This Little Hand (1/1) A Valentine's Day Special 10.5/Rose, Adult, spoilers up to JE.
Tarry, good Beatrice. By this hand, I love thee.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING Act IV Scene 1
It’s going to happen. It really is. Rose is lying right here, hair spread over the pillow, naked, beautiful, ready and waiting for him. He can’t quite believe they’ve already come so far. It’s only been few days, after all, since the moment on the beach where she turned and watched the TARDIS dematerialize and all he could do was keep a respectful distance, then offer her a tentative hand to hold.
Because it all seemed too good to be true, it comes as no surprise when she pulls away from him and turns her head sideways, so she doesn’t have to look at his swollen cock or the rejection he must be revealing in his eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she says, swallowing tears, and he doesn’t need to ask why.
She tells him anyway. “I can’t…just can’t. It’d be like…”
“Being unfaithful to him.” He completes the sentence, hoping he’s not letting too much of an edge creep into his voice. It’s no use explaining, is it? Saying again that he’s the same person. To her, with her human understanding, he’s not. Maybe never will be.
He could say he understands. He could get up, look away, pull his trousers on and let her rejection hang between them, unsoftened by any vague promise that it’ll just take more time. There’s no way of testing the truth of that statement other than hanging around to live through it, something he’s not sure he can bear to do. He’s proud, yes, and angry and sad and wondering how to forgive and resent himself at the same time.
He could walk away. Hasn’t a clue where he’d go - no money, no job, no TARDIS, no friends, but he’s confident he’d get by somehow. It just seems like such a waste, that he’ll have no real prospect of happiness to justify the sacrifice that has been made on his behalf. But already he’s beginning to understand that there are times when a male, human body craves the sensation of sex without the intimacy that makes it mean something. That you can’t hang around indefinitely waiting for your beloved - because that’s what she is - to yield to you out of pity or a sense of obligation.
“I’m sorry,” she says again.
“Yeah, you said.”
“Do you mind?”
He can’t prevent a little bark of laughter escaping; it’s such a pointless question. He feels like saying, “No, it’s fine, I’ll just go and shag your bloody mother, or one of the live-in staff.”
“I’m disappointed,” he admits. “I expect you’ve already realised that. But it’s your body, and you get to choose. And I suppose I understand the reasons.”
But he’s still not looking at her.
He moves away and they’re lying side by side and a universe apart; he wants so much to touch her. It’s making his skin prickle and he’s wondering whether it would be okay for him to make his own arrangements for dealing with his erection. It’s so undignified, so unbecoming for a Time Lord, to have your state of arousal so obvious. Many times he’s held her close before, but never with this embarrassment literally between them. She probably thought he didn’t care.
“He’d never have done it with you, you know,” he says. “He always had to have the door open behind him. Exit strategy. The worst thing you could have said was ‘forever’. Because he always knew it wouldn’t be.”
“You looked happy enough at the time,” she pointed out. “And you were the one that asked.”
You. Not him. It’s a start, he’s thinking. But it may be one of those accidental starts that only doubles your resolution not to take things to the logical finish. He knows all about that kind of resolution. Oh yes.
There’s nothing to say, so he stays silent. That’s unusual, for him. He usually talks in inverse proportion to the desirability of talking. Now he’s distancing himself from his memories of doing that, feeling more than a little mortified by the thought of all the crap he’s come out with in the past.
Nobody talked much on the beach, though. Particularly the other him. Post-Davros him - already diverging from the man who’d run down the street towards her. He suspects his babbling won’t be quite so irrepressible in future.
“You all right?” she asks, guilt still triumphing over intelligent conversation.
“Yeah.” He struggles for a few moments but finally capitulates to his body’s needs, gasping with relief as his fingers stroke the shaft of his cock. It’s a pleasant enough sensation, if you don’t think about the preferred alternatives.
She realises what’s happening and her expression softens into a smile, a little twinkle in the eye, an imperceptible movement of her face towards the hollow beneath his chin. He’s returned the look before he could stop himself.
“D’you mind? It’s a bit one-sided,” he says.
“I could…” She doesn’t finish the offer. He concentrates on the movement of his hand - the one he inherited from his other self, the one that didn’t give her the creeps. That one’s off somewhere in the TARDIS now, a universe away.
And that gives him an idea. Brilliant, he is. He turns her body towards him and begins a finger-walk across, then down, her bare abdomen, until he finds exactly the right place. His nostrils dilate at the mere prospect of the scent and sensation of her. He strokes her labia, circling, gently probing until she can’t stop herself gasping a little and arching her lower back in response.
He meets her eyes, tongues his upper lip - and there it is. A connection.
“This isn’t me, you know,” he says, keeping his mouth open and his eyes round and focused on her face. “It’s him.”
“Huh?” That’s about all she’s capable of saying at this precise moment. He’s gone in up to his knuckles now, and added a second finger
“Nope. This hand, see, that’s the one from him. All the rest of me grew from it.”
He’s probably completely squicked her out now. He watches her face, anxiously waiting for her to move away. But she doesn’t. She laughs, her head flicked back, tendrils of hair framing her face, her glowing cheeks, bright, happy eyes.
“Oh yes.” Bolder now, he goes deeper, relishing the soft, moist squelch. “This hand, see, this hand’s a sexin’ hand. Like this!”
She gasps something incomprehensible, at least as far as words go.
“Did you like that? ‘Cause there’s a lot more where that came from,” he continues. Merciless, now. “This little hand, you see, it doesn’t know when to stop. It’s having so much fun, it wants to do…ooh…this. And this. And…”
It’s a good thing this is a big house. Or that there’s nobody in the next bedroom.
Now she’s laughing. Oh, he’s good at this. He’s no idea how he got so good - it’s not as if he’s had much experience, but he’s not complaining when the effects are so obviously delightful. For a moment, at least, his own discomfort is forgotten in the sensation of giving so much pleasure. He plays her like a delicate instrument, feeling for her points of sensation, edging towards the timeless moment of release. Plucking her, fucking her, his entire being concentrated in the fingertips of one, alien appendage.
“Are you ready?” he whispers. “This hand’s ready. He’s not going to stop until he’s made you come.”
When it happens, it’s like two worlds colliding and imploding. It’s like taking off the handbrake and shooting into the Vortex as the stars of eons whirl around you. It’s one moment, and every moment, crammed into a singularity of nothing but pleasure and every cell in your body joining the chorus of delight and joy.
He doesn’t realise he’s inside her until his own ejaculation and the rush of endorphins flooding through him. Oh, what a body! She’s laughing now, her fingernails clawing his back, cheek to cheek and it’s heaven, he’s in heaven...
“What’s so funny?” he asks.
“Everything,” she replies, and he’s joining in, understanding that she’s decided she’s going to go with it, accept what her brain can’t yet process. She’s making the leap, whooshing down the roller-coaster into the unknowable again, and wasn’t that exactly what he always loved her for in the first place? Nobody ever made him laugh like Rose did. It’s irresponsible and childish and wonderful, the greatest tension reliever ever invented, and he’d forgotten how much he’d missed it until he got it back.
“Well,” he says, and it doesn’t sound nearly as significant as he’d expected.
“Well?” she repeats, giggling. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing,” he says - and they’re cracking up all over again. He feels he’s got them back, those blissful New New Doctor days, and that makes him the luckiest bloke ever.
Five minutes later they’re still lying on their backs, holding hands and laughing, and he’s realising how often he used the TARDIS thrusters as a substitute for sex - an arrangement that was probably far less satisfactory for her than it was for him.
He’s not entered her mind. He’d have expected intercourse without that happening would feel alien to him - but he understands now that the human species reaches communion differently, through the body rather than the sharing of consciousness. Now it’s so much clearer to him. Poor Rose. He put her through so much, and ignorance is only a partial excuse.
“You’re really him,” she whispers.
He wiggles his fingers at her, grinning. “Hello.”
She thumps him. “Stop it, you git. I mean, really him.”
“Not just the hand?”
“No. All of you. I’m just starting to get it. Or maybe I’ve stopped worrying about not getting it. Whatever.”
“No rush,” he reassures her; there’s nowhere he’d prefer to be, in this universe or any other one, to being with her now. He’s even looking forward to sleeping. He just knows how it will be; when she’s ready, she’ll murmur and turn her back to him and he’ll spoon himself against her buttocks - or maybe the other way around. The prospect of spending a few hours in that position appeals to him far more than it did before he was human.
He wants her to drift off to sleep feeling the beat of his heart and the rhythm of his breathing, offering her his entire body, from the top of his head (with its great hair) to the tips of his toes. He’ll tickle her if she sleeps late. He’ll let her spend hours counting his freckles.
“Think we’ll have to keep an eye on that hand, don’t you?” she says.
He holds it up, looking playfully solemn. “Definitely,” he agrees. “Come here!”
And, with a happy laugh, she does just that. He thinks that, just possibly, it’s going to be all right, but he’s not going to spoil the moment saying so. That’s never been their way.