Fic: Less Complicated (1/2)
Title: Less Complicated
Author: karenor
Character/Pairing: Ten/Reinette, Ten/Rose, Mickey
Rating: Light R for non-graphic sexual situations and language
Summary: From the uncrowned queen of France to the shop girl off the Powell Estate, the Doctor didn’t have to do a thing and hearts were thrown at his feet .
Betas: Many thanks to my betas, both illustrious cheerleaders and red-pen-wielders, requialexa and unfolded73.
Disclaimer: BBC owns, etc. etc.
Author's Notes: Fair warning: the Doctor and Reinette do a whole lot more than flirt or snog in this. But this really is, at its heart, a Doctor/Rose fic (I promise! Hang in there for part 2). Because I’ve long-since wondered what would have happened if the Doctor hadn’t been too late, and Madame de Pompadour did join Team TARDIS. How would she have shaken things up? AU from Girl in the Fireplace.
Part One
The first adventure with Reinette on board the TARDIS had gone surprisingly well.
She’d stepped onto the ship in all her Versailles silk and ribbons and baubles finery, clutching only a small satchel filled with her things. She’d looked strikingly out of place amidst the wires and bronze and coral of the TARDIS, but was no less a vision for it. What she must have been thinking of his ship’s dim interior after the splendour of the palace she was accustomed to, he couldn’t imagine.
Back in that palace, in her bedroom, he'd told her to pick a star, but once on board the TARDIS, with all of time and space at her command, all she'd said was, “I want to see your world.”
She must have noticed when his face clouded with emotion he couldn't suppress, because before he could have explained the impossibility, she'd clarified.
“All of yours,” she'd said, clearly including Mickey and Rose. “My Earth. Your time.”
“Oh, but I've just come from there, and trust me, it's boring,” Mickey had said. “You don't want to go there. And I've only just signed up on this boat myself. Clockwork robots looking for your brain, and wanting my guts for garters was my first trip. It's your call, but pick somewhere else, yeah?”
“What about-?” Rose had begun, and he, practically seeing the idea turn in her head, had finished for her.
“Somewhen else.”
“Yes,” Rose had confirmed, smiling.
“Somewhen close to your time,” he'd said to Rose, “but far enough to make it interesting for everyone.”
Rose’s eyes had grown wide with that bubbling excitement she always had at the start of a new adventure and joy at their synchronized trains of thought.
“Close enough to ours that Reinette can see how the world's changed,” Rose finished the thought. “1930's?” she'd suggested. “Or...?”
“40's.”
“After the war.”
“Yes!”
Reinette and Mickey had watched his exchange with Rose with amusement. And he'd nearly forgotten it was meant to have been Reinette's choice.
“Will that do?” he'd asked her.
Reinette had glanced at them all and shrugged, the movement exaggerated and loud in her ridiculous dress, and drawing his attention briefly, for about the eighty-third time since he'd met her, to her breasts.
“I don't see why not,” she'd said slowly. “Can we go to the New World?”
“America?” Mickey had asked. “I've never been there.”
“Well, that's settled then!” he'd said, stepping to the TARDIS controls. “Rose, if you'd show our guests to the wardrobe room.”
They’d ended up in Los Angeles in 1949. Big Hollywood. Bigger hats. Beautiful dresses that hugged the curves of his two lovely blonde companions. They went dancing at the Derby. And though they might have run into a hiccup there…
“Not exactly white...” Mickey had pointed out.
“Eh, they'll... just think you're with the band. Or talk English at whoever bothers you. They're suckers for the accent.”
And nobody had bothered them. It was a philosophy that usually served him well. Act like you own the place, and people will assume you do.
No, the first real problem he encountered was after their adventure.
Just a moment before, Rose and Mickey, a little drunk, and a lot giggly, had left the console room in a flurry of noise, leaving him alone with Reinette for the first time since she'd come aboard.
“It's been a long day,” she said, fanning herself with her hand as if overheated. She did look a little flushed.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“I find I’m quite tired. Escort me to my quarters?”
“Rose did show you where-?”
“Yes. Walk me there.”
He offered her his hand. And unencumbered by her huge gown, he found he could stand much closer to her now. He found that he wanted to stand much closer to her, which... could only come to no good.
She was silent on the walk through the TARDIS corridors, and he gave up his attempt to babble about halfway to her room. An unmistakable tension mounted between them as their steps drew closer to the plain door. Such that when they arrived, neither her words nor the meaning behind them were any surprise.
“Would you like to come in?”
“Yes,” he said immediately, before sighing, then backpedalling. “But it probably would be a very bad idea.” Still, he took an involuntary step towards her.
She looked at him from beneath her lashes, a practiced move if ever he’d seen one. “Because…?”
“Reinette,” he warned, opening her door for her, waiting expectantly for her to leave the threshold and enter.
She didn’t. Instead she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. Though he was less surprised than the first time he’d suddenly found her lips on his, he couldn’t respond. Nor could he explain himself out here in the hall. He gently pushed her away from him and into the room and followed her determinedly, closing the door behind him.
She sat on the bed demurely, and removed her short fur coat, tossing it behind her. She kicked off her red heels, not too dissimilar from those she was accustomed to. Her gaze never left his. His defied him and strayed to her legs, bare from just above the knee. She noticed.
“Do women get used to it?” she asked.
“What?” he said, distracted, trying to formulate his ‘This Can’t Happen’ speech.
“Modern women, all this… uncovered skin.”
He swallowed heavily, saw her eyes dart to the movement. “I-” he started, “I don’t know. Yes, I suppose. Look-”
“In my time, a lady’s flesh …” she began, her hands moving dangerously behind her neck, stretching the fabric of her dress against her chest. A moment later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a zip, slowly being lowered. “…was for the eyes of her lover.”
His eyes widened as the loosening garment began to fall and revealed her shoulders. She stood when the dress pooled at her waist and pushed it over her hips and off.
He blinked at her, standing before him nearly naked, her modern undergarments jarring with a fantasy he hadn’t even previously been conscious of, of her in 18th century ones. He stepped towards her, finally speaking.
“This is all wrong.”
She followed his eyes again. What about this woman made him so… transparent?
“This bra?” she asked, trying out the word. “These knickers, I think the word was?”
The thought of where she must have learned the words cut him. “Not just that.”
“Take them off me, then,” she softly commanded.
He opened his mouth to argue, to lecture, to list the reasons why this can’t and shouldn’t and won’t happen. But she’d probably already noticed another part of his body beginning to defy him as well. He closed his mouth and shook his head, hoping that was refusal enough. And then, at odds with that, a moment later, after making no real coherent decision to do so, he closed the gap between them, and did as she asked.
When she kissed him this time, pushing her naked, human-hot body against the cotton of his suit, he gave no resistance. Instead he gave himself over to the sensations, opening his mouth beneath hers to taste her, even as her small hands made quick work of his clothing. When he was as naked as she was, she pulled him onto the bed with her, his body above hers already settling them into position, clearly intending a fierce, quick, no-nonsense shag.
It was all happening tremendously fast, and he was having trouble thinking clearly, surrounded by her scent, her warmth, her soft skin. She was a beautiful, sexy woman who wanted him in a delightfully uncomplicated way. Why shouldn’t he have her?
You know exactly why, his own voice in his head said. And the image of another blonde woman came quickly after it.
He sighed, pulling away just a fraction. Reinette saw his hesitation.
“It’s just sex, Doctor,” she said gently. “I’ll be gone soon. Like a dream.”
“Not for me,” he answered, not sure which of her three statements he was addressing.
“Make love to me,” she demanded again, with the barest hint of a question.
He nodded, but pulled away even further, up onto his knees, before he issued his own command.
“Turn over.”
>>>
In her experience, men of power rarely made excellent lovers. They only sought their own pleasure, made a waste of her own considerable talents. They failed to drop ego and arrogance with trousers and hose. Not this lord.
His movements were desperate, his eyes and his mood dark. He seemed to want simultaneously to experience all she had to offer and to escape her bedroom as soon as possible. The combination alone was intoxicating. Not that he didn't please her. Thoroughly. Several times. There was torture in him and she was quite happy to take it, in any small way she could, into herself. She was, rather unfortunately, in love with this man. It was exhausting.
And though it was not her custom to sleep with those she's bedded, she found she wanted him to stay. To hold on to him for as long as he would allow. Which, as it happened, was not to be long at all. He stroked her hair as her body calmed for the last time that evening, as she listened with her ear on his chest to his strange heartbeat, which resumed a moderate pace much more quickly than hers could.
She had just begun to doze against him when he shifted gently beneath her, untangling them. She mewed a sleepy protest, but thought it best not to say any words that would make him feel more awkward. She watched him steadily in the low light as he silently redressed, criminally reclothing his beautiful body. What wasn't beautiful about this man? Even his pain, the guilt she saw now on his face was, in its way, exquisite. She closed her eyes, though, unable to witness it any longer.
She heard the last rustles of his clothing, and then, surprisingly, a brief dip of the bed as he pressed a hand or knee into it, leaned over her, and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. As if she were that little girl who had first met him and not the woman, grown.
“Goodnight Reinette,” he said softly, and then was gone.
>>>
Mickey awoke after only an hour or two of sleep. Who could tell on a ship that travels through time anyway? After damn well not enough sleep. He was unfortunately not at all drunk anymore, and already had the beginnings of what would be a killer headache come morning. Or what counted as morning in this crazy box.
Not that this time travel thing was all bad. The nineteen forties! Dancing and drinking and pretending to be all posh? That was miles better than being strapped to tables and attacked by French robots. Or... were they French? Whatever they were, no one pointed anything sharp at him last night. Tonight. Whatever.
He needed water.
Ha paused outside his door to get his bearings. The kitchen was that way, wasn’t it? He started off in the assumed correct direction. Twenty meters and around two bends down the hall and he wasn’t sure he’d been correct at all. Nope, that was definitely Reinette’s door; he’d been with Rose earlier when she showed her. So that would mean the kitchen was-. He began to turn when her door opened and out stepped a rumpled Doctor, shutting the door quickly, taking a deep breath and running a hand through his hair.
Mickey blinked in surprise. The Doctor... and Reinette? He couldn’t have, could he? With her? Oh but he knew a just-shagged-look if ever he’d seen one. Had happily worn it himself many a morning, even if it’d been a while. Only, the Doctor didn’t look exactly… happy.
The Doctor, noticing him, blinked back.
“All right, Doctor,” he said coldly, not exactly sure if he should be or had a right to be angry. But he was.
“Ah,” he said, radiating nervousness. “Mickey. You seem very… sober. Rose all right?”
“Sleeping,” he answered. “Reinette?”
“The same,” he said quickly before realising the implication. “I think. Though I have absolutely no idea. Why would I?”
“Right,” Mickey said, narrowing his eyes, trying to decide if the Doctor actually thought he was that stupid. Probably did. As they stood together for an awkward moment, he debated whether or not he needed to issue a warning in defence of Rose. Something that included ‘I’ll have to kill you’ somewhere in it. It would probably only make the bastard laugh at him.
“Mickey,” the Doctor began after a sigh, the bullshit gone from his voice. “Look-”
He held up a hand to stop him. “It’s none of my business, Doctor.”
“No, but you should know that-”
“What, Doctor?” he said harshly, now daring him to say... anything about this out loud. “What should I know?”
The Doctor looked down, didn’t answer.
He found himself feeling unfamiliar concern for the other man. Alien. Whatever. He sighed.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Doctor? Really, though?”
“I... no. Not, really no.”
Mickey nodded. Sympathy and fury both churning through him at once. He’d better get out of here before he got in the middle of something ugly.
“Right,” he said again. “Well, I didn’t see anything on my way to the kitchen to grab a water.”
The Doctor closed his eyes and so softly he barely heard, said, “Thank you.”
He nodded and headed off.
“Mickey,” he heard from behind him, “It’s that way.”
>>>
He was insane. There wasn’t really a better explanation, the Doctor thought, as he stepped into his shower. 900 years of time and space had finally driven him around the bend. It started with him jumping through a time window on a horse and continued with him shagging a French courtesan, down the hall from where the most important person in his life right now was peacefully sleeping off a night of revelry.
Not that this had anything to do with Rose. This had everything to do with him being weak, and Reinette being... very persuasive. All right, so all she’d done, really, was asked. And got naked. And kissed him. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t turned down beautiful women before. He was propositioned fairly often, as it happened. In this ‘foxy’ body, especially. Why was she different?
He scrubbed at himself more harshly than was strictly necessary, hoping the vague pain would distract him from his self-examination. It didn’t. Why had he turned to Reinette, allowed himself to be seduced so completely? It wasn’t like him. She distracted him quite effectively when she chose to. Something most women couldn’t do so well. And while thoughts of any woman but the one beneath him (or indeed above...and beside him) at the time may have been completely blotted out, the effects were very temporary. It all came flooding back before he’d even pulled back on his trousers.
He shook his head beneath the water.
Okay, so maybe it did have something to do with Rose. Maybe this was like inviting Mickey onto the ship, only worse. Reinette was an even more insurmountable buffer than Rose’s ex. Especially if he was shagging her. Reinette, not Rose. Whom he wanted. But shouldn’t want. Why shouldn’t he? Ah, right, because allowing himself to love her would make her eventual departure that much more painful.
Even in his head it sounded feeble, cowardly. He’d nearly told her how he felt in front of that chip shop (had it really been just yesterday?), albeit by accident. Why did he think she couldn’t handle it? Rose was stronger than he was allowing for. And so, if he was honest with himself, was he.
He turned off the water and leaned against the cool tiles with a heavy sigh. He was making excuses for doing that for which he had none. He was in love with Rose. He’d fucked Reinette.
It was so very wrong. And yet... he wanted to do it again.
-Part Two-
Author: karenor
Character/Pairing: Ten/Reinette, Ten/Rose, Mickey
Rating: Light R for non-graphic sexual situations and language
Summary: From the uncrowned queen of France to the shop girl off the Powell Estate, the Doctor didn’t have to do a thing and hearts were thrown at his feet .
Betas: Many thanks to my betas, both illustrious cheerleaders and red-pen-wielders, requialexa and unfolded73.
Disclaimer: BBC owns, etc. etc.
Author's Notes: Fair warning: the Doctor and Reinette do a whole lot more than flirt or snog in this. But this really is, at its heart, a Doctor/Rose fic (I promise! Hang in there for part 2). Because I’ve long-since wondered what would have happened if the Doctor hadn’t been too late, and Madame de Pompadour did join Team TARDIS. How would she have shaken things up? AU from Girl in the Fireplace.
Part One
The first adventure with Reinette on board the TARDIS had gone surprisingly well.
She’d stepped onto the ship in all her Versailles silk and ribbons and baubles finery, clutching only a small satchel filled with her things. She’d looked strikingly out of place amidst the wires and bronze and coral of the TARDIS, but was no less a vision for it. What she must have been thinking of his ship’s dim interior after the splendour of the palace she was accustomed to, he couldn’t imagine.
Back in that palace, in her bedroom, he'd told her to pick a star, but once on board the TARDIS, with all of time and space at her command, all she'd said was, “I want to see your world.”
She must have noticed when his face clouded with emotion he couldn't suppress, because before he could have explained the impossibility, she'd clarified.
“All of yours,” she'd said, clearly including Mickey and Rose. “My Earth. Your time.”
“Oh, but I've just come from there, and trust me, it's boring,” Mickey had said. “You don't want to go there. And I've only just signed up on this boat myself. Clockwork robots looking for your brain, and wanting my guts for garters was my first trip. It's your call, but pick somewhere else, yeah?”
“What about-?” Rose had begun, and he, practically seeing the idea turn in her head, had finished for her.
“Somewhen else.”
“Yes,” Rose had confirmed, smiling.
“Somewhen close to your time,” he'd said to Rose, “but far enough to make it interesting for everyone.”
Rose’s eyes had grown wide with that bubbling excitement she always had at the start of a new adventure and joy at their synchronized trains of thought.
“Close enough to ours that Reinette can see how the world's changed,” Rose finished the thought. “1930's?” she'd suggested. “Or...?”
“40's.”
“After the war.”
“Yes!”
Reinette and Mickey had watched his exchange with Rose with amusement. And he'd nearly forgotten it was meant to have been Reinette's choice.
“Will that do?” he'd asked her.
Reinette had glanced at them all and shrugged, the movement exaggerated and loud in her ridiculous dress, and drawing his attention briefly, for about the eighty-third time since he'd met her, to her breasts.
“I don't see why not,” she'd said slowly. “Can we go to the New World?”
“America?” Mickey had asked. “I've never been there.”
“Well, that's settled then!” he'd said, stepping to the TARDIS controls. “Rose, if you'd show our guests to the wardrobe room.”
They’d ended up in Los Angeles in 1949. Big Hollywood. Bigger hats. Beautiful dresses that hugged the curves of his two lovely blonde companions. They went dancing at the Derby. And though they might have run into a hiccup there…
“Not exactly white...” Mickey had pointed out.
“Eh, they'll... just think you're with the band. Or talk English at whoever bothers you. They're suckers for the accent.”
And nobody had bothered them. It was a philosophy that usually served him well. Act like you own the place, and people will assume you do.
No, the first real problem he encountered was after their adventure.
Just a moment before, Rose and Mickey, a little drunk, and a lot giggly, had left the console room in a flurry of noise, leaving him alone with Reinette for the first time since she'd come aboard.
“It's been a long day,” she said, fanning herself with her hand as if overheated. She did look a little flushed.
“Yes,” he said simply.
“I find I’m quite tired. Escort me to my quarters?”
“Rose did show you where-?”
“Yes. Walk me there.”
He offered her his hand. And unencumbered by her huge gown, he found he could stand much closer to her now. He found that he wanted to stand much closer to her, which... could only come to no good.
She was silent on the walk through the TARDIS corridors, and he gave up his attempt to babble about halfway to her room. An unmistakable tension mounted between them as their steps drew closer to the plain door. Such that when they arrived, neither her words nor the meaning behind them were any surprise.
“Would you like to come in?”
“Yes,” he said immediately, before sighing, then backpedalling. “But it probably would be a very bad idea.” Still, he took an involuntary step towards her.
She looked at him from beneath her lashes, a practiced move if ever he’d seen one. “Because…?”
“Reinette,” he warned, opening her door for her, waiting expectantly for her to leave the threshold and enter.
She didn’t. Instead she rose on her tiptoes and kissed him. Though he was less surprised than the first time he’d suddenly found her lips on his, he couldn’t respond. Nor could he explain himself out here in the hall. He gently pushed her away from him and into the room and followed her determinedly, closing the door behind him.
She sat on the bed demurely, and removed her short fur coat, tossing it behind her. She kicked off her red heels, not too dissimilar from those she was accustomed to. Her gaze never left his. His defied him and strayed to her legs, bare from just above the knee. She noticed.
“Do women get used to it?” she asked.
“What?” he said, distracted, trying to formulate his ‘This Can’t Happen’ speech.
“Modern women, all this… uncovered skin.”
He swallowed heavily, saw her eyes dart to the movement. “I-” he started, “I don’t know. Yes, I suppose. Look-”
“In my time, a lady’s flesh …” she began, her hands moving dangerously behind her neck, stretching the fabric of her dress against her chest. A moment later, he heard the unmistakable sound of a zip, slowly being lowered. “…was for the eyes of her lover.”
His eyes widened as the loosening garment began to fall and revealed her shoulders. She stood when the dress pooled at her waist and pushed it over her hips and off.
He blinked at her, standing before him nearly naked, her modern undergarments jarring with a fantasy he hadn’t even previously been conscious of, of her in 18th century ones. He stepped towards her, finally speaking.
“This is all wrong.”
She followed his eyes again. What about this woman made him so… transparent?
“This bra?” she asked, trying out the word. “These knickers, I think the word was?”
The thought of where she must have learned the words cut him. “Not just that.”
“Take them off me, then,” she softly commanded.
He opened his mouth to argue, to lecture, to list the reasons why this can’t and shouldn’t and won’t happen. But she’d probably already noticed another part of his body beginning to defy him as well. He closed his mouth and shook his head, hoping that was refusal enough. And then, at odds with that, a moment later, after making no real coherent decision to do so, he closed the gap between them, and did as she asked.
When she kissed him this time, pushing her naked, human-hot body against the cotton of his suit, he gave no resistance. Instead he gave himself over to the sensations, opening his mouth beneath hers to taste her, even as her small hands made quick work of his clothing. When he was as naked as she was, she pulled him onto the bed with her, his body above hers already settling them into position, clearly intending a fierce, quick, no-nonsense shag.
It was all happening tremendously fast, and he was having trouble thinking clearly, surrounded by her scent, her warmth, her soft skin. She was a beautiful, sexy woman who wanted him in a delightfully uncomplicated way. Why shouldn’t he have her?
You know exactly why, his own voice in his head said. And the image of another blonde woman came quickly after it.
He sighed, pulling away just a fraction. Reinette saw his hesitation.
“It’s just sex, Doctor,” she said gently. “I’ll be gone soon. Like a dream.”
“Not for me,” he answered, not sure which of her three statements he was addressing.
“Make love to me,” she demanded again, with the barest hint of a question.
He nodded, but pulled away even further, up onto his knees, before he issued his own command.
“Turn over.”
>>>
In her experience, men of power rarely made excellent lovers. They only sought their own pleasure, made a waste of her own considerable talents. They failed to drop ego and arrogance with trousers and hose. Not this lord.
His movements were desperate, his eyes and his mood dark. He seemed to want simultaneously to experience all she had to offer and to escape her bedroom as soon as possible. The combination alone was intoxicating. Not that he didn't please her. Thoroughly. Several times. There was torture in him and she was quite happy to take it, in any small way she could, into herself. She was, rather unfortunately, in love with this man. It was exhausting.
And though it was not her custom to sleep with those she's bedded, she found she wanted him to stay. To hold on to him for as long as he would allow. Which, as it happened, was not to be long at all. He stroked her hair as her body calmed for the last time that evening, as she listened with her ear on his chest to his strange heartbeat, which resumed a moderate pace much more quickly than hers could.
She had just begun to doze against him when he shifted gently beneath her, untangling them. She mewed a sleepy protest, but thought it best not to say any words that would make him feel more awkward. She watched him steadily in the low light as he silently redressed, criminally reclothing his beautiful body. What wasn't beautiful about this man? Even his pain, the guilt she saw now on his face was, in its way, exquisite. She closed her eyes, though, unable to witness it any longer.
She heard the last rustles of his clothing, and then, surprisingly, a brief dip of the bed as he pressed a hand or knee into it, leaned over her, and placed a chaste kiss on her forehead. As if she were that little girl who had first met him and not the woman, grown.
“Goodnight Reinette,” he said softly, and then was gone.
>>>
Mickey awoke after only an hour or two of sleep. Who could tell on a ship that travels through time anyway? After damn well not enough sleep. He was unfortunately not at all drunk anymore, and already had the beginnings of what would be a killer headache come morning. Or what counted as morning in this crazy box.
Not that this time travel thing was all bad. The nineteen forties! Dancing and drinking and pretending to be all posh? That was miles better than being strapped to tables and attacked by French robots. Or... were they French? Whatever they were, no one pointed anything sharp at him last night. Tonight. Whatever.
He needed water.
Ha paused outside his door to get his bearings. The kitchen was that way, wasn’t it? He started off in the assumed correct direction. Twenty meters and around two bends down the hall and he wasn’t sure he’d been correct at all. Nope, that was definitely Reinette’s door; he’d been with Rose earlier when she showed her. So that would mean the kitchen was-. He began to turn when her door opened and out stepped a rumpled Doctor, shutting the door quickly, taking a deep breath and running a hand through his hair.
Mickey blinked in surprise. The Doctor... and Reinette? He couldn’t have, could he? With her? Oh but he knew a just-shagged-look if ever he’d seen one. Had happily worn it himself many a morning, even if it’d been a while. Only, the Doctor didn’t look exactly… happy.
The Doctor, noticing him, blinked back.
“All right, Doctor,” he said coldly, not exactly sure if he should be or had a right to be angry. But he was.
“Ah,” he said, radiating nervousness. “Mickey. You seem very… sober. Rose all right?”
“Sleeping,” he answered. “Reinette?”
“The same,” he said quickly before realising the implication. “I think. Though I have absolutely no idea. Why would I?”
“Right,” Mickey said, narrowing his eyes, trying to decide if the Doctor actually thought he was that stupid. Probably did. As they stood together for an awkward moment, he debated whether or not he needed to issue a warning in defence of Rose. Something that included ‘I’ll have to kill you’ somewhere in it. It would probably only make the bastard laugh at him.
“Mickey,” the Doctor began after a sigh, the bullshit gone from his voice. “Look-”
He held up a hand to stop him. “It’s none of my business, Doctor.”
“No, but you should know that-”
“What, Doctor?” he said harshly, now daring him to say... anything about this out loud. “What should I know?”
The Doctor looked down, didn’t answer.
He found himself feeling unfamiliar concern for the other man. Alien. Whatever. He sighed.
“Do you know what you’re doing, Doctor? Really, though?”
“I... no. Not, really no.”
Mickey nodded. Sympathy and fury both churning through him at once. He’d better get out of here before he got in the middle of something ugly.
“Right,” he said again. “Well, I didn’t see anything on my way to the kitchen to grab a water.”
The Doctor closed his eyes and so softly he barely heard, said, “Thank you.”
He nodded and headed off.
“Mickey,” he heard from behind him, “It’s that way.”
>>>
He was insane. There wasn’t really a better explanation, the Doctor thought, as he stepped into his shower. 900 years of time and space had finally driven him around the bend. It started with him jumping through a time window on a horse and continued with him shagging a French courtesan, down the hall from where the most important person in his life right now was peacefully sleeping off a night of revelry.
Not that this had anything to do with Rose. This had everything to do with him being weak, and Reinette being... very persuasive. All right, so all she’d done, really, was asked. And got naked. And kissed him. But it wasn’t like he hadn’t turned down beautiful women before. He was propositioned fairly often, as it happened. In this ‘foxy’ body, especially. Why was she different?
He scrubbed at himself more harshly than was strictly necessary, hoping the vague pain would distract him from his self-examination. It didn’t. Why had he turned to Reinette, allowed himself to be seduced so completely? It wasn’t like him. She distracted him quite effectively when she chose to. Something most women couldn’t do so well. And while thoughts of any woman but the one beneath him (or indeed above...and beside him) at the time may have been completely blotted out, the effects were very temporary. It all came flooding back before he’d even pulled back on his trousers.
He shook his head beneath the water.
Okay, so maybe it did have something to do with Rose. Maybe this was like inviting Mickey onto the ship, only worse. Reinette was an even more insurmountable buffer than Rose’s ex. Especially if he was shagging her. Reinette, not Rose. Whom he wanted. But shouldn’t want. Why shouldn’t he? Ah, right, because allowing himself to love her would make her eventual departure that much more painful.
Even in his head it sounded feeble, cowardly. He’d nearly told her how he felt in front of that chip shop (had it really been just yesterday?), albeit by accident. Why did he think she couldn’t handle it? Rose was stronger than he was allowing for. And so, if he was honest with himself, was he.
He turned off the water and leaned against the cool tiles with a heavy sigh. He was making excuses for doing that for which he had none. He was in love with Rose. He’d fucked Reinette.
It was so very wrong. And yet... he wanted to do it again.
-Part Two-