Starlight - [Ten/Rose]

"Doctor!"

Rose swung her arm round the open doorway of the TARDIS and poked her head out, blonde hair swaying.

The Doctor, who'd been attempting to drag a heavy, rusted contraption -so far, fruitlessly- through the dirt the remaining few feet it needed to go to join the rest of its family to do, well, whatever it is greenish metal machines shaped vaguely like squids do, dropped his bulky burden with a sigh and turned around.

"Yes?" he asked, slightly out of breath.

Rose lifted up a pair of safety goggles. "You forgot these."

"Right!" he shouted, a bit too loudly for a public park, even one at present unoccupied. "Might need those. Safety first, you know. Always useful, safety goggles. You never know when you might need them. Like that time with the sentient pu-"

"Purple gelatin? Yeah," Rose laughed, " I remember. Where was it from? Order-something?"

"Ordromia," the Doctor corrected. " Second planet of its galaxy. Lovely place. The inhabitants, not so much. But if you can get past the slime and really, really aggressive tendencies, they can actually be quite pleasant!"

"I'll take your word for it," Rose giggled. A whiff of smoke caught her nose. "Is that supposed to happen?"

"Well..." He drew it out.

"Well?" She raised an eyebrow.

"Yes!"

"..."

"Probably not. But it's almost finished! No explosions this time, promise."

"You said that last time."

"Well, that was a fib. I do that occasionally. But none this time, I swear on-" he looked around wildly for a moment, "on..." and seemingly found nothing, "I just swear."

"Not willing to swear on the TARDIS?"

"She thinks it's rude." The Doctor eyed the TARDIS for a moment before returning to the project at hand, where a green light had begun to blink. "Aha!"

The Doctor gestured to a button in the middle of the squid-machine-thing's console. "You do the honors," he said, stepping aside gallantly.

Rose grinned widely at the Doctor before tentatively pressing the button.

Almost immediately, the night sky lit up with a thousand different lights, all emanating from the head of the squid-machine, which was now wheezing like a very sick train. Rose looked up. Green lines snaked around the stars, outlining constellations in a million rays of light. The sky had never seemed so alive.

"Wow," Rose breathed.

The Doctor pulled her down to sit next to him on the grass. "I know. Amazing, isn't it?"

Rose nodded mutely, eyes never leaving the sky.

The Doctor lay back, one arm behind his head, and Rose followed suit. He pointed.

"That's Globus Aerostaticus. Otherwise known as The Balloon Constellation. We saw that one up close the other day, remember?"

Rose made a noise of assent.

The Doctor continued, "and there's Polophylax, the Guardian of the Pole. Always gets forgotten, that one."

"And that one over to the far right, that's Gladii Electorales Saxonici. It's the Crossed Swords of Saxony. Real interesting story behind that one-" he trailed off. Rose's eyes were no longer on the light display above, and had come to rest on his face, which glowed softly in the green light.

She smiled softly. "Rose-" said the Doctor, but she shushed him and quickly, gently pressed her lips to his. It wasn't a fiery, heavy kiss, but it was warm, and soft, and happy, and as they drew back and lay back down on the grass, hand tangled in hand, they couldn't help but feel that this was a Moment, one happy, amazing Moment basking under the green light of the stars that they would reflect on in the trying days that would inevitably come. It was perfect.

And if the star-squid wheezed its last groaning breath before extinguishing itself and coming to rest in creaky, satisfied silence, if there were curious lights coming on in the houses across the road and flashing ones around the bend in the street, if they held hands and ran, laughing, from the police who'd come to investigate the calls of neighbors and to see what the commotion was about, and collapsed giggling into the TARDIS, well, that was perfect too.