Settling back into bed next to the Doctor, pulling the rumpled duvet around her (and trying, and failing miserably, not to think of just how and why the duvet got to be so rumpled), it occurs to Rose that things are probably going to be just a little bit, well. Awkward. To say the least.
"So," she says, and the word suspends in the air between them, frozen like a bubble in amber. "What now?"
Flat on his back, staring at the canopy up above, the Doctor folds his hands over his stomach. "We sleep, I would imagine."
Rose holds back a sigh. Surely he knows that's not what she meant, but after everything they both said, after everything he said, he probably isn't too eager to jump straight back into another Talk™; Rose imagines he needs a little bit of time to rebuild his composure, gather up all the raw viscera he spilled out and sew them back in. Which is, of course, exactly the opposite of what Rose needs (Let's dissect those guts she thinks, and wrinkles her nose after), but she can be patient. Can't she?
"Well, erm," she says, turning on her side away from him, twisting the bedclothes in her hands. "Good night, Doctor."
"Good night, Rose."
The never-ending storm and its accompanying darkness make it difficult to perceive what time of night it is (or day, for that matter), so Rose can't be sure whether she has lain wide-eyed and awake for hours or just minutes. Either way, sleep has eluded her for some time now, pointing and laughing while she chases her thoughts over and over like a bloody hamster spinning in its wheel.
"Doctor?" she asks over her shoulder, quietly, on the off-chance he could be asleep.
When he doesn't reply for a few moments, Rose wonders if he did actually manage to doze off, but soon enough, she hears a quiet, "Hmm?"
"Just wondered if you were still awake."
"Yes," he says softly.
Wincing at her stiffness—it certainly feels like she's been lying on her side for hours, whether or not that's true—Rose rolls over to face him, finds him still staring at the canopy up above. Has he moved at all since they returned to the bed, she wonders?
"Are you," Rose starts to ask, and swallows the rest of her words. The quickest way to kill a relationship is to take its temperature, she remembers reading in a magazine once, but then how else is she supposed to know whether the blasted thing needs medical attention? "Are you all right?"
"Yeah."
A few seconds later: "Are you?"
"Sort of," Rose answers truthfully.
"Mm. I supposed that's better than not at all."
"Yeah."
Quiet falls around them once more. Rose wonders if she should do something to disrupt it, try to get the ball rolling again on this conversation, but something stops her and her words never make it out into the open. But just as she plans to let the talk die so they can both go back to pretending to sleep, the Doctor says, "Did you need something?"
"I dunno. Why?"
"Your breath keeps hitching like you're about to speak."
"Oi," says Rose, with a limp slamp to his arm. "Keep those creepy bat-ears to yourself."
"I'll have you know, my ears are perfectly proportional to the rest of me, in both sensory-perception and size."
"Definitely smaller than the last set," Rose teases.
Even in the dim light, she can see the Doctor wince at that.
"What's wrong?" Rose asks.
"Nothing."
"No, not nothing," Rose says, fighting the edge of impatience that threatens to creep into her voice. "Something. You can tell me what it is."
She pauses. "Please," she adds, as an afterthought.
"Eh, last time I shared my feelings, I ended up with a sort of metaphorical slap to the face."
"No, the last time you shared your feelings, you ended up having sex."
The Doctor looks at her in surprise, and Rose's cheeks burn. "What?" she says, and maybe if she affects enough nonchalance, she'll actually feel it. "It happened. No use pretending it didn't."
"Well, that's sort of the problem, isn't it? Things happened, lots of things, complicated things, and now we've got to deal with them. And honestly, I'd rather just not."
"I don't know, seemed like you enjoyed it at the time."
He shoots her a dirty glance, and Rose smiles, cheekily, her tongue poking between her teeth.
"That's beside the point," the Doctor grumps, but Rose scoots closer to him anyway, close enough that she could easily bridge the distance between them with a kiss, if she wanted to. (And oh, does she want to.)
"Look, Doctor. There are two ways this can go," Rose tells him. "One: we move on, pretend we never talked, never fought, never kissed, or anything that came after, and eventually things go back to the way they were. Or two: we talk again, maybe we fight again a little, and eventually things go back to the way they were, except with kissing and sex sometimes."
"Rather presumptuous of you," replies the Doctor, arching an eyebrow, and Rose just laughs breathlessly and leans forward for a quick kiss.
"I like my odds," she murmurs against his mouth before kissing him again. For a second, she fears he'll freeze again, or pull away, but he quickly melts into it, shifting onto his side to improve the angle. Rose insinuates herself against him, delighting in how her curves mold to his planes, and he hums deep in his chest. God, it's been so long since anyone properly touched her—more than glancing contact during a courtly dance or getting dressed, anyway—that she's almost trembling with need, her body crying out for more.
"See?" Rose says, kissing him harder this time. "Talking doesn't always have to be miserable." She kisses his jaw, his throat. The Doctor swallows nervously against her mouth and she kisses him again, smiling. "I'm sure we can find ways to make it enjoyable, even."
"This feels like bribery," the Doctor sighs, even as one hand flies to her waist, anchoring Rose to him.
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
The Doctor's grip on her tightens. "There's a third way this could all play out, you know. Something you rather artfully neglected to mention earlier."
"And what's that?"
"One day—regardless of anything we do or don't do, or say or don't say—one day, you'll be gone."
Rose nods. "Better make the best of it, then, hadn't we?"
With a frustrated grunt, the Doctor pushes Rose onto her back, hovering over her. He ducks before their eyes have a chance to meet, kissing her fiercely before saying, "So what, we just run into this thing blindly and hope for the best? Ignore almost a millennium's worth of age difference, break down the walls with a battering-ram and overlook the debris, leave ourselves vulnerable and raw and exposed, form attachments that'll just make things hurt even worse when they break? Ruin each other anyway?"
"Something like that, yeah."
"Preposterous," the Doctor scoffs.
He kisses her again anyway.
"Doctor," Rose says, afterward, snuggling up against him. "Do you know what kept me awake at night, in France?"
"Rubbish 18th-century mattresses?"
"I couldn't stop thinking about the what-ifs," Rose continues, fingers playing idly with his necktie. "What if I had taken this opportunity or that, what if I'd said anything, what if I'd kissed you—what if I never got another chance? Long story short, it didn't matter whether we were in a relationship or not, or if we were ever anything more than best mates—being away from you didn't hurt any less for it."
Her voice quiets. "You were still the only thing I wanted," she confesses, warmth painting her cheeks. "Still all I could think about."
At that the Doctor dips down to press a hard kiss to her mouth, as if he's punishing her for her words, or maybe rewarding her for them, Rose can't tell. He kisses her like he's drawing the air from her lungs, like he needs it to live; a possessive thing, it's all-consuming, an unspoken but fierce claim before he breaks the kiss with a gasp.
God, he's so beautiful, it's ridiculous.
Lazily, the Doctor draws back to look at her, brow furrowed, as if he's puzzling something out.
"What?" Rose asks, but he just lets out a suspicious hm. His eyes travel over Rose, surveying the expanse of her laid out before him, and suddenly she feels rather shy, her skin flushing everywhere his gaze touches as his eyes light on her still-heaving chest, her debauched hair, her legs only barely covered by her rumpled skirt. The Doctor shifts back and Rose worries that he'll leave again, take a scalding-hot shower to cleanse himself of this whole business and anyone associated with it, but he doesn't move from his spot on the bed; rather, he loosens and slips off his necktie, shucking his jacket after.
"Speaking of 18th-century mattresses," he says, and Rose quirks an eyebrow, because that is absolutely the last thing she expected to come out of his mouth right now. "Why don't you turn over?"
Rose blinks. "Huh?"
Rolling up his shirtsleeves, the Doctor smiles at her, the first genuine smile she's seen from him all day, and Rose lets herself relax a bit. "Just saying, it stands to reason that you might not have slept all that well while you were…away," he replies, and if Rose weren't paying attention, she almost could have missed the way his mouth tightens at the word. "Poor sleep can lead to all sorts of unfortunate side effects, including but certainly not limited to muscle tension and soreness. And as your primary care physician, it would hardly do if I let you suffer, would it?"
Staring at the Doctor's forearms beneath their rolled-up sleeves (god, they're just wrists and arms and hands, how do they manage to be so stupidly sexy?), Rose is sort of loathe to tear her eyes away, but she complies, rolling over onto her stomach. The moment she's settled, she's rewarded with a pair of hands pressed to her shoulders, rubbing firm circles against muscles she wasn't even aware were tense and sore. Discomfort flares dully beneath the Doctor's fingers, and Rose stiffens at first, but he soothes the hurt, only to bring it back and knead it away again. Slowly, Rose's muscles start to unwind, melting to near-liquid, soft and pliant. The Doctor's hands work their way downward, finding a particularly sore spot, and Rose moans as his fingers crush the pain away.
"Like that, do you?" he asks, and Rose can practically hear his smirk. She foregoes replying in favor of nuzzling into her pillow as the Doctor's hands knead her discomfort away, alternating between firm strokes and soft, gentle pressure until Rose's muscles turn to jelly and she thinks she'll either fall asleep or seep into the mattress.
"So did you spend time as a massage therapist on some exotic planet or other," Rose asks, humming as his hands press stiffness out of her lower back, "or is this just another superior Time Lord talent thing?"
Chuckling, the Doctor kneads a little firmer, and Rose clamps down on a whine as discomfort flares through her, deliciously warm ease flooding back in its stead. "Neither," he replies. "But if you spend enough time learning the human or humanoid body, you pick up a few things. Maps of musculature and fascia, pressure points, areas where adhesions are likely to develop."
His hands work a trail up to her neck, his thumbs rubbing circles over muscles clustered in dense knots, and Rose sighs in relief. "After that," the Doctor continues, "it's just a matter of deducting what sort of pressure should be applied, and where."
At that, his hands slide around to her ribcage, ostensibly so his thumbs can iron out any pain beneath her shoulderblades, but it's impossible to miss how his fingertips glance against the sides of her breasts. The Doctor's hands grow bolder, skirting the neckline of her gown, and Rose's hands fist in the bedclothes, her thighs tensing.
"Should I stop?" the Doctor asks, voice quiet.
"Hmm-mm," Rose mumbles into her pillow, her cheeks and the tips of her ears growing pink and warm. The Doctor repeats the motion, his strokes firmer, until all Rose can think about is heat and friction between them again.
The Doctor's hands still, fingers settling against her dress. "I'd like to take this off, if you don't mind," he says softly.
"Please," she pants, scrambling upward, and everything becomes a tangle of limbs and clothes and wandering hands after that.
"You know," Rose says lazily, "if I didn't know any better, I'd think you were trying to distract me."
"Whatever from?" the Doctor asks, just a little too innocently.
"I could have sworn we were having a conversation, earlier."
"Ah, yes, the bribery," the Doctor agrees, kissing her shoulder. "I liked that bit, the bribery."
"I'm sure you did," Rose teases. "Just like any other bloke, you are."
The Doctor hesitates, opens his mouth as if he might speak. Decides against it.
"What is it? And don't go saying nothing again," Rose warns when his lips part and she can just see the word hovering between them.
"I'm not, though," he says with a frown. "Like other blokes, I mean. They die. I don't. I change. They don't."
Promises you adventure and then up and changes his personality on you echoes in Rose's ears, and she worries her lip between her teeth. "I told you I didn't mean—"
"Doesn't mean it isn't true."
"And am I really all that stupid, then?" Rose asks, anger flaring defensively. "Or selfish, or any of the nasty things you said?"
"We're all a little selfish," replies the Doctor. "But no, you're not stupid. Reckless, yes. Caring to the point of foolhardiness, certainly, at times. But no, not stupid. You should know that."
"It helps if people aren't regularly lobbing the word at you," Rose says quietly.
The Doctor glances up at her. "I know. I'm sorry."
Rose nods, softening. "Me, too. I shouldn't've…"
Swallowing hard around the lump in her throat, she looks away, ashamed. "I shouldn't've jumped through that window. I should've trusted you."
"And I shouldn't have made a complete ass of myself in France," the Doctor murmurs into her skin, kissing the silky skin beneath her jaw. "I let myself devolve into utter uselessness, wasting precious time. I should have found you faster, should never have brought you to that blasted ship to begin with, probably never should have taken you off the Estate at all—"
"Don't you dare say that," Rose says, her voice sharp. "You don't get to decide any of that for me. I don't want to be wrapped-up and packed away like something breakable."
"Even if that means—"
"Even if," Rose says stubbornly. "I just want to be with you."
"And I don't want you to get hurt," the Doctor snaps, avoiding Rose's gaze as he hovers over her. "I don't want the same thing to happen to you that happens to everything else I—"
He cuts himself off with a sharp inhale, eyes wild and unseeing as his chest heaves with caged-in words. Rose just watches him, mouth open in shock, her heart stuttering behind her ribs.
(It's the second time he's almost—surely he wasn't going to say—
What'll happen the day she slips up and says it to him?)
Before Rose can ask for the end of that sentence, the Doctor dips down to kiss her again, his mouth even more desperate than it was before, and Rose melts against him, fingers buried in his hair.
Afterward, the two of them lie side-by-side, just breathing in the dark.
"You all right?" the Doctor asks, and Rose is very glad to hear in the husky rasp of his voice that she's not the only one left winded and drained, if very pleasantly so.
Too tired for words, Rose nods, reaching for the Doctor. He gathers her into his arms, and she loops her arms around him, drawing him close. Even as numb as she is, the sensation of their bare skin pressed together might be the best thing Rose has ever felt, and she buries her face in his neck, exhaling slowly in contentment.
"Satisfactory?" the Doctor asks slyly, and Rose just laughs. As if he doesn't already know the answer.
"Ask me again when the feeling comes back to my legs," she teases.
The Doctor falls quiet, idly stroking her shoulder. "This doesn't…as nice as this all was, it doesn't change anything, you know," he says. "We still—"
"I know," Rose interrupts. "But we can figure it all out later, yeah? Right now, let's just bask."
The Doctor chuckles, with a rumble Rose can feel in his chest. "That good, eh?"
"Yes. Now shut up and let me sleep."
"Yes, ma'am."
The smugness in his voice would be unbearable if she didn't love him so bloody much.