**Dedicated to @nghtlck for her gorgeous banner (on the side)**
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Doo-wee-ooo doo-wee-ooo.
Jess's eyes popped open to the sound of her phone blaring the Doctor Who theme song, which was her cue to wake up.
"Oi! Turn that down," a familiar voice rang from down below.
Jess sighed in reassurance. It wasn't a dream, she thought excitedly. He's real. He's here.
She pulled the covers off her legs and ran downstairs - hair disheveled and breath still morning-like - to be met with the Doctor himself.
"Geez, you look terrible," he muttered. Jess rolled her eyes.
"So," she said playfully, "don't like your own theme song?"
He looked baffled. "Theme song? You mean, that was my theme song?" He plastered on a grin.
"Sure was." She smiled, too.
Jess looked around the lounge, inferring her mother had left early for work.
"You didn't sleep last night, did you?" she asked. Knowing him, she thought, he probably hasn't slept in the last decade.
"Nope," he said with a smirk. "I was too busy thinking."
"About what?"
"So, this show of mine. What's it called?" he asked, averting the question completely.
"Uh, Doctor Who," Jess said while stepping into the kitchen. The smell of pancakes and eggs felt like a slap in the face, along with waffles, bacon, and freshly-brewed tea.
"Did you say -"
"Doctor!" Jess, gasped, taking in everything he had done. "You made all this?"
"Well, yeah," he beamed.
"I'm only one person. How am I supposed to eat all this -" she glanced at the clock, "in fifteen minutes?" He looked at her quizzically.
"What do you mean, fifteen minutes?" he said as she rushed upstairs, taking her hair out of its messy plait and brushing her teeth.
"I've got school!" she called back, holding up two different jumpers in front of the mirror. One was 'Keep Calm and Don't Regenerate', and the other was the Van Gogh painting of the exploding TARDIS.
"Which one, Doctor?" she asked, standing in the doorway, - a bit of toothpaste on the corner of her lips - holding them both up for him to see.
"Is it really possible to keep calm while doing anything that involves me, Jessica?"
She looked back at the 'Keep Calm' one and smiled. "Regeneration it is. Today's the twenty-third, yeah? Two more days till Christmas!"
A frown pulled at Jess's lips. Two more days till your time. She threw the crimson colored fabric over her head, hoping he didn't notice her worrying expression.
Pulling her flimsy fandom gummy bracelets up her wrist, she sped downstairs and took a bite of waffle, sipped her tea, and grabbed her deep blue backpack, slinging it over her shoulder hurriedly.
"Okay, Doctor, don't go running off. I'll be back at three." She kissed him quickly on the cheek, to which he blushed. "Call me if anything goes up in flames." She turned back around. "You know what, don't call me if anything goes up in flames." She walked through the doorway, but poked her head around the wood. "Oh, and uh, don't break my Dalek." She gave him a firm look and began her on-foot journey to school.
While in that dismal place everyone hated to go, she worried constantly about the Time Lord at home. She hoped he didn't look through her Tumblr - oh how embarrassing that would be - or watch any episodes beyond season five (as he hadn't lived beyond that, or at least that's what she thought, based on the floppy-ness of his hair and the pure giddiness in his tone). If he read any of her fan-fictions dedicated to him, she felt she'd die of embarrassment.
At around two o'clock in the afternoon, when Jess was as tired as a fifteen-year-old could be in the middle of a school day (and a Friday, for that matter), the intercom announced for "Jessica Bennett, come to the office immediately". It sounded urgent, and Jess could feel the blood drain from her face as she carefully strolled down the main corridor and into the main office, where the Doctor was sitting as still as he could (which wasn't very still at all), a pile of disarray papers left to sit in the corner.
Jess's eyes widened in complete astonishment. "Doctor," she hissed, sitting down in the chair next to him, "what are you doing here?"
"I may have, well ... I may have - accidentally - broke your Dalek. And that shelf over here." He looked over at the broken plastic guiltily, as Jess tried to swallow her impatience. She just then remembered who she was talking to, and laughed. To someone other than her, it - may have - sounded maniacal, but she didn't care.
Her joy was clouted off her face as she asked, "Not my special-edition 50th Anniversary British flag Dalek, right?" She'd acquired it in November, a 'Day of the Doctor' present to herself. It was her favorite, and the most valuable thing she owned.
"No. Your alarm clock one. It started beeping so I pointed my sonic at it and it kind of -" he paused, as if what he was about to tell her would cost him his life, "- exploded."
"Exploded? You're kidding me."
"Miss Bennett," the school secretary - Mrs. Andrews - called, staring at her with those fierce, yellow eyes beyond those horn-rimmed glasses that reminded Jess of a hawk staring at its prey.
"Um," she gulped. "Yes?"
"Who is this man? He's been here for the past ten minutes and all he's been is a nuisance." Jess turned and looked at the Doctor.
She walked over there, leaning forward over the counter and whispered, "Sorry, he's my uncle, mom's brother. Staying over for the holidays. He's kind of -" she looked back, and the Doctor was trying to fix the flower pot he just knocked over, "- crazy, if you get what I mean. You know how that is. Do you mind if I bring him back home? It's the last day before break, s'not like I'm missing anything, right?"
Mrs. Andrews glanced back over to the Doctor and visibly shuddered. "Go on ahead, just don't bring him back." Jess grabbed the Doctor by the hand and led him out the doors.
"Don't move. 'Kay? I have to go get my bag."
The Doctor gave her an impatient look, and muttered, "You're treating me like I'm five, Jessica."
Jess rolled her eyes. "You're acting five, Doctor."
With that, Jess dashed through the double-doors and up the flight of stairs to get to her locker - a tiny little thing at the corner of the hall - and when she returned, the Doctor was nowhere to be found.
"Doctor? Doctor!" she called - adjusting the strap of her bag onto her shoulder hastily - and sauntered around the strip of forest next to the building. She peered beyond the tufts of bare tree bark, and a green light was glowing a bit off into the distance, so she strolled towards it.
"Are you sonicing a ... cat?" Jess questioned, glancing at the furry ginger ball of fluff surrounded by screwdriver-light.
"I think he likes it," he said with a satisfied smile.
"Don't you speak feline?"
"I speak everything," he boasted, tucking his sonic into his coat pocket and turning to face her. "But it's mostly telepathic with mammals such as the cat and other animals-" Jess cut him off with a glare.
"C'mon. Better get back before it gets cold out."
But it never did get cold. The walk home was fair (it couldn't be below fifty degrees), and the wind was at a bare minimum. Jess asked the Doctor about this as they arrived at the cream-colored front porch.
"I crash-landed here. Which, if I'm correct, then you'll remember this from when you saw it last time with the Cybermen and the Daleks, means that the bubble - it's not a bubble, but call it a bubble - around this universe has cracked. All of time and space is bleeding through the cracks, and that's why the whole climate is rapidly increasing," he explained.
Jess nodded her head and turned her key in the lock fastened onto the door. "So, if you don't fix it soon -"
"The entire universe will implode on itself, yes."
"That's what I was afraid to hear." Jess opened the door and took off her sneakers, setting her bag down in the mud-room.
"And why's that?"
"In order for you to fix it, you'd have to close off this dimension permanently. I'd never see you again." Jess looked down at her sock-clad feet, disappointment drowning her eyes.
"Hey, hey, hey." The Doctor delicately lifted her chin up so he could look her in the eyes. "You know me, probably better than any human in all of time and space." He took her in an embrace. "Would I ever do that to you?"
Jess smiled and gripped him tight. "No, no you wouldn't."
But you would, she thought, if you had to choose between them or me. Because you always choose them. That's just who you are, Doctor. That's how you'll always be. Saving the humans, leaving the girls behind. You think you're saving us, too, but really, you're just doing the opposite.
"Doctor?" Jess muttered, breaking the contact.
"Yes?"
"Please, for the sake of every universe in existence, don't ever change."