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Such a long time running,

And I can't stop now.

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Why he'd brought them out to a beach, he didn't know. Because of course, she couldn't see the sea and not want to go for a paddle. Despite it being eight o 'clock in the morning and, thus, rather bloody cold. She'd grinned at him in that way she could and taken his hand persuasively, her warming fingers linking with his. He couldn't help the fact that his fingers brushed the top of her hand tenderly as he'd grinned back at her, his thumb tracing a pattern in her palm. Then she had pulled him away from the tables and chairs outside the restaurant, across the empty road, over the mound of rocks and pebbles leading to the beach and down, down to the sand below. He laughed at her when she'd stopped and sat down, gaining a wet patch of sand on her backside in the meanwhile, tearing off her socks and shoes in a hurry.

"If you're not careful, I'll nab those," he commented, raising an eyebrow towards the socks she was stuffing into her trainers. She looked up at him, squinting into the sunshine. He was grinning, madly. "Little payback for what you did before."

"Don't think you need any more socks, Doctor," she laughed playfully. "You wouldn't believe how long it took me to find all the ones you'd hidden in your bedroom."

"I assume that by 'hidden', you mean artistically arranged in the bottom of my wardrobe in such a way that it was unbelievably easy to find them all?"

"All one-hundred-and-twenty pairs," Rose grumbled.

He looked incredulous.

"I don't care what you say, Rose, I do not have that many socks."

She smirked at him. "You should count 'em. It'll be something for you to do when you get back to the TARDIS. 'Cause, y'know, knowing you, you can't not know. You'll be standing there, itching to know how many are jus'... sittin' there. Waiting."

Rose looked up to him playfully, her tongue stuck firmly in the side of her mouth, wedged between her teeth as she smiled.

He didn't dignify her with an answer – mostly, because she was probably right. Since when had she gotten to know him so well? He grinned at her again, before sitting down beside her to relieve his feet of his own shoes. She blinked at him with a frown.

"What you doin'?" she asked, her voice actually shocked. He paused for a moment, his blue eyes on her.

"What does it look like I'm doing? Havin' a bath?"

"Well, no... it's just... didn't think you were the paddling type."

He thought about this for a second, momentarily distracted. Then he heaved a shrug and pulled off his second shoe, sock and all.

"People change," he offered as he stood again, bringing her with him. Rose stared down to his feet, his toes wiggling in the damp sand. She could already feel the water beginning to trickle under her soles.

"Didn't think you were people, either," she replied distantly, still staring down to his toes.

There was a pause as he let his eyes drift across her, her flushed cheeks and windswept hair. She didn't think he was people? Was that a good thing, or a bad thing? He didn't honestly know.

"You waiting for it to grow a sixth toe, or what?" the Doctor asked at length, amused by her sudden interest in his feet. She blinked and looked up to him, slightly abashed.

"No, I just – It's..."

"...A foot," he finished, when she seemed unable to. At her perplexed expression, he grinned. "Yes, Rose, I have feet, just like you. Five toes, heel, arch, ankle. Don't be so surprised."

"Oh," she laughed embarrassedly, reaching a hand up to tuck her hair behind her ear and looking away. "Yeah, course. Sorry."

"So much to learn, Rose Tyler," he grinned, taking her hand again and yanking her down the beach. "Good thing you've got me here to teach you."

They both grinned like escaped lunatics as they ran, hand in hand, down the length of the deserted beach. The Doctor's jacket blew out behind him and the wind cut ferociously at his cheeks, making his eyes water. But he didn't care. The feel of the fresh sand beneath his feet and the delicate hand in his was more than enough to make him happy. His blood was pumping, his heart was racing, his mind was whizzing; and as the sea rushed up to meet the pair of them, he wouldn't have swapped it for anything else in the universe.