(no subject)
Beadazzled, Nine/Rose, ADULT
He was about to spontaneously combust and nothing in all the cosmos was going to save him.
4,967 words
A/N: Special thanks to seeing_history for chucking a pencil at me.
The Doctor had felt doomed before. Backed into corners, hairs-breadth from destructions, hanging on by his fingerprints, countdown in milliseconds, all that. He was used to it, really, it was practically a hobby of his.
Every evil thing in the Universe seemed to want a go at him, like he was the number one stop for their bus tours or something. They all acted like they would win the grand prize if their Cunning Trap™ happened to take him down with it. Again, he was used to it.
What he wasn’t used to, what he currently could not wrap his vast and extraordinarily gifted mind around was the fact that all the Cunning Traps™ in the Universe had absolutely nothing on a small bit of red cloth. Neither could he comprehend how, not once in the entire unabridged catalog of dooms he carried around in his skull, had this situation ever been mentioned.
He was about to spontaneously combust and nothing in all the cosmos was going to save him.
The bit of red cloth in question was, at least in theory, a dress. According to their hosts, the conspirators in this Devious Plot®, it was the appropriate sort of attire for a lady of quality at this particular gala affair. He had to concede that, in and of itself, the hypothetical dress in question bore a distinct resemblance to the other clothing of other ladies at the party. It covered no less than the other dresses, which wasn’t, unfortunately, saying anything. It was designed in a similar fashion to the other dresses, liberally covered in seed bead designs and held together (such as it was) only by long, delicate strands of bright glass beads.
However, they had wrapped this tiny excuse for a dress around his small blonde companion and the countdown timer to his self-destruction had lost several hours immediately.
The majority of the problem was, in the Doctor’s authoritative opinion, Rose’s own damn fault. She’d come stalking out of their room (ok, maybe that bit was his fault) and immediately started complaining - graphically.
“I’m not even sure I can hide knickers under this damn thing, there’s no way I can actually wear a bra.”
Fully half of his synapses had shorted out at that point and he found himself wondering idly if he should talk her out of the knickers just for fun.
“And god forbid one of the straps breaks, because if it does, the weight of the beadwork will pull this handkerchief right off me.”
He’d actually carried bigger handkerchiefs in his life before. Even did tricks with them. Maybe he could make this one disappear, too.
“I don’t even want to know what I’ll do if I get it wet.”
He’d wondered silently what she’d do if he got her wet.
“If we end up running for our lives, I’m gonna be naked, because this thing’s as flimsy as tissue paper.”
His brain had immediately started rooting around for reasons why they should run for their lives.
“And heaven only knows how I’m gonna get out of it without shredding it to ribbons.”
The image that evoked made him pull his leather jacket closed and check the belt. He’d still had to stuff his hands into his jeans pockets in self-defense.
“And they’re not even making you so much as change your jumper.”
That statement had given him something to get defensive about and saved him temporarily.
Now, however, they were at the party and Rose had just arrived and the countdown timer had started at an absurdly low figure. He was going to die, right here, right now, and he’d never heard of anyone regenerating from sexual frustration before. It would probably be terribly embarrassing.
Rose looked around the party and apparently the human senses included some sort of radar he’d never been warned about or encountered before. He knew this because he was hiding - no, just standing, by sheer, wild chance - he was standing behind a very large potted plant. She still spotted him and immediately made straight for him.
Doomed, doomed, doomed, he thought, morosely.
Perversely, because he was never anything if not slightly self-destructive, he was quite resentful when one of their hostesses stopped Rose mid-trek. Deciding to take advantage of the temporary reprieve, he closed his jacket again and looked around for something, anything, to distract his errant hormones.
They were errant, damn near aberrant, really. There was an entire room full of exposed human flesh, fully biologically compatible with his own physiology. Not one bit of it did anything for him. However, the sight of Rose’s bare, bead trimmed back as she chattered animatedly with Beaded Barbie™ and friends was doing things to his blood pressure that he hadn’t known was even possible with Time Lord physiology.
Rose was his companion, his friend, the comfort and solace against the silence in his mind. It couldn’t possibly be right or reasonable for him to want more, but he did, wanted it so badly he could practically taste her on the air. He wanted to shag her completely rotten.
If it stopped there, if it was purely a hormonal (if rather human) response to the first female to look at him with compassion since before the War, he could have worked out a way around it: bio-control, meditation, self-discipline. If all else failed, he could have taken a young blonde lover to sate the confused desires of the flesh. Fortunately for his self-respect, what little of it was left, and unfortunately for everything else, it went quite a bit deeper than that.
He’d fought it, hard and constant, but it had always been there, the odds stacked against him since the moment he took her hand. So what if he had centuries of Time Lord training and aeons of evolution for emotional detachment to back it up? She had formidable compassion in her heart, the well-spring of life in her eyes, the promise of forgiveness in her soul. She had been formed with an absolute arsenal of beauty, inside and out, and then to seal his fate, her smile, just for him, with her tongue peeking out through her slightly parted lips, was like lethe, offering forgetfulness of all his sins in the bestowed mercy of her kiss.
He knew he could never tell her. Everything he loved died, and he had no right to risk her like that. Humans had a solution to that, though, a silent communication that spoke truth when words could not. Gallifreyans hadn’t understood it since before life crawled out of the soup on her world, and all the same, he still wanted it.
He wanted to carry her away to some beautiful, uninhabited place and lay her down in grass and leather, watch her shine beneath a banner of stars. He wanted to let her set her feet in soil no human but her would ever touch, and kiss her breathless as they stood on that alien land. He wanted to tell her everything that was in his hearts for her in a way she couldn’t help but understand, take her into his arms and into his bed, and celebrate their togetherness by entwining their naked bodies. He wanted to taste the salt of her skin, smell her arousal, feel her tremble with want for him, hear her cry out for him, see her come undone beneath him (or above him, he wasn’t going to be fussy). He wanted to fill all his senses with Rose and desire and the burning heat of her delicate human flesh.
He wanted to lay her down and make love to her and no amount of common sense could convince his body to pretend otherwise. At least his mind was still mostly clear on the matter.
Most of the time.
And then they had to go and put her in this tiny, wretchedly lovely, exquisite torture of a dress. His mind was now rowing against the current with the torrential waterfall of his surrender looming imminent abandon.
The things he would do to her, given the slightest provocation. He tried to dash the visions from his mind’s eye, but they wouldn’t go. “I want you, Rose,” he would whisper in her ear. He would watch her shiver, smile as her body responded with wet heat to his suggestion.
“Want you, too,” she might say, or just, “Please,” or, “Doctor, look at this.”
He blinked. That didn’t make sense for a fantasy, did it?
“Doctor, are you all right?”
With a start, he came back to the here and now, looking down into jewel-bright eyes that considered him with tender concern. Her hand reached for his face and he caught it. “What?” he said gruffly, hiding his abject humiliation (he was supposed to be her friend, damn him) in a more reasonable annoyance.
Rose dropped her hand, briefly stung, before she summoned annoyance to match his own. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your lofty contemplations. Just, there’s this party, yeah, an’ you’re the one who wanted to come here.”
Actually, he hadn’t. They were in entirely the wrong galaxy for the party he’d had in mind, which definitely would have resulted in less skin exposure for Rose. However, when the natives of Tapis had discovered they had visitors (before the Doctor had realized he was in the wrong place), they'd extended a delighted invitation for their guests to stay. The travelers had even received presents, because it was custom here to welcome visitors with gifts of beads.
Rose had been impressed and delighted. She might have stayed that way, too, if they hadn’t put her in that dress.
He could be nicer, though, not chase her away so surely. She didn't have any idea what was going on in his head, after all. It was hardly her fault that her best friend was turning to a right randy bastard in his old age. “Sorry Rose, I was distracted,” he apologized vaguely.
“Yeah, you looked it,” Rose said with a small, considering smile. “What happened, you discover the answer to some maths problem no one can solve or something?”
He chuckled. “What makes you say that?”
Rose shook her head. “You were smiling all happy and everything. Looked kinda dreamy, really.”
“Ah,” he said, the only thing that came to mind. He probably had been; thoughts of her always made him smile. He shoved that away before he could wander off on another little fantasy ramble. “What did you want to show me?”
“Just this bead bracelet,” she said, holding up her wrist. “Tarra Pinarra gave it to me, isn’t it pretty?”
It was, he had to agree. The bead was strung on a simple cord so as not to distract from its beauty. It was clear glass, and looked like it had a tiny galaxy captured inside it, glitter like a billion tiny lights flashing with Rose's slightest movement. He wondered idly if it was one of the pieces they called Onesti, and realized it was because the color was shifting - to reveal the wearer's emotions - as he watched it. He probably could remember what the gold-strewn crimson the bead was slowly acquiring meant, if he wasn’t too busy trying to ignore his body’s response to Rose's proximity. “It’s lovely,” he said and, although that applied to the bracelet, it wasn’t what he meant.
Rose looked up into his eyes and the Doctor looked down into hers, unable to break their gazes. Any second now and she was going to end up stuck between a wall and a hard place. He couldn’t breathe for inhaling the fragrance of her on the air. She licked her lip, started nibbling at it.
He was going to haul her back to their room and do absolutely unspeakable things to her. He was going to paint his name on every inch of her skin with his hands and then his lips. He was going to have her screaming for her Doctor before he watched her come undone. He was going to…
…get rescued by shrill laughter and the sound of tinkling glass just past the plant that hid them. Eye contact broke. They both blinked, and then Rose muttered a quick, “sorry,” before darting off.
Maybe he would make it one more night after all. The Doctor adjusted the fit of his jeans carefully and then stepped out to join the party.
*
How could one small blonde human being find so many different ways to wander off in one lifetime? The party had been winding down for an hour now, but the Doctor hadn’t laid eyes on Rose since their conversation after her arrival. He’d caught quick glimpses of her in passing, but she’d always vanished before he could approach her. He’d almost be willing to think she was hiding from him as much as he was hiding from her. (Wait… he wasn't hiding, he was… oh, the hell with it.)
"A psychic howl of pure, deep loneliness."
The Doctor stepped close to this conversation before he realized it might be private (or about him?) but the sympathetic tone in Tarra Pinarra's voice as she confided this information to her mate, Yarra, convinced him it was safe enough to approach.
"Tragic," Yarra said softly, her pale green eyes overly bright, even for the glitter of their celebration. "Are you going to do… Hello, Doctor."
The Doctor smiled and gave each woman the local half-bow of respect. Yarra didn't bother replying with it, simply touched the back of his hand with the back of hers, a greeting to casual friends. Tarra hugged, so he stayed well back from her. (They were telepathic, here.)
"Doctor!" Tarra exclaimed, her rich, impressive tones and glittering smile reminding the Doctor exactly why she was a celebrity on six planets in this day and age. Her smile actually had more sparkle than her heavily beaded silk dress, which was saying something. "We've been looking for Rose, but she's simply vanished…"
"Was about to ask you the same thing," the Doctor admitted, frowning as he looked around the room for any glimpse of shining, laughing blonde.
"We were just talking about her," Yarra confided cheerfully. "She's so adorably delicious, and…"
Tarra laughed gleefully, even as the Doctor tried to force himself not to glare at the beautiful woman. It wasn't fair; couldn't she at least stick to pretty boys?
"Down, girl," Tarra teased, then turned her attention back to the Time Lord. "I gave her a guide to her new jewelry, and she said she was going to put it in your room, last I saw her. The problem, you see, is that I found her Onesti. I think she must have dropped it while we were dancing. Could you return it to her?"
The woman held out the Onesti bracelet, sparkling a soft muted gray in the twinkling lights of the ballroom around them. He didn't know if the bracelet had already identified to Rose, or if it was simply that Tarra had no special mood at the moment. He accepted the jewelry, and the galaxy of light within it sparked brightly, swirled and ebbed, and tinted itself sharply, darkly green.
"Guess I'll try our room," he said. "She's not the sort to desert a party, really, but…"
"Oh, please don't worry about us," Yarra said. "We'll give your regards to Lillo for the night… if we can find him."
"I was very impressed with how Rose handled him, actually," said Tarra. "Funniest thing you ever saw, Doctor, telling him he was allergic to her. Well, but he does act all fussy about everything!"
The Doctor grinned. "She's brilliant," he said, fond and proud. "'Night ladies."
"Goodnight, Doctor!"
He didn't notice the bead in the center of the bracelet he held swirling and pulsing with a river of shining crimson. Neither did he notice the two behind him tossing each other merry salutes. He just went to find his Rose, telling himself firmly it was just to make sure she didn't need anything.
*
The Doctor shoved open the door of their suite, and the intended phrase of, “Rose, are you in here?” died on his lips. He might actually have died himself. His hearts stopped, both of them, then exploded into motion so rapid they could win at Dover Downs. His brained narrowed to one point: “Give up,” and went into shut down mode, allowing his blood flow to be redirected due south. His jeans were abruptly too tight. He tried to say something, anything, but the sound that came out of him was, at best, incoherent.
Rose was on her hands and knees, looking under the bed. The Doctor had absolutely no idea what she was looking for and couldn’t find it in him to care. He could see her knickers quite clearly and that was much more important. Her solution to her earlier mentioned revealing dress problem had been to wear a tiny confection of shiny red lace that exactly matched the dress.
The Doctor nailed himself to the ground, metaphorically speaking, and forced himself not to move as Rose turned her head to look at him, worry in her eyes, her expression quite frantic. The worry in Rose’s eyes was replaced by something he couldn’t understand the moment she caught sight of his expression. “Doctor?” she murmured.
He knew five billion languages, but not one of them was available at the moment. If he opened his mouth, the only thing likely to come out of it would be a few very, very filthy Gallifreyan words, assuming his jaw didn’t just fall open and stay that way.
“See something you like?” Rose asked in a bright, teasing tone.
“Yes,” was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Oh,” was all she said. Well, not so much said as just a startled noise that escaped her pretty mouth. She didn’t seem to plan to do anything about it, not even cover her knickers. She just knelt there, looking stunned and stunning.
“What are you doing?” the Doctor asked, when it finally occurred to him that maybe he ought to do something other than stare at his friend (friend!) like an adolescent ape.
Something flashed briefly in her eyes and she turned away from him, putting her head down on her hands. “Looking for my bracelet. I dropped it somewhere…” She trailed off, then tilted her head and went back to her looking, her hips rocking gently every so often when she reached under the bed. She was completely ignoring him.
The Doctor couldn’t tear his eyes away, not even in the face of her dismissal. Didn’t she have any idea what was going through his head right now, the turmoil of thought and ideas rampaging through him? Didn’t she know how exposed she was, how vulnerable?
“What are you doing?” she suddenly demanded, turning her head again to glower over her shoulder at him.
Trying very, very hard to control the impulse to throw myself at you, he thought. “I…” Rose looked away from him again, her whole body shifted, and he remembered. "I've got your bracelet here."
The lights within it were incredibly white, a vivid blue that was so bright, the bead shone like a tiny star in his hand. Rose blinked at it, and the Doctor blinked at her, and the blue-white shot through with pink and red in rapid succession. "That's in the book, I think," Rose said softly. Rather than get up, turn around, do anything sensible at all, she rocked back on her heels, and snatched a tiny book from the edge of the bed. "Yeah, says that bright blue is desire." She still didn't get up, and now the Doctor's hands were starting to itch with how much they just wanted - needed - to touch her. "Says the brighter the color, the more intense the desire."
Still over her shoulder, Rose gave a pointed look to the radiant little bracelet, and then up to meet his eyes. "Good color choice," she decided. She grinned at him, tongue poking out through her teeth. "You got someone in mind?" Her eyes traced his body, lingering here, here, and particularly there, and the Doctor started to feel quite objectified. It was fantastic.
He couldn't stop staring, imagining every single thing he could do with her, with that scrap of silk and beadwork she was wearing, with those pretty knickers she was showing to him again as she dropped back to all fours. In absolute fascination, the Doctor watched as she reached around (oh the wonders of gymnastics flexibility) and took off her shoe. He dropped the bracelet and didn't even notice where it fell on the thick, luxuriant carpeting.
Incredulously, he demanded, “Rose Tyler, are you tryin’ to provoke me?”
“All the time, Doctor,” she replied saucily, “all the time.” Her voice dropped low and husky, inviting and compelling. “Is it working?” Her tongue was back in her teeth.
Fuckit.
The Doctor shed his coat, strode across the room, and dropped to his knees behind her, large hands splayed on her rounded hips. “It’s working,” he agreed, and pulled her back against him, grinding his hips into her bum.
Despite everything, the Doctor still expected her to pull away from him, was unable to escape the fear that all she was doing was letting a game get out of hand. To his absolute surprise, enormous relief, and utter doom, all she did was sink back into him, shifting her backside against the hardness she couldn’t help but feel.
“That’s more like it,” Rose said, and her voice was throaty, almost a growl.
The Doctor tugged her up where he could reach her, where he could kiss her like she needed to be kissed, like her lips had been begging him to kiss her for as long as he had known her. She relaxed back into the kiss, all hot and languid in his arms as his hands found their way up to cupping sensual weight of her small, pert breasts. He'd been right before in his guess that she hadn't found a way to hide a bra under the dress. Her breasts had been there, all night, natural and beautiful, and only separated from him by a very thin layer of decorated silk.
"Want you so much," Rose murmured against his lips. Touching him was tricky in this position, but she managed it, and he could touch every part of her he had ever wanted.
She seemed to like that, whispering soft encouragements, gentle pleas as he found his way under the dress, pushing it up out of his way and off over her head. She smelled like moonlit rain, and the taste of her skin as he trailed his kisses away from her mouth, down her neck, across her now bare shoulders, set all his senses to tingling fire. He pulled his jumper off because she tugged at it, sucked a mark onto her shoulder because of the sounds she made and the way she moved while he was doing it.
Everything about this was for her, because he wanted her to be happy, but it was for him, too, because she was a dream he'd had far too many lonely, waking nights. He wondered if he shouldn't slow this down, talk about it a little, at least. There were reasons - an entire Wagnerian opera full of reasons why they couldn't do this…
And then, she bucked back into him with a desperate sounding, "now, Doctor". Then, he was kissing her again, unbuttoning his jeans, pushing the crotch of her tiny knickers to the side, sliding into her, and it was all over. He didn't know what he'd been thinking, all this time, why he had ever imagined they couldn't do this, since here he was, rocking so very gently into her tight, wet heat, and they very obviously could do this, and it was fantastic.
She was the hottest warmth he had ever felt, gasping as she felt him enter her, slipping her legs further apart to let him deeper inside. It was bliss like even he could never have imagined, Rose's body rising against him, his chest pressed tight to her back, both of his hands full of her perfectly shaped breasts. The Doctor lost himself in the rhythm they'd built between them, in the slick friction of thrusting into her again and again and again, in the noises of bodies sliding together, of lovers demanding everything of each other. In and out, stroke and groan and tight and slide. So very good.
"Rose," he whispered, gliding deep. He groaned as he pulled out. "My Rose." Filling her up, feeling the quiver of her muscles around him, the catch of anticipation in her breath, it nearly broke him. "So long," he admitted. The feel as she pushed against him, as if trying to get more of him inside her, he knew she was as close as he was. "Wanted you." Slide in, pull out, it made him grunt and shake as she whimpered and answered him in the same barely comprehensible language. "Need you."
"Doctor!"
God, she was gorgeous. Who called himself a genius who waited this fucking long for something like this? Their rhythm was faltering, sloppy, she was getting tired and frantic at once, her breath catching in little sobs, and he could feel her need as surely as his own. His right hand drifted reluctantly down from her breast to cup her. He slipped a finger down, between the hot slick folds that glided like kissing silk along the length of his cock. There was no hunting for her clitoris, the little bud swollen and raised in the throes of their passion.
Next time they did this, like this, he wanted a mirror so he could see every bit of it, and her. First, he would see the look on her face as he pushed into her, deep like this, as she called him god and scrabbled at his thighs with her nails. Then, he would stroke her clit, just like this, pressing it against his cock as he pulled out of her. After that, a complete circle or two, while she told him exactly how she liked it. And then, thrust back into her, deep and hard enough to almost knock her over.
He pounded into her for a few very quick strokes, and then Rose was coming around him, he could feel it, every single quiver and tug and pulse of it, squeezing him, pulling him, dragging him, flinging him over the precipice of his own orgasm. Bliss was all there was, ecstasy as the want that had been so tight within him finally burst open, shock after shock, as he shuddered and juddered and pressed deep into the blaze of Rose Tyler.
*
They were sprawled on the carpet, but more on each other, really. The Doctor kept staring at the ceiling, wondering if they were going to be awkward or weird with each other, if she was as happy as he was, if she could possibly have thought this was a mistake. All the same, he almost wanted to go find himself-of-a-few-hours-ago and knock the idiot over the head for even thinking of not doing this.
If he lived another nine hundred years, the Doctor was sure he would never experience anything more wonderful than the first time with Rose Tyler.
Rose would probably go to sleep, the Doctor realized. At least that way, he'd have a chance to make sure she'd not hurt her knees on the carpet. The very second he said this, however, Rose gave a quiet little giggle. "Wonder what the bed's like," she said gleefully.
The Doctor laughed, in joy and in relief. "No idea, obviously," he said playfully. Rose laughed right along with him.
"How're your knees?" he wondered.
"Fine," Rose said. "Fancy alien carpet, I guess. Got rug burn from playing footie in the band room at school, once. Wasn't pretty."
"You're gonna have to tell me about that," the Doctor decided. Rose was an amazing girl who'd been having mad adventures long before she met him.
She shrugged. "If you like." She held her hand up and the Onesti bracelet was dangling from her fist. "Love this thing," she said.
"Tiny microbes inside the glass," the Doctor explained. "They've no sentience, just a vague sense of emotion in most species, which they translate into color changes. Their planet's full of telepathic creatures that eat their host silica."
Rose chuckled. "Good to know I didn't completely break your brain."
"Oi!" the Doctor protested, feigning hurt when he was really charmed to pieces.
"Well, if you can still lecture me, after a shag like that…"
"So you're finally impressed!" he exclaimed.
Rose tried - he could tell she tried - to feign indifference. But then, he leaned over and kissed her shoulder over the mark he'd put there. Her eyes went dreamy and she admitted, "Oh, yeah!" The Doctor grinned and poked her in the side, and she squealed, and the next thing he knew, they were wrestling like a couple of toddlers on the floor.
The Onesti, gleaming red and gold, with streaks of palest blue, sparkled next to their heads like a tiny star, no farther from one than the other. If either of them had cared to look it up - or needed to, actually - they would have learned that red was the color of love.
The Doctor was too busy learning that there was too something more fantastic than the first time with Rose Tyler: the next time. Rose was too busy teaching him.
And, elsewhere on Tapis, a celebrity couple was very busy congratulating themselves on a plot well accomplished.
He was about to spontaneously combust and nothing in all the cosmos was going to save him.
4,967 words
A/N: Special thanks to seeing_history for chucking a pencil at me.
The Doctor had felt doomed before. Backed into corners, hairs-breadth from destructions, hanging on by his fingerprints, countdown in milliseconds, all that. He was used to it, really, it was practically a hobby of his.
Every evil thing in the Universe seemed to want a go at him, like he was the number one stop for their bus tours or something. They all acted like they would win the grand prize if their Cunning Trap™ happened to take him down with it. Again, he was used to it.
What he wasn’t used to, what he currently could not wrap his vast and extraordinarily gifted mind around was the fact that all the Cunning Traps™ in the Universe had absolutely nothing on a small bit of red cloth. Neither could he comprehend how, not once in the entire unabridged catalog of dooms he carried around in his skull, had this situation ever been mentioned.
He was about to spontaneously combust and nothing in all the cosmos was going to save him.
The bit of red cloth in question was, at least in theory, a dress. According to their hosts, the conspirators in this Devious Plot®, it was the appropriate sort of attire for a lady of quality at this particular gala affair. He had to concede that, in and of itself, the hypothetical dress in question bore a distinct resemblance to the other clothing of other ladies at the party. It covered no less than the other dresses, which wasn’t, unfortunately, saying anything. It was designed in a similar fashion to the other dresses, liberally covered in seed bead designs and held together (such as it was) only by long, delicate strands of bright glass beads.
However, they had wrapped this tiny excuse for a dress around his small blonde companion and the countdown timer to his self-destruction had lost several hours immediately.
The majority of the problem was, in the Doctor’s authoritative opinion, Rose’s own damn fault. She’d come stalking out of their room (ok, maybe that bit was his fault) and immediately started complaining - graphically.
“I’m not even sure I can hide knickers under this damn thing, there’s no way I can actually wear a bra.”
Fully half of his synapses had shorted out at that point and he found himself wondering idly if he should talk her out of the knickers just for fun.
“And god forbid one of the straps breaks, because if it does, the weight of the beadwork will pull this handkerchief right off me.”
He’d actually carried bigger handkerchiefs in his life before. Even did tricks with them. Maybe he could make this one disappear, too.
“I don’t even want to know what I’ll do if I get it wet.”
He’d wondered silently what she’d do if he got her wet.
“If we end up running for our lives, I’m gonna be naked, because this thing’s as flimsy as tissue paper.”
His brain had immediately started rooting around for reasons why they should run for their lives.
“And heaven only knows how I’m gonna get out of it without shredding it to ribbons.”
The image that evoked made him pull his leather jacket closed and check the belt. He’d still had to stuff his hands into his jeans pockets in self-defense.
“And they’re not even making you so much as change your jumper.”
That statement had given him something to get defensive about and saved him temporarily.
Now, however, they were at the party and Rose had just arrived and the countdown timer had started at an absurdly low figure. He was going to die, right here, right now, and he’d never heard of anyone regenerating from sexual frustration before. It would probably be terribly embarrassing.
Rose looked around the party and apparently the human senses included some sort of radar he’d never been warned about or encountered before. He knew this because he was hiding - no, just standing, by sheer, wild chance - he was standing behind a very large potted plant. She still spotted him and immediately made straight for him.
Doomed, doomed, doomed, he thought, morosely.
Perversely, because he was never anything if not slightly self-destructive, he was quite resentful when one of their hostesses stopped Rose mid-trek. Deciding to take advantage of the temporary reprieve, he closed his jacket again and looked around for something, anything, to distract his errant hormones.
They were errant, damn near aberrant, really. There was an entire room full of exposed human flesh, fully biologically compatible with his own physiology. Not one bit of it did anything for him. However, the sight of Rose’s bare, bead trimmed back as she chattered animatedly with Beaded Barbie™ and friends was doing things to his blood pressure that he hadn’t known was even possible with Time Lord physiology.
Rose was his companion, his friend, the comfort and solace against the silence in his mind. It couldn’t possibly be right or reasonable for him to want more, but he did, wanted it so badly he could practically taste her on the air. He wanted to shag her completely rotten.
If it stopped there, if it was purely a hormonal (if rather human) response to the first female to look at him with compassion since before the War, he could have worked out a way around it: bio-control, meditation, self-discipline. If all else failed, he could have taken a young blonde lover to sate the confused desires of the flesh. Fortunately for his self-respect, what little of it was left, and unfortunately for everything else, it went quite a bit deeper than that.
He’d fought it, hard and constant, but it had always been there, the odds stacked against him since the moment he took her hand. So what if he had centuries of Time Lord training and aeons of evolution for emotional detachment to back it up? She had formidable compassion in her heart, the well-spring of life in her eyes, the promise of forgiveness in her soul. She had been formed with an absolute arsenal of beauty, inside and out, and then to seal his fate, her smile, just for him, with her tongue peeking out through her slightly parted lips, was like lethe, offering forgetfulness of all his sins in the bestowed mercy of her kiss.
He knew he could never tell her. Everything he loved died, and he had no right to risk her like that. Humans had a solution to that, though, a silent communication that spoke truth when words could not. Gallifreyans hadn’t understood it since before life crawled out of the soup on her world, and all the same, he still wanted it.
He wanted to carry her away to some beautiful, uninhabited place and lay her down in grass and leather, watch her shine beneath a banner of stars. He wanted to let her set her feet in soil no human but her would ever touch, and kiss her breathless as they stood on that alien land. He wanted to tell her everything that was in his hearts for her in a way she couldn’t help but understand, take her into his arms and into his bed, and celebrate their togetherness by entwining their naked bodies. He wanted to taste the salt of her skin, smell her arousal, feel her tremble with want for him, hear her cry out for him, see her come undone beneath him (or above him, he wasn’t going to be fussy). He wanted to fill all his senses with Rose and desire and the burning heat of her delicate human flesh.
He wanted to lay her down and make love to her and no amount of common sense could convince his body to pretend otherwise. At least his mind was still mostly clear on the matter.
Most of the time.
And then they had to go and put her in this tiny, wretchedly lovely, exquisite torture of a dress. His mind was now rowing against the current with the torrential waterfall of his surrender looming imminent abandon.
The things he would do to her, given the slightest provocation. He tried to dash the visions from his mind’s eye, but they wouldn’t go. “I want you, Rose,” he would whisper in her ear. He would watch her shiver, smile as her body responded with wet heat to his suggestion.
“Want you, too,” she might say, or just, “Please,” or, “Doctor, look at this.”
He blinked. That didn’t make sense for a fantasy, did it?
“Doctor, are you all right?”
With a start, he came back to the here and now, looking down into jewel-bright eyes that considered him with tender concern. Her hand reached for his face and he caught it. “What?” he said gruffly, hiding his abject humiliation (he was supposed to be her friend, damn him) in a more reasonable annoyance.
Rose dropped her hand, briefly stung, before she summoned annoyance to match his own. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt your lofty contemplations. Just, there’s this party, yeah, an’ you’re the one who wanted to come here.”
Actually, he hadn’t. They were in entirely the wrong galaxy for the party he’d had in mind, which definitely would have resulted in less skin exposure for Rose. However, when the natives of Tapis had discovered they had visitors (before the Doctor had realized he was in the wrong place), they'd extended a delighted invitation for their guests to stay. The travelers had even received presents, because it was custom here to welcome visitors with gifts of beads.
Rose had been impressed and delighted. She might have stayed that way, too, if they hadn’t put her in that dress.
He could be nicer, though, not chase her away so surely. She didn't have any idea what was going on in his head, after all. It was hardly her fault that her best friend was turning to a right randy bastard in his old age. “Sorry Rose, I was distracted,” he apologized vaguely.
“Yeah, you looked it,” Rose said with a small, considering smile. “What happened, you discover the answer to some maths problem no one can solve or something?”
He chuckled. “What makes you say that?”
Rose shook her head. “You were smiling all happy and everything. Looked kinda dreamy, really.”
“Ah,” he said, the only thing that came to mind. He probably had been; thoughts of her always made him smile. He shoved that away before he could wander off on another little fantasy ramble. “What did you want to show me?”
“Just this bead bracelet,” she said, holding up her wrist. “Tarra Pinarra gave it to me, isn’t it pretty?”
It was, he had to agree. The bead was strung on a simple cord so as not to distract from its beauty. It was clear glass, and looked like it had a tiny galaxy captured inside it, glitter like a billion tiny lights flashing with Rose's slightest movement. He wondered idly if it was one of the pieces they called Onesti, and realized it was because the color was shifting - to reveal the wearer's emotions - as he watched it. He probably could remember what the gold-strewn crimson the bead was slowly acquiring meant, if he wasn’t too busy trying to ignore his body’s response to Rose's proximity. “It’s lovely,” he said and, although that applied to the bracelet, it wasn’t what he meant.
Rose looked up into his eyes and the Doctor looked down into hers, unable to break their gazes. Any second now and she was going to end up stuck between a wall and a hard place. He couldn’t breathe for inhaling the fragrance of her on the air. She licked her lip, started nibbling at it.
He was going to haul her back to their room and do absolutely unspeakable things to her. He was going to paint his name on every inch of her skin with his hands and then his lips. He was going to have her screaming for her Doctor before he watched her come undone. He was going to…
…get rescued by shrill laughter and the sound of tinkling glass just past the plant that hid them. Eye contact broke. They both blinked, and then Rose muttered a quick, “sorry,” before darting off.
Maybe he would make it one more night after all. The Doctor adjusted the fit of his jeans carefully and then stepped out to join the party.
*
How could one small blonde human being find so many different ways to wander off in one lifetime? The party had been winding down for an hour now, but the Doctor hadn’t laid eyes on Rose since their conversation after her arrival. He’d caught quick glimpses of her in passing, but she’d always vanished before he could approach her. He’d almost be willing to think she was hiding from him as much as he was hiding from her. (Wait… he wasn't hiding, he was… oh, the hell with it.)
"A psychic howl of pure, deep loneliness."
The Doctor stepped close to this conversation before he realized it might be private (or about him?) but the sympathetic tone in Tarra Pinarra's voice as she confided this information to her mate, Yarra, convinced him it was safe enough to approach.
"Tragic," Yarra said softly, her pale green eyes overly bright, even for the glitter of their celebration. "Are you going to do… Hello, Doctor."
The Doctor smiled and gave each woman the local half-bow of respect. Yarra didn't bother replying with it, simply touched the back of his hand with the back of hers, a greeting to casual friends. Tarra hugged, so he stayed well back from her. (They were telepathic, here.)
"Doctor!" Tarra exclaimed, her rich, impressive tones and glittering smile reminding the Doctor exactly why she was a celebrity on six planets in this day and age. Her smile actually had more sparkle than her heavily beaded silk dress, which was saying something. "We've been looking for Rose, but she's simply vanished…"
"Was about to ask you the same thing," the Doctor admitted, frowning as he looked around the room for any glimpse of shining, laughing blonde.
"We were just talking about her," Yarra confided cheerfully. "She's so adorably delicious, and…"
Tarra laughed gleefully, even as the Doctor tried to force himself not to glare at the beautiful woman. It wasn't fair; couldn't she at least stick to pretty boys?
"Down, girl," Tarra teased, then turned her attention back to the Time Lord. "I gave her a guide to her new jewelry, and she said she was going to put it in your room, last I saw her. The problem, you see, is that I found her Onesti. I think she must have dropped it while we were dancing. Could you return it to her?"
The woman held out the Onesti bracelet, sparkling a soft muted gray in the twinkling lights of the ballroom around them. He didn't know if the bracelet had already identified to Rose, or if it was simply that Tarra had no special mood at the moment. He accepted the jewelry, and the galaxy of light within it sparked brightly, swirled and ebbed, and tinted itself sharply, darkly green.
"Guess I'll try our room," he said. "She's not the sort to desert a party, really, but…"
"Oh, please don't worry about us," Yarra said. "We'll give your regards to Lillo for the night… if we can find him."
"I was very impressed with how Rose handled him, actually," said Tarra. "Funniest thing you ever saw, Doctor, telling him he was allergic to her. Well, but he does act all fussy about everything!"
The Doctor grinned. "She's brilliant," he said, fond and proud. "'Night ladies."
"Goodnight, Doctor!"
He didn't notice the bead in the center of the bracelet he held swirling and pulsing with a river of shining crimson. Neither did he notice the two behind him tossing each other merry salutes. He just went to find his Rose, telling himself firmly it was just to make sure she didn't need anything.
*
The Doctor shoved open the door of their suite, and the intended phrase of, “Rose, are you in here?” died on his lips. He might actually have died himself. His hearts stopped, both of them, then exploded into motion so rapid they could win at Dover Downs. His brained narrowed to one point: “Give up,” and went into shut down mode, allowing his blood flow to be redirected due south. His jeans were abruptly too tight. He tried to say something, anything, but the sound that came out of him was, at best, incoherent.
Rose was on her hands and knees, looking under the bed. The Doctor had absolutely no idea what she was looking for and couldn’t find it in him to care. He could see her knickers quite clearly and that was much more important. Her solution to her earlier mentioned revealing dress problem had been to wear a tiny confection of shiny red lace that exactly matched the dress.
The Doctor nailed himself to the ground, metaphorically speaking, and forced himself not to move as Rose turned her head to look at him, worry in her eyes, her expression quite frantic. The worry in Rose’s eyes was replaced by something he couldn’t understand the moment she caught sight of his expression. “Doctor?” she murmured.
He knew five billion languages, but not one of them was available at the moment. If he opened his mouth, the only thing likely to come out of it would be a few very, very filthy Gallifreyan words, assuming his jaw didn’t just fall open and stay that way.
“See something you like?” Rose asked in a bright, teasing tone.
“Yes,” was out of his mouth before he could stop it.
“Oh,” was all she said. Well, not so much said as just a startled noise that escaped her pretty mouth. She didn’t seem to plan to do anything about it, not even cover her knickers. She just knelt there, looking stunned and stunning.
“What are you doing?” the Doctor asked, when it finally occurred to him that maybe he ought to do something other than stare at his friend (friend!) like an adolescent ape.
Something flashed briefly in her eyes and she turned away from him, putting her head down on her hands. “Looking for my bracelet. I dropped it somewhere…” She trailed off, then tilted her head and went back to her looking, her hips rocking gently every so often when she reached under the bed. She was completely ignoring him.
The Doctor couldn’t tear his eyes away, not even in the face of her dismissal. Didn’t she have any idea what was going through his head right now, the turmoil of thought and ideas rampaging through him? Didn’t she know how exposed she was, how vulnerable?
“What are you doing?” she suddenly demanded, turning her head again to glower over her shoulder at him.
Trying very, very hard to control the impulse to throw myself at you, he thought. “I…” Rose looked away from him again, her whole body shifted, and he remembered. "I've got your bracelet here."
The lights within it were incredibly white, a vivid blue that was so bright, the bead shone like a tiny star in his hand. Rose blinked at it, and the Doctor blinked at her, and the blue-white shot through with pink and red in rapid succession. "That's in the book, I think," Rose said softly. Rather than get up, turn around, do anything sensible at all, she rocked back on her heels, and snatched a tiny book from the edge of the bed. "Yeah, says that bright blue is desire." She still didn't get up, and now the Doctor's hands were starting to itch with how much they just wanted - needed - to touch her. "Says the brighter the color, the more intense the desire."
Still over her shoulder, Rose gave a pointed look to the radiant little bracelet, and then up to meet his eyes. "Good color choice," she decided. She grinned at him, tongue poking out through her teeth. "You got someone in mind?" Her eyes traced his body, lingering here, here, and particularly there, and the Doctor started to feel quite objectified. It was fantastic.
He couldn't stop staring, imagining every single thing he could do with her, with that scrap of silk and beadwork she was wearing, with those pretty knickers she was showing to him again as she dropped back to all fours. In absolute fascination, the Doctor watched as she reached around (oh the wonders of gymnastics flexibility) and took off her shoe. He dropped the bracelet and didn't even notice where it fell on the thick, luxuriant carpeting.
Incredulously, he demanded, “Rose Tyler, are you tryin’ to provoke me?”
“All the time, Doctor,” she replied saucily, “all the time.” Her voice dropped low and husky, inviting and compelling. “Is it working?” Her tongue was back in her teeth.
Fuckit.
The Doctor shed his coat, strode across the room, and dropped to his knees behind her, large hands splayed on her rounded hips. “It’s working,” he agreed, and pulled her back against him, grinding his hips into her bum.
Despite everything, the Doctor still expected her to pull away from him, was unable to escape the fear that all she was doing was letting a game get out of hand. To his absolute surprise, enormous relief, and utter doom, all she did was sink back into him, shifting her backside against the hardness she couldn’t help but feel.
“That’s more like it,” Rose said, and her voice was throaty, almost a growl.
The Doctor tugged her up where he could reach her, where he could kiss her like she needed to be kissed, like her lips had been begging him to kiss her for as long as he had known her. She relaxed back into the kiss, all hot and languid in his arms as his hands found their way up to cupping sensual weight of her small, pert breasts. He'd been right before in his guess that she hadn't found a way to hide a bra under the dress. Her breasts had been there, all night, natural and beautiful, and only separated from him by a very thin layer of decorated silk.
"Want you so much," Rose murmured against his lips. Touching him was tricky in this position, but she managed it, and he could touch every part of her he had ever wanted.
She seemed to like that, whispering soft encouragements, gentle pleas as he found his way under the dress, pushing it up out of his way and off over her head. She smelled like moonlit rain, and the taste of her skin as he trailed his kisses away from her mouth, down her neck, across her now bare shoulders, set all his senses to tingling fire. He pulled his jumper off because she tugged at it, sucked a mark onto her shoulder because of the sounds she made and the way she moved while he was doing it.
Everything about this was for her, because he wanted her to be happy, but it was for him, too, because she was a dream he'd had far too many lonely, waking nights. He wondered if he shouldn't slow this down, talk about it a little, at least. There were reasons - an entire Wagnerian opera full of reasons why they couldn't do this…
And then, she bucked back into him with a desperate sounding, "now, Doctor". Then, he was kissing her again, unbuttoning his jeans, pushing the crotch of her tiny knickers to the side, sliding into her, and it was all over. He didn't know what he'd been thinking, all this time, why he had ever imagined they couldn't do this, since here he was, rocking so very gently into her tight, wet heat, and they very obviously could do this, and it was fantastic.
She was the hottest warmth he had ever felt, gasping as she felt him enter her, slipping her legs further apart to let him deeper inside. It was bliss like even he could never have imagined, Rose's body rising against him, his chest pressed tight to her back, both of his hands full of her perfectly shaped breasts. The Doctor lost himself in the rhythm they'd built between them, in the slick friction of thrusting into her again and again and again, in the noises of bodies sliding together, of lovers demanding everything of each other. In and out, stroke and groan and tight and slide. So very good.
"Rose," he whispered, gliding deep. He groaned as he pulled out. "My Rose." Filling her up, feeling the quiver of her muscles around him, the catch of anticipation in her breath, it nearly broke him. "So long," he admitted. The feel as she pushed against him, as if trying to get more of him inside her, he knew she was as close as he was. "Wanted you." Slide in, pull out, it made him grunt and shake as she whimpered and answered him in the same barely comprehensible language. "Need you."
"Doctor!"
God, she was gorgeous. Who called himself a genius who waited this fucking long for something like this? Their rhythm was faltering, sloppy, she was getting tired and frantic at once, her breath catching in little sobs, and he could feel her need as surely as his own. His right hand drifted reluctantly down from her breast to cup her. He slipped a finger down, between the hot slick folds that glided like kissing silk along the length of his cock. There was no hunting for her clitoris, the little bud swollen and raised in the throes of their passion.
Next time they did this, like this, he wanted a mirror so he could see every bit of it, and her. First, he would see the look on her face as he pushed into her, deep like this, as she called him god and scrabbled at his thighs with her nails. Then, he would stroke her clit, just like this, pressing it against his cock as he pulled out of her. After that, a complete circle or two, while she told him exactly how she liked it. And then, thrust back into her, deep and hard enough to almost knock her over.
He pounded into her for a few very quick strokes, and then Rose was coming around him, he could feel it, every single quiver and tug and pulse of it, squeezing him, pulling him, dragging him, flinging him over the precipice of his own orgasm. Bliss was all there was, ecstasy as the want that had been so tight within him finally burst open, shock after shock, as he shuddered and juddered and pressed deep into the blaze of Rose Tyler.
*
They were sprawled on the carpet, but more on each other, really. The Doctor kept staring at the ceiling, wondering if they were going to be awkward or weird with each other, if she was as happy as he was, if she could possibly have thought this was a mistake. All the same, he almost wanted to go find himself-of-a-few-hours-ago and knock the idiot over the head for even thinking of not doing this.
If he lived another nine hundred years, the Doctor was sure he would never experience anything more wonderful than the first time with Rose Tyler.
Rose would probably go to sleep, the Doctor realized. At least that way, he'd have a chance to make sure she'd not hurt her knees on the carpet. The very second he said this, however, Rose gave a quiet little giggle. "Wonder what the bed's like," she said gleefully.
The Doctor laughed, in joy and in relief. "No idea, obviously," he said playfully. Rose laughed right along with him.
"How're your knees?" he wondered.
"Fine," Rose said. "Fancy alien carpet, I guess. Got rug burn from playing footie in the band room at school, once. Wasn't pretty."
"You're gonna have to tell me about that," the Doctor decided. Rose was an amazing girl who'd been having mad adventures long before she met him.
She shrugged. "If you like." She held her hand up and the Onesti bracelet was dangling from her fist. "Love this thing," she said.
"Tiny microbes inside the glass," the Doctor explained. "They've no sentience, just a vague sense of emotion in most species, which they translate into color changes. Their planet's full of telepathic creatures that eat their host silica."
Rose chuckled. "Good to know I didn't completely break your brain."
"Oi!" the Doctor protested, feigning hurt when he was really charmed to pieces.
"Well, if you can still lecture me, after a shag like that…"
"So you're finally impressed!" he exclaimed.
Rose tried - he could tell she tried - to feign indifference. But then, he leaned over and kissed her shoulder over the mark he'd put there. Her eyes went dreamy and she admitted, "Oh, yeah!" The Doctor grinned and poked her in the side, and she squealed, and the next thing he knew, they were wrestling like a couple of toddlers on the floor.
The Onesti, gleaming red and gold, with streaks of palest blue, sparkled next to their heads like a tiny star, no farther from one than the other. If either of them had cared to look it up - or needed to, actually - they would have learned that red was the color of love.
The Doctor was too busy learning that there was too something more fantastic than the first time with Rose Tyler: the next time. Rose was too busy teaching him.
And, elsewhere on Tapis, a celebrity couple was very busy congratulating themselves on a plot well accomplished.