fic; doctor who: Losing Bets.
title: Losing Bets.
co-author: gallifreyburning!
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG?
words: 2,518.
notes: This is another "fic tennis" collaboration with gallifreyburning and allrightfine (that's me!) over on Tumblr, switching off every (approximately) 200 words, using the picture under the cut as a prompt. (For a version with the breakdown of who wrote what, you can read it on Tumblr here, too!)
summary: The Doctor has a bet with Jackie, and Rose is determined for him to lose.
He’s a minute away from stomping his foot, Rose can tell.
“I’m not going out there.”
“Yes, Doctor, you are.”
His leg twitches and Rose leans forward, waiting. She’s got a video on her phone of Tony doing the same thing, it’ll be perfect.
“I don’t think you need juice that bad.” He crosses his arms and his leg relaxes. Damn.
“Oh, really?” If she’s honest, she could probably do without the juice, but this bet with her mum has gone on far too long. They’re both acting like nutters, and Rose is putting a stop to it.
“Really!” The Doctor opens the refrigerator roughly, gesturing at the shelves. “Look! Milk, water, Pepsi, drink one of those!”
Rose smiles at him serenely and shakes her head. There’s beer in the fridge, too, and it doesn’t escape her notice that he hadn’t pointed it out.
“But, Rose! Think of all the juice you could buy when I win — that’s 100 quid worth of juice! And you know I’ll lose if I go out there! There are photographers everywhere!”
“I don’t actually need more money for juice, Doctor, and neither do you. This is about you and my mum provoking each other.”
“She started it!” His foot is twitching again. If Rose had made a bet with herself about the foot-stomping, she’d be collecting any moment now.
“Let’s face it, this entire thing is beneath you,” Rose retorts, shaking her head. “You look ridiculous, trying to disguise yourself with the jeans and the blazer — where did you even get that thing, it looks like you skinned a couch! A baseball cap? Really. I think Mum’s not really interested in the bet; she’s just trying to make you look ridiculous in public. And she’s succeeding.”
“I definitely need sunglasses.” Whether he didn’t register what she’s said or he’s simply ignoring her, Rose isn’t sure, but he jumps to his feet and moves to the window, standing to one side and peeking outside. “Big ones. Like that singer wears.”
“You’re not getting sunglasses, Doctor,” Rose says with a sigh, leaning back in the kitchen chair and resting both hands on her stomach. “Yes, definitely orange juice. And now I’m hungry, too. Chinese food from that little place at the end of the block. Dim sum and fried rice.”
He whirls around, sputtering. “But that’s — that’s two different stops, Rose! How can I avoid the paparazzi if…” The force of his argument is lost as he takes in the sight of her, his demeanor shifting from manic distraction to smitten defeat in a heartbeat.
She grins at him, cocking her head and trying not to gloat. The bigger she grows, the easier it is to get what she’s after. The first time she’d sent him for chips at 11 at night – months ago, now – he’d squinted at her, like he was trying to assess if it was a real craving or just a test.
He’d gone though, that time and every time since. The fuss had only started back up again when her mum had made him that stupid bet. As if any of them would be able to get anywhere dodging the press, especially with Rose pregnant and the Doctor’s flare for the ridiculous.
It was through sheer force of will he’d evaded them for this long. Well, evaded them within the terms of the wager. His body had been photographed plenty, limbs askew and ridiculous disguises flapping in the breeze; it was only his face he needed to protect.
(Rose had drawn the line at him leaving the house with a brown paper bag over his head, because of course that was the first thing he’d tried. Little round eyeholes and a square robotic grin – of course.)
Now, as an apparent last ditch effort, he squats in front of her chair, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walks his fingers up the inside seam of her trousers.
“What are the odds we could shift this craving to something more extraterrestrial?”
“We promised Mum we’d keep the TARDIS planetside until the baby’s born,” she replies with a smirk, snatching his hand and bringing it to her lips. Sucking the tip of his index finger into her mouth, she nibbles his skin with her teeth.
The young TARDIS’s navigational controls had been a bit … unpredictable. So the Doctor claimed, when the first time out he brought them home four months later than he’d meant to. The instant Jackie found out Rose was pregnant, she put her foot down about time travel, and Rose wasn’t inclined to argue. Nine months earthbound with the Doctor hadn’t seemed so long at first, but now … well.
“That’s — hmm — not what I’m talking about, and you — ahh-hh! — know it.” He’s on his knees now, leaning forward over her belly as she moves to his ring finger, kissing the pad and making her way down the length of it to his palm. His other hand has found its way up the outside of her thigh and is pulling at the waist of her pants.
“Juice plus dim sum plus fried rice equals happy Rose, yeah? I can’t concentrate when I’m hungry.”
He jumps up, startling her with the sudden shift. “I’ve got a plan!”
She glances down at his jeans, the lack of anything significant going on under the fabric, and he chuckles, “No, not that. Although, if you’ve changed your mind –”
He snatches her hand and presses it to his fly, grinning shamelessly at her as he twitches under her fingers.
With a light squeeze, and a laugh in spite of herself, Rose pulls her hand away. “Your plan?”
It’s a combination of his posture and his facial expression that tell Rose he knows he’s asking for a smack, but he goes ahead anyway.
“Your mum!” The Doctor reaches across the table for his mobile, shoving it into Rose’s hands. “You call your mum and ask her to pick you up your juice and food.”
His voice is getting louder on each word, apparently certain that this is his best idea today.
“She’ll come, of course she’ll come, she’s your mum. I didn’t even plan that to rhyme, it just goes to show how perfect this is, the English language wants it to happen.” He pauses for a breath.
“So, Jackie goes out, the paparazzi get their photo, Rose gets her food, and the Doctor gets 100 quid, and maybe a snog for his brilliance?” He puckers his lips hopefully.
“Mum won’t even send her driver around to pick it up, because she isn’t going to help you win this bet, not in a million years.” Rose leans forward and gives him a peck on his puckered lips before rising to her feet. “Fine. I’ll get my own juice and Chinese. I could do with a walk, anyway. I don’t like being cooped up in the flat for this long.”
The Doctor trails beside her, tugging at her sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her approach to the door. “Nonono, Rose, in your … enlarged state, you can’t execute the evasive maneuvers necessary to avoid the photographers stationed up and down the block. I’ve got a chart, see!”
He snatches a paper from beneath a magnet on the refrigerator, brandishing it in front of her face. It’s a painstakingly drawn map of their neighborhood, labeled with little Gallifreyan circles and color-coded sqares. He scrunches his nose and rubs the back of his neck with his other hand, his voice rising a bit as he gets more animated. “You have to know where to dodge, where to weave, where to dash; you have to know how fast the reaction time of each photographer is, and exactly when to —”
“‘Enlarged state?’” Rose interrupts, eyebrows arching nearly to her hairline. She huffs. “If you’re coming with me, take off that ridiculous baseball hat. Just because the people from G-Star Raw sent you that thing doesn’t mean you have to wear it. When the press publishes these photos, I don’t want you looking like an escapee from a boy band.”
The Doctor looks dejectedly down at his map, then folds it up and reverently slides it into his back pocket. He winces as it crinkles and Rose makes a mental note to get him a lamination machine for Christmas, and maybe a stack of take-away menus, just to give him something to get started.
“I am an escapee from a boy band – on Varzop B. Four months of my life I’ll never get back, that. Not hard to be ‘the cute one’ on a planet of bipedal hyenas. And talk about the press being jackals! Literal jackals!”
He’s steering her away from the door as he talks, clearly hoping she won’t notice. She plants her feet and he walks another few steps, tripping on a pair of discarded Converse before realizing he’s lost her.
She raises her eyebrows again as he rights himself, and she turns back for the door. “I’m going to get my food now, are you going to protect me from the jackals or are you staying here?”
“Oh, I’m coming! I have a contingency plan based on this exact scenario, well, close enough – well, luckily I’ve not been incapacitated by a hoard of roving beasties, but anyway, how would you feel about wearing a hat, too? Nothing gaudy, just a tasteful bowler cap? Maybe a sombrero? Or – oh, Rose?”
His voice is echoing out behind her, lost on the wind, as she makes her way down the front steps.
The Doctor apparently realizes he’s lost the battle and is out of the building like a shot, pulling her into the shadows of the front stoop. Manic gleam in his eye, he deposits his baseball cap on her head.
“Count to sixty, then take the long way to the Chinese restaurant. No matter what happens, Rose, remember that I love you.” He lays his palms on both sides of her face, fingers slipping into her hair, and plants a wet kiss on her mouth. Before she can reply, he’s gone in a flash of long legs, leaping down the front steps onto the sidewalk.
“Don’t mind me! Just out for a bit of fresh air!” he shouts at a post box.
For the first five seconds, his movements are exaggeratedly casual, like a stringless marionette left to its own devices on a London sidewalk. But then the first photographer appears from the nearby alley, enormous zoom lens on his camera, moving in for a better shot. The dam seems to break: a dozen, maybe more, begin to converge on the Doctor, coming from every direction imaginable, flashbulbs popping, and Rose doesn’t want to know how long that guy in the cargo pants was huddled inside their dumpster.
That’s when the Doctor really kicks into gear, and as she watches him move, Rose’s jaw is practically on the ground and she completely forgets how to count to sixty.
In fact, the only thing she can do is the only thing she wants to do, and she’s fitting her mouth around the syllables of his name, “Doctor!”
He skitters to a halt just up the block, turning around with wide eyes that are rapidly blinking at the camera flashes. He seems to realize she hasn’t moved at all and runs back toward her, leaping with unexpected grace over the mass of a photog fallen in the chaos.
When he reaches the stairs again, he jumps up, shielding her body and holding her biceps in his hands. “Rose! What is it? Are you all right? Is it time? Oh, oh! Is it time?!”
She pulls back to get a better look at his face, all flushed and wild and happy – the same way she suddenly feels, the same way she always feels for this mad Doctor of hers.
With a quick tug at the ball cap on her head, she flings it to the side and in the next movement grabs the Doctor’s face.
“I’ll give you a hundred quid,” and she’s pulling his lips down to hers.
He makes a surprised noise and she uses the opening to slip her tongue into his mouth, backing them up to the door and groping blindly for the handle.
His fingers close over hers, force them to stillness. He takes her in his arms, his body bending around her (no small feat considering the size of her belly). She pulls away from his kiss and stares at his mischievous brown eyes, millimeters from hers; at his lips, curled into a smile.
“Oh, we’re not taking this inside, Rose Tyler. Not yet,” he breathes. The photographers’ flashbulbs pop and flare. “If we’re losing this bet to Jackie, we’re doing it in style.”
Yes, those are certainly his hands on her bum. He deftly angles her toward the cameras, and he’s kissing her again, shameless with his tongue (the phrase sucking face crosses her mind). A split-second in she decides what the hell and throws her arms around his shoulders like they’re back on Bad Wolf Bay, fingers threading into his hair and nose pressing so hard into his cheek she can’t breathe.
She hears the snick-snick-snick of rapid-shutter cameras, and from behind closed eyelids she sees flashes of light, but none of it matters because she’s lost — his tongue teasing hers with practiced expertise, the feel of his bottom lip as she sucks it into her mouth, his long fingers clutching at her body, his warm breath suffused across her skin; she never gets tired of this, the taste and the smell and her Doctor.
When he pulls away, he’s grinning like the madman he is. Without even attempting to disguise his glee, he says, “Ooh, Jackie’s going to be furious.”
“Can we go inside now?” Rose says, and she tries to sound exasperated, but it comes out breathy and a bit desperate instead.
With a flourish, the Doctor turns to the paparazzi. “And that concludes the show for this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your kind attention.”
Epilogue:
The next day the Doctor goes down to the local newspaper stand and buys EVERY gossip rag he can lay his hands on, meticulously cuts out all the photos of him snogging Rose senseless on the front stoop, and spends an hour painstakingly pasting them onto a piece of posterboard. Right in the center of the posterboard collage of himself ravishing Rose in public, he tacks the bank cheque for £100. He presents the posterboard to Jackie at supper that night.
&&.
co-author: gallifreyburning!
fandom: Doctor Who.
pairing: 10.5/Rose.
rating: PG?
words: 2,518.
notes: This is another "fic tennis" collaboration with gallifreyburning and allrightfine (that's me!) over on Tumblr, switching off every (approximately) 200 words, using the picture under the cut as a prompt. (For a version with the breakdown of who wrote what, you can read it on Tumblr here, too!)
summary: The Doctor has a bet with Jackie, and Rose is determined for him to lose.
He’s a minute away from stomping his foot, Rose can tell.
“I’m not going out there.”
“Yes, Doctor, you are.”
His leg twitches and Rose leans forward, waiting. She’s got a video on her phone of Tony doing the same thing, it’ll be perfect.
“I don’t think you need juice that bad.” He crosses his arms and his leg relaxes. Damn.
“Oh, really?” If she’s honest, she could probably do without the juice, but this bet with her mum has gone on far too long. They’re both acting like nutters, and Rose is putting a stop to it.
“Really!” The Doctor opens the refrigerator roughly, gesturing at the shelves. “Look! Milk, water, Pepsi, drink one of those!”
Rose smiles at him serenely and shakes her head. There’s beer in the fridge, too, and it doesn’t escape her notice that he hadn’t pointed it out.
“But, Rose! Think of all the juice you could buy when I win — that’s 100 quid worth of juice! And you know I’ll lose if I go out there! There are photographers everywhere!”
“I don’t actually need more money for juice, Doctor, and neither do you. This is about you and my mum provoking each other.”
“She started it!” His foot is twitching again. If Rose had made a bet with herself about the foot-stomping, she’d be collecting any moment now.
“Let’s face it, this entire thing is beneath you,” Rose retorts, shaking her head. “You look ridiculous, trying to disguise yourself with the jeans and the blazer — where did you even get that thing, it looks like you skinned a couch! A baseball cap? Really. I think Mum’s not really interested in the bet; she’s just trying to make you look ridiculous in public. And she’s succeeding.”
“I definitely need sunglasses.” Whether he didn’t register what she’s said or he’s simply ignoring her, Rose isn’t sure, but he jumps to his feet and moves to the window, standing to one side and peeking outside. “Big ones. Like that singer wears.”
“You’re not getting sunglasses, Doctor,” Rose says with a sigh, leaning back in the kitchen chair and resting both hands on her stomach. “Yes, definitely orange juice. And now I’m hungry, too. Chinese food from that little place at the end of the block. Dim sum and fried rice.”
He whirls around, sputtering. “But that’s — that’s two different stops, Rose! How can I avoid the paparazzi if…” The force of his argument is lost as he takes in the sight of her, his demeanor shifting from manic distraction to smitten defeat in a heartbeat.
She grins at him, cocking her head and trying not to gloat. The bigger she grows, the easier it is to get what she’s after. The first time she’d sent him for chips at 11 at night – months ago, now – he’d squinted at her, like he was trying to assess if it was a real craving or just a test.
He’d gone though, that time and every time since. The fuss had only started back up again when her mum had made him that stupid bet. As if any of them would be able to get anywhere dodging the press, especially with Rose pregnant and the Doctor’s flare for the ridiculous.
It was through sheer force of will he’d evaded them for this long. Well, evaded them within the terms of the wager. His body had been photographed plenty, limbs askew and ridiculous disguises flapping in the breeze; it was only his face he needed to protect.
(Rose had drawn the line at him leaving the house with a brown paper bag over his head, because of course that was the first thing he’d tried. Little round eyeholes and a square robotic grin – of course.)
Now, as an apparent last ditch effort, he squats in front of her chair, bouncing on the balls of his feet as he walks his fingers up the inside seam of her trousers.
“What are the odds we could shift this craving to something more extraterrestrial?”
“We promised Mum we’d keep the TARDIS planetside until the baby’s born,” she replies with a smirk, snatching his hand and bringing it to her lips. Sucking the tip of his index finger into her mouth, she nibbles his skin with her teeth.
The young TARDIS’s navigational controls had been a bit … unpredictable. So the Doctor claimed, when the first time out he brought them home four months later than he’d meant to. The instant Jackie found out Rose was pregnant, she put her foot down about time travel, and Rose wasn’t inclined to argue. Nine months earthbound with the Doctor hadn’t seemed so long at first, but now … well.
“That’s — hmm — not what I’m talking about, and you — ahh-hh! — know it.” He’s on his knees now, leaning forward over her belly as she moves to his ring finger, kissing the pad and making her way down the length of it to his palm. His other hand has found its way up the outside of her thigh and is pulling at the waist of her pants.
“Juice plus dim sum plus fried rice equals happy Rose, yeah? I can’t concentrate when I’m hungry.”
He jumps up, startling her with the sudden shift. “I’ve got a plan!”
She glances down at his jeans, the lack of anything significant going on under the fabric, and he chuckles, “No, not that. Although, if you’ve changed your mind –”
He snatches her hand and presses it to his fly, grinning shamelessly at her as he twitches under her fingers.
With a light squeeze, and a laugh in spite of herself, Rose pulls her hand away. “Your plan?”
It’s a combination of his posture and his facial expression that tell Rose he knows he’s asking for a smack, but he goes ahead anyway.
“Your mum!” The Doctor reaches across the table for his mobile, shoving it into Rose’s hands. “You call your mum and ask her to pick you up your juice and food.”
His voice is getting louder on each word, apparently certain that this is his best idea today.
“She’ll come, of course she’ll come, she’s your mum. I didn’t even plan that to rhyme, it just goes to show how perfect this is, the English language wants it to happen.” He pauses for a breath.
“So, Jackie goes out, the paparazzi get their photo, Rose gets her food, and the Doctor gets 100 quid, and maybe a snog for his brilliance?” He puckers his lips hopefully.
“Mum won’t even send her driver around to pick it up, because she isn’t going to help you win this bet, not in a million years.” Rose leans forward and gives him a peck on his puckered lips before rising to her feet. “Fine. I’ll get my own juice and Chinese. I could do with a walk, anyway. I don’t like being cooped up in the flat for this long.”
The Doctor trails beside her, tugging at her sleeve in a vain attempt to slow her approach to the door. “Nonono, Rose, in your … enlarged state, you can’t execute the evasive maneuvers necessary to avoid the photographers stationed up and down the block. I’ve got a chart, see!”
He snatches a paper from beneath a magnet on the refrigerator, brandishing it in front of her face. It’s a painstakingly drawn map of their neighborhood, labeled with little Gallifreyan circles and color-coded sqares. He scrunches his nose and rubs the back of his neck with his other hand, his voice rising a bit as he gets more animated. “You have to know where to dodge, where to weave, where to dash; you have to know how fast the reaction time of each photographer is, and exactly when to —”
“‘Enlarged state?’” Rose interrupts, eyebrows arching nearly to her hairline. She huffs. “If you’re coming with me, take off that ridiculous baseball hat. Just because the people from G-Star Raw sent you that thing doesn’t mean you have to wear it. When the press publishes these photos, I don’t want you looking like an escapee from a boy band.”
The Doctor looks dejectedly down at his map, then folds it up and reverently slides it into his back pocket. He winces as it crinkles and Rose makes a mental note to get him a lamination machine for Christmas, and maybe a stack of take-away menus, just to give him something to get started.
“I am an escapee from a boy band – on Varzop B. Four months of my life I’ll never get back, that. Not hard to be ‘the cute one’ on a planet of bipedal hyenas. And talk about the press being jackals! Literal jackals!”
He’s steering her away from the door as he talks, clearly hoping she won’t notice. She plants her feet and he walks another few steps, tripping on a pair of discarded Converse before realizing he’s lost her.
She raises her eyebrows again as he rights himself, and she turns back for the door. “I’m going to get my food now, are you going to protect me from the jackals or are you staying here?”
“Oh, I’m coming! I have a contingency plan based on this exact scenario, well, close enough – well, luckily I’ve not been incapacitated by a hoard of roving beasties, but anyway, how would you feel about wearing a hat, too? Nothing gaudy, just a tasteful bowler cap? Maybe a sombrero? Or – oh, Rose?”
His voice is echoing out behind her, lost on the wind, as she makes her way down the front steps.
The Doctor apparently realizes he’s lost the battle and is out of the building like a shot, pulling her into the shadows of the front stoop. Manic gleam in his eye, he deposits his baseball cap on her head.
“Count to sixty, then take the long way to the Chinese restaurant. No matter what happens, Rose, remember that I love you.” He lays his palms on both sides of her face, fingers slipping into her hair, and plants a wet kiss on her mouth. Before she can reply, he’s gone in a flash of long legs, leaping down the front steps onto the sidewalk.
“Don’t mind me! Just out for a bit of fresh air!” he shouts at a post box.
For the first five seconds, his movements are exaggeratedly casual, like a stringless marionette left to its own devices on a London sidewalk. But then the first photographer appears from the nearby alley, enormous zoom lens on his camera, moving in for a better shot. The dam seems to break: a dozen, maybe more, begin to converge on the Doctor, coming from every direction imaginable, flashbulbs popping, and Rose doesn’t want to know how long that guy in the cargo pants was huddled inside their dumpster.
That’s when the Doctor really kicks into gear, and as she watches him move, Rose’s jaw is practically on the ground and she completely forgets how to count to sixty.
In fact, the only thing she can do is the only thing she wants to do, and she’s fitting her mouth around the syllables of his name, “Doctor!”
He skitters to a halt just up the block, turning around with wide eyes that are rapidly blinking at the camera flashes. He seems to realize she hasn’t moved at all and runs back toward her, leaping with unexpected grace over the mass of a photog fallen in the chaos.
When he reaches the stairs again, he jumps up, shielding her body and holding her biceps in his hands. “Rose! What is it? Are you all right? Is it time? Oh, oh! Is it time?!”
She pulls back to get a better look at his face, all flushed and wild and happy – the same way she suddenly feels, the same way she always feels for this mad Doctor of hers.
With a quick tug at the ball cap on her head, she flings it to the side and in the next movement grabs the Doctor’s face.
“I’ll give you a hundred quid,” and she’s pulling his lips down to hers.
He makes a surprised noise and she uses the opening to slip her tongue into his mouth, backing them up to the door and groping blindly for the handle.
His fingers close over hers, force them to stillness. He takes her in his arms, his body bending around her (no small feat considering the size of her belly). She pulls away from his kiss and stares at his mischievous brown eyes, millimeters from hers; at his lips, curled into a smile.
“Oh, we’re not taking this inside, Rose Tyler. Not yet,” he breathes. The photographers’ flashbulbs pop and flare. “If we’re losing this bet to Jackie, we’re doing it in style.”
Yes, those are certainly his hands on her bum. He deftly angles her toward the cameras, and he’s kissing her again, shameless with his tongue (the phrase sucking face crosses her mind). A split-second in she decides what the hell and throws her arms around his shoulders like they’re back on Bad Wolf Bay, fingers threading into his hair and nose pressing so hard into his cheek she can’t breathe.
She hears the snick-snick-snick of rapid-shutter cameras, and from behind closed eyelids she sees flashes of light, but none of it matters because she’s lost — his tongue teasing hers with practiced expertise, the feel of his bottom lip as she sucks it into her mouth, his long fingers clutching at her body, his warm breath suffused across her skin; she never gets tired of this, the taste and the smell and her Doctor.
When he pulls away, he’s grinning like the madman he is. Without even attempting to disguise his glee, he says, “Ooh, Jackie’s going to be furious.”
“Can we go inside now?” Rose says, and she tries to sound exasperated, but it comes out breathy and a bit desperate instead.
With a flourish, the Doctor turns to the paparazzi. “And that concludes the show for this evening, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for your kind attention.”
Epilogue:
The next day the Doctor goes down to the local newspaper stand and buys EVERY gossip rag he can lay his hands on, meticulously cuts out all the photos of him snogging Rose senseless on the front stoop, and spends an hour painstakingly pasting them onto a piece of posterboard. Right in the center of the posterboard collage of himself ravishing Rose in public, he tacks the bank cheque for £100. He presents the posterboard to Jackie at supper that night.
&&.