fic: of buttons and bazoolium

[beingfacetious]

Title: Of Buttons and Bazoolium
Author: Catey/beingfacetious
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Just borrowing from RTD and the Beeb.
Summary: At the Doctor's prompting, Rose gets her mother bazoolium - and she doesn't even say "thanks."
Author's Notes: Beta'ed casually by the so lovely miracleofmercy. Written for takethewords' Billie Piper ficathon. Inspired by humansrsuperior 's prompt, "buttons, kisses." This is my first longer-than-a-drabble fic and I had such fun with it; I hope it meets expectations!




“Can’t we go yet?”

Rose arched an eyebrow and continued to study the various baubles on the table in front of her, not needing to turn around to see the pout on the Doctor’s face. “It was your idea to come here,” she pointed out as she picked up a small gold trinket and turned it over in her hands. “’Ooh let’s go to the Bazaar,’ you said. ‘It’s right atop this asteroid, you’ve never seen anything like it,’ you said.”

“Well,” he spluttered in reply, “I’d no idea it would turn into such a…such an ordeal.”

That comment prompted her to turn and face him, and she almost laughed at his perturbed stature—hands shoved into pockets, shoulders sloped, one foot kicking slightly at the ground. “Doctor,” she said, biting back the laugh, “you brought me—me—to an alien shopping center. A huge alien shopping center. And you didn’t think it would be an ordeal?” She tilted her head to the side and pressed her tongue against her two front teeth in a grin. “Do you know me at all?”

A slow smile came in response. “I like to think I do, Rose Tyler.” She rocked back and forth on her toes once or twice, obviously pleased, and his eyes roved her face, landing and lingering a moment too long on her lips. “Anyway,” he went on, passing a hand through his hair and knocking a few gelled strands askew, “not a mistake I’ll be making again. And I think you should get that.” He pointed to the golden orb she’d forgotten she had clutched in her hand.

“Do you? For Mum?” She shifted her gaze from his tousled hair to the knick knack, wrinkling her nose skeptically.

“Yeah, absolutely. She’ll love it.”

“Are you just saying that so we can leave?”

“No!” the Doctor insisted in a voice pitched just a bit too high to be truthful. “It’s…cool. Jackie’ll think it’s cool.”

“Oh yeah?” Rose planted her free hand on her hip and thrust the hand with the thingie in it under his nose. “So what exactly is ‘it’?”

“Bazoolium.”

“Oh. Well what’s ba— bazo—”

“Ba-zoo-li-um,” he repeated slower, whipping out his glasses and pulling her hand closer. “Semi-rare, semi-precious metal. Acts as a weather predictor. Gets hot when it’s going to be sunny, gets cold when there’ll be rain.”

“Yeah?” Rose closed her fist around the instrument, noting that the Doctor didn’t drop her wrist as it flexed in his hand. “Mum would think that was cool.”

“Right!” The Doctor let go of her hand and slipped the glasses back into his pocket in one fluid motion. “So if you just pay the nice orange fellow behind the table, we can be on our way!” He took a few celebratory steps toward the TARDIS, beaming.

She studied the object for another moment. “Only…”

The Doctor made a strangled noise in his throat and she hurried on, blushing.

“It’s just, I saw what looked like buttons back over there, and Mum’s had this button collection since I was little, and she’s horrible at keeping up with it of course, but I thought she might—”

“Come get me when you’re done,” he interrupted, and shoved his hands back in his pockets and skulked away.

Three minutes later she found him sitting on a bench, staring at his trainers and humming quietly to himself. She rolled her eyes at the pitiful sight and sat beside him. “I went with the boolithium.”

He didn’t even bother to correct her as he glanced up, relief etched into his every facial feature. “You’re finished?”

“Well someone was rushing me…”

“I could kiss you!”

Rose felt her cheeks color and her heart accelerate at his exclamation. She cleared her throat and opened her mouth to reply, but the next thing she knew the bench was creaking from his jumping up off of it and he was waggling his fingers in her face. “Come on!” he said eagerly, and she sighed as she took his hand and was all but herded off to the TARDIS.

---

“It just doesn’t make sense…”

The Doctor and Rose were sitting at Jackie’s kitchen table, him wearing his glasses and staring out the window, her leaning forward with her hands wrapped around a mug of tea.

“It doesn’t make sense,” he repeated, drumming his fingers on the table. “Those things aren’t ghosts. They can’t be. But if they’re not…” He lurched forward, dropping his head into his hands.

“I knew it was wrong,” Rose muttered.

“Wrong!” The Doctor nodded in agreement. “It just doesn’t make sense. And I don’t like that.”

“I should have gotten the buttons,” Rose continued, murmuring into her tea.

The Doctor glanced up sharply, brows drawing together. “What?”

“At the Bazaar,” she clarified, leaning back in her chair with a frown. “I should have gotten the buttons instead of the ziboolium.”

“Bazoolium.”

“Whatever!” she snapped, ignoring how he drew back very slightly and raised his eyebrows. “Mum didn’t like it. I knew she’d rather have the buttons. If someone hadn’t been whining I would have had time to look at them…”

“Rose, what are you talking about?”

Her look of mild annoyance quickly darkened as she watched his face and realized he wasn’t joking. “At the asteroid Bazaar. You said to get the—weather thing. I mentioned I wanted to look for buttons. Remember?”

“I…” He rubbed at the back of his neck, looking intently at a spot on the table. “I don’t remember the buttons.”

She made an incredulous noise, narrowing her eyes dangerously. “It was this morning! Couldn’t listen for one second—”

“Look, Rose, I’ve honestly had better things to worry about in the last hour or so than this morning’s shopping trip!” He knew instantly from the crestfallen look on her face that he had said the wrong thing, as usual. She folded her hands in her lap and stared down at them, and he held back an apology that wouldn’t be enough.

“’m sorry,” she mumbled finally to her lap in a wavering voice.

“Don’t be,” he replied immediately, trying to sound casual despite the way his chest felt constricted.

They sat in silence, neither one speaking or lifting their eyes to find the other. At length Rose drew a slow breath.

“When I was little,” she began in a low voice, “Mum used to take out this half-empty jar of buttons. Sometimes she just let me play with them, and sometimes she told me where they came from…a lot of them came off of Dad’s old shirts and things.” She shook her head, pushing out a brief laugh. “She hasn’t mentioned them in a while. She probably wouldn’t have liked it any better than the weather thing. Anyway, you’re right,” she added more loudly, raising her eyes to meet the Doctor’s, which seemed to be boring into her with a kind of quiet intensity. “Whatever this ghost thing is, it’s got the attention of the whole world. Bit more important than an old jar of buttons.” She stood, picked up their teacups and moved toward the sink.

The Doctor caught her wrist as she passed. “After we sort this out,” he said quietly, rubbing his thumb along her lower arm, “I’ll take you back to the Bazaar and we’ll spend as long as you want picking the perfect buttons for Jackie’s jar. I promise.”

She stood still, feeling the electric tingle in her forearm, her eyes searching his for some unnamed thing she knew she could not honestly expect to find, until something on the telly in the next room made him drop her wrist and move closer for a better look.

---

In two years she had forgotten all about buttons and Bazaars (though she had thought about the ghosts every day).

They found—or, more likely, they were given—a quiet moment in a corner of the TARDIS, just the two of them. She opened her mouth with no idea of what to say, but before she had a chance she found herself crushed against his chest, one of his hands clutching desperately at her leather jacket and the other tangling itself in her hair. She threw her arms around him in return, clinging to pinstripes and a too-thin frame and the hope that she would never have to let go again. She thought she felt him heave in a sob, and both pairs of arms instinctively tightened.

After a moment that lasted an eternity and not nearly long enough, the Doctor pulled back very slightly. They wore matching smiles—broad, watery, and somewhat unbelieving—and Rose thought she saw a small something glistening in the Doctor’s eyes. He didn’t bother to wipe it away.

Instead he removed his hand from her hair and slipped it into his pocket, keeping one arm wrapped around her waist. He pulled his hand back out of his pocket, fisted, and opened it in the narrow space between their bodies, revealing at least a dozen small, brightly colored circles.

Rose stared, puzzled, at his open palm, not willing to remove her own hands to investigate. “What—?”

“Buttons,” the Doctor answered softly before she could finish, hearts thudding as an understanding grin dawned on her face. “For you. Well, for your mum. For you to give your mum. To make up for the bazoolium weather predictor, since that was sort of my fault.” He replaced the buttons in his pocket and scooped her hungrily back into a tight hug. Her cheek found his shoulder and he buried his nose in her hair, inhaling deeply without trying to hide it, for once. She smelled of shampoo and life well lived; same old Rose.

“Where did you get them?” she asked, not sure whether to laugh or cry at the thought of him traversing time and space, shopping for buttons, without her.

“Oh, all over the place,” came the whisper in her ear; she closed her eyes and let out a shuddering breath that she had been holding for far too long. “Craft fair on Kurhan. Gift shop on Midnight. Nicked one off of William Shakespeare.” He laughed at her scoffing noise. “It’s true! Stole it right off his collar.”

“Sounds like you’ve been having fun,” Rose said quietly against his neck.

He pulled her closer, not replying right away. “I’ve never gone back to the Bazaar,” he offered after too long a silence. “I didn’t…That is, I was waiting.”

“Waiting?”

“To go back. With you.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat that he didn’t quite recognize and nudged his collarbone with her nose. “I could kiss you.”

He leaned back, gripping her elbows and staring down at her with a grin wide enough to split his face in two. She slid her hands up his arms to rest on either side of his face, her heart flooding with warmth and pounding against her ribcage. She was startled to hear a giggle push past her lips for the first time in years as she ran her thumbs up and down his cheeks.

And then the TARDIS was rocking slightly and Donna was yelling some string of expletives and their world exploded around them, just like old times. He reached up to pull her hands from his cheek, laced their fingers together, and squeezed, leaning down to touch his forehead to hers for the briefest moment. Rose sensed the promise in that last, lingering instant of privacy, and as she ran along after him, never letting go of his hand, she believed him; just like she had two years ago.