Fic: Leave Me Paralyzed, Love - Jim/Rose
Title Leave Me Paralyzed, Love
Fandoms The Office and Doctor Who
Pairing Jim/Rose, Doctor/Rose
Rating PG
Summary "The blue box appears in their lives in late fall, a structural slap to the face for both of them..."
Author's Note A continuation of Powerlines and To Hang Your Hat Also, there's a fanmix now.
The blue box appears in their lives in late fall, a structural slap to the face for both of them, sitting on a street corner in Munich.
They're just walking, fingers laced and snuggled into thick fleece that blocks most of the wind, and then she's not walking anymore. He looks up from the shape of his toes to see the Police box as her finger-tips pass over his palm and his wrist before falling to her side. It's like a pirate ship or a magic carpet appearing before him, something mythic brought into startling reality. "Is that?"
But she doesn't answer, just begins to walk towards it, slow, then faster, then at a run that sends people spinning away against windows, into the street. When she reaches the doors they're locked, and he watches as she digs through her pockets for the key he's only ever seen glimpses of.
The lock fits (of course the lock fits) and he holds his breath as she pushes the doors open. What does he hope for her to find there?
..
They buy a car in Calais in late May. She says she'd like to drive. Drive and keep driving and see the country pass them by. He agrees because he misses the taste of summer air through rolled down windows and the yield of the steering wheel at his palms.
In France he meets his first alien. She's tall and blond and looks as human as anyone else (not like the Cybermen he remembers from a few years back, the ones Rose doesn't talk about), only her eyes glow a color he didn't know existed and she's trying to take over the world.
Somehow they end up tied to a nuclear device that's about to explode and he wonders when his life became a James Bond movie, or a Space Opera without the space.
Rose isn't phased at all.
..
Belgium is the kind of place he's always wanted to visit, though he's never been sure why. They spend a week in a small town outside of Brussels (the car breaks down and they haven't really got a choice) and he practices the French that's grown rusty since he was in high school. When they leave he tapes a postcard of their hotel to the sun-visor and it stays there till the tape peels away a month and a half later.
..
He's never been inside a space ship before, though he's heard about this one, many times. "Bigger on the inside" doesn't really begin to cover it.
..
When they hit the Russian border they turn the car around and head back, dipping South into new parts of Europe, circling towards its center. They take turns driving, picking the places they'll stop. While she drives he reads the books he's always put off (the backseat is carpeted in Penguin Popular Classics), she sketches outlines of the passing landscapes on the backs of receipts. They doze.
..
They sit in the TARDIS for three hours. He sits. She paces, traces the lines of the console with her fingers and breathes out in rough, uneven sighs. His stomach tenses with hers, the muscles winding and flexing as the feeling that his life's about to change again builds beneath them.
When the Doctor (this could be no other man) finally appears, a red-haired woman behind him, Jim stands, wipes the palms of his hands across his jeans. He opens his mouth and feels the stale air of his silence rush out into the room. Rose stops, her eyes locked with the Doctor's. Her whole face cracks, then splits into a grin he's never seen before, never even glimpsed.
..
Once a week he dials home from a pay-phone. He talks to his mother, his brothers, his father. His eldest niece is big enough for the phone, now, but she's shy and will only whisper "Uncle Jim?" into her end in a quiet, uncertain voice that makes him long for home.
Sometimes he'll call Mark, or his old college friends. He calls Dunder Mifflin, once. The woman who answers isn't Pam and he asks for Toby. They talk for three and a half minutes before the line is clogged with their mutual silence.
..
This room that gaped with emptiness moments before feels crowded. He says, "I'm just going to get some air," and Rose nods, but her gaze never shifts. Outside he gasps at Germany, so alien after something so alien.
The red-haired woman ("Donna," she tells him.) follows him out. They stand, side-by-side, in the cold late-afternoon air, waiting to see where life will take them next.
..
He goes home.
It's his own choice, he could stay with them, travel on, see the stars up close, but he thinks about his niece's whisper, stuffing at Thanksgiving dinner...Pam.
He calls and says "I'm coming home," and the Doctor drops him off down the street from his parents' house. Rose walks him out, grabs for his hand on the Pennsylvania pavement and thanks him for traveling with her, going all that way and back.
"It was good for me," he tells her, "seeing the world like that."
She nods and presses her cell phone (rejiggered and pokered especially for cross-dimensional calls) into his palm. "If you ever change your mind."
Fandoms The Office and Doctor Who
Pairing Jim/Rose, Doctor/Rose
Rating PG
Summary "The blue box appears in their lives in late fall, a structural slap to the face for both of them..."
Author's Note A continuation of Powerlines and To Hang Your Hat Also, there's a fanmix now.
The blue box appears in their lives in late fall, a structural slap to the face for both of them, sitting on a street corner in Munich.
They're just walking, fingers laced and snuggled into thick fleece that blocks most of the wind, and then she's not walking anymore. He looks up from the shape of his toes to see the Police box as her finger-tips pass over his palm and his wrist before falling to her side. It's like a pirate ship or a magic carpet appearing before him, something mythic brought into startling reality. "Is that?"
But she doesn't answer, just begins to walk towards it, slow, then faster, then at a run that sends people spinning away against windows, into the street. When she reaches the doors they're locked, and he watches as she digs through her pockets for the key he's only ever seen glimpses of.
The lock fits (of course the lock fits) and he holds his breath as she pushes the doors open. What does he hope for her to find there?
..
They buy a car in Calais in late May. She says she'd like to drive. Drive and keep driving and see the country pass them by. He agrees because he misses the taste of summer air through rolled down windows and the yield of the steering wheel at his palms.
In France he meets his first alien. She's tall and blond and looks as human as anyone else (not like the Cybermen he remembers from a few years back, the ones Rose doesn't talk about), only her eyes glow a color he didn't know existed and she's trying to take over the world.
Somehow they end up tied to a nuclear device that's about to explode and he wonders when his life became a James Bond movie, or a Space Opera without the space.
Rose isn't phased at all.
..
Belgium is the kind of place he's always wanted to visit, though he's never been sure why. They spend a week in a small town outside of Brussels (the car breaks down and they haven't really got a choice) and he practices the French that's grown rusty since he was in high school. When they leave he tapes a postcard of their hotel to the sun-visor and it stays there till the tape peels away a month and a half later.
..
He's never been inside a space ship before, though he's heard about this one, many times. "Bigger on the inside" doesn't really begin to cover it.
..
When they hit the Russian border they turn the car around and head back, dipping South into new parts of Europe, circling towards its center. They take turns driving, picking the places they'll stop. While she drives he reads the books he's always put off (the backseat is carpeted in Penguin Popular Classics), she sketches outlines of the passing landscapes on the backs of receipts. They doze.
..
They sit in the TARDIS for three hours. He sits. She paces, traces the lines of the console with her fingers and breathes out in rough, uneven sighs. His stomach tenses with hers, the muscles winding and flexing as the feeling that his life's about to change again builds beneath them.
When the Doctor (this could be no other man) finally appears, a red-haired woman behind him, Jim stands, wipes the palms of his hands across his jeans. He opens his mouth and feels the stale air of his silence rush out into the room. Rose stops, her eyes locked with the Doctor's. Her whole face cracks, then splits into a grin he's never seen before, never even glimpsed.
..
Once a week he dials home from a pay-phone. He talks to his mother, his brothers, his father. His eldest niece is big enough for the phone, now, but she's shy and will only whisper "Uncle Jim?" into her end in a quiet, uncertain voice that makes him long for home.
Sometimes he'll call Mark, or his old college friends. He calls Dunder Mifflin, once. The woman who answers isn't Pam and he asks for Toby. They talk for three and a half minutes before the line is clogged with their mutual silence.
..
This room that gaped with emptiness moments before feels crowded. He says, "I'm just going to get some air," and Rose nods, but her gaze never shifts. Outside he gasps at Germany, so alien after something so alien.
The red-haired woman ("Donna," she tells him.) follows him out. They stand, side-by-side, in the cold late-afternoon air, waiting to see where life will take them next.
..
He goes home.
It's his own choice, he could stay with them, travel on, see the stars up close, but he thinks about his niece's whisper, stuffing at Thanksgiving dinner...Pam.
He calls and says "I'm coming home," and the Doctor drops him off down the street from his parents' house. Rose walks him out, grabs for his hand on the Pennsylvania pavement and thanks him for traveling with her, going all that way and back.
"It was good for me," he tells her, "seeing the world like that."
She nods and presses her cell phone (rejiggered and pokered especially for cross-dimensional calls) into his palm. "If you ever change your mind."