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The first thing Rose notices is the dense and droning quiet. It’s the kind one quickly associates with the middle of the night when they’re used to waking in it.
She draws a quick, shallow breath, the stuffy air of a mid-summer night crowding her lungs with heat. She blows it out in a slow exhale, ruffling the wisps of hair in her face. The cooling unit in their flat is working, but not very well, leaving their room in a constant state of uncomfortable warmth. It reminds her of the laundromat on the Estates, oddly, all stuffy and damp with heat.
Thankfully, the sheets are cool against the bare skin of her arms and legs. That relief is offset by the press of another body against her back, crowding her with a softer kind of warmth, but there’s balance in the cool fingers curled around her hip, slipped under the light cotton of a shirt that isn’t hers. She smiles drowsily into warm pillows as the Doctor shifts in his sleep. The only thing that could make the heat more unbearable would be the inability to suffer through it with him.
He lets out a deep breath, brushing the nape of her neck as he nuzzles closer. Rose blinks with sticky eyelids and thinks about how easy it would be to pull him close and let herself fall back asleep. But something’s woken her and she hasn’t quite figured out what-
A pitchy cry over a crackling speaker snaps her fully awake. Five months in, she thought it would stop being a surprise. Her mind is still working to catch up in some ways.
Instinctually, Rose sits up, ignoring the way her still-tired muscles protest and try to drag her back to rumpled sheets. Beside her, the sudden movement and noise startles the Doctor awake. He also sits up, looking a bit ridiculous with puffy eyes and hair sticking up every which way. He fell into bed right out of the shower, smelling sweet and clean and pressing wet kisses into the crook of her neck. It had been lovely then, but he was paying for it with his worst bed-head yet.
“Wha-” the Doctor murmurs, voice thick with sleep.
The crying continues from the baby monitor atop their dresser, louder and more insistent.
Rose runs a hand over her face, willing herself to wake up faster. She tries her best to tamp on instinctual panic, knowing logically that her daughter is probably just hungry or fussy, in need of a change or company. Illogically, she’s not moving fast enough and she goes to throw the sheets aside.
“Mia,” she replies softly, half to her husband and half to her daughter in the other room. “I’ll go-”
“No no no no no,” the Doctor says, moving faster despite waking up a few steps behind. He’s already scrambling out of bed, kicking away blankets and clambering over their dusty blue comforter to kneel in front of her. “I’ve got this.”
She squints at him hazily, his face barely visible in the low light. What she can make out are his lovely deep eyes, wide with insistence and soft with single-minded concern. His expressive brows are eagerly furrowed.
It gets an easy smile out of her. “Doctor, you don’t hafta-”
He interrupts her by pressing a kiss to the tensed skin at the top of her nose. “Rose,” he mumbles. “It’s alright. Let me handle her this time. You need rest.”
When he settles back, she’s biting nervously at her bottom lip. It’s an old tick that’s flared violently in the last few months and the already raw skin quickly tastes like iron again.
“But what if she’s hungry?” Rose asks quietly.
The Doctor rests a soothing hand on her cheek. “There’s a bottle in the fridge. No problem.”
Another quiet cry echoes from the monitor. Rose flicks her attention over to it anxiously and the Doctor redirects her gaze with a light touch. “I’ve got her,” he stresses with a tired smile of his own. “Go back to bed. I’ll have her back down in no time, yeah?”
“Mmph, good luck with that,” Rose mumbles, leaning her heavy head into his palm. “She’s been extra fussy recently. Real stubborn.”
“I wonder where she gets that from.”
“Shut it.”
There’s a smile in her words and one on his lips as he chuckles and presses another kiss to her cheek, then the corner of her mouth. “Be back in a jif.”
She groans an acknowledgement, her fingers loosely wrapping around his wrist with a light squeeze, a little thank you. He hums a pleased you’re welcome and darts out of the room with far too much energy for - she looks at the dull glow of their alarm clock - two in the morning. Still, not all bad. Rose gets a good view of his toned legs and backside in his shorts and she smiles drowsily to herself as she flops back on their bed.
She wrestles under the covers thinking the only thing more attractive than how good the Doctor looks fresh out of bed is the way he greets every aspect of parenthood: with complete and utter enthusiasm. His smile as he offered to check on their daughter was all unfettered glee, a mirror of how he looked at her before yanking open the TARDIS doors.
And when he’d held Mia for the first time, it was with pure wonder, the same way he looked at the stars.
Rose curls into the Doctor’s vacant side of the bed, still lukewarm and indented with the shape of his body. The sheets smell strongly of him. So does her borrowed shirt. She smiles into the space between pillows and waits for him to get back. As sleepy as she is, she knows she won’t be able to rest while she can still hear Mia crying. It stirs a worry deep in her chest, one she feels won’t fade with time.
The same kind of worry Jackie must’ve felt every time her daughter walked out the front door and back into the stars. Rose reminds herself to give her mother a call in decent hours.
Over the speaker, a door quietly creaks open and Mia’s cries get a little bit louder, calling out.
The Doctor had spent a long weekend fiddling with the device, increasing its sensitivity to pick up the slightest sound. For all his grace, he had just as much worry as Rose. She remembers soothing him, hand to his scruffy cheek, as he bemoaned technical limitations on baby monitors. He’d still sorted it in the end, proudly, and now Rose can pick up on his quiet hushing as he enters Mia’s room and makes his way to her crib.
“I know, I know, Mia-love,” he coos, tinny and crackling over the speaker. No amount of distortion could cover the gentle way he pitches his voice up, softening the edges of his vowels and letting the words turn to something easier for her young ears to catch. “I know darling. It’s a miserable night.”
Mia’s cries stifle into sniffling sobs and Rose feels her heart clench in her chest again. She can practically see her, stuck on her back like a turtle with her little arms and legs flailing, reaching towards the sound of her father’s voice. The Doctor, sweeping in to scoop her up as gentle as can be. Five months now, but she was still so small, small enough that his hand could span the entirety of her back. There’s a creak and a rustle, the shifting of a crib as he leans over the side.
Rose turns her head into the pillows and closes her eyes, picturing the quiet scene in her mind to the white noise static of the baby monitor and Mia’s fussy complaints. The Doctor, cradling Mia to his chest, one hand supporting her small body, the other gently cupping the back of her head. He presses a featherlight kiss to the crown of her head, her soft downy blonde hair, and begins his gentle routine of pacing. She’s the type of baby soothed by movement, a rhythmic rock or bounce sometimes all she needs to calm.
She’ll love the TARDIS, once the ship is grown, Rose thinks.
The Doctor’s crackly hushing spills from the monitor, but Mia still continues her complaints.
“What’s the matter, sunshine?” he murmurs. “You’re not hungry, don’t need a change, you’re not feverish. What is it? What’s wrong?”
The picture is clear in her mind. His brow furrowed, frowning, letting the silence linger after his questions despite his daughter’s inability to answer with anything more than another cry.
“It’s alright. I’m here.”
Her tiny fingers clenching the fabric of his shirt as she squirms and kicks and rages minutely into the night. The Doctor patiently walking in small circles at a bouncing pace, round and round and round.
“How can I help?” he asks. He gets a small sniffle in reply and another wail muffled by his shirt. “I could tell you a story? How’s that, hm?”
He loves telling her stories because he’ll never run out of stories to tell. Centuries of time and space on the tip of his tongue, spilling out in anecdotes at the breakfast table or sitting on the living room floor, holding her in his lap as Rose ties up her tiny shoes, or laying in the normal scented grass of a nearby park. They stretch back to as far as his first life with fleeting mentions of his granddaughter all the way to Donna, the aunt she’d never get to meet.
His favorite stories to tell, of course, are the ones with Rose. Their first meeting. Their first date. The first alien planet they saw together. The first time they went back to the past. Slitheen and cat nuns and flying scribbles that lurked in garages. She was too little to understand the words, but was always captivated by her father’s face, tracking every expression with clear wonder and making the brightest noises of delight when something exciting happened. Rose could sit and watch them for hours, caught in their own little world, as the Doctor relived the millennium spinning in his head with such care.
“How about… when your mum and I learned about you? ‘S that a good one?”
Rose giggles. She remembers that like it was yesterday. Waking up ill and irritable, the Doctor beside himself with worry when he couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with her. Somehow, the idea of pregnancy hadn’t touched either of their minds even as they cycled through her very specific list of symptoms. She’d been sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for the Doctor to get back from the bathroom with paracetamol for her headache.
It had been an absent-minded list of medications that might clash with the pain-suppressants which drew her to the right conclusion. She’d been easing off of birth control, a fact that had somehow gone forgotten in the midst of their worry.
Silence. Her hand on her stomach. The dawning realization that pricked her eyes with wonder and disbelief and just the slightest tinge of anticipatory fear because, oh my god, this was actually happening. No amount of loose planning prepared her for sudden reality.
Rose had distantly heard the clatter of a pill bottle and saw the Doctor rush to her side, half sliding across the hardwood floor on his knees to take her hands and urge her to look him in the eye, asking “What? What is it? Rose, what’s wrong?”
She hadn’t answered, not with words. Instead, she’d taken his hand and placed it low on her stomach, letting the tears spilling down her cheeks and the smile that spanned her whole face do the talking.
After a moment, she’d said, beaming, “I think we’ve both been a bit thick this morning.”
His eyes had lit up like a kaleidoscope, potential spilling out into crinkles at the corners. All the air left his lungs in a small oh as the hand still holding hers tensed and relaxed in sequence with his next deep breath. Then he’d pulled her from the chair - gently as he could - into his lap so he could plant kisses over every square inch of her face with an equal measure of giddy anxiety in every muttered, “we’re having a baby!”
He reaches that point in the story at the same time Rose recalls it, but not even his light retelling is enough to make Mia stop crying. Her sobs might be a bit quieter now, Rose thinks, but she still sounds miserable. Her small face glistening with tears in the moon shaped night-light plugged into the socket across from her crib springs to Rose’s mind. She feels the pull to get up once again and tries to ignore it with a deep sigh, worriedly twisting the comforter in her hands.
“Not feeling a story tonight. Got it.”
Mia answers with a stuffy mmph in reply, all squirming displeasure.
“How about a song then?”
Rose opens her eyes and watches the monitor with interest. He sang, sometimes. When the fancy struck him. His tenor lended well to a melody and he knew how much she loved it when he did sing, even if his tunes got a bit wobbly. Certainly no trained voice, but it didn’t matter to her too much when it was paired with the rumble in his chest, a hand on her waist and the other clasping hers as they swayed in the kitchen. A pair of saps, her mother called them, and she was absolutely right.
Mia tended to be more fond of her father’s speaking voice, but she never protested a song. She liked the radio, she loved her mother’s voice, a low croon that Rose had surprised herself with in the first weeks of Mia’s life. She’d never considered herself much of a singer, but for her daughter she’d become one. The Doctor was much the same.
“Song it is then. Let me think…” He clicks his tongue a few times, probably pressing it to the back of his teeth for good measure. “Hm.” Tough decision, clearly. His repertoire is too grand, his nature too indecisive for just one lullaby.
Instead, he turns it into a loose medley, more humming than singing his way through some songs they’ve learned through trial and error are Mia’s favorites. There are a couple classics, of course, and more than a few ones she recognizes from the year they met, mentioning sweet things like rainy days and banana pancakes.
Mia wavers on the edge of calm, her cries seeming to slow to the occasional sniffle. The smile that creeps into the Doctor’s singing causes Rose to smile too. He slowly, carefully, trails off and lets silence sit for a moment.
“...Good?”
Like a siren, Mia’s back to a whining cry. It fails to cover a crackly sigh.
“Not good.”
Rose lets out a sigh of her own and throws aside the sheets, preparing to swing her achy legs over the side of the bed and go aid in his efforts. Babies were finicky creatures, they had quickly learned, and sometimes it was a matter of the right parent at the right time. Maybe this required a mother’s touch.
She’s just touched her feet to the carpet when the Doctor pipes up again, softer this time.
“What if we try a new song?”
Something in his voice causes Rose to pause. An ache, melancholic but sweet. In the dark, she can almost see him adjusting his careful hold on Mia, lifting her in both hands so she’s suspended in front of him. Her little feet kick uselessly in the air as he presses a butterfly kiss to her scrunched face.
“Let’s see how much I’ve got left in this old brain of mine.”
She doesn’t recognize the melody, but the sentiment is immediately clear. He starts with humming, low and melodic, rising and falling with a quality she can only describe as thick with age, like the bindings of old books sitting on a dusty shelf. It quickly pitches soothing like the lullabies he sung to her before.
A song for little ears, made to curl and sit in their chests.
When he starts singing, Rose feels the breath freeze in her lungs. She lets it out in a soft oh.
It’s his language. He’s singing in Gallifreyan.
And Mia begins to quiet.
The meaning is lost to both Mia and Rose, but the beauty isn’t. The gentle roll and click of his tongue blends strange syllables. Sounds snake up from deep in his chest and settle in the back of his throat. Alien words roll and soar even through the distortion of the baby monitor.
Rose closes her eyes and feels cool night air against her cheek in the still warmth of their room.
The song flows river-like from the Doctor, the ends of stanzas pattering dew from silver leaves. Dipping and rolling over one another, spilling into the next with what must be rhymes that only he knows. He holds this close to his chest as he must be holding Mia now over the space where another heart used to be.
After a moment, he stutters and hisses out a breath.
“Shoot. What was…?”
He starts again, but with a few words of mumbled English. He slips back to Gallifreyan but the English makes a reappearance a few lines later as he stumbles over another word. Gaps in his first language that he fixes with his chosen one. It makes for a patchwork blend, the English coming out a bit harsh in contrast to the Gallifreyan, but managing to fit well enough in his even tone. By the fifth time it happens, it sounds natural. The smooth syllables curve around the harsher ones like they were meant to be there.
Rose is so caught up in the Doctor’s singing, that she almost doesn’t notice how Mia’s cries have tapered off into hiccups. A moment longer, the occasional gurgle. The Doctor’s tone becomes tinged with hope, but he doesn’t stop singing for fear of upsetting her again.
This time, that doesn’t seem to be an issue. It’s quiet at first, but a minute goes by of Mia’s relative silence before Rose catches a giggle. Then another. The Doctor shifts his pitch, making the beautiful words turn into a silly jumble of alien mush, and their daughter lets out a delighted squeal, all her troubles seemingly forgotten.
Rose lets out a deep breath of relief and smiles. For as comfortable as their bed is - for as close to contentment as Mia seems to be - she wishes she was in the other room. She wants to stand in the doorway, let her drowsy eyes follow the Doctor as he continues his soothing march, Mia held where he can see her face. Her small hands, clapping in poor time with his voice, her gummy smile lovely as the polka-dot stars on the ceiling. A glow-in-the-dark planetarium as a temporary substitute for the real thing, providing poor light as the Doctor holds Mia up high.
Her laugh is shrill and delighted, morphing into babble that almost, almost, sounds like her father’s singing. Rose hears the slight catch of melody as his throat becomes blocked with emotion. He loops back and sings a simple word again, only three melodic syllables. Mia repeats him in squawks and noises, closer this time. One final repetition, and their rise and fall become near identical.
“Oh, look at you!” the Doctor coos. “Half fluent already. Keep that up, and we’ll be speaking together in no time at all.”
There’s a long pause. Mia continues her quiet sounds of glee.
“Do you think you could learn?” he asks her. The wistful quality of his voice lends wonder to every word. “It’s not an easy language. Like Mandarin, the average English speaker isn’t well equipped to learn it. And there are so many sounds! Like-”
He makes a sort of click from deep in the back of his throat, causing Mia to babble in amusement. The Doctor chuckles.
“Maybe not that yet.”
She keeps on with her own version of his song, adorably incomprehensible, and the slight sputter from the Doctor tells Rose that Mia is now prodding at his face.
“Yeah, love, that’s my nose.”
There’s another squeal of delight from Mia and a laugh from the Doctor. Rose doesn’t need to see to know that Mia has her tiny palms pressed flat against the Doctor’s cheeks, the stubble he tends to forget about in the mornings. Or maybe it’s less forgetfulness and more the knowledge that Mia likes the difference in texture from one part of her father’s face to another. Rose doesn’t mind it either - not in the slightest - finding the scratchy kisses across her skin a vibrant reminder to savor each passing day.
It certainly doesn’t hurt that he wears the rougher look remarkably well. If he slipped on his glasses while making tea, it resulted in a rushed morning full of rumpled clothes and stolen kisses. Less of those now that they had Mia, but Rose always makes time for a whispered reminder of how well it suits him. Color blooming high on his stubbled cheeks paints a lovely, human picture.
Mia continues giggling as she pokes at the Doctor’s face. “Ow. Gentle hands, sunshine. You’re going to tear my ears off.” The soft reprimand only makes her laugh harder. “Agh, yeah. That’s my mouth. Mpmh.”
Rose grins. Mia is poking her fingers at his closed lips, pressed tight in a thin line that makes him look remarkably like a Muppet. When she gives up her prodding, then he’ll press gentle kisses to her hands and resume his pacing, trying to get her to fall asleep. Around and around, their little routine born of months of trial and error that should hopefully result in a drowsy Mia and a few more hours of sleep for her equally drowsy parents.
A tiny yawn, barely caught by the monitor, settles Rose’s tepid worry and she finally lets herself lie back in bed, slowly rolling over to her side. It’s grown chilled in her absence and she curls her hand in the Doctor’s vacant spot as she waits for him to come back. The minutes inch by slowly with the occasional rustle or hush from the Doctor, a faint noise of sleepy protest from Mia.
Eventually, all falls still on the other end.
She can’t see him, but Rose knows the Doctor is smiling. “There we go. Fast asleep.”
The cradle creaks as he leans over and lays Mia down with as much care as he can. He’ll linger there for a moment longer, appreciate her blend of features caught in the dim light, and run the tip of his finger down the bridge of her nose. She inherited it from her mother.
“Sleep well.” There’s a pause. Then, a Gallifreyan word, one of the few that Rose recognizes. It’s sweet-sounding, soft and delicate, like the lingering look he gives their daughter before slipping out her room. Loosely, it means my star.
Rose feels a sting behind her eyes. She’s one of two people in the world - this entire universe - who knows what that word means, but soon, two will become three. Mia will grow and learn, this fragile routine will change, and their lives will shift in ways she would’ve never dreamed possible a handful of years ago. It rolls over her all at once like the warmth of a summer evening; encompassing, though not necessarily uncomfortable. The sudden, quiet realization feels fitting for such an ordinary night.
And the fact that a night like this is now ordinary takes her breath away.
The door to their bedroom creaks open and the Doctor slips in, careful to close it gently behind him. He’s already talking in a loud whisper.
“What did I tell you? Record time! I think it’s the heat getting to her, poor thing. Still, easy work, all considered. The only casualty is my shirt, she slobbered all over it.”
He pulls off the offending garment in one, smooth move and tosses it in the hamper without looking. He wavers at their dresser for a moment before shrugging in dismissal, deciding the night is warm enough as is without the help of a cotton shirt. The dip of his bare back is highlighted nicely in the sliver of moonlight from their window.
It’s a state of dress Rose has long since gotten used to, regardless of how far removed it is from three shirts under a full suit.
She watches him flop eagerly into their bed and wrestle with the sheets like he’s trying to outrun awareness. When the Doctor settles beside her, Rose registers him through the sweet blur of unshed tears.
His brow instantly furrows with worry and he cups her cheek, his other hand finding her waist to pull her in close. “Rose? What’s the matter? Is everything alright?” he asks, still hushed.
She smiles in reassurance and covers his hand with her own, shuffling closer to slot a leg between his. Skin against skin, cool and grounding. He hooks his foot around her ankle, the action automatic.
“She’ll stun them all when she starts primary, speakin’ two languages,” Rose murmurs, her smile wide and proud in the dark.
The Doctor lets out a breath of relief as he catches up to her swell of emotion. His thumb brushes away a few stray tears. “I’ll have her speaking in alternate-future tense by the age of six.”
“That’ll be an interesting parent-teacher conference.”
A familiar grin splits his face and he turns his head to muffle a giggle, coaxing Rose into stifled laughter as well. “Blimey! We’ll have to do those someday! Can you imagine it? Us, sitting on folding chairs in a year one classroom?”
The idea is so ridiculous, so wonderful, so new yet so perfectly them, that it sends them both into a fit of giggles. They try to hush each other through laughter, tangling arms in a rush to cover their mouths. If Mia hears them, their progress will be swiftly undone.
The flurry of limbs, the poorly smothered grins, makes Rose unbelievably light. She’s fairly certain it’s only the press of the Doctor’s body against hers that keeps her grounded, particularly when he props himself up to look her in the eye. He’s still wearing a daft grin, twirling his fingers in her hair.
“You really think she’ll want to learn?” he asks. The night air, still stuffy, is tinged with humidity. There’s rain building in the clouds.
“Of course,” Rose says. She smooths a hand over his bare chest. “‘S a beautiful language, Doctor. If she loves it now, she’ll love it when she’s older too.”
He pouts in consideration. “Same logic that tells people to play Mozart while their baby is in the womb, I suppose.”
“We didn’t do that. You just talked at my stomach a lot.”
“And it worked! She loves the sound of my voice!”
Rose shifts her hand to cover his mouth. “Well, not now she won’t. Hush up, mister.”
She feels his cheeky smile curve into her palm before he drops a kiss to the sensitive skin. When she removes her hand, the Doctor focuses his attention on her lips instead with a less chaste kiss. He scrapes his teeth against her bottom lip as he pulls away.
“I suppose you’re right. Silence can be golden,” he says, his voice so low it’s more a feeling than a sound.
Over four years together, two of those married, and he can still make her blush like a secondary school student with a crush. Her pink cheeks and the way she ineffectually shoves at his chest spur him to press a line of butterfly kisses up her cheek while murmuring delightful affirmations in both English and Gallifreyan. Rose stops his progress, brushing her nose with his before she tilts up to kiss him sweetly. It quickly dissolves into smiles. The late hour makes them far more punchy than usual.
The Doctor glances down and runs his finger along the hem of her shirt - his shirt. He raises a single eyebrow and Rose has to stifle a laugh.
“Thief,” he murmurs.
“What d’you mean?” she asks, feigning innocence.
“I’m fairly certain you don’t work for the earth and space sciences department at the Imperial College.”
“New lecturer?”
He grins and shakes his head. “I definitely would’ve noticed you.”
Unlike the slightly stuffy air, the warmth spreading under Rose’s skin is more than welcome. It’s a familiar crackling that sparks her hand to motion, trailing over the planes of his chest until she reaches low on his abdomen, brushing the trail of dark hair that disappears under his shorts. Muscles flex in response to her touch.
“You could always take it back,” she teases.
The temptation reads clear in his eyes, significantly darkened as he presses his lips to hers again. But he catches her wandering hand in his own and tangles their fingers together, breaking the kiss to press another to the backs of her knuckles.
“We have to get up early tomorrow,” he reminds her, an apology seeping from every word.
Rose groans. “Don’t remind me.”
The Doctor settles on his side, gently unfurling her hand to kiss her palm again. She runs her fingers up the curve of his jaw and silently bemoans the fact that they have responsibilities. The circles he traces on her hip aren’t helping.
“At least Mia’s asleep again. That gives us a few more hours,” the Doctor says. He’s as disappointed as she is, his mindless touch a dead give-away. Seeking comfort in the familiar curve of her waist without realizing it.
Rose smiles. “Tell you what. Tomorrow, I’ll give mum a call. Ask her to take Mia for a bit over the weekend. It’s been a while since she’s seen her, plus Tony’s at football camp, so she’ll have full reign to be a doting grandmother. House’ll be empty and then-”
“I’m all yours,” he interrupts eagerly.
In the dim, she can just make out his eyes, wide and sparkling with brand new, entirely familiar enthusiasm. The array of crinkles in the dim are so lovesick, it makes her heart hurt, and she brushes her thumb over them, relishing in the texture.
“You stole my line.”
The Doctor hums high-pitched from the back of his throat, pure glee, as he leans in to kiss her. It’s languid and unhurried. Well-learned and honed from plenty of repetition. Rose relishes in routine as she frames his face with her hands, smiling against his lips.
They finally settle, covered in still-cool sheets as a warm summer rain begins to tap at their windows. They know this has been one of the easier nights. There have been days where it seems all they can do is snip at one another, trading barbs as easily as they trade affirmations. But those are few and far between, and always followed by tired apologies and offers to do chores as atonement. Those offers are always rebuked in favor of a tight hug and condition-free forgiveness.
Tangled up in the Doctor, Rose tilts her head to press a kiss to the side of his throat. She doesn’t need to say it, but she does anyway.
He pulls her closer, if such a thing is possible, and says it back.
A fussy noise over the speaker causes them both to tense. It’s a long few moments before a huffy sigh calms them. Just the baby equivalent to talking in her sleep is all.
“We love you too, darling,” the Doctor whispers loudly to the speaker, “but please stay asleep.”
Rose grins and, as she slowly drifts off to the Doctor’s heartbeat and summer rain, wishes for a thousand more nights like this.
A thousand more chances to memorize the feel of a body curled around hers and the sound of a quiet requiem in the crackle of a baby monitor.