Jimmy
Inspired by a certain line from TWoRS and written for TTU challenge 84. Timey-wimey, in a way.
He's got thin lips and green eyes and floppy hair, and she's never seen anything quite so exquisite in her short life. He's also a bit posh, but ironically so. A mad sort of ironic posh. The beat of the drum pulses through her chest like the cheap champagne in her veins. She licks her lips.
"So... Jimmy, is it?" she murmurs, fingering his professor-y lapels. "What's with the bowtie?"
A wink, and he leans in, all conspiratorial-- "Bowties are cool, Miss Tyler."
When he comes calling on her during breaks from his band's tours throughout Europe, they get chips. He insists, even though she's supposed to be on that diet Shareen told her about and all.
(She doesn't tell her friends where she goes during lunches, anyway.)
He's got salt on his upper lip. She can't quite resist licking it away.
Perhaps the thing she loves the most about him is just how much faith he has in her. She's a clever girl, of course, but she's not particularly enamored of school--and from the cold, graying air of the halls, it doesn't have much affection for her, either. Her mother's always working, since a stylist's pay isn't near enough to support a family, no matter how small. And Mickey's... well, Mickey.
But Jimmy's got this twinkle in his eye, this grin she just knows he reserves for her. And he takes her hand, cool hands gripping onto her like she's something precious, like she's something to be protected, and she's never felt so loved before.
Except... he's not always around. And she doesn't mind the absence, not really, but her school marks sure as hell do, and by the end of her schooling, she's amazed she's not failed out.
It's no one's surprise when she doesn't go for her A-levels.
Rose wants to run away with him, to follow him on the road and marry him in Vegas and trace her name across his navel with her tongue and be with him forever. She's young, her mum says. Gonna get her heart broken. Gonna come runnin' back home with tears streaking her young face.
So when it happens outside their pub, one sticky cool night in June, she's almost expecting it. Almost.
He's tired. She cries.
"Don't wait around for me, Rose Tyler. I'm not coming back." It's not with cruelty he says this, she thinks. It's almost as if he's... warning her. "I'm never coming back."
And he doesn't.
"Why?" she cries to his retreating figure.
She's waiting for him when she applies to work at Henrick's. She's waiting for him when she starts sleeping with Mickey. She's waiting when a mad stranger takes her hand and pulls her safely from plastic people.
"Did I mention it travels in time?" and she's finished waiting.
The cannon beeps at her, and she smiles sadly. "Oh, and Doctor?"
He almost looks relieved to see her go. Almost.
"His name was Jimmy. Jimmy Stone." She squeezes the button and grins at him. "Be at Keisha's party, the twenty-sixth of March, 2004. About... oh, nine or so. We'd not want a paradox, yeah?"
The Doctor still hasn't made up his mind when he spots her at the club. But she's Rose, and he the Doctor--Jimmy, he reminds himself with a mental smack to his forehead--and this was written (is written, will be written) in her skin when she met him. And if he never sees his dimension-jumping Rose Tyler again, he'll never forgive himself.
And if he knows one thing--just one thing--her wish is his command.
"Excuse me, R--Miss... erm--"
She turns to him, tongue slipping between her teeth. "It's Rose. Rose Tyler."
"Oh yes. I'm Jimmy. Jay-eye-double em-why!"
Champagne giggles erupt from her throat. And then she gives him the once-over, and one-hundred-seventy-three years of Getting-Over-Rose-Tyler conditioning vanishes from his rather impressive mind.
"So Jimmy, is it?" He nods, and then she touches his lapels. His hearts pound to the beat of the drum. "What's with the bowtie?"
He can't stop himself from winking, or leaning in and inhaling her strawberry scent--home after so long.
"Bowties are cool, Miss Tyler."