Summary: Rose can't fit all her clothes in her backpack, so the Doctor helps out and Rose realises something about the new him. Set just before New Earth.

Spoilers: none, but if you really don't want to know a single thing about 1x02, 2x00 (the 2005 Xmas special) or 2x01, then don't read.

Disclaimer: I don't own.

A/N: Celebrate! Tenth story put up! Double digits! Uhuh. Okay. :D Just out of my own interest, it took me longer to write this one than Going Domestic, my other Doctor Who fic (which is longer). Very interesting. I like the other one better though. A lot better. Anyway, this is inspired by The Runaway Bride but someone's story got me started on writing this. Sorry, I don't remember whose. I don't even remember what specific thing I read that got me typing, but thanks, whoever you are. Enjoy!

Same Difference

The Doctor eyed Rose's backpack dubiously. "You're not going to fit all those clothes in there," he observed.

"Yeah I will," Rose said stubbornly, not sparing him a glance as she rummaged deeper into her wardrobe. The Doctor watched the odd bits of clothing fly steadily onto the bed, his head swivelling to and fro like someone at a tennis match. He thought he had counted forty bits and pieces of clothing but he could be wrong. In fact, he probably was as the ever-growing pile suggested very strongly.

"Okay," Rose declared, stepping back a pace with a satisfied look on her face.

"Right," the Doctor said, beginning to bounce on the balls of his feet in excitement. He bent down to pick up the backpack and hand it to Rose so that they could hurry this whole tedious process along, but she wasn't even paying attention to him. He followed her current line of focus, straight to a large, new group of bags filled with…more clothes. He lifted one incredulous eyebrow and dropped the backpack to the floor again with a soft thump. "What do you need all these clothes for?"

"I can't go around wearing the same things all the time!" she said, exasperated.

"Well I do it!"

She looked heavenward for a moment. "Men!"

"What?" He dragged out the word. Rose just shook her head.

There was a moment of silence which was only broken by the quiet rhythmic sounds of the new clothes being added to the pile. "But…" he began slowly, "what's with all the new clothes all of a sudden?"

"Boxing Day," Rose explained briefly, her mind clearly on other things.

"Ah." He pretended to know what she was talking about.

Twenty minutes passed and Rose was done sorting through her new clothes…or as the Doctor liked to see it, taking them out one by one, admiring them and finally placing them on the pile. He knew exactly how many new clothes she hadn't put on the pile: none.

Now Rose was shovelling the clothes haphazardly into the backpack, the Doctor helping as best he could. They weren't even halfway through the pile when it was stuffed to the top and almost bursting at the seams.

"Time to pick and choose, Rose. It's Judgement Day!" He gave her a small grin that faded when she wasn't looking in his direction. He gazed out the window longingly. He needed to be out there in the universe, someplace far, far away. "We should have started this earlier," he sighed.

Rose looked at him properly for the first time since they had started packing and saw the beginnings of desperation and the need to get away from stifling domesticity. It was so plainly written all over his face she was surprised that she hadn't noticed it earlier. "I won't be long, I promise." She flashed him a quick smile and surveyed the colourful pile before her. Something in her posture shifted and she stood up squarely, fastening the straps of her bag. "All done," she announced. Her eyes met his. He was frowning. "I'm being serious," she affirmed.

The Doctor gave her a long look.

"I am!" she repeated, a smile hesitantly playing across her face as he stared at her with that inscrutable expression. It was making her ever so slightly uncomfortable.

Then the Doctor reached out, unfastened the straps on her bag and methodically began to pull out handfuls of clothes. Her eyes followed his movements. "What are you doing?" she asked, unable to decipher the expression on his face. The new him was so different. He was definitely much cheerier and happy-go-lucky, but at the same time infinitely harder to read. It unsettled her.

As though he was feeling her uncertain gaze trained on him, he threw a reassuring grin over his shoulder and the shift in moods threw Rose off balance for a second. "Just wait and you'll see!" he chirped, shaking out the last of the clothes onto the bed. He quickly pushed past her out the door, past Jackie and Mickey's sharp questions from the kitchen, down the apartment stairs and into the TARDIS, Rose hurrying to match his breakneck pace all the way.

Once inside she found him scrabbling around under the console with his tongue between his teeth in concentration. She watched him from the side, a question hovering on her lips. "Doctor –"

"Where is it?" he exclaimed, springing to his feet and taking off again deeper into the TARDIS. Rose followed him into the wardrobe, completely bemused.

"There you are!" he all but cooed ten minutes later. He stood up, triumphantly holding a very strange, shiny, smallish but dangerous-looking metal device with a glass tube screwed on top that he cradled gently in the palm of his hand. He shot Rose an animated grin. "Know what this is?" He held it up right between her eyes.

"No," she replied, warily eyeing the contraption in his hands but felt a smile spreading across her face all the same. His enthusiasm was infectious, just like before.

"This," he paused theatrically for effect, "is a ­­­spatial amplifier, temporal extrapolator and space-time interval dilator all rolled into one!"

Rose blinked slowly. "A what?"

"Time Lord science!" he said, no less cryptically. And he jabbed the pointy end straight in the bag.

Rose started forward in alarm when she realised that this was the Doctor, the same one with a different face who she still trusted, and he wouldn't do anything destructive to her bag. Even if he did – accidentally of course – she could get another one. Well…now that she thought about it, the bag probably wouldn't self-destruct. But the Doctor did have a history of making various random things explode and with that golden light shining through from the bottom…

Her fears were unnecessary as she saw when she peered inside. All that was happening was a strange, golden gaseous substance oozing out from the tip of the device and swirling, vortex-like at the bottom of the bag. "What is that?" she asked. "Some kind of…energy?"

"Ah, sort of. Well, not really, but basically, yes it is," he replied, only managing to confuse her more. Now the device began to suck back the so-called energy into the glass tube, where it shimmered for a moment before settling down and the tube became transparent again. Then he stuck his head in the bag, muttering indistinctly to himself and prodding it with his hand while Rose looked on. He re-emerged a moment later with a self-satisfied smirk on his face. "All done," he announced, thrusting the bag at her.

"What did you do?" she frowned. It didn't look any different, which she supposed she could take as a good sign.

"Go and find out." He waggled his eyebrows knowledgeably.

"Just tell me!" she pleaded, giving him her best puppy dog eyes look. Amazingly, he resisted…with noticeable effort.

"Go on," he repeated firmly, leading her back to the entrance. "I'll be waiting right here."

"You better be," she smiled, giving up. She hurried back up the stairs and into her apartment. Inside her room again, she resumed packing with half a mind on the task. The other half was sorting through the similarities and differences between her first doctor and the new him. There were so many differences, like his physical appearance, his accent (which she missed dearly), his demeanour which used to be calmer, and his occasional manic grins which were now once every few seconds. She tried not to miss the old him for the new Doctor's sake – or rather, his sake since he was still the same person – but she did.

And yet, there was so much the same, like his penchant for getting into trouble (the Sycorax invasion straight after his regeneration said it all), his love for his TARDIS and all the stars and planets out there… She trailed off, leaving her list of similarities significantly shorter. Was he that different? No, she admonished herself, she just wasn't thinking hard enough. Still…

Her thoughts ran to a standstill. Since when was her bag so big? The pile was almost gone and she wasn't even nearing the top yet!

She stood stock still for a moment, turning the situation over in her mind when suddenly it clicked so easily into place. First his ship, and now her bag. She laughed out loud, and for a moment her mind flashed back to Platform 1 – her first proper trip with the Doctor – where he had fixed her phone. He had told her that he came first in jiggery-pokery then, and he still did now. No difference at all. The same Doctor. Perhaps not on the outside, but on the inside he was very much the same. Of course she already knew that, but somehow his willingness to do jiggery-pokery for her even now cemented this fact in her mind. And that gave her the most inexplicable, wonderful, relieved feeling inside.

She quickly finished packing and raced out the door to her mum and Mickey who were already downstairs, waiting to see her off. After a final goodbye from Mickey, she pushed open the door of the TARDIS. He looked up from the console as she entered and immediately spotted the snug fit her clothes made with the backpack.

"All fits in there?" A knowing smile flitted across his face.

Rose nodded anyway and beamed. "Thank you," she said gratefully, feeling more at ease with him than ever.

"No problem." His grin easily topped hers.

She shrugged out of her backpack and stepped up to the console. "So, where are we going?"

"Further than we've ever gone before." He grinned rakishly, eyes alight with anticipation and he yanked the lever down.

Yes, the ending is not entirely accurate. He actually pushes something on the side of the console. But yanking levers sounds so much cooler. :D

Technobabble is so hard to write.

I think that the 'bigger on the inside' thing was highly predictable. Oh well. I haven't been very original lately. Please review anyway, if clicking a little blue button is not too much trouble!

Thanks for reading!