I haven't been able to respond to all the reviews, but a huge thank you to everyone who is reading, favoriting, following, and commenting!

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Rose awoke and immediately realized she was surrounded by smoke. It was hard to breathe and she coughed as she tried to catch her breath. She tried to move but found she was pinned by something heavy that she couldn't see or feel. She continued to struggle and cough. Panic began to fill her smoke-addled brain and she tried to yell out for help. She could move her arm and immediately reached out to find a hand that was limp and growing cold. She lifted the hand into her vision, praying that it wasn't the hand she thought was so familiar. Through the smoke she saw it, John's wedding band on the hand's ring finger. Rose squeezed the hand and began to call out to him. "John…. John! John, wake up, please! You can't die! Don't die, John. John…. DOCTOR!"

Suddenly, Rose felt her body being shaken and a distant, familiar voice came through the haze and smoke. "Rose? Rose! It's okay. Everything is okay. It was just a dream. It was just a dream," the voice repeated soothingly.

Rose opened her eyes and found Jason sitting next to her on the bed, one hand on her shoulder and the other caressing her cheek while he offered her reassurances. Rose sat up and threw her arms around Jason's neck and clung to him, trying desperately to calm her breathing and racing heart. Jason stroked Rose's back and shifted Rose so that she was sitting with her legs draped over his. Rose sobbed into Jason's shirt; she'd had nightmares before, but this one seemed more intense and more real than any of the others. She had remembered details of the accident she hadn't remembered in all the nightmares of the last two years.

As Rose's sobbing began to calm, she nuzzled her nose further into the joint between Jason's neck and shoulder. The smell of smoke in her nostrils was slowly replaced by Jason's scent with each inhale. As she relaxed further, Rose couldn't stop herself from tilting her head slightly, allowing her lips to make contact with Jason's neck. She brushed her lips next to his Adam's Apple and Jason sucked in a breath. Rose felt a surge of desperate need, and began kissing Jason's neck, moving her lips up to his ear and down his jaw until she reached his lips. She opened her brown eyes to gaze into Jason's blue orbs for a split second before closing the distance between their lips. The kiss was soft and tentative for only a moment until Rose's senses were too overwhelmed by his smell and taste. She deepened the kiss, her tongue begging for entrance, which Jason granted immediately. The kiss quickly grew heated and passionate, fueled by need to give and receive comfort to and from each other.

Rose shifted her legs so that she could straddle his thighs. She moved an arm to reach around Jason's shoulders to pull him close to her while the other moved up his neck to his hair and scratch her fingernails along his scalp. Jason moaned with pleasure and wrapped Rose into a tight embrace, with one arm around her low back and the other across her shoulders, his fingers reach up to the back of her head to hold her against his lips in an effort to keep the kiss from ending.

As they continued to snog each other breathless, Rose couldn't resist the heat that pooled at her center. She raised her thighs slightly and rolled her hips against Jason, gasping at the friction she achieved and feeling the evidence of Jason's arousal through their layers of clothing. Jason moved his hands to grasp Rose's hips, urging her to move like that again. Rose moved her heat over Jason's erection again, causing both of them to throw their heads back at the pleasure that rocketed through their bodies. Rose moved over his erection again. But this time, her gasp came out with the name "John" spilling from her lips. Jason froze and Rose suddenly realized what she had said. She quickly moved off of Jason, pulling the duvet up to cover her body and then covering her face with her hands in embarrassment.

"I'm sorry, Jason…" Rose mumbled from behind her hands. Jason reached for her hands and removed them from in front of her face. "I'm so sorry. I…" He smiled gently at her and placed a finger over her lips to silence her apologies.

"Rose, it's okay. Really…" Jason comforted her. "You woke up from a nightmare that I can only imagine was about the accident that took John from you. It's completely natural to seek comfort in a loving embrace." He moved his hand to caress her cheek. "In a way, I'm glad you called me John, because if we didn't stop when we did, I'm not sure I would have been able to stop. And we shouldn't take things any further right now."

Rose was surprised to hear Jason's confession. Did he not want that kind of physical relationship with Rose? Was he not interested in her like that? As if sensing Rose's doubts, Jason continued. "Don't misunderstand. Want more than snogging, me. But, I don't want it like this, when we're exhausted, physically and emotionally. I won't take advantage of you like that, Rose. Not ever."

Rose reached up to caress Jason's cheek. "Thank you," she responded quietly.

Jason kissed Rose's palm and then stood up from the bed. Rose couldn't decide whether she should feel relieved by the distance or disappointed by it. "Why don't I go down to the dining room and fix us both a nice cuppa?" Jason offered. Rose remembered the gentleman at check-in pointing out a beverage cart in the dining room that was available for guests at any time. Rose smiled and nodded. Jason picked up the room key and headed out the door.

While he was gone, Rose decided to splash some water on her face in the en-suite and attempt to calm her nerves. In the silence of the room, Rose thought back over the last few days. She had done exactly what Jake had warned her against. She had allowed Jason to fill-in the empty corner of her heart that John had left behind when he died. Rose knew that she would never act this way with someone she had only met a few days ago. She had to reign in her emotions and try not to ignore the fact that Jason was a stranger to her… a stranger who just happened to look like her husband when she first met him.

Jason returned a few minutes later with two steaming cups of tea, prepared just the way Rose liked it. Rather than sit on bed, Rose and Jason took seats on the small sofa in the room, putting them close to each other but without the temptation of the bed.

"Do you want to talk about it?" Jason asked after they had both partially finished their tea.

"About the dream?" Rose asked.

"About the dream, or John. Whatever is on your mind," John suggested. "You can talk to me about him, you know. About them both, really. Anyone important to you is important to me too, Rose."

Rose continued to sip her tea, building up her strength to start her story. Rose hadn't spoken much about John since the accident. Even when Pete insisted Rose see the Torchwood psychiatrist when she returned to work, Rose had kept so much inside. She hadn't wanted to talk about it. She had wanted to keep it close, as if talking about it would mean she might lose it. But, Rose didn't want to hide this from Jason.

"John was brilliant," Rose began. "His intelligence was off the charts – doctor in medicine, physics, astronomy, mathematics, history, and literature. There wasn't a problem he couldn't solve eventually. And he loved to tinker. I was always catching him taking apart appliances to "improve" them. " Rose smiled as she recalled all the ruined toasters and blenders she had replaced over the years. "Mum made her kitchen off-limits after he destroyed her third microwave. He seemed to have endless amounts of energy. I never thought he'd be one to settle down and do "domestics" but as long as he had something to do or study or tinker with, he was happy. And then we had Samantha and he had someone else with as much energy and curiosity as himself. They were a pair – he even set up "safe" experiments for Sam to run in a corner of his lab. She was so much like him – bright, energetic, inquisitive, and funny. They were inseparable. You'll never find another father/daughter pair like those two." Rose continued to reminisce about her life with John and Samantha, telling him about their adventures, experiments, and desire to travel once Samantha was old enough. They were planning their first big family trip when the accident happened.

Rose spent the next hour, telling story after story to Jason, laughing sometimes to the point of crying, in both joy at the memories and sorrow at what was now lost. Jason listened attentively and laughed along with Rose when she laughed. And when she cried he scooted closer, wrapping an arm around her and holding her as she worked through her sadness. Rose couldn't see it, but Jason shed a few tears too.

As the time passed, both Rose and Jason began to feel tired again and agreed to go back to bed and try to get a little more sleep before check-out time. By 9am, Jason and Rose were back in Jason's car, heading back to Manchester.