It was a moment that was suddenly, irrevocably fixed in time.

In that instant, the time lines were in perfect flux, in complete synchronization. This was an event that was always meant to have happened. It was something vast and monumental, something of importance.

An event that, should it ever be altered, could rip the fabric of reality apart.

Somewhere deep inside of him something clicked. As if he had been missing some vital piece and it had been snapped into place. As if he had been waiting to breathe his entire life and had finally been given air. The contact of her lips pressed against his sent a ripple throughout him, like a shock wave that ignited each and every atom in his body.

Rose pulled back with a sharp intake of breath and pressed her lips together as they stared at each other. A blush had long since graced her cheeks, giving her the color of her namesake and it was stirring up a reaction within him that he had been working fervently to ignore since the night that she had stood before him in a lovely black gown that had left him unable to say anything more than "You look beautiful."

But this brief insight into what he had been denying himself seemed to have opened up a floodgate. He stood, managing to do so without putting any distance between them and looked down at her searchingly as he reached up to tug the towel from around her head, letting it fall to the floor unceremoniously.

Blonde hair hung limp and damp, and he couldn't keep himself from reaching out to run his fingers through it, tousling it in a further state of disarray before tucking it behind her ears, not bother to deny himself the chance to touch her in the process. Her lips parted slightly, her eyes becoming lidded and he let his hands linger to cradle either side of her face.

Slowly, ever so slowly, with his gaze trained on hers, he lowered his head until their lips were a breath apart. His thumb ghosted over the skin just below her eye, feeling her body tremor against his own in correspondence. They were suspended in a moment of hesitation and anticipation.

There were so many things unspoken in the way that she was looking back at him just then, so many things that he both needed and feared. And although they were things better left unnamed, among them was no trace of regret, no trace of uncertainty.

Just as she always had, Rose stood before him in total acceptance.

He was the Oncoming Storm, the last of the Time Lords and self proclaimed highest authority of the heavens. And Rose Tyler, tiny little being that she was, made him feel so small, so... human.

Rassilion, he loved her.

Thoughts and reason were forgotten as he closed the remaining distance between them, their lips melted into one another, fitting together perfectly. His mouth molded against soft compliance and he pressed into her gently. His movements were tentative, gentle and questioning.

She answered; returning the pressure against him and everything exploded in a vibrant spark of colors and lights that left him dizzy and boneless. He felt her fingers curl around his wrist, but they weren't protesting him.

Instead they seemed to be holding him in place as one of his hands slid to cup the back of her head, threading through the hair at the base of her neck, and the other trailed the length of her spine,looping around her waist and securing her body against his. He didn't suspect she would be going anywhere of her own violation, but to lose this contact just then would have left him unhinged and unbalanced in a way he wasn't quite sure he'd recover from.

The universe ceased to exist for them, giving them this moment of perfection. A moment that could stretch on for centuries, or could last for several seconds and he wouldn't have known the difference.

Her fingers slid deftly over his cheeks, coming to rest just below his ears and the gentle friction of her skin against his own caused an involuntary shudder along his spine. The need he had felt before to be near her suddenly flared again, scorching, and it loosened something more, something darker in the pit of his stomach.

Alarm spiked for a moment in the back of his mind and he began to pull away...

And then he felt her lips part and her tongue came out to seek entrance and he granted it to her, meeting her advance in return. Their tongues slid against each other, familiarizing the texture and taste and his hearts constricted at the sensation.

Coupled with reality of suddenly having Rose this way, it began to trigger a physical response; awakening desires and urges that had never been expressed in this body. He groaned and tilted her head for a better angle and she obliged happily, bringing her arms up to wrap around his neck.

Everything about her was light and warmth. A brilliance that was spilling into him, filling him with sensations he had never experienced. She tasted like incandescence and faintly of mint toothpaste, her mouth was warm and her scent reminded him of sunflowers. And despite her lack of telepathic capabilities, Rose was suddenly inside of him. She surrounded him, her presence touching the very depth of his soul and it filled him so completely that he was lost within her.

Rose was everything he had never known he had been missing, the very thing he had been searching all of time and space for, without even realizing he had been looking.

The urge to posses and to consume her flared within him, only heightened by the still present fear of losing her. Losing the single most precious thing he had ever been blessed to hold. And she had very nearly slipped right through his fingers.

His mouth on hers grew desperate, his touch on her metamorphosing into a demanding grasp of dominance, twisting the moment of beautiful acquaintance between body and soul into a contest of power and control that she would have no hope of winning.

Rose trailed her hands from his neck down to his shoulders and slipped them beneath his jacket, her fingers doing strange things to the skin under his jumper as she guided the leather down his arms. He allowed the loss of contact with her body only long enough for the garment to fall to the floor and then his hands were skimming her sides, finding purchase at her waist. He walked her back until the wall refused to allow them to go any further and his hands gripped her, hoisting her up.

Rose wrapped her legs around his waist and she broke the kiss, her chest heaving where it was pressed flush against his as she struggled to catch her breath and his mouth trailed from hers to her jaw, marking his path in an alternation of kisses and nips, his tongue filling the spaces in between. His journey ended at her pulse which jumped out at him in the rapid pattern of the beats of her heart and he latched onto the spot, claiming it with his mouth and marking into her skin a sign of his ownership of her. His hands were every where he could possibly get them as he searched for more of her; more to touch, to feel, more of her to taste.

Rose let out a series of soft noises that was driving him mad as her nails scraped gently along the back of his neck and hair line, fueling his need for her, to claim her in ways that would ensure she could never leave him.

His body was far too sensitive and stretched too tight and he rolled his hips in to meet hers. She would have no problem feeling his current physical state despite the barrier of restraining cloth his trousers provided and she responded in kind, arching into him.

If there had been any space between them before, it was gone now as she latched onto him even tighter, clinging to him as if her life depended on it. She turned her head back towards him and nuzzled the skin just below his ear, her lips and tongue soothing the skin and doing the complete opposite to the rest of him.

"D-Doctor..." His name spoken in the breathy tremors of her voice nearly undid him.

He would claim her body, possess her mind and bind her soul to his, knitting them together the way that he could feel they belonged. She would never need anyone else; not her mother or Mickey, only him. He would become everything to her. He would fill her in places that she had never even known had been empty. He would imprint himself on her very DNA and she would belong to only to him. Forever.

The Doctor reached up to tug at the dressing gown and it loosened from the sash around her waist, revealing to him the slope of her breast. The smell of her heightening arousal was a perfume that intoxicated him, pushing him even further over the edge. His hands no longer moved under his command; he was lost in the need that totally encompassed him, swallowing his ability to think or reason.

Rose would never leave him.

His mouth latched onto her collarbone with fervor, his teeth sinking into the skin at the same moment that he rolled his hips into her again.

Even long after the laws of human nature tried to claim her life, she would live. Because he would mold the very cells of her body into his own Time Lord image, preserving her for eternity.

She cried out then, the sound loud and much sharper then the moans that had mellowed in his ears like music and it sliced through the haze that had enveloped his mind. With painfully startling clarity, he yanked his head back to stare at her in horror.

Her lips were swollen and red, her cheeks flushed and her eyes glittered back at him, before she blinked and they cleared slightly. Her brow furrowed at his expression and she made to bring a hand up to touch his cheek. "Doctor?"

He didn't allow her to get that far, shaking his head once, sharply and he gently lowered her back onto her feet.

"What is it? What's wrong?"

He couldn't answer. Instead he took a step back, a step away from her and turned, running his hands over his face, trying to control the worrisome hitch his breathing had suddenly developed as a new kind of fear blossomed within him, effectively killing any and all traces of physical arousal.

Fear for Rose, fear of what he had just been on the verge of doing. Fear of himself.

"Rose..."

Her hand came to rest against his shoulder and he flinched away from it out of instinct, his nerves strained and frayed. He turned back to look at her, catching the look of hurt and rejection that briefly crossed her features and she pulled back her hand back, instead lifting it to tug her dressing gown closed and holding it so by crossing her arms over her middle. The look in her eyes, uncertain and suddenly guarded sent him spiraling even further downward and he mentally kicked himself.

"I shouldn't have done that." He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his trousers and looked down at the floor. He had let his guard down and had gotten carried away; the things he would have done to her, things he had come so very close to doing, without her consent or even her awareness of them. Things that were so much worse then anything she could possibly even imagine. He was suddenly disgusted with himself at the prospect.

Rose wasn't safe, even from him. He turned towards the wall, stared at it for a moment and reared his arm back to punch it without warning, letting out a string of curses in hissed tones as he did so.

"Doctor!"

"That was so stupid of me Rose, I'm so sorry."

A silence fell between them for a series of seconds and he glared down at the split skin of his knuckle. It wasn't bleeding, but it would definitely bruise. Either way, the self-inflicted injury seemed to help with his frazzled nerves as the inner argument of which event of day he should hate himself more for continued to wage. He heard her inhale deeply, and then once more before she finally responded in a slightly rattled manner.

"You're... Why would you-What?"

Even if she didn't know the extent of it, (and there was no way in any version of hell that existed in the universe that he would ever tell her about it) the fact that he had taken advantage of something she had probably meant to be a simple token of comfort and attempted to twist it into something more, to push her into something she couldn't possibly want with him, would have been enough to leave her just as disgusted with him as he was of himself.

And she couldn't want that with him. Not someone as broken and deranged as he was. Not someone who could have taken the lives of their own people. And certainly not someone who had left her at the mercy of a creature that knew none. No, Rose couldn't possible want that with him, not after everything she now knew about him.

"Should never have done that. I came in here to check on you and I just got carried away. It won't ever happen again. I'm so sorry." He took a shuddering breath and rested his forehead against the wall. Please don't ask me to take you home. I can't let you go.

"What are you talking about?" Her voice was incredulous and his hearts thumped unevenly against his rib cage. He heard her move closer, closing the distance between them. "Don't you dare apologize for that. "

"You don't understand."

"I don't care. That was the most..." Her breath hitched mid-sentence and he felt her shift next to him.

He turned his head a fraction of an inch and glanced at her from the corner of his eye. She still had her arms crossed, but she was facing him fully, her hip and shoulder pressed against the wall, head cocked to the side. Her eyes were skyward, and her bottom lip captured between her teeth as she tried to find whatever words she was looking for.

"I don't know how things like that work for you lot.. for aliens or Time Lords or whatever. But I've never felt that before." Her gaze dropped back to him., "Not with anyone. Ever. It was like there was this kind of ..singin' in my head...and the kiss... it felt..."

She suddenly laughed and her smile did wonders for him. "I can't even think of the word... nothing seems quite right."

His heart beats quicken and he turned to mirror her position, keeping the space between them, only reaching up to cup her cheek with his uninjured hand. "You heard that?"

She nodded, tilting her face into the warmth of his hand and he had to bite back to urge to kiss her again. "What was it?"

"It was me."

Her brow furrowed in thought and she brought her own hand up to cover his, her thumb rubbing the back of his hand languidly. "You were inside my head?"

"Not really inside.. more like.. exposed to it. Its complicated."

"Can you hear what I'm thinkin' then?"

"Yeah... but I'd never do that."

He absentmindedly ran his his thumb to trace her bottom lip, ghosting over the soft flesh. He heard her breath hitch slightly and quickly ceased the motion but couldn't pull his hand back as she held it to her face.

"Well, that's alright then, I s'pose."

"Really now?"

"Mhmm."

"You're just alright with that then, are you? Not bothered in the slightest that I can do that?"

"I think I've seen enough by now that somethin' like that isn't much of a surprise."

"And you're not the least bit concerned that I've read your thoughts at some point without asking, like with the TARDIS?"

"I think if you had, this would have happened a whole lot sooner."

His eyes darted from the point on the wall behind her that he had fixated on back to her face and there was that smile, her mouth pulled wide, tongue trapped between her teeth and he couldn't stop himself, he moved closer again. His expression contorted in his conflict and he could feel how exposed his emotions were on his face just then. His other hand came up to touch her and her teasing grin slowly melted into something infinitely more tender. He bent forward and kissed the corner of her mouth, before resting his forehead against hers and closing his eyes,inhaling a shaky breath.

"I don't do things like this, Rose."

"Why not?" She answered without hesitation, as if she had been expecting as much.

"It complicates things; besides I didn't bring you along for this. Wouldn't want you to think-"

"I don't."

"Good. Even still, it's not right. I'm nine hundred years old.. You're nineteen. You're practically a child compared to me."

"Then don't make comparisons."

He opened his eyes to peer at her and she was looking back at him, her expression was wiped free of any trace of humor, replaced instead with only sincerity. He wasn't sure how to respond.

"Is it true?" She asked then and she rested a hand on his chest, idly playing with the fabric of his jumper, her eyes refusing to meet his.

"Is what true?" He pulled back to watch her, suddenly distracted and completely taken with the way the flush spread across her cheeks. She was so lovely...

"What the Dalek said... Do you..."

Their breathing hitched simultaneously and he couldn't respond. Time seemed to stand still for them as if it too awaited his response and yet words were failing him. Instead, swallowing hard, he pulled her into the circle of his arms, holding her body incredibly close, and her arms snaked out to hold onto him nearly as tightly, her face buried in his chest.

The feel of her breathing against his hand on her back did more to comfort him then than he had any right to expect, and he brought his other hand up to run through her hair, smoothing it away from her face in soft strokes. He buried his nose against he top of her head and inhaled, committing her wonderful scent, the feel of her in his arms to memory. There was more spoken between them as they held each other in those moments then he could have possibly ever expressed in words. Because this embrace was so very different from any they had ever shared. And he had a feeling that it would be the last of its kind for a very, very long time.

She lifted her head then and their noses brushed, eyes peering into each other, seeing more in ways that neither of them ever had.

"Because I do."

The breath was stolen from him then in an instant, as if she had reached right inside of him and scooped it out, leaving her fingerprints in its wake. And he couldn't stop himself from closing the distance between them again.

This kiss was chaste and slow. His tongue slipped between her lips and met her own and he poured into her all the things that he needed her to feel. She responded in kind and he was suddenly so utterly captivated by her in every capacity.

Rose Tyler was the most amazing thing he had ever encountered.

He broke the kiss reluctantly then, almost painful in the effort it took and it occurred to him that he could happily spend the rest of his lives doing nothing but kiss her and they would have been complete.

She pulled back as well and a shock went through him to see a glisten of tears in her eyes. He made a mental note to jump into a black hole later and he reached up to capture one that had gotten caught in her lashes.

"Please, Doctor..."

"I can't."

"You're hurting, I can see let me help you."

"Rose.."

"Just this once, That's all I'm askin'. Then we never even have to talk about it again. I can't stand to see you like this."

"I..I can't"

"Why not?!" There was a sort of raw desperation in her voice, an inflection of need that he felt in ever fiber of his body and it rattled his bones. He swallowed hard.

"Because I can't... I can't trust myself with you."

"Then don't. Trust me instead."

Several seconds passed between them in a space of one and he could hold back no more; his resolve broke. He couldn't fight that, because if there was anything he did trust in this universe, if there was anything left for him to rely on,It was her.

He lowered his head then and allowed himself to surrender to the crescendo that had built between them.