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gingerteaonthetardis · 7 months

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Ok! So! Prompt time: emotional hurt/comfort + Malcolm x Hannah (or twelve x rose but it’s more fun to see Malcolm in this situation) BUT it’s Hannah (or Rose) who needs some serious comfort.

oh, i love this prompt!! so much!! i went with rose & tucker for this one because i had an idea come to me right away for them, hope you don't mind. also, please be advised that this fic involves grief over a canon character death.

enjoy!

to read on ao3, click here!

The morning of November 7th dawns cold and pale, with his mobile buzzing angrily toward the edge of his nightstand and no Rose beside him.

Now, Malcolm Tucker is not a romantic by even the most vigorous stretch of the imagination, but only one of those two things feels like an emergency.

He silences his mobile.

Sliding out of bed, he reaches for a jumper—a deep, rich shade of green he never would have picked for himself—and pads across the bedroom toward the hissing sound of the shower running.

One thing he's learned about Rose in the course of their… entanglement—is that she is not a morning person. Her aversion to alarm clocks is on par with his reaction to phone calls from Number 10 these days. As in, there's usually a lot of swearing involved, maybe some hives.

But if Rose being awake at this hour is unusual, her being conscious enough to shower is unheard of. Which makes it either a miracle on par with loaves and fishes, or a catastrophe.

"Rose?"

She gives no answer, or at least, not one that he can make out over the spray of water. But the door is cracked, and he pushes it open further to get a better look. It takes him several seconds to recognise why the air feels wrong: it's cold.

There's no steam billowing out from behind the curtain, and the unexpected draft indicates that the little porthole window behind her is open. An icy feeling slices through him, unrelated to the chill autumn air.

"Rose," he says again, a little more sharply. "Are you in there? Is this some kind of horror film set-up we're doing? You should know I've never seen Psycho."

There's confirmation of life in the sound of a sniffle, which could be a laugh but—his chest tightens—probably isn't.

"Don't come in," she mumbles.

"Why, have you got a knife?"

"That's not what h-happens in Psycho."

Mouth falling into a grim line at the unsteadiness of her voice, he reaches for the curtain.

"Okay, what the fuck is going—"

Shit. His heart does something his cardiologist probably would not like, and his hand falls limp at his side. Shit, and also fuck.

Because Rose is sitting in the very corner of the tub, down to her knickers and the ringer shirt he'd lent her to sleep in. She's curled up there, like she's trying to be a tiny ball instead of a person.

"Jesus Christ, have you lost your mind?" he snaps. "It's fucking freezing in here." When he reaches through the shower spray to touch her, he hisses at the temperature and withdraws. The water's cold, too. Frigid.

She bundles tighter into herself. "Just go, Malcolm, please."

His jaw locks.

Yeah, there's no way in hell he's going to just turn around and prance off to make his morning coffee while his… whatever-she-is has some kind of meltdown in his fucking shower that apparently requires subarctic temperatures.

"It's my bathroom, actually, so I think I'll stay, thanks," he shoots back, not bothering to regulate his tone.

For someone who has spent approximately twenty-three hours of every day in a state of unhinged stress for the last two decades, he is aware he should probably be hardened to the feeling by now. The two years he's been out of the business isn't nearly enough time for the conditioning to fade. But for some reason, seeing Rose in this condition has him reeling like it's his first press tour. His mouth takes off without his permission.

"I mean, talk about psycho. Is this some kind of new beauty routine I don't know about, like kiwi fucking facials and sperm hair treatments? 'Cause I have to say, I don't care for this particular trend. You'll freeze your perfectly lovely tits off, for one thing. And for another, you—Rose?"

He stops short, watching a tremble travel through her. It's like the ground during an earthquake, moments before a fissure opens—before damage becomes destruction. Unsalvageable.

She's trying not to cry. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

"Okay, you're actually scaring me now," he says, voice going flat. "What's happening here? Do I need to call a doctor? A psychic?" Her chin jerks up, and she stares at him with reddened eyes. "A priest?"

"No." The word is harsh, but he doesn't give a shit, because she comes a little back to life as she says it. Her eyes flare up at him beneath clotted, dark lashes. "I'm n-not possessed. God. You're so—I just… need a minute, all right?"

"Well, I'm sorry, darling, I don't think you have a minute before hypothermia sets in. You're turning fucking blue."

She seems intent on ignoring him—or perhaps she's just ignoring reality in general—because she promptly buries her face in her arms again, where they're crossed over her bare knees.

He's not lying; there is a strange lavender cast to her toes, her kneecaps, the tips of her fingers. She looks like a wax doll version of herself. But if she won't do anything about it, it's apparently fucking up to him.

Sighing, he braves the frigid shower spray again to reach for the knob, turning it towards the heated side. A new rush of warmer water soaks his sleeve.

So much for his nice, cosy morning plans.

"Look, just tell me what's going on," he tells her slowly, reaching over her head to tug the window closed, "and then if you really want me to leave you to it, I will."

It takes her about a full minute under the spray to stop shivering—longer for some colour to return to her skin, and even longer than that to answer him.

He knows she's working on it by the flexing of her fingers and toes, the gentle rocking motion she makes as she attempts to build her courage. He knows all the signs. The words are just sitting in there like stones; she's just struggling to pick them up and actually say them. And hell if he hasn't been there before.

Finally, she lifts her head again. Her cheeks are ruddy, and he realises she's been crying for a long time.

"My dad's dead."

Totally lacking in emphasis, her words still hit him like a ton of bricks. A one-two-three punch of deadpan delivery.

"Shit." No, that's not right. His brain is full of fucking smoke alarms. "I'm sorry." Better.

"Yeah." The silence dangles for a second. "It's nothing to do with you."

That takes him out at the kneecaps, and suddenly he's sitting on the lip of the tub, catching his breath. What the hell? "I… didn't think it was." He hesitates before asking, "When?"

Her eyes close. "He died 27 years ago today."

"Jesus. Rose, why didn't you tell me?"

"When exactly was I s-supposed to slip it into conversation, Malcolm?" Her lids bat back open in a second, and she turns her most challenging glare on him. "When you made that stupid joke about daddy issues, was I supposed to go, 'Surprise! My dad did actually die when I was six months old, but please have sex with me anyway'? And then," she barrels on, "we decided we weren't, you know, serious or whatever, and I kept assuming it would… end eventually? But we just kept seeing each other and the date kept creeping up, and I ignored it, because it's not like you're my fucking boyfriend."

The whiplash of her cursing would probably make him laugh if he wasn't feeling so desperately miserable.

"And then I came over last night and you—and then I… decided to stay…" She shakes her head, damp strands of hair whipping against her cheek. There are blueish shadows under her eyes, violently contrasting with the red. "And I thought I could handle it and it would be fine, but then I woke up and I just—I couldn't… I just kept thinking—" and that's the last word that makes it out of her before her air supply seems to shut off. Her chest shudders and her eyes close, and he wants to peck out his own fucking liver for letting this entire awful situation come to be.

"You have to take a breath every now and then," he scolds instead. "Fuck's sake."

To his intense concern, that doesn't even earn him a withering look. Just a continuation of the weird hitching rhythm of her chest. Her hands clench tighter around her knees, dimpling the skin with pale half-moons. Looking at her is borderline unendurable.

He groans. "Fuck this." And then he swings around over the ledge of the tub, kicking his limbs inside, where they are immediately soaked.

It's a big enough tub—compared to the size of his flat, the shower stall is almost impractically decadent—but it's not really meant for two. A fact he is keenly aware of as he goes to his knees beside Rose's shivering, twitching body.

Careful, he takes her by the shoulders and turns her around, then he spreads his knees as far as he's able—thanking hell he didn't decide to change into denims before this—so she can sort of sit in between them. He pulls her in until her curved back touches his chest.

The cotton clinging to her is still too cool, and he is grateful for the hot spray that continues to fall around them. At least, if they're going to be wet through, they can still share some goddamned body heat.

It's with this goal in mind that he wraps his arms around her—his whole body, hunching in over the snarled knot of her form. Letting their breathing fall into a shared, slower rhythm. "That's it," he feels himself say, like he's down some tunnel, far away from himself. "Just breathe with me, there's a girl."

He doesn't know how long they sit there like that: long enough for his knees to begin aching, and for the air to go humid against his nose, soft with the smell of her hair.

Her shampoo is sunny, somehow. Citrus, with something fresh and green.

"This is fucking ridiculous," he mumbles eventually. "You should have told me."

"I—" she starts, but he squeezes.

"Yes, yes. I should have made it easier for you to tell me, I know," he grinds out. "I'm an arsehole. And I shouldn't have said that shite about our ages either, because it only called attention to what's basically obvious to anyone with one or more eyes in their head. Which is that you can do far, far fucking better than me."

The worst part, which he does not mention, is that he hadn't even fucking meant anything by that whole 'daddy issues' bit. It had just felt expected, somehow—after the zoo that was his trial and with the zombie horde dogging his steps post-acquittal, he'd felt like an acknowledgement had to be made in case some hack wearing a wire was sitting nearby, just waiting to turn her relative youth and incredible beauty into a new headline in a smear piece.

The disgraced former spin doctor desperately pawing at a woman half his age would undoubtedly make a good photo op. So instead, he'd been snotty and perverse. And now he's paying for it.

Worse, she's paying for it.

"You should, by the way," he adds, feeling her hand squeeze back, curled somewhere around his wrist. "I'm serious. Anyone would be better. A fucking dogcatcher with a furs shop. A monk. I could set you up with fucking Ollie Reeder, so long as you don't mind that he's gay."

To his relief, she actually snorts. It's a laugh, liquified and wobbly, but real. "Oh, shut up."

"And I… I'm sorry about your dad." He swallows, having to force down a new wave of panic—not to do with her, this time. It's all him.

He braids their fingers together, feeling like a fucking pansy and trying to focus on the drumming water against his back. He so rarely fears inadequacy, but this is one area in which he's failed again and again and again.

He's been reliably informed that he is not a comforting presence.

"I really am, darling," he adds weakly.

"It was a long time ago," she says. "I barely even remember him."

"That doesn't make it easier, does it?"

Half of him waits for her to stiffen or recoil, while the logical part of his brain is forced to admit that Rose would never. She's far too kind.

That's always been his issue, really. She's just so goddamn kind, and he could kick himself in the head for taxing that. Keeping her at arm's length when she obviously doesn't want to be, making her feel like the showerhead would be a better listener. Christ.

She breathes deep instead, and her body unfolds itself until her head is resting on his chest.

"No," she admits. A long exhale. "It really doesn't."

The air is properly foggy now. Her skin is pink where he can see it. But he doesn't let go of her, and she gives no indication of wanting him to. He can feel the grief subsiding in the air, sucked down the drain.

That's the way of it: it comes in waves. And when it's gone, you might not resemble who you were before it.

"Ollie Reeder," she says, some indefinable time later. "God. I would literally rather donate my vagina to the National Trust. That's repulsive."

He kisses her shoulder, wishing fleetingly that it was bare. "Accept my apology."

"You know you didn't actually apologise for anything," she scoffs, sounding more and more like herself. "Except for my dad which, according to a near-thirty-year-old police report, you had nothing to do with."

But he kisses her again, and again, and she sighs. He likes to think she does so at least a little bit because it feels nice.

"Of course I forgive you, dickhead." He puffs a laugh against her, tightening his grip, and she settles into it like a cat in a sunray. Fucking unbelievable. "I know we haven't… really talked about it properly, Malcolm, but I—I mean, I get it, you know?" Two of her fingers fiddle with his damp sleeve. "Neither of us is particularly trusting."

"Understatement of the millennium."

"But I want to," she goes on, words seizing his heart in his chest. Seriously, Dr. Jones is going to kill him at their next appointment. "Trust you, I mean. Is that stupid?"

Her bones under his hands feel strong and sturdy, and her flesh is as forgiving as the rest of her, and he finally allows himself to feel all the fear he's been keeping at bay since the moment they met on that street corner, two in the morning. It had felt like a colossal fuck-up waiting to happen, or like an undeserved stay of execution.

"Yes," he answers shortly. "Probably so." He clears his throat, the sound feeling too loud in the close space. "But at least we're on equal idiot footing."

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees the motion of her cheeks, and when she tilts her head up to look at him, she's smiling. Blotchy and sweet.

Malcolm Tucker is not a romantic man. He's just fucking not. But he'd swear up and down in a court of law that he could get lost in Rose Tyler's gaze and be perfectly happy for it.

His fear fades into a background hum, suddenly fucking unimportant. He feels himself soften in ways he's still figuring out how to allow.

After a moment, her tongue slides between her teeth. "You've really never seen Psycho?"

He rolls his eyes with a groan. "What is with this generation and your relentless nostalgia?" he complains. "There are about five hundred brand new superhero movies to choose from and you want to watch some old—"

With her hands on his for balance, Rose pushes up a little, stretches her spine, and shuts him up with a kiss.

#hope you like! apologies for the wait! and also for any failures in grammar/editing due to my Extreme Brain Fog lmao <3 hugs #fic and chips #tuckerrose #malcolm tucker x rose tyler #ttoi x dw #dw fic #prompt fic #hurt/comfort #abbey writes #malcolm tucker #rose tyler #the thick of it #doctor who #i love them they're my fav rarepair ever ever ever

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