Rose sighed discontentedly and tossed her book aside.

"What's wrong?" the Doctor asked curiously, peering at her over the top of his own book.

"S'rubbish."

"Well, I could have told you that before we made a special trip to your future, just so you wouldn't have to wait to read it."

"I know," she replied contritely, "and I appreciate it, really I do. It's just…after you've seen the real thing, stories like this just seem so …"

"Trite?" he supplied helpfully. "Insipid? Idiotic?"

"Oi! Quit showin' off your vocabulary! That bloke was just so…scary…and werewolf-y. Makes this seem really fake."

"Yes, Rose, that particular werewolf was indeed very werewolf-y."

Rose looked at him with suspicion blossoming in her eyes. "Doctor, is there more than one kind of werewolf?"

"Yup," he replied nonchalantly.

"And you've met one?"

"Yup."

"Tell me!"

"Her name was Mags. She didn't look quite as wolfish as our Scottish friend, but her claws were rather impressive."

"Did you…did you have to…?"

"Hmm? No! No, not at all. She, um…ran off to join the circus, as it happens."

"You're making that up!"

"Not at all! They even asked Ace and me to join them."

Rose's eyes narrowed skeptically. "Talk about rubbish stories. I think you could write one of these books, Doctor."

"Have I ever mentioned that time I got stranded at an inn during a storm with Lord Byron, the Shelleys, and John Polidori?"

She'd tried to read it, really she had, but the language was a bit stilted, and her understanding of the overall narrative was becoming lost in her struggle to follow a sentence from one end to the other. Sensing her frustration, the Doctor had settled next to her on the couch, plucking the book from her hands and reading it aloud from the beginning. His voice wove the story around them in all its grotesque beauty.

He looked down once when he felt her shudder and link her arms through his. "You're not gonna sleep after this, are you?"

"You're not stoppin' now! I wanna know what happens next."

"Rose, how many times have your people made this book into a movie?"

"Don't care. I've never heard it the way you're tellin' it. Go on, then." She tightened her hold on his arm, nestling her head against his shoulder.

Rose's eyes were fixed on the fireplace, so she never saw the utter tenderness in his gaze as it flickered over her before returning to the pages of their book.

The Doctor shifted his weight carefully, trying to simultaneously not fall off the edge of Rose's bed, and not wake her…not after the fuss he'd had getting her back to sleep from that bad dream. He just knew this was going to happen, what with the werewolf and then that book, but of course she wouldn't listen, and so here he was now, stuck in this silly predicament. This incredibly foolish, incredibly time wasting, incredibly wonderful predicament - a sleep-tousled, flannel-jimjam-clad Rose Tyler wrapped around him, her fingers tangled in a death grip on his shirt.

There were things he needed to be doing…important, Time Lord-y things that required his urgent attention. He told her this would happen, but noooo, she wouldn't listen. It would serve her right if he just got up right now and - wait. What was that noise?