me, i wanted, i wanted the right time; a doctor/rose drabble, 665 words, PG. for
subtle__sarcasmYou had all the prayers of my loose heart
Me, I wanted, I wanted the right time.
Sometimes she would sneak into his old room, the fourth door on the first left. She would rummage in his wardrobe; stroke the sleeves of his old coat. The hundreds of other outfits would be bypassed for the familiar jumpers and dark slacks, the worn leather jacket that she knew so well.
She hadn’t opened the door to his old room in weeks. At times she felt twinges of nostalgia, but the old sense of who he once was had faded from the clothes, from the bed, from the room itself. Who he had been was no longer tied to the physical artifacts he’d left behind. He still ran through her dreams, whispered “Fantastic!” in her memories. And while the loss of him was a dull ache in her heart, at times powerful or faint, she could not truly mourn him.
Because he was still with her, still running hand-in-hand with her through fire and flood and history. He wore a new face, had slipped his slimmer body into a sharp suit, but he was still the Doctor. Her Doctor.
Now she found herself stealing into his new room when he was tinkering away at the controls, humming snatches of Beatles’songs as he pounded away with a rubber mallet. The first on the third right, just down the hall from her own. Found herself running her hands along the seams of his suits, rummaging in his long coat’s pockets for concert tickets and marbles and a pair of 3D glasses from a movie they’d gone to on Neptune in the year 4588.
Running with him, through all the days and adventures and near-misses, was no longer enough for her. He was hers, as much as anyone could possibly be. She had been there when he was born, when he had first opened those new, amber brown eyes. She had heard his first words, been the first to feel the warm grip of his hand. And she wanted to be his, as fully as she could be. She wanted to do more than run with her hand in his.
Sometimes she would sneak out a shirt that he left crumpled on his floor, wrinkled and forgotten in his rush to change. If he noticed it missing, he never said anything. She would slip it on before bed to have the smell of him on her skin as she fell asleep.
---
He was recalibrating something that didn’t, technically, have a name. He called it the “doohickey” privately and the “tri-wavelength modulator” when asked by someone like Mickey. He had a song stuck in his head and he couldn’t remember the next chorus.
Rose would know. Rose had a head full of songs; it sometimes amazed him just how many she knew. He knew it was late-at least, as late as it could be in a timeless place like the TARDIS-but she was usually awake at odd hours, reading cheesy romances (she hid them behind his collections of Dickens and Christie in the library), or talking to Jackie on her mobile, or trying on dresses in the wardrobe.
He tapped on her door before cracking it open. She was curled up in her bed, a little girl snuggling into her huge pink duvet. No, not a little girl, he reminded himself, not even by human standards. A young woman full of fire with sharp eyes and rounded curves.
The duvet had slid down one of her shoulders. He pulled it up, tucked it about her more snugly. She was wearing one of his shirts and it brought a smile to his lips. He turned off the bedside lamp, one she had picked out when they had first decorated her room, so many months ago. As he closed the door quietly, he heard her shift and sigh in her sleep.
He wondered how much longer he should bide his time.
The song that influenced the drabble:
Beirut -- "Guyamas Sonora"