Work Text:
It’s not like she meant to find it.
It was late at night, if the dimmed lighting emanating softly from the TARDIS’ roundels and grating was anything to go by.
It was also quiet. Of course, it wasn’t exactly abnormal for the Doctor to disappear off to somewhere random once his onboard human needed her shut-eye. While he sometimes stayed with her for a little bit, often just sitting by her and reading, he was likely to get bored after she fell asleep. Obviously Rose was none the wiser if he did indeed find something to tinker with or fix in the no doubt labyrinthine bowels of his space-time ship. But it explained why there wasn’t a whisper of him as she padded the corridor barefoot, hair still damp from a long overdue shower. She stopped by the galley to make a sweet and milky cuppa, and then made her way to the library.
Other than a fire crackling warmly in the grate by the reading nook, it was deserted. Rose didn’t pay that much mind. There were a hundred and one other places the Doctor could be. What caught her interest, however, was the thin and battered book resting precariously on the plush, sage-coloured wing armchair she usually took up (if she wasn’t curled up next to him on the Chesterfield nearer to the hearth, relishing in the rare, silent proximity).
The book hadn’t been there last time she was here. Even more interestingly, it looked like it didn’t quite belong. Not in the possessive sense of ‘it shouldn’t have even been there’; Rose wouldn’t lay claim to this section of the library since it gave her a pleasant buzz just to be allowed into this space of his. More in the sense of the chair not being its original intended destination.
The book was nondescript, unassuming. The fact it had clearly been discarded absentmindedly - or possibly hurriedly, it was hard to tell without literally having the ability to bend time backwards - was what made its mundanity extraordinary.
So it was completely understandable that she just had to pick it up.
A faded silver alien script crept up its spine, and Rose set down her mug as she settled into the armchair, flipping it open.
If she expected adventure or treasure, maybe a long-lost diary, well…
It was…dull. A manual, maybe? Long, meandering passages about deep-space wayfinding using harmonic star pulses and “centering one's gravity-self.” More meditation than navigation.
Rose squinted at a page describing “the emotional charge of orbital drift” and snorted. Boring. Weirdly boring, considering how out-of-place it felt.
She was about to set it aside - considering going to bed in light of the book’s content actually making her eyelids begin to drop - when something slipped out from between the pages and fluttered into her lap.
Rose picked it up—and paused.
It wasn’t part of the book - a small, neat square torn out of some lined notebook, snow white against the journal’s yellowing and spotted pages. It wasn’t hidden…but it felt private somehow.
As with the book discovery, her curiosity led the way; she unfolded it carefully.
It’s not like I meant to write it.
It just… happened. Words always seem safer on paper, as if committing them there means they’re less real. More like fiction. More like me. She’s always laughing. Always looking at me like I’m better than I am. I make her tea and she acts like I’ve given her the stars. And I have. But that’s not the point.
The point is: she smiles and the TARDIS gets brighter. I talk too fast and she keeps up. I run, and she runs with me. And now I’m here, standing still, wondering when exactly it stopped being friendship and started being something terrifying.
I keep thinking I can outrun it. That if I don’t say it aloud, it won’t grow teeth. But it’s there every time I look at her. Every time I almost reach for her hand and don’t.
Maybe this is my way of saying it without saying it.
Maybe this is just cowardice, in 12-point font.
Her gaze was long and staring into nothing as she lowered the bit of paper slowly, her pulse skittering like a bird caught in a trap.
She knew that voice. He hadn’t signed it, but the words dressed up in metaphor and self-deprecation told her. It was like a giant neon arrow gesturing at his flowing cursive.
The Doctor had written this.
She didn’t know when, or why -or who it was about.
Rose swallowed hard, changing mid-motion from folding the letter back up to scanning the sentences again, as though they might reveal something else hidden.
Except, she did know who it was about. Possibly.
So she reshelved the book (at random because the Doctor didn’t have a system owing to the TARDIS being somewhat of a packrat, plus liking to move things around without warning) and then took both her barely-sipped tea and the incriminating bit of paper with her back to her room. Just to be sure.
If the Doctor had figured out her secret of finding his secret, then he didn’t let on.
The next morning proceeded as usual. Rose drifted into the galley, yawning, and set down heavily at the breakfast bar. He chirped a cheery “morning” and slid a mug of tea across, bumping her shoulder with his. The amber glow filtering through the panels the TARDIS had installed herself to simulate something ‘cosy’ told her it was later in the day than she’d first thought. Which wasn’t a hard conclusion to draw, given that sleep had evaded her racing mind for more than a few hours.
“Or I guess, that particular stretch of linear time we’re calling ‘morning’”, the Doctor continued. “Did you sleep okay? I thought I heard the old girl at one point wake up a bit more. Which meant, naturally, you were.”
She neatly evaded swallowing a too-large mouthful of steaming breakfast blend just in time, and used the act of blowing the steam as cover.
“Oh, right. Yeah, I just couldn't get off at one point. Went for a walkabout to clear my head. Fine now though. Got my tea.”
She wasn’t sure why she lied. The dishonesty pricked at her gut, amplified in light of his slightly dropped concerned tone.
He smiled softly. “True, that. Tea gives time its meaning. Entire civilizations built on that premise.”
There was a satisfying crunch as he took a bit from whatever was on the plate before him. Her nose twitched at the smell of cinnamon and overly ambitious toast.
“Oh, sorry,” the Doctor mumbled through a half-finished mouthful of his interesting breakfast. “I should have made you something.” He offered her the other half of his toast creation, but Rose politely declined, and began to rifle through the cabinets for a box of cereal that hadn't expired in the 70s. In the end, she opened the bread bin, frowned at the choices, but dropped two slices of brown into the sleek toaster all the same.
The Doctor nodded his approval, wiping crumbs from his mouth with the back of his hand, and chasing it with the dregs of his cooling tea. “Ah, tea and toast. The very foundational pillars of the universe.”
She hummed in response, retrieving a jar of her ( their ) favourite Frovian marmalade from the cluttered fridge unit. He’d pushed his plate to one side, mug on top and was looking at her in a way that made her skin stir, although not unpleasantly.
So many things started to make sense. Fleeting memories of things and looks and touches and off-hand comments that she’d either assumed were not sincere, not real or even about her had radiant clarity in light of the passage she’d read just last night.
“Got any plans today?” There was a clatter of china as he got up and went to the sink with his empties.
She sipped her tea, thoughtful. “I dunno. Thought I might poke around the library. Might find something new to read.”
He turned to regard her, curious. “Oh? Didn’t you just start something only the other week? What was it - The Voyages of a Solar Traveller?”
“Nah, I finished that.” She hesitated but just for long enough that it wouldn’t be weird or anything. “I did start something else, but it…wasn’t what I expected.”
Her accompanying shrug was met with creased brows. She wasn’t even testing the waters that much, just to see what he knew, and her tone was already tugging him.
“I mean, it looked like it might be important,” she continued, too casual, cutting off eye contact while she reached in a lower cabinet for a plate. “Didn’t look like much, but I thought, maybe it might be full of secrets. In the end, it turned out to be nonsense.”
When she met his eyes again, something was stirring behind them, unreadable and fathomless.
“Oh.” He visibly swallowed, then cleared his throat noisily, awkwardly.
Was that it? Had the Doctor cottoned on? She couldn’t be sure, but he was a genius after all.
“Yeah, all structure and no story. Lost interest after that.”
Apparently he felt his smile was convincing as he scrubbed his plate along with 5 other mugs in soapy water. “Bit of a letdown, I guess.”
“Mmm,” she murmured. She should really stop, but… “I suppose some things are easier left unread.”
There was an infinitesimal shift within his expression as the words landed slowly and clearly. Maybe it was a tad cruel, but she needed to know.
The toaster popped, startling them both. The Doctor sucked in a sharp breath as he fumbled the slippery edge of ceramic, now not looking at her at all. The divot between his eyebrows was back, although softer, and there was a harsher line to his jaw.
“Actually, I, uh, was thinking. Had a question for you,” she said quietly, collecting a butter knife.
“Oh?” His reply, guarded now, flipped. “Is this going to involve blowing something up?” The mock-wariness was a typical fallback, but it had never been less effective.
Still, she smirked and shot back: “Tempting, but no. I was wondering – when was the last time someone told you something honest? Like really honest. No jokes, no hedging.”
He removed his sudsy hands from the sink bowl, blinking at her. “That’s an oddly specific question.”
“Just…Humour me.”
Reaching for a tea towel on the counter and starting to dry his hands, he answered measuredly “I suppose it depends what you mean by honest. People lie all the time without meaning to. They say what they think you want to hear.”
“Well, what if someone told you something scary. Something true. And didn’t take it back?”
He went still.
The background hum of the TARDIS seemed overly loud in the quietness.
“…Did someone say something?” he said carefully.
“Maybe.” She shrugged, feigning interest in her plate’s orange chevron pattern. “Maybe I’m just wondering what you’d do. If it was someone close. Someone who knows you better than you think.”
The Doctor was fixed on her, eyes tracking her every move. Studying. His long fingers twisted the tea-towel’s material, as if it was a chain his thoughts tracked.
“Well, I’d listen,” he answered eventually, voice low. “Least I could do.”
“And what if you didn’t have the right words to say back?”
He looked away, jaw tight. “I’ve never been particularly good with those. Words. Not the right kind, anyway.”
Rose peered at him, gentle. “Sometimes the wrong words are better than none at all.”
That trademark faint smile was back, but there was tension behind it. “You’ve been spending too much time around old books and cryptic aliens.”
She stepped toward him again, casually, too casually. “Suppose I told you someone wrote something down instead. Because they couldn’t say it. Would you want to know?”
The lines of his body rapidly went taut at that one.
“…Depends,” he said. “On what it said. And who it was from.”
Rose tilted her head. “But if it was from someone who mattered?”
The Doctor gave a strained smile, eyes flickering toward her but not quite meeting them. “Then I’d probably be terrified.”
Her heart was twisting as she watched him. “You really don’t know, do you?”
Too much. Too soon.
“Know what?”
Rose hesitated, then backed off with a small smile. “Never mind. You’re right. It’s just a weird question.”
He frowned, studying her yet again—genuinely puzzled, but not pushing.
She toyed with the crusts of her toast, then stood abruptly and rinsed her plate. “I think I’ll go check on the arboretum instead,” she said, voice light again. “That lavender’s been getting pushy.”
“Right,” he said, too quickly. “Yes. Good idea. Pushy plants. Menace.”
She gave him a small smile on her way out. Not sad, not sharp—just… knowing.
The door swished shut behind her.
Approximately two and half minutes later, the Doctor was three corridors away, having a complete internal meltdown.
He’d torn apart his bookshelves, rifled through old satchels, checked his neural interface logs. He knew he’d written something foolish. Something dangerous. Something with entirely too much heart.
And now he couldn’t find it.
Which, knowing the TARDIS and his spectacularly bad luck, meant one thing.
“Rose found it.”
He groaned and thunked his forehead against a coral strut.
But, at the same time, his vast cavern of a mind, reasoned, she couldn’t have. Cryptic remarks just a little while ago aside, it didn’t mean she had found it. The slim journal wasn’t where he’d hastily tossed it earlier in the library, but that didn’t mean that the mostly logical conclusion one could infer was correct. The TARDIS could have also moved it away. Away from prying eyes, not towards them.
What was all that in the galley anyway? His stomach in knots, the Doctor began to pace in his workshop - not an uncommon occurrence.
He paced the way he thought best: with long strides, muttering to himself, gesturing with a small spanner as if it might help him decode the strange puzzle of the past fifteen minutes.
“‘What if someone told you something honest?’” he repeated aloud, then made a frustrated noise. “That’s not casual. That’s dangerous . That’s the sort of thing she says when she knows something. When she’s teasing me—”
He spun on his heel, talking faster now. “And the way she looked at me. Like she was waiting. Like she expected—no, hoped —I’d say something. And I didn’t, because I didn’t know what she knew!”
He ran both hands through his hair and groaned.
Was there possibly anything else he’d missed? He had planned to tweak the onboard climate control today. Maybe something had gone wonky with the air.
“That wasn’t recycled air weirdness. That was Rose-being-clever weirdness. Which is far worse.”
And the one line that had been playing on repeat since he’d speedily exited the galley, haunting him.
“You really don't know, do you?”
That was…not normal. He rummaged in his pocket and pulled out the notebook he’d ripped the page with his hearts’ desires laid utterly bare on from it before (idiotically) leaving it in a book, of all places. Then flipped to a clean sheet and wrote that very phrase down. Underlined it thrice, then stared at it closely.
“...No, I don’t,” he muttered to himself, resigned.
In his mind, he could hear his ship rumbling laughter at him. He threw down his pencil and sank onto the green armchair, elbows on knees, fingers steepled at his lips, all the while throwing the nearest stretch of wall a glare.
“Oh, don’t you start. You were in on this , weren’t you?” He addressed said wall.
The lights blinked—indignant innocence. The TARDIS’ low, amused hum faded until it was just the Doctor and his racing neurons.
If she had read it— that letter—then everything was about to change.
And if she hadn’t, and he said something assuming she had… disaster .
He groaned again and dropped his head into his hands.
“What if she has read it… and didn’t run?”
What if, in fact, she’d been trying to tell him that she felt the same ?
He straightened, wide-eyed.
“…Nah,” he muttered, immediately talking himself down. “No, no. Too simple. Too hopeful. Too—Rose.”
Except, of course, it was exactly the sort of thing Rose would do. Catch him off guard. Try to bridge the impossible distance between their hearts with one careful, brave sentence.
He looked down at the notebook, still clasped tightly in his hand to the point of warping the metal-spiral spine. Picked up his discarded, stubby pencil to add another scrawl underneath the first.
Rose knows.
He just sat there, heart pounding, trying not to hope.
It was over an hour later by the time he regained the courage to go to the console room, but Rose was already there. Of course she was. HIs clever, beautiful pink-and-yellow human.
She sat on the jump seat, letter folded in her lap, as if it might whisper another secret if she stared long enough.
The Doctor entered, hair dishevelled, hands in his pockets, trying very hard to look casual and failing miserably.
She glanced up. “Hey.”
“Hello!” he said, a little too loud. “Lovely afternoon, isn’t it? Quiet. Peaceful. Not a single rampaging alien in sight.”
Rose tilted her head. “You alright?”
He shuffled on the spot, the nervous energy pinging off of him probably enough to power a medium-sized generator. “Me? Oh yes. Perfectly alright. Just had a mild—existential panic. The usual.”
She smiled faintly. “Did you lose something?”
His eyes locked onto the folded paper in her hands, recognising it instantly.
“Oh,” he said.
“Oh,” she echoed. Yes.
They stared at each other for a beat.
Then he said, in a rush, recovering his stomach from where it was located around his knees somehow: “It’s not what you think.”
She raised a groomed eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”
He floundered. “Well. That depends. What do you think it is?”
Rose then stood, crossing the floor slowly. Her voice was small, tentative, and barely audible. “I think it’s something you weren’t ready to say. Or maybe something you’ve been saying for a while—just not out loud.”
He swallowed hard. “It wasn’t meant to be read.”
“I know.”
Silence stretched between them. Only the hum of the TARDIS filled in the spaces.
Finally, she asked, “Was it about me?”
He hesitated. Looked away. Then back.
“Yes.”
It was like exhaling after holding his breath for a century.
She stepped closer. “You really think you’re not allowed to feel this? To want something more?”
“I’ve lost too much,” he said hoarsely. “I’m always losing. I didn’t want to make you part of that.”
“I get lost too,” she whispered. “But I found you.”
He laughed, breathless. “You’re maddening.”
She grinned. “You’re an idiot.”
A pause.
“I mean it, Rose,” he said, voice trembling now. “You’re not just… someone I travel with. You’re every variable in every equation I’ve tried not to solve. You make me feel human again. And that’s terrifying.”
Rose’s eyes shimmered. “Then stop running from it.”
He took a step toward her. “I don’t want to ruin what we have.”
“You won’t,” she said, fierce and certain. “Not if it’s real. Not if we both want it.”
Then he leaned forward, slowly, giving her time to pull away.
She didn’t.
Their lips met—soft and hesitant at first, a question neither had quite dared to ask until now. But the answer was mutual, unmistakable.
His hands framed her face, long fingers threading into her hair, pulling her closer. She rose onto her toes, hands grasping at his suit jacket lapels as if anchoring herself to the moment. The kiss deepened—gentle, but full of everything unspoken: fear and hope and something like home.
When they finally pulled apart, their foreheads pressed together, breath mingling.
“So…” she began with a crooked smile, “do I get a proper letter next time?”
He beamed back, eyes shining, thumb brushing the round of her cheek. “Only if you help me write it.”