amberfocus | Glow (1/1)--Birthday Fic for Editrx

Title: Glow
Series: Forward Steps Along the Path
Author:

amberfocus
Characters/Pairings: Ten2/Rose Tyler
Genre: Romance, Fluffity fluff fluff and her sister Fluffania
Rating: PG, Teen
Betas:

amyo67,

jeprdyfrndly
Summary: The beach no longer holds bad memories. Follows about eight years after Spark: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/212625.html, but will also stand alone.
A/N: Happy Birthday,

editrx. I'm not writing much at the moment, but this little ficlet grabbed on and didn't want to let go. Hope it makes your day a little brighter. *grins at bad pun*

Glow

She tastes like sun and sand and sea and salt. He knows this even though he hasn’t yet kissed her. He anticipates it, like the flavor of a ripe peach on a hot day, freshly plucked from its tree branch. It feeds his senses, invades them with the transitory ease that is Rose Tyler. He watches her, his chocolate eyes hooded and heavy as he follows her progress or lack thereof, amongst the incoming waves. His eyes graze her body, noting where ocean spray has left its droplets across the fabric of her clothing, in the places where it makes cotton cling to her frame and down to the exposed calves where sand makes a new home against the surface of her skin.

Rose dances and he fancies he hears music in amongst the crashing crescendo of percussion as water slaps hard against rocks, each wave scattering the beach with seaweed and shells and stones washed shiny and bright by tidal forces. The forlorn, lonesome cry of seabirds echoes in his head and he looks up to see they are not imagination but fact soaring in the sky. He wonders what they feel, what they sense, if they can understand what this day means to either of them.

He smiles, happiness flowing through him as Rose turns back to him and catches him staring. She giggles and then holds out her hands to him and he can’t hold back any longer. He’s long since discarded his shoes and socks and rolled up his trousers and now he joins her barefoot in the surf, his fingers easily finding her own and wrapping them up, her hand in his still the most precious gift he can ever imagine. He never thought he could come to love a beach again. He never thought he’d be allowed to love Rose like this.

“Happy?” she asks him. Her eyes are certain of what his answer will be but he tells her anyway.

“Oh, yes!” he says and pulls her close to him. His mouth descends on hers and she makes a surprised little o that allows him to slip through, his tongue now quite familiar with her mouth. He still often takes her by surprise with his sudden kisses. He is right, so right, about how she tastes and he closes his eyes, blocking out vision to better savor touch, sound, scent, and flavor. Her hands seek out his skin beneath the thin fabric of his shirt and as her fingers brush unencumbered against him, he makes a small, soft sound of pleasure in the back of his throat; a sound that they both know is still there, though it is buried by the roar.

Touching her makes all of his senses come alive, reminds him, almost, of what it was to be the Time Lord, something he no longer really is, but will forever remember being. It doesn’t sting like it used to, nothing does. Not now, not even here in this place where bitter memories have washed out to sea to be replaced by better ones, happier ones. He breaks the kiss and she pulls back from him and looks him in the eyes, suddenly serious.

“This is where we began,” she tells him. He doesn’t remind her that in another life, this is where they ended. That doesn’t matter anymore. It’s been nine long years, nine happy years. They’ve been married for seven of them, were married right here on this beach. It’s been a good life and he’s been more than happy to live it with her. He regrets nothing, not even the loss of his TARDIS anymore, or their abandonment on this world. The trade was fair, more than fair, because life is joy now and it wasn’t before.

Her eyes shine at him like precious amber stones, polished to reveal the secrets within, and he realizes suddenly from her smile that she’s keeping one. “What is it?” he asks her and her grin widens to cover her whole face.

“I love you,” she says simply and takes his hand and places it against her belly. He looks down, then up, then down again before sinking desperately into her eyes. Wild hope flares within him. He’d stopped allowing that years ago when test after test came back negative.

“You’re not…?” he asks.

“I am,” she says. “Went to the doctor to be sure, so many false starts, but…I’m pregnant.”

He picks her up and spins her around and around then hastily deposits her back on her feet. “Sorry, that’s probably not good for the baby.”

“Don’t be silly,” Rose giggles and plants an enormous kiss on his cheek. “I’m eight weeks along. You can’t hurt him.”

“Him?”

“Just have a feeling,” she says. “Won’t know until the sonogram in three weeks. I mean, if you want to find out.”

He shrugs. Right now he could not care less if it’s a boy or a girl. He’d thought never to have a child with her, had given up, and now he is and he thinks he can’t be any happier than he is at this moment. “I just want a child with you,” he says finally giving voice to words he’s been so afraid to say.

There are sudden tears in her eyes. “I never thought,” she says and breaks off. He knows exactly what she means. They have spent their time here fighting aliens and running Torchwood and living a fantastic life, but for the past few years they’ve both wanted more, both wanted a piece of the other to go on and time after time it was denied them. This is a different kind of fantastic, one they are both ready for.

He kisses her again and she responds with all of her heart and he’s a little dazed when they break apart. She still has that effect on him after all these years. “I love you,” he says and then he drops to his knees in the wet sand, not caring when an incoming wave soaks him to the waist. He presses his lips to her belly and kisses her there, too. “I love you,” he repeats to the little life growing there then lays his cheek against her.

Rose buries her hands in his hair and holds him there for a moment, then releases him and he climbs back to his feet. “Let’s go back to the hotel and celebrate this properly,” she says in a husky voice.

His face is wreathed with the size of his grin as his hand finds hers again. She answers him with a brilliant smile. As they make their way back the cries of the gulls no longer sound lonely.