earlgreytea68 | "The Day After You Kiss Rose Tyler" -- Commentary

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melnay13 requested "The Day After You Kiss Rose Tyler."

This is another timestamp meme fic. I’m actually pleasantly surprised how many of these got a commentary request. I’m glad they’re so beloved, as they’re not fics I would have thought to have written on my own, really. Sometimes, you lot are far wiser than me.

What did you do the day after you kissed Rose Tyler?

I could have almost made this one of those second-person fics I always admire but don’t think I could actually do. And, true to form, I shifted back over to third-person. But I read these first few paragraphs as being sort of the Doctor’s internal monologue to himself, his busy, little mind going over and over and over this.

Kissed her like you meant it, that is. No question in your mind that what you were doing was about to change everything, in the most terrifyingly unpredictable way, and that was okay with you because what you wanted was her, and all of the rest of it could disappear around you if you could just have her.

And the day after she, even more astonishingly, kissed you back. Quite determinedly kissed you back. A kiss that began in a quick and early twilight on an alien planet and ended in what could only be described as a slightly undignified make-out session on a captain’s chair that wasn’t quite roomy enough for such hijinks. And ended only because you didn’t quite know, well, what to do once you’d begun kissing Rose Tyler. How did you stop kissing Rose Tyler?

Because I knew they didn’t sleep together that day. Otherwise, we’d never get “The Natural Progression of Things.”

On the day after he’d kissed Rose Tyler, the Doctor still wasn’t sure he quite knew the answer to the question, just that he’d managed to make himself stop by babbling something about…something, and that had been the end of it, but now he was trying to figure out how one started after one had stopped, and whether one might be able to figure out how to stop again if one started again, and it was all most confusing, right up until the moment when Rose said, “Can we visit my mum?”

Apparently, the day after you kissed Rose Tyler, you went to visit her mother.

When I first got this timestamp meme request, I wasn’t really sure what to do with it. I knew that it was too early to link it to “The Natural Progression of Things,” so I tried to come up with other ideas that weren’t shagging. I thought maybe the Doctor could take Rose on a lovely romantic outing, just really sweet and adorable. I’m not quite sure when I decided that no, Rose would want to talk to Jackie. Except that this line here, “the day after you kissed Rose Tyler, you went to visit her mother,” was the first line I wrote for the fic, in my head. That’s why the beginning starts off in the second person, because I wanted to use this specific line.

A visit to Jackie Tyler did not seem like the most romantic trip to him, and he had been thinking that maybe he owed her some kind of romantic trip, (because I was thinking that it should be a romantic trip) but he was powerless to resist any request she might make, even a visit to her mother. He complained, because he had to; he didn’t want her to know that he’d find himself practically living with her mother if she asked it of him.

The Doctor would do anything Rose asked of him at this point. Which, naturally, terrifies him.

“Not for long,” she said, while he walked around the console setting coordinates and pretending to sulk about this whole thing. “I promise. Maybe just enough time for me to have a cuppa with her. You could take the TARDIS to a bazaar somewhere, if you wanted, pick up some parts for her, yeah?”

He was never taking the TARDIS anywhere ever again without Rose in it, he thought, but did not say out loud. (Because he’s not entirely sure he trusts his driving skills not to lose a year with her. Although he’d never, *ever* say that out loud.) Instead he said, “Or I could pick up some parts on Earth.”

“You could do that, too.”

He materialized in the Powell Estates, and he and Rose walked outside of the TARDIS together and stood for a moment outside it and looked at each. What did you do when you parted ways with Rose Tyler after you’d begun kissing Rose Tyler? The Doctor hesitated, then kissed her cheek. “Well, then. I’ll be back soon. Shouldn’t take me long.” As if he had requested this particular trip.

Rose stood and watched him stride purposefully off, hands deep in the pockets of his enormous coat, Converses scuffling at pebbles as he walked with the trademark bounce in his step, that bounce that was there even when he was terrified, even when he was tired and didn’t want to admit (it). It had been there when the figure walking away from her had lacked the spiky hair and wore leather instead of silk ties. No matter what happened to him, something deep inside her Doctor drifted toward bounciness, and the fact that that part of him was still so insistent touched her heart in a way that she knew it only could if she was in love with him.

This is one of my favorite things about the Doctor, which is why it gets mentioned here. Think of everything the Doctor’s been through, and he still has that bounce in his step. You know what I’m talking about, the way both Tennant and Eccleston danced through the role, in different ways but with that unmistakable glee underneath. The Doctor is a character who tends toward joy and excitement, even in the middle of everything; he just can’t ever completely conquer that little-boy part of him.

Rose turned and walked up the steps to the second level, knocked on her mother’s door before letting herself in and calling, “Hello? Mum?”

Her mother came barreling down the hallway and tackled her in a hug. “Oh, I thought I heard that daft machine!” she exclaimed. “Let me look at you. You still all in one piece?” Jackie tipped her head at her critically, as if trying to figure out what terrible alien ailments her daughter could have picked up while she’d been away.

Yes, the Doctor landed outside of Jackie’s flat. In my universe, this is something that *never* happens anymore. When they visit Jackie, they park right in her lounge, with the notable exception of just before “Doomsday,” when the Doctor notes that he can’t remember the last time he missed landing in Jackie’s flat. To my mind, the first time he ever landed in Jackie’s flat was at the end of AoS, when he takes Rose to see Jackie after they leave Mickey behind. So, that sets this prior to RotC/AoS. More on the timing of this fic later.

“Still all in one piece. How long’s it been?”

“Not very. Only a couple of weeks. Didn’t expect you back so soon. Where’s himself?”

Jackie asked the question almost hopefully, as if maybe the reason for an unprecedentedly short time away, for her showing up without her other half, meant that maybe this new Doctor had been unbearable to her, that she needed a break from him.

Still a very new Doctor, which is more of a hint about the timing.

“He’s buying parts,” Rose answered. “I thought we might have a cuppa. While he’s fiddling around doing, you know, boy things.”

“It isn’t ‘boy things,’” remarked Jackie, with a sniff of disapproval. “It’s alien things.”

Rose sighed and followed her mother into the kitchen. “I suppose,” she said, and sat down at the kitchen table while her mother filled the kettle with water. The problem was that he seemed very much like a boy to her at the moment. A man. He certainly snogged like a man.

Rose stared at the table and listened to the sound of the water starting to boil in the kettle and thought of the way the Doctor snogged, the way his tongue was just a shade cooler than she would have expected, as it slid against her, the way he kissed as if he’d kissed before but had never had any clue that it was really supposed to be like this.

Her mother set the cup of tea down in front of her, interrupting her reverie. “You’re awfully quiet,” she said, sitting down opposite her.

“So’re you,” Rose pointed out.

“I’ve been asking you questions for the past five minutes, and you haven’t heard a single one of them.”

Rose looked alarmed. “Have you really?”

Jackie smiled knowingly. “No. But I could have been. You were a million miles away.”

Which is where she’d been when he’d kissed her for the first time. A million miles away, under a googly-eyed fygtymut tree. “He kissed me,” she said, abruptly.

“You didn’t think he was going to?” her mother asked, sipping her tea and looking not the least bit surprised.

Rose was surprised that she wasn’t surprised. “Well, he’s never kissed me before.”

That succeeded in surprising her mother, she saw. “He hasn’t?”

Rose shook her head.

“Really?” Jackie looked incredulous. “Then what is it the two of you spend all your time doin’ in that box of his, if it isn’t shagging?”

You’ve got to think that’s what Jackie assumes is going on with Rose and the Doctor. I mean, really, honestly, think about it. The fact that this show thinks we’re going to believe that two people as good-looking as Rose and the Doctor (in both incarnations) were just innocently gallivanting through time and space, no shagging involved, is almost absurd, even before you add in the chemistry between the two of them.

Rose was displeased. “Mum. Really. It isn’t like that. It’s never been like that.”

“I don’t see why not,” muttered Jackie. “He was always a looker.”

“He told me you flirted with him when you first met him, and I didn’t believe him! I told him it was his bloody ego! But he was right, wasn’t he?”

This is a reference to the bit in “Rose:” “A strange man is in my room, and I’m in my dressing gown,” or whatever it is Jackie says to him. I think the Doctor told Rose about that, and Rose thought he was bring ridiculous.

“Rose, any female with half a brain cell flirts with a bloke who looks the way he did. The way he does. Don’t tell me you don’t have women through time and space fluttering their eyelashes at him.”

“We do,” Rose admitted, tearing a napkin on the table to tiny shreds.

Yes. They do. All over the place. And who can blame them. Can you?

“And how many does he kiss?” her mother asked her.

“Me,” Rose said. “Just me.”

The fact that Rose knows this, believes this, trusts that this is true, is just incredibly touching to me. There is no doubt, no jealousy that he’s being flirted with everywhere they do, because Rose knows, immediately, that she’s the only one he’s interested in.

“Really?”

Rose thought of the way the Doctor kissed. Rose thought of the way the Doctor looked at her. Rose thought of the way the Doctor had always looked at her. Bloody hell, why hadn’t she realized this long ago. “Yes,” she said, as it all dawned on her. “Yes. Just me. Just…” It was as if, all of a sudden, she had tripped and fallen and the ground had turned out to be miles and miles below her. The rushing speed of everything swept over her. “Oh, God, what am I going to do?” she asked, suddenly terrified.

Now I think Rose knew, long before this, that she was attracted to the Doctor, and had a crush on the Doctor, and loved the Doctor. I don’t think she realized the extent to which the Doctor reciprocated until just this moment, when she stopped to think about it and realized that the Doctor has always looked at her like she’s the most important thing in the universe (which, to him, she is). And I don’t think Rose really realized how very in love with him she was until this moment, which is why she’s suddenly terrified. Having a bit of fun with a hot alien is one thing; loving him with the depth she’s realizing she loves him is quite another thing. And she knew she loved him a lot—she’s already ripped apart the TARDIS to get to him—but their relationship has shifted now so that she has the possibility, however remote, of maybe an entire life with him, and what does that mean for her? In my universe, Rose never leaves the TARDIS ever again, but I don’t think she realized until this moment that that was what would happen to her.

“About what, sweetheart?” her mother asked, tenderly.

“I think I love him. I think I…”

“Oh, Rose.” Her mother reached over the table, took her hand and squeezed it. “I know you do.”

I don’t think Jackie approves of Rose’s choice at this point. What mother would, really? But I think Jackie does know that Rose is young and completely over the moon for him, and Jackie understands that. She’s been that way. Plus, given a choice between the Doctor and Jimmy Stone, I think Jackie would rather the Doctor, even now.

“I mean, not like…I think I’m in love with him. Like, really, honestly, in love with him.”

“Rose. There is no power in the universe that seems able to keep you away from his side. What did you think this was?”

“I don’t know, I didn’t think it was…What am I going to do?”

“Now that you’ve gone and fallen in love with an alien? Sorry, luv, I’ve no advice to offer on that.” Jackie sat back, picked up her cup of tea.

Jackie might be willing to deal with this impossible situation, but she doesn’t see the need to belittle the importance of the fact that he is an *alien.*

“Oh, it isn’t that.” Rose waved her hand impatiently, dismissing that idea. “It’s just—Oh, of course I’m in love with him. He’s the most amazing thing in the universe. And I’m…a shop girl, Mum.”

To Rose, the Doctor’s alienness is not important, it’s something she barely thinks about. She recognizes that their lifestyle is abnormal but doesn’t really classify *him* as abnormal.

“You’re not that, Rose,” Jackie said, firmly. “You never were. And if I made you think that’s what you were…I’m sorry. You’re not a shop girl. You’re Rose Tyler. And that’s something incredibly special. And that might be something I had to have the Doctor remind me of.”

I…love this paragraph. As much as I’ve always adored Jackie, I sometimes got the vibe from her that she wasn’t really pushing Rose to anything other than a life on the Powell Estate; that she would have expected Rose to have babies and live on the Estate and never really be any different from her. I think that Jackie may have failed a bit in truly showing Rose that she could do *anything.* Rose is clever and amazing, and the Doctor sees that immediately, that she’s the sort of girl who’s supposed to be out among the stars, doing remarkable things. I think that is what the Doctor does for Jackie, is make her see that her daughter really is extraordinary.

Rose managed a smile and took a calming sip of her tea. “He’s going to break my heart, isn’t he?”

Jackie sighed. “Sweetheart, I’ll be honest with you. Yes. He probably will. But it isn’t going to be because he’s not in love with you right back.”

I think Jackie always expected Rose and the Doctor to end in heartbreak. It doesn’t, of course, and I think Jackie is so very happy that he doesn’t, because who wants their daughter’s heart to be broken?

“Do you think he really is in love with me?”

Yes. She does. In my universe, Jackie has always recognized that the Doctor loves Rose. I think it’s the only reason why she is as supportive of the two of them as she is, because she knows that the Doctor adores Rose and will keep her safe and will make her happy for as long as he can. I think this is something it takes the Doctor forever to realize. He thinks his love for Rose is so very well-hidden.

“How can the two of you be so daft about this? He’s so in love with you he can barely tell up from down when you smile at him. It’s bloody sickening,” she grumbled into her tea.

I’m thinking here of the moment when Rose smiles at him in TCI, when they’re standing in the snow, and the Doctor’s answering grin is just so…Well, you know.

“I’ve got to tell Mickey,” Rose realized.

“Oh, Rose, Mickey knows. Apparently everyone knew but the two of you.”

So yes, Mickey was still in the picture here. I had a comment that the timing felt weird on this fic, because could it possibly be before SR and TGitF? And the answer is yes, it is. I think this fic takes place after “New Earth,” but before T&C, which is also where I think “The Natural Progression of Things” falls. T&C is so giddy and frivolous, it just seems to me like an outing after they’ve shagged. A lot.

So why SR and TGitF? Well, in my universe, I think the Doctor starts to panic. He’s let himself gets involved with Rose, and now he finds himself facing hard truths (that haunt him all up until and including “College”). She’s going to wither and die and leave him, but he promises not to leave her, he promises not to leave her behind. (Incidentally, I think Rose’s surprise over Sarah Jane is fitting to a couple who’s just begun shagging: She has good reason to think she’s special to him. The only thing about SR that doesn’t fit nicely here is the fact that Rose flirts with Mickey at the beginning of SR, and, in my universe, she’d already broken things off with him. Maybe she just couldn’t resist being playful. I think Rose and Mickey stayed friends.)

The Doctor brings Mickey along at the end of SR at least in part because of how terrified he is of what’s going on with Rose, of how close they’ve grown, of the promise he made her outside the coffee shop that night, to never leave her. Which is why, in TGitF, he leaves her. It’s a terribly stupid thing to do, but it’s the Doctor running away, the way he does. It’s the Doctor trying not to face the fact that he is completely in over his head with Rose, he doesn’t know what’s coming next. Maybe, he thinks, if he takes a step back, if he flirts back this once, if he can try to pretend Rose is not unique, he’ll stop being so terrified. It doesn’t work.

I should probably write a post-TGitF fic for this ‘verse.

********

He was back on the TARDIS when Rose finished her tea, tinkering. “You could have come up to my mum’s,” Rose told him, as she entered.

He shrugged and scratched the back of his neck. “I had these parts to install, y’see.”

And he didn’t really want to face Jackie, especially not now that he’s snogging Rose.

“Of course you did.” She walked over to him solemnly and said, “Kiss me again.”

And he did. Because the day after you kissed Rose Tyler, and every day after that, you just had to kiss her more and more.