tampered | closed: ongoing.

Rose is puttering around the flat getting ready for work. Quite a bit more relaxed working with the Doctor so she's wearing jeans and a hoody and not the Doctor's clothes ~~today~~. She fiddles with her hair, puts on earrings then finishes up her tea. She takes a glance at the clock, frowning a bit. They're late and while that isn't so uncommon that it worries her, she does wonder why he's not ready. She generally takes much longer with the makeup and the hair. She finally knocks lightly on the door.

"Doctor? Everything all right in there?"

He makes a valiant effort not to make a surprised noise or reaction that she doesn't have the benefit of seeing anyway. There's a quick glance to the door to make sure it really was closed and then he finishes looking through the bottom drawer in his dresser, again, and moves to re-rummage through the closet, again. So far he's found his trainers and a tie that work.

'Fine! Everything's fine! Just be another moment. Maybe a few. Maybe a bit more. But fine!'

He can't see the confused and slightly worried look on her face but he can probably hear it in her voice. She takes a step back from the door, hesitating before she speaks.

"Okay. You need anythin'?"

Rapidly the conclusion is being reached that this search is futile, but at the same time there's really not much he can do about it from inside the room, particularly with her directly on the other side of the door considering he's not about to go outside without proper clothes on. At the very least, at least pants.

'No! Well, yes, but you're in here enough as it is, so no. I mean.' He stops looking and making noise. She did sound a bit worried, which wasn't the intention. 'Thank you, but no.'

"All right."

She takes a few steps away from the door, expression utterly confused and concerned. After a few moments she steps closer to the door again.

"Whaddya mean, I'm in there enough?"

She doesn't really normally go in his room. She might have been in there a time or two but certainly nothing that would be considered 'enough'.

'Well obviously you're not in here, but it's close enough. Feels like you are. You're everywhere.' Really he's not meaning to talk about it but at this point he's both distracted and a little on the frazzled side.

Trigger more confusion and a little bit of hurt. She takes a big step back from the door.

"You want me to...go somewhere else?"

She's entirely and completely not understanding this at all. It doesn't occur to her that his sense of smell might be a bit better and this is a scent thing.

At this point he's just sort of standing in the middle of the room, scratching the back of his head. It takes him a few seconds to realise that she replied again, and then to realise that it really still didn't sound like she was all that happy. He very cautiously goes over to the door and opens it a crack, staying carefully behind it and just peering around the corner.

'No.' Clearly not saying anything specific isn't working, so he considers her for a moment and then keeps going. 'I don't have any clothes.'

His peering around the corner is met with curiosity and confusion. She's not sure why he's doing that whole peering around corners thing. His room can't be that messy. The verbal doesn't really clear anything up.

"I did laundry last week. Thought you had plenty of shirts."

Of course she wore a couple of them around the house and one to work but hung them back up because they weren't dirty. Oh alright, she may have worn more than a couple of them. She's not even going to address the pants portion of this equation. They've got to be taken to the dry cleaner and that hasn't happened since she wore them.

Yeah, he wasn't totally fond of the idea of opening the door at all, but trying to talk to her through it was removing the all important chance to imply meaning with facial expressions as well as words.

'I have lots of shirts, I just can't wear any of them. They're all d-, well, no, they're all basically clean, but they don't work.' He notices this might not actually be a more helpful explanation than the ones he was offering before. After a minute, he adds, 'There are reasons,' as though that helps.

Yes and since his body language and facial expressions are very key in her interpreting everything he doesn't say, it's a good thing she's able to see a bit of it at least.

It's clear from the expression on her face that she's attempting to put together how all these things figure in.

"Did I mess 'em up wearin' 'em or washin' 'em?"

She got that from the 'don't work' comment.

Even though it's just his head and part of his neck showing around the door, he manages to convey squirminess because this is something for whatever reason that he really doesn't want to admit. But it's a conversation that is happening and not explaining it was clearly causing distress, which he doesn't want more.

'Wwwearing them...'

She's getting squirminess out of it and she's still not quite understanding why outside of the general talking around a door because of the fear of her seeing him in his underpants.

"Oh." She looks crestfallen for a moment before she forces a slight smile. "I'll stop wearin' 'em. I didn't know. Sorry."

No, no, none of these statements are coming out correctly. He starts towards her instinctively - which means coming out around the door up to his shoulders, right now - and then remembers there was a very good reason he was standing behind the door.

'No! Sorry, that's not-, it's not a bad thing. Well. No, it's not a bad thing, really, it's just a distracting thing. You haven't done anything wrong. They just all...' He uses the arm closest to her to gesture. 'Smell like you.'

Oh. Well that makes things better. She's also sneaking a look at those naked shoulders. She might be a bit pink because of that. She grins at him, a sign that he's doing all right with his explanation really.

"So we'll call in sick, on account of all the distraction and wash up a suit of clothes that I won't touch, for when it's too distractin'."

And then in a fairly typical human fashion, her brow furrows a bit. "S'not a bad smell, right?"

He ducks himself more fully back behind the door now that she knows. It feels safer for some reason. 'That would be good, yeah.' He pauses for a moment because he's not sure what else to do right now. 'Please.'

"Why don't you grab a blanket, wrap up in it. I'll call into work and start the laundry. You can gather up the stuff."

She's trying to make it not a big deal. She watches him for a second more before she heads off in the opposite direction to start the washer and call in the way she said she would.

At least one of them isn't making it a big deal. That will probably be quite helpful in making it far less of a big deal. After she walks away, he closes the door again and goes to do a cursory look again just to make sure he really didn't miss anything left obviously lying around that will work.

And he didn't, so a few minutes later he's got the blanket off his bed wrapped around his shoulders and sort of wanders into the other room.

Weeeeeell, she's got dozens of questions and she figures he'll be more in the mood to answer them if he's calm. Besides, there's a bit of panic down deep in the pit of her stomach that if she makes a big deal of it, he'll realize the entire flat probably smells a bit like her and that will plant the idea that perhaps they ought to have separate flats. She likes living in a flat with him. Not to mention what she's afraid this could do to their fragile (her perception) fledgling romantic relationship.

By the time he wanders in, she's started the laundry, called work and she's just finished washing her hands, scrubbing a bit harder then is probably necessary. Really she's contemplating whether she out to shower again and scrub very well in an attempt to somehow lessen the impact of her scent. See, she's freaking out but she's doing it all internally.

"We're all set for the day. You want some tea?"

She does, as per the norm, have excellent reasoning. The entire flat really does to a certain degree, but that was something he got used to back when they both lived on the TARDIS. Similar thing to having her in the room with him. For some reason that is completely different to having her on his clothes; something to do with the closeness and ease and consistent proximity of it all.

Once he more fully calms down and realises this actually isn't as important a thing as he thinks it is, he'll probably tell her she doesn't have to do all of that, although the thought is sweet in a misunderstanding sort of way.

'Tea, yeah. Tea'd be good.' He would offer to help with it but he's using both of his hands to hold onto the blanket at the moment.

Well, she does try. She has to earn that clever adjective he occasionally attaches to her name. It makes a good deal of sense and the Doctor might be surprised that there's a good number of human men that would probably agree with him. They just don't likely get as distracted as he does by it; which, by the way, she happens to love that he gets so distracted by it that he can't really do anything. It's very flattering.

She puts on the kettle and then goes to stand an arm's length away from him. She reaches out to ruffle his hair in a sort of comforting kind of way and then stops. "S'all right, me touchin' you? Or should I be further away?"

He would absolutely argue that this is because they haven't got the benefit of better senses. Or that they're blessed with having worse senses, depending on how you look at it. On the whole he still definitely counts them to be a positive, even withstanding this current predicament. It's much better to have this sort of problem than not be as fully aware of her as possible.

'No, you don't have to-- I mean, it's not a... a proximity thing.' Really, the last thing he meant was for her to feel like she was actually some sort of problem. He meant it when he said it wasn't a bad thing, it's just - as you stated - a ridiculously distracting one. He grins a little and ducks his head a little toward her a couple of seconds later. 'Please.'

It's not that she thinks she's a problem so much as she doesn't want to be a bother...which is sort of a kind of problem. All right, she really has no idea what to think. She's just trying to navigate this with as little freaking out on either side as possible.

Being given permission makes a grin race across her lips and she closes all the distance between them, ruffling his hair with one hand, the other going to lay on his chest, the blanket between them.

"Better, yeah?"

Well, it wasn't supposed to make her feel anything negative either way. Somehow eventually they'll both calm down and he'll work out how to explain... most of this. Hopefully.

See even as uncomfortable as this is, that smile and her eagerness goes a very long way towards helping. He brings his head back up to look at her with what is likely impressively fluffy hair - as it was morning and he wasn't finished dressing and primping before he came out here anyway - and a grin.

'Much!'

Hopefully. She might prod him a bit once they're settled.

The impressively fluffy hair is amazing. At least she thinks so. She's not used to seeing it in such a morning state. She rests the hand that was ruffling his hair on his shoulder.

"Y'know, spendin' the day in our blankets sounds brilliant. Could go put mine on."

At least they'd both be uncomfortable together and likely end up being more comfortable as a result.

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I literally snort/giggled when I typed romantic relationship

The absolute loosest of terminology available

It works for them.

So many things do. it borders on not fair.

At least it always gives them things to do

this is true.

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