As Alec and Rose's love grew stronger over the next week including him taking lunch to her at the Gallery the day after they made up with Rose giving him her spare key so she could leave him in bed after it taking several attempts for her to persuade him to let her go and them going for a run on the Sunday morning, they went out to lunch, minus the revelation of Rose's past and their love making becoming more intense. They began to open up their pasts' to each other in more intricate details other than the shortened details Rose had told him. She told him how she had realised all too late that she had loved the Doctor and that now she didn't feel it was real love, not the love she felt for him and about the first Doctor she met, the one that saved her from the living plastic and from being destroyed by the Daleks. The one that she went back to rescue and how she became the Bad Wolf.
She told him bit by bit, every time they made love over the next week, one night at her house, the next at Alec's and Alec listened, never judging her, accepting the life she'd had before they met because it didn't matter now, she was with him and left her old life completely behind and every time they made love it was with him.
The more she told him, the more fascinated he became because it was all tying in with his childhood dreams. More and more was coming back to him, remembering things that had faded with the dreams. It was becoming apparent to both of them that they had been much more than dreams, that somehow, Alec was connected to this in other ways. Connected somehow to Rose and her universe because as far as Rose knew from what the Doctor had told her all those years ago when they had first crash landed on this world, travel between the two worlds was impossible after the Timelords were destroyed. The Doctor had told her they used to pop between realities but now they were no longer around it was only by accident they had got there. The Doctor said he would have known if any Timelords had survived and were living in that universe and as he didn't feel their presence it was assumed they had all been recalled to fight in the Timewar and not survived in any universe.
How could Alec possibly have knowledge of Rose's world if he'd never been there and never met Rose until recently? The only possible explanation would become apparent to them both over time but not until they had discussed in great detail every single event of Rose's past life and that was going to take some time to go through it with a fine tooth comb.
A week after they made up, on the Saturday morning, Rose was getting ready to go open the shop. Alec was still laid in bed, his top half uncovered and one leg sticking out of the sheet. Rose so wanted to get back in with him but she had a business to run. She had told him she was doing work for Torchwood as well and he'd asked her if he could help in any way.
"How about going out tonight, Rosie? Not that I don't enjoy being at home but people won't get used to us being together if we stay in all the time."
They had only been meeting at the Gallery at lunchtime when he could get away, with Alec bringing lunch for her and then they'd left the shop open and people had come in and out. They had already received a few stares as the locals recognised the Detective Inspector but since they were in a shop, no sly remarks were ever directed at them.
"Fine Inspector," a name that Rose had decided she was going to stick to calling him despite their intimacy because she knew he enjoyed being teased. "Why don't you surprise me?"
"Then come round my place when you get home and I'll have something special waiting for you, Sexy," he grinned.
"Then we'll never get out, Inspector, will we?" They both laughed.
"Cross my heart and by the way, I'm glad I have an actual heart to cross, that we will keep it low key as much as we possibly can."
"Aw, I'm disappointed now, thought it was going to be something good," as Rose blew him a kiss.
They had enjoyed coming home, talking a little, kissing and touching a lot and having some 'Fun' after dinner usually ending with Rose losing an item of clothing and Alec building up quite a collection of Rose's knickers which he couldn't bring himself to wash and give them back to her but he supposed he would have to eventually. She would have to go buy some more at this rate, he thought.
So Rose left Alec to get on with doing his laundry and cleaning, now she thought she might get some of her knickers back but she didn't mind him keeping them as 'Trophies' but not before a long lingering kiss where Alec almost tempted her back into bed and her having to adjust some of her clothing. She smiled to herself all the way to work. Just over a week ago, she thought she had lost Alec for good and now she was happy because she had realised that for the first time in her life she really knew what love meant and it had been him who had shown her it, not the Doctor, who she still thought about but a true, deep love she had never experienced before. Between her own foolishness and Torchwood, she had nearly ruined things.
Now they were talking things out, bit by bit, each of them trying to understand what they had experienced with Rose being strong for Alec who had clearly had his world rocked by his remembrance of his dreams. Rose had thought it fortunate that he hadn't dreamt about Daleks and Cybermen when he was younger although Alec had lived through the Cybermen invasion as they'd had them in Glasgow but not as much as London and of course he'd heard what had gone on there. She was helping him come to terms with the fact that it was more than just a dream, something much more and they were trying to work out together what it was. They were helping each other, more than they ever imagined they could because it was helping Rose to close the deep wounds she'd had when she was first left there, thinking herself abandoned and years of heartbreak.
Alec talked more and more to Rose about the dreams in that first week, for the first time in his life, someone was there for him after he had kept it to himself, not even telling his mother in fear she would have him sent away if he told her too much as she had dismissed them as schoolboy fantasies and somehow he'd never entrusted them with his ex-wife because he didn't think it felt right. Now he had found Rose, she was the one person he could trust because she believed him, told him things, filled in details he'd forgotten. Just how were the two of them so connected and how could he have almost let her go because of it? It was like their lives were meant to cross, they were meant to meet and fall in love. What forces had brought them together?
Rose toyed with the idea that somehow, she didn't know how, timelines had been manipulated between the two universes but Alec's had happened when he was younger due to the fact that this world ran ahead of the other and somehow, something had gone back in time to when he was a boy or they had seeped through time. Maybe even they had been meant to be sent to him as an adult but somehow they got lost in time. Surely the Timelords didn't exist in this universe? Did the Doctor somehow manage all this when they crash landed all those years ago? Did he somehow come back and arrange this so she would meet Alec and finally be happy because he looked like him? Or was it something more simple, sheer coincidence? No matter what it was, their lives were now intertwined and they were inseparable.
Rose opened the shop and Alec brought her lunch. She let Carly out for half an hour so they could be relatively alone, then when she got back, they disappeared into the kitchen but left the door slightly opened and began snogging, Rose giggling quietly.
When she got home, she quickly got changed into a dress she thought Alec would like and took a spare pair of knickers with her in her purse, having had to buy some more. When had she started doing that? she thought to herself, "I'll have to start a collection of Alec's shorts at this rate" but he was always too fast at pulling them on despite her protests. She looked at herself in the mirror and left to go to Alec's. Just as she came out, she saw Ellie, who she had only just really started talking to after her little intervention and she stopped. Alec had told Rose that Ellie had talked some sense into him and she was partly responsible for Alec stopping being an ass and coming to his senses. She told him that Ellie had been to see her as well and told her how badly he was feeling. "Right, she's sacked," he'd laughed.
"Hi, how are things with you?" Ellie asked.
"Great, partly thanks to you for telling Alec he was an idiot, for which I'm grateful."
Ellie smiled. "If you two don't have any plans tomorrow, well Alec used to come round for Sunday lunch and the boys have missed him. I always make Alec eat too much anyway so you'd both be more than welcome."
"Thanks, yeah, I'd like that, we can talk about Alec and make him squirm."
With that agreed, they said goodbye and Rose knocked on his front door, telling herself she must get Alec's spare door key and not caring any more that the neighbours were watching, they could live with it.
Alec let her in and he looked troubled. "We still going out, Inspector?" she asked.
"What oh yes, of course we are." She could tell things weren't right.
"Come on, spill the beans, what's up?"
"Well, I was thinking some more, trying to put a few things together since it's mostly you who does that and well, Rose, I've reached a few conclusions that I want to talk to you about."
"First things first, Inspector, you promised me you would have something special for me when I came round and you're not being let off."
His mood changed with the thought of touching Rose despite her leaving him in bed that morning. Alec pulled the curtains over even though it wasn't dark and they both drew closer, putting their hands on each other and squeezing each other then Alec moving his hand round to the front of Rose and she was already in meltdown at his touch. They stopped for a moment and Rose said, "Don't think about it, Inspector, because I've only brought one spare pair and I'm going to have to start confiscating your shorts if you don't watch out."
"Oh, promises, promises and to put the record straight, Miss Tyler, I've washed your knickers and they are in my bedroom waiting for you." They both smiled, then resumed with their feeling each other with Alec somehow managing to coax her knickers halfway down her legs and her unfastening his trousers.
They finally parted, Rose quite pleased she was still in possession of her underwear for a change, Alec disappointed he'd not started a new collection. There was still a while to go before they went out to dinner as he had made a reservation. They sat on the sofa and Alec turned to her.
"Rose, this other universe you come from, is it possible they had somehow collided and visions of the Tardis seeped through to me as a child? Even though I know the events you told me about happened to you only a few years ago, that somehow they bleeded back through time to me and I saw them as dreams?" Rose stared at him, it was exactly what she had been thinking as well as her other theories. How had he come to the same conclusion?