Title: My Pocket Is Your Pocket.
Author: Iby.
Characters and Pairings: Rose, The Tenth Doctor, Jackie; Rose/Ten.
Genre: Fluff, romance, traces of humour, snogging whilst snuggled together on the captain's chair (in this fandom, that is a genre, ta!)
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Nope.
Summary: We all know that the Doctor's pockets are bigger on the inside, but just what has Rose been secretly stashing in them?


. . . .

The grating rattled as the Doctor stomped his way up to the TARDIS console, Rose following hard upon his heels.

“I’m sorry!” she yelled. “I’ve said it a thousand times, how many more times do you want me to say it?” Her tone was a mixture of anger, exasperation and guilt.

The Doctor flicked his fiery gaze to her for a second before returning his attention to the ship’s controls. He violently flicked at switches and pulled at levers until the TARDIS entered the Vortex with a groan, obviously objecting to the way that she was being treated.

When he reached for the mallet, Rose decided to intervene for both the ship’s safety and that of the Doctor’s thumbs. “Oh, stop it!” she chastised, prying it from his long thin fingers. He was stronger than her, but let her disarm him anyway. Suspicious of his surprising acquiescence, she kept one eye on him as she put the mallet back on its hook. Deciding that he wasn't up to anything sneaky, she came to stand beside him.

“I am sorry,” she repeated, putting her hand on his shoulder gently as if to placate him.

Deeply engrossed in the act of sulking (an art that he’d honed over the years), the Doctor crossed his arms with a huff and stared steadfastly at the floor, determined not to let her catch his gaze.

Rose sighed impatiently. “Oh, you are such a child!” She turned and made for the door, fed up with him, but his fingers gripped her elbow and tugged her back beside him with a jolt.

“Where are you going?” he asked, his voice slightly breathless from panic.

Rose felt a tiny sliver of her annoyance with him melt away. He’d never been particularly fond of being on his own, but an extremely close call a few weeks before had left him almost religious in his need to keep her close.

“For a walk. Unless you’ve decided to stop being silly?” she asked, with eyebrows raised.

He shrugged theatrically and scuffed the toe of his left shoe against the grating, but made sure to keep his hand on her elbow.

Rose watched and waited, well acquainted with his expressions and mannerisms; the red that crept over his pale cheeks, highlighting his freckles, meant that he’d realized how immature he was being; the way he rubbed his thumb in little circles against her skin meant that he was thinking about kissing her.

He tilted his head slightly and Rose put her hand on his chest, palm flat and fingers splayed, the tips just resting against his right collarbone. “I don’t think so, Mister.”

Instantly, he began to curl back into his sulk, but Rose recognized the warning signs and snuggled up against him. “Forgiven?” she asked, tucking her head underneath his chin as he wrapped his arms around her.

He didn’t reply at first, but his stubble covered jaw rubbed against her forehead as he nodded. “Yes,” he whispered against her hair. “Sorry. I just got…”

“Embarrassed?” Rose prompted.

The Doctor didn’t particularly like the word, but he nodded nonetheless. “Yeah, I suppose. It’s silly, I know.”

Rose smiled, amused. “It’s not like mum’s never seen one. Besides, you’re supposed to be a Doctor.” She pulled back slightly to look up at him in challenge.

“I am a Doctor!’ he griped, and even though he had new lungs and new vocal cords, Rose felt for a fleeting second as if she was cuddled up against her first Doctor, so familiar was his protestation.
Then he waggled his eyebrows at her in a way that her big-eared Doctor never would have, and she whirled back to the present with a laugh.

“Then you shouldn’t squeak like a mouse when you touch a tampon!”

At the word, the Doctor blushed and pulled away, dropping gracelessly onto the captain’s chair, all long limbs and bright stripes. “It surprised me, is all!”

Rose made a long, deep noise of comprehension and perched on the console to face him. “It was one of those tampons, was it? The ones that sneak up on poor, unsuspecting Doctors and jump out at them? They’re dangerous, they are.”

The Doctor rolled his eyes. “I didn’t know it was in there! Then suddenly, I’m waving it at your mother!” He dragged a hand roughly over his face, reliving every painful moment of the experience. “I thought it was the tip of the sonic screwdriver,” he grumbled.

Rose extended a leg and tapped the Doctor’s knee with her foot to bring his attention back to their conversation. “You’re a duffer, you are.”

“So you keep reminding me.” He sighed resignedly. “Daily.”

Something in the Doctor’s tone sparked a smidgeon of anxiety in Rose. Despite their closeness, she sometimes worried that she took too many liberties with him. “That’s ok, isn’t it?”

Instantly recognizing her uneasiness, the Doctor rested a hand on her foot and patted it affectionately. “It’s more than alright. Especially since it’s true.”

Rose’s smile transformed from nervous to joyous. They stared at each other like happy fools, as was their wont, until Rose began to get a cramp in her leg. “Can I have my foot back, please?”

The Doctor, channelling Samantha, twitched his nose and looked to the roof of the TARDIS, pretending to ponder her request. Then, suddenly, he gripped her foot and tugged her toward him. With a yelp, Rose slid off the console, flailed for a second standing on only one leg, and then fell in an ungainly heap on the Doctor’s lap with an uuufff as all the air escaped her lungs. He gathered her up into his arms and settled her more comfortably against him.

Rose glowered, but the Doctor smiled winningly at her until she began to laugh. “Like I said; duffer, Doctor, same thing.”

He beamed. “Too true!” Then, without warning, he leaned in to snog her enthusiastically. His hands caressed their way up her body before stopping to cradle her head, his fingers threading through her hair. He shifted his hips against her bum suggestively.

Rose kissed him back just as enthusiastically, but it was then that an idea struck. If she could just keep him distracted…

She shifted about on his lap, trying both to hold his interest and to gain the right angle for…ah, she could just about – she shifted again – just about reach it.

His coat pocket.

She slipped her hand inside, and he slowed his kisses for a second as if he’d almost noticed, but she did something particularly fantastic with her tongue and he quickly resumed snogging the living daylights out of her.

Whilst her lips moved against his, her fingers quested around inside his pocket, brushing up against things that she couldn’t and didn’t want to identify. Suddenly, something rectangular and flat fell into her palm, but just as she was about to wrap her fingers around it, the Doctor twisted his body, trying to get closer to her and it fell back into the oblivion.

She groaned in annoyance, but at the Doctor’s confused raised eyebrows, she tried to turn it into a groan of pleasure. Altogether, it was a ridiculous sound. She leaned in to kiss him again before he could speak and he didn’t pursue it.

Again, her fingers moved around inside his pocket. She was just getting a cramp in her arm from the odd angle when something sharp fell into her grip and cut her palm deeply. She cried out and the Doctor pulled away with a start.

“What’s wrong!? Rose…” he noticed her hand in his pocket. “What’re…what’re you doing? Are you alright?”

Rose would have tried to casually remove her hand, pretend that it had somehow slipped in there, but the pain in her palm was incredible and the wetness she could feel trickling between her fingers told her that she was bleeding quite a bit. There was nothing for it. She slid her hand out and they both looked down to stare at it.

The Doctor pushed aside his curiosity and gently held her hand up for inspection. “I’ve got a little laser saw in there. Judging from the cut, I’d say that’s the culprit.”

Rose had a ten page rant on the stupidity that was carrying around a laser saw prepared in less than a second, but the fact that her hand shouldn’t have been in his pocket anyway, coupled with the fact that she was about to cry meant that she had to save it for another time.

“Come on, let’s get you to the infirmary.”

. . . .

Sulkily, Rose watched as the Doctor, stood before her, waved the dermal regenerator over her palm.

“What were you looking for?” he asked, tongue between his teeth as he repaired a particularly deep section of the cut.

Rose shrugged and scooted back a little further onto the infirmary bed, fully aware of the fact that she was being as childish as the Doctor had been acting only thirty minutes prior.

“Don’t move,” the Doctor softly chastised. “I’m going to leave the very top layer of skin open, so as to avoid a scar. Sometimes, natural healing is better than mechanical healing. I’ll dress it to avoid infection, but it should be as good as new tomorrow, eh?”

Rose nodded, simply grateful for the pain having gone away. “Thanks.”

He clicked the machine off and lifted her hand up. “Hold still.” In silence, he began to apply a dressing with infinite tenderness. When he finished, he reached behind him for something that Rose couldn’t see. “This is for being a brave patient,” he said around a grin, as he stuck a sticker on her cheek.

Despite herself, Rose laughed and picked up a shiny object that she had no name for to use as a mirror. “The Lion King, eh?”

The Doctor came to sit on the bed beside her. “Yup. We really need to watch that movie again. It’s been so long since we’ve seen it.”

“It’s been a week, Doctor.”

The Doctor blushed and decided to turn the tables. “So, my little thief. What were you doing, snooping around in my pockets? My pockets weren’t made for snooping. Snooping. Snooooooooping. Ping. Ping. P-p-p. I like that word.” He coughed, as if coming back to his senses. “What were you looking for?”

Rose flushed with embarrassment. “I…erm…”

“Yes?” the Doctor asked, drawing the word out, delighted by the prospect of a mystery.

“I put a few other things that I might need during the day in your pockets. Other than the tampon, that is.”

The Doctor’s jaw dropped. “I am not your pack-horse, Rose.”

“No, but you’re my…erm, that is, you’re my…well, it’s not like I can carry around a handbag whilst we’re running for our lives, is it? A girl needs certain things and everybody knows that it’s the boy’s job to carry stuff.”

A worried expression settled on the Doctor’s face. “Rose, if I was to look in my pockets right at this very moment, what would I find?”

There was nothing for it. “A box of tampons.”

The Doctor visibly swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing away beneath his collar.

She ploughed on. “A lipstick. Two lipsticks, actually, one red, one pink. A tube of mascara. My ID, because…well, you know, you may be 900 but I’m only 20 and some of these intergalactic pubs are strict. My purse, obviously. Um…that bracelet from Atomica that I keep meaning to take to a jewellers to get fixed. Some hair-ties, a bottle of perfume, a packet of gum...um, an umbrella, the keys to Mickey's car, my bank book. Lots of receipts. Lots and lots of receipts. I don’t know where the receipts keep coming from!”

The Doctor stared dumbly at her.

Rose tucked her hair behind her ears. “That’s about it, I think.”

. . . .

“What’re you doing?” Rose asked curiously as she made her way into the Doctor’s garage. Well, she called it a garage, though it held no cars, because it was where he tinkered and built things when he wasn’t messing about with the TARDIS. She’d spent many hours playing with the amazing inventions in here, listening raptly to the Doctor’s explanations of what he’d made, delighting in the way he delighted in sharing them with her.

The man of her thoughts, sonic screwdriver in mouth, didn’t reply but grunted to acknowledge her presence.

“Charming,” she drawled, coming to stand beside him to inspect what he was working on. “Hey, that’s my jacket!” It was indeed the white jacket that she’d worn to 10 Downing Street. Spread on the table in front of him were all of the belongings that she’d stowed in his coat pockets. A few other things that she’d forgotten entirely about were there too; including a pair of sunnies that she’d been scouring the TARDIS for for quite some time.

With a rattle, the Doctor took the screwdriver out from between his teeth and waved the blue beam at the pockets. “Little present for you, I’m almost done.”

He waved and jabbed for several minutes as Rose watched, curiosity well and truly piqued. Eventually, with an aha! of triumph, he turned to her and held the jacket up for her to inspect.

“Put your hand in here,” he instructed, and when she didn’t do so immediately he grabbed her hand and thrust it into the right pocket.

Rose gasped. “Oh my god!! That’s incredible!” She wriggled her fingers around inside the pocket, searching for the cotton confines and stitching, but found none. Suddenly, a thought struck. “You’ll still carry my purse, won’t you?”

The Doctor sighed indulgently. “Of course.”

Rose laughed delightedly and slipped the jacket on, buttoning up the first and the last buttons as he had done with his brown pinstripes. She threw her arms around him. “Thankyou,” she whispered against his neck.

“Thought you might like it,” he said as he settled his chin on the top of her head. “Pockets that are bigger on the inside.”

. . . .

Sunnies is Australian slang for sunglasses. Sorry, it slipped in!

Well, there we have it! The first fic to be posted in the new journal! I'm very excited and I hope that you liked it! If you'd like to friend the journal, to keep up with fics, please feel free to do so!