This is a few days late, because I was caught unawares, but happy birthday to Anna, my fandomtumblrtwinsoulmate! I wrote a thing! And my words are still not cooperating, but I put them down and am embarrassing myself by posting them anyway, because I love you!

I was inspired by these pics from the 50th anniversary set, and by this prediction that I am clinging to for the sake of preserving my sanity. 

The Doctor didn’t intend to be here.

Then again, he hasn’t intended to be in quite a few places lately. The TARDIS has been behaving like a tetchy carnival ride these past few months, spinning him around and spitting him out everywhere he doesn’t want to be, apparently hell-bent on thwarting his good pleasure. It’s as though the old girl feels like she has some right to rebuke him for ignoring the Oods.

First he ended up in a galaxy twelve megaparsecs from the Milky Way, where not a single creature had a concept of language. They interpreted the Doctor’s sneeze as a declaration of war, and he only negotiated a peace by a multi-planetary broadcast of himself singing “I Did It My Way.” They let him name the galaxy before he left. Then, he was aiming for the Effervescent Falls of Horrowood Cuspate when the TARDIS deposited him at the Phorphorous Carousel of the Great Magellan Gestadt, instead. And that entire incident with the Red Carnivorous Maw started with a trip to pick up strawberry biscuits.

After all of that, the Doctor didn’t intend to be here, but things could be worse.  A picnic with royalty – more specifically, a newly-minted queen who hasn’t taken her eyes off him for nearly a week. Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth is far more appealing (and far more ginger) than an Ood, that’s certain.

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Jack finds him alone in the TARDIS media room. He’s fiddling with a game controller, aiming it at the screen and pressing buttons apparently at random. 

“Want a hand with that?” Jack says, depositing his bottle of hypervodka on the coffee table and joining him on the couch.

“Can’t even figure out how to turn the thing on,” Mickey grouses, tossing the spare controller at him. 

It’s a Kii-Four Alpha Orange gaming console, rather outdated at that. Well, outdated as far as Jack’s concerned, although the TARDIS is currently parked somewhere near 1062 AD, so perhaps not outdated to the people living in the yurts on the plains outside. The Doctor and Rose are there now, feasting with the locals to celebrate the ousting of a malevolent local god that was actually an energy vampire from Betelgeuse.

Mickey and Jack were decidedly not invited, mostly owing to the fact that Jack inadvertently blew up the chieftan’s yurt, and Mickey happened to be standing beside Jack at the time.

In a matter of minutes, Jack has the game console up and running, Holo-Warrior’s Creed MXVII bursting to life across the screen in a flare of color and screech of theme music.

“Care for a little friendly wager?” Mickey says, nodding toward the hypervodka. “Lose a life force, take a shot?”

“But you’ve never played this game before. That would hardly be fair,” Jack laughs. 

“I’m a quick learner. What’s the matter, you afraid of a little competition?”

With a huff and an arched eyebrow, Jack plops down on the couch and hits the “start” button.

When the Doctor and Rose finally come back to the TARIDS hours later, they follow the sound of snoring to the media room. There’s an empty hypervodka bottle on the table, and Mickey sprawled atop Jack on the couch. He has a Sharpie clutched in his hand, and the word LOSER is written in unsteady letters across Jack’s forehead.

somethingofthewolf:

It’s penance.

It was a double homicide, the blond woman and her son. 

It’s just a case, only a pair of victims. But Hardy gets lost in the days, hours, weeks of studying evidence. Burying himself in details, reading witness statements and chasing leads, visiting the crime scene — the woman’s flat — over and over again. He discovers her journals in a box under the bed, and at some point digging into the evidence means he’s in over his head.

He’s drowning in her. 

He knows her perfume smells of peonies, and her shower gel of bergamot. Her taste in clothes runs toward the practical. Her handwriting is spindly, except for the elegant curl of her lower-case g’s. She was a secretary, barely eking by as a single mum, but had a degree in architecture. She’d been saving for years to take her son on a minibreak to Spain, for the beaches — except there are pictures of Moorish buildings clipped out of magazines and pasted in that entry, the Alhambra and the Grand Mosque of Cordoba.

Then she comes to visit.

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This story is for my first square on my trope bingo card — AU: Hooker/Porn/Stripper. Ten/Rose, natch. There’s a part 2 in my head, we’ll see if my fingers cooperate in getting it onto the computer.

The Doctor realizes it’s a mistake the minute the cab leaves him on the sidewalk in front of the Powell Estate. By taking this job to help the Master because he’d double-booked himself, the Doctor has landed right back in the sort of place he’s spent the last few years working his way out of. He’s all too familiar with the desperate, middle-aged women who populate council estates and call for the services of someone like him, and they aren’t the kind of women he wants to waste his time with anymore. He’d rather be in the company of middle-aged women who reek of desperation and money, the kind who prefer the word escort when they find out what he does, because it sounds so much more civilized.

But he’s a professional, so he’ll do the job.

It’s worse than he imagines.  The woman he’s here to see isn’t alone; this is some sort of birthday celebration. Ten o’clock in the evening, a ratty sixth-floor flat full of drunk older women in velour tracksuits with their faces caked in makeup. When the birthday girl herself opens the door, sweating gin and shrill with excitement, and he catches sight of the den of biddies behind her, he nearly bolts. She snags his tie with chubby fingers, blood-red fingernails digging into the expensive silk, and yanks him inside.

There is no end to the creative ways the Doctor is going to make the Master repay him for this favor.

The only small mercy is that the answering service got the message wrong when they contacted him, and the birthday girl seems to be under the impression that he’s a stripper. Stripping isn’t the Doctor’s forte, in terms of the skill set that comes with his profession – chatting someone up and using his gob as a seduction tool, sweeping them off their feet and out of their mundane lives, his extensive knowledge of how to please women physically, those are his strong suits. But he’ll manage this, tonight.

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allrightfine:

gallifreyburning submitted:
2013-01-01 09:00

It’s too cold to be outside, but it’s New Year’s, so they are anyway. Shivering in the cheap leather jackets they’d scraped together the money to buy, right after the guitars, because Koschei said something about cultivating a look. Theta nicked a new pair of Converse while he was at it – cherry red, instead of dirty white, bright against the wet black tarmac of the London streets.

Shoulders hunched, shoving their way through the thronging crowd near Big Ben, they don’t touch each other as they move, but they never get more than a few feet apart, as though an invisible tether is strung between them. They haven’t tried to talk since they got off the Underground at Saint James’s Park, because the crowds and the energy buzzing in both their ears, keying up their nerves, sparking and fizzling like the fireworks they’ve come to watch.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve ~ Part Thirteen ~ Part Fourteen ~ Part Fifteen ~ Part Sixteen ~ Part Seventeen

Morning light is streaming through the windows when there’s a knock at the bedroom door. The Doctor and Rose are a pile of tangled limbs and blankets, sprawled across the bed together. He starts awake at the noise, and Rose leaps out of his arms – and out of bed – with stunning speed. With a loud crinkling noise, she stumbles over the Henrik’s bags in her hurry to find a bedsheet to wrap up in.

“Rose? You going to lay around in bed all day? Breakfast is ready!” Jackie calls from the corridor.

“I’m getting dressed, I’ll be down in a mo’!” Rose calls back.

“The door’s locked, she can’t come in,” the Doctor murmurs, keeping his voice down so Jackie won’t hear, as he sits up to watch Rose clutch the sheet around her body. The room is a wreck, bags and pillows and linens strewn everywhere, the mattress slightly crooked on the boxspring.

Scratching his head and yawning, the Doctor tries to recall whether they’d overturned the overstuffed armchair in the corner during their second or third round of sex. It’s all a blissful blur at the moment; he’s counting on the details sharpening up after a nice hot cup of tea.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve ~ Part Thirteen ~ Part Fourteen ~ Part Fifteen ~ Part Sixteen

“Doctor?”

He lets Rose go, and she staggers at the suddenness of it. He’s at the door, fumbling with the handle until it locks. Rose wonders if he’s unsteady because he’s eager, or still frightened (in spite of what he’d said), or maybe a bit of both.

She comes up behind him, sliding her arms around his torso and pressing her face against his back. Hands flat on his chest, she rises onto her tiptoes and kisses the place where his shoulder and neck join, right at the collar of his t-shirt. He reaches out to steady himself against the door, fingers splayed wide; his other hand rests atop hers, just over his one heart.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve ~ Part Thirteen ~ Part Fourteen ~ Part Fifteen

Rose is in the bathroom, rinsing toothpaste out of her mouth, when she hears the bedroom door open. Rolling her eyes, she suppresses a sigh. Her mum has good intentions, she’s sure – she’s missed Rose for years, just like the Doctor. But Rose isn’t inclined to have a post-date heart-to-heart like they used to when Rose was sixteen years old; she’s not in the mood.

Toothbrush still in hand, she leans around the bathroom doorframe. “Mum, I’m tired, can we wait until –”

The Doctor is standing in her bedroom door. Rose’s mouth drops open, her toothbrush angling toward him in disbelief.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve ~ Part Thirteen ~ Part Fourteen

The Doctor and Rose take turns piloting the zeppelin, and even with a stop in Paris for lunch, they still arrive in London before dark. He makes sure to anchor the zeppelin far away from Jackie and her zoning laws. Not because of Jackie, really, or the prospect of getting shouted at – more because traveling across London itself can be an adventure, if he manages it properly.

Naturally the Doctor and Rose need to eat after the long flight from Italy. They stop off for a burger and chips, and the Doctor is certain the other diners are all staring at Rose because of the lake of vinegar she put on her chips, and not her strawberry-stained top, but mentioning it only earns him a cross look and a gentle kick to the shin under the table.

After dinner, Rose insists they stop by Henrik’s. Since her mother gave away Rose’s wardrobe years ago, and the Doctor managed to ruin her one nice top in Italy, she drags him to every corner of the shop, piling his arms high with clothes.

The saleswoman is initially thrilled to have a Tyler, of the Vitex Tylers, with the Vitex Tylers’ charge account on file, as her customer. She’s less thrilled when the Doctor keeps side-eyeing her and eventually remarks on the excessive hair coming out of her four facial moles – clear evidence of someone who’s handled xurexil spice, and doesn’t she know that the transportation and sale of xurexil spice is currently outlawed in this sector of the Milky Way? Violations are punishable by having one’s brains turned into soup for the Grand Emir of Xurexil Prime. He wouldn’t dream of reporting her, of course, but he’s certain he isn’t the first to notice those four enormous moles and all that hair, and she ought to be more careful, is all he’s saying. Maybe look into some electrolysis, at a minimum, to disguise the evidence of her criminal activities.

The upshot is that the woman leaves them in relative peace, and Rose is staring at him like he’s done something phenomenally embarrassing, or maybe a bit clever – or maybe both. Also, after that the Doctor is the only one waiting every time Rose steps out of the dressing room to ask what he thinks about the clothes she’s chosen. It takes him quite a while to make up his mind – he has to inspect each ensemble from every angle, for the sake of giving a well-informed opinion.

It’s just past midnight when their cab finally pulls up to the front of the Pete and Jackie’s. The Doctor helps Rose carry her shopping to the door. They stop on the threshold, an ocean of Henrik’s bags on the ground between them.

“Until Thailand, then,” the Doctor blurts out, forcing cheerfulness.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve ~ Part Thirteen

In the little lavatory aboard the Doctor’s zeppelin, Rose steps out of the shower and peers into the tiny mirror above the sink, looking for any trace of strawberry juice lingering in her hair. Zeppelins carry a very limited supply of water, but the Doctor has rigged this shower with sonic enhancements – it was almost like being aboard the TARDIS, in the ensuite that had been attached to Rose’s bedroom – no tidal-pool bathtub or jet-powered sink with five faucets in this tiny loo, of course. But the shower was very familiar, the low soothing buzz of the cleaning mechanism, the way the hair on her arms fluttered and her skin felt cleaner than if she’d only rinsed off with water.

Her hair is fine, but Rose stares at her strawberry-stained clothes for a long, thoughtful minute. Then she wraps up tightly in a towel and steps out into the brightly-lit living space.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven ~ Part Twelve

Out of the piazza and in the narrow alley, the afternoon shadows are long and the temperature’s much cooler. There are few revelers here, and the Doctor ducks into a doorway framed by a metal gate, right into a small, tidy courtyard lined by potted flowers, with a circular bench in the center. He leans against the nearest building to steady himself, gulping for air and swiping strawberries off of his neck.

His head is buzzing, beer and human hormones and the fact that today has been the stuff of fantasies – Rose, beside him on an idyllic day, acting as though she believes he’s the proper Doctor.

The Doctor doesn’t have any doubt as to who he is – he was telling the truth on Bad Wolf Bay so many years ago. Same man, same thoughts, same everything. A few bits of non-Time Lord biology don’t diminish who he is, or change him fundamentally, certainly not even as much as a full regeneration would have.

But the idea that Rose had thought him less, somehow … that she held him up to another version of himself and found this one lacking … that she had tried to break through the walls of the universe to escape from him, to return to the Time Lord with a second heart … it had been like a pointed stick digging into his gut. The same stick that stabbed right through him just after he regenerated from his ninth body into his tenth, when Rose said those words, Can you change back?

For years now, just when the Doctor thought he’d gotten rid of that pointed stick, learned to ignore it, something would happen to twist it again, and he’d realized it really did matter to him, what Rose thought, who Rose preferred. Because no matter how often the Doctor had tried to convince himself that he’d moved on, that she didn’t matter, his love for this woman didn’t define him … well, he could only hold onto those lies for so long.

And now that Rose is back, now it’s evident that she never found him lacking – that stick is twisting a different direction, trying to pull loose, which leaves the Doctor’s mouth dry and his one heart pounding. Once the stick comes out, he has no idea what the festering wound underneath will look like, how much it will bleed.

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allrightfine:

(logo: songfordecem)

That time the Doctor was a rock star, and asked Rose Tyler to be his opening act.

• Gallifrey Records:
  
  • Part 1/3
  • Part 2/3
  • Part 3/3

• Gallifrey Records II (the School Reunion Remix): [x]
• Gallifrey Records: Domestics (the Meet the Parents Mash-Up): [x]
• Gallifrey Records: Logistics (the Moving In Mash-Up): [x]
• Gallifrey Records: April Fools’ Day: [x]
• Gallifrey Records III (the Doomsday Compilation):
• Part 1/2
• Part 2/2

• Gallifrey Records IV (the GitF Bootlegs):
• Sneak Preview: [x]
• Part 1/2
• Part 2/2
• Commentary for Gallifrey Records IV
• The First Time the Doctor Sees Jackie Again + The First Time They Went on a Date Again: [x]
• The First Time They Held Hands Again + The First Time They Shared a Bed: [x]
• The First Time Rose Kissed the Doctor Again (and Vice Versa): [x]
• Final GitF Bootleg (or the first time they slept together)
• Part 1/2
• Part 2/2

• Gallifrey Records V, Five Times The Doctor and The Master Play Music Together (and One Time They Don’t.)
  • Part 1/3
  • Part 2/3
  • Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Ceremony: Part 1 + Part 2

• Gallifrey Records: The Layover Sampler [x]
  

• Gallifrey Records: The Solo Album Import [x]
  

• Gallifrey Records: The Acoustic Collaboration [x]
  

• Gallifrey Records: The Charity Broadcast.)
  • Part 1/2
  • Part 2/2
  • Epilogue

upcoming albums (fic set in some undefined time in the future/baby fic):

• Gallifrey Records Better With Three Box Set
  
  • Disc 1
  • Disc 2
  • Disc 3
  • Disc 4

compilation albums (fic that spans multiple time frames):

• Five Times the Doctor Took his Clothes Off (and One Time it was just for Rose.): [x]
• Five Times there was Kissing (and One Time there wasn’t.):
• Part 1/2
• Part 2/2

b-sides + unfinished tracks (or tag fic, basically):

• On Stage: [x]
• Record Store: [x]
• Sharing a Bed: [x]
• Paintball: [x]
• Interviews: [x]
• Music Festival: [x]
• Video Filming: [x]
• Holding Down the Fort [x]
• Hiding Clothes [x]
• Muddy Backstage [x]
• Fighting at the Bungalow [x]
• Gridlock [x]
• Movie Theatre [x]
• Press Day Stress [x]
• Old Photos [x]
• Post-Doomsday Shower [x]
• RTD and a Beach in Norway [x]
• Vegas [x]
• Powell Estate Bag Lunch [x]
• Post-Doomsday Shopping [x]
• Camera Phone Photos at Jackie’s [x]
• School Kids and Blonde Braids [x]
• Gallifrey Records at an Incubus Concert (birthday fic for Anna) [x]
• Best Suds [x]
• Theta, Koschei, Floppy Hair [x]
• What to Expect When You’re Not Expecting the Master [x]

actual songs from the first several fics in gallifrey records, a mix cd: [x]

the second album of songs from fics in gallifrey records, another mix cd: [x]

cover songs & album art (or stuff other people have created): [x]

(Also on Teaspoon and Livejournal!)

Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten ~ Part Eleven

Mid-morning, Rose and the Doctor are strolling hand-in-hand through Nemi’s bustling main piazza. The small town is perched high on a slope leading directly into a lake, and the view, glimpsed occasionally between buildings, is idyllic. Parked dirigibles dot the surrounding hills, and the sun gleams off the water, which reflects the bright blue sky. 

The cobblestoned piazza is lined with baskets and boxes and barrels overflowing with ruby-red strawberries, so ripe they’re nearly spoiled. The air is full of the scent of food, and the festive sound of celebration. Vendors in stalls are hawking every sort of strawberry-related concoction the human brain could imagine. As they walk, the Doctor doesn’t hesitate to fill Rose in what happens once mankind finally spreads out among the stars and brings their most beloved foodstuffs with them — the Strawberry Forests of Alnamore, strawberry-fueled rocket propulsion, genetically-engineered rainbow strawberries and the civilizations that worship them.

The shopkeepers call out animatedly in Italian to the milling crowd, swearing by the quality of their wares. The Doctor snatches a green beret from a rack in one of the stalls and settles it on Rose’s head, tucking her hair behind her ears.

“Pink and green, like a strawberry! Bella rosa!” he declares with a brilliant smile, happiness plastered all over his face. If she could bottle that look, Rose would never be sober.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine ~ Part Ten

“I’ll make us some tea,” Rose says, walking into the galley, leaving him alone beside the couch.

The Doctor stares after her. He can’t put life back the way it was five years ago, but where does that leave them, and the idea of “fixing things”? He’s bumbling through the middle, and no mistake. This process of getting to the part where everything comes out all right in the end, it’s dawned on him that he’s not exactly sure when the end actually happens. As brilliant as he is at giving rousing speeches and inventing gadgets to save the day, he’s fairly certain neither of those skills will come into play.

Was that it, just now, apologies and quiet forgiveness? Does that mean everything’s fixed?

Nearly five years, and the Doctor had resigned himself to the crushing reality that Rose was gone. But he’d gotten on with things – with life – because what was another sixty or seventy years, to cap off nine hundred?

He’d made goals, dangled carrots, trained himself not to think about Rose for hours at a time. Securing a ride off this blue and green rock, that was goal number one. In the interim he’d set other goals, depending on his optimism that day: getting dressed, shaving, leaving the BLIMP and walking to the little dumpling restaurant he likes, screwing up the nerve to approach Donna for the first time, a solo flight across the Pacific.

Now Rose is here, filling the kettle in his galley, and the Doctor can’t simply ignore the last five years of his existence and pretend like he saw her only last week. The horrific month he spent in the South American State, clawing his way past everything that happened, building a friendship with Donna – the shape he’s made of this half-human existence – he’s taken the good and bad, and crafted it into something. All without Rose, because he had to.

The Doctor can’t jettison five years’ worth of emotional experience like unwanted ballast.

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Part One ~ Part Two ~ Part Three ~ Part Four ~ Part Five ~ Part Six ~ Part Seven ~Part Eight ~ Part Nine

Rose is standing in front of the mirror in her bathroom, putting on the last touches of concealer to cover the circles under her eyes, when she hears her mum yelling from downstairs. The words are indistinct, but the tone is familiar enough.

Jackie wasn’t supposed to be home for another hour.

With a sigh, Rose walks through the guest room, grabbing her shirt along the way, pulling it on and fastening the buttons as she heads down the hallway.

Pete had gone into the office at his usual time this morning, and Tony had gone to soccer camp, and Jackie had some sort of charity committee she was heading up. She’d called them and canceled, told them she wasn’t coming, but Rose encouraged her to go anyway – she wanted a few hours of quiet to slowly pull herself together. To pretend like she doesn’t care whether the shed outside is still spouting a palm tree. Because she’s certainly not going to go look – just over twelve hours, and she’s managed to avoid even glancing at the back yard.

Rose follows the sound of her mother’s shouting all the way out the front door.

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