butterfly | Fic: Were He Not Romeo Called (Doctor Who; Doctor (Ten II)/Rose)

Story Title: Were He Not Romeo Called
Author: butterfly
Summary: Human society does require a name more specific than 'Doctor'.
Rating: G-PG. Fluff, really.
Spoilers: Spoilers through Doctor Who 4x13 - "Journey's End"
Disclaimer: I don't own anything -- it's all the BBC. Also, the title is taken from Shakespeare.

Were He Not Romeo Called

“What's wrong with John Smith?” Rose asked, blinking down at the spiral notebook that the Doctor had just pushed into her hands. The front cover said, in very firm letters, 'NAME IDEAS'.

“That's a name for a day or a week,” he said, hopping up on the arm of the couch. Rose obligingly shifted over and he slid down the side, pressing up right against her. She wasn't sure what this particular habit was about, but she'd gotten used to it in the month the two of them had been together in Pete's World. The Doctor tapped the cover of the notebook, drawing her attention back to it. “I'm looking for a name that your humans – oh, I suppose that they're my humans, too, now, at least partly – will be calling me for the rest of my life. And it's a bit boring for that.”

“What about that other name you used?” Rose said, trying to remember. “In Scotland, when we met Queen Victoria? It started with a 'J', too. James?”

“Oh, I couldn't do that,” he said, too quickly. He darted a fleeting glance over at her and then shrugged. “After all, I'm not going to pretend to be Scottish.”

Rose stared at him skeptically, but let him keep whatever secret he was holding back. They did, after all, have a lifetime for that sort of conversation. She looked down at the book and hesitantly opened the cover.

Every line of the first page had a name with a dash after it. Her gaze flicked up to the top of the notebook. Yes, on the top line, the page was divided into 'names' and 'what Rose thinks'. She flipped to the next page and the one after that and all the way through the hundred and fifty-page notebook.

Every single line had a first and last name suggested, with room for Rose to write down an opinion after it. And, in her brief scan through, it looked like every single name was different and they were no apparent alphabetical order... or any other kind of order that she could make out.

“You can't call yourself 'Orlando Bloom',” she said, holding out her hand, palm up. He reached into his suit pocket and pulled out a pen to give to her. She uncapped it and drew a thick line through the name. “Actually, if you could go through and strike out all the names belonging to actors,” she spotted Ludwig Beethoven further down, “composers... or, really, any real-life famous or historical people, that would be brilliant.”

“I could be Orlando Bloom,” the Doctor said, reluctantly taking back the notebook from her and furiously crossing off names. "We've both got brown eyes."

“No,” Rose said, patting him on the arm. “You couldn't.”

With his memory, it took a surprising short amount of time for him to go through and mark off all the disallowed names. With an internal sigh, Rose was soon taking up the notebook and pen again.

Some of the names were easy to reject.

“You just don't look like a Sylvester,” she told him, firmly blacking out that option. “Nor a Paul. Definitely not a Peter.”

“I rather liked David,” he said. Rose looked over at him, taking in the sharp features, lovely mouth, absolutely fantastic hair. “What do you think?”

The last David that she'd known had been balding, with a mean streak.

“Doesn't suit you in the slightest,” she said, striking off the next 'David' that she came to on the list. “Nor does any variety of Thomas.” More crossed-off names.

“Oh! That one is rather-”

“Not Alonzo,” she muttered, almost ripping through the paper as she rejected that one. Finally, she paused, the end of the pen landing on the side of a name and not crossing it off. “This might work.”

The Doctor wedged in closer to her to have a look.

“Ah, yes, that one is there for rather sentimental reasons,” he said.

“I know where the last name comes from – what about the first one? I've never seen it before.” she asked and, instead of striking through the name, she carefully wrote 'perhaps' after the provided dash.

“Ah, that's the name of someone that I failed, rather badly,” the Doctor said. “Not human, actually. One of my few traveling companions that wasn't your species.”

“Adric,” Rose said, slowly, feeling the word in her mouth. “Well, I can't picture calling you that, but I wouldn't, anyway, not under normal circumstances. You couldn't ever be anyone but the Doctor to me.”

The Doctor's smile at her words was wide and happy, crinkling up the lines around his eyes. “You like it, then?”

“Hmm, better than most of the others,” she said. “All the rest of those names... they're too human. Too normal. This one's properly alien.”

“I'm supposed to be passing as human, though,” the Doctor said, twisting around to lay his legs across her lap and resting his elbows and back against the arm of the couch. “Shouldn't I pick a properly human name? I could do 'Ian'.”

“And then you'll be an old gay man in my head,” Rose said, reaching down to touch the bare skin of his ankle. He wasn't wearing shoes or socks inside the house these days – he said that he liked the shock of the wood floor on his feet. “You remember Lord of the Rings, right? You'd be Gandalf. Not sexy.”

The Doctor chuckled, nodding slightly. “That is a very good point. But you think that 'Adric' is sexy.”

“Not really. It just doesn't bring up any... any images,” she said. “I've never heard it before, so I can't associate it with anyone. Like, if you wanted to go by the name 'Jack', I would think of Captain Jack-”

“He's never been a real captain,” the Doctor said, very softly.

“Or if you went by Mickey-” she smacked the Doctor's leg at his elaborate fake-shudder at the notion. “-we all know that I'd be thinking about my ex-boyfriend every time I said the name. Adric is a completely blank slate.”

“Ah, I can see the benefit now,” he said. Rose smirked, leaving her hand on his knee. The Doctor looked down at her hand and quirked an eyebrow. “So, that's decided, then? So easily?”

“It's not like it's the most important part of our lives or anything,” Rose said, capping the pen and tossing it and the notebook onto the wood coffee table in front of the couch. “Me, Mum, Dad, and baby Tony will all still call you 'Doctor'. Most of Torchwood will, too. The ones that aren't calling you 'that annoying git', at least.”

“I don't know why they don't like me,” the Doctor said, in an aggrieved tone.

“Maybe it's because you're always telling them that they're doing everything wrong and constantly trying to order them around,” Rose said. “They've got this thing called a 'hierarchy' and you're not on it.”

“Well, if Pete would just give me an appropriate job title-”

“Head Tinkerer was your last suggestion, as I recall,” Rose said.

“What's wrong with that?” the Doctor asked.

“Anything that makes your boss laugh is a bad job title.”

“He didn't laugh very hard,” the Doctor said, reaching down to capture her hand and entwine his fingers with hers. “I still like it.”

“We don't want to get too settled, anyway,” Rose said, glancing over at the Doctor. “Or Mum'll be thinking that we're going to be a permanent part of her life.”

“She knows better,” the Doctor said, absently, briefly bending forward to place a gentle kiss on her knuckles before shifting back into place. “Don't you think?”

“Tony's getting used to you,” Rose said. “That means that she is, too.”

“We do have another five years before our TARDIS is big enough to fly anywhere,” the Doctor said. “And, even after that, I can try to bring you-”

“Us.”

“-us back for regular visits,” he said. “She won't- That is... it's one of the benefits of having, well, me... the fact that you still get to see your mother.”

He was looking away from her when he said that bit, concentrating on the apparently fascinating still-blank wall that he was facing – Rose never had gotten around to properly furnishing her apartment and she and the Doctor were still working their way room to room. He was a very finicky sort of bloke when it came to decorations, it turned out.

“Yes,” Rose said, quietly but with enough love that his gaze flitted up to meet hers, a smile curving up the corners of his mouth. “Yes, it is.”

“Thank you for choosing my name,” the Doctor said, almost shyly. “I wanted- well, I want this life to be just as much yours as it is mine.”

“It will be,” she promised him, relaxing back into the couch, her fingers stroking lightly along his trousers, feeling the warm but not-quite-human-warm of him underneath. It was all horribly domestic – she couldn't picture the Doctor as she'd first met him doing this, whatever the other Doctor had said before he'd left her on the beach. She mouthed the words 'Adric Noble' to herself, trying to imagine herself introducing the Doctor to other people that way.

This is Doctor Adric Noble, but most people just call him 'the Doctor'. Yes, that would work quite nicely.

She'd have the papers drawn up in the morning.

~The End~

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Aw, that was so lovely! ♥ ♥ ♥

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