A Ridiculous Exception

Chapter 2

Rose let her hair dampen the bed as she lied on her back, her blonde strands spread across her sheets as stared up at the ceiling. She bothered her bottom lip as she frowned, her thoughts travelling a thousand miles a minute.

No matter how much she tried to take her mind off it all, any thoughts she had on the matter simply would not leave her head. They were probably as stubborn as the Time Lord somewhere in one of the rooms of the TARDIS.

But seriously…

What the hell had just happened?

She sighed, moving to curl on her side with her eyes screwed shut.

What the hell's going to happen now?

She was convinced that could have handled anything else, anything, but what had happened. May it have had to be carnivorous forests or Adolf Hitler or some pest as big as a sun… anything would have been better. Any of those, Rose was sure she could have handled, and the Doctor would most probably have a more definite chance of providing a solution for those than for this situation that they found themselves in.

Rose grabbed the white fluffy blanket at her feet and pulled the sheet over her head, squeezing her eyes shut and hugging her legs as she buried her face between her knees. She let out a strangled sigh, willing the lingering sensations the Doctor had left her to just sod off.

Nope, they didn't seem like they were going to go away.

She simply did not know what to do now.

She growled into her knees and jumped up in her bed, the blanket still around her, and marched to her dresser. She sat in front of the vanity, staring at a certain box that contained a certain perfume bottle of what she decided was pure sin. She glared at it to the point where she felt ridiculous, and she once more jumped up as she absentmindedly paced back and forth across her room.

She could just pretend that none of it ever happened…

…but she didn't want to.

Rose bit her thumb as she pulled the blanket closer and tighter to her. She could just apologise, tell him that what had happened wasn't his fault, and tell him that they could just forget about it.

But was that what she wanted? To forget?

But the feel of the Doctor's lips on her neck, his hands on her skin, his burning stare at the back of her head, they were too fresh for her to think any more rationally.

What was it that he wanted?

Rose let out a frustrated sigh and her arms flew up in surrender, slipping her feet into her slippers. She trudged to the door of her bedroom and slowly turned the knob, taking a peak outside in case the Doctor was just outside. Seeing no one, she let her feet drag her to the nearest kitchen, where she was sure a much needed drink was in order.

•

She sat cross-legged on one of the chairs, her head buried in one arm on the surface of the table and the other one outstretched with a hot cup of tea in hand. The blanket Rose brought with her rested carelessly on her shoulders and was loosely wrapped around her body, giving her warmth yet cool enough for air to seep through the fabric to calm down her frantic thoughts.

When she heard faint footsteps from corridor outside the kitchen door, getting louder and louder by the second, she froze.

For a moment, she contemplated on getting up and going back to the comforts of the confines of her room, but she soon dismissed it. If that were the Doctor, he'd still catch her, and it would be obvious that she was avoiding him. That was not a conversation she was prepared to face. Her fingers around the handle of the porcelain cup in her hand tightened until she was somehow worried that she would break it, but she couldn't bring herself to care enough.

Her heartbeat grew louder and louder in time with the footsteps, and she thought her heart was going to burst out of her chest when the sound came right outside the passageway. She couldn't even move, couldn't bring herself to look up, and she cursed under her breath for being such a coward.

"Rose!"

Rose sighed in both relief, and confusingly, disappointment, into the table as the voice of Captain Jack Harkness himself filled the room. She lifted her head up to see the man leaning against the passageway into the kitchen, his arms crossed across his chest.

"You're home early, mister. Sort of."

His grin grew wider. "Never in my life had I been scolded for being back early."

Rose returned his grin with a growing smile of her own. "Scolded? As much as I enjoy doing exactly that, I think I should congratulate you!"

Jack laughed and stood up straighter, looking at her for a moment, as if thinking, before moving closer to sit on one of the chairs by the dining table and turning it to face away from the table. When he sat, he crossed his arms on the back of the chair and rested his chin on top, still looking at Rose with an odd expression, as if waiting for her to say something.

"What?" Rose asked, not unkindly.

"Oh, no, take your time."

She frowned with a slight shake of her head, the confusion growing on her face. "Take my time on what exactly?"

"Well, you know," he answered, taking his time to look around the small kitchen room before his eyes landed back to Rose, a certain knowingness showing in his eyes that unnerved her. "Take your time on deciding when you're going to start telling me why you're bundled up and hiding here like a rabbit in a hole while the Doctor was just sitting on the jump seat by the console, staring off into space."

Where's that bouncy, flirty Jack she could use right now. A little distraction was what she wanted, not an interrogation.

"The man didn't even congratulate me like you did!" he said with a slight twitch of his lips, but his eyebrows showing a hint of a frown. "When I came in and asked him what his problem was, he ignored me for a moment, looked at me in the next, and then he told me to check on you, see if you were fine."

Rose bit her lip, looking anywhere but at Jack.

"When I asked him what happened," he continued, standing up to make his own drink, "he was just mum about it all. When I asked him why he hadn't asked you how you were doing himself," Jack shrugged. Rose's eyes were glued on him and his every word, watching him as he poured hot water from the kettle into his favourite mug. He set it back down onto the stove and moved to the cupboard, retrieving a box of their selection of teas. "He said that you might not want to see him," he continued, his fingers grazing over the packets in the box before finally picking out one of his selection.

Rose continued to worry her lip as he walked and sat back in his chair, tearing the packet open and dropping the teabag into the mug. "And?" she asked him to continue.

Jack rose a bit to reach for the nearby counter and got one of the jars situated in the middle of it, a small teaspoon sticking out of the lid. "And now I'm here," he smiled a bit as he glanced up at her as he put in two spoonfuls of sugar into his mug. "So will you finally tell me what's going on?" he asked as he propped up his elbow on the back of his chair, taking a sip from his hot beverage without bothering to stir it.

She met his cool gaze for a couple of moments before scrunching up her face and burying her face once more into her arm. "I made what is probably," she sighed, "one of the biggest mistakes so far in my life."

When she heard no reply from Jack, she peeked from where she hid her face, and saw that he was watching her with amusement as he nursed his mug.

"Go on," he motioned for her to continue with a nod.

Rose's head sank back down.

She wondered how much of it she could hide from him, and how much she couldn't.

With his almost-laugh amused smile on his face, she could kill him.

Yep. She might not even regret it.

"What?" she asked in slight irritation, her eyes flickering to the wall clock behind Jack. It didn't really have to be there, but with a little persuasion, the Doctor had asked the TARDIS to put a couple of clocks up in some of the most-frequented rooms as per Rose's request. No harm in trying to keep with Earth time in London, was there?

1:06 a.m., though. She never thought her story would take a full-blown hour to tell. And now, she was trying really hard not to be cranky.

"Aren't you a little excited, though, at least?" Jack asked, looking as if he was going to burst. "I mean, I want specific details."

Rose rolled her eyes. "We aren't in high school anymore, you know."

"Oh, Rosie, you're no fun sometimes."

"And you're no help at all," she retorted, banging her head against he table a couple of times. Jack laughed heartily at her expense, before sobering up.

"What to do plan to do, then?" he inquired. At this point, he had his feet on the table, which Rose glared disapprovingly at.

She groaned. "Hide in a hole like a rabbit and never come out of it again. Sounds like a good plan, yeah?"

He chuckled under his breath before looking at her with consideration. His feet dropped to the floor and his chair scraped closer to the table. Jack looked at her sideways for a moment as he laced his fingers on the table, then ducked his head to her direction as if to whisper a secret.

"You know what I would do?" he asked conspiratively with a little waggle of his eyebrows. Rose rolled her eyes with the edges of her mouth pulling upwards, having a feeling where their conversation was headed, and when Jack saw it, he threw his hands up in the air in exasperation.

"What, you too? Why does everyone else on this ship think that every single thought in my head is sensual?" he exclaimed, crossing his arms over his chest with a huff.

Rose grinned and retorted, "Because sensual doesn't even begin to cover every since thought in your head." Jack answered with a snort.

"Point taken, but still. No more distracting me from what we're really talking about here. Now, going back to the main point of this conversation…"

Rose tried to swallow the growing lump in her throat. She thought she was doing such a good job.

"What is it exactly that you want to do, Rose? What do you want?"

She looked down into her now empty cup, a couple of stray strands of frizzy blonde hair going into her vision. Him. She wanted to be with him. But did he want to be with her?

"I—"

But before Rose could fully open her mouth to answer, she was cut off as the whole room shook violently for a couple of moments too long for it to be a simple TARDIS landing. Her cup rattled on the table as Jack's mug slid from side to side, and they held on to the closest permanent fixture their hands could find. Before they decided to scramble underneath the table, though, the shaking stopped.

"What the hell was that?" Jack asked out loud as they stared at each other dumbly for a half second.

They ran to the control room of the ship, leaving a white blanket on the floor and their chairs upturned.

AN: Hi guys... well. I'm sorry to have posted only a filler chapter after... yeah. But there's Jack, at least! :)) Summer's been around here, so I can focus on writing a load of chapters for you guys. I'm open to prompts and suggestions, by the way! Let me know if you have any. :)
I'll do my best to update as soon as possible, as regularly as possible. And right now, I'm doing my best to lay down the chapters already.
Enjoy! Please leave reviews. :D They'd be awfully great.