Chapter Text
“She’s never gonna stop kissing me, is she?” He waited until they were out of Jackie’s earshot before he muttered his complaint to Rose.
Rose giggled and went to hold out her hand for him, but his had already slipped into it. “I don’t think so, no. But, and on the positive side, all those aliens that have it in for you now have to go through my mum first.”
“Good luck to them, then.”
Once they’d reached the ground floor and entered the open space, Rose smiled at the gentle warmth of the low sun she was greeted by. It had been quite a nice day, for a change. But then again, Rose always liked November. It was a bit chilly, and the evening had begun to settle its cool blanket of frost over the ground, but the sky remained unburdened and the sun was still yet just able to reach them.
Rose felt like she was slowly coming down from a blissful high. The buzz of seeing family for the first time in almost a year was a welcome change; normally she’d remain indifferent to family gatherings, they were just a part of life that she was never particularly excited about nor dreaded. But whether it was the constant uncertainty of a life guaranteed travelling with the Doctor, or just generally missing them, or even the fact that he’d accompanied her, she’d had a nice weekend. Here, as they walked back to the TARDIS parked no more than a ten-minute walk away, their strides were gentle and slow, both appreciative of the weather and the calm following a busy few days.
“Thanks for this weekend,” Rose chirped. “I know a christening with a load of family isn’t your idea of fun.”
He cleared his throat, a quiet whimper of restraint escaped it. “It’s not… not fun.”
She scoffed. “Can you go back in time and tell the you that was playing My Little Pony dress up with my 3-year-old cousin that it’s 'not not fun'?”
“No, no I don’t think I want to relive that.”
She did. She giggled at the memory of him sitting cross-legged on the floor with her cousin, being instructed to brush the purple pony’s hair and he taking his orders very seriously. The look of helplessness on his face had made her feel for the briefest of moments guilty, but then again, it was hard to feel that guilty when her cousin treated him to a new hairstyle complete with pink ribbons that was particularly dashing on the man.
They reached the corner of the park and Rose instinctively veered left, but felt the pull on her hand as the Doctor began to turn right. She let go of his hand.
“We’re this way?”
“No, it’s this way?”
“We parked on Sullivan road?”
“Yes, which is this way?”
She chuckled, stepping towards him to take back his hand. “Which is this way.”
He looked from left to right, confused. He deliberated it for a moment before he shook his head and let her lead him left. “I could have sworn it was that way.”
“I grew up on this estate Doctor, I know it’s this way. C’mon.”
The estate seemed different to her now somehow. She’d spent years of her life here, playing hide and seek in this park especially. She remembered hiding in the bush over there multiple times from her friends, and she was particularly good at climbing that tree and camouflaging herself well enough to win. Nobody had ever found her in that tree. Not even the time she fell out of it and twisted her ankle. She flinched at the memory, bringing her back to the current day where she spotted out of the corner of her eye that the Doctor smiling.
“What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing!” But his smile only grew. “I was just imagining little Rose running about this park, causing havoc and making a name for herself.”
“Oh, you bet I was. Right over there’s where we was shouted at by Mrs Davies for nicking her bin.”
“What’d you nick a bin for?”
“She used to shout at us for playing ball games so close to her garden. Pissed us off, so we nicked her bin.”
“But why the bin?”
“It’s annoying, in’t it?” Rose shrugged. “Where’d you put all your rubbish? Bin men won’t take them unless they’re in the bin.”
“Punishment fits the crime,” he surmised. “No further questions from me.”
“Actually had my first kiss right over there,” she said, only realising after she’d said it who she’d said it to. She shook her head and told herself it was the Doctor, her best mate, and it was ok. You talk about first kisses with your best friend.
“With the bin in hand or after you’d returned it?”
She slapped his arm, but he only laughed in response. She couldn’t quite work him out these days - well, any day really, but especially these last few weeks. He’d been less chaotic somehow, constantly wearing a smile, be it small or full of glee. He was content. That’s what he was. Even at the mention of a christening, an entire weekend spent with Rose’s family didn’t make him recoil in disgust. He’d rolled his eyes and played his part, but that’s all it was. An act.
“Why did you come?” she asked nervously.
“Where?”
“To this christening.”
“Because you asked me to?”
“Since when has that ever stopped you?”
“You’re welcome,” he muttered, but the grin teasing his lips relieved her tension.
And then it only confused her even more. She could drop it now, or just go for it. If she dared admit it to herself, he was acting like… almost as though…
She sighed. She couldn’t even entertain the thought of him of him actually being interested in a relationship. He had told her before that ‘them’ wasn’t going to happen, and to be fair to him, she did understand why. And she was happy to put that to the side and just enjoy his company. But she was getting bloody confused these days with the way he’d been acting, almost as though he’d changed his mind. The frustration fuelled her courage. “It’s just that, you never used to. Whenever I’d go home to see mum or whatever, you’d hang about in the TARDIS and wait for me to be done.”
He paused, thinking. “Didn’t think you liked me doing that?”
“Well, I’m just saying, I don’t want you to come along to things you don’t want to just because I ask you to.”
Again, another pause. A longer one this time, she could see him watching her in her peripheral vision. She kept her eyes ahead as though she wasn’t aware of how her words were teasing at a deeper conversation.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah? Why?”
“You seem not alright.”
The exchange could go one of two ways. She could, if she wanted to, really pull her act together and tell him nothing’s wrong. She’d just been thinking and was honestly worried he was going along with things he didn’t want to just to make her happy. He’d shrug and say it was alright in the end and he didn’t mind it, but he promises if it's something he genuinely didn’t want to do then he wouldn't do it. It would reassure her, and they’d reach the TARDIS and decide there and then what the plans were for the evening, maybe even make a bit of a plan for tomorrow.
Or she could pursue the thread she’d begun tugging at since she started talking. It was a horrible feeling, one that near drowned her in dread, but the water level had risen almost entirely, taking up her every thought and action and she just needed to be able to breathe.
“It’s just that,” she stopped in another moment of hesitation. One last chance to turn back and keep things agreeable between them. Why was she so prepared to suggest something she knew, without a doubt, would change their relationship for the worse? But, against her better judgement, there was something deeper inside her that seemed to pilot her actions above her own reason. “This all feels... well, not far off a relationship.”
His fingers loosened under hers and she could feel his edging to escape. It took everything she had to keep herself from stopping still in her tracks, dropping his hand out of embarrassment and screaming for her to take the words back.
“What are you saying?” His voice was affectless; she knew she didn't need to answer that question.
“Nothing, I didn’t mean anything by it, it was just-”
He dropped her hand and stopped, and she winced at the loss of his touch. She stopped a few steps ahead of him, too nervous to turn round for fear that the face looking back at her wouldn’t be her Doctor’s. Not in the way he normally looks at her, and now most likely wouldn’t look that way again.
She had to go and ruin it. For whatever reason, he’d opened up a bit since that dreadful night outside the cafe all those months ago. She wasn’t sure at what point her room had become their room, or at what point kissing her hands or her neck or her forehead had become normal for him, but it had and she hadn't wanted it to end.
But that was before. Now, though, she could feel she’d put a stop to all that and was back to square one.
She turned slowly to look at him - she would have to one way or another. She knew her face was completely clouded in remorse, and she needn’t worry that he’d know just how sorry she was for bringing it up. She fully expected to see his all-too-familiar cold exterior, his hardened features of frustration as he stared at the floor to avoid her gaze. But her heart stopped when she found he was looking directly back at her with an expression she was in no way expecting. Not anger, not irritation. It was almost sort of…
She narrowed her gaze to read him better, but as soon as she did his expression broke and she saw his jaw tighten and his eyes roll in frustration that she’d been expecting. She responded automatically to it.
“I’m sorry. Really - “
“- Rose, you know how I feel about this,” he snapped, two strides forward and he was ahead of her already. “And I don’t know why you’re asking. I thought I’d made it clear to you that it’s not going to happen. Me coming with you to your cousin’s christening doesn’t mean anything.”
She wanted to be anywhere other than here. She felt mortified, but she tried her best to get things back. “Look, I know, alright? Friends. That’s all I see us as, and I don’t want anything more than that, ok? Like you said, you made it clear, and so I’m clearing things up on my end, too.”
“Good. Glad we’re on the same page.”
"Right. We are."
His tone pissed her off. She wouldn’t have minded; except he hadn’t been making it clear. And now she was being made to feel like she was wrong for misinterpreting his actions! How was she supposed to know for certain that waking up in the morning to a sleepy kiss or two was entirely platonic? Holding hands as they walked down the street was something he did with everybody he walked down the street with. Their hugs had always been that long, and had always been for no reason whatsoever. She stuffed her hands in her coat pockets and clenched her fists in her refrain from saying something else she knew she'd later regret.
They spent the next few minutes finding the TARDIS in a silence the started off uncomfortable but had quickly been filled on her end by an irritation so loud she felt like screaming. He unlocked the door and she chucked her backpack down on the ground and left the control room without so much as a ‘see you later’ on her way out.
She grabbed a pair of fresh towels from the laundry room and stormed to her own bedroom, closing the bathroom door and locking it behind her - again, why did they not lock the bathroom door if they were only friends? How has he got it into his densely cultured and somehow still incredibly stupid time lord brain that walking in on her when she’s showering to grab whatever useless thing needed grain in such timely manner that he couldn’t wait for her to finish using the shower was just habitual in the realm of friendship? She yanked her clothes off in annoyance, her skin itching to be released of the burning tension inside.
She was furious. She turned the shower on as hot as she knew she could stand, about to tie her hair up out of the way before she realised she just wanted to scrub every single memory of this day from her body, so she reached for her shampoo and stepped into the shower.
The sting of the hot water was such a blissful welcome and she let it out-scream whatever chaos was taking place beneath her skin. After a few moments, she was able to breathe without wanting to shriek in anger, and after only a few moments more, she choked out a sob. Out of embarrassment, or of grief, or just the only way her body knew what to do with her emotions right now, she didn’t know. But she let the tears fall unrestrained, allowing her tears to export her inner pain to be quickly washed away by fresh water. She reached for the shampoo bottle and paid extra attention to her hand’s movements in lathering her hair with care and precision, working her fingers behind her ears and into every inch of her scalp, relaxing and soothing motions to bring her back to a place where her breathing alone could keep her upright. She let herself enjoy the warmth of the shower just a little bit longer than she usually would, mostly until she knew for certain she wouldn’t start crying when the water turned off, and then stepped out dry herself off.
She opened the cabinet and found a lotion she rarely used, one she kept as a treat for if she was having a particularly bad day. This counts, wouldn’t you say? she thought to herself bitterly, before mentally scorning herself for continuing to be negative and passive-aggressive. Those thoughts wouldn’t help her in the long run. She grabbed her dressing gown and perched herself on the edge of the bath, running the lotion into her legs that were in desperate need of a shave. Tomorrow, she told herself. Tonight was a night where she was going to get straight into bed, the Doctor surely had enough sense to not think to join her as usual, and read some magazines, maybe do her nails. Or maybe just sleep and deal with it all tomorrow.
She put the lotion away and opened the door, shrieking in surprise when she spotted the Doctor sitting in the middle of her bed.
“Christ, you scared me.,” she huffed, tugging her dressing gown around her tighter, and she was pissed off to realise that beautiful night she had planned only seconds ago now out of reach. She flicked through her not so extensive vocabulary in search for the nicest and friendliest “fuck off and leave me alone” she could find, before she spotted his face.
That expression again. Now she was able to see it a little clearer, she confirmed it for certain.
Heartbroken.
She drew her brow, her surprise silencing her. She searched for something to say, but his lips parted in search of his own words and she waited. She could feel her heartbeat in her ears, her fingers beginning to prickle and she wanted to sit down, or at least lean against something because the anticipation was unbearable.
He didn’t look at her when he started to speak. “It’s my fault. I..." he paused before finishing. She watched him helplessly, wanting to hear what he had to say but also wanting to comfort whatever pain he was evidently and unexpectedly feeling.
"I got it wrong.”
Her breath caught in her throat and she swallowed it down to start afresh. “Got what wrong?”
His gaze remained still for a moment until his shoulders drew back and he mustered up the strength to look up at her. His eyes were tired, pained, and she realised she didn’t think she’d ever seen him vulnerable. Scared, yes. Nervous, sometimes. But she was taken aback by how attuned she felt to his most honest self in this moment. She must have been looking back at him encouragingly, because he took a moment to reassure himself that he could say what he was about to.
“I thought we were in a relationship.”