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Title: The Unusual Usual (Or How the Doctor and Rose Are Not Attacked By a Bear) 1/1
Disclaimer: I don’t own Doctor Who.
Pairing: Tenth Doctor II/Rose Tyler
Summary: Rose reckons she should probably explain about the washing machine to the Doctor. The Doctor adjusts to being a half-Time Lord human hybrid stuck on the slow path without the TARDIS. Rose helps. Mostly fluffy.
Spoilers: 4x13 Journey’s End
Rating: PG
Word Count: 3,690
Thanks to 
shinyopals for the beta and the important lessons in British camping habits. And also to mrv3000 whose title prowess has yet to disappoint me. *smooch*
Rose reckons she should probably explain about the washing machine to the Doctor.
He’s taken to collecting the neighbourhood’s stray animals in the back garden. It’s cats, mostly (she always knew he was lying about not liking them), but he’s also got a collection of pigeons and mice. She thinks it’s because he feels a bit like a stray taken in by the Tyler family, but contemplating the Doctor’s mental state for too long gives her a headache, so she tries to look at it as “one of those mad Doctor-things” and leave it at that.
Unfortunately, he’s still wearing the same suit he had on when his double left them both on Bad Wolf Bay. She’s beginning to suspect that the TARDIS looked after all his clothing needs because he barely seems to notice the way his one suit is now splattered with dirt and animal hair.
“Doctor.”
He doesn’t look up from feeding the cats, down on his hands and knees. Rose tries not to think about what else might be on that suit.
“Hmm?”
“Pete’s found some clothes he thinks will fit you. And then we could… I dunno, go shopping later.”
There’s a pause. She can tell he’s considering her words.
The cats begin chomping loudly on their food.
“Shopping?”
“For clothes.” Patience, she reminds herself. He’s a 903-year-old Time Lord who’s just been doomed to a life of domesticity. It’s bound to be a shock.
He sniffs and straightens. “I like this suit.”
She decides not to comment. Blue really isn’t his colour. “And anyway, mum’s not letting you back in the house until you change and take a shower.”
One of the pigeons lands on his shoulder, nuzzling his chin with its beak. The Doctor barely seems to notice. Rose stares.
“Ooh, we could sleep outdoors,” he says. He looks wistful. “Under the stars. You and me. How does that sound?”
He looks so hopeful and lost that it breaks her heart. She holds out a hand. After a moment, he grasps it. “Come inside,” she says. She widens her eyes, giving him a stare she knows he can’t turn down.
He sighs and gives a despondent nod. She turns her gaze on the pigeon still sitting on his shoulder. They stare at each other. Rose narrows her eyes. Finally, the pigeon gives a squawk of annoyance and then flies off.
“Why did you do that for?” the Doctor says, looking even sulkier than before.
“Listen,” Rose says, “I like having you around, but it’s me or the pigeon, yeah?” She’s surprised at how possessive she sounds. Getting jealous of the Doctor’s stray pets is verging on slightly mad.
The Doctor perks up at her tone of voice. “You, obviously,” he says. He smoothes his thumb over her knuckles. He drops his voice. “Always you.”
Something inside her goes all warm and gooey. They share a smile and she can’t believe they’re having a moment in her mum’s garden, surrounded by stray cats and pigeons, and with the Doctor smelling… well, not his best.
He allows her to pull him back into the house and show him how to work the washing machine. He even lets her buy him new clothes—all suits, of course, but the credit card bill is worth the price of getting him into something not splattered in grime.
********
Things get tenser when the Doctor blows up the telly. Rose intervenes in the nick of time, just as Jackie looks like she’s set to lop his head off with the fireplace poker.
“There was a slight explosion,” the Doctor says, dodging Jackie as she swings the poker. “Just… a small one.”
“Oh, I’ll SHOW you an explosion…”
The Doctor ducks again.
Rose glances at the blackened space that used to be the telly. She folds her arms across her chest and raises her eyebrows.
“I might have also lost the… um… the microwave,” says the Doctor, scurrying behind Rose and peeking out at Jackie from over her shoulder.
Jackie holds up the poker.
“Careful,” Rose says, backing away, the Doctor with her. “Mum, there’s a four-year-old in the house, remember?”
“Rose, sweetheart,” Jackie begins in a rising voice, “Tony won’t have a house if that man destroys it!”
“Now let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” says the Doctor, from over Rose’s shoulder. “The probability of losing the entire house was practically nil.”
Rose twists her head around to look at him. “Doctor, what were you doing?”
He blinks at her as if his antics with the microwave and telly require no explanation. Finally, he swallows nervously and says, “I was trying to build a spaceship.”
“I’m sorry?”
His head bobs up and down. “Yup. Not a time machine, mind you, I’d need a bit more technology than what was available here, but a rudimentary spaceship is practically child’s play for me. Mind you, it produced a bigger electrical current than I was expecting. Maybe I could try the toaster next time? Would that do it, do you think?”
Rose blinks at him, mind still trying to process that the Doctor could build a spaceship from the spare parts lying around the house. It’s so… him. In spite of the big hole now in the middle of her mother’s lounge, Rose feels herself grinning. The Doctor catches her eye and grins back at her.
“Oh, you want the toaster next, do you?” Jackie screeches. She drops the fireplace poker and grabs a broom, the end of which is long enough to smack the Doctor over Rose’s head.
“Ow! Ow! Rose!”
“Stop it, both of you,” Rose snaps. “Mum, you can’t kill him, yeah? And Doctor, you can’t just go around blowing holes in the house.”
“That’s right, he’s not. ‘Cause he’s not gonna be living here.”
“Mum—”
“I know what he means to you, sweetheart,” says Jackie, slowly lowering the broom. “But he doesn’t work, doesn’t contribute, and now he’s blowing holes in my bleeding lounge. I want him OUT.”
“I’ll pay for any damages,” the Doctor says, beginning to sound sheepish.
“You will, will you?” says Jackie. “And with what money?”
The Doctor abruptly snaps his mouth shut. He thinks. “I’ll ask Pete,” he finally says.
“Fat lot of good that will do me,” mutters Jackie.
She looks like she might go for the broom again, so Rose jumps in. “We’ll leave, Mum. You’re right. It’s about time I got a place of my own, isn’t it?”
“I don’t mind you, Rose,” continues Jackie. “Couldn’t you drop him off somewhere? Maybe they’ll take him back on that planet of his—”
Rose senses the Doctor flinch from behind her. “Mum,” she says, shaking her head warningly.
Jackie sighs. “Whatever you think, sweetheart. Your father will chip in with the rent on a flat.”
“Right,” Rose says. “Thanks.” She turns to the Doctor. “It’s not quite a mortgage, but are you ready to sign a lease?”
He contemplates this for a few seconds. “Will we have a toaster?”
Rose has a sudden, vivid image of a coming home to find her new apartment building burnt to the ground and the Doctor standing there scratching his ear in embarrassment.
“We’ll see,” she settles on.
*******
“I should find a job.”
Rose jumps. The Doctor’s been uncharacteristically silent the last few hours. She glances at him—he’s standing in their new and unfurnished living room, his hands shoved into his pockets, and a contemplative look on his face. In the fading evening light, she can just make out the scratches dotting his chin—a present from an angry cat and pigeon scuffle. The scratches seem to have reminded the Doctor just why he hates cats so much. He’s given up on trying to adopt the neighbourhood’s strays, for which Rose is grateful.
“I’m sorry?”
He stares out the window and doesn’t look at her. There’s something defeated about his stare.
“A job, Rose,” he says. “That’s the proper thing to do, isn’t it? I can’t keep living off you for the rest of my life.”
“I don’t mind. Besides, it’s not like I paid rent on the TARDIS, is it?”
“That was different. Money didn’t matter then.” He frowns, one of his hands coming up to touch the window. “Now it’s… everything.”
Rose nods. “You could work for Torchwood.”
She sees him stiffen. “No.”
“Oh, come on,” Rose says, “it’s not that bad. It’s changed, Doctor. Do you really think I’d work for someplace that I didn’t think did real good?”
“I’m not working for Torchwood,” he says. “Rose, it’s a paramilitary group. They’re all the same.”
“So it’s not good enough for you, but it is for me?”
“I never said that.” He looks frustrated. “After everything they’ve done….”
“They were the ones that helped me build that cannon. Without it, well… you wouldn’t even be here, would you?”
“Suppose not,” the Doctor admits, but his voice is low and tightly controlled. She takes a few steps towards him, but he doesn’t look at her.
She wipes her sweaty palms on her jeans and finds her voice again. “We could work together,” she tries. “That’d be nice, woudn’t it? Like old times.”
“I’m not working for Torchwood,” he repeats again, still not looking at her.
“Right, fine,” Rose says. She tries not to feel rejected. “That’s fine.”
He sighs deeply. He turns around in a wide circle, eyes lingering on the walls, the carpet lining the floor, before stalling on the kitchen implements. Rose can practically see him taking it in—doors and carpets and living in a house.
She has to get him out of here.
“Of course I want to work with you,” he finally says. He stops his sweep of the room and sends her a disarming grin. She can almost believe he’s fine. Almost. “Just… not under Torchwood’s rule.”
“You just want to get out of doing paperwork,” she says, trying to sound teasing.
He shrugs and goes back to the window, leaving smudge marks on the glass as he looks outside. She goes over to stand next to him, her arms folded across her chest. She doesn’t touch him, but she’s there if he needs her.
“I’ve got an idea,” she says.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Rose says. She nudges him in the side. “Ever put up a tent before?”
*******
She takes him camping. Sleep out under the stars, he said. Well, if that’s what he wants, she reckons she can give it to him.
Rose has never been camping before, but the Doctor takes to it like a young teen who has been introduced to rock music for the first time. He proudly sets up their tent, tries to go fishing and feels too guilty to actually catch anything (they eat canned vegetables instead), and then lights a fire with the help from his new semi-functional sonic screwdriver.
It doesn’t take them long to fall into a routine. They plot out their course in the morning, decide where they’re headed and how long they’ll stay for. They end each night in front of the campfire roasting marshmallows and catching up on their lost years.
The Doctor tells her about Martha and Donna and meeting Shakespeare and Agatha Christie. In return, she recounts her last five years to him. She never moved out of the Tyler mansion because she couldn’t stand the idea of being settled into her new life—it had to be temporary, she always told herself, and what was the point of investing in a place of her own if she never intended to stay there? She started working on the dimensional cannon the day after she arrived home after Bad Wolf Bay. It was that or never get out of bed, and she wasn’t prepared to give in.
He smiles at her, but it’s a sad smile, and she can see how sorry he is that she went through this for him. Sometimes she suspects he thinks she’d be better off if she’d never fallen in love with him. Times like that, she doesn’t know whether to kick him in the shins or hug him and never let go.
They only sleep in the tent when the weather’s bad. Usually the Doctor prefers being out in the open, staring up at the vast expanse of space overhead. Rose sometimes feels like they could lose themselves to the unending openness of stars and forests stretching out around them. She curls up against him when it’s cold and he holds her close, lying awake and staring up into space long after she drops off into sleep.
They meet Sylvia and Richard during their second week. They’re an elderly couple in their early 80s, but can still fish and build fires with the best of them. After 14 days of canned food, Rose is grateful for the change.
“Been doing this every summer for the last 30 years,” Sylvia explains. “Ever since the kids left home. Helped take our minds off it, at first.”
“Turns out,” continues Richard. “We just really liked it. There’s nothing like it, sleeping under the stars.”
“There really, really isn’t,” the Doctor says, “Sylvia, could I trouble you for more fish?”
“Of course not, dear,” says Sylvia, who has taken a special liking to the Doctor. They smile at each other like they’re sharing a special secret. Instead of jealousy, Rose finds herself relieved that even as a half-human, the Doctor can still charm the pants off anyone.
“You’ll want to be careful tonight,” says Richard, face looking ominous in the orange shadows of the fire. “The owner of this campsite says there have been bear sightings.”
The Doctor snorts. “Bears in Britain? Someone’s been watching too much telly.”
Rose elbows him in the side and the Doctor “oofs.” She drops her voice to a hiss only he can hear. “Parallel world.”
“I mean,” says the Doctor loudly. “Best to be prepared. Eh, Rose Tyler? We’ve got plenty of… um, torches.”
Sylvia and Richard look at him like they’re quite certain he’ll get eaten. Rose suddenly feels protective. She scoots closer to the Doctor, looping her arm through his and staring threateningly out into the darkened woods.
“It’s the food they want,” Sylvia says. “We’ve been through our fair share of bear attacks haven’t we, darling?”
Richard nods and slips an arm around his wife’s shoulders. “She beat one off with a frying pan once.”
The Doctor smiles. “I can believe that.”
“I’ll bet the two of you can handle anything together,” Rose says.
The Doctor turns his smile on her and he reaches to grasp her hand, squeezing her fingers.
In the middle of the night, they hear Sylvia and Richard cooing and giggling at each other from their tent. Rose can feel the Doctor smiling into her hair, his arms instinctively tightening around her.
“Listen to them,” he says, sounding awed. “They’re… old, Rose. Well, I say old. Old for humans, anyway. Did you know that Sontarans live almost 145 years?”
“You might not want to let them hear you talking like that.”
The Doctor drops his voice. “And look at them! They’re still out there, making bonfires and catching fish. Doesn’t even slow them down.”
“And they’re better at it than you.” She pokes him in the side and he fidgets, resting his chin on the top of her head.
“Could be us in a few decades.”
“Scary, isn’t it?” Rose says.
He’s quiet and then says, “It’s not, actually. It’s… comforting.” He pauses. “Rose Tyler, will you get old and wrinkly with me?”
“I’d love to,” Rose says.
He grins and Rose begins to drift off, soothed by the warmth from his body and the crackling of the campfire next to them.
“You’re going to stay up, aren’t you?” she says, yawning around the words. “‘Cause of the bears.”
It’s a moment before he answers. “Yep.”
“That’s good,” Rose says. She yawns again. “I was gonna protect you, but I don’t think I’d do much good. ‘M glad you’re here, though.”
He kisses her forehead. “Me, too. I love you,” he whispers and her heart jumps at the way his voice sounds hoarse, like he can’t believe that she’s really with him.
It’s been a long few years, she reminds herself. For both of them. She can sense that he’s still keeping things from her—she can see his internal struggle in the way he talks about Donna and Martha, sticking to the stories that always end happily. And even if the camping and the bonfires and the sleeping out under the stars is something she never, ever would have predicted with the Doctor, he’s still so him, she can almost forget that there’s this other version of him still out there, a version that left her behind on a beach in Norway after she spent years fighting her way back to him.
She snuggles into him and tells herself that this Doctor would do anything for her. He’ll live in the flat with the walls and the carpets and work for her Torchwood and pay bills if that’s what she wants. (There’s the small voice in her head that whispers that it’s TARDIS travel that she truly wants, but he took that away from her and it’s not fair to blame this him for it. As much as she misses it, he misses it even more.)
In the morning, Sylvia shows them pictures of her cats and the Doctor “oohs” appreciatively even as he scratches absently at his chin, wincing as he remembers his last experience with cats. Richard teaches Rose how to fish and build a fire from scratch—both of which she intends to make good use of during the rest of her trip with the Doctor.
She’s sad to see them go, but she’s glad she has the Doctor back to herself again. He seems to be thinking the same thing because he keeps muttering things like “only 60 years left” and stops to give her quick kisses every few paces. Rose figures that a mental countdown to their death should be morbid, but is somehow endearing when it’s the Doctor. Besides, she doesn’t mind the snogging.
*******
Their London apartment is filled with musty and stale air when they return, the price of being shut up and abandoned for the summer months. While they were gone, Rose had placed a few calls, and the apartment has been furnished and painted in their absence. It scarcely looks like the empty, forlorn place they left behind.
“I had the carpets removed,” Rose says as the Doctor drops their things in the bedroom. He’s wearing a wide-brimmed hat he picked up before their trip. In spite of the hat, his face is dotted with freckles, and his nose is red and peeling. Rose thinks it’s adorable, but the Doctor mutters and picks at his peeling skin, trying to convince her that Time Lords never had to worry about such petty problems like sunburn.
“Rose,” he says, and he sounds grateful and pained all at once. “You didn’t have to. It’s okay. Really.”
She shrugs because he wouldn’t be her Doctor if domesticity didn’t terrify him a bit. “That’s not all, though,” she says. She can’t keep the giddy smile off her face and she shows him to the guest bedroom. “Look.”
She opens the door, the Doctor peering over her shoulder. The hat momentarily flops over his eyes and he removes it with a huff, tossing it behind him. He looks into the room and stills. Inside, the walls are lined with computers, tracking devices, and cameras.
“What…?” he says.
“It’s our office,” Rose says. “Like it?”
“Like it?” the Doctor says, pushing by her. He whips out his glasses and bends down to study the computers. “Rose, this technology…”
“I know, mirrors what you can find in the TARDIS, should be impossible, blah, blah, blah,” Rose says. “You know how I was able to study the TARDIS in Donna’s parallel world?”
The Doctor’s mouth drops open. “How did you…?”
“Well, I remember most of it,” Rose says. “Not as much as you do obviously, but I reckoned it’s a start. Pete still had most of my layouts.” Rose shrugs. “I had it installed while we were camping. There’s still plenty to do. I figured you’d want to make some enhancements.”
The Doctor takes off his glasses and stares at her, his mouth hanging open. She tries not to giggle at the dumbfounded look on his face.
“Listen,” Rose says, “I talked to Torchwood and convinced them to let us go freelance. They’ll give us enough money to live off, and we’ll handle the truly dangerous things, the stuff they don’t have the knowledge for. It means we’ll have to do some paperwork, but it’ll be on our own terms, in our own space.” She pauses, beginning to feel nervous for the first time. She shifts uncomfortably. “What do you think?”
The Doctor continues staring at her. He still looks speechless. Finally, he shuts his mouth, swallows hard and then takes a few steps towards her. “I think…” he begins.
“Yeah?” Rose says, beginning to smile because he has that look in his eyes, the one he’s always had and has only just recently started acting on.
“I think you’re brilliant,” the Doctor says, reaching her. He swoops down and gathers her up in his arms. Rose lets out a high-pitched giggle and manages to get her arms around his neck.
“Brilliant?”
“The brilliantest,” he says. “How’s that bedroom furniture?”
“It’s… good, yeah,” Rose says. She nuzzles his neck. “Very… um, firm.”
He sets her down. “We can start our new job as freelance defenders of the Earth tomorrow, can’t we?”
Rose kisses his chin and then winks at him. “Oh, yes,” she says. Then she takes off, running full-speed through the living room. She turns to call over her shoulder, “Race you!’
She hears him curse and then the sounds of pounding feet behind her. She smiles to herself. Stuck with her, it isn’t so bad.