Bed Bugs
Disclaimer: Nothing belongs to me.
--
It's the middle of the night, freezing cold, and they are sharing an unfamiliar bed in a not-so-normal house on a quiet, frightened street. He turns to her and pulls the covers up over their heads, holding them up with one arm so he can still see her face – or, rather, so that she can still breathe. The duvet is so thick that they'll be lucky if their eyes adjust to the darkness at all.
"Muffles the sound," he explains, and Rose blushes slightly despite herself, glad that the near complete darkness means even he probably won't be able to see for another minute or so yet. She is dressed in an old flimsy nightie of Trish's, borrowed at the last minute, shivering in the cold caused by the Isolus. The Doctor, in everything but his jacket, tie and shoes, doesn't even seem to notice the near-freezing temperature. "Don't want to wake Trish or her angry drawing daughter up. I'd like to remain in 3D until this is over."
"Well, it might be good for the whole keepin' quiet thing, but you know I can't actually see you anymore, right?" she tells him, reaching out a hand to try and find his face in the dark. She ends up poking him in what she thinks is the nose and he recoils sharply, a loud Ouch! defeating the purpose of having the covers over them in the first place.
"Shh!" she giggles, moving her hand carefully to the side of his face. "There. Got you."
"You can say that again."
"Sorry. Don't like talking to someone I can't see, that's all." She trails her hand down to his arm – though they have very few boundaries, touching his face in bed in the dark seems a little bit intimate, somehow, especially as she's just becoming able to work out the lines of his features in the dim light.
The Doctor sighs, obviously deep in thought, and her hair ruffles around her face. Then he grins suddenly. "You're all green and blue in the dark."
"Um. Thanks, I think."
"No, really. I like it. Go on, what colour am I?"
Rose blinks owlishly. He's just a slowly-forming dark shape under a sheet of dull grey. "Sort of…dark?"
The Doctor snorts, and she thinks she's about to get a lecture of the incredible absorption of light or the inferiority of the human eyeball, but it doesn't come. "I don't know how she's doing it," he admits quietly, changing the subject at lightning speed as though he's been thinking about this, mulling the words over in his head even while he was babbling about colours in the dark.
He takes her hand off his arm and pushing his fingers through hers, even his skin seeming warm in the cold of the night. He looks at their joined hands for a minute, and Rose can feel him turning them side to side as though they're some fascinating new science experiment, before lying them down between their heads. "Her mother's normal, sounds like her father was normal – if unlikely to be in the running for Dad of the Year – she's not different or special or advanced or inhuman. She could have come into contact with something that changed her, but materials capable of that shouldn't exist for another four thousand years…"
"S'pose it's not her," Rose suggests after a pause. "We've seen it before, yeah? Gelth, Slitheen, all sorts of reasons why people're actin' odd. Maybe she's…I dunno, possessed. That can happen, right?"
Even in the dark, she can tell he's staring at her.
"It was just a suggestion," she defends, shrugging as well as she can while lying on her side.
"A brilliant suggestion. Rose Tyler, do I ever tell you you're a genius?"
Rose grins through the gloom. "Not often enough."
"Well, remind me to. At – " he checks his watch " – 2.32am, every morning, I'm going to tell you exactly that. Every morning without fail. Rose Tyler, you're a genius. See? It's officially your genius minute. Of course, you can still be a genius at any other – "
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Rose?"
"It's OK if I'm, y'know, asleep. To not tell me."
"Right," he grins, then sobers, watching her in something close to amazement, full of fondness for the woman he just happened to stumble upon all those months ago. For all the possibilities he spends every minute of every day considering, he could never have even begun to guess how she would change his life. "How do you always know exactly what to say? If it's comforting someone, giving me ideas, asking the right questions… You always know. I have so many words and yet…" He shakes his head, dumbfounded.
"It's a talent," Rose tells him, seriously. "I took special lessons in it in school and everything."
For a second, he looks like he believes her. Then his face cracks into another grin. "Genius, I tell you. I'll never doubt you again."
"Thank you. …Hold on. You doubted me before?"
The Doctor just smirks.
--
When she next wakes up, it is to find herself cocooned in the duvet with the Doctor cuddled up behind her, firmly wrapped around the outside of the covers and holding them in place.
"You looked cold," he explains a little sheepishly, the tips of his ears staining red when she turns her head to look at him in slight bewilderment.
Genuinely touched and still too sleepy to really think about it, she turns over and pulls the duvet up, inviting him under before snuggling up to him, her nose pressed into his neck. He doesn't seem to know what to do with his arm, now, so she laughs slightly and puts it around herself, wriggling closer and tangling her feet with his.
"And there were the bed bugs to consider," he blurts. "Serious problem, bed bugs. Very serious. More serious than you might think, and not just on other planets. In fact, I was on Earth not long before I met you and – "
"Doctor?"
" – it was really quite unpleasant, I certainly won't be staying at that hotel again and – yes, Rose?"
"Shut up."
"Right. Yes. Of course. …Your nose is cold," he says, wrinkling his own but making no effort to move away.
She's already asleep.
If Trish has any thoughts when she walks in on them like this the next morning, she keeps them to herself.