Various looks had been exchanged along the way: eye-rolls from Jackie at the two of them over her shoulder, loitering glances of amazement from Rose at the Doctor, and regards of sheer adoration from the Doctor at Rose. While her mother's steps were incresingly trudging, theirs were gaining something akin to a skip. Once they had gotten on the road, it was just over an hour of walking around the coastline before they saw any reasonable signs of civilisation in the form of a rather small village on the horizon. The assumption that Jackie had been here before notwithstanding, until a building appeared, he had really began to wonder if she knew where she was going. But conveniently, they soon happened to spot a typical quaint and white, two-storey hotel a block into town.

"Hallo.", came the greeting from the receptionist behind the little counter as they walked in, Jackie in the lead.

But it was the Doctor who merrily spoke up for the three of them. "Hello!"

"Hvordan kan jeg hjelpe deg?"

And with that, he was stopped cold. "Ooh."

"I know, right?", Rose chuckled, feeling transported back to the old days when they had encoutered and subsequently discussed a truly peculiar feature of an alien planet or lifeform. "Hit me like a ton of bricks the first time too."

He couldn't help but simper at her before pushing his hands into his pockets and returning his attention to the middle-aged, blue-eyed brunette woman. "You don't speak English, by chance?"

"I do.", she smiled through a snicker, having stayed silent during her new guests' exchange.

Flashing a toothy smile that he'd had at the ready, he rolled up on the balls of his feet and back down again as he continued his initiative and made their reservation. "Brilliant! In that case, two rooms for the night, please." He added with raised brows, nearing giddiness, "One for my fiancée and myself, and one for her mother."

"Wot?" came a dual interruption, Jackie's loud and strident and Rose's soft but no less bewildered.

The Doctor blinked once, then twice, until his happy grin flattened at the concerned, confused looks and clear lack of accord amongst the three of them. Even his wild, slightly over-long hair looked like it had drooped. Opening his mouth to speak, he could get no sounds to exit.

"Wot'you mean your fiancée?", Jackie re-squeaked.

Did Jackie disapprove, he wondered, or did she just not pick up on it beforehand and neither did Rose want her to and she didn't expect that coming, at least not so soon? At some point, a couple of words tumbled down from his windless sails. Not having taken his eyes off his supposèd betrothed, he stuttered. "You're... not?"

Her countenance was mostly unreadable to him, but it did seem to indicate she wasn't exactly thrilled with the idea.

"Oh." Time seemed to pause as his lips remained in an o-shape. His gaze plummeted downward to the green and mauve, wood-patterned rug underneath them while an awkward hand removed itself from a pocket and came up to self-consciously rub the back of his neck. His state quickly devolved to a more than mild level of fragile terror at the possibility, probability?, that she wasn't really in love with him any longer, or she had at least thought it over and decided she couldn't be in love with this him, and that she didn't intend for him to be sticking around, at least like that.

Not missing anything about his abrupt change in mood, she took hold of and tugged on his other wrist, from where The Hand had been stuck in its pocket, to pull him over a few feet away from her mother and the understandably baffled but also entertained receptionist in order to have a more private moment.

She dropped said wrist, and seconds ticked by while she quizzed him with an arched brow. When he found his voice again, he had just blinked hard, and in so doing, an extra layer of wetness formed over his eyes. Now he had an intimate idea of how she'd felt back when she'd talked with him after meeting Sarah Jane. His voice wobbled, unable to keep the panic completely out of it. "We'd said... I could grow old with you. Together. Asked if you wanted to spend the rest of your life with me. When you... I assumed you... well," he pressed his lids down for another moment once more in concentration, "I mean I t..."

For the second time in mere hours, he found himself being yanked into sudden descent, this time via his shirt collar, his lips inelegantly crashing against those same, full, pliant Rose lips he would forever re-imagine in his dreams. His thought process catching up to what was going on, he caught himself just in time before he would have toppled over her, and hands at her waist, he steadied his mouth against hers until the kiss ended with a natural sweetness.

Their faces pulled apart by inches. Without conscious effort, her tongue graced across her top lip. "'M sorry. I must not a' been thinkin'. Still in shock about it all, y'know?" She outright laughed then. "Why would I 'spect a normal human proposal from you anyway, yeah?"

As if an afterthought flashed before him, his expression changed in an instant once again, and he quickly took to fumbling around in an inner jacket pocket bigger on the inside, no doubt, and fished out what he was after: a slightly wide, beveled band in a swirling mixture of gold and silver metals, otherwise plain apart from the large, striking, diamondy gem tension-mounted within. He regarded it in contemplation, then looked back up at her, a flicker of anguish shadowing his features. "I happened by a famous jewelry shop on Sestris. It was four months after you..." he trailed off, trying once again to avoid reliving that particular nightmare in his mind. "Had it set with the only Gallifreyan White Point Star I knew still existed. I told myself if...", he paused with a thick swallow, the motion causing a tear finally to spill over onto his cheek, "when I found you again... it didn't matter; I'd ask you if..."

"Yes.", Rose cut off his intense distress, breaking into her wide, trademark smile that had, since she had met him, become reserved for him and him alone. Tears were in her own eyes by then. "Yes, I want to stay with you. Grow old with you. I want to 'ave your adventure with you." He visibly relaxed, enough so that he thought he might to turn into a pile of relieved goo right then and there. "My heart's always been yours, Doctor." The ring all but forgotten, she pulled her lips inward to help keep her from crying in the moment as well. "I told you forever, y' know, and I mean' i'."

With that kind of declaration, along with the trump of using of his name for the first time since there had been two of him on the beach, the Doctor's face had lit up like a little boy's on Christmas morning. He threw himself at her, hoisting her smaller frame up in the air, and twirled them both around before lowering her down, moving back only a matter of millimeters to catch some air, his singular but full heart in his eyes and locked on hers. "I love you more than anything, Rose Tyler, and I meant that too. I always have."

Epilogue: So Jackie rolls her eyes again, they all get the rooms the Doctor had originally had in mind (not next door to each other, he was more than grateful for), and he and Rose, hand in hand, fail in making it look like they don't run to theirs.