Dark Is the Night
Title - Dark Is the Night
Author -
earlgreytea68
Rating - General
Pairing - Peter Carlisle/Rose Tyler
Spoilers - For both Blackpool and S2 of Doctor Who.
Disclaimer - Characters from Blackpool and Doctor Who are the property of the BBC, and are used with the greatest of love and respect; no profit is intended from the writing or sharing of this story. Also, at this point, they kind of belong to
jlrpuck, who kindly lets me play with them.
Summary - Did somebody request Rose's point of view...?
Authors Notes - This follows immediately off
chicklet73's beautiful "Early Morning Blues and Greens." The title for my fic comes from the song by a-ha.
Gah!
jlrpuckwas a rapid-fire and flawless beta for this story, and I totally forgot to thank her! Thank you!
Rose Tyler couldn’t sleep.
She should have been exhausted. It had been, after all, one hell of a day: woken before dawn by the trilling of the cell phone and the report of “suspected alien activity” wreaking havoc in Stratford. And after an entire day of intense diplomacy to sort out a disagreement between two inquisitive sects of Hyperions regarding whether or not Shakespeare had actually authored the plays the Hyperions had studied so carefully in preparation for their sight-seeing trip to Earth-she could see how the disagreement had escalated to blasting laser guns through the streets of Stratford; the Hyperions were a passionate lot-Rose was now finally dragging herself into her flat shortly after midnight. There had been a moment when she had considered just staying overnight in Stratford but the lure of her own bed, vacated far too soon that morning, had convinced her to catch the last train (turning down the offer of a zeppelin with a small shudder; she never could get used to that drifting, floating, dipping method of travel).
Unfortunately, Roddy had also chosen to take the last train, brimming over with enthusiasm as he usually was. Roddy was a new field agent, and Rose was aware that everyone had high hopes for him. Aside from a tendency to bound about rather like a puppy, Rose thought he would be a fairly good field agent: he had decent instincts, better-than-average problem-solving skills, and--most importantly--an open mind. But Roddy liked to talk. He asked an absurd amount of questions. Rose spent the entirety of the train ride responding to Roddy’s endless interrogation about Torchwood, and then Roddy insisted they split a cab so that Rose didn’t escape him until she finally reached her building. At which point she was finally able to pull her cell phone out and listen to the message that had come in that morning.
There was a moment of hesitation before he said, It’s Peter. And she knew he had been debating whether to leave a message at all. She was glad he did, because just the sound of his voice, coming across the phone as she pushed her key into the lock of her door, made her feel better, and she smiled. She loved the way he always said, It’s Peter. Even when she answered the phone. She always wanted to ask him if he thought she could ever mistake his voice for someone else’s. And the idea that he might think that she could, in that sometimes-daft head of his, made her smile even more.
It’s…early. You’re probably still sleeping. Rose snorted at that, as she tossed her keys onto the small stand by the front door. I…was just calling to say hello. There was another pause. Hello. Rose actually chuckled out loud at that, as she gratefully slid out of her shoes. That was it, really. There was another pause. I love you. Bye.
Rose, walking into her bedroom now, closed the phone and stood for a second, looking at it with what she knew was a ridiculous smile on her face. I love you, he said, constantly, all of the time, and she couldn’t get enough of it, the astonishment of knowing it was true and he meant it, that everything she felt for him was returned. The message listened to, her mobile was now telling her about the missed call that had resulted in the message. “Carlisle,” it read, helpfully, because she never had changed the name under which she stored him, leaving him the way she had when she’d first programmed his mobile into her Contacts list, when he had still been just this prickly, arrogant D.I. who looked like the Doctor that she had been forced to work with.
Rose erased the missed call and tipped her wrist so she could read the face of her watch. It was past 12:30 now. If Peter had been working a night shift, she could have called him. But she knew that his shifts had been thrown off this week, which he had pouted about petulantly. He had had today off, she recalled now, abruptly, and he had sulked, last time she had visited him, about the upcoming day off being “wasted” while she worked. And he was on a day shift tomorrow, which he had also complained about. She had teased him about preferring to stay out of sunlight, like a vampire, and then had cajoled him out of his grouchiness by doing that nuzzling-against-his-throat thing that he loved so much.
What all this meant was that Peter was no doubt sleeping. It was too late to call him now.
Sighing with disappointment, she retreated to her en-suite to get ready for bed. She would call him at work tomorrow. Hopefully he wouldn’t be busy and could listen to the story of her Stratford day, which she knew he would enjoy.
Rose pulled down the covers of her bed and snuggled underneath them.
And couldn’t fall asleep.
By rights she ought to have been exhausted. Indeed, she was exhausted. But she found herself laying on her back, watching the city lights as they played over her ceiling, and recognizing the heart of her insomnia.
She missed Peter.
Here she was, in an enormous, empty bed in an enormous, empty flat. For a long moment, she contemplated getting into her car and driving to Kendal. It would be a wonderful surprise…but she had to work in the morning, and she was so exhausted she didn’t trust herself to tackle the long drive, even if she could have found a way out of work. But the loneliness of the surrounding darkness pressed into her, and, restless, she stood up and walked out into her kitchen.
She made herself a cup of green tea with toasted rice, a blend she had discovered during a job in Tokyo once, letting the familiarity of the act soothe her, hoping it would relax her. Wrapping her hands around the mug, she walked into the living room, over to her couch, and sat on it, drawing the blanket she kept draped over the back of it over her legs. She seemed to always be cold lately. She knew it was because she was far too used to being near Peter, and Peter was always so marvelously warm. Blankets were a poor substitute.
She looked around the flat, sipping her tea. She was fond of the flat; it wasn’t terribly big and it had used to always feel cosy, just the right size. Now, though, it just felt empty.
In those early days, when everything in this universe had been new and nothing seemed like home, it had been a place to make into a home, a place for just her. She had decorated it painstakingly, not the way she would have decorated it as a girl but as the woman she had suddenly recognized she was. And it had been the first place to feel like home in this universe. A home she had made, on her own, almost through sheer force of will. She had always been proud of herself for it.
And it now felt hollow and incomplete, because it was Peter-less, and that put her in an irritable mood. Irritable because it was slightly terrifying to consider the truth that Peter was maybe the only thing with the power to make her really, truly happy. It was fabulous, of course, to have a man who made you feel that way. Yes, very fabulous. But also alarming, to be so very, well, dependent upon him.
Peter wanted them to live together. He hadn’t mentioned it, not since rushing it out that day in the glade, blushing and stammering and adorable, naked and dappled in sunlight and shade on an old blanket, and then she had been cruel and heartless and told him no. But she knew that he still wanted it: Peter Carlisle was not a man who gave up on dreams very easily. He thought he was. She knew his impression of himself was of a man who was completely capable of Moving On. She knew he wasn’t that way, knew that everything he wanted he wanted completely, deep inside of him, in places he didn’t even let himself look. And he-and here was the part that always made her catch her breath-he wanted her.
And it wasn’t that she didn’t want to live with him-that wasn’t it at all. It was that she wanted it too much. She had wanted it then, in the glade, when he had first asked, and her first impulse had been to leap upon him with delight and say she thought it would be wonderful. And then all that wisdom she had managed to attain kicked in, and she had taken a step back from the situation. Peter was her first serious relationship in this new universe; they had not been dating very long, that day in the glade. She was not a woman who was very good at relationships; she tended to rush into them when a bit more thought would have been a better idea. No one could say she’d had a stellar track record. And so she’d pulled back a bit, slowed him down a bit.
She didn’t exactly regret that now. But she thought maybe it was time to re-evaluate. Time had passed: it hadn’t changed how she felt about Peter, nor had it changed how Peter felt about her. She couldn’t imagine what more time would do, except cause her to miss him even more desperately.
It was a huge step. It was, in fact, the enormity of it that had given her pause that day in the glade; that had given her pause every time she’d thought about it since then; that was giving her pause now. To move in together was to basically admit that their lives had become so intertwined, that they had become so interdependent as individuals, that they needed to be near each other, always. Once, she would never have thought twice about it, but now she worried about it incessantly. It wasn’t that she thought it a risk, really; it wasn’t that she thought the idea unwise.
It was that she worried what it meant for them-each of them; the possibility, always growing ever greater, that she would somehow break his heart, or get her heart broken. She remembered what it had been like to stand that day on Bad Wolf Bay and say good-bye to the Doctor, and she didn’t want to ever feel anything like that again. The fact that she had lived through it, eventually recovered, didn’t make the idea of it any more appealing. Because she knew that, although she had loved the Doctor, it had been a love with less depth, somehow, less force of life behind it, simply because she had been a less fully-developed person. And more horrifying than the thought that Peter might break her heart was the idea that somehow she might end up breaking his. She couldn’t imagine how, but she knew-oh, so well-how impossible it was to predict the future. She wouldn’t plan to, but she wasn’t sure she could make that promise.
Peter had been hurt before. Indeed, if they were going to compare their relationship pasts, Peter had been hurt far worse than she had. And yet he hadn’t let that hold him back. He had taken the risks with her, at every turn, trusting whenever she was hesitant, and she marveled at that in him, that endless hopefulness. She would not have characterized Peter Carlisle as being a hopeful man when she had met him, but she knew now that he was. His life had been built on a buoyant sense of optimism that the world had never been able to completely break. Not many people got to see it very often-she knew she was one of the very lucky few-but it was there, and she fretted over being in charge of something so very precious as Peter Carlisle’s romantic, generous, sensitive, extraordinary heart. Even more in charge than she already was.
But Peter trusted her. Peter trusted her more completely than she thought she had ever been trusted in her life. Peter should have been the reluctant one here, the one concerned about himself and his heart that had already been bruised far more than it deserved. And instead Peter trusted her. Peter was willing to leap in, eyes wide open. Peter was willing to come to London for her, to fit his life into hers like perfect puzzle pieces. And if Peter could overcome all of the heartbreak of his past to trust her, then she recognized that she needed to trust him in return: trust him not to hurt her, and trust his judgment when he believed that she wouldn’t hurt him.
Rose realized that she’d finished her tea. The digital clock in the room read 1:42. Surely too late to call Peter. Surely.
She padded back to her bedroom, curled into the cold bed, and reached for mobile and rang him.
He picked up on the third ring, mumbling into the phone, “Carlisle.”
Rose smiled into the empty darkness of her flat. “It’s me. Were you sleeping?”
“Mmmno,” he answered.
“Liar,” she teased him.
“I’m awake,” he protested, his voice growing clearer as he really did wake up. “What are you doing?”
“I was…thinking of you.”
“Were you? Good, middle-of-the-night thoughts?”
“I missed your call, I’m sorry, I was…D’you wanna hear about my day, Peter?”
“I always want to hear anything you want to tell me about,” he replied.
“It was…I’m sorry. I’m sorry I woke you. It can wait until morning.”
“You can tell me about it now.”
“No. ‘S fine. It can wait. I jus’…Sorry I woke you up.”
“Is everything okay, Rose?” he asked, sounding vaguely worried, in a drowsy, not-quite-with-it way.
“Yes. I just…wanted to say hello.”
“Hello,” he said, gravely.
“And I love you, too.” She thought he would have responded to that but she realized he was busy muffling a yawn and trying not to sound as if he was busy muffling a yawn. “Go back to sleep,” she told him.
“We’ll talk in the morning,” he said. “I want to hear all about your day.”
“Yes,” she agreed, softly. “We’ll talk in the morning. Sweet dreams.”