Deshabille
by Sangga

Her mum always told her to dress for the occasion. It just takes Rose a while to figure out what the occasion is.

 

The first time, she gets an appropriate outfit from a room in the Tardis that's got a whole wall of racks and a few stuffed chairs, and she changes into a corset, which is hard to do on your own believe me, and then she can't see what she looks like 'cos there's no mirror, but after she puts her hair up and emerges, the Doctor looks at her, up and down, and says:

"Ah. You look very, er..."

"Nice?" she supplies.

"Yes. Very nice," he agrees, but really it's impossible to tell what he's thinking because he just looks a bit confused or something.

Which isn't particularly unusual, for him.

And afterwards, when she walks back into the control room in jeans and a t-shirt he says, "Back to yourself then, eh?", and she just shrugs.

 

And then the second time, when she gets a bit sick of her own clothes and goes in search of a change, and comes out in a long frilly skirt with some sort of high-necked jacket, he looks, and blinks, and lifts his eyebrows and says:

"Good as a holiday, then?"

"Yeah," she says, and then "Wot?", because he's still looking.

And he says, "Nothin'", like it really is.

 

So by the third time, when she tugs and snaps and squeezes into the silvery bodysuit that lets her walk around basically unnoticed on the latest weird planet, she's not at all bothered when he says:

"That's a good fit."

She just laughs because he reminds her of Mickey, for some reason, and at first she thought he'd said 'That's good an' fit', which is something that Mickey would say, but the Doctor wouldn't, obviously.

Which is just plain stupid.

 

The fourth time she's just come out of the bath, and she didn't even know the Tardis had a bath, which was nice, and she's in a towel, still a bit damp, with bare feet and stringy hair, and the Doctor doesn't say anything because he's too flustered.

She just smiles. It's not like it happened on purpose.

 

Fifth time, she's running late, and he bangs on the door, so if he's going to be rude he'll have to help with the laces.

 

Sixth time, he actually selects something for her himself.

 

Seventh, she wears her own clothes, which is sort of a relief, and he grins and says:

"Going incognito, then?"

And she grins back.

 

The eighth time is when she gets caught out, has to pilfer clothes on-planet, and the whole thing turns out to be a total disaster anyway. By some incredible luck they manage to get away, and she's ripped and torn and shaking back at the Tardis, and it's the time he takes off his jacket and puts it around her shoulders.

She feels bad because she thinks it might be his only one, and she bled all over it. And she apologised, but he got such a funny look that she stopped, but mainly because she passed out.

When she woke up she was in some kind of white nightie. So that probably counts as the ninth time.

 

Ridiculous, but she has to wear the equivalent of a bikini and bodypaint for number ten, and she asks him to do her back, and he gets all flushed or something and she says:

"Honestly, it's nothing you haven't seen before, is it?"

Which he has to admit is true.

So he paints her back, nape to ankles. And she says, "Are you going to do this properly or not?", and "I am keeping still", before deciding to shut it. And he has to use his hands because that's just how it's done, the prints that mark her so that no other male on the planet will touch her, but by the time he's halfway through she realises that her eyes have closed, so she swallows and opens them again.

He does the last print, the one that goes on her chest, over the bone between her breasts, and she can't help but take a big breath in. And then he's finished, paint-slathered hands open, away from his body slightly, like he's levitating.

"There," she says finally, "Now I'm yours."

When she looks at his face it's a bit like being gut-punched. And he says, very quietly:

"That's right."

And then they don't say anything at all for quite a while.

 

And later, he helps her paint it all on again.

So that would be eleven.

 

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