though we still rolled along
Title: Though We Still Rolled Along
Author: thenakedcupcake
Pairing: Ten/Rose, Ten/Rose
Rating: Adult-ish, Some sexy things, angst, hurt/comfort
Summary: Locked away in her alternate London, long before she has had success with the dimension cannon and two hundred and fifty seven days after she started trying, Rose finds the Doctor.
Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fic. Yikes! I have no beta, so please feel free to leave me all the feedback you can -- I love it. I listened pretty much exclusively to the Psapp song below while writing this; these aren't the whole lyrics, but the part that spoke to me the most. Enjoy!
We've left our homes,
for the dusty road,
though it weighed us down
to go.
Now, see, burning in the sun,
fire in our bellies.
Today ate us up,
and never chewed.
Though we still rolled along, cause 'a you.
The change that we don't see,
is happening to me
though you are watching.
It is cold, it is dark,
in the big black heart,
of the wood, of the hill,
at our home.
We are all, all but left,
in a wit un-breath.
We are all of the pack,
in the fire.
Psapp -- Hill Of Our Home
She found him, in her new world of zepplins, in a dank pub in London. He was gambling, smoking, and winning. His hair was as wild as his smirk was controlled, and his hands took money chips from the men at the table like he had ripped the Daleks into the void: efficiently.
Her blood had chilled while her nerves lit themselves on fire. She had been at the bar, ducking her head to avoid meeting any eyes, until she had heard a shout from the far corner. Her fingers went numb as they curled around her vodka, and she blinked no less than five times. Awareness sucked itself into a single point, and for a reason Rose could not fathom, it was the cigarette in his mouth. It was a long slender point of contrast in the din, like his fingers, like his stare. He could see everything here, she had no doubt; perceive bluffs and nervousness and whimsy. His mouth spoke to her in the way it curled around the cigarette, the way lips sucked and his eyes narrowed and he blew out like he was giving the air life, like he was cooly and smugly regarding a lover as she came. Her body shuddered; the flood of mental sensation at the sight of him had blocked out all else, and she didn't know how he was here, didn't care, didn't care, didn't care. Her Doctor didn't smoke and didn't gamble and didn't look at adversaries of games with such ice in his eyes, but then, her Doctor shouldn't be here, either, and he was.
Her glass was slammed onto the counter harshly before she knew she was out of her seat, the sharp chink of glass to wood cutting into the air around her. She sucked in a breath, and then there suddenly she was close enough to feel the energy vibrating off him, her feet having marched her to his table of their own accord. It touched her, his life and fire, poured over her skin, and she drank him in. He lifted his eyes to her without moving his face at all; sucked his cigarette deep and rolled his tongue around the smoke before exhaling.
"You're too pretty to play poker and be good at it, love."
She jumped sharply, as if shocked. There was no light in his eyes for her, no warmth or love or hugs or hands being held as they ran from bullets and aliens and social scandal and Cybermen and Daleks and the tension of each other, of the Doctor and Rose dancing around each other, but without dancing, never dancing like his eyes were looking at her, the dancing and the fucking just below the surface in the way this man looked at her and---
"Doctor..." She reached her hand (still no feeling, nerves cold to the pub air) to his face, and he caught it before it touched her. Cold, everything was so cold, skin and his double heart beat and this space between them.
"I haven't been called that in a long, long time. The Doctor... the doctor." He laughed, short and bitter. "Who are you?" Said sharply, the words angled in the room. The bar noise became dim as her blood hummed in her ears, soft and soft and then growing and then roaring. This wasn't right, her Doctor, her dear lovely Doctor... how was he here? What had happened?
He wasn't looking at her like she was just a pretty lass now. An empty headed ape in a beautiful cage designed for sex and arrogance and drowning out the sounds of the stars all around him. He looked at her like he knew the universe was ugly, and that she would be dealt with for her audacity of giving his name a voice from her throat.
Suddenly he was standing, impatient, putting out his cigarette on the bare wood of the table and not waiting for an answer. He pulled her by her arm, his fingers bruising as they sunk into her flesh; she followed him powerlessly, her legs jelly, her heart thundering like a wild thing. She couldn't have fought, something was wrong, so wrongwrongwrong but she had to follow him, help him, not let him go no matter the universe or time or place or pain that he buried under his chestnut eyes.
They were behind the bar, the cutting London air and fog and fuzziness wrapping around her and suffocating her. She stumbled as he pushed her back into the brick wall of the pub, the rough texture of the stone leaving imprints on her everywhere it touched. Like he did, and always had. The unmarked back door slammed closed as they breathed into each other's lungs, his face inches from her and a hard, angled mask. She thought he had never looked more beautiful, more terrible.
"W-what... what are you called then, Doctor? What do people say to you when you look at them like you look at me right now?" Her eyes searched his for something, anything that would widen and smile and wrap her in his arms until space itself could not keep standing for the love that was The Doctor and His Rose.
"Nothing." The word was soft, and it was suddenly truth; she saw nothing in his eyes when she looked. This man did not know her.
"They call you nothing? The Oncoming Storm, Time Lord, the Doctor and they call you nothing?"
His fingers twitched around her wrists, where they held her to the cold, wet brick. She sucked in his exhalation of air as he repeated his earlier demand, instead of acknowledging that she had spoken his race and his title of destruction: "Who are you?"
"Rose. I'm Rose. And I've been looking for you for a long, long time. But I... I don't know that I've found you. Doctor, you don't know me, do you?"
"Stop. Calling. Me. That," he grated out, leaning in with his slim body weight to press her more deeply against the wall, his presence becoming increasingly more threatening as it became more intimate. She felt his hard lines against his softer suit (a rich, deep red, no stripes, and the smell of smoke as it touched nearer her body), hip bones jutting into her belly and arms breathing along her her own as they stood parallel. She inhaled, full and calming; took him and the night air inside of her as a gift to her lungs, or a burden for them to interpret. She met his eyes with the fierceness that made him choose her, that gave him strength after the war that set everything ablaze. She stared at him with fire, and just like that day at Henrik's years ago, and all that time on Gallifrey, and the night on Sattelite Five, he couldn't look away; could not withdraw his eyes while she burned. She no longer cared who he was or what he let others call him; he was her Doctor in any where, any when, and he was here, now.
"Doc-tor." She stressed each syllable, and dared him.
He did not take to being challenged, and bruised her mouth with his own as an answer to her audacity. His lips moved without question or hesitation, his tongue parted her own lips forcefully and with the knowledge that she would let him. She acquiesed; opened wide, her mind and mouth and heart and legs as they twiched in response to his proximity. He moved her wrists from their place by her side to over her head, grinding them into the textured brick all over again. The power of her senses came flooding back, and for the first time since her vodka had hit the counter she felt, for the first time in this world that mocked her she bit his lower lip and sucked it and felt like she had come home. She brought her hips forward, began a discussion between where she wanted him and the cock that had become so hard for her and strained at his trousers.
"You've been here you're whole life, haven't you, Doctor?" she panted as his smirking and needy mouth sucked her pulse like he could eat her. She would have a mark in its wake, she was sure.
"You think a Time Lord would cuddle up to this weak Earth for his entire life, silly Rose? Silly, fragile flower who finds herself behind a pub, swirling with the smell of vodka and sex and opening her legs for the big bad wolf."
She couldn't help herself, and gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Doctor, my Doctor... you've always belonged to this universe, haven't you? Gallifrey burns and all the stars in your world go out and you drink and take money from men and think you are what Little Red fears."
He stilled beside her, but did not withdraw. She felt his cock twitch and stir in its place against her pelvis, watched his eyes bore into hers. For a moment, she imagined him considering using his mind to take her information by force. For a moment, she would have let him.
"I know Gallifrey, Doctor. I know you set her on fire to save everything, watched her burn because you couldn't look away. I know you have only ash left. Or had. You met me," she said, jutting her chin at him defiantly, proudly. She was proud of helping him, of sparking what had died so violently into something beautiful and full of life. She had done it before, and she could do it again, with this foreign doctor who had only known zeppelins and no Rose Tyler. "Or, you met me before, where I come from. Far, far away. An impossible place that is locked away deep in the forest. I don't ever get to see Grandmother's house again, Doctor. I don't get to go home. And neither do you."
She stretched her fingers as far as they would go to touch his hand where it no longer held hers captive, but clutched it for support. He was shaking now, and she caressed the thin skin on the back of his hand, let her fingers murmur thoughtfully of the blood vessels there that carried the drum beat of his hearts.
"Do you trust me?" she whispered into his open and waiting mouth.
His lips sealed over hers, softly this time. "Yes." The scarcest of murmurs, so meek it could have been a thing imaginary, a star that had blinked out when everyone was looking away. It made no sound, but she heard it; Rose heard the Doctor's pain and let it reverberate through her.
"Let me tell you a story, about the greatest man I ever met, and his Rose. Let me tell you about our adventures, and then you tell me if you think your name is nothing."
His fingers curled around her, and he shook unabashedly now. His eyes were wide and unguarded as he held their pulses together softly, three hearts letting their beats pound into the London fog. Neither felt the cold.
"Come with me, Doctor. Let me show you who you are."
Author: thenakedcupcake
Pairing: Ten/Rose, Ten/Rose
Rating: Adult-ish, Some sexy things, angst, hurt/comfort
Summary: Locked away in her alternate London, long before she has had success with the dimension cannon and two hundred and fifty seven days after she started trying, Rose finds the Doctor.
Notes: This is my first Doctor Who fic. Yikes! I have no beta, so please feel free to leave me all the feedback you can -- I love it. I listened pretty much exclusively to the Psapp song below while writing this; these aren't the whole lyrics, but the part that spoke to me the most. Enjoy!
We've left our homes,
for the dusty road,
though it weighed us down
to go.
Now, see, burning in the sun,
fire in our bellies.
Today ate us up,
and never chewed.
Though we still rolled along, cause 'a you.
The change that we don't see,
is happening to me
though you are watching.
It is cold, it is dark,
in the big black heart,
of the wood, of the hill,
at our home.
We are all, all but left,
in a wit un-breath.
We are all of the pack,
in the fire.
Psapp -- Hill Of Our Home
She found him, in her new world of zepplins, in a dank pub in London. He was gambling, smoking, and winning. His hair was as wild as his smirk was controlled, and his hands took money chips from the men at the table like he had ripped the Daleks into the void: efficiently.
Her blood had chilled while her nerves lit themselves on fire. She had been at the bar, ducking her head to avoid meeting any eyes, until she had heard a shout from the far corner. Her fingers went numb as they curled around her vodka, and she blinked no less than five times. Awareness sucked itself into a single point, and for a reason Rose could not fathom, it was the cigarette in his mouth. It was a long slender point of contrast in the din, like his fingers, like his stare. He could see everything here, she had no doubt; perceive bluffs and nervousness and whimsy. His mouth spoke to her in the way it curled around the cigarette, the way lips sucked and his eyes narrowed and he blew out like he was giving the air life, like he was cooly and smugly regarding a lover as she came. Her body shuddered; the flood of mental sensation at the sight of him had blocked out all else, and she didn't know how he was here, didn't care, didn't care, didn't care. Her Doctor didn't smoke and didn't gamble and didn't look at adversaries of games with such ice in his eyes, but then, her Doctor shouldn't be here, either, and he was.
Her glass was slammed onto the counter harshly before she knew she was out of her seat, the sharp chink of glass to wood cutting into the air around her. She sucked in a breath, and then there suddenly she was close enough to feel the energy vibrating off him, her feet having marched her to his table of their own accord. It touched her, his life and fire, poured over her skin, and she drank him in. He lifted his eyes to her without moving his face at all; sucked his cigarette deep and rolled his tongue around the smoke before exhaling.
"You're too pretty to play poker and be good at it, love."
She jumped sharply, as if shocked. There was no light in his eyes for her, no warmth or love or hugs or hands being held as they ran from bullets and aliens and social scandal and Cybermen and Daleks and the tension of each other, of the Doctor and Rose dancing around each other, but without dancing, never dancing like his eyes were looking at her, the dancing and the fucking just below the surface in the way this man looked at her and---
"Doctor..." She reached her hand (still no feeling, nerves cold to the pub air) to his face, and he caught it before it touched her. Cold, everything was so cold, skin and his double heart beat and this space between them.
"I haven't been called that in a long, long time. The Doctor... the doctor." He laughed, short and bitter. "Who are you?" Said sharply, the words angled in the room. The bar noise became dim as her blood hummed in her ears, soft and soft and then growing and then roaring. This wasn't right, her Doctor, her dear lovely Doctor... how was he here? What had happened?
He wasn't looking at her like she was just a pretty lass now. An empty headed ape in a beautiful cage designed for sex and arrogance and drowning out the sounds of the stars all around him. He looked at her like he knew the universe was ugly, and that she would be dealt with for her audacity of giving his name a voice from her throat.
Suddenly he was standing, impatient, putting out his cigarette on the bare wood of the table and not waiting for an answer. He pulled her by her arm, his fingers bruising as they sunk into her flesh; she followed him powerlessly, her legs jelly, her heart thundering like a wild thing. She couldn't have fought, something was wrong, so wrongwrongwrong but she had to follow him, help him, not let him go no matter the universe or time or place or pain that he buried under his chestnut eyes.
They were behind the bar, the cutting London air and fog and fuzziness wrapping around her and suffocating her. She stumbled as he pushed her back into the brick wall of the pub, the rough texture of the stone leaving imprints on her everywhere it touched. Like he did, and always had. The unmarked back door slammed closed as they breathed into each other's lungs, his face inches from her and a hard, angled mask. She thought he had never looked more beautiful, more terrible.
"W-what... what are you called then, Doctor? What do people say to you when you look at them like you look at me right now?" Her eyes searched his for something, anything that would widen and smile and wrap her in his arms until space itself could not keep standing for the love that was The Doctor and His Rose.
"Nothing." The word was soft, and it was suddenly truth; she saw nothing in his eyes when she looked. This man did not know her.
"They call you nothing? The Oncoming Storm, Time Lord, the Doctor and they call you nothing?"
His fingers twitched around her wrists, where they held her to the cold, wet brick. She sucked in his exhalation of air as he repeated his earlier demand, instead of acknowledging that she had spoken his race and his title of destruction: "Who are you?"
"Rose. I'm Rose. And I've been looking for you for a long, long time. But I... I don't know that I've found you. Doctor, you don't know me, do you?"
"Stop. Calling. Me. That," he grated out, leaning in with his slim body weight to press her more deeply against the wall, his presence becoming increasingly more threatening as it became more intimate. She felt his hard lines against his softer suit (a rich, deep red, no stripes, and the smell of smoke as it touched nearer her body), hip bones jutting into her belly and arms breathing along her her own as they stood parallel. She inhaled, full and calming; took him and the night air inside of her as a gift to her lungs, or a burden for them to interpret. She met his eyes with the fierceness that made him choose her, that gave him strength after the war that set everything ablaze. She stared at him with fire, and just like that day at Henrik's years ago, and all that time on Gallifrey, and the night on Sattelite Five, he couldn't look away; could not withdraw his eyes while she burned. She no longer cared who he was or what he let others call him; he was her Doctor in any where, any when, and he was here, now.
"Doc-tor." She stressed each syllable, and dared him.
He did not take to being challenged, and bruised her mouth with his own as an answer to her audacity. His lips moved without question or hesitation, his tongue parted her own lips forcefully and with the knowledge that she would let him. She acquiesed; opened wide, her mind and mouth and heart and legs as they twiched in response to his proximity. He moved her wrists from their place by her side to over her head, grinding them into the textured brick all over again. The power of her senses came flooding back, and for the first time since her vodka had hit the counter she felt, for the first time in this world that mocked her she bit his lower lip and sucked it and felt like she had come home. She brought her hips forward, began a discussion between where she wanted him and the cock that had become so hard for her and strained at his trousers.
"You've been here you're whole life, haven't you, Doctor?" she panted as his smirking and needy mouth sucked her pulse like he could eat her. She would have a mark in its wake, she was sure.
"You think a Time Lord would cuddle up to this weak Earth for his entire life, silly Rose? Silly, fragile flower who finds herself behind a pub, swirling with the smell of vodka and sex and opening her legs for the big bad wolf."
She couldn't help herself, and gave a sharp bark of laughter. "Doctor, my Doctor... you've always belonged to this universe, haven't you? Gallifrey burns and all the stars in your world go out and you drink and take money from men and think you are what Little Red fears."
He stilled beside her, but did not withdraw. She felt his cock twitch and stir in its place against her pelvis, watched his eyes bore into hers. For a moment, she imagined him considering using his mind to take her information by force. For a moment, she would have let him.
"I know Gallifrey, Doctor. I know you set her on fire to save everything, watched her burn because you couldn't look away. I know you have only ash left. Or had. You met me," she said, jutting her chin at him defiantly, proudly. She was proud of helping him, of sparking what had died so violently into something beautiful and full of life. She had done it before, and she could do it again, with this foreign doctor who had only known zeppelins and no Rose Tyler. "Or, you met me before, where I come from. Far, far away. An impossible place that is locked away deep in the forest. I don't ever get to see Grandmother's house again, Doctor. I don't get to go home. And neither do you."
She stretched her fingers as far as they would go to touch his hand where it no longer held hers captive, but clutched it for support. He was shaking now, and she caressed the thin skin on the back of his hand, let her fingers murmur thoughtfully of the blood vessels there that carried the drum beat of his hearts.
"Do you trust me?" she whispered into his open and waiting mouth.
His lips sealed over hers, softly this time. "Yes." The scarcest of murmurs, so meek it could have been a thing imaginary, a star that had blinked out when everyone was looking away. It made no sound, but she heard it; Rose heard the Doctor's pain and let it reverberate through her.
"Let me tell you a story, about the greatest man I ever met, and his Rose. Let me tell you about our adventures, and then you tell me if you think your name is nothing."
His fingers curled around her, and he shook unabashedly now. His eyes were wide and unguarded as he held their pulses together softly, three hearts letting their beats pound into the London fog. Neither felt the cold.
"Come with me, Doctor. Let me show you who you are."