This is dedicated to Macbeth99 because it's fluffy and just a little bit suggestive. I miss you.

Asking Twice

"Did you ever hear Marshal Dylan say,

'Miss Kitty, have you ever thought of running away,

Settling down? Would you marry me

If I asked you twice and begged you pretty please?'"

- Brooks and Dunne, "I Shoulda Been a Cowboy"

"Rose Tyler."

He would always remember the first time he spoke that name aloud, standing in a small, cluttered flat on the first day of the rest of his life. A day he would never have seen if not for one jeopardy friendly human girl blundering into the middle of his plan to get himself blown up. He didn't love her then. He didn't know anything about her except her name and the fact that her mum was a bit of a flirt.

Then she ruined his attempt to swan off by chasing him down the street, pelting him with questions, demanding to know who he was. So he took her hand and opened just a small part of his mind to her, let her feel the universe turning around her, a billion stars dying every moment and a billion more being born. It was supposed to scare her off, send her running back to her safe little world of telly and beans on toast, but instead she looked at him like ... Well, like he was Father Christmas and he'd just given her the whole universe tied up in a bow. And he was the one who went running for cover, back to the TARDIS and the convenient distraction of saving the world. He didn't love her. He was too terrified of her to love her. And besides he was fairly confident he would never see her again.

But the universe proved him wrong as it loved to do. (He really wished the universe would get a new hobby.) And she was racing through the doors of the TARDIS to escape the headless Nestene duplicate of her boyfriend. And she was pointing out the giant wheel shaped transmitter right in front of his nose. And she was swinging on a chain across a vat of living plastic to save his life and incidentally the lives of her entire species. And he loved her.

He would never know as long as he lived which was the exact moment he went from not loving her at all to loving her with every molecule in his body. It happened quick as blinking, easy as breathing. But he would never forget the moment he consciously realized he was in love with her. It was the moment she told him no.

He'd thought he was immune to pain. When Gallifrey burned and the Time Lords were silenced forever, he thought that was the worst pain he could ever feel and nothing else could ever hurt badly enough to make him notice. Then he offered Rose Tyler the stars, and she refused.

He took it like a man which is to say he sulked in the Vortex for a few hours, tinkered with the TARDIS, brooded, and generally felt sorry for himself until his magnificent sentient space and time ship (who was, as she constantly reminded him, much cleverer than a Time Lord with their funny little brains that could only think in five dimensions) put her metaphorical foot down. She'd had quite enough of his dramatics, thank you, and if he liked this human so much he could just go back and try again. She even told him what to say to change Rose's mind.

Oh, he put up a fight. He never asked twice. He didn't have many rules, but that one was iron clad. One offer per customer. The TARDIS fought back, and being a woman, she fought dirty. She hid the bananas, locked him out of the library, made all the showers run ice cold, and at one point, made all his underpants vanish from the wardrobe. He gave up and went back.

And the look on Rose's face when he stuck his head out the door and said so smoothly she would never know the words hadn't been his idea, "Did I mention? It also travels in time," that look melted the first layer of ice around his hearts. Just a friend, he told himself. Just a companion, a hand to hold. She was far too young, and he was far too damaged to expect her to love him back.

But when she kissed her useless lump of a boyfriend on the cheek, a goodbye kiss if ever he'd seen one, something inside him purred smugly, and he knew his hearts were well and truly lost.