Disclaimer: Doctor Who isn't mine. If it was things would be quite different. The BBC owns all and I bow before them.

D.O.C.T.O.R.W.H.O

It was 3:00 in the morning but the Doctor was hard at work on his precious TARDIS in the garage off the flat. He might be part human now, but he still longed to be able to return to the stars. After more than 900 years he felt like he had been born to run and he wanted to run once more, with Rose Tyler at his side. Sleep could wait when there was so much to do. He knew Rose would chide him if she had any idea he was still up but she was sound asleep at this time of the night.

The Doctor was working on shatterfrying the coral when a shrill cry from the other side of the flat pierced the night. "DOCTOR!" There was absolute terror in that cry. Startled and worried, he leaped to his feet, his sonic screwdriver flying from his hand, and started running. "Rose?" he called out.

He had been sharing a flat with Rose for the past few months. While they lived together, they slept apart. Their relationship was still developing but he would give her all the time she needed. This transition was taking time for both of them. At first frequent nightmares had disturbed her sleep, when she would wake up in tears over losing the original Doctor yet again in her dreams. But the bad dreams seemed to have subsided as of late, and the new Doctor had hoped they were a thing of the past. He looked forward to the day when she would be content with him.

Pushing his own feelings aside as he sprinted across the flat, he forced his face to go neutral. It may hurt but he couldn't let her see that. Rose thought he had only known of the nightmares the two times they had happened when she had fallen asleep against him on the couch late at night. Indeed, she no idea that his hearing remained much better than an average human's and that he had been completely aware of each and every time she had shed a tear in the night for the original Doctor, nor had she known the pain he felt in those moments and she wasn't going to start now. He heard crying as he approached her bedroom and he opened the door a crack. "Rose?" he called out softly.

Whatever had disturbed her sleep was not releasing her from its clutches. The Doctor could hear her sobbing softly. He crossed the room quickly and leaned over her curled up form. He placed his hand on her shoulder and rubbed it back and forth very gently. "Rose," he repeated.

It was not working and he was not sure what he should do. He didn't want to really shake her but he knew he couldn't let her nightmare continue. Acting on new found human instinct he instead slid softly onto her bed and pulled her into his arms. He rocked her back and forth gently and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. "Shhh, Rose. I'm here. I'm here."

Rose's shoulders stopped shaking and her eyes slowly opened but it was not sleepy eyes that met his own. Instead her eyes were glassy and uncomprehending, still full of some terror that only she could see. "Gone." she muttered. "Gone, gone, gone. Alone."

"No Rose, No. I'm right here." She seemed to withdraw into herself and started crying softly, her face buried in his shoulder. Wanting to comfort her, he brushed her hair softly from her face, which stopped her crying, and then he kissed her gently on the lips. He knew that kissing could have a calming effect and he hoped it would work. "You're not alone." He felt slightly hopeful as Rose drew in a breath and sagged against his side as she fully awoke.

"Oh, Doctor," she sighed.

The Doctor rubbed her back gently. "Bad Wolf Bay again?" He asked softly. The other Doctor? He thought to himself.

Rose reached out and touched his face, as if she was having a hard time believing he was real. She frowned slightly. "No," she replied. "It was you." She shuddered against him. "You were gone, Doctor. Not him, but you."

Still adjusting to being human, a smile had started to spread across his face when he heard that her nightmare had not been about the other Doctor but about himself. That had to mean something. He mentally kicked himself and stifled the smile, not wanting to find happiness in her pain. He hoped none of this had been noticeable in the dim light streaming into her bedroom from the hallway. If there was any remaining trace of the smile was gone with next words. "You weren't just gone, you were dead." She grasped his one of his hands in hers and pulled it to her heart.

"What?" The Doctor asked, shocked. He had no idea what he had expected her to say, but that was not it. He pulled away slightly to look at her and then used his right hand to pull her hand to his heart. There might only be one heart inside his chest now but it was beating strongly. "See," he said with a cheeky grin, trying to get her to do the same, "the ticker is still good."

Rose gave a feeble smile back, but there was such sadness in it. "For now, but not forever. You could leave and even if you don't, one day you'll die."

He realized they were at a precipice. His studies of human psychiatry led him to believe her fear of losing him was at the root of her nightmare, not the fear of him dying someday. They had been some discussion of the past and the future between them but mostly they had been focusing on the day to day adjustment. Clearly they had to have a talk now though, if her sleep was being disturbed. He looked at his beloved Rose, and smiled warmly at her.

"True, but that's not going to happen for a very long time. Come with me, Rose." He got up and led her by the hand to the kitchen and then pulled out a chair at the counter for her to sit down. Having seen plenty of late night talks over coffee or hot cocoa in the movies, he busied himself making some of the latter for the two of them. "Tell me about your dream."

She nodded. "We were walking through the park. Not doing anything exciting or extraordinary just taking a walk together. Suddenly you collapsed. I don't know why, but one moment you were on the ground and dead. Your heart had just stopped. You didn't regenerate, you just died, right in front of me." Her voice broke and he could see tears pooling in her eyes once again.

The Doctor reached over to cup her face and he stroked her cheek tenderly with his thumb. He thought for a moment how he should begin. He could usually talk for a long time about mindless things that didn't really matter, but he was not yet used to putting his emotions into words. Actions had defined him before the metacrisis and he was still working on sharing more of what he felt – and had felt - for so long.

"That must have been really terrifying," he started. He remembered the absolute horror that he had felt when he had almost lost Rose to the Void. The wind had been too strong and it had been all he could do to hold on himself, he certainly hadn't been able to even try to save her. If that kind of terror had interrupted her sleep, he understood her distress. "It's true that I won't regenerate, but as long as you want me, I'll do everything in my power to be with you, Rose."

"I know you say that now," she interrupted, her voice cracking. "But once the TARDIS is completed…" she trailed off. She knew domesticity was not coming easy to the Doctor even though she could tell he was trying very hard. Deep down she worried that this life they were sharing might not be enough for him once he had the freedom to leave.

"Once the TARDIS is completed I want to travel this universe with you. You know that, Rose." He stopped stroking her cheek and instead squeezed her hand. "That's all I've wanted for the longest time. Since I first invited you to travel with me. You said no, and I didn't want to accept that, so I came back. You and me, we have a habit of running after one another," he said with another huge grin, still hoping to get her to smile.

She nodded. "And you get so excited about traveling again. But then all of this," she waved her hand around. "The mortgage, carpets, everything… will you still want this?" Her voice then got softer. "Will you still want to be with me?"

"Always," the Doctor replied. He decided to share with her something neither he nor his previous incarnation had gone into detail about what had happened on the game station. He hadn't wanted her to feel guilty but now the knowledge might give her some comfort. Rose knew he had regenerated because his body was dying, but her memory of the events leading up to that were fuzzy.

"Rose," he began. "I never told you exactly why I looked into the heart of the time vortex. I did it to save you. You sacrificed yourself, to keep me safe, and believe me, it would have been a sacrifice. I had to save you in turn. A human brain could not handle the vortex and you would have burned. I knew that it would be the end of that life, the death of that personality, but I didn't care. All that mattered was you. This," he waved his hand to indicate his current state, "everything I am now, everything he is, was born out of love for you. So to answer your question, yes. Even if we could never travel again in the TARDIS again, the answer would still be yes.

The Doctor decided to go for broke and continue, to let her know everything that he wanted. "Before, I had so many rules. Rules to protect you and rules to protect myself. I didn't just lose Gallifrey, I lost my wife and family and while Gallifreyan relationships were so different it still hurt. But it wasn't just the thought of watching you wither and die that held me back. It was the fact I couldn't give you the kind of life you would eventually want and deserve. I knew that I loved you but I wouldn't allow myself to act on it. I could only bring myself to say it – or rather, start to say it – when I thought we would never see each other again. I didn't want to leave you not knowing that I returned your feelings.

And Rose," he leaned over to kiss her, "I still do. I felt everything he ever felt and only I have felt what has happened since he left. It's been," he paused as he pulled away from her slightly. Despite quite a bit of frustration, some misunderstandings and arguments, he had enjoyed every minute he had with Rose since they were left together at Bad Wolf Bay. "Fantastic," he finished, using the catchphrase of his previous incarnation.

"Brilliant." she said, in agreement, the dazzling smile that he loved lighting up her face. There was a peace to her face now, as though a weight had been lifted off her shoulders and her heart had been lightened.

"And just to make it abundantly clear, Rose Tyler," he continued, pronouncing her name the way he knew she loved, "I do want everything with you."

The kettle whistled and the Doctor poured hot water into two cups before adding the hot cocoa. "Oi!" he exclaimed, pulling his ear, and looking around in consternation. "Do we have any of the little marshmallows that I like?"

Rose grinned. Both at the question and at the Donna Nobleism that had preceded it. They still cropped up from time to time. "Yeah," she said, with her tongue between her teeth. "Top shelf, left side."

He found the marshmallows and proceeded to add way more than was necessary to both of their cups. He handed one of them to Rose and led her to the living room so they could enjoy their cocoa snuggled against one another. They each drank in companionable silence, lost in thought, and when they were done she took the cups to the sink to the dishwasher. "Let's get to bed," she suggested.

The Doctor nodded and walked with her hand in hand to her bedroom. He bent to give her a quick kiss good night but instead found her arms wrapped around his neck. Rose kissed him and after a moment her tongue traced a path across his lips, seeking entrance. He opened his mouth gladly, savoring both a trace of hot cocoa as well as the taste that was completely, utterly, Rose. They kissed leisurely, enjoying being in each other's arms. His hand slipped under her pajama top and he caressed the bare skin of her lower back lovingly, pulling her flush against his body, before pulling away as she tried, rather unsuccessfully, to hide a yawn. "Good night, Rose," he said with a smile.

She looked at him and bit her lip thoughtfully. "Could you stay here with me?"

Not expecting that but delighted all the same, he nodded. "I'll take the chair," he said lowering himself down into the chair that sat at the desk in her room.

Rose shook her head as she climbed into her bed. "S'Not what I meant. Will you hold me?"

The Doctor wordlessly toed off his trainers since he was still completely dressed. He was not willing to spoil the moment to change into his pajamas and so he just went for it and he slid in next to her and pulled her into his arms. He heard her sigh happily and a sense of catharsis filled him. He had sensed her holding back but had figured she had just needed time to adjust. He never imagined she feared losing him too. They should have talked sooner. "I love you, Rose."

"I love you too, my Doctor." She leaned her ear against his chest and he could tell she was listening to the steady beating of his heart with a smile on her face before she sank back to sleep.

He watched her sleeping in his arms and a lump rose to his throat. Wherever the other Doctor was out there in the parallel universe, he thanked him for leaving this amazing woman with him. He knew tonight had been a milestone for him and Rose and he couldn't wait to see what tomorrow would bring. With a sigh of contentment, he fell asleep next to the woman he loved with every beat of his single heart.

A/N: Ok, my first real DW story and not just the Doctor's thoughts. I don't know where this came from but once I got it into my head I had to write it… just as I had to pay homage to some lines/scenes from Buffy the Vampire Slayer that I love. I couldn't help myself. Kudos to those who spot them. :) I welcome thoughts on this… I know I used way too many adverbs but I think the dead of night setting makes for a softer atmosphere than if this was set during the day and they just seemed to fit.