Collaboration Fic: Feeling by Proxy
Title: Feeling by Proxy
AuthorS: unfolded73 and myself, fid_gin
Beta: jfiliberti
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/alt!Tenth Doctor/Rose and all variations thereof
Rating: NC17 for Very Strong Sexual Situations, of course
Disclaimer: We own nothing, all glory to the BBC
Summary: The final part in the "Loved 'Verse Trilogy", following Alone Time and Unspeakable. The first was Rose's story, the 2nd: Ten's. This here is alt!Ten's story of life in the Loved 'verse.
Notes: The first two in the trilogy are prerequisite reading, if you want to follow what's going on. Or, you know, you could just sit back and enjoy the porn. Not nearly as slashy as Unspeakable, but it's there. Graphic sexual situations and language! We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our wonderful beta jfiliberti, who has worked with us through this whole trilogy, as well as papilio_luna and chloris67, who influenced some ideas in this one when they joined us for a painful but necessary rewatch of Journey's End.
unfolded73 has linked this over at her journal as well, please go comment there, too! As is probably evident by the meta she's posted for our first two collaborations, we work quite closely on these and she deserves as much, if not more, of the credit than I.
Also meant to add, for maximum effect, I suggest reading this at least once while listening to Interpol's "Pioneer to the Falls". Lord knows, I've had it on repeat while writing it.
The Doctor realized almost immediately at Bad Wolf Bay, and moreso once they had been reunited with the TARDIS, that he could no longer sense Rose's mind the way he'd once been able to.
He cornered the other Doctor about the subject as soon as they returned to the TARDIS. "Are you still able to..." He nodded with his head and gestured vaguely toward the identical mop of brown wisps and tangles atop the other Doctor's head. "Rose...are you still able to feel Rose?"
The Doctor in brown didn't look up from where he was writing in a leather-bound journal with that ridiculous quill. He leaned over to try and catch a peek at the swooping and looping Gallifreyan script, but the Doctor suddenly pulled the journal up close to his chest and looked up, scowling. "I don't know what you mean," he said, defensively.
The Doctor bristled at what had always been his standard answer whenever Rose had cast him that shifty look of hers and asked whether he'd been 'reading her mind'. "Oh can it, Time Boy." Donna's words found their way from his mouth before he could stop himself. "Yes, you do."
The Doctor's face softened. "Of course I can," he said finally. He closed the journal and set it aside, regarded the Doctor in blue with his fingers tented under his chin. "It's going to be different, you know. There's nothing I can do about that."
So, resolved, the Doctor adjusted to the absence of Rose's consciousness available for him to pluck at whenever he felt like doing so in the only way he could imagine: he began asking her.
The first time, shortly after they dropped off Jackie. The other one had been angry, defeated - "Where to first?" Rose asked, and her only answer was the chocolatey back of his suit jacket and the slump of his shoulders. When the Doctor in blue found her later, seated in the TARDIS galley with a thousand-yard stare in her eyes, he had to ask even though he knew: she was thinking of her mum, of course. Or of him.
"What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking 'bout you," she answered, ignoring the way his eyes boggled at that surprising answer. "About what happened when you were..." She looked up, her brow crinkling. Flustered. "Born?"
"What about it?" he asked, intrigued.
"What was it like?"
And, ignoring the primal urge to evade, to withdraw, he found himself telling her.
Telling her how it had taken him some time to realize anything was wrong. Welllll, plenty had been wrong - to realize anything was different. He'd woken up stranger places than the floor of the TARDIS, in stranger states than naked as the day he was...well. Really, really naked.
How his gob had gotten ahead of his brain, and he'd worked out what happened: the memory of her running toward him, all smiles and lugging that ridiculous gun. The blinding pain of the Dalek laser, and Rose's face as she'd begged him not to regenerate. The disturbing revelation of his one beating heart, and Donna's voice coming from his own lips. Biological metacrisis. He was the Doctor, and he wasn't. He told her of the disgust - at his own body, at his other self for allowing something like this to happen out of vanity. How, ignoring the memories he shared with the other Doctor (Please, I only just found her again, please not now, for her, let me stay the same for HER), he'd floundered in his rage, toward the Daleks, toward himself (Was he happy, now, having avoided another nasty regeneration and successfully held onto that pretty face for just a bit longer? Did he have her hand in his? Did he at least kiss her properly?).
That he had found himself building a weapon, his right hand tingling as the long-disused nerves began to work again. Materializing aboard the Dalek Crucible, he'd run full tilt out into certain death.
He told her he never expected to survive.
"You make it sound like you're disappointed you lived," she said, and tentatively, he outstretched one hand to touch her face, waiting for her to flinch. It had been easy, he thought, for her to accept him as the Doctor when she had no choice. But now?
She leaned into his touch, just a bit, just enough, and his heart melted. "Oh no," he answered, his voice nearly a whisper. "Not disappointed at all."
***
"Hi," she said from the doorway to his bedroom, several weeks later.
He looked up into her lovely face and did his level best to smile. It was proving to be almost more than his one heart could bear, watching her with his duplicate. But what could he say? Of course Rose was going to resume a physically intimate relationship with the man that she loved. Of course she was going to return to the Time Lord's bed, the bed that they had shared on occasion before she got lost. But here he was, a new creature and yet shackled with the all-consuming love for this woman, and sometimes it made him want to scream and smash things. There'd been a glimmer of hope when, the week before, she'd sat the three of them down over coffee and began her rather startling confession with the proclamation: "We need to talk about sex." But as much as she'd come out and admitted an interest in pursuing a physical relationship with him, she had not acted on it.
"Hi," he finally offered.
Rose had a serious, determined look in her eye, and she approached the desk where he was sitting with purposeful strides.
"Guess what I'm thinking," she said with a smirk before pulling him out of his chair and smashing her lips to his. It took him a moment to remember how to respond, but respond he did, his tongue seeking and then granted access between those full lips, drowning in the taste of her which he'd only briefly sampled before on that beach in Norway. The memories of kissing her before, when he was him, he could recall as if from a film but the substance was lacking. Anyway, he was quite sure it had never felt like this.
He moaned into her mouth as they stumbled backwards towards his bed, nearly losing their balance. He struggled to get the words out between kisses and gasps for air. "Rose, are you sure...I'm not...I'm..." He grabbed one of her hands and placed it over the right side of his chest where no second heart beat, but she only smiled at him.
"I know that. I came to your room, remember?" She pushed his blue jacket from his shoulders.
He wondered if this was sanctioned by the other Doctor, but was afraid to ask, afraid to break the spell of desire for him that she seemed to be under. He also wondered if he should consider this his first time, and if Rose was deflowering him. In many ways it felt like a first time; he didn't remember ever feeling so out of control with lust before. He flushed at the way his hands shook as he undressed her. Then Rose was tumbling him onto the bed and her wet mouth was all over him and he stopped wondering anything at all.
"Oh," when she had slid his trousers and pants down over his slim hips, pausing to nip at one of them. Every brush of her lips, every touch of her tongue against his flesh sparked another chain reaction that heightened his almost unbearable arousal. Each nerve in his body seemed directly connected to his cock, already painfully hard. His one heart raced, over-compensating, and he thought he might simply keel over dead of a heart attack before even getting to feel Rose from the inside in this body. Please...just like...oh. Like that.
She sank slowly down onto him.
It was over a little quickly.
"I'm sorry." He didn't want to meet her eyes, but it was a bit difficult not to with her still straddling him. Her expression was nothing but gentle understanding.
"New, new Doctor," she said softly, tracing one hand down his chest. She smiled suddenly. "Do you remember our first time after you regenerated?" He flinched at the memory. "S'like that, yeah? Just a new body to get used to. We've got all the time in the world." She regarded him silently for a moment before speaking. "I love you."
"But I'm not-"
"You are."
He pulled her down into a deep kiss rather than argue the point. "I adore you. And if you give me about a half hour," he said with a little smile, "I will endeavor to do a better job showing you how much."
***
The other Doctor had gone, sometime while they both slept - not unusual, since he never slept himself and there was only so long he could lie still. The Doctor remembered how that had been, and he relished these moments, waking slowly, sharing a bed with the woman he loved. There was something delightfully, decadently domestic about it that he'd never admit he craved, just a bit.
"I probably don't need to ask, do I?" His voice was still dry and raspy with sleep. Rose was on her back, gazing at the ceiling with a bemused expression, but she turned on her side at the sound of his voice.
Her slow smile did something to his insides. "Last night."
He grinned in return. "Me too."
"Wishing I'd been a fly on the wall a little earlier in the proceedings. I mean, how did you end up ..."
"What?" he asked, wide-eyed, and she hit him with a pillow. After disarming her of her weapon and pulling her on top of him to kiss her soundly, he continued. "How'd we end up doing what you caught us doing?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know."
"She's not coming." He stood in the doorway to the other Doctor's bedroom, the bedroom that used to be his.
"What?" The other Doctor was reading, sitting on the bed in his brown suit, and he looked up at him over the tops of his glasses.
"She's taking a bath. She wants to be alone, I think."
"Oh." He frowned, then ran a hand through his hair. "I could try ..." he said, standing up.
The Doctor in blue shook his head. "She seemed to have quite made her mind up."
His counterpart dropped back onto the bed, removing his glasses. "Well, that's disappointing."
"Yeah." He leaned a little more comfortably against the doorframe, his posture indicating he didn't intend to go anywhere anytime soon. "She said she was tired."
"Welll...you humans. Get tired. Unfortunately."
The Doctor spoke, his voice soft. "I'm not human." His eyes met those of the other Doctor. "And I'm not tired."
"No?"
"No." The insinuation hung in the air. "So, now what?"
"Now what, what?" the Doctor on the bed asked, seemingly oblivious.
The Doctor huffed. The thought of Rose reclined in the bath, all naked and slippery, had him aroused and agitated and he didn't fancy the thought of retiring back to his room alone to take matters into his own...hands. He looked to the other Doctor to somehow resolve this unacceptable situation. "I mean, we could ... if you wanted."
The other Doctor looked up at him, his eyebrows lost in his hair. "We could what?"
"You know." His eyes flicked toward the bed.
"Without Rose here?" His voice rose to a squeak on the last syllable.
"Why not?" It was, honestly, the best answer he had. The evening, for him at least, seemed destined to end in self-gratification...might as well make it interesting.
He seemed to consider it, then he shrugged. "Why not indeed?"
It wasn't the most flattering acceptance of a come-on that he'd ever received, but he felt his heart rate increase anyway. There was something about being with this man who was him and yet so much more, this man who he remembered being, and the thought of all the times Rose had watched them do what they were about to engage in, moaning encouragement. He was across the room before he realized he'd even decided to move, kissing the other Doctor and tipping him backwards onto the bed. They pulled at each other's clothes, mostly ineffectually, as their mouths and tongues met again and again. He felt the other man's erection pressed into his hip, and he was relieved to know that the other Doctor was at least as aroused as he was.
He broke the kiss and crawled down the Doctor's body, pulling at the clasp of his brown pinstriped trousers. He wasn't quite sure why he was so desperate to please his other self first; there was no resolved sense of wanting to get it over with. He found that, alone with the other Doctor, he was...curious. Would the Doctor enjoy it as much as he appeared to when Rose was present? Would he enjoy it? Fleetingly, he wished that they were standing, that he could kneel on the floor as he had the last time he had done this to himself, alone, without the aid of a woman. After the Time War, that had been, and his last body had been so achingly lonely, so broken, so desperate for tenderness of some sort. He'd left the TARDIS's defense shields down, sought the blip of another TARDIS. Of course, he'd never expected the one he eventually collided with to be so similar to his own, and he'd rather imagined that it would be a past incarnation of himself he'd bump into...
His mind full of the ghosts of hundreds of years of time travel which this body had never sustained, his one human heart racing, the Doctor pulled the other man's zip down and lowered his trousers and pants as far as he needed to. Without any discussion about it, he took the other Doctor's cock into his mouth.
Rose was still smiling a small smile even as she kissed him. "Well, whatever it was, it was incredibly hot."
"Hot," he scoffed, returning her kisses happily.
He soon found that the outcome of this progression in their relationship was a Rose who had, if possible, an even larger libido than before, and she seemed to have no trouble keeping up with two men. And as she got more comfortable with their arrangement, she got more sexually adventurous.
"What are you thinking?" he asked one evening after she removed her fingernails from his scalp and the vice grip of her thighs from the sides of his head, and he crawled up her body, licking her moisture from his lips.
Her only answer was an evil grin before twisting her torso underneath his body to rummage in her nightstand drawer. When she came up with the slim pink shaft of her vibrator in one hand, he was confused, until he saw the small, clear bottle in her other hand.
"Oh." He swallowed. "Rose, what..."
"Am I thinking?" she finished, her tongue poking between her teeth. "Would you like me to show you?"
He gasped at even the thought of it, impossibly turned on. "I don't-"
"Shh," she soothed, straining up to kiss him. "Relax. I won't turn it on." Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. "I know you like it when I touch you there. I thought you might want more."
"I do," he said, his voice low.
"Tell me," she said, flipping the cap and squeezing the lubricant into her hand.
"I want you to." He realized he was trembling with anticipation, watching her slide her hand over the device.
"Tell me," Rose repeated, reaching around and running the length of it up and down over his entrance.
"I want," and he groaned, bucking back against the first teasing pressure. "Please ... fuck me ... oh God, inside me, now."
The plastic was warm from her hands, slick with the lubricant she'd applied, and she slid it inside of him with such confidence he found himself wondering whether she'd done this before? With him? But pleasure stamped out any burgeoning jealousy, and he yowled as she hit him just right inside, fucking him in a slow rhythm with her hand while with the other she pushed his hips down, spreading for him. Inside of her, improbably fucked on both sides by Rose, he came embarrassingly fast.
"You..." he breathed, when he was able to speak again, "are amazing."
"See now that's what I was thinking," she answered.
***
It was a quiet afternoon in the library. Rose stood up from where she had been seated cross-legged on the floor and stretched, setting down her magazine. "Back in a moment," she said to them.
The Doctor in brown grabbed her hand as she passed by the sofa, bringing it to his lips. "Don't be long."
She grinned. "I won't."
"I love you," he murmured. She trailed her hand through his hair affectionately and left the room.
The one-hearted Doctor couldn't help staring at his double from his seat across the room in his favorite wing-backed chair, his book forgotten on his lap.
"What?" the other man asked.
"What, what?"
The other Doctor huffed in frustration. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
His resulting smile was small and probably not a little bitter. "Was thinking I'm the victim of my own success. If you can express your feelings, what does she need me for?"
"Don't say that," he said dismissively.
"It's true."
"It isn't true." He stood up from his seat on the sofa. "She loves us both, isn't that what you told me?"
"She loved us both because there was something of me that I was willing to share that she couldn't get from you."
"You think that now that I've increased my vocabulary by one phrase that suddenly she doesn't need you anymore?" The other Doctor sat on the ottoman in front of the chair he occupied and sighed heavily. "It's me that she'll likely tire of, as the two of you grow older, if you decide to have children-"
"What?"
"Don't pretend you've never thought of it, I know you have. So has she." He held up a hand to stop any further denials. "It'll happen someday, I'm resigned to that."
"Even if it did, it's not like they wouldn't be your children too."
"I suppose." He raked his hands through his hair. "More people for me to watch grow old and die."
The idea of that struck him with sudden force. "That will be worse than watching us die, won't it? Watching your children die. Again."
The other Doctor laughed without mirth. "You know me too well."
"Well, I am you, as you have so often said."
The Doctor in brown pinstripes shook his head. "You aren't, I was wrong." He reached out and touched the other man's cheek. "You're you."
He swallowed awkwardly. This show of affection from his duplicate was almost completely unprecedented; certainly he'd never done anything remotely like this outside of the bedroom. The Doctor in blue shook his head. "I'm not -"
"You are the most unlikely creature in the whole of the universe. Part Time Lord, part human. A brilliant mind, and an open heart, and more passionate about life and fear and sex and longing than anyone I've ever known. Don't you see how amazing you are? You're you, Doctor." The other Doctor leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "Forgive me for making you feel like anything less."
Tears welled in his eyes. "Please don't. Don't be so … so kind to me, I can't bear it."
"Why ever not?"
He almost choked on the answer. "Because a part of me still wants to take her away from you, have her all to myself."
"A part of me wants to let you. So that I don't have to watch you die. Watch your children, your grandchildren, die."
They sat in silence for a moment. "Well," the Doctor in blue said, his voice cracking, "we're a pair, aren't we?"
"Indeed. Two bodies, twice as many irresolvable issues."
"Makes you wonder how Rose manages to put up with either of us."
The brown-suited Doctor chuckled. "Aren't we so lucky that she does?"
The Doctor slipped away shortly after Rose returned, the sudden, naked tenderness of the other Doctor too much to bear. It was later, as he sat brooding in one of the gardens, that they found him. "Come to bed," said the Time Lord, and Rose held out her hand, and he was moving toward them before he even realized he'd decided to.
They led him to his own bedroom, began to undress him, and so much attention should have made him feel awkward; would have perhaps, before today. But he allowed it, allowed Rose to slowly slip buttons through buttonholes and allowed the Doctor in brown to reach around from behind and unfasten his trousers, slipping them over his erection and down. The dream-like quality of both of them circling him whispering encouragement and endearments, the odd conversation with the Doctor - he began to feel a little drunk. It was when the other Doctor, still dressed in his brown suit, went to his knees in front of him that he felt genuinely dizzy, like he was floating above it all and looking down. "What …?" he started to ask.
"Let me," the other Doctor responded, his tongue flicking out to touch his cock, and the Doctor's legs almost gave out, his single heart racing. "Let me," he repeated, his hands on the Doctor's slim hips and then his cool mouth had taken all of him in. The groan that wrenched from his throat sounded foreign to his own ears. Rose was behind him, naked now, running her hands down his back and over his bum and murmuring to him in words that he couldn't quite interpret, because his brilliant mind could only register so much pleasure at once.
A few delirious moments later and he had to stop the other Doctor, pushing him away gently. "Stop," he said. "I'm too close." Rose turned him to kiss her, to press the length of her nude body against his, to guide him back towards his bed.
"Guess what I'm thinking," she whispered against his lips, echoing that first time when they had made love in this bed, and he closed his eyes at the intensity of the memory of it as she lay back.
"Go to her." The other Doctor's voice from behind him, low and next to his ear. He was close enough that the Doctor could feel he still had his suit on.
"Aren't you going to..." A thin hand identical to his own came from behind to curl over his mouth, silencing him.
"Shhh," the Doctor hissed. "Just trust me. For once." The other man's mouth was so close to his throat that each word spoken was almost a kiss against it, and the Doctor whimpered. Opening his eyes, he pulled the hand away from his mouth and crawled forward down over Rose.
She smiled up at him. "Hello."
"Hello." He bent his head to nibble at her neck and shoulders as he slid one hand between her legs. She was wet, so warm he thought she might scald him; dipping two fingers inside of her, he hoped she would. His thumb found her clitoris, worked it gently as he fucked her with his fingers, enjoying her mewling cries and the way her hips rose to meet his hand.
The other Doctor, still clothed, had stretched out next to them, placed one hand lightly over his own which moved, pleasuring Rose. He took a long, ragged breath. "I can feel her through you," the other Doctor said, opening his eyes. His pupils had nearly swallowed the brown of his irises altogether, and he looked possessed. He moved his hand away. "Would you like to know what that's like?"
"Please." Rose was panting beneath him. "I...need you. Now."
Curious about the other Doctor's cryptic statement, the Doctor removed his hand. He shifted over her, grasped her behind one knee to move her leg up over his hip, and slid inside her. They both gasped from the intensity of it, and he stilled for a moment, trying to reign in his body's response. After a moment when he felt a bit of control regained, he sighed deeply and began to move inside of her in long, slow strokes. He couldn't keep from moaning her name. "Oh god...Rose..."
The other Doctor had moved, budging up and closer to them. He lifted one hand to gently cup Rose's cheek, and she turned into it to place a kiss into his palm. He hummed at the sensation before slowly sliding his fingers up and around to her temple. The Doctor recognized the action a half second before he felt the cool fingers of the other hand on the side of his own face, gentle as he had been in the library. "Feel her," he heard him whisper just before the circuit was completed and the world fell away.
The onslaught of sensation and images was instantaneous and overwhelming. It was never meant to be experienced by one being, this human physical sensation of sex - pounding blood and hormones and animalistic want - and this Time Lord ability to connect to another's mind. The intensity of the pleasure was painful, boiling inside him, burning him from the inside out. He felt Rose - her ecstasy as she swiftly approached orgasm and the sensation of him filling her, mixed with her happiness being between the two Doctors and her vague confusion at what was happening now. He saw himself, through her - the first time on that miserable beach, alone and haggard, so many years ago, saying goodbye and fading. Fading. And now, as himself, so new and uncertain, so open where the other Doctor had always been closed to her. And him, no longer afraid to tell her he loved her, and her slight discomfort with her realization that she wasn't sure if she liked it, at first. But she was happy, and grateful, and he made a low, wordless sound in his throat at the narcotic rush of love from her, for her, as she came apart beneath him.
There was that, as well. From the other Doctor. Love, for Rose. Possessiveness, and jealousy. Watching his twin making love to her, feeling what they were both feeling. Toward him as well, images of the two of them piloting the TARDIS. The last Time Lords in existence, and the Doctor realized with shock that there was a part of the other Doctor who sometimes wished it was just them, without Rose coming between them, united in their shared knowledge and memories of Gallifrey. But he was thankful, so thankful that they had found him, stayed with him. Saved him.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, there was himself. Somehow so much more distinctive, when literally held up against the other Doctor. He craved life, and love. He craved acceptance, and was so moved now, receiving it, he almost wanted to run and hide. Too much. Take Rose, settle down, procreate, grow old. These urges frequently caught him unaware, made him feel guilty. Then there was the other side of it - the desire to reclaim his ship, his ship. Anger at the accusation of genocide and frustration at the other Doctor's reluctance to admit that he had wanted to do the same thing. But he had them, now, both of them, and they wanted him there. He shouldn't even exist, but now they couldn't imagine a life without him.
And, coursing through all of it: desire, want. Fuck. Good...too good. He was going to...
The Doctor cried out, spilling himself inside Rose as the other Doctor's hand at his forehead shook and finally fell away. He let himself collapse against her, and she hummed and stroked his back, her hands soothing his damp, oversensitized flesh. His breathing gradually slowed in audible pants, and he was aware of the same sounds from the other Doctor, who was lying on his back next to them, his eyes closed.
"What was that?" Rose asked.
The Doctor didn't open his eyes, just held up his hand, wiggling the fingers. "Time Lord," he murmured.
He let himself roll off of her to one side as Rose lifted up on an elbow to look down at the other Doctor's body. "And you ... oh."
The brown-suited Doctor smiled, opening one eye to look at them both. "Our minds were linked. What he felt, I felt."
"You know," she said, laughing and leaning over to kiss his cheek, "I bet not many women can say they've made two men come simultaneously. Well done, me."
"Oh, yes," he responded, his single heartbeat finally back to normal. "Well done you, indeed."
She snuggled between them and they curled around her, a warm cocoon of sex-tousled-Doctor, and the Doctor very much not in blue wondered with slight irritation why the other still had that suit on but found he didn't have the energy to suggest he remove it. Instead he buried his face in Rose's shoulder, feeling sleep quickly closing in on him.
"It was all three of us, wasn't it?" Rose said suddenly. Dreamily.
"Is. Please," the other, clothed Doctor spoke up, his voice faint and muffled. The Doctor felt Rose turn her head toward his voice.
"Are you tired?" she asked, amazement in her voice.
"...takes a lot out of me," he mumbled. A moment later the slow, regular pattern of his breathing left no mistake: he was asleep. The half-human Doctor smiled against Rose's skin, dozing off. And shortly after, Rose Tyler, the most loved girl in the universe, joined her Doctors in slumber.
AuthorS: unfolded73 and myself, fid_gin
Beta: jfiliberti
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/alt!Tenth Doctor/Rose and all variations thereof
Rating: NC17 for Very Strong Sexual Situations, of course
Disclaimer: We own nothing, all glory to the BBC
Summary: The final part in the "Loved 'Verse Trilogy", following Alone Time and Unspeakable. The first was Rose's story, the 2nd: Ten's. This here is alt!Ten's story of life in the Loved 'verse.
Notes: The first two in the trilogy are prerequisite reading, if you want to follow what's going on. Or, you know, you could just sit back and enjoy the porn. Not nearly as slashy as Unspeakable, but it's there. Graphic sexual situations and language! We owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to our wonderful beta jfiliberti, who has worked with us through this whole trilogy, as well as papilio_luna and chloris67, who influenced some ideas in this one when they joined us for a painful but necessary rewatch of Journey's End.
unfolded73 has linked this over at her journal as well, please go comment there, too! As is probably evident by the meta she's posted for our first two collaborations, we work quite closely on these and she deserves as much, if not more, of the credit than I.
Also meant to add, for maximum effect, I suggest reading this at least once while listening to Interpol's "Pioneer to the Falls". Lord knows, I've had it on repeat while writing it.
The Doctor realized almost immediately at Bad Wolf Bay, and moreso once they had been reunited with the TARDIS, that he could no longer sense Rose's mind the way he'd once been able to.
He cornered the other Doctor about the subject as soon as they returned to the TARDIS. "Are you still able to..." He nodded with his head and gestured vaguely toward the identical mop of brown wisps and tangles atop the other Doctor's head. "Rose...are you still able to feel Rose?"
The Doctor in brown didn't look up from where he was writing in a leather-bound journal with that ridiculous quill. He leaned over to try and catch a peek at the swooping and looping Gallifreyan script, but the Doctor suddenly pulled the journal up close to his chest and looked up, scowling. "I don't know what you mean," he said, defensively.
The Doctor bristled at what had always been his standard answer whenever Rose had cast him that shifty look of hers and asked whether he'd been 'reading her mind'. "Oh can it, Time Boy." Donna's words found their way from his mouth before he could stop himself. "Yes, you do."
The Doctor's face softened. "Of course I can," he said finally. He closed the journal and set it aside, regarded the Doctor in blue with his fingers tented under his chin. "It's going to be different, you know. There's nothing I can do about that."
So, resolved, the Doctor adjusted to the absence of Rose's consciousness available for him to pluck at whenever he felt like doing so in the only way he could imagine: he began asking her.
The first time, shortly after they dropped off Jackie. The other one had been angry, defeated - "Where to first?" Rose asked, and her only answer was the chocolatey back of his suit jacket and the slump of his shoulders. When the Doctor in blue found her later, seated in the TARDIS galley with a thousand-yard stare in her eyes, he had to ask even though he knew: she was thinking of her mum, of course. Or of him.
"What are you thinking?"
"I was thinking 'bout you," she answered, ignoring the way his eyes boggled at that surprising answer. "About what happened when you were..." She looked up, her brow crinkling. Flustered. "Born?"
"What about it?" he asked, intrigued.
"What was it like?"
And, ignoring the primal urge to evade, to withdraw, he found himself telling her.
Telling her how it had taken him some time to realize anything was wrong. Welllll, plenty had been wrong - to realize anything was different. He'd woken up stranger places than the floor of the TARDIS, in stranger states than naked as the day he was...well. Really, really naked.
How his gob had gotten ahead of his brain, and he'd worked out what happened: the memory of her running toward him, all smiles and lugging that ridiculous gun. The blinding pain of the Dalek laser, and Rose's face as she'd begged him not to regenerate. The disturbing revelation of his one beating heart, and Donna's voice coming from his own lips. Biological metacrisis. He was the Doctor, and he wasn't. He told her of the disgust - at his own body, at his other self for allowing something like this to happen out of vanity. How, ignoring the memories he shared with the other Doctor (Please, I only just found her again, please not now, for her, let me stay the same for HER), he'd floundered in his rage, toward the Daleks, toward himself (Was he happy, now, having avoided another nasty regeneration and successfully held onto that pretty face for just a bit longer? Did he have her hand in his? Did he at least kiss her properly?).
That he had found himself building a weapon, his right hand tingling as the long-disused nerves began to work again. Materializing aboard the Dalek Crucible, he'd run full tilt out into certain death.
He told her he never expected to survive.
"You make it sound like you're disappointed you lived," she said, and tentatively, he outstretched one hand to touch her face, waiting for her to flinch. It had been easy, he thought, for her to accept him as the Doctor when she had no choice. But now?
She leaned into his touch, just a bit, just enough, and his heart melted. "Oh no," he answered, his voice nearly a whisper. "Not disappointed at all."
***
"Hi," she said from the doorway to his bedroom, several weeks later.
He looked up into her lovely face and did his level best to smile. It was proving to be almost more than his one heart could bear, watching her with his duplicate. But what could he say? Of course Rose was going to resume a physically intimate relationship with the man that she loved. Of course she was going to return to the Time Lord's bed, the bed that they had shared on occasion before she got lost. But here he was, a new creature and yet shackled with the all-consuming love for this woman, and sometimes it made him want to scream and smash things. There'd been a glimmer of hope when, the week before, she'd sat the three of them down over coffee and began her rather startling confession with the proclamation: "We need to talk about sex." But as much as she'd come out and admitted an interest in pursuing a physical relationship with him, she had not acted on it.
"Hi," he finally offered.
Rose had a serious, determined look in her eye, and she approached the desk where he was sitting with purposeful strides.
"Guess what I'm thinking," she said with a smirk before pulling him out of his chair and smashing her lips to his. It took him a moment to remember how to respond, but respond he did, his tongue seeking and then granted access between those full lips, drowning in the taste of her which he'd only briefly sampled before on that beach in Norway. The memories of kissing her before, when he was him, he could recall as if from a film but the substance was lacking. Anyway, he was quite sure it had never felt like this.
He moaned into her mouth as they stumbled backwards towards his bed, nearly losing their balance. He struggled to get the words out between kisses and gasps for air. "Rose, are you sure...I'm not...I'm..." He grabbed one of her hands and placed it over the right side of his chest where no second heart beat, but she only smiled at him.
"I know that. I came to your room, remember?" She pushed his blue jacket from his shoulders.
He wondered if this was sanctioned by the other Doctor, but was afraid to ask, afraid to break the spell of desire for him that she seemed to be under. He also wondered if he should consider this his first time, and if Rose was deflowering him. In many ways it felt like a first time; he didn't remember ever feeling so out of control with lust before. He flushed at the way his hands shook as he undressed her. Then Rose was tumbling him onto the bed and her wet mouth was all over him and he stopped wondering anything at all.
"Oh," when she had slid his trousers and pants down over his slim hips, pausing to nip at one of them. Every brush of her lips, every touch of her tongue against his flesh sparked another chain reaction that heightened his almost unbearable arousal. Each nerve in his body seemed directly connected to his cock, already painfully hard. His one heart raced, over-compensating, and he thought he might simply keel over dead of a heart attack before even getting to feel Rose from the inside in this body. Please...just like...oh. Like that.
She sank slowly down onto him.
It was over a little quickly.
"I'm sorry." He didn't want to meet her eyes, but it was a bit difficult not to with her still straddling him. Her expression was nothing but gentle understanding.
"New, new Doctor," she said softly, tracing one hand down his chest. She smiled suddenly. "Do you remember our first time after you regenerated?" He flinched at the memory. "S'like that, yeah? Just a new body to get used to. We've got all the time in the world." She regarded him silently for a moment before speaking. "I love you."
"But I'm not-"
"You are."
He pulled her down into a deep kiss rather than argue the point. "I adore you. And if you give me about a half hour," he said with a little smile, "I will endeavor to do a better job showing you how much."
***
The other Doctor had gone, sometime while they both slept - not unusual, since he never slept himself and there was only so long he could lie still. The Doctor remembered how that had been, and he relished these moments, waking slowly, sharing a bed with the woman he loved. There was something delightfully, decadently domestic about it that he'd never admit he craved, just a bit.
"I probably don't need to ask, do I?" His voice was still dry and raspy with sleep. Rose was on her back, gazing at the ceiling with a bemused expression, but she turned on her side at the sound of his voice.
Her slow smile did something to his insides. "Last night."
He grinned in return. "Me too."
"Wishing I'd been a fly on the wall a little earlier in the proceedings. I mean, how did you end up ..."
"What?" he asked, wide-eyed, and she hit him with a pillow. After disarming her of her weapon and pulling her on top of him to kiss her soundly, he continued. "How'd we end up doing what you caught us doing?" he asked.
"Yeah."
He grinned. "Wouldn't you like to know."
"She's not coming." He stood in the doorway to the other Doctor's bedroom, the bedroom that used to be his.
"What?" The other Doctor was reading, sitting on the bed in his brown suit, and he looked up at him over the tops of his glasses.
"She's taking a bath. She wants to be alone, I think."
"Oh." He frowned, then ran a hand through his hair. "I could try ..." he said, standing up.
The Doctor in blue shook his head. "She seemed to have quite made her mind up."
His counterpart dropped back onto the bed, removing his glasses. "Well, that's disappointing."
"Yeah." He leaned a little more comfortably against the doorframe, his posture indicating he didn't intend to go anywhere anytime soon. "She said she was tired."
"Welll...you humans. Get tired. Unfortunately."
The Doctor spoke, his voice soft. "I'm not human." His eyes met those of the other Doctor. "And I'm not tired."
"No?"
"No." The insinuation hung in the air. "So, now what?"
"Now what, what?" the Doctor on the bed asked, seemingly oblivious.
The Doctor huffed. The thought of Rose reclined in the bath, all naked and slippery, had him aroused and agitated and he didn't fancy the thought of retiring back to his room alone to take matters into his own...hands. He looked to the other Doctor to somehow resolve this unacceptable situation. "I mean, we could ... if you wanted."
The other Doctor looked up at him, his eyebrows lost in his hair. "We could what?"
"You know." His eyes flicked toward the bed.
"Without Rose here?" His voice rose to a squeak on the last syllable.
"Why not?" It was, honestly, the best answer he had. The evening, for him at least, seemed destined to end in self-gratification...might as well make it interesting.
He seemed to consider it, then he shrugged. "Why not indeed?"
It wasn't the most flattering acceptance of a come-on that he'd ever received, but he felt his heart rate increase anyway. There was something about being with this man who was him and yet so much more, this man who he remembered being, and the thought of all the times Rose had watched them do what they were about to engage in, moaning encouragement. He was across the room before he realized he'd even decided to move, kissing the other Doctor and tipping him backwards onto the bed. They pulled at each other's clothes, mostly ineffectually, as their mouths and tongues met again and again. He felt the other man's erection pressed into his hip, and he was relieved to know that the other Doctor was at least as aroused as he was.
He broke the kiss and crawled down the Doctor's body, pulling at the clasp of his brown pinstriped trousers. He wasn't quite sure why he was so desperate to please his other self first; there was no resolved sense of wanting to get it over with. He found that, alone with the other Doctor, he was...curious. Would the Doctor enjoy it as much as he appeared to when Rose was present? Would he enjoy it? Fleetingly, he wished that they were standing, that he could kneel on the floor as he had the last time he had done this to himself, alone, without the aid of a woman. After the Time War, that had been, and his last body had been so achingly lonely, so broken, so desperate for tenderness of some sort. He'd left the TARDIS's defense shields down, sought the blip of another TARDIS. Of course, he'd never expected the one he eventually collided with to be so similar to his own, and he'd rather imagined that it would be a past incarnation of himself he'd bump into...
His mind full of the ghosts of hundreds of years of time travel which this body had never sustained, his one human heart racing, the Doctor pulled the other man's zip down and lowered his trousers and pants as far as he needed to. Without any discussion about it, he took the other Doctor's cock into his mouth.
Rose was still smiling a small smile even as she kissed him. "Well, whatever it was, it was incredibly hot."
"Hot," he scoffed, returning her kisses happily.
He soon found that the outcome of this progression in their relationship was a Rose who had, if possible, an even larger libido than before, and she seemed to have no trouble keeping up with two men. And as she got more comfortable with their arrangement, she got more sexually adventurous.
"What are you thinking?" he asked one evening after she removed her fingernails from his scalp and the vice grip of her thighs from the sides of his head, and he crawled up her body, licking her moisture from his lips.
Her only answer was an evil grin before twisting her torso underneath his body to rummage in her nightstand drawer. When she came up with the slim pink shaft of her vibrator in one hand, he was confused, until he saw the small, clear bottle in her other hand.
"Oh." He swallowed. "Rose, what..."
"Am I thinking?" she finished, her tongue poking between her teeth. "Would you like me to show you?"
He gasped at even the thought of it, impossibly turned on. "I don't-"
"Shh," she soothed, straining up to kiss him. "Relax. I won't turn it on." Her eyes sparkled with curiosity. "I know you like it when I touch you there. I thought you might want more."
"I do," he said, his voice low.
"Tell me," she said, flipping the cap and squeezing the lubricant into her hand.
"I want you to." He realized he was trembling with anticipation, watching her slide her hand over the device.
"Tell me," Rose repeated, reaching around and running the length of it up and down over his entrance.
"I want," and he groaned, bucking back against the first teasing pressure. "Please ... fuck me ... oh God, inside me, now."
The plastic was warm from her hands, slick with the lubricant she'd applied, and she slid it inside of him with such confidence he found himself wondering whether she'd done this before? With him? But pleasure stamped out any burgeoning jealousy, and he yowled as she hit him just right inside, fucking him in a slow rhythm with her hand while with the other she pushed his hips down, spreading for him. Inside of her, improbably fucked on both sides by Rose, he came embarrassingly fast.
"You..." he breathed, when he was able to speak again, "are amazing."
"See now that's what I was thinking," she answered.
***
It was a quiet afternoon in the library. Rose stood up from where she had been seated cross-legged on the floor and stretched, setting down her magazine. "Back in a moment," she said to them.
The Doctor in brown grabbed her hand as she passed by the sofa, bringing it to his lips. "Don't be long."
She grinned. "I won't."
"I love you," he murmured. She trailed her hand through his hair affectionately and left the room.
The one-hearted Doctor couldn't help staring at his double from his seat across the room in his favorite wing-backed chair, his book forgotten on his lap.
"What?" the other man asked.
"What, what?"
The other Doctor huffed in frustration. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
His resulting smile was small and probably not a little bitter. "Was thinking I'm the victim of my own success. If you can express your feelings, what does she need me for?"
"Don't say that," he said dismissively.
"It's true."
"It isn't true." He stood up from his seat on the sofa. "She loves us both, isn't that what you told me?"
"She loved us both because there was something of me that I was willing to share that she couldn't get from you."
"You think that now that I've increased my vocabulary by one phrase that suddenly she doesn't need you anymore?" The other Doctor sat on the ottoman in front of the chair he occupied and sighed heavily. "It's me that she'll likely tire of, as the two of you grow older, if you decide to have children-"
"What?"
"Don't pretend you've never thought of it, I know you have. So has she." He held up a hand to stop any further denials. "It'll happen someday, I'm resigned to that."
"Even if it did, it's not like they wouldn't be your children too."
"I suppose." He raked his hands through his hair. "More people for me to watch grow old and die."
The idea of that struck him with sudden force. "That will be worse than watching us die, won't it? Watching your children die. Again."
The other Doctor laughed without mirth. "You know me too well."
"Well, I am you, as you have so often said."
The Doctor in brown pinstripes shook his head. "You aren't, I was wrong." He reached out and touched the other man's cheek. "You're you."
He swallowed awkwardly. This show of affection from his duplicate was almost completely unprecedented; certainly he'd never done anything remotely like this outside of the bedroom. The Doctor in blue shook his head. "I'm not -"
"You are the most unlikely creature in the whole of the universe. Part Time Lord, part human. A brilliant mind, and an open heart, and more passionate about life and fear and sex and longing than anyone I've ever known. Don't you see how amazing you are? You're you, Doctor." The other Doctor leaned over and kissed him on the forehead. "Forgive me for making you feel like anything less."
Tears welled in his eyes. "Please don't. Don't be so … so kind to me, I can't bear it."
"Why ever not?"
He almost choked on the answer. "Because a part of me still wants to take her away from you, have her all to myself."
"A part of me wants to let you. So that I don't have to watch you die. Watch your children, your grandchildren, die."
They sat in silence for a moment. "Well," the Doctor in blue said, his voice cracking, "we're a pair, aren't we?"
"Indeed. Two bodies, twice as many irresolvable issues."
"Makes you wonder how Rose manages to put up with either of us."
The brown-suited Doctor chuckled. "Aren't we so lucky that she does?"
The Doctor slipped away shortly after Rose returned, the sudden, naked tenderness of the other Doctor too much to bear. It was later, as he sat brooding in one of the gardens, that they found him. "Come to bed," said the Time Lord, and Rose held out her hand, and he was moving toward them before he even realized he'd decided to.
They led him to his own bedroom, began to undress him, and so much attention should have made him feel awkward; would have perhaps, before today. But he allowed it, allowed Rose to slowly slip buttons through buttonholes and allowed the Doctor in brown to reach around from behind and unfasten his trousers, slipping them over his erection and down. The dream-like quality of both of them circling him whispering encouragement and endearments, the odd conversation with the Doctor - he began to feel a little drunk. It was when the other Doctor, still dressed in his brown suit, went to his knees in front of him that he felt genuinely dizzy, like he was floating above it all and looking down. "What …?" he started to ask.
"Let me," the other Doctor responded, his tongue flicking out to touch his cock, and the Doctor's legs almost gave out, his single heart racing. "Let me," he repeated, his hands on the Doctor's slim hips and then his cool mouth had taken all of him in. The groan that wrenched from his throat sounded foreign to his own ears. Rose was behind him, naked now, running her hands down his back and over his bum and murmuring to him in words that he couldn't quite interpret, because his brilliant mind could only register so much pleasure at once.
A few delirious moments later and he had to stop the other Doctor, pushing him away gently. "Stop," he said. "I'm too close." Rose turned him to kiss her, to press the length of her nude body against his, to guide him back towards his bed.
"Guess what I'm thinking," she whispered against his lips, echoing that first time when they had made love in this bed, and he closed his eyes at the intensity of the memory of it as she lay back.
"Go to her." The other Doctor's voice from behind him, low and next to his ear. He was close enough that the Doctor could feel he still had his suit on.
"Aren't you going to..." A thin hand identical to his own came from behind to curl over his mouth, silencing him.
"Shhh," the Doctor hissed. "Just trust me. For once." The other man's mouth was so close to his throat that each word spoken was almost a kiss against it, and the Doctor whimpered. Opening his eyes, he pulled the hand away from his mouth and crawled forward down over Rose.
She smiled up at him. "Hello."
"Hello." He bent his head to nibble at her neck and shoulders as he slid one hand between her legs. She was wet, so warm he thought she might scald him; dipping two fingers inside of her, he hoped she would. His thumb found her clitoris, worked it gently as he fucked her with his fingers, enjoying her mewling cries and the way her hips rose to meet his hand.
The other Doctor, still clothed, had stretched out next to them, placed one hand lightly over his own which moved, pleasuring Rose. He took a long, ragged breath. "I can feel her through you," the other Doctor said, opening his eyes. His pupils had nearly swallowed the brown of his irises altogether, and he looked possessed. He moved his hand away. "Would you like to know what that's like?"
"Please." Rose was panting beneath him. "I...need you. Now."
Curious about the other Doctor's cryptic statement, the Doctor removed his hand. He shifted over her, grasped her behind one knee to move her leg up over his hip, and slid inside her. They both gasped from the intensity of it, and he stilled for a moment, trying to reign in his body's response. After a moment when he felt a bit of control regained, he sighed deeply and began to move inside of her in long, slow strokes. He couldn't keep from moaning her name. "Oh god...Rose..."
The other Doctor had moved, budging up and closer to them. He lifted one hand to gently cup Rose's cheek, and she turned into it to place a kiss into his palm. He hummed at the sensation before slowly sliding his fingers up and around to her temple. The Doctor recognized the action a half second before he felt the cool fingers of the other hand on the side of his own face, gentle as he had been in the library. "Feel her," he heard him whisper just before the circuit was completed and the world fell away.
The onslaught of sensation and images was instantaneous and overwhelming. It was never meant to be experienced by one being, this human physical sensation of sex - pounding blood and hormones and animalistic want - and this Time Lord ability to connect to another's mind. The intensity of the pleasure was painful, boiling inside him, burning him from the inside out. He felt Rose - her ecstasy as she swiftly approached orgasm and the sensation of him filling her, mixed with her happiness being between the two Doctors and her vague confusion at what was happening now. He saw himself, through her - the first time on that miserable beach, alone and haggard, so many years ago, saying goodbye and fading. Fading. And now, as himself, so new and uncertain, so open where the other Doctor had always been closed to her. And him, no longer afraid to tell her he loved her, and her slight discomfort with her realization that she wasn't sure if she liked it, at first. But she was happy, and grateful, and he made a low, wordless sound in his throat at the narcotic rush of love from her, for her, as she came apart beneath him.
There was that, as well. From the other Doctor. Love, for Rose. Possessiveness, and jealousy. Watching his twin making love to her, feeling what they were both feeling. Toward him as well, images of the two of them piloting the TARDIS. The last Time Lords in existence, and the Doctor realized with shock that there was a part of the other Doctor who sometimes wished it was just them, without Rose coming between them, united in their shared knowledge and memories of Gallifrey. But he was thankful, so thankful that they had found him, stayed with him. Saved him.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, there was himself. Somehow so much more distinctive, when literally held up against the other Doctor. He craved life, and love. He craved acceptance, and was so moved now, receiving it, he almost wanted to run and hide. Too much. Take Rose, settle down, procreate, grow old. These urges frequently caught him unaware, made him feel guilty. Then there was the other side of it - the desire to reclaim his ship, his ship. Anger at the accusation of genocide and frustration at the other Doctor's reluctance to admit that he had wanted to do the same thing. But he had them, now, both of them, and they wanted him there. He shouldn't even exist, but now they couldn't imagine a life without him.
And, coursing through all of it: desire, want. Fuck. Good...too good. He was going to...
The Doctor cried out, spilling himself inside Rose as the other Doctor's hand at his forehead shook and finally fell away. He let himself collapse against her, and she hummed and stroked his back, her hands soothing his damp, oversensitized flesh. His breathing gradually slowed in audible pants, and he was aware of the same sounds from the other Doctor, who was lying on his back next to them, his eyes closed.
"What was that?" Rose asked.
The Doctor didn't open his eyes, just held up his hand, wiggling the fingers. "Time Lord," he murmured.
He let himself roll off of her to one side as Rose lifted up on an elbow to look down at the other Doctor's body. "And you ... oh."
The brown-suited Doctor smiled, opening one eye to look at them both. "Our minds were linked. What he felt, I felt."
"You know," she said, laughing and leaning over to kiss his cheek, "I bet not many women can say they've made two men come simultaneously. Well done, me."
"Oh, yes," he responded, his single heartbeat finally back to normal. "Well done you, indeed."
She snuggled between them and they curled around her, a warm cocoon of sex-tousled-Doctor, and the Doctor very much not in blue wondered with slight irritation why the other still had that suit on but found he didn't have the energy to suggest he remove it. Instead he buried his face in Rose's shoulder, feeling sleep quickly closing in on him.
"It was all three of us, wasn't it?" Rose said suddenly. Dreamily.
"Is. Please," the other, clothed Doctor spoke up, his voice faint and muffled. The Doctor felt Rose turn her head toward his voice.
"Are you tired?" she asked, amazement in her voice.
"...takes a lot out of me," he mumbled. A moment later the slow, regular pattern of his breathing left no mistake: he was asleep. The half-human Doctor smiled against Rose's skin, dozing off. And shortly after, Rose Tyler, the most loved girl in the universe, joined her Doctors in slumber.