Interpersonal Attraction

It happened on a normal day.

Odd that.

You'd have thought, probably, that it would've been because of something big. Something scary. Catastrophic, even. Something threatening to tear them apart forever. A last chance.

But it wasn't.

You'd have thought, maybe, that it would've been because of some disastrous occurrence like losing the TARDIS and having to go domestic or something.

But it wasn't.

You'd have thought, perhaps, that it was all down to jealousy. Either him or her, meeting another person on some planet or some time, and flirting with them, and then the reaction of the other time traveller would have been quite spectacular.

But it wasn't. They didn't do that anymore. They only looked at each other. Funny that.

You'd never have thought it was thanks to something romantic.

And that's okay, because it wasn't. They don't really do romantic.

No, it was just a normal day. Well, as normal as one of their days can be. Namely, they were being chased by an alien in a place which he had told her was uninhabited. They eventually made it through the TARDIS doors and Rose was bent over, hands on her knees, trying to catch her breath. The Doctor threw his coat over one of the railings and watched her, panting himself, despite his respiratory bypass system. That's how fast they'd had to run.

Once Rose had recovered, she walked over and poked him in the chest. "You got it wrong. Again," she said, but her eyes were alight with mischief and she was evidently happy, despite her accusing, teasing tone.

He grabbed her wrist playfully to stop her from moving away. He liked having her close to him. "Nah, not wrong. Just a bit...muddled."

"Muddled," Rose echoed sarcastically.

"Yep," he said, instinctively intertwining their fingers at the same time.

"Right, let's see. You got: the time wrong. The planet wrong. The aliens-don't-live-here bit wrong. The - "

" – yeah, yeah. Ok, I get your point," he interrupted.

"Are you sulking?" she asked him, her mouth curving into one of those gorgeous Rose Tyler smiles; all teeth and tongue and loveliness.

"Never," he declared, like he was outraged at the prospect.

She laughed at him then, right in his face, and he looked at her with an indignant pout. Then he realised that staying angry at Rose Tyler was a lost cause because her laughter was so contagious that he started hooting away with her, and all of a sudden they were collapsed into each other on the floor of the console room, giggling manically.

When the laughter died away they simply sat there; Rose leaning against the Doctor's side, his arm coming up to wrap around her shoulders and secure her snug in his embrace. She turned her head to regard him somewhat lopsidedly, and her smile was beaming across her face, bright enough to light the entire TARDIS for eternity.

He wished she could.

Her tongue poked out then, and he poked his tongue right back at her. She twisted so that she was facing him, and he loosened his grip on her shoulder only to hold her at the elbow instead, guiding her closer.

"You know, I reckon I could fly the TARDIS better than you," she commented cheekily.

She probably could. But still. That was insulting. "Oi! Honestly, Rose Tyler - "

And then he stopped to listen, because she was laughing again, and he loved her laugh. He loved everything about her. He loved –

Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh dear.

I love her?

I love her.

I love Rose.

Rassilon.

Really?

No.

Yes.

Oh dear.

Yes.

Yes I do!

I love Rose Tyler!

Bugger.

"Ah," he said wearily, closing his eyes.

Her giggles having subsided, Rose asked him, "What's up?"

"I...I think I have a problem."

"What sort of problem?" she said, laughing quietly again.

"A big one. A bad one."

"How bad is it?"

"Very, very bad. Weeelll, it could be worse, I suppose," he answered, considering this. Out of all the people in the universe, he was pretty sure he was glad that it had been Rose to do this to him, rather than someone...anyone...else. Like Blon Fel Fotch or a Cat Nurse Nun or something.

Yes. It could be worse. "But it's still extremely bad," he continued.

"Anything I can help you with?" she asked, to which he groaned. "What?" she responded indignantly.

"You're the last person who can possibly help me with this," he told her, opening his eyes only to see her beautiful face that would certainly be the death of him. Again.

He closed his eyes again. Much easier to have a conversation with her like that; not looking into her big, brown eyes that he loved so much.

Oh dear.

"Thanks," she responded sarcastically. "Am I too much of a stupid ape for you or something?" she asked teasingly.

"Definitely not. Quite the opposite in fact."

"What are you going on about?" she asked, affectionately reaching up and patting him on the head. She ran one of her hands through his hair then, unconsciously, and he had to take some deep, steadying breaths. He hated

(loved)

it when she did that.

"I...weeelll, the thing is, I sort of..." he trailed off.

"Go on. Say it," Rose prompted.

"Have you ever thought...nah, course you haven't," he replied distractedly.

"Have I ever thought what?"

"Never mind."

"Doctor!"

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes. It. Does. Tell me!"

"Evolution!" the Doctor blurted out.

Rose looked at him strangely. "Huh?"

He swallowed. "Ok. So. Humans, yeah?"

Unsure of what he was asking, Rose simply nodded.

"Ok. So, humans have evolved, to be able to take one look at someone and know whether they like them or not. Obviously, friendship builds over time, according to many different factors – like, bonding over shared events, working out a problem together, having things in common, having fun et cetera, et cetera. But there's always an initial judgement, yeah? Humans take one look at someone and surmise who or what they are, just through stereotyping and...stuff."

He paused, and Rose raised an eyebrow. "Where is this going?" she asked.

"Somewhere!" the Doctor insisted. "To determine how much you like someone, there's an interpersonal attraction involved – a force that draws people together. And there's a whole spectrum then, from extreme attraction to extreme repulsion. You like or you dislike a person." He took a deep breath. "You love or you hate someone."

"Yeah...?" Rose said, turning and snuggling into him a bit more to settle down for his lecture, and maybe nod off. She loved to listen to his voice, especially when he was in Sexy Teacher Mode, but she was very tired, and if he even mentioned the words transdimensional physics she reckoned she'd fall asleep straight away. Instinctively, she flung her arm around his waist and rested her head on his chest.

Her movements consequently made it a lot harder for the Doctor to continue talking.

But you know. He persevered.

"Weeelll..." he started, clearing his throat afterwards in an attempt to dispel some of its huskiness. This was all quite strange, trying to tell her this.

"Go on," she said.

"Weeelll, there are factors causing that interpersonal attraction - physical attractiveness, propinquity, familiarity, similarity, complementarity, reciprocal liking, and reinforcement. The first, obviously, is how attracted you are to someone simply because of what they look like," he told her, and fortunately for her, her face was hidden so he couldn't see her blush. "Then there's how often you come in contact with someone, how familiar and intimate you are with them, the characteristics you share, the things that you differ on that in fact make you the perfect pair, how much you believe the other person likes you, and the future behaviour of either person."

He stopped talking for a bit then, considering his next words carefully, so Rose took the opportunity. "Doctor?"

"Hmmm?" he replied distractedly.

"What are you saying?"

She stretched her legs out perpendicular to his and turned herself around so that her head was resting on his lap. He looked down at her and smiled. "I'm just...I'm trying to make sense of it."

"What, your problem?"

"Yeah."

"But you're talking about human relationships and stuff. What's that got to do with a Time Lord's inability to fly his own TARDIS properly?" she asked teasingly.

"Oi!" he replied, and tickled her ribs.

"No! Don't! Too ticklish!" she shrieked.

"You shouldn't have insulted me then, should you?" he retorted, still tickling her mercilessly.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she cried, wriggling around on his lap, laughing hysterically.

He ceased his motions, and watched her closely as she calmed down. She caught his eye, and frowned quizzically. "What are you staring at?" she asked him.

He cleared his throat again. "Nothing. Just. Weelll. Just you."

She beamed up at him. "Ah, well that's alright then."

"Yeah?"

"Yep."

"You like me staring at you, do you?" he teased.

"Mmhmm," she replied simply.

He smiled warmly at her. "Rose. You know what I was saying earlier..."

"About being attracted to someone?"

He swallowed nervously. "Sort of, yeah. Weelll. You see, the thing is..." he floundered then, the words stuck in his throat.

"Are you confused?"

He blinked at her. "What? Am I confused? I thought you were confused as to where the conversation was going, not me."

"I am. But I don't mean about this weird conversation. I mean, are you confused about..." she trailed off then, hesitant to continue.

"About...?" he prompted.

She inhaled a deep breath. "About...boundaries. And um...friendship and...human ideas and...er...well. And us." She gestured between them with a nervous hand.

"Yeah," he murmured quietly.

Her eyes widened. "Really? I completely guessed there," she laughed. Then she stopped and just looked at him. "Me too," she said softly.

"It's just - " he began, but stopped when he noticed where his hands were. His left was fitted securely in hers, resting on her stomach, and his right was stroking the loose strands of her hair back from her face.

Her eyes followed his gaze and she bit her lip in realisation. She didn't know what to say.

He frowned a little, and then began to talk again. "So, normal humans. Weeelll, normal anyone. Weeelll, except for Time Lords, really. Normal people meet in normal ways and become friends and laugh together and maybe go on dates and then fall in love in the normal fashion and have normal life together for the rest of their normal, if immensely boring, lives," he explained, in a fairly coherent way, he thought.

She just stared at him, praying that this was going the way she longed for it to go.

Then came the hard part. "But that's not...that's not...it's...huh. How do I say this? Um..." he stuttered, no longer strictly coherent, averting his eyes from hers. "I could never have that."

Rose plucked up the courage to speak. "Did Time Lords...not do that?"

He met her eyes then. "Weeelll, not really. It was more sort of...complicated. Nothing as straightforward as simply falling in love."

"There's nothing straightforward about falling in love," Rose muttered.

He gazed at her expressively for a few moments. "No, you're right. Nothing straightforward about that. But..."

"We aren't normal people, Doctor."

"What?"

"Normal people do things...normally." Rose cringed at how rubbish she was at this. All she wanted to do was tell him, but she knew he didn't feel quite the same, so it was going to be so awkward when she did.

"So we did things differently," the Doctor murmured.

Rose's pulse rate quickened and she blinked rapidly. "We did?"

"Course we did. I picked you up with a line that no other man could ever use," he said sincerely, and then they both burst out laughing. "Best eight words I've ever said," he told her meaningfully once their laughter had faded out.

She smiled. "Is that what you did, then? 'Picked me up?'"

"Weeelll, I picked you, and I took you upwards," he retorted, smiling gently.

"I saved your life. You didn't pick me. You were forced to take me, because of my utter brilliance," she said seriously.

"That's true," he admitted. "Never usually ask twice."

"Special, was I?"

"Oh yes," he insisted, and she grinned up at him.

"What else did we do differently?" she asked innocently.

"Everything," he sighed happily. He thought for a moment, and a frown flickered across his face. He glanced down at their intertwined hands again, and his right hand softly stroking over the features of her face; her forehead, her cheek, her jaw line. His frown deepened as his confusion grew greater. "Rose, are we...are we a...a..." he trailed off.

"Are we 'a' what?" she asked, her heart beating double time.

He cleared his throat. "We hold hands all the time. We hug all the time. We laugh all the time. You tease me all the time. I moan about your mother all the time. We argue a lot of the time, let's be honest. We drink tea and talk for hours together. We live together. We visit places together. We sit on that sofa in the library practically snuggling together. To all intents and purposes it has just struck me that we are, in actual fact, a couple, are we not?"

"Not to all intents and purposes," Rose murmured, a suggestive eyebrow raising conspiringly.

He sighed over-dramatically, pretending to be exasperated with her. "I don't know; you humans, always reducing things to that."

"I'm not reducing anything to anything. As for being a couple...what happened to the whole 'humans wither and die' speech? I didn't think you did the being one half of a 'couple' thing. Especially not with a human. I just assumed you were this over-friendly with everyone you've travelled with," said Rose, accompanied with a shrug.

The Doctor stared at her. "Seriously? You thought that? Really?"

Rose shrugged again. "I...well. I hoped it was more than that, but..."

"You did?"

"Yeah. But you know, what with you being a different species and everything..." she trailed off, smiling nervously. "And I have no idea what you think of me, really. I mean, this could all mean something different to you, couldn't it? Like you were saying earlier, about humans and that. And you're different; you're alien. Physical attraction and all that other nonsense you were going on about...that's not the same for you, is it?" she asked him, swallowing past the lump in her throat. "You're sort of...indifferent to that sort of thing, right?" Then she had a horrifying thought. "Oh. Or...are you just indifferent to me?"

He stared at her again and shook his head. "You really have no idea do you? Just what you mean to me. I can assure you, Rose Tyler, I am extremely not indifferent to you. That's my problem," he explained, chuckling a little.

Rose sat up at that, and his hand at her cheek fell, brushing her arm on its way down to rest on the floor. She shivered involuntarily, and fixed him a look. A look that said: Explain Yourself, I Don't Understand You, You Silly Alien.

"Rose - " he began. He let go of her hand and wrapped his arms around her waist, dragging her around and closer until her back was pressed up against his front. She shifted, settling on his lap, and stretched her legs out in the same direction as his this time. She bumped her knee against his and smiled at how right this position felt. Being in his arms. It felt wonderful.

He pressed a kiss to the top of her head and that was enough to make her giggle in delight. He rested his chin on her head then, and asked, "What are you giggling at now, Rose Tyler?"

"You're not indifferent to me..." she said slowly, marvelling at the prospect.

"Of course I'm not."

"So...you...notice me, then?"

"Hard not to, with that cackling laugh you've got," he retorted. Takes after her mother, he thought. He shuddered at that.

"Hey! I meant, you notice me in a...um...physical attraction-y way?" she asked tentatively.

"Yes, Rose. I am very physically attracted to you," he said seriously, amusement underlying his words, and then he nuzzled her hair affectionately.

"Then why have you never kissed me?" she blurted out, without really thinking.

"Do you fancy me, Rose Tyler?" he countered.

"Yes," she admitted simply, refusing to acknowledge her blushing cheeks. It was time to confess these things, she thought. She needed him to know. She couldn't go on pretending.

"Then why have you never kissed me?"

"I...oh. Well, I thought if I did, you'd take me home or something."

"Ah."

"I thought I'd overstep that final boundary and ruin everything."

"I see."

"I thought you'd reject me and then I'd feel really, really stupid."

"Right."

"And I didn't really think anything else would ever happen, so I just...didn't do anything to find out."

"Yeah."

There were a few moments of silence, and then: "Doctor?"

"Hmmm?"

"Have you ever wanted to make this...more?"

He took a deep breath, inhaling the scent of her shampoo and various other things that were Rose as he did so. "I'm not meant to feel like this. It's not a...biological imperative for me to...want this...but...I realised a long time ago that things are different with you."

"Oh," Rose whispered.

"And then it suddenly occurred to me, when I was listening to you laughing earlier, how much I love to see you so happy."

And oh, did she know what he was really saying here.

Rose turned her head to look at him, and before she knew what was happening, his lips were on hers. Her eyes fluttered closed and their noses bumped together as she twisted more fully, bringing her whole body around until she was facing him and sitting astride his lap. They both parted their lips simultaneously, and explored each other's mouths passionately; her hands came up to run through his hair and she pushed him backwards until his head hit the wall. He gripped her by the hips and pulled her closer still, and soon she was straddling him quite deliciously.

After a few moments, Rose pulled back panting, gasping for breath in an entirely different way to earlier on, before all those revelations. She dropped her hands to his collar and she fiddled with it nervously, contemplating what to say.

"Rose - " he began, but she got there first.

" - I love you," she whispered, her words ghosting over his lips.

He smiled and lent his forehead against hers. "I love you more," he murmured, and she laughed.

"Soppy git," she told him.

"Yep. But apparently, you love me, so all is good," he insisted.

"It certainly is," Rose agreed.

And they kissed some more.

It happened on a normal day. Well, normal for them. And it was brilliant.

Just like them.

...

Later. Much later. Four hours later, in fact.

"So, how long have you been physically attracted to me, Doctor?" she asked sleepily, snuggling into his chest.

He let out a long breath and pressed a soft kiss to the top of her head. "I think it would be indecent of me to say."

Rose giggled, the sound reverberating against his collar bone, and he shivered unintentionally. "That first time I took a shower on the TARDIS and you burst in accidently, then?" she questioned playfully.

Accidently? Okay. Sure, she could think that. Let's go with that. That's good. Safe. "Mm-hmm," he replied, smiling into her hair as he held her close.

"I liked you before you changed, you know. Even the ears," she murmured softly after a few moments of silence. "It's never mattered, though. What you look like, it doesn't matter, 'cos I'd love you even if you had two heads. Or no head. But that definitely wouldn't be an improvement so don't go testing my word on that," she laughed.

"Thankyou," he said softly, his eyes drifting closed himself.

"But don't go dying on me again, 'cos you're quite sexy like this," she instructed sternly but quietly, her voice barely more than a whisper.

"I believe the word was 'foxy,'" he replied cheekily, finding her hand under the bedsheet and grasping it firmly in his.

"Same difference," she mumbled, drifting off to sleep. "Love you."

"Love you too."

And that was that.

...

A/N: Hope you enjoyed this :D I had lots of fun writing it, I do have to say. Well, I always have fun writing ten/rose. These two really are THE best pairing EVER. Anyways, please review! Love Laura x