A Splash of Orange, A Thread of Gold Part 2/2 (Doctor Who Ten x Rose fanfic)
Author: Abelina
Title: A Splash of Orange, A Thread of Gold
Chapter: Part II
Previous Chapter: Part I
Fandom/Pairing: Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler (Ten x Rose, Ten/Rose)
Summary: ‘Run’ was a beginning. This is where we stop running. Rose and the Doctor in the aftermath of Krop Tor.
Setting: S2 - Post-The Satan Pit. Spoilers up to and including that episode.
Rating/Warnings: Adult/NC-17. Explicit sex.
Word Count: 5,432
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em, I’m just borrowing them for a while, without even a whiff of profit.
Banner: made by me
Beta: Thanks to
yumimum for the eyeballs.
Notes: The conclusion to my first Ten x Rose fic. Also, I never write in present tense, except that this is how this story demanded to be told, so I gave in to those weird and demanding muses. Apologies for the knock knock joke. The muses wouldn't let me move on unless I kept it in.
A Splash of Orange, A Thread of Gold
Part II
*~*
The lights are dim in the room when Rose wakes, well dark enough to sleep by but not completely pitch black. The roundels on the wall glow pale yellow, the sort of light that seems disruptive but really isn’t, not when it’s the TARDIS. The Doctor’s arms aren’t around her anymore, and Rose assumes he’s woken already and left her to her sleep.
She can’t quite pretend she’s not a little disappointed, with the cool sting of it prickling at the back of her neck, even though she understands. He isn’t human, never will be, and it’s a little unfair to expect him to lie around in bed waiting for her to wake when she needs so much more sleep than he does. The meaning of the night isn’t determined by whether or not he’s here when she wakes for their so-called morning after, though Rose would be lying if she said it wouldn’t be nice.
When she rolls over, Rose finds she’s completely mistaken. Curled on his side, hair sticking up everywhere, face slackened in sleep, is the Doctor. She has so rarely seen him sleeping before, just four times. Once, early on in their occasional bed-sharing when he had short hair and a Northern accent, she woke through the night because she forgot to use the toilet before going to bed, but by the time she climbed over him in her rush for the loo he was awake enough to offer a comment on the fortitude of her bladder. The next two times he wasn’t so much asleep as he was healing-from regeneration, that first time, and from an injury the other. The fourth time, when she caught him dozing in the library beneath an old book, he woke before she had the chance to really look, and so Rose is surprised by how young he looks now.
It’s the eyes, Rose thinks. The man can change his face, but not the weight carried in his eyes, and with them closed she can’t see the years he hides beneath this handsome visage. He’s as beautiful sleeping as he is when he’s awake, but differently. Peaceful looks good on him, if a little out of place, and a pleasant tingle lights in her chest, because who else can say they’ve seen this side of him? She doesn’t think many.
It’s not a naïve notion, though she’s certain Mickey might’ve told her so once upon a time. She knows it isn’t in the same way as she knows the rest of it, how he feels about her, that what’s between them is something bigger than both of them. It’s there, woven into the threads of time that encircle the two of them. How she knows this is the only part she doesn’t understand, but that doesn’t make the knowledge any less the truth.
Rose nods off and wakes twice more before the Doctor finally stirs. He mutters something about calibrating the dimensional fractal relay modulator and arches his back, stretching out, all long skinny limbs and sticking up hair. Rose touches his temple with her fingers when he relaxes his stretch but before he seems fully aware. She strokes the skin there, and he moans quietly, a hint of a smile on his lips. After a minute or two, the sleepy grin becomes a conscious one, and the Doctor blinks his eyes open.
“Hello,” he says. They’re already lying close, but he wraps an arm around her and pulls her right to him.
“Oh!” Rose is surprised at the presence of his morning erection now poking her in the stomach and wiggles a little in greeting. “Hello!”
He knows well what she means but ignores it, instead trailing his fingers up her spine and into her hair, leaving behind a tingling path before mimicking the motion of her fingers with his own.
“You know,” he says, stroking softly, “on Gallifrey, this would be considered an invitation to something even more intimate than sex in the shower.”
That warms her up from the inside, and Rose doesn’t cease the small circles of her fingers. “A telepathy thing, yeah?”
“Yes,” he says. “Not that sex with you wasn’t, Rose, but priorities were…”
“Different,” Rose says, and he nods.
Her stomach’s a little fluttery at the way he’s taking this in stride, but not because she expects otherwise, not anymore. No, she just loves the way it sounds from his lips, loves the way it looks on him.
“Feels nice, though,” he says, his voice bringing Rose out of her head and back into the moment.
It takes her half a second to realise he’s talking about the touch of her fingers and not the sex, though that, undoubtedly, felt ‘nice’ too.
“Is that…” She bites her lip, considering, but decides to say it anyway. “Is that something we could do? I-I mean, if you wanted?”
He doesn’t answer, and a knot of worry tightens in Rose’s belly, except he doesn’t move away either or break eye contact. She can’t really read the expression in his eyes as he continues to trace light circles at her temple, except to say that it’s intense in a way that’s wholly unfamiliar. Long minutes pass before he abandons her temple to thread his fingers in her hair, and he glances upward then, or perhaps inward, before closing his eyes.
“If I-Rose, do you-” He stalls, exhaling through pursed lips, opening his eyes again and presenting her with that same intense look. “You do. Of course you do.”
Rose leans forward, brushing his nose with hers before placing a quick kiss on his lips. “It’s you,” she says, hoping that’s enough of an explanation for him.
It seems to be. He spends a few moments just gazing at her-there’s no other word for it-with wide-eyes and a soft little smile. “It’s possible, in theory, that we could. I believe you have some potential, just not now, Rose. To teach you, I need to be at my best and-”
“I dunno,” Rose says, bumping her hips forward. “You were pretty good earlier.”
That draws the smile and the huffy chuckle as she hopes it would. “You noticed, then?”
“Mmm, just a bit.”
She pokes out her tongue and he dives for it, catching it gently in his teeth before she can return it to the safety of her mouth. Rose protests, speaking words that matter less in content and more in sound because he’s still got her tongue and it’s all a string of incoherence anyway, but she feels his lips smiling against hers and that makes it worthwhile. He releases her and they kiss, a languid meeting of lips and tongues without the need to rush. Rose slides her fingers into his hair and sighs happily.
The kiss winds down before it can build up, and after a time they move apart just far enough to see each other’s face. The Doctor replaces his fingertips at her temple and brushes his thumb across her cheekbone.
“I want to show you something,” he says, tapping his thumb.
Rose understands immediately, and her insides stir with flutters of nervous elation. “All right,” she says, biting her bottom lip in an effort to contain her emotions. “Yes.”
The Doctor’s other hand slips between her face and the pillow to mirror the placement of the one already there. Rose waits, the fluttery nervous feeling intensifying, crawling up from her belly into her chest. Fingertips offer another light caress before settling firmly in place, two behind each ear, two over her temples, thumbs on cheeks.
Rose just barely registers taking a deep breath in when she feels it, a little like a tickle of fingertips dancing at the edge of her mind, not entering, not pushing or demanding, just there. “Oh!” she gasps, and by the time she’s spoken the sensation flits away.
The Doctor’s smiling in the way she always thinks of as his true smile, the boyish one that’s wide and toothy, ever so slightly manic, and usually follows the discovery of something amazing.
“You felt it right away!” he says, with something like pride in his voice.
“Just a tickle,” Rose says, and he nods. “Like, knock, knock, who’s there?”
He tries, and fails, to keep a straight face as he answers. “The Doctor.”
She’s laughing already, but manages to giggle out the expected response. “Doctor who?”
He joins her in laughing, pulling her to him in a tangle of arms and legs, the end result of which seems to be a rather more entwined hug than she’s used to, but which she instantly decides is her favourite sort.
“Ask me that again someday,” the Doctor murmurs into her forehead, once their laughter dies down to a comfortable sort of quiet.
Rose doesn’t respond, because she senses that she doesn’t need to. So she burrows into the hug instead and they stay this way for a while. Arousal simmers between them, not as urgent as before but no less tangible. The Doctor plays idly with her hair and his breath whispers across her scalp, forming silent words that settle warmly in her chest even though she can’t hear them. Rose glides her fingers over his back, light brushes on his skin in random, swirly patterns. There’s a hum of energy beneath her fingertips as she touches him, something like the feel of the TARDIS in flight and just as alive. His ‘morning’ erection hasn’t gone away, either, and Rose is very conscious of its hard length and of the warmth pulsing between her legs in response.
It’s not long before the Doctor extracts himself from Rose to turn her onto her back. He hovers over her, propped up on his hands and knees and not touching her at all, just looking down at her face wearing the expression he does when he’s studying something intently. Rose feels her cheeks warm under his scrutiny, but not out of embarrassment.
“I’ve been imagining a thousand ways to make you come, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, and her cheeks blaze hotter. “The way you look… I want to repeat that until it’s permanently etched into my retinas.”
The simmer ramps up into a full-on boil, arousal spreading from its concentrated epicentre until her whole body feels warm and flushed.
“You say such nice things,” she says, as though he complimented her on her shoelaces or something equally as impersonal-never mind the fresh flood of moisture between her thighs.
He snorts, a smirk sliding onto his face as he leans down, still without touching her. “I quite enjoyed you coming apart around my fingers,” he says, “which, naturally, makes me wonder how you’d like my tongue.”
Rose groans and rolls her eyes with a little extra emphasis. She wants to take him up on the offer, but this game of words is almost as good. “The way you’re always licking everything? Oh, I’m positive I’d absolutely hate every minute of it.”
That delightful lower lip pushes out past the upper one. “But Roooose.”
The whine in his voice is feigned, but he can’t hide the smoulder in his eyes. He leans a little closer, nudging one knee between hers, and whispers, “I want to know how you taste.”
A shiver rolls through her. Rose lifts her leg to curl it around his, now that it’s no longer trapped, and reaches her own hand down into her folds, coating her fingers in her copious wetness. She circles her clit, creating a bit of friction, just enough to make her clench her inner muscles and bite her lip from the tease of pleasure. The Doctor watches this with great intensity, his tongue laving his lips in what can only be a subconscious parody of what he wants to do to her.
Rose brings her hand up after a few minutes, grinning to herself at the way the Doctor’s gaze follows it unerringly. She holds her glistening fingers in front of her face, between hers and the Doctor’s, wiggling them a little, sliding them slickly back and forth.
He groans a needy little sound from the back of his throat. “Rose.”
She gives in and touches her fingertips to his lips. The point of his tongue thrusts out from parted lips to glide between her digits. What little upper hand Rose has vanishes the moment his tongue wraps around her finger and he sucks it into his mouth, licking it clean before repeating the treatment on the second finger. He doesn’t break eye contact the entire time and Rose wonders if it’s possible to spontaneously combust from this alone.
When he’s done, he releases her fingers from his mouth with a soft pop and affects a thoughtful look, the sort he usually pulls out his brainy specs for. “You taste like…”
Rose presses her heel into the back of his thigh and drags it down his leg as far as she can reach. “Yes?”
He slowly, so slowly, raises his eyebrow and swipes his tongue across his lower lip. “Well,” he says, “with such a small sampling my options for comparison are limited.”
Before Rose can form a response, the Doctor slides down the bed a nd pushes her legs apart. Rose lifts up on her elbows and opens wider for him. He wriggles his arms beneath her thighs and looks up at her, chin resting low on her belly. Rose clenches around a little spark of arousal at the sight of him with his bed-head and hooded eyes and lazy smile.
“I could offer you a rather bad cliché,” he says, stroking the inside of her thigh with his fingers.
“Such as?”
“Bad, Rose,” he says, voice husky, dropping a kiss on her belly before inching down. “Very, very bad. The baddest bad that ever badded.”
“B-bad can be good,” Rose whispers, her breathing gone shallow with anticipation, wondering how he could possibly make silliness so arousing.
“Mmm.” He nudges her curls with his nose and breathes deeply. “Or, we could try for a comparison to food, which, come to think of it…”
He darts his tongue out, lapping at the moisture coating the coarse hairs in front of him. He hasn’t touched her, but he might as well have done for the way the action steals her breath and has her fighting the urge to buck her hips off the bed. He closes his eyes and licks his lips and rumbles in approval.
“Oh, God,” Rose moans, falling back into her pillow.
She feels the huff of his breath on her warm skin, and a second later he’s tracing the outside of her labia with his nose. Rose curls her fingers and toes into the bedding.
“I could likely manage something from a strictly chemical composition standpoint…”
His sideburns scratch her inner thigh and his nose is but a whisper, a tease of touch that’s not nearly enough at the same time as it’s almost too much. It’s torture, but the sweetest sort, and her legs tremble from the effort required to keep still. Rose groans-a deep, throaty thing that couldn’t possibly have come from her body, except it has and the Doctor pauses in his explorations to exhale another cool breath over her heated flesh.
“Doctor…”
“Rose,” he says, voice thick, almost reverent. He nips at her inner thigh and slides a hand round to lay low on her belly, long fingers splayed out over trembling skin. “You taste like-”
He dives in, tongue sliding along her folds until he reaches her swollen clit, circles it in broad, heavy strokes. Rose sighs and bites her lip around a soft moan.
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor murmurs.
He sucks the bud into his mouth, which draws a throaty moan from Rose as shivers of pleasure shoot from her clit, through her belly and straight down to her toes. His hand on her abdomen keeps her hips from moving, but her legs curl over his back and she clutches fistfuls of blanket in her fingers.
“Oh! Doctor!”
She’s aching already, throbbing with the desperate need to have him inside her, and each suck, each stroke of his tongue builds her higher and higher with lightning speed until she’s holding her breath and teetering on the cusp. Then he’s sliding two fingers into her, curling them just so and plunging in deep, and her orgasm crashes over her amidst a flurry of hoarse moans and words forgotten the moment they pass her lips.
The Doctor licks gently at her clit as she comes down, her body still quaking with shivery aftershocks. She lifts her head enough to see him peering up at her from between her legs and behind his tousled fringe. Beneath the heat in his gaze lies a profound tenderness she only ever catches brief glimpses of, yet he’s baring it to her now.
“Come here,” she whispers, reaching for his hand where it’s still lying on her belly.
The Doctor crawls up her body until he’s cradled between her thighs and he tangles their fingers together, placing their joined hands on the bed beside Rose’s head. His lips glisten with her juices and he looks down at her with almost the same sated expression she imagines she must be wearing.
“Oh, Rose.” He huffs a little chuckle and lets his forehead touch hers. “You taste so utterly wonderful I can’t possibly find the words in English.”
Laughter bubbles up in her chest, the sort that’s accompanied by tears that have nothing at all to do with being sad. “I’m happy with wonderful.”
“You are wonderful.” He shifts up so he can see her face again, brushing her cheek with his fingertips. “And if I hadn’t taken a very bad fall down a very deep pit with a very beasty beast in it, and if I didn’t think I could use at least another hour of sleep-and four or five more for you-I’d get started on the other nine hundred ninety-nine ways of showing you.”
“This one’ll do,” Rose says, bending her knees, squeezing his hips with her thighs. “That’s a good start.”
He slides into her, slowly this time, until he’s seated fully and they groan together when he pushes just a little bit deeper. Rose again marvels at the way he stretches her. She thinks of a few clichés of her own but leaves them unspoken where they belong, instead sighing as he begins to move inside her. He’s not rushing, he’s barely withdrawing before sinking right back in, but Rose doesn’t mind the slow build. She twines her legs around the backs of his and rocks slowly with him.
“You feel so good inside me, Doctor,” Rose whispers, and her belly goes fluttery at the soft smile the words draw from his lips.
“You’re so hot around me,” he replies, in the softest voice she’s ever heard him use. “Hot and wet and so tight, Rose, and you chase away every clever thing I want to say.”
Rose sighs again and thinks it doesn’t matter what he says, just that he’s saying it. They’re quiet for a time, aside from little sighs and quiet moans and the subtle sounds of sliding flesh. After rushing through the first act in the shower and her quickest orgasm ever from oral sex, this slow third act is a welcomed change. Rose closes her eyes and threads her fingers into his hair. The Doctor nuzzles into the crook of her neck, murmuring words she can’t hear. This feels so right, this with him.
There’s a thought, in the back of her mind, that tells her of course this is right. It couldn’t be anything else.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Rose debates with herself but decides, after a moment, that she wants to share. “I’m thinking about threads.”
He pauses mid-thrust and lifts his face from her neck to look at her. “What?”
He looks so baffled Rose has to smile, though he’s not distracted enough to cease his movements for long. His brow remains furrowed, but his next thrust is a little more emphatic.
Rose takes in a breath and explains. “It’s like, inside me, there’s this spool of golden thread. But it’s not just in me, it is me, part of me, and the threads are travelling off everywhere. A lot of them just sort of vanish. I don’t know where they go.”
His brow furrows a little more. “Go on,” he says.
“Then there’s this tangle-no, that’s not right. It’s more like, a bunch of them are woven together, into these strands, and they look like they should break apart except they don’t, they’re strong, you know like how a spider’s web is?”
She isn’t sure she can get the words out beneath the intense scrutiny of his gaze, and closes her eyes to continue. “And those go right to you, Doctor, and I can’t tell where my threads end and yours begin.”
He’s quiet for so long, Rose begins to wonder if she shouldn’t have told him after all, though they’re still moving together. When he does speak at last, his voice is very soft, very quiet, and he has to clear his throat before he forms the words.
“You-you can see this?”
She starts to shake her head, but stops. “Not like I can see your face,” Rose says, opening her eyes again and finding that his are glistening. “And I can’t feel it, either, not like I can feel you.”
She tightens her muscles around him, which draws a smile and a little groan.
“It’s just there,” she says, not knowing how else to explain. “I know it’s there, and when I think about it I get a picture in my head of the spool and threads.”
He releases her hand to cradle her head, fingers sliding into her hair. “I-I don’t know what to say to that.”
She worries her lip between her teeth, trying to will away the creeping anxiety rising in her gut. “Does that mean-am I imaging it all?”
“No. You’re not.”
He brushes her forehead with a light kiss and presses deep inside her. Rose wraps her legs around his bum, drawing him closer, keeping him there, a steady pressure inside that chases away the worry and replaces it with delicious shivers of sensation.
“When, Rose?”
“Longer than I realize, I think,” she says, reaching up to cup his cheek with her palm. “But today, I thought I’d lost you and when I saw you again it all just sort of exploded in my brain and I couldn’t un-see it.”
After a minute’s silence, he speaks, enunciating carefully as he does when what he’s saying is particularly important. “I think, Rose, that this is going to take a bit of figuring out, but if I had to guess-well, when I say guess, I mean carefully hypothesize based upon the available evidence-I would say it appears you’ve retained, or perhaps obtained, a degree of time-sense.”
It clicks instantly, a half-memory of her time as the Bad Wolf. Rose doesn’t always get clear pictures of what happened at the Game Station, though she has slowly remembered most of the pertinent details over time. This is simply a flash, the more complicated parts an incomprehensible blur, except for the sense of those strands of gold weaving through time and space.
“From when I had the vortex in my head,” she says at last. “I’m time-sensing this.”
“Yes.” Rose doesn’t miss the hint of a shadow flash in his eyes as he answers. “Are you bothered by it? Headaches, or disorientation, or-”
Rose presses her fingers to his lips to stop him. “No, Doctor, I’m fine, honestly. Look me over, sure, but later. We’re not meant to worry anymore tonight, and-” Rose simultaneously lifts her hips from the bed and presses him closer with her heels. “-I believe we’re in the middle of something.”
His answering grin has her clenching around him.
“I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘the beginning of something’.”
The Doctor withdraws from her body and thrusts in hard and deep. Rose’s smile is broken by a moan as the sensation jolts through her.
“I-oh-I thought we weren’t doing bad clichés.”
He presses forward to drop a kiss on her bottom lip, which drives him even deeper into her. He pauses there, pinning her to the bed with his hips. “Nothing about you or this or us is a bad cliché, Rose Tyler. But it is a beginning.”
Rose sighs and shakes her head. “No. ‘Run’ was a beginning. This is where we stop running.”
The look on the Doctor’s face as he gazes down at Rose tugs at something deep inside her. Her heart pounds in a way that has nothing at all to do with sex as she meets that powerful stare, hoping he can see in her eyes everything she sees in his. And maybe there is a place for clichés in all of this, for eyes that speak when the voices can’t, for things that are bigger and more terrifying and beautiful and amazing than words.
Rose caresses his cheek with her palm, and the Doctor closes his eyes as he leans into her touch and whispers her name. In the next instant he’s kissing her, hard and urgent, thrusting his tongue into her mouth with the same vigour as he thrusts his cock into her body. She can taste herself on his tongue and the knot in her belly pulls tighter. He drags her hands above her head, pinning them to the bed. Rose wraps her legs around his waist pulls up from the bed to meet his thrusts, and the angle is bliss, he’s so deep inside her, and oh, oh, he remembers about that twist of his hips and suddenly it’s all Rose can do to keep up.
The kiss grows sloppy, coordination of tongues and teeth and lips losing out to the pounding of their bodies. Rose breaks away and lets out a moan and the Doctor buries his face in the crook of her neck, groaning into her skin. He works a hand between them, fingers fumbling for her clit, and she’s so slick and swollen and sensitive that even his clumsy strokes are enough. The knot breaks and the pressure explodes, spreads out from her core in a blaze of tingling heat all the way to the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet, up through her belly, over her scalp and down her spine and through every nerve in her body until she’s awash in flames. Her climax crashes through her, seizing her muscles and drawing her cries out into a single, rasping wail which is echoed by the Doctor’s throaty groan a moment later. He thrusts in hard, his whole body going rigid as he comes inside her.
They collapse together onto the bed, sweat-soaked and boneless. Rose’s vision’s a bit blurry round the edges and the Doctor’s body on top of hers should be heavy but isn’t, and she clings to him in a dreamy, floaty afterglow that feels a little like holding onto the safety of the TARDIS doors and letting her body drift in the weightlessness of deep space. Likely somewhere in the vicinity of a supernova.
The Doctor rolls onto his back and holds out his arm so Rose can snuggle up beside him. She lays her head over his right heart, listening to its steady pulse, echoed by its mate in that unmistakable quadruple beat which will always sound like home. The Doctor pulls the blanket up over them both, then lets his fingers drift over her skin, from shoulder to hip and back again in a gentle caress. Rose knows she should go to the loo, but the thought of extracting herself from the warmth of the bed and the Doctor’s embrace is a less pleasant thing than a bit of stickiness on her thighs or a wet spot on the sheets. So she stays, closes her eyes and lets the weightlessness settle deep, seeping into her belly and making her head spin in a hazy, sated way.
“Rose?”
“Mmm?”
The Doctor’s fingers touch her temple, circling lightly. Rose doesn’t open her eyes, but she hears him exhale through his nose and can almost picture the pensive set to his jaw.
“I’m thinking something, too.”
Rose blinks away the fuzzy edges of pre-sleep and tries to connect his statement to whatever it is he’s referring, when she remembers their talk of golden threads and dubiously acquired time-sense.
She tips her head up to look at him, finds him staring at the ceiling. “Tell me,” she whispers, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingers.
He doesn’t look at her this time, but that’s okay. His eyes drift shut and his fingers stroke her temple and he says, “I’m thinking about everyone.”
“Hmm?”
“Nine hundred years is a long time, more than you can imagine, Rose,” he says, quietly, speaking to the ceiling. “I’ve known so many people. I had family once, you know, on Gallifrey.”
“Susan?” Rose says, the name coming into her head as she recalls the few stories he’s shared of his first companion. Though he’s never said she was family, the affection with which he speaks of her always gives Rose the impression of an old uncle reminiscing about a beloved niece.
The name brings a smile to the Doctor’s lips, a delicate thing that’s easy to miss, though Rose likes to think of herself as somewhat of an enthusiastic student in the study of the Doctor’s expressions. It’s subtle but speaks of gratitude, that smile, that tiny stretch of his lips like a secret he’s holding, as though he doesn’t want to let on how much he’s touched by her simple remembrance.
The smile lingers as he continues speaking. “I’ve had friends. Companions. Enemies. Lovers,” he tells her, glancing down with that last, though she has already figured that out. “I’ve travelled the stars with the bravest, most brilliant and amazing people and they will forever mean so very much to me.”
His eyes shine as he speaks, fixed on the ceiling though his gaze has gone thoroughly inward, reaching deep into hundreds of years worth of memories. Rose touches his hand where it rests against her cheek, and he shifts to tangle their fingers together. Rose lays their joined hands over his chest and squeezes.
He looks down at her now, back in the present, wearing that same immense expression from before. “But none of them, Rose, none of them were you.”
It’s not words the Doctor’s afraid of, especially with this face. It’s the context, the content, the direction of them that concerns him. Their weight, their intent, and their effect. This, Rose thinks, is why she has a swarm of butterflies in her belly now. These words he’s not afraid to speak, and that means everything.
“Doctor,” Rose touches his cheek, cupping it in her palm, stroking her thumb across the line of freckles barely visible in the dim light. “I know. Of course I know.”
His eyes glisten wetly and he just stares at her. Then he smiles, so softly, and whispers, “I know, too.”
She traces her thumb over his bottom lip before twining her fingers with his again. “No going back. I meant it when I said it wasn’t an option.”
The Doctor squeezes her fingers, then wriggles until they are lying face to face, sharing his pillow, with their hands clasped between them.
“How long are you going to stay with me?” the Doctor asks, voice so quiet he’s barely audible over the hum of the time ship.
“Forever,” Rose answers, without stopping to breathe first. “My forever, Doctor, and yours too if I could find a way to do it.”
What shines in his eyes now is something that looks a little like hope, or perhaps a lot, and that’s a good thing. She’ll let her thoughts dwell later on all the facets of this, of the flash of insight on his face when she spoke that last bit. For now, she sighs against his lips when he leans in to kiss her, and burrows into his embrace when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close.
As they drift off to sleep, Rose feels the threads between them weaving tighter, growing stronger.
Yes, she thinks. Forever sounds good.
*~*
The End
Title: A Splash of Orange, A Thread of Gold
Chapter: Part II
Previous Chapter: Part I
Fandom/Pairing: Doctor Who, Tenth Doctor/Rose Tyler (Ten x Rose, Ten/Rose)
Summary: ‘Run’ was a beginning. This is where we stop running. Rose and the Doctor in the aftermath of Krop Tor.
Setting: S2 - Post-The Satan Pit. Spoilers up to and including that episode.
Rating/Warnings: Adult/NC-17. Explicit sex.
Word Count: 5,432
Disclaimer: I don’t own ‘em, I’m just borrowing them for a while, without even a whiff of profit.
Banner: made by me
Beta: Thanks to
yumimum for the eyeballs.
Notes: The conclusion to my first Ten x Rose fic. Also, I never write in present tense, except that this is how this story demanded to be told, so I gave in to those weird and demanding muses. Apologies for the knock knock joke. The muses wouldn't let me move on unless I kept it in.
A Splash of Orange, A Thread of Gold
Part II
*~*
The lights are dim in the room when Rose wakes, well dark enough to sleep by but not completely pitch black. The roundels on the wall glow pale yellow, the sort of light that seems disruptive but really isn’t, not when it’s the TARDIS. The Doctor’s arms aren’t around her anymore, and Rose assumes he’s woken already and left her to her sleep.
She can’t quite pretend she’s not a little disappointed, with the cool sting of it prickling at the back of her neck, even though she understands. He isn’t human, never will be, and it’s a little unfair to expect him to lie around in bed waiting for her to wake when she needs so much more sleep than he does. The meaning of the night isn’t determined by whether or not he’s here when she wakes for their so-called morning after, though Rose would be lying if she said it wouldn’t be nice.
When she rolls over, Rose finds she’s completely mistaken. Curled on his side, hair sticking up everywhere, face slackened in sleep, is the Doctor. She has so rarely seen him sleeping before, just four times. Once, early on in their occasional bed-sharing when he had short hair and a Northern accent, she woke through the night because she forgot to use the toilet before going to bed, but by the time she climbed over him in her rush for the loo he was awake enough to offer a comment on the fortitude of her bladder. The next two times he wasn’t so much asleep as he was healing-from regeneration, that first time, and from an injury the other. The fourth time, when she caught him dozing in the library beneath an old book, he woke before she had the chance to really look, and so Rose is surprised by how young he looks now.
It’s the eyes, Rose thinks. The man can change his face, but not the weight carried in his eyes, and with them closed she can’t see the years he hides beneath this handsome visage. He’s as beautiful sleeping as he is when he’s awake, but differently. Peaceful looks good on him, if a little out of place, and a pleasant tingle lights in her chest, because who else can say they’ve seen this side of him? She doesn’t think many.
It’s not a naïve notion, though she’s certain Mickey might’ve told her so once upon a time. She knows it isn’t in the same way as she knows the rest of it, how he feels about her, that what’s between them is something bigger than both of them. It’s there, woven into the threads of time that encircle the two of them. How she knows this is the only part she doesn’t understand, but that doesn’t make the knowledge any less the truth.
Rose nods off and wakes twice more before the Doctor finally stirs. He mutters something about calibrating the dimensional fractal relay modulator and arches his back, stretching out, all long skinny limbs and sticking up hair. Rose touches his temple with her fingers when he relaxes his stretch but before he seems fully aware. She strokes the skin there, and he moans quietly, a hint of a smile on his lips. After a minute or two, the sleepy grin becomes a conscious one, and the Doctor blinks his eyes open.
“Hello,” he says. They’re already lying close, but he wraps an arm around her and pulls her right to him.
“Oh!” Rose is surprised at the presence of his morning erection now poking her in the stomach and wiggles a little in greeting. “Hello!”
He knows well what she means but ignores it, instead trailing his fingers up her spine and into her hair, leaving behind a tingling path before mimicking the motion of her fingers with his own.
“You know,” he says, stroking softly, “on Gallifrey, this would be considered an invitation to something even more intimate than sex in the shower.”
That warms her up from the inside, and Rose doesn’t cease the small circles of her fingers. “A telepathy thing, yeah?”
“Yes,” he says. “Not that sex with you wasn’t, Rose, but priorities were…”
“Different,” Rose says, and he nods.
Her stomach’s a little fluttery at the way he’s taking this in stride, but not because she expects otherwise, not anymore. No, she just loves the way it sounds from his lips, loves the way it looks on him.
“Feels nice, though,” he says, his voice bringing Rose out of her head and back into the moment.
It takes her half a second to realise he’s talking about the touch of her fingers and not the sex, though that, undoubtedly, felt ‘nice’ too.
“Is that…” She bites her lip, considering, but decides to say it anyway. “Is that something we could do? I-I mean, if you wanted?”
He doesn’t answer, and a knot of worry tightens in Rose’s belly, except he doesn’t move away either or break eye contact. She can’t really read the expression in his eyes as he continues to trace light circles at her temple, except to say that it’s intense in a way that’s wholly unfamiliar. Long minutes pass before he abandons her temple to thread his fingers in her hair, and he glances upward then, or perhaps inward, before closing his eyes.
“If I-Rose, do you-” He stalls, exhaling through pursed lips, opening his eyes again and presenting her with that same intense look. “You do. Of course you do.”
Rose leans forward, brushing his nose with hers before placing a quick kiss on his lips. “It’s you,” she says, hoping that’s enough of an explanation for him.
It seems to be. He spends a few moments just gazing at her-there’s no other word for it-with wide-eyes and a soft little smile. “It’s possible, in theory, that we could. I believe you have some potential, just not now, Rose. To teach you, I need to be at my best and-”
“I dunno,” Rose says, bumping her hips forward. “You were pretty good earlier.”
That draws the smile and the huffy chuckle as she hopes it would. “You noticed, then?”
“Mmm, just a bit.”
She pokes out her tongue and he dives for it, catching it gently in his teeth before she can return it to the safety of her mouth. Rose protests, speaking words that matter less in content and more in sound because he’s still got her tongue and it’s all a string of incoherence anyway, but she feels his lips smiling against hers and that makes it worthwhile. He releases her and they kiss, a languid meeting of lips and tongues without the need to rush. Rose slides her fingers into his hair and sighs happily.
The kiss winds down before it can build up, and after a time they move apart just far enough to see each other’s face. The Doctor replaces his fingertips at her temple and brushes his thumb across her cheekbone.
“I want to show you something,” he says, tapping his thumb.
Rose understands immediately, and her insides stir with flutters of nervous elation. “All right,” she says, biting her bottom lip in an effort to contain her emotions. “Yes.”
The Doctor’s other hand slips between her face and the pillow to mirror the placement of the one already there. Rose waits, the fluttery nervous feeling intensifying, crawling up from her belly into her chest. Fingertips offer another light caress before settling firmly in place, two behind each ear, two over her temples, thumbs on cheeks.
Rose just barely registers taking a deep breath in when she feels it, a little like a tickle of fingertips dancing at the edge of her mind, not entering, not pushing or demanding, just there. “Oh!” she gasps, and by the time she’s spoken the sensation flits away.
The Doctor’s smiling in the way she always thinks of as his true smile, the boyish one that’s wide and toothy, ever so slightly manic, and usually follows the discovery of something amazing.
“You felt it right away!” he says, with something like pride in his voice.
“Just a tickle,” Rose says, and he nods. “Like, knock, knock, who’s there?”
He tries, and fails, to keep a straight face as he answers. “The Doctor.”
She’s laughing already, but manages to giggle out the expected response. “Doctor who?”
He joins her in laughing, pulling her to him in a tangle of arms and legs, the end result of which seems to be a rather more entwined hug than she’s used to, but which she instantly decides is her favourite sort.
“Ask me that again someday,” the Doctor murmurs into her forehead, once their laughter dies down to a comfortable sort of quiet.
Rose doesn’t respond, because she senses that she doesn’t need to. So she burrows into the hug instead and they stay this way for a while. Arousal simmers between them, not as urgent as before but no less tangible. The Doctor plays idly with her hair and his breath whispers across her scalp, forming silent words that settle warmly in her chest even though she can’t hear them. Rose glides her fingers over his back, light brushes on his skin in random, swirly patterns. There’s a hum of energy beneath her fingertips as she touches him, something like the feel of the TARDIS in flight and just as alive. His ‘morning’ erection hasn’t gone away, either, and Rose is very conscious of its hard length and of the warmth pulsing between her legs in response.
It’s not long before the Doctor extracts himself from Rose to turn her onto her back. He hovers over her, propped up on his hands and knees and not touching her at all, just looking down at her face wearing the expression he does when he’s studying something intently. Rose feels her cheeks warm under his scrutiny, but not out of embarrassment.
“I’ve been imagining a thousand ways to make you come, Rose Tyler,” the Doctor says, and her cheeks blaze hotter. “The way you look… I want to repeat that until it’s permanently etched into my retinas.”
The simmer ramps up into a full-on boil, arousal spreading from its concentrated epicentre until her whole body feels warm and flushed.
“You say such nice things,” she says, as though he complimented her on her shoelaces or something equally as impersonal-never mind the fresh flood of moisture between her thighs.
He snorts, a smirk sliding onto his face as he leans down, still without touching her. “I quite enjoyed you coming apart around my fingers,” he says, “which, naturally, makes me wonder how you’d like my tongue.”
Rose groans and rolls her eyes with a little extra emphasis. She wants to take him up on the offer, but this game of words is almost as good. “The way you’re always licking everything? Oh, I’m positive I’d absolutely hate every minute of it.”
That delightful lower lip pushes out past the upper one. “But Roooose.”
The whine in his voice is feigned, but he can’t hide the smoulder in his eyes. He leans a little closer, nudging one knee between hers, and whispers, “I want to know how you taste.”
A shiver rolls through her. Rose lifts her leg to curl it around his, now that it’s no longer trapped, and reaches her own hand down into her folds, coating her fingers in her copious wetness. She circles her clit, creating a bit of friction, just enough to make her clench her inner muscles and bite her lip from the tease of pleasure. The Doctor watches this with great intensity, his tongue laving his lips in what can only be a subconscious parody of what he wants to do to her.
Rose brings her hand up after a few minutes, grinning to herself at the way the Doctor’s gaze follows it unerringly. She holds her glistening fingers in front of her face, between hers and the Doctor’s, wiggling them a little, sliding them slickly back and forth.
He groans a needy little sound from the back of his throat. “Rose.”
She gives in and touches her fingertips to his lips. The point of his tongue thrusts out from parted lips to glide between her digits. What little upper hand Rose has vanishes the moment his tongue wraps around her finger and he sucks it into his mouth, licking it clean before repeating the treatment on the second finger. He doesn’t break eye contact the entire time and Rose wonders if it’s possible to spontaneously combust from this alone.
When he’s done, he releases her fingers from his mouth with a soft pop and affects a thoughtful look, the sort he usually pulls out his brainy specs for. “You taste like…”
Rose presses her heel into the back of his thigh and drags it down his leg as far as she can reach. “Yes?”
He slowly, so slowly, raises his eyebrow and swipes his tongue across his lower lip. “Well,” he says, “with such a small sampling my options for comparison are limited.”
Before Rose can form a response, the Doctor slides down the bed a nd pushes her legs apart. Rose lifts up on her elbows and opens wider for him. He wriggles his arms beneath her thighs and looks up at her, chin resting low on her belly. Rose clenches around a little spark of arousal at the sight of him with his bed-head and hooded eyes and lazy smile.
“I could offer you a rather bad cliché,” he says, stroking the inside of her thigh with his fingers.
“Such as?”
“Bad, Rose,” he says, voice husky, dropping a kiss on her belly before inching down. “Very, very bad. The baddest bad that ever badded.”
“B-bad can be good,” Rose whispers, her breathing gone shallow with anticipation, wondering how he could possibly make silliness so arousing.
“Mmm.” He nudges her curls with his nose and breathes deeply. “Or, we could try for a comparison to food, which, come to think of it…”
He darts his tongue out, lapping at the moisture coating the coarse hairs in front of him. He hasn’t touched her, but he might as well have done for the way the action steals her breath and has her fighting the urge to buck her hips off the bed. He closes his eyes and licks his lips and rumbles in approval.
“Oh, God,” Rose moans, falling back into her pillow.
She feels the huff of his breath on her warm skin, and a second later he’s tracing the outside of her labia with his nose. Rose curls her fingers and toes into the bedding.
“I could likely manage something from a strictly chemical composition standpoint…”
His sideburns scratch her inner thigh and his nose is but a whisper, a tease of touch that’s not nearly enough at the same time as it’s almost too much. It’s torture, but the sweetest sort, and her legs tremble from the effort required to keep still. Rose groans-a deep, throaty thing that couldn’t possibly have come from her body, except it has and the Doctor pauses in his explorations to exhale another cool breath over her heated flesh.
“Doctor…”
“Rose,” he says, voice thick, almost reverent. He nips at her inner thigh and slides a hand round to lay low on her belly, long fingers splayed out over trembling skin. “You taste like-”
He dives in, tongue sliding along her folds until he reaches her swollen clit, circles it in broad, heavy strokes. Rose sighs and bites her lip around a soft moan.
“Oh, yes,” the Doctor murmurs.
He sucks the bud into his mouth, which draws a throaty moan from Rose as shivers of pleasure shoot from her clit, through her belly and straight down to her toes. His hand on her abdomen keeps her hips from moving, but her legs curl over his back and she clutches fistfuls of blanket in her fingers.
“Oh! Doctor!”
She’s aching already, throbbing with the desperate need to have him inside her, and each suck, each stroke of his tongue builds her higher and higher with lightning speed until she’s holding her breath and teetering on the cusp. Then he’s sliding two fingers into her, curling them just so and plunging in deep, and her orgasm crashes over her amidst a flurry of hoarse moans and words forgotten the moment they pass her lips.
The Doctor licks gently at her clit as she comes down, her body still quaking with shivery aftershocks. She lifts her head enough to see him peering up at her from between her legs and behind his tousled fringe. Beneath the heat in his gaze lies a profound tenderness she only ever catches brief glimpses of, yet he’s baring it to her now.
“Come here,” she whispers, reaching for his hand where it’s still lying on her belly.
The Doctor crawls up her body until he’s cradled between her thighs and he tangles their fingers together, placing their joined hands on the bed beside Rose’s head. His lips glisten with her juices and he looks down at her with almost the same sated expression she imagines she must be wearing.
“Oh, Rose.” He huffs a little chuckle and lets his forehead touch hers. “You taste so utterly wonderful I can’t possibly find the words in English.”
Laughter bubbles up in her chest, the sort that’s accompanied by tears that have nothing at all to do with being sad. “I’m happy with wonderful.”
“You are wonderful.” He shifts up so he can see her face again, brushing her cheek with his fingertips. “And if I hadn’t taken a very bad fall down a very deep pit with a very beasty beast in it, and if I didn’t think I could use at least another hour of sleep-and four or five more for you-I’d get started on the other nine hundred ninety-nine ways of showing you.”
“This one’ll do,” Rose says, bending her knees, squeezing his hips with her thighs. “That’s a good start.”
He slides into her, slowly this time, until he’s seated fully and they groan together when he pushes just a little bit deeper. Rose again marvels at the way he stretches her. She thinks of a few clichés of her own but leaves them unspoken where they belong, instead sighing as he begins to move inside her. He’s not rushing, he’s barely withdrawing before sinking right back in, but Rose doesn’t mind the slow build. She twines her legs around the backs of his and rocks slowly with him.
“You feel so good inside me, Doctor,” Rose whispers, and her belly goes fluttery at the soft smile the words draw from his lips.
“You’re so hot around me,” he replies, in the softest voice she’s ever heard him use. “Hot and wet and so tight, Rose, and you chase away every clever thing I want to say.”
Rose sighs again and thinks it doesn’t matter what he says, just that he’s saying it. They’re quiet for a time, aside from little sighs and quiet moans and the subtle sounds of sliding flesh. After rushing through the first act in the shower and her quickest orgasm ever from oral sex, this slow third act is a welcomed change. Rose closes her eyes and threads her fingers into his hair. The Doctor nuzzles into the crook of her neck, murmuring words she can’t hear. This feels so right, this with him.
There’s a thought, in the back of her mind, that tells her of course this is right. It couldn’t be anything else.
“Tell me what you’re thinking.”
Rose debates with herself but decides, after a moment, that she wants to share. “I’m thinking about threads.”
He pauses mid-thrust and lifts his face from her neck to look at her. “What?”
He looks so baffled Rose has to smile, though he’s not distracted enough to cease his movements for long. His brow remains furrowed, but his next thrust is a little more emphatic.
Rose takes in a breath and explains. “It’s like, inside me, there’s this spool of golden thread. But it’s not just in me, it is me, part of me, and the threads are travelling off everywhere. A lot of them just sort of vanish. I don’t know where they go.”
His brow furrows a little more. “Go on,” he says.
“Then there’s this tangle-no, that’s not right. It’s more like, a bunch of them are woven together, into these strands, and they look like they should break apart except they don’t, they’re strong, you know like how a spider’s web is?”
She isn’t sure she can get the words out beneath the intense scrutiny of his gaze, and closes her eyes to continue. “And those go right to you, Doctor, and I can’t tell where my threads end and yours begin.”
He’s quiet for so long, Rose begins to wonder if she shouldn’t have told him after all, though they’re still moving together. When he does speak at last, his voice is very soft, very quiet, and he has to clear his throat before he forms the words.
“You-you can see this?”
She starts to shake her head, but stops. “Not like I can see your face,” Rose says, opening her eyes again and finding that his are glistening. “And I can’t feel it, either, not like I can feel you.”
She tightens her muscles around him, which draws a smile and a little groan.
“It’s just there,” she says, not knowing how else to explain. “I know it’s there, and when I think about it I get a picture in my head of the spool and threads.”
He releases her hand to cradle her head, fingers sliding into her hair. “I-I don’t know what to say to that.”
She worries her lip between her teeth, trying to will away the creeping anxiety rising in her gut. “Does that mean-am I imaging it all?”
“No. You’re not.”
He brushes her forehead with a light kiss and presses deep inside her. Rose wraps her legs around his bum, drawing him closer, keeping him there, a steady pressure inside that chases away the worry and replaces it with delicious shivers of sensation.
“When, Rose?”
“Longer than I realize, I think,” she says, reaching up to cup his cheek with her palm. “But today, I thought I’d lost you and when I saw you again it all just sort of exploded in my brain and I couldn’t un-see it.”
After a minute’s silence, he speaks, enunciating carefully as he does when what he’s saying is particularly important. “I think, Rose, that this is going to take a bit of figuring out, but if I had to guess-well, when I say guess, I mean carefully hypothesize based upon the available evidence-I would say it appears you’ve retained, or perhaps obtained, a degree of time-sense.”
It clicks instantly, a half-memory of her time as the Bad Wolf. Rose doesn’t always get clear pictures of what happened at the Game Station, though she has slowly remembered most of the pertinent details over time. This is simply a flash, the more complicated parts an incomprehensible blur, except for the sense of those strands of gold weaving through time and space.
“From when I had the vortex in my head,” she says at last. “I’m time-sensing this.”
“Yes.” Rose doesn’t miss the hint of a shadow flash in his eyes as he answers. “Are you bothered by it? Headaches, or disorientation, or-”
Rose presses her fingers to his lips to stop him. “No, Doctor, I’m fine, honestly. Look me over, sure, but later. We’re not meant to worry anymore tonight, and-” Rose simultaneously lifts her hips from the bed and presses him closer with her heels. “-I believe we’re in the middle of something.”
His answering grin has her clenching around him.
“I think the phrase you’re looking for is ‘the beginning of something’.”
The Doctor withdraws from her body and thrusts in hard and deep. Rose’s smile is broken by a moan as the sensation jolts through her.
“I-oh-I thought we weren’t doing bad clichés.”
He presses forward to drop a kiss on her bottom lip, which drives him even deeper into her. He pauses there, pinning her to the bed with his hips. “Nothing about you or this or us is a bad cliché, Rose Tyler. But it is a beginning.”
Rose sighs and shakes her head. “No. ‘Run’ was a beginning. This is where we stop running.”
The look on the Doctor’s face as he gazes down at Rose tugs at something deep inside her. Her heart pounds in a way that has nothing at all to do with sex as she meets that powerful stare, hoping he can see in her eyes everything she sees in his. And maybe there is a place for clichés in all of this, for eyes that speak when the voices can’t, for things that are bigger and more terrifying and beautiful and amazing than words.
Rose caresses his cheek with her palm, and the Doctor closes his eyes as he leans into her touch and whispers her name. In the next instant he’s kissing her, hard and urgent, thrusting his tongue into her mouth with the same vigour as he thrusts his cock into her body. She can taste herself on his tongue and the knot in her belly pulls tighter. He drags her hands above her head, pinning them to the bed. Rose wraps her legs around his waist pulls up from the bed to meet his thrusts, and the angle is bliss, he’s so deep inside her, and oh, oh, he remembers about that twist of his hips and suddenly it’s all Rose can do to keep up.
The kiss grows sloppy, coordination of tongues and teeth and lips losing out to the pounding of their bodies. Rose breaks away and lets out a moan and the Doctor buries his face in the crook of her neck, groaning into her skin. He works a hand between them, fingers fumbling for her clit, and she’s so slick and swollen and sensitive that even his clumsy strokes are enough. The knot breaks and the pressure explodes, spreads out from her core in a blaze of tingling heat all the way to the tips of her fingers and the soles of her feet, up through her belly, over her scalp and down her spine and through every nerve in her body until she’s awash in flames. Her climax crashes through her, seizing her muscles and drawing her cries out into a single, rasping wail which is echoed by the Doctor’s throaty groan a moment later. He thrusts in hard, his whole body going rigid as he comes inside her.
They collapse together onto the bed, sweat-soaked and boneless. Rose’s vision’s a bit blurry round the edges and the Doctor’s body on top of hers should be heavy but isn’t, and she clings to him in a dreamy, floaty afterglow that feels a little like holding onto the safety of the TARDIS doors and letting her body drift in the weightlessness of deep space. Likely somewhere in the vicinity of a supernova.
The Doctor rolls onto his back and holds out his arm so Rose can snuggle up beside him. She lays her head over his right heart, listening to its steady pulse, echoed by its mate in that unmistakable quadruple beat which will always sound like home. The Doctor pulls the blanket up over them both, then lets his fingers drift over her skin, from shoulder to hip and back again in a gentle caress. Rose knows she should go to the loo, but the thought of extracting herself from the warmth of the bed and the Doctor’s embrace is a less pleasant thing than a bit of stickiness on her thighs or a wet spot on the sheets. So she stays, closes her eyes and lets the weightlessness settle deep, seeping into her belly and making her head spin in a hazy, sated way.
“Rose?”
“Mmm?”
The Doctor’s fingers touch her temple, circling lightly. Rose doesn’t open her eyes, but she hears him exhale through his nose and can almost picture the pensive set to his jaw.
“I’m thinking something, too.”
Rose blinks away the fuzzy edges of pre-sleep and tries to connect his statement to whatever it is he’s referring, when she remembers their talk of golden threads and dubiously acquired time-sense.
She tips her head up to look at him, finds him staring at the ceiling. “Tell me,” she whispers, tracing the line of his jaw with her fingers.
He doesn’t look at her this time, but that’s okay. His eyes drift shut and his fingers stroke her temple and he says, “I’m thinking about everyone.”
“Hmm?”
“Nine hundred years is a long time, more than you can imagine, Rose,” he says, quietly, speaking to the ceiling. “I’ve known so many people. I had family once, you know, on Gallifrey.”
“Susan?” Rose says, the name coming into her head as she recalls the few stories he’s shared of his first companion. Though he’s never said she was family, the affection with which he speaks of her always gives Rose the impression of an old uncle reminiscing about a beloved niece.
The name brings a smile to the Doctor’s lips, a delicate thing that’s easy to miss, though Rose likes to think of herself as somewhat of an enthusiastic student in the study of the Doctor’s expressions. It’s subtle but speaks of gratitude, that smile, that tiny stretch of his lips like a secret he’s holding, as though he doesn’t want to let on how much he’s touched by her simple remembrance.
The smile lingers as he continues speaking. “I’ve had friends. Companions. Enemies. Lovers,” he tells her, glancing down with that last, though she has already figured that out. “I’ve travelled the stars with the bravest, most brilliant and amazing people and they will forever mean so very much to me.”
His eyes shine as he speaks, fixed on the ceiling though his gaze has gone thoroughly inward, reaching deep into hundreds of years worth of memories. Rose touches his hand where it rests against her cheek, and he shifts to tangle their fingers together. Rose lays their joined hands over his chest and squeezes.
He looks down at her now, back in the present, wearing that same immense expression from before. “But none of them, Rose, none of them were you.”
It’s not words the Doctor’s afraid of, especially with this face. It’s the context, the content, the direction of them that concerns him. Their weight, their intent, and their effect. This, Rose thinks, is why she has a swarm of butterflies in her belly now. These words he’s not afraid to speak, and that means everything.
“Doctor,” Rose touches his cheek, cupping it in her palm, stroking her thumb across the line of freckles barely visible in the dim light. “I know. Of course I know.”
His eyes glisten wetly and he just stares at her. Then he smiles, so softly, and whispers, “I know, too.”
She traces her thumb over his bottom lip before twining her fingers with his again. “No going back. I meant it when I said it wasn’t an option.”
The Doctor squeezes her fingers, then wriggles until they are lying face to face, sharing his pillow, with their hands clasped between them.
“How long are you going to stay with me?” the Doctor asks, voice so quiet he’s barely audible over the hum of the time ship.
“Forever,” Rose answers, without stopping to breathe first. “My forever, Doctor, and yours too if I could find a way to do it.”
What shines in his eyes now is something that looks a little like hope, or perhaps a lot, and that’s a good thing. She’ll let her thoughts dwell later on all the facets of this, of the flash of insight on his face when she spoke that last bit. For now, she sighs against his lips when he leans in to kiss her, and burrows into his embrace when he wraps his arms around her and pulls her close.
As they drift off to sleep, Rose feels the threads between them weaving tighter, growing stronger.
Yes, she thinks. Forever sounds good.
*~*
The End