When
Sleep and Less Collide
(Re:
How the Potato Caused the French Revolution)
Disclaimer: I do not, have not, and will never own the BBC.
Mickey had jumped ship nearly three nights ago and she still can't sleep. At least, she assumes it was three nights, because everything about time becomes skewed when you travel through it, and the vacillations always leave her wondering.
Sometimes she'll ask the Doctor the exact time, because she does ponder these things, and he'll simply look upwards, tap his fingers against his hip and then reply with something like, "Oh, you'll be hungry in about an hour, I reckon. How about catching a meal on Alephian?"
And later, in what she assumes to be an hour, her stomach will grumble and he'll look towards her with a smug expression and begin setting coordinates.
This does not, however, change the fact that a small hum is radiating from somewhere within her room as she lays, motionless, across her bed, staring at the lazy patterns of the TARDIS' ceiling.
This is ridiculous, she thinks. She squeezes her eyes shut, willing them to stop straining and just relax for heaven's sake. She sighs as they flutter open again, stubbornly refusing to allow her some rest. Her leg tingles, a small prickling sensation, and she shifts it to the left, straightening the slight bend of her knee. She remains sprawled, unmoving, for what seems like hours before lifting herself into a sitting position. Elbows on bent knees, she rubs her eyes with the palms of her hands, the pressure causing explosions of color to appear and then fade behind her eyelids.
Tea, Rose thinks. That'll set me straight.
She swings her legs over the side of her bed with a sigh, sliding off the mattress as her toes skim the ground's surface. The floor is cool under her bare feet when she stands, and she lifts both arms in the air, stretching the muscles in her back and lengthening her torso while a yawn fights to escape her lips. The shirt she's wearing is twice her size and proudly bears the faded image of Snoopy, proclaiming that she's too cool for school, and it's hem stops an inch or two above her knees.
She idly wonders if she should maybe pull on some trousers in case she runs into the Doctor on the way. He's probably sleeping, she thinks, and decides she's much too lazy to dig through her closet anyway. She makes her way to the door, stepping over a nearly ruined set of running shoes, and opens it a small crack. Light seeps into the room, and she blinks rapidly, eyes focusing and readjusting to the hallway's illumination. She steps out of her room and shuts the door gently behind her, cringing a bit when the hinge gives a small creak of compliance.
It's a short walk to the kitchen, just a few doors down and somewhere to the left, and Rose mentally ticks off each of the entrances as she passes them. Bathroom, storage, library, locked, sometimes-garden-sometimes-laundry-room, kitchen. She notices a bright light streaming from the open doorway and slows her gait as she approaches.
TARDIS probably knew I was coming, she guesses.
Stepping into the frame of the door, she squints as the light hits her eyes. She hears a soft rustle of clothing from behind a cabinet door and can see the Doctor, in his typical pinstripe uniform, reaching for something from within its depths.
Rose watches him pull out a metal can that could possibly hold something akin to soup. Or shampoo, she thinks. She never knows with the Doctor, especially since he nearly ate a bowl of yogurt with an unhealthy dose of her conditioner mixed in for breakfast. He claimed innocence, of course, insisting that the TARDIS moved it into one of the kitchen's cooling shelves, and it's entirely not at all his fault if the old girl gets a bit confused when it comes to foreign objects, and what do humans think they're doing, anyway, naming things that in no way, shape, or form resemble soapssomething like "Strawberry Blast; now with an infusion of papaya!" - accompanied by very tasty-looking descriptions when you can't even eat it? Not even a little?
And, Rose remembers, that was only slightly before the unfortunate incident of him mistaking a rather plain looking can of shaving cream for a popular 2046 model of a fire extinguisher - They were all the rage, I'm telling you! People went around lighting things on fire just to use them! - and confidently threw it at the TARDIS console.The TARDIS wasn't particularly happy with that episode, and for several days afterwards the Doctor kept finding himselfin a room filled with a substance that tasted, peculiarly, like shaving cream.
Rose never asked how he knew what shaving cream tasted like, mostly because she couldn't be quite sure that Time Lords didn't just eat things like shaving cream for supper all the time, and thus didn't find it difficult to restrain an urge to inquire why he would even be eating strange foaming liquids occupying rooms of the TARDIS. At any rate, she kept close tabs on her toiletries after that.
Still holding the might-possibly-be-soup can, the Doctor pulls his glasses from some sort of pocket and pushes them onto the bridge of his nose, glaring at the can suspiciously, and then licking it twice. Odd affinity for licking things, this one, she thinks with a bemused smile. Apparently satisfied, the Doctor places the can back into the cupboard, stretching so far within it that she can only see the lower half of his body.
Rose steps all the way into the kitchen and begins making her way to where some apparently amazing herbal tea is stored - Perfect if you need a bit of shut-eye, the Doctor once told her (though he continued with, The Qha'safians actually tried perfecting an already existing recipe by adding mint and their slightly larger version of a potato, and it turned out to be a rather nasty concoction. Got it right in the end, though.) - when the Doctor stills quite suddenly, all previous movements and reachings completely halted.
He stays like that for several minutes, and Rose continues staring at the motionless bottom half of his body, wondering what on earth he was waiting for. Her eyebrow arches as she opens her mouth, and just as a question about his behavior is going to slip past her lips, she completely fails to notice a rather large, speeding blur hurtling towards her. A sharp intake of breath replaces her question as something hits her on the side of the head with a healthy thwop.
"Ow! What'd you do that for?" Her voice was overpowering in the silence of the normally kind atmosphere of the TARDIS kitchen.
The Doctor pulls himself out of the cupboard quickly, and with a startled face sporting crooked glasses he questions her existence. "Rose? Rose, what are you doing in here? Shouldn't you be resting?"
"Easy for you to say!" Rose answers, rubbing her head with vigor. "I couldn't sleep, so I came in here to make some of that, whatsit called, potato tea, and I get hit in the head with.." she trails off as she looks down at the offending object, resting peacefully on the kitchen floor. "A spatula?"
"Spat-what?"
"Spatula. You hit me with a spatula? Are you kidding me?"
"Well," he says defensively, "how could I have possibly known it was you?"
"Doctor," she says rather slowly with a voice that is almost almost almost bordering on irritation, "who else would it be? Far as I know, we're the only two things on this ship that might run into each other more than once." She's still rubbing her head, more slowly than she was before, and the Doctor looks at a bit of a loss.
"Well," he says again, "it could've been that Jnagorian man-eating plant. I keep finding it in the storage room, ever since that bit of falling cliff hit the TARDIS."
Rose's eyebrows raise slightly. Brilliant, she thinks. That's definitely something I could've been better off not knowing about. She begins to entertain the notion of how she could leave her room up in arms, and subconsciously decides that an umbrella isn't her best bet for dueling one of the Doctor's temperamental vegetables. She almost asks him why he has a man-eating plant on board, but decides to save it for a time when things aren't being thrown at her and when her head doesn't throb as much.
She's about to ask him where the Qu.. The Kwasf.. where everything is stored when the Doctor insists that she just sit down at the table while he makes her the tea, and that he's really very glad that she isn't a plant that eats people, because he's just now recalling that kitchen tools can be an excellent way to declare war, and he can't go about having a war in his own ship, now can he? Rose is only half-listening to him go on about the Jnagorian planet's plant prisons and how he challenges her to say that three times as fast since it's a rather delightful mouthful. She decidedly doesn't try saying it three times as fast, and instead rests her chin on crossed arms that are currently lying carefully on the table's surface.
The Doctor is still all energy, and Rose's eyes follow him as he walks to and fro in the kitchen; from cupboard, to shelves, to counter, to strange-mixing-bowl-strainer-thing, and back again to counter top. He seems to be preparing the Qha'safian (I wonder how that's spelled, she thinks, then quickly dismisses the thought of even trying) ingredients and Rose finds that she's incredibly glad that the Doctor is making it instead of her, because there are so many more ingredients and processes than any tea is entitled to have. She watches him sprinkle in some reddish powder, and, apparently finished, he stirs it in four times clockwise and twice counter-clockwise with a brightly colored spoon.
Rose lifts her head when he places a steaming cup of what she supposes is the tea in front of her. Her hands wrap around the mug as she pulls it closer, enjoying the warmth that's seeping into her hands. The Doctor sits himself in the chair opposite her and she notices that his hair is a disaster, sticking up however it wishes, and that he's got a bit of red something-rather smeared right above his left eyebrow. He realizes she's looking at him with something that might be curiosity and might be amusement and decides to say, "What?"
She doesn't tell him about the red on his face. "Thanks. For the tea, I mean," she clarifies, "Not for throwing kitchen utensils at me."
Rose inhales the warm curling tendrils of steam slowly rising from the cup. Its almost spicy, a harder version of cinnamon perhaps, and she smells something incredibly foreign tangled within the hot wisps; all citrus and tea leaves and dark swirling spices. The Doctor watches her intently as she lifts it in front of her mouth, hesitantly taking a sip of the alien drink. It isn't as hot as she assumes it will be - heated enough to not be lukewarm but cool enough not to burn her mouth - and her tongue is instantly assaulted with a collection of sensations; the liquid is crisp and razor-sharp and continuously changing its consistency from smooth and flat to thick and rolling, like a peppery molasses. She's almost sure that she can taste honey amidst a hint of lemon, the citrus undercurrent accenting something darker, richer, an unknown ingredient that seems to calm her immensely. She takes another sip, and then another, each taste bringing a small burst of flavors that she rolls her tongue around in before placing the cup back onto the table.