If, during the metacrisis, Donna turned into half doctor…
Does that mean Rose is walking around with a half Donna?
because he clearly wasn’t just part human, he was PART DONNA.
I mean, does he ever just hit her with the “OI WATCH EARTH GIRL” ???
Rose Tyler walked into another dimension with her doctor, thinking all would be well, just to get him home and realize that he was part sassy redhead temp from Chiswick who YOURE NOT MATING WITH, SUNSHINE
Also, I guess this means, in some way, the doctor is finally a ginger
Chapters: 2/2 Fandom:Doctor Who (2005),Doctor Who Rating: General Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Tenth Doctor & Donna Noble, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler Characters: Tenth Doctor, Donna Noble, Metacrisis Tenth Doctor, Rose Tyler, Mia Tyler Additional Tags: Episode AU: s04e17-18 The End of Time, Regeneration rewrite, Because Ten deserved not to regenerate alone, And have his essence saved, Pete’s World (Doctor Who) Series: Part 1 of Tyler Family Adventures Summary:
The Doctor is regenerating, but he’s unsure if he even deserves another chance. A person he does not expect shows up in his darkest hour to lend an embrace… and it leads him to somewhere he could not have predicted, in his wildest dreams.
For@elialys. Patron Saint, Mama Bear, and fiercest protector of my soul. My Donna.
______________________
“As he pushes his nearly frostbitten feet through the snow, toes poking through his torn shoes, and Ood Sigma appears, he thinks of Donna— their new song ringing through his ears.
Saint Donna, who he’d robbed of her memories to save her life. His best friend. The best he’d had, really— his double in every way, even before the metacrisis, with all of their synchronicities, and the only person besides Rose that had ever understood the stuttering, gasping language of his hearts.
The thing about having someone love you through the darkest, most gut-wrenching days of your life is that it creates something not found in the bounds of ordinary connections. You try as you might not to bleed on them, pulling your mess back in towards yourself with nothing but a useless squeegee, yet they continue to clean it up anyway—unapologetically.
And they just get you, without you needing to scream endlessly into the void. And somehow you both become renewed in the process.
Donna had certainly done this for him, more than most— closer than even a sibling, really. A soul twin.
She’d accepted all of his tangled, cycloptic darkness that night she’d stopped him from fulfilling his perceived destiny of dying beneath the Thames.
There had been snow that day, too, even though he’d fabricated it. Along with the day they’d saved the Ood, which was what had brought Sigma here to sing him to sleep currently. There’d been what looked like snow after Pompeii, too.
Spartacus and Spartacus, standing together watching it all crumble. Pushing that lever because they’d had to. And he hadn’t done it alone, that time.
Snow had always held a property of finality, and of rebirth, really, as he’s looking back.
As if the material itself, whether crystallised water or ash or whatever else, held TIME—like in a snowglobe. A suspended moment, with a past, and a future, flash-frozen, except for the snow itself, swirling around in wonderment.
His mind must be going, now, as he doubles over in pain—the last thing to be addled and ruined before the big event. His memories slip and start overlapping each other just like his mind, as he reaches out for the TARDIS door.
He can’t remember exactly what interior to expect, and when he sees it’s the organic-looking coral theme instead of sterile white he’s honestly surprised.
And then he can’t remember where he’s put his umbrella.
He’s ready, this time. No matter the result, he decides.
He doesn’t care, he just wants it to end—his body is glowing, itching, burning.
Screaming out for him to just give in and make it stop.
He’s alone and he’s terrified— because really, this abandoned, emotional torment is the only monster that loves him enough to stay.
And as he goes down, his mind doesn’t even register that he’s slipped in the snow, as his face hits the door jamb.
And he blacks out.
…
He remembers vividly, he’s not sure whether it’s from his past or his future, a visit to a museum.
Canvases full of colour, life, and nature in a place that honoured them instead of their darker, more stoic predecessors.
Like the chromatic hues of chalk, brightly etched on a sidewalk just before rain splatters over it, blurring and swirling the pigments together.
Testaments to the spectrum of human experience— when you look close up, you can’t tell what you’re looking at— all you see is a world of colour. But as you take steps back, shapes flood your imagination.
Water lilies. Bridges. Sunflowers. Ships. Trees and Haystacks. Churches and clouds.
And stars.
And someone assuring a man with tears in his eyes that he’d changed the world, allowing people a glimpse into the dazzling way he sees the universe, despite the monsters in his head.
And a… redhead?
As he looks up at this person with flaming red hair, the edges of her features still formulating like she’s blended from acrylic, it is not the face he expects.
His head is in her lap, and she’s wiping the dirt, blood, cold sweat, and the sick off of his face that he can still taste on his lips.
Suddenly his brain lurches with realisation, but his body is paralysed from moving away from her.
“Donna!?”
She just looks down at him, grinning through emotion, big, fat tears dripping down her cheeks onto his face as she caresses his filthy head.
“Hello, you Dumbo…well, you kind of look like a homeless Yeti now, with snow all over you. Trying out for the Olympics again, Doctor? Don’t tell me it’s in pairs figure skating again, I’m not entering with you. I was just there to look at the nice boys in tights.”
He blinks, trying to move anything in his body, but it’s just not happening.
“Donna. You can’t possibly be here. You’re in my head just to make me feel worse. Please get out.”
She wipes her eyes and then laughs at him, her entire form shaking.
“Is that any way to greet your best friend? Especially seein’ as you’re the one who put me here in the first place!”
She mocks him in body and in tone.
“Look at me, I’m an idiot who shot my regeneration energy into a spare hand, then created a metacrisis plus a bonus telepathic bond with my best friend, so that when synchronicity takes over between us yet again, her probably pissed-and-passed-out consciousness shows up to keep me company as I lay dying or mutating, but I cast her off anyway.”
She shakes her head at him, still laughing.
“Nope, not gonna happen, moron. I’m not leaving you. Just because I can’t see you while I’m actually conscious doesn’t mean my subconscious can’t take form and seek you out, especially with your mind the state that it’s in. Souls are energy and ours our twins, you know that as well as anyone. And besides, I probably just had an absolutely brilliant New Years’ celebration, no one like yours to really ring in the new year with for the afterparty.”
He smiles at her, for real this time, exhaustion and regeneration hormones taking over, as his eyes blink as slowly as he speaks.
His eyes roll back in his head, as she scratches his temples with her fingernails, soothing him.
“Don’t lie to me. You can’t, remember? Two idiots, one braincell. And it’s regenerate, numpty.”
He knows well that he’s rambling, now, as though he really had been partying all evening with her instead of chasing the Master all over creation and been a punching bag to the Time Lords.
“I just want to go to sleep, Donna. I’ve lived for too long. I… it’s not worth it anymore. I’ve hurt too many…I literally broke your mind, remember?”
He rolls over, trying to pull himself up, and time is starting to disintegrate. Pulling him downwards as though he’s melding into the floor.
He attempts to stand, getting up on all fours, trying to shake the vision of Donna from his brain, but his muscles fail him and he crumples yet again, his head landing this time squarely on her chest, as she remains sitting on the floor, his body literally curled into her.
She doesn’t seem to mind, and for once she’s not poking fun at his antics.
For a hallucination, he remarks how clear her heartbeat is. He isn’t sure at this point whether she really is figment of his artron-addled imagination, or if the real Donna has somehow sleepwalked herself over here, before she’d ever even met him properly.
She says nothing, but she continues to wipe the grime and bile from his face and holds him tighter.
“Why… are you here, Donna?”
She doesn’t speak at first.
But then, she does it softly, and in a tone she only uses when she’s full of emotion.
“Because I wouldn’t be anywhere else…to remind you first of all that you are indeed an idiot, and your brain is a giant arsehole. And that I’ll always be here….And that there will never come a day that you don’t deserve it. You are worth it, Doctor. You are worth it to me. You’re worth another life, and I will always find you, in the end. You can’t get rid of me that easily.”
Characters: Rose Tyler, Metacrisis Doctor (Tentoo), Original Character
Pairing:Tentoo x Rose
Genres: hurt/comfort, angst with a happy ending
Rating: K (all ages)
Warning:n/a
Summary: Still grieving the loss of the Doctor on Doomsday, Rose meets a stranger on New Year’s Eve.
Notes: This idea has been floating around in my mind for years, and I finally decided to write it down. I wanted to get it done by New Year’s Eve… but, you know, life. *sigh*
Auld Lang Syne
Rose slipped out of Vitex’s large, formal ballroom, music from the small orchestra the Vice President of PR had hired for the party following her into the hall. Stopping only to retrieve her coat from the cloakroom, she carefully crossed the lobby on tiptoe, certain that her heels would create an echo if they struck the marble floor of the empty room.
Exiting through a nondescript side door, she emerged onto a secluded courtyard that overlooked the Thames, the door making a soft whooshing sound as it closed behind her. There was someone already there, a solitary figure sitting on a bench in the shadows near the courtyard’s far wall. A man by the looks of it, given the fact that the person was in a suit rather than a dress, although that wasn’t a certainty. She had seen several women wearing tuxes that evening. But odds were that it was a man, probably out here to have a smoke, although she quickly realized she couldn’t smell tobacco. Maybe he was waiting for someone, she thought. Or perhaps he was just trying to evade the crush of people inside as much as she was.
Under normal circumstances being alone in the dark with a stranger near midnight might have given her pause, but the only way to get into the courtyard was through the door she’d used. Since the only people there that evening were attending the Vitex bash, he was obviously also a guest of the party.
Not to mention that Jack Harkness’s instructions on self-defense, followed by months of Torchwood’s field agent training, left her able to handle most situations. Even in a floor-length gown and 4-inch heels.
Pairing: tentoo x rose Rating:K (all ages) Warning:n/a Summary: While celebrating her first Christmas with the metacrisis Doctor, Rose thinks about her Time Lord.
Notes:Christmas Eve. Bittersweet, moments of fluff, some hurt/comfort. Rose is pregnant, but this is not a pregnancy fic.
Silent Night
The colorful fairy lights strung around the room twinkled gaily, matching the strands that circled the Tyler family Christmas tree. Unlike in the more public areas of the mansion—the grand entrance with its 14 foot white tree, delicate silver and blue ornaments hanging from its limbs and flanked by the twin staircases trimmed in gold and silver garland, so breathtaking that its image graced the cover of a magazine; the ballroom with smaller versions of the tree in the hall in the corners of the room and crystal snowflakes suspended from the ceiling; the formal dining room with its series of frosted wreaths on the walls and coordinating centerpieces on the table—the large living room in the back of the house had not been decorated for the holiday by an interior designer. And it showed. It showed in the mismatched ornaments on the tree, the cheap red and green garland trimming the tops of all the furniture and hanging in long loops from the crown molding, the ceramic figurines of Father Christmas on the mantle. The enormous plush reindeer in the corner that was sturdy enough for even Pete to sit on. The paper snowflakes carefully cut out by a five-year-old with safety scissors and attached to the windows with cellotape.
The personal, loving touches that spoke of family and couldn’t be recreated by a decorator, not at any price.
Pairing:ten x rose, tentoo x rose Rating: T Warning:n/a Summary: “Rose,” he says softly in her ear, “Rose, is that…me behind us?”
Notes:Sorry but this is canon compliant and a little bit angsty so be warned.
She doesn’t seem all that surprised to see him, which really should have been his first clue that something was amiss. After piloting, impressively he might add, through the void in an effort to get back to her, he figures she should at least have the decency to look a little shocked or stunned. But still, she throws her arms around his neck, sighing, “Doctor,” and truly that is good enough for him.
A little more surprising, but still equally welcome is when she cups his face securely between her hands and plants a kiss on his lips. His eyes close immediately at the touch, overwhelmed to finally have her back. “Oh, Rose,” he whispers, silents tears tracking his face, even as he pushes forward to reclaim her lips for a decidedly less chaste kiss than the one she had initiated.
He can almost taste the confusion and slight concern on her lips, but still she responds equally to his fervor and he sighs into her mouth when she opens it for him. There are not many things that can leave him feeling truly breathless, respiratory bypass and all, but he finds when they break apart after a moment for some much needed air, he is panting.
They are still pressed together, foreheads touching and lips only a scant few inches apart. He keeps his eyes closed, fearing if he opens them now, she will disappear again. Unspoken words left on his tongue.
Her fingers stroke, almost hesitatingly, down his sideburn. “Doctor, what’s wrong?” she asks him quietly. “You’re scaring me.”
The Doctor doesn’t dislike the cold in this new body.
Heloathesit.
It doesn’t come to him all at once, either. It grows steadily, as the months go by, and late spring turns into summer, then autumn. As this particular season progresses, so does his displeasure.
By December, he’s come to the conclusion that having an internal temperature this high is absolutely ridiculous and pointless, especially when the outside world is now stuck in freezing temperatures that refuse to go back up. Whenever he steps out of a building, any inch of him that is exposed to the frost immediately starts leaking heat, and he’s powerless against the laws of thermodynamics.
“You are such a dork,” Rose points out the first time he goes outside with his new ‘winter outfit’, which comprises (among other things) three layers of clothes, a thick coat, gloves, a scarf and a woollen hat. “You do realise those are ski goggles you’re wearing, right?”
“My eyeballs were freezing,” he replies into his scarf, still rather unhappy about the stinging sensation in his nose and cheekbones, which remain vulnerable to the cold.
For all of her eye rolling at his supposedly ‘dramatic’ reactions, his wife is not faring any better than him whenever they step out in these arctic conditions.
While she will shamelessly mock him for being so sensitive to the drop in temperature, her solution is to use him as a heat pad, going as far as regularly slipping her freezing little hands all the way beneath layers of coat, jumper, shirt and undershirt to press her icy palms over his back.
“You’re so warm,” she tells him, having somehow burrowed her face so efficiently into the crook of his neck that her nose has managed to bypass the tick scarf to be pressed into his skin.
Well, he knows he is, that’s kind of the problem isn’t it?
Not only is he a good fifteen degrees hotter than his warmest incarnation was, but he’s also a whole degree hotter than her body. Maybe it’s all to do with male versus female physiology, or maybe it’s just the universe being an arse.
He suspects the latter.
Rose does love his warm body, constantly encouraging heat transfer between them; and it’s not like she’s simply borrowing his warmth. She’s stealing it, plain and simple.
Sneaking her icy toes between his legs, splaying her frozen hands upon his shoulder blades, ignoring his hisses of discomfort at the sensation, or how his entire body always breaks into shudders, his skin covered in goose-flesh.
“C’mon, t’s not that bad,” she tells him once, while way too many of her digits poke into his shivering flesh like tiny icicles.
“I beg to differ,” he replies. “I’ll have you know that you’ve turned into a proper thermal thief, lately.”
“Yeah?” she asks against his neck, a laughter in her voice. “Gonna call the cops on me?”
New tools, he thinks. Some of these aren’t quite right. Calibrated wrong, or don’t fit my hands right. Just a hair off. I can do better.
His mind is off, running in ten different directions. His body may be slightly human now–he can actually feel himself aging, a horrifying experience he tries to ignore as much as possible–but his mind is all Time Lord. He can still do all the complex calculations he needs for whatever new thing he’s currently working on in his head, all while reciting A Christmas Carol and trying to figure out what to give Rose for her next birthday.
It’s late. Two fifty three am. He’s still got a perfect sense of time, too. Only it’s less comforting now. For one thing, he doesn’t like to think about time passing, because now time is finite. For another, he knows he should be asleep, or at least in bed with Rose. Holding her. Listening to her breath, to the beating of her heart.
This is my contribution to the Tentoo Party of Love and Acceptance and Deep Denial of That One Short Story I Shall Not Mention. I’m also tagging @doctorroseprompts, as this definitely fulfils the fall/autumn prompt.
Featuring the Doctor and Rose babysitting Tony for the weekend, and being disgustingly cute and soft as they do so because this is Tentoo and Rose we’re talking about.
They are barely through the front door that Tony is jumping onto the Doctor, clinging to one of his legs with his head thrown all the way back, looking up at him through many centimetres of height difference.
“Pleaaaase can we do climb up?”
The Doctor doesn’t even hesitate, already halfway done with taking off his peacoat when he says: “Up you go, then!”
He throws his coat on the ground, before taking position, which involves spreading his legs, lowering himself in a half-crouch, his arms bent and extended outward, his every muscles locked to make his body as stiff and sturdy as possible.
Overall, a rather awkward position.
‘Climb Up’ is not a favourite game amongst grownups. It involves a small child challenging himself or herself to ‘climb’ over the adult’s body as if it were a tree. Understandably enough, most people tend to be rather reluctant to engage in it, as it is all kind of uncomfortable and painful, the over-enthusiastic toddler’s elbows, knees and feet regularly poking into sensitive areas and leaving bruises in their wake.
The Doctor loves it – and Tony adores him for it.
“Who knew I would make such a good tree?” he’d once asked Rose, beaming at her, absolutely delighted with having a three-and-a-half-year old hanging upside down from one of his outstretched arms, an angry red mark already flaring on his cheekbone where Tony’s foot had made contact not-so-gently a couple minutes ago.
Tony doesn’t make it as far today, still trying to ascend the Doctor’s leg when a shrill gasp of disapproval rings through the air.
“Where the hell d’you think you are?!”
The Doctor’s smile immediately freezes at the sound of Jackie’s shout, while Tony slowly slides back down, having caught Rose’s eyes and seen the small shake of her head, wordlessly advising him to stop what he was doing to avoid getting caught up in their mother’s wrath.
“Firstly, Rose is neither shallow nor stupid. She doesn’t settle for second best. She gets the person she fell in love with. And, as a bonus, he’s now able to spend the rest of his life with her, as she with him. Secondly, the very same person who experienced the heartbreak of losing Rose for the first time now experiences joy at the prospect of a lifetime in her company. In this full sense, the Doctor who lost, finally wins.”
-Paul Dawson, Doctor Who and Philosophy: Bigger on the Inside
Okay, so I’m still calling him Retro-Ten for now based on the rumors that Thirteen Retro-Regenerates back into Ten, but I wouldn’t mind if it actually ended up being Tentoo instead. Here’s how my headcannon would work for that scenario:
Due some weird temporal anomaly, when 13 starts to regenerate she somehow swaps places with Tentoo instead and ends up in Pete’s World. She reunites with Rose, who fills her in on what’s been happening since they last saw one another and The Doctor apologizes for how she left things. Rose reassures her that she’s forgiven her and tells her that even though she’ll always love her, she and The human Doctor got their happily ever after and even introduces 13 to their teenage daughter Mia. Over tea, Rose would then ask 13 if she’s happy and whether or not she’s traveling with anyone cause she doesn’t ever want her to be alone. The Doctor tells her about Dan and Graham and Ryan and then kind of nervously mentions Yaz and then as she talks about how kind and wonderful Yaz is, she becomes more relaxed and Rose can tell from the way she describes the young woman, with such fondness in her voice, that she’s found someone that makes her happy as well. The Doctor mentions that in some ways Yaz reminds her a bit of Rose, with her cleverness and bravery, and Rose just smiles and tells her she’s happy for her. Then they hug and there’s closure for that storyline.
Meanwhile Tentoo is trying to sort out how he got back to the main universe and is desperate to get back home to his family. He then runs into Donna and maybe somehow ends up being able to help her to remember him without causing her mind to burn, and she in turn (after smacking him of course, because even though it wasn’t that him who erased her memories, he’s still the same man and since The other Doctor isn’t around he gets to be the recipient of her ire) tries to help him to get back home while Rose and 13 are doing the same in Pete’s World. Maybe they come across some alien mystery to solve at the same time and during that they swap stories about their families. He’s delighted to find out she named her daughter Rose and can’t wait to tell his Rose about it when he gets back to Pete’s World and he tells her about his own daughter and some of the work he’s been doing for Torchwood while growing a new TARDIS. Maybe he nicks a few things from his old TARDIS as well. (Oh come on, you know he would if given the chance. He’d probably take his old coat and a few other bits and bobs to transplant into his own TARDIS)
Then ultimately, they save the day of course, and Tentoo gets to say a final goodbye to Donna before he and Thirteen are finally switched back. Upon arriving back in Pete’s World, he immediately takes Rose into his arms for a proper welcome back snog to end all snogs and their daughter Mia walks in on them and yells “Oh my god, not again!”, with a tone that suggests that she catches them going at it a lot, and she still can’t believe she’s an only child, and then thoroughly grossed out, leaves the room.
Meanwhile, back in the original universe, 13 is reunited with Donna and gets to say a proper goodbye this time, and Donna of course would probably make some joke about how she likes her much better as a woman instead of a skinny strip of nothing martian, and makes sure The Doctor knows she’s happy and doing well with her family but makes her promise to keep in touch this time before letting her leave and giving that story between them some closure. Then 13 takes off for somewhere quiet where at that point she finally regenerates into 14.
The first time it happened, he was sitting cross-legged under the console, dozens of wires in one hand, his sonic screwdriver in the other. Nothing out of the ordinary, really. Tinkering with things that didn’t need tinkering, busying his hands and his brain, focusing his thoughts on something else than his everlasting pain and sorrow. He was used to it.
His screwdriver buzzed, one of the wire sparked, a burn spread over the back of his hand. He laughed. Odd. Usually, he would curse at his ship or glare at the culprit. But that one time, he laughed. It scared him. To feel the joy bubbling in his stomach, to feel his lungs fill with air to fuel the laughter, to feel his brain buzz with excitement and… Was that love?
His hands clenched his sides made painful by so much hilarity and he fell down on his back, gleeful tears rolling down his temples. A flash of blond hair behind his eyelids, a picture of a naked body.
It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he was left with an awkward feeling of nothing. His laugh turned to a giggle, then to a silent smile, until he pinched his lips and swallowed the hard ball in his throat. He rubbed the back of his hands under his nose and sighed. At least, they were happy. He could only be happy, too.
The second time it happened, he was in the middle of a negotiation with a bunch of aliens in a far corner of the universe, on a planet that was more of a giant dumpster than an actual planet. Death threats, terrorism, bombs ready to explode. Nothing to laugh about, really. But he did. In the middle of an offer, a giggle rose in his throat and his fierce frown morphed into a stupid grin.
He laughed, loud, his body bending forward on its own to alleviate the pain in the muscles of his abdomen, his eyes squeezed shut to chase the ecstatic tears. And behind his eyelids, a flash of blond hair, a picture of laced fingers, each hand bearing a golden ring.
It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he was left with a comforting feeling of completion. He cleared his throat several times to tame the laughter dwindling down to giggles, wiped the tears rolling down his cheeks, and his manic grin gave way to another frown. At least, they were happy. He could only be happy, too. For the both of them. For him.
The third time it happened, he was nestled against a cushion in the library, a heavy philosophy book opened on his lap, glasses perched on the tip of his nose. Nothing particularly funny about any of it. But he laughed. He felt just a tiny flutter of something between his hearts, for just a tiny fraction of a second, and he laughed. Not very loud, this time, just a rumble in the back of his throat and puffs of air coming out of his lips.
He closed his book and reigned a few tears in. This happiness was theirs, and theirs only. But behind his eyelids, a flash of blond hair, a picture of pouty, minuscule fingers wrapped around a bigger one.
It stopped as suddenly as it had started, and he was left with a treacherous feeling of jealousy. Not for long. They were happy. He could only be happy, too. For the three of them. For that part of him who was living the life he had always dreamt of.
He stood up, walked to the shelf, and picked a thin book with a laughing bunny on the cover. He read it aloud by the fire, and he smiled.
The fourth and last time it happened, by accident or by fate, he was in bed, looking up at the dark ceiling. Nothing exciting, really. Just trying to get some sleep. He should be feeling nothing. But he felt too much. Both his hearts broke in his chest, his stomach heaved under the waves of pain, silent tears gathered in the corners of his eyes. No flash of blond hair, no other picture. Only black. Black pain, black sorrow.
He rolled to his side, reached for the heart-shaped cushion he had stolen from her room. He buried in his nose in the pink fuzz, and he cried. Even when his presence was gone from his mind, he cried. For an hour, maybe, or two, or the whole night. He was heartbroken. He could only be heartbroken, too. For him, for that part of him who was learning what it meant to be human, that part of him who’d have to live alone, without the blond-haired woman who had brought so much love in his life. And he cried.
It mustn’t have been more than two months later. He was standing atop of hill of bright yellow grass, the deep purple sky diluting into a pale pink on the horizon. He felt it. How his left heart missed a few beats for no apparent reason. How a little hole was momentarily carved in a corner of his mind. He felt the tear that hung to his eyelashes and he looked up at the night sky, at those two sparkling diamonds pinned on the endless canvas of the universe.
They both had lived their happy lives. He could only be happy, too.
Kept it under Mature because it’s far less smutty than I expected it to be!
“Rose, please,” he whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut as he nimble fingers reached into his pants.
“Please what?” she smiled at his reflection through the mirror. “Stop, or don’t stop?”
“Stop,” he answered before she gave his erection a squeeze and kissed the side of his neck. “Okay, maybe don’t. But I won’t be blamed if we’re, ah, late.”
“Fine with me,” she giggled as she withdrew her hand just to take his and lead him back to the bedroom. “Now lie down and let me do my thing, handsome.”
“Handsome,” he snorted, plopping down on the mattress as asked, shuffling back to nestle his head in a pillow. “As if you believed that. Seriously, Rose, this is all pointless. I’m a fat wrinkled apple. You won’t change my mind.”
“Doesn’t mean I can’t try,” she grinned, toeing off her heels and getting rid of her tight skirt. “Now shut it, old fart, and let your wife prove you wrong.”
He wanted to roll his eyes, but couldn’t detach them from her. She still had this power to hypnotize him at all times, but more specifically when she was undressing. He had trouble accepting the epitome of perfection that she was could already be forty-six years of age, because to him, she was as beautiful as the day he had fallen in love with her for the first time. He watched, enthralled, her deft fingers unbutton her blouse, pull it down her arms, drop it to the side, that one insolent smile tugging at her lips.
“Since when does my wife wear red lace?” he asked, eying the underwear ensemble he had never seen before.
“It’s your birthday next week,” she explained as she joined him on the bed and straddled his waist with an elegant throw of her leg - her flexibility, among many other things, was still something he particularly enjoyed. “Wanted this to be a surprise, but you know how much I hate brand new underwear. Wanted to wear it once to get used to it for the big day. Guess I’ll have to find another surprise. So, Doctor, shall I begin with my… Presentation?”
“Like I have a choice,” he sighed, his hands finding their way to her hips out of habits.
“No you don’t, indeed. Part one. Me.”
“You? What do you mean, you?”
Her only answer was a soft smile. She reached behind her back to unclasp her bra, shrugged it off her shoulders and discarded it to the side, glad to see his sweet chocolate eyes darken almost imperceptibly. She laced her fingers with his and brought his hands to her breasts, splaying his them over the mounds of creamy flesh. Without really thinking about it, he did what he usually did. He caressed their swell, weighed them in his palms, brushed the pads of his thumbs over her nipples. She breathed out a groan and momentarily shut her eyes to enjoy his touch, but remembered she had to carry on with her presentation. She caught his wrists and pulled them down so his fingers trailed down her abdomen to settle on her lower belly.
“See?” she said softly, ignoring the gooseflesh that spread to her skin under his warm hands.
“See what?” he raised an eyebrow as he caressed her body he knew by heart, trying to spot something out of the ordinary.
“Forty-six, four kids, Doctor,” she smiled, mirroring the patterns of his gentle strokes over his chest. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not as fit as I used to be either. Saggy boobs, little fat belly, a few stretch marks.”
“Nonsense,” he protested with a vehement shake of the head as he rose into a sitting position to hug her body close to his. “You’re as beautiful as ever, love, just as gorgeous.”
“Then why can’t you accept that I still think you’re as handsome as ever, Doctor?”
“Because I’m vain?”
“Well, at least we’re getting somewhere,” she giggled, giving his jaw a playful bite. “Now, part two. You.”
She pushed him back on the bed and shifted higher up his waist, smirking at the gasp that fled past his lips when she ground over his lap in retaliation for his sigh of defeat. She buried her fingers through his mane of brown spikes that felt just a tad stickier than usual, thank the many layers of gel he had used, but the result was the same. She knew he husband, and she knew he loved it when she played with his hair, pulled on his strands and scratched her nails on his scalp. Sure enough, at the first tug he closed his eyes, and at the first scrape he bit into his lip. She found the grey spot he had tried to bury among the brown - how he had even believed he would have been able to hide it, she didn’t know. The tuft stood out almost comically, like a single white petunia planted in a large bed of red ones. But only the colour was different. It felt the same under her fingers, just as soft and thick as the rest, just as rewarding when she pulled on it and he answered with a moan.
She could see all the years they had spent together in that grey hair, all that time she had been blessed with with this beautiful man on her side. Twenty years into their marriage, four beautiful children, and when she looked at him she still saw the man she had fallen in love all those years ago. She loved the grey hair because it reminded her time was a precious thing and should not be wasted.
“Don’t touch that horror,” he whined, shaking his head to divert her fingers away from the patch of silver hair. “I’ll have it dyed tomorrow.”
“I like it,” she said as she clenched her fingers tighter around his spikes, using her hold to pull his head back and lick her way up his throat to suck the soft patch of skin under his jaw into her mouth. “I think it’s important. When I look at it, I remember the chance I’ve been given to spend my life with you. I remember I love you more than life itself, and I remember you love me. I want to see it everyday. I want to see it and remember. Don’t dye it, please. I like it.”
She pulled on his hair again to turn the objection she felt coming into another one of his throaty moans and kept going. She trailed her fingers down his sternum, traced the edges of his pectorals that had softened over the years, teased his nipples with her fingertips and watched his face. Like she expected, his eyelids fluttered shut and his mouth pinched, the tendons in his neck straining under the skin. She kept a hand over his chest to continue with her ministrations, and brought the other back to his face. She ran her index over the crinkles at the corner of his eyes that spread out to his temples, followed the curve of the hollow of his cheek, swept over the prominent dimple dug into his skin, pressed against the wrinkle that fell from the edge of his mouth. As far as she could remember, the corners of his mouth had always had a tendency to be pulled down by a mysterious gravity. The years had only made it more visible. Deeper, longer. She replaced her finger with her lips and tweaked a hardened nipple between her knuckles.
“I like to think I contributed to those wrinkles,” she murmured against his skin, shifting down his body to rub her center against the erection she still felt under the layers of clothes. “When I pleasure you, you always make the same face.”
“What face?” he grunted, prying an eye open to see her smirk at him.
“That one,” she said just as she slid her hand down his body to grab his length through his trousers - the face he made that came with his groan perfectly illustrated what she meant, and it seemed he realized. “But I also like to think… Those wrinkles show just how much you’ve smiled for the past twenty years. When I see those wrinkles, I see your happiness. I remember all those times we’ve laughed and smiled and shared our love. The day we got married and you couldn’t keep that stupid grin away from your face. The day I told you I was pregnant for the first time and you couldn’t stop laughing like a loony. The day our first daughter was born and you couldn’t stop crying. I love your face, because when I look a you, I see my handsome husband, and I remember why I’m happy.”
She knew that, after this, he would never dare to think his wrinkles made him ugly again, lest he’d hurt her feelings. She knew he was vain, but she also knew he was vain mostly because he didn’t want he to think he was growing unattractive. She hoped that was enough to convince him she still thought he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen - the lack of protest was already a good sign.
She heard him suck in a gasp when she shuffled down his leg, grinding down hard on his crotch before she did, and she stole one last deep kiss from him before she went on a journey south. Her mouth followed the shallow line between his pectorals, planting wet, open-kisses on the way down, until she reached the soft curve of his belly.
“Hm, not much to say about this,” she smiled, cushioning her cheek against the flesh, drawing little heart shapes with a fingertip over his side. “But I like it. And you can’t do anything about that, darling, because you can’t judge what I like. There’s plenty of things I love that you hate.”
“You love sappy novels and pear pies,” he huffed as she scraped her teeth over the underside of his bellybutton. “Not very reassuring, given your more than questionable tastes, love.”
“‘Kay, let’s put it that way, then,” she nodded, cradling her chin in the palm of her hand as she lazily rubbed his hardness. “You love me and you trust me, yes? So, if I say I like it, you have to believe me. Isn’t that right, Doctor?”
“I…” he started, but had to swallow when she finally tugged on his trousers and underwear to gather them around his knees. “I suppose.”
“Sorry?” she teased, kneeling between his thighs before she wrapped her fingers around his hard base and squeezed hard, just to steal to the last thread of his coherence and win the fight.
“Yeah, ‘kay, I believe you,” he whimpered as his hips jerked up to follow her movements. “I mean, ah, it’s just a bit a fat, right? And it’s kinda, God, your fault, so…”
“Exactly.”
She didn’t wait for another reaction on his part and bowed her head to take him into her mouth - the only efficient way she had ever found to keep his gob under control. It didn’t stop him from moaning and cursing and growling his pleasure, but at least that hadn’t changed. She knew exactly how to get him there, knew every little thing he loved and every little sound he made depending on how she touched him. It was comforting, in a way. To know her husband was exactly the same as he’d ever been, no matter how much he thought he’d morphed into something he loathed. She could only hope he understood she still loved him just as much. Hope he accepted she did.
It didn’t take long before she heard the low groan he usually made at the pinnacle of his pleasure and felt his fingers tangle in her hair as his back arched from the bed and his toes curled into the sheet. She brought him down from his high with gentle caresses and a few kisses pressed on the swell of the belly he didn’t like, then plopped down next to him to wrap her arms around his chest heaving with the remnants of his pants. She nuzzled his cheek with the tip of her nose, dropping a few more kisses on his jaw, brushing a hand through his hair.
“You’re beautiful, my Doctor,” she murmured, watching his softening features, a glint of adoration and a gleam of affection in the depth of her eyes. “You’ll always be.”
“You’ll always be, too, my Rose,” he answered softly, content to bask in the love and the warmth of his perfect wife. “I love you.”
“I know, darling. I love you, too. And I love your belly.”
“Don’t push it,” he grinned, poking the soft spot above her hip where he knew she was ticklish.
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. Now, get your old ass up, we really need to go. And you have quite the belly to drag behind.”
“I take back what I said, I hate you.”
His hearts only soared with more love when she patted the soft lump with a cheeky grin and climbed off the bed.
“Doctor, I swear to God if you don’t get out of that bathroom now I’ll kick the door open.”
He barely heard her threat, barely peered at the door behind him through the mirror. It was true he had spent far too long in the bathroom, but he had a very good reason. Several reasons. First, to keep her from witnessing a small-scale panic attack that might have had pulled a tear or two from his eyes. Second, to find a way to hide it, so she wouldn’t see the horror of it.
Well, it didn’t lookhorrible, but it certainly felthorrible. That was it. The very first obvious sign that this rubbish human body was aging, and all the rest it implied. According to the small plastic card Rose insisted he should always keep in his pocket, he would turn fifty a few days later. To a Time Lord, fifty was nothing but a quick blink of an eye, a flutter of an eyelid. To a human, that fifty marked the beginning of the second half of their pathetically short lives. He was old. Very old. Older than he’d ever been before, even as a Time Lord. Ancient, almost.
He wasn’t scared of dying, because he had long accepted this body wouldn’t last. He was simply scared of aging. Scared the changes in his body would somehow… Make him too different from the Doctor Rose had fallen in love with. It might be too awkward to her. She had started to love him when she thought he’d always remain the same lanky man with wonky features and long spikes of brown hair. But now. Now, he certainly was different from that ideal she had married.
There was the few pounds he had managed to pack on for indulging in way too many of the meals she prepared him every night, and all those unhealthy lunches she put in his bag before he left for work. And then, his lower lip had gotten just a bit poutier, his left eye a bit bulgier, his crinkles a bit deeper. And then, this morning, he had found out about that one thing he dreaded. He could contract his abdomen when she was looking, just to make it look a bit flatter. He could smile and make faces to hide his growing wrinkles and softening features, just to pretend time wasn’t taking its toll.
But there was nothing he could currently do to hide the tiny tuft of silver hair growing among the mane of brown. He had tried to sculpt the hair around to bury it, but it hadn’t worked. He had tried to trim the top to make it less visible, but it hadn’t worked. He was trying to paint them back to their original colour with careful strokes of his fingers covered in a thick layer of her eyeshade, but it wasn’t working that well either.
“Doctor, I’m coming in, yeah?” she said behind the door - and it flew open before he could protest.
She stared at him, raised eyebrow and fists firmly planted on her hips - how had she managed to keep such a slender waist when his was but a long gone memory, he didn’t know. She spotted the tubes and boxes of hair gel on the counter, the comb full of hair, his fingers dirty with black power, the contents of her toilet bag all gathered in the sink.
“What on Earth are you doing with my makeup?” she asked, picking up his wrist to watch his fingers from up close.
“I’m not, I mean, I’m not using your makeup to… Makeup,” he stuttered, hurrying to wash his hands with a blob of soap. “I was looking for your hairbrush and… It just all fell and I’m trying to… Nevermind, it’s nothing. I’m done anyway. We should go.”
But of course, she had seen the hair products, the comb, the awful quantity of shiny gel plastered all over the top of his head. She only smiled, suddenly much less irritated, and handed him a towel.
“I like it, you know,” Rose pointed out, purposefully glancing at his hair.
“You like what?” he shrugged as he shoved all of the products in the bag and set it back on the shelf.
“Your hair,” she simply answered. “It’s beautiful. The good kind of grey, silver and all shiny.”
“I do not have grey hair yet, thank you very much,” he huffed, though the blush spreading on his cheeks did a poor job at backing up his claim.
“You’ve had gray hair for ages, Doctor,” she giggled, running her fingers through the short strands at the back of neck. “It started there.”
She gently tugged on a spike going astray just behind his ear. She trailed her fingers around, until they reached the slightly flat area of his skull and scratched her nails on another patch of hair.
“Then here,” she continued - and she rolled an arm around his waist as she did, pressing into his back and staring at his reflection through the mirror. “And that one, it appeared two weeks ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he muttered, swatting her hand away from his head.
“Because I like it,” she repeated, pinching the light swell of his abdomen in retaliation. “I like everything about you. I like that you’re human. I like that you’re growing old with me, like you promised. You thought I wouldn’t notice? Your breath when you try to hide your belly, or your forced smiles when you try to hide the crinkles at the corner of your mouth?”
“You… You did?”
“You’re my husband, you plonker, of course I noticed. And guess what, you’re not smiling twenty-four seven, and sometimes you have to breathe like everyone does. I see it, Doctor. I’ve been seeing it for months. I said nothing because I love it. I love you, slight overweight, grey hair and wrinkles included. I just want you to be yourself.”
“Well I hate myself right now,” he mumbled, trying to get free of her hold she wouldn’t loosen. “Look at me, Rose. I’m fat and hideous and so old.”
“Fat, yes, alarmingly so,” she agreed.
He frowned at those words, but rolled his eyes when she grinned at him from above his shoulder and snatched the hem of his shirt from his trousers. He grumbled when she ran her hand in circles over the small lump that, she had to admit, was slightly overreaching above his belt. But she loved it. Its warmth, its softness, its thin layer of coarse hair that disappeared under the waistline of his pants. All those things she had learnt to love about this human the first day they had spent together, and all those things she still loved despite his most vehement protests.
“And hideous, too,” she smiled, pressing her lips on the side of his neck. “But you’ve always been hideous, it just didn’t happen overnight. And old. Gosh, you are so old, I think you’re on the brink of death already.”
“It’s not funny, Rose, look at me.”
“I look at you, my Doctor, I always look at you.”
“You should have told me, then,” he groaned, still miffed that she had been seeing these things for ages when he only had noticed them a few weeks before.
“Tell you, then what? What would you have done about it? Go on a diet and dye your hair? Buy a pass to the gym and get botox in your face?”
“Well, if that’s what it takes to be the same as before, yeah, I would do that.”
“Do you honestly believe I would ever love you less because you’ve grown a tiny belly?” she asked in a murmur, so sincere he almost believed she meant that question - impossible, though, because that would imply he didn’t trust her, and she knew just how much he did. “Or love you less because you’ve got a few wrinkles or gray hair, or weak knees and cranky fingers? That such ridiculous things of your appearance would ever change how I feel for my husband and the father of my children? Do you, Doctor? Because that means I haven’t loved you properly.”
“It’s not about love, Rose, it’s about you finding your husband attractive,” he retorted, swatting her hand away from his belly, now revealed by the few buttons she had undone. “And, excuse me, but you never compliment me on my hair or my body anymore.”
Her fingers went back to his shirt at those words, but instead of carefully undoing the remaining buttons, she ripped the two hems apart, little plastic pucks raining down on the tiles. She pulled it down his arms with a harsh shove, staring at him through the mirror, looking at her own hands mapping the contours of his broad shoulders, trailing down his pectorals, down to his abdomen, down, downer. Her fingertips slipped under his belt, quickly, just enough to see his bright chocolate eyes darken and, quite ironically, the wrinkles at the corners of his mouth deepen as he pinched his lips to keep a moan in.
“Rose, the kids…” he started, briefly closing his eyes when her nails grazed the coarse hair at the juncture of his legs.
“Are gone already. Our eldest has her licence now and this is her birthday. She took my car.”
“We’ll be late, we…”
“Don’t try to change the subject, Mister,” she scolded, biting her lips into the soft skin of his shoulder. “Do you want to know something, Doctor?”
“What?” he sighed - both because he was just a bit annoyed, but mostly because he was starting to really appreciate how her body was pressing against his.
“Maybe I don’t compliment you on your body anymore…”
“Ah, see?” he interrupted with a sad grin of victory.
“But you don’t tell me you love me anymore,” she continued, unfazed by his intervention. “The last time was… I don’t know, a year ago, on our anniversary?”
“Of course I tell you I love you, don’t be silly Rose,” he protested, stopping her wrists when she began to move her hands again. “I tell you that everyday.”
“Nope,” she smiled as she broke free from his hold and unbuckled his belt. “But that’s alright. Because I know you do. So I thought… You knew I still find you attractive, too, just like I know you still love me. Because I do. You’re handsome, Doctor, every single part of you. Obviously I haven’t made myself clear enough. I shall remedy that, don’t you think?”
“Rose, love, we’ll be late,” he repeated, bracing himself against the sink, her deft fingers zipping his fly down and popping the button off.
“They can wait. I have a beautiful husband to love, right now.”
He hisses a Gallifreyan curse under his breath as he feels the tiny sting of nicking himself yet again, and sees a little trail of blood peeking out from the shaving cream. He’s shaved this face a thousand times before, but for some reason it’s only nowas a biological metacrisis that he ends up cutting himself so often. He could blame the razors on Pete’s World easily enough – there was a reasonthey stopped making carbide steel blades in the prime universe, after all – but it’s his hand he stares at with a look of betrayal, not the razor. He should be able to compensate for inferior tools, after all. He’s still part Time Lord, he should have the ability to master the technology of his choosing, even stupidbackwardsprimitive ones like the tiny tool in his hand.
Somehow, Rose must have heard his curse from outside the en-suite. She knocks softly on the bathroom door and opens it quietly.
“Everything all right in there?”
He turns around to face her, a disheveled picture of annoyance and woe. He’s wielding the offending razor the way he used to wield his sonic screwdriver, and her mouth quirks slightly.
“Here, let me …” she says with a soft smile.
She takes a few steps forward, coming to stand in front of him. He doesn’t resist as she takes the razor from his hand.
He’s tall, and the angle is awkward, and she’s afraid she’ll do an even worse job than he seems to be doing himself, so she hoists herself up to sit on the sink and spreads her knees wide so that he can stand between them.
He moves forward slowly, into the open invitation of her thighs cupped around his own, and sighs.
“We could get you an electric one,” she says gently, as her fingers graze the outline of his jaw and ear, skimming the razor gently over his cheek as she finishes his work.
His nose wrinkles at the idea.
“Hardly,” he scoffs, wanting to shake his head in derision but rightly afraid that a sudden movement could lead to another nick. “Can’t get it as smooth and close as with a blade.”
“You’re definitely getting it close, Doctor,” she laughs gently.
He stares down at her, the stirring in his abdomen from being in such close proximity to her warring with a residual bit of Time Lord haughtiness about the joke at his expense. She seems to sense his internal battle, and she sighs, puts down the razor, and slowly wipes the remaining shaving gel off his face with a nearby washcloth. This decides the war within him, as he closes his eyes and leans into her hand.
“I do like it smooth like this, tho,” she breathes into his cheek, kissing the scabbed-over nick and sliding her lips across the outline of his jaw, back up towards his earlobe. “I like it a lot.”
He moves in closer to her, pulling her thighs even tighter around his waist, so she can show him just how much.
“Have you ever thought about children?” he asks, whispered low as if he doesn’t want the gently falling snow brushing against their window to hear.
She’s already wrapped around his reclining form but she draws him closer and buries her face in his chest, needing the artificial layer of privacy as she analyses his question in her mind, his words rolling around on her tongue. His heart is beating faster than usual, she notices, and knows this isn’t an idle post-coital bliss type of question.
It’s not as if they shy away from the topic; she’s off-handedly and oh-so-casually praised his interactions with Tony numerous times, even commenting once that he would be a great father. But they’ve never had this conversation. This grown-up, responsible, mature conversation, and she feels the sting of cortisol and adrenaline shoot through her veins. Her heart speeds up to beat in time with his.
She considers making light of his question, reciting a smooth joke or retort, but she also knows that her lips are so close to his solitary heart that her words might break it. Instead she softly kisses the thin layer of delicate skin left protecting it and slowly trails her way up to his lips. “Yes.” The word resonates through their mouths where she intoned it and she can taste the tang of electric anticipation spark from his tongue.
He shifts his hips so that their bodies are side by side, turned toward each other. His hand reaches over and strokes up her jawline with the pad of his thumb. It circles her ear, tucking back an errant strand of hair as it goes.
His question has been answered, the communication cycle technically complete, but the unspoken intentions and subtext hang in the room like shimmering spirits. She can almost see them, hovering in her periphery, and closes her eyes.
“I had a baby, once,” she blurts out before she can think better of it, or to segue into that final secret in a more delicate fashion. Before she can push it down and pretend to forget about it again.
He freezes, his hand still cupping her ear, and she counts four long breaths in the thick silence.
“When?” His inquisition is soft but she can hear the undertones of shock and slight trepidation.
“I was seventeen,” she says, “before I met you.”
She can see one fear lifted from his shoulders but other complex emotions pass along his face to take its place. He wets his lips as if he’s going to speak but then flattens them, shifting his hips and moving his hand to behind his head and leaning on it. His eyes don’t leave hers and she knows she has his complete attention; with her hyper-distractible Time Lord, that was saying something.
Her throat feels constricted and she clears it. “Jimmy…um, it was an accident. Obviously. I mean I was sixteen, and in school still. Didn’t even realize until I was about four months along–god, I was a baby myself, so naïve… I didn’t tell anyone but Jimmy. He was none too pleased, as you might expect from a twenty-year old musician, especially when I wouldn't…I couldn’t get rid of it, probably should have but I just couldn't…"
She breaks off and he nods reassuringly, snaking a hand between their bodies to squeeze her hand. “And I was too ashamed to tell anyone, even my mum… So I dropped out of school right after my GCSEs and moved into his squalid, horrible flat in Camden. Refused to see my mum, Mickey, anyone. Didn’t answer their calls. They’re still a little bitter about that time; I don’t blame them…” She takes a deep breath.
“Jimmy was awful, kept telling me how lucky I was that he allowed me to stay with him, that he was with me at all, that he deserved someone far prettier and smarter than me. He’d tell me one day that I was the kindest person on Earth and then the next day leave me in tears and forced to apologise for being a conniving manipulative bitch. He would make fun of me for dropping out of school, for being too dumb to take my A-levels, even though… But I couldn’t leave him, not while I was pregnant, and… I don’t know, he had this way of being unexpectedly nice once in awhile, throwing me tiny grains of excitement or loving words. It was addictive; I lived for those patronizing pats of the arm and…I almost believed I was happy. That he was, in fact, amazing and that I was, in fact, lucky to have him."
She picks at a seam on their sheets. "I was just smart enough that I knew I had to put the baby up for adoption, that I couldn’t keep it. I went to all the pregnancy clinics and check-ups, alone of course, averted my eyes from the pity everyone in the waiting room and practice showed me. Pity and derision, really, but it was hard to tell the difference.”
“Rose…” he murmurs, pulling her close. His chin tucks into her neck and she can tell he’s trying to buffet her from the pain, even if he was a decade too late.
“I managed,” she says firmly, clenching her jaw, “and I’m not a shrinking violet now. One of those life experiences that change you, you know? Makes or breaks you…”
“You are the strongest person I have ever known,” he says sincerely, his eyes wide with compassion, “and I’ve known a lot of people.”
Funnily enough, that’s when the tears well up and she sniffles into his t-shirt. He holds her silently, rubbing her back and rocking her back and forth as effectively as he can in a horizontal position. “Back then, I never even imagined I could end up with someone as wonderful as you,” she mumbles into his chest, “Didn’t think I was good enough to be loved.”
“You are more than deserving of love,” he forces out through clenched teeth, “you always have been. I’m so sorry that there was ever a time in your life that you weren’t cherished.” He wipes off a tear from her cheek with the side of his thumb. “There never will be again.”
She tightens her grip on his hand but can’t control her quivering mouth enough to speak a response. But he knows.
After a few minutes she calms down enough to exert control over her vocal cords and moves back from his embrace so she can see him. She maintains her hold on his hand and he strokes her fingers with his thumb.
“You don’t have to tell me the rest,” he reassures her, “Or you can tell me another time. If you want.”
She shakes her head. “I’m tired of holding on to this; I’ve never told anyone about it. And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before… There was never a good time to bring it up in the TARDIS, and then so much time had passed…”
“I know,” he murmurs, dropping his eyes, “I would have liked to know, but… Yeah, I can’t imagine an opening to drop that piece of information.”
“I almost told you once, the old old you, my Doctor in leather…” She smiles fondly at the memory of his previous incarnation. “We were staring out at Woman Wept and you’d just opened up a little about Gallifrey… It was nighttime, remember? And those three moons were reflected in a row on the frost and the light from the stars was dancing off the crystals; everything was blue and ice.” She smiles in memory, “And I kept thinking that the whole planet reminded me of your eyes, all hard and icy blue and…striking.”
He grins and nuzzles into her hair, running his lips down her skull and to her neck. “I wanted to kiss you so badly that night,” he confesses between pecks.
“I wanted you to kiss me that night,” she sighs, moaning lightly as his lips move down to her clavicle and then continue on south. He stops when he reaches the swell of her breast, however, and raises his eyes to meet hers.
“I want to hear the rest of your story,” he tells her, his voice rich and thick like treacle, “and then I’m going to show you what it means to be loved.”
Her breath is rapidly accelerating and it takes a second to claw through her daze to understand what story he’s talking about. He rolls off her and resumes his intent listening position, his eyes open and accepting.
She closes her eyes for a second, recalling the next part of her tale. “I went into labour a little early, 37 weeks I think, and I was alone in the flat when my water broke. I thought about calling Jimmy but I didn’t want to bother him–I was too frightened of being a bother that I didn’t even ask him for a lift to the hospital. I took a bus. And I was so frightened; I was terrified and all I wanted was my mum… But I didn’t call her. I walked into the maternity ward and checked myself in and told the nurses that my partner was on his way. I think they knew though, I could see it in their eyes whenever he was mentioned. Like we both knew we were just playing a game.”
She can see him clenching his jaw again but he stays quiet, lets her continue in her own time. She takes a shaky breath. “I don’t remember much after that; it’s all a drug and pain filled haze. I didn’t ask for pain medication but they gave me a spinal block anyway. Looking back, I’m grateful for it, even if I would have refused it at the time. It would have been too much, all alone with the full brunt of that pain. It was bad enough anyway…"
"I do remember asking the delivery room attendant over and over again not to show me the baby once it was born, not to even tell me if it was a boy or girl. I still don’t know. It makes it a little easier I guess…."
She has to stop for a few seconds, her throat closing up again. "I saw a glimpse of it though, accidentally. It was so tiny and its head was covered in downy white blond curls, wet and plastered to its skull…” Her words are barely choked out by the end of the sentence and she can see pain etched across his face, probably mirroring hers.
“And that’s it,” she concludes with a tight smile. “I signed the papers and got out of there before they even officially released me. Went straight to the estate and cried in my mum’s arms for days. Made up some story about Jimmy leaving me, and mum didn’t fuss once about me staying in bed miserably for a few days. She was brilliant, actually; I thought she’d be so angry at me, maybe not even let me back in the flat, but she was so comforting and forgiving… Told me later she was so glad I’d escaped that abusive relationship that she didn’t have the heart to scold."
"Good woman,” the Doctor says under his breath but she doesn’t have the emotional strength to tease him for complimenting her mum right now.
“I did have to put the hospital fees on my credit card. Eight hundred pounds; a fortune for someone like me. Told mum it was Jimmy’s debt I’d paid off. Technically it was, in a way.”
He grunts in response and pulls her close again, pillowing her head on his chest. “And that was it? He never contacted you?” His words vibrate against her cheek.
“I texted him, told him it was over. He didn’t reply.” She shrugs, “It was better that way; I might have fallen under his spell if I saw him again back then. It was a rough time.”
She feels him growl and she lifts her head to flash him a slow smile. “But everything worked out for the best. A couple of years later a crazy alien took my hand and he’s still holding it.”
“And he loves you,” he mumbles huskily into her hair and rolls them over so that he is holding himself over her. His hair flops down in front of his eyes as he drops his head to search her eyes; his shallow breaths are hot on her face. Slowly, tenderly, he lowers his lips to hers, imbuing such adoration through his gentle kiss that tears spring to her eyes again.
“You are worth my entire universe,” he intones reverently, moving downward to worship every centimeter of skin with his lips. Shifting his weight to his right arm, he trails his fingers under her vest top, along her ribs and up to her breasts, circling a peak with his index finger before lowering his mouth over it. He rolls the stiff tip between his teeth and then laves at it and before sharing his attention equally with her other breast. His touch is so achingly gentle that it feels like her heart might burst.
Both breasts thoroughly lauded, he plants a row of kisses down her stomach, pausing briefly for the tip of his tongue to swirl inside her navel, but otherwise keeps up the steady pace. When he reaches the waistband of the knickers she’d hastily thrown on after their last round, he dips his tongue underneath, scouting as she rocks her hips up against his mouth.
“Thought I took care of these hours ago,” he chuckles and sits back on his feet. He holds her gaze as he leisurely peels them off, a reverential glow radiating from his eyes. She feels like her entire body is suffused in lazy warmth and pulls his lips to dance with hers.
He makes love to her like she’s the most precious entity in the multiverse and he tells her so, whispered and chanted and translated into a hundred languages. His strokes are long and steady, rocking into her like he’s rocking her to sleep. She comes with a whimper and he follows with a groan, their highs a release rather than fireworks and explosions.
“You are my unconditional goddess,” he murmurs, sated, as he pulls her groggy form to his.
— She opens her eyes before he does and smiles at his serene expression. He’s beautiful when he sleeps; freckled and unguarded, and she fleetingly hopes the full Time Lord can find such peace in his dreams.
Of course she wants children with him: those freckles on a little boy, to see his soulful brown eyes when their newborn girl first blinks awake. Her hand has moved unconsciously to her lower abdomen and she feels for the familiar but fading stretch mark.
When she looks at him again he’s watching her, his eyes crinkled and solemn.
“Do you ever regret the adoption?” he asks softly, reading her eyes perfectly. He always can.
She sighs. “I still think about the baby…that mop of curls, that impossibly small clenched fist… They promised me it was going to a good family, a family who wanted it more than anything else… It was the best option. If I had to do it all over, same circumstances, I’d do the same. But do I regret it? Sometimes. When I see a blonde toddler or a mum nuzzling into her baby’s neck…yeah. But knowing it has a better life than I could have ever given it, a mum and a dad and not having to grow up on a council estate… it helps.”
She leans over and gives him a quick kiss. “And so do you. Thank you.”
"Mmm,” he hums distractedly, clearly imagining scenarios of pain he could inflict on Jimmy. His eyes are dark and distant. She knows him too.
“Doctor?”
“Mmm?”
She waits until his eyes drift back up to hers. “I think about children a lot, you know. Our children.” He’s silent for an excruciating minute, his eyes wide and locked on hers. “Um, if you want them, that is…it’s fine. Either way. I…Can I even get pregnant? With your…I mean–”
With a whoosh he lets out his breath and captures her in his arms, rolling them inside the duvet until they’re a trapped in giggling, gleeful bundle.
“Say it again,” he begs.
“What? ‘Our children’?” she pants, her arm pinned between them and wrapped together so tight she can hardly breathe.
“Our children. Yours and mine. Ours.” She laughs and his face almost splits from his grin. “It’s going to be fantastic.”
In a universe where everyone stayed in the Prime Universe.
——-
By this point, the Doctor’d thought, he’d seen Rose in as many situations as two people feasibly could. Well… rather more situations, as most couples could hardly boast access to a frankly miraculous time ship and the rather dubious couples therapy of exploding a seat of modern British government to save it from flatulating aliens.
But the Doctor had never quite seen Rose this nervous. Not in the dozens of near death circumstances they’d found themselves, not when she’d worked herself up to confess her feelings for him, and he, fool that he was, had nearly choked on his own hearts as they tried to float out of his chest. Not even in bloody FRANCE when he’d been blind and the biggest arse this side of Raxicoricofallapatorius.
(And that’s saying a lot, because Clom in particular has it’s fair share of arses.)
No, he’s never seen Rose like this. Sweating and twisting her fingers in her lap, shifting on the cheap faux leather seat every few minutes to reach into her bag and check for the thousandth time that their paper work was in order.
The Doctor sighed and glanced to the corner of the small waiting room where an incongruous blue police box was doing it’s inanimate best to whistle and seem inconspicuous. Bless her. The old girl was nervous too.
He’d risked a paradox once before to reunite Rose with her family. The Doctor swore then and there that, Reapers be damned, he’d do it again if anything went wrong today. They’d get this right if he had to go back and do it over again a thousand times.
The tinny overhead speaker dinged and the raspy disembodied voice of the night nurse called out, “Paging Doctor… I’m sorry… The Doctor and Mrs Tyler to the front desk.”
Rose shot up, smoothing down her hair and fussing with the collar of her button up shirt.
“That’s us,” she gulped, stating the obvious. “Do I look ok? They’ll think I look ok, won’t they?”
She’d insisted that they dress up for this, and for once the Doctor had complied, donning proper dress shoes with his slacks and a soft cashmere sweater over his own button up.
He placed a soothing hand on her elbow, and reached down to gather up her massive bag (bigger on the inside, but still, Rose had insisted they bring everything “just in case”).
“You look beautiful, as always. They’ll think you’re perfect.”
Rose gave him a shaky smile and together they walked over to the front desk, making it there just as a small dark haired nurse pushed through the double doors leading to the Labor and Delivery unit, of the University College London Hospital.
The young nurse gave them a wide smile, walking over to them with the tiniest bundle swaddled in her arms. “Are you Doctor and Mrs. Tyler?”
Rose was shaking, and so the Doctor answered for her “That’s us,” just as a feeble wail began to rise from the pink and blue blankets in the Nurses arms.
“Well Mr. and Mrs. Tyler,” The nurse said, and the Doctor, seeing that there were tears in her eyes too decided he liked this woman immensely, “It is my pleasure to introduce you to your daughter.”
The woman leaned over and settled the infant in Rose’s arms, patting her on the shoulder and murmering. “She’s beautiful love, one of the prettiest babies I’ve ever delivered. Take your time. But I wager she’ll need her nappy changed soon enough.”
The woman smiled at the Doctor before taking her leave, gesturing that she’d be right behind the reception desk if they needed anything. When the Doctor looked back to Rose he could see she was staring entranced at the babies face tears streaming unabashedly down her cheeks, and her index finger twined around a tiny flaxen ringlet.
“My Daughter,” she whispered, and then tearing her gaze from the baby looked up at him, her eyes wide in disbelief. “Doctor, it’s my daughter.”
The Doctor smiled, his hearts pounding in his chest, hardly believing it could contain so much love.
“Of course it is Rose. She’s perfect.”
“Yeah” Rose breathed, looking back down at her in rapture.
But when Rose finally looked back up at him, the Doctor could see the hesitation and doubt in her eyes.
“Doctor… are you sure you’re ok with this… that she’s not…”
The Doctor just smiled, wrapping an arm around his beloved wife and clasping her to his chest. When he let her go he simply answered the questions inherent eyes by hoisting the bigger-on-the-inside diaper bag where she could see it.
“When you’re ready Rose, the instant you think you can let her go, if you don’t mind, I’d like to be the first to change MY daughter’s nappy.”
Rose and the Doctor practically fell into the TARDIS, slamming the door behind them. When asked what she wanted to see Rose had said, “Whales! Maybe in Alaska? I’ve always wanted to visit Alaska,” and the TARDIS had obliged, taking them to a cliff on the Alaskan coast with a spectacular view of a large pod of humpback whales. Unfortunately there was also a rather brisk wind in their faces, and it even started to snow at one point, so by the time the whales were gone they felt more than half frozen.
The TARDIS, however, was warm and inviting, and by the time they’d caught their breath they noticed a light flickering down the corridor. “I think she means for us to follow,” the Doctor said, pulling Rose to her feet.
“Oof,” Rose groaned. “The whales were brilliant, but I could have done without the snow. I think I’m going to need a week to thaw.”
“Nonsense,” said the Doctor, pausing a moment to kiss the tip of her very cold nose. “I never tire of seeing you with snowflakes sparkling in your hair. Pure magic.”
Feeling a bit grumpy from the cold, Rose grumbled, “Try to find some warmer magic next time, if you please.”
The TARDIS, it seemed, knew what Rose wanted before she asked. They followed the flickering lights and occasional chirps to a room Rose had never seen before. Maybe it hadn’t been there before. Maybe the TARDIS had just redecorated it for the occasion.
“Oh!” Rose gasped.
It wasn’t at all cold; in fact, there was a roaring fire in the fireplace on the far end of the room. But to her eyes it looked as though it should be cold…because it looked as though it had been built of ice and snow. The walls, floor, and ceiling looked to be hard packed snow, accented by pillars of carved ice. There were blankets and pillows piled in front of the fireplace–which looked, impossibly, like it too was carved out of ice–and next to what was clearly meant to be their sitting area there was a small ice table with two mugs filled with something steaming, probably hot cocoa, since Rose thought she could see marshmallows. There was even a large bed, also of snow, although it had a plush mattress and heavy blankets atop the snowy foundation.
Her crankiness forgotten, Rose wandered around the room, examining the walls and the furniture, running her hands over the intricate carvings. “Doctor, it really is ice and snow! It’s cold under my fingers, but the air is warm. Why isn’t anything melting?”
“Perhaps the TARDIS is giving you some ‘warmer magic,’” he suggested with a grin. He snaked an arm around her waist, pulled her close, and said in a low voice, “Let’s go sit by the fire. I might have some magic to warm you up as well.” He winked.
“Doctor!” she said, laughing. Her cheeks, already pink from the sudden heat in the room, flushed even brighter.
He pulled her to the pile of blankets, where they curled up together in front of the crackling fire.
“I never tire of seeing you like this, either,” the Doctor said, gently running his fingers through her hair.
A late birthday fic for tehriona, who shares a birthday with Tentoo. So what better way to please both birthday people than with Tentoo and Rose doing happy adult things in Pete’s World?
Inspired by this photo of the lovely Billie Piper and a sort-of sequel to this tagfic.
Rose Tyler in leather, the Doctor, and a motorcycle. Enjoy!
Jackie insisted they come to lunch today. On the one hand, Rose is grateful for the distraction. But on the other, she doesn’t want to deal with anyone right now. She feels lost in much the same way she did when she first came to this world. Except this time she’s not alone, and she has to sort out her feelings on that fact on top of everything else. Yesterday - has it really only been that long? Yesterday, she found the Doctor, only to lose him again in a matter of hours. And today, she’s left with the scattered pieces, another version of him that’s supposed to be dark and scary but is really just wide-eyes and innocent smiles.
She doesn’t know what to feel… should it be angry, or guilty, or sad? There’s a small, traitorous part of her that just says ‘happy.’ She’s been fighting for so long, and finally she has at least a piece of what she was striving for. She isn’t back home but she does have her family. And she has her Doctor, she does, but it hurts that there’s still a piece of him out there alone after everything she did to get back to him. Rose is tired: emotionally, physically, in every way she can imagine.
They must look knackered, both of them, because her Mum insists they spend the night rather than travel back into the city. Rose just wants to be home or at least the closest thing to it in this world. But it’s not all bad. The one consolation is that the bike is here.
There’s no space at her flat, but the garage at the mansion is huge and she knows the roads that will lead out into the countryside: long and winding and open. She suits up, puts on her armor of leather and denim that’s protected her heart these long years she’s spent alone. Rose will slip away like she always does, quietly retreat to her own personal world of wind and speed.
She doesn’t count on running into him in the hallway.
“Rose,” he gasps out, surprised as he nearly runs into her. He takes in her appearance quickly. “You’re leaving?”
She blinks, trying to get her emotions in check. “Yeah, just going for a ride.”
“Ride?” he asks curiously.
She quickly clarifies. “On my bike. I have a motorcycle; it’s in the garage.“
“Oh.” The Doctor affects a cheerful facade to cover up his disappointment at being left behind. “Brilliant.”
But of course Rose can see right through him. She knows him better than anyone. She bites her lip, hesitating for a moment. Then puts the offer out in the open before she can change her mind.
“You want to come?”
He answers a little too quickly. “Yes.” He stops himself, and then continues a little more hesitantly. “Well…that is… if you don’t mind me tagging along.”
The Doctor reaches a hand up behind his neck and runs his fingers through his hair, dislodging any attempt at styling. It’s such a familiar gesture, and it floods her heart with affection for him. As much as she wants to be alone, she can’t deny the magnetic pull of his company. Even through the confusion of the past few days, his presence here is enough to remind her… she loves this man.
“Sure,” she replies coolly, turning towards the stairs and nodding her head for him to follow. “Come on.”
Rose leads him to the garage of the Tyler estate, hones in on her vehicle right away and pulls back the plastic cover. The motion reveals a sport touring bike resembling a BMW model, as it existed in the prime universe. It’s a beautiful combination of supple matte leather, shining chrome, and sparkling enameled plastic that’s not-quite-TARDIS-blue. The machine is used but well-kept. Rose obviously takes a lot of care in its maintenance.
He thinks of all the hours he missed, how he would have loved to watch her learn the motorcycle’s operation and upkeep. He wonders if her work on the Dimension Cannon fed her engineering abilities, or whether it was the other way around. As much as he’d like to ask, part of him wants to wait until she’s ready to tell him, afraid to tip the uneasy balance that’s fallen between them. She’s letting him in, just a little, just enough to share this part of her acquired during their time apart. And for now that’s more than he could have hoped for.
She tosses him a helmet, casually slipping into a grin. There’s a sense of comfort here that wasn’t present in the hallway. The Doctor realizes they’re now operating on her terms, in her safe haven. They haven’t even moved yet, they’re still in the shade of the garage, but already she’s starting to shine.
“You don’t mind if I drive?” she asks, fitting her own helmet over the golden waves of her hair. But it’s really not a question. She will either way.
The Doctor doesn’t protest, simply closes the strap under his chin and beams at her happily. “Lead the way, Rose Tyler.”
With a nod she mounts the bike, scooting forward as much as she can to give him room. The Doctor fits himself behind her, carefully arranging his arms around her waist. He’ll need to hold on, but he doesn’t want to give her the wrong idea. Even though every cell in his body is screaming it, is elated by every bit of him that’s touching her. If she minds, she doesn’t let on. Rose goes through the preparations with calculated precision. Once everything’s checked, she switches on the ignition and the motor roars to life. He feels it as much as he hears it, the whole bike rumbling softly beneath them in time with the loud clamor filling the air.
“Ready?” she calls over the din.
“Yeah,” he says, probably too quiet for her to hear. He doesn’t really trust himself to say much else.
With that, the kickstand goes up and they are off. The bike lurches forward out of the garage and down the driveway, the Doctor clinging to Rose with the force of their motion. It’s been awhile since he’s been on a motorbike this fast; it’s open and, while exhilarating, it’s a little bit frightening, with no doors to hold you in, no grated floor waiting to catch you when you tumble over. There’s no sense of navigation, but Rose seems to know where she’s going, tearing down the lane toward the more remote rural routes outside the city.
The Doctor doesn’t feel unsafe, but Rose is certainly pushing the engine to its capability, turning into the curves of the winding pavement, the landscape rushing past them in a blur of colors dominated by green and blue. She knows the way, knows the limits and strengths of this machine, and he is so proud of her, so full of desire and joy that he’s the one with her.
Rose is warm in front of him, the smooth leather of her jacket so temptingly reminiscent of skin. The seat is vibrating beneath them and there’s so little room, between the force of their acceleration and the top-box behind him. The Doctor’s pressing his whole front into her and, try as he might to think of unattractive things, the reality of Rose Tyler, motorcycle riding beauty is overwhelming him. He can’t stop his human body from reacting.
She feels it, of course she does, his erection pressing into her lower back through layers of fabric. He wants to climb into himself and never face her again, but instead his traitorous body presses his hips into her, groaning at the delicious friction and hoping against hope the combined roar of the wind and the engine swallows the sound. Rose decelerates, pulling to a stop on the side of the road. The Doctor is mortified.
He swallows hard, trying to sit back, away from her. “Rose, I’m sorry, I can’t control–”
“’S alright,” she answers quickly, cutting him off. “I just… I can’t concentrate. ’S not safe.”
He sighs heavily, willing his arousal to fade. “I know; I’m sorry.”
“Don’t,” she snaps, quick to answer again. She throws her leg forward over the handlebars, an awkward dismount but the only way to avoid pressing into him anymore. Rose dusts herself off, staring at the ground. “I told you; it’s okay. Let’s just take a break, yeah?”
“Sure,” he agrees quietly.
He gets off the bike, slowly, carefully. Trying not to draw attention to the obvious. Rose pulls a blanket from the small trunk and hands it to him, attempts a reassuring smile when she catches his eyes. Keeps her gaze up and up, above the belt. She starts up the bike again, driving it slightly off-road towards a wooded area inset from the shoulder, a secluded glade surrounding a little stream bordered by farmland on either side. He follows, carrying the blanket with him. They discard their helmets wordlessly, resting them carefully on the seat.
She secures the bike at the top of a little hill while he spreads the blanket out down the embankment, right before grass meets little water-smoothed pebbles on the shore of the creek. Silently, he lays out on the blanket, feet in the shade facing the rushing water and head in the sunshine, towards the road. Rose joins him, mimicking his position. There’s barely an arm’s length between them but it’s too much. He wants to hold her, but he’s not sure where he stands after his body’s automatic, and overt, reaction to her.
But there’s nowhere to run, now. It’s just the Doctor and Rose Tyler in this universe, and even if not, she’s brought them here, she’s his ride back. He’s nervous, but they have to get past this. So he’ll talk it out, make the first move.
“I know you’re upset with me…” the Doctor begins, his voice soft and low.
Rose turns, giving him her full attention, and he’s as glad as he is terrified. “I’m not upset,” she says simply. He gives her the look of a boyfriend knowing better than to tell his paramour the dress makes her look hideous. She rolls her eyes, sighs in resignation. “I’m not upset with you,” she amends. “I’m upset because I don’t know how I’m supposed to be feeling right now.”
He takes her hand, threads their fingers together. She lets him, her eyes following the movement and oh, it’s going to be alright, because he has her hand and she’s talking with him, and nothing can be that bad as long as he has her with him.
“Rose, you’re not obligated to feel anything,” he tells her truthfully, putting all the sincerity he feels into his eyes. “You’re supposed to be feeling exactly whatever you’re feeling.”
She gives him a crooked smile and rolls towards him, into him; slings one arm over until her hand rests on his stomach, dangerously low. Her head is propped up on her hand, bent at the elbow, and her grin is so close, within reach of his lips if he wanted. And he wants, so very much.
“And if what I’m feeling is attracted to you?”
He’s proud of himself; he doesn’t cough or sputter, even though he’s more than shocked by her words. He just mirrors her expression with a lopsided smile, tries for the casual approach.
“Well… I can only sympathize. I feel very attracted to you,” he admits with more confidence than he feels. Adds a little self-deprecating, “Obviously.” An afterthought.
The Doctor hates that he’s so unsure. Wishes he could act with all the confidence of his former self, but the metacrisis has left him on unsure footing. It doesn’t help that his arms and his thoughts are consumed by everything Rose. He feels sometimes a shell of that being and hopes Rose can accept what’s left.
She frowns, picking at a piece of fuzz on his trousers and avoiding his gaze. “But you didn’t before?”
He blinks, his head jerking back in sudden confusion. “Of course I did.”
Rose lights up, then, rolling on top so she’s straddling him. His hands come up automatically to steady her, fingers digging into sun-warmed leather. She’s gorgeous and confident, he can’t believe how she’s grown since he last saw her. This is a woman who knows exactly what she wants and has fought to get it. His flimsy singular heart is bursting with affection, no, adoration for her, and he’s afraid its rapid beat will never slow down.
“Since when?” she asks breathily, pressing her hands gently into his chest. “Since leather?”
“Yes, I like this on you,” he murmurs distractedly.
“No,” she giggles, her amused face luminescent in the afternoon sun. “I mean, when you wore it.”
“From the beginning, Rose,” he confesses, pulling her down into an embrace. His arms clutch her reflexively. “Always.”
She buries her head into his neck, blonde hair spilling out onto the blanket below them. Rose teases him with her lips against his neck as she whispers. “Then why didn’t you do anything about it?”
“It was easier to distract myself, then. I thought…” He swallows, gives himself a moment to push through. “I thought it was better. I was an idiot.”
Rose chuckles, and the way her body shakes against his sends pleasurable sparks up his spine. “Well, at least we agree on that.”
The Doctor pants, closes his eyes, tries to put his thoughts into words even as he tries to reign in his own body. “But now, it’s like… I can’t even control it. Every time I look at you, first thing in the morning or here in the sunlight. When we’re alone or even in front of your mother, Rassilon help me.”
She giggles outright at that, snuggling closer and nuzzling into the small patch of skin beneath his collar. He feels her everywhere, warm breath against his neck and gravity conspiring to press all her soft curves against him. His erection is back as though it never left and he’s certain she can feel it as surely as he feels her heat radiating through black denim.
“I didn’t mean to rush this, to force this on you,” he gasps, hips rising up of their own accord. “Sorry–”
“Oi, no more apologizing,” she admonishes sweetly, pressing a gentle kiss below his ear. “I can’t be that bad if I’m turnin’ you on.”
“'That bad?’” he scoffs, completely incredulous. “Rose, you’re…”
The sentiment dies in a groan. She’s swirling the tip of her tongue in tiny patterns along his jaw, and he can’t process much else.
“Yeah?” she asks, breathless. “Tell me.”
Rose rocks her hips into his and he cries out; the feeling is electric. He’s not sure how he’s become so lost so quickly. His body demands more, but his mind fights against the urge. He has to know, before he’s gone completely.
“Rose,” he chokes out and he barely recognizes the voice, it’s so rough. “Is this…?”
“It’s a little late for that,” she quips playfully, repeating the agonizingly pleasurable motion of her hips. “But you may want to kiss me.”
She lifts herself up and as soon as her lips are reachable he captures them. There’s little finesse to their kiss, technique relinquished for raw passion, a fire stoked too hot to be controlled. He’s burning for her, hungry in a way he’s never been before. Fingernails scratch against scalp as Rose greedily fingers his hair. Her mouth opens to him and he groans as she sets up a rhythm, her tongue stroking against his in time with her hips rutting carelessly against his hardness. The Doctor tries to keep up but he’s helpless against the onslaught, settles instead for taking her lead and accepting whatever is offered.
For Rose it’s not enough. She tears her lips away from his with a breathy gasp and sits up suddenly, fingers scrabbling in their haste to tug his shirt up and out of the way. She runs her hands down the exposed skin appreciatively before turning her attention to the fastenings of his trousers.
He reaches for her arms, ready to stop her. “You don’t have to–”
In answer to that, she moves against him again, effectively silencing him.
“Tell me,” she repeats, chasing the words he didn’t say earlier.
“You’re beautiful. And warm and soft, I want to…” He can’t work his mouth, the fantasies are spiraling so fast. Behind thin eyelids backlit by the setting sun, he sees his head buried between her thighs, the soft curve of her throat exposed with her head thrown back beneath him, his hands gripping her hips as he watches her back arch deeply like a drawn bow. “I want every part of you, to touch and taste you.”
“Yes,” she moans, low in her throat, and it’s permission and acknowledgement all in one, spurring him into action.
She’s got his trousers undone as he’s working on her denim, hands trembling with anticipation for what’s underneath. Rose pulls the zipper down on her jacket and he does grab her hands now, halting her progress.
“Please,” he nearly growls. “Leave it on.”
She smiles, cheeky response queued up and waiting. “I thought you wanted to see.”
The Doctor flashes a sheepish smile. “I do, but this is…”
“Kinky,” she supplies, grinning madly.
He blinks dazedly. “What?”
“You’ve got a thing,” she explains patiently, opening her jacket and lifting her black shirt and bra above her chest in one move. He stares, transfixed. “A thing for leather. You like it.”
“I like it on you,” he rumbles, hands automatically finding her breasts. He runs his thumb over each nipple gently, just teasing. Rose cries out and arches into his touch, silently urging him for more contact. She must be sensitive, or maybe she’s just as far gone as he.
She smirks down at him through a haze of desire. With her skin all flushed and a curtain of blonde framing her face, she’s never been more pink and yellow and gorgeous to his eyes.
“I seem to remember you liking it on you, too,” she reminds him. Her hand sneaks down between them to run her palm against his cock, now straining rigidly against the soft fabric of his pants.
“Perhaps, Rose Tyler,” he grounds out, and really it’s a miracle he can still talk with her touching him like that. He’s thinking medals are in order. “Or maybe you were just projecting.”
Her smirk widens, teeth bright against the golden afternoon. “Maybe.”
She rolls off him onto her back, and he just barely contains a very unmanly whimper at the cold air left in her wake. He’s worried until he sees her shimmying out of her jeans. Rose turns her head to face him and smiles brightly. The sweet gesture cuts through the desire clouding his brain. Love has been present throughout, but suddenly it’s unconditional fondness that’s seizing his chest and pricking tears at the corner of his eyes. He reaches out, gently touches the backs of his fingers against her cheek.
“I love you,” he whispers, trying to keep his voice steady, but it wavers just a bit.
Rose curls back into him, cradles his face in her hands and touches their foreheads together. “I love you, too,” she tells him assuredly. “You know that, right?”
“Yes,” he breathes softly against her lips, because he does but it’s amazing to hear her say it.
She opens immediately to his kiss, the slide of her tongue languid and graceful in comparison to their earlier snogging. While he’s distracted, responding to the movements of her mouth and burying his hands in her soft hair, she tugs down his pants, freeing his erection. He hisses at the air hitting sensitive skin but she’s quick to remedy the oversight, climbing on top and moving her knickers aside until her folds are sliding against him, wet and soft against his warm and hard.
The Doctor breaks the kiss, throws his head back and moans at the feeling. Each layer removed is just a little bit more, a little bit better. The feeling of Rose against him, hot and slick with nothing in between, is so close to bliss he can’t imagine it can get better. He wants her to share in this pleasure, make sure she feels equally as satisfied, but it’s almost too much just receiving these feelings. He has to tell her, try to make her understand.
“Rose, Time Lords, we don’t… didn’t…” He struggles and she strokes his cheek soothingly, mirroring his earlier actions. “They don’t surrender. Not to any being in the universe, not even to our own feelings. You’re going to have to teach me, to let go, to surrender to you.”
Her smile is all acceptance and it’s beautiful; he can’t believe he’s so lucky. “You’re doing pretty well so far. Tell me what you want, Doctor.”
That name breaks him. It’s his name, but it’s more… it’s all his doubts resolved and hopes realized in one word. To be that man, in Rose’s eyes and surrounded by Rose’s love, forever. “Inside, please.”
She’s not smug at hearing him beg. She simply nods, her face softening into pure adoration as she guides him home. Wet heat envelopes him as she slides down, taking his cock inside her inch by inch. It’s just as well she takes this slowly; the image Rose makes, knickers askew, shirt ridden up and leather jacket open, combined with the divine feeling of her sex surrounding him are conspiring against his resolve.
“Rose,” he sighs her name, hoping it conveys the depth of what he’s feeling.
“Doctor,” she answers, smiling softly. “It doesn’t always have to be frightening, giving in.” She starts to move, lifting up and letting back down, moaning enticingly at the pleasure of feeling him deep inside her. “It can be beautiful.”
He meets her eyes and the Doctor is caught by her enraptured stare. The rushing brook, the occasional traffic whizzing by on the road, the impending twilight all fade until there’s only her; above him and around him, filling up every sense and thought. She’s right. In this moment he’s not afraid. He feels more at peace than he can ever remember. Where Rose is leading, he wants to follow.
The day she finds out she’s pregnant is the day she finds out that her 903-year-old Human Time Lord Metacrisis actually has the maturity level of a 3-year-old.
She’s fairly certain she’s never seen him look happy. His smile is stretched, like its too big for his face to accommodate. He’s bouncing up and down and he races from the bathroom where she’s holding the pregnancy test to the spare bedroom.
She follows him down the hallway and sees him with a giant box at the edge of his desk. With long, sweeping gestures the Doctor is clearing the room–piles of junk and off-planet trinkets.
He’s muttering to himself, “Need to empty the room. Babies don’t need Macentor Defabricators in their nurseries, do they? No. Okay, room cleared. Paint! Need paint. Babies can’t sleep in dark rooms, bad for their auras. Neutral colors..GREEN!“
He turns to Rose, still holding a now overflowing box of trinkets.
"Rose, we need to go to the store. We need green paint.”
But before Rose can open her mouth to answer him, he’s swirling about the spare bedroom and taking down framed certificates and pictures off the wall.
“Okay, we need a crib and diapers. Loads and loads of diapers. Wonder if the TARDIS is up for a quick trip to Calet for those fancy diapers with the no-smell technology. That’d be useful.”
He straightens and turns, wide-eyed to face Rose.
“Rose, the TARDIS! It needs to be baby-proofed! What if little Tyler gets in there and accidentally sends herself to Mars?” The Doctor slapped a hand to his forehead and makes to rush past Rose.
Rose is leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, looking bemused. She’d hoped for a positive reaction from him, but this was above and beyond.
She’d been worried sick about the way he would react when she’d become suspicious of her pregnancy. In the late hours of the night, he’d spoken to her about his family on Gallifrey. How he’d never want to have children again because it hurt too much. He’d cupped her face once night and told her that a family with her might not be so bad though.
Still, this overexcited, nervous wreck of a Doctor is not what she was expecting.
She reached out a hand and placed it gently on the Doctor’s arm as he was racing out the door for the TARDIS.
The Doctor stopped, his breathing fast, and looked at his wife. His beautiful, pink and yellow human wife.
“Rose, we’re having a baby.”
Rose smiled and nodded. She grabbed his hand and placed it gently on her stomach. The Doctor’s thumb massaged the flat of her abdomen before he fell to his knees and pressed a kiss to the soft skin there.
She ran a hand through his hair and grinned.
“Yeah, Doctor, we’re having a baby.”
From his knees, the Doctor grinned up at her before his eyes went wide again.
He leapt to his feet.
“Maternity clothes! Rose, are you getting all of this? We need to go shopping!”
Rose giggled. Only a baby would make the Doctor willingly shop.
She watched his retreating form, a happy warmth saturating her chest.
They were Rose Tyler and the Doctor and they had their very own plus one, now.
Summary: As Tony Tyler grows up, he has to learn that age old lesson: how to share.
Tony liked the Doctor. At first. Rosie had always told him stories about the time traveling alien in the blue box and while he didn’t really understand them, the tales sounded exciting like the adventures in his picture books and Tony liked that. The Doctor seemed pretty friendly. He had a really blue suit and crazy sticky uppy hair and always wore a really big smile. He grinned at Tony and grinned even wider at his sister Rose.
When he finally met him, Tony liked the Doctor. Until he didn’t. Because suddenly all Rosie wanted to do was spend time with the Doctor and she didn’t want to play with Tony anymore. Rosie hugged the Doctor a lot and laughed and joked with him. Tony decided he didn’t like it, and stopped talking to the Doctor. Mum laughed and said Tony was ‘just shy’ but that wasn’t it at all. He didn’t like the Doctor taking his sister away.
Mum complained too, said they spent all their time shagging. Tony didn’t know what shagging was but he assumed it was something only adults did, like drink-ing and work-ing. Maybe it was a game, lots of games ended in -ing. If it was a game, Tony wished he could play too.
Rosie and the Doctor only came over to watch him a few times in those first few months, and when they did they got to stay up late and make lots of noise in their bedroom which wasn’t fair. Whenever Tony played with Rosie mum always told him to ‘keep it down.’
No, Tony didn’t like the Doctor one bit.
As Tony got older, though, he warmed up to the Doctor a little bit more. Mainly because since Rosie came back she was happier. She smiled a lot more and though he saw her a little less, when she did play with him it was easier to make her laugh and join in on his fun. She was a good sister and always made time to play with him, but before the Doctor came there were times Tony felt her heart wasn’t in it. There was always a little bit of sadness behind her smile in those days.
Seeing Rosie happy was a big part of it, but as he grew Tony was able to better appreciate the Doctor’s stories too. He was fascinated with the descriptions of alien worlds. The Doctor promised to take him one day, when his magic ship was finished. Mum didn’t like that idea but Tony could think of a few ways to convince her. If nothing else, he would leave a note and run away, for who could resist a chance to see the stars?
As a young man, Tony appreciated his sister’s chosen partner a lot more. He could see they were clearly in love and the Doctor wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The Doctor was family, and more and more that thought made Tony happy. It had been years since the alien came back with Rose and they settled into life quite nicely, but eventually Jackie got fed up and demanded he ‘make an honest woman’ out of her daughter.
Rose protested, saying they were just fine as they were and she didn’t need a ceremony to prove anything. Tony was shocked when the Doctor actually agreed with his mum, something about society and conventions, and offered to participate in the ceremony willingly. The Doctor never agreed with his mum. Never. It was unprecedented. Jackie didn’t seem to know how to react.
Rose seemed just as shocked, but when the Doctor pulled a shiny ring from his pocket and smiled that smile he only did for Rose she happily gave in. There was a lot of kissing after that and, as happy as Tony was for them, he didn’t want to see it so he made himself scarce.
The wedding planning went by in a whirlwind and the day arrived seemingly out of nowhere, which was how Tony found himself here now, helping the Doctor prepare for the ceremony in the parish hall.
“I used to be jealous of you, you know,” Tony said out of nowhere.
The Doctor glanced up from buttoning the cuffs of his dress shirt, a questioning look on his face. “Why’s that?”
“Until you showed up I had Rosie all to myself. Then you came along and she wanted to do was spend time with you.”
“Ah,” the groom realized, clearing his throat. “Sorry about that.”
Tony smiled vaguely. “No, that’s okay. I understand now.”
“Erm… yes, well,” the Doctor babbled nervously. “How about now? Is it - are you… That is, how do you feel now? Am I… alright?”
Tony motioned for the Doctor to turn around and helped the groom into his suit jacket. For some reason, although the alien agreed to the wedding, he absolutely refused to wear a tuxedo.
“You love my sister, Doctor,” the young man explained patiently. “And she loves you more than anything else in the world - two worlds apparently. You’re fine in my book.”
The Doctor shifted his jacket until it settled, and turned around to face his soon to be brother-in-law. “I do, Tony. So, so much.”
“I know,” Tony said wisely, pinning the boutonniere to the Doctor’s lapel. “That’s why I’m proud to be your best man.”
Tony liked the Doctor. At first. He didn’t understand when he was younger but now he knew, this mad alien was the best thing to ever happen to his sister. Over time, they had become family. Rose loved the Doctor. And now, Tony did too.
The Doctor and Rose are in Pete’s World but things are not as they seem. They are out of step in time and in their effort to deal with that, they have plenty of alone time to confront their thoughts and feelings on the past, the future, and each other.
As I stated in my first chapter review for this fic, I was so excited to start this one. I have read so many positive reviews of it from people’s who’s opinion I respect (and often tend to agree with) that this is one of the best Tentoo x Rose pieces they have ever read. As much as I adore Nine x Rose and Ten x Rose and will happy read either for hours (the Doctor and Rose together and happy is what I’m truly interested in), these two are my personal endgame and I was eager to dive in. Unless there is canon divergence, all Tentoo and Rose fics start at the same place, but what the author does with the story is what makes them stand out from one other.
For this one it is the introspection and character study. There is a background plot and it is rather important and drives the story forward as the Doctor and Rose have to deal with getting back in sync with time on Pete’s World or they will cease to exist. However, what I will always remember about this story is the way it dives into their characters in a way I haven’t read before. This is in depth and nitty gritty and so very honest.
This fic does not start off sunshine and rainbows. The Doctor has centuries behind him and has gone through so much in his many lives. While he loves Rose without question, he has been thrust into a body and situation he never asked for. Feeling diminished and cut off from everything he knew and Rose isn’t exactly embracing him (physically or metaphorically) the way he would hope she would. Rose has her own thoughts on what has happened and maintains to herself they will only be friends. But as the fic goes on and they talk and respond to each other and circumstances it becomes clear they are still the Doctor and Rose – will always be the Doctor and Rose – and they belong together, for whatever the future will bring.
In the end I find myself struggling on how to summarize recap this one. How does one summarize the the Louvre? A museum with wonderful paintings? That hardly seems worthy of the great works of art you find inside. Yet in a way that is how I feel about this fic. It is a work of art – a word of art, if you’ll pardon my pun. Just like I wouldn’t want to cram the Louvre into one day, it isn’t something I would ever want to rush through or read in one sitting. No, this is something to be savored slowly, one word at a time. It is just that gorgeous.
It’s been eight months since the accident Rose Tyler can’t remember and the blank space where her memories should be invites questions she’s not sure she wants answered. Post JE, Ten II/Rose
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