Rose doesn't know how the Doctor's arms aren't tired yet.

After all, they have been lying side by side on top of his trenchcoat for over an hour now, during all of which he has been holding Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire as he reads out loud to her. Somehow as a child, Rose had missed the memo that Harry Potter was awesome. The Doctor seems keen on making up for lost time now, and Rose would be lying if she said that his attempts to turn her into a hardcore Potterhead aren't effective. The dynamic inflection of his voice keeps her as rapt with attention as the narrative itself does. If it weren't for the fact that the Doctor's body was lying so closely and so casually by her side, she would forget where she was completely and get utterly lost in the story.

Unfortunately - a thrilling kind of unfortunately, but still - the ten centimeters of space between their shoulders is slightly distracting. He could be just a little bit closer, and they would be touching. He could even put his arm around her, hold her...

But he can't, because they're friends, because she's human and he's Time Lord - in capital letters because it's apparently a Big Deal (and not just because he's the last) - and finally, and most logically, because both of his arms are suspended above his head, holding the book up. He can't easily hold her and the book. She doesn't even see how he can so easily hold the book.

"'I'm not sure whether they hibernate or not,' Hagrid told the shivering class in the windy pumpkin patch next lesson," the Doctor reads, doing a perfect imitation of Hagrid's voice. Rose interrupts him with a giggle.

"What?" he asks.

"Your Hagrid sounds funny," she says, turning her head to grin at him. He turns his head to her as well, doing what she assumes is his best impression of an offended expression.

"I'll have you know," he says, "that I almost played Hagrid in the movies. They loved my Hagrid!"

"I'm sure they did," Rose says, sticking her tongue between her teeth. She almost doesn't notice the half-second where the Doctor's eyes fall from her eyes to her mouth. Almost. But she turns away from him and orders him to keep reading, knowing she should take it with a grain of salt. In almost two years of traveling together, he's had plenty of opportunity to make a move, if he'd wanted to. She has learned to pretend not to notice or care about the moments when it looks like he almost wants her. It doesn't hurt much. Hurts less than it would if she let herself hope.

Anyway, lying ten centimeters away from him on a sunny day on a grassy hill, listening to his voice detailing the behaviors of blast-ended skrewts and watching the round white clouds slowly drift by - that isn't so bad. If this is what Rose has to look forward to for the rest of her life, she'll take it, and gladly. It feels like a happy day, the kind that makes you want to run through a field of daisies (which she might do later, since there's plenty of open space here in which to do it), and she feels a kind of serene validation that has nothing to do with romantic possibilities. It's the proximity of their bodies - the fact that even though they're not as close as she'd especially like to be, they're closer than she'd ever expected to be from the beginning. His voice doesn't hold back as he reads her more about Rita Skeeter, and she knows that it's not his life story, but at least it's something he's sharing with her. He trusts her enough to lie side-by-side with her on his trenchcoat and let himself get lost in the fantasy world of words.

Maybe it's more than that. It's intimacy. It's the closeness they've come to, which embodies their trust and their proximity and becomes this overwhelming feeling of friendship and - okay, and romantic possibilities. She feels loved with every hug she receives from him. Maybe it's not the kind of fireworks, swell-of-the-music, passionate and/or romantically tragic love that she thinks she knows all about from being raised on television, but it's there. Sweet and strong and soft and serene. Comforting.

"Rose?" she hears him say. Then he says something about being uncomfortable and shrugs his shoulders a bit. A-ha. She knew he must have been getting tired, holding up the book.

"Let me hold it for a bit," she says. He shakes his head and says that he can, but she insists, using this moment as an opportunity to scoot a few centimeters closer to him. They've been this close before - closer, by far, with each hug they share - but it's still something that makes her heart beat just a little bit faster, something that makes her happy.

"We can share," he offers, closing the space between their shoulders. Rose nods, although this proximity means that he can no longer see her head unless he turns his own from the sky. She reaches up and takes one side of the heavy book, and his free arm flies down and lands across her upper ribs and stomach with an almost audible whump. He leaves his hand here. Now it is Rose's turn to act offended.

"You just gonna leave that there?" she asks him in mock dismay.

"You seem to have taken all my personal space," he replies. "I'm only taking back what's rightfully mine. Besides, it's too late. My arm is too tired to lift now."

"Now that's rude," she says with a grin, not minding at all.

"That's what sort of man I am," he says, and she can hear the feigned grimness in his voice. "Rude and – "

"Not ginger," she interrupts. "So I've been told."

He laughs and squeezes her side, shifting her attention back to his rude (but welcome) invasion of her personal space.

"You know," she says, "if you're just gonna leave your hand there like that, then for the sake of retaliation, I must...retaliate."

"You lost the dramatic effect of that one there," he mutters to her, chuckling.

She lets her free hand float down and land gently on the hip of his closest to her, which is somewhere her hand has never been before. She feels warmth flood her body at that thought, but keeps an even tone.

"I try to leave the dramatic effect for the professionals," she says. When he doesn't respond, she adds, "That'd be your cue to keep readin'."

"Oh!" he says. "Right! Yes! 'Harry thoroughly enjoyed double Divination that afternoon...'"

Rose lets her mind float on the sound of the Doctor's voice, now softer due to their new proximity. This is intimate – more so than it was just a few moments ago, when she was (mostly) calmly contemplating her closeness. Now she feels somewhat less calm. The thudding of the blood rushing in her ears and the general tones he's making drowns the Doctor's exact words out.

It's more intimate because he's touching her, and she's touching him. There may not be real romantic intentions behind it, but their bodies' closeness has him reading in a much softer tone than he had been reading before.

Rose has learned, from the nearly-two years of experience traveling with the Doctor, how important and meaningful the passage of time is. Presently, she counts the seconds that she spends holding her breath in, afraid that if she breathes out, it will come out as a sigh accompanied by a gasp back in.

He's barely even touching her.

His hand is only just resting on her hip farthest from his own, his fingers slightly curled so that each pad of his fingertip is only just lightly touching her, burning her through the thin fabric of her shirt.

The rest of his arm is lazily draped across her body, too, crossing from her hip across her stomach to just under her breasts. His closeness to such erogenous areas should be thrilling, but he seems to be disregarding it completely as he reads on. She feels like squirming under him, she has become so tense, and suddenly the more she thinks about it, the more awkward lying in this position feels. She starts to lift her hand off of his hip, but he pauses and nudges her shoulder with his.

"It's okay," he says, his voice still as steady as it was when he was reading. "I'm comfortable."

God, it's as if he can read her mind. Gingerly, she lets her hand fall back across his stomach to the other side of his hips, mirroring his arm's position over her own body. Her hand lands more firmly, and she feels the hardness of his body under her hand.

He continues reading in a soft tone as she relaxes and absentmindedly presses her fingers harder into his hip, drumming her fingers on the area over his hipbone. She forces herself to listen into the words he's saying, something more about Dobby the House Elf. He reaches the end of a page and moves his hand off of her for just a moment to lick his fingers and turn the page. Immediately she misses the contact, the heaviness of his arm across her body. On his hand's way down back to her, it brushes against hers that is holding up the other side of the book. She barely conceals her shudder at the light contact.

Rose's arm is already getting tired, holding the book above her head like this, but if he could hold both of his up for over an hour, she can deal with more than ten minutes of holding just one arm up. She distracts herself with the murmur of his voice and the feel of his sharp hipbone under her hand. She consciously flattens her hand against it, keen on feeling more of this part of him she's never felt. This touch could be completely platonic if he chooses to interpret it that way. She strokes her thumb across the area of stomach above his hipbone, wondering if he can feel it through his clothes. His words are once again drowned out by the rushing sound of her blood, but she can hear him falter for a second. She zones back in to hear him hesitantly read on. She bites her lip to hide her smile and lets her thumb keep stroking his stomach, half-wishing it was another part of him that she was stroking.

His hand goes back up to change the page again – already? she thinks – and this time when it comes back down, he flattens his hand on her hip as well, his thumb on her stomach mirroring her thumb's actions on his. She's sure this is intentional, she's sure he has no idea the kind of effect he's having on her, she's sure he can hear her heart pounding from there. She's not sure she's breathing. This is somewhere else they've never been, a threshold they've never crossed together. This is more intimate than anything they've done so far – touching each other just ever-so-slightly in a way that one could even call caressing (and Rose wants that to be the word for it – a good word, caressing), for the sake of exploration and mutual pleasure. Rose reminds herself to breathe and sucks in a gasp that she's sure is obvious. She tells herself to focus on the Doctor's voice and try to pretend that each circle his thumb makes on her stomach isn't sending tingles through her so intense that it feels like she's being burned.

It's only then that she realizes how quiet his voice has become. She can barely hear the words he's saying even when she tries to listen to the story.

"Speak up," she says, or tries to say – her voice comes out sounding much breathier than was intended.

The Doctor clears his throat and reads on louder for her: "'But Winky cried harder than ever. Dobby, on the other hand, beamed up at -' oh."

Rose lets in a sharp intake of breath as her thumb reaches too far and brushes against something hard that is definitely not his stomach. She feels her whole body flush; she feels frozen in time. She has not moved her hand away, has not made any movement. Neither has he.

"This -?" she hears herself whispering. She turns her head to his, and sees in his face something she's never seen outright before. Not this strong, not this visible. He swallows and looks over at her, not quite meeting her eyes.

"Yeah," he breathes. She lets out a breath with him, a quick, shaky exhale.

"Do -?" she starts, not quite sure what she's asking. His eyes flit to her mouth, and she licks her lips self-consciously. She wants him to kiss her, wants him to want her, knows that he does want her, or at least that the male in him sees the female in her and is responding the way he was biologically made to respond. Either way, she's been feeling herself responding the same way for the past however-long-they've-been-lying-together-like-this. For whatever reason he is hard under her hand, it doesn't matter to her now.

Except that it does. She's spent the past two years trying to crush her own hope, and now? This is easy. This is terrifyingly easy, surprisingly simple, and incredibly confusing. Maybe she ought to have been the one to make a move. Months ago. A year ago. From the first day.

Time wasted. And she is so conscious of the importance and meaning of time's passage, the significance of each second gone by. She inhales, her eyes on his. He exhales, his eyes still fixed on her lips. The seconds tick by, and she feels so tense, so aware of everything happening. His body, his anatomy, hard under the soft press of her unmoving hand. His arm across her body, his fingers only just digging into her hip now, as if he almost can't control himself and he needs to exert his energy into this tiny clenching of the hands. Their shoulders touching. The grass underneath them. The breeze ruffling his hair and rustling the pages of the book they still hold above and between them with their other hands.

Ten seconds. Then twenty. It's as if she's suspended in time. It's as if they are, and the only things moving around them are the wind and the clouds.

Then she breaks it.

She squeezes the book in her tired hand and removes it from his hand, setting it down somewhere beside her.

She moves her newly freed hand to the Doctor's face and caresses his cheek.

And then, completely conscious of how much time she may have wasted and how much time she'll lose if she doesn't act now, she kisses him.

It's a soft, chaste kiss. Rose can feel his want for more by the way he exhales out as she pulls back, but half of her is expecting him to disdainfully remove her hands from him, get up, and leave her here on this alien planet. After all, she is touching the forbidden fruit - almost literally.

But instead of getting up, he seems to sink into the ground. His eyes finally meet hers, and she sees that expression again. She sees a darkness she's only gotten glimpses of before, and she sees desire and curiosity and questioning. She sees a spark of adventure and the fears that accompany it. The danger.

She squeezes him under her hand for the first time, and he gasps, his eyes fluttering shut involuntarily.

And then his lips are on hers, slow but desperate, parted without thought, so that it's so easy for her to slip her tongue across his for the first time. He groans and caresses her tongue with his, his fingers now digging harder into her side.

This is no longer the most comfortable position, lying side by side with their arms tangled across each other. Rose removes her mouth from his, removes her hands from him, causing him to groan in disapproval until he figures out that she is only doing this so that she can climb halfway on top of him.

Her hand immediately moves back down to his hardness, stroking him through his clothes.

"Is this -?" she asks, losing her question in a breath. Is this okay? is what she means to say, but he seems to understand the question.

"Yes," he says, his voice low and hoarse. His hands grip at her hips as she straddles one of his legs. She lets herself fall down on him into a horizontal embrace, using her free arm to brace herself against the ground. She finds her lips a centimeter from his.

The Doctor leans up to peck her lips.

"This is - ahhh." He groans, bucking his hips into her hand before regaining control of himself. "This is new."

Rose makes a noise of agreement, wondering how they ended up here like this so fast. She tries to be conscious of every second, but it seems like she's lost track of time as the moments blur together. His hands have moved from her hips to the zipper on her jeans, creating a larger gap of space between their clothed bodies for his fingers to work the button.

"Do you want to -?" she asks, finding herself kissed again by him before she can finish her question.

"I want this," he answers, slipping one hand inside her knickers. She moans as his fingers slide through her wet heat and slip inside of her. Shakily, she unbuttons the Doctor's trousers and lets the zipper glide slowly down, taking in the moment even if her release of inhibitions has taken away her ability to count the minutes that have gone by.

"You're wearing Calvin Kleins," she says, amused, as she peels his trousers down.

"Mmmm," is all he says, and with a flick of his finger, he reduces her words to similar syllables. She pushes his pants down and feels his cock for the first time, hard in her hand and warmer than the rest of his body.

She wraps her hand around it and slides down experimentally. He moans loudly and bucks his hips. She keeps moving, up and down and up and down, spreading moisture from the tip of his head, setting a rhythm with which the movements of his hand in her pants joins. The only space between their bodies is the room they need to move their hands between them. Rose kisses the Doctor sloppily, feeling him bite at her lower lip then move lower to suck at her jaw. She cries out, feeling herself getting close from the feeling of his deft fingers inside her.

She speeds both of them up, rocking her hips into his hand, trying to gain friction on her clit from his palm. The Doctor grunts and swipes his thumb sideways across her clit momentarily.

"Slow down," he says. "Please."

She understands. She wants release, craves it, needs it, but she also needs this to last. This is the only time they will have this first. She doesn't want it to be fast and furious; she wants the intimacy they've built up throughout the day, the intimacy they've been building up for two years. She wants to learn the faces he makes and the sounds he releases under her touch. She wants to feel his hips slowly moving her up and down - a natural reaction to the sensation, and one that he can't control - a preview of what will inevitably happen when they take the next step in their shared intimacy.

She drops her head to his shoulder, panting, every sensation resonating strongly in her body. Everything is extra sensitive. His breath on her ear as he gasps, for example, is almost more erotic than the way his fingers curl inside of her. The feel of his hips gently rocking into her hand, the fabric of their shirts creating friction against each other. He holds her by the waist with his free hand, his cold fingers tracing circles on her back under her shirt. She shivers, practically overloaded with sensation.

"Please," she says, "touch me - my clit."

He moans, and she wonders if he might have a thing for dirty talk or begging or something. But she'll have plenty of time to find that out later. She looks forward to it, but she's not fixated on it, and she can't be bothered with much other thought when his thumb finally rubs a decisive circle in her clit like the ones his fingers are tracing on her back. It strikes her that he may not be drawing circles - he may be writing words, intimate things that he can't yet share out loud, or just a general claim of her body, or maybe the word "yes" over and over, which is the only word falling out of both of their mouths now. "Yes," and then "Oh, Rose," and "Doctor," and "please," and indistinguishable moans and nonsensical syllables. But everything makes sense, the way his body moves wildly under hers as it nears closer to his release, the way she pulls her head back and he kisses her hard but tenderly, if it's at all possible, and the way his hands slide up her side and hold her steady as she finally climaxes into bliss and oblivion. She loses her grip on him for just a second when she throws her head back, but she remembers at the last moment, and it only takes him a few pumps before he is coming, gasping her name and rocking uncontrollably into her hand.

They both come down together, and Rose collapses to his side, wiping her hand messily on the grass above his head and snuggling up to him.

They are content to lie there for a while, not speaking, not really knowing what to say. They watch the round white clouds go by and touch each other tenderly in places still yet undiscovered by the other.

"We still have to finish that chapter of Harry Potter," Rose whispers to the Doctor, grinning.

"What chapter were we on?" the Doctor asks, smiling back.

"I don't remember," she says with a laugh. "Something about blast-ended skrewts?"

"Rose Tyler," he admonishes, "I know I remember reading farther than that."

"I'm sure you did," she says. "I was just a bit distracted."

"Hmm," he says. "So I have to go back and reread all of that stuff about the House Elves and everything?"

"'Fraid so," Rose says. "Unless... I could think of a few better things for us to do."

The Doctor seems to consider her for a second, although she sees that his eyes are already growing that dark look once more.

"Yeah? Think Harry Potter can wait?" he asks. "The best literary work of your generation?"

"Are you really arguing the case for reading a book over having sex with me?" she asks.

"You know," he says, "you're right. Sod Harry Potter." He gets up off of his trenchcoat and pulls her up with him, catching her as she nearly falls from dizziness at getting up so quickly.

"You're coming back to the TARDIS with me," he says. She doesn't miss the note of tenderness in his voice, but she also hears the roughness of a man who is obviously quite sexed up. She smiles at her own accomplishment and grasps for his hand.

"Allons-y, then," she says.

"Allons-y," he agrees, picking up his coat and escorting her down the hill to the TARDIS.

It's only three minutes from the hill before he decides to run back and retrieve the Harry Potter book, "just to have for later." Rose laughs as she runs after him, pulled by their joined hands. "I love you," she wants to tell him in that moment, but she doesn't. And that's okay.

They have time.

A/N: I love reviews almost more than Harry Potter.

Wait, hold on, that's a lie. I love nothing more than Harry Potter. Except maybe David Tennant's freckles. Maybe...no.

Still. Reviews are lovely. ;)