Rose is gazing at the tentative play of light across the vast darkness as the universe creates itself, infinite wonder in her eyes.
He, however, watches only her.
He takes in her rapt expression, the aimless sketches her legs create in the air as they dangle off the edge of the TARDIS, and the eloquence of her silence.
He pretends not to notice how, when her head settles into him, it fits seamlessly into the pinstriped angles of his shoulder. He pretends not to notice how he doesn't have to reach for her before her hand softly captures his.
(He's very good at not seeing things that are most definitely there.)
It's moments like these when he allows himself to begin to think that she could be his. He is a contradiction, running away from and towards her in the same breath, but as he pretends to watch the slow spiral of asteroids away from them, he lets the concept overwhelm him.
It's terrifying, really, the gravity of their potential; so often, he's surprised that he doesn't burst into flames from the sheer force of it.
But that's the thing: it's potential-possible as opposed to actual, but not even that. According to his own rules, it should be impossible that he even wants it to happen. He's always danced at the edges of possibility, but since he first tore through time with this pink-and-yellow girl that defies definition, the concept of impossible has been fantastically blurred.
As if she's reading him, Rose folds a small sigh into his collarbone, and his heartbeats stumble and trip over each other. He's paralyzed by optimism, and he can't even see the newly-born universe anymore. For the first time in nine centuries, he is completely still.
Ultimately he breaks the silence, because he has to. (In this shifting realm of possibility, some things never change.)
"Penny for your thoughts?" he queries, something he will hopefully never say again.
"It's just so…" she falters, hand attempting to illustrate what her words cannot. Brow furrowing slightly, she tries again. "It's like, we can reach out and touch it, the creation of the universe, but it's so distant at the same time. I mean, back home-" (and he remembers that home is twenty-first century London, not this quiet pocket of space with Rose at his side) "-people are nattering on about the price of bread, and what's on telly-"
"If Brangelina are splitting up again," he supplies, feeling her bitten-back laughter against him. It's pathetic that his knowledge of human trivialities could make him so content.
"Stupid little things like that," she agrees. "But then you see this…" The hand that isn't in his gestures to the infant stars drifting past them, as if it's his first time here (and in a way, it is).
"Makes you feel a bit insignificant, yeah?"
Says the girl who swallowed time, he doesn't say. Someday, she will understand just how wrong her sentence is.
"Clever thing like me, insignificant?" he retorts in scandalized tones, tucking away his smile.
She attempts to hide her expression by feigning interest in a cluster of stardust to their left, but he sees the telltale lift of her cheek and grins.
They sip Earl Grey as coiling galaxies form, and Rose nearly rewrites the whole of creation by almost dropping her mug; it takes them quite a while to recover, leaning against each other with breathless hilarity.
"Time's in flux, Rose Tyler," he scolds, trying for stern, but coming out as…well, something else. "One drop of tea could change the course of history."
She rolls her eyes at him, reassuming her place on his shoulder. "It'd be a nice change for you; you've seen the beginning of the world, what, ten times?"
"Eleven," he corrects, surreptitiously sliding the empty cups out of harm's reach. He fits himself back into her, not-seeing the velvet skies before them.
"Eleven," she repeats, shaking her head with a bit-lip smile. He doesn't mention that it'd just been him and the stars, those other times. Him and the stars and Gallifrey burning on the insides of his eyelids. Better with two, this place.
"Don't you ever get sick of it?"
"Not with you."
It quietly escapes him before they both realize exactly how far over the sticky line of acceptable topics of discussion he's crossed. He swallows, and-for once-lets the moment unfurl.
Rose gazes at the tangible possibility hanging in the newborn air, something like hope in her eyes.
He, however, watches only her.