Chapter Text
For once, Rose was grateful that the Doctor wouldn’t be joining in the festive domesticity. Christmas dinner with Jackie and Mickey was just what she needed to make her head stop spinning, ground her a little, help her make sense of her life again, because for the first time, she was realizing that she had forgotten.
The Doctor was fantastic and kind and heroic and brilliant and all those other things, but he was an alien. Not just an amazingly clever man with a few weird psychic powers, an alien. Rose had seen his mind time and again while he went through the slow process of acclimating her to it, but she hadn’t realized until now that she didn’t see that incomprehensible maelstrom as him, not really.
Today he saved the world in pajamas and a bathrobe. Before that, thousands of years in the future, he made love to her for the first time, knocked her unconscious, and packed her off back home so that she would be safe while he died. In between, he changed his face and his voice and apparently just about everything else about him.
That was what he was. That was what she was in love with.
It was too much, so for now, she wasn’t going to worry about it. Cooking with mum was lovely; they had a whole little routine for Christmas dinner that they’d worked out over the years, evolving from when Rose was too young to do more than stir bowls her mother pointed at. Even now, Jackie was the one who chopped everything that needed chopping, just out of force of habit, and Rose basted the turkey with a single-minded meticulousness that it really didn’t need. Just like every other Christmas.
Mickey got there just in time to carve, and brought over a bottle of something cheap and sweet, and they all laughed and passed things back and forth and talked and talked without saying much of anything.
And then he walked in, and wow. He’d always been magnetic, but now he looked just edible, with that little smile on his new face. The smile was new, too, but she thought she recognized the feeling behind it.
What was really new was the way he blended seamlessly into the warm feelings of family and Christmas that had filled the apartment. Even Jackie seemed fine with him there, making smalltalk and passing the turkey just as readily as she did with Mickey.
That was when Rose decided that it didn’t matter what he was. Nothing could be more human than the gathering around that table, and if he could fit there, then she could fit with him. Since he was there, he must agree.
When they stood outside the TARDIS together and he confirmed that he still wanted her to come with him, she almost kissed him right in front of her mum.
“You’re not leaving right away, are you?” Jackie asked. “Only you just got back.”
“No, can’t leave for a bit yet,” the Doctor said. “I’ll have to fix up the TARDIS first. Someone pried her open and messed about inside, and then, er, someone else seems to have crashed her into London just a bit. But I’ll have her up and running in about a week.”
“We’ll be here for New Year’s, then!” Rose said, grinning up at him.
“Suppose we will.” He beamed back. “Got to hand it to humans, you certainly know how to celebrate an arbitrary milestone. Champagne and fireworks and snogging, brilliant! I remember one human colony, couple thousand years from now, that ended up on a planet with an incredibly short orbit--just five weeks long! And on top of that, there were two separate groups of colonists, and of course they both started their local year on the day they landed. The government eventually had to ban New Year’s celebrations because no one was ever getting any work done.”
“Well, I’m going back inside,” Jackie said. “Real snow or not, it’s freezing out here. You two can stay out and natter about planets and colonies until New Year’s if you like.”
“I’ll spend the night in the flat, mum,” Rose said. “Just let me get some things from the TARDIS first.”
“All right, sweetheart. Mickey and I’ll go do the washing up, and then the three of us will have a cuppa before bed, how does that sound?”
Mickey did not look entirely pleased with this plan, but he went along with it, and soon Rose and her new Doctor were alone in the TARDIS once again.
“I’m sorry,” he blurted suddenly. “Been wanting to say that since I woke up, but first it was the Sycorax and then Harriet Jones and then your mother, and it’s not really the sort of conversation I want to have in front of any of them. I’m not sorry I sent you home, but I’m sorry about...how I did it.”
“Which part?” Rose asked. “The part where you sent the TARDIS off while I was asleep, or the part where you shagged me first?”
“The--the second one. I hope you’re not too--how’s your head?”
“It hurt for a bit,” she admitted. “But it’s fine now. Is that why you decided to do it? Because you knew it’d knock me out so you could swan off?”
He winced.
“Wow. Well, least it felt a bit nicer than getting knocked over the head with a mallet, or something,” she said.
“A bit!?” he protested, indignant.
Rose laughed.
“Oh, all right, a lot. I understand why you did it, and you’d better not do it again--send me away, I mean, not the sex. But let’s not fight right now. It’s Christmas.”
“Fine by me!” he agreed. “What should we do instead? Can’t take the TARDIS anywhere just yet, but we could always go exploring inside her--there are rooms in here I haven’t seen in years! Or poke about London for a bit. Or we could find out whether I like telly this time around--what do you think, Rose Tyler, does this look like a telly-watching face to you?”
“I think if you tried to sit still long enough to see a whole program, you’d explode,” she told him. “And I’m going up to my mum’s for a cuppa and then to bed in a few, remember?”
“Oh.” He deflated a bit. “I thought maybe since we weren’t fighting tonight, you might want to stay the night on the TARDIS after all.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Brilliant, Doctor. I’ll just call mum up and tell her not to expect me because I’m going to be shagging my alien boyfriend, shall I?”
“Ah--well--” he started sputtering like a fish. “Rose, I’m not really--with the parents, and the labels, and the--bit too old to be a boyfriend--don’t even know all the relevant social norms in your time--a little too domestic for me--”
“I was kidding,” she told him. “Blimey, never seen anyone so anxious to avoid being my boyfriend before. I’m going to go get my overnight things.”
It wasn’t like she wanted to make things “domestic” between them. It just would have been nice if he hadn’t seemed so panicked at the prospect. As morning afters went--or getting on a couple of days after now, whatever--this one had the most warning flags ever.
Not that she’d be listening to any of them. But it’d be nice if he gave her some indication that he still cared about her.
When she walked back into the console room, overnight bag slung over her shoulder, he was still there, darting around the console. Watching him gave her a sort of double-vision; on the one hand, he was so clearly the Doctor that she didn’t know how she could ever have doubted him, but on the other...the jacket was gone, the ears, the short-cropped hair she’d scraped her nails across, the broad hands that had worked her body so reverently, all gone, replaced by a stranger.
He darted around the console to her and laid his hand against her cheek, first gently, then more purposefully, touching his fingertips to her temples.
“May I?” he whispered, and she sent her agreement back to him in a wave of feeling that made him suck in air like he’d been drowning.
No words or images passed between them, just feelings, the same feelings as before, alien and intense and completely him. She did her best to send him back her love, but couldn’t help but tack on her confusion and hurt and everything else. There was no way to lie like this, or at least, if there was, she didn’t know it.
Can’t you just tell me? she thought at him unintentionally. Can’t you just say how you feel in words?
But her thoughts were swamped beneath the tide of him, although the connection remained shallow, and she let them drift away into silence.
She wasn’t sure how long they stood there like that before he pulled back, holding her head between his strange new hands and gently kissing her forehead with unfamiliar lips.
“Good night, Rose Tyler,” he said, and she couldn’t help but think Couldn’t the accent have stayed, at least? Just one solid thing for me to latch onto?
“Good night, Doctor,” she said, and left the TARDIS.