Chapter Nine:

Standing outside her door, the flowers suddenly felt very silly. He'd never gotten her flowers before. Well, maybe once or twice he had given her flowers, but never in this context. Never feeling like a nervous suitor.

An eternity must have passed by the time she finally opened the door for him. He'd switched hands on the bouquet three or four times and had adjusted his tie at least as many times.

The knob turned and the Doctor readied his 'hello', but hadn't prepared himself for the woman that opened the door.

Rose was clad in a gorgeous black dress that clung to her in all the right places. His jaw dropped open, and his heart thundered in his chest. The little voice in the back of his head told him just how how much he'd like to take that dress off her, but he swallowed the urge and snapped his mouth shut.

There was a knowing smirk playing at Rose's lips when she took the flowers from his hand and carried them into the kitchen for a vase and water.

He stood in the kitchen doorway watching her, trying to be discrete about his desire to watch her move. He hadn't decided whether or not he liked the control hormones had on this body's actions, but he did think it was something he could get used to.

"Eyes up here," Rose laughed, waving at her face.

The Doctor chuckled at himself and ran his fingers through his hair, muttering a half hearted apology to Rose as she took his hand and led him toward the door.

*.*.*.*

The Doctor held the door of the cab open for Rose as she slipped into the backseat. She smiled when he sat down beside her.

"So where are we eating?"

"Oh, this little place Katrina told me about. Her nephew's restaurant actually."

"Katrina?"

"The tailor."

He grinned cheerfully at her, quite pleased with himself for having found a nice little place, even if he'd had some help. His fumbling for a simple word to describe his relationship with Rose had gained him both the name of the restaurant and a kind smile.

His relationship with Rose Tyler was difficult to pin down at the best of times. She was definitely his friend. No matter how bad things had gotten, she had been quite persistent about reiterating that fact. Before they had been separated at Canary Wharf, they had be lovers and according to the customs of a myriad of planets, they were also husband and wife.

But his return to her through this body had confused the lines and blurred their tenuous relationship, and he didn't even think 'girlfriend' was an appropriate term for his Rose, even if culture allowed it.

She was so much more to him than that.

"Nobody's a stranger," Rose laughed, shaking her head at him.

There was going to be some sort of retort to that, but the words died on his lips when Rose's mobile rang and her face fell.

"This is Rose Tyler," she answered, unpleasantly.

The Doctor's heart sank, knowing this wasn't going to be good. At least not for his date with her. His assumption was affirmed when Rose apologized to him and redirected the driver to some point on the other side of the city.

She asked a few more question of the person on the phone, but he couldn't hear what was being said. He was too far away in his own thoughts.

Maybe they could give it another go this weekend?

No. that wouldn't work. Rose was leaving and then they had Jess and Steve's wedding when she came back.

Perhaps next Tuesday things would work out better.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to look out the window. As much as he enjoyed looking at Rose, her hair, makeup, and clothes only reminded him how things were definitely not working out the way he had hoped they would this evening.

*.*.*.*

They could see the lights before the cab rounded the corner and the emergency vehicles came into view. Rose calmly directed the driver to stop and paid him.

"Out," she commanded, waving the Doctor toward the door.

He climbed out and held it open, offering his hand to Rose to help her out.

"Should we have gone back for different shoes?" he asked as her heels hit the pavement.

"No." She shook her head and smiled at him. "All my clothes were bought with work in mind."

Looking like quite the leader, Rose strode past him and round the barriers to her team. Her hips swayed in the most lovely and distracting way when she was on a mission. He found himself frozen, looking after her slightly slack jawed for the second time that day, and remembering he ought to tell her how much he liked that dress.

Shaking his head to put his thoughts back on the present and the reason they were out here and not on a nice little date somewhere that definitely wasn't out in the middle of… where were they?

The Doctor looked up at the buildings. He knew this street, he'd been here in the other universe. But that was back in the nineteenth century. It had been a casualty of the blitz.

Why did it look entirely untouched by the war?

"Gingerbread houses," he muttered, hurrying to catch up with her.

Crossing the barriers, he heard the end of teasing calls at Rose, the last of which faded abruptly when he appeared. All eyes seemed to take him in. A hard, warning look from Rose caused them all to turn away as quickly as they had focused on him. Suddenly paperwork and computer screens were far more interesting than the two people who had just arrived, quite obviously, from an interrupted date.

"Sorry," Jake said from Rose's side. "I didn't realize…"

Rose shook her head and assured him it was fine before she snatched the pencil off his clipboard and used it to pin up her hair.

"So?" she prompted.

"Right," Jake responded. "We have two victims. One didn't make it."

He pointed toward a covered body on the ground, but Rose was more interested in the woman sitting in the back of the ambulance. She told Jake to tell her everything as she walked toward the woman being looked over by the medics.

"She was babbling nonsense when we got here, but she just sort of stopped," Jake explained as Rose crouched down to look into the woman's face.

"Just stopped?"

Rose ran her fingers down the the woman's neck, both sides. She then swept back her hair still looking for something she seemed to be missing.

"It wasn't a sucker then?"

"Why do you think we called?" he asked. "I wouldn't have interrupted your date if I could have helped it."

"Doctor told you, didn't he?"

"The man's been on about it since you agreed."

"Fair enough."

The Doctor wasn't sure whether he liked being talked about like he wasn't standing right there, but the smile on Rose's face at Jake's comment about his excitement over their date was enough to make him hold his silence.

"Doctor?"

Rose waved him over and he cheerfully obeyed her.

"What do you think it is?"

He crouched down beside her to look in the woman's eyes as Rose stood to talk to the medic. Vacant green eyes stared out at nothing. It was like her mind had been completely wiped of all thought.

"Here." Rose held out a small torch. "Her name's Mary."

The light beam reflected back at him with a very unusual glimmer as he shined it into the woman's eyes. Something was in there that shouldn't be. He shoved the torch back into Rose's hand and moved round the woman, pulling her hair up from the back of her neck. There was a small swollen puncture mark just at the edge of her hair line.

"A ha!" he exclaimed.

"What is it?" Rose asked, bending down beside him.

It took him tilting the woman's head so Rose could see the wound on the back of her neck. Her reaction surprised him. Rather than asking his thoughts on it, she cursed loudly and directed someone to check the other one for the same mark. Seconds later someone confirmed her assumptions, which gained another choice word for Rose.

This time it was the Doctor's turn to ask questions, which he did quite readily, quizzing Rose on the nature of the creature they might be dealing with.

"We've seen this before," she told him sharply as she closed the ambulance door. "Thought we were rid of them. Apparently we were wrong."

She turned round and barked orders to her subordinates, her foul mood slowly seeping through the scene of the attack.

The body was loaded into the back of a van, and the Doctor found himself climbing into the backseat of a car with Rose, who was back on her mobile giving instruction to Torchwood about putting together a team to scour the city looking for the creature that had attacked the couple in broad daylight.

She snapped the phone shut and glared angrily at the screen.

"It's not even curfew yet," she groused before dialing yet another number.

*.*.*.*

"It's a parasitic life form. It's offspring live off the neural energy of the brain," Rose explained when the Doctor pulled her aside on the way into Torchwood Tower.

She wondered briefly why he hadn't remembered, when they had dealt with it last year. The thought was quickly squashed when she remembered he wasn't the same man she'd been left on the beach, so he hadn't seen the creature yet; therefore, he couldn't know what it was.

Reminding her team what to do with the body--gaining a few joking salutes and a "yes, Boss" from Jake--Rose led the Doctor to the medical floor the woman had been taken to.

Appreciative her mobile's battery hadn't decided to go flat yet, she called the medical floor to confirm the operating theatre Mary would be in. The Doctor watched her intently from her left side, looking like he didn't plan to let her out of his sight.

As soon as she's hung up the phone, he began asking her questions. How long had they had this trouble?

*.*.*.*

For the better part of the night, the Doctor merely tried to stay out of the way, or at least that was what it seemed like he was doing. He studied the specimens after they were removed from the two victims, he commented on their origin based on their general structure and molecular composition, but admitted he hadn't seen the like before.

Though, things drew out and the entire evening was wasted on work, he was quite agreeable with doing nearly anything Rose or anyone else asked of him, until exhaustion had everyone ready to go home, and final reports were set aside to be finished in the morning.

Then Rose informed him her flat was only a few streets over and she would walk home.

"What do you mean, 'I'll just walk?'," the Doctor exclaimed.

"I do it all the time," Rose claimed, securely tucking the strap of her hand bag over her shoulder.

He rounded her, blocking the path to the door.

"What about curfew?" he asked. "I thought that was enforced for a reason."

"It is, but I will be fine. My flat's not too far."

She picked up the hand gun off the table and checked the magazine to be sure it was fully loaded before snapping it back in and tucking it into her bag. That gained her a few pointed looks from the Doctor.

"If you need a gun, it's not safe," he argued.

"I never said it was safe. I said I would be fine."

"I'd rather you not walk home."

"It's not your choice."

"Then I'm coming home with you."

Rose wasn't the only one whose eyebrow raised at his chivalric declaration. If he walked home with her, he would be there for the night. The entire public transportation system was shut down hours ago. There was no way for him to get back to his own flat if he didn't accept the ride home Mitch had offered him and Jake.

Part of her felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of him staying overnight after last week's incident, but she was still amused enough to be pleased with his offer. The other him had been just a little more self-important, not to mention afraid of the shadows that lurked in the dark alleyways.

Firmly, she told him, "You're on the sofa."

"Of course."

Jake smirked at her from over the Doctor's shoulder, and she tried to give him a hard look but he merely rolled his eyes. He looked even more smug when the Doctor automatically slipped his hand in hers as they walked together toward the door.

Before they were even in the corridor, Rose could have sworn she heard Jake make a comment to Mitch about the chances of the Doctor staying on the sofa being very small indeed.

"What's out there?" the Doctor asked as the approached the outside doors.

"Monsters," Rose teased, knowing he was referring to the curfew and unable to resist. "Big hairy ones."

He wasn't the least bit amused, knitting his eyebrows at her.

"I'm serious, Rose. Why is there a curfew? There must be something dangerous because you kept repeating 'it's not even curfew yet'."

"Oh. It's usually just the suckers, and they tend to stay away from the Tower."

"Suckers? What sort of creature is that?"

"Two actually. One is a sort of vampire. It looks mostly human and lurks in shadows. It feeds by sucking the body dry of all fluids. The numbers have dropped since the enforced curfews. Keeps people off the streets and out of danger at night."

"And the other?"

"Well, it's basically a succubus."

"Really?"

"People are upset night clubs were shut down, but that was where they liked to find their victims."

"Did they kill their victims or was it just energy drain?"

"They killed them."

He hummed a slightly despondent response before thoughtfully adding, "Though, I suppose that would be some men's idea of a good death."

He grinned down at her, cheerfully swinging their joined hands. There was no stifling her giggle. And she found herself leaning into him as they laughed and walked together.

"Not you, though," Rose teased, bumping him with her shoulder.

"Well…" he stammered. "I'm not sure I enjoy this body's response enough to find that particular demise appealing."

For some silly reason, his comment served to inspire her imagination. Life with the Doctor had changed her perception of quite a few things. One of which being the permanence of bodies in general, and the thought tumbled out of her mouth before she'd even realized she'd said it.

"Be one hell of a way to regenerate."

His eyes were sparkling with mirth as he bent over laughing, "That would take some explaining."

"Why'd you regenerate this time?" Rose asked with feigned annoyance.

"Some beautiful woman shagged me to death," he responded with a chuckle, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, his laughter died and his expression sobered.

"What is it?"

The question was automatic, as his sudden change of behaviour had her looking around for the thing that had gone bump in the night. Only, there was nothing around them except a streetlight.

The Doctor laughed and shook his head. "Nothing."

"Doctor?"

The light, or perhaps her exhaustion, was playing tricks on her, but his eyes had grown darker while he gazed down at her appreciatively, most definitely interested in more than just her face. When he noticed she'd caught him staring, he cleared his throat dramatically and ran a hand through his hair as he averted his eyes.

"Come on, it's two in the morning," Rose exclaimed, trying to pull him along.

Her flat was just round the next corner, and she would feel a bit safer once she was in the bright light of her building's lobby.

He didn't budge. If anything he held he hand more tightly, pulling her back to him and laughing.

"Street corner, two in the morning."

A bright, cheeky grin spread across his face, nearly illuminating the shadows around them more than the lamp they stood under.

Rose couldn't help but smile at him, her heart suddenly beating bit stronger in her chest when he hugged her to him in celebration of absolutely nothing but the revelation that they were standing on a street corner at two in the morning.

"Well, we're not getting a taxi home," she laughed into his chest.

Knowing standing in an embrace with one's eyes closed was not the safest thing to be doing at that moment, for all she enjoyed it, Rose pulled herself free and tugged him along a bit more forcefully.

"I'd like to get some sleep before we have to report in tomorrow."

*.*.*.*

Standing in Rose's lounge that night, the Doctor realized her sofa wasn't as big as he remembered it being. It looked comfortable, yes. But it was comfortable in a curl-up-together-and-watch-the-telly sort of way, not in a sleep-the-night-on-the-sofa-because-you're-not-allowed-in-the-bedroom way.

Grimacing at the piece of furniture, he slipped off his jacket, peeled off his waist coat, and tossed the both of them over the nearby arm chair. Then he bent over and loosed the laces of his shoes to facilitate kicking them off while he unfastened his trousers and pushed them down his legs.

By the time Rose was padding barefoot across the floor toward the bathroom, clad in her little matching pyjama set, he was left in only his vest, shorts and socks.

Her head popped out of the bathroom door to ask him if he wanted a toothbrush.

"Yes, please," he chirped, practically sprinting across the flat to get to her.

One of the things he was missing about his Time Lord physiology was the lack of bad breath--unless he happened to eat something with a particularly foul odor, that was. His body simply produced different enzymes which didn't breed bacteria the way a human mouth did.

When he slid into the bathroom, his socks slipping across the tile floor, Rose had produced a bright yellow toothbrush from the cupboard and held it out to him along with her tube of toothpaste before she bent over the sink and began cleaning her teeth.

For a few short minutes, the two of them stood hip to hip, scrubbing away at molars and incisors. So physically close, but they had never seemed so far apart.

Rose was the first to stop and rinse her mouth out, dropping her toothbrush in the holder before giving his arm a pat and bidding him a good night.

He mumbled an incoherent reply around his toothbrush as she walked out of the room.

Spitting the foam in the sink, he gently placed his toothbrush beside hers and switched out the bathroom light, so he could return to the sofa and attempt to settle in for the night.

*.*.*.*

He rolled over again, trying to find a comfortable position, but that was nearly impossible. That sofa was not made for a man of his stature to use as a bed, even for only one night. Finally giving up on the possibility of finding the elusive method of folding himself up that would facilitate a restful slumber, he sat up slowly and rubbed his face.

Perhaps he could just go without sleep for a night.

That didn't seem like a decent option. He was supposed to actually work tomorrow. Not sleeping would severely limit his mental capacities.

Glancing back at Rose's bedroom door, he wondered what his chances were of being granted permission to share her bed. Immediately, he shot down that idea. There was no way she would be willing to allow him that.

He was going to resign himself to the possibility of waking sore and unrested, but Rose's bedroom door seemed to call for him to at least ask.

What was the worst that could happen?

She'd tell him 'no'?

That wouldn't change the outcome he'd have if he didn't ask.

Climbing to his feet, he shuffled over to Rose's partially opened door and knocked on the frame as he pushed it open and whispered her name.

"Yes?" Rose answered from the darkness.

"As much as I appreciate the offer of your sofa..." he began, pausing to formulate a decent argument as to why he should be allowed to sleep in her bed with her that sounded as far away from any ulterior motives as possible.

"Fine," Rose replied. "But if you try anything you'll be on the floor faster than you can say 'Clom.'"

That was simply too easy.

"I didn't even ask you yet."

"Get in bed and shut up," she groused. "We have an early morning."

"Yes, Ma'am."

He slipped into the room, finding himself having to find the bed by feel. His eyes were adjusted to the light, but he could hardly see any outlines at all. The only illumination came from the door to the hallway and there wasn't very much at that.

Automatically making his way around to the left side of the bed, he found it occupied.

"Watch the hands," Rose snapped when his palm came down on the curve of her hip - at least he assumed it was her hip. He couldn't be sure without further exploration, but further exploration would grant him an expulsion from the bed before he'd even gotten in.

"Why are you on my side?" he asked.

"S'my side now," she murmured.

"Rose, I'm always on this side," he pleaded.

She was evidently not impressed with this information because she stubbornly informed him, "Other side's free."

"It's dark. Just budge up and make room."

"What's the magic word?"

"Please?"

He felt the mattress shift as Rose slid to the right, giving up the left side of the bed to him. Slipping underneath the duvet, he settled down onto the warm pillow she'd just vacated. It smelt of her perfume.

"Goodnight, Rose" he said to the dark silhouette in front of him.

"Goodnight, Doctor" she whispered back.

To be Continued...