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[THE DOCTOR]
The first time it happens, it’s a complete accident.
He’s picking her up for a night out in his own car, having given Wilf a month of vacation on a complete whim. There’s a big group of them meeting at a club, just like in Miami, only this time Adam’s not invited. He’ll be lucky if he’s even invited to the recording session next month, that git.
Rose slides into the passenger seat, grinning widely at the music thumping from the speakers. Jackie must not be home or she’d be out in the driveway, yelling at him about the volume and how they have neighbors and their neighbors have neighbors and no one needs the Doctor as their personal disc jockey at this time of night.
“‘Dance Hall Days,’ Doctor? Isn’t that a little on the nose?” she says over the music, reaching for the knob and lowering it slightly to be heard. It’s like he doesn’t even hear how loud it is until someone else points it out, or that’s what Rose tells him.
Besides, if the fine people at Toyota didn’t want him to listen to his music at this level, they shouldn’t have made it go that high. The Jackie in the back of his head roars to life again, this time snarking that his Prius may be helping fight air pollution, but he’s still definitely contributing to noise pollution. Maybe making peace with Jackie Tyler was a bad idea, if she’s going to haunt him like this now. He blanches at the idea and shoves the mental Jackie away.
“It’s Wang Chung, Rose! Look how fun that is to say! Well, listen to how fun that is to say! Wang. Chung. Besides, it’s the radio.” He maneuvers the car back onto the roads as the song continues.
“Oh, and here I thought you were trying to tell me something, like one of those emotionally stunted nutters that delivers a mix CD instead of saying how he feels.” Her tongue is between teeth at the end, smirking.
“Rose Tyler! Are you implying I can only speak to you through the language of music? That’s hardly accurate! I also use my hands!” He walks his fingers across the gear shift and onto her thigh, scratching at the material that covers it, determinedly not thinking about the stack of mix CDs he’s made her and just never delivered.
She laughs, “Of course, of course, my mistake. The Doctor, practically an open book. The Oncoming Transparency, that’s what they call you, right?” She slips her hand over the top of his, stilling his movement.
“Well, now that you’ve indicated that there’s an expectation I be inscrutable, I will be speaking to you in the language of our people. You brought this on yourself, honestly.” He shrugs like it’s out of his hands.
At the next traffic light, he pulls back from her leg to plug his iPod into the stereo, thumbing through until he’s found The Specials and the opening chatter of “Nite Klub’ trickles out from the speakers.
“Ah, yes,” Rose says. “A song about nightclubs on the way to a club. How ever will I figure out what you mean?”
It’s a bit of a game after that, always making sure something significant is queued up when she gets in his car. If she’s stayed over, he’ll race down to the lot before she gets there, just to be able to change the song.
The Kinks and “Do It Again” the next time he picks her up after a bit of creative snogging in the parking lot of a Tesco.
Arcade Fire and “Keep the Car Running” when she texts him that Jackie had made tea and wouldn’t he like to come in?
Wolf Parade and “Shine a Light” when he intends to keep her out and awake until, well, until it’s light.
A few weeks later, they’re driving through the streets of London on the way to take her home because Rose has run out of clean laundry at his place. The paparazzi have started matching up photos of her in his clothes with photos of him wearing them and so, since she’s on a little bit of a tear about it (or possibly Jackie is, he’s not entirely sure where the heat’s coming from on this one), he’s running her to pick up more.
Or, well, that’s what he assumes anyway, if he’s taking her home to drop her off, he’s not sure what he’ll listen to on the way back to his flat, but it’ll definitely be something depressing.
The Jam’s “In the City” has just finished vibrating through their seats as he pulls into her driveway and she leans over to give him a kiss.
No, no, no, no, he knows that kiss, that’s a “good-bye for the night” kiss. There’s sort of an unspoken agreement that he won’t stay over at her house. Well, unspoken in that Jackie Tyler had proclaimed she wouldn’t have him defiling her daughter under her roof and all doors were to remain open.
Rose pointing out that rule hadn’t even existed when she was a kid didn’t seem to have helped.
“Come back to my flat,” he says and tries his most charming smile.
“I’m tired, Doctor,” she says and he fails to keep the disappointment from his face. He knows she’s tired, can see it as she falls asleep in the car more and more often, driving across town, essentially living in two places at once.
The obvious solution is right there, he can see it, and more than a few times he’s been sure Rose was going to suggest it, but it’s just – that’s a sizable step, isn’t it? Moving in together?
Sure, they’d lived together on tour, but that was in a bus, with wheels and emergency exits, not in a flat with doors and carpeting and housework. Not that he isn’t committed, of course he is, but, blimey, that’s a hell of a way to show it, isn’t it? Sign your names right down on a piece of paper, make it official.
Harder to break a contract if there’s no contract to begin with, right?
The noise of Rose opening the car door pulls him from his thoughts. “Okay then, good night!”
He panics, leaning across the center console and grabbing for her hand as she steps out. “Rose, wait. Wait.”
She turns to him, stooping to lean through the open door as he tightens his grip around her fingers.
“What if we – ” he falters, because she could say no, because she could say yes, because he’s about ready to launch a new tour, just so things can go back to the way they were.
“Doctor?” Rose has a knee on the car seat, the angles awkward as she waits for him.
“What if we – “
Say it, say it, say it.
” – went to my flat and I did that thing you like, but this time with chocolate instead of frosting?”
Coward, every time.
Rose rolls her eyes and laughs, stooping further into the car and hope floods his veins. Maybe she’s agreeing, maybe he’ll get Rose Tyler covered in chocolate instead of an empty bed.
But no, she grabs at his iPod, fingers running across the screen. She smirks at him as the starting riff for “Dancing with Myself” fills the car, Billy Idol rasping out the Doctor’s new plans for the night.
She pats him on the head and ducks back out the door as he jabs at the stereo to shut it off.
He spends the drive home in silence.
The next morning they’re supposed to meet everyone for breakfast, a restaurant Mickey has been talking about for weeks, there’s a proper fry up that tastes just like some place that was around the corner from the Powell Estates, but one that probably meets health codes.
He didn’t initially mind the idea of breakfast with the whole gang, getting everybody together one last time before they head into the studio and work begins again, but now he’s feeling fussy about it.
Traffic to pick Rose up is a nightmare and even though it’s not actually any worse than normal, he’s still angry about it, laying on the horn and being incredibly liberal with vulgar hand gestures.
He forces himself to at least appear in a better mood by the time he makes it to Rose’s, starting up with The Replacements just as he’s pulling into the drive. “I Will Dare” is on at least three of the mix CDs he most certainly did not make for her and he shakes his head at the stereo, singing along with Paul Westerberg – how dumb am I?
Rose pulls open the door and sits, dropping her purse onto the ground between her knees, and he likes that, the way sometimes her lipstick tumbles out and she misses it and he’s always driving around with little pieces of her now.
“You will dare what, Doctor? Working up to something?” she says after she leans over for a kiss.
He returns the kiss absentmindedly, making a big show of checking his mirrors as he puts the car back into drive.
“Oh, come on,” she says. “Can’t leave me hanging. This one’s great. Not like last week with that Stooges song.”
Perfect, a distraction.
“Rose Tyler, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ is a brilliant piece of music and did I or did I not take you for hot dogs shortly after?”
He bites back the lewd comment about the shape of hot dogs and other, similarly-shaped things she may have had in her mouth that evening.
“Out with it,” she says, not buying in.
“Well,” he says, stepping a little too hard on the brake before leaning back into the seat and tugging on his ear. “It’s just – the restaurant’s right around the corner from my flat.”
Rose’s eyes widen. Maybe they’ll get to have this conversation without him bringing it up.
“And what? You don’t want to pick me up anymore?” Rose says, crossing her arms over her chest and shifting to face forward.
Oh, bollocks.
“No, no, no, that’s not it. I thought – ” he trails off, hoping she’ll fill in the gaps correctly this time.
“You thought what?” She’s not giving him a single inch, curling her fingers over her knee caps.
“I thought, well, ehm, I thought if we were leaving from the same place, then that’d be one less trip, wouldn’t it?” He feels the air rush out of him as he finishes speaking. There, it’s on the table now.
“Doctor, I told you, I was tired, and out of clean clothes. I can’t stay over every night.” Her voice isn’t giving anything away either and he feels like he’s floundering.
It’s like they’re having two different conversations and it’s his own fault, unable to say what he really wants to say, in words a normal person would use. They feel weighted and clumsy on his tongue, just say it: “Rose, let’s move in together.”
Instead, he brakes suddenly again, swinging into a small parking lot as Rose yelps with the harsh turn.
“Oi!” she says, as he throws the car into park and shifts to face her in his seat.
“Sorry. Listen, Rose.” He’s being a complete wanker, he knows. This is the woman he loves, something he’s even told her before, tells her often, sort of, so why does this seem so hard?
“I want,” he says, and fumbles for his iPod again, “Just. Just listen, okay?”
Al Green will take care of this for him – sounds like a plan.
He cranks the volume a little bit, raising his eyebrows as the music begins. It’s a bit more literal meaning of “Let’s Stay Together” than the song is speaking to, but that’s what he wants: him and her, staying in the same place.
Together.
Rose tilts her head as she listens and he can tell the exact moment she really gets it because her eyes widen and she reaches to turn the stereo down.
“Let’s stay together, Doctor? Is that – that’s what you want?”
His hands flop a bit searching for hers, and when he finds them he fits them together, drumming his fingers over her knuckles before stilling.
“That’s what I want,” he exhales and he realizes he’d been looking for that contact, for reassurance. “We practically lived together before anyway. We did live together. And I miss you, even though I see you all the time. I miss your make up on the counter because that’s the only place for it, not because you’ve unpacked your little travel kit. I miss fighting for fridge space and having seats at the table. I miss not having to worry about when your clean clothes will run out, because mine will have run out, too. I miss Naked Wednesdays, Rose. I really miss Naked Wednesdays.”
He misses Naked Thursdays through Thursdays, too, but those were never quite as formalized.
She finally smiles at him, laughing softly, “We spent Wednesday naked just last week, Doctor.”
He sits up straighter, he’s going to convince her of this now, or cut himself open trying. “But it’s not the same! It’s not the same when Naked Wednesdays end with you going home. I want Naked Wednesdays at our home. I don’t care if it’s my flat, or a new flat or your mother’s house. No, wait, I do care if it’s your mother’s house. I’d rather live with Jack than that, and you know he’s got all those cameras. But, Rose, really, anywhere, so long as it’s with you. We can go live back on the bus, if you want. I’ll ask Donna where they parked it, she always remembers.”
The words are just tumbling out, non-stop, and he feels a little out of control with it all. He really should’ve expected this, found the emergency shut-off before he opened the floodgates.
Rose untwines her fingers from his, reaching past the gear shift to pull him into a hug. “I’m not living on the bus if I don’t have to.”
He finishes the hug with a quick pat on her back, pulling away and sniffing, trying to pretend that didn’t sting. A lot.
“No, no, right, ‘course not. Silly of me. You’re probably used to your mum’s anyway. She’s got that, you know,” he says and gestures with his hand. “Staff to do the washing and cooking and stuff. Rubbish at cooking most of the time, me. Of course, I can’t help it if most recipes aren’t exactly optimized for maximum efficiency. Obviously you’d want to stay where the food’s edible, though. Even if it does take ages.”
His mouth is itching to say more words, lips opening and closing a few times as her hand moves to cup his cheek, fingertips curling back around his ear, “I’m not going to live on the bus. But I will live somewhere. With you. If you’re sure.”
He turns his face into her hand, dropping a kiss on the pulse point in her wrist. “I am surely sure, Rose Tyler! Never been more sure of anything in my life! Well, there was that one time, at the Derby, but that was more of a hunch.”
Well, he thinks to himself, a hunch and a bit of math and a good look at some the jockeys. If this music career goes off the tracks, he’ll always have that.
She scratches into his hair and all that thought of horses and here he is, practically purring into her touch. Do horses purr? He could try whinnying into her hand, but that might ruin the moment.
“Doctor.”
The moment he’s apparently stopped paying attention to, because if he focuses, really and truly focuses, on what’s happening, he’s either going to shout in joy or bolt from the car, and in a “know thyself” sort of way, they’re both equally likely.
“Doctor,” she says again. “Let’s do it then, we’ll get a flat, but a new one. A bigger one, one closer to my mum’s than yours is now.”
He opens his mouth to protest, he’s not especially attached to where he lives now, but even one mile closer to Jackie Tyler is likely to kill him, good and dead. Before he can get it out, Rose cuts him off.
“Not too close, but this drive is a nightmare. Can’t be making that every Sunday when we’re going over for tea,” she says and smiles sweetly.
He’s not sure what to fix on – pointing out that he’s made this drive nearly a hundred times in the last month, or that he will most certainly not be agreeing to a weekly tea.
“Every other week. Every other month. No, wait, this is brilliant, you’re going to love this, I’ll get that new, faster internet, and we’ll video chat her for tea. Perfect, eh? And she won’t be able to slap me or anything,” he says and nods. There’s that settled then.
Rose falls back into her seat and laughs, “We’re going to be late for breakfast.”
He sighs and moves the car from the lot. If she’s not even dignifying the video chat idea with a response, it’s all but dead in the water. Still, not a bad morning. Of course, the ones in the future are going to put it to shame, the ones he spends waking up next to Rose Tyler in their bed, in their flat, but still, not bad at all.
Donna’s already got several pitchers of mimosas on the table by the time they arrive at breakfast and when he accidentally lets the news slip, by unthinkingly pilfering the the housing section of the paper from the next table over, she repurposes them into a celebratory toast.
“Maybe you can convince him to get rid of some of those awful things he calls clothing,” Donna says to Rose before turning to the Doctor. “You have to make room for her in the closet, you know.”
As if he’s possibly going to live in a flat that can’t hold all their things. The bus manages just fine, anyway.
“We’ll get a spare room, put all the clothes in there, we can call it ‘the wardrobe,” he says and grins. “The wardrobe. Love that.”
By the time breakfast is done, he’s added 12 more rooms to the flat, things like “the library” and “the second library” and “the conservatory.” Not to mention he’ll need a whole room for his guitars, and Rose will need one for hers.
It’s going to be tough work, finding one that size, but they can do it.
Two weeks later, they end up putting a deposit down on a three bedroom flat that’s a perfect 26 minute drive from Jackie. That’s with light traffic, of course. Bad traffic and he can stretch it to a whole hour, if he wants. (And, of course, he does, insisting they leave for their Sunday tea right as churches are letting out all across the city.)
Rose buys him a can of blue paint and sends him to the front door, “Make it look like the bus,” she says.
The hallway smells of paint for a week and the neighbors are quieted with promises of autographs and acoustic performances at the association meetings.
He stills layers meaning into the songs they listen to on car rides, but now it’s things like Van Morrisson singing about cleaning windows.
Naked Wednesdays resume as planned.
[ROSE]
Rose is warm, and incredibly happy. She’s panting, draped over the Doctor in contented exhaustion, her nose smushed into his collarbone, and she can taste his sweat on her lips. She opens them a bit, lets the tip of her tongue wiggle against his skin. Salt and sex and a hint of soap — her teeth follow her tongue, nipping just enough to elicit a response.
“Oi, Rose Tyler,” he says, his face buried somewhere beneath her hair. She pulls up and he blinks, nose wrinkling as he fights off a sneeze. “At least let a bloke catch his breath. Or maybe get a sandwich. Did you know Elvis used to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches? I could go for one of those.” His tongue touches his top lip and he stares at the ceiling, as though he can see it right there in front of him.
“Really?” she says, sitting up, one hand planted in the middle of his chest as she makes a few small circles with her hips. “That’s what you want right now? A peanut butter and banana sandwich? I could go make one for you, if it means I get to dig through your cupboards. What kinds of dark secrets lurk in the kitchen of the Doctor’s flat?”
The corners of his mouth lift into a wicked grin, his own hips bucking upward. “Is this what the London air does to you? Make you insatiable? Might have to arrange to spend a bit more time in the city, then. Postpone the next tour.”
“Back in a mo’ with the sandwich!” she says, sliding off of him and bouncing to the bedroom door.
“If you’re going to be a tease,” he calls after her, “at least don’t skimp on the banana!” A pillow hits the wall behind her with a soft thud.
While the Doctor’s blue tour bus was the very epitome of lived-in, every corner of it oozing with personality and take-out containers and clothes, the Doctor’s London flat is the opposite. It’s practically sterile (well, with the exception of the six or so surfaces she and the Doctor have used in the hours since Wilf dropped Rose off at the back entrance to the apartment building, far away from the cameras positioned along the main street).
The furniture is black leather and chrome, the kitchen stocked with bare necessities, and it looks like someone went through a bachelor’s catalogue and bought every last item available. Which is, apparently, exactly what happened. When Rose came through the door for the first time this evening, the Doctor explained that a few years back Rolling Stone was doing a spread, so Donna talked him into buying a proper flat for the photoshoot and she hired a designer to come in and make it rock-star appropriate. Hence the shag carpet in the living room and the ultra-sleek modern everything else.
Rose has climbed onto the kitchen counter and is on her knees, stretching up to the back of the top shelf of the cabinet, when the Doctor’s voice startles her. “I’m pretty sure you’re in flagrant violation of a few health code laws, food preparation surfaces and all that.”
She huffs, hopping onto the floor, trying to decide if she minds the fact he’s been watching her climb all over his kitchen. Naked. “Bare. Completely bare. Well, except for a jar of dried rosemary and a few Pot Noodles. Since you finished off the last of the pineapple pizza, we’re left with moldy cheese in the fridge, some ice and vodka in the freezer, an empty jam jar in the sink, and two dozen take-out numbers on the counter. None of which are of any use, at three-thirty in the morning.”
It’s interesting, this glimpse into his life without her. What exactly did he do with himself before, when he wasn’t on tour? Rose has the distinct feeling he ended up crashing on Donna or Martha or Jack’s couch more often than he spent time in this flat. Or maybe he stayed all by himself on the blue bus in the storage yard.
She also has the distinct feeling that if she wasn’t living at her mum’s mansion, they’d be doing this at her place right now.
“Rosemary and Pot Noodle, that’s practically gourmet!” he says, reaching past her into the cabinet for the food. “A bit of vodka to wash it down, nice and cold.” He grins. “And we’ll go to the shop tomorrow.”
“Oh no,” Rose says, plucking the two Pot Noodles from his hands and opening them, filling them with water and sticking them in the microwave — the only appliance in the kitchen that looks like it’s been used much at all, actually. Used and never cleaned. “I don’t have a toothbrush or a change of clothes, and you’re driving me home tonight, because I’m having breakfast with Mum. Haven’t seen her in months, and I already ditched her this afternoon for a shag. Anyway, I’ve got to be there when you show up for tea tomorrow afternoon.”
The Doctor looks crestfallen. “You mean you’re not — no, no, of course, with your mum, of course.” He shifts from foot to foot, and he looks more than a little ridiculous, pale and naked in the dim light. Ridiculous and vulnerable and it’s sexy, really, with the way one hand’s scratching the back of his neck and the other’s planted on his hip.
He wants her to stay — it’s so obvious, it might as well be tattooed on the tip of his tongue.
“Me walking out the front door of your flat in the morning in the same clothes I wore last night isn’t going to help us avoid the media attention we’ve talked about,” Rose says, fetching the Pot Noodles from the microwave and handing him one, along with a spoon. The Doctor shakes a few flakes of rosemary into his before he digs in.
“Yeah, no, s’fine,” he says, coming to stand beside her so they’re both leaning against the counter. “I’ll take you home. I mean, there were some moves I’ve been saving ‘specially for an occasion like this —”
“You’ve been holding out on me?” Rose says in mock horror, bumping his hip.
“I’ve got tricks up my sleeve, Rose,” the Doctor replies, eyebrows arched on his smug face.
“You don’t have any sleeves, Doctor,” Rose retorts with a giggle. “Unless you count all that manly hair on your arm.”
Rose starts carrying an enormous purse, stocked with everything she needs for her nights over — toothbrush, contact lens case, hairbrush, makeup, a clean pair of knickers. Although she does end up borrowing the Doctor’s clothes more often than not. Because she likes the fact that she can bring a piece of him home with her, when he drops her off at the front door of her mum’s house and she goes upstairs to lie down alone in her bed. She sleeps wrapped up in his scent, even if his arms are halfway across town.
She begins to leave things at his apartment — little things, at first. A toothbrush in the cup beside his sink, a spare pair of trainers under his bed, a box of tampons stashed behind the pile of enormous fluffy towels in the bathroom cupboard. Then there’s a blanket — she’s always cold, sitting on his big leather couch and watching telly — it’s a fuzzy one, and he doesn’t say a word when she shows up with it in her hands, just snuggles under it with her. Doesn’t ask her to take it with her when she goes, either; just leaves it in a heap on the couch, waiting for next time.
The first week Rose spends five nights in a row at his flat, she finds herself making a mental inventory of supplies they need for the kitchen — a proper whisk, a decent pot for boiling water, a corkscrew that actually works — she realizes what she’s doing.
She’s moving in.
They’re sliding into cohabitation, and the Doctor’s just letting it happen without properly asking her, without a proper invitation or acknowledgement that they want to take this step together.
And that same night, when the Doctor pops around the corner to pick up some Chinese take-out and a few bottles of orange soda, Rose finds herself digging through the media cabinet in the living room, looking for a DVD she’d dropped down the back of the telly the night before. Instead, she finds a pile of mix CDs crammed behind the DVD player, burned and labeled in the Doctor’s angular handwriting For Rose.
Standing in the Doctor’s living room, holding a stack of CDs he’s made for her and never worked up the nerve to give her, Rose realizes she doesn’t want to slide into cohabitation. Because what if it isn’t what he wants, but he’s too much of a coward to say anything? And what if, by the time Rose has bought a whisk and some pots, and she’s worn a groove on his front table by putting her purse there every day, he’s silently suffocating, because he doesn’t have his own space and she’s used up all his air?
Rose carefully puts the mix CDs back where she found them with a silent resolution not to sleep more than three nights a week at his flat, because he isn’t asking her to move in, and she’s not going to do it if it isn’t what he wants.
This new development does not fail to escape the Doctor’s attention. He doesn’t say anything — seems on the verge of it, on occasion — mostly when they’re in the driveway of her mum’s house and she’s getting out of his car. It’s endearing, the way he looks like a lonely puppy dog, all big brown eyes and pulling her back into the passenger’s seat for one last snog that turns into three or four. Long fingers wrapped around her knee, holding her as though he’s never going to let go.
It also doesn’t fail to escape Rose’s attention, the way he does say things through the little speakers in his Prius. He never hands over those mix CDs, but he always has something waiting for her when he comes to pick her up.
The morning they’re meeting everyone for breakfast, before they head back into the studio and hiatus is over and it’s time to get to work, the Doctor is in a mood. She can see it, the furrow between his eyebrows and the way he’s throttling the gearshift with a death-grip. The Replacements’ “I Will Dare” is pounding out of the speakers.
Rose hops in and gives him a peck, turns the music down just a bit. “You will dare what, Doctor? Working up to something?”
He stares out the window and puts the car into drive, clearing his throat ever-so-quietly, and in the back of her brain she’s doing what she always does — putting the Doctor-shaped puzzle pieces together, trying to suss out what he won’t say. Does this have to do with their upcoming time in the studio? The Doctor historically hasn’t collaborated with others when it comes to songwriting, not since his beginnings in music with the Master, and the fact that he’s opening his career and his studio to her is a significant leap for him. Is that what he’s on edge about?
“Oh, come on,” she says with a sigh, finally admitting to herself that she hasn’t got a clue what’s got him so on edge. “Can’t leave me hanging. This one’s great. Not like last week with that Stooges song.”
He tries to derail the conversation, but Rose is having none of it. Not even when he gives her that lewd look when he makes a comment about hot dogs, and she licks her lips unconsciously, and his eyes go a little bit wide at that.
He’s off-guard, no doubt thinking about the fingernail marks she left in his hips that night, and when she prods him again, he finally lets it slip. “It’s just — the restaurant’s right around the corner from my flat.”
He’s watching her out of the corner of his eye, attention ostensibly on the road, but every bit of his concentration is on her at the moment.
She can’t bear to look at him, because she knows exactly what he means, and it stings. “And what? You don’t want to pick me up anymore?”
Rose had been holding onto an idea of their life during next few months, the Doctor pulling up in the mornings with a cup of coffee waiting in her cupholder, ready to take her to his studio. It was a lovely image, but in this moment, with this uncomfortable tension filling the car, Rose realizes she’s been fooling herself. Thinking the Doctor could do some form of domestic, thinking that maybe she would be the one who’d inspire him to take that kind of leap.
Never mind moving into the Doctor’s flat, he can’t even stomach the idea of having her in his car.
“No, no, no, that’s not it. I thought —” he trails off, doesn’t manage to finish.
She wants to shout, feels the words in the back of her throat, and they sound like Jackie’s words, actually. Working very hard, eyes on the road and fingernails digging into her own knees, she says tightly, “You thought what?”
Get your own car, Rose. I’m not your babysitter or chauffeur, Rose. Grow up, Rose.
I need some space, Rose.
“I thought, well, ehm, I thought if we were leaving from the same place, then that’d be one less trip, wouldn’t it?” The words come out in a breathless rush, practically tripping over each other as they stumble off his tongue.
Rose turns, very slowly, to look at him. He’s not asking for more space. He’s asking for less.
But he isn’t really asking at all. He wants her to say the words, to fill in the gaps for him.
Rose can’t risk a misunderstanding. Not when it comes to this. He has to say it; he has to mean it. So she starts at the baseline, at the bare meaning of his words. “Doctor, I told you I was tired, and out of clean clothes. I can’t stay over every night.” Not unless you invite me to. Not unless you say it. Not unless it’s what you really want.
The Doctor yanks the steering wheel sideways and the car bumps up into a parking lot, rough and sudden. She squeaks in surprise and he lets out a low frustrated sound, almost like a growl. He slams on the brakes, shoves the car into park, and unbuckles his safety belt so he can turn to face her.
His expression is one of fierce concentration, as though he’s trying to communicate telepathically and is infinitely frustrated she isn’t picking up whatever he’s sending out.
His long fingers are fumbling with his iPod, and he’s muttering things, and she catches, “Just listen, okay?” before he cranks the volume.
She recognizes the song from the second note, “Let’s Stay Together.” And by the time Al Green is crooning, “Since, since we’ve been together … loving you forever … is what I neeeeed,” it hits her, what the Doctor is trying and utterly failing to say.
“Let’s stay together, Doctor? Is that — that’s what you want?”
He flails for a moment, all nervous energy, before he clasps her hands.
“That’s what I want.” He’s holding onto her like she’s the only thing anchoring him to the surface of the Earth, like he might just rocket off and get lost in the black emptiness of space without her. He’s babbling on, cataloguing the things he misses about her when she isn’t at his flat, and she’s having a hard time breathing. Her cheeks are numb and tingling.
And then he says it. He says the words she needs to hear, the invitation, the confirmation, the proof that moving in isn’t just what she wants, but it’s what he wants to.
Our home.
“I don’t care if it’s my flat, or a new flat or your mother’s house. No, wait, I do care if it’s your mother’s house. I’d rather live with Jack than that, and you know he’s got all those cameras. But, Rose, really, anywhere, so long as it’s with you. We can go live back on the bus, if you want. I’ll ask Donna where they parked it, she always remembers.”
She reaches out for him — she needs to be touching him more, holding him, because this is real, it’s happening — the two of them, committing to a physical address together. She’s got her fingers in his hair, she’s leaning close enough to plant kisses on his cheek and lips. There are semantics to deal with, of course. Where, and how. She’s going to have to break the news to Jackie, and her mum’s going to be lonely, and Rose can’t let that happen. They’ll have to be close enough to visit regularly.
But those are details she can worry about later. For now, she’s giddy.
Rose is even giddier when, during brunch, the Doctor pulls out the housing section of the newspaper like it’s some sort of an announcement, like he’s putting his commitment on display for everyone to see. There’s a toast and congratulations all around, and he might as well have given her a ring for all everyone is gushing.
Before they leave the restaurant, Donna catches her in the hall outside the ladies’ room. With a huge grin and a bear hug, she asks, “How’d you talk him into that? The Doctor buying a flat with someone — it was like pulling teeth to get him to buy one just for himself!”
“It wasn’t me. He did it — asked, I mean. It was him. His idea.”
When Donna pulls back, her smile has shifted into something secretive and knowing. Like the grin of a big sister who’s been around longer than anyone else, who sees things no one else notices. “I know a realtor who can help you manage Rock Boy while you shop for a flat, yeah? Otherwise you’ll end up buying a pet shop full of kittens or living in the back room of his favorite guitar shop or something.”
“That’d be great, Donna,” Rose replies, hugging her again. “That’d be perfect.”