Fic: 9.8 Metres Per Second Squared
Title: 9.8 Meters Per Second Squared
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen for soft-focus sex
Betas: jaradel and spikewriter , both of whom I owe a debt of gratitude for dealing with crazy me and this wee timorous beastie of a story.
Summary: On planet Earth, falling happens at 9.8 metres per second squared. It is the easiest thing in this world and in all the galaxies of the universe. No special skills are required. Rate of acceleration is constant and gravity does the rest.
A/N: Written for the time_and_chips Seasons Change ficathon. My season is, quite obviously, autumn. People who know anything about botany and/or physics and/or maple syrup, please please please ignore the blatant liberties I have taken with all of the above. Sometimes poetry wins over science.
Of course he sticks his fingers right in and brings them directly to his mouth, without any cautious preamble, not even a glance. This is a habit that Rose is fairly certain will get the Doctor in to serious trouble eventually. Perhaps even more trouble than he is normally in.
"It's all watery," she says, peering over the lip of the bucket, giving the side a tap and watching the ripples.
"That's how it comes out of the tree," the Doctor replies sagely, though the fact that he is still darting his tongue out to take little licks from the end of each finger serves to remove the edge off of his intended tone of authority. "It has to be boiled down before actually becoming syrup."
Rose wrinkles her nose, but pokes the tip of one finger in to the amber liquid, and gives it a good look-see before circumspectly tasting.
It isn't nearly as sweet as she is expecting. The sap tastes faintly of minerals, but it is not an altogether unpleasant experience and she licks the rest off with a slurp. The Doctor is already in to the bucket again for another taste, but her own hand darts out, grabs his by the wrist, and aims his dripping fingers directly at her own waiting mouth. It happens so fast that she can legitimately say that she is as surprised as he.
The look on his face in that moment can only be described as circular. Eyes and mouth all form perfect round O's, punctuated by eyebrows that disappear under his fringe. She notes however, that he is not resisting, and rather quickly his features fall back in to a mask of unconcerned curiosity.
She takes his long index finger in to her mouth and begins to suck the sap off, trying to avoid making too brazen of a show by involving any tongue, while he regards her over the rims of his glasses. The look in her eye, as she deals similarly with his middle finger, she hopes to pitch as playful innocence. What's a little finger-licking between friends?
As she draws his finger slowly out of her mouth, she takes note of every contour. His first knuckle is bony, a little knobby and rough, but the space between that and the second knuckle seems impossibly long and thin. She allows her tongue to lightly touch the whorls and lines of the print, and then closes her lips around the tip as the last bit of sweetness leaves her mouth. She licks her top lip, sliding her tongue over the lingering impression left by his manicured nail, before swallowing and giving a little smile.
When she releases his hand again, he lets it fall limply to his side.
"Delicious," she pronounces.
Perhaps eager for an excuse to break Rose's discomfiting glances, which do not appear to be innocent by any stretch of the imagination, he tilts his head up, squinting and examining the foliage. His now-laughing eyes crinkle around the edges, going a short way to betraying his great age.
Like a cartoon, he lurches forward and shimmies up the trunk of the sugar maple whose wares they have just been sampling. His trainers send little bits of bark raining down on to her head.
"Be careful!" she pointlessly admonishes, because that is partially her job, to tell him things that he doesn't need to know and will completely ignore. He smiles more broadly and begins to edge out on to a limb ten feet over her head.
"It's all right, trees quite fancy me," he sniffs.
He comes to a stop at the point right before where the limb he is standing on would naturally begin to bend and eventually snap under his weight.
"There now," he says softly, leaning precariously in to a tangle of smaller branches. "Look at you." Puckering up his lips and puffing out his cheeks, he blows and one perfectly crimson leaf makes a spiralling descent downwards. Rose opens her hands in front of her and it lands there gently.
About fifty additional less-perfect leaves immediately come tumbling down after, as the Doctor takes a bad step and catches himself on the limb above the one he is standing on. The sudden violent rustling and crackling of the foliage masks any curses he may have muttered, but he rights himself soon enough. Cat-like, he crouches down, takes the branch in his hands and hangs from it several feet off the ground before letting go and hitting the earth with a soft thud, his coat billowing behind him. He stands to his full height again and Rose is left looking back and forth between the Platonic ideal of an autumn leaf that she holds in her hands, and this impossible man, gurning and smacking the dirt off of his trouser legs.
~o0o~
It's not the beach she requested to take the chill off of their sojourn on Dame Kelly Holmes Close. In fact, this may be the diametrical opposite, but she has to hand it to the Doctor: the view is impressive. Perhaps not the conjunction of a binary star or the explosions of a gas cloud in the Horse Head Nebula, but likewise something she never thought she'd see back when she was just Rose Tyler, shop girl.
The rocky outcropping they are reclining on is comfortably covered with fallen leaves as the setting sun begins to withdraw the thermals from under the wings of the raptors which wheel and soar in the valley below.
"Mountains and rivers without end," sighs the Doctor contentedly, hands behind his head.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. There's a painting, this reminds me of it." But rather than continuing to run his eyes over every vivid texture and colour in the landscape, he turns on to his side towards her. She does the same, and they lie inches apart. She wants to make a joke about the Green Mountains not really being all that green this time of year, but it doesn't exactly seem like the right time, not with the Doctor feeling all poetic and expansive.
"What are you thinking about?" she finally asks.
"I reckon, for me, the more apt question is what aren't I thinking about?" he says with a cheeky smirk that she half wants to smack right off of his face and half wants to explore the edges of with her own lips.
"All right then, what aren't you thinking about?"
"Well, I'm not thinking about elephants." He beetles his brow and looks genuinely consternated. "Bugger. Now I am."
"Doesn't this view make you feel all sort of...small, though?"
"Rose Tyler, if anything were to make me feel small, I would have found it long before now." She gives him a look and he screws up his face and looks mildly embarrassed. "Oh...that sounds arrogant, doesn't it? What I mean is, there will be a day when you'll not feel small either. And you're not. I'm not. No one is. If there's one thing I want for you, it's for you to not feel small."
A raptor screams in the valley and they raise themselves up on their elbows to look down over the cliff. As they watch, a falcon tucks her wings and falls in to a stoop. She becomes a dot, and then not even that, as she plunges to the valley floor. She sees what she wants and speeds towards it.
"Blimey," the Doctor says, laying back down again, unable to enjoy a moment without commenting on it. "Are you getting cold?"
Rose shakes her head, which is a lie, but if she owns up to the bout of shivers she's contending with, he'll insist they go back inside, maybe even leave completely, and she doesn't want that. She wants to fall as well.
Her hand comes up to rest on his cheek, which is rough and cool, even cooler than usual. He blinks and she sees questions in his eyes, for which there are no answers. She wants to tell him that this is so simple. He ventures his own hand to her waist and it fits there like every embrace they've ever shared has left a perfect imprint for him to find and slide in to. He lets his eyes darken and stay that way and in them she sees time and all possibilities. She denies them, every single one of them, and tumbles forward, down the rabbit hole, past the event horizon.
He makes the final backwards step as well, closes the last inch of distance between them, and there is free fall. The acceleration is overwhelming, the blackness below is terrible and alluring, the wind cries in her ears. She wants to take it all back, claw her way up again, but this falling is so easy. There is no choice in the matter. It is drowning, it is dying, it is being born, it just happens and they are both powerless.
There is an unfolding and an unmasking as things fall apart and away. He murmurs her name against her mouth, sucking and tasting the remnants of their sweet feast, unable to be quiet even now. The leaves crunch as they move together and the spicy, warm scent of decay is released.
He talks. Of course he talks. He names her and he names all the little parts of her that he touches. He names the sensations as if giving a tour of this new land. Over here, we have the nonsense words I will speak in my pleasure. Over there is the taste of how alive you are. And just here, the little shards that I become when we join. The echoes of his narrative amid the trees above and in the valley below fade in to the Doppler shift of rapid descent, a guidebook left behind and forgotten about.
Perhaps their landing will be soft nevertheless, and all of the things that flew away will land nearby, ready to be gathered and put back together again. Maybe they will both walk away from the collision with the ground, when it does finally come to pass. But for now, the falling might as well be flying, it seems as ceaseless and as free.
Travelling in time, stories do not progress from beginning to middle and end. Now, however, they slowly flip through the chapters in a quite linear fashion, from tender, tentative preface, to grasping and clutching in a frantic tussle, and then to a slow but unbridled climax. The back pages are filled with shy, quiet murmurings and contented sighs as they lay together, tangled in clothes and making an index of sensations for future reference.
She feels the inertia of her heart lagging behind her body, as she shivers under a complex of stars that seem so close, she wants to dive upwards and swim in them. This fall will end some time and they both know that when it does, they will not see the ground until the moment of impact. This is certainly a very sensible reason to not jump in the first place, but sensibility can never compare to the tantalising surety of disaster. The falcon overtakes the hare, clouds break and the storm comes, and falling objects hit the ground.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen for soft-focus sex
Betas: jaradel and spikewriter , both of whom I owe a debt of gratitude for dealing with crazy me and this wee timorous beastie of a story.
Summary: On planet Earth, falling happens at 9.8 metres per second squared. It is the easiest thing in this world and in all the galaxies of the universe. No special skills are required. Rate of acceleration is constant and gravity does the rest.
A/N: Written for the time_and_chips Seasons Change ficathon. My season is, quite obviously, autumn. People who know anything about botany and/or physics and/or maple syrup, please please please ignore the blatant liberties I have taken with all of the above. Sometimes poetry wins over science.
Of course he sticks his fingers right in and brings them directly to his mouth, without any cautious preamble, not even a glance. This is a habit that Rose is fairly certain will get the Doctor in to serious trouble eventually. Perhaps even more trouble than he is normally in.
"It's all watery," she says, peering over the lip of the bucket, giving the side a tap and watching the ripples.
"That's how it comes out of the tree," the Doctor replies sagely, though the fact that he is still darting his tongue out to take little licks from the end of each finger serves to remove the edge off of his intended tone of authority. "It has to be boiled down before actually becoming syrup."
Rose wrinkles her nose, but pokes the tip of one finger in to the amber liquid, and gives it a good look-see before circumspectly tasting.
It isn't nearly as sweet as she is expecting. The sap tastes faintly of minerals, but it is not an altogether unpleasant experience and she licks the rest off with a slurp. The Doctor is already in to the bucket again for another taste, but her own hand darts out, grabs his by the wrist, and aims his dripping fingers directly at her own waiting mouth. It happens so fast that she can legitimately say that she is as surprised as he.
The look on his face in that moment can only be described as circular. Eyes and mouth all form perfect round O's, punctuated by eyebrows that disappear under his fringe. She notes however, that he is not resisting, and rather quickly his features fall back in to a mask of unconcerned curiosity.
She takes his long index finger in to her mouth and begins to suck the sap off, trying to avoid making too brazen of a show by involving any tongue, while he regards her over the rims of his glasses. The look in her eye, as she deals similarly with his middle finger, she hopes to pitch as playful innocence. What's a little finger-licking between friends?
As she draws his finger slowly out of her mouth, she takes note of every contour. His first knuckle is bony, a little knobby and rough, but the space between that and the second knuckle seems impossibly long and thin. She allows her tongue to lightly touch the whorls and lines of the print, and then closes her lips around the tip as the last bit of sweetness leaves her mouth. She licks her top lip, sliding her tongue over the lingering impression left by his manicured nail, before swallowing and giving a little smile.
When she releases his hand again, he lets it fall limply to his side.
"Delicious," she pronounces.
Perhaps eager for an excuse to break Rose's discomfiting glances, which do not appear to be innocent by any stretch of the imagination, he tilts his head up, squinting and examining the foliage. His now-laughing eyes crinkle around the edges, going a short way to betraying his great age.
Like a cartoon, he lurches forward and shimmies up the trunk of the sugar maple whose wares they have just been sampling. His trainers send little bits of bark raining down on to her head.
"Be careful!" she pointlessly admonishes, because that is partially her job, to tell him things that he doesn't need to know and will completely ignore. He smiles more broadly and begins to edge out on to a limb ten feet over her head.
"It's all right, trees quite fancy me," he sniffs.
He comes to a stop at the point right before where the limb he is standing on would naturally begin to bend and eventually snap under his weight.
"There now," he says softly, leaning precariously in to a tangle of smaller branches. "Look at you." Puckering up his lips and puffing out his cheeks, he blows and one perfectly crimson leaf makes a spiralling descent downwards. Rose opens her hands in front of her and it lands there gently.
About fifty additional less-perfect leaves immediately come tumbling down after, as the Doctor takes a bad step and catches himself on the limb above the one he is standing on. The sudden violent rustling and crackling of the foliage masks any curses he may have muttered, but he rights himself soon enough. Cat-like, he crouches down, takes the branch in his hands and hangs from it several feet off the ground before letting go and hitting the earth with a soft thud, his coat billowing behind him. He stands to his full height again and Rose is left looking back and forth between the Platonic ideal of an autumn leaf that she holds in her hands, and this impossible man, gurning and smacking the dirt off of his trouser legs.
~o0o~
It's not the beach she requested to take the chill off of their sojourn on Dame Kelly Holmes Close. In fact, this may be the diametrical opposite, but she has to hand it to the Doctor: the view is impressive. Perhaps not the conjunction of a binary star or the explosions of a gas cloud in the Horse Head Nebula, but likewise something she never thought she'd see back when she was just Rose Tyler, shop girl.
The rocky outcropping they are reclining on is comfortably covered with fallen leaves as the setting sun begins to withdraw the thermals from under the wings of the raptors which wheel and soar in the valley below.
"Mountains and rivers without end," sighs the Doctor contentedly, hands behind his head.
"Pardon?"
"Nothing. There's a painting, this reminds me of it." But rather than continuing to run his eyes over every vivid texture and colour in the landscape, he turns on to his side towards her. She does the same, and they lie inches apart. She wants to make a joke about the Green Mountains not really being all that green this time of year, but it doesn't exactly seem like the right time, not with the Doctor feeling all poetic and expansive.
"What are you thinking about?" she finally asks.
"I reckon, for me, the more apt question is what aren't I thinking about?" he says with a cheeky smirk that she half wants to smack right off of his face and half wants to explore the edges of with her own lips.
"All right then, what aren't you thinking about?"
"Well, I'm not thinking about elephants." He beetles his brow and looks genuinely consternated. "Bugger. Now I am."
"Doesn't this view make you feel all sort of...small, though?"
"Rose Tyler, if anything were to make me feel small, I would have found it long before now." She gives him a look and he screws up his face and looks mildly embarrassed. "Oh...that sounds arrogant, doesn't it? What I mean is, there will be a day when you'll not feel small either. And you're not. I'm not. No one is. If there's one thing I want for you, it's for you to not feel small."
A raptor screams in the valley and they raise themselves up on their elbows to look down over the cliff. As they watch, a falcon tucks her wings and falls in to a stoop. She becomes a dot, and then not even that, as she plunges to the valley floor. She sees what she wants and speeds towards it.
"Blimey," the Doctor says, laying back down again, unable to enjoy a moment without commenting on it. "Are you getting cold?"
Rose shakes her head, which is a lie, but if she owns up to the bout of shivers she's contending with, he'll insist they go back inside, maybe even leave completely, and she doesn't want that. She wants to fall as well.
Her hand comes up to rest on his cheek, which is rough and cool, even cooler than usual. He blinks and she sees questions in his eyes, for which there are no answers. She wants to tell him that this is so simple. He ventures his own hand to her waist and it fits there like every embrace they've ever shared has left a perfect imprint for him to find and slide in to. He lets his eyes darken and stay that way and in them she sees time and all possibilities. She denies them, every single one of them, and tumbles forward, down the rabbit hole, past the event horizon.
He makes the final backwards step as well, closes the last inch of distance between them, and there is free fall. The acceleration is overwhelming, the blackness below is terrible and alluring, the wind cries in her ears. She wants to take it all back, claw her way up again, but this falling is so easy. There is no choice in the matter. It is drowning, it is dying, it is being born, it just happens and they are both powerless.
There is an unfolding and an unmasking as things fall apart and away. He murmurs her name against her mouth, sucking and tasting the remnants of their sweet feast, unable to be quiet even now. The leaves crunch as they move together and the spicy, warm scent of decay is released.
He talks. Of course he talks. He names her and he names all the little parts of her that he touches. He names the sensations as if giving a tour of this new land. Over here, we have the nonsense words I will speak in my pleasure. Over there is the taste of how alive you are. And just here, the little shards that I become when we join. The echoes of his narrative amid the trees above and in the valley below fade in to the Doppler shift of rapid descent, a guidebook left behind and forgotten about.
Perhaps their landing will be soft nevertheless, and all of the things that flew away will land nearby, ready to be gathered and put back together again. Maybe they will both walk away from the collision with the ground, when it does finally come to pass. But for now, the falling might as well be flying, it seems as ceaseless and as free.
Travelling in time, stories do not progress from beginning to middle and end. Now, however, they slowly flip through the chapters in a quite linear fashion, from tender, tentative preface, to grasping and clutching in a frantic tussle, and then to a slow but unbridled climax. The back pages are filled with shy, quiet murmurings and contented sighs as they lay together, tangled in clothes and making an index of sensations for future reference.
She feels the inertia of her heart lagging behind her body, as she shivers under a complex of stars that seem so close, she wants to dive upwards and swim in them. This fall will end some time and they both know that when it does, they will not see the ground until the moment of impact. This is certainly a very sensible reason to not jump in the first place, but sensibility can never compare to the tantalising surety of disaster. The falcon overtakes the hare, clouds break and the storm comes, and falling objects hit the ground.