|| save it 'til the morning after ||
Rose Tyler was a messy sleeper. She hogged the covers, she tossed and turned, she used the entire length of her pillow, and sometimes -- just sometimes -- she kicked around when the dreams weren't as peaceful.
Rose Tyler always dreamt. She could count the nights she'd felt passed in a blink with one hand, and the nights of plain dark with the other. Most of her dreams hazed into one another, and by the time morning came she barely remembered tiny bits. They weren't the things of giant floating bananas and abstract shapes telling her to brush her teeth along her horse's, even after opening her eyes to the vastness of time and space -- they were regular school visits, familiar faces, exciting adventures, starring both brown eyes and blue, and a TARDIS that was both bigger and smaller than it already was when she was awake.
Rose Tyler always woke up alone. Once upon a time, and very ocassionally, long arms wrapped her, a four-rhythm beat rocked her, and with a very, very rare snore. But only around the beginning, for they were never there when she woke up. That had always been alright; she'd learnt to distinguish the brush of those arms leaving her own while half-asleep, a subconscious warning of the empty side she'd open her eyes to. She found the disappointment wore off in a blink if she was prepared for what was coming. Busy mind like his, better anatomy like his -- she understood.
This time, however, exhaustion and warmth had rendered her still. She moved only to stretch, she turned only to follow. Her tired mind was too busy making sure to process her experiences and storing them into her memory to come up with anything other than a few short flashes of something akin to daydreams. And, when the Doctor's arm left her side, her mind let her in on the regular consequential knowledge. Like muscle memory, as if no nights alone had ever happened, as if the dream had extended for years only to end in a way to tie her back into this reality she might as well had never left.
Rose woke up a long while later, expecting all three things to be as they had always been (messy sleep, barely-remembered dreams, a vacant lukewarm bedside), so she took her time to really open her eyes and bring her body back to movement. It was a bit sore and in the back of her mind she knew she would be, enough for her not to question why. She drew in a raggedy breath and transformed it into a stretch, tasting the coolness of that morning, when--
Something hot and solid knocked against her legs. Or, rather, her legs knocked against it. Suddenly, her pillow moved underneath her ear. Sounds that weren't hers came from past her head's resting place. Rose turned, careful not to make the bed jump, and she froze.
The Doctor was... still asleep. Right there. Both beside and under her. Rose's mind was too used to what it meant for his arm to leave, so it hadn't considered that maybe he'd just turned. Moved, but not away. Maybe they'd both moved together. She wasn't sure. She didn't know. What she did know, though, was that the slack of his jaw was something she hardly ever got to see. He mumbled voicelessly, but his breaths were quiet. His brow was tender and the creases of his forehead were just that -- worn-out skin, wrinkles, not full-on canyons. And his eyes...
She honestly didn't remember having seen him so calm before.
Rose couldn't breathe, didn't dare to make a sound that could wake him. For a long, long moment, as she deprived herself from oxygen, she was entirely and fully convinced she'd be willing to do anything the universe asked of her to let him rest as he was. But then she had to breathe again and her arms started to get tired. I still would've done it if I hadn't taken a bloody beatin', she groaned to herself as she tried to lean back down and find a position where she could still look at him. But the Doctor didn't even stir. He was probably as knackered as she was...
Rose rested her chin on her hand, gingerly pressing on the Doctor's chest, and quieted down as much as she possibly could. She had to fight the urge to touch his face, though; to brush his sideburns, to draw new lines on his skin. She knew better -- it'd wake him up and scare him in a nasty way, just like it now happened with her. The subtle rocking of his heartbeats made her eyelashes flutter amid the quell of his room until she slowed down her very blinks. The Doctor's steady rhythm soothed away the events and lingering anxiety of the previous day like the washing of morning waves against a sand that had been dry for too long. Rose lost track of time in the serenity of that moment, the first in which she really felt suspended away from a passing second.
