He can’t stop staring at her face. The glorious curves of her cheeks, the way her honey eyes darken as they sway together to the dulcet tones of a clunky piano in the middle of Florizel St., that sliver of tongue peeking out from behind her teeth while she grins that gorgeous lazy grin of hers, and oh, those sugar plum lips, soft and begging to be kissed, but he just tightens his grip on her waist, pulls her closer to him, and presses his nose into her loosely coiffed updo, and he just breathes her in ‘cause the very sight of her leaves him in a prickling sort of awe, the sort that catches his breath in his chest, that hurts so very nicely, and then she ghosts her lips across his neck.
“Rose,” he gasps, the weight of this love he feels is all but suffocating him; he’s lucky he has his respiratory bypass. He feels her smile against his skin.
“Doctor.” And she pulls back, gazes at him knowingly, and well, he’s done for.
All of the pushing, all of his defenses, and they crumble with a word.
(There is power in words, after all.)
“I’ll never let anything happen to you again,” he whispers desperately, releasing her waist to grasp her face in his trembling hands. “I can’t—I won’t lose—”
Their lips meet and it’s just like he’s never imagined it—real and nose bump-y and warm and orange juice-y, but he can’t shut his eyes, ‘cause then he sees what the Wire did to her, his golden girl with her face stolen, her very essence ripped from him, and fuck, that’s her tongue, and he needs to get them to the TARDIS now or he’ll take her in this street, and Great Britain in 1953 is a shade too conservative for the kind of public indecency he’s got in mind—
she sighs and leans into him
—and he loves her, and he’s always known it, it’s like that Billie Holiday song, he sees her pink-and-yellow face in every flower, and her eyes in every damned star in the universe, and he’s a bit determined to show her some stars of his making.
She pulls back an inch and giggles against his lips. “I should have gotten my face lost a long time ago, I guess.”
He flinches. “I’d be perfectly happy if you never lost any part of you again.”