Red Bicycle

Red Bicycle

"Look at you, beaming away like you're Father Christmas."

"Who says I'm not? Red bicycle when you were twelve."

"What?"

Rose laughed as the Doctor pulled her back up. Jack stood in the side, looking amused.

"So, Doctor," said Jack, "how long have you and Rose been travelling together?"

The Doctor shrugged non-committal. "A while," he said.

"And how long's 'a while'?" asked Jack, a gleam in his eyes.

Rose laughed again. "A few months," she said. "I met him and he blew up the place I worked in."

"Oi, that wasn't my fault!" the Doctor protested. "I had to; otherwise the plastic would have –"

"Would have taken over the world," Rose completed for him. She grinned, her tongue sticking out from between her teeth. "I know."

The Doctor harrumphed. Jack glanced back and forth between them. There was chemistry here, hard to miss. Of course, everyone in the entire Universe would probably know of it, except these two themselves. He mentally shook his head. Couples these days.

"Oh, hang on," said Rose, remembering something. "You said you gifted me a red bicycle when I was twelve. So, the shop wasn't the first time I met you."

"Technically, the shop was the first time I met you," the Doctor said. "Timelines. Very confusing." He rounded the console, pulling a lever here and pressing a few buttons. "Right, then," he said, pointedly ignoring Rose. "Where do you wanna go? We could go and watch Merlin build the Stonehenge, or probably go forwards in time. Maybe we could visit New Earth. Or Norway."

"Oh, no, no, no," Rose said. "You are telling me this story, mister." She sat herself down on the seat beside the console and crossed her arms determinedly. She patted the seat beside her, offering Jack to sit. Jack did so, silently taking in the dynamic of the duo. Jack himself was not a very quiet person, but something about the Doctor and his extremely pretty companion compelled him to simply observe two people so undeniably in love.

The Doctor looked uncomfortable at the prospect, but relented with a sigh.

"Alright," he said, gruff. "This was after I asked you if you wanted to come with me on the TARDIS the first time . . .

The TARDIS landed with her usual sigh, holding a downtrodden Time Lord within her. The Time Lord in question was downtrodden because of a girl who had denied his offer to join him in Universal adventures.

It wasn't as if he was desperately in need of a companion and had come to London deliberately searching for one. The TARDIS had (not) accidentally landed in the 21st Century London. The year was 2005, and the Doctor didn't remember anything particularly interesting happening that year when the TARDIS had picked up a signal from the Nestene Consciousness. From that moment on, it had been his usual seat-of-the-pants adventure, except, this time, he was accompanied by a human girl. Something that had not happened in a long, long time. The last companion he had had had been far before the Time War.

This human was different. The Doctor immediately recognized a brilliance in her. She was brave and took no nonsense from anyone. She had an easy laugh and, most of all, was kind. Even though she didn't know the first thing about the Doctor, he had seen true concern in her eyes when he told her he was working alone. She understood him on a level that even baffled the Time Lord. In the end, he had been saved by that pink-and-yellow human. She was truly nothing remarkable, just a teenage girl who came from a home that could be better off, with no A-Levels. And yet, despite all her material flaws, she was a dazzling human being, and the Doctor had seen as much in the short span of time he had spent with her. So he offered her to come with him. And she had denied him.