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It's his idea to send the TARDIS to California ahead of them.
He cannot stand that Rose has not been to America and that not only has she never visited, she's never seen the land, a landscape every bit as powerful and eerie as any planet he's taken her to. He drops them off in Washington DC in 1966 and then accidentally induces a minor panic attack in his beloved companion when he promptly sends the TARDIS forward two weeks and two thousand miles. She only forgives him for it when he explains that it'll be waiting for them in San Francisco.
They stroll around the capital looking at the monuments and museums, eating ice cream cones bought from garishly-decorated vans that drip in the muggy late summer heat onto their fingers and clothes. When the sun goes down he produces a couple of crumpled green dollar bills and sends her off to get bus tickets. They spend their first night in America on a bus to Cleveland, Rose shifting uncomfortably next to him and resting her cheek on his shoulder to grab snatches of sleep when she can. He stares at the window, feeling the heat of her skin through his coat and suit jacket more acutely than any weather. They watch the sun rise over Lake Erie and he buys Rose a flimsy cotton dress on the equally flimsy premise of her needing non-anachronistic attire so they can travel unnoticed and tries not to stare at her legs too blatantly. She teases him about his suit until he points out all the other men around them who are wearing them, and then she switches tactics to teasing him about how his suit will look in San Francisco.
He almost tells her about the acid trip of a suit he wore as the sixth him and manages to hold it in only because he imagines the consequences of handing over that kind of ammunition.
They hitchhike to Detroit with a newly married couple who thinks they are likewise, and they do nothing to disabuse them of the notion. They chat about pop music and miniskirts and have you heard the Beatles' new record and that last track, oh. He murmurs the story of how he met John Lennon and Paul McCartney in his fourth body and gave them the copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead that eventually inspired the song into Rose's ear, letting his nose brush against her cheek and enjoying the shudder that runs through her despite the summer heat. She giggles and he cannot quite resist the urge to press a kiss to the spot where her jaw hinges.
In Chicago he sneaks her up the under-construction Hancock Center after the construction site is closed for the day, taking her up to the highest floor that's safe for standing. He tells her that in a year construction will be temporarily halted when they realize they've miscalculated the soil compression, and then takes her dancing until the early morning hours in a dirty, smoky club that blares pop music over the murmurings of discontent and uprising, a powder keg that is less than twelve months from exploding into stunning violence. Rose's cheeks flush pink when he twirls her around and up against his chest, the color spreading down her neck and décolletage and he thinks about what she would look like laid bare before him, all pink and yellow, every inch of her. He uses the psychic paper to get them a hotel room and a good night's rest, Rose choosing to curl up on top of the duvet and under his coat. When he puts it on the next morning it is soaked with her smell and it makes him a little dizzy.
In a shop in St. Louis she finds the blue suitcase, almost TARDIS blue but not quite and a style that will be much admired back in her time. Even though they don't have anything to put in it, she doesn't even have to bat her eyelashes at him before he's fishing out cash to cover the modest asking price, explaining about inflation and the relative value of the American dollar over time. She pulls the insides out of their motel room pillows the next morning to fill it up.
They hop trains for most of Kansas, sometimes riding in well appointed compartments or sleek mid century commuter cabins, and even more often jumping into empty or not-so-empty freight cars, Rose sleeping on his coat and, sometimes, curled up on his lap. Slowly the stuffing in the case begins to cradle objects, pieces of found metal and glass bottles from the train tracks, proper souvenirs from the shops in the cities and towns they've visited, the occasional different dress or pair of sandals that she buys for herself. He indulges her every whim, is helpless not to, and in return he watches her skin darken with a tan, her legs — already lean and strong thanks to their usual space adventure running — become sleek from the miles of highway and train track they walk.
They stop in Colorado, for three days just because they like the feel of being in the mountains. They hitchhike in with a lovely middle-aged woman named Margaret who is so charmed by them she insists they stay for dinner. They eat with her and Aaron, her husband and then join them in the lounge to watch The Beverly Hillbillies. Aaron is a teacher at a small college nearby and the Doctor is soon engrossed in a conversation about the students and the escalating war in Vietnam, is arm slung over the back of the loveseat and around Rose's shoulders as she watches the program and jokes with Margaret. When Aaron excuses himself to use the restroom he turns and finds Rose is already looking at him, a soft smile on her face and a distant look in her eye. She startles a little, clearly not expecting to get caught in her observation, and he's not sure why it's that moment, and not any of the other thousands of moments he's had since he met her, that he chooses to kiss her. He takes his time with it, memorizing the fullness of her lips and the taste of her mouth just in case this is only kiss he gets. When he pulls away she looks dazed and then breaks into a dazzling smile and he knows it won't be.
A week later they're lying on the western shore of Antelope Island, watching the sun set and waiting for the stars to appear in the enormous, uninterrupted sky of the Great Salt Lake. He's humming, a tune he's been hearing for most of the trip, running around in his head to the beat of train wheels and car axles. He hums the beginning, low and soft enough that he's a little surprised when Rose starts humming in harmony. He doesn't stop, though; she sings rarely and he loves her voice. Her eyes are closed, her face glowing orange-red as the sun disappears more and more beyond the horizon, and he watches her, waits.
"Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together," she begins softly and he knows she means to continue, sees her draw the breath for it, and stops it with his mouth, rolling on top of her as he kisses her deeply, desperately, on the hard and arid ground.
She responds eagerly, draping her arms around his neck and holding him close. He fits one thigh between hers and snakes his hand under the short, loose hem of her dress to grab her leg, to draw it up and over his hip. Slowly she works his tie loose, his shirt open and out of his trousers. As she scrapes her nails across his chest and tugs on the hair there he lets his own hands get a bit free, sliding from her leg to her hip and then over, to the junction of her thighs and the burning heat there, warm through her simple cotton knickers and then blazing beneath them. His touch makes her arch, skilled and cool fingers teasing her, blocking her path as she tries to get to him in return, to touch the hardness pressing into her hip. He evades her, chuckling and moving his mouth to her jaw, her throat, her collarbone, licking the salt from her sweat and the lake air that's collected in that hollow as she squirms and squeaks and implores him to let her touch, too.
The stars come out, sparkles like diamonds on gold-purple-blue-black velvet, but they don't notice, mapping instead the constellations of freckles on each other's skin, galaxies of sensation, supernovas behind their eyes as he finally comes inside. It's not optimum, his coat the only barrier to the rocky ground, the squawking birds circling overhead and once the roar of a plane passing overhead, but somehow it's perfect, the way she sighs his name and the scrape of her teeth at his throat. He buries his face in her neck, breathing her in as he moves in her, taking this moment, this memory, and filing it away carefully for later, when he'll need it. There's a stutter at the base of his spine and then time stops, stretches like the universe is taking a deep breath, and he breathes the words into her mouth, words he mustn't ever say but cannot hold back, words he hopes she doesn't hear. He thinks he tastes them on her lips as well as she shudders beneath him, around him, and then goes limp.
They clean up as best they can, which is to say ineffectually, but he's not ready to go yet. Instead he holds her close, wrapped around her as completely as he can be, watching the sky as it continues to darken. Her breath, which has been tickling his chest hair for forty-two minutes, slows and evens out, and cradled under the blanket of stars he starts humming again.