Third Date of the Unacquainted Kind

In Which Happiness Isn't Happiness Without a Violin-Playing Goat

A/N: There is nothing I can say. I am abhorrent, I am ghastly, I don't deserve any of you. I could rattle off a bunch of excuses, but I haven't really got anything solid except that if this is how fast time is going at the moment I shudder to think what it's going to be like in fifty years.

Has the Doctor something to do with this? Is he playing tricks on me? I hope so!

Anyway, you'll be pleased to know I have the next chapter nearly finished already. Even so, I will accept all shouts of outrage and abuse at the hiatus of this story.

"Not too bad Doctor, if I do say so myself." The Doctor adjusted his bow tie one last time in the mirror, looking rather pleased with himself. "Not too bad indeed." He patted the TARDIS console affectionately. "Wish me luck old friend, I'm going to step out of those doors and into progress."

The Doctor stepped out of the TARDIS and into a puddle.

"Eurgh." He shook the dirty water off his leg and glared at the TARDIS. "Thanks dear." He grumbled, before stepping over the puddle with his dry foot and gazing up at the building in front of him.

The aforementioned house was a small, boxy old thing- half of it painted a cream colour to cover up the rusty-brown underneath, and the windows and door were painted blue- TARDIS blue, the Doctor noted affectionately. There were various potted plants dotted around the small garden in the front, and a wheelbarrow full of gravel in the corner, sitting beside a wooden shed that was in need of a fourth wall.

"Right then." The Doctor wrung his hands together, fidgeting before the gate of the little house. "Come on, Doctor. You've fought Daleks. You've been killed by an astronaut. You've played five-finger fillet with Helen Keller. You can do this." He took a deep breath, strode purposefully through the gate and up the path and knocked on the door before he could change his mind.

She's probably not even in, stupid Doctor. Go and calibrate the gyroscopic stabiliser. The Doctor hopped down two steps, then twisted back around and around once more as his astoundingly large brain tried to make up its mind. He had one foot on the path and the other on the last step when the door opened, and he sheepishly turned around to face Rose.

"You're early." Rose beamed at him, hairbrush in one hand.

The Doctor blinked. "Am I? That's a bit unusual. Normally it's the other way around. Early for what, exactly?"

"For our date?" Rose replied, raising her eyebrows.

"Our date? Our- you and me- on a, a..." The Doctor stammered, motioning between the two of them. "We've got a... yes, right. A date! That's what we've got. I'm here for our date." He reached out to a table beside the door and took hold of a small bunch of chrysanthemums, never taking his eyes off of Rose. He swept them up and thrust them at her, broken roots dangling from his hand.

"These are for you. Sorry about the dirt."

"Oh." Rose furrowed her brow but smiled at him anyway, taking the plant from him. "Thanks, I'll er- put them in some water. Come on in." Rose wound her way through the living room and disappeared from sight.

"A date?! I'm not even dressed for a date!" The Doctor muttered under his breath as he strode into the room. Pausing, he patted down his pockets and after digging past a pile of rope, a lollipop, a scale model of the TARDIS (on a keychain), and a small whistle for both the black-spotted and the silver-spotted Craags from the planet Wall, he found and brandished a smart black bow tie.

"Much better!" He exclaimed as he gave his new tie a tug.

"All done." Rose stepped back into the room carrying a vase of the bedraggled chrysanthemums, clods of dirt floating in the water. "They're lovely." She placed the vase on a table beside what appeared to be a half-finished jumper for a person with three arms and no neck, and moved to stand in front of the Doctor. "Thanks." She smiled at him and reached up to hug him.

"Ooh, we're hugging now." The Doctor replied, a bit startled as he patted her on the back. Oh. We're hugging now. He wrapped both arms around Rose's waist and closed his eyes, resting his cheek against hers and let out a breath he hadn't known he'd been holding.

She felt just as he remembered, had dreamed of over the last two hundred years and he savoured the moment, trying to hold it for as long as possible before time snatched it from him.

Perhaps she would think it normal for him to hold her for so long. How long do we usually hug for? How many hugs have we had, in this body?

The Doctor continued to hold her far past what one would usually consider normal and into the realm of the type of hug one might get from a semi-harmless stalker. Rose pushed at his shoulder lightly. "Mr Smith? Not that I'm not enjoying this, but for us to go on this date I've actually got to finish getting ready?"

"Oh, right- yes!" The Doctor released her quickly, looking flustered. "Off you pop." He bobbed his head in the direction of the stairs.

Rose smiled at him again, she should NEVER stop doing that, and headed upstairs. "Make yourself comfy!" She called over her shoulder.

Whilst she was gone, the Doctor took the time to have a look around. The living room he was in was a bit of a mish-mash of styles- there were trinkets and figurines and rugs and cushions and a Buddhist fertility statuette- hold on! The Doctor zeroed back in on the last one. "I don't think so." He muttered, glancing around before pointing his sonic screwdriver at it. There was a burst of green light and the small, cherubic little figures clambering over the large Buddha promptly fell off.

"There'll be none of that." He grumbled, moving further into the house.

There was a room adorned with photographs, and the Doctor was pleased to see he was not forgotten. There were pictures of his two most recent incarnations, both posed photographs with a smiling Rose by his side and ones he hadn't been aware she had taken- of him in the console room or library with a tool or book never far away. There were also pictures of what he presumed to be his meta-crisis, who appeared to not have gained any new sense of fashion or hairstyle.

He moved slowly around the room, smiling fondly at an older Jackie with a chubby blonde boy on her hip, a balding Pete and a grinning Mickey. There were pictures of people he didn't recognise- people in military uniform, a group of children standing beside a well in a dusty village, women with colourful drinks in their hands and rows upon rows of what appeared to be of Rose's travels to far-off lands (or as far-off as one can get on Earth).

"Shall we go then?" Came a voice behind him, and the Doctor turned to see Rose standing in the doorway.

The brain of a Time Lord is a wholly remarkable thing, capable of approximately 40 quadrillion processes per second, recalling the first 3528 digits of Pi and calculating the time it would take to finish a whole chocolate cake when faced with an oncoming army of Pudgalorpae in 0.4 seconds, (4.9 seconds to actually eat the cake).

But unfortunately, when faced with a woman who has legs and a dress and a head with hair (or no hair, if one is that way inclined) the Time Lord's brain is no more able to function than that of average male human, and ceases to be able to produce a sentence more intelligible than a lizard performing Hamlet's soliloquy.

"S'... s' b-blue." The Doctor managed, staring at Rose. His mouth felt suddenly dry, his hands felt suddenly clammy, and his neck suddenly felt hot. He tugged at the collar of his shirt.

Rose looked down at her dress. "Is it alright?"

The Doctor bobbed his head up and down, looking remarkably like the English bulldog toy in the back of Amy and Rory's car. "Mhmm, yes- no, it's lovely- it's a lovely.. in fact it's-" He broke off, taking on a thinly-veiled mask of indifference as he leant against the sideboard, knocking over a photograph as he did so which in turn caused a domino effect to ripple across the picture frames along the length of the sideboard.

The Doctor scrunched his face up and winced. "Sorry..." He muttered.

"Well shall we go then? Before you destroy the rest of the house?" Rose smiled at him, and took his arm. "Where are we going?"

"Hmm?" The Doctor replied. "Where? Where, where, where, where. To the place, that I..." He trailed off, face screwing up as he thought of the right word. "Booked, of course? Is that right? You book somewhere? Which I did, of course."

It was two hours and thirty-six minutes later when the Doctor and Rose were walking along the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

The Doctor was trying to figure out if it would be inappropriate to give in to the constant, habitual want to hold her hand.

Rose was trying to figure out why the staff at the restaurant her companion had taken her to consistently referred to him as 'Your Holiness' and proclaimed that their entire meal would be free of charge, in gratuitous thanks of his great philanthropy across the world.

The Doctor had told her of his travels (his most time-appropriate, Earth-based ones) and Rose had told him snippets of her life; she told him she worked for the Ministry of Defence but gave no more detail than that (it was boring, she said), told him her family had passed away (a long time ago, she said) and that the last date she had been on involved a book reading of something about all the things one could find in their house to deter a burglar (it was informative, she said).

The Doctor was relieved of his internal debate by Rose slipping her hand into his, her fingers winding through his own. The Doctor looked down at their joined hands and smiled softly, and for just a moment -a snippet, perhaps, of the great stretch of time that was his life- he was completely, utterly, blatantly happy.

By the time they had walked back to Rose's house, the night had grown cold and so had the Doctor's feet. "Need to bring better shoes next time..." He mumbled to himself.

"Well, goodnight." Rose turned to face him when they reached her door, waiting patiently.

"Er.. oh, yes!" The Doctor replied, taking a step forward and giving her an air kiss on each side of her face. "Goodnight."

Rose furrowed her brow at him in bemusement, which only deepened as she peered around his shoulder in the direction of where the TARDIS was supposed to be hiding. "Do you see something under-"

"No!" Rose was cut off as the Doctor spun her around, clasped her hands tightly in front of his chest and stared forcefully into her eyes. "I don't see anything. Anything but... you. Because you are... so... lovely, and, and..." The Doctor racked his brains as he maneuvered Rose closer to her door. "And don't forget," he began earnestly, "that I am just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to- hold on, have I got that right?"

Rose stared at him with wide eyes. "Blimey, you really are quite forward aren't you?"

"Yes! I just can't control myself. So quick, into your house before I do anything untoward!" He ushered her through the door. "Chop, chop, come on, it's hormone city here!"

"Alright, alright. Don't get your knickers in a twist!" Rose replied.

"I beg your pardon?! I don't wear knickers!" The Doctor looked aghast.

Rose smiled cheekily at him, and his protests of indignation died on his lips as she stood on her tiptoes to press her own to his cheek. "G'night, Mr Smith."

The Doctor stared after her, mouth slightly agape as she disappeared into the house, softly shutting the blue door behind her.

As he descended the stairs and reached the gate at the end of the path, the Doctor turned back to watch the trail of lights flick on and off again as Rose moved throughout the house, a smile on his lips and a hand on his cheek.

A/N: More to follow soon, dearest ones.