Chapter Text
“What?”
The word escaped her throat so fast in a choke so strained that she only realised how bad it sounded when she saw his eyes widen.
“No - wait - I didn’t- “
“-never mind- “
“-no, Doctor- “
“-let’s just forget it- “
“-no we have to- “
“-I shouldn’t have- “
“-Doctor!” she snapped, her voice slicing through the blockage between and he stopped dead in his tracks, awkwardly hovering over the edge of the bed as he daren’t fully stand up nor relax back down onto it. Her breathing was ragged, choking over the pressure of her heart's fight to keep her in place. She watched him closely, unmoving as was his gaze with hers in return. They both tried to gauge the other’s thoughts, and Rose huffed in its futility.
“What do you mean you thought we were already in a relationship?”
He winced at the forcefulness of her words. “Like I said, I obviously got it wrong.”
“What - how, what - I don’t..." She pinched the bridge of her nose and huffed, clearly not quite ready to form sentences. She tried to quieten her thoughts to at least decide on one question of many to prioritise and ask him first. What the hell did he mean? Since when? Why did he tell her differently earlier? Why is he being so damn confusing? What did he get wrong? Did he - was he - what? She released her nose and opened her eyes to meet his, wide with concern and, in large part, sorrow. She shook her head slowly in disbelief, and he lowered his gaze. He slipped back down to sit in on her bed and breathed in deeply.
They remained in silence for a few moments: Rose trying to figure out what on Earth was happening, while the Doctor nervously traced the floral pattern of her bedsheets.
She decided to let the words roll off her tongue rather than plan them, since it had apparently all gone to shit anyway. “You said. Earlier. You said we were… we were on the same page.” She recounted the conversation, her body starting to tingle in frustration at the memory of his anger. “You said we were ‘never going to happen’, and now you tell me you thought we were?”
He released his breath slowly, his nervousness evident in its tremble. “Rose, I don’t do this.”
“Don't do what?”
“This!” He gestured to them, then around him at her room. “Sleeping next to somebody every night, sharing a room- “
“-exactly! So you’re only sending me mixed signals when you do do them!”
“I mean I don’t do this with everyone! The hand-holding and the hugging and the kissing - for God’s sake, Rose, I kiss you! I don’t do this sort of stuff with just anyone!” He was focusing on his words she could tell, because he was having a hard time finding them. She watched him in silence as he searched the floor for them, before shaking his head and looking at her helplessly. “I thought you knew that?”
It was like she was hearing what he was saying but it was so ridiculous she couldn’t take what he was saying to be believable.
“I..." she croaked, and he continued to watch her. It was making her nervous, she couldn’t think straight. She certainly wouldn’t have thought he did all those sorts of things with just anyone, no. She knew those things he did only with her. But she didn’t think for a moment he was even remotely interested in romantic relationships. “I didn’t,” she finished awkwardly.
His expression was so strange to her. She could see that it was broken, she knew by the way his eyes carried a heaviness behind them too overbearing, the way his entire physique had relaxed in his despair, but she didn’t understand it.
“Do you do all that stuff with all your other friends?” He asked cautiously, and she detected the apprehension in his voice.
“No, of course not.”
“Well... then, what did you think this was?”
She blinked; he seemed more alien to her now than ever. She knew this man. Knew him like the back of her hand. She probably knew the back of his hand better than she knew that back of her own. But she could feel a shift in her understanding of reality, and she wasn’t quite following where it was taking her. She tried to put herself in his shoes because he seemed to be suggesting he was the one thinking she was less advanced in the stages of their relationship. Which made absolutely no sense.
“But you were angry!” she finally said, trying to align whatever he was saying now with her understanding of the conversation earlier. “You snapped and said we’d been over this. And now you’re…”
He waited patiently for her to finish, his shoulders slumping in sympathy when he saw that she couldn’t. She felt the distance between them now especially; seeing him look at her with concern and not have him scrambling over to her was so foreign now.
He spoke slowly, nervously. “Rose, you said it was like we weren’t far off a relationship.”
“We weren’t!”
“Yes, well. You know that, to me, it already was a relationship. This, to me… I thought we’d…” She could see his frustration with himself, that every time he spoke, he was angry at himself for misunderstanding. She still wasn’t even sure what it was he’d got wrong. He knew how she felt, so why was he so nervous?
Unless he didn’t know.
Mad. No way, couldn’t possibly have not known. She was so obvious with the way she felt. She thought back over the last few weeks. She considered all of her actions, and how he might have interpreted them. Considering she didn’t think they were in a relationship; he’d have to be a completely useless nutter to think they were just platonic signs of affection. There was that one morning a couple of weeks ago when he made her breakfast, and she braved her thank-you in the form of a kiss on his cheek. It was daring for her, and she remembered it clearly, especially because it had confused her how he had barely acknowledged it as being out of the ordinary himself. To her, that was so far off platonic she near screamed at his indifference towards her bravery. But then, was he saying now that perhaps the reason he didn’t think it was out of the ordinary was because he thought they were together?
Hold on. She tried to extract another memory of note where her actions may have caused him to think she believed they were in a relationship, too. Every kiss she gave him, every gesture she had made, like when she combed through his hair after he’d just gotten out of the shower, or how she intimately ran her fingers down his back when he was fixing whatever gizmo or gadget in the TARDIS, all had been an imitation of the kinds of displays of affection he’d been giving her. She only felt like she could kiss his cheek because she remembered the first time he’d kissed her cheek, she only felt like she could run her fingers through his wet hair because that’s what he did to her, running her fingers down his back was only encouraged by the way he’d trace his along hers when she was falling asleep next to him. He had always set the pace of their relationship, defining it and she only ever kept to what he was comfortable with. If he had learnt to become more comfortable with kissing, then she was by all means fine with that. More than fine, but she would have never done something unless she knew he’d be comfortable with it, too.
It was only when her eyes finally settled back on his in her search for the truth did she understand. She was only echoing his physical affections because she felt like he was letting her, whereas he thought she was returning them wholly because she thought they were now together, too.
He continued to watch her. “When you said it was almost as though we were in a relationship, I didn’t understand.”
“Because you thought we already were,” she mused out loud.
He nodded slowly. “But I was wrong?”
Her eyes narrowed as the truth was starting to untangle itself, and she fell to perch herself on the edge of the bed next to him. It was only in doing so did it further fuel his version of the truth, because she was shocked to not feel his hand reach for her leg. “So you, what, backtracked when you thought you were?”
“I was,” he corrected. “Rose, if you didn’t see this as a relationship, then we’re… quite clearly on different pages.”
“You - I, what, how can you think - " She swallowed her stutter, taking a moment to refresh herself and keep her words coherent. "I mean, even if I didn’t see this as a relationship already, surely you must know that’s what I want, too?”
His brow drew together in confusion, and hers did in response to his. “What! You said you just wanted to be friends!”
She yanked herself back up off the bed in disbelief, hitting the wall behind her as she did. “When?”
“Earlier! You said you only saw us as friends and that’s all you wanted!”
She scoffed incredulously. “I was obviously saying that because you freaked out and snapped back at me for daring to suggest we might be closing in on a relationship!”
“Because you had just proven to me that I was alone in thinking that we already were!”
“But I didn’t know that’s how you saw it! I thought you were just relaxing your boundaries, how the hell was I supposed to know you’d changed your mind?”
“Changed my mind?” he stressed; his eyebrows raised in utter bewilderment. “What are you on about?”
“Outside the cafe! All those months ago, you said! Curse of the time lords, wither and die and all that! Do you not remember?”
“Of course I remember, but that was then! I thought you knew things were different now!”
Her hands snapped to her temples as she tried to grasp his absurd claim. “How? How could I have possibly known things were different? And why are they different? Since when have they been different?”
“Since I almost lost you on that parallel world! Or since I lost your face, or since I almost bloody lost you for good on that bloody planet!”
She scrunched her eyes shut, pressing the pads of her fingers onto her eyelids in an incomprehensible and demanding frustration. “You didn’t think to tell me you’d changed your mind?”
“I didn’t think it needed saying!”
She let the words ring around her before her hands finally slid down her face, meeting at a point under her chin where she rested her head in deliberation. It was a lot to process, to learn that she had in fact been in a relationship with a man she’d been wanting to be in a relationship with for quite some time now. He really was bloody impossible to keep up with. Her fingers curled and her chin fell down to rest on top of them, now able to open her eyes and see the Doctor below. He was still sitting at the end of the bed, his elbows resting on his thighs and his head in his hands.
“I tried not to question it too much,” he spoke, finally. “You, I mean. Why you’d want to be with me.”
She chewed her bottom lip as she thought. “I thought I’d made it clear outside the cafe that I did?”
“Yes, well. That was before I told you that we couldn’t be, and before I left you on a spaceship somewhere in the 51st century. Before I bloody drove your boyfriend away to another universe.”
She'd never felt their dynamic this way, that perhaps he had felt undeserving rather than unwanting of her love. She tried to joke, anything to relieve the pressure of the atmosphere they'd created since they'd started talking. “Well, when you put it like that, why do I want to be with you?”
He raised his hands and gestured to his point being proven. She giggled, and only then did he finally chuckle too and then she saw him again, her Doctor, her best friend. Same now as he was this morning, only different somehow. It was like she’d finally got that last piece of him that would enable her to see him clearly. He looked up at her fondly, a boyish charm about his ancient character, and she reached for his head, scratching his hair as it stood at the perfect height at her waist.
“You’re a daft fool, you know that?”
“I think you can award yourself a little credit for this one, too.”
She leaned down to place a kiss on his head, hearing his content hum in reply.
“I can’t believe you let me go to your cousin’s christening like it was just another normal Saturday."
"You know as well as I do that there's no such thing as normal with you."
"I think I’m now your cousin’s godfather.”
She laughed. “You are, yes.”
“Thought so,” he chuckled, tugging gently on the tie of her dressing gown to bring her closer to him. Her cheeks flushed as she considered he might loosen it entirely, exposing her skin and freely exploring it with his hands. She winced at her earlier decision to not shave. She dared herself to gently fall down onto his lap, slipping her legs either side of him and thankful yet for her earlier decision to use that lotion when his fingers began to effortlessly skate up her thighs.
“You never kissed me," she pointed out, her final argument before she was to admit defeat. His eyes darkened and her gaze drew to his lips, transfixed by the way his tongue slid out to moisten them and she was faintly aware hers was doing the same.
“You never kissed me.”
The murmur of his voice, the hunger in it sent an actual shiver down her spine, her body involuntarily flinching. The touch of his fingers burned her skin below them, she imagined he could only feel the tiny goosebumps flourishing in the wake of their path. She decided not to entertain that grin of his, the one that was telling her he knew exactly what he was doing.
“I think,” she breathed, as his head slowly dipped to kiss her collar bone, “we could have avoided this whole situation if we’d just been explicit.” She tried not to lose focus on her words, which was a momentous task when his kisses became so soft and gentle that she couldn’t be certain he wasn’t slowly tracing the path up to her lips solely with the tip of his tongue.
“So if I’m hearing you right, you’re saying you think we need to be clearer with each other in the future?”
“Mmm,” she moaned, and she’d be angrier with his seeming lack of difficulty in maintaining coherent speech if he wasn’t now delicately peppering her jaw with his deliberate kisses. Her hands slipped up from his neck and to his hair instinctively, grasping onto it for additional support the closer his lips got to hers, clenching and unclenching fists of his hair with every breath in and out. She felt his hands begin to itch upwards, dipping under her dressing gown and softly grazing their way up to her waist where they lay still, holding her in place, his thumbs brushing the dip of her hips and there was so much of him that she could feel everywhere, all over her skin, all of her senses receptive only to his touch.
He paused when his lips met hers, hovering just above them and she was growing increasingly more frustrated at his calm and steady breathing contrasting embarrassingly against hers, shallow and needing. “One question.”
“What?” she breathed impatiently.
“Do you need me to tell you how much I want you, or are happy for me to just show you?”
“Show me,” she affirmed, if not the only thing she was certain of tonight by far. “Definitely can just show me.”