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It’s past three in the morning when Rose finally makes it back to the flat. She stands in front of their patchy wooden door and fumbles for the keys as quietly as she can. They slip through her fingers more than once and she curses under her breath, acutely aware how the sound carries down the hall and through doors.
Babysitting Tony shouldn’t have dragged on so long, but her parents had gone out for drinks after dinner and once Jackie Tyler had a glass or two of red in her, she could start talking and stop only when the sun came up. Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. A few impatient phone calls to Pete, and Rose could finally drive home in the dead of night. She briefly considered staying there and crashing on the couch, but the thought of her warm bed and another body comfortably curled around her own was too tantalizing to pass up.
She finally finds the right key. To say she could cry with relief would be an understatement. Her entire body relaxes as she slides the key into the lock, turns it, and opens the door, all as slow and quiet as humanly possible. The Doctor is probably asleep and all she wants is to slip under their covers and join him. The thought alone rests warm on Rose like a weighted blanket as she finally shuts the door.
It’s closed for maybe three seconds - quiet for maybe three seconds - before…
“Rooosee!” drawls a familiar voice, pliant and gleeful. And loud. Very loud, too loud for past three in the morning.
Rose barely has time to register before well-known hands grab her upper arms and a messy kiss is pressed to her forehead. Day old stubble scrapes her skin and, despite her exhaustion, she smiles.
“Rose, Rose, Rose,” the Doctor mumbles, pressing a kiss to her brow, cheek, nose, every time he says her name. Something about his voice slips. The hands at her arms are soft, as always, but they feel too loose even for him.
Rose laughs when he kisses the corner of her mouth and she smells, almost tastes, cheap beer.
Right. He was at a pub quiz that night. Jake had insisted. Their usual guy was out and the Doctor was the cleverest person in the office by a long shot. Centuries worth of useless trivia swirling around in his head, all recallable at the turn of a hat. Might as well put it to good use.
He’d already committed when the call came in from Jackie, begging Rose to watch Tony for the night. The Doctor offered to back out of pub night, insisting he’d rather help her babysit then be surrounded by drunk, sweaty, trivia-crazed lunatics - Jake and Torchwood company excluded.
His words, not hers.
But Rose insisted because she knew Jake was excited and these kinds of get-togethers were good for connections. Besides, Tony wasn’t a huge handful; she could deal with him solo for one night.
Which is how they ended up here: an exhausted but amused Rose and a liquor and love drunk Doctor, showering her with messy affection. He runs one hand up and down her arm soothingly and she melts into the ministrations with a tired sigh. After a moment, Rose takes his face in her hands and - appreciating the flushed warmth against her palms and the dopey grin she can feel - meets his eyes in the dim light of their foyer. His pupils swallow up any brown, massive pools of drunken affection as he beams at her.
He shoves his head forward and clunks their foreheads together.
“Missed you,” he slurs.
Rose runs her thumbs up the swell of his cheeks and giggles. “Missed you too.”
He hums happily from the back of his throat and even that is thick and heavy somehow. It strikes her that she’s never seen him this smashed before. Sure, he’s been tipsy. A pint or two and he becomes softer at the edges, more boneless as the alcohol turns him into a loose-limbed marionette. This, however, is a new level and although it’s somewhat adorable, Rose feels an instinctual swell of worry.
She stills her thumbs. “Are you drunk?” she asks softly, more out of curiosity for his response than anything else.
The Doctor reels back, pouting out his lower lip in thought as his brows furrow deep. He’s putting a lot into this, parsing it out. He runs his tongue along his teeth, presses it to the roof of his mouth, and clicks his jaw open. Then shuts it. A slow grin overtakes his features and he brings their foreheads back together with another dull thud. He manages a nod against her with a high-pitched giggle.
“I think so. Just a bit.”
“Just a bit?” Rose echoes, amused.
“Just the tiniest little bit,” the Doctor agrees, holding up his thumb and pointer finger atoms apart to illustrate.
“Mmm, I’m sure,” Rose chuckles. It quickly turns into a yawn and she lets her hands fall from the Doctor’s face.
She tries to slip past him, set down her bag at least, but the Doctor is quick and needy; he flings his arms around her waist, half falling over her before she can move. His head tucks between her neck and shoulder and she feels him groan into the junction. No point in moving now, she figures with a sigh, and she lets her bag slip off her shoulder to the floor so she can hug him back properly. Rose strokes the back of his head with one hand, scratching his scalp, and he hums quietly against her skin, pleased.
“I missed you,” he says.
It’s so quiet she almost doesn’t hear it. Before she can respond, he’s talking again.
“So so so so much, Rose. It wasn’t the same with you gone.”
She smiles and turns to kiss the side of his head. “But I’m here now.”
His hold on her waist tightens. “But you weren’t with me.”
A realization strikes her and Rose’s heart clenches painfully in her chest. “Doctor, are we talking about the same thing?” she asks quietly.
He’s quiet for a long moment. Tension falls heavy on him; she can feel it in his shoulder blades. When he breathes, it’s slow and even, strangely sobered while the rest of him is so far lost in inebriation.
“Pub quiz,” he finally mumbles.
He’s lying. She can tell.
But Rose doesn’t press the issue because it’s late and he’s wildly drunk. It doesn’t matter much anyway given that - like a swinging pendulum - his mood turns on a dime and he’s suddenly pulling back to look her in the eye with unmitigated glee.
“But you’re here now! You’re back!” The Doctor presses a messy kiss to her cheek, almost missing his mark and souring past her shoulder. It’s a gentle hand to his face that redirects his path and he covers it with his own, beaming. “I’m lost without you. Truly, absolutely, completely.”
Rose smiles at him as her heart slowly unclenches, instead blossoming with a dizzy kind of warmth. Combined with her lack of sleep, it makes for a blissfully exhausting combo, and she takes him by the hand, coaxing him to unlatch so she can finally move past.
Fluidly, he follows, and they stay loosely laced as she kicks off her trainers and heads for the kitchen. She only lets go to grab a tall glass and fill it up to the brim at the sink. Thirsty and tired isn’t a good combination and one of those is quicker to remedy at the moment. The Doctor falls over the countertop across from her, bending at the waist so his chest and arms splay flat. His fingers drum an unsteady beat.
Halfway through her glass, Rose glances up to see the Doctor looking at her, completely boneless and besotted. His dark eyes glimmer in the low kitchen light and his half open-mouthed smile is so sweet her heart swells. She finishes her glass, setting it in the sink.
“What?” she asks quietly, smiling.
The Doctor giggles, twists, turns his head to look at her from another angle because clearly one isn’t enough.
“Hello, sunshine.” His voice is molasses, syrupy on the counter, and it sticks Rose to the spot.
“Sunshine?” she says in a breathless laugh. She knows her cheeks are flushed, and she knows he knows because he pushes himself onto his elbows and his grin takes on a delightfully smug note.
“That’s you! Light of my life, star for my darkened nights, sun for my gloomy days, and everything, everything, in between. You are everything, Rose. All of the above. Every box checked.” The Doctor thinks for a moment, the look on his face so familiar. “I’ve never called you that, have I? Sunshine?”
Rose props herself up across the way. “No, you haven’t.”
“Ohhh, what’s wrong with me?” he groans. “And that’s a Donna-ism, so it’s bizarre I haven’t used it sooner.”
“A Donna-ism?”
“Something Donna used to say,” he says, slurring the s’s. “Still says, I suppose. I dunno.”
Suddenly somber, he’s not looking at Rose, but at the counter and she wants nothing more than to pull him into her arms, tell him she’s sure Donna still says all those wonderful things that live on through him. She’s still Donna, even if she doesn’t remember. Before Rose can move, however, the Doctor swings right back to glee.
“There aren’t enough words for you, y’know. English is so limited! It’s just so… so… restricting. So many words, but not enough, not for you.” The Doctor pushes back from the counter, almost with a recoil as his arms snap back after the rest of his body. He runs a hand through his hair, two, racking his brain, searching and searching as Rose watches, amused.
“‘Love’ is good. That’s a classic. ‘Darling,’ now that’s oddly posh, that’s situational. ‘Dear’? ‘Sweetheart’? ‘Love of my life’?” Pausing, he considers the last one, tilts his head, and nods. “True.” And like a shot, he’s back, tugging at his jaw. “But not enough!”
Back and forth and back again, he paces as he does at Torchwood when there’s a difficult problem to solve. Thanks to the alcohol, his steps are uneven and he sways a bit with every turn. Rose follows him with her eyes, back and forth, grinning. Suddenly, he stops and stares right at her.
“I’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing. Well… nothing in English, anyway. What I do have is-” He slips into a string of melodic syllables, tripping and lyrical, and he spins a sonata in their kitchen.
Rose doesn’t understand, but she doesn’t need to; she can feel it somewhere behind her ribcage as pounding and potent as her heartbeat, the meaning conveyed effortlessly through the slide of his tongue. It isn’t the first time she’s heard this language - his language, that of his people - and every time it leaves her stunned. Usually, he lets it spill out in brief phrases or curses throughout the odd day, but it was most common when they were laying in a haze of post-coital bliss. Or before. Sometimes during. It sounded even better breathless against her skin, Rose thinks.
It takes her a minute to realize that he’s done speaking, staring at her with syrupy adoration once again, and she’s struck by how strange and wonderful their life is. It hurts that the best she can give in return is a soft smile.
“‘S gorgeous, Doctor,” she says.
That seems to be more than enough for him because he’s absolutely beaming as he says, “You think? Oh, good! Good, cause it’s not really translatable into English, not in any way that matters. That’s the problem with High Gallifreyan.” He blinks for a moment. “Or was that Common?” A few more words under his breath. “Both. I’ve been mixing them. A hybrid… like me! Ha!”
Rose loves his grin, and she wishes she could find the words to tell him how much. Being exhausted is a quiet curse against meaningful prose. For now, she settles for crossing the kitchen, pulling the Doctor in by the hem of his shirt, and kissing him. It’s soft, tasting like cheap pub beer and the patient hours he spent waiting for her to get home. And that’s another thing: he waited up for her. He died for her, years and years ago, and yet he still manages to outdo himself in life and love every single day.
Like the rest of him, his lips are pliant against hers and he melts into the kiss with a low hum. For the amount of time it takes for him to dissolve into giggles, they fall into each other to the dull drone of the city outside their windows. The Doctor, giddy, grins against her lips, and Rose breaks the kiss with a laugh of her own.
“You need to sleep this off,” she says, taking him by the hand again. “How much did Jake get you to drink?”
With his free hand, he starts counting on his fingers. He gets to four before wavering, squinting at his own calculations like they make no sense to him. “Um… dunno. Lost track. More than normal.”
“Clearly.” Rose lightly tugs on his hand, pulling him along.
As he trips into their room behind her, he frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She spins around and grins at him. “You’re a pile of mush! Of course you’ve had more than usual.”
The Doctor has so many expressions she loves: his furrowed frown, his dopey grin, and this, his overexaggerated affront with sharp eyebrows and a dropped jaw.
“Mush?! Rose Tyler, I am…” He wobbles his head, searching for the words. A bobblehead. He turns into a bobblehead when he’s this wasted and Rose fights down a laugh to let him finish his thought. “...very, very far from mush. The picture of eloquence, I am.”
“Suuure. Now get out of your clothes, picture of eloquence.”
His eyebrows raise so high, they threaten to lift off his forehead.
“Ah, not like that,” Rose scolds. “You’re drunk and I’m exhausted. We are sleeping and that’s all.”
He holds up his hands in wobbly assent. “I didn’t say anything.”
“No, but your eyes did all the talking.”
Rose tosses a shirt at him and it lands perfectly on his raised hand. The Doctor gets the hint and grabs a pair of flannel pajama bottoms to match, sparing a wink along the way. It nets him a smile and rolled eyes in return. They get into sleep clothes in comfortable silence with only a little bit of trouble on the Doctor’s part. It’s amazing how his wiry limbs can get stuck in the strangest of ways when he’s uncoordinated: he gets caught with his shirt half on. Taking pity on him, Rose untangles him and tugs it down the rest of the way. Perfect opportunity to then tug him straight into bed without anymore drunken wobbling. She’s a bit worried he’ll hit his head on something if he stays vertical, but her fears are allayed when they both curl under bedsheets.
There must be magnets in her spine considering how quickly the Doctor spoons up behind her, curling his body around hers like it's the most natural thing in the world. Arms wrap tight at her waist and he slots a leg in between hers. He buries his face into the crook of her neck with a tired, deep sigh and Rose stretches, pressing her back further against his chest. He hums his appreciation.
It’s quiet for a moment. Rose thinks he’s already asleep and is on the cusp of drifting off herself when the Doctor speaks.
“I love you,” he mumbles into her shoulder. Soft, like his lips on her skin.
“Love you too,” she whispers back, drowsy.
There’s another stretch of silence before-
“Rose?”
“Hm?”
“I really, really, really love you.”
A warm chuckle. “And I you.”
“No but… Rose, it’s more than I know what to do with.”
“...Everything okay?”
“More than! It’s just… you taught me how to feel like this. And it’s amazing, y’know? How much someone can feel. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this much, not for one person. Like my heart’s trying to get out of my chest.”
Rose is stunned. He’s stock still against her, waiting patiently for her response, and it’s all she can do not to suck in a shaky breath. She feels like crying. Good tears, of course, but she doesn’t want to worry him. Instead, Rose takes one of the hands fisted in her camisole and brings it to her lips, kissing the back of his fingers.
“You always had the capacity for that kind of love, Doctor,” she says. “You just needed to find it again.”
All the air leaves his lungs and he breathes her name on the exhale. His arms tighten like he’s trying to pull her into his ribcage as he kisses the junction of her neck and shoulder with reverence. Rose returns the sentiment by holding his fingers to her lips.
“Love you,” he whispers again.
“Love you,” she mutters back against his hand. He can feel her smile, she knows.
Minutes later, his breathing slows and the Doctor is asleep. Rose stays awake just long enough to press his hands over her heart before drifting off herself.
<><><>
When the Doctor wakes in the morning, he immediately regrets opening his eyes. The gentle sunlight streaming in between the slats of the window shade shoots straight past his eyes and into his skull. His head is splitting in two and he turns his face into the pillows with a groan. He tried to keep it quiet, but it’s just enough to wake Rose and she stirs.
Sometime in the night, they shifted and turned so now the Doctor’s head rests in the hollow of Rose’s throat, arms still tight around her torso and legs still knit together. It’s the perfect position for her to press a kiss to his forehead and tangle a hand in his sleep-tousled hair. His eyes flutter shut with a contended sigh.
“Good morning,” she mutters. “Sleep well?”
Another groan.
“Poor thing.”
The Doctor musters the strength to open his eyes and pull back to meet hers: half-lidded and warm, with a healthy dose of smug amusement.
“You’re very unsympathetic to my plight,” he rasps out. His voice is shot, throat and mouth a desert.
Rose giggles. “Not at all. But you have to admit, it’s a bit funny.”
The Doctor mumbles what might be an agreement and focuses his limited energy on the night prior, unsurprised to find it a sickly blur.
“I’m never doing that again,” he mumbles. “Jake… he owes me. For that, he owes me big time.”
“Did you win quiz night?”
“Of course!” He winces at the volume of his own voice. “By a landslide. And then we had one too many drinks to celebrate. Paul got me back safe, I remember that, and then..” The Doctor scrunches his nose. “The rest is a big fat blur.”
Rose sinks further into the mattress. Her fingers twist and twirl in his hair as she thinks up ways to jog his memory, not wanting their final conversation to get lost in the mire.
Suddenly, the Doctor straightens, an odd note of panic in his posture. “I didn’t do anything stupid, did I?” he asks.
Rose frowns. “Stupid?”
“Yeah, something daft. I know how I get when I’m tipsy, all..” He sputters a long breath through his lips in lieu of proper words. “I did something stupid, I can feel it.
“Like what?” she asks with a chuckle.
The Doctor tilts his head up and his eyes are doe-like, large and plaintive. “Like going to bed without you.”
Even sober, he’s a sweetheart.
Rose shifts down till they’re eye to eye and lets her smile precede her answer. “You waited up,” she says simply. Her voice is so fond it surprises even her.
He blinks owlishly at her until he remembers and his expression lightens. “You came home late. I sat upside-down on the couch until I heard the door.”
Rose laughs, tipping her head to rest against his. “I didn’t know that bit!”
He nods. “Thought it would help the room stop spinning. I was wrong.”
“Could’ve told you that.”
“Well, considering I made it to the door before you got to the sitting room…”
With a chuckle, she concedes. “You remember now?”
A click of his tongue against the roof of his mouth indicates a maybe and the Doctor waggles his head a bit. “Most of it. I remember why I thought I did something stupid.”
Rose feels a sudden note of worry. Was it their conversation? Did he regret his drunken words, which she found to be sweet rather than stupid?
“What is it?”
“My movements.”
Rose just blinks at him.
“Aw, come on! Don’t tell me I didn’t look ridiculous, I know I did.”
A second. Two. Rose bursts out laughing, any worries gone in a snap replaced only by love for the daft man she’s sharing a bed - a life - with. Through her laughter, she finds his face with a hand and draws him into a kiss. When she pulls away, she grins. “I thought you were adorable.”
“I was liquid-limbed, Rose,” he says seriously. “You were right. Mush. A ragdoll of a man, all joints and no poise, no finesse.”
“You’re already physically expressive, this was just a bit… more,” Rose argues.
“A lot more.”
“You were sweet!”
“I was sludge.”
She kisses him again, this time slower. A tease to the seam of his lips and he complies with gentle eagerness. He still tastes a bit like last night, but eclipsed by a hum in the back of his throat, gentle fingers brushing the bare skin at her hip. It’s so very him to be like this after a night out, Rose muses, all fault finding misery and sweet nothings jumbled in a drowsy haze. She pulls away only for air, smiling softly at the Doctor who’s now all dazed and freshly kissed.
“Sweet sludge,” she hums.
He grins, tongue to the back of his teeth. “If you approve, I suppose it’s alright.”
“More than.”
The Doctor goes to kiss her, his darkened eyes lovely in the morning gold light, but he stops. Something else. He’s remembered…
“Hm.”
“Hm?”
“I said a lot last night.”
“You did,” Rose agrees slowly.
He flips to look at the ceiling. “Blimey. I rambled.”
Rose scoots a bit closer, trying to parse his expression. “No more than usual, honestly.”
With a huff, the Doctor turns to look at her, worry furrowing his brow. “But you were exhausted.”
“And you were drunk. Besides, I missed you and you were happy to see me. How could I ever be upset with that?” The gentle trail she traces against his cheek pairs nicely with her words.
Fully flipping back, he beams. “I’m always happy to see you.”
“I know.”
His smile softens, eyes crinkling at the corners. “And I love you. Really, really, really love you.”
Rose doesn’t know how he handles it, loving with just one heart after having two; she suddenly feels as though she needs twelve.
“You remember that?”
“Course I do.” He’s close now, their noses brushing. “Thanks for helping me find it again, right here.”
The Doctor kisses her and, like he does in everything that matters, pours all of himself into it. He props up on an elbow, urging her to sink back into their bed as he deepens the kiss, a hand cupping her cheek to angle her head just-so. She fists her fingers still tangled in hair and her blood runs fast when the Doctor groans and presses closer, his knee slotting in between her thighs. Heat builds low in her core and anticipation burns a sweet ache through every pass of their lips, every touch.
She’s just trailing a hand down his chest past the thrum of his heart, when he breaks away. A sigh of disappointment passes her kiss-swollen lips and the Doctor gives a chaste peck to the tip of her nose as an apology.
He settles and catches his breath with a hazy grin. “I meant every word I said last night. Every single one. Every drunken ramble, every term of endearment. Everything.”
Rose grins up at him and makes a decision. In one smooth motion, she reaches up and tugs him down by the front of his shirt, bringing them nose to nose as he collapses on top of her.
“I love you too,” Rose says and it’s more air against his lips than words before she kisses him again.
His participation is immediate and enthusiastic, a cool hand under her shirt indicating a quick and pleasant escalation. Reluctantly, Rose breaks the kiss and the Doctor frowns in confusion.
“You have one hell of a hangover,” she manages, a bit breathless. There’s a hazy smile on her lips, almost like a dare
He shrugs - as she knew he would - and ducks his head to kiss the spot under her ear that always makes her shiver.
“I’ll live.”
Good enough for her. Rose lets him attend to her neck before bringing his lips back to hers, slowly raising a leg to hook over his hips and press him closer in the process.
It’s a Saturday morning and they have absolutely nowhere to be, no one to see but each other if they like, and no one around but the sun looking in through slated shades. The golden light plays nicely against bare skin and Rose follows its paths across the planes of his chest when all is said and done.
Although, not much was actually said, save for the Doctor’s scant slips in his mother tongue. He murmurs similar words now as they both rest in a blissful stupor, pleasantly sleepy in a mid-morning glow.
Rose stretches out against him, pressing contours more solidly together. “And there’s no translation for that?” she asks in a sleepy slur.
“Nope,” the Doctor confirms. “It’s poetry, basically. Old Gallifreyan love letters written in a dialect that was mostly forgotten even when I was young.
“So a long time ago.”
“Oi.”
She chuckles, turning her face into his shoulder. “Sorry. You were sayin’?”
“Right. Best comparison I can think of is ancient Greek to modern Greek. Derived and sometimes understandable, but very different. A lost language.”
Rose nods. It does make sense, easily, but one thing still nags at her. “And you learned this?”
“Part of the Academy curriculum,” he says in that distant voice he gets when talking about his childhood. “But some of it I learned m’self. The poems, mostly.”
“Trying to impress someone?” she teases.
“No,” the Doctor chuckles. “Just a rebel. Emotions of the hearts like love were considered lesser-than so it was my way of sticking it to the man: quietly reciting poetry under the covers after lights out.”
Rose hums, gleeful. His description paints quite the picture, although the child in it is unclear. That many regenerations ago, he could’ve looked like anyone.
“I’m glad for it,” she tells him truthfully.
“Me too.”
“Say it again?”
The Doctor grins and Rose shuffles further up to pillow her head on his chest and listen to the sweet rise and fall of melodic words. Words just for her. Completely sober and sincere. She hopes the kiss she presses to his lips before slipping back to sleep is enough to tell him the same.
It is. More than.