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They're in the supermarket when it happens for the first time.
Rose is standing in front of the tinned tomatoes, her lip caught between her teeth as she weighs – figuratively and literally – two cans, trying to determine which brand has the best price. She's beautiful, obviously, even with her hair scraped back and wearing a dodgy sweatshirt. It's too big and has fallen off her left shoulder, exposing the white strip of her undershirt and a perfect portion of soft skin. His fingers itch to adjust the collar and maybe linger on the curves the material is covering, and all of a sudden he has completely forgotten what he wanted to put in the trolley next.
He doesn't panic – at least, not at first. Even when... when he was the old Doctor, he had moments of absent mindedness, sometimes for the same reasons, too: Rose and her tight jeans leaning over the TARDIS control always made his superior Time Lord brain a bit foggy. He furrows his brows and clicks his fingers, trying to go back over the mental shopping list he'd created not even an hour ago. They needed carrots and celery and some lettuce for his sandwiches; he'd put in bananas and she'd jokingly tried to sneak in some pears, but he'd given her a withering look and she'd grinned and removed them. They were in the canned vegetable section, but Rose was dealing with the whole tomato situation, so that couldn't have been it. He genuinely can't remember, and he feels the first tendril of fear creep into his chest; it still felt a bit empty, with only one heart beating away.
'Doctor?' Rose asks, looking over at him, her face crinkled into concern. 'All right, there?'
'Yeah, 'course I am,' he says, running a hand through his hair in a way he knows makes him seem completely not all right, but part of him thinks tugging at the strands should kick his memory back into action. It doesn't. He forces air into his lungs, and that staves off the darkening at the edges of his vision; it would be completely stupid to have a panic attack in the middle of Tesko over a forgotten shopping list. 'You ready to go?'
She frowns at him anyway and puts a few tins into the trolley. 'I thought you said we needed kidney beans,' Rose says, tilting her head to indicate that there was a whole stretch of canned beans waiting for him.
His eyes widen as her words jog his memory. Kidney beans. Of course. Of course. He was going to make her chili. Or, at least, a variation of chili. There's a mountain of debate on the topic over what exactly could be included in a chili, particularly about the addition of beans to the mix, with some very strong opinions against, as he'd discovered in one of his trips to America...
He shakes his head and grabs some cans of beans. He can feel Rose's eyes on the back of his neck, worried and suspicious, as he pushes the trolley into the next aisle.
---
He's fine. Absolutely fine. Until Rose finds out.
It was silly, really, that he'd managed to convince himself that if he ignored this... this failing, it would just cure itself, or go away. He barely flinches when he has to scroll through his phone contacts to get the number for their landlord, rather than just punching it in automatically. No one is there when he spends four minutes trying to locate his pen when it's stuck behind his ear the whole time, and so he just brushes it off. He also forgets Pete Tyler dropped into his office mid-week to invite them for Sunday lunch.
Until Rose gets a teary call from her mother on Sunday evening, that is.
'Would you like to explain,' Rose asks him in very clipped tones, 'why my mum just rang, sobbing about how I don't love her any more?'
He gives her a confused look. 'Well, that's ridiculous. Anyone with eyes could see how much you love your mother.'
'Yeah, but I'm the one who apparently missed a family lunch,' she says, tossing her mobile down on the couch so she can put her hands on her hips. 'All because my boyfriend couldn't be arsed telling me that we'd been invited.'
The Doctor freezes. He is suddenly personally acquainted with the flight-or-fight response he'd read so much about. It feels a lot like adrenaline and the urge to go lock himself in the bathroom.
'Look,' Rose sighs and softens her body language. 'I know you don't like my mum. And I know spending time with the Tylers can't be nearly as interesting as whatever project you're doing at Torchwood, but next time let me know, yeah? That way I can go, and you can go back to fiddling with your screwdriver.'
He's mildly irritated at her dismissal of his work, but it's mostly an attempt to cover the yawning great fear that seems to have eaten into his stomach and lower intestine. The Doctor licks his dry lips and croaks out: 'I forgot.'
Rose blinks at him. 'You what?'
'I forgot.' He sinks into the couch, wriggling away from the phone he sat on. 'Pete came down on Wednesday and told me about lunch and I forgot. I completely forgot.'
She sits down next to him, her hands grasping at his. 'But you don't forget anything. You just sort of shuffle it away and remember it when you need to save the world or something.'
The Doctor shakes his head. 'No, he does that.' They don't need to clarify just who exactly deserves italics. 'I'm human, Rose. I can't keep everything in my head anymore.'
When she quietly asks, 'What about your long term memories?', he's not sure whether to be glad she was the one who brought it up, or to berate himself as a coward for not wanting to think about it earlier.
---
They visit the Torchwood medical facilities later that evening. Rose's hair is a mess from having his hands tangled in it, and he's lost some buttons on his shirt, torn off during their hasty, worried love making. He has never felt closer to her than he does sitting next to her in a hallway, waiting for the results of his CT scan. His left knee presses against her right one, a comforting pressure that supplements the way they hold hands. There are two cups of lukewarm tea sitting forgotten on the lino at their feet. He smooths down her hair and drops a kiss on her forehead. She plays with the loose cotton thread that used to hold a button and quietly threatens to sew it back on.
They both breathe easier, fuller, when it turns out he's fine. He's human, and will only now create human memories with loss of information and fuzzy edges, tinted with nostalgia and irrational thought. He'll still retain his long term memories of being a Time Lord with perfect, agonising clarity. He'll be able to remember just how hard Rose squeezed the first time they held hands, but he might very well forget if he's meant to be meeting her at the pub tomorrow night.
It's humbling and deflating and he feels very small.
---
Pete shows him how to use the calender in his phone. The Doctor already knew - he'd played with all the functions when Rose had tossed it his way their first day together - but for some reason Jackie and Rose are practically beaming at them from across the room. He's confused for a moment until he realises this is a bonding experience, in their opinion, so he squares his shoulders and nods and asks pertinent questions to his not-quite-father-in-law.
A week later he gives Pete a call to thank him sincerely because he discovers the man has put in all the Tyler birthdays and anniversaries and a man like that is an ally.
---
It gets easier and it gets worse. He doesn't feel so helpless when there are strategies, and this is something he knew as a Time Lord. He just never expected it would apply to the very mundane business of being a human, with their petty meetings and reminders to pick up milk. The first time he sits down to write out a shopping list he nearly bolts, but it's better to clutch a piece of lined paper in his hand than have an existential crisis under flickering fluorescent lights. Later, he'll find a wad of scrunched up lists under the seat of their car and be floored by the tangible proof of his life: he isn't weaving through time and space, he is slowly wading through it, leaving evidence of his time here in smeared ink on paper and long strips of receipts.
Rose laughs and tells him no one has ever been so romantic about the bloody shopping. He loves her all over again for reminding him that he is, in many ways, completely alien.
It gets worse because he's suddenly aware of everything that he might forget. He can cope with missing pens and cups of tea he's let go cold. He does not want to lose a really great train of thought that might lead to a breakthrough for his project, so he starts writing down very thorough notes. This drives his assistant mad because with every sentence the Doctor writes, it's more classified information being committed to paper and more work for the poor man to do in grading and sorting and archiving it.
It gets worse, because he's suddenly aware of the fact there are things in his life that are more precious to him than anything, more important than breathing, and he doesn't care if it makes him look mental, he's going to write it down anyway.
Rose complains that it always takes so long to sort his washing because his pockets are full of Post-It notes. He tells her to read them, and is not surprised when she hugs him tight enough to make it hard to breathe. 'You are so stupid,' she says, voice thick with tears. 'You'll never forget that, I promise.'
He hugs her back and she loosens her hold on him. 'I've forgotten what you wore last Monday, Rose. I can't remember the exact shade of the lipstick you had on when we went to the fundraiser dinner. I don't know what I'll forget next, and I don't ever want to forget that I love you.'
Rose looks like she wants to protest, but instead she kisses him.
---
'I've got you a present,' Rose announces, some weeks later.
He looks up from his book and sees her standing in front of him, her hands behind her back. She has an amazing smile on her face, all secretive and smug, and he wants nothing more than to kiss her until she's smiling for an entirely different reason. Instead, he puts down the novel and raises an eyebrow in question. 'A present? Have I been a very good boy?'
'Oh yes,' Rose breathes, and he returns her smirk.
She walks towards him and holds out a medium sized box – it's only wrapped in brown paper, but this is the first present he's received since coming to the alternate universe and he thinks it might be the loveliest thing in the world, even without opening it. 'What is it?' He asks, taking it from her. 'A second Rose Tyler?'
He loves her for laughing at his terrible joke. 'Flatterer,' she accuses. 'M'not that small.'
'You are delightfully flexible, though,' he mutters under his breath, and gets a weak smack on his shoulder for his trouble. 'All right, all right, I'll open it.'
He slides his thumb under the Sellotape holding the paper together; there's possibly a third more tape on the box than required, and some of it has caught strands of Rose's hair. The Doctor thinks that in itself is so wonderful, he nearly forgets that there's a present underneath it all. When the paper falls away he finds himself in possession of a very fancy, very expensive digital camera.
It's a bit of a puzzle.
'A camera?' He asks, wincing when he hears his tone. It should have been more excited, happier. It just comes out as perplexed.
Thankfully Rose seems to have expected him to not get it because her grin widens and then she's sitting next to him, unpacking the camera from its box. 'You're human now, yeah? And us humans have this ingenious way of remembering stuff. We call 'em photos.'
'I know what a photo is,' he tells her, but there's a warmth that seems to have filled that hole in his gut, the one worry had created, and he knows he probably has a stupid smile on his face. Trust his Rose to just drop a solution in his lap, poorly wrapped and everything.
She hands him the camera – heavy, solidly made – freed from its nest of polystyrene and cardboard. 'There you go. Now you don't have to worry about remembering what I wore.'
---
He takes photographs of everything. He doesn't bother with Torchwood because he knows they're very keen on things being private – and besides, they have CCTV everywhere – but everything else is open to his camera's lens. He takes photos of the bus he takes to work, the woman who does his coffee; takes photos of people walking their dogs or pushing prams. Every tree along their street is captured in pixels and uploaded on to their computer. Going out with friends is better, now that he can preserve the moment, can have a tiny sliver of time printed and framed. It feels less transient. Less like time is slipping through his fingers with nothing to show for it.
Jackie howls at him for catching her in her robe and slippers. Pete gives him tired smiles. The Doctor even lets Tony have a whirl of the camera, but his photos are mostly blurry and full of thumbs.
And Rose! Oh, Rose is wonderful. Indulgent. She smiles for him, bright and shining, as if she's never smiled at him before. He is allowed to catalogue every inch of her skin, hovering over her body so he can take the perfect photograph of her collarbone. It is a beautiful study in shadow, he tells her, and she grins with her tongue curling up around her teeth. He takes a photo of that, too.
He takes photos of Rose licking icing off her fingers, distracted and laughing at something her mother has said. He makes sure he photographs her all dressed up and waiting for the taxi that will take them to the latest charity dinner – she's wearing a slinky black dress and bright red lipstick, and he remembers because he very nearly managed to get her out of the black dress before they even left. He definitely smudged the lipstick. He remembers because he has a photograph of Rose reapplying her make up on his desk at work.
Sometimes Rose takes photographs of him, and he enjoys it – almost as much as he enjoys taking photos of her. There is something possessive, he finds, in the action, and that soothes him even more than having visible memories available to him whenever he needs. All he's ever wanted was to be owned by her, and he knows for a fact she has a picture of him, his hand caught in his hair mid-ruffle, on her desk at work.