New fic, at least that way my hours in the lab's tea room aren't wasted. Came up with this little bunny while sitting in there today, just seemed the right thing to write.
Unbetaed, so I would be grateful for comments/corrections. Hope you like.

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Title: And then there's tea
Disclaimer: I possess tea, but not Doctor Who
Spoilers: POTW

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What Rose came to like most about the TARDIS weren't the travels in space and time, the constant feeling of adventure or the sheer impossible space it seemed to contain. It wasn't one of the gardens or the pools, her own incredible big bathroom or her giant bed.

She came to like the tea room most.

That little ordinary room, crammed with cabinets (which would have been a lot of work to put up without a sonic screwdriver, the Doctor assured her), a little table and some chairs that seemed to be cobbled together from a hundred different time zones.
Jack once joked that she seemed to live in that place, but he would always turn up sooner or later too, sitting and laughing about recent adventures, talking about old friends and his time as an agent.

The little room didn't even have its own water connection, more than once the Doctor had appeared at her door on his quest to make tea, offering her a share of the reward should he find any water. "Care for a tea?" sounded so right when he said it.
She and Jack could sit in the cosy windowless room forever, discussing in the evening, staring silently into their first mugs to wake up in the morning. The Doctor would pity them and their puny ape biological clocks, constantly in motion, never seeming to be tired as them, always about fixing things, drinking away their last tea and leaving a mess of oily footsteps, spilled sugar and at least three different mugs in his wake.
He would sit there quietly during the night while the humans slept, brooding over his tea, life, the universe and everything. His mood would light up as soon as she came in, haunted by insomnia again, knowing where she would find her cure.
He would smile when she started to fall asleep even before taking a sip of his favourite mixture ("Got it at the Boston tea party, I don't think they'd mind"), leaning onto his shoulder or placing her head onto his arm on the table.
Sometimes he woke her up, complaining she was drooling onto his jacket and sending her off into her bed, but at other times he would let her sleep. He had carried her back into her room more than once, tugging her under the blanket and placing a gentle kiss on her forehead when he thought she was still fast asleep. She always pretended to be.

All corridors seemed to lead to that most unspectacular room of the TARDIS, it was the centre of them all. And so the Doctor knew where to look for her after he remembered her name, after losing Jack.
And himself.
He held her in her arms until her crying subsided into weak sobbing, whispering "Care for a tea?" into her ear. She smiled at him when she realized that some things never changed.