"You don't need another bloke around the place," the Doctor said unhappily as Rose watched her latest conquest walk away. "What about me, am I so boring that you need another pretty boy around?"

Rose sighed and then shrugged. "No. Just when you go off on one of your TARDIS rants or a deep dark mood, sometimes it's nice to have someone to talk to who won't, ya know, bite my head off."

The Doctor looked slightly abashed at her accurate summary of his moods. "But that doesn't have to be a human, especially not a male. I know; I'll get you a pet. You can talk to a pet."

Rose stared at the bright blue eyes and manic grin as he decided for her. "How about a cat? I like cats."

Rose shook her head negating that one. "We had a cat; it was off the estate and was a bit strange. Gone off cats since."

He sighed. "Okay, how about a dog, then? Hey, we could go to Barcelona and get one with no nose."

"And who'd take it for walks?"

"There's enough mileage in the TARDIS for it to get lost for a century, even in dog years."

Rose shook her head. "You'd bitch about dog-hairs in the console and poop-scoopers and we'd constantly have to leave it alone in the TARDIS while we went off on adventures and we'd come back to who knows what kind of mess."

The Doctor nodded, thinking about that. "Good point. No dog. Okay, what about a Hamster?"

Rose wrinkled her nose in disgust.

"Gerbil?"

"That's just a hamster with a grudge."

"Mouse?"

Rose bit her lip. "Don't they, like rule the world?"

The Doctor pointed at her. "Too much Douglas Adams. What about Rats?"

"Mice with delusions of grandeur, and they spread the plague."

"Tarantula?"

Her 'don't-be-so-stupid' look was a direct copyright infringement of his own.

"Okay, a snake?"

"Snakes are haughty, they don't listen so much as … judge."

He gave her a look. "A lizard?"

"'s just a snake with legs."

The Doctor was running out of ideas. "How about a Gremlin."

Rose folded her arms. "I assume you've seen the movie?"

"An aardvark? Anteater? How about a Klaxorian Silverback? A Venusian Magna-Rat? A Blatbian Trillarp?"

Rose gave him an odd look. "You're making those up."

"Maybe, sort of." He gave her a sheepish smile that still had the ability to make her knees go weak. "Goldfish, how about a goldfish?"

"Uh ... No."

He threw his hands up in defeat. "How can you possibly object to a Goldfish? You don't have to walk it or clean it very often. There's no scooping or grooming, and they're very easy to talk to."

"Bad goldfish experience." Rose bit her lip.

The Doctor stared at her. "How can you possibly have a bad goldfish experience?"

She pouted. "It's possible, leave it at that."

"No." He folded his arms. "You're just being difficult now, Rose. I want to know, how can you possibly have a bad goldfish experience?"

She glared at him and he glared back, his face set in its usual mask of indolence and accusation.

"Fine, I'll tell you." She groused. "But you are not allowed to judge me."

"I'm all ears."

"I know."

"Oi!"

Rose smiled easing the sting of her words. "Okay. When I was about six I got two goldfish who I called—"

"Pinky and perky?"

Rose poked him. "Actually, smart-arse, they were Mulder and Scully, after the X Files."

"Great show!" The Doctor enthused. "Of course everyone knows that abductions are just aliens messing about."

"Riight." Rose would never know whether he was serious or not. "Well, when they died I was really upset and got two more: Marcus and Shadow after Babylon 5 characters."

The Doctor frowned. This was a different side to Rose that he had seen before. Somehow he couldn't imagine her getting into science-fiction. "Bit into Sci-fi were you?"

Rose knew what he was thinking and poked her tongue out at him. "Nah, they were just cute. Anyway after those two died I didn't have any more for a while and then I went to this fair with Jimmy. He won me a goldfish and I already had the bowl and everything so I thought 'why not?'"

The Doctor leaned back and nodded in understanding. "Fairground goldfish."

Rose's grin faded. "I got it home and I swear it didn't move for, like, three days. It stayed as still as anything right there in the middle of the bowl. It wasn't dead cuz it blinked occasionally. I figured it was stoned or in shock or something so I called it Station, cuz, ya know, stationary."

"Clever."

"Yeah." Rose bit her lip hard in memory. "I had the bowl on my desk at home, right, and I was doing my homework, when I could feel it staring at me from the corner of my eye. I looked around and I swear it flipped the other way like it was saying 'nope, not me, I'm not watching you'. But when I turned back to writing I could see it slowly turning to watch me again."

The Doctor tried to hide his smirk. "So, this fish was staring at you?"

"It's not funny!" Rose protested at his amusement. "Every time I turned around it did this, like, exorcist twist and looked the other way. It was almost … spying on me."

The Doctor couldn't hold in the grin. "Right."

Rose rolled her eyes. "At the bottom of the bowl I had these glass marbles instead of stones because I thought they were pretty. At night I could hear this clack, clack, clack, clack sound that kept me up. But when I switched on the light Station wasn't moving again. Just stayed there in the middle of the bowl."

"So, it stared at you and played marbles at night?"

Rose knew it sounded ridiculous but needed him to understand. "First thing in the morning I went over to check and it had built this ramp of marbles up against the side of the bowl, like it was trying to escape."

The Doctor gave up any pretence of not being amused and laughed. "Station Tyler: the amazing escaping fish."

"Escaping, hell, it was plotting!" Rose moved closer to him. "That damn fish was plotting to take over the world or something. It kept watching me, following me with its eyes around the room an' pushing those marbles at night. It'd wait until I started to fall asleep and then clack. I'd wake up and then just as I was about to fall asleep again clack. It was that thing you said; psychological warfare."

"Your goldfish was psyching you out?"

"My goldfish," Rose said haughtily at his look of pleasure, "was an assassin in training. Station was plotting something, and I think he was going to creep out of the bowl and, like, flop down my throat in the middle of the night to choke me to death."

"A suicide choker?" The Doctor bit his lip, trying to control his laughter, unsuccessfully. "Committing Hari-cod?"

"Shut up!"

"Salmon-cide!"

"Shut it."

"Oh, come on, that was funny."

Rose gave him a sympathetic look. "You think that, if you like."

"So, what did you do with Station the suicidal?"

Rose looked away and mumbled.

"What?"

She glared at him. "I boiled it, okay? I put the bowl in the window and went out."

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "You murdered your fish?"

"It was a … wassname pre-emptive strike, yeah, kill him before he killed me. Self-defence!"

He shook his head. "Rose Tyler, Bass-boiler."

"It was a possessed goldfish. I refuse to feel guilty over this."

The Doctor grinned, poking her. "That poor fish, probably never did any harm, just wanted to get back to the fair with its brothers and sisters and you killed it. Haddockcide."

"Enough with the fish jokes!" She couldn't stop the laugh that erupted at his teasing. "Just, no pets, okay."

"That means boyfriends too?" He grinned and she nodded.

"Okay, okay, no boyfriends either."

"You'd probably boil 'em anyway."

Rose pointed at him. "I'm so warning you."

He held his hands up in defeat. "All right. I'll stop. Although I wouldn't have minded you doing that to Adam."

Rose's lips twitched. "No pets. All right."

"Okay. Just me and you."

"Better with two."

He reached over and gripped her hand. "Yep."

"So where we off to, then?"

His lips twitched. "We could go to Aquatica. You know what that'd be?"

She knew she was going to regret this. "What?"

"Fin-tastic!"

"Oh, shut up."