fic; Doctor Who: and other gerunds. / program worldwide.
title: and other gerunds.
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG?
words: 608.
notes: These are two ficlets cross-posted from Tumblr, from prompts. This one is here over there.
"I love walking, Rose, I do. It's my second-favorite gerund after running. Well, and after the sexual ones, kissing and shagging and licking and, oh, there are a lot of that type, aren't there? Still, it's definitely in my top 20."
Rose is not going to be swayed by this, wherever this is going -- the car is in the shop and they're more than halfway there, but he keeps talking anyway.
"But did you have to pick such a windy night for it? And where am I supposed to steal off to when your mother gets to be too much to handle? You know she will. She'll keep chasing me around with that ring, trying to get me to take it, like I can't procure something as simple as a ring on my own."
She steps neatly out of the way of a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk, not missing a beat.
"It's sentimental, Doctor. She wants her old ring to go to me, so I can pass it on to my daughter someday."
"Well, then she should just give it over, shouldn't she? Why insert a middle man into this? Seems entirely unnecessary."
This is a well-worn conversation, one Rose has given up on trying to mediate. If she tells the Doctor to take it, it looks like she's telling him she wants a proposal.
(Not that she's opposed to that, on principle, just that she wants him to get there on his own. Well, mostly.)
If she tells her mum to stop pestering him, she's left to deal with Jackie Tyler theatrics, of the "my only daughter is never getting married" variety.
Instead, she distracts him.
"You know, the car wouldn't be in the shop if someone hadn't tried to change the fuel system on their own."
The Doctor stops walking, aghast, looking every bit like she'd slapped him. Or maligned his hair.
"That fuel system was an insult to this planet and, as it's the only one I'm living on presently, it's in my best interest to preserve it."
Admittedly, Rose knows the Land Rover was a gas guzzler. A gas monster -- an Abzorbaloff, even. They'd picked it up for a song at an employee auction when Torchwood started its green initiative -- a fact that went a long way in indicating how not-green it was. But changing over to something more eco-friendly should've been done by a mechanic, not by the Doctor and a malfunctioning sonic screwdriver.
Which is how it had found its way to a garage in the end anyway.
"I think it's brilliant that you want to save the Earth and everything, Doctor, but maybe leave the car stuff to the car people."
He starts muttering then, words like, "Bessie" and "insult" and "Time Lord," but she lets it go. Mostly because they're at their destination, but also because any implication that he -- this human Doctor, that is -- can't do something, seems to lead to a frenzy where he concentrates only on mastering that skill for weeks at a time. This is how the entire Tyler family, and house staff, had ended up with hand-crotched afghans.
And bi-level birdhouses.
And macrame key chains.
(But it's also how she'd ended up with consistent, multiple orgasms -- although she may have played him on that one. Just a little bit.)
He's still mumbling by the time they've passed the coat check. And he keeps it up all the way into the party, where her parents are waiting.
It takes her mum 10 minutes to start up with the ring.
It takes the Doctor 10 seconds to pull out his own.
title: program worldwide.
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG-13 (f-word!).
words: 513.
notes: This one is here on Tumblr.
She should've known from the $83 in iTunes charges on her credit card statement. The ones he'd said were for "music to meta-crisis by."
And it's not like she really asked him what kind of music it was. She'd just assumed it was, like, experimental or out there or space-themed. Stuff like David Bowie and Pink Floyd or Animal Collective and Muse.
There was nothing to suggest, then, that he'd suddenly decided they needed to visit the west coast of America for any reason other than wanderlust. Nothing to suggest he meant anything by, "California, Rose! California knows how to party."
And if he'd gleefully donned his Chucks, and noted, seemingly apropos of nothing, that they were not Bally's, well, the Doctor says random things all the time. Rose can't keep track of all of it.
They were in Compton before she figured it out.
When they get back home, the Doctor is greeted with balloons and hugs from several female members of the Torchwood staff.
He turns to Rose and she takes him in, hair sticking up, suit rumpled, and a serious look on his face.
He meets her eye and solemnly tells her, "I'm not a player, I just crush a lot."
It's not that bad, Rose assures herself. It's good he's found something he enjoys. It's better than the way he lampoons every movie she makes him watch.
She is wrong.
"I would've thought this was an understood part of agency decorum, but the annual Torchwood paintball team-building exercise is not the appropriate place to 'go HAM.'"
Pete is standing in front of the field teams, unsmiling, but he's a little amused, Rose can see it.
"While I, and the other board members, appreciate enthusiasm, that kind of language will no longer be tolerated."
The lesson sticks until the Doctor's presentation to that same board about increased funding for the R&D labs.
Rose watches it happen in slow motion -- the Doctor walks to the podium, shuffles his papers, clears his throat, and speaks.
"Put the fucking mic on."
They have to suspend him. Pete apologetically tells them that he has to make an example of someone, that they support field agents using unique methods to amp up for dangerous missions, but that it should be done in the training field house, not in the executive conference room.
When he reprograms the thermostat to just shy of boiling and looks at Rose pointedly for 10 minutes before she finally tells him it's, "hot in here," she almost draws the line. Then he giggles for another 10 minutes. So, clearly the target demo for rap music, her giggling Doctor.
She lets it continue. Lets it slide when he passes on a lucrative freelance job because, "more money creates more problems, Rose. Honestly, it's like you haven't even been listening to me."
It takes two more weeks before it's out of his system. The next day there are more iTunes charges on her credit card statement.
The Doctor buys four cans of hairspray and something leopard printed on lunch.
Rose hides his iPod.
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG?
words: 608.
notes: These are two ficlets cross-posted from Tumblr, from prompts. This one is here over there.
"I love walking, Rose, I do. It's my second-favorite gerund after running. Well, and after the sexual ones, kissing and shagging and licking and, oh, there are a lot of that type, aren't there? Still, it's definitely in my top 20."
Rose is not going to be swayed by this, wherever this is going -- the car is in the shop and they're more than halfway there, but he keeps talking anyway.
"But did you have to pick such a windy night for it? And where am I supposed to steal off to when your mother gets to be too much to handle? You know she will. She'll keep chasing me around with that ring, trying to get me to take it, like I can't procure something as simple as a ring on my own."
She steps neatly out of the way of a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk, not missing a beat.
"It's sentimental, Doctor. She wants her old ring to go to me, so I can pass it on to my daughter someday."
"Well, then she should just give it over, shouldn't she? Why insert a middle man into this? Seems entirely unnecessary."
This is a well-worn conversation, one Rose has given up on trying to mediate. If she tells the Doctor to take it, it looks like she's telling him she wants a proposal.
(Not that she's opposed to that, on principle, just that she wants him to get there on his own. Well, mostly.)
If she tells her mum to stop pestering him, she's left to deal with Jackie Tyler theatrics, of the "my only daughter is never getting married" variety.
Instead, she distracts him.
"You know, the car wouldn't be in the shop if someone hadn't tried to change the fuel system on their own."
The Doctor stops walking, aghast, looking every bit like she'd slapped him. Or maligned his hair.
"That fuel system was an insult to this planet and, as it's the only one I'm living on presently, it's in my best interest to preserve it."
Admittedly, Rose knows the Land Rover was a gas guzzler. A gas monster -- an Abzorbaloff, even. They'd picked it up for a song at an employee auction when Torchwood started its green initiative -- a fact that went a long way in indicating how not-green it was. But changing over to something more eco-friendly should've been done by a mechanic, not by the Doctor and a malfunctioning sonic screwdriver.
Which is how it had found its way to a garage in the end anyway.
"I think it's brilliant that you want to save the Earth and everything, Doctor, but maybe leave the car stuff to the car people."
He starts muttering then, words like, "Bessie" and "insult" and "Time Lord," but she lets it go. Mostly because they're at their destination, but also because any implication that he -- this human Doctor, that is -- can't do something, seems to lead to a frenzy where he concentrates only on mastering that skill for weeks at a time. This is how the entire Tyler family, and house staff, had ended up with hand-crotched afghans.
And bi-level birdhouses.
And macrame key chains.
(But it's also how she'd ended up with consistent, multiple orgasms -- although she may have played him on that one. Just a little bit.)
He's still mumbling by the time they've passed the coat check. And he keeps it up all the way into the party, where her parents are waiting.
It takes her mum 10 minutes to start up with the ring.
It takes the Doctor 10 seconds to pull out his own.
title: program worldwide.
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG-13 (f-word!).
words: 513.
notes: This one is here on Tumblr.
She should've known from the $83 in iTunes charges on her credit card statement. The ones he'd said were for "music to meta-crisis by."
And it's not like she really asked him what kind of music it was. She'd just assumed it was, like, experimental or out there or space-themed. Stuff like David Bowie and Pink Floyd or Animal Collective and Muse.
There was nothing to suggest, then, that he'd suddenly decided they needed to visit the west coast of America for any reason other than wanderlust. Nothing to suggest he meant anything by, "California, Rose! California knows how to party."
And if he'd gleefully donned his Chucks, and noted, seemingly apropos of nothing, that they were not Bally's, well, the Doctor says random things all the time. Rose can't keep track of all of it.
They were in Compton before she figured it out.
When they get back home, the Doctor is greeted with balloons and hugs from several female members of the Torchwood staff.
He turns to Rose and she takes him in, hair sticking up, suit rumpled, and a serious look on his face.
He meets her eye and solemnly tells her, "I'm not a player, I just crush a lot."
It's not that bad, Rose assures herself. It's good he's found something he enjoys. It's better than the way he lampoons every movie she makes him watch.
She is wrong.
"I would've thought this was an understood part of agency decorum, but the annual Torchwood paintball team-building exercise is not the appropriate place to 'go HAM.'"
Pete is standing in front of the field teams, unsmiling, but he's a little amused, Rose can see it.
"While I, and the other board members, appreciate enthusiasm, that kind of language will no longer be tolerated."
The lesson sticks until the Doctor's presentation to that same board about increased funding for the R&D labs.
Rose watches it happen in slow motion -- the Doctor walks to the podium, shuffles his papers, clears his throat, and speaks.
"Put the fucking mic on."
They have to suspend him. Pete apologetically tells them that he has to make an example of someone, that they support field agents using unique methods to amp up for dangerous missions, but that it should be done in the training field house, not in the executive conference room.
When he reprograms the thermostat to just shy of boiling and looks at Rose pointedly for 10 minutes before she finally tells him it's, "hot in here," she almost draws the line. Then he giggles for another 10 minutes. So, clearly the target demo for rap music, her giggling Doctor.
She lets it continue. Lets it slide when he passes on a lucrative freelance job because, "more money creates more problems, Rose. Honestly, it's like you haven't even been listening to me."
It takes two more weeks before it's out of his system. The next day there are more iTunes charges on her credit card statement.
The Doctor buys four cans of hairspray and something leopard printed on lunch.
Rose hides his iPod.