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It’s three weeks’ worth of press on opposite sides of the globe, interview after interview, solo performances on morning shows and local television programs. All in a big push to cover as much ground as possible, publicity-wise, before their new album is released, and the tour kicks off. Then they’ll be together for months, close quarters in the blue tour bus; although this is Rose and the Doctor, and there’s no such thing as too close when it comes to their quarters … their quarters could be the size of dimes, and it’d still be cozy as far as they’re concerned. They’ll be back to sharing a stage and sharing a bed and everything will be right in the world.
This whole harebrained publicity scheme was the Doctor’s idea. They've done this "separate press tour" thing once before -- before his plane crash, before he'd left Rose in France and then come back to her a different man. Part of him wanted to see how well he’d cope this time, jet-setting across the globe, Rose-less and on his own.
Rose had hesitated — started to dig her heels in when he suggested it. But the Doctor was adamant. It was healthy, right? Time apart? It was something they should be able to do, right?
Giving her space, in case she needed it. Giving her some time to breathe. Just like any other normal couple. And the Doctor was trying so very hard to be normal for Rose, because she deserved that, after everything they’d been through together. An average life.
During the last two weeks, the Doctor has discovered that he’s utter rubbish at being average.
They’ve been making do with webcams and mobile phones, but at the two week mark there’s a layover in Frankfurt. Eight hours, that’s all they can manage with both their schedules.
For three days beforehand, the Doctor can hardly sit still. He’s obsessively checking plane schedules, monitoring weather forecasts, keeping an eye on the Frankfurt news to make sure there isn’t some kind of union strike brewing that might delay everything.
The Doctor arrives in Frankfurt an hour before she does, spends forty-five minutes of it in the washroom of the executive lounge, changing into his cleanest pair of clothes (the pinstripes, always the pinstripes) and shaving and coiffing his hair (just the right amount of product, the ideal level of elevation without being too sticky for her fingers to slip through).
He feels strung out, not only because he’s desperate to touch Rose (he’s been watching her do that to herself on a webcam for the last fourteen days, and it’s nearly driven him around the bend), but because he misses everything about her. The sound of her laugh, especially when he’s the reason she’s laughing; the way she touches him when she isn’t thinking about it, absently holding his hand or hanging onto his arm, bumping up against his side just because he’s standing in proximity; the complex scent that is Rose, strawberry shampoo and bergamot body wash and makeup and underneath it all, her; the sound of her voice and the way her words always ground him, keep him balanced.
And as he stands in front of her gate, watching her plane pull up to the jetway, he’s feeling distinctly unbalanced. He hasn’t slept for nearly forty-eight hours, waiting for this moment. He’s tugging at his left ear (the wonky one, Rose calls it) and pacing back and forth like some kind of caged cat, lean compact movement and focused intensity. He hears the people around the gate whispering his name, he recognizes the click of camera phones, but for all he cares in this moment, there could be a horde of paparazzi snapping away.
Rose is here. She’s almost in his arms.
Things are going to be okay.
The entire plane unloads — all of them lumbering at the speed of sloths and none of them is Rose, not a single one. He pulls his mobile out, but there isn’t a message. When the flight attendant rolls the last passenger off in a wheelchair, the Doctor stops her.
“Excuse me, I’m waiting for a girl, there should’ve been a girl,” he gestures to his hair, “she’s kind of yellow and —”
“Just wanted to give the crowd a chance to clear.”
He whips around and she’s there, in the door, pulling along a suitcase behind her. The Doctor’s legs are moving in long, sure strides before his brain catches up. He sweeps her into his arms, picks her up off the ground and swings her back and forth, her knees bent and feet kicking happily. She makes a squeaking noise because he’s got her in a death grip. He closes his eyes, tips his head down to bury his face in her hair and whisper her name.
“Missed you too,” she says, clinging to him.
“I’m not normal,” the Doctor blurts out, and it registers on some level that isn’t exactly what he means to say, but the words just keep coming. “I’m trying to be normal, Rose, I swear I’m trying. I’m eating eggs for breakfast instead of cake, and I’m pressing my suits with an iron when they get wrinkled instead of microwaving them, and I even tried staying indoors for a while, but it just isn’t working.”
She giggles into his neck. “I wouldn’t expect anything else, Doctor.”
She’s solid and real here in his arms, stretched against him, and he wants to snog her senseless. His body’s practically on a hair trigger, reacting without his consent; his hands are aching to slip under her shirt, his lips tingling with the need to taste her skin. The sound of her voice, the feel of her breath, everything has got him as keyed up as a sixteen-year old.
“You’ve got the room?”
“Reservation’s all set, it’s ours,” he replies, reluctantly setting her on her feet. He takes her suitcase in one hand, his own guitar case in the other. “Limo’s waiting outside the airport.”
“Mmm.” Her eyes roam over him, from head to foot; her teeth press into her bottom lip until the flesh turns bright pink. “Eight hours.”
“Wellll, seven hours and forty-six minutes, as of right now,” he replies as she falls into step beside him. “By the time we reach the hotel, I’d calculate seven hours and fifteen minutes. That’s assuming we agree to cut it close, catching our flights out in the morning.”
“You’re brilliant,” she says, looking up at him, honey-colored eyes sparkling with happiness, and he feels his chest swelling. “Brilliantly dense. This publicity tour was the worst idea you’ve ever had. And that’s saying something, considering the banana soup you made that one time, and the fact that you actually proposed having the guitarist of the Raxacorico Fallapa Trio guest on this new album. I’ve done six sets with Blon Slitheen so far, one of them yesterday morning, and did you know about her digestive issues? Because even with an earpiece in I can hardly hear myself sing, for all the bodily noises she’s got going on. It’s horrifying.”
The way Rose is talking, the affection in her voice, she might as well be extolling every one of his virtues. He knows he’s grinning like an idiot, and he doesn’t care, because she knows all the nooks and crannies of his soul and loves him anyway.
Hands full of luggage, fingers twitching around baggage handles with the need to hold Rose’s hand, the Doctor speeds his pace. The quicker they can get to the limo, the quicker he can get her into his arms; with the limited time they’ve got, he doesn’t intend to waste a single second. “Well yeah, I spent the last two days with Jack. You can’t begin to imagine — we started off with some karaoke at a bar in Tokyo, woke up the next morning cuddling with some octopuses in the back of a fish market, and neither of us even had anything to drink that night — oof!”
She’s caught his elbow and, with a furtive look down the moderately crowded corridor, yanks him sideways. Bumping open an emergency exit door with her hip (the alarm wire isn’t connected, it’s discreetly tucked next to the sensor, and it’s remarkable she noticed such a tiny detail), she drags him through the door.
They’re in a stairwell, the floor littered with crushed cigarette butts. “Smoke break?” she says, lifting her eyebrows and nodding up the stairs.
“You quit,” he retorts. He shrugs nonchalantly, subtly adjusting his grip on the guitar and suitcase. “But for the sake of argument, if we were going to have a smoke break, I’d beat you to the roof!” And he’s off like a shot, taking the stairs two at a time, bags bumping his legs.
“Cheater!” Rose shouts behind him, enormous grin on her face as she rockets after him.
It’s four stories to the roof and Rose catches up to him; they reach the top landing at practically the same time. The door to the roof is propped open with a cinderblock, and he pushes it open.
Outside, the night sky glitters, the outskirts of Frankfurt glittering on the ground. He absently notes the door slamming after Rose steps onto the roof with him. It isn’t a gorgeous view; it isn’t even very beautiful, the night sky obscured by light pollution and the noise of idling jets drifting up from the tarmac.
But it’s empty.
The Doctor is turning around to say something — it’s devastatingly clever, what he’s going to say, and Rose is going to be ever-so-impressed, but she’s already there. She snatches his lapels, yanking him forward as she comes up onto her toes, her mouth opening against his.
And it doesn’t matter that it smells like jet fuel or that he’s been wearing the same socks for thirty-six hours or that somehow a pebble has worked its way into his trainer and is currently digging into his big toe.
All that matters is Rose, and he’sbending his head down to meet her mouth, one hand pushing into the small of her back, the other curling up under her arm so his fingers can spread against the base of her neck and into her hair. Her mouth is so soft — she’s always been a bit obsessive about chapstick, always has a stick of it in her pocket, and the familiar taste of cherry combined with the feel of her body stretched against his, and he’s spun them both around and pushed her into the metal roof door before he’s even aware of what he’s doing.
“Tell me this press tour was a stupid idea,” she says, biting down a little bit too hard on his bottom lip, and he grunts.
“Iff waff a tupid idee,” he says, his tongue too occupied to worry about proper pronunciation.
She wraps her leg around his thigh; he picks her up just enough so she can hike her knee over his hip instead, her other foot dangling and both his hands planted firmly on her bum.
Goosebumps prick down his back as her fingers slip into his hair, and when she grabs two fistfuls and tugs, he stifles a yelp against the corner of her mouth. Sultry and low, she breathes, “Tell me we’re going to cancel the rest of the press tour.”
In an instant, all the details associated with canceling the last week of press flash through his mind —Donna screeching at him, newspaper articles speculating as to why, arguments with Russell at Gallifrey Records — and maybe Rose is serious, or maybe she’s just feeling a bit out of sorts, he isn’t sure. He begins to try to reply, but she arches her back, shoulderblades pressing into the bricks as her hips lift away from the wall to grind into him, wiggling without grace and with very clear intent. He stutters a syllable, his eyes slamming closed.
Her mouth is moving on his neck, her tongue tracing patterns in between words: “Because I don’t want … any space, Doctor. I don’t … need it. Not … right … now. I’ll let … you know when … I do, okay?” She sucks so hard at a spot halfway down his neck, he knows he’s going to be wearing turtlenecks for the next week. “Did you … do you … need space?”
Is Rose really trying to have this conversation right now? Two weeks apart, her hips grinding into his, her fingernails trailing across his scalp?
He blurts out the truth: “No. Definitely don’t need space. Not an inch. I just want-t-t-ted” — he stutters helplessly as she yanks his shirttails out and pops open the button of his trousers, slipping her fingers inside as far as they’ll go; with their hips pushed together like this; he can’t reciprocate, can’t do anything when he’s supporting her up against the wall, and she’s taking full advantage — “just wanted to know we could, because you will, you might want that space someday.”
“Someday,” Rose says, tracing a line with her tongue from the hollow of his throat to his earlobe. “Not now.”
“Someday’s good,” he says, and it’s practically a squeak as she wiggles out of his grip. She thumbs open the button on her jeans, hips swaying side to side as she pushes them down over her thighs and onto the gravelly roof.
“No,” he says, and it’s so weak. But he’s imagined this reunion for weeks now, and he’s planned it all out in meticulous detail — slow, her spread out in front of him, taking his time touching her the same way she’s been touching herself on the webcam. “No, there’s a hotel room, and I ordered champagne and flowers, and a big bed with—”
“Shut up. Pull those down before anybody catches on that we’re up here,” she says, eyeing his trousers with a grin, and catching her tongue between her teeth as her knickers follow her jeans.
His fingers fumble with the zip for a second, he’s so completely distracted by the flesh that curves out the bottom of her t-shirt, the sight of her here in person, and the instant his trousers are down far enough he’s got her against the door again, picking her up and she tugs his shirttails out of the way and he’s home, her fingers curling into his shoulders and his name soft on her breath. Her head is tipped back a little, her eyes closed as he starts to move.
It’s awkward, like this — he’s one strong gust of wind away from toppling over backward; her knee keeps slipping down his skinny hip until she folds her calf around the small of his back; he’s trying to touch her the way he knows she needs to be touched, but their bodies are too close — none of it matters.
“Doc-Doctor,” Rose stutters, fingernails digging into his neck and he’s not going to last, not this time, not when he’s been needing her so badly for so long.
Apparently he isn’t the only one; before he’s even half-winded, Rose goes rigid, makes a noise he’s incredibly familiar with as she shudders, and then lets out a groan: “Doctor.” A second later she collects herself and is moving with him again, and he follows right after her, grunting out a few incoherent syllables — the earth is moving, spinning and shattering around him, there’s a clattering in his ears like the drumbeat to his favorite song, and —
“Doctor!” It’s a terse whisper, Rose’s hands pushing against him and her legs slipping from his hips. He opens his eyes, presses a kiss to her lips before she reaches down to roughly yank his trousers up.
“Rose,” he replies, and he’s beaming, all teeth and lazy satisfaction. There’s a hotel room, sure, and a limo between here and there, but right now he’s certain that the smell of jet fuel will never be unpleasant again.
“Give me my knickers!” Rose hisses.
It hits him, then, that the earth moving and the pounding — it was due in no small part to the fact that someone’s started knocking and trying to shove open the door behind Rose’s back. She bucks forward as the metal bounces with the force of their attempts.
“Dies ist Sicherheit! Öffnen die Tür!”
The Doctor spins around and leans his back against the door with her, wincing as security continues to hammer on it from the other side. “Go on, then! I’ll hold them off!”
She scrambles for her clothes, pulls them on in record time even as the door bounces behind the Doctor and he digs his heels in, trying to keep it closed. There are more than one of them on the other side, though, and he only lasts long enough for Rose to finish buttoning up. She’s trying to smooth down the blond bird’s nest of her hair when they burst through, two of them — uniforms and nightsticks, but at least with their guns holstered.
“Oh thank goodness, we’ve been stuck up here for a bit. Took a wrong turn downstairs, saw a door that said exit, then the same door locked right behind us,” the Doctor says to them, hands raised amenably as he steps just in front of Rose. He's well aware that his shirttails are hanging out, his hair is sticking straight up, but he manages a confident swagger regardless. “You’re just the rescue we need! I was saying to Rose just now — wasn’t I, Rose — just saying about how the side of the building doesn’t look like a good place for a bit of a climb, not unless you’re Spiderman. Which I am, to my eternal ten-year-old self’s disappointment, most certainly not.”
“Herr Doctor,” the man with the most stripes on his badge says. He lifts his baton and points to something behind them.
The Doctor turns, and Rose turns with him, and there it is, affixed to a pole on the corner of the building: a security camera.
Rose lets out a noise like a balloon leaking air.
“Ah, yes,” the Doctor says, clearing his throat. “Well. Danger of dying, stranded on top of a building. Y’know, makes a bloke examine his … ah … priorities.”
“Unauthorized persons are not allowed in this area, Herr Doctor,” the guard says.
“Just Doctor,” the Doctor replies, grinning and reaching back for Rose’s hand. Her fingers squeeze his. “No need to be formal, we’re all friends here.”
“Protocol says we take you to the security holding area for questioning and call the city police,” the guard says. “But Agustine thinks we ought to escort you off the premises and let you go.”
The Doctor nods at the second guard. “Agustine — good name, great philosopher. Obviously the mark of a great thinker, that name.”
“But it would be bending the rules a bit,” Agustine pipes up, stepping forward and digging into a small bag hanging beside his hip. The Doctor’s arms stretch protectively backward, trying to keep Rose safely corralled, but she shoves his arm down and comes to stand beside him anyway.
Agustine produces a flash drive and a short stack of CDs from his bag. “I stopped the camera recording after a few minutes, and I have the only copy of it here on this drive. And …” He blushes and looks down, trailing the toe of his big black boot into the gravelly roof. Clearing his throat, his face flushed crimson, he says in a strangled voice, “I’m a very big fan of your work, and if you would perhaps sign some things for us and … sing a song from your first album, my supervisor has agreed we can give you the recording and escort you off the premises.”
“Of course!” the Doctor says instantly, reaching for his guitar. “What song would you like to hear? ‘Slopes of Perdition’? That’s a popular one! Or ‘Oakdown Burning,’ kind of dark but it got quite a bit of radio play —”
Agustine clears his throat. “Ah, no, actually I am not familiar with your music, Herr Doctor. I was speaking to Fräulein Tyler. Her song ‘Oo-delicious’ is my favorite of favorites.”
Rose makes a stifled noise that almost sounds like a giggle. Smiling graciously at the security guards, she opens her own guitar case and slings her guitar on. “I got us into this mess, I suppose it’s fair I get us out. Care to back me up on vocals, Doctor?”
“Anytime, Fräulein Tyler,” the Doctor replies, ignoring the way she smirks at him sideways.
They do two encores, Rose signs the CDs and gives Agustine her pick, and the Doctor pockets the flash drive. When Agustine and his supervisor leave them at the limo, Rose collapses next to him on the bench seat. “Suppose that’s really the only copy?” she asks.
The limo pulls into traffic as he sniffs and pulls the flash drive out of his pocket. “We’ll know soon enough — Donna keeps an eye on the fan forums, it’ll pop up there eventually, if another copy exists.”
“Sorry,” she says, eyebrows drawing together unhappily, arms crossing as she slumps down in her seat.
He turns to her, one hand brushing the hair away from her ear while the other gropes behind him until he finds his trench coat.
“Nothing to be sorry for. First of all, you're here. Second of all, adventures in the Frankfurt airport, getting pinched by the coppers, singing our way to freedom -- all in a day's work,” he says, leaning down to kiss her, lips slow and methodical. Because now it’s his turn — everything he’s been imagining for the last two weeks. He slips onto the floor, turns to kneel between her legs, and simultaneously pulls the trench coat over his own head. He holds it up long enough to grin at her, mischief gleaming in his eyes.
“Hired car. Never can be too careful, in case it’s equipped with security cameras,” he says, then dives beneath the coat, pushing it up to her shoulders. Rose's giggles fill the darkened back of the limo.