keep_counting | Fic: Towards the Sun (Doctor Who)

Title: Towards the Sun
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose, mentions of Jackie & Mickey
Rating: PG13
Warnings: Spoilers for season 2 up until and including 'The Satan Pit'. The Doctor and Rose being the Doctor and Rose
Genre: Angst/Romance/Humor
Word-count: 3,063
A/N: Another one in my apparant campaign to make the Doctor and Rose discuss their problems.
Disclaimer: If I owned 'Doctor Who', do you think Billie Piper and David Tennant would have been allowed to leave?
Summary: After the events of 'the Idiot's Lantern', the Doctor acts on his feelings for Rose. Only, he doesn't get the expected reaction. At all.

He kisses her on a foggy day back in London, two days after she lost her face to a crazy, living television, and it’s all her heart can do to not just give out from happiness right then and there.

She pulls away before she can become too lost. He opens his eyes, looking so giddy it hurts.

“I’m sorry. I can’t,” she says, and she’s pretty sure that none of them ever imagined it happening like this.

He looks like he’s been hit by a freight train.

“What?” he mutters, looking bewildered and like the whole world just turned upside-down. Only, he’s probably tried that before and knows how to deal with it.

This is unexpected.

It’s not like she’s ever hidden her feelings for him. It’s not like it isn’t painfully obvious that she loves him, more than anything or anyone else. It’s not like she wouldn’t want to kiss him back, to just lean up and never let go. It’s not like it wouldn’t be perfect.

“I hope we can still be friends,” Rose says and almost wants to giggle at the sheer absurdity for the situation. The Doctor does not look like he would appreciate a giggle right now, though. He looks like he has no idea if he should be thunderously angry or cry or just stand there looking lost. He does the last one surprisingly well.

“I just can’t,” she says and wants to turn around, wants to run away back to the TARDIS (I learned from the best), but he grasps her by the arm before she can come far.

“Why not?” He asks, his voice hard and demanding, no measure of the hurt he must be feeling filtering through.

She tries to smile at him, be reassuring, convince him that there isn’t some evil alien taking over her brain and making her do all the opposite things of what the real Rose Tyler would want – and she wants – but it probably doesn’t come out very well. It’s hard to be sincere when it feels like your insides have been hollowed out like a pumpkin at Halloween.

“Because you were right. It could never work,”

He lets her go then, fingers slacking around her arm and she slips from his grip and walks back to the TARDIS. She ends up in her own room, sitting there for what feels like hours until she feels the familiar hum of the ship as it flies into the Vortex.

oOo

He actually runs tests on her, albeit in secret, watching her like a hawk and letting the sonic screwdriver slip over her hands and face and neck while in the midst of action or escape, probably thinking she wouldn’t notice.

She isn’t sure if she should be happy that he’s concerned enough about her to want to really make sure she isn’t some kind of alien-replacement, or if she should laugh and mock him about his huge ego that is apparently telling him that the real Rose Tyler would never reject him.

Sometimes she has no idea what she’s doing. It’s been a month now since the incident and there has been so many times when she’s had to restrain herself to not just walk up and kiss him.

It’s so much harder when she knows it would be welcomed. And then she wonders why it is that she doesn’t, especially when she’s lying alone in her bed (time for some human-sleep) and she can sometimes hear him walking around outside, stopping at her door. If she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine him quietly opening it and walking to her bed, slipping under the covers with her.

He’s not there when she opens her eyes. Of course he isn’t: she’s made it perfectly clear that she doesn’t want that.
Even if it is one big, fat, mind-boggling lie.

oOo

Something seems to shift and change: like the past month has all just been one, long dream for her and the Doctor and now at least he’s finally woken up.

Takes her mother to stir him out of whatever it was of silent glances and scans with the screwdriver: Rose isn’t sure if it’s Jackie’s general nagging for her daughter to come back home – which has come back with a vengeance after what happened to Mickey – or the fact that there is talk of Mark who is apparently still harboring a crush on her despite her never being around and Jimmy Stone who… well, the less said of Jimmy Stone the better, as Rose had sternly told her mother before she could rant on for another hour about the man.

Whatever it is, it worked some odd magic or another and the Doctor now seems determined to – for lack of better word – bloody seduce her.

If there ever was such a thing as ‘personal space’ between them, it has disappeared now completely. If her hand isn’t permanently attached to his, it means she is at least five miles away or showering or sleeping. The hugs last longer too, and if she tries to ease up before the Doctor is ready to let go, he will only hold stubbornly unto her longer, his hand occasionally gliding up and down her back or lightly touching her hair.

It sets her on fire and her fantasies of jumping him are sometimes so vivid that she is surprised when she returns to the real world and finds that she hasn’t actually done it.

It also makes her feel quite helpless, because she is always tethering on the edge of wanting him to continue and wanting him to stop, and she realizes that this is the kind of torture he put her through when it was all Rose, I remember how to dance and you look beautiful, considering, and it must be driving him mad – it certainly drove her mad – but she just isn’t sure what to do anymore.

There are actual goddamn compliments now, not just the casual throw-back of brilliant or clever girl! But long looks at exposed skin and comments like you look lovely, and it makes butterfly wage war in her stomach every single time and when her treacherous heart (or possibly her hormones) makes her smile at him shyly, he looks even more like the cat that got the cream.
And the canary and all the fish in the bowl as well.

She wonders in the end, if she even stands a chance – he’s a Time Lord after all, and while she prides herself on being stubborn as a mule, there’s only so much a single human heart can take.

She wonders if she’ll break both of his when it’s over, or if it’s only one of them that work in the ways of emotion: one to pump the blood and one to twist the knife into. Or maybe it’s both, and he feels twice as much love and twice as much pain.

He kisses her again in the TARDIS control room, as she lands with a well-meaning and loud ‘thud’ and they are thrown to the floor. She really thinks that after all this time she should be more prepared, but she’d been very distracted at the moment, and so had fallen to the floor in a graceless heap, banging her head against the metal grating in the process and hurting her hand as well, trying to bode off the fall.

The fact that it had been his neck that had distracted her was a minor detail that no-one need know off.

“Rose?” he half-laughs, sitting down beside her. “Are you hurt?”

“Ow,” she mumbles and pouts at him, rubbing her head with her uninjured hand. “You are a horrific driver, you know.”

“Am not,” he protests, reaching out to stroke her hair. “Did you hit your head?”

“No, I was born with bumps in my skull.”

He laughs again. “Come here,” he says and she barely has time to wonder if he’s going to joke about kissing it better, when suddenly he is kissing her.

He’s rather good at it too, which really isn’t fair. Not at all.

“You’re supposed to be impulsive and reckless, you know,” he mutters as he pulls away again. “You’re supposed to be the one to convince me that we can do this, that it’s alright for me to want you despite the difference in age and species. Despite the fact that, as you’ve probably already figured out, I don’t deserve this. You’re supposed to be human.”

Rose blinks. “That’s what you think? That I was rejecting you because I didn’t think you deserve to be happy?”

“No, but maybe you should.”

“You are one big, walking contradiction, did you know that?”

“Surprisingly enough, you’re not the first to tell me that,” he has the gall to grin at her, cheekily even, and she wonders if she could punch him hard enough for his first incarnation to feel it.

“It’s not the reason,” Rose mutters, trying to focus on the pain in her head and hand, anything but the fact that her lips are still warm and tingling softly. “It’s that you were right – it’s that… one day I won’t be here anymore. And that’s not fair to you, and I can’t ask you to give me everything I want when it’s going to hurt you so much, but if we start, I could never just settle if I thought you were holding back without reason and in the end, you’d be even more hurt when I’m gone. And I wouldn’t ever do that to you.”

He’s silent for a little while, his eyes roving over her face as if mapping it out, and she wonders if he’s going to send her home now. If everything has become irrevocably damaged.

“Didn’t you ever wonder why I did it?” he mumbles then.

Rose frowns. “Did what?”

“Why I kissed you that day?”

Her eyebrows almost hit her hair-line. “Ummm… are you trying to tell me that kissing doesn’t mean the same for you as it does for me? Because if it’s some odd Time Lord-custom that really just means ‘buy me a banana’, then I am very sorry for the misunderstanding…”

He bursts out laughing, hands grasping her shoulders as he doubles over. Rose smiles nervously, not exactly sure if that is a good sign or not.

“You…” he splutters out, frame shaking with suppressed laughter. “You really are something, aren’t you?”

“I suppose…” she mumbles, amused despite herself. A warm feeling has settled in her chest, as if some tight knot had finally loosened. “So that’s not it then?”

He pulls himself together enough to actually get a word out, still smiling widely at her. “That’s not it, no.”

“Then…” she stops herself, chewing her lip and wondering when exactly he broke the last of her defenses down. “Why did you kiss me that day?”

“Well, why do you think?”

Good lord, was he backtracking now? Her murderous glare wiped the smile completely from his face.

“Eerrr, what I mean to say is… what happened right before? I mean, what do you think could make me…”

“So it was because you were scared?” Rose says as realization hits. “Because the Wire had taken my face, and you were scared and relieved that I was alright so you kissed me?”

“Yes. It was also because I realized something.”

“And what did you realize?”

“How big a fool I’ve been.”

“Yes, well, I could have told you that long ago,”

His turn to glare now. “Thanks a lot.”

“You’re very welcome.”

“Do you mind being quiet while I bare my soul to you here?”

“Is that what you are doing?”

“It is in fact.”

“By all means continue then,” she mumbled, a large smile spreading on her face. She’d missed this, the bantering back and forth, and hadn’t even realized that they’d really stopped doing it. If his smile was anything to go by, he was thinking the same as her.

“What I meant to say is that… while you’re right, that it is....” he trailed off.

“Going to hurt when I die?” Rose prompted along, regretting her blunt words as he flinched. “Sorry,”

“Right,” he mumbled, his jaw set in a hard line. Feeling bold by the fact that he’d just told her he was going to open up, she reached down and grasped hold of one of his hands. It seemed to reassure him somewhat, as he looked into her eyes again and continued.

“It’s going to hurt no matter what. It’s going to devastate me no matter what or when – the Wire showed me that. You didn’t have a face Rose, you have no idea how horrible… Your very mind was gone. You… and all I could think of was that it was my fault, for putting you there, for taking you along… don’t argue, just let me speak, okay?” he gave her a stern look and she promptly shut her mouth again. “It was my fault, you were there because of me, you stay with me because you care for me and it shouldn’t be fair that I get to know that, get to hold that with me forever and you could die any second and not know how much I….”

The silence as he cut himself off again was strangling and her heart was beating in an unsteady rhythm, excited about what he’d said and terrified at what he hadn’t. He looked so vulnerable, like he’d already gotten out more than intended, but there was also something hard and unyielding in her eyes, as if he’d been fighting to get this out in the open.

Nine hundred years of not saying: she figured this was as bloody close as it got.

“You must’ve been very bewildered when I said no,” she mumbled, deciding to give him this outing. She didn’t want to force him to say anything he didn’t want to – or might not really mean.

He smiled slightly. “You could use that word.”

“You thought I’d been possessed again!” She couldn’t help but tease. “Your ego couldn’t handle it, could it?”

He sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “Your mind had just been stolen, I figured maybe something had been muddled up or you were confused or maybe couldn’t remember who I was. Had to make sure you were alright.”

She swallowed. “I wasn’t.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t alright. I made you miserable, didn’t I?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say miserable, more put-out and confused than… yeah, okay, I was miserable,” he pouted. “I thought, you know, maybe you preferred the old leather jacket and ears and really didn’t… want me anymore.”

“Sometimes I think… it was easier with him. I knew that he… that you… cared for me, back then. You, this you, you always threw me off the loop. Never knew where I had you.”

“I’m sorry,”

“No, you’re not, not really,” Rose cut in. “Because you were just doing what you’ve always done. Running away from the people you care about.”

“Now, that’s hardly fair…”

“It isn’t the truth then?”

He stared at her long and hard, his Adams apple bobbing as he swallowed heavily. “Yes. It is.”

“I never gave up on you, you know. I always had faith. And then you just sent me away, for my own good or whatever and even when I come back to save you then you just… change, and I dunno… I kept pointing out things in my head, things you wouldn’t have done before, when you were still him, because you knew it’d hurt me, but you never seemed to care about that.”

“I did care!” He protested. “Of course I care, how can you even doubt that?”

“I didn’t doubt that you cared, just whether you cared as much as the old you did,” Rose shot back, willing her tears not to fall. “And then you suddenly kiss me, and what was I supposed to think of that? And I’d remember what you said, about how we wither and decay and I couldn’t…”

She had to stop, had to clench her teeth and look away, because crying in front of him now had the potential to ruin everything.

“Please don’t cry,” he suddenly muttered, his hand clenching around hers. “Rose…”

“Sorry,” She muttered, reaching up to wipe her tears, hissing as she became aware of the pain in her hand.

“What is it?” the Doctor asked, suddenly in a flurry of movement as he took her to the infirmary to check her over. Less than an hour passed, and suddenly it all seemed like a dream. He gave her some pain-killers and told her to get some rest and she had no idea how to broach the subject again.

oOo

“You’re an idiot.”

“Thank-you,”

“No, but I mean it,” Rose turned around and glared, hands resting lightly on the console. “You actually just let yourself fall?”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

“You could have died!”

“And regenerated.”

“Or gotten so hurt that you couldn’t regenerate and then died,”

“But I didn’t?” he muttered, sounding as if it was a hopeful suggestion instead of a statement. Rose had to take a deep, steadying breath.

“Please don’t ever do something like that again. What if the TARDIS hadn’t been down there? You would have been trapped there forever. On your own,”

He was silent for a short while, pulling the levers, flying his ship. “I never even thought about that,”

“Obviously not,”

“Want to know why I didn’t think about it?”

“Because you’re an idiot. I told you,”

“Because I knew you’d save me, somehow.”

That stopped her short. “Sorry, what?”

He smiled, looking off into the distance. “The Doctor and Rose Tyler; the stuff of legends. Not just ‘The Doctor’ in that sentence, was it?”

She smiled shyly, moving closer to the control panel. “Wouldn’t be able to do any of that stuff if it weren’t for you,”

“Says the woman who just killed the Devil,”

She moved even closer. He was watching her now. “You taught me.”

“No, I just showed you. That’s all I do,” he was standing beside her suddenly, looking at her as if he was seeing her for the first time. “The rest is all you,”