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(One.)
It was a remodeled warehouse just outside of South Beach, but Mickey swore up and down it was the club to go to since they were in Miami for the press tour. Everything was chrome and glass and modern furniture, and it was nicer than Rose had imagined it would be. The herd of them were ushered into a VIP area, everybody piling onto the springy black velvet benches.
Rose was trying to maintain some sense of decorum with the Doctor — this whole thing was so new, only a week since the wrap party and the back room at the pub — but he was making it very difficult, with his hand in the small of her back, and the way he kept leaning down to talk next to her cheek, and his hair already wilting in the humidity. His shiny pinstriped suit was ridiculous, really, not his usual brown, but orange and silver instead.
Somehow he was pulling it off, and it made Rose want to pull it off of him.
There were enough of them to make the VIP room into a party on its own — except Adam, who was leaning around the velvet rope to peer into the club, chattering on about someone he’d spotted at the bar. Rose wasn’t really paying attention.
“C’mon,” she said, grinning at the Doctor and putting her tongue between her teeth, biting down just a bit, and he couldn’t refuse. She held his hand, pulling him out of the VIP room, and everyone else followed in a rush, crowding onto the already crowded dance floor.
Mickey was right — this place was sublime, wild in all the right ways, the DJ was on fire, and Rose hadn’t had anything to drink yet, but she was already feeling giddy.
The Doctor stepped into the pulsing throng of dancers just behind her, and before she could turn around he was pressed up against her back, gripping her hips against his, lanky body already moving to the beat.
She sighed happily, lifting her arms up and behind both their shoulders, burying her fingers in his hair (warm and sweat and Doctor) and grinding her hips right along with him. She opened her mouth, singing along at the top of her lungs, but it didn’t matter — no one could hear anything over the music pounding out of the enormous speakers.
As the next song started, he took her by the waist and spun her around, directly into his chest, and his thigh bumped between her legs, forcing them open. They were moving again, hips rolling together, her fingers clutching at the back of his neck and his hands digging into her waist, rhythmically pulling and pushing, and this was everything she wanted, except with too many pieces of clothing between them.
Donna danced by, shimmying with some handsome bloke. “Did you see who was at the bar?! Adam went to set her straight … can’t believe she has the nerve…!” But the details were lost as the bloke danced her away.
Rose’s fingers tightened on the back of the Doctor’s neck, pulling his face closer. His grin was gone, his eyes locked to hers, brown and glittering and predatory and it was so warm, it had to be the humidity making her this lightheaded. She could float up to the ceiling and pop, every part of her aching and how, how was she feeling this desperate need again, they’d shagged just before they left the hotel two hours ago.
He needed it too; she felt the evidence hard against her belly every time his hips rocked forward. Clenching her thighs around his leg, rolling with him, the bass beat thumping through them both, Rose didn’t even try to stifle the whimper that welled in her throat, because no one could hear her anyway.
The Doctor apparently heard.
His face was so close, his breath puffed over her lips. Her eyes closed, ready for the kiss, but his stubble scraped against her cheek and he groaned into her ear, “We can’t – Rose, oh god – we can’t do this here.”
She lost track after that — pounding music and stumbling through the crowd until they reached their VIP area, please god oh please, let it be empty.
It wasn’t.
Adam had some woman up against the wall, one leg hiked over his hip, flaming pink stiletto propped on a table. Their mouths were locked together, but her eyes were open and she spotted Rose and the Doctor and squeaked, shoving Adam away so hard he fell on the floor right in front of them.
“Cassandra!” Rose shouted. The Doctor yelped, snatching his hand away and rubbing at the fingernail marks Rose had left in his palm.
Cassandra was the bane of Rose’s public life, a pop princess in her own right, but one who took all her cues from Rose — copying her hairstyles, fashion, music, everything. It was as though she wanted to be Rose.
Cassandra tossed her platinum curls over one shoulder and shimmied her skirt down to a respectable level, puckering her lips at the Doctor. “Ooh, look at what the cat dragged in — slim and foxy!”
One of Rose’s hands went to her hip, the other pointing at the door. “Get out!”
Cassandra huffed, flipping the bird with both hands before flouncing out of the room and back into the club. Adam stayed on the floor, huddled in a ball, covering his face in shame. They both stared at him.
“He’s your drummer,” Rose said to the Doctor, crossing her arms.
The Doctor arched his eyebrows. “Not anymore.”
(Two.)
The Doctor’s voice rang out through the cabin, echoing off the walls and getting louder on every line.
"And our ashes will fly from the aer-o-plane over the seeeea…"
He broke off mid-verse and turned to Rose. “I hope they put us up in a Neutral Milk Hotel. Get it, Rose, get it? Like the band, the band whose song I was singing, while we’re in a plane, over the sea?”
Rose sighed, “I get it. Donna gets it, Martha gets it, Lucy the flight attendant gets it. I’m sure even the pilot gets it.”
A sudden pounding on the door separating the cabin and cockpit sounded out an affirmative.
“Maybe let’s take a break from the singing though, yeah? Save your voice and all that?”
The Doctor looked offended. “I will have you know that I have never, not once, cancelled a performance because of voice trouble.”
Donna didn’t even bother to remove her eye mask. “Yes, we know, and the city of Cleveland is still recovering. Honestly, those poor people. I bet you shattered some windows that night.”
The Doctor ignored her. “Do you suppose there are any carrot flowers on board? And, sub-question, how do you think you’d go about becoming king of them?”
Rose moved her hand to the Doctor’s thigh, squeezing gently. “Seriously, Doctor, let’s put the late-’90s indie rock to rest.”
Martha leaned into the aisle, turning toward the back of the plane where Rose and the Doctor sat. “You know, I heard that album is about Anne Fran–” She stopped at Rose’s glare. “I mean, um. I think I’m going to have a kip.” She clicked off her overhead light.
Rose felt the weight of the Doctor’s head rest briefly on hers, before he was sitting back up and raising the window shade. He had to be the only person Rose knew who felt energized by air travel. Even middle-of-the-night-after-two-hours-on-the-tarmac air travel.
She, on the other hand, was exhausted, and raised the arm rest to lean into the Doctor’s side.
Some last minute confusion and an overbooked plane had sent a few of them to a separate one. The rest of the bands and the crew were on the original flight, but Rose was grateful for the quiet. Adam snored and somehow always ended up only a row away from her. It was nice just to have the – well, the family.
The Doctor slid his arm around her shoulders and she sunk closer to him, letting the light sound of his breathing lull her to sleep.
She woke up scant minutes later to a rubbing on her forearm. It felt like someone was – oh my god, he was coloring in her tattoo. With a marker.
Yanking her arm away, she pulled back to see the Doctor’s sheepish grin. “What did you get only the lines for? If you didn’t want someone to color in your star, you should’ve colored it in yourself.”
He recapped the marker and pushed it into the seat pocket.
She was about to respond, something about things that seem like a good idea when you’re young, when the flight attendant appeared in the aisle.
“So sorry to bother you, but if you’ll not be needing anything, I’ll just take my seat at the front,” Lucy said.
The Doctor squeezed Rose in tighter to him, “Got everything I need.”
She gave him a light elbow. “Doctor,” she said under her breath.
“Ah, Lucy’s not going to blab, are you, Lucy?” and he gave her his most charming grin.
“No, sir.”
“See? That’ll be all, ta!”
Lucy made her way back down the aisle and Rose saw the light switch off in the front.
The Doctor pulled Rose toward him with the arm around her shoulders. “All alone, on a tiny plane, in the middle of the night,” his voice rumbled through his chest and into hers.
“There are four other people on this plane, Doctor.”
He gave her a quick kiss. “And they’re all asleep.”
Despite herself, she leaned into him. “We could be asleep, too, you know.”
His free hand came up to settle at her waist, fingers pulling at the bottom of her shirt.
“Well, if you tire me out, maybe I’ll go to sleep.” He dropped his head to kiss her again.
Opening her mouth under his, Rose decided to make the best of it. If a little snogging would put him out for the rest of the flight, she wasn’t going to complain.
His tongue slipped past her lips, sliding against hers before he pulled back to nip at her neck.
“You smell really good,” he said into her skin.
“I smell like airport.” And she tugged at his hair in encouragement.
“Love airports.” His tongue traced a line up her neck to her ear, pulling the lobe into his mouth while she squirmed against him.
“Just snogging, Doctor,” she tried to keep her voice stern.
“Mm-hmm, yep, got it.” His hand slipped under her shirt but, true to his word, didn’t venture any higher.
She pulled at his hair again, bringing his mouth back to her own. After several long minutes of teeth and lips and tongue and warmth, he finally pulled back, resting his forehead against hers and panting lightly.
“Oh, Rose Tyler, you are in for it when we get to that hotel, neutral milky or no.”
She smiled, tongue resting at the corner of her mouth. “I’m looking forward to it.”
The Doctor leaned against the window, Rose leaned against him and moments later they were asleep.
Sluggish and drowsy on the walk through the airport the next morning, it took three newsstands before anyone noticed. There, on the front of a rack of tabloids, was a photo of the Doctor and Rose, grainy and dim and definitely kissing.
The Doctor snatched one from the rack, scanning the story quickly.
“Lucy!” He said, and then paused. “Always wanted to say that. Ricky Ricardo over here, look at me!”
Rose leaned in to read the article, “Doctor, focus.”
“Sources inside Vortex Vinyl provided Daily World News this exclusive photo of the Doctor and Rose Tyler making a little mouth music on a late night flight,” she read.
“Mouth music,” the Doctor said. “Is that a real thing? And, more importantly, although I guess that would depend on who you ask, how did the Master get to Lucy?”
Donna grabbed the paper from the Doctor’s hands, thwacking him over the head with it. “Oh, you big dumbo, overbooked flight, private plane? We’ve been set up!”
The Doctor’s eyes widened. “Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, I was just checking to make sure you lot knew.”
Rose prodded at the Doctor, they were beginning to make a scene in the newsstand. “Let’s get moving, and you can tell me why the Master is leaking pictures of us to the press.”
The Doctor followed along with her, Donna and Martha trooping behind.
“The Master was – well, we grew up together. Got into music together. Listen, Rose, there’s a lot of in between bits I’d rather skip for now, all right? I’ll tell you about them someday, I promise. But when I was signing with a label, the Master was just starting up Vortex. I went with Gallifrey instead, he took it personally.”
Rose twined her fingers with the Doctor’s, this industry always felt so small to begin with, but this made it a thousand times worse.
“Why didn’t you sign with him?”
“I didn’t – we didn’t think the same, he and I. You know he’s responsible for all that money being thrown at radio stations? The payola? It’s all him, and it ruined things for a while.”
He sighed and grabbed at the paper, clearly switching gears as he squinted at the photo.
“Is my nose really that squishy?”
(Three.)
In October, Rose texted Jackie from a night market in Shanghai, a picture of the Doctor haggling with a stall vendor. The message said, He’s plotting his Christmas present for you. Something called bezoolium.
An hour later: The bezoolium necklace turned his hand green. The search continues.
And plotting was the proper word for it — this little hunt had gone far beyond the definition of planning. This would be the Doctor’s first Christmas with the Tylers, and he had determined to buy something that would knock Jackie’s socks off. Not because he yearned for her love or approval; quite the contrary.
Gift-giving between them was a bizarre sort of competition, to see who could crack the other’s facade of indifference. For her last birthday, he’d given Jackie a Jaguar XKR-S Coupe. When he unveiled it with a flourish in the front drive of the mansion, Jackie bit her lip, put her hands on her hips, and said, “Well, you could’ve at least gotten green. I don’t like red. Rose knows, ask her. That didn’t occur to you, did it? I didn’t think so.” With a smirk and a nod, she’s walked into the house without looking back.
Of course, she nicknamed the Jag Hot Momma and kept it meticulously waxed and drove it every day. But she never, ever showed the slightest amount of affection for the car where the Doctor might notice.
The Doctor claimed not to remember his birthday, or exactly how many years old he was (nine hundred and three, Rose, he told her anytime she asked, with that damned Cheshire cat grin, and she’d done her research after that, but never found a precise birthdate listed in any of his biographies). But during their last visit to London, Jackie had declared that she was celebrating his birthday anyway — cake and everything — and presented him with a 1949 Fender Broadcaster prototype.
His eyes riveted to the guitar and Rose could tell he was practically drooling, but his face stayed impassive and he said with a shrug and a sigh, “Jackie, I do prefer Gibsons.”
And so with Christmas coming up, the Doctor was in a shopping frenzy. He scoured every online auction site, spent hours combing through every market and high-end boutique from New York to Moscow, and by the time they came back to London for Christmas, Rose was ready for the entire debacle to be over.
Christmas morning, kneeling on the floor beside his winning bid, the Doctor rubbed his hands together gleefully after he put the last piece of tape on her package. “She’s going to cry tears of joy, and my superior skills in gift-buying will have done it to her!”
“Doctor,” Rose sighed, nibbling on her thumbnail and nudging him with her toe. “Can we just go downstairs?”
“Not yet. Bow-tying is an art form in some cultures, Rose, during Victorian times there were entire tomes devoted to the practice, and I can’t just do this up like I’m tying my trainers. This is important.”
Fifteen minutes and an elaborate ribbon later, the Doctor presented Jackie with his find. The very picture of smug victory, she placed a box in front of him, too — wrapped in deep blue satin, tied with velvet.
“Go on, then, Doctor” she said, plopping down on the chair opposite and lifting her eyebrows in anticipation.
“Oh no, ladies first,” the Doctor replied generously, making a gesture at the box he’d deposited in front of her.
They stared each other down like gunfighters, tumbleweeds of Christmas spirit bouncing across the barren landscape between them.
“Fine, I’ll open mine then, shall I?” Rose said loudly, snatching up one of her presents.
“No, I’ll go.” Jackie took her elaborately wrapped gift from the table like she expected a bear trap to spring from inside. The bow was so meticulously knotted, she broke two fingernails trying to get it undone before stalking to the kitchen for scissors, shooting death glares at a gleeful Doctor all the while.
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, Rose sang, elbowing him in the ribs so hard he grunted.
When Jackie finally wrestled her gift open and lifted the lid off the box, she stared at the tissue-pillowed contents with the blankest face Rose had ever seen; she might as well have been staring at a plain wall.
“I’m terrible with electronics. You could’ve gotten me something I might actually use,” she huffed, crossing her arms and trying to glare at the Doctor.
“It’s a satellite phone with video capabilities, top-of-the-line, with all the bells and whistles. I even fiddled with it a bit — some jiggery-pokery — now you can see and talk to Rose no matter where we are on the planet! That thing’ll work when we perform for the penguins in Antarctica!”
Jackie blinked rapidly, tears shining in her eyes, and her arms were crossed so tight across her chest she seemed to be hugging herself. “I’m going to have to get Mickey to work this thing for me, aren’t I? Might as well be a paperweight, I hardly know what to do with this kind of gadget. I was hoping for some slippers.” She took a breath that almost sounded like a sigh. “Well then, go on. Open yours.”
The Doctor took his time, long fingers working the ribbon and silk with the precision of a surgeon. He flipped open the lid on the box and stared at the contents, genuinely puzzled.
“A coat.”
“It’s Janis Joplin’s overcoat, the one she wore during the Festival Express tour. ‘S her greatest period, performance-wise. I thought some of that might rub off on you. Your last few bouts on stage haven’t been your best, I don’t know if anyone’s told you that, but your voice sounds a bit off since — oof!”
The Doctor had swept Jackie off her feet into a hug. “Janis is my favorite — I’ve never even told Rose how much her early albums influenced — I mean — thank you.”
Before Rose knew what was happening, Jackie pulled her head back, took the Doctor’s face in her hands, and deposited an kiss on his mouth. “I love the phone – sometimes I miss Rose so much, and I think if only I could talk to her it’d be bearable, and the phone is perfect, Doctor, really, it’s just perfect!” The tears she’d tried blinking back were dripping down her cheeks along with a healthy dose of mascara.
The Doctor set Jackie back on her feet and, without a scrap of discretion, made a face like a child who’d accidentally eaten a bite of celery, and wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket.
Stepping to the other side of the room and clearing his throat loudly, he said, “Right. What’s for breakfast, then?”
Before brunch was over, Jackie was sniping at the Doctor for dipping his fingers into the jam jar, and the Doctor was mocking Jackie for her burnt Christmas buns, and Rose had enough with the both of them. She left for the rest of the morning, taking out the baby-blue scooter the Doctor’ had given her for its inaugural ride.
(Four.)
The Doctor had his hands in the air — not in surrender, more a conciliatory gesture that said "we’re all reasonable beings here" — and he was so far away, Rose only caught a few of his words over the din.
“Everyone just calm down, if we form a queue then everyone can —”
Three pairs of knickers hit him at the same time, tossed from different angles. He flailed wildly, trying to brush them off his head and shoulders, and nearly flailed right into the audience surrounding the stage.
“Doctor!”
Rose tried not to sound panicked — she wasn’t worried for herself, but she was painfully aware of the mass of people converging on his location, all of them frantic and chanting his name.
He couldn’t have heard her voice over the roar of the crowd but all the same, he instantly spotted her on the walkway of the second floor. He was done talking and trying to be reasonable, his face now a picture of focused determination, and she knew just as much as she wasn’t worried for herself, he wasn’t worried for himself, either — he was only worried about her.
They made a ridiculous pair.
Rose had managed to duck away from the crowd — that was around the time their bodyguards had been overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers — but Rose lost the Doctor’s hand somewhere in the melee and there he was, still in the thick of it on the lower level of the shopping mall, all on his own.
Her shout had attracted a few others’ attention, as well, and a squeal of excitement rose from the crowd as her hiding place was spotted. They began to climb the stairs, sprinting up the escalator in the wrong direction, anything they could to get to her.
Donna was nowhere to be seen — as soon as she’d realized exactly how large and out of control this situation was getting, she’d been off like a rocket, probably to demand security reinforcements from mall management. This wasn’t the first signing event they’d been to, but it was certainly the most shoddily run; Rose didn’t know who was responsible for this debacle, but whoever they were, they were doubtless getting the most thorough dressing-down in the history of star-studded mall signings.
The stage the Doctor was perched on trembled and then began to rock back and forth, the crowd desperate to reach him, and this was the exact definition of mob mentality — no one was thinking, everyone following along with the person next to them, ripping at the curtains surrounding the base of the platform and climbing the sides.
The Doctor nearly toppled over at the first shuddering jolt, but quickly regained his balance and navigated the stage like a sailor crossing the deck of a ship, long legs moving with surprising speed. Three running strides and he sprang into the air, over the heads of the crowd already cresting the sides of the stage, their arms reaching up to grab him and Rose saw it in her mind, like a slow-motion nightmare, one of them snagging his pinstriped cuff or his trainers and he’d go down headfirst into the midst of them.
But his momentum carried him to the decoratively exposed steel girder that supported the second level of the mall; it also knocked off his specs as his forehead made contact with the metal. The glasses went spinning into the crowd and the Doctor made a face Rose would’ve giggled at in any other circumstance — a comically exaggerated frown, rubbing his forehead and shooting the girder an accusatory look, as though it had head-butted him on purpose.
He was on the move again, climbing awkwardly, shimmying and working for purchase on the unforgiving metal girder, and if he lost his grip now he wouldn’t just fall into the crowd, he’d crush them on his way down, he was up so high.
The first few fans reached her perch on the walkway and Rose kicked her heels off without a second thought and sprinted toward the Doctor, bare feet slapping on the cold tiles and heart pounding so hard it was going to break free of her chest.
The sight of them moving toward each other, him climbing like Romeo toward Juliet on a balcony, elicited a squeal from the crowd, like a high-pitched thunderclap echoed by the wind of fangirl sighing.
They’d been frantic before; they were positively frothing now. If they had their way, she and the Doctor might yet end up with a tragic ending of Shakespearian proportions.
Rose reached the Doctor just as he tumbled over the railing and popped back onto his feet. Before, when they were separated by an expanse of stores chock full of logo tees and knickknacks and a crowd of unruly fans, his expression had been one of grave concentration and concern.
But now, as her hand slipped into his, his face broke into the most brilliant smile, as though this was an exhilarating game of some kind, and he shouted, “Run!”
They darted down the walkway, dodging and leaping and this was insanity, like they were on some sadistic Asian gameshow where no one had explained the rules and Rose wasn’t exactly sure what would happen if the crowd got hold of them, but she was certain she didn’t want to find out because it would constitute as losing.
The end of the line — well, the end of the walkway — was the large entrance to Henrik’s department store, all fluorescent lights and clothing racks and perfume displays, and they hurtled right inside, pushing past employees who stared in mute horror at the wave of people descending on their store.
Rose was looking for a way out — a door, a glimmer of daylight, something — but the Doctor’s mind had already concocted a different plan.
“This way!” he called, making a beeline for the elevator, but instead of pushing the call button, he wrenched open the door of the tiny utility cupboard beside the elevator and shoved her inside. The door slammed shut behind them, plunging them into pitch dark, and she heard the lock click.
“Safe!” he crowed triumphantly.
Rose tried to swat his arm, but in the dark she ended up hitting his stomach instead, and he grunted. “We’re stuck! What’re we supposed to do, tunnel our way out? Did you bring some kind of chisel in those pockets of yours?”
“Hmm.” There was an extended rustling noise. “Eight peppermints, five rubber bands, a paperclip, seven pieces of paper, and something I think is a ball of silly putty. At least I hope it is. But no chisel.”
“So we’re waiting for rescue,” Rose said, giving him her devastatingly exasperated look, the one that usually sent him stuttering, but in the dark it had no effect whatsoever. She sighed. “C’mere, how’s that head of yours?”
She fumbled around until she found his face and gently touched his forehead. He made a small noise and drew back. “Hurts.”
Just then someone tentatively knocked on the metal door. Another joined it, and within a matter of seconds it was a deafening hail of blows, thundering in the small space.
“Is the door going to hold?” she shouted into his ear, fingernails digging into his arm.
“Dunno!” the Doctor yelled right back. “Do you feel that?”
“Feel what?”
“Adrenaline!” he replied, seizing her head in the dark and his mouth found hers, a bit chapped and dry from all the yelling and running and she licked his bottom lip, giggling as she threw her arms around his shoulders.
“I feel it,” she said.
He started to say something else but she stoppered it with her lips, tongue enthusiastically tangling with his, and if the fangirls wrenched the door open right now, they’d see exactly what they were hoping for: the Doctor and Rose with their mouths locked together, him pawing at her breasts and her palming the front of his trousers.
As it turned out, it wasn’t the fangirls who managed to get the door open. It was Donna, with a maintenance man and a bevy of local police.
“Does it qualify as public indecency if it’s in a cupboard?” she sighed at the nearest uniformed officer.
(Five.)
They were 42 miles outside Graceland when the Doctor decided they ought to dress the part.
Jack, on the road with them for some sort of “week in the life” broadcast immediately embraced the idea, leaping from the bench to swivel his hips.
Donna pretended to be engrossed in her laptop, but the Doctor had run the battery down playing Minesweeper hours before (“I like when it smiles at me!”), so she was really just staring at a blank screen.
They weren’t actually performing tonight – it was a charity thing put on by the Elvis Presley Estate, and the label had purchased a table. Predictably, with the promise of nibbles and the King and a tour schedule that put them in the area anyway, the Doctor had volunteered. With enthusiasm.
But now it had gone off the tracks.
“I’ll be Elvis, of course,” Jack said, like it was obvious.
The Doctor recoiled. “I believe there is an actual rock star on the bus to fill those shoes. The blue suede ones, naturally.”
Jack curls his lip, practicing. “Yeah, but she’s a little too blonde for the part, don’t you think?”
Rose, who had beaten the Doctor’s Minesweeper high score on the first try and was fixing herself a crown out of the tin foil from the morning’s breakfast burritos, looked up. “I am not getting in the middle of this.”
The Doctor looked horrified. “Rose Tyler, I know for a fact you enjoy the way I move my hips, I’m a natural for the part.” He turned to Jack. “Plus, I’ve got sideburns. You haven’t.”
He nodded like the matter was settled.
“Elvis didn’t always have sideburns and he’s definitely not British.”
The Doctor was already fixing his hair in the small mirror. “Easy enough,” he said, in a stilted American accent.
Donna shut her laptop. “You can both be Elvis. Pick an era. Rose and I are putting on something fancy and enjoying ourselves, and so help me, if either of you even think of getting peanut butter and banana on my dress, I’ll stick a banana somewhere else.” Jack perked up and Donna cut him off: “And you won’t enjoy it!”
The Doctor and Jack both darted for their luggage, but Jack stopped halfway there and took off his jumper, leaving him in just a white undershirt. “Army Elvis! I call Army Elvis!”
The Doctor looked down at his own clothes. “Suit Elvis!”
“Fine with me! No one will even recognize that!”
Predictably, they did recognize him though and the Doctor and Rose were both swarmed by autograph seekers as soon as they pulled up to the valet.
Jack grabbed Donna’s hand and pulled her inside before stopping short at a sign at the front – the schedule of events. There, at 7:15, a charity auction, a charity bachelor auction.
Donna tugged on his arm. “No, no, no, absolutely not.”
Jack winked. “Afraid your bank roll isn’t big enough to pull in Hark the Shark?” He flagged down the nearest publicist and signed himself up. Donna, distracted by a passing tray of champagne, missed him scribbling down the Doctor’s name as well.
It was 7:30 before they called the Doctor’s name, a spotlight shifting to him where he sat holding Rose’s hand underneath the table.
He barely blinked before shrugging and making his way to the stage. Climbing the steps, he rubbed his fingers as if there were bills between them and pointed at
Rose, mouthing, “For charity,” with a grin.
When the call for bids went out and Rose raised her hand, the room went silent. It could hardly be construed as any sort of confirmation, mates did this sort of stuff, after all, but still – it was clear no one was going to bid against Rose Tyler for the Doctor.
Donna gamely stepped in from across the table, upping the amount enough that the donation was significant before allowing Rose to make a final, unanswered bid.
As the gavel came down, the Doctor hopped off the stage, sweeping Rose up in a hug before realizing where they were. He pulled back and stuck out a hand for her to shake instead. The smile he gave her though indicated the Elvis-themed date she’d just won would not go unused.
Jack’s name was next and he sauntered from the table like he had all the time in the world. Hark the Shark was syndicated in America and a few whoops followed him to the stage.
Bidding took off aggressively, centered mostly around a table of Brits in suits in the back. It just outpaced the Doctor’s bid, when Rose nudged Donna under the table, nodding at where Jack stood on stage.
“Oh no, it’s not up to me what the Captain gets up to in his spare time,” Donna said, but the way she was sizing up every bidder spoke differently.
The price climbed higher and this time it was the Doctor who nudged Donna.
“Fine!” she shouted, drawing the attention of the auctioneer.
“Is that a bid from table 9?”
Donna growled out an affirmative and Jack beamed.
Three minutes later, bidding had ended and Donna had won herself an amorous radio DJ.
She steeled herself as he swaggered back to the table, fists clenching at her sides. Jack leaned in, mouthing hovering over hers as he braced a hand on the back of her chair. “Bid like that? Think you deserve something extra,” and he kissed her as the room went wild.
A week later, the Doctor and Rose stumbled on them backstage, Donna in blue suede pumps and Jack in a collar, howling like a hound dog as he pinned her to the wall.
(One.)
She smirked at him around her cigarette, and he smirked right back.
“Rose Tyler, you think I’m joking.” The Doctor crossed his arms, kicking at a pebble on the asphalt before leaning against the side of the bus. “I assure you, I am not.”
She kicked the pebble back to him, bringing up a few more from the crumbling ground with it.
“I don’t think you’re joking, I think you believe it right now. I do not, however, believe in your follow-through when we’re tucked up in that tiny little closet you call a bunk.” She took a long drag, letting the smoke out into the air and tipping her head to watch it dissipate into the sky.
“I don’t believe my follow-through in that particular area has ever been called into question before. I’m – I’m insulted.” He pushed back off the bus, making a show of avoiding the cloud of smoke.
“Now, now, no one’s insulting anyone, I just think whether I’ve snuck a cigarette or not has no bearing on whether you’ll be kissing me later.” Inhale, exhale.
“It’s hardly sneaking anything if you tell me to come outside with you so you can smoke the cigarette you charmed off that poor ticket taker. Not that I wouldn’t know, superior nose, me.” He made a show of sniffing at the air.
“Reminds me of nights on the Estate is all, out under the stars because we’d been kicked out of everywhere else, passing a cigarette between six of us just to feel grown up.”
The Doctor walked a fading painted line, arms out for balance. “I don’t know what kind of deal your mother cut on this tour, but I’m certain you probably have enough money to buy the Estate. And every cigarette-selling bodega around it.”
She took another drag, the tip glowing brighter for a moment and she focused on it. “Not the point. Besides, you used to smoke, I know you did. I’ve seen pictures.”
He darted in and plucked the cigarette from her fingers, considering it for a moment. “Used to, yeah. Quit though. You know, they say that quitters never win, but they do, in this case.”
Rose felt her throat tighten at the look of the cigarette in his long fingers, the same image she’d seen in magazines tucked up alone in her bedroom years ago. There was no reason it should be attractive, it was a disgusting habit, and he wasn’t wrong about the smell, and yet –
“You gonna smoke that or give it back?”
He rolled it between the tips of his fingers. “Oh, I don’t know. What’s your policy on kissing smokers? Same as mine? A no smoky snogs situation, if you will?”
The ash was collecting on the end and he flicked at the butt with his thumb before she answered.
“Sure, Doctor. No smoky snogs for me either.”
He nodded thoughtfully and brought the cigarette to his lips, inhaling deeply before letting the smoke out in a thin line. “Noted – no kissing for either of us then.”
She snagged it back, finishing it off with one last deep pull, before stubbing it out and skipping off to deposit it in the coffee can in the center off the lot.
When she returned, the Doctor was back in the bus, the door still open for her.
She climbed the steps and looked toward the back. The Doctor was already on the bunk, jacket off, and reclining with his hands laced behind his head.
He raised his eyebrows at her and she darted down the aisle, flopping on top of him before pushing herself up on her elbows.
His hand skirted down to rest on her side, inching slowly toward her bum.
“I thought there’d be no kissing?” she said and nudged at his nose with her own.
“This isn’t kissing.” And his hand completed its journey, while the other wound up between them, cupping her through her t-shirt.
She felt a current ripple through her and ground down into him with her hips. “No, it’s not.”
He walked his fingers to the front of her trousers, undoing the snap and lowering the zip. “And this isn’t kissing either.”
She unbuttoned the top of his Oxford, loosening his tie before pulling it over his head. “Nor this.”
His fingers slipped between the gap in the material, edging the waistband of her knickers. “This also doesn’t qualify.”
She finished with his shirt, leaning up so he could shimmy it off and tugging her own over her head.
“Still not kissing,” she said.
His hands repositioned, pulling at the waist of her trousers and dragging them as low as he could.
Hopping off the bunk, she slid them down and stepped out of them, taking her shoes and socks with them. She paused to watch him undo and remove his own trousers, kicking his trainers off like they were strangling him.
“More stripping than kissing, this,” he said.
“Oh, definitely.” And she rejoined him on the bed, positioning her legs on either side of his hips and rocking into him, the heat rippling out even through the thin fabric still between them.
He dragged a finger down her chest, circling her belly button before making the return trip and skirting the lace of her bra.
“Well, if stripping’s okay…” She twisted her hands behind her, undoing her bra and sliding it down her arms, flinging it toward the front of the bus.
He licked at his lips. “Just to clarify, kissing would be – all kissing? Or just mouth to mouth?”
She grabbed his hands, positioning them where she wanted to be touched. “Your rules, remember?”
The next morning she woke him by pressing her forehead to his, face looming close until he opened his eyes.
“And what, Doctor, is your policy on kissing with morning breath?”
He paused to consider for a moment, “Not my favorite, but I’ll make an exception.”