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It’s probably not his first choice, in terms of how he’d imagined this finally happening.
Not that he’d imagined this exact scenario, per se, only maybe he had in that he’d always imagined he and Rose as more. More than companions, more than partners in crime, more than friends.
He’d imagined the kind of more that led to things like fighting for blanket space and casual kisses and, yes, sharing a bath. That right there was an action that was firmly planted on the “couples” side of the relationship divider, something that would define them as properly together and not leave them stuck in the weird sort of limbo they’d somehow fallen into.
(It just wasn’t done, was it, to fall in love with your human companion? The other Time Lords would have ridiculed him for sure, but even his past incarnations–-save the last one–-would’ve scoffed at the idea of so carelessly giving his hearts away to someone so young, so innocent, so short-lived. And yet he’d gone ahead and done it anyways, thrown himself in with reckless abandon, letting Rose fill up all the empty space in his hearts and make herself at home there.)
At any rate, he’d like to believe that she’s imagined this, too. He’d admittedly not always been the best at reading people–-his ability to notice someone flirting with him often depended almost entirely on how directly they went about it. With Rose, though, he’d been looking for signs even in his last incarnation, gruff and grumpy though he was.
He liked to think the signs have been in his favor lately, filled with lingering glances, intertwined fingers, and tongue-touched smiles.
Still–-his imagination usually came up with something a bit more, well, romantic. Candles, music, bath oils, you name it.
Naturally medicinal water to help heal Rose’s wounds was not exactly one of the potential plans, and she also tended to at least be conscious in most of his fantasies.
As upset as he was about that particular detail, he had to admit it was probably for the best–-having fallen unconscious was likely saving Rose from feeling a significant amount of pain at the moment, and he wanted to relieve as much of it as he could before waking her.
Gently, he lowered them both into the water, settling himself onto the shallow terrace and adjusting Rose into a sitting position next to him. Idly, he realized with a flinch that they were both still fully clothed and thanked Rassilon that he’d improved the dryer settings on his sonic just last week (and that That Incident That Shall Not Be Named, back on Melculla VII with Jack and Rose and his previous incarnation, had convinced him to make a habit of adding fully watertight seals to all of his pockets and carrying around spare clothes).
Rose’s clothes were a lost cause, and he shed his jacket and trousers as quickly as he could manage and deposited them along the banks of the ice pools. They were gorgeous, really, and he rather hoped he could heal Rose enough to wake her out here because he’d desperately wanted her to see these: the ice pools of Koorharn, warm as a sunny day in LA on Earth but still edged with ice on this planet due to the minerals in the water raising the natural freezing point. It was those minerals that he was counting on now, to help relieve Rose of the burns covering her torso and limbs.
Keeping one arm locked securely around his injured companion, he reached into the pocket of his damp suit trousers and gingerly fished out the sonic. Adjusting the settings carefully, he then began to cut through the cloth that was sticking to Rose, peeling each piece off of her as gently as he could manage and then depositing them into a soaking heap next to his own clothes.
When she was finally down to just her undergarments, he adjusted the sonic settings again before disinfecting her burns as best as he could, all the while cursing himself for getting them into such a dangerous situation in the first place. Granted, he hadn’t known there would be a bomb involved, but he was still careless, and it had still cost Rose. Almost cost him Rose.
When he’d run everything over with the sonic, he reached back into his pockets and dug out the seventy-fifth century burn cream he kept on hand for occasions like this, using his teeth to uncap the bottle and then gently beginning to massage it into Rose’s skin. To his relief, the minerals got to work right away in enhancing the healing effects; the evidence of her injuries was practically erasing itself before his eyes. With renewed energy, he quickly applied the cream to the rest of the burns, heaving a sigh of relief when the last one faded away.
“Rose,” he whispered gently, shaking her shoulder a couple of times until she started stirring. “Time to wake up, Rose, I need to check how you’re feeling.”
“Doctor?” she mumbled, squeezing her eyes shut even tighter for a moment before blinking up at him in confusion. “What–-where are we?”
“The ice pools of Koorharn,” he informed her, unable to resist twitching his lips into a proud smile. “Told you I could get us here!”
“Erm,” she began, stretching out her limbs with a tired groan. “Speaking of, I don’t really remember you getting us here. Or…” she glanced down and immediately flushed scarlet, eyes widening comically. “Or, um, getting undressed.”
“Right,” the Doctor winced. “About that. What is the last thing you remember?”
Rose thought carefully for a moment, trying to organize her cluster of thoughts and fighting back the fog of fatigue that was making concentration difficult. “Um, we were in the guard tower. We suspected there was a conspiracy to overthrow the current monarch, who actually wasn’t really a bad bloke, from what I remember, and then…” she trailed off with a frown.
“And then the door blew right off its hinges,” the Doctor finished for her softly, unable to meet her gaze. “The tower was empty because they rigged it to blow, Rose,” he told her, hearing her shocked gasp followed by the sounds of her shifting around in the water.
“But, but how–-” she started, checking herself over, and the Doctor finally, finally offered her a small smile.
“The water in the pools has natural minerals that amplify the healing process,” he explained. “Essentially, most of the compounds speed up the chemical reactions started by most human medicines, so the burn cream worked nearly instantaneously upon application.”
“Oh,” she muttered, blushing red and sliding a bit deeper into the ice pool. “I–-thank you.”
“Of course,” he frowned, wondering a bit at the embarrassment and gratitude in her tone. Didn’t she know he would do anything for her? A bit of medicine was absolutely nothing. “Good to know you don’t really feel it, then. I was worried you might still be in pain.”
“Nope,” she said, popping the syllable just as he often did. “How about you, though? Were you hurt?”
“Nah, I was further from the epicenter of the blast,” he explained, and though his tone was light, her expression clearly demonstrated that she could see straight through him, could tell how guilty he felt over that. “I mostly got hit with debris, and then we both got a bit... overheated, while I was carrying you out.”
“Ah,” she mumbled, embarrassed. She sank a bit further down into the water before glancing up at him sheepishly. “Um, like I said–-thank you. For, you know, saving me and everything.”
“Of course,” he repeated with a furrowed brow. “Rose, you don’t need to thank me for taking care of you, you must know that I-–that I always will,” he finished hastily, averting his gaze momentarily before sliding further down into the water until he was nearly eye-level with her.
“I know,” she replied, cheeks flushed far pinker than the temperature of the water warranted. His breath caught as she offered him a heart-stopping smile-–not her usual, full-blown, tongue-in-teeth and just-this-shy-of-beaming grin, but a much softer curve of her lips that made him certain she saw right through his smoke and mirrors and thought him worth smiling at anyway.
“Do you, though?” he asked, wavering slightly with an undercurrent of urgency that Rose reacted to instinctively, sliding both of her hands into his under the water and giving them a gentle squeeze.
“Yes,” she reassured him. “I do.”