Work Text:
Rose Tyler, shop girl, wore platform sandals and crackle-glitter nail polish (often chipped from biting). She bleached her roots about once a month with her mum. They would order lo mein and re-watch How Harry Met Sally and drink fizzy drinks. Rose called it salon night and Jackie called it a touch-up date and they gossiped all night over the film.
***
Rose Tyler, time traveler of the TARDIS, wore smart white trainers (better for the running) and glossy short nail polish, pink or black or a deep, sapphire blue (still chipped). She still bleached her roots about once a month, but it was hard to coordinate visits to London with the growth of her hair, not to mention her mum’s, so salon nights were few and far between. When she bleached her roots on the TARDIS, a different sort of night occurred. For all its infinite corridors and labyrinthian rooms, the moment she mixed the powdery peroxide with the creme developer, the Doctor came sauntering into her bathroom, plugging his nose and complaining of the smell.
The first time it happened, he was Northern and leather and barged through her bedroom, into her open ensuite door, brow furrowed and sonic screwdriver at the ready.
“Oi!” she’d said, propped up on the counter, gloved hands maneuvering deftly through her parted hair. “What’s this about?”
His eyes flicked from her head to the blue plastic bowl in her lap and back up, and a few more times for good measure. She raised a brow. Suddenly he smiled, wide and lovely, and said, “Knew it wasn’t natural. Ha! Turn on the fan next time, you smell terrible,” and strolled back out of her suite. She rolled her eyes, fond.
The next time, he was pinstriped and stolled in casual and confident, the way he was wont to do those days, through her already-open bedroom door and right into her bathroom, and plopped himself down on the closed toilet, pulling his knees up like kid for good measure. She was halfway done, and didn’t spare him a glance until she’d finished applying the thick mixture to this section.
When she did, she almost dropped her bleach brush. He had a little swimmer’s nose clip plugging his nose, and a stoic expression met her.
He scrunched his nose—an impressive feat, given the nose clips. She grinned.
“Something amusing you, Rose?” he crooned innocently. The effect was ruined by how nasally the clips made his voice sound.
“Oh, nothin’, I just didn’t realize when you said Olympics you meant you were going to enter in it.” He raised a brow. “You know, swimming,” she snickered, gesturing towards him with her brush.
He pouted. “I have a very sensitive olfactory system, and that toxin you’re brewing is quite nasty, lemme tell you.”
She wanted to tease him about how he came to her room to sit closer to the bleach, even though it bothered him so much, but then he might leave. She rolled her eyes and smirked. “You and your superior biology can’t handle a little bleach?”
***
Rose Tyler, defender of the earth, turned out to be sharing a life with Rose Tyler, Vitex heiress. The heiress' nails were red and acrylic, a little longer than she’d ever had her natural nails, but not so long that they would interfere with work. In between heiress responsibilities, they were bare and bitten to the quick, red and raw with just the right amount of distracting sting. She had a highly contrasting wardrobe of functional utility wear, cargo pants and military jackets and big dark boots, and high-end luxury wear, cocktail dresses and french sweaters and heels with a red sole. She got her hair coloured in a salon that had to sign an NDA, and usually she was there with her mum. Her hair was the healthiest it had ever been, glossy and full and long, when she let it grow out. When Jackie insisted, and when her Torchwood schedule aligned (which wasn’t often), the hair-washers at the salon would slather her face in green goo and massage it and tell her about how pretty her pores were.
After Bad Wolf Bay, she’d let her hair grow out, clinging to the unhinged half-idea that this hair was hair that knew the Doctor. Her hair grew longer than it’d been when she’d met the Doctor, and every time she went to the salon for a root touch-up her hair stylist would beg her to let him cut off the split ends.
A particularly bad incident at Torchwood left her with singed tips, dry and brown and carrying the scent of flame, and she let her stylist cut it off, then, and felt undue tears gather at losing something the Doctor had touched.
***
Rose Tyler, savior of the multiverse and girlfriend of the Doctor, had salon nights with her mum in the Tyler mansion outside London, where they re-watched How Harry Met Sally and ordered dim-sum. They talked about the differences in the universes and how Pete’s health was and if Tony should go to the school across town. They didn’t touch up their own roots, or paint their own nails, but they went to the salon together and almost always got facials. They kicked their feet up on Italian leather, and wore mismatched socks, and linked arms, and drinked fizzy drinks.
On the first of these new salon nights, in the parlor across the mansion, the Doctor was babysitting Tony, since Pete had to work nights lately.
Tony had grown immediately attached to the Doctor, but during that first salon night where Rose and Jackie laughed into wine glasses and tried unsuccessfully to eat their soup dumplings with forks, Tony was oddly subdued. After snack time and dance time and reading time were over and Tony was still shy, the Doctor was concerned. When he asked Tony what was wrong, Tony gave a big sigh, too big for a four year old, and said: “I’m sad you and Rose are gonna leave.”
The Doctor furrowed his brow. “London’s a small town, we’re just a car away—and we’re sleeping over tonight. I know this house is big but it’s not that big. And trust me I know big, my last house was infinite.” He made sure to enunciate the word to try to make Tony smile.
“No, Mr Doctor, you’re gonna leave,” Tony huffed, crossing his arms and shaking his head.
“We’re really not,” he replied. He swooped down and picked Tony under the arms, and said, “where do you think we’re going to go? Even if we did swan off to, I don’t know, Clom, we’d always come back. We’ve got you here, and the goats.” Jackie recently had fallen head over heels for pygmy goats, and now the Tyler estate had a barn and field for little devils. Tony had been granted the power of naming the first little goat, and had christened it as Tony. Tony Jr had black and grey spots on his coat. “Rose has grown quite attached to spotted Tony.”
That got a smile out of Tony, as mention of the goats usually do, but he quickly snuffed it out in an eerily similar way as his older sister. The Doctor sat down on the couch, placing Tony on his knee. “Really, I don’t know what you’re getting at here.”
“Mum said you and Rose are going back to space ‘soon as your box is done growing up. And then it’s gonna be just like before! Rose is gonna be gone again, and so are you, and I’ll be stuck here with spotted Tony!” He burst into tears. The Doctor, having grown used to the kiddie hysterics recently, rubbed comforting circles on his back.
“We’re really not going anywhere, Tony,” he said, when the tears had subsided. “It won’t be like when Rose was going to leave before—she thought she was going to be stuck in a different dimension then.” He raised his brows meaningfully. “When our TARDIS is grown, we’ll go on trips sometimes, yeah, but we do that now too. Only difference is a much more reliable mode of transportation. We can be gone and back a second, poof.” Tony sniffled and wiped his eyes, and the Doctor hooped his nose. “And we’ll always come back, promise. We're here to stay, for spotted and un-spotted Tony’s alike.”
There it was, a Tyler smile—Tony flavor. The Doctor’s specialty, really, conjuring up those Tyler smiles. He’s an expert on it—well, in the younger models, at least.
“How long?” Tony asked, eyes drooping in the tell-tale sign of a nap approaching. “How long are you gonna stay with us?”
The Doctor stilled at the familiar wording. He leaned back so he could look into the toddler’s eyes. “Forever,” he said.