Doctor Who: Where the Ocean Kisses the Shore
Title: Where the Ocean Kisses the Shore
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings/Characters: Ten/Rose, OC Aliens
Rating: T (I got sick of the G-R rating system already, go figure)
Notes: Written for Challenge 92 over at then_theres_us, which is a photo challenge. The photo inspiration is at the bottom. Unbetaed (I could actually use a beta for my DW stuff, if anyone's interested), but edited enough that it's bearable (though still a bit blah near the middle). 2,862 words, which is much more than I was expecting to write. Enjoy.
The sand was more like gravel, and the water had a hypothermic icy chill, but at least that meant the ocean was blue and clear as opposed to the muddy, sandy green froth that oceans in many places tended to become. It was easy to forget how much salt was in the expanse of clear blue before her.
Abstractly, the thought hung in her mind that, at some indefinite point during the night, they were going to have to walk out into the water, and she wondered if the Doctor had puzzled it out yet. She wasn't entirely sure why, but she had been told-mostly in short, passing references conveyed with a sense of casual crypticism-that it was necessary, perhaps to show that they weren't gods who walked upon the surface. That was the only explanation her mind could offhandedly conjure. For the meantime, Rose was too busy enjoying the company of the blue-and-orange Cerellans that inhabited the planet, the lukewarm air holding a timelessness and a congenial, almost familial amity that made it seem like it (or any kind of change) would never actually come.
The Doctor had gotten absorbed in a group of children a ways down the beach from where she meandered, telling the time traveler's equivalent of a big fish story. Once upon a time, she had eaten up his every word like impossible truth from the mouth of a god, just like the kids were. But she knew better now. She'd been there; there was only one dragon.
Every once in a while, she would hear his Homeric voice exuberantly spouting exaggerations, and sometimes her responding, disbelieving laughter would prompt a response from those around her. So, more than once throughout the night as the sun slowly set, like a clock ticking down towards Cinderella's stroke of midnight, Rose found herself relaying the same story to the adults that the Doctor and the children were currently enraptured in, the way it actually happened. And, when she thought about it, maybe there had actually been more than one dragon. But not the legions he was talking about. Just two... or three. Five, at the most.
So she told her tale of four-ish dragons while he told his of a planet full of them, and somehow the natives exchanged glances that still said they knew better. They were, of course, too polite and far too amused to say anything.
Suddenly, halfway through one of their many stories about Daleks, Rose felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw the already-familiar, wizened, triangular face of Myeta, who was, to the best of Rose's understanding, the new leader whom they had helped to place in her traditional (“rightful”, many of the natives had said, though she wasn't sure if she ever liked the sound of that phrase) seat of power. Her smile was knowing, and it reassured Rose against worries she hadn't even been aware she was holding. The woman's impossibly human, impossibly loving eyes redirected Rose's heavenwards, and Rose realized that the sun had already set without her realizing it. The sky was now dominated by a massive, pristinely white moon that seemed to take up half of the black canvas above them. The light it cast across the beach was like a suspended sunrise, fresh and new, but with the sleepy, melancholy, impossible static energy of a sunset.
“It's a good omen,” she informed Rose, her voice slightly belabored. By her age, her kindness, the long day, or the effort of speaking itself, Rose knew not.
“Is it, now?” Rose replied conversationally, not sure whether she was humoring Myeta or the old woman was humoring her.
“Yes. You and your Doctor will have very much good luck.”
Rose smiled a bit, her eyes laughing for her. “I figure the universe must be fond of us as it is. S'pose it's good to know it'll keep up.”
“I feel sorry for the universe the day it gives up on you.”
“It best not, for all the times we've kept from giving up on it.”
Myeta's eyes glittered for a second, bright and sparkling with knowledge, before she turned to walk to the moonlit, otherworldly stretch where the glistening water met the resilient, smooth stones beneath their feet. Rose thought she heard a quiet, rumbling “Come” from her friend, but she would have followed her regardless because her captivating eyes had not yet dismissed her: they held strongly onto Rose's very soul. Slowly, easily, with the natural organization of those who knew exactly what was going on, the others Rose had been talking to slowly began to fall into step behind the pair. The Doctor's group had to be awoken to the outside world, at which point the Doctor magnanimously released the kids from the rest of the story, and, after a few seconds of disappointment, the easily distracted group began to race excitedly down to meet their parents. The Doctor himself strode up, hands shoved in his pockets, with an air of casualty that Rose knew was hiding a biting curiosity. Unsurprisingly to Rose but apparently rather shockingly to the Doctor, the pair were pushed to the center of the gathering, and therefore the center of attention.
“What's this about, then?” he asked, self-consciously standing a little bit taller and looking at the situation down his nose.
Myeta made her way between them, stopping right where only the occasional overachieving wave could reach the edge of her feet, and stood with her back to the expansive ocean. She made an orchestrated gesture or two, and two of the crowd emerged, one behind Rose and the other behind the Doctor, to take their coats. The Doctor made a fuss for a minute or two about the coat being a gift (“Janis Joplin”), but the rather extraordinarily tall, bright-faced individual who had taken his coat assured him that they'd take good care of it and he would want it dry later.
Rose jokingly told him to play nice, and at that point he begrudgingly relinquished not only his jacket but all of his suit pieces until he was remaining staunchly protective of his shirt and the alien, arms already belabored with fabric, still held out his free hand, expecting the garment. Rose herself had been stripped down to her undershirt, and she was insanely glad that this particular race understood the human stigma about mammary glands, even if they didn't share it.
It was Myeta's eventual “Doctor, the garment will do you no good wet. Even less in the ocean.” that seemed to knock him off his guard enough to give up the shirt. Rose certainly wasn't reveling in the slow, casual revealing of rare skin from the Doctor as he unbuttoned his shirt, and if she darted her tongue out across her lips for a second while glancing down at his bare torso, it was because the salt in the air was chapping her lips.
As the two with their clothes returned to their legions, a second pair broke rank to bring forth... two colored cloths? One was pink and the other was yellow, and the Doctor's brow screwed up a little a he watched them proceed. It was a far less intense version of the look he always had just before the answer to a long-suffered mystery occurred to him, and Rose wasn't sure what to make of it.
Myeta took Rose's left hand, tying the yellow cloth around it, and then the Doctor's left, tying the pink one around his own palm. She tugged their two hands together and fit them around one another, and when Rose looked up from Myeta's actions to the Doctor's face, the almost-realization had blossomed into barely-restrained horror. When Rose looked back, Myeta's old face seemed to have taken on a rather sinister quality, the motion of raising their clasped hands over her head like showing a freshly-caught carcass as a trophy before taking the best and throwing the remains to the pack.
“You have been brought to us by greater powers, just as you have been brought to each other. All here recognize this, and it is past time you show our Mother you recognize this as well.”
Her words were cryptic through the lens of panic Rose instinctively put on, and when she moved to step under their raised arms, Rose almost pulled away. It was only the fact that it's his hand she's clasping, the fact that no other position would make her more ready to make a hasty getaway, that kept her from doing so.
Myeta, however, continued to defy expectation without a care in the world. Once she had walked under their linked hands, the pair of time travelers now between her and the sea, she leaned in, still all-knowing and conspiratory, whispering “She is not your Mother, I know, but it is important to my people. I only wish you recognize it to each other, but I know you need a push.”
Smiling still, she gave them a small, literal push towards the sea, enough to get their feet wet in their stumbling. The Doctor began to wade purposefully, nervously through the water, and Rose, nonplussed, let herself be led along. Their hands weren't literally bound together, but there was very little that could get her to let go of his hand at that moment, regardless.
Once they were both knee-deep, the Doctor risked a glance over his shoulder and suddenly stopped, letting Rose pull even with him. He leaned closer to whisper, and Rose's heart had never been beating faster. “Rose, I think I misunderstood. This... this isn't just a celebration because we helped overthrow a corrupt colonial government. This... I think this is a wedding.”
The knot of panic in Rose's stomach untangled, but the one in her chest kept her heart beating just as frantically for entirely different reasons. “What, a wedding? That's it? From the look on your face, I was afraid we were gonna have to swim for our lives from the civilization we just saved.”
“Rose...” The Doctor's already visible nerves stood more on end as he reached to tug at the hair on the back of his neck. “Rose, the wedding is ours. Traditionally, the Cerellan leaders have to approve all marriages, and they have the power to... sort of coerce one, if two members are too shy or awkward or otherwise unable to recognize their feelings, or for more... political reasons. So long as no one protests. I'd imagine this is her way of saying that she's going to stick to all of the old rules. Or... thanking us or something.”
Everything he said after ours blurred together into his general nervous explanation, because even though Rose didn't let it show, it sent a little trill through her heart.
After a moment, when she was sure he was done, she leaned in closer and looked up at him around her eyebrows, somehow managing to convey the impression of looking patronizingly down at someone even though she was looking a whole head upwards. “Doctor, it's no big deal,” even though her heart said otherwise, “We've been married before. 'Snot like it matters. No need to make a scene, right?”
He paused for a moment, considering. Her blasé attitude about the whole thing obviously wasn't what he was expecting. They had been married before, sure, but those were all life-or-death scenarios. They hadn't ever just... done it for the heck of it.
After a moment, he nodded. “If it's alright with you.”
“Yeah, course. Just tell me where to stand and when to pucker up.” The edge of her tongue caught teasingly in her smile, and he wondered vaguely if she meant the subtext that it sent along with the off-handed comment.
“Not much left, really,” he commented casually, like it didn't make a difference what everything she said actually meant. A little worried about what everyone back on the shore was thinking, he began to pull her along again, deeper into the water that they were both just beginning to realize was freezing. As the adrenaline faded into butterflies and awkwardness, they were just two friends walking, hand in hand and considerably more naked than usual, deeper into the freezing ocean of an alien planet. “We basically just wade until it's up to about our shoulders and then duck underwater for our kiss.”
“Wha...” Rose's feet failed her, dumbfounded, but the Doctor continued to pull her along through the water's resistance. If either of them stopped, they would get distracted from the goal and caught up in implications, and that's very dangerous territory when you're getting married to your best friend that you live with for not-the-first-time.
“Don't believe in much fuss, the Cerellans,” the Doctor added distractedly, launching into a dissertation on alien culture that his heart wasn't in and her mind was too over-stimulated to process.
Suddenly, he stopped. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a footstep, he glanced back at the shore and then down at her. “Should be far enough, don't you think?”
Her eyes followed the same path, and she nodded. “So, do we lock lips before we take the plunge, or do we have to fumble around for each other's faces underwater?” The words were supposed to be joking, but, partly because of the unenthusiastic smile that goes with them, they fell flat.
“If I remember correctly, it's rather a faux pas to start kissing before we're both underwater... either that, or no one cares and I'm being paranoid.” He scratched the back of his neck with his left hand again, and Rose was even less enthusiastic.
“But it's salt water! How am I supposed to find your face?”
“It's okay. I'll be able to see.” There was a long pause, both nervous and thinking the other was only bearing this because they had been pressured into it. No longer did it seem like a good idea or the easiest way out of an interesting social mess. Neither dared turn back now, though. “Ready, Rose?”
She stared at him a long, heavy moment before she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I'm getting any more ready.”
The chilly, world-obliterating salt water covered each of them at approximately the same time, and before Rose could even get her bearings back from the rush of cold, cold liquid, a pair of (comparatively) warm lips were on hers. Her stomach was full of butterflies and her heart was mush, but she let her mouth peek open a little, and she swore he must've too, because she felt distinctly like she was breathing his air.
They hadn't agreed on when or how to pull away, but her lips were moving and so were his, and, for the moment, she didn't really want to stop. She had a feeling she was going to have dreams about this (dreams that started like this, the frigid ocean fighting the heat building inside of her until the cold water mattered less and less), and she wasn't really ready to let the moment end, regardless of what he was thinking, because they'd agreed and it felt so natural and words weren't there to mess it up. It was only the deep, overriding, all-encompassing need for oxygen that eventually made her pull away from the desperate kiss and come crashing back to the surface for an equally desperate breath of air.
Her reemergence was met with distant cheers, and she half-noticed that it was a long moment before the Doctor joined her in the startling reality of the salty air.
~*~*~*~
Back in the TARDIS, toweling off, Rose suddenly broke the strangely comfortable silence. “That was our fifth wedding, y'know.”
“Really?” The Doctor asks in return, like he had really lost track of such a small number.
“Feel like we need to celebrate or something... y'know. Running, hopping, swimming, and marrying for our lives.” He wasn't sure where she was going, and she wasn't sure why she'd even brought it up or why it mattered (okay, that last part was a lie), but he humored her and she humored herself anyway.
“And just what did you have in mind?”
She pondered for a moment, and was quickly struck with an absolutely brilliant idea. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
“Ice cream.”
The Doctor smiled, strolling towards the kitchen. “I think we can manage that.”
Rose smiled brightly and followed him, ideas forming in her head. This might not be a half-bad way to test the waters, actually. If he was still putting up with getting married to her again and again a while down the road, then maybe it'd be okay to push a little bit farther.
For now, the chocolate mingling in her mouth with the fading taste of salt and Doctor was as far as she needed to go. She was definitely going to dream about days that started this way.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairings/Characters: Ten/Rose, OC Aliens
Rating: T (I got sick of the G-R rating system already, go figure)
Notes: Written for Challenge 92 over at then_theres_us, which is a photo challenge. The photo inspiration is at the bottom. Unbetaed (I could actually use a beta for my DW stuff, if anyone's interested), but edited enough that it's bearable (though still a bit blah near the middle). 2,862 words, which is much more than I was expecting to write. Enjoy.
The sand was more like gravel, and the water had a hypothermic icy chill, but at least that meant the ocean was blue and clear as opposed to the muddy, sandy green froth that oceans in many places tended to become. It was easy to forget how much salt was in the expanse of clear blue before her.
Abstractly, the thought hung in her mind that, at some indefinite point during the night, they were going to have to walk out into the water, and she wondered if the Doctor had puzzled it out yet. She wasn't entirely sure why, but she had been told-mostly in short, passing references conveyed with a sense of casual crypticism-that it was necessary, perhaps to show that they weren't gods who walked upon the surface. That was the only explanation her mind could offhandedly conjure. For the meantime, Rose was too busy enjoying the company of the blue-and-orange Cerellans that inhabited the planet, the lukewarm air holding a timelessness and a congenial, almost familial amity that made it seem like it (or any kind of change) would never actually come.
The Doctor had gotten absorbed in a group of children a ways down the beach from where she meandered, telling the time traveler's equivalent of a big fish story. Once upon a time, she had eaten up his every word like impossible truth from the mouth of a god, just like the kids were. But she knew better now. She'd been there; there was only one dragon.
Every once in a while, she would hear his Homeric voice exuberantly spouting exaggerations, and sometimes her responding, disbelieving laughter would prompt a response from those around her. So, more than once throughout the night as the sun slowly set, like a clock ticking down towards Cinderella's stroke of midnight, Rose found herself relaying the same story to the adults that the Doctor and the children were currently enraptured in, the way it actually happened. And, when she thought about it, maybe there had actually been more than one dragon. But not the legions he was talking about. Just two... or three. Five, at the most.
So she told her tale of four-ish dragons while he told his of a planet full of them, and somehow the natives exchanged glances that still said they knew better. They were, of course, too polite and far too amused to say anything.
Suddenly, halfway through one of their many stories about Daleks, Rose felt a hand on her shoulder. Turning around, she saw the already-familiar, wizened, triangular face of Myeta, who was, to the best of Rose's understanding, the new leader whom they had helped to place in her traditional (“rightful”, many of the natives had said, though she wasn't sure if she ever liked the sound of that phrase) seat of power. Her smile was knowing, and it reassured Rose against worries she hadn't even been aware she was holding. The woman's impossibly human, impossibly loving eyes redirected Rose's heavenwards, and Rose realized that the sun had already set without her realizing it. The sky was now dominated by a massive, pristinely white moon that seemed to take up half of the black canvas above them. The light it cast across the beach was like a suspended sunrise, fresh and new, but with the sleepy, melancholy, impossible static energy of a sunset.
“It's a good omen,” she informed Rose, her voice slightly belabored. By her age, her kindness, the long day, or the effort of speaking itself, Rose knew not.
“Is it, now?” Rose replied conversationally, not sure whether she was humoring Myeta or the old woman was humoring her.
“Yes. You and your Doctor will have very much good luck.”
Rose smiled a bit, her eyes laughing for her. “I figure the universe must be fond of us as it is. S'pose it's good to know it'll keep up.”
“I feel sorry for the universe the day it gives up on you.”
“It best not, for all the times we've kept from giving up on it.”
Myeta's eyes glittered for a second, bright and sparkling with knowledge, before she turned to walk to the moonlit, otherworldly stretch where the glistening water met the resilient, smooth stones beneath their feet. Rose thought she heard a quiet, rumbling “Come” from her friend, but she would have followed her regardless because her captivating eyes had not yet dismissed her: they held strongly onto Rose's very soul. Slowly, easily, with the natural organization of those who knew exactly what was going on, the others Rose had been talking to slowly began to fall into step behind the pair. The Doctor's group had to be awoken to the outside world, at which point the Doctor magnanimously released the kids from the rest of the story, and, after a few seconds of disappointment, the easily distracted group began to race excitedly down to meet their parents. The Doctor himself strode up, hands shoved in his pockets, with an air of casualty that Rose knew was hiding a biting curiosity. Unsurprisingly to Rose but apparently rather shockingly to the Doctor, the pair were pushed to the center of the gathering, and therefore the center of attention.
“What's this about, then?” he asked, self-consciously standing a little bit taller and looking at the situation down his nose.
Myeta made her way between them, stopping right where only the occasional overachieving wave could reach the edge of her feet, and stood with her back to the expansive ocean. She made an orchestrated gesture or two, and two of the crowd emerged, one behind Rose and the other behind the Doctor, to take their coats. The Doctor made a fuss for a minute or two about the coat being a gift (“Janis Joplin”), but the rather extraordinarily tall, bright-faced individual who had taken his coat assured him that they'd take good care of it and he would want it dry later.
Rose jokingly told him to play nice, and at that point he begrudgingly relinquished not only his jacket but all of his suit pieces until he was remaining staunchly protective of his shirt and the alien, arms already belabored with fabric, still held out his free hand, expecting the garment. Rose herself had been stripped down to her undershirt, and she was insanely glad that this particular race understood the human stigma about mammary glands, even if they didn't share it.
It was Myeta's eventual “Doctor, the garment will do you no good wet. Even less in the ocean.” that seemed to knock him off his guard enough to give up the shirt. Rose certainly wasn't reveling in the slow, casual revealing of rare skin from the Doctor as he unbuttoned his shirt, and if she darted her tongue out across her lips for a second while glancing down at his bare torso, it was because the salt in the air was chapping her lips.
As the two with their clothes returned to their legions, a second pair broke rank to bring forth... two colored cloths? One was pink and the other was yellow, and the Doctor's brow screwed up a little a he watched them proceed. It was a far less intense version of the look he always had just before the answer to a long-suffered mystery occurred to him, and Rose wasn't sure what to make of it.
Myeta took Rose's left hand, tying the yellow cloth around it, and then the Doctor's left, tying the pink one around his own palm. She tugged their two hands together and fit them around one another, and when Rose looked up from Myeta's actions to the Doctor's face, the almost-realization had blossomed into barely-restrained horror. When Rose looked back, Myeta's old face seemed to have taken on a rather sinister quality, the motion of raising their clasped hands over her head like showing a freshly-caught carcass as a trophy before taking the best and throwing the remains to the pack.
“You have been brought to us by greater powers, just as you have been brought to each other. All here recognize this, and it is past time you show our Mother you recognize this as well.”
Her words were cryptic through the lens of panic Rose instinctively put on, and when she moved to step under their raised arms, Rose almost pulled away. It was only the fact that it's his hand she's clasping, the fact that no other position would make her more ready to make a hasty getaway, that kept her from doing so.
Myeta, however, continued to defy expectation without a care in the world. Once she had walked under their linked hands, the pair of time travelers now between her and the sea, she leaned in, still all-knowing and conspiratory, whispering “She is not your Mother, I know, but it is important to my people. I only wish you recognize it to each other, but I know you need a push.”
Smiling still, she gave them a small, literal push towards the sea, enough to get their feet wet in their stumbling. The Doctor began to wade purposefully, nervously through the water, and Rose, nonplussed, let herself be led along. Their hands weren't literally bound together, but there was very little that could get her to let go of his hand at that moment, regardless.
Once they were both knee-deep, the Doctor risked a glance over his shoulder and suddenly stopped, letting Rose pull even with him. He leaned closer to whisper, and Rose's heart had never been beating faster. “Rose, I think I misunderstood. This... this isn't just a celebration because we helped overthrow a corrupt colonial government. This... I think this is a wedding.”
The knot of panic in Rose's stomach untangled, but the one in her chest kept her heart beating just as frantically for entirely different reasons. “What, a wedding? That's it? From the look on your face, I was afraid we were gonna have to swim for our lives from the civilization we just saved.”
“Rose...” The Doctor's already visible nerves stood more on end as he reached to tug at the hair on the back of his neck. “Rose, the wedding is ours. Traditionally, the Cerellan leaders have to approve all marriages, and they have the power to... sort of coerce one, if two members are too shy or awkward or otherwise unable to recognize their feelings, or for more... political reasons. So long as no one protests. I'd imagine this is her way of saying that she's going to stick to all of the old rules. Or... thanking us or something.”
Everything he said after ours blurred together into his general nervous explanation, because even though Rose didn't let it show, it sent a little trill through her heart.
After a moment, when she was sure he was done, she leaned in closer and looked up at him around her eyebrows, somehow managing to convey the impression of looking patronizingly down at someone even though she was looking a whole head upwards. “Doctor, it's no big deal,” even though her heart said otherwise, “We've been married before. 'Snot like it matters. No need to make a scene, right?”
He paused for a moment, considering. Her blasé attitude about the whole thing obviously wasn't what he was expecting. They had been married before, sure, but those were all life-or-death scenarios. They hadn't ever just... done it for the heck of it.
After a moment, he nodded. “If it's alright with you.”
“Yeah, course. Just tell me where to stand and when to pucker up.” The edge of her tongue caught teasingly in her smile, and he wondered vaguely if she meant the subtext that it sent along with the off-handed comment.
“Not much left, really,” he commented casually, like it didn't make a difference what everything she said actually meant. A little worried about what everyone back on the shore was thinking, he began to pull her along again, deeper into the water that they were both just beginning to realize was freezing. As the adrenaline faded into butterflies and awkwardness, they were just two friends walking, hand in hand and considerably more naked than usual, deeper into the freezing ocean of an alien planet. “We basically just wade until it's up to about our shoulders and then duck underwater for our kiss.”
“Wha...” Rose's feet failed her, dumbfounded, but the Doctor continued to pull her along through the water's resistance. If either of them stopped, they would get distracted from the goal and caught up in implications, and that's very dangerous territory when you're getting married to your best friend that you live with for not-the-first-time.
“Don't believe in much fuss, the Cerellans,” the Doctor added distractedly, launching into a dissertation on alien culture that his heart wasn't in and her mind was too over-stimulated to process.
Suddenly, he stopped. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a footstep, he glanced back at the shore and then down at her. “Should be far enough, don't you think?”
Her eyes followed the same path, and she nodded. “So, do we lock lips before we take the plunge, or do we have to fumble around for each other's faces underwater?” The words were supposed to be joking, but, partly because of the unenthusiastic smile that goes with them, they fell flat.
“If I remember correctly, it's rather a faux pas to start kissing before we're both underwater... either that, or no one cares and I'm being paranoid.” He scratched the back of his neck with his left hand again, and Rose was even less enthusiastic.
“But it's salt water! How am I supposed to find your face?”
“It's okay. I'll be able to see.” There was a long pause, both nervous and thinking the other was only bearing this because they had been pressured into it. No longer did it seem like a good idea or the easiest way out of an interesting social mess. Neither dared turn back now, though. “Ready, Rose?”
She stared at him a long, heavy moment before she nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, I don't think I'm getting any more ready.”
The chilly, world-obliterating salt water covered each of them at approximately the same time, and before Rose could even get her bearings back from the rush of cold, cold liquid, a pair of (comparatively) warm lips were on hers. Her stomach was full of butterflies and her heart was mush, but she let her mouth peek open a little, and she swore he must've too, because she felt distinctly like she was breathing his air.
They hadn't agreed on when or how to pull away, but her lips were moving and so were his, and, for the moment, she didn't really want to stop. She had a feeling she was going to have dreams about this (dreams that started like this, the frigid ocean fighting the heat building inside of her until the cold water mattered less and less), and she wasn't really ready to let the moment end, regardless of what he was thinking, because they'd agreed and it felt so natural and words weren't there to mess it up. It was only the deep, overriding, all-encompassing need for oxygen that eventually made her pull away from the desperate kiss and come crashing back to the surface for an equally desperate breath of air.
Her reemergence was met with distant cheers, and she half-noticed that it was a long moment before the Doctor joined her in the startling reality of the salty air.
~*~*~*~
Back in the TARDIS, toweling off, Rose suddenly broke the strangely comfortable silence. “That was our fifth wedding, y'know.”
“Really?” The Doctor asks in return, like he had really lost track of such a small number.
“Feel like we need to celebrate or something... y'know. Running, hopping, swimming, and marrying for our lives.” He wasn't sure where she was going, and she wasn't sure why she'd even brought it up or why it mattered (okay, that last part was a lie), but he humored her and she humored herself anyway.
“And just what did you have in mind?”
She pondered for a moment, and was quickly struck with an absolutely brilliant idea. “Ice cream.”
“Ice cream?”
“Ice cream.”
The Doctor smiled, strolling towards the kitchen. “I think we can manage that.”
Rose smiled brightly and followed him, ideas forming in her head. This might not be a half-bad way to test the waters, actually. If he was still putting up with getting married to her again and again a while down the road, then maybe it'd be okay to push a little bit farther.
For now, the chocolate mingling in her mouth with the fading taste of salt and Doctor was as far as she needed to go. She was definitely going to dream about days that started this way.