This Alien of London--Part One

[amberfocus]

Title:  This Alien of London (pt. 1)
Author:  Amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  Nine/Rose, Jackie Tyler, Mickey Smith
Genre:  Romance
Betas:  teikachikata, doctor10_crazt, and amyo67
Rating:  Teen, this part
Summary:  Rose and Nine return to London after their first few adventures and get caught up in the Slitheen invasion.
A/N:  This fic was written for the Time in Flux ficathon over at doctor_rose_fic.  The goal was to take your assigned episode and rewrite it, or part of it, having the Doctor and Rose get together in it without totally skewing canon so much that the next episode couldn't happen.  I got Aliens of London.  Recognizable dialogue is from that episode.

Chapter One

 

 

As the TARDIS materialized on the grounds of the Powell Estate, Rose and the Doctor were laughing. They’d hit the grating at the rough landing and neither one of them had made any attempt to get up. She rolled towards him, propping her head up on her hand and studying his smiling face.  Meeting Charles Dickens had been amazing, but it was their time in the cellar of the undertaker’s house when he’d turned to her and told her he was so glad that he had met her and given her a smile that had suddenly turned her heart on its side that had really made her stop and think. She’d felt something then that she had never dreamed she’d feel for the amazing alien when he’d first invited her along. It was desire and it had flashed through her so strongly it had shocked her.

 

Sure, they’d argued afterward about Gwyneth and whether or not her death had been preventable, but at the end of it they’d made up so easily it was as if the argument had never happened. Rose almost felt guilty because a woman had died and all she could think about was whether or not there was any romantic future with the alien beside her who had grown desperately attractive to her overnight. The next morning she’d woken with that desire so strong she knew it wasn’t adrenaline telling her she wanted him. Her head had been clear and she’d still wanted him.

 

To make up for the bad parts of that adventure he’d taken her to her first alien planet and shown her the Glass Pyramids of San Kloon. It had been an amazing experience. The hot desert sun had beat down on them and she’d gotten a bit sunburned, but they’d spent the whole day wandering about holding hands and giggling together and he’d bought her dinner at a restaurant inside one of the pyramids. He hadn’t been a cheap date that night. The view of the stars through the top level of the pyramid had been amazing and something had shifted between them.

 

He’d told her she looked beautiful again and this time he hadn’t qualified it. She hadn’t been in a fancy dress with her hair in an updo. She’d just been in regular, ordinary clothes, a simple sundress she’d found in the wardrobe room and sandals. He’d taken a flower from their centerpiece, a shimmering, glistening, blue desert rose and tucked it behind her ear, and they’d wandered back to the ship hand in hand. It had been amazing, but real life had intruded and she’d asked to go back home to get her things and say a proper good-bye to her mum and her mates. He’d agreed and set the coordinates and next thing she knew they were rolling around on the floor together.

 

She smiled at him and he smiled back. “We ever gonna make one of these landings on our feet?” she asked him.

 

He turned to her and propped his own head up. “I think it’s a bit more fun this way, don’t you?” he asked.

 

She reached forward and lightly brushed a smudge of coal ash and sand off his jacket. Cardiff had been remarkably dirty, and the desert sand had gotten into everything. The battered leather was in need of a good cleaning. He stilled as her hand touched him, as she moved it from the jacket to his jumper and smoothed the wrinkled fabric there. She saw him swallow hard then he caught her hand and stilled it.  He sat up abruptly and then stood, holding his hands out to her and helping her to her feet.

 

“Best go and get your stuff and let your mum know you’ll be taking off for a longer while,” he said.

 

“Okay.” She walked to the doors and stepped outside, blinking in the bright London sunlight. The Doctor followed her out and leaned against the ship, crossing his arms and giving her that happy smile again. “How long have I been gone?” she asked.

 

“About twelve hours,” he said. Rose couldn’t believe it. All she’d seen and done and it had only been twelve hours! It felt like she’d lived a lifetime in the past few days with him. She laughed, the sound echoing through the alley he’d parked the TARDIS in. He joined in. She couldn’t even remember a time in her life when she’d been this happy before.

 

“Oh, right.” She sighed as she finally sobered, starting to walk away from him. “I won’t be long. I just want to see my mum.”

 

“What are you going to tell her?” he asked.

 

She turned back to him. “I don’t know,” she said wrinkling her nose. “I’ve been to the year 5 billion.  And I’ve only been gone, what, twelve hours? No, I’ll just tell her I spent the night at Shireen’s. See you later.” She tossed a jaunty wave at him, turning back one more time. “Oh, don’t you disappear.” She waved her finger at him. He smiled at her as if that thought was the furthest thing from his mind. Maybe it was. Maybe her presence in his life had made him as happy as his in hers had done. Sure now that he would wait for her, she hurried off to the flat to find her mum.

 

 

 

It hadn’t been twelve hours. He should have checked, but he’d been so confident in his abilities, having been able to impress Rose at every turn so far, that he’d gotten cocky. Twelve months! Rose was sure to find that unforgivable. And it was guaranteed to land him smack in the middle of a bunch of domestics that he didn’t want to deal with, but because he was the one who had put her in this position, he felt like he owed it to her not to do a runner and let her sort things out for herself. Who was he kidding? He didn’t want to let the girl out of his sight, in case she changed her mind about going off with him again. Whatever convincing was necessary to get her to come back, he needed to be there to do it.

 

Which was why he was standing there listening to Jackie holler at Rose while an uncomfortable looking police constable sat in the chair opposite her. She had drawn in on herself under the onslaught of Jackie’s verbal abuse. Rose did her best to defend herself. “But that’s what I was doing…traveling!” And Jackie was off again, huffing about Rose leaving her passport behind.

 

He finally spoke up, unable to bear the anger the woman was directing at her daughter and how much it obviously hurt Rose. The poor girl hadn’t done anything wrong. This was all on him and he couldn’t stand to see the brave, strong girl he’d taken with him cowed by the force that was her mother.

 

“Actually, it’s my fault. I employed Rose as my companion.” Why had that come out sounding so dirty? And why was he this nervous? He was not afraid of a forty-year-old harridan.

 

All eyes turned on him. “When you say companion, is this a sexual relationship?” the constable asked.

 

Feeling like he was suddenly backed into a corner, his eyes darted from Rose to the constable and back to Rose, who was looking at him with something he couldn’t quite identify on her face. Something that told him she might not mind such a thing if it had been true. Which it wasn’t. Not yet, anyway. “No,” he said just as Rose looked away uncomfortably and said no, too.

 

“Then what is it?” Jackie demanded. “Because you, you waltz in here all charm and smiles and the next thing I know she vanishes off the face of the Earth!” Oh, if she only knew how close she was to the truth. “How old are you then? Forty? Forty-five? Did you find her on the internet? Did you go online and pretend you’re a doctor?”

 

“I am a doctor!” he protested.

 

“Prove it. Stitch this, mate.” He didn’t even see the hand coming before it connected with the side of his jaw in a resounding smack that spun him around with far more force than he’d have thought Rose’s mother, little as she was, could muster. He let out an involuntary cry of pain.

 

This…this was why he didn’t do domestic, no matter how happy his new companion made him.

 

 

 

Rose had finally gotten her mother to calm down, the constable had left, and he’d spent ten minutes with a bag of frozen peas on his face while Jackie and Rose tried to talk things through. She kept shooting him looks like she thought he was going to take off on her, something he was stubbornly refusing to do despite the little voice inside his head that was telling him he was already getting far too attached to the girl and maybe leaving now before he was in completely over his head was a good idea. Another voice, louder and more persistent, kept telling him he needed her.  And against every rule he'd lived with his entire life, he wanted her.

 

That wasn’t an easy thing, needing--wanting--someone like this, but he was willing to admit to himself that he did. She brought so much light into his life. He just enjoyed being with her, watching her joy and excitement as she experienced new things, whether it was the end of her planet, a trip to the glass pyramids, or the visit to the past to meet Charles Dickens. Well, some of her joy had been tempered by fear in some of the things they’d faced, but she’d been so brave and strong, facing everything with him, her hand in his, standing right by his side like a…well, like a real partner, not just some screaming assistant. Not that she couldn’t scream. Rose definitely had a nice set of…lungs on her. He shook himself.

 

Rose finally got her mother settled with a cuppa and had called over someone named Bev to deal with the fall out and she turned to him and said, “Come on. Let’s get out of here for a bit.” She took the peas from his hand and tossed them onto the kitchen table and then led him out of the flat and up, up, up to the roof of the building. Rose sat cross-legged on a concrete outcropping and stared out over the city.

 

“I can’t tell her. I can’t even begin…she’s never going to forgive me. And I missed a year. Was it good?” She finally turned her head to look at him.

 

“Middling,” he responded.

 

She turned her face away from him again. “You’re so useless.”

 

“Well, if it’s this much trouble, are you going to stay here now?” he asked. He was desperate to hear her say no, that of course she was going to come with him and he practically held his breath waiting for her response.

 

Again she looked at him, and the words that came out of her mouth were not the ones he wanted to hear. “I don’t know,” she said. “Can’t do that to her again, though.”

 

Trying to lighten the mood and get Rose smiling again he said, “Well, she’s not coming with us.” It worked and Rose burst out giggling. He beamed. He couldn’t help himself. The sound of her laughter did that to him every time.

 

“No chance.”

 

“I don’t do families.”

 

“She slapped you,” Rose said, still sounding as if she couldn’t believe it.

 

“Nine hundred years of time and space and I’ve never been slapped by someone’s mother.”

 

Rose jumped down off her perch and reached up, gently fingering the side of his face. “I don’t think it’s going to leave a bruise,” she said. “Icing it helped. She didn’t hurt you too badly, did she?”

 

“It hurt enough,” he admitted gruffly, but his breath was catching in his throat as he looked down at her. Her hand lingered on his face for a moment before she gently pulled it away and kissed his cheek.

 

“What was that for?”

 

“Something human mothers do when their child is hurt. They kiss it and make it better,” she explained.

 

“There’s all kinds of something wrong with that sentence,” he said. “Being as I’m the one who’s 900. You shouldn’t be having maternal feelings for me.”

 

“I’m not!” she said a little too quickly. “It’s just…I dunno, a custom, is all. Soothe the hurt, make it better. When you say nine hundred years?” she asked slowly.

 

“That’s my age.” It wasn’t precisely true. He’d shaved a few centuries off his age. He hadn’t wanted her to think he was really old, and after that first millennium, well…women started thinking you were middle-aged. He didn’t want Rose thinking that, thinking he was a father figure. No, that was the last thing he wanted.

 

“You’re nine hundred years old.” She wandered towards the edge of the building shaking her head.

 

“Yep.”

 

“My mum was right. That is one hell of an age gap.”

 

“Too much of one?” he asked her. The answer to that should not be so important to him.

 

She froze for a moment before turning back to look at him again. “Too much of one…for what?”

 

He came to her side and picked up her hand. “Too much of one for you to consider me…”

 

“Consider you,” she repeated dumbly. He was standing so close to her now he didn’t know where his personal space left off and hers began. He could hear her heartbeat picking up, her breathing suddenly getting shallow. “For what?”

 

“For this.” He ran his thumb over her lower lip and watched as her eyes widened. She parted her lips and then as his thumb left, she moistened them. Her eyes flicked to his lips and that was all he needed to know. He bent his neck and she tilted her face up and their mouths met somewhere in the middle.

 

Rose didn’t hesitate to open her mouth to him and he deftly slid his tongue inside, making long, slow, exploratory strokes. She tasted vaguely of the syrup she’d had on her pancakes that morning, and of tea with honey and lemon, and something else that was a blend of her hormones and natural body chemistry. She sighed into his mouth, and he made an answering noise in the back of his throat as the few inches of space between them suddenly disappeared. Rose was clutching at his jumper and her warm, little body was pressed firmly up against his.

 

He lost track of time as they stood there kissing, quite a feat considering what he was, but there was something about her that erased everything else from his mind. Reality, the rational, right and wrong. He just wanted her. It was pure and it was simple and it was everything.

 

Eventually she broke the kiss and took a step back from him, releasing his clothes and blinking in the harsh sunlight as she opened her eyes. He searched her face uncertainly but then she grinned that heart stopping smile of hers where her tongue slipped over to the left side of her mouth and poked out between her teeth. “No,” she said, “I don’t think it’s too much.”

 

“What?”

 

“Of an age gap. Not too much of one at all. Good thing that copper didn’t ask us about our relationship after this happened. I was never any good at lying to the police. Can you just see the look on Mum’s face? It would have been a right hook and not a simple slap,” she said.

 

“Nothing simple about that slap. It hurt,” he mumbled.

 

“Don’t be such a girl.”

 

“Think I proved I was all male right then.”

 

“Not completely,” Rose threw back.

 

He caught her about the waist and pulled her into his body. “Do you want me to?” he asked. Rose swallowed hard and looked up into his face.

 

“I think I do.”

 

“And the fact that I’m an alien?” he asked.

 

“Doesn’t matter.” She laughed then and broke away again. “Even if it means that every conversation with you just goes mental. There’s no one else I can talk to. I’ve seen all that stuff up there, the size of it, and I can’t say a word. Aliens and space ships and I’m the only person on Earth who knows they exist.”

 

He was just about to answer when a shockingly loud sound split the air around them and when they looked back an alien space ship was passing so near over their heads that they both instinctively ducked down low to avoid being hit. The underside brushed by so closely that he could have reached up and touched it and, indeed, he was able to read some of the words written there in an alien language he couldn’t quite place.

 

They scrambled to their feet, staring in shock as the ship continued across London and crashed, a huge cloud of black smoke rising into the sky. “Oh, that’s just not fair,” Rose said.

 

The Doctor burst out laughing, turned to her with his manic grin, and took her hand. Pulling her with him he ran for the stairs.

Ch. 2:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/284081.html