Chapter Text
The Doctor stretches languidly across the sofa in the library, hands propped behind his head as he gazes up at the ceiling, counting the stars projected there by the TARDIS. One… ten… fifteen million.
Sitting up, he sighs and runs his hands through his hair, the barely restrained pent up energy in his limbs making him feel like a caged lion that has forgotten what it felt like to run. He smiles, liking the image of himself as a wild cat, darting through the savannah, the breeze ruffling his fur, the dirt grounding into his paws, as he searches for a gazelle or a zebra to… well, best not to think about that, really. No longer fancying the idea, his smile turns to a grimace and he begins to consider the possibility that he might actually be a bit bored.
But, nah, with a brilliant mind like his, boredom becomes an impossibility. Restless, maybe. Agitated, even. But bored? Not him.
No, the reason for his current state of mind looms in front of him, never letting him forget: words spoken by fallen angels under black holes on a planet that should have been impossible. Lies, a voice inside him protests and he wants to embrace it, wants to wrap his arms around it until the niggling doubts disappear.
The Doctor has always easily dismissed prophecies and superstitions and all of that human rubbish, but when it comes to Rose… well, sometimes he lets reason get away from him. That night, after goodbyes and reunions and hugs that left them clinging to one another, they kissed. He doesn’t remember who made the first move or how it happened, just the feel of her warm, wet lips on his and want, such aching want that terrified him even as it thrilled him.
Since then, he has rushed from place to place, never stopping or looking back, never giving into the urge to even think about kissing her again, never acknowledging her looks of longing and hurt and confusion.
But never always has a funny way of turning into now, eventually.
The comfort that the soft sofa cushions provided moments ago turns suffocating and the walls of the room begin to look smaller and smaller, everything combining to close in on him at once. Taking a deep breath and exhaling roughly, he closes his eyes and leans back so that the crook of his neck rests on the hard edge of the sofa. When he opens his eyes, the projected stars on the ceiling have expanded and he silently thanks the TARDIS for the gesture. Running a hand through his hair absent-mindedly, he begins to ponder the events of the past few days.
Spending three days at Jackie Tyler’s flat after the incident with the Absorbaloff and another two lingering in the vortex made it impossible for him to ignore his warring desires.
He wants to wrap Rose in a blanket of protective cotton, lock her away in the TARDIS, safe from anything that might harm her, including himself; he wants to take her into his arms and whisper words that he couldn’t say into the nerve endings of her skin, hear her words of response in her muffled moans against his lips.
But most of all, he wants to give her what Elton could give Ursula, what he made possible for them after one imploring look from Rose. It was almost too late for total reconstruction, but he managed to key into the absorption matrix and separate Ursula from the pavement with a bit of quick thinking and ingenuity. Now, they could have a proper life together; the kind of life that Rose deserved. The kind of life he could never give her.
A sudden mental nudging from the TARDIS snaps him out of his thoughts and alerts him that Rose is awake.
Standing up to walk to the kitchen and prepare the morning tea, the Doctor stretches his arms above his head and smiles at the thought of seeing Rose again after so many hours away from her. Why she deems it necessary to waste her life away in unconsciousness, he will never understand. But the thought of her sleep tousled hair and adorable morning grumpiness eclipses his previously sour mood and he begins to walk briskly down the hallway, whistling the tune of “I’m a little teapot” as he enters the kitchen.
He opens a barely used cupboard full of tea kettles and grabs a particular favorite, a ceramic antique adorned with blue and pink flowers and the imposing face of a warrior facing a snake like dragon. After filling it with water, he places it on the stove and begins to prepare poached eggs and beans on toast.
Maybe, just maybe, a good breakfast and a bit of caffeine will be enough to set everything back to normal again.
***
Rose sighs contentedly as she stretches and settles back on the mattress, her eyes growing heavy again as her body seems to meld into the pillows and plush duvet. It’s one of those mornings where she’s gotten a full-night’s rest but could easily fall back asleep for a couple more hours, drifting in and out between peaceful daydreams.
She used to love sleepy mornings like this back on the estate, when she had nowhere to be and no one to see aside from Mickey, who would usually be playing footie with his mates well into the afternoon anyway.
But since she’d started living on the TARDIS, started living with the Doctor, Rose had taken to jumping out of bed and rushing through her formerly lazy shower, eager to see what the universe had in store for them that day. Today, though, she almost lets her eyes fall closed again, because if she has to spend another day trying to ignore what happened between her and that jam-loving, pin-striped, goofy-grinning, hair-gel enthusiast of a Time Lord she is going to --
Rose flops onto her stomach and presses her face into her pillow, letting the soft down muffle the volume of her groan. He was such a git, giving her possibly, no, definitely the best snog of her life after one of the worst days of her life -- a day she thought she’d lost him for good -- only for him to pat her shoulder and run away. Literally and figuratively.
She thought he might have had a break through the other day, when he figured out how to return Ursula to corporeal form so she wouldn’t have to spend the rest of her life as a slab of slate. There was a softness in his eyes as he watched her and Elton embrace, a softness that stayed there as Rose squeezed his hand and he smiled down at her, squeezing her hand right back.
Of course, it wasn’t long later before the Doctor was making up some lame excuse to leave, Rose calling out apologies to their new friends as she hurried along behind him, unsuccessfully trying to ask him what was wrong as he spent the remainder of the evening tinkering beneath the console.
Later on she realized the softness in the Doctor’s eyes was the same look he’d had that other night, when she ran up the grating and jumped into his arms, holding him tighter than she ever had.
Rolling onto her side, Rose can’t stop her mind from wandering to a few hours after that, when she was swinging her legs from the console seat and he gave her another hug that lingered, one that ended with his fingers threaded through her hair and his cool breath on her lips.
All it took was for her to lift her chin a fraction of an inch and there he was, mouth covering hers as he gasped quietly, a soft intake of air she wouldn’t have noticed had he been any other bloke. It was that small sound that spurred her on, that prompted her to part her legs and tug him closer by his belt loops, to finally slip her tongue into his mouth as she’d dreamed of countless times before.
Rose shifts in bed as she licks her lips, hands toying with the hem of her vest top. Maybe she has time for a quick--
She groans again, her voice louder without the pillow to absorb the sound, and throws the duvet off her as she sits up, shoving her feet into fuzzy pink slippers and picking her bathrobe up from the floor. She’s sick of finding temporary relief, sick of treating the symptom and not the cause and, most of all, sick of waiting for him to suddenly progress beyond the emotional maturity of a 14-year-old boy.
Slipping the bathrobe on and wrapping the thin fabric around herself, Rose sets off down the corridor to find him.
The frustrated crease in her brow softens a bit when she discovers he’s in the kitchen, whistling quietly to himself as he pops several pieces of bread into the toaster before sliding over to the stove and peering into a steaming pot. She leans against the galley doorway and smiles in spite of herself as she watches him glide about, remembering the way he once scowled around the word “domestic.”
“Morning,” she mumbles after a while, scuffing across the floor and plopping down onto a chair at the round table.
“Hiya.” The Doctor flashes her a brilliant grin before turning back to the stove. “Was wondering when you’d decide to come in. Sleep well?”
“Mhmm.” The furrow in her brow deepens again, inexplicably annoyed that he’d known she was lingering. “Glad to be back in my own bed -- it’s more comfortable than the one at mum’s.”
“Why didn’t you sleep on the TARDIS then?”
“You know mum likes me to sleep in my old room when I’m home.”
“But the TARDIS was parked in the lounge, which is actually about two dozen feet closer to your mother’s bedroom than your bedroom.”
“That’s not the point,” Rose sighs, eyes boring holes into his stripey back. “Besides, why do you care where I sleep?”
The Doctor turns and fixes her with a quizzical look, two pot holder-covered hands suspended in front of him. Rose bites her lip to suppress a smile and a knee-jerk comment about him looking like a quilted lobster.
“You just implied you didn’t sleep well in your old bed so I was only wondering why you slept there at all when the TARDIS was nearby.” His eyes roam her face for a moment before he goes back to his work at the stove. “Besides, I need my companions well rested. You know, for all the running.”
“Yeah, like when we ran away from Elton and Ursula.”
“We didn’t run away from Elton and Ursula,” he huffs.
“No, you’re right, we didn’t but you did. Ursula had just put the kettle on for us but you were already backing away, spouting off some nonsense about tangled timelines and a hurricane in the vortex. I can tell when you’re lying, you know.”
The Doctor’s shoulders tense at her words but he continues to ready breakfast, carefully removing four eggs from the pot with a pair of tongs.
“Just didn’t know why we should stick around longer, is all,” he says. “They were only being polite, Rose. Their life together was just beginning, figured they didn’t really want us in the way.”
“Oh right, and you’re usually so considerate about that sort of thing.”
The Doctor spins around to gape at her as a high-pitched whistle sounds from somewhere behind him.
“What’s that?” Rose asks, frowning at the unpleasant noise.
“Ah, water’s boiling,” the Doctor says, lifting a ceramic teapot from the stove. “Decided to use this kettle I’d forgotten about -- nicked it from an emperor during the Ming dynasty. Nearly lost my hand for it, in fact! Not my fightin’ hand, the other one.”
“But we always use the electric kettle,” Rose says, voice flat.
“Fancied something different this morning, I guess.”
“Why would you ever use a stovetop kettle anyway?” Rose crosses her arms and pouts, glaring at a spot on the floor. “Those things take ages to heat up and last time I checked we lived on a spaceship with electricity so by using an old-fashioned kettle it’s like you’re completely ignoring about 150 years of technological progress. And things have to move forward, Doctor, you of all people should know that. Tea kettles can’t just stay in perpetual stasis -- once an advancement is made, such as the electric kettle, you can’t just revert to an old-fashioned kettle like you’re living in the stone ages. You can’t just get scared and run off and pretend like electricity was never invented in the first place, like if you ignore it long enough it will go away, even though in the back of your mind you know your life with be much improved with circuits and light bulbs and electric sodding kettles!”
Rose takes a few deep breaths and feels her cheeks heat up as she registers her outburst. When she finally raises her eyes the Doctor is staring at her, brows arched high on his forehead, holding the blue and white teapot in front of him.
“Rose?”
“What.”
“Are we still talking about kettles?”