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Safeway hadn’t closed down over in this world. In fact, it was doing quite well for itself. Sort of like the Essential Waitrose stuff — it’s good quality, and mostly quite surprisingly cheap for that quality.
None of that mattered, of course, not to the Doctor. He probably didn’t even know what Safeway was.
Judging by the looks of things, he didn’t know what a supermarket was.
They’d just left Norway and were coming back home. Well, her home. She felt a little like she was bringing a guy back to her flat; she had already realised, about two days in, that she had left a failed experimental risotto in the fridge next to a camembert that was almost certainly going to stink the flat out the moment they open the door, but did she also leave any dirty dishes in the sink? Had she remembered to put away her collection of bras (which had all since become devastatingly ugly since the love of her life was in another universe) strung across her chair? They’d spent a little bit of time out there and it was wonderful, but mostly… she frowned as she tried to think of the word. Not awkward, no, it wasn’t awkward as much as it was odd.
She had spent the past few years working tirelessly to get back to that universe; every time she got into bed she would work through equations in her mind, run through every possible scenario and obstacles she might encounter. It was until quite recently, when she’d realised she might very well actually find him, she’d begun playing other kinds of scenarios in her mind, the ones she wouldn’t previously have allowed, the ones that involved him again. She might just be able to return to a life of hugs and childish grins, waking up to him in the mornings, slipping her hand into his whenever they were walking — well, and running — but this time it would be different. They’d have known, they’d have both experienced the heartache that came with those years spent apart, the ones where they never believed they could ever wake up to each other again.
Now, the funny thing is, all that had happened. She had hugged him, and they had grinned at each other childishly. They’d gone to bed with each other, and woken up with each other — well, only over the last few days. Their first week or so together they spent it sleeping separately, mostly because he was still trying to adjust to a human-physiology-trying-to-accommodate-a-time-lord-mind. Read: sleepless nights, physical exhaustion during the day but high mental alertness. Anyway, what she meant was she had it all, all those things she daren’t imagine she ever could.
But, it wasn’t quite right. He wasn’t quite him.
Well, that’s not strictly true. He absolutely was, there was no mistaking that. Whatever doubts she had had were washed away whilst they were in Norway. She’d asked him as many ‘trick’ questions as she could, trying to see if his memories really were right. In fact, she had been surprised by the sorts of things he did remember, like the colour of the dress she wore for her 20th birthday or her favourite song that she always forgot was her favourite song until it came on and she would tell him, apparently mesmerised: “oh, this is my absolute favourite song!”. But whenever she found herself alone, without him, she sort of questioned it all again. Perhaps it was knowing a man in a brown suit, that physical being who physically hugged her and physically grinned at her and physically woke up to her in the mornings was not in fact the one physically doing those things now.
No, that man was elsewhere. This Doctor had assured her that, wherever he was, he was absolutely devastated. But she couldn’t help but think he’d be alright. The universe moves on, and he has the job of ensuring the universe moves on. No time to grieve Rose, think about her, and certainly no time to worry whether Safeway might be a bit too busy given it’s Saturday morning.
She sighed — and there it was.
Because this new Doctor of hers — and she did smile at that, the thought that he was, finally, hers — was now faced with these worries. The clone of a man he undoubtedly thinks got the better end of the stick, running through time and space while he was shivering in the freezer section of the Safeway in Thornton Heath, staring at the garden peas with a frown on his face.
“You alright?” she asked.
“Why are there different brands of peas?”
“What?”
“Peas. The little spuds that come from pods,” he scratched the back of his neck, still confused. Rose was just as confused about his confusion. “Surely they’re just… peas? Why’s there gotta be ‘Bird’s Eye’ peas and ‘Batchelors’ peas? Do ‘Bird’s Eye’ peas come from different pods to ‘Batchelors’ peas? Do ‘Bird’s Eye’ and ‘Batchelors’ share a same pod? Are they in fact two peas in a pod?”
She closed her eyes as she processed the overflow of words coming from his mouth and shrugged when she finally caught up to her inner ramblings. “Just the same as every other thing in this supermarket. Brands competin’ and all that.”
“Yes, but peas? Really? They’re literally the exact same thing. I get, oh I don’t know, different brands of kitchen roll and chocolate and chicken pie and washing detergent, but a pea is a pea.”
“Na, ‘Bird’s Eye’’s are better.”
He finally drew his gaze back to her then, his brow furrowed, and her heart warmed at the utter helplessness on his face, the same kind of face he would give her when Jackie would ask for his opinion on ‘man stuff’. “I’m kidding. I don’t know, honestly. Just chuck whichever’s on offer in.”
He nodded, opening the door —
“Hold on, why do you want peas?”
He paused, hand on the handle. “Do we not want peas?”
She glanced at his trolly and sighed; there were things in there that she just knew he’d looked at, shrugged, and thrown in without thought. Not a chance in hell did he look at ‘Aunt Bessie’s Yorkshire Puddings’ and think they were a good idea.
“Us humans — well, you humans,” she teased, her smile involuntarily widening at the thought, “tend to only pick up things we need. See that list I gave you earlier?”
“Oh, yes, no I lost that.”
“Where did it go?”
“I dunno — I lost it, didn’t I?” he grinned.
She groaned, and then frowned when she considered the bigger picture. She looked up at the aisle number — as if she needed to be told they were with the frozen food — and wondered, “Hold on, why are you all the way down here in the freezer section, anyway?”
He shrugged, “I don’t know, just fancied starting down this end.”
She looked at him, confused again. “That must mean you went all the way to this end of the supermarket purposefully?”
“Yeah. Thought I’d start bottom-up, can't be doing with sifting through piles of apples and radishes just yet.”
“But the freezers are right next to the tills, freezer stuff comes last, don’t it?”
“What?”
“Well, the freezer section’s at the end before you reach the tills so you’re not walking around with frozen stuff defrosting in your trolly while you shop.”
He buried his face in his palms and groaned in exhaustion. “There’s a system to a bloody supermarket?”
“Of course there is! And it’s a clever one, too!”
He shook his head in defeat and looked down at the trolly. “Right well, what do we do with all of this, then?”
The first thing she noticed on the pile of assorted items he’d decided was important in his first trip to the supermarket was a packet of branded frozen ice cubes, so she rolled her eyes and said, “Just, put them all back. We’re gonna be in here a while ‘cos I haven’t been home in a good few months.”
He nodded, somehow looking compliant when she fully expected a begrudged moan.
It turns out the dynamic shift in their relationship, where she knew everything and he didn’t, was quite entertaining. But goodness she had never spent so long in a bloody supermarket. There was absolutely no way this man was the same as the other he so claimed to be, because that man was a nine-hundred-year-old Time Lord from Gallifrey, who had travelled god only knows how many dimensions and visited god only knows how many time periods and had witnessed god only knows how many planets and civilisations go about their daily magnificent lives. That man, the one who used to groan and sometimes even flat-out refuse whenever Jackie would ask him to nip down to the local Londis to get a pint of semi-skimmed milk (‘the green one!’ she’d snapped the time he dared to bring back red), was absolutely not the man who was now staring at a dish sponge with a handle with such wonderment.
“Rose, look at this!”
She nodded, “I know, I’ve seen one before.”
“No but look,” he insisted, holding it out before her. She, once more, nodded, so he looked back at it and decided to explain further. “You put the washing up liquid in this little handle and the sponge thingie soaks it all up like a little dispenser! I wouldn’t have to put up with you chucking mountains of washing up liquid on the sponge to wash up one bloody teacup!”
She took it from him, having used one countless times at her mum and dad’s, and nodded. “Yes, or, since half the stuff I had to wash up was your stuff, you could just… wash up your own stuff and stop moaning.”
He frowned when she handed him back the sponge and he looked at it glumly.
“He's got one life, one chance to be a human, and he’s spending it washing dishes,” he grumbled, chucking the sponge in the trolly.
She knew he’d meant it as a joke, but it still hurt. She wanted to ask him something she’d been a bit too nervous to before, but now, as she watched him eyeing up the different Fairy Liquid soap bottles and giving each a quick sniff before pulling a face of disgust, she worried that he really was disappointed in this life. She’d felt it, that sort of anticlimatic nothingness that now existed between them, where they’d spent so long without each other and only wanting the other that, now they had each other, what else was there? Weekly shopping trips to Safeway, setting morning alarms and opening a joint account?
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, slipping her hand into his.
He looked at her and blinked. “That’s alright, we’ll just make sure you put in a couple of quid extra for the surplus of washing up liquid every month.”
She nudged his arm with hers, but didn’t release her hold. She tilted her head to rest it against his arm, closing her eyes to the feel of a suit somehow familiar to her, a feeling of dreadful guilt she hadn’t been able to shake stirring more forcefully. “No, I mean I’m sorry for this. This boring shopping stuff and a lifetime of washing up and whatever.”
He squeezed her hand and nudged her from his arm, only to twist her to face him and pull her into his chest for a hug. “Don’t be daft, I’ve always wanted a human life and now I’ve got one. That includes washing up and whatever else I’m sure I’ll be moaning about.”
She tightly wrapped her arms around him and sighed deeply, listening intently to that solo heartbeat. It had a slightly different rhythm to a human’s; the only way she could describe it was that it was, quite literally, half his old heartbeat rhythm; slightly more even in its pulse to hers. That, and, she was tickled to find out a few weeks ago, it was on his right.
“C’mere, I wanna show you something,” he tugged on her hand and she followed reluctantly; she could feel that awful sense of guilt on her shoulders weighing her steps down. They stopped only a metre or so down the aisle, and he gestured to the section opposite them. “See all this, here? This is Cardiff in 1869.”
“That box of dishwasher tablets?”
“Yep,” he grinned, spinning her around. “And all that over there, that section of rinse aid, that’s New New York.”
She stood in the middle of the aisle, looking back at him hoping there might be a further explanation. He smiled gently and she blinked; she wasn’t used to this smile yet. Well, she was — he most certainly used to look at her like he absolutely adored her, her every movement and thought and intricate link to his time and space. But this smile from this Doctor was one that she now knew for certain was of absolute assured love, and somehow it changed as a result.
“Nine-hundred years of travelling — I was bored beyond belief of the same old universe I knew inside out. And then you came along, and suddenly watching you get mesmerised by plain old snow in 1869 made me realise that, actually, it wasn’t boring. It was a life that could be rediscovered just by watching you discover it.”
“Don’t try and tell me discovering Thornton Heath’s Safeway is the same for you as discovering time travel exists was for me.”
He chuckled, edging closer to her and she watched him suspiciously when his smile grew. “You? You’re used to all this stuff. But me? I’ve never been to a supermarket before with the intention of buying a week’s worth of… living. Just going out there, doing the dishes with a sponge with a handle, tasting different brands of peas and making crisp sarnies for the evenings we’re just too tired to cook.”
She tried to stifle a ridiculous grin at his genuine excitement, but he caught it — just as he always does — and so kept going with every intention of making her smile.
“And, the best bit is after all that, once the week’s finished, I get to do it again. What happens if I don’t get on with the sponge? Maybe neither ‘Bird’s Eye’ peas nor ‘Batchelors’ peas tickle my fancy and we have to try out Safeway’s own? What if we’re getting back late every single night and we’re a bit sick of crisp sarnies and want to try something else? And then I just think of the thought of coming with to you, evenings at home sticking on the telly and watching whatever rubbish is on these days with a bowl of popcorn we nipped down to the Tesco Express in our pyjamas to get...” he sighed with so much want as he reached her that her eyes closed in her own excitement for years yet to come. With that, she felt his lips brush her forehead, and then her cheek, and then her nose, and then her lips. And it felt right when they kissed now, just as the way her hand felt right in his and their laughter had that wonderful harmony that was their own song and nobody else's.
“‘scuse me,” a male voice came from behind them, and Rose was sadly reminded they were standing in the middle of the washing up and detergents aisle of a supermarket. She went to pull away, but the Doctor held her still, only breaking their embrace by tilting his head to the side.
“Sorry, sir, this is very important — won’t be a mo, promise.”
Rose giggled when he brought his lips back to hers, even more so when she heard the man behind them chuckle and turn his trolly around. When she pulled away, and after she’d giggled at his hopeless disappointment when she did, she whispered, “You promise you’ll still find it exciting when the washing machine breaks?”
“Affirmative.”
“And filtering out the bits in the orange juice because you accidentally bought the one ‘with pulp’ will always be one of your favourite adventures?”
He did groan a little at the idea and she smirked, bumping the tips of their noses together in the hopes of enticing another kiss.
“Anything with you is an adventure I absolutely want to have,” he whispered, “and I can’t wait.”