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Jack’s laughter echoed in the room, and he swore the TARDIS’ hum echoed his amusement. “I’ve known a lot of smart people in my life, and I’ve known a lot of stupid people in life, and I’m not too sure these two fall into the ‘smart’ category.”
The Doctor, maybe, maybe he did, Jack mused, tossing a few kernels of popcorn into his mouth, eyes fixed on the screen. Said screen currently displayed a shot of the kitchen, where two figures stood in what could best be described as attack poses.
Attacking one another, he decided. After another thought, hearing the exchange from the kitchen, “Maybe the Doctor’s smart. Rose, though…”
And so he waited.
--
The Doctor leant back against the counter, his fingers curled around the edges. “Rose, really?”
“Yes, Doctor, really,” Rose huffed, pacing around. While the Doctor had backed down from the defensive pose, it hadn’t really placated Rose. The clever Time Lord he was, had long figured it out. Not easily, really, but he’d figured it out. If he hadn’t known before the misplaced trip to Cardiff and the Gelth and Charles Dickens, he’d certainly known it by the end. What did they call it, ‘love at first look’? Something like that. He’d known. Rose, though, well, it’d taken her a little longer.
A lot longer, maybe, but he wasn’t entirely sure. What he was sure of, though, was that she did know it now. And, being the gentleman he is, he was now exercising the strongest restraint he ever needed by not unleashing the full show of his desire for her. He wouldn’t push himself on her – not when he knew how easy it would be to overwhelm her.
And so he waited.
--
“Yes, Doctor, really,” she growled at him. Rose’s eyes narrowed at him, her “anger” more frustration than anything else came not from him, but her own inner conflict. At this point, she’d lost count how many nights she’d wrestled with the feelings of attraction for the Doctor.
She hadn’t really come out ahead, seeing as how those feelings continued their knock-out fight almost every time she saw him. Or thought about him. Or heard his voice. Or Jack mentioned him. Or Adam mentioned him. Or her mum. Or Mickey. Or really anyone, at this point; it would have been hysterically comical if it hadn’t been her in this… predicament. Rose had long termed it her predicament, as it wasn’t really a problem since she’d refused to speak it out loud (and until you said something out loud, it wasn’t a problem, her mate Shareen had once said). Even in frustration in the shower or while whinging into her pillows at night, Rose carefully hadn’t said it out loud.
“Doctor,” she started, licking her lips, deciding once and for all the answer to her predicament was to provoke the Doctor to say something – anything, even if it wasn’t what she wanted to hear, but something! – and then it wouldn’t be either problem or predicament. She took a mirrored pose to his against the kitchen island, only a few steps of space between them.
“Yes, Rose?” he asked, voice even, good-humoured even, not betraying a thing. Bastard, how can you make this so hard? “Something on your mind?”
She licked her lips again, and refused to groan; wasn’t licking your lips considered flirting with these Time Lords? “Talking to you isn’t easy!”
“Says she who’s so wound up,” he replied, his grin still firmly in place, arms crossing over his chest and head cocking just slightly. And then he licked his lips.
No! No no no, Rose, stop that, don’t let him seduce you like that, her brain whirred, and she almost, almost backed down. “’m not wound up,” she denied, but the retort rang hollow to both of them. His grin actually grew at that.
That low chuckle in his chest sent a shiver down her spine – smug Time Lord clearly didn’t miss it, she knew. “Fine, not wound up, you. Gonna try some complete thoughts this time?”
She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, but he was right; she’d had at least three or four false starts at this conversation, and Rose was honestly surprised the Doctor hadn’t wandered off. Humouring her, surely. His impatience showed, but it wasn’t as bad as his exasperation with many of their fellow companions, Adam especially. Maybe it was she who needed a distraction… “This.”
“This?” he asked, an eyebrow quirking. She held up a banana in one hand, and an apple in the other. His wince of confusion was enough to make her question. “Why is there an apple in here?”
“I asked for it,” Rose replied, and the Doctor managed a shrug. “But like… I have a situation, a… a predicament,” she hedged.
And so she waited.
--
“A predicament?!” Jack almost choked on the popcorn, staring in utter confusion. “Just SAY something! What’s your predicament, not enough ingredients for a fruit salad?”
--
The Doctor dropped his arms, and pushed up from the counter. “A predicament involving fruit? This I’ve got to hear,” he said, walking toward the fruit bowl and picking up another banana, peeling it and taking a bite. “Go on, full attention.”
“Well,” Rose said, pacing about slightly. “Think…think of it this way. It’s an euphemism.”
“Probably need two apples for that euphemism,” he responded, and Rose nearly chucked the apple at him in retaliation.
“It’s… not that sort of euphemism, Doctor,” she corrected, “maybe it’s an analogy. So, this apple, here…. Here, take this banana,” she said, tossing it at him. He fumbled, but caught it, nearly dropping his half-eaten banana in the process. “So, this apple. And that banana.” The Doctor waved it, as if in greeting. “Yes, that one. Not the one you’re eating.”
“Can I finish this one?” he asked, mouth full with another bite.
Rose groaned, setting the apple down on the counter before answering. She clenched her hands and then looked at him. “Yes, eat the rest of it, Doctor.” After he finished chewing and then ate the last bite, he tossed the peel into a bin behind him, without so much as a second look, and then held the banana at his mouth curved in a smile. “All right. So. This apple, and that banana. They… they both live in this fruit basket. Lived. Well, okay they’re set there, but. Yes. In the basket.”
He set the banana down, back into the basket, as Rose set the apple next to it, nesting it against the curve of the yellow fruit. “All right, they’re together in the basket.”
“So,” she says, starting to wander around the kitchen, turning to face the Doctor as he took residence in a corner of it, “you know, apples, see you can just, rinse it off and take a bite, get right into it, you know? It’s got a skin, and, and it’s okay. It’s edible I mean. So, like, you can just… get right into it. Other than a quick rinse, no… no big deal with it.”
“Okay…”
She then picked up the banana for a moment, and set it back down, flipped away from the apple this time. “But, bananas. Bananas, they… they have a… a peel. Well, it’s like a shell, you know, and… sometimes you have to… get past that peel… I mean the shell, to… get to know what delicious fruit is inside. Like, it’s hiding and waiting to be discovered. But it’s… but it’s kind of hard to know how to get past that pe—shell.” Rose was never quite good with analogies.
The Doctor nodded; he had debated how long to let her struggle with the analogy was so desperately tried to express. “So, trying to get someone out of their shell. Or peel. Is that your predicament?”
“It’s… well, yes,” she finally admitted. “But it’s… also that once you take off the peel,” Rose mumbled as she retrieved the fruit and began to unpeel it, “you don’t know what’s inside, I mean, you think you do, and you have an idea, but you’re not always sure, I mean… it’s there and then you open it up and it’s not quite the same but… you still really want to find what’s under the peel and it’s desperately important to find out, you know?” she said, staring at the half-peeled banana. She looked up at the Doctor. “D’y’know what I mean?”
“I think so, but why you’re not out and about peeling things open is beyond me, Rose Tyler.”
She gasped for a moment. “Are you sayin’ I’m—”
“No, you’re not a slag, Rose Tyler, you’re too clever a woman for that. I am saying your analogies are a bit strange, or is that a human thing?”
“Doctor!” she hissed, dropping the fruit onto the counter and slamming her hands down. “I’m not very good with this.”
“I know, we’ve been here almost an hour with you making a lot of half-finished statements, but I think you’ve almost figured it out.”
She sighed, wanting to bury her face in her hands. Rose flung her blonde hair out of her face and looked at him. “I just don’t know how to peel this banana!”
He held her eyes as he shrugged his leather jacket off his shoulders, letting it slide over his moss green jumper to the crooks of his elbows before tugging it off, tossing the leather piece to the counter. “Isn’t it just as easy as askin’?” he suggested, leaning back against the counter again. “I mean, if the… banana is amenable to being peeled…”
And so he waited.
--
The sound Jack heard from the TARDIS could only be considered cacophonous laughter, and he joined in. “Doc totally gets it, come on Rose, this is bordering on embarrassing if you don’t… come on.”
After a moment, the screen flashed to another room in the TARDIS; Jack recognised it at once for what it was: a shared bedroom. “Inevitable isn’t it?” he asked, and an electronic sound resembling agreement echoed. “Bet you’ve had that ready for ages.” Another sound of agreement. “Maybe tonight it’ll finally be used.”
And so they waited.
--
Rose looked at him, refusing to let her face flush as pink as her lip gloss. “Amenable… to… being peeled.” She repeated the phrase, unable to do more than parrot as things clicked into place. Awful analogy Rose, but… maybe it’s working? “It’s not like a banana can peel itself, it’s… it’s out there until someone comes along and with the right touch…”
“Or right words,” the Doctor allowed, and Rose swallowed. Hard.
“But…”
“Yes?” His voice held steady, somehow; the quirk of the corner of his eye, and surely it was a trick of the overhead lighting that made him look ever-so-slightly vulnerable. Rose had to be imagining it.
“But y’unpeeled yourself,” she said. A loud, indistinct sound rattled the walls and Rose looked bewildered for a moment, though the Doctor remained unshaken.
He nodded. “I did.”
“But why?” she asked, not entirely sure if she wanted his answer. She expected terse tones and some grand exposition of ‘stupid apes and stupid analogies’ or something.
“And so I waited.”
--
“That’s a more overdue kiss than a Jan Der Gorbinsan movie,” Jack crowed, laughing as he recalled a famous rom-com director from Earth’s thirtieth century, known for overly saccharine films of Harlequin Romance-level sap. “You’re locking them out of their rooms tonight, aren’t you girl?”
I’ve Waited For This flashed on the screen. Jack could only grin. So had he.