rest has changed that rather drastically. Given the fact that she declined his suggestion for the them to get separate rooms, this might become a bit of an issue tonight.
Or not.
"Let's go then!" She says a bit too keenly, eager to leave the room and its stifling tension – which she's fairly certain is not one sided, hoping it will also put an end to their resultant, cringy small talk.
There's a twenty-minutes taxi ride to the closest shopping mall, and Rose spends most of that time on the phone. She speaks to Pete first, the call both personal and professional.
Unlike her mother, Pete doesn't nag her about the lack of updates, informing her of what little happened during their time away instead – from his point of view, barely twelve hours passed between the moment Jackie and Mickey left and the time Jackie called him from that beach.
She calls Ethan next, her second in command; he seems genuinely relieved that she's succeeded in her mission, yet he sounds a bit puzzled, maybe wondering why she's back in this universe at all – everyone in their team knew that Rose Tyler's last trip with the dimension cannon was meant to be a one-way ticket. She doesn't have the heart to tell him that their next assignment will be to dismantle the device they've been perfecting for years. She spends a couple minutes discussing the latest readings they recorded instead, before giving her whole team time off until she herself makes it back to England.
When she refocuses on the man sitting by her side, he's watching her intently. "What?" She can't help but ask.
"You're in charge," he answers simply, yet there is undeniable respect in his voice.
She gives a faint shrug; while earning his appreciation used to be something she thrived for when she first met him, the idea of discussing her command status makes her uneasy, now…especially the thought of sharing with him some of the tougher decisions she's had to make in recent history.
"Someone had to do it," she says, dismissive. "Until yesterday, this universe didn't have a Doctor to look after it."
"Rose Tyler," he says, emphatically. "Defender of the Earth."
The immediate call-back to their exchange on Bad Wolf Bay all these years ago is not a pleasant sensation, like a cold fist closing around her heart and lungs, squeezing all the air out.
She's almost dissociating for a moment, exhilarated and relieved that the man she saw vanish in front of her eyes is now sitting a mere foot from her…until she remembers that the solemn, lonely Doctor from her memory is actually still a universe away from her.
Rose takes a wobbly inhale as the gritty feeling rolls through her, looking away and gazing out the window, trying to clear her head. There is nothing she can do about this, not anymore. Her Prime Doctor (as she's coming to think of him) has made his choice, forced her to make her own in the process. The most dejected part of her would like nothing more than to think him a selfish, egotistical man-child…but she can't, her initial hurt fading and changing into something else.
His counterpart, her Human Doctor…leaving him here with her had been her Prime Doctor's way of giving them closure, in his own, twisted way, even if it meant giving her up for himself. And at the heart of it, this is a big part of why she's struggling with this situation.
She cannot stand the thought of him on his own.
Oh, I've got the TARDIS. Same old life, last of the Time Lords.
Ever since she'd stood in the middle of that crowded London street and listened to this lone, broken soul confess that he was the sole survivor of his species, she'd sworn her allegiance to him, proclaimed herself the cure to his solitude, until it became one of her core values.
It eventually led her to absorb the Time Vortex itself, pushed her to jump through time and across dimensions, risking her own life and sanity over and over…all of this to insure he would never be alone again.
"Oh, I'm fine," he'd assured her on that blasted beach. "I've got Madame."
Same old life indeed.
Except that he does have Donna, this time around. His best friend, and equal, as determined as Rose once was to spend the whole of eternity with this skinny boy.
And if she tries, if she really tries, Rose can almost convince herself that it is enough.
…
Shopping, the Doctor decides, is not going well.
Crowded building aside, which comes with its own flurry of tricky bits, the entire premise of this outing is making him feel absolutely out of place. He's visited hundreds of shops and markets across the universe over his extensive lifetime, yet none of them has ever made him feel the way Knarvik Senter does in that moment.
Insignificant.
The mall itself is a typical mall from this specific period of Earth history. With typical mall stores and typical mall restaurants and typical mall customers. The only atypical element here is him. And the most peculiar thing about him is that he is not that peculiar at all anymore.
He's just a regular bloke doing some clothes shopping, trying to decide if he should stick with suits, or if the time has come for him to switch to jeans.
Oh this is not pleasant at all.
The fact that Rose more or less discarded him when she remembered he could fend for himself all the while treating him like a prepubescent child is not helping much.
He's not sure what he's done wrong between the moment they left the hotel and reached the shopping mall, but he's obviously mucked things up. Ever since they stepped out of the taxi, she's been as distant as she was when he first woke up; they'd barely entered the building that she was pointing at a clothing store.
"Looks like you should find everything you need in there," she'd said. "Go pick a couple outfits, something to sleep in, too. We'll get you a proper wardrobe once we're in England. I'll get us a suitcase and all the bathroom stuff. Meet you back in there in fifteen, yeah?"
And she was off.
The Doctor feels like he's spent most of the day naively attempting to build a sturdy tower using glossy playing cards, carefully adding level after level, their progress slow and tentative yet real…until someone somewhere opened a door and let in a gush of wind that sent the whole thing crashing down.
So here he stands amidst a heap of scattered cards, staring at a plastic dummy wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a bob hat, bitterly thinking he wouldn't mind the bloody thing extending an arm and attempting murder.
"I might've to let it strangle you if you're really thinking about getting that shirt."
The Doctor physically and visibly startles at the sound of her voice, having apparently lost his peripheral awareness along with a few hundred other things he's forfeited in the process
His singular heart nothing short of trips over itself while his brain releases a potent cocktail of chemicals into his blood, putting his entire body on high alert, as if he were a prey having just spotted a vicious predator leering at him.
He swiftly turns to find a non-threatening Rose standing at his side instead, looking up at him with a dubitative frown and a bit of a pout, probably just as surprised as he is by this excessive reaction.
He could have laughed it off, shrugged it off, rambled it off.
But his heart is still hammering, his fingertips tingling from the sudden overdose of adrenaline, and he's fed up with this bloody downgrade of his, just as torn by Rose's attitude toward him.
He wants to remain patient and understanding, but fifteen minutes ago, she couldn't get away from him fast enough, and now here she is, making inside jokes as if nothing happened.
"Feeling nostalgic about the old clerk life, are we?"
The comment itself is benign enough, but delivery is everything. His voice had been smooth and clear, and every bit as condescending as he knew how to make it.
Rose's face slackens in surprise, taken aback by his animosity. In a matter of seconds, her cheeks flush with heat, her eyes glossing over as she averts her gaze and sets her jaw, her body folding slightly inward.
For one brief instant, he's a barely nine-hundred-year old leather-wearing pillock again, having just insulted a kind, brave-hearted nineteen-year old Earth girl.
But Rose quickly unhunches her shoulders and stands tall at his side, tilting her chin up as she takes in a sharp, steadying breath, bringing her blazing eyes back to his.
I won't be taking any of this crap, is what she's telling him without a single word.
He's half-tempted to carry on being an abrasive prick – such a comforting, familiar persona, but his conscience decides otherwise…a conscience that looks suspiciously like Donna, from the small tilt of the head to the slow, unimpressed, and absolutely judgmental shake of the head.
You. Dumbo.
Rose stares at him, and he stares back.
"I'm sorry," he says at last, sounding oddly winded yet sincere, and her shoulders relax a little. "I…" He closes his eyes, shaking his head. "That was unkind and uncalled for. There is nothing wrong with being a shop assistant, an honourable profession, truly, one I am sure you exceeded at, too. I would be ever so lucky to have you advise me on what to wear, considering my abysmal sense of style. Did I ever tell you about how I used to walk around with celery pinned to my jacket lapel? And I don't mean that metaphorically either. It was an actual piece of vegetable. Right there."
He points at his remaining heart, which still beats faster than it should, his distress anything but physical, now.
He reopens his eyes with a bit of a grimace, daring a glance at Rose. Her cheeks are still pinker than usual, but there's a look in her eyes he recognises well, the early stage of an amused twinkle he's missed as much as he misses Gallifrey's scintillating sunrises.
She eventually tilts her head with a dismissive shrug of her shoulder. "I was a rubbish clerk," she admits. "Hated every second of it. Got reprimanded about once a day for telling people off and being too honest about how they looked in their outfits. And this thing there?" She says, pointing at the atrocious shirt. "It needs to be exterminated."
Unfortunately, her bold attempt at humour falls flat on the account of that on simple word turning out to be quite triggering.
He's not sure why he's smelling acrid smoke, all of a sudden, but it's burning at the back of his throat, soon causing his lungs to more or less collapse onto themselves, even as his head fills with the deafening sound of a few hundred thousand synthetic voices.
And they are all screaming.
A/N: I have this thing that happens with me and my WIPs, where all of my scenes start to become waaaaay lengthier than I originally plan them to be. Splitting this one here because of reasons; I'm almost done writing the rest of it, so I quite confidently think the next update should come within the next few days. As always, any feedback would be lovely.