Some Ten/Rose domestic fluff for the DoctorRose Fic Marathon, mostly to soothe my mental health but who doesn’t need more Ten/Rose in their lives?
T W E N T Y O N E
SUMMARY: Ten/Rose. It's Rose's twenty-first birthday, and she's invited the Doctor along to a party thrown by her mum. A night of pub celebrations, boisterous friends and family gatherings, quizzes, a little bit of jealousy and some hard truths ahead, the Doctor must grit and bear the domesticity for his best friend — well, the love of his life. If only there was something to make it worthwhile..
TAGS: fluff, domestic, romance, jealousy, pub quizzes, everyone loves Rose Tyler (the Doctor being top of that list), mutual pining, longing, etc etc
Read on AO3: twenty one
***
“See you’ve found a way to pass the time,” she muttered once Laura was out of earshot, slipping her arm out from his and grabbing the napkin from the bar. She looked at it distacefully for a moment, before she passed the napkin to him.
“Enduring terrible flirting and being come on to is just one of the many things I’m voluntarily subjecting myself to to be here with you tonight.”
“How hard that must be for you.”
He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, she seemed irritated, and when Laura put the drink in front of her and begrudgingly took the tenner from the Doctor, Rose seemed to only sadden as she swirled her straw around in her drink.
“Just didn’t think you were interested in this sort of stuff, s’all,” she shrugged.
He frowned; he assumed she must have meant flirting. “I’m not.”
Rose looked at her drink for a moment, a pinch in her brow that he couldn’t translate. It wasn’t indifference, it wasn’t even the irritation she was projecting on her voice, but he wasn’t fond of it, he knew that much.
“Only got eyes for you, promise.”
***
It was one of those days, the ones he hadn’t really ever had to subject himself to in his many years of life, and he calls them ‘obligatory domestics’. The kinds of days where he needs to drop Rose off so she can do a bit of ‘life admin’: check in on her grandparents, nip to primark to get some basics, cash her birthday cheques, all that sort of stuff.
And then, of course, there were the days he needed to attend parties.
Now, he wasn’t a party person. Awkward small talk, terrible music — depending on the decade, of course — dreadful finger food, that annoying needless obligation to stay and ‘enjoy yourself’ when all you really wanted to do was leave. This was one of those days where Rose had a party to attend, and had asked him to just drop her off back at home for the night and they could get back to travelling the next day.
The problem was, it was her birthday party.
Now, if it were his birthday — if he even had a birthday — then he wouldn’t exactly call it a mark for celebration. Not even at the turn of a new century, and he most certainly wouldn’t call turning a thousand a celebration, which he was sure was coming up soon. And the funny thing was, Rose didn’t feel the need to celebrate birthdays, either. Well, unless they were somebody else’s; she would go out of her way to make that day astronomically special for them. So when she had turned to him last week, when they were out enjoying a milkshake in a diner on Panvorix, and told him, regrettably, that her mum wanted to throw her a birthday party with her friends and family for her twenty-first, which he was sure meant something to humans, he wondered whether he really needed to be there.
But, and this is where he finds it difficult: he somehow knew she wanted him there. She hadn’t explicitly said so, she had just sort of shrugged and said ‘you can come, too, although I doubt you’ll want to’. But other than that, she had talked about it as though she was going to go, not they. And if he only paid attention to her words and what she was saying, like he thought most humans — and, well, every other species in existence — did, then he would have felt no obligation whatsoever to join her. But these humans, and especially the British, have this odd sort of way of communicating where they would say one thing with words but also without them, and usually, the things they weren’t saying was quite different to the things that they were. And it seemed as though this was the case with Rose. Her lack of eye contact, the slight reddening in her neck, the indifference that he just knew wasn’t as indifferent as she would have liked it to be. She’d slurped her milkshake and changed the subject and that was that — no need to dwell. But once she had gone to bed that night, he wondered. He tinkered away in the control room and tried to interpret all those little things and he just couldn’t, so he gave up and decided to take her for her word. So he told himself, if she brings it up again, if she asks-but-doesn’t-ask him to come, then he’ll go with her. Otherwise, he’ll leave her with her mum for the night and come back for her the next day as she asked.
That was until Jackie called.
“You’re coming,” she had said flatly, and she had said it in such a frighteningly threatening way that he only nodded and agreed.
Rose had seemed most happy when he had said they were getting to her mum’s for midday on Saturday. She had quickly tried to hide it, and once more he got the impression that she was only acting nonchalant. But he wasn't quite sure, so he double checked just to be safe.
“You sure you want me there?”
She had frowned, and again shrugged without looking at him. “Course, you’re my best mate.”
And so here he was. Waiting in the control room for her, in a blue suit this time, while she packed her things in an overnight bag.
Today was her actual birthday. Her mum had called her all excited, wishing her a happy birthday — even though she was about to see her in a couple of hours. The Doctor had made her a cup of tea and said happy birthday, too, but Rose’s cheeks had flushed pink and he took that to mean that was enough making-a-fuss over her birthday for the day. Other than that, he hadn’t seen her all morning, and so when she entered the control room freshly showered and now in her jeans and a hoodie, her backpack slung over her shoulders, she grinned quite sheepishly and said,
“Hello.”
“Hello,” he echoed, a little less nervously. “All packed and ready, then?”
“I am indeed,” she nodded, and skipped over to him with a bit more gusto. “You mentally prepared?”
‘Oh, absolutely not.”
“Me neither,” she chuckled, and tugged on his arm. “You didn’t see mum on my eighteenth — she gets several octaves higher, just to warn you.”
He shuddered. “Well, lucky for you— and me, I suppose— my capacity to detect high pitches gets less and less with each passing century.”
“That’s good to know.”
After they had gone to Nando’s for lunch, Jackie had asked the Doctor to join her and help set up at the pub while Rose got ready back at the flat with a couple of her mates. He hadn’t been in love with the idea — a few hours alone with Jackie filling him in on the gossip of somebody called ‘Bev’ while various 90s pop songs echoed through the room, that was — and she certainly did like to talk when she was excited. They had pinned a few ‘Happy 21st Birthday!’ banners around the room, chucked a lot of small plastic ‘21’s across the floor and the bar, and, by the time Rose called to say she was on her way, the room had filled with quite a lot of people indeed. Some family members he was sure he had met before, little kids of cousins he definitely hadn’t, and a few of Rose’s friends who seemed to know her family quite well. It was the first time that day he had sort of warmed, seeing that Rose had grown up with such a loving group of friends and extended family, and he even loosened just a little as he chatted to a few while they waited for Rose to turn up.
“Everybody, she’s at the bottom of the road!” Jackie called out loudly, when she received a text from Shareen. At that, people picked up nearby birthday poppers and whistles, getting to their feet with excited and anticipatory smiles — the Doctor even had a confetti cannon himself ready to go for when she walked in.
But of course, when she did walk in, he couldn’t do anything at all except look at her.
As people called out excited ‘happy birthday!'s and set off their poppers, the Doctor found himself completely anchored to the spot while the room only burst with colour and into life. He had always found her quite beautiful, especially when she was giggling away or saying something particularly clever, and he had even found himself breathless once or twice to watch her. But tonight, goodness — he wasn’t convinced he had two bloody hearts because neither one was beating and certainly neither of them were supplying oxygen to the rest of his body.
It was her smile, without a doubt. It was different somehow, like an old smile he was sure she must have used before she met him, to see all these familiar faces of her loved ones. That, and her cheeks were dusted a delightful pink, a little shy he knew she must have been to have so many people around her for her. Her hair was wavy for once, and she wore a black dress that the Doctor was momentarily ashamed to find himself looking at; the way it sculpted her curves and defined the most enchanting silhouette, cut mid-thigh and exposing her legs — and he was especially ashamed for his gaze to linger on those, but she was simply so exquisite, everywhere, that he soon felt instead the same overwhelming awe he gets when he studies a painting, ones in which the colours tell a compelling story and the shapes express feelings that words could not completely.
He still hadn’t managed to find his breath by the time she caught his eye, and he found himself desperately trying to cling to coherent thoughts when she nervously made her way over to him.
“Hello,” she said again when she got to him, pausing for a moment before she reached up on her toes to give him a hug. He had just enough semblance of normality to return the gesture, albeit weakly — still trying to process his thoughts as he was.
Tell her!
“Happy birthday,” he whispered instead, and he heard her giggle by his ear before she released him, and there was a moment where he could have told her just how breathtaking she looked, but of course, he didn’t.
Instead, she scratched her arm and looked around the room. “Thanks for helping mum set all this up.”
“Oh, right—” he cleared his throat “— sure, no probs.”
“You’ll have to fill me in on all the gossip later.”
“Don’t worry, I took notes.”
She chuckled, and her eyes softened as she looked at him, taking him in, and they seemed to even darken somehow, which sent an odd sort of sense of affirmation through him — he was right not to shave today, then.
“Listen, er—” she began, her brow creasing in awkwardness, and she started scratching her arm again. He watched her curiously, wondering what she was about to say and feeling strangely nervous, all of a sudden. “Please don’t — I mean, thank you for coming, it— I just wanted to say please don’t stay, if you don’t want to— if you’re feeling awkward or anything just feel free to, you know—”
“Rose, it’s alright,” he grinned, putting his hands in his pockets. “I’ll be alright.”
“I know, I just didn’t want the last of the Time Lords to perish here in this pub in Southwark out of boredom.”
“Yeah, would be a dreadful end to their race I must admit.”
“Not one for the textbooks,” she giggled. “Nor one I’d particularly like on my conscience, either.”
“Blimey, you’re right — lot riding on the entertainment this evening, then.”
“Well in that case, I should remind you that mum planned this party.”
“Oh,” he groaned, and sighed defeatedly while she only continued to chuckle. “It’s just a couple of hours. I can do it.”
He sort of regretted saying that. Well, no, he definitely regretted saying that.
He’d spent the first hour or so meeting Rose’s family, and then after that getting to know five or six of Rose’s friends, sat around in a booth. They were all friendly enough, inviting him in as one of their own and of course, he thought, Rose’s friends would be charming, since they were Rose’s friends after all.
And then there was Callum, he thinks his name was, and at first the Doctor was able to maintain a calm composure despite his irritability when the lad put his arm around Rose, but after twenty minutes or so and he still hadn’t moved, the Doctor started to sincerely regret his decision to come here tonight and wondered whether he could quietly slip away and narrowly avoid some other, less painful end. But then Rose would give him that look, that smile that just seemed to settle him if only for the fact that it was hers. And so he stayed, listening to stories of their school days and joining in with their laughter until it became just a little too much, when Callum started whispering things to Rose when nobody else was paying attention. Rose didn’t seem particularly bothered by him, nor was she giving off any signs that she was uncomfortable, but he certainly seemed to have more of an agenda than she, and just enough that it pissed the Doctor off enough for him to excuse himself to get a drink instead.
“Just a Coke, thanks,” he said as he reached the bar, but the bartender looked back at him apologetically.
“Pepsi alright?” she said.
His shoulders slumped in disappointment because why would he want a Pepsi if he was ordering a Coke—
“Just kidding,” she grinned, reaching down for a glass and picking up a glass bottle of Coke. “Wouldn’t do that to you.”
“Oh,” he only half smiled, and loosened his tie just a little to finally just be able to breathe. “Well, that’s a relief.”
“You look like you could use something stronger, though.”
“Do I?” he frowned, somewhat surprised but not entirely that he must look exhausted to others. It was exhausting, realising that he was far too in love for his own good. But the bartender didn’t look like she thought that, not at all, as she grinned over to him.
“Parties don’t really seem like your sort of thing.”
He shook his head, resting his elbows on the bar. “No, not really.”
“So what is your thing, then?”
Earth wasn’t quite ready for the question to be answered with ‘time travel, mostly’, so he flustered a little in search of an answer more reasonable for the time period. “I tried soap carving, once. That was fun.”
She looked back at him completely confused for a moment, and he only added the admission to the long list of things he was regretting about this evening, before she gave him a friendly smile.
“Not something I would have expected you to say.”
When the Doctor only shook his head in hopeless exasperation, she grinned,
“I’m Laura, by the way.”
“John,” he retorted, as she placed the Coke in front of him.
“Nice to meet you John — this one’s on me.”
It took him a second to realise she had just bought him a drink — of Coke — but a common gesture nonetheless he was sure indicated flirting. “Oh— er, thanks.”
She nodded, but didn’t turn to serve any of the other guests, not that it was all that busy up at the bar, anyway. “So, John. Did you, er, come here with anyone tonight?”
As dreadful to admit as it was, he couldn’t say that he had. And it seemed so odd to him to think about, because he went everywhere with Rose, but he had never been anywhere with her. It wasn’t really something he had ever considered, whether he would like to start going places with Rose as his and he as hers, but now, as he thought about Rose with that slimy little git behind him, he rather wished that he didn’t have to fret. Not about the dreadful moment she tells him tonight that she’s going back to Callum's, and not about any other time in the future she would admit to having fallen in love with somebody else. It wasn’t a possessive thing, he didn’t want for nobody else to want her because she was his, but he wanted to just love her and be free to; no more of this pining and hiding and instead just be able to say that he was so terribly in love with her and that wasn’t going to change, no matter how much he wanted it to. Except he highly doubted she would want that, this nine-bloody-hundred-year-old alien who had murdered and cowered to be hopelessly devoted to her when she didn’t exactly ask for it. So, he swallowed, feeling his hearts sink in defeat as he did.
“No. Just me.”
Laura’s lips curled in triumph, and she leant in a little bit closer. “In that case, what are you doing tonight?”
If he was just that little bit less in love, he might have been tempted, he had to admit. But he was far beyond the point now of needing a distraction to this dreadful torment, he was much too in love with Rose to even be able to be distracted in the first place. Yet, he couldn’t quite find his voice to decline, so he only started to fluster as he broke eye contact, and took a sip of his drink in the meantime.
“Tell you what,” she smirked, taking a napkin from the bar and began to scribble something on it. “I finish at eleven-thirty. Here’s my number, just in case.”
As he helplessly watched her, he felt somebody put their arm through his as they approached the bar from behind, and was somewhat mortified to find Rose appear beside him. She looked quite peculiar indeed, an expression he had seen a couple of times aimed directly at the woman in front of her, and he glanced down in confusion when she placed her other hand on his arm.
“Malibu and Coke, please.”
Laura looked over to her, then down to her arm, then back up with a look that only seemed to mirror Rose’s. “Got any ID?”
Rose scoffed. “This is my party, you know.”
“Can’t serve you unless you’ve got ID.”
“Tell you what—” the Doctor interrupted, reaching into his pocket for the psychic paper as he heard Rose about to counter “—this one’s on me. Can’t have the birthday girl paying for her own drinks.”
Laura only looked back at him in disillusionment, her eyes flickered back to Rose. “Okay, but it was just you I was buying the drink for.”
Rose scoffed incredulously, and wrapped her arms around the Doctor’s only tighter as the two women seemed to be engaging in a fight without actually fighting. Or from what he could tell, anyway.
“See you’ve found a way to pass the time,” she muttered once Laura was out of earshot, slipping her arm out from his and grabbing the napkin from the bar. She looked at it distacefully for a moment, before she passed the napkin to him.
“Enduring terrible flirting and being come on to is just one of the many things I’m voluntarily subjecting myself to to be here with you tonight.”
“How hard that must be for you.”
He couldn’t put his finger on why, exactly, she seemed irritated, and when Laura put the drink in front of her and begrudgingly took the tenner from the Doctor, Rose seemed to only sadden as she swirled her straw around in her drink.
“Just didn’t think you were interested in this sort of stuff, s’all,” she shrugged.
He frowned; he assumed she must have meant flirting. “I’m not.”
Rose looked at her drink for a moment, a pinch in her brow that he couldn’t translate. It wasn’t indifference, it wasn’t even the irritation she was projecting on her voice, but he wasn’t fond of it, he knew that much.
“Only got eyes for you, promise.”
She seemed to only laugh in spite of herself at his words, and seemed to receive his joke — although he couldn’t be certain he had meant it to be one. She looked up at him through those devilishly long eyelashes of hers and he tried desperately to think of just about anything to say to change the subject.
“Having a nice night?”
Rose pulled up a bar stool and hoisted herself up, wiggling about to get comfortable. “S’been nice, yeah. So many mates I haven't seen in forever — not since we all went to get our GCSEs.”
He gazed to the side of her in thought. “Five years ago, that must be now?”
She raised her eyebrow, but didn’t smile. “Yeah. Can’t believe it.”
She started poking at the ice in her drink now, but not consciously. She was distracted, seemingly saddened by the thoughts running through her mind. He watched her hand, her nails recently painted, wearing the ring her mum had got her for her birthday.
“I’m twenty-one,” she almost whimpered.
“Wait till you get to nine-hundred.”
He was relieved to hear her laugh, a real one, and she glanced at him with kind eyes, her eyes, not those strangely woeful ones she looked at her glass with. “Yeah. If ever I’m feeling old, I’ll just think about you instead.”
“There are some benefits to being ancient, then.”
She giggled, and it only seemed to tickle her more until he saw her completely, Rose as he knew her returned back to him. It relieved him, and he realised he had stiffened to see her so glum. She glanced once more down at the napkin and he sighed, unsure exactly what she was thinking, before something told him to lift up her glass and place it underneath instead. She turned to him with a shy smile, her lips thin as she tried to hide whatever emotion was surfacing, and she was unable to hold his gaze for long when she leaned against him to nudge his arm with hers. An apology, he guessed, and he himself tittered in response. She was less saddened certainly, but her silence was not quite unburdened, so he sought,
“What’s on your mind?”
“Hmm?”
“You,” he said softly. “I know you don’t like your birthday, but something’s up.”
She once more gave him one of those thin smiles, a smile he recognised was one she was trying to put on for him but unsuccessfully — he knew her, afterall. She sighed, and shook her head.
“Everyone’s… it’s just so strange. Being back, after having been away. Things have just… happened. Like Charlie’s had a baby, can’t believe it. She’s younger than me.”
So that was it. He felt an odd sense of guilt in the centre of his chest that only sank lower, and he realised she had only been confronted with how much she had missed since travelling with him. How much she was missing out on, and how much he had taken from her while he only wanted to keep her for himself. But he didn’t suppose she needed his self-loathing tonight, so instead, he frowned as he thought.
“Charlie’s your…” he began, trying to remember as he scanned the room.
“Cousin.”
“Right,” he nodded. He was surprised to find her watching him with a gentle smile when he looked back at her. “What?”
“Nothing,” she grinned, sheepishly, looking down briefly as her smile only grew less so and slightly more endeared, might he say, instead. “Just you, trying to learn all my family and friends.”
“Trying being the keyword there — there’s a lot of them.”
“I know, but it’s funny,” she teased, that tongue sticking out of her teeth that he had to quickly avert his gaze from, “You can remember something complex and yet still get lost remembering the names of my family.”
“My mind sadly is not a TARDIS,” he jibed, and she chortled delightfully into her glasses as she took a sip. “Everytime I have to remember one of your cousin’s names, I have to forget about something else. I’ve forgotten Einstein’s special relativity equation to remember you have an Aunt called Jeanette.”
“Well, that's a bummer for relativity, because my Aunt’s called June.”
He frowned at her, momentarily fooled, before he rolled his eyes. “No she’s not.”
Rose scoffed with her mouth agape in shock. “Yes she is!”
As she giggled away, he vaguely recalled meeting a month, before his eyes widened and he blinked in defeat.
“Blimey, right then.”
Rose put her drink back down on the bar and struggled to contain her giggles and, goodness, he simply couldn’t look away. Her eyes scrunched shut, her nose wrinkled and smile so bright, she was impossibly beautiful when she was like this, her laughter sounding so pure and so wonderfully joyous. He wasn’t convinced she was laughing solely at his complete inability to remember anything remotely related to something so important as her family, because he only imagined it to be quite disappointing, but he wasn’t about to step in and stop her, especially not when he felt his own smile begin to grow at seeing her this way. She shook her head and opened her eyes as her giggles subsided but smile remained and she looked at him in the most breathtaking way and he could feel himself falling, needing to physically stop himself from leaning in closer to her.
There was a moment, one terribly long agonising moment, where he thought he might just falter. Despite everything inside him begging him not to, he found himself unable to hear himself when her eyes locked with his in such a way, in fact, the only thing that was able to prevent him from kissing her was knowing how terribly awkward it would be when she pulls back, wondering what on Earth he was thinking to presume she would want him to kiss her. So he swallowed, and looked away, back down at his drink and he took another sip.
Thankfully, before he had a chance to make a fool of himself and try to string a sentence together, he was interrupted by a voice sounding from a microphone behind them. They both turned, and, over at the corner of the pub stood two of Rose’s girlfriends, both of whom he remembered were with them at the table earlier, standing with a few pieces of card in their hands.
“Ahem — can we have everyone’s attention, please?” one of them — he was sure her name was Grace — announced, a smug anticipatory smile donned her slightly flushed face, and the room went quiet a moment before the music turned down, too. “Hi! Good evening, everyone! So, in case you aren’t all aware yet, today is our very own Rosie Tyler’s twenty-first birthday!”
The room broke into applause, a few cheers and the odd wolf whistle as many turned to look at Rose beside him.
He teased quietly only to her, “Rosie?”
“Shut up,” she muttered as she elbowed him, but couldn’t stop grinning despite herself. “Little gits know I hate being called Rosie.”
“So before we get started, a very happy birthday to you!” the other girl — Cara, was it? There goes Euler’s equation, he surrendered — said into the microphone. “We hope you’re having a great night, and we love you—”
“Even if she did nick my GHDs.”
Rose snorted when Grace stuck her tongue out at her. “I did not! I just forgot to give them back to you!”
“Hmm, how convenient— anyway,” Grace stressed, and the room was chuckling to their playful teasing. “We thought we might play a little game, before we start the, er, slideshow in a bit—”
“Oh, god,” Rose muttered under her breath, and the Doctor sniggered quietly.
“— just a quick ‘How well do you know Rose Tyler’ quiz. No teams, no competition, strictly for embarrassment purposes alone.”
“Get me out of here,” Rose whispered to him, but he stayed firmly put.
“Oh, absolutely not. I’m staying for this.”
“Then I’m going to fly your ship myself and leave you here stranded.”
“Fine by me, I want to see all those pictures you’ve been so adamant remain hidden away in a box every time we go round to your mum’s.”
She groaned, and hid her face in her palms.
“So, without further ado: question one.” Grace paused for dramatic effect, reading the words on her paper with a teasing smile. “What was the name of Rose’s first boyfriend?”
“Oh my god, my mum’s here—”
“Jimmy!” one of her friends shouted, and the Doctor felt Rose bury her face against his arm.
“No,” she whispered, about the same time Grace called out,
“Incorrect!”
“Craig David!” a male voice shouted, and Rose groaned loudly as the room went quiet.
“That is correct!”
The Doctor scoffed next to her as the rest of the room erupted into laughter. “Oh, come on.”
“Rose absolutely believed she and Craig David were meant to be back in year six, and told everyone they were boyfriend and girlfriend,” Cara giggled, and the Doctor only chuckled to hear Rose repeatedly whispering ‘Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god’ into his arm.
“Had to get her a poster!” Jackie called with a squeal of delight.
“Get me— you’re a Time Lord for god’s sake, go back in time and stop this from all happening!” Rose urged.
“Not a chance.”
“Question two!” And once more, the room went quiet in anticipation. “And a little less embarrassing, maybe—”
“Thank God,” Rose mumbled. At that point, he couldn’t really stop himself from giving her arm a gentle stroke.
“— Which film was Rose obsessed with at the beginning of secondary school?”
“Easy! Back to the Future!” another one of her friends called out.
The Doctor scoffed, “You’re kidding?”
Rose pulled away, then, unashamed. “Marty Mcfly, hottest fictional character in the world, I stand by it.”
“If I dress up in that puffer vest and the TARDIS gets her act together to disguise as a DeLorean, are we just playing out your secondary school fantasy?”
“Why do you think you had me so hooked with ‘did I mention it also travels in time’?”
“And that is correct!” Grace called, and just on queue, The Power of Love began to play through the speakers. Rose shook her head, and broke into a timid but unabashed smile.
“How many gigawatts to travel in time, Rose?” Grace called.
“One point twenty-one!” she volleyed, unashamed.
“Is that all? I’ll remember that for next time,” the Doctor whispered, and she elbowed him with a smirk.
“Question three — and sorry, Jackie — but why did Rose get two weeks of detention in year eleven?”
“Oh my god no!”
“Two weeks!” The Doctor kept his exclamation hushed, and once more Rose turned back around to face the other side of the bar, but he tugged on her arm to bring her back around, leaving her unable to hide her embarrassment and red hot cheeks.
“For skipping maths to snog Jimmy in the art room!”
“Rose!” Jackie gasped loudly as the room cheered.
“This is the worst thing that has ever happened in my life ever,” she groaned to the Doctor, and he only found her that much more gorgeous as she looked so delightfully mortified.
“That is correct!”
Rose whimpered quietly to the Doctor as the rest of the room erupted into laughter, “Please do that thing again where you make me forget all of my memories.”
“The snog wasn’t that great, then?”
She shuddered. “Far too much tongue.”
“How delightful,” he chuckled, feeling a peculiar sense of victory.
“Question four!” Grace called, and waited for the room to settle. “Which medal did Rose win in the county gymnastics?”
“The bronze!” the Doctor called, surprised but unashamed for calling out himself, and the room roared in cheer and a thunderous applause broke out.
“And quite right!” Cara hailed into the microphone, and Rose bumped arms with the Doctor.
“Was only the bronze,” she mumbled.
“Hey!” he denounced, “The bronze is bloody excellent!”
Her smile was thin and bashful and begged to be attended to; he responded without thinking by pulling her into his side and she wrapped her arms around his waist.
“Okay, okay, our last and final question—” somebody at one of the nearby tables began to perform a drum roll as Grace paused to read the card “— What did Rose do on her eighteenth birthday?”
“Get absolutely hammered?” someone suggested, and by the way Rose only hid herself further into his chest and shook her head, he imagined they were right.
“More detail needed!” Grace called.
“My whole family’s here,” she whimpered quietly.
“How PG are we keeping it?” one of the boys from the table they were all sitting at earlier shouted, and they giggled amongst themselves.
“Oh god, was it that bad?” he whispered to her, but she just kept shaking her head.
“More PG than your eighteenth, Liam,” Cara pointed out, to which Liam held his hands up in his surrender.
“Didn’t you throw up at Tottenham Court Road bus stop?”
“That was not me!” Rose called out, releasing her hold on the Doctor. He folded his arms, now very aware that the rest of the room was looking at them. “That was Shareen!”
Shareen gasped somewhere in the crowd. “You little grass!” She slammed her hand down on the table and stood up. “And for that, I’m breaking my silence — on Rose’s eighteenth birthday, she got drunk and performed ‘Steps, Tragedy’ up on a table on Carnaby Street in front of the entire street with accompanying dance moves — and she fell down at the end.”
“And we have the video to play to you all later!” Cara beamed, just as the room erupted into an excited cheer.
Rose shrieked in protest, her cheeks burning red and the Doctor only cackled at the image of Rose drunkenly bearing her heart and soul out to what he knew was her favourite girl band of the 90s, so he could only imagine how animated that performance must have been. People had got to their feet, cheering and clapping as Rose hid her face in her palms and Tragedy began to blare through the speakers. Some chanted along, some were too lost in their own giggling and retelling of old anecdotes, and some flocked to Rose to give her gleeful hugs and cheer her on. But something about it saddened him all of a sudden, watching as Rose was swallowed up by the love of her friends so fierce and unashamed, a dull and remorseful ache somewhere in his chest that he couldn’t quite place but certainly didn’t like.
He turned back around and spotted Laura, now leaning against the back bar, and he caught her eye.
“I’ll take that stronger drink, now.”
She glanced over at Rose, now completely lost to the crowd, then back at him, and nodded.
He didn’t drink often, not at all, so he insisted only on a single, handing Laura a fiver and telling her to keep the change. He got to his feet, grabbed his jacket, and slipped quietly outside and into the pub garden.
The night was pleasant, the stars for once visible over London, but he imagined most might not catch them so clearly amidst the surrounding light pollution. There were strings of warm fairy lights hanging from the brick wall that surrounded the quite large garden, a few pub benches dotted around with even less people quietly chatting amongst themselves over a beer and the odd cigarette. What encouraged him the most was the quiet, the peacefulness that greeted him as he stepped out of the pub, sitting down on one of the vacant tables just under a tree with yet more fairy lights hanging from it.
He sighed deeply, but he found he wasn’t quite fully able to breathe in all the way, like something caged his chest and prevented it from fully expanding. He took a sip of the — what he discovered was — whiskey and shuddered to feel its heat trickle down his throat, settling something that had been rising in his body all night. He looked down at his hands, quivering now although he was not cold, and swallowed thickly.
He was in love, he had known that for a long time. But tonight he had realised how terribly irrevocable it was, how awfully trapped he had made himself in his dreadful and unavoidable addiction to her, how he had known this was going to be devastating and he was going to regret it but yet hadn’t cared. And now here he sat, alone as he always was and always would be, wondering just how he might survive this in the end.
It wasn’t that he worried about the day she would no longer be with him, although that wasn’t a thought he liked to entertain. It was this horrible ache, a dullness in his bones, a contradiction to the life she inspired within him. It was twisted, it was confusing, and it was devastating.
He looked up at the stars, a universe above him that he knew and yet didn’t. Taking another sip of his whiskey, and following another subsequent involuntary shudder, he closed his eyes to the return of that hollowness in his chest. The vacuum above felt infinitely small in comparison, and he knew there was no fighting it’s torture except to grit and bear it for as long as she stayed with him, and even longer than that.
He didn’t shudder when he took a third sip of his drink.
He had been so lost in his thoughts for so long that he only realised the environment had altered when a figure sat beside him. There were less people now he realised, only one or two at a table a few away from his, but none of that seemed to matter when he saw it was Rose who had sat down next to him.
“You alright?” she asked.
“Hmm?”
She shivered, and looked down at his drink. “Bit too much back in there, yeah?”
He couldn't reply at first, but his lie found his tongue at the time that he swallowed. “Na, it’s been alright. Just needed five outside in the quiet.”
Rose grinned, a warm smile he knew well, and shivered once more. The goosebumps began to line her skin, soft hairs rising on her arms, and he glanced down at her things to see the same pattern emerging there. He unbuttoned his jacket and slipped it off, attentively hanging it over her shoulders and she looked down with a smile, pulling it tighter around her.
“Thanks,” she whispered, a soft sound that settled on the air and he closed his eyes to it, trying to still what it did to his hearts. Once more, he breathed deeply, now that he could as she sat close to him, and when he opened his eyes on his exhale he saw her looking down at the table, mulling over something in her mind.
“Are you alright?” he murmured, and she closed her eyes to that.
“Mmm. Just needed to step out — don’t like havin’ all the attention on me, you know that.”
Funny, he thought, if she knew just how much she claimed all of his attention, his thoughts and dreams, his hopes and longings, even down to his physiology and heartbeat, she would flee.
Her legs had started to bounce — anxiously or because they were cold, he didn’t know — but he found himself looking at a mole on her thigh, one he of course had never seen before. He closed his eyes once more in a desperate plea to try and stop the thoughts from drowning him, of how much he wanted to see every piece of her, to know all her moles and the feel of her skin under his fingers, to learn her and know her in a way nobody else did or ever could possibly again.
“Y’know, I remember the first time you met all my family, when we were huddled in my mum’s living room watching the telly,” she grinned, and her voice encouraged him to avert his gaze, and, thankfully, his thoughts. “Said you didn’t do domestics and all that.”
“I still don’t,” he pointed out, and she sniggered. “I have no idea how I keep finding myself in these situations so often.”
“I think you like them, really.”
“I like you, there’s a difference.”
She chuckled, “So if I’m understanding you correctly, the last of the Time Lords bends to nobody’s will except mine?”
“You understood that correctly, yes.”
Her gleeful hum in response was enough for him to let her believe he was exaggerating. After a minute or two, she spoke again.
“I used to come here all the time. Most Thursdays after work. Sometimes it’d be all of us — it was quite central for where we all worked — and sometimes it’d just be me and Mickey.”
He grimaced as she rubbed salt into the wound unknowingly. He was reluctant to admit to himself just how many hours he had spent thinking about them, of their dates in the park and stolen kisses in her lunch break, of nights spent together and mornings in love. He glanced back down at the mole on her leg and knew of course he wasn’t going to know her as nobody else did, he never could even if he did ever give in to his hearts.
“It’s like a different life,” she sighed. “I always thought this sort of stuff would hit you in your thirties, lookin’ back over your school days and realising how much had changed since then. But I’m twenty-one, and it feels like a completely different me and it was only two years ago!”
He was still while she spoke what was on her mind. He didn’t get the feeling that she regretted it so much, and he was a little relieved at that. But he thought perhaps it was more the speed of time passing that stunned her, her perspective of it all shifting and she wasn’t quite ready for it. As a Time Lord, he so wished he could slow it down for her, make it just that little bit more manageable because, truthfully, it terrified him sometimes, too.
“It’s only that you fill your life with so much that it feels that way,” he tried, and she sniffed in the cold. “It feels a bit like time passed you by because, well, it has. You didn’t even see it go, you were far too busy moving and adapting but it passed, at the same rate it always does. But you didn’t.”
She frowned, and gave him a lopsided smile. “I suppose you would give me some nonsensical explanation of time that oddly makes sense.”
“It’s what I’m here for.”
“Really?” She scrunched her nose. “I thought you were here to protect time.”
“Whoever told you that?”
She rolled her eyes with a more symmetrical smile now, her hands moving to cover her face as she attempted to hide just how funny she found his joke. “If it’s this bad at twenty-one, must be bloody awful for you.”
He inhaled sharply, making her giggle more. “The trick is not to think about it.”
“Take each day as it comes,” she reflected, and he hummed beside her in agreement. “They were right, all those adults. Everytime they said to live each day to the fullest.”
“That they were.”
And then she seemed to sadden again. After a moment, and with a quiver to her voice, she whispered,
“If only it didn’t make time pass faster that way.”
He nodded slowly in agreement, although he protested she be thinking such morose concepts on her twenty-first birthday. She began to pick at the skin around her nails, the nail polish on her thumb had chipped and he knew she must have been doing this all night, then.
“Why don’t you like your own birthdays?” he asked, realising that he never had.
She shrugged. “I used to love my birthdays. Birthday cakes, party bags, trips to the London Fields Lido and all that stuff.”
“Then what changed?”
She hesitated, and frowned. He waited while she thought, but he realised at some point she wasn’t searching for the answer, she was only debating whether to give it to him. Eventually, she swallowed, and spoke flatly,
“I met a Time Lord.”
And there it was. He felt his thoughts click into place, then, that strange sadness about her all day that he hadn’t quite been able to interpret finally making sense. It was, truthfully, his biggest regret, although he should have seen it coming, and he only gritted his teeth at his own negligence.
“Rose—”
“No, but think about it,” she insisted, and for once he found himself wanting to listen to her, to hear her worries about something he considered constantly. She seemed too intent on bearing herself to him here, in this garden, on this night, and he could only let her. “Every day I get older—”
“You’re twenty-one, that’s hardly you getting older—”
“But it is!” she retorted, a strange smile that wasn’t a smile by any means only holding back her tears now and he didn't know how they had got here, but his hearts ached to see her like this nonetheless. Her mouth hung open as if to say something else, but she seemed unable to and only let out a small croak instead.
“Hey,” he murmured, and he took the opportunity to tuck a strand of hair behind her ear, curling his fingers as he dared himself to brush her cheek. “I do not want you to miss out on any of this because you’re afraid of getting older next to me.”
“M’not afraid of getting older,” she contended plainly. “I’m afraid of leaving you all alone.”
His breath was uneven as he exhaled, but he didn’t think she would have detected it. He dropped his hand back down to the table, and she sniffed wetly, seemingly annoyed by herself for some reason. She bit down on her bottom lip with her eyes closed before she opened them to find his, holding his gaze firm. He saw all of her, then, the things she didn’t want him to see in her eyes even in this light, and he knew she must be seeing all of him, too.
Because it consumed him to learn that this was how she felt. That she regretted each passing day because it was one less day — not that she got to spend with him, but that he had left to spend with somebody. The dreadful wringing of his chest at that, at knowing how much of her life and how many of her days she was spending in fear for his inevitable loneliness when that was only his worry, his concern. Rose wasn’t supposed to feel any of that, much less break her own heart every day, and he realised he must have been doing a terrible job at keeping those worries and concerns to himself. Rose only ever wanted everybody else to be okay, and now, on her twenty-first birthday, she was furious with her own mortality for getting in the way, stopping somebody she cared for so deeply from hurting.
So he had no alternative, really, when he leaned in to her this time. He just about had enough control to pause, give her the chance to pull away if she so wanted, and it seemed as though time completely stopped as he did. He could hear her breathing shallow, see the goosebumps line her neck and he took that moment, those few seconds, to learn her as he had wanted. His eyes found another mole on her collarbone, and upwards, the pulse in her neck at having him this close to her. A quiet and strained whimper on her lips, a plea, and then the feel of those lips against his.
He had always wondered how she would taste. The time he had kissed her on Satellite Five, he had only done so to take the time vortex from her, and for that his senses were mostly dulled. Now, as time slowly began to resume once more, he couldn’t taste a thing either; all he could do was feel. This overwhelming relief surging through him, his hearts beating as they should to feel this alive, and, for a moment, an assertion that nothing could tamper with his hope.
And then she gasped; her mouth opened and that’s when he could finally taste her. And he did, the tip of his tongue finally tasted home as it explored the texture of hers and everything he was learning about her he already knew. Because she was familiar, she was her, he knew her lips already and running his tongue along them told him nothing new about them but yet wanted more even still, to know how her bottom lip felt between his teeth, and he was a quick learner, picking up on the sensitive spots that would draw her moans and which of them would catch her breath in her throat.
His heightened senses had thus far only proven to be most valuable, until now, because she consumed all of him to a point where it was too much, and he had to break away, just to focus. But she didn’t hesitate to keep going, so keen was she on tasting him too, and she trailed her kisses across his cheek and along his jaw and this was new, feeling her learn him with her own senses, the moans she drew out herself at certain points on his skin.
“Rose,” he breathed, a plea and a promise in itself, and she brought their lips back together once more.
She began to shift without breaking their kiss and he felt her move one of her legs over him, soft chuckles she released onto his lips as she fumbled onto his lap on the most uncomfortable bench he could remember sitting on. But he quickly lost all conscious recognition of the world outside him, outside them, when he felt her hands move to cup his neck before her fingers slowly trailed up and through his hair. Her lips curled when he groaned and a second later so did she when she ran her nails back down. Their kiss was broken when her head rolled back to the feel of his hands on her thighs, sliding up to her waist where they held her hips close to his and in their respite, his lips found her neck and he sucked, just over her pulse, her breath catching in response. He felt her hands loosen as they became less conscious of their actions and more reflexive to her feelings and he felt her pulse drum fervently beneath his lips. With a final nip to her skin, he released her, the darkened bruise forming he could see even under this light, and pride raptured his veins to have finally claimed just a part of her as his. But then the trouble was he wanted to claim all of her as his, if she would let him, and by the way she rocked into his hold when he pulled away only confirmed that she would. As her lips began their descent once more down onto his skin, pressing sweet and messy kisses down the bridge of his nose and to his lips, he realised he couldn’t find the trouble in it at all.
He deftly slipped his jacket off her shoulders and shuddered at the speed in which her goosebumps prickled beneath his fingers, before he dragged them slowly across her shoulders and down her back, as far as her dress would allow. One hand stayed where it was, exploring the planes of her shoulder blades as they contracted with the movement of her hands, and the other travelled south and to the small of her back where he pressed, gently, until she arched into him. That move released another sound from her lips, much lower this time, much deeper and hungrier and his was only lustful in response. She tore her lips from his to bow her head to his shoulder, pausing only to catch her breath with the intent of resuming, so he peppered his kisses this time further down her neck, softening as they pressed across her shoulder until he felt her lips on his neck, her teeth grazing his skin as she matched the mark made on hers. He shivered to know she was doing the same, marking him, and he moaned into her skin as he allowed her to.
“I want you,” she breathed, he was sure she was trying to sound firm but her need strained her request. “But not here.”
He remained still as his surroundings began to settle into their rightful place and he remembered where they were. He was in no way ready to pull back, but he couldn't exactly keep going, so instead he kept his eyes closed as he followed the trail of his hands on her body, slowly tracing the curves and dips of her frame. She didn’t move either, but it seemed she too was focused only on his hands, as she had since stopped exploring him herself. To feel her in this way, to roam freely as he wished while she remained compliant and willing above him, prevented him from asking if she was sure she wanted him, and if was even a little bit more level-headed than he was at the moment, he would ask if she had really thought this through.
But all he could seem to focus on was her words, the sound of her telling him she wanted him. After that, nothing else mattered.
“Doctor,” she whispered again, and he opened his eyes to find that mole on her collarbone beneath him. He swallowed, and with considerable difficulty, and pressed his lips to it before he finally pulled away.
She cleared her throat and started to shift off of him and he spotted the other table glance over in their direction. Right, he thought, scratching the back of his neck and neatning his — he was sure — disheveled hair. Public decency, must remember that one.
Rose was grinning sheepishly by the time she settled down next to him, and for a moment, neither looked at the other. He swallowed, now that he was finally able to, and ran his palms over his trousers to neaten them down just a little. Rose tugged on the hem of her dress to bring it a bit further down her thighs and he swallowed again to see her legs bare, having only very recently felt them beneath his hands, and the tips of his fingers tingled at the memory.
Rose let out a breathy laugh, then, and he glanced over to her just at the time she looked up at him. She drank him in, her eyes flickering across his face, but he couldn’t quite do the same; he found himself transfixed only on her eyes.
“C’mere” she grinned, licking her thumb and rubbing it across his cheek. “You’ve got lipstick all over you.”
He nodded, before he gestured to her. “Funnily enough, so do you.”
She pressed her fingers to the side of her lips and giggled while he fumbled around in his suit pockets for some makeup wipes, and then she brought them down to her neck to press gently into the bruise beginning to form over her pulse.
“Bit more worried about everyone seeing that.”
He raised his eyebrow. “Didn’t hear any complaints from you when I was giving it to you.”
“Nope,” she affirmed smugly. She tugged at the wipes when he pulled them out, taking one and began cleaning up his face. “Think I’ve got some concealer in my bag, anyway.”
“Your bag’s inside.”
“Bugger,” she cursed, and he chuckled. “Reckon you could go and grab it for me before anyone sees?”
He pointed to his neck. “I think we just have to own this one, Rose.”
“It’s a lot easier to own it when everyone doesn’t know you.”
“It’s only you they know.”
“Right,” she beamed, “so you won’t have a problem going and getting my bag then, will you?”
“Bugger,” he cursed, and she chuckled.
He watched her, then, the golden lights shimmering in her eyes as she smiled, her lips still a little swollen and hair messier now. She wasn’t aware of him watching her, he didn’t think, so she was caught off guard when he began to smooth down the strands, running his fingers softly through her hair to bring back a bit of order. As he did, his gaze remained fixed on her, the shy way she kept herself still and allowed him to sort her out, to fix her back up as if she needed fixing in the first place.
“You are…” he tried, but the word was lost on his lips. He had no way of surmising her beauty at that moment, and he supposed that's why people looked to poetry or song in times where words weren’t adequate to suffice.
Perhaps she didn’t need any of that, because she seemed to understand exactly what he was trying to say, or at least the depth of it. She took his hand then, which had since frozen in his quest to articulate just how captivating she was, and brought it to her lips. She kissed each of his fingers deliberately, carefully, attentively, her eyes closed as she spoke the words caught in her throat on his skin and all he could do was listen.
God, she was divine. He felt the way his hearts completely responded to her alone, their slight quickening as her lips brushed his skin and the harder they beat for her when she released him. He was sure they had a song about them, her song, and he could have them converse with her for as long as he lived.
“What are you thinking?” she murmured, and he had been mostly — no, completely — unaware of her watching him. He wasn’t quite ready yet to translate his hearts’ intent, so instead he leaned back into her, touching his lips to the corner of hers to kiss her where he was hesitant to pull back, captured instead by a sweetness that lingered on her skin. When her lips curled beneath his, he finally did pull away; not too far though, just enough for her to hear the words he didn’t speak.
Neither said anything, for a while. Not through their searching for something to say, but simply because this was unlike them to be so close and they were familiarising themselves with it.
He was falling in love with it.
“You know,” she whispered with a smile, “I don’t think I’ve ever known you to say so little.”
“Would you prefer it if I were babbling away instead?”
“God, no,” she chuckled as he pulled away. “Think I can safely say that’s one of my preferred ways you’ve made use of your tongue.”
He raised his eyebrow and her cheeks flushed pink furiously.
“Oh my god, no! I didn’t mean— not that!”
He raised his other eyebrow and, after quickly searching his eyes, she raised hers.
“Wow, okay so maybe that, if you’re—”
He chuckled, and kissed her shoulder before climbing to his feet. “I’m going to go and get your bag.”
“Or—” she grabbed his hand to stop him “— how about we both go back to the TARDIS and pick up where we left off?”
He snorted. “No chance am I missing your drunken Steps performance.”
“Not even for a good shag?”
He stilled to hear her say it, and only then did it occur to him that that was where this was heading. It was sobering, but he couldn’t say in any way it was repellent — not at all — only completely unbelievable.
“Oh god—” she slapped her hands to her face “—you didn’t— that’s not what.. what you— oh my god you didn’t say that’s what you wanted—”
“Rose,” he stressed, although gently, pulling her hand away as he crouched down in front of her. He tried to look at her, peering up from underneath her, but she wouldn’t look back at him. “I don’t think we’d be fooling anybody if I said I didn’t want that, too.”
She nodded firmly, still unable to look him in the eye. He rubbed his thumb over her fingers as they rested firmly in his, still a little nervous was she while he was completely certain.
“But it’s not all I want.”
“Yeah?” she said as she chewed her bottom lip. He nodded, and she paused for a moment, hesitant, before she spoke. “But…”
And then it was lost on her, either the rest of that sentence or her confidence to say it. Her fingers began to fidget in his, and he loosened his hold but not entirely, simply only allowing her the freedom to dwell without letting her drift entirely.
“But what?” he probed.
She looked even further down now, her chin tucked to her chest. “Wither and die, and all that.”
Ah yes, he grimaced. That.
The truth was, of course that’s all he could think about. And he regretted saying that to her every day since he had, because it shouldn’t have been her problem and yet he had made it her problem. By only showing her how much it anguished him, she had taken it upon herself to fix it for him, only to realise that she couldn’t. Nobody could, and for that, she couldn’t simply rest and allow herself to be happy while he only awaited misery. He wondered, then, if that was why she was so hesitant — not because she didn’t want this with all her heart, but because he had given her reason to believe he was petrified for his own survival, for a future of solitude without her but it was specifically that last part that tortured him now.
Without her. How could she possibly begin to resolve her heartache when she worried tirelessly over something she couldn’t control? He had to unburden her, assure her that he wasn’t scared for him, when truthfully he felt sick by his awaited grief. So for that, he bent his head to kiss her knee, and swore to inherit all her anxieties himself and free her of them.
“I know you’re a whole twenty-one-years-old now, but I don’t see you withering anytime soon.”
She didn’t laugh, but he still smiled reassuringly, intent on fulfilling his promise.
“But I will, one day,” she countered, and he fought back a sigh.
“Are you always this miserable on your birthday?”
“Doctor!” she pleaded, but she was beginning to smile despite herself. “This is serious!”
The worst part was that he had had this exact argument with himself, time and time again, only he was normally on her side himself. But it had all changed when he had heard her tell him she wanted him; up until then, those arguments with himself were a response to the very hypothetical situation she might want him, but now that she actually did, he found himself quite unable to see her side now.
“Alright, alright,” he held up his hands in defeat. “You’re right.”
She didn’t exactly bask in it, but he knew he wasn’t about to give up anytime soon. So he perched himself down next to her, the picnic bench groaning as he settled his weight. A silence extended between them and he watched as Rose played with her ring, fiddling about with it in the interlude as she tried to find her words. But as the silence passed and she remained quiet, he realised perhaps she had nothing to say unprompted, so he asked a question he was sure he never would in the hope that she might finally release herself.
“What do you want?” he whispered.
She hesitated even still, before her breath carried her answer in a sigh. “You.”
He could have her say it over and over again and never tire of it; perhaps that serenely restful truth caused the words to tumble from his lips so desperately. “You have me. Christ knows why you want me out of anyone else in the whole bloody universe, but whatever you want is yours.”
Perhaps it was the slight inflection on just the right word, or perhaps it was all of them together, but he felt her somewhat loosen beside him. Determined though he was, he was misplaced to hear himself say it, something he only ever imagined might terrify her now only somehow consoling her.
“This is… mad,” she shuddered with a smile. “Do you know how long I’ve wanted this?”
“I can take an educated guess.”
“And you really want this too?”
He shrugged. “Probably— I don’t know, haven’t really thought it through.”
She whacked his arm with a chuckle she couldn’t quite suppress. “Oh my god—“
“Rose,” he whispered, urged perhaps, and she all but stilled completely to hear him say her name in such a way. He turned to look at her but she had closed her eyes, so he took her hand, small and fragile and soft as it was, and started to settle the ache in his fingers by running them across her skin. So warm, even if she didn’t think so in the cool April chill, and the softness against his, coarse and tired, was sublime.
“Why me?”
“Why you, what?”
“You said I could have anyone in the whole universe, well what about you? You’re a Time Lord,” she breathed the name of his race with such wonderment while he only regretted it, but he kept still. “And you’re the last one! You have literally all of time and space to choose from, why would you choose somebody with such a short life span— somebody who you can’t exactly share the rest of your life with or even a substantial part of it. Sixty years, that’s all I have! That’s all we’ll have!”
“This is a bit like talking about breaking up before you’ve even gotten together,” he pointed out, and she grinned again despite herself at that, and it only seemed to frustrate her that he joked when she searched for an answer much more reassuring. But the fact was, it would seem she had thought about this, and perhaps had even used it to convince herself he didn’t want her in return, which was utterly absurd to him. Joking with her wasn’t seeming to do the trick, lightening the mood in the hopes of lightening her worry was proving to serve no end to her own perceived stalemate, and she wasn’t just taking him at his word and allowing herself this.
So he bent his head to kiss the ball of her shoulder and he lingered there, breathing her in, unable to stop himself from kissing the same spot again. He needed saving from this, he realised, because kissing her seemed entirely unpreventable since he had allowed himself to only minutes ago, and right now she needed his reassurance.
“I’ve seen it all, Rose. Nine hundred years of travelling, I’ve met some spectacular people. But you have something on me that I can’t describe, and I know for a fact it’s irreversibly binding. I know, because I feel it in the way you smile, the sound of your laugh, I know I don’t stand a chance when you say my name as you giggle and I’m a complete lost cause when you touch me in any way. What I’m trying to say is I’ve met so many people in this universe, from so many corners of it across so many ages and none of them have ever given me something so completely tangible to hold on to.” He frowned, realising how he must sound completely bonkers, and he wasn’t exactly the greatest romantic of his time, but he really was limited by his words in describing what she was to him, so he settled instead on one final, simple sentiment. “You’re everything.”
He sniffed, because it sounded so terribly feeble and uninspired, and pulled away. She had been watching him as he spoke his mind, perhaps thinking he was an absolute nutter, but her palm touched his cheek and she leant forwards, brushing her lips to his and only holding on to time, savouring each passing second in this point in time and he felt how overwhelming it was, even to him. All the seconds passed, all the ones following it were immeasurable, literally, and for only a few of them, just one or two, they kissed. When she pulled away, he found himself wondering how he could possibly not chase more of those seconds.
“And don’t even get me started on that,” he breathed, and she giggled delightfully.
“You know, when you told me you were coming tonight, I thought maybe I might be lucky enough to hear you tell me I look beautiful—“
“Which I still haven’t done,” he chastised.
“— I never imagined any of this might happen, not for a second.”
“You didn’t?” he retaliated. “I was spending my day hoping that I could just survive it — and I have to say, there was a moment when your mother was telling me about Bev’s one night stand where I really, honestly, thought I might not.”
“And yet, you stayed,” she grinned, somewhat smugly and a little sweetly. “And you hate domestics!”
“I could get used to them,” he shrugged, and she only looked back at him in surprise. “Well, okay, I could learn how to tolerate them.”
“For me?” she said, still a little in disbelief.
“I told you, anything in the universe, time and space, all of it, is yours,” he assured. “If that includes family gatherings and ‘life admin’ days, then so be it.”
“Christmas dinner?”
“I’m there.”
“Even Mum’s fiftieth birthday bash?”
“Even that.”
“Christenings, baby showers, all that stuff, too?”
“If Charlie pops out any more kids, you bet I’ll be meeting them all.”
Rose scoffed, “Who are you and what have you done to the Doctor!”
“S’what you’ve done to me,” he corrected.
“It’s what domestics have done to you.”
“No, no, it’s definitely you.”
The sound of these giggles in particular, the ones where she was endearingly timid as he all but worshiped her, were entrancing; a new world he had yet to explore lay in their sound and he was a traveller, after all. It was far too tempting, she was far too tempting, and her darkened eyes as she looked at him here and now held a map to a path unknown, a whole universe in itself and he was ready to be lost in this one.
Her eyes flickered to his lips and she licked hers almost straight after, before she met his gaze once more and they were somehow even darker now. He found himself falling before he had even let go; their noses touched and her hand on his thigh sparked, and this was ridiculous, it was completely without sense that it all should feel like this. How many times had he fallen in love, how many moments had passed like this one and yet none of them were like this one, nobody looked as she looked at him, nobody’s touch was as devilishly hypnotic and never before had his hearts drummed so mercilessly for a moment in time to pass and yet remain—
“Rose!”
They both tore away to the sound of her name being called from the door, and all at once it came back: the sounds of merriment inside, the rustle of the leaves above them, the very harsh reminder that they weren’t alone.
“We’ve been looking all over for you, your mum wants to do a speech.”
“Oh, god,” Rose groaned as Shareen trudged over to them. But her steps slowed as she got closer, until she stopped completely just before them, her mouth open as she realised what she had interrupted.
He wished, with everything he had really, to be anywhere else but here.
“Oh my god, are you two—“ she gasped, narrowing her eyes at them before she pointed at their necks. “What! is that a— have you two got hickeys?”
Rose fidgeted excessively, pulling her dress down as much as she could before slapping her hand to her neck. “Shareen— please can you go get my bag?”
She scoffed indignantly and folded her arms. “Concealer ain’t gonna cover that up— what did you do to her!” she teased at the Doctor, and he only hung his head low and desperately willed for this to be over.
“Shareen,” Rose groaned. “Please, c’mon— I got two bloody weeks of detention covering for you when it was both of us skipping science to snog our boyfriends!”
The Doctor scratched his neck and shuddered to realise he was now in a situation akin to snogging his high school girlfriend when he should be in science class. He’d always wanted the human experience but this was not so high up on his list.
“As your mate, it’s my duty to have you completely mortified on your twenty-first — but—“ she insisted, when Rose began to protest “— as your best mate, I’m going to do you this favour and help you cover up the fact that you were out here neckin’ with a bloke none of us have really met before.”
The Doctor leapt to his feet, finally deciding to remove himself from this dreadful situation, but Shareen put her hand on his chest to stop him instead.
“Nope— you stay here, you look even worse than she does,” she smirked, before turning back to Rose with a wicked grin. “Give me two mins, but if your mum finds you in the meantime then I can’t help you.”
“Nobody could,” the Doctor muttered, mostly to himself, but Shareen caught it and giggled in agreement, before she turned to head back into the pub.
“I take it back,” he insisted as Rose got to her feet, too. “None of it, you can have none of it.”
“Nope,” she grinned. She took his tie in her hand and began to fiddle with it, but the look in her eye told him she was doing this deliberately, the little minx, and, worse yet, she knew exactly what it was doing to him. But she released him from it, this torture of being in a very public place when he so very much wished that they weren’t, and stood on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck and pull him down for a chaste kiss, smiling into his lips as she whispered, “No taking it back now, Time Lord.”
And it was worth it, he thought, to see a smile he hadn’t seen before. Well, that and the way she had called him “Time Lord” in a way that sent shivers down his spine. But her smile now was one where she was so completely happy and at ease, and he was quite happy indeed to bear the weight of her concerns if it meant she could enjoy her time alive.
He supposed, then, for her twenty-first birthday, he might have given her time itself.
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