#poor lemons have been moldering for like FOUR YEARS???? | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

megabadbunny · 4 years

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Cartography and Ritual Observation

In all the time that she plotted and worked and strove for a happy ending, Rose realizes, she had planned for all manner of contingencies and failures. She never actually figured out what she would do if she succeeded. (She never actually planned to be happy.)

* lemon-free version on fanfiction.net *

***

She never expected to see the Doctor in her universe, in her living room, in her flat. Yet, here he is.

(Here they both are.)

The Doctor is eager to inspect everything the moment they get in from Norway, peeking inside Rose’s bedrooms and her bath, opening the refrigerator and cabinet doors, inspecting the light fixtures, overturning the few knickknacks she has accumulated in her time here. His fingers glide over everything; impossibly, Rose has almost forgotten how much he sees with his hands. He listens to her house tour with rapt attention and she can see him filing every detail of her home away.

Rose doesn’t keep much food in the cottage, so she orders some takeaway and pretends to eat it while the Doctor tucks in. She’s too unsettled to eat properly, for reasons she can’t quite explain. She turns on the telly and they watch it for a bit—it’s a “documentary” on aliens, naturally—and Rose tries not to think about the weirdness of this situation, the mundane bizarreness or strange normalcy of it all, while she plucks out and eats all of the shrimp in her fried rice. The Doctor keeps up a running commentary on the film’s inaccuracies and Rose smiles, remembering how they used to do this on the TARDIS just a few years ago.

It’s almost disturbing, how easy it is for Rose to pretend that everything’s all right—except it isn’t pretend at all, is it? Everything is all right, just not the sort of all right she’d imagined, not the kind she’d planned and worked and hoped for. But her dislike of having decisions made on her behalf (yet again) notwithstanding, she can’t deny that she ended up with a pretty good deal. A fantastic deal, even; she got everything she wanted, and more besides—the Doctor, with her, and her family and her friends and her home, and the promise of adventures in the TARDIS once more, all in the same universe again. Which, as brilliant as it is, still doesn’t answer the question niggling in the background-noise of her consciousness, growing ever-louder by the minute:

What now?

For the first time in four years, the next step is completely unknown. It’s as if, upon arriving at her destination, someone ripped the guidebook out of Rose’s hands and set it on fire right in front of her. There’s no longer any map, no itinerary, no plan. And how the fuck is Rose supposed to deal with that?

Rose’s hands long to fidget, but she forces them still, locks her leg to keep her foot from tapping impatiently. She’s doing a magnificent job, she thinks, of looking like a normal person, one who isn’t about to vibrate right out of her skin with the utter need to just get up and complete the next step of the plan already. Whatever that next step may be.

Glancing sidelong at the Doctor, Rose wonders what, besides factual inaccuracies about aliens, might be going through his head right now. If he feels Rose’s gaze heavy on him, he doesn’t say, too busy glowering at the images of the Great Pyramid of Giza flashing across the telly because according to the documentary, humans only could have built the Pyramid with the help of aliens, but according to the alien in the room, that’s a bunch of hogwash, and all that business was 100% ancient Egypt, 100% of the time; I didn’t offer so much as a tidbit of advice on the construction, only popped by long enough to nab a snack from Khufu’s coronation, you can’t beat a pomegranate grown in the cradle of the Nile. At any rate, he doesn’t look worried about plans or the future, or indeed, anything that happened fewer than 4500 years ago. Rose wonders if she should snuggle up to him, for the simple comfort of it and also just because she can, just like she used to. She remembers when she would tuck in close on the settee in the TARDIS library under the feeble pretense of being cold; the Doctor would tut at her cold hands and feet and snag her a blanket, toss it over her. But he wouldn’t make her move. He’d still wrap an arm around her shoulders, wouldn’t budge if she nestled against his side.

(She had always wondered, then, how long the sense of normalcy would last if she had leaned up to press a kiss to his throat or his cheek or his mouth, if she had tried something more. She never found out. She never did try.)

They watch another film after that, and another, and finally, just when Rose is starting to wonder if he won’t need sleep to speak of in this body either, the Doctor stretches and lets out a yawn.

“I’m a bit knackered,” he announces. “But I suppose a metacrisis-regeneration will do that to you.”

After the two of them wash up for the night, there’s a brief, awkward question of which bedroom he’ll sleep in. But before Rose has to make a decision—put him in the spare room, or offer to share hers? Would offering the spare room make her seem cold and aloof, would offering her room make him feel claustrophobic?—the Doctor opens the door of the guest bed, deciding for her.

“Well,” says Rose, only a little awkwardly. But before she can say Good night, the Doctor surprises her by reaching out and pulling her in for a kiss.

It’s a very short kiss, but Rose’s brain still goes fuzzy and she’s warm everywhere he touches her, heat blossoming from his mouth, from his fingers on her shoulders, sliding down into her belly. He pulls her in close, her chest against his, and he’s so much warmer than before, so warm she can feel the heat of him even through both of their shirts. His lips part in millimeters and she can taste peppermint on his breath, the not-unpleasant reminders of toothpaste mingling with his own oh-so-human traces, working in gentle countermeasure to the softness of his lips, and the peppermint and the hormones and the warmth of him flood her mind like a pleasant buzzing fog. It’s a short kiss, yes, but her toes curl anyway and her heart races in her chest. She tells herself that it’s probably only because it’s been a while since anyone’s kissed her quite like this.

(She won’t admit that no one’s ever kissed her quite like this.)

Afterward, the Doctor pulls her into a hug. A proper hug. Arms wrapping around her body, bringing her toward him like gravity. Holding her snug and tight. Her own arms encircle him before she can even think to stop. It’s an automatic process. Touching the Doctor is still so engrained in her system, it’s right up there with breathing and blinking.

“Sorry,” he exhales into her hair, and he sounds almost out of breath—that’s a first. “It’s just—I’ve wanted to do that for ages.”

Rose can feel his heart hammering against hers. Fluttering like a creature in a cage. (A cage built for two.)

Should she invite him into her room? Is that what he wants? Is that what she wants? Is this part of the plan, now?

(What do they do, now?)

“Rose?” asks the Doctor. “Are you all right?”

Rose hesitates. She isn’t totally sure of the answer, and even if she was, she doesn’t know if she feels levelheaded enough to deliver it right now. But she can see that, despite his casual and placid demeanor all evening, now the Doctor is incredibly tense, concerned, even; she can spot it in the purse of his lips and the furrow of his brow, feel it in the rigidity of his hands on her arms.

Something eases up a little in her shoulders. He’s better at hiding it, but he’s just as nervous as she is, isn’t he? And probably feels just as lost, too.

“This isn’t really what either of us had in mind, is it?” Rose realizes aloud.

The Doctor frowns. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...it’s not like either of us woke up the other day deciding to come back to this universe. And I can’t imagine you planned for your metacrisis-thing to happen.”

“That last one’s true enough,” says the Doctor, scratching his neck uncomfortably. “But, erm. As for the former. I had already made a decision about where I’d end up, regardless of what the other me decided.”

“You wanted to come back here?”

“Given the circumstances, yes.”

When Rose doesn’t reply, just furrows her brow in confusion, the Doctor averts his gaze. “I wasn’t so concerned about the specific location,” he says, slowly. He swallows hard. “All I knew—all I know—is that where you are, that’s where I want to be. Knew it from the second I woke up in this body. I just want to be with you.”

Rose stares at him, mouth parted in surprise.

“Only—only if that’s what you want too,” the Doctor stutters, cheeks flushing pink.

“I do,” says Rose, a small smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as something goes fluttery in her stomach and warmth suffuses her from head to toe. “Of course I do. But I—it’s been a long few years, right? So I might need a minute, to get my thoughts and feelings and everything in order. Okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” the Doctor replies quickly. “Naturally. Makes sense. Completely.” Suddenly jittery, he steps back, hands fluttering about frantically in search of something to do before depositing themselves firmly in his pockets. “Totally understandable, imminently relatable. Molto bene. Hunky-dory. Bleh, not hunky-dory, never hunky-dory, what a dreadful-sounding phrase, please feel free to erase it from your memory immediately. But of course, take all the time you need, Rose, however long you need, I’ve got all the time in the world—well, I’ve got a good sixty years—well, could be fifty, with the way Donna’s cholesterol is going, and thanks for that, Donna—but then again, could be longer, depends on how things go with the baby TARDIS and whether anyone or anyplace in this universe has got any Werinian lipid stabilizers—but please, yeah, take whatever time you need, Rose, that’s fine by me, absolutely top-notch, spiffy, even—”

“Doctor, wait,” blurts out Rose, grabbing the Doctor by the elbow before he can sprint off to goodness-knows-where. “You don’t have to swan off.”

“I was not,” says the Doctor, who looks very much like he may bolt into the next dimension at any second, “going to swan off. Or duck off. Or goose off. Or any-other-sort-of-waterfowl-off, for that matter.”

“Sure you weren’t,” Rose teases him, smiling weakly.

“I was merely adhering to my promise of, you know. Being considerate and giving you what you need, and all that.”

“Yeah, except I asked for time,” says Rose. Her smile deepens. “Not space.”

“Right,” says the Doctor.

“An important distinction, don’t you think?”

Something about him seems to loosen just a little bit. “Very important.”

Rose grabs his hand, squeezing it reassuringly, just to make absolutely certain he knows where she stands, and feels immensely relieved when he squeezes her fingers in response. But not half a moment passes before Rose has to stifle a yawn of her own.

“All right, then,” she says quietly, almost shyly. “See you tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice soft.

“Good night, Doctor.”

He beams down at her. “Good night, Rose.”

***

Tomorrow, of course, ends up being something of a loose concept, because tomorrow is full of exciting things like Rose sleeping in (until past noon, somehow), Jackie and Tony bursting into the cottage (because it’s after noon, Rose, you haven’t stayed in that late in ages, are you dead?), Tony being so terribly excited to meet the Doctor that he wets himself just a little bit (The Oncoming Storm meets The Oncoming Piddle), and Jackie announcing that it’s time for a trip to the shops (they need to buy the Doctor things now that he’s human and here and forever).

“All right, but let’s keep it a short trip,” Rose tells her mum as the four of them head out the door. “Just for the basics.”

“Oh, of course,” Jackie replies, waving her hand dismissively. “Only the essentials.”

“One hour,” Rose says.

“Whatever you say, sweetheart,” Jackie calls over her shoulder.

Naturally, one hour becomes two becomes five.

It’s about as weird as Rose anticipated, or rather, as weird as Rose would have anticipated, if she’d ever thought of such a thing. She half-expects the Doctor to bound away at any moment, impatient with the quaint little Earth shops and their decidedly terrestrial wares, but he seems content to poke around, to good-naturedly ignore all of Jackie’s fashion suggestions, to answer all of Tony’s many strange four-year-old’s questions. Rose keeps to herself for the most part—it’s only sort-of on-purpose, there are all sorts of feelings crawling around under her skin and she isn’t sure what to do with them—and she trails behind the rest of the group, hanging back, watching.

Her mum, Tony, the Doctor. In the same universe. In a shop together. Picking out socks and deodorant and hair gel. Years of dimension-hopping and traveling all of time and space have somehow failed to prepare Rose for how very weird this is.

Not bad, of course. But weird. Probably weird for him, too, Rose reminds herself.

“Awful quiet,” Jackie remarks at an upscale suit shop, her voice low so that only Rose can hear. She rifles through a clothing rack and pulls out a suit jacket (in blue, not brown; she’s cottoned on quickly).

“How d’you mean?” Rose asks.

Tilting her head, Jackie holds the jacket out at arm’s length, surveying the garment and the Doctor in the same glance. The jacket’s skinny, but not as skinny as he is. “Thought you’d be bouncing off the walls, the both of you,” Jackie explains. “That, or tangled up in the bedsheets.”

Rose groans. “Oh my god, Mum.”

“Don’t give me that. I know how it is. Lose the man you love, spend years pining after him, finally find a parallel version of him in an alternate universe. Bound to be some celebratory shagging, isn’t there?” Jackie replaces the jacket on the rack and grabs a different one. “Especially when he keeps wearing those tight trousers. You buying what he’s selling, or what?”

Rose closes her eyes and prays for mercy. “Mum, I’m pretty sure he can hear us.”

Both of them glance across the store to check, but the Doctor seems absorbed in the necktie display, smiling when Tony points to a tie in a shade of nearly-TARDIS-blue.

“Nah,” Jackie sniffs. “Even his hearing isn’t that good, I reckon.”

As soon as she turns away, the Doctor looks up at Rose with a wink.

(Is she imagining things, or did it suddenly get a few degrees warmer in the shop?)

***

Days pass and he hasn’t kissed her again since that first night. But to be fair, she hasn’t kissed him again, either. Rose knows it’s only because they’re each trying to respect each other’s space or personal boundaries or sensitivities or whatever, which is quite frankly silly, given that in their time together before, neither of them seemed to really know what boundaries were, much less how to respect or enforce them.

Well, that isn’t quite true, she supposes. There were plenty of boundaries that they never crossed. It just didn’t feel so obvious before.

Take, for example, nighttime habits. On the TARDIS, each night they weren’t assisting some planetside uprising (or stewing in an alien prison for assisting in said planetside uprising), there was a distinct ritual: Rose would plop down on the jumpseat or the library settee or a pallet of cushions on the engine-room floor, reading a book or trashy mag or painting her nails or simply lounging about while the Doctor researched or tinkered or plotted. Rose would often have a snack with her as well, which the Doctor would insist he wasn’t interested in, but would ultimately eat half of. Lulled into relaxation by the TARDIS’ gentle hum, Rose would eventually doze off, at which time the Doctor would quietly rouse her and remind her to go to bed. After a bout of protesting that she wasn’t really that tired (punctuated with a deep and satisfying yawn that made the Doctor raise an eyebrow in amusement), Rose would then sleepily stumble-shuffle down to the hall to her room, scrub her face and brush her teeth, and go to bed. Neither of them would see the other until the morning (or sometimes the very early morning, on days where the Doctor excitedly burst into her room without warning and subsequently had a pillow chucked at his head), and that was it. That was the ritual, with all of its implicit steps and rules and boundaries. Hands could be held, food could be shared, cuddles could be had, but certain things were not discussed, other certain things were overlooked, and each night Rose went to bed alone. It didn’t need to be spoken or thought about; it just fell into place, a river following its own daily flow. It’s much the same, now, except there’s no hand-holding and no cuddling and no touching at all, just daily business, time together in the evenings, and then separate beds in separate rooms. This is the new ritual, it seems; this is the new plan.

This explains how a whole week passes before Rose decides she has to do something about the Doctor’s nightmares.

Wrenched awake by the sounds of shouting (again, same as the previous six nights), Rose waits just long enough for her heart to stop pounding before she throws off her duvet and pads down the hall, to the spare room where the Doctor sleeps. She presses her ear to the door, listening for any additional signs of agitation, and only spares half a thought for boundaries when he cries out again in the dark and suddenly she’s pushing the door open and climbing into the bed, time and space and rules be damned. Slipping beneath the bedclothes, Rose snuggles up behind the Doctor as he hyperventilates in his sleep, snaking a hand over his stomach and ribs and chest, pulling them both close. He awakens with a jolt and a gasp, grabbing Rose’s hand with a grip like a vice.

Rose freezes, feeling the Doctor tense to stone beneath her hand and arm. She wonders if he’s angry at her, if he’s embarrassed, if she did the wrong thing, if she should have waited to come up with a better plan.

“Rose?” asks the Doctor quietly, his voice rough.

“Yeah, Doctor,” she replies in a whisper. “I’m here.”

A few moments pass in thick silence before the Doctor relaxes, sinking back down into the mattress. He loosens his death-grip on Rose’s hand, but doesn’t let go entirely; instead he tugs, just a little, until Rose snuggles in closer, cushioning herself to him completely and eliminating even the thought of space between them. Her cheek pressed against his shoulderblades, her chest to his spine, Rose can feel the precise moment he slips back into sleep, his breaths expanding and evening out into liquid slow smoothness.

He doesn’t move her hand from his chest, and it’s a long time before he lets her hand go.

Probably they should just start going to bed together, but this all becomes part of the new ritual—go about their daily business (together), stay up late (together), wash up (at the same time), go to bed (separate beds, in separate rooms), awaken at the sound of nightmares ripping the calm night air (from down the hall), climb into his bed and go to sleep (next to him), wake up (alone). It’s another rule they both follow; the Doctor may need more sleep now, but he still needs less sleep than Rose does, overall, so she isn’t too surprised that each morning she awakes in it, his bed is empty. Until one morning it isn’t.

Honey-warm light drips in lazily through the gap between drapes and Rose realizes, her eyes slowly sliding open, that for once, she isn’t entangled in a mess of bedsheets, but rather, she seems to be intertwined with rather a solid fellow-human-shaped thing. One may even go so far as to say that she is, in fact, tangled up in the limbs of a fellow human. Probably she should slip out before he wakes, do what she can to preserve this boundary she’s drawn, but she hesitates, her breath warm and trapped between her face and the Doctor’s chest. Her legs are twined with his and her arms are wrapped around his torso and one hand, the cheeky little thing, has snuck up the back of his sleep-shirt, so her palm is pressed flat against warm, pliant skin.

It’s nice, all cuddled and close like this, pressed together in their blanket-cocoon. It’s very nice. But Rose suspects it’s breaking the rules; she asked for time, so that means she’s got no right to be touching him now, like this. Besides, there’s no indication that he’s interested in anything beyond hugging, or holding hands, or the occasional wayward kiss. He could very well be totally asexual, for all Rose knows. And if that’s the case, she doesn’t want him to feel pushed, or pressured. So she pulls her hand down, hoping that a slow, gentle motion won’t disturb him, but that’s almost worse than if she’d just whipped her hand out straightaway, because now it probably feels like she’s stroking him, which, not that she minds, but what if he does? Nevermind that when she glances down (oh, that’s a mistake) she can see that his shirt has ridden up in the night to expose an entire agonizing expanse of rarely-before-seen skin, stretched thin over his hipbone and smooth over his stomach and smattered with a sparse scattering of hair leading southward, and warmth blossoms between Rose’s legs at the thought of her fingertips tracing a line down, down, down, over his flank and his hip and straight to his—

His breathing has gone shallow. He’s awake now. With Rose’s face pressed to his chest, her lips right over his heart, and her hand still half up his shirt. And with one of his legs sandwiched between hers, there’s no way he can’t feel the heat of her.

Fuck.

“Sorry,” Rose whispers anyway, because she feels like she should. She shifts in a halfhearted attempt to extricate herself from the Doctor. “I’m sorry, I just woke up like this—I didn’t mean to—”

“No, no, you’re fine,” the Doctor stutters. “I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable.”

Rose laughs. “I was afraid I was making you uncomfortable.”

“Well, I appreciate the consideration, but I don’t think that’s something you need to worry about.”

Brow pinched in confusion, Rose shifts in the bed, extricating herself from the Doctor just enough that she can scoot up to his eye level. “Really?” she says.

He nods. “Really.”

“Oh,” says Rose, suddenly breathless, thinking of the Doctor’s wink in the shop the other day. Her hand has stilled on his lower back, near the waistband of his pyjama-bottoms and she can’t decide if she should keep moving away or if she should slip a finger beneath the elastic and see what happens next, sod the rules.

“I’m not in any particular rush,” the Doctor says, as if he can hear what she’s thinking. Or maybe it’s just that evident on her face. “I said I’d give you time, and I meant it. For whatever you need.”

Rose smiles at him. “You know just what to say to a girl, don’t you?”

“Well, it helps to have one buzzing about in your DNA.”

Rose abandons his waistband in favor of fisting her hand in the back of his shirt, squeezing him in a hug as she buries her face against his chest.

“Thank you,” she says.

He doesn’t say anything, but hugs her tightly in reply.

***

It’s Tony’s birthday party—hard to believe he’s five years old, now, feels like just yesterday that Rose was visiting him and her mum in the maternity ward and marveling over the downy-softness of his sweet little baby head—and he has decided, with all the solemnity a small child can muster, that he wants a proper garden party, something fancy and grown-up, all suits and ties and dresses and pumps. (Rose has a sneaking suspicion about the correlation of this interest in suits and the sudden arrival of the Doctor in this universe; she keeps it to herself, but can’t hide her smile when she asks Tony what he’d like for his birthday, and his immediate response includes a pair of his own red Chucks.) Of course, once the day arrives, after the cake and biscuits and presents and fancy-proper-adult-party have worn out their novelty, Tony decides he wants to play a game of hide-and-go-seek. And naturally, he starts by tagging the biggest child present.

“You’re it!” he shouts, slapping the Doctor on the leg before he and the other children run off laughing and screaming.

The Doctor glances up at Rose in question, a half-eaten treat in one hand. “I’m what?” he asks incredulously around a mouthful of biscuit.

“You’re it,” Rose laughs. When the Doctor just raises an eyebrow, confused, Rose laughs even more. “You know. You’re the one that finds all the children hiding. Haven’t you ever played hide-and-go-seek before?”

“Well, of course I have, but it’s called different things in different places, isn’t it? Not to mention it’s been several centuries and just a few planets since then.”

“At least you look good for your age,” Rose teases.

“I do, don’t I?”

“Oh, yeah. Barely have any wrinkles or grey hair or anything.”

The Doctor mock-glowers at her. “Rose Tyler. I most assuredly do not have any ‘wrinkles, or grey hair, or anything’ anywhere on my person.”

“What about the freckles?”

“Those are hardly indicative of old age. And besides, everyone knows freckles are charming. Like a bunch of little kisses from the sun, just kissing you all over.”

“Has the sun been kissing you all over, then?” asks Rose, her tongue peeking out playfully between her teeth. “Should I be jealous?”

The Doctor’s eyebrows pique with surprise as Rose registers the implications of what she just said. She begs herself not to blush.

“Just to clarify: for this particular hypothetical, are you asking if you should be jealous of me,” the Doctor asks slowly, a grin playing across his lips—and a smug grin, at that!—“or if you should be jealous of the sun?”

Huh. It’s been a little while, but Rose is fairly certain she’s being flirted-with.

“You’re a smart lad,” she says, grabbing the biscuit out of his hand. “You’ll figure it out,” she tells him, offering her own smug grin as she eats her stolen treat.

“Mr. Doctor!” shouts Tony from across the garden, drawing Rose and the Doctor’s attention to where he has decided to hide in a very obvious spot. “Come find us!”

Turning back to Rose, the Doctor clears his throat. “So I should, erm,” he says, gesturing over his shoulder toward where all the children ran off, and have the tips of his ears gone pink? “Probably go put the seek in hide-and-go-seek, right?”

“Right,” Rose says. “They’re not gonna find themselves, after all.”

“Well, it’s a good thing they’ve got me, then, isn’t it?”

“A very good thing,” says Rose, smiling.

The Doctor beams at her for just a second before darting off in search of all the children, pretending to carefully examine every nook and cranny in the garden, even those that children couldn’t possibly ever hide in, ignoring the titters of laughter that float his way from all of the poorly-hiding five-and-six-year-olds.

(He catches Rose watching him a few moments later and shoots her another wink across the garden. Cheeky bastard.)

An hour or so later, as the sun is setting and the sky darkening, the party has begun to wind down, and the staff has begun cleaning the mess away. (It still feels surreal, the staff, and the mansion and the money and the not-having-to-worry-about-every-penny, but it’s a good sort of surreal after twenty years of scraping by, and the staff are very well paid.) As Jackie and Pete start the goodbye negotiations with other sets of attending parents, Rose sets off in search of Tony and the Doctor, to lure them back to the mansion with the promise of dinner. She pokes around the poolside and the trees and the flowerbed, and has just come round the old shed when something seizes her by the shoulder and tries to pull.

With a blink Rose’s UNIT-honed instincts take over and she grabs her assailant’s hand and arm and lunges to the ground, yanking him bodily over her shoulder. He hits the grass in front of her with a solid thwack and Rose springs back, hands held defensively between her and the Doctor, just in case he—

Oh. Ah. The Doctor.

“What the hell was that?” Rose demands.

“What the hell was that?” he hisses back at her, staring up at her with wide eyes.

“Sorry, sorry,” Rose splutters. “Are you—”

She doesn’t have a chance to say Okay because the Doctor has already scrambled up from the ground to grab her once again (by the hand, from the front, this time, where she can see him coming) and he’s pulling her up to the shed with him, throwing open the doors so he can draw them both inside. It’s a tight squeeze, the two of them in there with all the old tools and tarps and equipment, but the Doctor closes the doors behind them anyway. Rose starts to ask what on earth’s gotten into him but the Doctor cuts her off with a finger held to his lips.

“Rose?” asks Tony’s voice, a few meters off to their right somewhere. “Mr. Doctor?”

Rose rolls her eyes. She opens her mouth to say that playtime is over now, ta, but before she can say anything, the Doctor switches his hand from his mouth to hers, putting his finger to her lips and stoppering her words. Normally, Rose might bat him away or grimace in irritation at him hushing her up like this, but right now, with these invisible lines drawn between them, heightening every touch to something near-electric, all Rose can think about is his finger against her mouth and his other hand still grasping hers. And as close as they’re standing, Rose notices (just like she used to back then) just how good the Doctor smells. It isn’t quite the same as before; there’s the slightest tang of sweat that never used to be there, but not in a bad way. He still smells like him, and he still smells good. (Christ, he smells good.)

The pitter-patter of little feet in the grass nearby isn’t quite enough to pull Rose out of her thoughts, though she knows it means Tony is close, and therefore close to finding them. But even if the stakes are so different now (no physical danger here, not unless the Doctor decides to surprise-attack her again), she can’t help but recall all the other times like this, the two of them holding close in a dangerous situation, before. Rose thinks of hiding from palace guards and harrowing space station escapes and prison breaks with held hands and held breaths and pounding hearts and god, she wants to kiss the Doctor so badly, she really, really does. So maybe she should, Rose thinks as the Doctor’s gaze drops from her eyes to her mouth, where his finger rests. Maybe she should just pull his hand away and push up onto the balls of her feet and press her lips against his and kiss him. Maybe it doesn’t matter that they still haven’t properly talked yet. Maybe it doesn’t matter that this dirty dingy old shed is possibly the least romantic setting she could have chosen. Maybe she should snog the everloving daylights out of him regardless. Maybe—

“Rose,” says the Doctor, his voice low, his eyes locked on hers. He leans forward, and Rose’s pulse races in her throat as his lips brush against her ear.

“Run for your life,” he whispers.

“Found you!” Tony shrieks, tossing open the shed doors. Shouting in mock-fear, the Doctor cinches his grasp on Rose’s hand and yanks her out of the shed before Tony can tag either one of them, pulling her along in a run. Rose stumbles at first, taken by surprise, not to mention that she’s still wearing her pumps. But the Doctor is laughing like a madman, pulling her along as he sprints with seemingly no effort whatsoever, and it feels just utterly glorious to be running again after weeks without and soon Rose is kicking off her pumps to better keep up with him, relishing the stretch and burn in her lungs and calves and thighs. Tony giggles and yells behind them and the Doctor laughs and whoops next to her and he’s still clutching her hand and the wind whips her hair and air expands her lungs and happiness swells in her chest and spreads to her head until she feels giddy with the rush of it and it’s been weeks since Rose grinned this hard or felt this good, it’s been months, it’s been years.

“Run for your life!” the Doctor shouts, and Rose laughs.

***

Rose may not have foreseen the Doctor returning to this universe with her, and thus may not have been able to plan for such an event, but some things still just make sense and fall into place naturally, and the Doctor working with UNIT is one such thing. (Working with, mind, not for; it’s an important distinction, he insists, and Rose rolls her eyes but plays along.) Thus it’s in the breakroom for the Applied Sciences department that Rose finds the Doctor late one night, dozing on the couch after a long day of research and alien negotiations.

Biting her lip, Rose watches him, taking a moment to appreciate this rare unguarded view. The Doctor has always looked youthful with this face, but right now, he looks young, downright vulnerable, head bowed and specs slipping down his nose and lips parted ever so slightly as he sleeps. Pale blue light from the breakroom telly bathes his face in ghostly hues, reflecting in his glasses, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. Something warm swells almost uncomfortably in Rose’s chest; this may not be exactly what she was working for all these years, but damn it, he’s wonderful, and he’s beautiful, and he’s here. With her. The enormity of such a massive thought in such a quiet moment is enough to make her head spin.

Biting her lip, Rose checks the clock. It’s nearly midnight. She’s more than ready to go home, but she sort of hates to disturb the Doctor right now. There are a few more things she can do, she decides, before she rouses him and they go home. Let him sleep for a few minutes longer, she thinks.

Rose has just turned to leave the breakroom when his hand reaches out to wrap around hers.

“’Lo,” murmurs the Doctor, his voice thick with sleep. “Time to head out?”

Rose smiles. “In a minute. You can close your eyes again.”

“Nah, I’m not tired,” says the Doctor, sitting up with a great yawn.

Rose piques an eyebrow in suspicion, her smile deepening. It is immensely gratifying to be on the opposite end of this conversation for once.

“…maybe I’m a little bit tired,” the Doctor admits.

“Just a little bit,” Rose teases.

“Only the littlest of bits,” says the Doctor, yawning again. With his free hand he reaches up beneath his specs, rubbing at his eyes. “Just give me a moment and I’ll be good to go. Yeah?”

“All right,” says Rose, moving to leave.

He still hasn’t let go of her.

“Did you want me to wait?” Rose asks.

“Only if you like,” he says casually—a little too casually, Rose thinks—so she nods, plunking down in the break room’s old comfy armchair, her fingers still twined with the Doctor’s. While they’re waiting, Rose figures she might as well watch some telly, but whatever the Doctor’s got playing looks dreadfully boring, not to mention so quiet she can barely hear it. So Rose reaches for the remote, only for the Doctor to pull it away at the last second.

Rose’s lips twitch. ��Do you mind?” she asks.

“Do I mind what?” he asks, eyes trained forward on the telly.

“Do you mind if I change the channel?”

The Doctor shrugs. “Have at it.”

Maybe it was a misunderstanding, Rose reasons. He was asleep just a moment ago, after all. Probably he’s just not thinking. She reaches for the remote again.

He pulls it out of her reach again.

Rose’s eyes narrow. Her fingers drum on her thigh. Tap-tap-tap.

(Is he messing with her?)

She pretends to settle back in the chair, wriggling her bum comfortably into the cushions. He places the remote on the sofa arm between them. He rests his hand mere centimeters away. After a moment, Rose can tell he’s relaxed a little, sees the tension easing from his arm and neck.

After another moment, Rose pounces.

She dives across the furniture and naturally he’s too quick for her once again, snatching up the remote just as Rose’s fingertips glance against it.

(He is messing with her.)

(This, of course, means war.)

Rose pushes up on her knees and reaches one arm out as far as it will go, holding on first to the chair-arm and then the Doctor’s shoulder for balance, and he holds the remote just out of reach. His arms are longer than hers and he knows it and he’s using it to his advantage, the bastard. He just sits there with a slowly-spreading smug grin on his face, pretending to watch the telly even with Rose’s arm waving madly in front of his face. With every swipe of her hand, he just holds the remote further and further away, until his arm is fully extended and Rose is practically falling out of her chair. And when Rose jumps up, thinking she’ll just catch him from the other side, he switches hands, chuckling quietly to himself.

The urge to laugh bubbles up in Rose’s gut, but she pushes it down. She doesn’t have time for laughter. She only has time for vengeance.

With a quiet hmmph! she sits back down, trapping the Doctor between her body and the sofa-arm. The Doctor opens his mouth to protest and Rose takes full advantage of his tiny slip in concentration, throwing one leg over his lap in a deep lunge while her hand strains toward her prize.

Close—! She can practically feel her fingernails scraping the plastic casing, she’s so close—

—until the Doctor’s free hand grabs her by the waist and pulls her back, hard.

Rose can’t help laughing now, and he’s laughing too, both at her and with her, while she struggles against him, pushing at him with her chest pressed into his shoulder and thigh slung across his lap. (Damn, but he’s stronger than he looks; of course, so is she, but she has no desire to prove herself by harming him. The other day was a close enough call.) Writhing in his grip, Rose makes one last valiant effort, her hand straining desperately to close itself around his wrist or his shirtsleeve, maybe yank his arm closer, before he finally manages to pull her away, and she falls back with a solid thump.

“You unbelievable ass,” Rose laughs, pushing her hair away from her face.

“Me?” the Doctor asks innocently. “I was just sitting here, minding my own business, when I was assaulted—”

“I’ll show you ‘assaulted’,” Rose mutters under her breath, but she’s still grinning.

“—and then you decided to crawl all over my body like it’s some kind of sentient obstacle course!”

“Oi,” Rose chuckles, moving to stand up, “It’s not my fault you’re all arms and legs and—”

Her thigh brushes over his lap as she moves, and she freezes. Over the last few years she hasn’t had much chance to accrue what one would label a wealth of experience in the matter, but she’s fairly certain she just accidentally touched something that was neither a hand nor a leg nor a part that’s traditionally considered public touching material. And she might not be an expert, but she doesn’t think it’s typically quite that, well, hard, either.

Oh. Oh.

Rose feels like she should flush with embarrassment, or jump back and pretend nothing’s happening (observe the ritual, adhere to the boundaries, stick to the plan), but she can’t seem to move, stuck in partial suspension above the Doctor. His face is eye level with her chest, which he seems adamantly unfocused on, eyelashes fluttering just a little too rapidly, and oh my, but she’s suddenly noticing just how warm they both are, how short her skirt is, how his thighs are bracketed by hers, just how much they’ve been touching each other this whole time.

The Doctor swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the force of it. “Yes, erm,” he says quietly, and is he blushing? “I see you found my mobile,” he lies, his voice surprisingly calm.

“Your mobile,” Rose repeats.

“Yep. My mobile.”

“Right,” Rose nods. She points at the coffee table behind her, at the Doctor’s phone lying there. “That mobile?”

The Doctor closes his eyes. Rose can almost hear him silently cursing himself. “Yep. That’d be the one.”

“Of course,” Rose laughs. “So, you don’t feel anything when I…?”

“Nope,” the Doctor rushes.

Rose arches an eyebrow at him.

He sighs in frustration. “I used to have much better control over this sort of thing, you know,” he complains. “Now it’s all…misfiring synapses and…signals shooting all over the place willy-nilly, and, and, quite frankly ridiculous hormones.”

“Tell me about it,” Rose teases.

The Doctor chuckles under his breath, unable to meet her eyes. His hand is still snug against her waist, hasn’t left its spot where he pulled her down, and she can feel the warmth of him through her shirt, feel his fingers curling against her. Rose wonders if he’s even aware of doing it, and he must be, because a second later, his hand moves, spasming like he burned it. His hand settles awkwardly on the sofa next to him and Rose watches as he determinedly looks at anything but her.

God. He must be mortified.

She knows she should back away. She should. And yet…well, she notices he’s not exactly trying to get away, either.

“Do you want me to move?” she asks anyway, because she should.

The Doctor thinks about it for a second. “Interesting choice of words, move,” he says slowly. “Sort of…different connotations, aren’t there? Multi-layered word. Several different meanings.”

Rose grins. “Which one do you mean?”

He swallows again. He still can’t meet her eyes. “Erm,” he says. Followed by, “Well.” He looks like he’s thinking about it. Trying to decide. Rose thinks maybe she should help him with the process. (She’s never been afraid to cheat just a little.)

Rose eases forward until she’s straddling him, bookending his hips with her knees. She’s careful to leave some space between their bodies, just in case he changes his mind, just in case this isn’t what he wants. She can tell by the rise and fall of his chest that his breathing has sped up. She feels his thighs tense beneath her.

It never occurred to her that she could affect him quite like this. The prospect of it all is giving her a rush, hormones fizzing together in her head like a potent cocktail. Like a drug.

(They still need to talk about all these things, Rose knows.

So. She’ll talk.)

“Which one did you mean?” she asks again, conversationally, like none of it means anything. Like she isn’t sitting in his lap, feeling the faint predictions of arousal in her own body now, stirring somewhere low in her abdomen. She’s so sure she knows, almost entirely certain she can predict what he wants, but she needs to hear it. Needs to make sure she’s not taking advantage of him, that this isn’t just his fresh new human body reacting without his permission.

His fingers nervously tap the cushions next to him. He starts to ask her something, stops, glances over at the breakroom door. It’s still open, Rose realizes, and anyone in the lab could hear them. Well, it’s only Ripley in the lab, this late at night, and it’s doubtful he’s heard anything up to this point, but if their volume increases at all, he’s going to get an earful.

Rose reaches for the remote control, pulls it easily out of the Doctor’s hand.

“Was this all part of the game, then?” the Doctor asks, amusement bleeding through his nervousness.

Smiling, Rose turns around and aims the remote at the telly, turning up the volume just loud enough to mask any suspicious noises that may arise out of the room. When she turns back to the Doctor, he’s finally looking up at her face, making proper eye contact now. He doesn’t look away this time.

He looks so open and wide-eyed and pretty and god, Rose just really wants to fuck him.

“Do you want me to move,” Rose starts, sliding forward in his lap until their hips meet, her skirt rucking up around her hips until her legs are almost entirely exposed, “like this?”

Their faces are quite close now, close enough that they could kiss, if they wanted. And Rose does want. So that’s the next step of the plan. Rose does exactly that, leaning forward to press a kiss next to his lips, on his jaw, near his ear. She arches her hips into his and hears a soft breath escape him, watches in her peripheral vision as his eyes shutter closed. She does it again, until she can feel him pressing into her through her pants. His hands fly up to her hips but he doesn’t move against her.

“Doctor,” Rose breathes, her lips grazing the shell of his ear, “you need to tell me if you want me to keep going, or if you want me to stop.”

“Don’t stop,” he murmurs. “Please.”

“All right, since you asked so nicely.”

The Doctor lets out a half-laugh at that, but the sound ends in a hum when Rose starts rolling her hips against him again. She sets up a slow and steady rhythm that she knows is going to drive them both mad, even with all of these layers between them. Rose wants to look at his face, wants to see his guard slipping, but he ducks his head. He plants feather-light kisses while they move, dotting her neck and throat and collarbone with a touch that’s so faint, it simultaneously makes Rose want to squirm away and squirm closer for more. She opts for the latter, pressing into him until their chests touch and she can feel his heart hammering against her stomach. She can feel the exact size and shape of him through her pants, hot and hard and just begging for release. He still doesn’t meet her thrusts, but his hands settle on her hips, fingers skirting the edge of her waistband.

It’s been quite some time since anyone has touched Rose like this, anyone that wasn’t her anyway, and even taking that into account, it’s been a while; it doesn’t take long for her body to start crying out for more. His hold on her hips is too gentle, his kisses too light, his movements too careful. She can’t tell if he’s afraid of chasing her away or if he genuinely just doesn’t feel the same urgency she does. It feels like every single fiber of her existence is straining for him and a needy ache is growing between her thighs and she just really wants friction and heat and more and now.

“I’m heading out,” Ripley’s voice calls from the lab, startling them both. The Doctor gives a jump beneath Rose. She claps her hand over his mouth before he can make any noise. Both of them freeze, adrenaline pumping through their veins. Rose waits with bated breath for the sounds of Ripley approaching.

“Have a good night!” Ripley shouts, still in the lab.

“Thanks, you too!” Rose replies. She is supremely pleased with how normal and not at all out-of-breath she sounds.

The lights in the lab go dim, clicking out one-by-one. The breakroom plunges into darkness. Only the telly remains on, casting shadow-shapes that flicker gently over the room, voices and music shockingly loud in the quiet. Rose listens closely for the sounds of the lab door closing and locking after.

Once Ripley is well and truly gone, the Doctor relaxes a little. He heaves a sigh of relief, his breath warm against Rose’s palm. He looks up at Rose like he’s asking her what happens next.

She moves her hand out of the way and replaces it with a kiss.

The Doctor is surprised, but he warms up to the idea quickly, his lips moving against hers. He almost seems perfectly content with the close-lipped kiss, languorous and slow as it is, but his grip on her hips tightens just a little bit and he arches into her just a fraction. The sensation makes Rose’s head swim and her body flush with anticipation and want.

But it isn’t enough. Rose doesn’t need him calm and slow. She needs to see him out-of-control—needs to see him wanting her. Needs him to know how badly she wants him.

She hits the “off” button on the remote, cutting off the noise from the telly, and she scoots back just far enough that her fingers have space to unbutton the Doctor’s trousers.

“Close your eyes,” she says, brushing her lips against his jaw. “And keep them closed.”

The Doctor opens his mouth like he might protest, but he doesn’t. He licks his lips, nods, and complies.

Once Rose is certain his eyes are properly closed, no movement beneath to indicate that he’s peeking, she kisses him again, a little harder this time, and she unzips his fly, as quickly as she can without getting him caught. She strokes him through his pants, watches his brow furrow and his teeth flash as he bites his lower lip. His breaths leave his mouth with a ragged edge to them; he’s trying to breathe evenly, possibly trying to engage a bypass system he no longer has while he tries desperately not to thrust into her hand.

Good. Better.

Still not enough.

Rose hooks her fingers over the edge of his waistband and pulls it down, carefully. She edges back as she goes until she can extend one leg behind her, then the other, lowering herself to her knees on the floor.

The Doctor, eyes still closed, frowns. “Rose...?”

She leans forward and takes his cock in her mouth.

A strangled gasp tears out of him and his entire body goes stiff. Rose quickly pins down his hips with her hands and takes him in as far as she can, hollowing her cheeks. She swirls her tongue around him, applying as much pressure as she can muster. She can tell he wants to thrust, can feel it in the way he trembles; she rubs circles against his exposed hips, urging him to relax as much as he can. She moves her head up and down, slowly at first, torturing him just a little bit before she picks up speed, moving one hand to stroke whatever expanse isn’t covered by her mouth.

His hands fist helplessly in the cushions beside him. Rose looks up to find his head thrown back, teeth biting into his plump lower lip hard enough that it’s gone white. She redoubles her efforts. She hums around him, pressing her tongue firmly over where he’s most sensitive. At that, he starts panting, his stomach muscles pumping overtime with the effort of it.

Rose has never seen him like this before, never watched all the rules slip away like this, and the sight of him, gasping and desperate and so, so close to breaking, is enough to make her grow ridiculously wet and needy. She rubs her thighs together for any shred of friction she can get. A series of strained noises escapes him and that only makes it worse, so she tightens her lips around him, tightens and swallows.

“Rose,” the Doctor gasps, “Rose—ah. Stop. Stop. Let me—please—”

She ceases moving the moment the message reaches her brain and she releases him with a wet pop, sits up straight to ask him what he wants, and he leans over and shows her: framing her face in both hands, he presses his lips to hers in a punishing kiss. He urges her mouth open and his tongue slides over hers, and there it is, there’s that sense of urgency she was looking for. As his tongue explores her mouth, she wonders what he tastes there, what’s more overwhelming, the bare traces of him or the taste of her arousal—whatever it is, it stirs a moan deep in his throat and suddenly he’s pulling her up and back into his lap.

He’s still hard beneath her and in the midst of her increasingly intoxicating head-fog, Rose thinks that must be terribly uncomfortable. Rose moves to help him, to finish what she started, but he stops her. His grip on her wrist is surprisingly firm. “Not yet, please,” he says hoarsely between kisses. He holds her close with one hand while the other snakes up under her skirt, skating over her inner thigh on its way to her pants. Fingers press into her through warm, soaked cotton.

“Ah,” the Doctor mutters to himself, as if he’s just now realizing something. “Yes, that’s very—you’re really quite—”

His words fade to a satisfied hum as his fingers explore the edge of her pants, slipping under, gliding over slick skin. His strokes, gentle at first, grow firmer. Rose’s eyes fall closed at the sensation. She presses into his hand, hips tilting forward and drawing back in time with the motions of his fingers, and she lets out a whimper when he grazes over her clit. The pressure sends pleasure spiraling through her and she chases after that feeling, rocking her hips and fucking his hand until she’s so wet she thinks she might explode from need. He slips a finger inside her and she bites down on a moan.

She can feel the Doctor’s gaze on her face, gauging her reactions. A delicious thrill shivers through her but no, that won’t do, that won’t do at all, not when she’s still desperate to see him come undone.

Pulling herself up by the back of the sofa, she tries to sit up on her knees, starts to push down at her knickers. She lets out a surprised little yelp when the Doctor stops her, grabbing her hip with his free hand. At first she worries that maybe this isn’t what he wants after all, maybe he doesn’t want things to progress any further, but when he pushes her knickers to the side, she realizes that’s not true at all—he just doesn’t want her to move away from him, not even to take off her pants. He doesn’t want to wait. Which is brilliant, because Rose doesn’t want to wait anymore, either. She slides back down until she can feel the tip of his cock nudging at her, and, shifting her hips just so, she sinks down onto him, slickly, taking him in as far as she can.

The Doctor grits out a groan, his eyes losing focus, lips parting just the tiniest bit. Rose can’t help the grin that spreads across her face at that. (Can’t help the gasp that leaves her when she pushes down just a little bit more, taking him further in, the two of them sliding together deliciously.) She takes advantage of the breach in his defenses, leaning forward for another kiss and slipping her tongue along the seam of his mouth. She tilts her hips back and forth, drawing up and pushing down and pushing just a little further each time until he’s fully sheathed inside her, easing the swollen ache between her legs. When her muscles clench around his cock, she feels him tense beneath her, his legs and stomach going rigid while his brow furrows in concentration.

“Just relax,” Rose murmurs against his lips.

“Seems unlikely at this juncture,” the Doctor laughs weakly.

Grinning, Rose clutches at the Doctor’s back, nails digging into his shirts and his skin as she increases her pace and pressure, rocking her hips up and down and just losing herself in the heat and the wet and the friction of it all. For a bloke who has almost certainly never had sex—not in this fresh new body with all its sensitive new nerve endings—he is holding out magnificently, lasting far longer than Rose would have imagined. She thinks, maybe, as she feels her climax building, as the warm-tickle-yes-yes-yes builds low in her belly, that he must have held onto some truly extraordinary Time Lord willpower. Or, the thought dawns on her…

She slows her movement, hips grinding almost to a still. “Have you been practicing?” she whispers in his ear.

“What?” he asks, distracted, his voice strained and ridiculously breathy.

Rose sinks back down inch-by-inch and feels rather than hears the groan rumbling in the Doctor’s chest. “You’re holding out remarkably well, especially for the circumstances,” she says. “Have you been practicing? Touching yourself?”

When he doesn’t answer, his Adam’s apple bobbing nervously, Rose nips at the pulse point beneath his ear, her tongue darting out to taste his salty-sweet skin. She slides a hand between them and rubs at where they’re joined. As her fingers ring the base of his cock, stroking him, the Doctor’s head lolls back on the couch, his eyes slamming shut.

“Yes,” he gasps out, like the admission pains him.

Rose rewards him by sliding her hips up and down, her movements agonizingly slow as she torments them both. “What do you think about?”

“What do you think?” the Doctor asks with another strained laugh. When Rose stops moving, his eyes open again and his gaze meets hers.

“You,” he confesses, panting. “Just you.”

Rose smiles and presses a hard kiss to his mouth the instant the words leave him. One of his hands flies up to grasp her by the jaw, suddenly possessive, claiming, and Rose’s lips part without hesitation as he plunders her mouth with his tongue and finally (finally) starts to move, arching up into her. She rocks against him and he meets her measure-for-measure, thrust-for-thrust. No longer content as a passive player, the Doctor slips his hands under Rose’s shirt and pushes it up over her breasts, planting kisses on every inch of skin he can reach. His thumbs circle and tease her nipples until they’re peaked and straining through the thin fabric of her bra.

Her climax quickly begins to build up again, warmth blooming through her; she’s close, she’s close, she’s so close, dancing right on the edge, pleasure rippling through her body in waves. She slides her hand back between them again, teasing her clit with fingers slippery with sweat and sex. As her muscles flutter desperately, clenching tight around him once more, the Doctor pumps his hips harder, his breaths leaving with a moan. He grasps her by the back of the head and pulls her down for one more kiss, his fingers tangling in her hair. When he bites her lower lip, flooding her with pain and warmth, Rose shudders and breaks around him and he swallows her cries. She strokes him and fucks him through her own climax into his, where he breaks the kiss in favor of burying his face in the join of her neck and shoulder, shouting as he spasms and empties into her.

Their movements slow and still until they’re both motionless, panting in the quiet dark. The Doctor winds his arms around Rose in a lazy embrace, his face still buried against her shoulder. His specs are digging into her almost uncomfortably but she doesn’t say anything, hugs him about the neck and idly strokes his sweat-dampened hair instead.

Her brain is mostly empty except for a very pleasant hazy hum. She hopes the same is true for him. Still, there’s that nagging little thought cropping up, quieter than usual, but still there, as always: What’s next?

“Are you, erm,” she tries to ask amidst shuddering breaths. “How are you doing?”

“Dunno yet,” is the muffled reply. “I’ll tell you when my legs stop feeling like jelly.”

Rose chuckles and kisses the side of his head.

They end up taking the train home, or as close to home as they can get, anyway. It’s the first time Rose has been on a train in years; she decides this is to blame for why her legs are so much wibblier than usual, why she has to shift her stance and cling to the pole so much harder than before. It’s certainly got nothing to do with the pleasantly warm soreness throbbing between her legs, certainly nothing to do with the source of said soreness.

Of course, the Doctor doesn’t seem to be having any trouble staying upright at all, jelly-leg comments notwithstanding. Of course he doesn’t.

“So,” Rose says, casually. “Not a fan of blow jobs, hm?”

It is incredibly satisfying to see him wavering just a little, his grasp tightening on the pole. “Huh?” he asks, very intelligently.

“You stopped me, earlier. You know. When I had you in my mouth.”

“Erm, well,” says the Doctor, scratching the back of his neck while flushing as brilliant a carnation-pink as Rose has ever seen. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Why?”

The Doctor glances down at the floor, as if he finds it suddenly fascinating. “Just wanted to hold you, is all,” he murmurs.

Something in Rose’s stomach feels almost unbearably fluttery and tender at that, but before she has a chance to reply, the train gives a lurch, jostling her. She braces herself against the Doctor, one hand on the pole while the other snakes beneath his jacket, grabbing a fistful of shirt. Strictly for balance reasons, of course. It’s got nothing to do with what he just said, or the fact that she’s so very glad to be on this train with him, or how very much she loves him, or the fact that she’s planning to kiss him again.

(It’s a good plan. Very good. The best she’s ever had, possibly.)

Rose pushes onto her tiptoes to press a kiss to the Doctor’s cheek. He’s warm, beneath her lips; warm from blushing, and other things too, maybe. She kisses him again, lower, and again, on the corner of his mouth, and this time he turns his head to catch her lips with his. It’s slower than the other kisses they’ve shared, and softer. Rose has to hide her face against his chest, after, to counteract the overwhelming sweetness swelling between her lungs.

There are still things they need to discuss, of course. Big things. Big, important things. But they can wait a little while longer.

Well, most of them can, anyway.

“I’m glad you’re here with me,” Rose says quietly, to the Doctor’s chest.

He rests his head against hers, exhaling slowly. “Me, too.”

***

#ficandchips #tentoo x rose #tentoorose #tentoo/rose #anti turning of the tide #rose tyler #metacrisis doctor #tentoo #warning: here be lemons #here there be lemons what i wrote LITERAL YEARS AGO #poor lemons have been moldering for like FOUR YEARS????#??????????#because originally this was part of a super duper angsty post-JE fic i was working on off and on for a long time #but as much as i really liked some parts of it--it was ultimately too draining to write #because even though i likes me some angst as much as the next salty mean bitch #i do ultimately want these two idiots to get together #i can handle a fair amount of angst with rose and tenth doctor mach i but after an initial bout of angst #i'm ready for her and metacrisis doc to be happy together #even if they've got external shit to deal with -- i want them to be happy together #so instead i've just been reappropriating my favorite bits here and there--incorporating them into other works #a big chunk of it was incorporated into/transformed into 'something of the wolf'#other bits and pieces have been incorporated into the rewriting of 'in lovers meeting' (formerly 'hitchhiker's map')#and other bits have been retooled and expanded-upon to present this here fic #i'm just happy some of this writing is finally seeing the light of day dammit #:D #mbb fic

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