Work Text:
Really Great Hair
"C'mon, out with it, tell us all about the porn star on your bus, Rose!" Shireen prompted, laughing shrilly. Keisha fell about laughing in the pub booth, as Rose turned bright red.
"I never said he was a porn star, Shireen!" Rose protested.
"You said he had..."
"Really great hair," Rose supplied. "Not once did I say 'porn star'!"
"You did say it was a sin to have hair like his. Can you imagine yourself gettin' your fingers entangled in it as he thrusts...."
This time Rose put her hand over Shireen's mouth before the whiskey could loosen her lips any more. Keisha had gone into silent laugh mode.
And yes, Rose had imagined it, possibly more than once, but she wasn't giving Shireen the satisfaction of being right.
"Enough with the tease. I wanna hear about the porn star," Keisha giggled. "M'gettin all hot and bothered and you haven't told me the good stuff yet."
Rose expelled a huffy breath and rolled her eyes. "There's a bloke on my bus. Rides every morning. He's fit. Likes tight suits. Sexy glasses...."
"Whoa, hot nerd alert," Keisha interjected.
Rose snorted. She'd thought the same thing the first time he'd gotten on the bus.
"Is he ginger?" Keisha asked, out of the blue.
Knowing Keisha's hot Weasley brother fantasies, Rose was quick to correct her. "He's sorta...brown. Auburn highlights, I suppose. Not that I noticed..."
Shireen nearly did a spit take. "Yeah, like you never noticed."
"He's got great hair, okay? Spiky...you know...artfully messy. Like he rolled out of bed that way, but it's not exactly bed head...."
"Prob'ly spends loads of time in front of the mirror in the mornings," Shireen interjected.
"Doesn't matter, if he's that hot," Keisha asserted.
Rose nodded in agreement. "He rides the bus every day...gets off at the stop before Henrik's. "
"And that's it?" Keisha asked, clearly disappointed. "Does he have a name? D'ya know where he works? Have you even made eye contact?"
"I've made eye contact," Rose muttered defensively. Once. And he caught her looking and she was mortified. He grinned, though. Kind of smugly. "He's got a girl, probably. Or a bloke. Or he's a jerk. Another Jimmy....."
"And there goes Rose, talkin' herself out of speakin' to yet another eligible...." Shireen slurred,
"Oh, don't even say 'eligible bachelor.' Sounds like Mum. Actually, sounds more like Gran, come to think of it."
"Does he have a ring?" Keisha wanted to know.
"Don't know, didn't look," Rose groused.
"Well, look. But beware of a tan line on his ring finger 'cos that just means he took it off," Keisha said with all the wisdom of someone who read advice columns obsessively.
"She ain't sayin' anythin' to him, Keish. Rose don't do that. She don't flirt since Jimmy," Shireen slurred.
"And you need to be cut off," Rose recommended. "Before you barf in Keisha's car."
"Aw, hell no, that ain't happenin' again," Keisha said, getting up from the table.
Rose was relieved that the subject had been changed.
******
She didn't think about the conversation again until late that night, at home on the estate. It had stung a bit, Shireen's drunken needling.
Rose suspected it stung because there was a grain of truth to it. Jimmy Stone really had done a number on her confidence. She had dated her old friend Mickey for a while, because he was safe, but that had waned when he met Martha, and now they were together.
Anyway, it didn't matter because she'd sworn off men while she worked hard and studied. She'd gotten her A levels and now was struggling though her first year at uni. She didn't need that kind of distraction anyway.
******
The distraction was already on the bus when she got on the next morning. The only seat left was, of course, the one next to his. She sighed and plopped down into it. He looked up briefly from his book and gave her a quick smile.
Rose noticed that he looked tired. She wasn't going to mention it. She was sure that her night out with the girls and her lack of sleep did nothing for her looks either.
Still, he made exhaustion look sexy. And he had neither a ring nor a tan line on his left hand.
She leaned her head back against the window and sighed, pulling a tabloid out of her purse. She tried to lose herself in the latest gossip about the royals and ignore the man sitting next to her.
About halfway through the ride, she was startled by the feeling of someone brushing up against her.
Rose looked over at Great Hair only to realized that he'd dozed off and was leaning toward her in his seat. She scooted over from him a bit. The contact would become more than she could handle, she knew.
Her hand was already itching to touch his hair. It was close, and it would be a very simple thing to reach up and just pet.....
~Rose Tyler, you're doin' no such thing!~
Henrik's was really a long bus trip, she realized. Straight through. No transfers.
Just like his bus ride.
It was sweet torture sitting next to him. Rose could hear him breathing steadily. She could smell him too, lovely and musky and sweet...
~Oh, get a grip, Tyler!~
The suit was blue today. Burgundy pinstripes. Burgundy chucks to match. Not many men could pull that look off.
"I'll bet you'd like to pull that suit off," the voice of the devil on her shoulder murmured. That voice sounded a lot like drunken Shireen.
Great Hair took a deep breath and shifted in his seat, putting him impossibly closer.
~Oh, bloody hell.~
Rose looked up at the window and was alarmed to see that his stop was coming soon, and he was showing no signs of waking.
Rose had to do something. He was going to miss his stop, and with one more good shift, he'd have his head in her lap.
Not that she'd complain. But they both had to be somewhere. That hand, itching to touch, moved quite of its own accord. She stopped the treacherous appendage just short of his hair.
Then she sighed and went all in.
His hair was very soft and touchable. She gave it a light pat at first, and he didn't stir. Then her fingers dove in for a bit of a more through exploration.
Great Hair purred, low in his throat, and put his head on her shoulder. She felt that purr all the way down her spine. Her face flushed red.
Well, this couldn't continue. "Hey, mate," she whispered, tugging lightly. She pulled her hand out of his hair and he actually moaned a little. That did not help her situation.
"Hey, mate!" she spoke more loudly. "Gonna miss your stop, wake up!"
The bus was pulling up to the stop. He startled awake, dropping his book on the floor. She reached down to grab it. He reached down at the same time and they were face to face.
"Don't miss your stop," she stammered.
"Erm....thanks, " he muttered quickly. She could see his cheeks reddening.
He hopped up from his seat, called "Thanks!" again, and dashed off the bus.
Rose covered her face with her hands, trying to melt into the seat from embarrassment. Obviously, on some level, he'd registered her hair fondling and was mortified by it. Of course, that had to be it. He'd seen her on the bus before. Probably noticed her and wrote her off as not his type, had to put up with sitting next to her today....
And was disgusted to have had her fingers in his hair.
If she could have curled up into a ball on the seat she would have.
On the plus side, she'd finally heard his voice and he had a lovely Scottish accent.
Which she did not need to be thinking about right now. At all.
The stop for Henrik's was coming up. She gathered her purse but left her gossip rag behind forgotten. She heard a voice behind her, but ignored it. She prayed they hadn't had an audience. It was horrible enough with just the pair of them.
******
At least work was busy and she didn't have a lot of time to think about her mortification. Then Keisha texted and agreed to pick her up after her shift. She had chips with her friend, who was worried that Rose didn't speak much. "M'fine, really. Can you...can you run me in to work tomorrow?"
"I can tomorrow, but not the rest of the week. What happened?"
"Nothin. Just...that's fine. Just run me in tomorrow." She had the day off Wednesday, and by the time Thursday rolled around, he might just have forgotten.
Or so she hoped.
******
Wednesday left her plenty of time for listening to Mum natter on about Howard, and EastEnders reruns, and beans on toast. She also had plenty of time to ruminate on her embarrassment. She tried to study for her midterm but got stuck on her math homework. She was too distracted to study, at any rate.
So, Rose made a plan to cope with the bus ride. She'd enter that bus with her head held high, and if he spoke to her, she'd speak back but otherwise she was done obsessing over fit blokes with really great hair. She had midterms coming up. She'd use her bus time to study. She couldn't let one embarrassment put her off the bus, especially since she had no other transportation.
*****
Thursday found Rose waiting at the bus stop. The bus pulled up right on time, and she shouldered her school bag, stepping onto the bus with confidence she didn't feel. She didn't look around at the passengers. She strode to an empty seat and sat down, immediately opening her bag. She pulled out her math textbook and started checking homework.
She was erasing and cursing under her breath when someone sat down next to her. "Erm....pardon," the person (who spoke in a lovely Scottish accent) spoke.
Rose looked slowly up and met the gaze of the most beautiful pair of chocolate eyes. Her heart began to race, and she gripped her pencil nearly hard enough to break it.
"Hello," he greeted with a smile.
"Hello," she said back, unable to resist returning the smile.
He stammered, "Was..erm....wonderin' if you were okay. You missed a couple of days."
Her heart was beating even more rapidly, and she absently wondered if there was an medic on board to perform the CPR when she dropped from cardiac arrest. He'd noticed her absence.
She realized that she was expected to answer, so she finally murmured, "I had a ride Tuesday and was off work Wednesday."
He blew out a breath. "Thought you were maybe...avoiding me, possibly. Or were sick, or off work, which actually turned out to be true..." he rambled. "But mostly I thought you might be avoiding me. Not that I could blame you, given my embarassing display."
"I....excuse me?"
"I'd been up all night studying and writing. Had no idea my work would take so long. I was so exhausted and I practically curled up in your lap, without even introducing myself. I'm James McCrimmon, by the way. So now I've introduced myself."
"I suppose you can feel free to curl up in my lap now," Rose said, them immediately was mortified all over again. She covered her face with her hands.
"Well..." he drawled. "You haven't introduced yourself to me yet, so that would still be awkward."
Rose uncovered her face, snickering. "I suppose so. In the interest of making it less awkward...I'm Rose Tyler."
"Rose Tyler," he repeated, and her name made itself at home in his mouth. She'd never known hearing her name could be so....
Arousing. Let's just call it what it is.
"Nice to meet you, James McCrimmon," she finally spoke. "And you have nothing to be embarrassed about. You were exhausted and the bus was full and you fell asleep."
He stared at her, and she began to be uncomfortable with the scrutiny. Finally he started talking rapidly, as if he'd made a decision to speak and wanted to get it out before he changed his mind. "Fact is...I was pretty happy you sat down next to me. I'd...been wanting to talk to you for a while, but anyway... fell asleep. That was not what I had planned. Was pretty mortified when I woke up."
He'd been wanting to talk to her? Her mind was buzzing, going from one possibility to the next. Did that mean he was attracted? Or was he bored and wanted to talk and she looked like the least likely person to attack him and steal his wallet?
"Really?" she stammered eloquently. "I...I've been wanting to talk to you, but you...were usually listening to your iPod or reading...."
"I wouldn't have minded if you had interrupted," he confessed.
Once again, she repeated, "Really?"
He chuckled. "I would have been fine with it."
"Well...we're talking now," she smiled. She thought, in for a penny, and added, "and while we're talking, I wanted to apologize because I....started patting your hair. To wake you up. Purely to wake you up."
James' eyes widened. "I didn't dream that?"
Her eyes also widened. "No, that wasn't a dream."
"Then you did more than pat it," he stated.
She felt the blush spread from her neck up. Oh, the hell with it. "I fondled your hair. I totally took advantage of your hair. It's really great." She barely got the last out before she was overcome by nervous laughter.
She fervently hoped he'd see the humor in it all.
James smirked. "It is pretty nice." Then he joined her in laughter. "I don't mind at all. Maybe...I was hoping it was you doing the..fondling. Then I decided I had to be dreaming and was terribly embarrassed about dozing off on you."
"I was terribly embarrassed because I thought I'd made you uncomfortable."
"Oh, I was anything but uncomfortable," he sighed. "Erm....I mean, it felt nice and I really wish I'd been awake enough to enjoy it more."
She grinned, her tongue poking out mischievously. "You enjoyed it quite a bit. You were purrin'."
James' jaw dropped. "Bloody hell."
He glanced down at her book. "So, algebra?"
Nice segue, she thought. "Yeah. Might as well be a foreign language, though. My instructor's good...he's just a little intimidating."
"If you like...I could give it a look."
He sounded hopeful that she'd agree.
"Okay..."
For the next few minutes of the bus ride, he explained part of the assignment to her and by the time he arrived at his destination, she had a better understanding of her homework. "Thank you, James, I think there's a good possibility I may not totally fail the midterm now."
"You won't," he assured her. "When is it?"
"Tonight," she sighed.
"Then call me when you're done. I have to be at the uni for a lecture tonight. We can celebrate afterwards."
"I won't have my grade yet. Or your phone number."
"Then celebrate it being over. You pick. And hand me your phone."
She grinned. "Chips," she decided as he entered his number into her phone. She immediately texted him back with her number.
"Sounds lovely. Then when you get your grade we can celebrate again. If...I may be so bold." He stood up, ready to exit. Rose smiled up at him and he beamed back.
"You may be," she assured him.
As he moved toward the door he laughed, "Brilliant!"
Rose couldn't help but laugh as he stepped off the bus. She leaned back against the window, throughly pleased with the unexpected turn of events. She was jolted out of her thoughts by a loud voice across the aisle.
It was a ginger lady who was always on the bus when Rose got on. "About damn time, Jack!" she laughed.
"Excuse me?" Rose asked, puzzled.
"I've been ridin' the bus with you two idiots for weeks now. It's about time somebody made a move! All he does before your stop is go on and on about you! And all you do is make eyes at him! It was gettin' to be like a soap opera around here!"
The man next to her, a handsome blue eyed, dark haired man said in an American accent, "Here's that five quid I owe ya, Donna. I was sure Blondie would make the first move. Thanks for making a long bus ride entertaining." Rose watched, disbelieving, as money exchanged hands.
Rose's mouth was still agape when she got off the bus.
*****
As time went on, Rose had plenty of opportunities to sink her fingers into his really great hair. In fact, when she kissed him in front of family and friends the day she became Rose McCrimmon, her fingers entwined in it quite satisfyingly. It scandalized her mum and inspired James to happily anticipate the honeymoon to come.