bluesuit_handy

Who: Handy and Rose
Where: Hallway/Banquet Hall
When: Evening, after Handy's chat with Jack, and after he meets Temperance Brennan; also after Rose's conversation with Jack.
Summary: Troubled by what Jack said about Rose avoiding the Doctor and about her being from "after" Handy, said Handy decides to seek her out.

Handy left the library sometime in the late afternoon to take up wandering through the hallways of the hotel. He wasn't entirely sure whether or not he was looking for Rose - he both desperately wanted to talk to her after what Jack had told him and, at the same time (though he would never admit it to himself) he was at least a little bit afraid at what her reaction might be to seeing him again (not to mention that, as obvious as it was from what Jack had said, he didn't want to confirm the fact of his own death). He couldn't remember a time as the Doctor when he'd been so shy about anything, but then he wasn't really the Doctor. Not completely. A few speech patterns hadn't been the only thing he had inherited from Donna. For all that she was so brash and loud and brave on the outside, she (and thus Handy) didn't have that old self-assurance that had gotten the Doctor through so much of his life. They were both good at pretending, though, even to themselves, so Handy told himself that he hadn't immediately sought Rose out when he discovered her presence because he'd wanted to spend some time exploring by himself, not because he was afraid that the person on whom he'd come to rely for stability in his thus far very short life would turn him away.

It was good that he'd managed to convince himself of that, or else he might have turned right back around and gone back to hide in his room when he turned a corner and spotted her.

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His grin made her grin; it was just as infectious as it had always been. The feeling was bittersweet and she was absolutely enraptured by it. "Oh, I have my doubts," she told him in as serious a tone as she could muster before breaking into giggles.

"Besides, I don't think spoilers much matter here," she continued a few moments later. "If we get to leave here at all, we'll either remember all this or we won't. If we don't, spoilers don't matter, and if we do, then everythin' will have changed anyway."

Handy inhaled loudly and looked around the room. "We can't be in either of our home universes," he said, shaking his head. "The reapers would have come down on us by now. Either that or I was right, and nothing we tell each other matters because we're not the originals anyway."

He looked back at her again, a smile on his lips. "I can't say I'm glad to have been shanghaied to some mystery dimension...but maybe it's not all bad, if we can be together from different times like this."

Rose couldn't bear to tell him that part of her was wishing he wasn't sitting right there in front of her, that it was killing her to see his face, hear his voice, know that he was alive and safe and not at all the man he would become. She imagined this was how it had been for River Song, who she'd heard about one random night during a marathon of banana daiquiris that had left them more than a little sloshed.

"'s definitely gonna be a lot less lonely round here now," she added brightly, returning that smile. "Someone to chat with, find trouble to get into... 've missed that."

"Trouble? In a big posh hotel with everything you could ever want?" Handy grinned. "We'll have to start looking for it right away."

Right now, though, he realized, he wasn't really feeling up to much in the way of trouble. He stifled a yawn as he reached for another handful of chips.

Rose raised an eyebrow at him. She knew what that meant, she'd seen him try it enough. And not just in the early years, either, he'd always tried to stretch his own endurance to match what he'd had as a Time Lord.

"Maybe you should get some sleep?" she suggested casually, then gestured at his plate. "After you finish inhaling your food, o' course."

Handy stopped and looked at her, an eyebrow raised. "Next you'll be telling me when to..." his brow furrowed as he thought about it. "...no, I can't think of anything to top telling me when to eat and sleep. Nothing I care to mention, at least." His mouth curled into a wry half-smile. "Would I get a bedtime story?"

"After seein' you nearly fall over on top o' poor Tony more than a few times, I had to start paying attention, 's all," she explained, hoping she wasn't making him sound like an invalid. He never seemed too keen on talking about his human-ness. "You get the hang of it pretty quick though, swear."

Rose paused for a moment and narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't need a bedtime story," she decided, popping a last chip in her mouth before wiping her hands on an elegant cloth napkin. "Got more 'n enough imagination all on your own."

Handy shoveled a few more chips into his own mouth before wiping his own hands and setting the plate aside. "Fine, but you still have to check under the bed for monsters."

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