He feels fine. And he isn't totally certain of the point of all this.

"What is the point of all this?" the Doctor asks. "You do realize that a physical examination isn't at all necessary? I can still self-survey with nearly one hundred percent accuracy, half-human senses or no. And if anything was wrong with me, I'd tell you."

"No, you wouldn't," Rose argues softly. She's sitting next to him on the exam table, feet dangling over the floor several inches higher than his. She does not touch him. She very specifically does not hold his hand. Her own hands clasp together under his jacket, which folds neatly in her lap and drapes over her arms. She doesn't even look at him when she speaks.

The Doctor worries the inside of one cheek. He's human now, or at least this version of him is; for all that it's new and terrifying and not at all what he wanted, he supposes he should probably start acting like one. (If he pretends everything is normal, then eventually it will feel that way, right?)

"What, erm. What about you?" he ventures, fingers fidgeting nervously in his lap. "You didn't exactly have an easy time of it. Probably could use a check-up yourself. Are you all right?"

"I'm always all right." Rose sits up, glares at the clock mounted on the wall. "Isn't the doctor ever going to get here?"

The Doctor knows she's talking about a physician, doctor with a lower-case "d", a Torchwood-appointed medical expert who will march in, take his vitals and his blood, order up a gene test, realize they've got something miraculous on their hands and order up all sorts of exciting and invasive procedures–he doesn't need his dwindling time-sense to know how these events will proceed–he knows that this is the "doctor" she's referring to, and not another Time Lord a universe and a lifetime away. But he still flinches.

"Right," Rose says with a heavy sigh. "It's been twenty minutes. I'm calling it."

She pushes off the exam table, tossing his jacket over a chair, and stomps over to the cabinets lining the wall, opening drawers and doors and impatiently rifling through their contents. The Doctor watches her with a mounting sense of apprehension.

She's not…? She won't…? But…

"What are you doing?" he asks when she pulls a stethoscope out of the drawer and drapes it over her neck.

"I'll just do the exam myself," Rose replies, tossing her hair back over her shoulders. She pulls several other instruments out of the drawers, twenty-first devices that are so crude and basic that the Doctor has to stop himself from physically recoiling at the thought of them touching his skin. "I'm EMT-certified," Rose continues. "I can check your vitals and all that stuff, mark it off the chart. Just cover the basics so Torchwood can stop whinging about it and get your papers started."

When she catches the bewildered look on his face, she frowns. "What?" she snaps.

The Doctor shakes his head. "Nothing, I just…"

Rose plants her hands on her hips. She quirks an eyebrow. She's waiting for him to finish, but he can't think of anything to say that doesn't sound immeasurably stupid. As much as he does not want some stranger poking and prodding all over his fresh new half-human body, he can't stand the thought of Rose dealing with him in such a cold, clinical, impersonal manner. He's not sure which is worse.

"Do you think I can't do it?" she asks.

"No, no, that's not it at all. I have full faith in your capabilities. It's just that–"

"Cos it's been a hell of a few days, and I'm tired of waiting, and I'd really like to go home."

"Understandable, yes. But I'm not–"

"It isn't like it's more intimate than anything else we've done. This isn't exactly new for us."

The Doctor's tongue stills at the unspoken mention of intimacy, freezes at the sounds of we and us. He chances a look up at her. She won't meet his gaze.

"Yeah, I said it," Rose grumps. "What are you gonna do about it?"

He blinks in the harsh white glare of the lamps overhead. His eyes are more sensitive to the light now; he'll have to keep that in mind. "I was sort of under the impression that there wasn't anything I could do about it," he says slowly. "It didn't seem like there was going to be a we or an us, if your comments in Norway were anything to go by."

Rose pulls a blood pressure cuff out of the drawer before she returns to the exam table. The cuff opens with a loud Velcro-toothed rip. "I don't know what you're talking about," Rose says, pulling the Doctor's arm out so she can wrap the cuff around his bicep. The cuff fastens snugly, perhaps just a few millimeters more snug than completely necessary, but the Doctor is not about to complain.

"But I will say," Rose continues, pumping up the cuff so that the pressure is uncomfortably tight, "that I worked really hard to get home, for a really long time, just to end up right back at square one. You can't really blame me for being upset about that, can you?"

His pulse–singular, lonely, and maddeningly unpredictable–thunders under the pressure cuff. When Rose plugs the stethoscope into her ears and presses the bell against his arm, he can only imagine the sound must be deafening. Discomfort and anxiety are going to wreak havoc on his new circulation system; that's another thing he'll have to keep in mind from now on.

"Can you really blame me for wanting to stay with you?" the Doctor asks once Rose has unplugged her ears, once she can't hear his heart racing anymore.

"125 over 83," Rose announces quietly, as if she hasn't heard him. The blood pressure cuff deflates and she unwraps it, deposits it on the counter with the rest of her pilfered medical equipment. "Could be pre-high blood pressure, could be nerves. You should keep an eye on it just in case."

"It's nerves," the Doctor says dismissively. "Though this body may have a slight tendency toward hypertension if I don't cut down on the sweets. Bloody inefficient human metabolism. But I mean what I said."

"I'm sure you do. You should probably start eating a salad every once in a while."

"Rose," the Doctor says, growing a bit testy.

"Doctor," Rose replies, and she doesn't seem testy at all. Just sort of…flat. She picks up an ophthalmoscope and clicks the light off and on, testing it; the Doctor tries not to think of how much the instrument reminds him of a sonic screwdriver several regenerations ago. Rose doubles back toward him and, with one hand pressed gently to the side of his head, she tilts his skull this way and that, shining the light of the scope in first one eye, then the other. It leaves little halos on the back of the Doctor's eyelids when he blinks.

Rose writes notes on a clipboard. She's been quiet for far too long. She should say something. Or he should. Someone should. The silence is suffocating.

"I know you're angry, and I understand as well as I can," the Doctor says, and he hates how much it sounds like a plea, and he knows he should drop it, but he doesn't. "I didn't exactly ask to be abandoned here either. Present company excluded, this universe has got absolutely nothing in it that I'm interested in. But it was the best decision for everyone. This might not be the world either of us were looking for, I might not be the Doctor you wanted, but it's light-years better than nothing, isn't it?"

He swallows and casts his eyes downward, cataloging the little hairs on the back of his hands. Manly hairs and manly hands and all of it the same as before, except for how it isn't. "And perhaps this is a bit selfish," he continues, "but don't I deserve even a little bit of happiness? In some incarnation or another?"

Rose ignores him. Something twists tight in his chest; he wonders if it's normal for human bodies to have such visceral responses to situations like this, to emotions left raw and bleeding out in the open. And it doesn't help that Rose is quiet and composed and betraying nothing of her own thoughts, a smaller, blonder, more female version of his Ninth self having traded out black leather for blue. This is not the Rose he knows; Rose from a few years ago would have shouted at him and given him what-for and stomped away and then bounded back the next morning with a smile and a hug. He does not know who this stony-faced and silent young woman is.

(Was he always this difficult to talk to?)

Rose swaps out one instrument for another, returning with an otoscope. But the Doctor can tell her she needn't worry, his otolaryngological health is excellent, and besides, he doesn't much fancy anyone looking about the insides of his ears. He stops her before she can raise the instrument, stalling her progress with his hand on hers.

"I should have asked what you wanted," he admits quietly. His single lonely heart batters against his ribs and his fingers go numb; it's very unpleasant and little wonder he rarely opens up like this. "The other me, I mean. I should have given you a choice. And I didn't. I'm sorry."

Rose says nothing, but something in her face seems to soften. She still won't look at him. He doesn't like that; he's the one who always has to look away, not her.

"Rose?" he tries again, dipping his head down to see if he can meet her gaze that way.

"The sooner we get through this, the sooner we can leave," she replies. "They'll want to know your basic stats–temperature, oral health, blood type, stuff like that. Then we can go."

"Is this the standard procedure for cataloging all your aliens?" the Doctor asks half-sarcastically; he is not comfortable with the idea of Torchwood knowing all of this information about him.

"It's the standard procedure for anyone who works here. They keep it on hand in case they ever need to monitor you for symptoms of foreign contaminants."

"Am I working here, then?" he asks, wrinkling his nose.

"You've got to get a job someplace. You really want to work anywhere else?" Rose asks.

The Doctor considers. "37.2, nothing to report, type A. That good enough?"

Rose kneads her brow, knuckles flattening the wrinkles accumulated by a tension headache. "You're only making this harder."

"You're making this harder," the Doctor echoes petulantly. Words are building up in the space behind his teeth and he can feel a faint shadow of Donna bursting to chit-chat-chatter and release all these feelings bottled up inside, the ones that have been trapped in the silence between them ever since they arrived in this universe.

Drawing in a deep breath (rubbishy human cardiovascular system, he'll be forever filling his lungs), he watches Rose's face as she pulls out a digital thermometer, snapping on one of the covers, and he lets out another flood of words before she can get the instrument and its horrible plasticy smell anywhere close to his mouth. "I know we need to talk, there are things that should be said, emotions and details and all that rot to discuss, because that's what humans do, they just talk about everything and somehow that's supposed to make it better, but I don't know that works. I don't know how any of this works! Observation and theory and traveling with humans for 900-odd years are all very good and well, but there's no substitute for practice. So if things are going to get better, we need to talk about them, but why are you letting me do all the talking? You're the one who does all the talking. You're the one who knows the things that need to be said. I'm the one who's all–"

And here he sighs, gestures aimlessly with his hands, "–brooding and stoic."

She looks up at him then, their eyes making good, proper contact for the first time since Norway. "You're what now?" she asks, disbelieving.

"Brooding," the Doctor repeats. Rose's eyes widen; he's not sure why. "And stoic," he adds, a little disgruntled.

A laugh tries to escape her; he can see her choke down on it. "Yeah. A right anti-hero, that's you."

"That is me," he protests, and now Rose is making no effort to hide her chuckles. "What?" he demands, feeling himself flush with indignation as Rose shakes her head and her shoulders quake. "That's who I am!"

"Maybe a couple of you's ago," Rose giggles.

"All the me's," the Doctor insists, and in response, Rose just shakes her head again and leans in to press a hard kiss on his lips.

The Doctor feels the veneer of his frustration crack just a little bit. It is astonishingly difficult to bluster at her when she does things like that. His cheeks flush and his pulse quickens and he wants to hold her–his hands raise and falter, unsure of where to go, uncertain of the boundaries with things the way they are right now–but the kiss ends as abruptly as it began. Rose pulls back with something like wonder in her eyes and the air in his lungs leaves with her.

She reaches up to his face, planting fingertips against his chin and cheek with a featherlight touch. "You're so warm," she murmurs.

He can still feel the ghost of her lips on his. "Vasodilation of the facial cutaneous blood supply," he says breathlessly. Rambling; that's one thing that hasn't changed. "Human bodies are terrible at thermoregulation. Or maybe this particular human body is just deeply flawed. Still got that bit with the dorsal tubercle, after all."

The Doctor flexes his wrist as if to prove a point, but although Rose smiles, her eyes are not drawn by the motion. "You're supposed to do that, though," she says. "The blushing bit. When someone kisses you, someone you fancy. That's supposed to happen."

"Never has before," the Doctor replies. "Not to this degree, anyway."

Rose nods. "That's sort of the point, isn't it?"

The Doctor's eyebrow arches in confusion. This conversation is happening on wavelengths invisible to him. Quite unusually, he has no idea what's going on. But a well-timed hug solves a lot of problems, he's found, so he leans forward and draws Rose in by the waist, folding his arms around her. She surrenders easily, standing between his legs, her hands trapped between the two of them, pressed between their stomachs like flowers in the pages of a book. The pressure of her warmth and curves and softness pings on his fresh nerves, sending all sorts of brilliant thoughts through his head that will have to be dealt with later. Rose buries her face in the crook of his neck; her hair smells faintly of her old shampoo, the same in any reality, and of something sooty and metallic on top. Dimension jumps and burning Dalek ships and this must have all been terribly hard on her, he realizes, much worse than he could know. His arms tighten around her.

He cinches his arms around her as tight as he can, smiles when he feels her do the same in response, her fingers curling in his tee-shirt. Gods, he'd forgotten how good this felt, just hugging her. How does she do that?

Rose's hand wanders up to his chest, and she splays her fingers across the bottom of his ribcage now. Her touch is tentative, like she's afraid she'll scare him off. Her palm presses against him and she's feeling his heartbeat, he thinks, just like she did on the beach a few hours ago. His pulse hammers in his chest and he's sure Rose can feel it, certain that she knows it's because of her.

"See, s'different," she breathes. "You're different."

"Not so different," he argues softly.

Rose shakes her head. "It's not a bad thing. You seem–I dunno. It's like the walls have started to crumble a little bit, or something."

He doesn't really care for the sound of that–useful things, walls, good for keeping things out or worse things in. "Yes, I deeply admire the loss of control I will experience in this body," he drawls sarcastically. "It's such a handy evolutionary quirk, being unable to choose your core temperature or the finer points of your metabolism or the way your body responds to external stimuli. Incredibly satisfying, can't imagine why I didn't try it sooner.

"Besides, even if I had a better rein on it, I did technically do all this before," the Doctor continues. "With the blushing, and the hearts-racing, and the autonomic nervous system causing nitric oxide levels to rise in the trabecular arteries of certain tissues."

"Yeah, but you had to make all that happen, or let it happen, or whatever. It was never like this, was it? At the end of the day, you were always in control."

The Doctor hesitates. Time Lord physiology is a little more complicated than that, but she's not wrong. And he suspects she's not just talking about his new body, either.

"Suppose neither of us asked to be here like this," he offers. "I'm sorry things didn't turn out the way you hoped."

Rose shrugs. "I made my choice."

It takes a moment for the words to soak in.

Meaning seeps in through the cracks and bleeds through to the other side. When the message finally reaches his brain, the Doctor's breath catches in his throat, an unpleasant reminder that his respiratory bypass is gone. His mouth falls just a little open and he gapes at Rose, a question hovering at the edge of his tongue.

"Think about it," Rose mutters, laughing under her breath, and the Doctor watches as tears pearl in the corners of her eyes, "Who would you rather be with–someone who pulls you in close, or the person who will never stop pushing you away?"

"Right," the Doctor nods as pieces fall together in place. There's a curious feeling like something expanding in his chest, not enough to be alarming, just enough to make him grin like an idiot.

(He knows he should feel bad about the other Doctor alone and depressed in another universe, and in a distant way, he does–but in a closer, much more present way, he's starting to feel ridiculously giddy and just the tiniest bit hopeful.)

But…

"…just to confirm, 'pull you in close' is the proper answer, yes?" he asks.

Rose rolls her eyes. "Yes, you daft git," barely makes it out of her mouth before the Doctor pulls her back into another hug.

(In this body or any other, he'll take "daft git" over "sweetheart" any day.)

Shifting back just a few inches, he grasps Rose by the chin and kisses her properly, the way he feels she should always be kissed, firm pressure and mouths pushing open and hands holding her close in just the smallest hint of desperation. It's unseemly, he knows, and maybe just a little embarrassing, how much he craves Rose's physical reassurance, the comfort of their bodies colliding together and the feel of her lips on his. He was always a bit touchy before, but this–the almost electric buzz between them, the way his head rushes and floods with neurochemicals that leave him feeling intoxicated, how his body now matches hers for warmth, flushing everywhere she's making contact with his new and oversensitive skin–this is something else entirely.

Although he doesn't particularly care for it when he is the one that has to break the kiss for the sake of breathing now, because damn these inefficient lungs.

"I can't stop thinking I'm betraying him somehow," Rose says quietly while the two of them catch their breath.

"You're not," the Doctor says firmly. "You chose to stay. He chose to go."

"I'm still gonna miss him, though," Rose admits. She doesn't meet his eyes when she says it. "You know. The other you. Even if he is a giant prat."

A tiny and petty flare of jealousy surges through him. He stamps it down, hard, buries it deep where it belongs. "I'm all right with that," he replies.

Rose smiles at him, that tongue-touched grin he remembers so well. "Liar," she says, and she doesn't give him a chance to defend himself before she's leaning in again, pressing another kiss to his mouth. And this, finally, this is the Rose he remembers, acting just the way his memory has outlined for him in painstaking detail: drawing her body flush against his, her fingers tangling in his hair. Some selfish part of him tucked deep and away is secretly quite pleased that he can still have this effect on her after all this time apart. (Still got it he remembers from a lifetime ago, and his lips curve up in a smile.) He is especially pleased, and just might let out the smallest half-murmur himself, when Rose's fingernails scrape lightly against the base of his skull. It sends a shiver down his spine. Unwanted half-humanity or not, he's suddenly very, very grateful that he's the bastard lucky enough to be stranded here.

He only halts their progress because she stops moving against him.

"We should stop," he realizes, breathing into the hollow of her neck.

"We should," Rose nods. "We should be responsible."

"We haven't seen each other for a long time."

"It'd be good to take things slow," Rose breathes, her fingers tangling in his shirt.

"Yes, it would," he agrees, kissing the spot on her throat that he knows will make her shudder. (She does.)

"We're both different people now."

"True, very true, very literally true in some senses."

"We're not 100% certain where we stand."

"Well, you're standing right there," the Doctor points out.

Rose laughs and he thinks it might be the best thing he's ever heard and he says a silent thank-you with a kiss, pressing his lips firmly to hers until he can feel her practically melting in his arms. And even though he misses the TARDIS like he misses his second heart, even if some part of him in the background is still reeling from everything he's lost in coming over to this new world–even if he'll never fully recover from it, not really–with his lips pressed to her pulse point, in the soft space beneath her ear, he can feel that her heart is pounding every bit as hard as his, and he thinks humanity might not be quite so terrible after all, if he gets to share it with her.

At least, until he hears the door open on the other side of the room, and remembers most twenty-first-century human attitudes about public sexual displays.

"Sorry about the wait," a female voice announces as the door pushes open. "We're sort of in the middle of a crisis upstairs, something about killer mold–"

Rose pushes the Doctor away and the physician stops walking and talking and starts staring instead, at the Doctor with his flushed face and Rose with her smeared lipgloss and both of them with their hands in each other's clothes. The physician's mouth opens and closes a few times. She blinks.

"Erm–"

"Physical exam," Rose blurts out. The physician raises an eyebrow in query and Rose hurriedly follows with, "Just finishing the physical exam."

"For Torchwood," the Doctor supplies helpfully, flattening his hair where Rose's fingers have mussed it.

"For Torchwood's medical records," Rose adds.

"And to test this body's automatic responses to environmental stimuli. They're quite satisfactory."

"Anyway," Rose says loudly, and the Doctor watches as the back of her neck flushes a peculiar shade of pink, "You've got everything you need there–" she gestures to the clipboard, neglected on the counter, "–so we'll just be on our way."

Before the physician or the Doctor have a chance to say anything else, Rose grabs the Doctor's hand, drags him off the exam table, and hauls him out the door. He barely has a chance to snatch up his jacket before they're gone.

But then…

"Wait a minute," the Doctor says, popping his head back through the doorframe. "Did you say something about 'killer mold'?"

Later, after a crisis is narrowly avoided and a day saved just by the skin of its teeth, they go home. They wash up and pull on jimjams. They resolve to stay in separate rooms for the night. They resolve to play it safe, and give each other time, and space.

Their resolve lasts about two hours.