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Rose knocked on the hotel room door once, twice, three times. The Doctor couldn’t be asleep, could he? He never used to sleep much, but even without his new part-human body, it had been a long drive here from Bad Wolf Bay. Rose knew, because she’d been the one driving. The Doctor had offered – Jackie, to nobody’s suprise, hadn’t – but Rose had welcomed the distraction. Anyway, she wasn’t sure if she trusted the Doctor to stick to any kind of speed limit, not when he was used to instantaneous travel in the TARDIS. The TARDIS which they didn’t have anymore, so Rose had gripped the steering wheel of their hire car and gotten on with it.
At first, the drive had been awkward. Jackie had just kept talking and talking, so much that even the Doctor, relegated to the backseat, couldn’t get a word in edgeways. Rose eventually just had to tell her mum to shut up so she could focus on the road. She’d exchanged a wry grin with the Doctor in the wing mirror, and from that moment on the journey had been a lot less awkward, but a lot more distracting, as Rose and the Doctor tried not to look at each other lest they both burst out laughing.
Once it started to run into evening, Rose had pulled up in a hotel car park and Jackie had gotten them rooms – which was why Rose and the Doctor were at completely opposite ends of the building. Rose remembered the room number though... or, at least, she hoped she did. There had to be someone in there, because she was pretty sure she could hear a hairdryer. She knocked again on the door, praying that she wasn’t about to get thrown out for harassing some random Norwegian person. “Doctor?” she hissed, mindful of the ‘keep quiet’ signs, and was about to knock again when the door was flung open. The Doctor stood behind it, beaming at her, still in his blue blazer. His tie was wonky, like he’d put it on in a hurry. Rose instinctively reached up to correct it.
“Rose! Have you seen? They have these little bottles of shampoo, it’s genius! Tiny shampoo! Who’d’ve thought?”
Well, that explained the hairdryer. And the smell of lemons. “I’m hungry,” said Rose.
The Doctor kept up his smile, running a hand through his hair. “Okay.”
“The receptionist said there’s a chippie down the road.”
“Okay.”
Rose rolled her eyes. “Come with me to the chippie, Doctor.”
The Doctor pulled the door shut behind him. “Yessir.”
***
Rose let the Doctor get their food while she bagged a spot outside, thankful that it was a warm summer’s evening. “Our first date, chips,” the Doctor said happily as he returned to her, dumping two paper-wrapped packages on the table. “Remember?”
“Do you?” Rose blurted out.
“‘Course I do,” said the Doctor. “I was there.” He started removing the greasy paper. “Rose... I’m still – me, you know.”
Rose hasn’t realised her expression was so revealing. But then, the Doctor always been able to tell what she was thinking. “Yeah.”
“No, really.” The Doctor pushed her half of the chips across the table. “I really am. It’s like regeneration – it was a regeneration. I saw you, and I was running, and you were running–” He gave her a silly smile which Rose tried not to return.
“Shut up.”
“Hmm. Anyway, then I got shot by a Dalek, didn’t want to change, and woke up like this. Changed a little, annoyingly. But I’m still me.” He tapped his head. “Same stuff in here. Madman with a box, yeah? Well,” he admitted a little more quietly, “without the box now.” He looked up hopefully. “But still me.”
Rose reached across the table and took his hand. She wondered if it was the same one whose replacement had freaked her out so much all those years ago, on a spaceship above London on Christmas day. When she squeezed it, it squeezed back. “Yeah,” she repeated, more sure this time.
They sat there in comfortable silence, both eating chips one-handed. It was starting to get dark, and the stars were revealing themselves. A full sky of stars, thought Rose, for the first time in years. After a few minutes, the Doctor spoke. “So, Rose Tyler. What now?”
Rose swallowed her mouthful. “Back home, I guess.”
“And... where’s that?” He made a face. “With Jackie?”
A laugh escaped from her. “No. I’ve got my own place now, a flat. Nothing special, but... I couldn’t just stay with Mum and Dad. Needed my own space, you know?”
The Doctor grinned. “I know. I needed my own space so much, I stole a TARDIS and ran away.” He sighed, and Rose winced in sympathy. The TARDIS was gone now, and there was no chance of getting another. “So. Where do I go? Oh, I’m going to have to get a house, aren’t I? With walls. And a mortgage.” He faux-shuddered at the thought, clearly aiming to make Rose laugh. She almost did, until she caught herself questioning if any of the horror in his tone had actually been real. Could the Doctor really adjust to a human life like this, all boring and ordinary? Could she?
“Difficult to get a mortgage when you don’t legally exist,” Rose pointed out instead. “I can tell you that from experience, the paperwork takes ages. In the meantime... um. Well.” Rose suddenly decided she was very interested in her chips. “You could probably take Mickey’s old place, ‘s not like he’s here to use it.” She fiddled with a sachet of ketchup. “Or... you could–”
“Rose, could I–”
“Yes, yeah, of course!” Rose leaned forward eagerly.
“–have the ketchup?” The Doctor flushed just as hard as Rose did.
She pulled her hand away in embarrassment, trying to look normal. “Oh. Um. Yeah.” Rose handed the sauce over, and studiously avoided the Doctor’s eyes.
There was an awkward silence as the Doctor drowned his chips, until finally he spoke. “Rose... could I live – with you? In your flat?”
“Sure,” said Rose casually. Or, at least, she hoped she sounded casual.
“I could, um, take the spare room, or the sofa, if you–”
“We’ll work something out.” Rose grinned down at her chips.
“Anything not to live with Jackie,” quipped the Doctor, and Rose laughed.
***
When all the chips had been consumed, Rose and the Doctor found themselves wandering, their way lit by only the moon and the street lamps. After a while, they found a park, and the Doctor spread out his jacket on the grass for them both to sit on. He yawned. “Interesting,” he murmured. “I’ve barely done anything all day, but I’m getting tired.”
“’S what happens, when you’re human,” Rose pointed out. “And it’s catching.” She yawned too. “So, what d’ya think? Parallel world, and all that?”
“Well, you’re in it, so that’s a mark in its favour,” judged the Doctor sleepily. “Everything else seems pretty much the same.” He lay down and stretched out on the grass, hands under his head. “Let’s just stay here... My first night on a parallel universe, under the stars with Rose Tyler.”
Rose wriggled around so she was lying down too, using the Doctor’s chest as a cushion. He didn’t seem to mind. “You can see all of them, feels like,” said Rose. “The stars.” She gazed upwards at the clear sky. She’d never see this in London, not with all the light pollution. Still, though, she had seen better. “Guess we’ll never go up there again,” she sighed. “No more travel for us.”
“Probably not,” said the Doctor wistfully. “Not through space, anyway. Or time.” A pause. “But then, the travel was never the most important part.”
Rose smiled. She’d always thought so too, but had never been quite sure if he’d agree. “It was fun, though.”
“Oh, it was.”
“I’d have travelled forever, I think,” she admitted quietly, examining the moon. It was easier to say when she didn’t have to look at him.
The Doctor shifted. “Me too.” A beat. “It wouldn’t have been fair on you, Rose. I... always worried. It was fine then, it was brilliant. But I used to think... twenty, fifty years, then what?”
“I’d have stayed with you,” Rose said. Wasn’t it obvious? “I really would’ve done.”
“I know.” The Doctor sighed. “And it wouldn’t have been fair.” Rose wasn’t sure what to say to that. “You deserved better than the life he could give you,” the Doctor said, and suddenly they weren’t talking about the future they could’ve had together. This was the future Rose could’ve had, if the Doctor – the original Doctor – had wanted her to come. If he hadn’t refused to say it, hadn't left her on that stupid beach for the second time. She’d have gone with him in a heartbeat. Would she have regretted it, as the years went by? Rose suddenly realised she didn’t know, and that scared her. “But then, you deserve better than what I can give you too,” the Doctor confessed, stifling another yawn. He carried on wistfully. “Maybe he could never give you his forever, but he could give you the stars, Rose. I used to be able to give you the stars.”
Rose looked up into the night sky, not confident enough to speak. Then, she asked, “Are they the same?”
“What?”
“The stars. Are they the same?”
“Yeah, yes, I think so.”
Slowly, Rose raised a hand, and pointed at a random flickering dot. “What’s that one?”
“What?” The Doctor’s confusion was audible.
“You used to say,” Rose said hesitantly, “that seeing the universe – knowing the universe – was just as good as owning it. Well... here’s the universe, right here.” She gestured, then dropped her arm back to the grass. “Go on, Doctor,” she said quietly. “Give me the stars.”
“Oh.” Rose could practically hear the Doctor’s smile. “I can... I can do that.” The Doctor shifted a bit, freeing his hands. One reached out to clasp Rose’s, and the other pointed upwards, just in Rose’s eyeline. “So. To start with, it’s hundreds of light-years away, hundreds. The light that’s reaching your eyes now, Rose, was forged centuries ago – now that’s time travel.”
“What’s it called?” Rose murmured sleepily.
“Well, you lot do have a name for it, but it’s incredibly boring. All random letters and numbers. Humans are terrible at naming things, Rose, you really are. Especially scientists.” Rose couldn’t help a snort. That was the Doctor alright, going ’round insulting species like there was no tomorrow – even though there was. For the first time since the stars had started disappearing, ‘tomorrow’ was a certainty. That was... new. “But the native species of that solar system,” the Doctor continued, “they call it ‘Life-Giver’. Isn’t that beautiful?”
Rose smiled to herself, hearing that silly little grin the Doctor wore whenever he got to talk about something brilliant. “Go on.”
“Well, every five years, they have this festival...”
They stayed there for hours. Rose could have stayed there forever, just herself and the stars and the Doctor’s voice – and his hand wrapped around hers. Just as she was drifting off, the Doctor paused his description of the lost (and found, thanks to them) moon of Poosh to say her name. “Rose?”
“Yes, Doctor?”
“Can I say it?”
Rose yawned. “Say what?”
“I mean, I spent so long not saying it, and I’d quite like to say it again, but–”
Oh. “You can say it.”
Rose could feel the Doctor’s chest rise and fall with each breath. “I love you, Rose Tyler.”
She opened her mouth to reply, then paused. These were the words that had kept Rose going for years. Could she say them now, in this little park, to this Doctor whose singular heartbeat she could hear so clearly beneath her head? The Doctor had never been like Mickey, or Jim, or any boyfriend she’d ever had. He had always been so much more than a boyfriend. She couldn’t say these words without meaning it, not to him. So Rose closed her mouth, and sat with the words for a while, until she knew them to be true. Only then did she speak, very deliberately, gazing up at the night sky with the entire universe her witness. “Doctor?”
“Yes, Rose?”
“I love you too.”