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It had, the Doctor thought as he froze to death, been a cunning plan at the time, inasmuch as he planned anything. Which he never did.
Still, the usual combination of Kill The Villain and Save The Planet had worked out. It was the consequences that hadn't been quite as well received. The people of Tellian 6 were pleased to be liberated, but not so pleased at the fact that their social infrastructure was now in chaos, and that their favourite pop idols had been killed in the process.
He and Rose had tried to explain that the members of the duo Yassi Madulla had realised that they were binding the citizens of their world in a government-enforced brainwashing scheme, and had sacrificed themselves in the process, but the Tellians were not particularly impressed. Personally, the Doctor thought that Yassi was crap anyway, and the universe was better off.
Unfortunately, the trumped up charges and the judge did not agree, and he was sent to Rura Penthe, an enforced labor camp somewhere on the fringes of the fringes of known space, to mine until he was dead. The Doctor hadn't bothered to point out that such a sentence could be a while for him.
After the last incident, he'd decided it was best to teach Rose to drive the TARDIS, at least insomuch as to get where and when he himself was. The TARDIS had, fortunately, agreed, and Rose had beaten him to the prison planet by a week. Unfortunately, in trying to break him out, she got herself caught and sentenced to labour that was either Not-So-Hard or Ridiculously-Hard, depending on your point of view, but in most civilised minds, rather distasteful. Naturally, the Doctor couldn't stand for that...but he couldn't get to Rose, who was being kept in a holding cell until the warden arrived back from his vacation. He couldn't really get much of anywhere without freezing or being beaten up rather badly.
So Plan C became Get TARDIS and Fetch Rose, and by the end of five days, he was running out of ways to do that, until a rather convenient riot over blankets led to his escape. Escape in any way and at any time possible.
Thus, Rura Penthe. Thus, freezing to death.
The suit really hadn't been the best wardrobe choice, in the long run. Even though he didn't usually go back to outfits, he decided that a nice scarf and a waistcoat would have been fantastic right about now. Not thin pinstripes that he could feel the wind blowing through at every turn. Not bloody canvas trainers, for fuck's sake. That had been the worst choice. And, if he didn't get his arse back to the TARDIS straight away, he was going to have to pick out a new wardrobe anyhow. Something sensible, this time, he resolved. Dignified yet bloody warm. Perhaps with layers. Rose was always harping about how layers were 'in', and even though he tried to tell her that her version of 'in' was very limited in the grand scheme of things, this time she had a point.
This winter, he thought, warm is the new black.
It had come to the point where this was exceedingly funny. A human would have been dead by now and not making exceedingly bad jokes, nor babbling to himself. But the Doctor, as he liked to point out regularly, was not human. Instead, he was just very, very bad off.
He could feel the TARDIS in his mind, and that was how he knew he was going in the right direction. But the TARDIS could not come to him, and she was ten miles off on this frozen steppe that never seemed to end. It was windy, but at least it wasn't snowing, which would have made things entirely unbearable.
Thinking a little, he wondered how Rose would take the regeneration this time. She would feel guilty, he decided. This time, she would think it was her fault, and she would leave. Of course, that depended on whether he even reached the TARDIS in time to keep his new self from dying as well...and the self after that...by that point, he might just lie down and die, he thought. The last of the Time Lords, felled by a giant freezer box.
Quite literally felled, because now he'd tripped, the sole of his Chuck Taylor committing suicide. And this time he wasn't about to get up. The snow was slightly warmer. If I'd had any sense at all, he thought, I would have built an igloo while I still had the strength. Being single-minded was only occasionally handy, and this had not been one of those times.
Unfortunately, dying all the way was going to take a lot longer, even if he couldn't get up. So he began to go through all of the limericks he could think of, beginning in English and working his way through all of the other languages (including Camparian, where the form was illegal), and adding bawdy lines where he saw fit.
He had just reached something quite untranslatable when he heard a noise. Or he thought he heard a noise. The noise was not the wind, which automatically made it distinguishable. It sounded like a machine. Unfortunately, the Doctor couldn't be arsed to get up and wave. He squinted into the distance, where, indeed, there was a machine approaching. Moving. With someone on it, due to intercept.
The Doctor decided to keep reciting limericks. Which was what he was doing when Rose Tyler stopped the...well, the best word was probably snowmobile, with spiked wheels and resembling an ATV...next to him and got off.
"You're all blue," she said, kneeling next to him in the snow. He noticed she had far more clothing on than she had when he'd last seen her. Including furs. "Bloody stupid, going out like that."
He felt the need to finish the poem before responding. "It was to save you, I might state in my defense."
"Do I look like I needed saving?" Rose snapped, sounding remarkably like her mother. "Here I am. I got us transport, whereas you got yourself frostbite, never mind me." She walked behind him, bent down, and scooped him up under the armpits. "Get up, then..."
"Can't. Legs won't work. Shame, I liked these legs."
She paused, half-dragging him to the snowbike, and he wondered how she'd learned to do this. "You're not gonna..."
He shrugged as much as he could in that position. "Might."
"Doctor..."
"Honestly, Rose, I'm not in the best state, yeah? Right now I need to get somewhere warm, have some tea, and fast. Make sure I don't fall asleep, all right?" This time he was deadly serious, and he could tell she knew it by the fact that she didn't say anything at all, only hauled him on to ride pillion in front of her.
"So where's the TARDIS, then?"
"You went out without knowing where to go?"
Giving him a glare, Rose tapped a panel with her mittened hand. "They use these to find prisoners. Detects heat at fifty miles."
"Oh." There was a long pause. "Do I even want to know what you did to escape and get one?"
"Not really." Her voice was breezy, but he could tell that now wasn't the time to push. So he directed her towards the TARDIS, and with a jolt or two (Rose hadn't ever got the hang of manual transmissions, much less non-human ones), they were off.
A few minutes later, Rose asked, "So what were you saying when I came to find you?" It was obvious from her tone of voice that she was hoping it was, say, an ode to a lost lover, or a declaration of immovability. The Doctor toyed with the idea of telling her it was John Paul Jones' full speech from the deck of the Bonhomme Richard, in Gaelic, but decided she wouldn't know who or what he was talking about. And he was too tired, for once, to lie. This worried him immensely (or would have, if he wasn't so tired).
"Limericks," he said quietly.
"Sorry?"
"Lim-ricks. Poems. Five lines, A-A-B-B-A. Usually bawdy." He paused again, then shivered and instinctively drew closer to her as the wind bit down. "Actually, all of the ones I was quoting were bawdy. Like this one...'There once was a girl from Nantucket/Whose cu--'"
She blushed, or at least, he thought she did. "Know that one."
"Oh. What about 'There once was a fellow called Tucker/Who, instructing a novice coc--'"
"Know that one too. You're not well, Doctor," Rose said, but she was laughing. "It didn't sound like English, when I saw you. Sounded French."
"I'd run out of English ones and gone on to other languages." He rolled his eyes. "Wasn't French. That was Euskara. Basque. They're dirty bastards, some of them. At least, those who write the limericks."
"What did it say? In English."
"I couldn't possibly."
"It's that bad?"
But before he could answer, they had run into the TARDIS, almost literally, and Rose hauled him off the bike before she pulled out her TARDIS key and opened the door. The Doctor found that he didn't want her to not be touching him, which unnerved him immensely. The whole dying alone in a white field, while romantic, had definitely done a number on his mind. Not that he was particularly sane to begin with.
"Legs still don't work," he announced, trying to get up and failing. "Even if they do, eventually, without me being dead, I'll probably lose a toe. Never lost one before. At least not without the rest of the foot."
Rose was looking at him like he was mad. Then she dragged him inside the TARDIS and shut the door firmly behind them. The snow on their attire had already begun to melt.
The Doctor couldn't see particularly well at the moment (which was to say, he could see about as well as a human could), things were foggy, but for all he could tell, Rose was stripping down. In his state of mind, he didn't even bother to pretend to be Not Looking. In fact, he gingerly blinked a few times, stricken. What the hell is she wearing?
"Rose," he said. She didn't notice. "Rose," he said again, louder. "Not very practical. Why are you wearing something that came off the Ann Summers back catalo--oh." He cut himself off as he realised why. "Never mind, sorry..."
"Let's check these toes then," she said, ignoring his statement as she pushed him to one side of the console. He didn't need to look down as she pulled the Chucks off his feet. It didn't hurt. Not hurting was a bad sign, he knew that, and her sudden intake of breath wasn't a good one either. "All right, trousers next. Lets get you into something dry, get some tea on, and we'll figure out what to do from there."
"But..." This violated a cardinal rule: Never Be Naked In Front Of Companion. Or Even Remotely Naked. It Gives Them Ideas. Never mind that he'd broke it multiple times... And obviously, Rose wasn't listening. Right now he didn't even care, because he was starting to hurt. Lots. And he was cold. And though he knew it must have taken her at least five minutes to get his clothes off, them being wet and him being fairly limp, he was quite suddenly very naked.
It still hurt, and he tried to tell her this, especially now that the TARDIS, bless her, had finally decided to turn up the heat in there, but all he could think of was a dirty poem involving blonde women. He blinked again, trying to will it back. It hurt to blink.
After he opened his eyes again, he found that Rose was standing there looking down at him. "Got yourself in a bad spot, Doctor, but you're not going to die. Just need to get you warm, inside and out." And she started dragging him again. It hurt to be dragged, though he was busy having a mental fit over the fact that he'd broken Cardinal Rule 1.ZZ.iii. And in between the hurting he could feel the drag of some rather nice satin against his back, which was quite nice, even though he'd BROKEN CARDINAL RULE 1.ZZ.iii, AGAIN, DAMN IT TO HELL AND OTHER PLACES. Not to mention he could hear her heartbeat speed up.
"Okay, Doctor. I'm going to get you all tucked in, warm and dry, and then I'll get the tea on."
Now he was in bed. How did he get to bed? And how the hell did he get to bed with Rose in a satin negligee and her voice like that? Perhaps he was hallucinating one hell of a hallucination. Closing his eyes, he took stock of himself...oh, this was bad. Very bad. And not just because of the cardinal rule. "Rose?" he said again, or rather croaked. "Rose, I..."
He couldn't think of anything to say that wouldn't offend her immensely (human women never understood anything, or chose not to). So he cut himself off, then said...croaked..."I don't know if tea's going to cut the mustard. I'm not warming up fast enough. Blood temperature's still down far too low."
It was obvious from the look on her face that this, on the surface, sounded like the worst pickup line in the world, but then her expression changed to intense worry. She couldn't bear it if I changed again. Would drive her mad, he realised. "What..." She chewed on her lower lip in thought, then appeared to have reached a conclusion. "Saw this on telly once. Don't get upset."
And then she shucked off the lingerie and crawled back up next to him. "Mountain climbers, right? 'S what they do, when someone freezes. Best way to warm someone up, right?"
Blushing hurt. His lack of control at the moment meant that something else hurt too. "Um. Yeah. I think I heard that once," he squeaked. But she was warm, lovely warm, and he found he could move enough now to get right up against her. Funny how that worked. Too funny.
"That's better, yeah? Little warmer?" She hadn't appeared to notice him blushing, or thought nothing of it, but her heartbeat had skyrocketed again. He was slightly tempted to read her mind, but it would be far too much of an effort right now. That kind of thing could kill him, at the moment. Besides, her voice was entirely concern.
"Some, yeah." He found he shivered a bit, uncontrollably. More than a bit, now. It was a good sign, but he didn't really know if she would create quite enough warmth on her own to get him back up to speed. A voice in the back of his head said that this sort of moment called for desperate measures, then another voice argued that such ideas would definitely be breaking 1.ZZ.iii, and then a third voice told the other two to shut up because Rose was saying something. Fortunately, she said it twice.
"Doctor..." The way she said it this time was enough to make him look over at her without moving his head too much. It was slightly disturbing, but he decided that retaining his composure was the best plan. Better to communicate in words instead of grunts. Or in limericks--he couldn't seem to get one out of his mind. "Our eyes are transfixed on her bre..."
"Yes?" he asked. Maybe a bit too hesitant, but then again, he wasn't well, was he, now.
"Doctor, listen to me. I'm going to try something, and swear you've never needed it so much."
The Doctor honestly had no idea what she was talking about. Honestly. And her hands were definitely below Acceptable Companion Space. "Rose, what are yo--" Then it wasn't just her hands, it was her mouth, and her lips, and all those human bits, and then...
He definitely didn't have control today, because if he had, he wouldn't have been breathing like this, and Rose wouldn't be anywhere remotely near where she was. Which was giving him a blowjob. It sent a jolt through him, both scaring him shitless and turning him on like mad, because it didn't hurt, and he nearly sat straight up in bed. There may have even been a bit of a cry.
"Rose," he moaned, though whether it was because he couldn't stop her from what he didn't want, or whether it was because he wanted more, he wasn't exactly certain. Mostly because he was lying to himself. Then she did something with her tongue that made him stop lying, a bit of a curvy thing that feathered right. there. and...
Mentally, he prayed for forgiveness from any deity that would listen. Most of them didn't really give a shit, he knew from experience. Most of them would probably applaud him.
And he was feeling quite a bit warmer, able to pick up her delicate touches down his skin, which also didn't hurt. It was, all in all, a fairly decent go at it, for a human. He also began to wonder where she learned how to do all of this...not just from bloody Mickey, he was certain of that. Much as he wanted to deny it, he could feel his hips beginning to move, to shift forward and press his cock into her mouth, her mouth which was so bloody warm that he wished she could take all of him like a blanket. (Then he wondered where the hell he got that idea--probably Almodovar or something.)
That thought was the end of his extracurricular critical commentary, because Rose had just moaned over him, the vibration and pressure adding to the warmth, and she'd done it just in the right spot. After that he stopped wondering.
The problem with this sort of thing was that he really didn't have much of a say in it, really couldn't do anything in return. Being a proactive type, the Doctor balked at this, not to mention the fact that it was really not doing much for gender equity. Despite his restraint, though, he was still moving into her mouth when she threw the next curveball.
Oh, he thought. That she has to have got from Mickey. And then he really just thought Oh a whole bunch of times, and said it, too, or rather moaned it again as he began to buck back down onto her hand, then up into her mouth (god, she had him all in there what the bloody...), uncertain as to which would be more preferable. Shutting his eyes, he decided it wouldn't be fair if he didn't at least make an attempt. And it would be defensible in court.
"Rose...are...are you sure this is a good..."
Apparently it was, as she slid another finger in, and he had never been so glad for human-similar biology in his entire life. Hips working more, he was breathing in gasps, now, and he couldn't pretend this was Not His Fault, oh definitely not anymore. Not when he was basically fucking her mouth, and her throat, and getting off on the brush of her hair against his thighs. Usually, it would have taken a while to get to this point, and he was still a bit concerned about the fact that she wasn't getting much out of it, but the point where he wasn't going to care was fast approaching. Usually he would have been mortified by his poor performance, but right now it didn't seem to matter. Instead, all that mattered was the rushing burn in his groin, the fire that he wished would spread to the rest of him.
Gasping, he seized up around her fingers, then bit his lip trying to will himself back. Fastest draw in the West, Doctor? one of the voices in his head asked, which was just enough to keep him from going, out of sheer spite. Even though she was doing even better things with her tongue, something he hadn't thought humans could really improve on, and was he really reaching down and grabbing her hair, oh yes he was. He hadn't thought he had that much strength in his hands at the moment, but he did. And now she was sucking even harder (white off rice) and her fingers slid to a rhythm that was new to him and he looked down where she was moving and moaning in accompaniment, which was pretty, beautiful in fact, he'd never noticed she could be that lovely...
And then he was finally warm. The rest of the orgasm, the shaking and the gasping and the pleasure and all the other things that there weren't words for in English, were really secondary to the heat of it. He didn't stop to think about what it might do to Rose, how she might feel, that it might be a bit odd...because now he was warm.
He could have kissed her, really, were her lips not still wrapped tightly around his cock. Instead, he fell back, releasing his hold on her hair, and closed his eyes, breathing hard, hearts pounding. Sex wasn't drastically different for most species, really, it just depended on what went where when, and right now, he was a bit overwrought.
"Rose..." he whispered, brushing the top of her head with his hand. "Was...that on the telly then? With the mountain climbers?" It was meant as an attempt at levity. He was usually good at levity. She didn't respond, merely stared at him for at least a minute, eyebrow curving up, and he realised that he'd buggered it up. Shit. "Didn't...I mean..." He paused. "Words aren't going to work, are they?"
Nothing. "Right," he said. Fortunately, by now, his hands were back into shape, so he did really the only thing that could improve matters: he reached down, pulled her up by her forearms, and kissed her. It wasn't a particularly romantic kiss...romance wasn't really what he wanted to imply at the moment. Nor was it, however, timid. It was a strong thank you of a kiss, with tongues, and the implication that they really didn't have to stop quite yet.
At least, that was what the Doctor meant. He hoped Rose would get it.
Which she did, or so it seemed from the fact that she started to kiss him back. More than kiss him, back, she was grinding her body into him, legs on either side, spread wide. He could feel the slick of her against his hip, the very warmth that he really just wanted to be in, the pounding of her heart through her clit. And then everything really just made sense, especially her moaning earlier.
Pulling back from the kiss, he looked up at her, wanting to make sure everything was sorted. "Rose, this..." But because of the way she looked at him, he stopped and kissed her again, rising up so that her body was pressed full against hers, chest moving so he could feel hers ("There once was a girl from East Lo--"). It took a moment or two before he was able to pull back enough to speak again. "This can't...can't be all the time, yeah?"
And then she kissed him, started sucking on his lower lip and moving her tongue against it, all salty bitter with him, but she was tense. He could feel it in her back. "Just...let me have this now, all right? Just once. You're going to die if I don't."
That sounded like such a line, and he was about to protest that he was feeling much better, but stopped himself as she continued. "Just this once. Let me help you," she said quietly, and as if to prove her point, she moved so his cock was between her legs, right up against her, making it basically impossible to protest in any way, even in a futile and merely polite manner. It hadn't been too long since he'd come, but his turnaround time, the last he'd checked (sooner than Rose would think) was fairly good...and she was doing that kind of thing with her body, the wriggling thing that female beings of this shape did which was ridiculously pleasing.
That, and he was beginning to suspect, now that he was on the mend, that she needed to forget something, or at least, have a memory to supersede it, not to mention be in control of something for once. The thought of what was unspoken, what was possible, made his stomach feel like a hole was burned into it, but if anything, it made him even more determined to make her feel better. Besides, it wasn't like they were just standing about having tea and the matter had come up. I was brutalised and used. Oh, well, then care to have some therapeutic sex with a dashingly sexy father figure you trust? Oh, yes please. Lemon and sugar?
"Okay," he whispered, and rose up to meet her as she leaned in to kiss him. He wasn't quite hard enough yet, but he had a hell of a lot of determination. It wasn't out of pity that he was doing this...he'd known Rose far too long and liked her far too much to pity her. He was doing it because if he refused, she'd be devastated. Because if he didn't, he'd feel bad...
Fine, perhaps they were both making excuses, which was idiotic seeing that they were both adults in their respective cultures. It was also because he wanted to. Because it felt good. Because he wasn't as much of an altruist as he liked to make out.
But he was damned if he wasn't going to make it better for her, so he decided that she'd be on top. Besides, he didn't trust himself to hold himself up for as long as this might take. The effort would probably just make him worse. He wanted her in control, and besides, this was quite pleasant, having her legs spread on top of him, feeling her opening slightly against his cock. More than quite pleasant...it made him make a rather interesting noise as she bore down a little. "Sorry if this takes a bit..." he said, reaching up to stroke her back. The way she looked made him want to kiss her again.
So he did, seeing as they were waiting. A slow nip on her lower lip, then the upper one, then his tongue pressing against her teeth, wanting to be let in. She didn't seem to mind the wait, all things considered, as she leaned in and kissed him back, her hand still soft, not chapped despite the cold weather, touching his cheek. It was that above everything else that made him truly resolve to let it go, at least with one part of his mind, enjoy himself. Help her.
So he kissed her some more, tasting her beyond what remained of himself and memorising it for future reference: human, post-pubescent female, blood type B negative, Rose Marion Tyler. She tasted like that, but she also tasted like many other things that he logically knew she couldn't, which had to be products of his own mind: Tupelo honey (which brought a rather complicated memory involving a Van Morrison album to mind), cinnamon bark, and a fruit that became extinct along with a certain planet some time back. She definitely couldn't taste like that, but when he decided to tell her this, he found that his mouth was in use, so he saved it up and promptly forgot to mention it.
Instead, he touched her some more, pleased to find that her skin was just as soft elsewhere. More soft, even. He liked that, soft, soft was good like bananas and a sunny day, and Rose's back, and then her bottom, were soft. Therefore they were good. But not soft was also good, he resolved as he reached forward instead, fingers still slightly stiff, to touch elsewhere which wasn't soft and which made her gasp.
Good was about the best adjective he could come up with, save warm, which Rose also was. She felt good. And warm. Her movements made him ache, made him want to press into her and just get it done with but also let it go on for ages. There needed to be a single word for it, but there wasn't, which was a pity, but he let her know by moving back against her, dragging his cock and biting lightly at her lip, especially since she'd indicated talking wasn't going to be in order. She didn't need a gag to shut him up, she just needed to...
There was a moment where time itself seemed to slow down, as she got up a little and settled down onto him before shifting forward. Then time possibly did stop, at that. She was even warmer than her mouth, and it was all he could do not to move, to drag himself against her again and again, as she planted her hands on his chest.
It looked like she was going to say something, and she did, through the strands of hair that fell in her face. "You know I'm the same, right? Same as always, Doctor."
He would have just said yes, but the way she looked at him and the way her voice broke when she said it let him know that placating her for the moment would not be suitable for once. So he paused, reached back up and bent her head down to meet him, kissing her forehead. "No one's ever the same, Rose," he said, voice hoarse still and rough as he let her go and looked her in the eye. "Everything changes us. But you're not bad, and you're not wrong."
That was what did it, really, temporarily stopped his feeble attempts at denial, and increased the fear of Oh god, what's it going to be like in the morning? exponentially. But the Doctor would see it though, that, and the fact that he was beginning to worry that Rose was right, that he needed a bit more of this or he'd be quite ill. So instead of saying anything more, he gently pushed up into her, urging her onward if she liked, showing her that he still liked her and that he still wanted this. Which his body was definitely saying now, his groin beginning to ache and cresting in rhythm with his heartbeats.
She was in control, and they began again in long, smooth draws and pulls, his hands on her hips, his mouth on her breast, her hands pressed into his shoulders, hips driving. Working together as they did in so many other things, really. He could feel her orgasm closing in on her before she did, every quick throb of her clitoris against his body when they met, the way her pupils dilated and her eyes grew wider. And when she did come, she dragged her nails against his shoulders and his chest, drawing blood to the surface (going to leave a mark, that), crying out to God before she just cried out without words.
She didn't cry out his name, for which he was grateful. That would only make it worse, in the very end, and it would hurt them both.
The quick flutter of her muscles against him, the tight clench, made him grit his teeth and keep holding back. He wouldn't do that to her now, wouldn't use her, even though he could feel that she was so very warm and even though he knew the adrenaline would probably do him quite a bit of good. So he slowed when she did and stroked her back when she was finished and shivering, forehead pressed into his left shoulder.
"You're not bad, Rose, I promise. I say so." And his saying so made it the truth.
Sitting up, she looked at him, and he was almost afraid by what he saw in her eyes. "You're not bad yourself, Doctor," she said, but it was a bit hollow. Like mountain climbers on the telly. And again, he wasn't certain what to do next.
So he looked at her for a while and didn't say anything, cock unflagging (one of the benefits of controlling one's circulatory system, at least a little). Finally, he said, "You know that wasn't what I meant," but there wasn't any pique to it, it was merely necessary. Truth wasn't something that they always had, he and Rose. Like this...this sex thing, this wasn't the truth, but it wasn't exactly a lie. It just was.
He'd always known she was going to leave him, and in that moment, he knew it again...before he promptly forgot about it.
"I know. I...I know what you meant. I was just, uh, are you warmer?"
Humans were terrible at covering things up. Of course, when they weren't terrible at it, that spelled trouble. He gave her another look, this one exasperated. It was like talking about the weather. Then again, she was English, the masters of awkward pause. "I think I'll be all right. Just need a few days rest, yeah? Maybe a lie on a beach somewhere, or the desert." He paused. "You ever been with the Bedouin?"
Of course she hadn't, she was English. But he had to ask, it was polite. He was trying hard to work on polite, though it seemed a bit moot when one was still, nominally, fucking someone. He let his circulatory functions resume normal operation, as it seemed she was done. "I don't think so. Desert people, right? Arabia?"
It was like dangling a carrot; he knew she'd love it. The look on her face was sheer joy...sometimes he wondered if he shouldn't have just set her up to travel around the world. He couldn't very well just leave her in Croyd--Aberdeen. Much happier without him, all the shite he dragged her through...bugger that, he needed to stop thinking about Rose, or he'd go mad with guilt. Guilt for not loving her like she needed, not being her neat little house with a garage and a garden, not being all of the things he couldn't be.
Bedouin. Yes. Desert.
"Some, but I was thinking more westerly. Morocco. They make fantastic coffee there, not to mention the lamb with couscous. And it's warm. Delightfully, deliciously warm! Then we could pop in to Casablanca, which isn't quite as pretty as the film...promise we'll show up after the war, get Rommel out of the way."
"I liked that movie. Let's do it."
"More than a movie, Rose. A real place and a real time. A time we'll be avoiding because we don't want to be shot at--" He found himself cut off by her leaning down to kiss him again, allowing him no escape.
And against his better judgment, he kissed her back, gentle and soft, because he did love her, really. But it was just for a moment, and then he pulled away, sliding out of her and leaning on one elbow before collapsing backwards. "Oh dear," he said, finding that most of his energy had gone. "Rose...this is going to sound terrible. But would you possibly consider making some tea? I would, but I don't think my legs are working much."
"Oh, yeah," she said, getting off the bed. "I was going to do that earlier. Must have slipped my mind what with the saving your life and..." They both mentally filled in the blank, he was sure. "...Right. Tea. Tannins and free radicals. See? I pay attention."
He nodded, yawning like a lion and not bothering to hide it, still noting that she must memorise every word he said. She was wearing Howard's dressing gown, and he wondered if she'd find the Satsuma he kept in there, just in case. "You do. If I fall asleep, I'm terribly sorry...wake me for the tea?"
She nodded and headed out. As soon as she was down the corridor, he considered crying, but he wasn't that sort of a man, after all. Anyhow, if he started, he realised he didn't know exactly where and when he would stop.
So he waited, and tried to ignore the scent of her on the duvet, and wished, as he had so often before, for less time, until he fell asleep.