A/N: This was a request from NewDrWhoFan, who asked for fluff based in Love & Monsters. Sadly, I've never been the best fluff writer, but judge for yourselves!
It had been a long day, both figuratively and literally. Figuratively in that they'd met the Devil and both had nearly died, literally in that the Doctor estimated that Rose had got up over twenty two hours ago. Consequently, Rose was fast asleep in her room and the Doctor was… restless. After four hours of waiting, therefore, he had succumbed to the temptation to go out without her.
Normally, he wouldn't even consider it—how many times had she proved that he needed her?—but tonight... he just couldn't relax. The Doctor's greatest fear was captivity and stasis; he'd come entirely too close to that eventuality today.
Perhaps it said something that the house he landed outside was mortgaged up to the hilt.
Rose awoke several hours later to the sight of the Doctor sitting in her cosy armchair at the foot of her bed.
"You alright?" she asked sleepily.
"Me? Oh, I'm fine. More than fine. I'm—"
"What happened?"
She was sitting up now, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. He sighed.
"I... got bored. So I did a scan of London for hostile alien life forms..."
And so the whole story came out. The Elemental Shade, the semi-detached house with Mr and Mrs Pope, and their young son, whose name, inexplicably, was Elton.
"He woke up just as I was leaving. I left his father to tell him what happened."
By this stage, Rose was sitting at the end of her bed, cross legged, with her cloud of hair pushed firmly behind her ears. She watched him intently, and reached for his hand.
"You stopped it, though. At least you stopped it before it got to his dad. Or him. It's not your fault, Doctor."
He grimaced. "Oh, I know that. Not my fault it was there. Not my fault I was a bit too late." His grip on her fingers tightened. "But I was there. Call it survivor's guilt. I should have waited for you."
"Hindsight's a marvellous thing," she quipped gently. "People die all the time, Doctor."
"Yeah. Exactly."
Effectively, he'd killed the conversation. Rose saw that he would speak no more, and so offered the next best thing.
"Tea?"
A few cups of tea, some toast and a change of clothes later, and the Doctor and Rose were out running for their lives again.
"Right, go back to the TARDIS lab, and there's a couple of buckets of soapy water there."
"Soapy water?!"
"Experiments—trust me! Grab the... the... oh, it's not blue, anyway. Quick!"
He had already wheeled away to avoid the angry Hoix before she muttered, "Blue. Right."
When they eventually got back to the TARDIS, the Hoix safely tranquilised and being dragged behind them, they were laughing so hard that Rose could barely see to unlock the door.
"You said blue! You did!"
"I didn't!"
"Oh stop lying! I swear you're colour blind!"
"I am not! It's ages since I was doing those experiments."
"See! You admitted it, you said blue!"
The continuing giggles rather spoiled the resultant splutter of indignation.
"It was Elton."
Rose looked up from her phone, where she'd been flicking through something or other. "What?"
They were in the console room, Rose sitting on the jumpseat and the Doctor fiddling with... well, she'd never understand the workings of the TARDIS.
"Elton," he repeated. "The little boy whose mother..."
She cut him off before he had to say it. "Last night, yeah. What about him?"
"The guy earlier. With the Hoix. That was him."
She blinked. "What... how d'you know?"
He shrugged and came to sit down beside her. "Looked the same. Plus, it got my time senses tingling. Woah!"
Barely having sat down, he leapt up again and twirled a dial with a flourish.
"Nearly hit late fifteenth century Spain," he explained.
"What happened then?" she asked, distracted.
"Well, there was the Reconquista, Spanish for 'reconquest' funnily enough, the final winning of Granada by Ferdinand and Isabella; you know what the loser's mother said to him?"
"What?"
"She said to him 'weep like a woman for what you could not defend as a man'."
Rose laughed in shock. "That's horrible!"
The Doctor caught her eye. "That, Rose Tyler, is exactly what your mother would have said. Though she might have used fruitier language..."
Fifteen minutes later they had mysteriously joined the English delegation sent to see Ferdinand and Isabella's baby, the Infanta Catalina, who would grow up to be Katherine of Aragon, first wife to Henry VIII.
This was life on board the TARDIS. Flitting from place to place and time to time like a butterfly on caffeine, taking nectar from any temporal flower they so chose. In the morning running away from an irritated Hoix, in the afternoon visiting royalty. It was mad, it was rocket-paced, and it was fantastic.
For once they were able to return to the TARDIS in a leisurely fashion following their royal banquet, Rose still cooing over little Katherine.
"She was so cute!"
"She'll win a war one day," he told her. "Well, a battle. Well, she wasn't there, but a woman in those days essentially putting together and commanding an army, that's impressive…"
"And did you see her waving to that ambassador guy?"
The Doctor smiled fondly. She wasn't about to be moved on her opinion of this woman who would grow up with an unshakable belief that she was born to be Queen.
"Right, I'm gonna get out of this dress. How did they bear all that velvet and that in Spain? It's boiling!"
He watched her go, gazing at a girl who looked at once so regal and so real.
And that was how it was supposed to stay. Rose and the Doctor, the Doctor and Rose, forever and forever through time immemorial.
But when her mum called, crying, they agreed they'd visit more often.
Rose started looking for gifts.
She started saving her laundry.
And one day, she bought her a trinket made out of bazoolium.
A/N: Any more requests? I've got no more chapters in progess at the moment, so ideas are welcomed!