Don't Blink - 26/?
Title: Don't Blink - 26/?
Characters: Ten, Rose
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb
The first half of this chapter is beta-approved. The last half is not, so be gentle when alerting me to any mistakes therein. :)
(ch 1) (ch 2) (ch 3) (ch 4) (ch 5) (ch 6) (ch 7) (ch 8) (ch 9) (ch 10) (ch 11) (ch 12) (ch 13) (ch 14) (ch 15) (ch 16) (ch 17) (ch 18)
(ch 19) (ch 20) (ch 21) (ch 22) (ch 23) (ch 24) (ch 25)
“A large cheese pizza, breadsticks and sauce, and a side salad with house dressing.” Billy closed his menu and looked up at the waitress.
“And to drink?”
“A Diet Coke, please.”
She stared at him in puzzlement. “You’re on a diet but you want a Coke?”
“No, a diet Coke.”
“Coca-Cola, then.”
“Diet Coca-Cola,” he corrected her.
Billy and the waitress were sharing identical looks of confusion, the kind of look that says you think the other person is crazy. Rose thought it was pretty funny.
The Doctor cleared his throat to catch Billy’s attention. Billy glanced at him. The Doctor shook his head slightly. Billy had already seen that look several times. It was the look that told him he was mentioning something that was out of the current time. Boot-cut jeans, men’s skin care products, and microwave popcorn were just some of the items that merited that look.
“You’re kidding,” Billy said, offended.
“Not yet. Sorry.”
“So, a Coke, then?” the waitress persisted.
Billy sighed and handed over his menu. “Yeah. A Coke. Thanks.”
Rose ordered for both herself and the Doctor, the Doctor busy lecturing Billy on the exact timeline of where and when and how Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola, Vanilla Coca-Cola, Lime Coca-Cola, Coffee Coke, Apple-Cider Coke and Soy Sauce Coca-Cola were created.
“Of course, some of those won’t be marketed until fifty years or more from now,” the Doctor concluded. “But it may help you when you’re ordering drinks in the future.”
Rose hid a smile behind her water glass. Billy looked annoyed, his default expression when dealing with the Doctor.
“Wonder if I can get some rum put in my Coke,” he muttered.
The Doctor smiled at him tolerantly. “You’ll be fine, Billy! You have a lovely future ahead of you.”
“Yeah, one where I know exactly where and when I’ll die. Not what everyone hopes of.”
“At least you’ll be ready,” Rose said, trying to be helpful.
“I’ll be all alone except for Sally Sparrow.”
“But you’ll be married!” Rose said brightly. “She said you had a good life.”
“And I’ll lose my hair,” Billy said darkly, and there was nothing Rose could say to counter the unfairness of that one.
The waitress brought their drinks and a basket of breadsticks. Billy drank his Coke in silence, still depressed over his future. Rose and the Doctor were talking softly about something, and he knew they’d include him in the conversation if he showed the least interest in it.
He looked around the restaurant instead. It was a stereotypical kind of place, the sort with red and white plastic tablecloths and flickering candles on the tabletops. Couples and families were seated all around them, enjoying their dinners. Billy’s gaze went to a family of four. Dad was wearing a mint green polo shirt and baby blue slacks. Mum wore a yellow and blue plaid blouse with green trousers and a large white pearl necklace. Their two young boys wore typical kid clothing, as far as he could tell. Dark trousers and plain shirts.
At the table behind the family were two couples. The girls were wearing cardigans and plaid skirts and the young men wore collared shirts and clean-cut hair. Across the room from them was a woman with long, uncombed hair wearing a tie-dyed shirt sitting with a man with hair almost as long.
The sixties, Billy was left to conclude, was a frightening decade. Only the knowledge that disco was yet to come kept him from thinking things couldn’t get any worse. He felt a wave of longing for his own family, not even here in London yet. They were still living in Jamaica, still waiting for him and his brothers to be born, still waiting to come to England.
Billy wrenched his thoughts away from that subject with a great effort. From there his thoughts went to work, and what would be happening once he was discovered missing. He finally noticed that his companions were sitting quietly, looking at him.
He shifted uncomfortably. “What?”
“You looked sad,” Rose said quietly.
“Yeah. Well, I was sad. I am sad.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Billy sighed. “Wasn’t your fault, was it? You didn’t do anything.”
“I know. But it wasn’t yours, either. Those angels lie in wait for victims. We were all in the wrong place.”
“And now we’re in the wrong time.”
“Billy!” she said in delight. “Was that a joke?”
“No,” he huffed.
“Sounded like a joke.”
“It wasn’t.”
Rose turned to the Doctor. “I think Billy was making a joke.”
He was sitting next to Rose, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth, behind her shoulders. To Billy it looked like she could move just a few centimeters and be cuddled against his chest with no effort at all. Strands of her hair kept getting caught up in the rough weave of the shirt the Doctor wore. It was a dark blue, and the blonde hairs shone even in the harsh light of the restaurant.
The Doctor was staring down at Rose with a small, bemused smile on his face.
“Don’t you think he was making a joke?” she persisted, and whatever the Doctor had been thinking was cleared from his mind as he looked from Rose to Billy.
In a rare moment of tact and understanding, the Doctor diffused the situation by handing Rose the breadbasket, “Breadstick, Rose?”
“Thanks.”
Billy sighed and shook his head. It hadn’t been a joke.
“So why Cambridge, anyway? It’s an hour from here, at least.” Billy peered at the Doctor from over his salad.
Rose paused in the middle of eating her own salad and looked up at the Doctor.
“That’s pretty far,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think about the distance.”
“I only have to be there twice a week,” the Doctor told her reassuringly. “I’m starting out with just one class to teach. Plenty of time to build the camera and disks to make the recordings, and then we can go home!”
“But how long will it take?” Rose persisted, and Billy admired the way she might be crazy about the Doctor but she didn’t let it blind her to his faults. “What if you’re there for months and months?”
“I won’t be,” the Doctor said firmly as the waitress appeared with their pizzas. “I’ll earn some money to keep me honest, and I’ll be able to use the university’s resources to get us home.”
Rose didn’t look totally convinced. Billy sympathized with her. He wasn’t totally convinced, either. In the end, Rose’s faith in the Doctor carried the day, and she was able to eat enough pizza to make the Doctor nod in satisfaction. With Rose so convinced, Billy let himself be convinced as well, and was pleasantly surprised by how good the pizza was, even though it clearly was not cooked in a brick oven.
The only thing that jarred his enjoyment of dinner was the sight of an older couple across the restaurant, who were each enjoying a cigarette with a cup of coffee.
“They can’t be smoking in here,” he said, and forgot himself enough to start to stand up and go over to them.
“Smoking’s allowed right now,” Rose said hastily, and Billy groaned and sat back down.
“Why does everything have to change?” he demanded of the Doctor. “Everything is different. Is it asking so much that some things be the same as I remember?”
“Time changes things, Billy. Nothing stays the same for very long. By the time you remember London in the twenty-first century, these people will be recalling the glory days of smoking after dinner. And the things you’ll take for granted in the twenty-first century - that you did and will take for granted - your children will probably think are old-fashioned and ridiculous.” The Doctor shrugged. “All children think their parents are old and backwards.”
Rose looked at him quickly at his last words, but he didn’t say anything else, and Billy didn’t understand why they would make her react that way.
Rose looked away from the Doctor as quickly as she had looked at him. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve seen here,” she said to Billy, leaning across the table towards him. “A few weeks ago I saw my pregnant grandmother smoking!”
Billy acted with typical revulsion. “She’s pregnant with your mum or dad?”
“No, not my mum. My mum’s already here. She’s three.”
“Three years old?”
“Yeah.”
Billy shook his head. “It kills me how you can act like this is nothing! Like it’s so normal to run into your grandparents and see your mother as a baby.”
“I didn’t say it was normal!” Rose snapped. “And it’s not fun to be rejected by people you’re related to. It’s happened to me a few times, so I know. But what choice do we have here?”
“Finish your pizza, Billy.” The Doctor pushed Billy’s plate closer to him. “If you think too hard about all this you’ll go mad.”
With the distance from London to the university in mind, Rose firmly vetoed a jaunt down to the campus that night. She wanted to go home and relax. She was content to walk down the street with her hand in the Doctor’s, enjoying the sights and sounds of London.
Billy, walking on the other side of the Doctor, had other thoughts.
“What’s that he’s handing around?” he demanded, spotting a group of young men on the corner. “Those little bags -”
“Probably marijuana,” the Doctor said tolerantly as Rose glanced around curiously. “Quite common these days.”
“They should be arrested.”
“Ah, but don’t you feel the least bit nostalgic? Time was that dope was the hardest thing on the streets. These days are long gone, Billy.” The Doctor’s voice hardened. “Cocaine, heroine, crack. All the wonders of the modern world still to come.”
Billy stared hard at the little group as they passed by. “The law is still the law.”
“You’re not a cop anymore. Best to start acting like it.”
Billy did not want to start acting like it. He didn’t want to do any of this. He wanted to be back where he belonged.
Rose reached out to him, stretching her arm across the Doctor’s chest.
“It’ll get better, I promise,” she said, her fingers tugging on his sleeve.
“You don’t know that.” Billy was aware, in a distant corner of his mind, that he was acting like a jerk, but he couldn’t help it. People were dealing drugs on the street and talking about free love and the Beatles and the people who weren’t acting like that were dressed in clothing last seen in Leave it to Beaver.
“I do know that. We’ve seen your future. You get married and you have a happy life. Things get better.” Rose fixed him with a firm look, and Billy was forced to back down. She was absolutely right.
“Okay. So I’m happy later on. Right now can I just be a miserable sod?”
The Doctor laughed out loud, which was fine for him, since he still had a firm hold on Rose, who was looking at him with undisguised adoration.
“No time for miserable sods, Billy! Let’s go home and work out our game plan.”
Billy shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. Beside him, the Doctor and Rose had already forgotten his presence. They were still holding hands - did they ever let go? - and were chattering quietly about something. Rather than try to join the conversation, Billy contented himself with looking around on the walk home. London was a fascinating place this year, and there was a lot to see. It wasn’t very hot for a July evening, and gradually Billy found himself forgetting the awful lot that was his life.
A newsstand caught his attention. The newspapers and magazines were all talking about the upcoming moon landing, and Billy felt a spark of excitement that he’d get to see that as it happened. He dug around in his pockets only to remember that the money he had was a lot newer - or was it older? - than the money currently being issued.
“Hey.” He turned to the Doctor and poked him in the arm. Surprised, the Doctor turned around.
“Something wrong?”
“You got a couple of pounds? I want to buy something.” Billy gestured to the stand.
The Doctor smiled, pleased that Billy wasn’t complaining or angry. “Let me see.” He dug around in his pockets but all he had were a few coins. “Rose?” He turned a charming smile onto her, which, to her credit, Rose ignored.
“Is it on me, again, then? Good thing I have a job.” She pulled some bills out of her bag. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back,” Billy promised.
He grabbed a couple of magazines and held out the bills to the agent.
“Here you go, mate.”
The agent gestured at the magazines in Billy’s hand. “Glad to help you out, young man! The moon landing will be amazing, won’t it? Can’t wait, can’t wait!”
Billy grinned. The agent was a man in his forties, with dark hair and twinkling blue eyes. He reminded Billy a bit of Father Christmas. “I can’t wait, either. Should be exciting.”
The agent leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what,” he said in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Once they land on the moon, it’s only a short time until they move on to Mars.”
Billy blinked in surprise. “You think so?”
“I know so! And you know what happens after that?” The man leaned in even closer. “They’re gonna find aliens, they are! Proof of aliens! And then there won’t be no more cover ups about it. Think the government and America don’t know about ‘em?”
Billy shook his head to clear it. The guy sounded like something out of The X-Files. “I don’t know. Do they?”
“‘Course they do!” the agent said scornfully. “I keep watch at night with me telescope, but I haven’t seen anything yet. But I will. Mark my words, when aliens come, you can remember that it was Wilfred Mott who predicted it first.” He nodded in satisfaction, and Billy grinned.
“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
“What was he saying to you?” Rose asked curiously when he joined them again farther down the street. The Doctor and Rose had continued walking, but Billy accepted this as standard behavior. When the two of them were together, others tended to fade away.
Billy snorted. “Another conspiracy theory nut. Says they’ll find aliens on Mars if not on the moon.”
The Doctor shook his head. “No life on the moon. It’s just a rock. Nothing on Mars, either. In 2057 a human colony will land on Mars, though. No aliens life forms found there, either.”
“You always say nothing ever was on Mars!” Rose said in surprise. “You won’t even take - you never even took me there. But there was a human colony?”
With both humans looking at him in fixed interest, the Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “There was a colony established there,” he admitted. “They did quite well for awhile, too. But something happened in November of 2059. The entire base was destroyed. No one knows why. No one ever settled the planet again.”
Rose pouted. “That’s terrible. Everyone always talks about life on Mars, and there never was any!”
“Terrible? Aw, not so much!” The Doctor took her hand again and gave it a squeeze. “It was the impetus for humans to start traveling through the stars in earnest. That was the starting point for discovering new life and new planets. Amazing, really.”
Billy grunted. “Too bad those Angels couldn’t have thrown me forward in time. It would have been fun to see what’s going to happen. This way I’m stuck reliving everything.”
“There are worse things.” They’d arrived at their building, and the Doctor opened the door for Rose. He followed her in, leaving the door to nearly smack Billy in the face.
“Bloody alien,” Billy muttered to himself. A door to his left opened a crack. He glanced over, his cop’s instincts kicking in automatically. The door quickly closed again, leaving him with no more than the impression of a small amount of light from the flat behind it, and what he thought was a small woman standing at the door peering through.
“This entire place is too strange,” he muttered to himself, taking the stairs two at a time to Rose’s flat. He closed the door behind him, locking it automatically.
“Doesn’t matter what year it is,” he commented, walking into the living room. “Nosy neighbors are everywhere.”
The Doctor had collapsed onto the couch. He looked up at Billy. “We have nosy neighbors?”
Billy shoved at the Doctor’s trainers. “Oi! Get ‘em off. This is my bed!”
Rose came in from the kitchen, where she’d poured a glass of Coke for herself.
“We do! I’ve told you about her. That’s Mrs. MacMurray,” she explained to Billy. “She doesn’t get out much, but she’s an old dear. She likes to keep watch on what goes in and out of the building.”
“Nosy neighbors,” Billy repeated. “Not always a bad thing. They get to know the rhythm of a place and they know who doesn’t belong pretty quick. Good at crime prevention.”
“That makes me feel safer,” the Doctor couldn’t help saying. “She must be all of seventy if she’s a day.” Then he jumped up. “Does it seem warm in here to you?”
Rose was surprised into a laugh. “You’re never warm. Or cold.”
“Well, it’s warmer in here.” He walked over to a window and pried it up a few inches.
“It’s July,” Billy pointed out. “Heat rises, and it’s hot. No central air, eh?”
“Not even a fan,” Rose sighed. “We’ll boil until we get back.”
The Doctor moved to another window. “At least we can get some air going.”
Billy watched this with his arms folded across his chest. “Another way to be uncomfortable,” he commented. “Which reminds me. How long do I have to sleep on this couch? It’s too damned uncomfortable.”
“It’s all we have.” Rose touched the back of the couch. “I know it’s not the newest or the best, but we should be done with this place pretty quickly.”
“Which would be great,” Billy returned, “but I’m still left on the couch while you two get the bed.”
The Doctor turned around and fixed him with a stern, forbidding look. “Rose gets the bed,” he corrected. “I don’t sleep. And Rose isn’t sleeping on the couch.”
“Doctor,” Rose protested in a soft voice. “Maybe it’s not fair that I-”
“No.” The Doctor wasn’t brooking any arguments on this one. “We can find a cot or something if we need to, but there’s no space for another full-size bed even if we wanted one. And Rose’s bedroom is hers alone,” he finished.
Billy raised his hands in surrender. “Look, don’t shoot me! I’m just saying that the couch is lumpy.”
“We’ll try to work something out in the morning.” Rose looked at Billy with a sympathetic, pleading expression. She didn’t want him to be upset, and she didn’t want any discord.
“It’s not a problem,” Billy said finally. “As long as I get some privacy,” he added. “Just because you don’t sleep doesn’t mean you can lurk around and watch me sleep.”
“I don’t lurk,” the Doctor said indignantly. “I work on our project. The project to get us home.”
“Time for bed!” Rose said cheerfully. “Good night, Billy! I’ll let you have the bathroom first.”
“Thanks.” Billy headed for the bath. At least he had pajamas to sleep in.
“And you.” Rose pointed at the Doctor.
“And me what?”
“Don’t antagonize him, Doctor. It’s hard enough without having you poke at him all the time.”
The Doctor was honestly astounded. “Rose, I don’t poke at him.”
“Remember who he is. We need him, and we need to be nice to him because it’s not right to be rude. Now, go hide in the kitchen. Don’t read in here while he’s sleeping, and don’t try to watch the television in the middle of the night.”
“There is no television in the middle of the night.”
She snorted as she turned around and went back to her room. “There will be if you try to tinker with the air and soundwaves.”
The flat was really stuffy, Rose noted as she closed the bedroom door. It didn’t help when the door was shut. With the light still off, she drew back the curtains and opened the window. Sounds of the city came in at once, but only a very little breeze.
She sighed.
Out in the main part of the flat she heard Billy and the Doctor talking. She took the opportunity to go into the bath and get ready for the evening. She sincerely hoped that her feminine protection lived up to its name that night. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to buy the maxi-pads with the required belt, and while the tampons were working, she couldn’t help but think of Jackie’s stories of the outbreak of Toxic Shock Syndrome. This was long before any of that was to happen, and Rose eyed the package of tampons that she’d bought. Rely - we even absorb the worry.
“That makes me feel so much better,” she muttered.
She put on her pajamas, washed her face and brushed her teeth. Back in her room she listened to a half-audible conversation out on the street below. She heard Billy tell the Doctor that he could leave the room now, and heard Billy cursing as he tried to make his bed using the sheets from the night before. She didn’t envy him sleeping on that couch.
The Doctor paused in his work and stretched. It was eleven minutes, fifteen seconds after midnight, and he was nearly done with his plans. Soon they would be able to record those messages that he would one day give to Sally Sparrow, and then they would get out of 1969 London, and he would get his TARDIS back.
He was grateful Billy had come to them, since he was apparently the one who would get them out of this mess. He was just annoyed that Billy, being human, required sleep and was therefore in the room that the Doctor had been using as a work area.
Not that the kitchen was comfortable, he admitted to himself with just a spot of sarcasm as he looked around. Small, rickety table to work on, tiny sink with a leaky faucet - what was wrong with it that the sonic screwdriver couldn’t fix? - no window to look out of. Not even a small pass-through window to look into the living room.
He hated it. He hated the kitchen, hated the flat. He hated this entire mess.
He stood up quickly, pushing the chair away from the table with enough force to make it tip over. He caught it before it crashed to the floor, righting it and cursing softly.
They were trapped here. As surely as he and Rose had been trapped on that space station, with the TARDIS gone and a black hole looming overhead, they were trapped here in 1969. He had only the promise that they could get back if he followed instructions written on a page. Instructions written by a girl he’d never met.
He wanted to be out of this mess now. Wanted to be back on his ship with Rose, traveling the stars and watching her laugh in delight. The feeling of suffocation, of helpless rage, was nearly overwhelming, and the effort it took for him to hide those feelings from Rose was killing him.
Suddenly the kitchen seemed much too small. The flat itself was tiny, an insult to the term “flat”. He’d been living there for weeks now, pretending all was well, but a small part of him had been rebelling against it all along. He turned the light off and slowly eased the kitchen door open. Billy was asleep on the couch. The Doctor began to walk to the door when he heard a sound behind him.
Turning, he spied light coming through from beneath Rose’s door. Concerned, he reversed direction and walked down the hallway to tap gently on the door.
“Rose?” he asked softly. “Are you all right?”
Rose had woken up from a disjointed dream where she lectured her grandmother on not smoking. Her grandmother, hugely pregnant, had just rolled her eyes and kept smoking, pausing occasionally to take a sip of diet Coke while on the television she watched men land on Mars and then explode.
Shaken by the dream, Rose turned on her lamp and walked around the room, pausing to idly swipe at the clutter of things she had on her dresser. Between the dream and the oppressive heat of the July night, it was hard to sleep or think.
The Doctor’s voice took her by surprise, and she dove for the dressing gown that was lying on the floor.
“I’m fine!” she said quickly, tying the sash around her waist and opening the door. “Are you?”
He nodded. “I heard you in here. Seemed a bit late for you to be up.”
Rose nodded in agreement. “Come in.” She waited for him to pass by her into the room and closed the door.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
“I was working on our project. I was about to get some air when I saw the light under the door.”
“Out where?” she questioned. He rarely talked about what he did at night when she was asleep.
“Just out.” The Doctor peered out the open window, walked to the dresser and then absently opened and closed the wardrobe doors before sitting on the bed.
“Are you all right?”
He sighed, and suddenly he seemed like a different person to Rose. “This is hard. I’m not a very patient person, Rose.”
She couldn’t help but smile. That seemed like a massive understatement. “No?”
“No. I want to get back to the TARDIS immediately. I don’t feel like waiting.”
She sat down beside him, tying the sash on her dressing gown a little tighter. “I want to get back, too.”
“But I want to get back now.” The Doctor stood up again, pacing around the room. Rose watched him in the dim light. “I feel trapped here. There’s nowhere to go!” He flung his arms wide to illustrate his point, knocking against the wardrobe in the process. “Ow! It’s so small here. This room, this flat, this London. I’m suffocating, Rose.”
Rose felt pity and sympathy for him. “I know it’s got to be hard for you, Doctor. But...you were trapped here in London before, weren’t you?”
He scowled. “I was. That was the Time Lords’ doing. But sometimes I was able to get back. I hadn’t completely lost the TARDIS. I could still travel sometimes. This is...this is different.” He sat down on the bed beside Rose again. She could almost feel the pain running through him.
“It’ll be okay.” She spoke quietly, as though to a frightened child. “We’ll get back. Everything is working out the way Sally said it would.”
He scoffed out a disgusted breath. “Sally! What does she know? Things could have changed already. Any little thing we did could have altered the expected outcome. There’s no guarantee, even with Billy here.”
“Well, there have to be other ways. I could...I could call someone! I could call Shireen! Or Keisha, or...” Rose’s voice trailed away as the Doctor waited for her to finish the sentence. “I could call someone and explain that I’m not really dead, but just stuck back in time,” Rose finished. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that would go over well.”
The Doctor smiled in spite of himself. “Your friends wouldn’t be any help, anyway, Rose. They’d be no match against the Weeping Angels.” He leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows as he looked up thoughtfully at her. “They’re incredibly powerful beings, and they have the TARDIS to protect now. I could use your phone to call Sarah Jane, but even that wouldn’t do much good. Sarah and K-9 are brilliant - I don’t doubt that they could find that house and the TARDIS with no problems at all. But the Angels will be guarding it and will take no chances. They’d send them back in time quicker than they could...” His voice trailed off as he heard what he was saying.
“Quicker than they could blink?” Rose suggested.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to end the sentence that way. But they would. Or even worse, they’d figure out that Sarah Jane and K-9 might be able to gain access to the TARDIS, and that would truly be a disaster.” He sighed and fell back all the way on the bed. “No, there’s no other way than what we’re doing.”
“Well, at least we’re on the right track,” Rose said optimistically. Without really thinking about it, she lay down beside him. He turned his head to look at her, and she suddenly became aware of the heat of the night and of the thin fabric she was wearing.
For a long moment neither one said anything, content to just look at one another in the dark. An occasional car drove by, throwing light onto their faces for just a moment.
Without conscious effort or thought, the Doctor moved closer to Rose, raising himself up on his left elbow. She lay still, watching him. He touched her face, and Rose shifted closer as his fingers got tangled up in her hair.
He may have whispered her name, but she was beyond paying attention. She closed her eyes as he kissed her, holding his head against hers to keep him there.
She finally had to break away to gasp for breath. He let her breathe in a scant amount of air before kissing her again. He ceased to feel time as he kissed her, as she kissed him back and whispered nonsense words when she had to stop for breath.
Rose had waited a long time to do this again, and she kissed him enthusiastically. Somewhere along the way he lost what little control he had of the kiss, and she pushed him back and rolled on top of him. His hands freed themselves form her hair and moved to her back ,holding her tight against him.
There was not telling how far things might have gone if a very loud, very real, “Damn!” hadn’t come in through the closed door. Startled, Rose jerked around and the Doctor quickly sat up. It took them both a few moments to figure out what had happened. Billy, on his way to the loo, had bumped into something in the dark.
“It’s just Billy,” Rose whispered, breathing hard.
The Doctor looked at her. “Just Billy,” he echoed. “Damn him.” He pulled Rose back to him, drawing her onto his lap and kissing her thoroughly once more.
“Doctor,” she murmured, taking his hand and moving it to a place he very much wanted to explore. Her skin was soft through her nightgown, and it took all of his self control to remove his hand from the neckline of her nightgown, suddenly struck by a pang of conscience.
“Rose,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”
She made a sound that couldn’t be translated, but by the enthusiastic way she was moving against him he took it to be a good thing. His hands returned, running up and down her back as they kissed before pausing at the spot where her nightgown was riding up her thighs. He began to pull the material up. Rose shifted on his lap to help him, and he nearly lost all control and focus.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered in his ear. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m not stopping,” he gasped, amazed that he was actually short of breath. He continued to yank the nightgown up, and then, of course, it happened.
A sudden jolt against the closed door sent them springing apart from each other like two guilty teenagers.
“What the hell?” Rose began.
The Doctor heaved a great sigh. “Billy.” There was a world of loathing in his voice. “We need to find him someplace else to live. This is not the right time. We have company, and we’re in this small flat...”
“I don’t care.” And she didn’t, but she slowly moved away from him while he cursed himself for caring enough to want to make it seem real and not cheap and tawdry. Certain portions of his anatomy were heartily cursing him as well.
They heard Billy move back to his sofa, muttering to himself about something. Their eyes met again, and Rose actually felt herself blushing. She was glad it wasn’t so obvious in the dark.
“I guess some things are better with just two.”
He snorted. “You’re telling me. The sooner we get him out of here the better. Anyway, it’s late. You should get some sleep.”
Rose raised her eyebrows. Did he really think she would sleep after this?
“I’m sorry.” His voice was soft in the darkness. “Rose, I-”
“It’s okay.” Her voice was just as soft. “It’s okay. We have all the time in the word, don’t we?”
“That doesn’t make me feel better right this minute,” he responded sourly.
Despite herself, Rose chuckled. “I’ll see you in the morning.” After he’d closed the door behind him she sat down on the bed and covered her face with her hands. And then she started to laugh. Because if Billy alone wasn’t an obstacle to their being together, it was also the wrong time of the month for her. And wasn’t that just typical of their luck so far?
Twenty-seven
Characters: Ten, Rose
Summary: AU. What if Rose had stayed through Doomsday and was the one to end up in 1969 with the Doctor? How would they get back to their proper time? Would they want to?
Rating: PG
Beta: nattieb
The first half of this chapter is beta-approved. The last half is not, so be gentle when alerting me to any mistakes therein. :)
(ch 1) (ch 2) (ch 3) (ch 4) (ch 5) (ch 6) (ch 7) (ch 8) (ch 9) (ch 10) (ch 11) (ch 12) (ch 13) (ch 14) (ch 15) (ch 16) (ch 17) (ch 18)
(ch 19) (ch 20) (ch 21) (ch 22) (ch 23) (ch 24) (ch 25)
“A large cheese pizza, breadsticks and sauce, and a side salad with house dressing.” Billy closed his menu and looked up at the waitress.
“And to drink?”
“A Diet Coke, please.”
She stared at him in puzzlement. “You’re on a diet but you want a Coke?”
“No, a diet Coke.”
“Coca-Cola, then.”
“Diet Coca-Cola,” he corrected her.
Billy and the waitress were sharing identical looks of confusion, the kind of look that says you think the other person is crazy. Rose thought it was pretty funny.
The Doctor cleared his throat to catch Billy’s attention. Billy glanced at him. The Doctor shook his head slightly. Billy had already seen that look several times. It was the look that told him he was mentioning something that was out of the current time. Boot-cut jeans, men’s skin care products, and microwave popcorn were just some of the items that merited that look.
“You’re kidding,” Billy said, offended.
“Not yet. Sorry.”
“So, a Coke, then?” the waitress persisted.
Billy sighed and handed over his menu. “Yeah. A Coke. Thanks.”
Rose ordered for both herself and the Doctor, the Doctor busy lecturing Billy on the exact timeline of where and when and how Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Caffeine-Free Coca-Cola, Vanilla Coca-Cola, Lime Coca-Cola, Coffee Coke, Apple-Cider Coke and Soy Sauce Coca-Cola were created.
“Of course, some of those won’t be marketed until fifty years or more from now,” the Doctor concluded. “But it may help you when you’re ordering drinks in the future.”
Rose hid a smile behind her water glass. Billy looked annoyed, his default expression when dealing with the Doctor.
“Wonder if I can get some rum put in my Coke,” he muttered.
The Doctor smiled at him tolerantly. “You’ll be fine, Billy! You have a lovely future ahead of you.”
“Yeah, one where I know exactly where and when I’ll die. Not what everyone hopes of.”
“At least you’ll be ready,” Rose said, trying to be helpful.
“I’ll be all alone except for Sally Sparrow.”
“But you’ll be married!” Rose said brightly. “She said you had a good life.”
“And I’ll lose my hair,” Billy said darkly, and there was nothing Rose could say to counter the unfairness of that one.
The waitress brought their drinks and a basket of breadsticks. Billy drank his Coke in silence, still depressed over his future. Rose and the Doctor were talking softly about something, and he knew they’d include him in the conversation if he showed the least interest in it.
He looked around the restaurant instead. It was a stereotypical kind of place, the sort with red and white plastic tablecloths and flickering candles on the tabletops. Couples and families were seated all around them, enjoying their dinners. Billy’s gaze went to a family of four. Dad was wearing a mint green polo shirt and baby blue slacks. Mum wore a yellow and blue plaid blouse with green trousers and a large white pearl necklace. Their two young boys wore typical kid clothing, as far as he could tell. Dark trousers and plain shirts.
At the table behind the family were two couples. The girls were wearing cardigans and plaid skirts and the young men wore collared shirts and clean-cut hair. Across the room from them was a woman with long, uncombed hair wearing a tie-dyed shirt sitting with a man with hair almost as long.
The sixties, Billy was left to conclude, was a frightening decade. Only the knowledge that disco was yet to come kept him from thinking things couldn’t get any worse. He felt a wave of longing for his own family, not even here in London yet. They were still living in Jamaica, still waiting for him and his brothers to be born, still waiting to come to England.
Billy wrenched his thoughts away from that subject with a great effort. From there his thoughts went to work, and what would be happening once he was discovered missing. He finally noticed that his companions were sitting quietly, looking at him.
He shifted uncomfortably. “What?”
“You looked sad,” Rose said quietly.
“Yeah. Well, I was sad. I am sad.”
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Billy sighed. “Wasn’t your fault, was it? You didn’t do anything.”
“I know. But it wasn’t yours, either. Those angels lie in wait for victims. We were all in the wrong place.”
“And now we’re in the wrong time.”
“Billy!” she said in delight. “Was that a joke?”
“No,” he huffed.
“Sounded like a joke.”
“It wasn’t.”
Rose turned to the Doctor. “I think Billy was making a joke.”
He was sitting next to Rose, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth, behind her shoulders. To Billy it looked like she could move just a few centimeters and be cuddled against his chest with no effort at all. Strands of her hair kept getting caught up in the rough weave of the shirt the Doctor wore. It was a dark blue, and the blonde hairs shone even in the harsh light of the restaurant.
The Doctor was staring down at Rose with a small, bemused smile on his face.
“Don’t you think he was making a joke?” she persisted, and whatever the Doctor had been thinking was cleared from his mind as he looked from Rose to Billy.
In a rare moment of tact and understanding, the Doctor diffused the situation by handing Rose the breadbasket, “Breadstick, Rose?”
“Thanks.”
Billy sighed and shook his head. It hadn’t been a joke.
“So why Cambridge, anyway? It’s an hour from here, at least.” Billy peered at the Doctor from over his salad.
Rose paused in the middle of eating her own salad and looked up at the Doctor.
“That’s pretty far,” she said slowly. “I didn’t think about the distance.”
“I only have to be there twice a week,” the Doctor told her reassuringly. “I’m starting out with just one class to teach. Plenty of time to build the camera and disks to make the recordings, and then we can go home!”
“But how long will it take?” Rose persisted, and Billy admired the way she might be crazy about the Doctor but she didn’t let it blind her to his faults. “What if you’re there for months and months?”
“I won’t be,” the Doctor said firmly as the waitress appeared with their pizzas. “I’ll earn some money to keep me honest, and I’ll be able to use the university’s resources to get us home.”
Rose didn’t look totally convinced. Billy sympathized with her. He wasn’t totally convinced, either. In the end, Rose’s faith in the Doctor carried the day, and she was able to eat enough pizza to make the Doctor nod in satisfaction. With Rose so convinced, Billy let himself be convinced as well, and was pleasantly surprised by how good the pizza was, even though it clearly was not cooked in a brick oven.
The only thing that jarred his enjoyment of dinner was the sight of an older couple across the restaurant, who were each enjoying a cigarette with a cup of coffee.
“They can’t be smoking in here,” he said, and forgot himself enough to start to stand up and go over to them.
“Smoking’s allowed right now,” Rose said hastily, and Billy groaned and sat back down.
“Why does everything have to change?” he demanded of the Doctor. “Everything is different. Is it asking so much that some things be the same as I remember?”
“Time changes things, Billy. Nothing stays the same for very long. By the time you remember London in the twenty-first century, these people will be recalling the glory days of smoking after dinner. And the things you’ll take for granted in the twenty-first century - that you did and will take for granted - your children will probably think are old-fashioned and ridiculous.” The Doctor shrugged. “All children think their parents are old and backwards.”
Rose looked at him quickly at his last words, but he didn’t say anything else, and Billy didn’t understand why they would make her react that way.
Rose looked away from the Doctor as quickly as she had looked at him. “You wouldn’t believe the stuff I’ve seen here,” she said to Billy, leaning across the table towards him. “A few weeks ago I saw my pregnant grandmother smoking!”
Billy acted with typical revulsion. “She’s pregnant with your mum or dad?”
“No, not my mum. My mum’s already here. She’s three.”
“Three years old?”
“Yeah.”
Billy shook his head. “It kills me how you can act like this is nothing! Like it’s so normal to run into your grandparents and see your mother as a baby.”
“I didn’t say it was normal!” Rose snapped. “And it’s not fun to be rejected by people you’re related to. It’s happened to me a few times, so I know. But what choice do we have here?”
“Finish your pizza, Billy.” The Doctor pushed Billy’s plate closer to him. “If you think too hard about all this you’ll go mad.”
With the distance from London to the university in mind, Rose firmly vetoed a jaunt down to the campus that night. She wanted to go home and relax. She was content to walk down the street with her hand in the Doctor’s, enjoying the sights and sounds of London.
Billy, walking on the other side of the Doctor, had other thoughts.
“What’s that he’s handing around?” he demanded, spotting a group of young men on the corner. “Those little bags -”
“Probably marijuana,” the Doctor said tolerantly as Rose glanced around curiously. “Quite common these days.”
“They should be arrested.”
“Ah, but don’t you feel the least bit nostalgic? Time was that dope was the hardest thing on the streets. These days are long gone, Billy.” The Doctor’s voice hardened. “Cocaine, heroine, crack. All the wonders of the modern world still to come.”
Billy stared hard at the little group as they passed by. “The law is still the law.”
“You’re not a cop anymore. Best to start acting like it.”
Billy did not want to start acting like it. He didn’t want to do any of this. He wanted to be back where he belonged.
Rose reached out to him, stretching her arm across the Doctor’s chest.
“It’ll get better, I promise,” she said, her fingers tugging on his sleeve.
“You don’t know that.” Billy was aware, in a distant corner of his mind, that he was acting like a jerk, but he couldn’t help it. People were dealing drugs on the street and talking about free love and the Beatles and the people who weren’t acting like that were dressed in clothing last seen in Leave it to Beaver.
“I do know that. We’ve seen your future. You get married and you have a happy life. Things get better.” Rose fixed him with a firm look, and Billy was forced to back down. She was absolutely right.
“Okay. So I’m happy later on. Right now can I just be a miserable sod?”
The Doctor laughed out loud, which was fine for him, since he still had a firm hold on Rose, who was looking at him with undisguised adoration.
“No time for miserable sods, Billy! Let’s go home and work out our game plan.”
Billy shoved his hands in his pockets and sighed. Beside him, the Doctor and Rose had already forgotten his presence. They were still holding hands - did they ever let go? - and were chattering quietly about something. Rather than try to join the conversation, Billy contented himself with looking around on the walk home. London was a fascinating place this year, and there was a lot to see. It wasn’t very hot for a July evening, and gradually Billy found himself forgetting the awful lot that was his life.
A newsstand caught his attention. The newspapers and magazines were all talking about the upcoming moon landing, and Billy felt a spark of excitement that he’d get to see that as it happened. He dug around in his pockets only to remember that the money he had was a lot newer - or was it older? - than the money currently being issued.
“Hey.” He turned to the Doctor and poked him in the arm. Surprised, the Doctor turned around.
“Something wrong?”
“You got a couple of pounds? I want to buy something.” Billy gestured to the stand.
The Doctor smiled, pleased that Billy wasn’t complaining or angry. “Let me see.” He dug around in his pockets but all he had were a few coins. “Rose?” He turned a charming smile onto her, which, to her credit, Rose ignored.
“Is it on me, again, then? Good thing I have a job.” She pulled some bills out of her bag. “Here you go.”
“Thanks. I’ll pay you back,” Billy promised.
He grabbed a couple of magazines and held out the bills to the agent.
“Here you go, mate.”
The agent gestured at the magazines in Billy’s hand. “Glad to help you out, young man! The moon landing will be amazing, won’t it? Can’t wait, can’t wait!”
Billy grinned. The agent was a man in his forties, with dark hair and twinkling blue eyes. He reminded Billy a bit of Father Christmas. “I can’t wait, either. Should be exciting.”
The agent leaned forward. “I’ll tell you what,” he said in a low, conspiratorial tone. “Once they land on the moon, it’s only a short time until they move on to Mars.”
Billy blinked in surprise. “You think so?”
“I know so! And you know what happens after that?” The man leaned in even closer. “They’re gonna find aliens, they are! Proof of aliens! And then there won’t be no more cover ups about it. Think the government and America don’t know about ‘em?”
Billy shook his head to clear it. The guy sounded like something out of The X-Files. “I don’t know. Do they?”
“‘Course they do!” the agent said scornfully. “I keep watch at night with me telescope, but I haven’t seen anything yet. But I will. Mark my words, when aliens come, you can remember that it was Wilfred Mott who predicted it first.” He nodded in satisfaction, and Billy grinned.
“I’ll remember that. Thanks.”
“What was he saying to you?” Rose asked curiously when he joined them again farther down the street. The Doctor and Rose had continued walking, but Billy accepted this as standard behavior. When the two of them were together, others tended to fade away.
Billy snorted. “Another conspiracy theory nut. Says they’ll find aliens on Mars if not on the moon.”
The Doctor shook his head. “No life on the moon. It’s just a rock. Nothing on Mars, either. In 2057 a human colony will land on Mars, though. No aliens life forms found there, either.”
“You always say nothing ever was on Mars!” Rose said in surprise. “You won’t even take - you never even took me there. But there was a human colony?”
With both humans looking at him in fixed interest, the Doctor sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “There was a colony established there,” he admitted. “They did quite well for awhile, too. But something happened in November of 2059. The entire base was destroyed. No one knows why. No one ever settled the planet again.”
Rose pouted. “That’s terrible. Everyone always talks about life on Mars, and there never was any!”
“Terrible? Aw, not so much!” The Doctor took her hand again and gave it a squeeze. “It was the impetus for humans to start traveling through the stars in earnest. That was the starting point for discovering new life and new planets. Amazing, really.”
Billy grunted. “Too bad those Angels couldn’t have thrown me forward in time. It would have been fun to see what’s going to happen. This way I’m stuck reliving everything.”
“There are worse things.” They’d arrived at their building, and the Doctor opened the door for Rose. He followed her in, leaving the door to nearly smack Billy in the face.
“Bloody alien,” Billy muttered to himself. A door to his left opened a crack. He glanced over, his cop’s instincts kicking in automatically. The door quickly closed again, leaving him with no more than the impression of a small amount of light from the flat behind it, and what he thought was a small woman standing at the door peering through.
“This entire place is too strange,” he muttered to himself, taking the stairs two at a time to Rose’s flat. He closed the door behind him, locking it automatically.
“Doesn’t matter what year it is,” he commented, walking into the living room. “Nosy neighbors are everywhere.”
The Doctor had collapsed onto the couch. He looked up at Billy. “We have nosy neighbors?”
Billy shoved at the Doctor’s trainers. “Oi! Get ‘em off. This is my bed!”
Rose came in from the kitchen, where she’d poured a glass of Coke for herself.
“We do! I’ve told you about her. That’s Mrs. MacMurray,” she explained to Billy. “She doesn’t get out much, but she’s an old dear. She likes to keep watch on what goes in and out of the building.”
“Nosy neighbors,” Billy repeated. “Not always a bad thing. They get to know the rhythm of a place and they know who doesn’t belong pretty quick. Good at crime prevention.”
“That makes me feel safer,” the Doctor couldn’t help saying. “She must be all of seventy if she’s a day.” Then he jumped up. “Does it seem warm in here to you?”
Rose was surprised into a laugh. “You’re never warm. Or cold.”
“Well, it’s warmer in here.” He walked over to a window and pried it up a few inches.
“It’s July,” Billy pointed out. “Heat rises, and it’s hot. No central air, eh?”
“Not even a fan,” Rose sighed. “We’ll boil until we get back.”
The Doctor moved to another window. “At least we can get some air going.”
Billy watched this with his arms folded across his chest. “Another way to be uncomfortable,” he commented. “Which reminds me. How long do I have to sleep on this couch? It’s too damned uncomfortable.”
“It’s all we have.” Rose touched the back of the couch. “I know it’s not the newest or the best, but we should be done with this place pretty quickly.”
“Which would be great,” Billy returned, “but I’m still left on the couch while you two get the bed.”
The Doctor turned around and fixed him with a stern, forbidding look. “Rose gets the bed,” he corrected. “I don’t sleep. And Rose isn’t sleeping on the couch.”
“Doctor,” Rose protested in a soft voice. “Maybe it’s not fair that I-”
“No.” The Doctor wasn’t brooking any arguments on this one. “We can find a cot or something if we need to, but there’s no space for another full-size bed even if we wanted one. And Rose’s bedroom is hers alone,” he finished.
Billy raised his hands in surrender. “Look, don’t shoot me! I’m just saying that the couch is lumpy.”
“We’ll try to work something out in the morning.” Rose looked at Billy with a sympathetic, pleading expression. She didn’t want him to be upset, and she didn’t want any discord.
“It’s not a problem,” Billy said finally. “As long as I get some privacy,” he added. “Just because you don’t sleep doesn’t mean you can lurk around and watch me sleep.”
“I don’t lurk,” the Doctor said indignantly. “I work on our project. The project to get us home.”
“Time for bed!” Rose said cheerfully. “Good night, Billy! I’ll let you have the bathroom first.”
“Thanks.” Billy headed for the bath. At least he had pajamas to sleep in.
“And you.” Rose pointed at the Doctor.
“And me what?”
“Don’t antagonize him, Doctor. It’s hard enough without having you poke at him all the time.”
The Doctor was honestly astounded. “Rose, I don’t poke at him.”
“Remember who he is. We need him, and we need to be nice to him because it’s not right to be rude. Now, go hide in the kitchen. Don’t read in here while he’s sleeping, and don’t try to watch the television in the middle of the night.”
“There is no television in the middle of the night.”
She snorted as she turned around and went back to her room. “There will be if you try to tinker with the air and soundwaves.”
The flat was really stuffy, Rose noted as she closed the bedroom door. It didn’t help when the door was shut. With the light still off, she drew back the curtains and opened the window. Sounds of the city came in at once, but only a very little breeze.
She sighed.
Out in the main part of the flat she heard Billy and the Doctor talking. She took the opportunity to go into the bath and get ready for the evening. She sincerely hoped that her feminine protection lived up to its name that night. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to buy the maxi-pads with the required belt, and while the tampons were working, she couldn’t help but think of Jackie’s stories of the outbreak of Toxic Shock Syndrome. This was long before any of that was to happen, and Rose eyed the package of tampons that she’d bought. Rely - we even absorb the worry.
“That makes me feel so much better,” she muttered.
She put on her pajamas, washed her face and brushed her teeth. Back in her room she listened to a half-audible conversation out on the street below. She heard Billy tell the Doctor that he could leave the room now, and heard Billy cursing as he tried to make his bed using the sheets from the night before. She didn’t envy him sleeping on that couch.
The Doctor paused in his work and stretched. It was eleven minutes, fifteen seconds after midnight, and he was nearly done with his plans. Soon they would be able to record those messages that he would one day give to Sally Sparrow, and then they would get out of 1969 London, and he would get his TARDIS back.
He was grateful Billy had come to them, since he was apparently the one who would get them out of this mess. He was just annoyed that Billy, being human, required sleep and was therefore in the room that the Doctor had been using as a work area.
Not that the kitchen was comfortable, he admitted to himself with just a spot of sarcasm as he looked around. Small, rickety table to work on, tiny sink with a leaky faucet - what was wrong with it that the sonic screwdriver couldn’t fix? - no window to look out of. Not even a small pass-through window to look into the living room.
He hated it. He hated the kitchen, hated the flat. He hated this entire mess.
He stood up quickly, pushing the chair away from the table with enough force to make it tip over. He caught it before it crashed to the floor, righting it and cursing softly.
They were trapped here. As surely as he and Rose had been trapped on that space station, with the TARDIS gone and a black hole looming overhead, they were trapped here in 1969. He had only the promise that they could get back if he followed instructions written on a page. Instructions written by a girl he’d never met.
He wanted to be out of this mess now. Wanted to be back on his ship with Rose, traveling the stars and watching her laugh in delight. The feeling of suffocation, of helpless rage, was nearly overwhelming, and the effort it took for him to hide those feelings from Rose was killing him.
Suddenly the kitchen seemed much too small. The flat itself was tiny, an insult to the term “flat”. He’d been living there for weeks now, pretending all was well, but a small part of him had been rebelling against it all along. He turned the light off and slowly eased the kitchen door open. Billy was asleep on the couch. The Doctor began to walk to the door when he heard a sound behind him.
Turning, he spied light coming through from beneath Rose’s door. Concerned, he reversed direction and walked down the hallway to tap gently on the door.
“Rose?” he asked softly. “Are you all right?”
Rose had woken up from a disjointed dream where she lectured her grandmother on not smoking. Her grandmother, hugely pregnant, had just rolled her eyes and kept smoking, pausing occasionally to take a sip of diet Coke while on the television she watched men land on Mars and then explode.
Shaken by the dream, Rose turned on her lamp and walked around the room, pausing to idly swipe at the clutter of things she had on her dresser. Between the dream and the oppressive heat of the July night, it was hard to sleep or think.
The Doctor’s voice took her by surprise, and she dove for the dressing gown that was lying on the floor.
“I’m fine!” she said quickly, tying the sash around her waist and opening the door. “Are you?”
He nodded. “I heard you in here. Seemed a bit late for you to be up.”
Rose nodded in agreement. “Come in.” She waited for him to pass by her into the room and closed the door.
“What were you doing?” she asked.
“I was working on our project. I was about to get some air when I saw the light under the door.”
“Out where?” she questioned. He rarely talked about what he did at night when she was asleep.
“Just out.” The Doctor peered out the open window, walked to the dresser and then absently opened and closed the wardrobe doors before sitting on the bed.
“Are you all right?”
He sighed, and suddenly he seemed like a different person to Rose. “This is hard. I’m not a very patient person, Rose.”
She couldn’t help but smile. That seemed like a massive understatement. “No?”
“No. I want to get back to the TARDIS immediately. I don’t feel like waiting.”
She sat down beside him, tying the sash on her dressing gown a little tighter. “I want to get back, too.”
“But I want to get back now.” The Doctor stood up again, pacing around the room. Rose watched him in the dim light. “I feel trapped here. There’s nowhere to go!” He flung his arms wide to illustrate his point, knocking against the wardrobe in the process. “Ow! It’s so small here. This room, this flat, this London. I’m suffocating, Rose.”
Rose felt pity and sympathy for him. “I know it’s got to be hard for you, Doctor. But...you were trapped here in London before, weren’t you?”
He scowled. “I was. That was the Time Lords’ doing. But sometimes I was able to get back. I hadn’t completely lost the TARDIS. I could still travel sometimes. This is...this is different.” He sat down on the bed beside Rose again. She could almost feel the pain running through him.
“It’ll be okay.” She spoke quietly, as though to a frightened child. “We’ll get back. Everything is working out the way Sally said it would.”
He scoffed out a disgusted breath. “Sally! What does she know? Things could have changed already. Any little thing we did could have altered the expected outcome. There’s no guarantee, even with Billy here.”
“Well, there have to be other ways. I could...I could call someone! I could call Shireen! Or Keisha, or...” Rose’s voice trailed away as the Doctor waited for her to finish the sentence. “I could call someone and explain that I’m not really dead, but just stuck back in time,” Rose finished. She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Yeah, that would go over well.”
The Doctor smiled in spite of himself. “Your friends wouldn’t be any help, anyway, Rose. They’d be no match against the Weeping Angels.” He leaned back on the bed, resting on his elbows as he looked up thoughtfully at her. “They’re incredibly powerful beings, and they have the TARDIS to protect now. I could use your phone to call Sarah Jane, but even that wouldn’t do much good. Sarah and K-9 are brilliant - I don’t doubt that they could find that house and the TARDIS with no problems at all. But the Angels will be guarding it and will take no chances. They’d send them back in time quicker than they could...” His voice trailed off as he heard what he was saying.
“Quicker than they could blink?” Rose suggested.
“Yeah. Sorry. I didn’t mean to end the sentence that way. But they would. Or even worse, they’d figure out that Sarah Jane and K-9 might be able to gain access to the TARDIS, and that would truly be a disaster.” He sighed and fell back all the way on the bed. “No, there’s no other way than what we’re doing.”
“Well, at least we’re on the right track,” Rose said optimistically. Without really thinking about it, she lay down beside him. He turned his head to look at her, and she suddenly became aware of the heat of the night and of the thin fabric she was wearing.
For a long moment neither one said anything, content to just look at one another in the dark. An occasional car drove by, throwing light onto their faces for just a moment.
Without conscious effort or thought, the Doctor moved closer to Rose, raising himself up on his left elbow. She lay still, watching him. He touched her face, and Rose shifted closer as his fingers got tangled up in her hair.
He may have whispered her name, but she was beyond paying attention. She closed her eyes as he kissed her, holding his head against hers to keep him there.
She finally had to break away to gasp for breath. He let her breathe in a scant amount of air before kissing her again. He ceased to feel time as he kissed her, as she kissed him back and whispered nonsense words when she had to stop for breath.
Rose had waited a long time to do this again, and she kissed him enthusiastically. Somewhere along the way he lost what little control he had of the kiss, and she pushed him back and rolled on top of him. His hands freed themselves form her hair and moved to her back ,holding her tight against him.
There was not telling how far things might have gone if a very loud, very real, “Damn!” hadn’t come in through the closed door. Startled, Rose jerked around and the Doctor quickly sat up. It took them both a few moments to figure out what had happened. Billy, on his way to the loo, had bumped into something in the dark.
“It’s just Billy,” Rose whispered, breathing hard.
The Doctor looked at her. “Just Billy,” he echoed. “Damn him.” He pulled Rose back to him, drawing her onto his lap and kissing her thoroughly once more.
“Doctor,” she murmured, taking his hand and moving it to a place he very much wanted to explore. Her skin was soft through her nightgown, and it took all of his self control to remove his hand from the neckline of her nightgown, suddenly struck by a pang of conscience.
“Rose,” he whispered. “Are you sure?”
She made a sound that couldn’t be translated, but by the enthusiastic way she was moving against him he took it to be a good thing. His hands returned, running up and down her back as they kissed before pausing at the spot where her nightgown was riding up her thighs. He began to pull the material up. Rose shifted on his lap to help him, and he nearly lost all control and focus.
“Don’t stop,” she whispered in his ear. “Don’t you dare stop.”
“I’m not stopping,” he gasped, amazed that he was actually short of breath. He continued to yank the nightgown up, and then, of course, it happened.
A sudden jolt against the closed door sent them springing apart from each other like two guilty teenagers.
“What the hell?” Rose began.
The Doctor heaved a great sigh. “Billy.” There was a world of loathing in his voice. “We need to find him someplace else to live. This is not the right time. We have company, and we’re in this small flat...”
“I don’t care.” And she didn’t, but she slowly moved away from him while he cursed himself for caring enough to want to make it seem real and not cheap and tawdry. Certain portions of his anatomy were heartily cursing him as well.
They heard Billy move back to his sofa, muttering to himself about something. Their eyes met again, and Rose actually felt herself blushing. She was glad it wasn’t so obvious in the dark.
“I guess some things are better with just two.”
He snorted. “You’re telling me. The sooner we get him out of here the better. Anyway, it’s late. You should get some sleep.”
Rose raised her eyebrows. Did he really think she would sleep after this?
“I’m sorry.” His voice was soft in the darkness. “Rose, I-”
“It’s okay.” Her voice was just as soft. “It’s okay. We have all the time in the word, don’t we?”
“That doesn’t make me feel better right this minute,” he responded sourly.
Despite herself, Rose chuckled. “I’ll see you in the morning.” After he’d closed the door behind him she sat down on the bed and covered her face with her hands. And then she started to laugh. Because if Billy alone wasn’t an obstacle to their being together, it was also the wrong time of the month for her. And wasn’t that just typical of their luck so far?
Twenty-seven