Everyday Fantastic: A Time Lord's Guide to the Slow Path (7/15) (original) (raw)

Title: Everyday Fantastic: A Time Lord's Guide to the Slow Path (7/15)
Author: Roxyk630
WARNING: There are S4 spoilers beyond this point. Character/Pairing: Ten II (10.5, Handy!Ten, Human!Ten, Blue!Ten)/Rose, Appearances by: Jackie, Jake, Pete, Tony and others
Rating: PG-13 (with some brushing R bits later)
Disclaimer: I do not own Doctor Who nor any of the characters contained within. All rights belong to the BBC. I do inflict humiliation upon my dalek action figures and make them wear silly hats and aprons. So... even more concern than the BBC coming after me... is the Cult of Skaro, an encounter I definitely would not survive.
Betas: mtemplar_ficand otahyonifor this chapter. Thank you both! <3 swankkat, my own personal cheering squad throughout this entire thing. Special mention to those who've been keeping up with this, you guys are all awesome, I never expected such a response!
Summary: The Doctor learning to live day by day on the slow path with Rose.
Author's Notes: Sorry this took so long guys! Thank you so much for your patience with me! <3 Please note, in this chapter I'm basing this with the thought that The Doctor and Rose did not have a previous relationship beyond friendship. For this and later chapters we will also be focusing on the "whole new set of horomones, whole new set of problems" theory.
Previous Chapters: Teaspoon, Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6

CHAPTER 7

“Thought you didn’t know how to do this?” Rose smiles as she gestures between them. “No complaints from me.”

“There’s a lot more to this than what’s been done so far, Rose.”

“Such as?”

His hand trails to his hairline, messing it as they walk back towards the back entrance of the house. “Complicated Relationship Stuff? Talking, building foundations of trust—” Each time he adds something new to the list, his voice picks up speed until Rose can barely comprehend all the things he feels fall under the complicated category of ‘this.’

“—Getting used to human hormones, doing more than holding your hand. It’s not about showing you the universe anymore, is it? I mean, this is about showing you me. That could be complicated. Very complicated. I’m still getting to know this me! I’m a complicated time-lord-human-man…thing. Whole new body, same thinking, whole new set of habits and horomones. I like Eastenders now! That was upsetting. Add to that getting to know us. I know us, I’m referring to us, in the big ‘_US_’ sort of capital—italics-- emphasis sort of way, that’s all very complicated and new. We haven’t even touched on the topic of reproduction and intercourse—”

Catching on to the end half of his words, she giggles. “Doctor, it’s not all that different than regenerating. You did that before. You think anyone starts out inherently knowing everything about — wait. Did you say reproduction? Like, dancing? I thought you said you’d danced!”

He looks at her incredulously, with an expression that may border on embarrassment. “Rose, sometimes words are just that— words. Not everything is a double entendre! Of course I’ve danced, you saw me! Charleston, horrible two step, salsa, tango, waltzing. Dancing is quite simple; dancing is a completely different subject!”

“I thought you were being cheeky! Nine hundred some odd years of travel and you’ve never—you’re a virgin?”

His face turns an awkward shade of red at her words. “I never said—no, a Time Lord's biological need to reproduce isn't as high as a humans. Besides, Rose, sexual intercourse isn’t exactly the same for all species!.”

“So you’ve had it off with other species?!”

“No— “ His words filter into a groan. “Not intentionally.”

“You’ve unintentionally had sex with other species?” Rose’s face is drawing increasingly skeptical in a battle he seems to be losing, rather horribly.

“That makes it sound— “ His hand weaves through his hair in frustration. “Some species and planets have odd customs and mating habits. They can just hold hands, or share protein strands, wink, exchange pants, use telepathy, or wiggle their tentacles and make googly eyes at each other! Even your species has dinner and a drink first! Infinite options!”

“Now you have tentacles?”

“Rose,” he groans through his hands, his eyes peering through his fingers to meet her smile. “You are making this really difficult.”

“Species you’ve mated with aside, you are, by Earth definition, a virgin?”

“Yes—in this body, both of this particular body. I won’t recount personal history, but I’m not completely naïve,” he adds quickly.

“So how did Time Lords ‘reproduce,’ then?”

“Well.” He steps a bit closer to her with mirth in his tone. “When a Time Lord fancies a Time Lady….”

Rose smacks his arm with a roll of her eyes.

“Rose, every species has some form of reproduction and sexual intercourse, including mine. The only thing that matters now is that mine is currently human. Doesn’t matter how it worked in my past. Not sure I want to bother explaining—some of it is horribly unromantic. I’m really not about to end this evening with the biology of Time Lord mating habits. The ones I need to be concerned with now are human.”

Rose blushes and smiles. The Doctor for once is out of his element. Her hand finds his, pulling it slowly from where it rests at the nape of his neck. The other has been gesturing wildly to his far side.

“You’ve been doing just fine so far,” she says softly. “I think you know more than you let on.”

“The things we’ve been doing? It’s nothing different from before— “ He pauses at her look of protest. “Okay, I’ll admit kissing you is new-ish. Well, the ready-and-willing, not-removing-the-Vortex-and-not-possessed kissing thing is new. Even then, it’s all—” He doesn’t want to admit that it’s somewhat instinctual; hormones, physical reactions to stimuli, moving beyond kissing. He’s experienced it before, differently. He’s at a loss not wanting to explain that instinct doesn’t always make something good. Even with instinct and his knowledge of human relations, he feels horribly out of his element. Reading about human biology and understanding it on a medical and professional level is one thing. Experiencing it, living it, is something all together new.

“It’s confusing but nice?” he finishes lamely.

“What do you know about ‘human reproduction,’ then?” Rose asks with a quirk of her brow and a distracting lick to her lips.

“I know the science of it. The structure, what makes up the inner mechanics of males and females—of millions of different species, mind. There’s this one species that— “

“Doctor, we’re focusing on the human at the moment.”

“Right.” He clears his throat, continuing his list.” Location of parts, Tab A goes into slot B, hormones, chemical signals, basic format. I’ve dealt with human mating —sex— before, just not from this angle.” He looks uncomfortable. “That doesn’t mean I’ll know what feels good to you, or what you enjoy. “

He’s too late to try to explain. He lost her in a fit of giggles and snorts somewhere back near Tab A.

“Sorry! It’s— “ She smiles, trying to calm her nerves and giggles, to give him some sort of confidence. “What feels good to me?”

Her eyes meet his with a smirk. “You won’t find that in any textbook,” her voice is low as her fingers walk up his chest from the button of his coat. “That will require… further experimentation on your part. Bit of a tip? You don’t have to call it intercourse all the time. Only when,“ her fingers dip into his front pocket and pull out his glasses, placing them gently over his nose. “Now say it.”

“What? ‘intercourse’?” He looks wholly confused.

A hum precedes her words. “That’s a bit of all right. Very sexy.” With a kiss to his cheek she retreats into the house, biting her lip to hide her smirk.

He’s left standing slightly stunned on the back porch, wondering if he imagined the look in her eyes.

More experimentation will be mandatory.

Rose grins as she leans back against the porch door, realizing he’s still standing stunned on the other side. “Nutter.”

“Rose, what happened to my kitchen?” Jackie demands.

“It’s not that bad, Mum. We were going to clean up….”

“There are peas everywhere!” Jackie’s voice may have raised an octave in pitch. Rose is about to respond when she feels the door push in behind her.

“Blimey, Jackie, I’m not sure the neighbors heard you well enough. Could you repeat that? Maybe this time we can shatter the glass?” The Doctor grins from around the door. Rose notes that he’s still wearing his glasses.

“Ha! Very funny! Seriously, how did you get peas all over the floor?” Jackie asks, her tone a bit less shrill.

Both of them smile idiotically at each other as he enters the house and closes the door behind him.

“Sorry, Mum. There was some difficulty getting the bag open.” Rose laughs.

The Doctor winks at Rose before he takes her hand and whispers, “Run.”

Rose doesn’t make it very far, losing him sometime before they actually make it out of the kitchen. Unfortunately, the Tyler Mansion is not the TARDIS, and running can only get him so far before he’s winded and Jackie catches up.

“You’re quite quick, Jackie!”

“Amazing what chasing a two-year-old can do for your figure.”

“And in those heels?” He huffs, trying to catch his breath.

“How lovely of you to notice, but it won’t work. Kitchen.” Jackie grins before pointing him towards the kitchen where Rose is already cleaning up the random bits of pea from the floor.

“How was the Vitex dinner, then?” Rose asks when they enter the room. She hands him a mop when he makes it to her side.

He decides he doesn’t like mopping several seconds into the task.

“Same as they usually go? I get one of ‘em drunk and Pete does all the talking.” Jackie beams. “We make quite a team, Pete and I.”

“You have them cleaning? Jacks, they just got back from some rather extensive work in the other universe. Let them have a bit of a rest before putting them to work.” Pete enters the kitchen and grabs a glass of water from the refrigerator. “I put Tony in bed, but we need to go say goodnight to him. He woke up when I shifted him into the bed. ‘Night, you two.”

“I think you’re both quite used to that ‘work’ by now.” Jackie replies, giving both them a light kiss on the cheek before following Pete out of the kitchen

“It wasn’t that bad, was it?” Rose asks, pointing at the mop.

“Could be a little more sonic,” the Doctor replies, eyeing the mop with an odd glint that Rose recognizes.

“I can understand the screwdriver… but a mop?” Rose snorts.

“This house could be riddled with nasty germs just waiting to strike Tony when he’s crawling on the tile eating floor peas. Disinfectants, Rose!”

“No,” Rose laughs. “I’m sure there’s something better than the mop you can work on. And, Tony can walk.”

He decides the mop is the best place to start, but only after Rose has fallen asleep.

He watches her drift off into sleep after some lulled conversation, and a few chaste kisses. The house has fallen completely silent, and he’s disturbed to find he’s still awake, wide awake. Blinking a few times in the darkness, he places a kiss to Rose’s sleeping forehead, watching her lips quirk into a gentle smile, before slipping out of bed and grabbing his glasses. He makes his way downstairs, hoping the small snick of the door doesn’t disturb Rose.

The yippier Rose meets him in the hallway with a small whine and a cock of her head.

“Shhh.” He shushes. The gesture seems understood by the dog as she follows him silently down the stairs to the kitchen.

Rose had taken all of his clothing purchased earlier upstairs to her room, but luckily the appliances still sat in bags in the hall. He’d lied a bit when he’d said he needed coffee in the bedroom and that the other appliances were for them whenever they chose to move out. He needs a few bits and bobs off of the blender, the toaster had all of the springs he needed, he’d purchased a couple of LEDs, several computer parts that weren’t really for upgrades, and many other random bits Rose hadn’t bothered to ask about. Not to mention the few things he’d stashed in his suit coat pockets back in the TARDIS, when he was one Doctor and a hand. They were minor parts but he’d always carried a few spares in his pockets ‘just-in-case.’ He decides to take that as a token of luck. The sonic screwdriver won’t be exactly the same, but he’s always enjoyed those little challenges.

His eyes search the dark kitchen as he feels the wall for the light switch. He blinks several times, noting the odd spots that have formed in the room. The terrier is unbothered by the sudden brightness as she lightly pads over to her water dish.

“There!” He grins mischievously upon finding his prize. “Jackie’s going to love her new mop.”

The Doctor decides to begin with the mop and work his way around to other minor improvements.

Rose wakes the next morning around nine, to find the Doctor sprawled next to her, fully clothed and snoring, his limbs hanging haphazardly over the side of the bed.

“Doctor?” No response. She tickles his earlobe, causing him to roll and the snoring to lessen, but he mumbles something in his sleep about late nights with Rose and lemony fresh household cleaners. That’s always the first sign of trouble.

He sits bolt upright at Jackie’s scream from downstairs. Rose isn’t sure if it’s a good scream or a bad one, but she can hear her mum going on with Bev downstairs. Pete’s voice joins the mix a few minutes later, after Rose hears him running down the stairs.

“Doctor?”

His eyes look bleary and he’s staring beyond her with a chuffed grin.

“I upgraded the kitchen!” Then he plops back down onto the pillow, pulling Rose closer by her hips and snuggling in. Within a few more seconds, he’s fast asleep once again, if he was ever really awake.

With a small nasal laugh, Rose untangles herself from the sheets, finding it best to go see the massive uproar he seems to have caused her mother. She manages to slip away from the Doctor’s grip relatively easily, considering his hold on her.

“She’s always walking away,” he mumbles, digging his head into the pillow.

His tone didn’t fit the one of happy yet odd dreams from the previous night, and she stills. Kneeling beside the bed, her hands dart to his hair and his brow furrows. He’s a bit clammy compared to what she remembers from the previous evening. She’s left wondering if that’s due to the work he’s done on her Mum’s kitchen, or if there’s something else toying with his brain at the moment.

“Doctor, you all right?” Rose whispers softly, her fingers tracing his brow.

“’M always all right,” he mutters in his sleep, brow still furrowed, before rolling over sharply, pulling his hand from hers. If he was awake, she’d think he was brooding.

She sighs heavily before padding to the door, not bothering to check her bed head before joining her family downstairs. She can check on him again later.

Rose assumed when she made it downstairs she’d be walking into an effective mess of whatever the Doctor had “upgraded” in her mother’s kitchen. She’s as surprised as the rest of her family when she sees the literally sparkling kitchen.

“Rose, I didn’t want you two to clean the entire kitchen! Just the peas,” Jackie says, watching Rose in awe.

“Mum, I didn’t— “ She looks around the room, noting tiny things have changed about the once normal appliances. Great.

“And what exactly happened to the mop, Rose?” Pete asks. He’s holding up an odd and surprisingly still compact mop with a confused look.

“It’s— “ Sonic. She leaves the last bit out, wondering exactly what he’s done to the rest of the appliances. “I’ll ask him once he’s awake.”

“He must have been up all night! Look at this! It’s gorgeous!” Jackie exclaims.

Rose decides her mum must have been shouting happily earlier and praising Bev before she pointed out the difference in the appliances. Bev looks both happy that she doesn’t have to clean and nervous about the potential loss of her job to a more convenient and potentially free maid. Rose gives her a reassuring smile.

“Is it safe to use the toaster?” Pete asks.

If domestic doesn’t suit the Doctor, Rose muses, it seems he makes the domestic work for him.