When he finds Rose for the last time, New Year’s Eve, 2005, he knows her, but she doesn’t know him.

She doesn’t know how to view his happiness and grin back, or find his hidden sadness and gently touch him, concern on her face. She doesn’t know how to match him, her mood so fluidly molding to his, bouncing the energy back. She doesn’t know how to feed off him the way he feeds off her. Not selfishly, although there is - was - quite a bit of selfishness, too, between them and the universe. But this is not selfishness; this is - was - honesty. The grin he couldn’t suppress became hers because he gave it to her. The tears she spilled made him feel her sadness, too, because to not feel is inescapable in such a loving and human communion. And he still can’t escape it, though the feeling seems to escape her. Well it should; she doesn’t know him. Not yet.

Oh, but she will.

She appears charmed, still, as if something awakens in her at the something in his voice that she cannot yet place. She grins at him, and she’s going to have a really great year, and that grin is all he needs, all this regeneration has ever needed. She doesn’t know him, doesn’t yet know to mirror his moods, but he knows her.

He finds, hidden in shadow but blinded by the smile and the snow and the pink-and-yellow and the love she will feel for him, that he cannot stop from smiling back at her.

For a moment. 

“Rose,” he whispers.

He’s spent years looking, and now he thinks he may have found something. He thinks he may have found her. 

He holds his sonic stethoscope up to the wall, his eyes widening. He can hear her crying, sobbing on the other side of the wall - the other side of the universe. To her, it must have only been five minutes. She’s been gone for only five minutes. 

For him, it’s been five years.

Five lonely, lost years without her. Five reckless years of running from absolutely nothing, toward absolutely nothing. Escaping and losing himself and losing everyone around him in his insane desire to run. 

He stops now. 

He should move, though, from his crouched position against this concrete wall. He should get the TARDIS and reunite with Rose as soon as possible - five years without her was enough, and he wants forever with her. But he stays still, just for a moment. A moment to take in the beautiful reality of something so surreal. She’s here. Well, he’s here for her. But still, she’s so close, and she’ll soon be his once more. He lays his fingers flat against the stethoscope, curling his hand to the wall, and breathes.

She’ll soon be his again.

(Source: lastofthetimeladies)

one- or two-sentence doctor/rose fic 

nine-era

• she finds wonder in being able to see days that have already passed and days that have yet to happen, all in the same day for her.
• he finds wonder in being able to show her the universe, to learn the universe through new eyes. maybe it’s not so unforgiving after all.
• he doesn’t deserve her.
• he can’t stop noticing how her teeth press a soft indent into her lips when she smiles. he almost - almost - wishes she would stop smiling so he could stop seeing it every time he closes his eyes.
• she’s nothing more than a stupid ape to him, she thinks. so when captain jack tries to dance with her, she doesn’t resist.
• the doctor wishes he could show rose all of his moves - but he still doesn’t deserve her, and she still wouldn’t, doesn’t, can’t want him. 
• when she got cold during their trip through an isolumos blizzard, he gave her his leather jacket. she tried to ignore the jacket-sharing connotations, but she couldn’t ignore the way he looked so naked (and so fit) in nothing but a jumper.
• when he realizes she loves him, he is happy to die. for her.

ten-era

• he wants to touch her, every part of her in reach of his hands, and he finds, after very little provocation on his part, that she is very open to this idea. 
• his lips are cold against hers, and his body is colder. she doesn’t cuddle as closely to him at night as either of them would like.
• whenever he tries teaching her to co-pilot the tardis with him, the lessons go awry. he finds, in this new body, that he prefers other hands-on activities. 
• she cannot get her hands out of his hair. (he doesn’t mind.)
• one day he will lose her. he holds on tighter.
• she wants to rage at him, scream at him, “give me a choice, once in a while! stop making the decisions for me -” but he never ever will. 
• when she promises him forever, he lets himself believe it. they will find a way to stretch her mortality.
• she was just a valiant child, a foolish teenager thinking she would live forever. she died today.

post-doomsday

• she slips into depression, can’t sleep, can’t think, can’t evenly breathe sometimes. the knowledge that he believes in her is the only thing that helps her out of bed in the mornings.
• she adopts “defender of the earth” as her personal slogan. she wears it like armor under her work clothes, a superhero’s identity hidden to all but herself.
• he needs someone, doesn’t want to be alone, can’t be with someone who isn’t her.
• when tony is born, jackie jokes that they should name him “doctor” for all the doctor’s done for her. she doesn’t notice as her daughter’s smile slips.

tentoo-era

• he holds her hand just the same way he used to. but he’s warmer now.
• he gives her choices and tells her stories of his past. the relationship they build is one built together this time, as equals.
• she’s not as mad at him as she would have expected to be. stuck (in a universe that she’s never called home before now) with him (the human him) - that’s not so bad.
• she cries when he finds his first gray hair. he tells her that it’s okay - when he was still in his first regeneration, he had a whole head of white hair.
• he still holds on tight to her. he could still lose her just as easily.
• sometimes his mortality strikes her and she has to call him to make sure he’s alive. she doesn’t want him crossing the street alone. 
• he doesn’t want to do anything alone now that he’s got her and he’s living on a time limit.
• “it’s been ten years - we might as well just get it over with and get married.”
• when they marry, the wedding is a huge spectacle sponsored by vitex. they say their real vows in private: “forever.” “forever.”
• he never lets her go a day without knowing he loves her. “forever, forever, forever,” he repeats through gasps and gritted teeth as they make love. 
• his time runs out before hers does. at eighty-nine years old, rose feels like the valiant child alone on bad wolf bay once more.
• she dies at peace knowing that he believed in her - that the version of him on the other side of the walls will continue to believe in her. forever. 

(Source: lastofthetimeladies)

(X)

He catches her hand in his and tells her to run, and she finds herself taking off before she knows what she is running from.

Read More

It always makes her nervous when the Doctor is quiet.

And he is dead silent in the cab ride on the way home from work tonight. His grip on her hand is tight - tighter than when they run, tighter than when they make love; it’s a death grip, her fingers as white and bloodless under his as they only are when they’re in danger together and it’s no longer fun and games with friendly aliens, but life or death with not-so-friendly aliens.

But they’re just in the car on the way home, no danger in sight, no unfriendly aliens in sight (unless the cabbie is actually Slitheen), and he’s holding onto her like if he lets go, she’ll fly away.

She turns to him, wrestling her numb hand from his grip.

“What’s wrong, Doctor?” She can’t help the wrinkle that reaches her furrowed brow - she’s aged in her time on this new home. (He has, too. They’re aging together. She knows it scares him sometimes - when he found his first gray hair, he called in sick for the week and moped around the house, sonicking everything in sight until Jackie came in and threatened to force-feed him pears.)

“Nothing’s wrong,” he says absently, grabbing her hand again and looking away. And then he rambles. Instead of silence, the cab is full of nervous babbling, and she doesn’t even catch half of it. Something about doors and tea and bananas and - “truffles, which, strangely enough, are abundant in this universe, have you noticed that? But other foods, like strawberries, are almost impossible to find. It’s a shame, really, I do love strawberries; in fact, did you know I was a strawberry farmer at one point in my life? Few regenerations back - didn’t work out so well, as it turned out they were sentient and didn’t much like it when I tried to eat their Prime Minister - “

“Doctor,” Rose says, cutting him off. “What is it?”

The Doctor swallows and reaches into his pocket. Rose feels her breath catch as he pulls out a small box, but just as her mind almost starts racing, she realizes that it’s not shaped like a ring box.

It’s a ratty pack of playing cards.

Hand shaking, the Doctor passes it to Rose, who takes it with her free hand. 

“Could you -?” She wiggles the fingers still captive by his, and he lets go immediately.

“Look,” he whispers, his voice urgent and desperate and absolutely terrified-sounding. She looks.

“52 things I love about you,” reads the cover of the box of cards. Rose bites her lip and opens the tab as the Doctor whispers fervently to her, “It’s actually 51 things I already love and one thing I would love. You’ll see.”

She takes her time on each card, pausing on a few that she especially loves - “The adventure that comes with being with you;” (she thinks of back when living together like this day after day would have been the one adventure he could never have;) “The way you run;” (she remembers the first time they ran together;) “You will wear anything I buy you at least once;” (her mind goes to the babydoll he bought her last week and the red dress he asked her to wear to a Vitex event a few years ago;) and “You love me;” (she knows that it’s still taking him some time to love himself). 

She finally gets to the last card. The Ace of Hearts.

It reads, “The way we’re going to be married” in bold pen, and then a tentative, “if you want” scratched in pencil as if he was still unsure, still insecure enough to add that final bit of text - or maybe because he wants her to know she has the choice, which he had never given her before he came back to her in human form.

She doesn’t have to say anything. Tears are in her eyes - even though she thinks it’s stupid to cry, since he’s been hers for years already - and she laces her fingers back with his, squeezing hard and kissing him with equal fervor.

She pulls back as the cab pulls into their drive. His grin matches her own, his face a few centimeters from hers, and she finally speaks.

“Let’s get married.”

(Source: fuckyeahmakestuff, via starsallaligned)

She had dreams of a man like the Doctor long before she met him. A strange, familiar man in the same blue box. Often she would awaken from the dreams and immediately forget. But there were some memories that stayed.

A majestic city, its center covered by a shining glass dome. An orange sky setting the trees of silver ablaze with ruby light. Two suns shining down on her as she made her way through the forest and toward the citadel. 

She has always dreamt of this place, and it has taken her years of dreaming and redreaming to remember as much detail as this. She often thinks of asking the Doctor if he knows of such a place, if he can take her. She thinks, though, that even he cannot know of such a fantastical planet. She never asks.

She asks plenty of other questions, though - questions that he can answer with a toothy grin and a ramble that will prove to be a challenge to keep up with. A challenge she does not quite mind facing day after day. 

At night, she dreams. Visions of her new Doctor fade in and out with the blue-eyed man she knew before, solidifying in her mind that he is the same person. More visions swim in - of men with older faces but younger minds, and she wonders if the TARDIS is connecting her to the Doctor’s past. If it has always been the TARDIS, for the years and years of dreaming prior to meeting the Doctor. As if all of her life, all of her dreaming up until now, has been a rehearsal for being here now. As if she was meant to be here. As if Rose Tyler on the TARDIS with the Doctor was a fixed point in time. Not luck, but destiny.

When she awakens from her dreams in the middle of the night, it is dark but for the slight alien glow of the TARDIS walls. It is silent but for the quiet, measured ticking of the old silver fob watch on her bedside table.

(Source: lastofthetimeladies)

After about a year on Pete’s World, (which he now supposed he considered his world too, although the settled and domestic connotations of that phrase still took a bit of getting used to,) the Doctor finally warmed up to (or cooled down enough to listen to, or at least tried to take heed of) the phrase “you only live once.”

It was his regeneration that sparked it. (Well, not his, but his Other Self, the Time Lord in the other universe to whom he still felt a connection. One night he awoke with a burning feeling where his other heart should be - not should be, but used to be, could have been - and he realized that he must have gone from Ten to Eleven. Eleven lives. Ten regenerations in all. Two left for the Other Him, technically. But anyway.) He realized that as a Time Lord he had had the advantage of semi-invincibility, the air of a cat with nine lives, except that cats don’t actually have nine lives - well, they didn’t until, of course, they evolved back in the year of 67/apple/098. (Or, he supposed, forward in the year of 67/apple/098, if he wanted to get into time-traveller jargon, since the year was currently 2010.) He was no longer invincible in any way, shape, or form. He had one life. 

This meant a number of things, but for some reason, the thing that felt most important was the probably completely trivial fact that he would never be ginger. (He wondered if his regenerated Other Self had achieved gingerness, but if he was being honest with himself… he doubted it. He never had been good at regeneration. All but failed the class, in fact.)

He snuck out of the house at the crack of dawn, careful not to awaken Rose, who slept so lightly now that she had life growing inside of her. (This was something that both amazed and terrified him all the time, and more and more often recently he awoke in cold sweat from a dream about Gallifrey burning, with the image of all those he had lost flashing before his eyes and the added but unclear as-of-yet face of his unborn child. The beauty of life outshone the fear of it, though - that’s what he told himself - it had to.)

He made it to the convenience store down the block, bought the ginger-est hair dye he could find, and took it to the salon. He knew dyeing his hair at home would probably end in catastrophe, not to mention the fact that the fumes would be bad for Rose. 

The hair stylist took one look at him and said, “Are you sure?”

He grinned and told her that he had never been more sure of anything in his life, although this was, in point of fact, completely untrue. He was terrified.

And well he should have been.

As it turned out, and as he found out from the booming laughter coming from a still-pajama-clad Rose as she caught him sneaking back into the house, (freshly ginger,) bright orange was not his color.

He kept the permanent hair dye in for the few months it took to grow it out anyway.

You only live once.

The Doctor’s face lit up when he opened the TARDIS door and found that they had landed in the middle of a pet store.

Rose took one look at his face and pulled him back into the TARDIS by his sleeve.

“But Rose,” he said, already forming an argument he knew he would win. She cut him off.

“We don’t need another puppy on the TARDIS,” she said, grinning at his sullen pout. “You’re enough trouble already.”

She’s sick of all the alien foods and weird fruits and sausages from animals she’s never heard of and butter substitutes. 

Not that they’re not good, because usually she enjoys her meals in the end (even if she is at first reluctant to take a bite), but meals with the Doctor are nothing if not adventurous, and she’d like a little break from that, for once. And not chips. If it’s not weird sea-cow beef from the planet of New Pennsylvania, it’s chips. She wants food from Earth? Chips.

Rose never thought she would say it, but she’s sick of chips.

So she tells him. He looks almost offended, his eyebrows going up and those silly ears of his actually drawing back as if they don’t want to hear any more of this. But he keeps listening. 

“I want normal food,” she says. “Food that comes from my planet. From my time.” And he listens. He doesn’t give her enough opportunities to visit her mum as she would necessarily like, so it’s the first thing he suggests. A trip to the Powell Estate. She quickly shakes her head. It would be nice, of course, but she doesn’t want all the fussing. And the Doctor would inevitably be slapped at some point. Again. 

No, she wants… She wants… What does she want?

She wants pancakes. With lots and lots of syrup.

And she tells him so.

(Had she realized he would trade his leather jacket in for a slightly frilly blue apron so quickly to make buttermilk pancakes from scratch just for her, she would have asked him to make her breakfast long before this. But it’s nice to know these things for the future.)

They will be spending much more time in the kitchen from now on, she thinks as she discreetly snaps a photo of him with her camera phone.

“Ohhh no,” Rose said, her voice just short of a shriek. “You are not wearing that!”

The Doctor frowned and looked down at himself and back up at Rose.

“What’s wrong with this?” he asked her, his brows furrowed like a puppy.

Rose laughed and stepped close enough to him to pull at the lapel of the baby blue Hawaiian button-up that he was wearing.

“What isn’t wrong with it,” she said. “You do realize you’ve got pineapples printed on your chest, right?”

“Well, we are going to the beach,” said the Doctor defensively.

Rose smirked.

“No, we’re not,” she said. “Not until you change.”

“Well, I’m not changing,” said the Doctor. His pout combined with the horrendous pineapple-print shirt and - oh, God, he was wearing flippers on his feet! - made him look like a three-year-old about to throw a tantrum in the kiddie pool.

All he needed was an animal-shaped inner-tube around his waist.

“There’s no way I’m changing,” the Doctor repeated as Rose considered him. “Absolutely no way.”

“Oh,” said Rose, her smirk deepening as she began to unbutton the Doctor’s shirt, “I can think of one or two ways to get you out of this…”

(They were late to meeting Jackie, Pete, and Tony on the beach, but at least the Doctor complied in putting on a different shirt. Eventually.)

He loves her.

Of course she knows he loves her.

It’s in his face, the way his tongue touches his teeth when he mirrors her smiles. The way his eyes crinkle and sparkle as he gazes down on her.

It’s in his body, the way he holds her tight for a less-than-brief but not-quite-fulfilling celebratory hug. The way he grasps her hand as they run, as they walk, as they stand completely still. 

It’s in his voice, the way he says her name. The ways he says everything but what she’d most like to hear, speaking of the habits of Grajk during mating season or the reason Mars Bars are named so or Soledeor battle tactics or his favorite Disney movie. But never the three words, not even when he had one last chance. Not even a hologram on a beach could bring her relief to that tension.

She knows he loves her. 

Why couldn’t he ever prove it?

Paperwork 

(Rated M. Rose/TenToo office!sex) Rose cursed whoever was in charge of the furnaces for turning them up this morning. They had brought on this - the Oncoming Storm slumped back in a tiny office chair, his shirt untucked and his tongue escaping from between his lips to wet them every half minute or so in a tantalizing manner that sent tingles straight through Rose’s body.

Read More

(Source: lastofthetimeladies)

“Starry Night” - a Doctor/Rose ficlet 

His trench coat covers both of them like a blanket as his body covers hers. It is so cold out that she can see her breath, but under him, fully clothed but for the pair of jeans still stuck around one ankle, she feels warm enough.

The push and pull of their grinding, thrusting hips are the only movements in this silent, starry night. She gazes at the stars above them, her eyes fluttering open and shut involuntarily, and wonders how many other people in all of space are doing the same thing she is doing at this time. Billions, she thinks. Somehow, the thought does not negate her feeling of importance, the significance of this moment, of being here right now, of being his. Billions of other people do not have his body pressed and moving into theirs as his is into hers. They do not know the feeling of him desperately claiming them as his own. She does. She clutches his shoulders over his coat and matches his desperate pace, her heart pounding in the space between his two. Billions of people have something very like this, but they will never have this. This is hers, as he is hers, and by the stars above, she is his.

His head is buried in the crook of her neck, gasping out and breathing her in as he fucks her, makes love to her, whatever this quiet frenzy of sighs is called.

The constellations above them twinkle and dance in rhythm with their quiet gasps. They fade in and out as her eyes flutter open and closed more frequently as her climax nears. The cold wind pulls at them slightly, urging them to hurry.

She opens her eyes one last time and thinks she sees a constellation in the sky that outlines their bodies holding each other so desperately tightly. She digs her nails into his shoulders and allows her eyes to close and stay closed as she gives herself over to pleasure.

When she comes, she sees stars.

(Source: lastofthetimeladies)

Intimacy 

Anyway, lying ten centimeters away from him on a sunny day on a grassy hill, listening to his voice detailing the behaviors of blast-ended skrewts, and watching the round white clouds slowly drift by - that isn’t so bad. If this is what Rose has to look forward to for the rest of her life, she’ll take it, and gladly. (Fluff!Angst!Smut! Ten/Rose. Rated M.)

Read More