(no subject)
one day soon I'll hold you like the sun holds the moon, eleven/rose, PG-13
( Inspired by The Girl by City & Colour and Letters From The Sky by Civil Twilight. )
The Doctor steals one night, one night between giant cakes and ginger girls; he keeps one night for himself.
A part of her pushes anxiously - she doesn't have the time, doesn't have the luxury to sit here like this when stars are blinking out, but everyone needs to rest sometimes. 1,367 words.
Somewhere in Leadworth, in a sleeping corner of the village where only alley cats and mice are still awake (the cats are chasing the mice and the mice are running, running in fear, running from glowing eyes and the song of death), a girl stumbles back into a home not entirely hers anymore. It is not the right place and not the right Time. Rose should not be surprised by failure - certainly, it does not stop her for long, not the girl who takes her bleeding heart and patches it back together time after time, ripping through the thinning walls of the Void to find one man ... to find her Doctor, her Doctor with his Time Lord hair and desperately dark eyes, with his long fingers and delicious suits; the one person she can say these forbidden words to.
She will try again and soon, but she is tired, too tired from having gone weeks without sleeping and hopping from one dimension to another. Most of her arrivals are places like this, quiet and slow, but sometimes she finds herself saving lives and coordinating UNIT teams (Rose is not sure how that happens, but she is something of an urban legend among them; the woman of unknowns and hopes who appears in the middle of chaos and guides them).
She prays it is not too much to ask for one night here, back in a world where the skies are empty and filled with clouds, where the absence of zeppelins humming might as well be a lullaby. And any decent village has a chips stand open, however late at night.
Rose does not find a chips stand, but she does find a small place on a street corner that doesn't turn her away. The back room is booked, reserved for some lucky bloke's stag night and all she can think of is how much she wishes she had someone to share her gorgeous chips with. She savors them anyways, alone and staring out the window (trying to memorize every little thing of this world, every little thing that is so different and so precious and so hers). A part of her pushes anxiously - she doesn't have the time, doesn't have the luxury to sit here like this when stars are blinking out, but everyone needs to rest sometimes. She does not expect the back door to swing open and a thoroughly harassed man to be pushed out.
He looks so out of place her heart clenches for one terrible second, but then she realizes she is mistaken. He is tall and gangly and a bit pale (pasty, if she is to be honest, though that might just be the weak fluorescent lighting), the bow tie at his collar somewhat askew, a bracer dangling perilously off his shoulder. Maybe it is being home again, eating chips, maybe it is sleep deprivation, or maybe it is just pure lunacy, but she had truly, sincerely thought he had been an impossible someone.
But he sees her. He sees her and freezes and she watches him as he gasps for breath and for the words he is swallowing. The Doctor sees his Rose, his beautiful, lonely Rose and he cannot speak at all. She doesn't recognize him though, not this incarnation of the Doctor she loves so much and he cannot for the life of him figure out why she is here (it might have something to do with the fact that his genius mind is quite happily seizing onto the image of her and refusing to think of anything else - it is an annoying habit he doesn't think he will ever lose). There are no cheery pinks and yellows and denims in sight - in their place are practical blacks and dark blues and oh, how the colors speak to him, sparking a tiny thought that this body has not visited for too long.
"Rough crowd?" She asks, tilting her head at the door that is slammed behind him, curiosity in her eyes - he sort of looks like a boy, baffled and lost with his gaping mouth and eyes so wide. It takes her voice to wake him. He nods, still not trusting himself to speak around her. He never really did.
"Wrong cake," he says by way of explaining because it is true and because if he never has to tell another lie to Rose Tyler, then the universe is kinder than he gives it credit for. He is content just observing her, watching her take his words and puzzle out all the secret meanings, watching her be brilliant. He knows the moment she has it because the smile she flashes him is blinding and he feels like he is being given an unspeakably grand gift. Her small, human hands push the basket of chips to the side of the table, one of them waving in front of her in lieu of an invitation. It doesn't matter that the plastic tablecloth is dirty with grease stains and crumbs are clinging to his shirtsleeves. He sits eagerly across from her, thrilled, so far beyond his new found serenity, that he is here and she is here and he still cannot stop thinking it, that they are here together.
"Don't mind if I do." The Doctor pops a few chips into this new mouth and finds that his new-new-new taste buds are, coincidentally, madly in love with them. The realization crashes into his lungs and he struggles not to laugh at the irony of fate. "These are - oh, they are too lovely."
She brightens, young and soft and everything that makes her irresistible roaring to life with her wide, toothy smiles. "Aren't they just!"
"If you don't mind me asking," he begins and doesn't wait for her answer. "You aren't my replacement, are you?" A thumb jerks awkwardly at the party and the sounds behind them, barely muted by slight plaster walls.
He adores making her laugh.
"Oh, no. I'm just popping by for a bite. Have to get going soon," she adds and he can feel his two hearts tremble - he can't stop her, or she might never find him again, or they might never have what they have (what he has) so he can't be selfish, this Doctor, even though not being selfish now is only because he wants to keep all his memories of her, which is actually very selfish.
But, a small voice is murmuring, is tempting him, just one night. Don't I deserve just one night?
Before the world ends (or before he loses his grip on his fleeting courage, he isn't sure which), he grabs her hand and says, "Run."
"But I haven't paid yet!"
"Run," he insists, a delighted sparkle in his swirling green eyes and she is gulping for air because this man who cannot be who she wants him to be is saying all the things he cannot be saying.
"Okay," she concedes breathlessly and they are running, they are running into the night, down a street at two in the morning, away from a screaming man and his half eaten chips. They run and run and he is stunned by her, stunned by her grin of sheer disbelief and carefree eyes, her fingers that fit between his just so, just as they always have (just as they always will).
She never asks for his name and he never asks for hers.
They have this one night, stolen from time and stolen from each other. One night of warm hands and hot touches, of her tears and her doubts when she confesses to a stranger about how much she wants to stop searching (never stop searching, he encourages her, he begs her) - "It hurts so much, every time I look and he isn't there," she rasps out brokenly - of her incredible ability to make him forget when and where he is when she kisses him and says "Thank you, stranger," before the world explodes into millions of stars and his skin is singing the most magnificent song, buzzing with this and now and the moment. She disappears in the morning.
One night is all he gets.
( Inspired by The Girl by City & Colour and Letters From The Sky by Civil Twilight. )
The Doctor steals one night, one night between giant cakes and ginger girls; he keeps one night for himself.
A part of her pushes anxiously - she doesn't have the time, doesn't have the luxury to sit here like this when stars are blinking out, but everyone needs to rest sometimes. 1,367 words.
Somewhere in Leadworth, in a sleeping corner of the village where only alley cats and mice are still awake (the cats are chasing the mice and the mice are running, running in fear, running from glowing eyes and the song of death), a girl stumbles back into a home not entirely hers anymore. It is not the right place and not the right Time. Rose should not be surprised by failure - certainly, it does not stop her for long, not the girl who takes her bleeding heart and patches it back together time after time, ripping through the thinning walls of the Void to find one man ... to find her Doctor, her Doctor with his Time Lord hair and desperately dark eyes, with his long fingers and delicious suits; the one person she can say these forbidden words to.
She will try again and soon, but she is tired, too tired from having gone weeks without sleeping and hopping from one dimension to another. Most of her arrivals are places like this, quiet and slow, but sometimes she finds herself saving lives and coordinating UNIT teams (Rose is not sure how that happens, but she is something of an urban legend among them; the woman of unknowns and hopes who appears in the middle of chaos and guides them).
She prays it is not too much to ask for one night here, back in a world where the skies are empty and filled with clouds, where the absence of zeppelins humming might as well be a lullaby. And any decent village has a chips stand open, however late at night.
Rose does not find a chips stand, but she does find a small place on a street corner that doesn't turn her away. The back room is booked, reserved for some lucky bloke's stag night and all she can think of is how much she wishes she had someone to share her gorgeous chips with. She savors them anyways, alone and staring out the window (trying to memorize every little thing of this world, every little thing that is so different and so precious and so hers). A part of her pushes anxiously - she doesn't have the time, doesn't have the luxury to sit here like this when stars are blinking out, but everyone needs to rest sometimes. She does not expect the back door to swing open and a thoroughly harassed man to be pushed out.
He looks so out of place her heart clenches for one terrible second, but then she realizes she is mistaken. He is tall and gangly and a bit pale (pasty, if she is to be honest, though that might just be the weak fluorescent lighting), the bow tie at his collar somewhat askew, a bracer dangling perilously off his shoulder. Maybe it is being home again, eating chips, maybe it is sleep deprivation, or maybe it is just pure lunacy, but she had truly, sincerely thought he had been an impossible someone.
But he sees her. He sees her and freezes and she watches him as he gasps for breath and for the words he is swallowing. The Doctor sees his Rose, his beautiful, lonely Rose and he cannot speak at all. She doesn't recognize him though, not this incarnation of the Doctor she loves so much and he cannot for the life of him figure out why she is here (it might have something to do with the fact that his genius mind is quite happily seizing onto the image of her and refusing to think of anything else - it is an annoying habit he doesn't think he will ever lose). There are no cheery pinks and yellows and denims in sight - in their place are practical blacks and dark blues and oh, how the colors speak to him, sparking a tiny thought that this body has not visited for too long.
"Rough crowd?" She asks, tilting her head at the door that is slammed behind him, curiosity in her eyes - he sort of looks like a boy, baffled and lost with his gaping mouth and eyes so wide. It takes her voice to wake him. He nods, still not trusting himself to speak around her. He never really did.
"Wrong cake," he says by way of explaining because it is true and because if he never has to tell another lie to Rose Tyler, then the universe is kinder than he gives it credit for. He is content just observing her, watching her take his words and puzzle out all the secret meanings, watching her be brilliant. He knows the moment she has it because the smile she flashes him is blinding and he feels like he is being given an unspeakably grand gift. Her small, human hands push the basket of chips to the side of the table, one of them waving in front of her in lieu of an invitation. It doesn't matter that the plastic tablecloth is dirty with grease stains and crumbs are clinging to his shirtsleeves. He sits eagerly across from her, thrilled, so far beyond his new found serenity, that he is here and she is here and he still cannot stop thinking it, that they are here together.
"Don't mind if I do." The Doctor pops a few chips into this new mouth and finds that his new-new-new taste buds are, coincidentally, madly in love with them. The realization crashes into his lungs and he struggles not to laugh at the irony of fate. "These are - oh, they are too lovely."
She brightens, young and soft and everything that makes her irresistible roaring to life with her wide, toothy smiles. "Aren't they just!"
"If you don't mind me asking," he begins and doesn't wait for her answer. "You aren't my replacement, are you?" A thumb jerks awkwardly at the party and the sounds behind them, barely muted by slight plaster walls.
He adores making her laugh.
"Oh, no. I'm just popping by for a bite. Have to get going soon," she adds and he can feel his two hearts tremble - he can't stop her, or she might never find him again, or they might never have what they have (what he has) so he can't be selfish, this Doctor, even though not being selfish now is only because he wants to keep all his memories of her, which is actually very selfish.
But, a small voice is murmuring, is tempting him, just one night. Don't I deserve just one night?
Before the world ends (or before he loses his grip on his fleeting courage, he isn't sure which), he grabs her hand and says, "Run."
"But I haven't paid yet!"
"Run," he insists, a delighted sparkle in his swirling green eyes and she is gulping for air because this man who cannot be who she wants him to be is saying all the things he cannot be saying.
"Okay," she concedes breathlessly and they are running, they are running into the night, down a street at two in the morning, away from a screaming man and his half eaten chips. They run and run and he is stunned by her, stunned by her grin of sheer disbelief and carefree eyes, her fingers that fit between his just so, just as they always have (just as they always will).
She never asks for his name and he never asks for hers.
They have this one night, stolen from time and stolen from each other. One night of warm hands and hot touches, of her tears and her doubts when she confesses to a stranger about how much she wants to stop searching (never stop searching, he encourages her, he begs her) - "It hurts so much, every time I look and he isn't there," she rasps out brokenly - of her incredible ability to make him forget when and where he is when she kisses him and says "Thank you, stranger," before the world explodes into millions of stars and his skin is singing the most magnificent song, buzzing with this and now and the moment. She disappears in the morning.
One night is all he gets.