Fic: A Rather Belated Realization - 1/2 (Doctor Who)
Title: A Rather Belated Realization (1/2)
Rating: PG13 (NC17 overall)
Wordcount: 6.5k
Warnings: Explicit naughty things
Beta: vyctori
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: (Sequel to A Somewhat Complicated Situation) He looked at her curiously, his eyebrows far from stationary and completely endearing. And then he leaned in, his fingers splayed across her back, and pressed his lips to the tip of her nose.
The only productive thing she’d done in the past few hours was to put a pair of knickers on.
Rose had tried to do other things after that, of course. She’d tried to read, she’d tried wandering around, she’d tried watching at least six of the different versions of telly available on the TARDIS. In the end, though, she’d more or less done nothing besides feel time drag.
The need for girl talk and the lack of anyone she could call without sounding crazy had driven her to guilty pleasure movies. Those, she’d learned to watch on a headset, an adjustable screen before her eyes and the speakers carefully arranged over her ears. It was surprisingly comfortable, wonderfully compatible with DVDs and had saved her loads of embarrassment back when the Doctor was still prone to call her a stupid ape. No seeing the screen, no mocking her movie choice. It was a great system.
The only downside to the headset was how it effectively blinded and deafened her to her surroundings. Lying stretched out on a couch, starting to smile at familiar scenes and well-worn dialogue, Rose was utterly unprepared for the touch on her leg.
With a small yelp, she jerked, pushing herself up into a sitting position and pulling the headset down in one rapid movement. “Doctor!”
He blinked down at her, eyebrows raised and his hair crazy. It was sticking up in the back and looked like it was wet. “Scary movie?” he asked, oblivious to her mental wanderings as she realized he must’ve been in the shower.
“You surprised me, that’s all,” she said, turning the whole DVD arrangement off. “What is it?”
He blinked again, his smile spreading afterward. “It’s time for dinner, that’s what,” he told her, his voice somehow bouncing with his enthusiasm. There was no other word for it. “C’mon!” He held out his hand to her, wiggling his fingers and advertising the spaces in between, the place where her hand fit so well.
Unable to resist even if she had wanted to, Rose took his hand and, giggling, let him pull her up off the couch. He lifted their hands, changing his grip, and spun her like they were dancing, spun her against his chest. His suit jacket was unbuttoned and her arm slid in so easily, wrapped around his back between his shirt and the heavier layer.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hello,” he answered, his grin breaking out all the wider. His arm went around her in return and the hand holding hers changed its grip yet again, putting them in the proper position for a waltz.
She could feel herself turning red with the connotations, but in a wonderful way. Like she was flushing and filling up with heat and it was all his fault, really, telling her he was going to run off and learn how to wank.
As if he were reading her mind, he followed up the greeting with “Aren’t you going to ask how it went?”
“How what went?” Because if her first guess was wrong, she’d never live it down.
His wide grin got a lot less wide. “Oh, you know.” His smile shrunk into a small frown. “You do know. Did you forget?”
“You mean, the, ah.” And she looked down at the nonexistent space between them.
“Yep!” He popped the “p” and rocked his hips into hers like a piece of punctuation. The grin was back, encouraging her to join in on the great big joke. “I think I’m developing a knack, Rose,” he confided, bending his neck to speak inches from her face. His arm around her back kept her close against him. “You were right.” Their hands still clasped, his thumb stroked the side of her forefinger. “It feels good.”
“It does,” she said, managing to get that much out. It was difficult to do much of anything at all with the Doctor’s eyes right there and his mouth right below. The only option that would result in the continuance of her sanity was to stare at his nose.
So she did.
Following her line of sight, his eyes crossed. “Rose?”
“Hm?”
“Something wrong with my nose?”
She shook her head, not wanting her voice to give her away. Stood on her tiptoes and kissed his nose, the cool tip of it. Her hand fisted in the cloth of his shirt for balance, pulled at it a little. Coming back down to her heels, she smoothed out the fabric over his back, needing something to do with her arm still trapped there.
His eyes crinkled at her. “You’ve been doing that a lot recently.”
“It’s fun,” she said and then wanted to hide. Her voice was fine; it was the content that was the problem. It was fun the same way the tie incident had been fun.
He looked at her curiously, his eyebrows far from stationary and completely endearing. And then he leaned in, his fingers splayed across her back, and pressed his lips to the tip of her nose.
Neither of them closed their eyes.
“That is fun,” he confirmed at a murmur, not quite pulling back. “Noses are interesting.”
His eyes were right there. His mouth was right there. He leaned in again.
Rose pulled her hand free from his and slapped his chest playfully. “I thought you wanted dinner? What was it, a planet called Blinks?”
“Blynxis,” he corrected, not quite grinning back, but that was just too bad. Rose wouldn’t be able to take it, standing here and letting him enjoy kissing her without actually kissing her.
“Right, yeah.” She slipped out of his arms and bounded to the door. “Race ya to the Console Room?” She turned back to look at him, expecting the usual nod and a second of a head start.
Beyond to put his hands in his pockets, the Doctor hadn’t moved. “Well,” he said. “Well, you could. Or,” he added, pulling one of his hands out to thumb at his ear, “you could go get dressed.”
“I could what?” Her grin started turning real.
“Fancy dress only,” the Doctor replied. “You can’t say I never take you anywhere nice.”
“How nice are we talking?” she asked. “I mean, you’re still in your suit.”
“I’m in luck,” he explained, following her to the door. He leaned against the jamb, his face on the same level as hers. “Stripes are in. Stripes are snazzy. Superb. Something else starting with S.”
“Sporty?” she offered.
He beamed at her. “That too.”
“So I should go get a pinstriped suit?” she asked, her tongue caught between her teeth in a grin.
“Nope,” the Doctor said, leaning in. “No, nope and never. Or, well.” He paused, went back to leaning against the door. “Not never. Supposing you wanted to, not never.”
“Supposing I didn’t want to?”
“That would be never, then,” he concluded, his hand slipping under her arm to rest on the small of her back. He gave her a little push. “Off you go.”
“How fancy is fancy?” she remembered to ask, duly moving towards the Wardrobe but turning to walk backwards. “Should I be getting out my ball gown?” she teased.
He shook his head, taking her seriously. “Too difficult to sit in. Anything between the silver coat rack and the scarves ought to be fine. Go on, get ready.” He waved his hands at her, shooing her along.
She couldn’t help grinning at how eager he was. “What happens on Blynxis? Besides eating dinner, I mean.”
“You won’t have to run,” he promised her. “You can as much impracticality into your shoes as you want to.”
“No, it’s like, is there some kind of, I dunno, momentous occasion you’ve got planned out?” When the talkative man was careful not to answer, Rose grinned, stopping her slow walk. “Is it a surprise?”
The Doctor made shooing motions at her again, but even from down the hall, she could see how his eyes were smiling. “Go get dressed, Rose.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
She could feel by the hum that the TARDIS had already landed, but he was still standing at the console when she got there, his back to her. The lights were more blue than green now and she adored the picture he made, a thin and dark figure suspensefully still.
“What d’you think?”
He turned around.
He smiled.
It did amazing things to her insides and she beamed back at him. He leaned back against the console, long and compelling, and moved his index finger in a little circle. She twirled around, the skirt flaring up with the motion before softly settling back around her knees. The back was daring for a strapless dress and Rose herself had no idea how any of it was staying up. The bodice was soft and clung to her chest in a way that was more sensual than irritating or tickling. Almost like it was clinging from static, yet somehow more stable than that. It made her feel sexy and that made her bold.
“What d’you think?” she repeated, joining him at the console, her motions very deliberate due to her heels on the grating. And maybe due to something else too. She leaned in towards him, one hand on the console’s edge; it lifted her arm from her side, gave him a clear place to put his hand on her the way he’d been doing before.
“I think...” the Doctor said, drawing out the word, “that we’re going to be late for dinner. C’mon!” With that, he bounded away, racing to the coral strut by the door for his overcoat.
Feeling only very put out, Rose followed, already regretting putting the impractical back into her footwear. “So this is going to be brilliant,” she said more than asked.
“Completely brilliant,” he promised her, pulling his coat on and waiting for her by the door. He pulled the door open and gestured her though. “Dinner and a show, the best you’ll find in this sector.”
“What’s the show?” she asked, stepping outside. The moment she passed through the TARDIS doors, the local temperature crashed into her and Rose immediately went from being slightly cold in her sleeveless, backless knee-length dress to being completely freezing. She stepped backwards into the Doctor who caught her with a surprised laugh.
Feeling cloth and buttons and Time Lord breath against her back, Rose came very close to resting in his arms, temperature be damned. His hands folded over her stomach and hers moved to cover his and his mouth stroked her ear with words she didn’t quite catch.
“W-What?” she asked, her teeth starting to chatter.
“This isn’t hurrying up,” he repeated. “C’mon.” He didn’t let go. Probably couldn’t let go with her holding his hands in place.
“It’s fr-freezing. I can see my breath.” If that building in the hillside was the restaurant, she could make it there without freezing, but she didn’t particularly want to.
He chuckled a little and blew out a breath past her ear. “Mine too!” he exclaimed, treating it like a thrilling discovery.
She twisted in his arms and immediately wished she hadn’t, the movement baring her back to the chill. Her body shook against his and she tried to slip past him and back into the TARDIS. No such luck.
“Rose!” He had that horrible face, the hurt one where she’d just stepped on his feelings.
“I need to get a coat or something,” she explained and, shaking his head, he responded by removing his and wrapping it around her with one smooth motion, almost a flourish. It was warm and heavy and it was saturated with the smell of him.
“Now you don’t,” he said, once again guiding her out. Or maybe it was “No, you don’t.” Her powers of observation had just shorted out. By the time they got to the restaurant doors, her ears were freezing and her feet were worse, but standing inside was a thing of beauty. It was warm inside, a kind of blissful warmth. If this warmth had been liquid, it would have come with marshmallows in it.
Wincing a little as her feet readjusted to the temperature, she watched the Doctor banter with the hostess at the front desk and tried to ignore the growing tension in her stomach. It eased when he turned back to her, offering his hand as if he were about to escort a lady.
“Dame Rose,” he said, his fingers curling over hers one-by-one, “our table awaits.”
“By all means, Sir Doctor, lead on.”
It was the hostess who led on, actually, bringing them up a flight of stairs and through a hallway, the walls lined with wooden panelling that looked so smooth as to appear almost soft. Rose thought they were going up the hillside a little more, maybe to a room with a good view. Height on hillsides generally meant a good view. Maybe they were going to watch it snow? But no, there hadn’t been any clouds in the sky, not that she could see. A meteor shower, then?
As they followed the hostess in silence, she savoured the feeling of the Doctor’s overcoat still on her, the way it felt directly against the skin of her back. She’d stopped holding it shut, of course, and she liked the way it squished when she walked. It made her feel special, wearing his coat and holding his hand.
She wondered if her first Doctor would ever have wrapped her in his leather jacket like this. Of course, he’d only worn one jacket then, not two the way he did now. Having an extra now, that was probably what did it.
The hostess stopped seemingly at random and turned around abruptly, hands folded over her stomach. Well, over her abdomen. There was really no telling. “Please enjoy your meal,” she said, one of her amber eyes on each of them.
“Thanks - we will!” the Doctor informed her, reaching around Rose to tap the wall. One of the panels vanished into the wall, revealing itself as a sliding door. “Rose, get settled, won’t you? I’ll place our order.”
For once, Rose did as she was told. Not due to actually listening to the request as such, but due to the gentle push on her back into the room and thus towards the window.
Because this place wasn’t simply on a hillside. It was at the edge of a cliff. And beyond it, a shining and incredible thing, was what Rose could only assume was an ocean. The entire wall opposite the door was a window, one giant piece of some kind of glass, leaving her view completely uninterrupted save for the small table set all the way up against the glass.
The Doctor’s long coat sleeve half covered her hand as she reached out, touched the glass. Beyond her hand was blue, rolling darkness, illuminated from above by the stars and from beneath by what had to be enormous lights. They were a soft red that twisted into purple, a gentle yellow that sunk into a deep green as the light sources dipped beneath the water, only to emerge again. The strength of the light varied across the oblong shapes, waxing and waning, probably as they bobbed with the waves. It was strange and beautiful and it went on to the horizon, past it. An entire ocean full of light, even brighter than the two violet moons above.
“Do you like it?” the Doctor asked her, his voice soft and somehow expected.
She pulled her eyes away from the sight, looked at the man quietly sliding the door shut behind him. “I love it,” she said honestly. “They’re beautiful. What are they?”
He moved to stand next to her, hands folded behind his back instead of offered to her. He grinned at the sight beyond the window. “Oh good. It hasn’t started yet.”
She looked up at him, curling her fingers around the ends of the coat sleeves. “It gets better?”
He turned his grin on her, his eyes bright. “Oh yes.”
“So what are they?” she asked again. “Some kind of whales?”
“At the moment,” he said, looking back out at the glowing ocean, “that’s seaweed. You see how each of them is shaped a bit like an eggplant? They’re woven that way, underwater.”
“So they’re lamps?” she asked. They’d been to festivals before with floating lamps, some on Earth and some far, far away. It was beautiful, but she’d thought they were more organic than that. “How do the lights get in there? They look alive, though, like fireflies or something.”
“Very close.” Less of a grin now, something softer instead. He looked pleased, maybe even proud. “Those are nests, Rose. Great big nests, freshly risen to the surface, full of infant jeribs. They’re going to climb out soon. Very soon, in fact. Within the hour, I’d say. Look.” He pointed, tapping at the glass. “You see how they’re bobbing less and less? Once they’re stable on the surface, it’s time to be born. It’s a bit like cooking gnocchi, actually: once it’s on the top of the water, get it out of the pot.”
She loved watching him explain things, probably just as much as he loved to explain them. “What do the, the jeribs? What do they do, then? Swim away before the nests sink back down?”
“You don’t want me to ruin the surprise, now, do you? Besides,” he added as an off-hand sort of comment, “you’ve already guessed it. C’mon, dinner before the show.”
When she took one more look out the window, he stepped behind her, his hands going to the lapels of the coat around her. “And I think you can take this off now,” he told her, fingers brushing against her skin as he peeled the layer away. The fabric stroked down her arms, pulled away from her back, baring the curve of her spine to him. He added, breath and voice caressing her ear, “It’s going to heat up in here.”
Her eyes fell shut. “It- it is?”
“Yep,” he said, popping the “p” and pulling away. “I told the hostess you’re from a warmer climate. They’re adjusting the thermostat as we speak.”
“Oh.”
He gave her an odd look, draping his coat over the back of one of the chairs. The table was between them, Rose still beside it and him behind his chair. “Why, did you want to be cold?”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, I- I mean. Is that okay? What about all the other customers here who liked it colder?”
“It’s just us.” He sat down, looked into a metallic cup as if expecting something to be already inside. There were two cups on the table, but only one large plate, all empty. Beyond those, there were only two small candles in crystal bowls on the table. No silverware on the tablecloth, she noted, not seeing any sort of metallic glint against the deep blue fabric.
She joined him, by now feeling used to the new height in her heels but still welcoming a chance to sit. “How can it just be us? Big restaurant, I thought.” Hard to tell how many other doors to other viewing rooms there were, but even such a high end place like this couldn’t be completely private.
“We,” the Doctor said, “have landed in the middle of a recession. Blynxis is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so far out of the way of any usual trade route that even the filthy rich don’t want to spend the fuel money right now. Luckily, Blynxi excel at transmatting food here - nothing alive, but anything edible, they can still get. Which means-” here he looked at her very importantly, tapping the empty plate “-that the cupboards are completely stocked with very good food that is going to go to complete waste unless someone happens to show up.”
“Someone, say, with unlimited credit,” Rose finished, her smile growing by the minute.
“Exactly,” he confirmed, looking pleased with himself. “Can’t let this place get run out of business from one bad season. Well, I say one bad season, I mean a decade. Well, I say a decade. You get the point.”
“The food’s that good?”
“No, it’s- Well, yes, but more importantly, we are currently overlooking the Jerinx Sea, the only wildlife reservation you need a reservation to go to. There are observation decks all around the coast to fund it. Isn’t that brilliant?” His eyes encouraged her to agree.
“Let me get this straight: We’re saving all those jeribs, an animal reserve, and a restaurant by having a fancy meal.” She had turned fully to face him by this point, her bare knees against the side of his chair.
He was twisted as well, his arm over the back of his chair and his legs next to hers. It kept her in this position, but that was hardly a bad thing. “We are,” he confirmed, and asked her again, leaning towards her: “Isn’t that brilliant?” He looked so pleased with himself, almost giddy.
“I love it,” she said, the word needing to come out somehow.
“Watch this.” He picked up a small piece of metal, sliding it out of the plate, a tiny thing that looked more like a toothpick than a utensil. Holding it carefully between two long fingers, he tapped the side of the empty plate and then, with almost no transition, it was no longer empty. “Very Hogwarts,” he commented, dropping the summoning-toothpick on the tablecloth. “Also very like a tapas bar, every morsel just a mouthful. Harry Potter goes to Spain.” He picked up one of the more normal-looking ones, some sort of pastel paste on a cracker. “I just love nibbles, don’t you?”
“I like ‘em better when I’m not the one serving them,” she said in a kind of agreement, trying not to stare too obviously as he popped the entire thing in his mouth, chewed, and licked his thumb and index finger clean. The cloth of his trousers felt good against her knee, but she tried not to focus too closely on that either. The food - focus on the food. “What’s that one?”
“Hm?”
“That one?”
As it turned out, it was a wonderful way to have dinner, bite by bite, the Doctor identifying each piece until she learned how to guess what was what. He talked about the places the plants had been grown or the fish caught, the bizarre history of that one spice, and as he did, it occurred to Rose that she knew every planet he mentioned. All of them. Every last one.
Every single morsel was an instance of “Remember when?” and “Didn’t we once go there to do that?” They ate facing one another far more than they looked out the window, making their way through the items on the plate with exceptionally slow progress. At some point, she shifted away to take off her shoes but, of course, she shifted back.
They drank from different sides of the same cups, one filled with water and the other with something like wine, something sweet yet full that stroked the tongue. As they passed them back and forth, as the Doctor folded his hands around hers and drank from the cup still between her hands, she felt very much that there was something to be said for communal dishes. She did the same to him with the water cup and he laughed, delighted.
Outside, the nests in the water glowed brighter and brighter from within, no longer submerged purples and greens but brilliant reds and yellows set against the intensely blue ocean. They were like shimmering lanterns of extreme proportions. Every so often, she’d ask how much longer it would be, but she stopped the time he replied, “Why? Do you want to go back to the TARDIS?” That time, she shook her head.
“Just eager for your, what was it, momentous occasion.”
“Oh, it’ll be momentous,” he assured her.
“And an occasion?” She reached for the wine again, took a sip.
“That too.” His fingers wrapped around hers once again and instead of drinking from the cup, he set it aside. “Enough of that, I think. No inebriated humans.”
“I’m not even tipsy,” she protested, knowing she was at least another glass to getting even that far. It was difficult to feel anything besides happy and relaxed and all the rest of it with him still holding her hand like that, but she was pretty sure that was just him.
He gave her one of those looks, his look of knowing so much better. “The amount of giggling coming out of you has more than doubled in the last half hour,” he informed her, looking very serious about it. Very, very serious and then he wiggled his eyebrows and sent her giggling. “You see! Just like that.”
“Oh, shut up,” she told him between laughter. Her hand left his to push at his chest a little, the closest to a playful shove she could manage in their current positions.
“Me? Never.” And then, magpie-minded as always, he recalled the remaining contents of the plate. “Oh, this, you have to try.” He picked it up carefully, a thin wafer with what looked like some sort of cheese spread with berries in it.
She held out her free hand, but he shook his head.
“The wafer is so delicate that the oils on your hands would dissolve it,” he told her. “That’s the best part, the dissolving, but you want it in your mouth for that bit.” He held it up to her lips, this bottle cap sized bit of something delicious. “Better than chocolate, I swear,” he added, coaxing her to open her mouth.
She looked at his face and at his fingers and she opened her mouth enough for him to give it to her.
Apparently, that wasn’t good enough. “You’re going to want the whole wafer on your tongue at once.”
She opened her mouth a little wider and his fingers were against her bottom lip and her mouth filled with so much flavour from something so little. The wafer didn’t fizz away or steal the moisture from her mouth; no, it was far gentler than that. True to the Doctor’s word, the wafer dissolved immediately, falling apart in flakes of almond or hazelnut or something in between. As the flakes disappeared, yet more flavour hit her tongue, one taste after another, molten and yet still melting. It was thick and rich and, pretending to be a liqueur, the berry sweetness made empty threats of overwhelming all else. The tastes somehow balanced in her mouth, somehow balanced together into something very much worth giving a hum of satisfaction over.
She had closed her eyes without knowing it and she opened them just in time to watch the Doctor lick his fingers clean, two swipes of the tongue over the skin that had just been at her lips.
It made her swallow before she was really ready to.
“What was that one called?” she asked, very aware of the hand still holding hers, the position of those hands on his knee.
“A crissen,” he replied. “Finicky, but worth it. There’s another one, if you want it. Not much else left on the plate your stomach can digest,” he added when she tried to let him have it. “Don’t want you going hungry.”
She eyed the little crissen on the plate.
His thumb stroked over her knuckles, a slow and relaxed motion he kept repeating.
“Yeah,” she said and, somehow, his finger got into her mouth a little this time. Just a little and he slipped it back out easily enough, but it pulled at something inside her, something that had already been pulled at quite a lot from the dress and his coat and their legs together like that.
She had to look away at that point, maybe to distract herself, maybe to see the sight they presented as reflected in the window. Except, she realized, there was no reflection. No glare on it either from the lights inside.
“Is this glass special?” she asked.
His thumb stopped stroking.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“The window glass,” she said. “I mean, usually when you look out at night and it’s bright inside, you can’t really see.” His hand felt oddly tense around hers now, so she shifted her grip a little, starting stroking his knuckles instead. He didn’t stop her, but he didn’t really respond either.
“Oh,” he said. The Doctor reached for the wine cup and drained what was left of it, head tilted back, neck long and exposed. He set the cup back down, didn’t use the magic little toothpick to refill it again. “Yes, the glass is special.”
Fully expecting him to continue, she asked, “Yeah?”
“Yes.” That said, he popped one of the things she apparently couldn’t digest into his mouth and chewed.
“Designed for looking at stuff at night?”
He nodded. Swallowed. “More or less.”
“Is there a story there?” she asked, trying to coax him out of whatever this was. This had been the perfect ending to a less-than-perfect day and she didn’t want that to change. He’d been happy a minute ago.
“Not much of one,” he said. He pulled his hand free of hers to scratch at the back of his head, the loose release leading to a surprisingly hard gesture. “Your general tale of scientists getting a wage in a laboratory.” He paused. He was oddly still, looking at the window rather than through it. “I’m not doing this right, am I?” His gaze flickered to her eyes only to dart away again.
“It’s okay,” she told him, voice soft, and this time, his gaze stayed on her.
“Yeah?” he asked. Something in his eyes, something around his mouth reminded her that her hand was still on his knee. He could flirt without knowing it, her Doctor, all attractive hopefulness. It made her feel a little guilty, thinking of him like this when something was so obviously off.
“Yes.” She smiled at him, moving her hands to her lap, and tried to reassure him. “I guess even you have to run out of stories sometimes.”
“Rose, that’s-”
There was a flash of light from outside and they immediately turned to look.
“Was that,” she began to ask.
“It’s starting,” he answered, standing. Her legs felt cold without his against them. “C’mon,” he said, giving her his hand as the sky was lit from below, one nest after another bursting open as if to release lightning. “It’s better without the table in the way.”
She rose to follow him, the wood flooring cool against her bare feet as they stood beside the table rather than behind it. She looked down, down at where the glass connected to the floor and it looked as if there was no window, as if it was a sheer drop down into the waves. It registered as never before that she was standing at the edge of a cliff. She grabbed at his arm and he pulled her close.
“Vertigo,” they said at once, her trying to explain, him trying to comfort. They looked at each other, more surprised than confused, and then laughed.
Another flash lit up his face and she hurriedly looked back out to the sea, to the reds and yellows and the.... those.
It was like the nests had dissolved like crissen wafers, their light spilling out into the air, rising up, flashing, pulsing. At first it was only one nest, but then another, and another, and suddenly, the great lanterns on the water were living stars in the sky. They really were like fireflies.
“They’re beautiful,” she breathed.
The Doctor chuckled quietly beside her. “Just wait, Rose. Only a little longer.”
The frequency of the flashing nests took off, the seaweed bundles breaking open one after another until it was almost too bright to look at, until the water seemed full of fireworks, brilliantly glowing jeribs rising up faster and more beautifully than smoke ever could.
They circled in the air, looping, spinning, waiting for their siblings, moving with quick bursts of excitement each time a nest opened. Each hatching added another splash of light into the air, ten or twelve or maybe dozens of the little creatures flying for the first time. They filled the sky, holding back the violet moons and the tiny stars. It was breathtaking.
“One left,” the Doctor said. “That nest there, do you see it?”
It was far away, but she did, just barely. It was difficult to see, so little light truly in the water and so much reflected on it. “What happens if it doesn’t open?” she could help asking. “Will they drown?”
He shook his head, his fingers finding her wrist, her palm. She caught his hand, held it, threading their fingers together. “That won’t happen,” he said.
As if waiting for his cue, a cloud of jeribs swooped down, one cloud out of the storm of light. They dove at the floating nest, collided with it, sending the nest into a flash of green as it broke open underwater. The little lights bobbed back up before taking off into the sky, all of them at last in the air.
“Now?” she asked.
“Now,” he said.
Now they danced.
Like a flock of shining birds, they moved through the air in flowing coordination. They dove and rose and dared the waves and the winds both. In unpracticed unison, they turned like a school of fish, turned and turned again. This was more than motion; this was joy and excitement and wonder at finally reaching the air, finally flying into the stars.
“They look....” she said, started to say.
“They’ve been underwater their entire lives,” the Doctor told her. “They’ll go back down, of course - got to make more nests, circle of life and all that - but right now, they have this. More to the point, they have each other.”
“They look so happy.” But that word was too small. It was far too small for this, for living fireworks delighting in their innate, intimate knowledge of each other’s movements. She couldn’t make out the individual jeribs, couldn’t see the lights within the blaze, but she still knew.
She knew what joy like that looked like.
His hand squeezed hers. “They are,” he said. “So happy.”
They stood together in the light of that life, savouring the world. When the jeribs swooped into a tight dive to skim over the water, they both laughed without being able to explain why. It was all light and feeling and it made the darkness shine like onyx, even blackness made bright when finely cut.
Gradually, the flock or school of jeribs began to fly farther and farther away, a brilliant cloud slipping in among those simply of water.
She looked up at the Doctor once the cloud was little more than a light on the horizon, found him already looking back at her. “Where are they going?”
“Well,” he said, glancing outside, his hand once again pulling from hers to ruffle his hair. “Somewhere else. Another part of the reserve, I think.”
She nodded, feeling quiet inside. It was a good kind of quiet, the kind of quiet that had filled her up those rare times she’d seen the Doctor asleep, a lanky man of one face or another sprawled over a couch in the TARDIS library. It was a very good kind of quiet and she hoped it wouldn’t fade when she spoke, when she had to speak.
“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t think she’d ever meant the words more.
His eyes soft, he smiled. He didn’t say anything, maybe feeling that quiet too.
“This was wonderful,” she added, unable to help it. “Really... really wonderful.”
“Good,” he said. It was all in his eyes, in the crinkled edges.
She couldn’t move, or breathe. She didn’t want to.
His eyes so warm, his lips quirked and he ducked his head a little. “We should, well, we should probably, you know. Well, we could, if you wanted-” His eyes flickered away from her, to the door.
“Right,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll put my shoes back on.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” he said to her as she bent down, fishing the shoes out from under the table. The way the window extended to the floor even beneath the table gave her a wobbling feeling of having nearly lost her shoes off a cliff. Not a real concern, but still there.
“Why?” she asked, sitting down in the Doctor’s abandoned chair. “You gonna carry me back to the TARDIS?” She grinned up at him, her tongue between her teeth.
He blinked at her, but by his growing smile, it was clear that he was becoming increasingly partial to the idea. “I could,” he offered.
She laughed.
“I could,” he repeated, like she’d just dared him.
She stood, getting used to her heels again. “Big, strong man that you are.”
“Big, strong man that I am, yes.” His arms circled around her, his hands on the skin of her back. It made her shiver, her breath hissing out involuntarily, and then, just like that, his hands fell away. “Big, strong man with cold hands, that would be me.” For what had to be the thousandth time, she was grateful for the excuse to react to his touch.
Making herself, she laughed again. Picked up his coat. “Mind if I borrow this again?”
“It’s going to smell all human-y now,” he pretended to complain, “but the big, strong man will manage.”
“You can stop calling yourself a big, strong man now.” She was laughing, but she meant it.
Not as thick as he often was, he seemed to catch onto that. “Right, yes. Onwards.” He paused, and then smiled a bit, slipping his hand into hers. “I think I’ll like onwards, don’t you?”
| -->
Rating: PG13 (NC17 overall)
Wordcount: 6.5k
Warnings: Explicit naughty things
Beta: vyctori
Disclaimer: Do not own.
Summary: (Sequel to A Somewhat Complicated Situation) He looked at her curiously, his eyebrows far from stationary and completely endearing. And then he leaned in, his fingers splayed across her back, and pressed his lips to the tip of her nose.
The only productive thing she’d done in the past few hours was to put a pair of knickers on.
Rose had tried to do other things after that, of course. She’d tried to read, she’d tried wandering around, she’d tried watching at least six of the different versions of telly available on the TARDIS. In the end, though, she’d more or less done nothing besides feel time drag.
The need for girl talk and the lack of anyone she could call without sounding crazy had driven her to guilty pleasure movies. Those, she’d learned to watch on a headset, an adjustable screen before her eyes and the speakers carefully arranged over her ears. It was surprisingly comfortable, wonderfully compatible with DVDs and had saved her loads of embarrassment back when the Doctor was still prone to call her a stupid ape. No seeing the screen, no mocking her movie choice. It was a great system.
The only downside to the headset was how it effectively blinded and deafened her to her surroundings. Lying stretched out on a couch, starting to smile at familiar scenes and well-worn dialogue, Rose was utterly unprepared for the touch on her leg.
With a small yelp, she jerked, pushing herself up into a sitting position and pulling the headset down in one rapid movement. “Doctor!”
He blinked down at her, eyebrows raised and his hair crazy. It was sticking up in the back and looked like it was wet. “Scary movie?” he asked, oblivious to her mental wanderings as she realized he must’ve been in the shower.
“You surprised me, that’s all,” she said, turning the whole DVD arrangement off. “What is it?”
He blinked again, his smile spreading afterward. “It’s time for dinner, that’s what,” he told her, his voice somehow bouncing with his enthusiasm. There was no other word for it. “C’mon!” He held out his hand to her, wiggling his fingers and advertising the spaces in between, the place where her hand fit so well.
Unable to resist even if she had wanted to, Rose took his hand and, giggling, let him pull her up off the couch. He lifted their hands, changing his grip, and spun her like they were dancing, spun her against his chest. His suit jacket was unbuttoned and her arm slid in so easily, wrapped around his back between his shirt and the heavier layer.
“Hi,” she breathed.
“Hello,” he answered, his grin breaking out all the wider. His arm went around her in return and the hand holding hers changed its grip yet again, putting them in the proper position for a waltz.
She could feel herself turning red with the connotations, but in a wonderful way. Like she was flushing and filling up with heat and it was all his fault, really, telling her he was going to run off and learn how to wank.
As if he were reading her mind, he followed up the greeting with “Aren’t you going to ask how it went?”
“How what went?” Because if her first guess was wrong, she’d never live it down.
His wide grin got a lot less wide. “Oh, you know.” His smile shrunk into a small frown. “You do know. Did you forget?”
“You mean, the, ah.” And she looked down at the nonexistent space between them.
“Yep!” He popped the “p” and rocked his hips into hers like a piece of punctuation. The grin was back, encouraging her to join in on the great big joke. “I think I’m developing a knack, Rose,” he confided, bending his neck to speak inches from her face. His arm around her back kept her close against him. “You were right.” Their hands still clasped, his thumb stroked the side of her forefinger. “It feels good.”
“It does,” she said, managing to get that much out. It was difficult to do much of anything at all with the Doctor’s eyes right there and his mouth right below. The only option that would result in the continuance of her sanity was to stare at his nose.
So she did.
Following her line of sight, his eyes crossed. “Rose?”
“Hm?”
“Something wrong with my nose?”
She shook her head, not wanting her voice to give her away. Stood on her tiptoes and kissed his nose, the cool tip of it. Her hand fisted in the cloth of his shirt for balance, pulled at it a little. Coming back down to her heels, she smoothed out the fabric over his back, needing something to do with her arm still trapped there.
His eyes crinkled at her. “You’ve been doing that a lot recently.”
“It’s fun,” she said and then wanted to hide. Her voice was fine; it was the content that was the problem. It was fun the same way the tie incident had been fun.
He looked at her curiously, his eyebrows far from stationary and completely endearing. And then he leaned in, his fingers splayed across her back, and pressed his lips to the tip of her nose.
Neither of them closed their eyes.
“That is fun,” he confirmed at a murmur, not quite pulling back. “Noses are interesting.”
His eyes were right there. His mouth was right there. He leaned in again.
Rose pulled her hand free from his and slapped his chest playfully. “I thought you wanted dinner? What was it, a planet called Blinks?”
“Blynxis,” he corrected, not quite grinning back, but that was just too bad. Rose wouldn’t be able to take it, standing here and letting him enjoy kissing her without actually kissing her.
“Right, yeah.” She slipped out of his arms and bounded to the door. “Race ya to the Console Room?” She turned back to look at him, expecting the usual nod and a second of a head start.
Beyond to put his hands in his pockets, the Doctor hadn’t moved. “Well,” he said. “Well, you could. Or,” he added, pulling one of his hands out to thumb at his ear, “you could go get dressed.”
“I could what?” Her grin started turning real.
“Fancy dress only,” the Doctor replied. “You can’t say I never take you anywhere nice.”
“How nice are we talking?” she asked. “I mean, you’re still in your suit.”
“I’m in luck,” he explained, following her to the door. He leaned against the jamb, his face on the same level as hers. “Stripes are in. Stripes are snazzy. Superb. Something else starting with S.”
“Sporty?” she offered.
He beamed at her. “That too.”
“So I should go get a pinstriped suit?” she asked, her tongue caught between her teeth in a grin.
“Nope,” the Doctor said, leaning in. “No, nope and never. Or, well.” He paused, went back to leaning against the door. “Not never. Supposing you wanted to, not never.”
“Supposing I didn’t want to?”
“That would be never, then,” he concluded, his hand slipping under her arm to rest on the small of her back. He gave her a little push. “Off you go.”
“How fancy is fancy?” she remembered to ask, duly moving towards the Wardrobe but turning to walk backwards. “Should I be getting out my ball gown?” she teased.
He shook his head, taking her seriously. “Too difficult to sit in. Anything between the silver coat rack and the scarves ought to be fine. Go on, get ready.” He waved his hands at her, shooing her along.
She couldn’t help grinning at how eager he was. “What happens on Blynxis? Besides eating dinner, I mean.”
“You won’t have to run,” he promised her. “You can as much impracticality into your shoes as you want to.”
“No, it’s like, is there some kind of, I dunno, momentous occasion you’ve got planned out?” When the talkative man was careful not to answer, Rose grinned, stopping her slow walk. “Is it a surprise?”
The Doctor made shooing motions at her again, but even from down the hall, she could see how his eyes were smiling. “Go get dressed, Rose.”
.-.-.-.-.-.
She could feel by the hum that the TARDIS had already landed, but he was still standing at the console when she got there, his back to her. The lights were more blue than green now and she adored the picture he made, a thin and dark figure suspensefully still.
“What d’you think?”
He turned around.
He smiled.
It did amazing things to her insides and she beamed back at him. He leaned back against the console, long and compelling, and moved his index finger in a little circle. She twirled around, the skirt flaring up with the motion before softly settling back around her knees. The back was daring for a strapless dress and Rose herself had no idea how any of it was staying up. The bodice was soft and clung to her chest in a way that was more sensual than irritating or tickling. Almost like it was clinging from static, yet somehow more stable than that. It made her feel sexy and that made her bold.
“What d’you think?” she repeated, joining him at the console, her motions very deliberate due to her heels on the grating. And maybe due to something else too. She leaned in towards him, one hand on the console’s edge; it lifted her arm from her side, gave him a clear place to put his hand on her the way he’d been doing before.
“I think...” the Doctor said, drawing out the word, “that we’re going to be late for dinner. C’mon!” With that, he bounded away, racing to the coral strut by the door for his overcoat.
Feeling only very put out, Rose followed, already regretting putting the impractical back into her footwear. “So this is going to be brilliant,” she said more than asked.
“Completely brilliant,” he promised her, pulling his coat on and waiting for her by the door. He pulled the door open and gestured her though. “Dinner and a show, the best you’ll find in this sector.”
“What’s the show?” she asked, stepping outside. The moment she passed through the TARDIS doors, the local temperature crashed into her and Rose immediately went from being slightly cold in her sleeveless, backless knee-length dress to being completely freezing. She stepped backwards into the Doctor who caught her with a surprised laugh.
Feeling cloth and buttons and Time Lord breath against her back, Rose came very close to resting in his arms, temperature be damned. His hands folded over her stomach and hers moved to cover his and his mouth stroked her ear with words she didn’t quite catch.
“W-What?” she asked, her teeth starting to chatter.
“This isn’t hurrying up,” he repeated. “C’mon.” He didn’t let go. Probably couldn’t let go with her holding his hands in place.
“It’s fr-freezing. I can see my breath.” If that building in the hillside was the restaurant, she could make it there without freezing, but she didn’t particularly want to.
He chuckled a little and blew out a breath past her ear. “Mine too!” he exclaimed, treating it like a thrilling discovery.
She twisted in his arms and immediately wished she hadn’t, the movement baring her back to the chill. Her body shook against his and she tried to slip past him and back into the TARDIS. No such luck.
“Rose!” He had that horrible face, the hurt one where she’d just stepped on his feelings.
“I need to get a coat or something,” she explained and, shaking his head, he responded by removing his and wrapping it around her with one smooth motion, almost a flourish. It was warm and heavy and it was saturated with the smell of him.
“Now you don’t,” he said, once again guiding her out. Or maybe it was “No, you don’t.” Her powers of observation had just shorted out. By the time they got to the restaurant doors, her ears were freezing and her feet were worse, but standing inside was a thing of beauty. It was warm inside, a kind of blissful warmth. If this warmth had been liquid, it would have come with marshmallows in it.
Wincing a little as her feet readjusted to the temperature, she watched the Doctor banter with the hostess at the front desk and tried to ignore the growing tension in her stomach. It eased when he turned back to her, offering his hand as if he were about to escort a lady.
“Dame Rose,” he said, his fingers curling over hers one-by-one, “our table awaits.”
“By all means, Sir Doctor, lead on.”
It was the hostess who led on, actually, bringing them up a flight of stairs and through a hallway, the walls lined with wooden panelling that looked so smooth as to appear almost soft. Rose thought they were going up the hillside a little more, maybe to a room with a good view. Height on hillsides generally meant a good view. Maybe they were going to watch it snow? But no, there hadn’t been any clouds in the sky, not that she could see. A meteor shower, then?
As they followed the hostess in silence, she savoured the feeling of the Doctor’s overcoat still on her, the way it felt directly against the skin of her back. She’d stopped holding it shut, of course, and she liked the way it squished when she walked. It made her feel special, wearing his coat and holding his hand.
She wondered if her first Doctor would ever have wrapped her in his leather jacket like this. Of course, he’d only worn one jacket then, not two the way he did now. Having an extra now, that was probably what did it.
The hostess stopped seemingly at random and turned around abruptly, hands folded over her stomach. Well, over her abdomen. There was really no telling. “Please enjoy your meal,” she said, one of her amber eyes on each of them.
“Thanks - we will!” the Doctor informed her, reaching around Rose to tap the wall. One of the panels vanished into the wall, revealing itself as a sliding door. “Rose, get settled, won’t you? I’ll place our order.”
For once, Rose did as she was told. Not due to actually listening to the request as such, but due to the gentle push on her back into the room and thus towards the window.
Because this place wasn’t simply on a hillside. It was at the edge of a cliff. And beyond it, a shining and incredible thing, was what Rose could only assume was an ocean. The entire wall opposite the door was a window, one giant piece of some kind of glass, leaving her view completely uninterrupted save for the small table set all the way up against the glass.
The Doctor’s long coat sleeve half covered her hand as she reached out, touched the glass. Beyond her hand was blue, rolling darkness, illuminated from above by the stars and from beneath by what had to be enormous lights. They were a soft red that twisted into purple, a gentle yellow that sunk into a deep green as the light sources dipped beneath the water, only to emerge again. The strength of the light varied across the oblong shapes, waxing and waning, probably as they bobbed with the waves. It was strange and beautiful and it went on to the horizon, past it. An entire ocean full of light, even brighter than the two violet moons above.
“Do you like it?” the Doctor asked her, his voice soft and somehow expected.
She pulled her eyes away from the sight, looked at the man quietly sliding the door shut behind him. “I love it,” she said honestly. “They’re beautiful. What are they?”
He moved to stand next to her, hands folded behind his back instead of offered to her. He grinned at the sight beyond the window. “Oh good. It hasn’t started yet.”
She looked up at him, curling her fingers around the ends of the coat sleeves. “It gets better?”
He turned his grin on her, his eyes bright. “Oh yes.”
“So what are they?” she asked again. “Some kind of whales?”
“At the moment,” he said, looking back out at the glowing ocean, “that’s seaweed. You see how each of them is shaped a bit like an eggplant? They’re woven that way, underwater.”
“So they’re lamps?” she asked. They’d been to festivals before with floating lamps, some on Earth and some far, far away. It was beautiful, but she’d thought they were more organic than that. “How do the lights get in there? They look alive, though, like fireflies or something.”
“Very close.” Less of a grin now, something softer instead. He looked pleased, maybe even proud. “Those are nests, Rose. Great big nests, freshly risen to the surface, full of infant jeribs. They’re going to climb out soon. Very soon, in fact. Within the hour, I’d say. Look.” He pointed, tapping at the glass. “You see how they’re bobbing less and less? Once they’re stable on the surface, it’s time to be born. It’s a bit like cooking gnocchi, actually: once it’s on the top of the water, get it out of the pot.”
She loved watching him explain things, probably just as much as he loved to explain them. “What do the, the jeribs? What do they do, then? Swim away before the nests sink back down?”
“You don’t want me to ruin the surprise, now, do you? Besides,” he added as an off-hand sort of comment, “you’ve already guessed it. C’mon, dinner before the show.”
When she took one more look out the window, he stepped behind her, his hands going to the lapels of the coat around her. “And I think you can take this off now,” he told her, fingers brushing against her skin as he peeled the layer away. The fabric stroked down her arms, pulled away from her back, baring the curve of her spine to him. He added, breath and voice caressing her ear, “It’s going to heat up in here.”
Her eyes fell shut. “It- it is?”
“Yep,” he said, popping the “p” and pulling away. “I told the hostess you’re from a warmer climate. They’re adjusting the thermostat as we speak.”
“Oh.”
He gave her an odd look, draping his coat over the back of one of the chairs. The table was between them, Rose still beside it and him behind his chair. “Why, did you want to be cold?”
“No,” she said quickly. “No, I- I mean. Is that okay? What about all the other customers here who liked it colder?”
“It’s just us.” He sat down, looked into a metallic cup as if expecting something to be already inside. There were two cups on the table, but only one large plate, all empty. Beyond those, there were only two small candles in crystal bowls on the table. No silverware on the tablecloth, she noted, not seeing any sort of metallic glint against the deep blue fabric.
She joined him, by now feeling used to the new height in her heels but still welcoming a chance to sit. “How can it just be us? Big restaurant, I thought.” Hard to tell how many other doors to other viewing rooms there were, but even such a high end place like this couldn’t be completely private.
“We,” the Doctor said, “have landed in the middle of a recession. Blynxis is beautiful, don’t get me wrong, but it’s so far out of the way of any usual trade route that even the filthy rich don’t want to spend the fuel money right now. Luckily, Blynxi excel at transmatting food here - nothing alive, but anything edible, they can still get. Which means-” here he looked at her very importantly, tapping the empty plate “-that the cupboards are completely stocked with very good food that is going to go to complete waste unless someone happens to show up.”
“Someone, say, with unlimited credit,” Rose finished, her smile growing by the minute.
“Exactly,” he confirmed, looking pleased with himself. “Can’t let this place get run out of business from one bad season. Well, I say one bad season, I mean a decade. Well, I say a decade. You get the point.”
“The food’s that good?”
“No, it’s- Well, yes, but more importantly, we are currently overlooking the Jerinx Sea, the only wildlife reservation you need a reservation to go to. There are observation decks all around the coast to fund it. Isn’t that brilliant?” His eyes encouraged her to agree.
“Let me get this straight: We’re saving all those jeribs, an animal reserve, and a restaurant by having a fancy meal.” She had turned fully to face him by this point, her bare knees against the side of his chair.
He was twisted as well, his arm over the back of his chair and his legs next to hers. It kept her in this position, but that was hardly a bad thing. “We are,” he confirmed, and asked her again, leaning towards her: “Isn’t that brilliant?” He looked so pleased with himself, almost giddy.
“I love it,” she said, the word needing to come out somehow.
“Watch this.” He picked up a small piece of metal, sliding it out of the plate, a tiny thing that looked more like a toothpick than a utensil. Holding it carefully between two long fingers, he tapped the side of the empty plate and then, with almost no transition, it was no longer empty. “Very Hogwarts,” he commented, dropping the summoning-toothpick on the tablecloth. “Also very like a tapas bar, every morsel just a mouthful. Harry Potter goes to Spain.” He picked up one of the more normal-looking ones, some sort of pastel paste on a cracker. “I just love nibbles, don’t you?”
“I like ‘em better when I’m not the one serving them,” she said in a kind of agreement, trying not to stare too obviously as he popped the entire thing in his mouth, chewed, and licked his thumb and index finger clean. The cloth of his trousers felt good against her knee, but she tried not to focus too closely on that either. The food - focus on the food. “What’s that one?”
“Hm?”
“That one?”
As it turned out, it was a wonderful way to have dinner, bite by bite, the Doctor identifying each piece until she learned how to guess what was what. He talked about the places the plants had been grown or the fish caught, the bizarre history of that one spice, and as he did, it occurred to Rose that she knew every planet he mentioned. All of them. Every last one.
Every single morsel was an instance of “Remember when?” and “Didn’t we once go there to do that?” They ate facing one another far more than they looked out the window, making their way through the items on the plate with exceptionally slow progress. At some point, she shifted away to take off her shoes but, of course, she shifted back.
They drank from different sides of the same cups, one filled with water and the other with something like wine, something sweet yet full that stroked the tongue. As they passed them back and forth, as the Doctor folded his hands around hers and drank from the cup still between her hands, she felt very much that there was something to be said for communal dishes. She did the same to him with the water cup and he laughed, delighted.
Outside, the nests in the water glowed brighter and brighter from within, no longer submerged purples and greens but brilliant reds and yellows set against the intensely blue ocean. They were like shimmering lanterns of extreme proportions. Every so often, she’d ask how much longer it would be, but she stopped the time he replied, “Why? Do you want to go back to the TARDIS?” That time, she shook her head.
“Just eager for your, what was it, momentous occasion.”
“Oh, it’ll be momentous,” he assured her.
“And an occasion?” She reached for the wine again, took a sip.
“That too.” His fingers wrapped around hers once again and instead of drinking from the cup, he set it aside. “Enough of that, I think. No inebriated humans.”
“I’m not even tipsy,” she protested, knowing she was at least another glass to getting even that far. It was difficult to feel anything besides happy and relaxed and all the rest of it with him still holding her hand like that, but she was pretty sure that was just him.
He gave her one of those looks, his look of knowing so much better. “The amount of giggling coming out of you has more than doubled in the last half hour,” he informed her, looking very serious about it. Very, very serious and then he wiggled his eyebrows and sent her giggling. “You see! Just like that.”
“Oh, shut up,” she told him between laughter. Her hand left his to push at his chest a little, the closest to a playful shove she could manage in their current positions.
“Me? Never.” And then, magpie-minded as always, he recalled the remaining contents of the plate. “Oh, this, you have to try.” He picked it up carefully, a thin wafer with what looked like some sort of cheese spread with berries in it.
She held out her free hand, but he shook his head.
“The wafer is so delicate that the oils on your hands would dissolve it,” he told her. “That’s the best part, the dissolving, but you want it in your mouth for that bit.” He held it up to her lips, this bottle cap sized bit of something delicious. “Better than chocolate, I swear,” he added, coaxing her to open her mouth.
She looked at his face and at his fingers and she opened her mouth enough for him to give it to her.
Apparently, that wasn’t good enough. “You’re going to want the whole wafer on your tongue at once.”
She opened her mouth a little wider and his fingers were against her bottom lip and her mouth filled with so much flavour from something so little. The wafer didn’t fizz away or steal the moisture from her mouth; no, it was far gentler than that. True to the Doctor’s word, the wafer dissolved immediately, falling apart in flakes of almond or hazelnut or something in between. As the flakes disappeared, yet more flavour hit her tongue, one taste after another, molten and yet still melting. It was thick and rich and, pretending to be a liqueur, the berry sweetness made empty threats of overwhelming all else. The tastes somehow balanced in her mouth, somehow balanced together into something very much worth giving a hum of satisfaction over.
She had closed her eyes without knowing it and she opened them just in time to watch the Doctor lick his fingers clean, two swipes of the tongue over the skin that had just been at her lips.
It made her swallow before she was really ready to.
“What was that one called?” she asked, very aware of the hand still holding hers, the position of those hands on his knee.
“A crissen,” he replied. “Finicky, but worth it. There’s another one, if you want it. Not much else left on the plate your stomach can digest,” he added when she tried to let him have it. “Don’t want you going hungry.”
She eyed the little crissen on the plate.
His thumb stroked over her knuckles, a slow and relaxed motion he kept repeating.
“Yeah,” she said and, somehow, his finger got into her mouth a little this time. Just a little and he slipped it back out easily enough, but it pulled at something inside her, something that had already been pulled at quite a lot from the dress and his coat and their legs together like that.
She had to look away at that point, maybe to distract herself, maybe to see the sight they presented as reflected in the window. Except, she realized, there was no reflection. No glare on it either from the lights inside.
“Is this glass special?” she asked.
His thumb stopped stroking.
“Sorry?” he asked.
“The window glass,” she said. “I mean, usually when you look out at night and it’s bright inside, you can’t really see.” His hand felt oddly tense around hers now, so she shifted her grip a little, starting stroking his knuckles instead. He didn’t stop her, but he didn’t really respond either.
“Oh,” he said. The Doctor reached for the wine cup and drained what was left of it, head tilted back, neck long and exposed. He set the cup back down, didn’t use the magic little toothpick to refill it again. “Yes, the glass is special.”
Fully expecting him to continue, she asked, “Yeah?”
“Yes.” That said, he popped one of the things she apparently couldn’t digest into his mouth and chewed.
“Designed for looking at stuff at night?”
He nodded. Swallowed. “More or less.”
“Is there a story there?” she asked, trying to coax him out of whatever this was. This had been the perfect ending to a less-than-perfect day and she didn’t want that to change. He’d been happy a minute ago.
“Not much of one,” he said. He pulled his hand free of hers to scratch at the back of his head, the loose release leading to a surprisingly hard gesture. “Your general tale of scientists getting a wage in a laboratory.” He paused. He was oddly still, looking at the window rather than through it. “I’m not doing this right, am I?” His gaze flickered to her eyes only to dart away again.
“It’s okay,” she told him, voice soft, and this time, his gaze stayed on her.
“Yeah?” he asked. Something in his eyes, something around his mouth reminded her that her hand was still on his knee. He could flirt without knowing it, her Doctor, all attractive hopefulness. It made her feel a little guilty, thinking of him like this when something was so obviously off.
“Yes.” She smiled at him, moving her hands to her lap, and tried to reassure him. “I guess even you have to run out of stories sometimes.”
“Rose, that’s-”
There was a flash of light from outside and they immediately turned to look.
“Was that,” she began to ask.
“It’s starting,” he answered, standing. Her legs felt cold without his against them. “C’mon,” he said, giving her his hand as the sky was lit from below, one nest after another bursting open as if to release lightning. “It’s better without the table in the way.”
She rose to follow him, the wood flooring cool against her bare feet as they stood beside the table rather than behind it. She looked down, down at where the glass connected to the floor and it looked as if there was no window, as if it was a sheer drop down into the waves. It registered as never before that she was standing at the edge of a cliff. She grabbed at his arm and he pulled her close.
“Vertigo,” they said at once, her trying to explain, him trying to comfort. They looked at each other, more surprised than confused, and then laughed.
Another flash lit up his face and she hurriedly looked back out to the sea, to the reds and yellows and the.... those.
It was like the nests had dissolved like crissen wafers, their light spilling out into the air, rising up, flashing, pulsing. At first it was only one nest, but then another, and another, and suddenly, the great lanterns on the water were living stars in the sky. They really were like fireflies.
“They’re beautiful,” she breathed.
The Doctor chuckled quietly beside her. “Just wait, Rose. Only a little longer.”
The frequency of the flashing nests took off, the seaweed bundles breaking open one after another until it was almost too bright to look at, until the water seemed full of fireworks, brilliantly glowing jeribs rising up faster and more beautifully than smoke ever could.
They circled in the air, looping, spinning, waiting for their siblings, moving with quick bursts of excitement each time a nest opened. Each hatching added another splash of light into the air, ten or twelve or maybe dozens of the little creatures flying for the first time. They filled the sky, holding back the violet moons and the tiny stars. It was breathtaking.
“One left,” the Doctor said. “That nest there, do you see it?”
It was far away, but she did, just barely. It was difficult to see, so little light truly in the water and so much reflected on it. “What happens if it doesn’t open?” she could help asking. “Will they drown?”
He shook his head, his fingers finding her wrist, her palm. She caught his hand, held it, threading their fingers together. “That won’t happen,” he said.
As if waiting for his cue, a cloud of jeribs swooped down, one cloud out of the storm of light. They dove at the floating nest, collided with it, sending the nest into a flash of green as it broke open underwater. The little lights bobbed back up before taking off into the sky, all of them at last in the air.
“Now?” she asked.
“Now,” he said.
Now they danced.
Like a flock of shining birds, they moved through the air in flowing coordination. They dove and rose and dared the waves and the winds both. In unpracticed unison, they turned like a school of fish, turned and turned again. This was more than motion; this was joy and excitement and wonder at finally reaching the air, finally flying into the stars.
“They look....” she said, started to say.
“They’ve been underwater their entire lives,” the Doctor told her. “They’ll go back down, of course - got to make more nests, circle of life and all that - but right now, they have this. More to the point, they have each other.”
“They look so happy.” But that word was too small. It was far too small for this, for living fireworks delighting in their innate, intimate knowledge of each other’s movements. She couldn’t make out the individual jeribs, couldn’t see the lights within the blaze, but she still knew.
She knew what joy like that looked like.
His hand squeezed hers. “They are,” he said. “So happy.”
They stood together in the light of that life, savouring the world. When the jeribs swooped into a tight dive to skim over the water, they both laughed without being able to explain why. It was all light and feeling and it made the darkness shine like onyx, even blackness made bright when finely cut.
Gradually, the flock or school of jeribs began to fly farther and farther away, a brilliant cloud slipping in among those simply of water.
She looked up at the Doctor once the cloud was little more than a light on the horizon, found him already looking back at her. “Where are they going?”
“Well,” he said, glancing outside, his hand once again pulling from hers to ruffle his hair. “Somewhere else. Another part of the reserve, I think.”
She nodded, feeling quiet inside. It was a good kind of quiet, the kind of quiet that had filled her up those rare times she’d seen the Doctor asleep, a lanky man of one face or another sprawled over a couch in the TARDIS library. It was a very good kind of quiet and she hoped it wouldn’t fade when she spoke, when she had to speak.
“Thank you,” she said. She didn’t think she’d ever meant the words more.
His eyes soft, he smiled. He didn’t say anything, maybe feeling that quiet too.
“This was wonderful,” she added, unable to help it. “Really... really wonderful.”
“Good,” he said. It was all in his eyes, in the crinkled edges.
She couldn’t move, or breathe. She didn’t want to.
His eyes so warm, his lips quirked and he ducked his head a little. “We should, well, we should probably, you know. Well, we could, if you wanted-” His eyes flickered away from her, to the door.
“Right,” she said. “Yeah. I’ll put my shoes back on.”
“Oh, you don’t need to do that,” he said to her as she bent down, fishing the shoes out from under the table. The way the window extended to the floor even beneath the table gave her a wobbling feeling of having nearly lost her shoes off a cliff. Not a real concern, but still there.
“Why?” she asked, sitting down in the Doctor’s abandoned chair. “You gonna carry me back to the TARDIS?” She grinned up at him, her tongue between her teeth.
He blinked at her, but by his growing smile, it was clear that he was becoming increasingly partial to the idea. “I could,” he offered.
She laughed.
“I could,” he repeated, like she’d just dared him.
She stood, getting used to her heels again. “Big, strong man that you are.”
“Big, strong man that I am, yes.” His arms circled around her, his hands on the skin of her back. It made her shiver, her breath hissing out involuntarily, and then, just like that, his hands fell away. “Big, strong man with cold hands, that would be me.” For what had to be the thousandth time, she was grateful for the excuse to react to his touch.
Making herself, she laughed again. Picked up his coat. “Mind if I borrow this again?”
“It’s going to smell all human-y now,” he pretended to complain, “but the big, strong man will manage.”
“You can stop calling yourself a big, strong man now.” She was laughing, but she meant it.
Not as thick as he often was, he seemed to catch onto that. “Right, yes. Onwards.” He paused, and then smiled a bit, slipping his hand into hers. “I think I’ll like onwards, don’t you?”
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