AN: This fic, written for Vallora's birthday, was written from a prompt given to me by the talented and wholly brilliant earlgreytea68 over on LJ, who has a lovely book that she was handing out prompts by date. My date was October 30th, and in 1932, this happened in Boston: Charged with drunkenness and working on the Lord's Day was an East Boston man who, in 1932, painted a bakery shop sign while standing on a 10-foot ladder with one leg wound about his neck. I couldn't help but think: "Can you actually do that?" This fic happened.
Being Bad in Boston
It was a quiet Sunday in Boston, Massachusetts, in the early 20th century. Rose Tyler, dressed in the traditional finery of a lady of quality for the time period, was standing in an alley with her eyes tightly closed, a blissful little smile on her face.
When she said "standing", what she meant was "tied up". This might have been, in fact technically was, bad. However, she was tied to the Doctor, face to face, so close that she could smell nothing but leather and time, so securely pressed against him that she could feel his hearts beating. There was absolutely nothing she could do about it, bound so tightly from her shoulders to her feet that she couldn't even move her arms.
She'd closed her eyes about ten seconds after she realized their predicament was pretty well inescapable, because there was no chance either of them could move without both of them falling over. Her vision was filled with nothing but the Doctor's throat. (They were tied very tightly together, and as he was head and shoulders taller than her, she was just about eye-level with the collar of his jumper.)
There was an awful lot of grumbling and complaining going on above her head, and Rose wished it would stop, because she was very busy fantasizing and wanted to enjoy her erotic little daydreams in peace. All right, so it was slightly naughty to imagine doing kinky things to a man who was tied up to you through no fault of his own. Still, Rose couldn't help it and besides, imagining was politer than actually doing them, not to mention more likely to be effective.
She was in the process of thinking out a scenario for her arms being free and his still being pinned when something familiar jolted her sharply from her pleasant little meander. "You an' your boyfriends!" the Doctor snapped.
Rose's eyes shot open and she laughed. "Ha, Jack," she said. "S'your turn to get yelled at this time."
"He's glaring at you, Rosie." Jack, who was also tied up, had been dropped flat on his back on the pavement several feet away from them.
"Dunno why," Rose said. "S'not my boyfriend's gotten high on lemonade, is it?"
"You brought this one in the first place!" the Doctor complained. She felt her hair shift from where he nudged his chin toward Jack. "This is the last time I let you bring your pets on board."
Rose chuffed in amused irritation. The Doctor flinched. She chuffed again. He nearly fell this time. She decided to stop, lest they get injured. "Look, the TARDIS is my home, s'much as it is yours, so I get as much say as you do who we have on board." She chewed thoughtfully at her lip. "And, I gotta admit, Jack, this bloke mighta been a bad idea."
Jack's voice sounded more that a little bit petulant. "How was I supposed to know his species gets manic on citric acid?" He huffed and there was a sound that Rose supposed was probably flailing. "And what're you grinning for, anyway?"
"I don't look like a drunken tortoise?" the Doctor suggested happily. "You should see this, Rose, he's floppin' around like a landed mackerel."
As she might have noticed before, Rose could see absolutely nothing but the perfectly shaped and carved contours of the Doctor's throat. His adam's apple was right there, the perfect place to lick, really. It looked like it needed to be licked. In fact, despite the brisk October air, there was a faint sheen of sweat... Rose groaned.
"You all right?" the Doctor asked solicitously.
Rose wondered if she should tell him that wriggling like that was definitely not helping. "What are you doing?" she demanded, quite a bit more sharply than she intended.
"Tryin' to loosen these ropes some, maybe get you more air..." He sounded defensive and more than a little bit embarrassed.
"I'm wearin' period undies, Doctor," Rose snapped. "Lycra and stainless steel. I couldn't get more air if there was any, yeah?"
The Doctor made a sound that was an awful lot like a growl. Rose started, and tried to move her hand to reach for him like she always did. That didn't work (of course) but her usual gentle, "What's wrong?" came out anyway.
The low buzz in the Doctor's chest continued for a moment and then he said, quite crossly, "We don't want to hear about your knickers, Rose."
"Speak for yourself, Doc," Jack exclaimed gleefully. "Don't listen to him, Rosie. Start at the beginning and tell me everything there is to know. First off, are they white?"
"Shut up, Jack," Rose grumbled.
He probably didn't hear her, though, because the Doctor shouted a wordless protest, followed by, "You mind your own business, Captain."
"Touchy..." Jack started.
The Doctor must have done something, because Jack cut off as if he'd been teleported away. Rose never did find out what it was. They stood and Jack lay in tense silence for long minutes, and then Jack started humming.
"Shut it," the Doctor muttered.
"It's the terror of knowing what the tension's about, wanting to watch some good friends..."
"Those aren't the lyrics, Harkness," Rose spat.
"Now I know I'm in trouble," Jack said playfully. Then, he caroled louder, "Under pressure! Hangin' round with me..."
"So help me, when I get loose..." Rose threatened.
"Well, you're killing me, here!" Jack protested. "You're tied together like a really good porno, you could at least entertain me by having a nice, healthy frot, but no..."
"There you are, Jack old boy!"
He was saved by the bell, as far as Rose was concerned at this point. Or by the git, really... That wasn't the point. The point was, the Doctor had gone from slightly tense against her to stiff as a board, so still that if Rose didn't know better, she'd think he was dead. She wasn't sure he was still actually breathing, tell the truth. His skin, as near as she could see, had drained of color. She decided that, whatever it was that made him go all still and tense, she might better do it too, in case there was a monster behind them or something.
"Are these your 'captives', sir?" said a strong, strange accent. Just as people from Rose's home tended to lose their 'h', this bloke seemed to have lost the letter 'r'.
"They are indeed, my good man."
That was Dimitin, Jack's ridiculous lover, affecting an RP accent and sounding worse at it than Rose did trying to sound Scottish. "You wouldn't believe it, Jack. Turns out, today belongs to the local lord or some such, and one is only allowed to work for this lord person on days that belong to him." Dimitin sounded very drunk and very scathing. "This is, of course, the Doctor's fault, Jack. He knows very well that I'm not from around here and have to be told simply everything."
He drawled that 'everything' out as long as he possibly could. Rose rolled her eyes, closed them tightly, and told herself that if she fantasized hard enough, this would all be a very bad dream and she and the Doctor could...
"I say, Constable, instead of arresting me, perhaps you should arrest the gent with the ears. He's in charge, you know."
"I'm gonna kick you back to Quinzal if you don't shut up, Dimmi," Jack said in quite the sweetest, most persuasive tone Rose had ever heard him use. Considering Jack's line of work when she'd met him, that was definitely impressive. Jack had apparently been freed, because he crossed her peripheral vision.
She wanted to demand he release them at once, but she knew as a lady at this particular time, she wasn't supposed to be anything but scared stupid right now. She didn't know what the Doctor was doing, but as he had yet to stop impersonating a board, she thought she might not want to know. She turned as much of her concentration as possible back to her fantasies of no alleys, con-men, boyfriends, or police, just her and the Doctor and a length of rope.
"What are you arresting him for, anyway?" Jack wondered.
"Working on the Lord's day," the r-less constable enumerated. "Also public drunkenness."
"How do you know he's drunk?" Jack demanded. "He could be insane, you know."
"He was painting a bakery sign while standing on a ladder."
"Sounds crazy to me," Jack suggested. Rose inhaled the fragrance of leather. What was crazy to her was just standing here. Jack's earlier suggestion was so much better.
"He had one leg wrapped around his neck," the man continued indignantly.
Jack laughed out loud. "That," he said, "was just showing off."
The heavy fabric of her calf-length dress was bunched in her hand as Rose and the Doctor trudged back to the TARDIS. Officer O'Malley had been adamant that they all make the lady comfortable, and had even offered to have a car take them to their lodgings. The Doctor had refused, but had to promise to see to her well being immediately. Thus, Rose and the Doctor had separated from Jack, who had agreed to bail Dimitin out of the local gaol - or spend the night with him, possibly. Rose wasn't all that clear on what exactly had been decided - she'd been busy fantasizing.
"Dunno why I bother, really," she muttered to herself.
"Bother with what?" the Doctor asked.
Leave it to those ears to pick up every word, no matter what. "Nothing," she lied.
The Doctor cut her a look out the corner of his eyes. "OK," he said, dubiously.
After several moments, Rose huffed in frustration again. "It's just, tied up like that in an alleyway..." She sighed and pushed a stray lock of her hair back behind her ear. It really needed a color. "Just... that's not how it works in the stories."
The Doctor chuckled. The sound was different from what it had been in the alley. "Oh?" he said darkly. "How's it work in the stories, then?"
Rose stopped walking and looked up at him, unsure she should believe her ears. "You really wanna know?" she asked, looking into those intensely dark blue eyes. The look in them was making her tingle almost as much as proximity had earlier.
"Really wanna," he said, voice heavy with portent.
Rose grinned, her tongue poking out through her teeth. The Doctor grinned right back. She took his hand. He squeezed.
"Right," she said. "For starters, then." She looked around, saw no one, and leaned close. It had been bothering her for hours, this curiosity, this near need. She licked the Doctor's adam's apple. He tasted of time and honey, and trembled under her touch.
"How's that work in being tied up?" the Doctor asked, though his arms came up to wrap around her.
Rose giggled. "Is there a rope in the TARDIS?"
The Doctor laughed. "C'mon, you wicked little thing," he said.
"Oh, by the way," Rose added as they stepped through the blue front doors of their fantastic home.
"Yeah?"
"When you're that close to someone you want, you're not s'posed to get stiff all over."
The Doctor laughed out loud. "Run, Rose," he ordered, his smile promising such beautiful wickedness. "'Cuz when I catch you..."
"You can show me stiff?" She couldn't resist.
"Right, you had your chance." And right there in the Console Room, the Doctor snatched Rose Tyler up and flung her over his shoulder. When he carried her off into the TARDIS interior, her cries of protest just didn't seem to have any protest in them. It was probably the giggling that gave her away.
Jack and Dimitin celebrated by getting in arrested on three more planets before the Doctor and Rose finally emerged and put a stop to it.