#tentoorosemicrofics

Years later, (and a universe away,) in the woes of late-stage-pregnancy-induced nostalgia, she’d told the Doctor about it.

Unluckily for her, the Doctor, who was only a recent member of the human race, had never been part of a school stage performance. He’d thought it hilarious, and Rose had had to endure three extremely long days of her husband trying to sneak in the most absurd sheep puns into every conversation.

Until she’d had enough, and the Doctor had learned not to poke the extremely hormonal bear.

“Rooose,” he’d said with the air of a man who simply couldn’t help himself. “ Let me out of the baaathroom.”

When their five year old skips into the kitchen with a crumpled pamphlet and a massive grin, however, the Doctor sings an entirely different song.

“I knew it all along,” he says loudly, sweeping Mia into his arms. “Of course you’ve been cast—no surprises there. It’s in your blood, you know. Your mum was the finest actor her school ever saw.”

Rose groans, exasperated, turning just in time to see her daughter’s face pucker up into a frown.

“Really?” she asks dubiously. Even at her tender age, she knows her father can sometimes be full of it.

“Oh, yes,” the Doctor says, eyes twinkling, pushing a stray strand of blonde hair behind her ear. “They could hardly tell the difference.”

“Shut up,” Rose tells him, whacking his shoulder lightly with a tea towel, before leaning in to press a kiss to their daughter’s forehead. “You’re going to be brilliant, darling.”

The Doctor tells everyone who will listen, and then he tells everyone who won’t, too.

His daughter’s playing a moon. She’s got two whole lines. She’s brilliant.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he tells her suddenly, late at night.

Rose squints up at him, rubbing sleep out of her eyes. “Wha’?”

“This!” he says, wrestling with an extremely worn piece of paper. “This!”

Rose squints harder, and the script for Mia’s play comes into vision. The text’s been underlined and circled in several places, overwritten with the Doctor’s rapid, slanting hand, the margins full of swirling patterns and ovals she’s come to recognise as the Doctor’s language, the same ones she’d seen on the TARDIS.

The play’s about a boy from an alien planet, the Doctor explains with some amusement, and he’s looking for his pet cat (the starring role, naturally) but he’s lost, and Rose yawns, wondering why this world couldn’t just stick to something simple like the Nativity.

“Why would the moon even know where Abbadon is? And Abbadon—come on. Name a cat that and it’s like you deserve to lose it…”

“I don’t think you’re supposed to,” Rose tells him drowsily.

“What, lose a cat?”

“Think about it this much.”

But the Doctor’s muttering to himself again, something about inflections and enunciation, pen in hand, so Rose turns to her side, succumbing to the warm embrace of sleep.

It's a warm autumn night, the day of the big show. Rose isn’t sure who’s more excited, Mia or the Doctor.

The school’s bustling late into the evening, only for tonight, and her heart grows warm as she notices Mia, who can barely walk in a straight line at the moment, taking in the familiar building like it’s something she’s never seen before.

It’s a whole new entity at night; wind rustling through the neatly trimmed shrubbery, the ducky swings swaying slightly in the playground, excited chattering from all the children running about behind stage and the all too familiar hissed instructions to stay still by exasperated teachers and parents.

They come to a stop backstage. Mia’s nearly vibrating with energy when she turns to look at Rose, eyes flashing sudden worry. “Are you leaving now?”

“I have to,” Rose tells her, squatting so she can be level with her daughter’s small face. “Have to get a good seat, don’t I? You’ll do brilliantly, Mia, we’re already so proud of you.”

The girl nods once, and then her name’s being called, and Mia’s teacher shuffles her away for her costume fitting.

She’s easily one of the smallest children there, and Rose feels a strange twisting in her gut when her daughter turns to give her one last timid wave.

The Doctor’s saved her a seat in the front row, because of course he has, and his extremely battered Converse tap the ground restlessly as he bickers with her mother. It’s a habit he still hasn’t given up, the shoes—no matter how posh he’s dressed, and it endears him to her, impossibly as it may seem, even more.

And he is dressed posh tonight—in his best tux, in fact; Rose simply hadn’t the heart to tell him that he’d gone a little overboard.

“Well?” he asks her immediately, ignoring whatever it was her mum was saying before he caught sight of her.

“All good,” Rose says, plonking down on the seat next to him. “A little nervous, but that’s natural.”

“Nervous?” the Doctor scoffs a bit too loudly, even as his frame visibly relaxes. “There’s nothing to be nervous about. It’s these other parents who’ve got to be nervous. No one’s even going to notice their children after ours—”

“Doctor, shh!”

It’s only when the lights turn on that Rose realises how large the audience actually is.

The auditorium’s packed to the brim, and she feels a swooping unease in the pit of her stomach as she imagines their tiny daughter reciting her two lines under those harsh stage lights.

Had it been this hard on her mum? She spares Jackie Tyler a glance, who is chatting away happily to Pete, and wonders if it gets easier when there’s a bit of a gap in relation.

The Doctor’s muttering to himself again, and Rose wonders if her experience would’ve been as good if she hadn’t successfully pulled off her bleating—if she’d gone on stage, frozen in front of that massive audience and forgotten her lines. She wonders if she should’ve actually checked on what the father-daughter duo were up to every spare moment they got, because God knows what the Doctor’s taught Mia, and—

“Good evening, everyone! Thank you so much for being here today. Our students are so excited to…”

It’s probably a good thing that the Doctor knows the entire script by heart, and proceeds to perform it live, because Rose can barely hear over the pounding in her ears.

Her grip on his palm (when had she grabbed his hand?) tightens when Mia stumbles slightly on entrance, the massive cardboard moon she’s been taped to getting in the way of her feet in her haste to enter stage, but she regains balance swiftly.

“Don’t worry,” she enunciates loudly, her voice clear as a bell. “I’ll show you the way.”

And Rose’s entire being swells with pride.

It’s magnificent, it is—even if the Doctor begins applauding right after (only to be stopped by a mortified Rose), and she can tell by the way her daughter is beaming that all that bubbling anxiety’s now glee, and it’s positively overflowing.

There’s probably not that much she’ll remember about this age in her life but this moment? Of looking into the audience with a sense of accomplishment, and seeing her parents unbearably proud?

This moment is eternal.

The rest of the play flies past, the two of them barely paying attention, still coming off the high that this is their life, and this is their daughter—

“I love you,” the Doctor says abruptly, lifting her palm to his lips. “Thank you.”

For what? she wants to say, but the words never make it out of her throat.

Mia is, thankfully, moon-less when she barrels into her adoring fans, less than half an hour later.

“How was it? HOW WAS IT?”

“Amazing,” Rose says truthfully, giving the girl a big hug, matching a wild smile with one of her own. “You were amazing!”

“You were wonderful, sweetheart,” her mum gushes.

“An incredibly convincing portrayal,” Pete says dutifully. “Best moon I’ve ever seen.”

Mia turns to the last member of the foursome now, the one whose opinion probably matters the most, on tenterhooks.

“Well,” the Doctor frowns, tugging on his ear. “Honestly, I’m a little disappointed.”

Mia’s face falls instantly. Jackie tuts in disapproval.

“Disappointed,” the Doctor continues, “because I didn’t know we raised a thief. What—you thought you could just steal the show like that and get away with it? The other parents are furious, you know. We’ve been getting requests all evening—haven’t we, Rose? They all want to take you home, all jumping at the chance to have such a brilliant performer in the family. I told them I’d think about it, of course…maybe for the right price—”

“DADDY,” Mia shrieks when the penny finally drops. “YOU LIKED IT!”

“Of course I liked it!” the Doctor roars, sweeping the girl into his arms. “I loved it. Nine hundred years, I’ve never seen a better…”

Rose watches them bid her parents goodbye with a slight stinging in her eyes; the Doctor’s face is alight with happiness, and Mia looks like she’s on another planet altogether.

The Doctor notices, because of course he does, stepping closer to Rose.

“What,” he says to Mia, even as his eyes never leave hers, “d’you say to some chips?”

“YES!”

The Doctor chuckles fondly, before lowering the spirited girl to the ground, from where she takes off immediately after her grandparents, probably in the hopes of haggling for a few more sweeties.

He reaches into his jacket pocket then, retrieving a battered looking instant camera. She knows it must’ve been hard to track one of them down—they hadn’t much been in fashion in Pete’s World.

“I know it’s not the same,” he says almost shyly.

Her heart is expanding so much and so fast she thinks it’s a miracle her ribs aren’t cracking from the force of it.

“No,” Rose tells him, beaming, “it’s better.”

As under a green sea he imagines drowning.  Physical life as perpetual motion, and his single heart hares towards its conclusion contraction by contraction, his mind a tremulous wisp constantly reforming itself in the stream of blood and sense impressions.  His sense of time, of potentiality, the complex biology of a being capable of experiencing and witnessing and manipulating the block universe—oh, it’s all there, the shutter-slides of possible moments one after the other clicking past like a child’s image viewer.

Rose's eyes are wet and luminous in the afternoon sun, staring at the disappearing indented square where the TARDIS had parked in the sand, and when she finally looks at him, he is trapped in her gaze like a failing satellite in a deprecating orbit.

Poetry. He’s never been good with words, gob notwithstanding.  Couldn’t ever get the right ones out when it’d mattered most, couldn’t see the… the… not effect, not point, but necessity of something so intangibly small and terrifying as  I love you.   His people hadn’t had a term for it, in the end.  They hadn’t had poetry, either, not in the way that the others in the universe had in more-than-equal measure.  They’d had art in the most rigid and elegant of representations, with love and brilliance and joy expressed through equation instead of emotion, and even then so repressed and turned down to a low, bare simmer that it paled in comparison to the lightning-fast boil of humanity.

It’s what’d drawn him to them in the first place.  That potential, that passion.  That poetry, that intervallic and linguistic playfulness, from the tight-structured villanelles to the Modernist explosion, of faces in a crowd to lost watches to shared oranges to an old pond all wrapped in heavy symbolism and interpretation; but always, the common fellow-feeling.  That one can read through and see another and the self in words, individuals bound together by the great weavings of the human experience.  

He can see himself mirrored in Rose’s eyes, and he half-hates the image he can see there.  So he pushes past, looks at her: a thinner face, lighter makeup, a tense, straight set to her shoulders under her leather jacket—and oh, how he wants to hold the rounds of those shoulders in his hands, to pull them from their flexion and gentle them until they’re soft against him.  He thinks of the bare skin of her, under his hands—

—and his mind, that tremulous wisp drowning under a stream of blood and sense impressions, flickers, and he brushes aside his time senses, his training all screaming at him to stop, stop, this is beneath you and it’s frighteningly easy to ignore the entirety of it with this new human element in his system.  Nearly a millennium of self- and societal-imposed asceticism, up in flames for a woman who had looked at him with tender, brave eyes and offered her company to an old, broken man.  

He doesn’t find a single atom of regret in the ashes of his strictures.

His grip on her hand changes, fingers twining like he’s found home, and he steps closer to her, his brilliant, bowed human love.  She hasn’t stopped staring at him, like he’s something unreal.  Perhaps he is.  He doesn’t feel quite real, in this moment that continues to flow from could be to wriggly now to solid past.  Time is passing,  and he only has so many heartbeats left.

“Rose,” he starts.  She’s still silent, but she’s turned to face him, all tightly-wound limbs and runner’s grace kicking through her bones. “Rose—,” he begins again, and his throat closes up, so he snarls at the sky instead.  Her hand squeezes his, and he looks back to her.  There is something quiet and considering in her gaze, now.  He wants to give her anything, everything, all of him.

Poetry.  

He’s always been shit at it, honestly.

“Did you mean it?” she says into his tortured silence.  “What you said?”

He tilts his head.  Thinks of recitations he could give to her, arcing words of beauty he knows he could never really deliver correctly.  He brushes his thumb against hers slowly as he thinks, and he catalogues and revels in the shudder that rushes through her and then through him in return.  Thinks of—no, knows, his time senses and potentialities flickering back in at his bequest—growing old with her, grey and withered, and that self-same shudder at the rasp of skin on skin, of a growing TARDIS and comfortable mornings wrapped up in each other, house-rattling arguments, a child wild with laughter at a birthday cake, paired golden rings growing dull and scratched with time and adventure and love and death—

Gently, he steps finally, fully into her space, and his free hand cups her jaw.

“Oh, Rose Tyler,” he says, resting his forehead against hers.  Their breaths mingle and he can hear the blood rushing through his veins, pounding in his ears.  “I meant every word.”  For the first time since the golden fire of the time vortex embodied, he presses his lips to hers.  Beneath him, she hums, and there is a smile on her lips and tears on her cheeks as she kisses him back.

“Good,” she whispers between breaths.  Then she laughs softly as he chases across her cheek with kisses, and he wants to hear that sound forever. No weight of the universe on him now, only the comforting pressure of gravity and fatigue in his bones; only the sweet press of Rose Tyler against his chest.

They had experienced an awkward start to their day, however. 

The Doctor had begun his morning a bit differently than Rose, bursting into her room with a huge grin and a fresh, printed-out itinerary for the return trip: Only two pages that he’d obviously still relished in the opportunity to staple together. 

Rose was viscerally aware that, ever-so-narrowly, he’d managed to catch her very frazzled appearance as she quickly stuffed something bright pink beneath her bedspread; eyes wide, hair a tangled mess, cheeks hot and flushed in the morning light.

She’d become so used to him waking up a bit late since regenerating into existence, and it was still very early, so she thought she could easily get away with indulging her body's neglected needs for the first time since they’d begun their new life together. 

After all, she had been… frustrated.

In the days it’d been since their reunion [and subsequent banishment], they’d shared many hugs; even a few brief, but sweet, well-intentioned kisses before parting for the evening.

Lovely as it was, that was the extent of it.

Rose had been so focused on ensuring the most comfortable adjustment possible for herself and her new Doctor that she hadn’t put any effort into anything beyond that.

Mostly because anything “beyond that” had never existed in the first place.

Once upon another universe, sure — there had been a hefty implication of “that”. However, before either of them had found the bravery necessary to rip the bandaid off, effectively turning “that” into “more”, the Void had seen fit to open up a rift between them.

Now, they finally had each other again; thrust into life with all of the grocery-shopping, petrol-pumping, linear leaky-faucet-fixing charm that comes with domesticity… 

And less than two weeks in, the Doctor had already caught her wanking. 

He’d said nothing on the topic, instead turning an instant and vibrant pink that could rival her little buzzing assistant, turning around and briefly stammering through travel plans as he all but melted out the door.

By the time Rose had rinsed off her shame and horror in the shower (possibly gently thudding her head into the wall several times), the Doctor had a cup of tea and a plate of eggs in front of her in the kitchen, and it was as though the faux pas had never even occurred. 

But that didn’t mean it hadn’t. 

And Rose was still frustrated. More so, now.

Not only had she not been able to bring herself to finish the job in her bedroom, robbing her of that much-needed tension relief, but the Doctor was acting weird now. He couldn’t seem to stop looking at her, he was annoyingly quiet, and if Rose said anything, his responses were skittish and short; like he was afraid she would run away if he said the wrong thing. 

Well, she wasn’t going to stand for that. They’d come too far to backpedal now. 

Was he uncomfortable because he was repulsed, or was it that he was intrigued? Did the concept of her existing as a sexual person excite him or make him want to run for the hills?

After breakfast, Rose decided she wanted to experiment a little. See if she could glean a bit of how he was feeling without having to say a word (since he seemed keen on keeping his mouth shut).

Since it was a toddler’s birthday party, she thought she’d slip on something sweet and simple for the occasion — something that felt a bit juvenile, but fitting. 

She’d bought the outfit on a sentimental whim about a year back, specifically because she remembered the way the Doctor had looked at her when she wore something similar long ago: a denim overall dress and plain pink t-shirt. She had thigh-high black stockings as well, which she’d only worn once, at a work gala — but for the sake of keeping the whole ensemble true to her memories, she’d slipped them on.

Nerves were overridden by a surge of confidence when she saw the look on the Doctor’s face before they left. The recognition was immediate, and his reaction... Intrigue mixed with an unmistakable touch of heat. So quickly, it was replaced with a warm smile and a “Don’t you look nice?” as he took a few steps closer.

Then — then — he’d kissed her. Just the smallest of kisses; first on her lips, then on her forehead; but it was so lovely that the fleetingness of it didn’t even matter.

As Rose beamed and blushed like a schoolgirl, she felt certain of one thing: absolutely nothing was wrong. Not only that — but the Doctor was sentimental, as well. 

And seemed to have a thing for stockings.

Together, they held hands and headed out the door, ready to take on their day as toddler chaperones. 

Hours later, as Rose scrubbed away at dried globs of frosting loaded with powdered sugar and yellow #5 until her fingers turned pruney, she wondered why she hadn’t chosen a less daunting task. 

However, when considering the chaos of the dwindling party, she decided it was well worth a bit of the mundane.

It’d been a very long day.

After saying their farewells, the Doctor was eager to drive them home, having (rather enthusiastically) worked out the best route that branched away from how they initially got there. He’d boasted about his knowledge of the back roads between Guildford and London, with villages and meadows and the light of the moon illuminating cottages that speckled the hillsides. 

The moonlight was a late addition to his ‘scenic route’ pitch, having obviously not accounted for how late they’d be gone — but nonetheless, Rose was happy to oblige. She was far too tired to get behind the wheel. 

“It’ll be well worth the whelm of your Saturday, Rose Tyler,” he’d declared as she dried her hands on an embroidered kitchen towel. “Just you watch!”

She felt guilty for being half asleep before their return trip had even started, but it couldn’t be helped. The hum of the engine drowned out the rest of the world, causing the quiet buzz of the radio to play out like a distant auditory hallucination as a cool breeze circulated through the car. 

The Doctor still twigged along as they drove, listing off a fact or twenty as he pointed out landmarks; forming a welcome (if inadvertent) lullaby. 

Rose had always loved his voice regardless of which body he occupied, and to hear him rambling at her side was like a gift from her past to her present; the perfect end to a day that had otherwise been something of a rollercoaster.

She slipped away into the realm between sleeping and dreaming without even realizing it; which made it all the more surreal when, somewhere along the way, she found herself startled out of her haze by the sensation of a warm hand resting over her knee.

Rose jumped a little and glanced over at her quiet driver, who had long since stopped talking as the roads grew darker and more remote. 

He wasn’t looking at her, perfectly focused on the drive… but his hand was saying quite a bit indeed.

He started to stroke her lightly back and forth; long fingers tracing her kneecap, occasionally drawing a circle that would have tickled if not for the thickness of her stockings.

Rose’s heart began hammering away persistently as her eyes remained locked on his hand, watching him touching her as though it was the most normal thing in the universe. 

Even in the midst of their lightly-flourishing relationship, this sort of intimacy was so unlike him. She tried to calm herself enough to enjoy it, to just let it be what it was: a nice, reassuring touch; nothing more.

But then he started to move his hand up her thigh, slower and slower. The shift was so subtle that, if she couldn’t see the amount of stocking visible between his hand and her skin growing smaller by the second, Rose would worry she was just imagining it. 

Everywhere he touched left a trail she could feel burning in his wake. In response, she felt a slow crawl of warmth radiating from her lower belly, seeping through her core. 

What inspired this, she wondered? The outfit? The flash of pink silicone in her bedspread? The road winding through the darkness?

Or was she overthinking it entirely?

Before long, his pinky slipped past the stocking and grazed the soft flesh of her bare thigh, riding the line between fabric and skin. Rose bit her lip and closed her eyes, just barely able to bite back a moan, because it had been so long since she’d been touched that way — and never like that.

By him. 

Right when she thought he’d decided he’d been bold enough, he reversed course, pressing his hand firmly into her thigh and dragging it back up, away from her body. Rose’s breath caught on a short, sudden grasp when he wrapped his finger around her knee and gently pulled, coaxing her to uncross her legs.

She wasn’t sure it was actually happening as she obeyed his silent command, both thighs now flat on the seat with her black boots planted on the floorboard. 

Seemingly content, the Doctor resumed. 

His fingertips coasted down towards the hem of her dress, which had ridden up a bit. Rose’s eyes flashed to the profile of his alarmingly tranquil face, and she couldn’t have told you where they were — if there were pretty hills or moonlit cottages or a tyrannosaurus rex chasing them down the road — because then his little finger was dipping below denim, tracing the edge of forbidden skin just beneath.

“D-Doctor,” she whispered in a shiver, not even hearing herself over the car’s engine, but the Doctor heard her, of course. His hand stopped and he turned his head almost infinitesimally, just enough to catch her stare out of the corner of his eye. 

“Should I stop?” 

Rose’s eyes widened, flicking between his hand and face a few times — but he was no longer looking at her, having resumed watching the road.

When she said nothing, he glanced back over. She held her breath and shook her head almost automatically, if a bit quickly. 

Of course she didn’t want him to stop. She just couldn’t remember how to speak, is all.

His hand continued then, slipping under her dress, and her legs opened by degrees. She hoped she didn’t look too eager but… 

The Doctor ran his palm up and down the inside of her thigh encouragingly before pulling lightly at her leg. “A little more?” he asked in a murmur, his voice deeper; richer than she thought she could ever recall hearing on him. “Please.”

Rose’s thighs slid open further, sticking just slightly to the leather seat, and he didn’t hesitate. He leaned back into his chair and pushed his hand between her legs, not stopping until his pinky brushed over her knickers. She gasped audibly, dropping her head forward.

The engine’s soft purr grew louder as the night grew darker, and he took to tracing her slit with light, up-and-down strokes. She bit the pout of her lower hip and wrapped one hand around her purse strap, clutching tightly.

They probably still had a bit to go until they reached their flat, so the Doctor let this go on for a while, working her up leisurely. Taking his time to tease. For dexterity's sake, the angle was sort of awkward, but Rose knew he would see this through — even given the limited opportunities afforded by their bodies being separated by a clunky center console. 

She knew that he knew what was happening was, in fact, a very big deal indeed. Perhaps the biggest deal in the universe. He wasn’t just feeling her up… He was telling her, plain and simple, that he was ready for this. Ready for them. No more lines.

To accentuate that point, he soon caved completely, dipping beneath the edge of her knickers and pressing his pinky through soft, silky-wet flesh. Rose’s mouth fell open with a shuddering moan and her legs spread further, now as wide as they could go as he started rubbing at her clit with the full length of his little finger.

Trees, bluffs, and hillsides seemed to pass the car faster and faster as he stroked her tenderly, sliding his hand up and down between her legs as he focused pressure in just the right spot. 

There were no street lights out where he’d taken her, just the stars and the darkness and a speed limit the Doctor had clearly set out to take to task. Rose could tell he was frustrated by the limited mobility of his hand and was obviously taking that frustration out on the car, but that made it no less surprising when he suddenly tore his finger from her knickers and grasped the gear lever, shifting into neutral before bringing them to a squealing stop on the shoulder. 

Breathless, disheveled, and no longer even remotely tired, Rose turned her head to make sure everything was alright. The Doctor was a bit preoccupied with pulling the parking brake, cutting the lights, unbuckling his safety belt, then drawing his leg up onto his seat before he turned his attention back to her.

The console was still a bit of a hindrance, but he had no trouble getting his hand in her hair and tugging her mouth to meet his.

Rose melted into her seat as he pressed the warmth of his lips to hers over and over, letting her taste him as he kissed her; leaving behind the sweet vestiges of frosting from the one-too-many cupcakes he’d devoured earlier in the night. 

His hand disappeared from her hair and reappeared between her legs a few seconds later, pushing the fabric back out of his way before she felt him sliding into her folds to feel her properly.

Rose’s lips left his with a breathy “Fuck” as he anchored two fingers over her clit and took to rubbing her slowly, gently. 

He stayed very close as he touched her; dark, lusty eyes burning with curiosity and wonder as he touched her, studying her. “Gorgeous,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her again. “Just gorgeous.”

Only once did he slip down to feel her from the inside; stroking carefully in and out of her, listening to her mewls and sighs as he moaned encouragingly. He was so, so close to her; so warm. 

Affection and love and sex imbued the cool air around them as the world grew small, holding the pair within a pocket of intimacy that seemed to exist outside of reality; outside of time and space. 

The engine was quiet enough now that Rose could hear the slick movement of his fingers as she felt them gliding over her clit, moving back and forth so unhurriedly. She could hardly breathe, losing herself to his skilled hand; drowning in the soft, brilliant sounds of pleasure they were sharing together in the dark. 

All of that pressure continued on, building beautifully, and it wasn’t long before he was stroking her into an orgasm that made her face and body do things she knew he’d never seen before. He watched every second of it.

On the shoulder of some rural road outside of London, the smile that swept across the Doctor’s features as he made her come for the first time was so utterly replete with joy that Rose almost had to weep in the afterglow. Everything about it was perfect. Glorious.

There was one more lingering kiss before he pulled away suddenly, and in seconds, he had them peeling out from the gravelly shoulder, flying down the road towards where light pollution could be seen illuminating the sky in the distance.

Rose blinked several times, part of her wondering if their little moment had actually just happened at all.

“Errm… Doctor?” She glanced outside, watching an old fence flying past her window like a film strip as the engine’s hum kicked up into a low roar. “S-Sort of hard to appreciate the scenic route with you driving at warp speed, don’t you think?”

“Sod it with the stupid scenic route,” he stated plainly. “If I don’t get you home within half an hour, I’m afraid we’ll be taking up residence in the nearest field. And I don’t know about you, Rose Tyler, but I’d rather not spend the morning picking grass out of my hair.”

She laughed out loud at the visual. “S’alright if it takes a bit, though.” She looked over at him with a grin, though she could feel the heat of her face growing flushed all over again. “I’m… not exactly tired anymore. Not sure I could go to sleep if I tried, actually.”

Only then did he turn and look at her, one eyebrow arched high. 

She hums noncommittally, even as an odd flush of happiness goes through her. “You know Michael, yeah? In HR?” She waits for him to nod impatiently. “Well…we went on a couple of dates. Wouldn’t even call them dates, actually. Didn’t really go past that. “ Her cheeks tinge pink. “I’m pretty sure I spent them talking his ears off about you.” 

She meets the Doctor’s gaze then, expecting him to say something cheeky. Instead, his eyes darken, and he swears loudly, before moving so suddenly that Rose jumps. 

“Sorry, hello, Anderson—was it?” the Doctor demands, leaning forward to tap the cabbie’s shoulder. “Yes, right—mind taking us back? I’ve forgotten to do something.”

“Doctor,” Rose sits up, bewildered. “Wha—”

“I knew it,” he says. “Knew that slimy bastard had eyes on you. He still fancies you, did you know that? Couldn’t keep his eyes off you tonight. It’s indecent, it is, Rose—it’s not right. He knows you’re with me now.”

Rose tries to ignore the shiver of delight that travels up her spine at that. With him. “So he fancies me—so what?”

“So what?”  the Doctor snaps. “So…what? So I’m going to show him that, that’s what.” He straightens his collar, pulls back his sleeves, muttering furiously. “...does he think he is? Hovering all day…all those reports…touching your shoulder…And tonight. Bringing you that drink?”

“You’ve been watching him closely, then, have you?”

“It’s not funny, Rose.” 

“Going to duel him to win my hand?”

“I just might,” he says, and Rose realises the cab’s pulled up outside the pub they’d left minutes ago. The Doctor yanks the door open, stepping onto the pavement before she can yank him back inside. 

“Doctor, wait! “ she laughs incredulously, stumbling as she makes to follow him. She grabs his arm. “What’re you doing? 

“Nothing,” he says pleasantly, plastering a wide grin across his face. “Just going to give the gentleman a piece of my mind.” With that he turns to march back into the pub, only for Rose to pull on his arm again, anchoring him to her. 

“Doctor, stop!” she says, quite unable to keep the amusement out of her voice. “You can’t just–look. What does it matter? It’s not like he has a chance.” She lifts his wrist, waving it between them. “I’ve won the hand already.”

The Doctor groans, but his lips twitch. “Awful.”

“You love it.”

They stand like that for several seconds, Rose grinning, until he shakes his head in defeat, allowing himself to smile. “I know he hasn’t got a chance,” he admits somewhat gruffly. “Doesn’t mean I’ve got to let him try.”

“Doesn’t mean you can walk in there and deck him either,” Rose reminds him. “You’re in enough trouble with Pete as it is.”

The Doctor makes a noise of irritation.  Carefully, Rose tugs him in the direction of the cab again, as if to not spook him. “I like this look on you,” she tells him conversationally, her tongue poking out of her mouth of its own accord. “Green.”

“You would,” he says grumpily, but there’s no real venom in his words. 

She remembers suddenly, her first Doctor, and the way he would sulk when she so much as glanced at a “pretty boy”. An unbearable fondness suffuses her chest. “Hey,” she says, slowing to a stop. She leans in, pressing her lips to his jaw, to the slight stubble he’s got going nowadays, lingering for a few seconds before pulling away. “I love you.”

His cheek is warm, his gaze even more so. 

“Rose Tyler,” he says quietly. He glances away then, to a street lamp at the corner of the building, and then to the cabbie and then her watch, strangely, before finally flitting back to her. 

“What?” she asks him.