Remember Time Brings... [attn: Jack]

Jack shrugged, watching her peer down at the bed. "No commute?" he suggested with a smile. "Makes it easy if there's an emergency, too." Well, and there was the fact that it was much easier to live at work where it would be more difficult for people to notice the whole never-aging, never-dying bit, but that was something he preferred to leave out of this conversation. He realized a little belatedly that he'd never told her what he actually did for work, but that, too, could come in time.

"Still doesn't explain the hole..." Rose mused with one final glance down it, before she took a few steps towards him. Later she'd probably be more concerned about the actual 'in his office' part. Say, once she'd cleared her head.

There had been something else of interest though. "What sorta emergencies d'you get in an...underground lair?" Lair was maybe not the best word to put there. It summoned to mind images of supervillains. Not generally something she related with Jack.

He probably could have tried to seem offended at least a little by her use of the word 'lair', like he was a cliche out of DC comics (well, with the coat, he could make a good go of it, but... no), but instead he just sounded amused, "Lair? It's not really a lair."

Still smiling, because he really wasn't sure he could stop, he added, "I'll explain in the morning. Think that'd be best? Otherwise you might not remember." He was teasing her, but there was a tiny bit of seriousness there. She would just about have to be at her most sober before he could explain Torchwood to her.

Especially if he was planning on avoiding the part where he'd been working for them for the last, oh, several decades. Which he was.

She opened her mouth almost automatically to tell him she wasn't that bad, but something in the back of her mind poked her and told her to shut it. Instead, Rose rolled her eyes. "Bat cave then. Better?" She managed a fairly good impression of innocence with her teasing.

"Yeah...prob'ly." She admitted, somewhat reluctantly. Wouldn't be fair to make him tell the whole thing over again anyway. He had a point, she reasoned. "Don't think I'll forget to ask." Rose warned him, expression bordering on serious though her presence was anything but threatening.

"Not at all. No batmobile. And besides, do I look like the kind of guy who gets dressed up in spandex and a cape and-- you know what? Don't answer that." He grinned, and would have been the picture of innocence if she didn't know him as well as she did.

"Not a chance of that, huh?" he asked, adding, "Go on, you can sleep in there, princess. I'll wake you up when it's light out." He, himself, had little intention of sleeping. He hadn't before -- he had a lot to think about.

"That's no fun..." She meant the lack of batmobile. A moment later, after looking him over rather inquisitively, she burst into more giggles at the mental image. When they stopped, Rose was still smiling.

"None... 'Kay" Her attention turned back to the hole, and she moved to sit at its edge. Once seated she worked on battling her shoelaces, knotting them further as she looked over at Jack in the meantime. "You're sure?" Rose checked, giving in and just yanking her shoes off still tied.

Jack grinned. It was good to hear her laugh again. Really was. "Yeah, I know," he said once she'd stopped giggling, "I'd look damn good, but the chafing..." He knew she didn't mean that part, but it was funny, so he kept it up.

"Didn't think so, but it's worth a shot, right?" he asked, watching her but this time moving back closer to his desk. Where he would be spending the night.

That time Rose had the forethought to bite her lip to keep it in, ducking her head as she grinned broadly at...her feet. It was almost surreal, the scene. Down the rabbit hole... she thought with a tinge of further amusement, and swung her legs over the edge.

"Guess so." She shrugged slightly, then let herself drop down. A moment later she'd landed rather ungracefully on the bed. A quick look around the space let her realize the bed took up the whole space. Rose stood up on it with some effort, looking over the edge.

Jack raised an eyebrow at Rose peering at him from inside the hole. "Having fun?" he asked with a grin. He wondered distantly how long she was planning to stare at him, but that was okay, too. He'd tolerate half of anything at the moment.

She blinked at him, but smiled. "You like small bed-areas." The comment was more or less at random, and passed along with a hint of teasing. At least this one had space overtop.

Rose moved to sit back down after that observation, to get used to the bed.

"More convenience," he told her with a shrug, adding, just a little bit wickedly, "Just big enough for two if you try hard enough." What, like he was going to stop that just because it was Rose? (Hell, he was more likely to tease like that with Rose.)

"I'm sure it is." She sounded amused. Looking around as she pulled the blankets back to move under them, she couldn't help thinking that that had to be a tight squeeze. A few moments later she was flat on her back beneath them, staring up through the hole. Her pockets weren't exactly empty, but it had been the extent of her planning to take off the shoes.

Jack walked around his desk to sit down in the chair behind it, glancing at the paperwork he was probably going to have to do sooner or later. There were some things that one simply couldn't delegate. This was particularly true of anything relating to the UN, the government, or UNIT, which held for all of the aforementioned paperwork. Dammit.

"'Night, Rose," he said, smiling in the direction of the bed. Generally.

"G'night..." She rolled onto her side, burrowing herself slightly in. It was comfortable, especially compared to the usual unfriendliness of unfamiliar beds, Rose noted as she closed her eyes. A stray thought crossed her mind, and she opened them partially, looking at the wall in his general direction and muttering. "...Jack?"

Jack had grabbed the first of the papers he had to deal with, along with a pen, but what fragile concentration he had been getting into broke when he heard her ask his name. "Yeah?" he asked, looking up from the desk.

"Missed you." Rose told him, her voice suggesting that was all she had meant to say. The message delivered she lowered her head again, closed her eyes and started over on her attempts toward sleep, which didn't take very long at all.

Jack smiled a little at that, nodding though she couldn't see him. "You, too," he replied, letting it go at that. Back to work. Back to trying to get something done while he waited for her to wake, like living in stasis. But he was getting pretty good at waiting.

Rose slept quietly for the most part, save for the occaisonal sound made when she tossed a limb too far in her sleep and hit a wall. She'd never been a very still sleeper, and in this instance her dreams included a rather vast amount of people she knew, and a ridiculous amount of spandex. The villain was a vaguely pinkish and rather transparent bubble, and they'd been about to confront it when...

Jack spent the time that Rose was sleeping getting through the paperwork he would have to get done or else international people of interest (though Jack was unsure who, exactly, found them interesting, because it wasn't him) would be irritated with him, and that, while occasionally amusing, would be a bad thing. Given the least little reason to get offended, he knew from experience, and they would.

He had been intending to spend the time thinking things over. The Doctor, his daughter, Rose... But he'd thrown that idea in the bin; it wasn't going to help anything, overthinking. Pretending like he even knew what to begin to think.

When Rose finally awoke, it was rather slowly and mostly because of something in her pocket jabbing into her side. This had led her to notice that she was fully dressed, which wasn't right at all. Reluctantly she opened her eyes, blinking as she realized she seemed to be down some sort of giant hole.

She sat up, rubbing her temples slightly as she did, and tried to think of how she'd gotten...whereever she was. It had been her original universe, she was pretty sure. Enough came back to her that she remembered going into the pub, and then... Legs crossed beneath her she gazed upwards, to the top of the hole. "Hello?"

Hearing a voice startled Jack out of the sort of half-doze that extensive paperwork brought about, and he looked up and towards the hole in the ground that was his bed. "Rose?" A pause as he stood, and, coming round the desk so he could look down at her from the edge of the hole, he smiled and said, "Good morning."

At the sound of her name, or more the voice saying it, the memories of the events of the night before clicked back into place. She positively beamed up at him when he came into view, for all her bedraggledness. "'Morning." Rose made to disentagle the blanket from her lap after the greeting, and stood once she was freed.

"Oh, good," Jack remarked with a grin, "You really are still down there. Couldn't tell, with the blanket." He offered her a hand to help her up to the office proper. Even after a sleepless night, he was still elated to have her there. It was almost hard to believe, and if he hadn't seen so many stranger things, he might have wondered if he wasn't hallucinating.

Rose took the hand thankfully, more than willing to accept the help. Especially since she'd been sure it would have been something of a challenge to work her own way up. "Didn't have anywhere to go, unless you've got a secret passage down there." She told him once she was on solid ground.

He shook his head. "Nah-- I thought about it, but that'd be a little cliche, wouldn't it?" As if Torchwood didn't have enough up against it in that regard. "Feeling better?" he asked. Just checking.