Her individual skin, or her skin as metaphor? It's always been like this, even when it hasn't, but he doesn't like to dwell on that thought or thoughts like it because his palms start to itch in a way that makes him want to clap or fix things. It would all be so easy if he could be consumed by her. Which is ridiculous, of course, the last thing he wants is to be immolated. But, still, the idea offers such a seductive hint of quiet and smallness. It's never quiet, not with the hum of time and the nagging murmurs of possibility, and he will never be small. He is vast, containing multitudes, and if he contradicts himself then just wait for his next regeneration. They're all there, crammed in his head like sardines in a clown car, and there's a mixed metaphor for you, which brings him right back to Rose's skin, and why he shouldn't think about it.
All of this slams through his head in an eye blink, the amount of time it takes Rose to notice that he's looking at her, the amount of time it takes for him to stop. At least he thinks he's stopped. He's still looking, obviously, but he's not looking, and that's really the important thing. "Ah. Where was I? Space!" he says, and Rose jumps. "Not the stuff outside, of course, but the stuff in between." He holds his hands out in front of his chest, the distance between them demonstrated and practically palpable, and he notes clinically that Rose doesn't seem to be following as well as she should be. And she should be, because this - as he's mentioned, as he's announced several times - is somewhat marginally less vital than, say, breathing. "You know those optical illusions with the vase that's a face? Vase that's a face - that's funny, that rhymed. Face, vase, space. It's just a matter of focusing on the things you don't focus on. The things on the outside of what's inside. Then we'll be fine."
Is he babbling? He suspects he is babbling. Rose has furrowed her brow the way she does when he's babbling, but she's not interrupting him, which makes him wonder somewhat frankly about her attention span. Humans, and he means this with a great deal of affection and no small amount of annoyance, can't focus their concentration any better than gnats. Gnats. Funny things, gnats, with their free-living larvae and their silent g. The silent g: there's a lovely construct. Gnat, gnome, gnosis. Gnosis, from the Greek word for knowledge, and why is she still looking at him like that? Looking, not just looking, and he self-consciously draws his hands together, the air between them collapsing with an audible pop.
"Rose," he says, and he's displeased with the tone of his voice as it leaves his throat. It should be a firm, warning tone, but instead - well, instead. It gets her attention, though, gets her eyes to focus on his face, and he finds himself able to breathe in a way he hadn't been aware was lacking.
"The space in between," she says, sounding dazed. "Right." Then the brow furrow, again. "Jus'...how exactly am I supposed to do that? No," she clarifies, shaking her head a tiny bit, "don't do the thing with the hands again. And no more metaphors. Can we get through this without a metaphor, please? I'm distracted enough without having to...you know." She waves her hand, causing the air between them to move in a way that is almost, but not quite, visible to the naked eye.
And that is quite enough of the word naked, the Doctor thinks, because that's a whole separate set of possibilities that he currently doesn't have the time to parse. "Without having to what?" He doesn't want to give up his metaphors. He likes his metaphors. A metaphor, as they might have said but didn't, makes the medicine go down. Down, down, the same way his eyes are going, following the line of her jaw to the place it meets her neck, following the place her neck meets her shoulder, the place where her collarbone curves and -
"You know. Decode," Rose says, and his eyes snap back up to her face. He is relieved to note that she is focusing somewhere in the distance and not on his roaming gaze, which wouldn't have been roaming in the first place had she not been so enticingly covered in quivering bits. "You mix your metaphors, and I'm always having to decode you, and it's a big waste of time. You've got that huge brain, use it to come up with reasonable sets of words that don't require a translator."
"One, you don't need a translator when you have the TARDIS. Which we would do, if you would stop whinging and start paying attention. Two," he says, holding up the relevant number of fingers, "I do not mix metaphors, or if I do, it's entirely intentional, and completely beside the point, and since when do you have a problem with my metaphors? And three," but three is wily, three flits out of his grasp like a gnat, and why does he feel like he's had all these thoughts before? Aside from the fact that a brain as immense as his is likely to have had all thoughts before, and has possibly begun playing them back at a slightly different speed just to muck things up even further.
Rose blinks, her eyelids practically scoffing at him, and he wants to reach across the space between them and take her by the shoulders (round, easily palmed shoulders, springy skin covered in some synthetic knit he's sure he recognizes but can't remember the name of - could he sneak a look at the tag without her noticing?) and give her a little shake, just to remind her of the urgency of their situation. He wonders what it's like in her skin. Not her actual skin; that would be macabre, and somewhat self-defeating. He wants to know what it feels like to be Rose, to be human and young and full of adrenaline and hormones and mortality. And he could find out quite easily, just a laying on of hands, as it were. His hand is already extended, three fingers held out into the air separating him from Rose. An alien with three fingers; how cliche. He unfurls the other two, and just for a moment the air around his hand is thick with portent and meaning, and he stares at it, openmouthed, the pieces finally coming together.
Rose, of course, has to shuffle them up again by saying "Three, Doctor?"
To which he has no choice but to reply with a dignified and erudite "What?"
"Number three. You were talking."
"I - of course. I like talking, such a lovely thing to do with the mouth. Not that it's the only thing one can do with a mouth, or even the only way one can convey information, especially those species which do not have mouths, though I've often wondered -"
And then Rose does something unthinkable, something terrifying and absolute. She folds the space between them, halves it, quarters it, and places one of her hands on either side of his face. "Doctor," she says, but he can't think of anything beyond the feeling of her skin on his skin, the parts of them that are touching, the parts of them that are not. "Doctor, you're not making any sense, even for you. Didn't you say that we had to get out of here before you started talking nonsense? Because I think we missed the window on that." Her palms: cells against cells. He can feel them sloughing against each other, microscopic bits of him mingling with microscopic bits of her. "Please," Rose is saying, frustrated and annoyed, and his eyes linger on her lips. Please. "I need you."
"Negative space amplifier," he says abruptly, pulling back from her hands. The space between them fills like an hourglass. "Similar to a negative feedback amplifier, but spatial, obviously. All we need to do is find the highest concentration of what isn't there, get the frequency, and block the signal for long enough to get to the TARDIS." The space between them is still humming with her, with them, with their potential. He can see it clinging to Rose's curves like a second skin, the way time molds to a moment.
"So we just need to find...the most nothing?"
He beams at her, at the possibility of her, suddenly certain. "Not nothing. An absence of nothing. A concentration of what is not, which isn't the same as nothing, is it? And if I'm right - and I'm always right - it's about...here."
He gestures, and he may or may not have the sonic screwdriver in his hands. He is aware of a moment in which the potential Doctor and Rose and the real Doctor and Rose play a game of hopscotch. Then the moment snaps and space is space again. He is aware of Rose, just Rose, her shape and her smell and her huge, trusting eyes. Small, yes, like a pinprick, like a blink. He is aware of her now as he always has been: a glance backward from her inevitable end, a gasp in forever. Nothing more than that. Nothing cosmic. Although, for him, everything is cosmic, isn't it? Like talking about a stitch in time, which, he knows from experience, is quite literal, though somewhat messy.
With the signal dampened he can touch her without a cavalcade of everything running through his head, and he curls his fingers around hers in something akin to triumph. Between skin and skin: nothing but light. "Incidentally," he says, grinning madly as they dash down the hall toward the TARDIS, "I did have a number three."
"'Course you did," Rose replies, tongue in teeth, and they slam the blue doors shut.