Notes: the Doctors, Rose, the TARDIS, etc belong to the BBC. I'll put them back later. Fever belongs to Peggy Lee. Starlight and Time is Running Out belong to Muse. If I owned any of them, crochet and knit would be just a hobby again, and not my job.
This chapter gave me fits, it's just a little interlude until the next bit, but has important information in it. I just finally said 'screw it' and am posting it now.
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A few hours later, the part human Doctor had been looking for Rose for about 15 minutes when he came upon the door to Rose's practice room. He stepped into the odd room and looked around. There were mats all over the place, walls and pillars of all sizes that could be moved around, handholds and small cubbyholes in the walls, and gymnastics equipment all over the place.
He couldn't see her, but he knew she was there, because of the music playing. Music always played whenever Rose was in here. This time, the music played softly, and he couldn't tell which direction it was coming from.
...Captain Smith and Pocahontas, had a very mad affair. When her daddy tried to kill him, she said, "Daddy oh don't you dare." He gives me fever...
He walked around the massive room for a minute, looking all over the place for his quarry. About the same time he saw her, the song changed.
...Far away from my memories of the people who care if I live or die. Starlight, I will be chasing your starlight, until the end of my life...
She sat at a long table hidden away in a corner. Her face was close to a magnifying glass and a leather strap was laid out on the table. There were teeny tiny bits and bobs next to it. Rose picked up one of them with a hand covered in- was that an electrostatic discharge glove? It was! She was wearing white ESD gloves.
She carefully put the little piece in the leather strap, and used a small screwdriver- one that just does screws- to put it in place. She did the same with the other three pieces, which he now recognized as a Vortex manipulator. It looked different than the manipulators of this universe, and he knew it was the one she had found in the other universe, the one she had gotten a replacement crystal for. He hadn't seen it before that moment and hadn't thought that she still had it.
She was fixing it, but he didn't understand why. Why would she need one of those damned space hoppers?
He had to admit it, though, seeing her tinker was captivating. She was concentrating, with her tongue sticking out. Her hair was tied back in a ponytail to keep it out of her face. He was reminded that they hadn't finished their 'conversation' earlier.
The Doctor knew that she had done some engineering, but hadn't seen her put her new skills to use before. He realized that in their TARDIS part work session, they'd given her the simplest things. They hadn't even thought about it. She could handle so much more, and would need to in the future. The little TARDIS-to-be had bonded to her right away. Whether she wanted it or not, she was going to be the custodian of one of only two TARDISes in existence.
He felt bad about watching her without her knowledge, but at the same time, he didn't want to disturb the obviously delicate work she was doing.
The song playing changed again, and he was listening to the song Rose had sung when she gave them the books, music, and tea seeds from the other universe. I think I'm drowning, asphyxiated. I wanna break this spell that you've created. You're something beautiful, a contradiction. I wanna play the game, I want the friction... It was the reason that he had taken her to that concert.
Rose had started singing to the song as she replaced the panel that covered the intricate bits of the Vortex manipulator. She put down the leather strap, removed her gloves, and picked it back up.
"Okay, 'ere we go!" Rose exclaimed before she pressed the button. Lights lit up, and she stood up in triumph. "Yes!" A couple of the lights went out, and a little red one flickered before it died. She put the manipulator down on the table and bent over it, her hands clenched on the edge of the table.
"Two weeks! Two bloody weeks I've been workin' on ya, and all yer good for 's scannin' and a teleport for one!" She hit the table, and the screwdriver she had been using rolled almost to the edge of the table.
The Doctor was just about to make his presence known, when suddenly Rose shouted "'M bloody useless, that's why! Two weeks to get a simple teleport to work!" She growled, picked up the screwdriver, and threw it.
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Rose was furious. She thought that she had the Vortex manipulator finally calibrated properly. After two weeks of working on it, all she had managed to do was get the short range teleport back online. It had shorted out in the other universe. The wrist strap was only powerful enough to transport one person through space without access to the Vortex.
All she had to do was get it calibrated to this universe, and it'd be good to go. The Doctors both could probably get the damned thing fixed in about a minute. She didn't expect that, but she did expect to be able to do it in 2 weeks. She had helped build a dimension crossing device with nothing more than 21st century Earth knowledge, so why couldn't she do a calibration?
She growled and threw the tiny screwdriver that she had used to work on the wrist strap. She knew she shouldn't have, but it felt good to throw something.
That's when she noticed him.
The Doctor stood there, in his blue suit, looking like a deer in the headlights. The screwdriver had zipped right past him.
"Whatever it was, I didn't do it," he said with his hands up. When Rose smiled at his antics, he put his hands down and came on over to the work table.
"'M sorry, I didn't know you were there," she apologized.
"You couldn't have," he replied back. "I didn't know you had a little workshop in here too. What else have you got hidden away here?" He picked up the leather strap, raised an eyebrow, and asked, " And what're you trying to fix this thing for?"
She took the device from him, a bit annoyed. "I do some work 'ere sometimes 'cause I've got a button that turns on telepathic shielding if I want. As for fixin' that, it's mine, why not?"
"You live in a time machine. You're growing your own time machine. We just picked up stuff for your future time machine today and spent a couple hours working on it. You don't need this thing," he replied, gesturing to the Vortex manipulator with a look as if it had personally offended him.
"Whatcha got against Vortex manipulators?" Rose asked.
"Time travel without a capsule," he stated with a disgusted look on his face.
Rose shook her head and rolled her eyes. "I was thinkin' 'bout bein' separated from the TARDIS, or having to get out of a jam quickly. I can think of a couple times where this thing woulda come in handy."
"True," he conceded, then took out his sonic, pushed his glasses further up his nose, and held his hand out to Rose so she could give him the wrist strap. "Here, I'll take a look at it and see what's wrong. Should be fixed in a tick."
"It needs calibrated to this Vortex, and no," she said and held the Vortex manipulator away from him. "There's a reason I didn't jus' bring it to you in the first place," she told him, pointing a finger at him.
The Doctor looked like someone had taken a toy from him. He crossed his arms and leaned back against her work table, looking down.
"Why's that, then?" he asked after a moment.
"'Cause I want ta do it myself," she told him. "I can do this. I need to do this. I've already fixed the teleport, which shorted out the last time I used it and took the laser out as well. All I need now's the link to Time. It's just a matter of findin' the right resonance an' calibratin' the Vortex manipulator to it so that it can work in this universe."
The Doctor was grinning by the time Rose finished her babble.
"What?" she asked.
"Rose Tyler, look at you. You're absolutely brilliant." He said with pride as he looked her up and down.
It was a moment before she noticed that the look in his eyes was lust. She still wasn't used to that.
He came over to her, took the Vortex manipulator from her hands, and laid it on the table. The softly playing music changed again.
"Rose Tyler, may I have this dance?" the Doctor asked as he held a hand out to her.
Rose took his hand and let him pull her into a close hug. The two of them swayed to the song.
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As the Doctor and Rose softly swung to Snow Patrol's Run, he wondered when he started doing things like this, then decided that it was a quirk of being part human, never mind dancing with her before this version of him had ever come into existence.
"I have a surprise for you," Rose whispered in his ear while they swayed.
"Ooh, what?" he asked. He loved surprises.
"Well," she softly said, "if you still want to, we can make our bond an actual, proper bond now."
Yes, yes, yes! His mind cheered. Of course I still want that. He pulled back to look into her eyes. She met his gaze, biting her lip a little shyly.
"The bond is finally settled?" he asked. He knew the answer, had known that the strong bond between Rose and his other self had settled as soon as the other Doctor had known, but hadn't known how to bring up the topic. He was glad that Rose had quickly brought it up herself. That had dispelled some of the previously unknown insecurity that had creeped in while the links between the three of them were lopsided.
When Rose nodded, his lips found hers and he kissed her hungrily.
"Let's get to a more comfortable place, shall we?"