Thirty-Four Degrees Celsius
Title: Thirty-Four Degrees Celsius
Characters and/or Pairings: 10.5/Rose
Rating: PG
Summary: Inclement weather and a Torchwood training exercise bring things between the Doctor and Rose to a head…
Author's Note: written for wildwinterwitch
Word Count: 2,482
Rose stumbles, slips in the mud - would have fallen head long into a pond-sized puddle but for the fact that the Doctor manages to catch her first.
“Keep moving Rose. We’re almost there.” He shouts the words over the rain as he sets her back on her feet.
We’re almost there. It’s the same phrase he’s been repeating for close to an hour now - over and over till the words have lost all meaning to his ears. If he were being honest, he would tell her that he has no clue if they’re almost there or not…that he’s not certain if there even is a “there”. At the moment though, honesty is taking a back seat to keeping Rose moving - to keeping her alive.
Bloody Torchwood training exercise. If they get back - no, he corrects himself, when they get back - he is going to have a very…serious…discussion with Pete regarding how the institution is being run.
Right now though, they have to keep moving. Rose is displaying symptoms that suggest hypothermia and if she stops here, with no shelter -
Well, they just have to keep moving.
He tells her as much.
“C-can’t,” she says, shakes her head with so much effort that the exaggerated move makes her look inebriated.
She’s getting worse.
“Yes you can, Rose.” He tries not to let his desperation seep into his voice. Tries to sound calm. “C’mon now. Just one foot in front of the other.”
“C-c-can’t…fff-fe-feel…muh-m-my…f-ff-f-eet.” The words click like Morse code through her chattering teeth.
He looks around once more - as though help were somehow magically on its way. No, it’s just him. Right then.
He makes an executive decision and before she can protest, has Rose over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry.
The fact that she doesn’t put up a fight worries him more than anything.
**
He’s nearly given up hope when he sees the cabin through the rain. Almost doesn’t believe it’s real.
It is though - real enough that the door nearly falls off when the Doctor tries to open it (one handed, mind you - the other still holding Rose securely in that fireman’s carry). He thinks it looks abandoned, as he steps inside, but it’s dry, and at the moment, that’s more than enough.
He lowers Rose’s dead weight to the floor as gently as possible - winces when her body makes audible impact against the boards. Slips his gear off his back with far less concern and rolls his shoulders, wishes (desperately, and not for the first time today) for a hot bath.
Calling it a cabin might have been a bit generous, he decides as he stands to take stock of their shelter. It’s more of a shack, really. Just bare boards - not even any real insulation - and completely lacking in furniture, food, a heat source…
It’s this last bit that has him most worried. The Doctor casts an eye toward the spot where he left Rose.
She’s barely moving and her lips are a shade alarmingly close to blue. Not good.
**
One hundred seventy-two. One hundred seventy-three…
He’s managed to both find the thermometer in their Torchwood-issue first-aid kit and get Rose to hold it under her tongue for nearly the required three minutes - no small miracle either thing.
One hundred seventy-nine. One hundred eighty.
He retrieves the thermometer, forces himself to read it: thirty-four degrees Celsius.
He scrubs a hand over his face. Tries very hard to not calculate the odds of survival for someone with hypothermia and no heat source.
**
Thirty-four degrees Celsius. He works with a renewed sense of urgency, .
Bloody Torchwood, and their stupid training exercises. The thought comes again as he frantically unfurls a sleeping bag. It’s their fault that Rose is out here.
Go ahead, tell yourself that…or you could be honest…could admit, at least to yourself, that it’s as much your fault as anyone else’s. Maybe more…
He would like to deny it, but it’s too close to the truth. There’s no objective reason for him to be doing field work. And there’s nothing wrong with Research and Development - he has a good position in the department. Should be satisfied with it. Probably could be, if he really tried...
If he had, Rose would be tucked into her own bed right now, safe and warm instead of stranded in the middle of nowhere during one of the worst rainstorms he can remember. But no, he had to put in the request to become a field agent, and now Rose is half-frozen, soaked to the skin, and -
“Doctor?” The word is slurred, barely intelligible, but it brings his attention back to where it belongs.
Rose. He’s got to get her warm.
Self-flagellation will simply have to wait.
**
“C’mon now, off with your wet things.” He finds himself speaking to her like she’s a child as he helps her out of her jacket, peels her t-shirt up over her head and off. Her arms flop back to her sides the instant they’re free of the wet knit. She’s like a damp rag doll in his hands. The comparison makes him work faster.
Even so, he hesitates a moment before unzipping her jeans. As difficult as Jackie Tyler might find it to believe, this is uncharted territory.
Actually, he’s pretty sure that everyone assumes they’ve been shagging like rabbits these last six months. (Has he really been in this universe for six months?) The truth is so far from that it’s, well, laughable. That kiss on the beach was intense, but it was the last intimate contact he’s had with Rose. She barely even holds his hand anymore. And he has no idea why…
He shakes the depressing thought from his head, and takes his attention off Rose’s body along with the rest of her clothes. Earlier, he’d been worried by how quickly they were losing the light. Now…well, he’s actually grateful that’s it too dark to see anything. Makes behaving like a gentleman that much easier.
**
Rose’s skin feels like cold wax against his when he slides in to share the sleeping bag. His legs, arms wrap hers, and at that first skin-to-skin contact she seems to sense his warmth, almost burrows back into it. (And that pleases him on too many levels. It makes him think maybe she still trusts him…gives him hope…)
When she presses her back to his chest, he’d swear he can feel the heat being leeched from his body into hers. Good. He may not be able to claim many physiological advantages over his Time Lord twin, but right now he is immeasurably grateful for his higher human body temp.
He stays like that a long time - listens to the rhythm of the rain, feels the rhythm of Rose’s breath as her chest rises and falls beneath his hands.
Tired as he is, he can’t seem to get to sleep. Only a bit of that is due, in all honesty, to having Rose naked and in his arms. What’s really keeping him awake is what put her there: his field training.
Rose had come home furious the day she found out about his request. They’d been arguing about it practically every day since.
“You have to be more careful, Doctor.” She kept saying. “It’s not like you can regenerate anymore. You only have this one human life, now.”
It was an argument that got old very quickly.
Finally, he’d snapped - told her he felt “wasted” and that he was bored in R & D, that he was bored with his “one human life” (the look on her face when he said that - like he had slapped her - still makes him feel sick).
He had told her a load of rubbish, rather than the truth, which is that he just wants to be closer to her. That he misses the two of them working as a team, misses her hand in his - that he just plain misses her, damn it.
And for some idiotic reason, he thought the two of them working together would make it better.
They are so far apart and he has no idea why, much less how to fix it.
**
It’s the sharp jab (an elbow?) in the ribs that wakes him rather than the nearly nonexistent morning light.
“Oi! Some of us are trying to sleep here.” Half asleep, the words spill out of his mouth before he has time to remember where he is and to whom the offending elbow belongs. A quick glance at his surroundings, though, and memory returns swiftly.
He glances down at the blonde head against his chest, notes the arms circling his waist. At some point during the night Rose turned herself round, and has been embracing him in her sleep. He tells himself not to read too much into that.
The sleeping bag is warm, and he’s rather fond of the company, but he forces himself to get up. Among other things, he needs to figure out exactly where they are. And anyway, it’s probably easier for both of them if Rose doesn’t wake up wrapped around him.
He breathes a sigh of relief when he manages to climb out of the sleeping bag and Rose’s arms - all with her still asleep.
**
“Where are we?” Rose asks with a yawn. She sits up, gasps when the cold air hits her bare back. “And before you answer that, Doctor, where are my clothes?”
“Your clothes,” he grabs the stack of dry things he’d set aside for her, hands them to Rose, “were soaked through, and first-aid dictated their removal.”
He thinks she pales a bit, but maybe that’s just a leftover from her close call last night.
“First-aid? Right.” She quirks an eyebrow at him, snorts lightly. “Haven’t heard it called that before.”
“Yes - first-aid. You were too out of it to know, but you had hypothermia, Rose…moderate, but still…hypothermia.” He knows he’s overreacting, but he can’t seem to stop himself. “I had to get you warmed up - wasn’t like I was copping a feel.”
She flinches a bit at the edge in his tone. “I didn’t - “ she cuts herself off with her bottom lip between her teeth, takes a deep breath and tries again. “S’not what I meant. Not how I meant it, in any case… I was kidding - you know, trying to make a light of an awkward situation?”
He nods his head but doesn’t say anything. Just listens to rain as it drops in fat, heavy splashes on their borrowed roof.
“You…you didn’t see…anything…did you?” she asks a moment later.
It ought to make him laugh - she sounds so little-girl, nothing like the “Rose Tyler: Defender of the Earth” that he knows.
“No, Rose. I didn’t see anything,” he says with a sigh. “By the time I found the cabin it was nearly dark - I could barely see my hands to undo my own buttons.”
The utter relief on her face hurts him more than he wants to admit.
**
He sits with his back to her as he studies the map - gives Rose privacy as she dresses.
The Doctor is in the middle of calculating the distance from “where-we-are” to “where-we-need-to-be” when Rose asks him a question, and without thinking he turns around.
One of them gasps - he’s not sure which.
But he has definitely turned around too soon.
His map dangles from one hand. Rose’s arms are drawn behind her back in the act of (he’s assuming) clasping her bra.
They stay frozen like that for…well, he’s not sure how long.
“Rose?”
He is having a hard time forming a complete sentence, much less getting one out. She’s still more naked than not - but that’s not what has him virtually speechless. Not really.
No, that would be the scars.
There must be close to a dozen, sprinkled across her body like salt on chips. Most of them are relatively small - no more than an inch or so long - but one or two look suspiciously like bullet wounds, and there is a slash that runs a good four inches over her left breast before it disappears into her bra.
“You weren’t meant to see those.” Rose says as she crosses her arms over chest, and her voice is so soft that he almost misses the words.
“So I gathered.” He’s having a hard time coming up with anything coherent to say, runs his hand through his hair as though the action might prompt an appropriate response. Finally he asks the question foremost in his mind. “What happened?”
She doesn’t say anything, just pleads with wide eyes and a sort of shake of the head for him to drop it.
Not bloody likely.
“Rose, I know these are more than six months old.” He doesn’t remember crossing the short span of the room, but now finds himself standing directly in front of her. “And thanks to a particular evening gown you wore in Cardiff, I know that you didn’t have this,” one long finger hovers over the scar by her heart, “when we met.”
She still doesn’t say anything - just stands there covered in goose-pimples and silence.
“Was it Torchwood?” He tries to ask it as gently as possible...isn’t sure how successful he is.
“No.” She answers a bit too quickly. Then, “Not really.”
He’s ashamed to admit it, but he’s not sure he believes her. Because honestly, what else could it be? What could have happened, what could have caused this, that she wouldn’t tell -
The dimension cannon.
He looks down at her, at how she won’t meet his eyes, and he knows he’s right. These scars are from trying to find him.
Oh bloody hell.
And it makes sense, suddenly, how she always refuses to talk about her experiences dimension hopping. He’s assumed that she’d seen some pretty horrific things, but this… He traces the scar over her heart, and is almost dizzy with the realization of how close he came to losing her - to losing her and never even knowing.
“You should have told me. Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, Rose. I’m so sorry, so sorry.” He has her in his arms now, and he can’t stop saying it. Can’t stop apologizing.
“That’s exactly why I didn’t tell you." Her words come out muffled against his chest. "‘Cause I know you, and you already feel responsible for far more than you should.”
He finds himself dizzy again. This time, though, it’s from the knowledge that the distance he has felt between them for so long now is finally disappearing. That, daft as it is, it was never there because Rose didn’t love him…but, rather, because she does.
Rose Tyler: Defender of…him. Even against himself.
He traces the line crossing her heart once more, and this time Rose brings his hand to her lips. Kisses his palm. And finally (after six months), his lips.
Minutes into the kiss, he finds he feels rather magnanimous towards Torchwood and their training exercises…