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The air was so thick with alcohol-laced breath that the Doctor thought he was growing drunker by the second, despite not a drop passing his lips since he’d finished his beer 20 minutes ago. There was a gentle haze to the edge of his vision - he wouldn’t trust himself behind the controls of the TARDIS right about now, but to be fair, when was he ever able to be trusted in control of his TARDIS?
It was both too dark and too brightly lit, the neon lights and TV screens showing some sort of sports game shining directly into his brain, while he couldn’t make out the expression of anyone around him - grounded only by the pressure of Rose’s body against his arm, pressing it into the sticky leather of the booth. He could hear the familiar tone of her voice lilting and growing more excited as she told a friend of a friend a story from high school.
“So, how’d you guys meet?” The friend of a friend asked, looking hazily between Rose and the Doctor.
Rose’s hand found his knee under the table.
“There was a bit of an emergency at my old job and this handsome stranger helped me out,” She grinned, squeezing gently as he bit back a laugh - the ways they carefully shrouded their history in the presence of non-Torchwood people was a bit funnier when the world was shimmering around him - “We got talking and decided to start travelling together, just on a whim. Got split up for a while, and then reunited here in Norway just last year, and here we are!”
The friend of a friend leaned forward, “Oh God, so you did long distance for a while?”
“In a manner of speaking,” The Doctor replied, pressing a kiss to the side of Rose’s head, feeling the blonde strands shift beneath his lips.
“My boyfriend - well, he’s not my boyfriend , but y’know what I mean - he’s moving to Edinburgh in the autumn and I don’t know if I’ll be able to cope. Seven and a half hours is a long drive, you know?”
“I do know,” It was Rose’s turn to bite back a laugh, even while her hand clenched tighter over the fabric of his jeans.
The friend of a friend began a long-winded ramble about her not-boyfriend to which Rose listened diligently, while the Doctor’s mind trailed off, back through those years of travelling, of flying through the stars, of holding her hand across the stars, their differing mortality causing them to be universes apart - literally. The immortal holding the mortal to himself, as if he could forgo the inevitable.
If he only knew that one day he’d be drunk in a sweaty pub, with Rose in his arms and his lips on her skin.
He pressed kisses into the side of her throat, too far gone to worry about what everyone else thought. He’d definitely spotted one of Rose’s friends entangled in the corner with a man who she had never seen before tonight, so it wasn’t like they were the worst offenders. He could feel the vibrations of Rose’s little listening hums, feel her chin bump against his temple when she nodded, feel when her hums turned from ones of active listening to those of pleasure at the feeling of his lips on her.
He sucked a mark into the back of her neck, where her hair and collar could hide it at work on Monday, revelling in the way her breath puffed against his temple as she turned her head to face him.
“Doctor, we’re in public.”
“So are they,” He nodded towards the offending friend and stranger, resuming his efforts on a new patch of skin.
She sighed and tipped her head to the side, giving him more space to work with, “You’re lucky everyone else is drunk. You’re lucky I’m drunk.”
“When can we go?” He let the last vowel trail into a whine, the low vibrations of his voice rumbling across her skin, eliciting a little gasp to leave her lips.
“Doctor, I came out tonight because I’m trying to make friends in this universe.”
He nodded understandingly but didn’t halt his assault on her pale skin, pressing kiss after kiss to the most secluded, most tantalising spots. Trailing around, he vaguely heard her start a conversation with another girl before his lips landed on that spot behind her ear, at which he felt a full-body shiver run through her, prompting her to grip his leg tighter under the table and pull away from him. He pouted but recognised that she was farewelling the other girls still at the table, and he quickly slid out of the booth before she could change her mind.
As they stepped out into the bitingly cold London air, the Doctor threw his arm around Rose’s waist and tugged her close, stabilizing her heels-and-alcohol-induced wobble, “I’m sorry, you wanted to make friends.”
She shook her head, pressing her temple into his shoulder, “They were boring anyway. They never shut up about the men in their lives…”
“To be fair,” He jibed as she swayed away from him and then back into his arms, “I did hear my name coming up a lot when I was talking to Charlotte’s boyfriend…”
She flushed red, “That’s different, Doctor.” He nodded with a faux-serious expression, goading her, “You’re mine for life now.”
“Am I really?” He teased.
“You’d better be. Jumped across universes for you, the best thing you can do is stay-”
They were out in the open, swaying slightly as they stood on the street corner where the Doctor had called the taxi, but he couldn’t help but collect her into his arms and capture her lips under his. He felt a satisfied puff of breath against his cheek, her hands gripping his waist where they’d made their way under his winter coat. She tasted like the cider she liked, smelled like the sticky leather seats of the bar until he pressed closer, and then there was that unmistakable Rose scent.
She hummed against his mouth, lips never leaving his, “You taste like beer.”
“You taste like apple juice.”
“It is not apple juice!”
He hummed, swallowing her defence down as his mouth closed over her once more. He began to fade away, leaving this human body behind to levitate back towards the stars, back towards the time vortex and the void and all those liminal spaces that he’d left far behind, Rose now grasped tightly in his arms and never let go…
A bright light shone behind his eyelids, making his inebriated mind wonder for a moment if he was passing by some star before he heard the buzz of a window winding down and an unamused, gruff man’s voice asking, “Taxi for John?”
“Yes, that’s us,” Rose replied, flushing a soft red as she attempted to wipe her lipstick from where it had smudged outside the line of her lips.
They managed to hold it together in the back of the taxi - Rose had never let him do anything to her in the back of a taxi, for the sake of the driver - until they pulled up to the front of the familiar townhouses, the blue door shining through the darkness to his blurred eyes like a beacon.
The door was barely shut when his hands were back on her, pushing her up against the door and lifting the hem of her skirt, tugging it up and over her hips so her thighs were bare to him.
“Impatient,” She remarked, but the breathless quality of her voice told him that it was more than welcome.
“You too,” He returned, nodding at how her fingers had almost absent-mindedly begun to undo the button on his jeans.
She looked down innocently, as if she was completely unaware of what her traitorous hands were doing, “Huh.”
With a truly love-sick smile sliding its way across his face, the Doctor ducked his head to capture her lips under his. She was more vocal here, in private - little whines and noises that could almost be categorized as moans and whimpers made their way from her lips straight onto his, the vibration of her voice travelling inebriating him further. Mindlessly his hands found their way under her thighs and he pushed her up against the door, revelling in the soft skin against his rough palms, and the way he could freely cover the throat and neck revealed to him in as many kisses as he could physically give her. It was so familiar, so mindless, that he didn’t even have to think about it as he blindly carried her from the door to the bedroom, shed the rest of her clothes and lost himself in her.
Afterwards, he felt the haze of drunkenness, adrenaline and desire ebb away from the edges of his vision, the intoxicating shimmer that had been like a magnet pulling him to Rose all evening, now dulling into a soft beauty that was almost more attractive.
He pressed his face into the back of her neck again, tasting sweat drying on bare skin. She hummed, satiated, and curled back into him, like a cat stretching in a patch of sunlight. He ran a gentle tongue over the purple mark on the back of her neck that he’d left there in the bar, not that long ago. She turned over in the sheets, pressing her face to his naked chest, bare legs tangling.
His eyes caught on the map of stars out the window.
He mapped them for a moment, past journeys flitting through his mind’s eye.
He pressed his face into the golden hair of the human girl in his arms and fell asleep.