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Chapter Two: With One Look

"Are you ready yet, Rose our reservations are in thirty minutes." The Doctor called down the hall to his tardy companion. The Doctor had been slightly surprised when Jack mentioned he had made reservations to the speakeasy, only because he had been planning on making them himself that evening and taking Jack and Rose there. Jack was dressed in a gray pinstriped suit that looked like it had come from the 1920's. The TARDIS wardrobe had done well. A dove grey fedora completed Jack's outfit. The Doctor had even changed out of his jumper and jeans. He had declined a suit jacket in favor of a plain white dress shirt and a wide tie the same shade of blue as his eyes. His pants had red pinstripes against a black background. From the way she squealed the Doctor assumed Rose had found something appropriate for the time period of Speakeasy as well.

"Perfection takes time, Doctor." Rose called back.

"We don't have that much time." The Doctor called back grinning as he imagined the look on her face at his words. He wasn't prepared for her response. Rose called him a follower of the Oedipus in perfect Gallifreyan. It shouldn't have been possible. The closest he had ever heard a human come to speaking Gallifreyan was a dim memory of his human mother trying to speak more than a few simple words and phrases. He had never heard a human able to utter the words Rose had used with an almost native born fluency. He didn't know if he was proud of the fact that she had obviously been paying attention when he had been fixing the TARDIS and had learned well or concerned that he had better start watching what he said. The TARDIS didn't translate Gallifreyan out of respect for him but translation was apparently no longer a problem for young Miss Tyler.

He settled for a queer sense of pride especially when Jack asked him. "Was that Gallifreyan?"

The Doctor nodded and Jack looked even more confused. "I thought humans couldn't speak Gallifreyan, Doctor."

"They can't usually. My Rose is quite unique."

Jack started to ask him another question and the Doctor cut him off.

"No I'm not going to tell you what she said." Jack shrugged as if to say, I had to try.

"Thank you, TARDIS." Rose said as she looked in the mirror at the costume the TARDIS had provided for her when Jack announced he was taking the two of them to Speakeasy. Rose was wearing a ruby red flapper dress with a beaded fringe hem that just touched the middle of her thighs. The dress was cut low in the back and just over the top of her cleavage in the front. It wasn't short or low enough to make her feel like a tart but it made her legs look long and her cleavage was brought front and center. There had been a black hat on the bed that had a silk ruby colored rose pinned to the left and a pair of heels a shade darker than the dress. Rose couldn't wait until the guys saw her. Maybe this time if the Doctor called her beautiful he would leave off the qualifier, for a human. At the very least, she was sure Jack's would tell her she looked pretty. He wasn't the one she really wanted to hear it from but a girl liked to be flattered.

"What do you think?" Rose asked walking into the control and spinning around to allow the men to get the full effect of her outfit.

Jack, as expected whistled appreciatively at her. "You look wonderful, Rosie."

She tried to give him a glare at the diminutive of her name but couldn't help smiling at the compliment. It ruined the affect of her glare considerably. Rose then turned to the Doctor to see what he would say if anything. He gazed at her a long moment and his eyes were completely unreadable. The intense heat in his eyes was a little unnerving. She almost wished he would laugh and tell her she looked pretty for a human or make a snarky comment on how long the two men had been waiting. She couldn't remember any man looking at her like he was at the moment and she didn't know how to react, especially considering it was coming from him. The Doctor's words and gestures that reminded her she was a woman were so rare that what might have been simple flirting from someone like Jack became monumental from the Doctor. Say something, end this, let me look away, Rose begged him silently. She was sure it would only be with words that he could break the hold he had on her with his magnetic eyes.

"You look stunning, Rose." The words were delivered with such an honest intensity that it took her breath away. His words and his look were making her forget things she should remember like getting her heart to start beating again and her lungs to voluntarily take in air. If he touched her she would be lost.

Before Rose knew what he was about to do, the Doctor had taken her hand pulling her slightly towards him before lifting her hand to his lips and in a gesture more in place with a courtly love setting but still perfectly natural coming from the Doctor brushed his lips across the back of her hand. It was perfectly innocent gesture; except his tongue touched her hand as he kissed it and Rose came undone. She couldn't stop the slight tremor that ran through her at the touch of his lips and tongue on her suddenly overheated skin. From the darkening of his eyes and the way the hand holding hers tightened slightly, he hadn't missed it either. There was a dark promise in his eyes and more than a touch of very masculine pride.

Rose wanted to ask him many questions. The first and foremost being would he do that again at least once a day for the rest of her life. She'd never reacted that strongly to such an innocent and dangerously intimate touch and could well see becoming easily addicted to it. She wanted to ask him why he had done it. She knew he had been giving Jack keep away stares and glares but she didn't think he had done this as an indication of possession. It was too intimate for that. She wanted to ask him but she was hesitant about asking when she saw the hidden answers in his eyes. Instead Rose turned her hand in his and laced their fingers together in the now familiar gesture. "Shall we?"

ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX FOR PRESIDENT ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX FOR PRESIDENT ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX FOR PRESIDENT ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX FOR PRESIDENT

He was getting good at his masquerade, the Doctor realized. Then again, even a stupid ape would have gotten good at hiding his true face, his true feelings after nine hundred years. So it was the nine hundred years of experience he called upon to perform the biggest masquerade of his life so far. He was pretending to be an asexual alien that didn't long for Rose with every breath, that didn't live for the moments when she put her small hand in his. It was the most innocent of touches yet it affected him more profoundly than the most intimate of caresses because it was Rose's hand that he held.

He suspected she was attracted to him. In the basement of the hospital, Rose had been openly flirting with him and though he told the greatest lies to himself even he couldn't deny he had responded to the flirting. He had taken her into his arms and started to dance with her. He had wondered what she would have said if he kissed her, as he had wanted to do. As he had wanted to do since he saw her in the lift in the basement of the department store. He had wanted her in the lift and when she came swinging on the chain and saved him from the Nestene Conciousness, he knew he was in love with her. Her compassion, bravery, and beauty from the outside in, everything that made her Rose had made him fall completely in love with her.

She had flirted with him more than once, but he often wondered if it was because she was genuinely attracted to him or was it because they were so close. He had heard her describe him as so much more than her boyfriend and more than her best mate and he had realized as she said it that the description summed up their relationship as well as anything could. He doubted she could be in love with him. Attracted to him? possibly. Loved him? Certainly. He was sure she loved him. Rose loved everyone that was part of the beauty that made her Rose. In love with him? Not even a chance. Rose was light and life. She wouldn't love someone as damaged and dark as himself.

He had nothing to offer her. A chance to die on an almost daily basis, a pair of battered hearts in a broken man, being away from the family and friends who cared for her, and needed her as he did. These things were all he had to offer her. For an angel such as his Rose, this offering was nowhere near worthy enough. She deserved to be treated as the jewel that she was.

So he hid his love, gave her congenial smiles never hinting at the real emotions below the surface. He continued his masquerade and tried not to notice times like now when it fell away and he was revealed. When she'd come into the control room he hadn't been able to take his eyes off of her. It wasn't that she hadn't been beautiful before, to him she was the most beautiful woman in the universe, but tonight she had been extra stunning. It had been all he could do not to take her into his arms and kiss her passionately, letting his hands explore her curves ad finding out what made her breath quicken and her pulse pound. What would make her melt into his arms? How would his Gallifreyan nickname, it was the closet thing he left to a real name, sound on her lips in a moment of passion. He wanted to know it all and he knew it wasn't right so he had settled for kissing her hand and in his mind he was kissing her. In his land of masquerade it was almost enough.

Rose later decided she blamed the shoes for the fall. The shoes the TARDIS had left with her dress were comfortable except the heel was bit higher than she had worn in a while. High heels weren't exactly a vital part of life with the Doctor. So Rose blamed the shoes when she was walking back to the TARDIS and the heel of her left shoe snapped causing her to topple forward, twisting her ankle under her as she fell.

"You've got to teach me some of those words, sweetheart." Jack said as he stopped walking to turn back to Rose who had just let loose with some more Gallifreyan vulgarities she had learned from her reluctant tutor, the Doctor.

Rose gave him a pain filled smile. "Fine help me up and I'll teach you anything you'd like." Rose said holding out her hand to him. Jack pulled her to her feet and reached for her a minute later when Rose wobbled and started to fall backwards. He was going to offer to carry her back to the TARDIS but her words came to mind. When the time comes don't be the hero, the TARDIS had told him. He assumed she meant now.

"Let me." The Doctor said taking Rose from Jack's hold into his own arms. The Doctor's words hadn't been a request as much as a command. Jack happily moves aside and lets the Doctor carry Rose. He hides his smile at the idea that this is what the TARDIS meant earlier about being the hero.

The Doctor was falling and he blamed Rose. The warmth of her in his arms, the scent of her perfume sweeter than the night air around them, the way she sighed as if the pain in her ankle no longer mattered and snuggled closer to him. All this was making him fall into some very human emotions like lust. Time Lords did not give into human emotions or instincts especially not baser instincts like lust. Even being half human and half Gallifreyan was not a sufficient excuse for his obvious failing. He was falling and he couldn't help but take her with him.

The Doctor couldn't understand it. He had carried her into the med lab and mended her ankle. It was a mild sprain and by morning she would be fine. What he found a strange thing, mystifying was the analgesic her normally gave her for pain was having no effect on her. Rose had tried to assure him that she was fine but he could see the lie in the way she held herself and in her eyes. It was almost as if he could see the pain radiating off of her. There were other things he could give her but the only one he had on hand she had never had and he wasn't sure what her reaction might be. He told her what the options were and always she told him to do what he thought was best. He didn't want to see her in pain all night, so he gave her the shot and hoped for the best.