The New Black
{ gen | Ten/Rose }
| podfic available |
written for amireal’s Chafing Challenge
*
The Doctor stormed into the Tardis, Rose close behind him.
“What did I tell you?” the Doctor demanded as he stomped around the ship. “I said, ‘Whatever you do, Rose, don’t touch the water.’ And what happened?”
Rose squelched pathetically up the ramp and stared miserably up at him.
“You touched the water, that’s what you did! You touched the water.”
“If you had told me it was alive -!”
“- Oh, then you definitely would have touched it!”
She crossed her arms and glared at him. “You’re always happy when a human is curious! You think it’s great when we do stupid things just to - to learn, or discover, or whatever!”
“Yes, but now I’m wet! My clothes are soaked and we had to run for our lives and now I’m chafing and it’s all your fault, Rose! All because you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself!”
He shoved his hands into his pockets angrily and then grimaced. “And my pockets are filled with water! Possibly it’s sentient! Possibly there is part of a water creature in my pants!” The Doctor dug around inside them but gave up after a few moments. “There’s nothing for it,” he said mournfully. “I’ll have to change my clothes.”
Rose rubbed a bit at the mascara that had run all over her face. “How about something a little less…brown? I can pick it out for you, if you like. You didn’t do so well this last time.” She eyed him up and down with a smirk.
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. “You wound me, Rose, you really do.”
“I’ll bring back a mop,” she said in reply. “You’re dripping all over the Tardis.”
“I’m dripping -? Oh, that’s very witty. Very droll.” He fiddled with the console, spinning a couple dials and wistfully dinging the bell. “How about someplace dry this time? I know a planet that had a three-hundred year drought. It’s covered in deep caverns created by the splitting of the ground, it’s very interesting. Very beautiful, too, in an apocalyptic sort of way.”
“Is it dangerous there?” Rose asked as she returned with the mop, wearing a dry set of clothes and carrying a new outfit for him.
“Not really,” The Doctor replied. “Well, maybe a little. Well, all right, a lot. Those caverns are really, really deep and really, really unstable. What do you say?”
They grinned at each other across the console. The Doctor made that child-like sound of glee Rose had grown to love and hugged her, simultaneously wetting her dry clothes and snatching the new outfit from her.
“Blue?” he asked, holding the suit jacket up against him. “You think?”
“Colour, Doctor,” Rose replied with an artistic sweep of the mop, “is the new black.”