amberfocus | Brown Eyelashes--Birthday Ficlet for Angel932

Title: Brown Eyelashes
Author: Amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose
Genre: Fluffy angst? Angsty fluff?
Rating: PG, barely
Summary: After the events of The Idiot's Lantern the Doctor seeks reassurance from Rose.
A/N: Written as a birthday gift for

angel932. No smut from me, sorry, you broke me with your own. Please, please, post that lovely Hot Bath fic in your journal that you wrote for me when I was so sick. More people need to see it.

Brown Eyelashes

Her eyelashes are brown and that’s a random thing to notice, but he does. He’s so used to seeing her with too black eyeliner and mascara that he’s never even stopped to think what color they might be underneath. He shouldn’t be with her like this, shouldn’t be watching her sleep, shouldn’t be noticing the way that her eyelashes flutter against her cheek or the way that she takes deep, quiet breaths and how that makes her chest rise and fall in a way that makes the shift that she’s sleeping in cling to her body one moment then relax its grip the next.

Her lips are warm, pink, slightly parted and bowed in such a way as to tempt any man to sin. He’s not just any man, of course he’s not, but when he looks at her he wishes that he could be. He makes some small noise and Rose stirs and her eyes open, those brown eyelashes blinking slowly as her vision focuses on him. “Doctor?” she asks sleepily. “Everything all right?” She asks it like it’s the most normal thing in the world for her to find him in her bedroom in the middle of the night.

He’s never done this before, never invaded her privacy like this, but today he can’t help himself. His hand is shaking as he reaches out to touch her face, to reassure himself that it’s still there. She senses his need and takes the hand, pulling it towards her and resting it against her cheek.

“I’m still me,” she says echoing words he’d said to her just a few months ago when he’d gone and regenerated on her. He has a whole new understanding of what she must have gone through that day when she looked for the face she had once recognized and saw nothing there that was familiar. Only her face had been replaced by nothingness, the personality of Rose Tyler gone with it, and he’d shaken with a fear he hadn’t felt since the day he thought she would be swallowed alive by the Time Vortex.

The shaking of his hand stills against her face and he moves his fingers slowly over her skin, feeling eyelids and nose and tracing across her cheekbones and lips, erasing the horror of nothingness. There is so much reassurance in her features, so much comfort in the tracing of thumb over skin. “Still you,” he murmurs.

Rose catches hold of his hand as it slides from her jaw and she won’t let it go. “You haven’t answered my question. Are you all right?”

“I’m not the one who could have lost every…” He stops himself because it’s not true. He could have lost everything today. He could have lost Rose. “Oh, Rose.”

She sits up, her long legs sliding out from under the covers and she tugs him down so that he’s kneeling before her. She pulls him into her arms and she feels his body begin to shake. “I almost lost you.” His voice is so quiet she almost doesn’t hear him, but there is no mistaking the anguish in it. “I almost lost you, Rose.”

“I’m harder to lose than you think, Doctor.”

He pulls back and looks at her fiercely. “But you’re not. I could lose you in a heartsbeat and—and—Rose, I’ve wasted so much time!”

He kisses her then, his lips closing the distance to hers as if this is something they do all the time, something that is as natural as breathing. Her lips are pliant and soft beneath his. For just a second he had feared that she wouldn’t kiss him back, or worse that she’d push him away, but her hands have already found their way to the fabric of his shirt and she is pulling him closer to her. It lasts both a lifetime and only a few long seconds before she slowly lets go of him and he pulls back.

“Okay now?” she asks him in a thick voice. He nods at her, unwilling to trust himself to speak. She strokes her hand through his hair and he leans into her touch. “I’m here and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Can I stay?” he asks jerking his head towards the chair.

She looks slightly surprised at the request but she doesn’t deny him. “You can stay as long as you need to,” she says. He climbs to his feet and she slips her legs back into the bed, pulling the covers over her as he settles into the bedside chair. She reaches out for his hand and he grabs hold of it, his fingers wrapping around hers reassuringly. She falls back to sleep that way and when her hand becomes limp in his, he doesn’t let it go. He’ll never let it go again. Even if this is all they ever have, he’s going to hold onto it for as long as he possibly can.