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The first time they see her, she’s standing in the middle of a field being fitted for a gorgeous dress, all lace and shiny fabric, held together at the side with a capo.
Her legs are just visible near the bottom, encased in skinny jeans, cuffs in a perfect roll up and battered Converse on her feet – she’s the very picture of classic French elegance meets rock and roll.
Rose is not the only one to notice.
“That’s Madame du Pompadour, Rose!” The Doctor’s voice is somewhere between a sigh and a schoolboy squeak. “It’s Reinette to her friends, of course. Can you imagine? Touring in period wear? We were barely able to get you in a dress, once you’d gotten your jeans back on.”
He nudges her, and the way he says it, it’s friendly, but Rose feels something rise at his words – an instinct or a claim or just plain, old jealousy, but it’s there.
“I don’t know, seems kind of stuffy, don’t you think?” Rose says, squinting into the sun as the Madame dons a spotless pair of Wayfarers up ahead.
“No, but don’t you see? That’s brilliant! A send up of the entire thing, while still paying homage. Rebels in their time, some of them.”
There’s no easy way around it – the Doctor is gushing.
Even if Rose were a different person, one prone to fits of diva behavior, there’s nothing to be done for their opening act. They came with the gig, as it were. Legacies, in a way.
Well, as much of a legacy as a festival in its second year could have, anyway.
Last year’s had broken all sorts of attendance records, outpacing the best – Glastonbury, Coachella, all of it – and at the forefront were Madame and the Pompadours, opening for Phoenix.
Phoenix was supposed to headline again this year, a French band for a French show, but Sofia Coppola was pregnant, ready to deliver at any moment and Thomas Mars had bagged the whole thing at the last minute, unwilling to take the risk.
Rose tries to imagine herself and the Doctor in the same position, and it’s when she’s decided he’d finish the gig that she finally admits she’s being unkind and unfair.
Things were off between them. Somewhere between a week in a Honolulu hotel following the worst two months of her life, and the backstage area at this festival, there’d been a shift.
And now here she was, watching from backstage as crews assembled the main stage for tonight’s kickoff performance. It’s a cross between a time travel and space theme and, honestly, couldn’t they just focus on one thing? Did they have to follow their every whim, the French?
The Doctor’s still staring after Madame across the grass when Rose leaves his side to join up with Mickey and Jake. Mickey’s fiddling with his iPod, trying to get it to play out the same speaker Jake’s bass is plugged into and when they notice her approach, the opening to “Mr. Brightside” screams from the speaker, twin grins on their faces.
Rose snatches the iPod from Mickey’s hand and pulls the audio jack. The music cuts off with a loud pop.
“Hey!” he says, frowning and taking the iPod back.
“Think we ought to add this to the lineup? To fit the theme?” Jake’s fingers move, and the bass line for “E.T.” vibrates out of the speaker.
Laughter bubbles out of her and she smacks him on the shoulder. “Oh, that’s brilliant. Will you go tell the Doctor? I want to have a good view of the show when his head explodes.”
Mickey’s attention slips past her, to the field behind them, the fitting and the Madame. Rose doesn’t give in to the instinct to turn and look.
“You ready for this, Jake?” she asks instead.
He shrugs. “You mean because you didn’t give us any time for proper rehearsals?” She opens her mouth, is about to say something about who was actually responsible for the way they rushed headlong into this gig, and thought better of it. Jake didn’t seem to notice. “Yeah, me, I’m always ready.”
“’Scuse us, mate,” Mickey says. He looks at Rose, tips his head to the left. “A word, Rose?”
She crosses her arms over her chest and follows him past a row of boxed equipment and a horde of roadies. He stops when they’re a distance away from everyone else, and Rose thinks about how all she wants right now is a cigarette.
“You all right?” Mickey asks. Rose wants to scream. She’s heard the question so often in the last few weeks, the words have lost all meaning. How could anyone possibly be all right? Hangnail, pimple, migraine, broken leg, heart condition — everyone has something wrong, no matter how small. And when people ask are you all right, what they’re really saying is, can you guess what I think is wrong with you?
Rose hates this game.
She’s certainly not in the mood to play it with Mickey.
“Fine,” she says. “Actually, busy. I’ve got things I should —”
“Everyone thought you’d take some time,” Mickey interrupts, blunt and focused, his attention not wandering any more. “It’s been less than a month, since … everything.”
What’s the proper way to refer to the Doctor being lost, and Rose finding him again? Everything does seem to be the popular choice lately.
“I have a calendar, Mickey. I can count the days,” she says, staring at her black boots, digging the rounded toe into the soft dirt. “Did you draw the short straw? Is that why you’re the one bringing this up? It isn’t as if I don’t know you’re all talking about it.”
“Rose,” Mickey says, and it’s full of soft concern.
She forces her eyes to meet his and replies, “Mickey. Honest, ‘s fine. Everything’s fine. This” — she gestures to the bustle around them, to the crew assembling lights and the musicians fiddling with equipment — “this is our life, it’s good for us to get back to it. Much better than sitting around a flat in London.”
Quiet hours — and the Doctor doesn’t do well with quiet — with nothing but each other, settling into the semblance of something routine. Domestic. Popping out for a quart of milk and some bread, sitting still long enough to wonder if they ought to paint over the hideous grey color on the living room walls, not talking about what had happened.
The days had begun slipping toward domestic, and the nights were full of things said without words, just the two of them, desperate intensity and rough hands and the need for release, as though he was exorcising something through her.
When they were quiet and still afterward, limbs tangled and the taste of his sweat on her tongue, a thousand questions sat unasked on her lips: What happened to the pilots? Did you give up hope? Do you know how much I’d sacrifice for you?
Are you all right?
There’s a clock mounted to the top of the stage’s skeleton, counting down to the start of the concert. There’s no audience around to cheer along with it yet and Rose hears nothing but the sound of its gears for a long moment.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
It’s almost frightening, like waiting for a bomb to go off, and Rose is grateful when Mickey breaks the silence.
“If you say so. But listen, you know you can still talk to me, right?”
Rose pulls him into a tight hug on impulse, and his arms fit around her like they always have, “Hey,” he says, the words coming out with a surprised laugh. “Hey, it’ll be okay.”
She nods into his neck and pulls back quickly.
“What do you think? Should we explore before the masses descend?” Rose keeps her tone light, whatever just happened, it’s over now.
Mickey grins and grabs her hand, wheeling her around to set out.
It puts the Doctor and Madame right in her field of vision and Rose can see that he’s been roped into helping. He’s got his hands fisted in the fabric under her arm, holding it together and the capo long gone. She’s braced herself with an arm around the Doctor’s shoulders and the seamstress flits around them.
The way the Doctor is positioned, he should be able to see Rose, but his eyes are only for the woman in the dress.
~~~~~
He’s not sure, exactly, how he’s ended up here, Madame du Pompadour – no, Reinette, she’d insisted – steadying herself on him while he helps fit together a dress that probably costs more than most of his guitars.
“You haven’t aged a day,” she’s saying. “I used to listen to your albums in my room, curled up by the fireplace. You really spoke to me, Doctor. It feels like you’ve been a part of me my entire life. I’d love to share a stage with you.”
The seamstress jostles them this way and that and a swift check of her hips brings him flush against Reinette. His fingers curl into the dress, knuckles pressing into it and the soft skin underneath, as he mumbles out a reply.
It’s nice, he thinks, to be with someone who knows him, someone who doesn’t seem to want to define him by the recent events in his life, but by the man – the musician – he is at his core.
Someone he hasn’t hurt, and someone who isn’t a fresh reminder that he, too, isn’t bulletproof.
“Will you accompany me to Versailles, Doctor?”
He pulls back to look at her and she laughs, pointing at a cluster of trailers and tour buses across the field.
The Doctor backs away to give the seamstress room as she helps Reinette step out of the dress, and it’s like watching the petals fall off a flower. Free of the costume, she adjusts her sparkly tank, settling it back up on her shoulders, and grins at him, coming alongside to slip her arm around his elbow.
It’s an odd gesture, formal and intimate all at once.
He flexes his fingers instinctively — hand-holding, that’s more his speed, and a twinge hits him, because he knows whose hand it should be. He glances back at the berm over his shoulder. “You ought to meet Rose.”
Reinette turns with him and they survey the scattered groups of people, discrete hives of activity in preparation for the concert.
“Where is she, your Rose?” She shades her eyes with her free hand and rocks onto her tiptoes, as though it will help her see better. It also leaves her leaning on him for support.
The Doctor eyebrows draw together and he sighs. “She must’ve wandered off.” He looks down at Reinette, flashes a grin, and she beams back. “Rose does that, from time to time.”
“Wandering off,” she says with a gentle tug, and they start walking. “Sounds like the beginning of an adventure.”
He lets himself be led toward the trailers, his brain running down a thousand different tracks all at the same time, and apparently whichever words fall out of his mouth are coherent enough to keep her attention. “When I first visited Versailles — the proper Versailles — I sat on the lawn and wrote ‘Hall of Mirrors’ and ‘Clockwork Man.’ The timepieces in that place arefascinating, really, the early traces of modern technology and the need of man to impose order onto chaos. The idea that time is something that can be made orderly, when human experience is all so subjective and time is relative, anyway.”
He is, he realizes, dangerously close to slipping into a lecture about theoretical physics.
Reinette’s attention is steady, her eyes alert and intelligent. “So much of our experience is simply stumbling from one event to the next,” she says. “Creating patterns and order from chaos helps everything feel less terrifying, don’t you think?”
Mathematical equations drawn into the sand to predict which trees will yield the largest coconuts. A makeshift abacus, ticking off the number of times the tradewinds change, which direction they blow and the weather patterns that result. Sitting on the beach, counting off the seconds as the tide comes in, waiting until he’s soaked to his chest before he bothers to move.
The thing he realizes after his first week: never, never try to quantify the wildly unlikely chances of rescue.
“Yeah,” the Doctor replies, staring straight ahead. And this is the moment where Rose would look at him with her forehead wrinkled and her lips set into a line, as though she’s reading his thoughts. And she’d be worried, but trying to hide it; she’d be on the cusp of trying to discuss everything, when all he wants to do is walk away and forget it ever happened.
When the Doctor hazards a glance, he finds no scarcely-concealed worry on Reinette’s face; she hasn’t picked up on the subtle shift in his mood. She’s happy and open, a bright young thing reflecting back at him everything he wants to see instead of everything he ought to look at.
Something in him blinks out. The parts that are trying to do right, be healthy, not break anything, suddenly they – fade away.
He’s not thinking about anything except how great it feels to not think.
Reinette is here and lovely and he’s just exhausted. Walking the thin line between giving Rose enough information that she doesn’t feel hurt, but keeping enough back that he’s not picking at unhealed wounds; it’s all so tiring.
He’s just going to live in this for now, for a little bit, and he lets himself be led past the buses. The trailers are circled like wagons and in the middle of them there’s a lavish, if impractical, furniture set up.
He thinks briefly of the lawn chairs folded out near his own trailers and decides the plush fabric of the couch to his left would be better on his back.
That’s what he’s looking out for – his back.
On the divan across from him a woman he recognizes as Reinette’s drummer is snogging the host of a late night chat show. They are both, he knows, married to other people.
Reinette catches him looking and turns her head in question.
“I just – ” he tries to figure out what he wants to say. “Relationships?”
She laughs, but not unkindly. “On the road? In this lifestyle? What happens in one relationship needn’t affect another. Why should loving more than one person be so vilified?”
The noises the pair on the divan are making are distracting and he forgoes answering Reinette in favor of getting away from them.
The door to one of the trailers is open and he can see a guitar resting just beyond it.
Again she follows his gaze, “Would you like to see it?”
He nods without thinking and follows her to the door.
~~~~~
Rose has had enough exploring.
Somewhere around the food tents, watching the ingredients that went in, the questionable hygiene, the way she could no longer see the Doctor when she looked back to the field, she’d had her fill.
Now, she wanted to be away from Mickey, away from the sun, and away from that bloody stage clock echoing out every passing second. She wanted a cool, dark room, a big, soft bed, and the smell of the Doctor as she rested her head on his chest.
It’s only when she feels a phantom itch on her calf that she realizes she’s thinking of a specific memory, instead of some invented dream world.
Months ago, before the crash, and they’d spent the day in a park in a small town, kicking a ball around, snogging under trees, and being eaten alive by mosquitoes.
The family-run inn, clean and cozy and inviting, and she’d felt content – the Doctor humming Pixies songs and the vibrations under her cheek as she dozed on and off.
She’s trying to remember the name of the town, maybe they can visit, when Mickey says her name.
“What d’you suppose that’s for?” he asks, crossing his arms and tipping his head sideways as he studies the horse trailer that’s just pulled up beside Madame and the Pompadours’ caravan.
“Horses, I expect,” she replies, nudging him with her shoulder.
He nudges her right back. “Yeah, I see that, but I mean, what’s it doing here?”
“Let’s go see.” It’s the logical answer, and she doesn’t know why — the itch on her calf, the restlessness in her feet, the weight in her chest — but she takes off running, black boots eating the ground at a grueling pace.
Mickey’s voice is behind her Oi, wait up! But she doesn’t, legs churning and lungs working, and her fingers twitch instinctively, because this is an adventure, and the Doctor should be here.
Rose comes to a skidding halt beside the trailer. Mickey catches up a few seconds later, bending over and out of breath. “What’s the — what’s the rush?”
“Curiosity,” she replies, wiggling her eyebrows and grinning at him with her tongue touching the corner of her mouth. “C’mon, keep up!”
She pops her head around the corner to find a man unlatching the hinged door. “Pardon, parlez-vous anglais?”
The man glances up at her, and the thick mustache on his upper lip wiggles as he sniffs. “Oui.”
“Whose horse is it?”
The metal bolts clank as he finishes opening them all, and he reaches up to pull the trailer door down, where it serves as a ramp for the animal inside. “Arthur belongs to Madame Reinette, he is part of her act.”
As though on cue, Arthur lets out a loud whinny from inside.
“Bête capricieuse,” the handler mutters, and Rose’s brain takes a moment to catch up with that (traveling with the Doctor, she’s picked up more than she ever knew she could, she can carry on rudimentary conversations in half a dozen languages now): temperamental beast.
The horse kicks at his stall, and the entire horse trailer shudders.
~~~~~
The guitar fits nicely in the Doctor’s hands, and he leans forward on the couch, fiddling with a few of the tuning pegs. Reinette is beside him, feet tucked up under her as she reclines against the back pillows, watching him with avid interest.
“When I earned my first real royalty check, I went straight out and had it custom-made,” she says. “He’s a craftsman in Provence, only does commissioned instruments. He’s a master.”
“I’m in the market — lost my guitar a while ago,” the Doctor says without thinking, strumming a few chords. “It’s rare to find a craftsman who can make one like this — practically a work of art! Y’know, I met Claes Oldenburg at a party in New York a decade ago, and he lost a bet.” He turns his head to give Reinette a knowing look. “In case you ever find yourself in a similar situation, just remember that Claes cannot eat nearly as many pistachios as he’d like you to believe. I had him beat, three-to-one! That man owes me a guitar sculpture the size of a taxi, and still hasn’t made good on it.”
She laughs, and it’s an incredibly pleasant sound — and he hadn’t realized how close she is, except suddenly he can feel the heat radiating off her and soaking straight through his pinstriped jacket and oxford.
When he looks back on it – something he almost never does, too mixed up with guilt and moving forward and trying to be the sort of man that deserves Rose – he’s surprised by how casually it had happened.
She leans forward, placing her hand on his leg and meeting his eye, and it doesn’t cross his mind that she’d kiss him until she does it moments later. Instead, his brain winks into static, all white noise and rushing water.
Then her other hand is moving to his cheek, the pads of her fingers curling softly into his skin and she uses the grip to move him forward, to bring him halfway while she closes the rest of the distance.
Her lips are on his just as the noise in his head drops out and there’s a split second where everything around him is so clear – the sound of the crews working outside, someone’s mic giving off a burst of feedback, the dust in the sunlight as it slants in through the windows.
And then her mouth is pressed to his.
He opens into the kiss on instinct, lips parting to fit hers, and she’s angling her head, leaning further into him and guiding him back into the cushions with gentle pressure. She rises up on her knees to move with him and then she’s twining a hand in his hair and realigning their mouths, her tongue snaking out to wet his bottom lip before darting away.
Something spinning in him finds a groove and he slackens his grip on the guitar, allowing it to slide to the floor before his hand is lightly pressing against the small of Reinette’s back, anchoring her to him as his tongue rims the inside of his own lips, waiting waiting waiting, like crossing a busy street at rush hour.
It feels like a dare, like a risk, and even if he’s not thinking about why, even if he’s kept his mind blank and crushed the cricket of his conscience under his trainer, there’s still a current of illicitness running rings around the couch.
He’s just decided to go for it, dart across the intersection and hope he misses the cars, and his tongue is slipping past his lips, his hand sliding higher up her back, when a horse whinnies.
Reinette pulls back almost lazily, giving him a wide grin and squeezing her hands where they’d landed on him. Then she’s dropping her feet to the ground and calling out, “Coming, Arthur!”
He stays on the couch, head swimming and lips numb and every hair on his body standing on end.
He’d just snogged Madame du Pompadour!
In a moment of insanity he wants to tell someone, wants to call up NME or Rolling Stone and shout it to the press.
Instead, he watches her bounce out the door before flopping his head back into the cushions.
The Doctor doesn’t get to bask for long. The horse whinnies again, followed by panicked shouting. The Doctor’s on his feet, stumbling out of the trailer and trying not to trip over his trainers — his body’s buzzing, he’s still running his tongue over his own bottom lip, but as soon as he takes in the scene outside, his haze evaporates in a flash.
There’s a mustached man with a bleeding head on the ground next to a horse trailer, and a white gelding in the midst of a fit nearby, kicking and pawing.
Mickey and Rose are a short distance from the trailer — and that jolts him, the idea that Rose has been nearby in the last five minutes.
He dashes toward the melee. A few steps ahead, Reinette’s running and calling out in French to the agitated gelding, her arms outstretched in a calming gesture.
Before she gets close enough to catch his reins, the sight of a small crowd converging on him spooks the horse even more. He kicks the trailer with both back legs, leaving a sizeable dent in the metal, before making a mad dash directly toward Reinette.
The Doctor, with his longer legs, has nearly caught up to her, and Reinette’s so concerned with catching the beast that she doesn’t try to get out of Arthur’s path. The Doctor reaches her just in time, snatching her by the waist and tackling her as Arthur’s hooves pound into the ground where she was standing a second ago.
The Doctor’s only got a split-second to process it — the feel of Reinette’s body, stretched out beneath his, the twist of her hips and the push of her torso as she gets her bearings. Her eyes are so bright blue as she stares up at him in shock, her hands fisting into his jacket and fingernails scraping against his waist.
There’s a shout — Rose, calling to Arthur, yelling instructions to Mickey, and a pair of black boots flash by as she takes off after the spooked animal. Reinette pushes at him and the Doctor finally moves, rolling off of her. She’s instantly up and away, right behind Rose.
The Doctor scrambles to his feet, but at this point the situation’s already being managed: the horse has stopped moving, hemmed in on one side by the stage; Rose and Reinette are working together, talking quietly to each other and moving slowly so as not to startle it any more, keeping it corralled as they approach. Within moments, Rose catches hold of the horse’s reins. Reinette darts forward, stroking Arthur’s nose and singing quietly to him in French.
The Doctor comes to stand a short distance away from them, his hands shoved into his pockets.
“I’’ve been wondering where you wandered off to,” Rose says to him with a grin, tongue poking out of the corner of her mouth, but her gaze darts to the group of trailers behind him and he wonders if she noticed which one he came out of.
“Oi, you were the one who wandered off,” he retorts, clearing his throat. “We were looking for you earlier, weren’t we, Reinette?”
He glances at Reinette, glances at Rose, and decides it’s safest to keep his eyes on the horse.
Rose reaches out a hand toward Reinette. “I’m Rose Tyler. It’s lovely to finally meet you in person.”
Reinette steps forward in a graceful movement and pulls Rose into her arms. “Thank you — it was very brave, running after him like that. He’s certainly got a mind of his own!”
Rose returns the hug after a moment, patting Reinette warmly, if not, the Doctor notices, a little awkwardly, on the back before pulling away.
Reinette keeps Rose’s hand back for a moment – “Where are my manners? I’m Reinette.” – before releasing it.
Rose smiles. “Oh, I know.” And the Doctor hopes it’s the effort from the run that’s coloring her cheeks and not something else entirely.
It was just a blip, a slip, a tiny, insignificant, little lark. The reason he feels a pressure in his chest is only adrenaline. Because the idea that he’s ruined, bollocksed, fucked everything up, is too much to even consider.
When Mickey comes bounding in a few seconds later, the Doctor’s so grateful for the distraction, he could kiss him right on the mouth, but then he’d have dug himself two holes.
(And, a destructive, traitorous part of him points out, then he’d have erased the ghost of Reinette’s lips from his own.)
“The handler, he’s gone to the hospital. The medic said head wounds bleed a lot, so it’s probably looks worse than it is.”
Reinette hugs Mickey, too, and the Doctor is struck with the inane notion that maybe he can pass off the snogging off as a peculiarity of French culture.
Then as Mickey pulls away and turns to Rose, gushing about her performance and her bravery, he’s split open by a bolt of jealousy, sizzling through him like chips in a fryer.
It’s completely irrational, he’d been seconds away from putting his tongue in another woman’s mouth, and still the sight of her with Mickey – Mickey who is dating Martha, Mickey who is happy with Martha – digs into his bones.
Maybe he’s jealous that Mickey would’ve never acted like that.
“I’m going to get a drink,” someone says, and it’s when they all look at him that he realizes it was him.
Reinette’s gaze is level, but disconcerting. It’s like she’s seeing into the heart of him and, if he’s honest, that’s what this whole thing has been about – keeping people away from his heart, away from where they can do any real damage.
Before he can say anything else, Reinette has turned from him and to Rose, “Tell me, Rose, do you ever do your own hair? The style you wore on the cover of Mojo last year was simply stunning. Any chance you could help me with mine? I’d love to have it off my neck for the show.”
Rose is floored, he can tell, but follows along as Reinette links their arms together and walks them back to the trailers.
“So,” Mickey says.
“So,” the Doctor responds.
~~~~~
It’s almost painful to admit it, but Reinette is lovely. Charming, funny, talented, easy to talk to – if Rose were a different woman, Reinette would be exactly her type.
So, she tells herself, gathering Reinette’s hair into a pile on the of her head, she can hardly fault the Doctor for taking notice a little.
They meet plenty of fascinating people, it doesn’t do any harm to chat with them a bit.
Alone.
In their trailers.
Right?
Rose is doing that very thing now, why should it be any different that the Doctor did? Why does her gaze keep slipping from the shine of Reinette’s hair to the corners of the trailer?
What exactly is she looking for?
Rose knows the Doctor, knows he’s never been the kind of man to take advantage of the wilder aspects available to someone in his profession. Anytime a groupie manages to wiggle past security, the Doctor escorts her (or in some cases, him) right back out of the backstage area, all the while being his usual chatty, amiable self. Rose has seen it happen a dozen times, scantily-clad girls and once a bloke in a thong, by the time the Doctor’s done walking them back to where they belong, they’re pleased as punch just to have spent a few minutes with him, even if they didn’t get what they were after.
And as she chats with Reinette, it dawns on Rose that she doesn’t know exactly what kind of man the Doctor is anymore.
Before the plane crash, he’d gone and had his will changed to include her. They’d never talked about marriage or vows or promises; as far as Rose was concerned, they didn’t need to. And if changing his will was anything to go by, neither did the Doctor.
But what he’d gone through — that kind of trauma, the kind he wasn’t willing to talk about with her or anyone else (no matter how many therapists’ numbers Donna has left on their kitchen counter) — would inevitably change a man.
What if he isn’t her Doctor anymore? What if the man she fell in love with — the one whose intentions and devotion she’d never doubt — was still lost somewhere in the Pacific?
She sits down, Reinette does her hair, and Rose isn’t looking in the corners of the trailer anymore, because if the Doctor’s left something of himself here, she doesn’t know if she wants to find it.
The sun is setting, and it’s getting close enough to curtain that Rose leaves Reinette with warm hugs and good will and exchanged mobile numbers and promises to ring next time they’re in each others’ cities.
She makes her way to the other end of the backstage area as the wailing strains of electric guitar fill the twilight air, the sound of Madame and the Pompadours warming up before the crowd descends.
The Doctor is home — that’s what this blue bus is, really, moreso than any flat in London. He’s stretched out on the little bunk in the back, hands tucked under his head and gaze fixed on the pebble-patterned plastic ceiling.
“Hey.”
“Hallo.”
She joins him without hesitation and he scoots to make room, but she still winds up half on top of him because it’s such a small space. Her face tucks into the hollow of his neck and his arm settles around her like second nature. She takes a deep breath, letting her fingers stroke the stubble along his jawline. Madame and the Pompadours are at full volume now, vibrating through the metal walls and filling the silence between them.
The Doctor tips his head sideways to nuzzle her hair — a familiar motion — but he stops suddenly, his body twitching as he draws his face away, as though he wants to wiggle straight through the side of the bus to get away from her.
“What is it?” she says, pulling up to look at him.
He closes his eyes, brings his hands up to rub at them. “Nothing. I’m tired. Just —”
She catches his hand, pulls it away from his face, but he keeps his eyes closed. “No, tell me, Doctor. What is it?”
“You just … don’t smell like yourself,” he says, and he laughs. “Not very Rose-y.”
Rose realizes that what he’s saying is that she smells Reinette-y.
“I’m going to go watch the performance,” he says, and he’s moving, shifting over her and sliding out of the bunk.
“I’m going to stay here and get ready,” she replies.
When the door of the bus closes behind him, she’s already reaching for the bobby pins in her hair, because she has to wash it, she has to wash it now, and she’s going to have to pull herself together so her eyes won’t be red from crying when she takes the stage.
~~~~~
He’s barreling through the backstage area, waving off Jake and Adam and trying to lose the horse that’s started following him. For every few steps he takes, he’s rubbing at his nose, over and over, trying to get the smell out, trying to shake the specter of – whatever today has been, like it’s something he can sneeze away.
He’s so lost in thought, so unfocused, that he walks right into base camp for another band, some act that’s playing a side stage later on. They’re sprawled on the grass, no furniture to speak of, and he longs for that for a moment – the quiet simplicity of just being with your mates. He wishes briefly that Donna had been able to make it to this gig, but she’s out at contract renegotiations and he’s just begging to be slapped anyway.
The thought fades away as the smell of Reinette and Rose and guilt is quickly overtaken by that of the joint being passed around the group.
One of the girls looks up as it’s passed to her, she’s young and skinny with short black hair and a sleeve of wolf-themed tattoos, and she recognizes him immediately, he can tell. She doesn’t say anything though, instead extending her arm, the tip of the joint glowing brightly.
He’s never been one for the rock and roll lifestyle, as it pertains to substance abuse. Or anything more than the exceedingly occasional use. No, he thinks, he’s reckless in so many other ways.
The smell though, and the promise of not having to feel for a minute, it’s powerful, and he’s squatting down and reaching out before he thinks better of it.
Just one pull, just enough to take the edge off.
The girl looks pleased at his acceptance and as he inhales, feeling the smoke fill him up, she grins at him.
“Banana daiquiri,” she says.
He exhales, stopping himself from blowing rings with the smoke at the last second, “Sorry?”
She laughs, “That’s the strain – banana daiquiri.”
He nods and passes the joint back to her, “Ah, I’ve always liked a good daquiri. And you can never go wrong with bananas. Always bring one to a party, I used to say. Well, I’ve said. Just now.”
She laughs again, a light thing that he knows has less to do with him and more to do with banana daiquiri and he finds himself uncurling his legs to sit cross-legged in the grass.
The joint makes the circle a few more times, but he only takes one more hit, the feeling stretching out inside of him, unpacking until there’s no room left in his brain for anything else, as one of the Pompadours, not Reinette, is on the mic somewhere up ahead of them.
By the time they wrap their set and the crew gets his and Rose’s gear set up, it’ll be another hour, so he lets himself lean back into the grass, staring up at the stars in the sky and he knows it’s not just the smoke that’s making him long to be on one.
~~~~~
Rose is ready, by the time she takes the stage — she is, after all, a professional. Work is work, everything else is details, and if Jackie Tyler has taught her anything, it’s how to cope with being left behind.
Everyone moves on, the first lesson she learned when she was sixteen and breaking into the industry and her first manager decided she was a lost cause. She can hear her mother’s voice: You grow hard, when you have to. You don’t let down the people who matter most.
So by the time the set starts, Adam kicking off with his drumbeat and Jake coming in on bass, Rose is there for her bandmates. She doesn’t let them down. She shouts a warm welcome to the crowd — “Bonsoir, Cannes! Etes-vous tous prêts?” — and the audience roars in response.
She’s there when the Doctor lights into the first song, ‘Bad Wolf Rising.’
She’s there when, halfway through the set, his fingers fumble over the strings.
It’s a small misstep, something hardly noticeable, but Jake shoots her a look and she covers for the Doctor, belting out the lyrics and flipping her guitar in a way that catches everyone’s eye, draws attention away from what’s happening on the other side of the stage.
The Doctor catches himself, and from that moment on he’s also a consummate professional. He hits every note, his fingers find every fret, he grins and plays to the audience.
He doesn’t play to her.
Which is, after all, one of the hallmarks of their performances. Their chemistry. The way they connect onstage, the energy that crackles between them. It’s why the Doctor’s one-man show turned into a full-time double-act.
Except tonight.
Another hallmark of their show: multiple encores. They make it through one, and they’re standing backstage, side-by-side, listening to the audience scream for more.
He looks at her — finally looks at her, his brown eyes focusing in a way they haven’t in a long time.
“I can’t,” he says. “I’m sorry.”
For what? she wants to shout.
He walks away.
It’s the finality of it that stuns her.
Standing there, the stage vibrating under her feet with the noise of the crowd, and it’s too dim to focus on anything. To pick an object and zero in and not cry or shout or react. It’s just her, the dark, and the way she feels weighted down, like suddenly her bones, her stomach, her heart, it’s all turned to granite and she sways unsteadily with the sensation.
Her brain takes over, cataloging the sentence – I can’t – and breaking it down.
He can’t what? Play another encore? Stay in France?
Be with her?
The last one sticks, a choked noise breaking from her throat. There’s a feeling like a free fall and she’s struggling for something steady.
The safety net, the feeling that no matter what, no matter how grouchy or angry or rude one of them got, no matter what was said or what was done, they’d always come back to each other.
She remembers Mickey telling her that after the very first time they broke up, no matter how many times they got back together, he’d never felt secure in things again. She’d put her finger on the trigger and squeezed, and what was to stop her from doing it again, now that she knew it wouldn’t hurt, now that she knew she could do it?
It was always there, always looming, he’d said, and she finally gets it, right here, in the immediate aftermath, something like gunpowder in the air.
Adam crosses the floorboards so quietly she doesn’t even hear him until he’s right next to her. The rest of the band always exits to the opposite side, waiting for Rose and the Doctor to reappear and start the encores. After the first time Jake had found them snogging in between songs, they all stay away. It must have been a while, if he’s come looking.
“Rose?” Adam says, and his voice seems loud and wrong and rough, “Are we going back out? I think they’re gonna storm the stage.”
He gestures at the curtain, at the crowd behind it, but she stays quiet and still. If she doesn’t move from this moment, this spot, maybe it won’t have happened. There can be no fallout to something that hasn’t ended.
“Like the Bastille,” Adam says awkwardly after a moment. “Get it? Like France? Storm the Bastille?”
Rose nods, giving him a watery smile, “Yeah,” she says. “I get it. I’ll go back out with you guys. The Doctor is – the Doctor’s not coming.”
Adam’s eyes grow wide but he wisely keeps his mouth shut and turns to the curtain. When she doesn’t move, he faces her again, “I’ll walk out with you.”
He puts his hand out palm up and she stares at it dumbly before taking it.
His hands are even more calloused than the Doctor’s, clenched around drum sticks and whatever Adam gets up to in his spare time.
It feels horrible, but then there’s a small rush of gratitude for Adam. She’d written him off early on and never looked back, but somewhere along the line he’d become an okay bloke.
The moment passes quickly though, as she’s struck with a memory of him pressed up against Cassandra in a club in Miami. On its heels is a vision of the Doctor in the same situation, but Cassandra is much more beautiful. And much more French.
She wants to vomit.
Adam tugs at her hand, pulling her on to the stage and, like always, she settles in immediately, grabbing her guitar and prepping for a publicist-friendly explanation.
But then something in her comes loose and she wants to lash out. She pulls the mic toward her, “I’ll be doing a cover alone tonight – it’s The Cure, and the Doctor hates The Cure, so he’ll be sitting this one out.”
The Doctor, in fact, loves The Cure and she remembers a starry night, the door to the bus open so they could hear the stereo, and he’d danced her across a parking lot, spinning and twirling and dipping, while “Just Like Heaven” echoed all around them.
At the very least, this will give the blogs something to talk about – a feud between the Doctor and Robert Smith might just be big enough that they won’t notice the one between the Doctor and Rose.
A quick aside to the band and she’s back at the mic, “I’d like to dedicate this song to the Doctor anyway though!” She says it cheerily, all sweetness and light.
Then she plays “Boys Don’t Cry.”
~~~~~
Thirty minutes later, when Rose steps offstage, she finds their blue bus empty.
The Doctor hasn’t packed any bags or taken any of his things, there’s no clear evidence of flight, but the bathroom mirror is shattered.
There’s a note on their bunk: Gone out for some air.
She gets a phone call from Donna half an hour later. “Rock Boy just sent me a text — what’s he bloody mean, don’t come looking? What the hell is going on down there?”
Rose has no idea how to respond.
“He left. He’s gone.” The words seem like gibberish as they come out of her mouth.
“He what?!”
The performance was a one-off, so everyone packs up and heads back to London, as planned. Rose doesn’t go back to their flat, can’t imagine sleeping there by herself. She stays at the mansion with Jackie, instead.
Four days, three gallons of ice cream, and one pair of pajamas later, she’s cried herself out.
On the fifth day, Martha invites her and Jackie over for a dinner party. Which is good, because if her mum wasn’t coming, Rose would be the third wheel, and that kind of asymmetry is the last thing Rose needs right now.
They’re polishing off the third bottle of wine, and Rose and Jackie are decimating Martha and Mickey at a trivia game; everyone’s laughing and she realizes, at that very moment, that it’s possible for life to be normal again, without the Doctor here.
Afterward, as she and Martha flip through catalogues and discuss bridesmaids dresses, it dawns on Rose that maybe she can be normal again, without the Doctor here.
On the drive home, she sits beside Jackie in the front seat of the car, chewing her lip and fiddling with the hem of her shirt.
“I should’ve asked Martha for that chicken recipe,” Jackie says as she steers them through the front gate and up the main drive. “Do you suppose she’d mind? I’ll call when we get inside …” Her words trail off and the car comes to a halt.
Rose looks over at her. “Mum? What’s —” She follows Jackie’s gaze and sees it in the shadows of the front stoop, the outline of a man. Jackie’s already got her mobile out, is dialing her security firm, but Rose reaches out and rests her hand on top of her mum’s.
“No. It’s him.”
Jackie lets out a breath, a shocked huff of air. “You’re — you’re sure?”
“It’s him,” Rose says again, because she’d know his lanky silhouette anywhere.
With numb fingers she fumbles at the door latch, and she’s not rushing because half of her wants to throw herself into his arms and bury her face in his neck and never let go, but the other half wants to turn the car around and drive away.
What could he possibly have to say, five and a half days later, that would excuse any of this?
Jackie doesn’t seem to be wrestling with the same conflicted feelings as her daughter. Slamming the car door behind her, she marches directly up to him. The Doctor straightens from where he’s slouching against the wall, steps forward to meet her, and before he can even open his mouth to speak, Jackie’s palm connects with his face so hard it knocks him sideways and the crack echoes across the blacktop.
“Get out!”
In that moment, even Rose is afraid of Jackie.
“He’s not staying,” she calls to her mother as she finally gets her bearings, finds her feet, and closes the distance between them.
The Doctor’s got a hand to his injured cheek and he wiggles his jaw, as though testing to make sure it isn’t permanently damaged. Even though Jackie’s still standing right in front of him, a real and present threat, he doesn’t back away or even look at her; his attention is riveted to Rose.
“He’s not staying, but he’s obviously got something to say. So let him say it,” she says.
Jackie rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. “Right, then. Spit it out, then get the hell off my property!”
“Mum.” Rose touches her shoulder. “Just give us a mo, okay?”
Jackie’s attention rests on her for just a minute before surveying the Doctor from head to foot, as though she’s looking at a wild animal and she isn’t quite sure if it’s rabid or not. “I’ll be just on the other side of this door, Rose,” she says, narrowing her eyes at him. “Shout when you need me.”
“Thanks, Mum.”
The front door clicks closed behind her. Rose stares up at him — he’s in jeans and a hoodie, a full week’s growth on his cheeks and his hair a mess. His brown eyes are dark, his expressive brows drawn together with a crease in between.
“Your mum missed her calling as a boxer,” he says, finally dropping his hand from his cheek. “Although I suppose I deserved that.”
“You suppose?” Rose says, lifting an eyebrow. “You walked away five days ago with hardly a word, haven’t called since, and you suppose you deserved a slap?”
“I deserved that,” he amends resignedly.
Rose crosses her arms over her chest, hugging herself, and tips her head sideways, toward the lawn. He nods and follows her — Jackie will doubtlessly be watching from the window, but if they’re far enough away at least she won’t be able to eavesdrop.
She feels his unwavering gaze, and her brain is telling her to ignore it, but her body’s responding automatically, heart thumping and nerve endings tingling and she decides that no matter what happens, she’s not going to let herself touch him, because she can’t afford to lose herself right here and now.
She stops at the far end of the swimming pool and sits down on a lounge chair. He sits on the chair next to hers, both of them turned toward each other, and he rests his elbows on his knees.
“I went to the flat,” he says. “Your clothes and your toothbrush were gone.”
“I can clear out the rest of my stuff by the end of the week,” she replies.
His eyes pop open wide at that, his fists clenching so hard his knuckles go white. His words are clumsy, falling through his lips pell-mell: “That isn’t what I meant, Rose — I just — if it’s — if it’s what you want, I suppose —”
“I saw the pictures in the tabloids, you and Reinette,” she blurts out. “My stuff out of your flat, seems like what you want. Walking away in the middle of a performance, spending the last week in France —- that’s where Donna told me your credit card charges were coming from, at least. I got the message loud and clear, Doctor. You’re ready to move on. I’ll collect the rest of my things and be on my way, too.”
“No.” The word is broken, a prayer and a plea and he leans forward, hands reaching toward her. She draws back, keeps her arms crossed and stares him down. “Rose, I don’t know what the papers published, but I haven’t been with Reinette, I didn’t –” He stops, draws a shaky breath and shoves his fingers into his own hair, pulling at it, as though he needs something to hold even if it isn’t her hand. “We had lunch, the day after the concert. I asked for the name of the man who made her guitar. That was it.”
Rose’s eyebrows lift and she frowns, her stomach twitching and something dangerously close to hope blossoming in her chest. It’s warm and comforting and she wants it, she wants that hope, but her self-preservation instincts kick in and squelch it.
“Really.”
“Yes! Rose, really.” He pauses, his mouth twitching down and his gaze falling to his Chucks. He takes a slow breath, and it’s like the wind sighing through a hollow tree, a sad sound. “No. The afternoon before the concert. I kissed her. Just a kiss, nothing more.”
“Ah.” Rose is trying, and failing, to keep hot tears from welling in her eyes. “And then you called her up and asked her on a date and … what? She sent you home? She rejected you, so here you are?”
He drags his eyes up to meet hers again, and she’s startled to see them shining with unshed tears, too. “The kiss, it was a mistake. But honestly, the only reason I met her for lunch was to get the name of the man who made her guitar. I didn’t want anything else from her. We only talked. I haven’t seen her since.” He finally extracts his hands from his hair and it’s a wild tangle, sticking up at odd angles. “She told me I’m a lost, lonely little boy.”
Oh, and he is. Hoodie, mournful eyes, fingers trembling against his own knees, he’s the picture of a soul set adrift. “She’s a smart woman,” Rose says.
“Rose, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please come home.”
“Why?” she snaps. “So we can hop right into another gig, you can eventually find someone else shiny and new to distract you? So we can keep living in silence, suffocating under all the things you won’t talk about? I can’t do that anymore. I don’t want to.
“And the way you ran away without a word, leaving me to think …” She pauses, revisits. “Leaving me. You left me.”
Because that’s the heart of it. That’s what every bit of this boils down to. All her tears and frustration and heartache.
“I’ve been in Provence,” he says, his voice rough, as though he’s been shouting. “Saw the guitar-maker. Spent four days by myself in a hotel room, trying to work up the courage to face you. Trying to figure out a single reason I might deserve you, or any words I could say to earn your forgiveness. Rose, you’re all I’ve been thinking about. You’re all I ever think about.”
“Oh.” Her face has gone numb, she’s hugging herself so hard her shoulders ache. That hope she squelched a minute ago, it’s flared back to life, and this time her need for self-preservation isn’t enough to stomp it out. “Well, I know for a fact that sometimes you think about banana muffins.”
“What?” The word pops right out of him, the sad expression on his face shifting into confusion and, after a few heartbeats, something else — like someone seeing the hint of dawn, a flash of pink and yellow in an otherwise grey sky. “Well, yeah. Bloke can’t help it, muffins with banana in them — one of the greatest innovations in the history of baking.”
“Did they have those in Provence?”
He leans back and shakes his head, nose wrinkled. “It was mostly these croissant-things,” he says, waving his hand in a crescent shape. “Crusty ones, without bananas. It was like prison food.”
Because she can’t help it, the corners of her mouth turn up just a bit. “I’ll bet it was torture, all that French cooking.”
“Never seen so much cream on everything in my life!” He pats his flat stomach. “Five days, and already I’ve got a pot belly!”
She’s not hugging herself anymore, and she realizes that without her arms clamped like steel bars around her middle, she can actually breathe. When she inhales, her ribs ache. Catching her tongue between her teeth, she pushes her foot forward and nudges the toe of his trainer.
The Doctor’s eyes are glittering and earnest and he leans forward again, pinning her with his gaze and it’s like a touch, might as well be his hands on her face, stroking her cheeks and tracing the line of her neck with his fingers. God she wants it, she wants him, and to keep herself from reaching out, she clutches the edge of her chair so hard the wood cuts into her fingers.
“It’s funny, Rose, the label ‘rock god’ … if you hear it enough, you start to believe it. The ‘god’ part, the idea of invincibility or immortality or – I don’t even know, but it seeps into you when you’re not looking. When I was alone on that island, with everything stripped away – all my friends, distractions, even my music – I realized how frail I am. I’m no god; I’ve only got one life, Rose Tyler. I want to spend it with you.”
She can’t breathe, because he’s talking – and it’s like watching him pry back a piece of armor, cutting the leather buckles on a rusted breastplate that hasn’t moved in years and lifting it away, showing her what’s underneath.
That flame in her chest, it’s burning hot, flickering like a newborn star in the dark void of space. But it’s fragile, not quite burning steadily yet. “Doctor, I’m not coming back to the flat.”
“Ah.” Everything about him deflates, shoulders curving inward and head dropping forward, palms of his hands grinding into his closed eyes and hair poking between his long fingers.
This is the moment — the Doctor vulnerable, needy, so very exposed — this is the moment she could throw herself into his arms, tell him she forgives him (does she? Already? No, not quite yet) and she loves him (does she? Still? God, so much and so deeply it makes her ache, from her scalp to the soles of her feet).
She sits motionless, clutches the chair harder, fingernails digging grooves into the wood.
“I’m not coming back to the flat with you tonight, but you can come by tomorrow at lunch. It’s your turn to pay, when we go out for chips.”
The Doctor lifts his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. “Yeah?”
Rose nudges his Chucks with her trainer again and this time she doesn’t pull back afterward, her foot resting against his. “Yeah.”