Relict, 7/12(?) (DW, 9/J/R, Teen for the moment)
Chapter One - Bazaar | Chapter Two - Maintenance | Chapter Three - Off-Balance | Chapter Four - Whirl | Chapter Five - Shadows | Chapter Six - Latency
Thanks as always to wendymr for the beta reading.
Chapter Seven - Ritual
The hot water hit the nape of her neck and seemed to spread throughout her body, down her spine, across her shoulders, up over her scalp. She wasn’t just sore from the headlong dash from the dragon’s nesting place - well, they weren’t really dragons, but flying reptilians that nested in the cliff of a thrust-fault in the depths of a just-above-freezing rain forest. Close enough.
She stretched her arms over her head and back, tilting her head under the water. She was still carrying tension from last night, and the niggling worry that persisted since yesterday morning. In the bigger scheme of things, last night hadn’t been the worst. It was almost…normal. It just hadn’t had the same triggers.
Rose planted her hands against the tiles, bowing her head and shoulders under the pounding power of the shower. That first time she had slept with him had been so serene, so hopeful. The second time…
The second time had shown her the dangers of getting what she hoped for.
She shuddered, gasping a little as the water ran down her face, around her cheeks and into her mouth.
…
There’s no one - I would know.
The empty look in his eyes haunted her, and after getting Adam settled with fresh clothes, fresh linens, tea with milk and two sugars, and a turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese, lettuce, brown mustard, no tomato - honestly, he was worse than Jamie Simmons down the end that she used to babysit, and Jamie was three - she went in search of the Doctor.
He was not in the console room, the galley, the observation room, the library, or the machinery shop, all the places she normally could find him. She found herself wandering down spiraling corridors with no doorways, and although she felt as though the TARDIS was guiding her, she also felt some resistance. As she was having to take the long way around.
She was beginning to be quite self-conscious of her own sweaty, disheveled state when she fetched up at a plain wooden door with iron hinges, the kind one found in listed buildings. It was even a little canted, as if the TARDIS were somehow suffering from subsidence. It was an ordinary enough looking door, but she couldn’t help feeling as if it had a big red “KEEP OUT” sign on it.
Twisting her fingers together as she chewed on her lower lip, she thought about knocking, but something stopped her. She turned away hesitantly, but before she had taken two steps, she heard the latch sigh open, and she turned back, watching the door swing open onto near darkness. A wedge of taupe linoleum was all she could see.
She approached cautiously, alert but concerned, and called out softly, “Doctor?”
“Rose! Don’t-” His hoarse response was too late. At her touch, the door swung open, allowing the weak light from the corridor to spill over the bare, simple room. The Doctor was lying on a narrow, plain bed with a dark spread, highlighting the paleness of his skin as he was bare from the waist up.
Her overwhelming first impression was human. Lean. Thin, really, except for the strength of the wiry muscles. Shoulders that seemed to be broad and narrow at once, collarbones sharp as razors beneath his skin. He had raised himself on one elbow, twisting toward her, but she could see the effort registering on his drawn features, and as she drew closer, her eyes adjusting to the murky light, she could see the pale shadows of bruises all over his torso, the deepest in the hollow of his far shoulder. Another settled in the arch of his ribs, and she could see the delineation of knuckles in the abraded skin. But that was not the worst. Patches of pink and white mottled the flesh, some peeling like sunburn, others appearing to be in the early stages of blistering.
She was speechless, horrified for a moment, then was at his side in an instant.
“Come with me to the medlab.” She tried to find places to put her hands, determined not to think about anything but treatment for the moment.
“I’ve been,” he said simply, lips a little pale from pressure as he eased himself back against the thin mattress with its shallow pillow. “It’s all right, Rose, I’m healing. It’ll all be okay in a few hours. Go back to bed.”
“I think I’ll stay right here,” she said firmly, pulling the bucket-shaped caster chair at the roll-top desk closer to the side of the bed. “He tortured you, didn’t he? Like he did the Dalek?”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, just moved carefully to settle into a flat position on the bed.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking up a silver implement from the corner of the desk. It looked like a fatter version of the sonic screwdriver; it even had a blue glowing light on one end and was humming so softly that she didn’t really hear it until she picked it up.
“Dermal regenerator.” He closed his eyes.
As if that was going to stop her.
“Can this fix the burns?” she asked, turning it over and examining the light more closely.
“Careful,” he warned, reaching out with breathtaking suddenness to deflect the light from her eyes. “Yes.”
“Show me.”
“Rose-” He looked at her with an expression that came as near to helplessness as she ever wanted to see from him, then he took the tool from her, adjusting the setting. “Look, this isn’t a magic wand. You have to focus it on the burn until the flesh underneath heals; then the blister will start to peel. It takes several minutes per square inch, even on burns this superficial - just the by-product of his imaging scan that’s more useful for metal than flesh. I’ve done the worst ones, and I heal pretty fast. The rest can wait until morning.”
“Don’t think so.” She reached over to turn on the desk lamp, providing enough light for both of them to blink uncomfortably for a moment. Then she was off the chair and onto the side of the bed. “Budge over a little.”
Just a flash of rebellion in his eyes, and she gave him a warning look.
“Look, if you can wait until morning, you can move over six inches.”
She almost regretted her insistence when he seemed to get suddenly…small with his tiredness and shifted over to give her a bit more room to sit beside him. “So the ones that are peeling are the ones you’ve already done?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m going to start with this one,” she said, indicating a hand-sized blister on his left breast. “Teach me.”
He took a deep breath, settling his hips a little more toward the wall and said, “Focus the beam on the blister. Start from the edges and work towards the center.”
Rose held the beam steady on the edge of the blister, watching as, at first, it seemed to get worse, then the skin on top started to thin.
“You won’t be able to heal one spot at a time,” he explained, lifting his head to watch. “Let it get about like that, then move on and come back around. It helps if you can massage a little as you move, behind the beam. Gets the blood flowing. My circulation isn’t as fast as yours.”
Rose used the pads of her fingers to massage the healing flesh, backing off toward the edges a bit more when he hissed through his teeth, and she fell into a rhythm as she worked inward towards the center as the old, dead skin started to peel away, leaving new flesh underneath.
She was pleased with her quarter-hour’s work. “Better?”
She was pleased even more by his soft, “Well done. Thank you.”
Trying to avoid the bruises, Rose fell into a rhythm of healing the blisters, the bigger ones first, then the smaller ones. As she checked his expression periodically, she was relieved to see his face relaxing, his eyes growing softer, more dilated, a darker blue that generally seemed to indicate happiness in him.
She rested for a moment, brushing the small flakes of dead skin away, out of the surprisingly abundant, but almost invisible fine blonde hair on his chest. Feeling an odd flutter, she pressed her palm lightly against his chest. “What’s that?”
“My heart,” he said, as if she were particularly thick.
“What, it’s on the other side?” She grinned, feeling a little thrill at this proof of alienness.
“There’s one on either side.” His tone practically added, “Everybody knows that.” But then his face and tone softened as her mouth fell open in amazement. “I’ve got two.”
“Really?” Without even thinking about it, she bent her head to press her ear over first one side, then the other. “Wicked!” As he sucked in his breath, she realized her hair was spilling across blisters and brand-new skin which must be especially sensitive, and she swept it back from her face as she sat up. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“’S okay.” His voice was soft as his eyes traced her face. “Thank you.”
Smiling gently, she started to work on some of the smaller blisters. His breathing, always slower than seemed normal to her, settled into a relaxed tempo, and she was relieved that he was falling asleep. He had not slept, as far as she knew, since she had known him, which was some vague time in the TARDIS, but surely more than a few weeks now.
She had done all the blisters and even worked a bit on some of the areas that were half-peeling, until she was sure he was asleep. The exhaustion of the day started to hit her, and she found a light woven blanket at the foot of the bed, which she wasn’t sure had been there all along. She spread it gently over him, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she lay down on top of the blanket beside him, pulling the edge over her bare shoulders.
She was never sure exactly what awakened her, the flash behind her eyelids as she remembered the Dalek exploding, the strangled scream of anguish, or the shock of hitting the floor, elbow first. She didn’t have time to think of the pain sparking almost cartoonishly from her affronted funny bone before another hoarse, shrieking cry - inhuman, but unmistakably full of pain - assaulted her ears.
She scrambled up to her knees beside the bed, seeing his body stretched rigid on the small surface, tendons and muscles stressed, eyes open and staring. “Doctor?” She reached out tentatively to touch his arm, and he jerked, shoving back against the wall, his hand stretched defensively toward her. She pressed her palm against his, lacing her fingers through his, repeating his name. It took a moment before he seemed to focus, and then the horrible emptiness filled his eyes once more.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said, his soft voice raw.
“It’s all right.” She eased closer.
He blinked, and his eyelashes suddenly spiked wetly. “Oh, Rose, they’re all gone.”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand, her heart tightening at the violent shudder that went through him. “I know.”
She found a clean jumper on the desktop and he pulled it over his head hungrily. Almost in the same motion as he thrust his arms into the sleeves, he gathered her into his arms, and she went eagerly, holding him tightly.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly, and she could feel him shake his head vigorously. He can be just like Jamie Simmons, too, she thought with a bittersweet smile, her hand smoothing over his close-cropped hair. It was the first time she had touched it, and the softness amazed her. “That’s okay, you don’t have to.”
He had tried to get her to leave, but his eyes pleaded for her to stay. And she did. She held him through the violent shudders, the screaming in languages that the TARDIS did not translate, and the particularly the stretches when exhaustion left him limp and hardly breathing, asleep or unconscious, she was unsure. She could only imagine what was going on in his head; she didn’t really want to know. If he could not bear it, she was not sure she could either, and it didn’t alter in the least her desire to be there for him.
She awoke curled up in the middle of the small bed, covered by the blanket, to find him leaning back in the desk chair, long legs crossed, leather jacket sitting firmly on strong-narrow shoulders as he gazed at her over the rim of his black glazed tea mug, the one with the gold inscription in the circular script that he scribbled on the Post-Its scattered over the console. He was a bit paler than usual, the taut skin around his eyes and mouth a little more lined, but his eyes seemed soft, and he reached out to hand her the tea mug that had been sitting on the corner of the desk.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, her own throat a little raw as she downed a warm, milky mouthful of honeyed tea.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She took another sip of tea. She found it somehow difficult to ask the reciprocal question, feeling his defenses rebuilding.
“Ready to show your new boyfriend a little taste of time travel?”
The twinkle in his eyes caused her to grin in relief, even as she retorted, “He is not my boyfriend.”
“Ah, well, the lady doth protest…” he teased, and she made a face at him, relieved to fall into the familiar banter.
He chuckled, taking another sip of tea.
It was then that they heard Adam’s querulous voice drifting in from the corridor.
“Your boyfriend’s calling you.”
“Oh, hush, you.” Rose couldn’t stop grinning as she untangled herself from the blanket and climbed out of the small bed, miraculously without spilling her tea. “I’m coming!” she called, as she slipped her feet into the trainers that she had kicked off sometime in the night.
“Rose.”
The Doctor’s voice was so deep, so rich, despite the edge of roughness, and she looked at him with a subtle shiver of unexpected pleasure. He leaned forward and reached out with his left hand to squeeze hers.
“Thank you.”
She moved towards him, her arms opening for a hug.
“Rose?”
Adam’s voice sounded like it was right outside the door, but the Doctor stood up quickly, giving her a quick, fierce hug. “Go get ’im, Tiger.”
…
She made herself remember all of it, including the gentle playfulness of the next morning. It didn’t matter to her so much that they never talked about it. She felt guilty that she treasured those moments as much as she did, when they cost him so much.
Rose turned off the tap and reached for a towel, rubbing her steamy pink skin quickly so that she could meet the Doctor in the medlab before he came looking for her.
***
Showered, shaved, and dressed in loose navy cotton trousers and a white t-shirt, Jack made his way to the medlab in soft glove-leather slippers that had appeared beside his bed while he was in the shower. They almost felt like they were massaging his feet, and he patted the corridor wall gratefully -and only a little lasciviously - as he rounded the corner.
He was surprised to find the Doctor alone in the medlab, checking a huge, old-fashioned leather-bound book on a stand that looked out of place in the gleaming, utilitarian room. The décor was reminiscent of Earth’s high modernist period in Europe, mostly white and straight lines, though the visible metal had a softer sheen than chrome, closer to white gold.
“Ah, there you are.” The Doctor looked up from the book and patted the padded table as he passed by on the way to a glass-fronted cabinet.
Jack hopped up on the table as the Doctor took out a vial of pale pink liquid, a small pot made of dark amber glass, and a short, slender tool.
“Foot up.” The Doctor dipped the tool in the pink vial as Jack obeyed, pulling the wide leg of the trousers up to his knee. The smooth tip of the tool was set against the muscle of his calf, a few inches from the slightly inflamed scratch, and Jack felt a slight, brief puff as the medication was injected by some sort of air-pressure mechanism. The pinkness was already starting to fade as an opalescent ointment from the little pot applied directly took away the swelling and itch.
“Fantastic!” declared Jack as the Doctor placed the lid back on the pot and raised an eyebrow. Jack grinned, unrepentantly cheeky, and the Doctor shook his head slightly, turning away to wash his hands in the basin behind him.
Rose shuffled into the medlab in her ridiculous bunny slippers and oversized pink flannel pajamas, also decorated with bunnies. Her clean hair was loose around her shoulders, and tiredness was evident in her face.
Jack watched as the Doctor’s quiet concern drew the sharp features taut. Rose’s hand looked tiny in his as he lifted it up for examination. A quick injection of the pink liquid, and the Doctor brushed his thumb over the puncture mark, which was almost healed over already.
He reached up to brush her fringe tenderly out of her eyes with a forefinger, his palm cupping her cheek as his other hand continued to hold the injured one at their sides. “Feeling anything out of the ordinary?” he asked, blue eyes intent into brown.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him with a smile. “Just tired.”
The Doctor swallowed visibly, his thumb gently stroking the apple of her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he murmured finally.
Her smile was so warm, Jack could feel it even when it wasn’t directed at him. “’S not your fault,” she reassured him. “Well, not much. Startling the dragon-things, that kind of was. And landing us in a briar patch, that kind of was, too. And I suppose-”
“Yeah, all right,” he interrupted her, eyes twinkling even as he pretended to huff, his arm dropping around her shoulders as he turned to Jack. She practically melted into his side, grinning broadly as he asked, “Jack. Care for a dance?”
***
Rose curled into the corner of the leather couch in the library, her feet tucked beneath a soft afghan as she cradled the cocoa mug in her hands, blowing across the hot, sweet liquid. Although Jack had offered her the first dance, she had been happy to take up the sidelines, out of fairness and curiosity as well as tiredness.
The huge four-storey room was dim except for the fire roaring in the huge fireplace opposite her. Jack and the Doctor had rolled up the big, ornate rug to bare the wooden floor, once highly polished but now mellowed to a dark, buttery brown.
“It’s not a ballroom, but it’ll do,” declared the Doctor, dusting off his hands as he went to the old Victrola sitting on a table near the piano, over in the corner. “What’ll it be? Minuet? Twist? Foxtrot? Afoxé?”
Jack was standing in the middle of the impromptu dance floor, hands on hips as he watched the Doctor flipping through records. “I’d like a waltz, please.”
The soft, rich tone of his voice stirred something almost uncomfortably pleasant in Rose’s belly, and the Doctor turned to look at him. For a moment, she thought he might be angry, but the taut look in his face seemed to be something else, something she couldn’t quite read. It caused Jack to lower his arms and relax his body. A smile eased slowly over the Doctor’s face, and he took a large disk from the stack in his hands.
“A waltz it is,” he declared, turning to put the disk on the turntable and wind up the mechanism. He adjusted the horn and set the needle on the disk, then stepped towards Jack as the scratchy sounds gave way to a tinny orchestral introduction.
Jack lifted his arms, and with no trace of awkwardness, the Doctor swept him into the gentle curves and lobes of the dance as the lilting first strain began. As if it was a movie, the small sounds of the acetate record were subsumed into a full-bodied, live sound that seemed to come from all around them in the room, and the dancers orbited each other smoothly as they traced an ellipse around the floor.
Jack’s grace wasn’t a surprise to Rose, and the Doctor’s shouldn’t have been, as she had experienced it first hand; but it astonished her how easily they moved together. Their heights were so evenly matched (Jack made up for a slight deficit with the extra elevation in his hair), but their bodies - though both so masculine - were utterly different. Jack was classic, solid, muscular, and yet he looked smaller against the Doctor’s lean length.
As the waltz descended into the whirl of its coda, Rose realized that, although they had started a relaxed arm’s length apart, their bodies were now almost touching, their eyes locked. For a brief moment, as the music ended, all of them seemed to hold their breaths.
Then the opening strains of “In the Mood” riffed from the walls, and the grin that split the Doctor’s face was equal parts challenge and glee as he pushed Jack away and caught him by both hands. Jack laughed, willingly spinning under the Doctor’s arm as they bounced into an easy swing jive.
…
The yawn ripped through her grin as she watched Jack and the Doctor bobbing up and down in some bizarre puppet-like manner, which - she was informed by Jack - was a Xaxaha’an hunting dance. They had been going for hours now, through the galliard, the Watusi, the schottische, Zulu war dances, and Indonesian wayang tupang before an argument over whether a highly stylized series of posturing was medieval Japanese or from the planet Messurawa sent them spiraling off into dances from other places, other races, some of which weren’t even bipedal. Watching Jack writhing on the floor as if he were some intelligent caterpillar had them all in gales of laughter.
Jack’s hair was frizzing a bit with the perspiration that slicked his t-shirt to his body. The Doctor had even shrugged off his leather jacket sometime back, the sleeves of his cobalt-blue jumper shoved up his heavily veined forearms. They were both a little out of breath and laughing as the skirling music shrieked to a stop.
The music began again, something that sounded vaguely Middle Eastern to Rose’s unsophisticated ear. It had a steady but asymmetrical rhythm on various percussion instruments, and a weird, wailing stringed instrument - almost like a violin playing a blues guitar riff - sailed over the top. Blue eyes met blue, in something like a challenge, a dangerous smile curving the Doctor’s mouth as he dropped into a half-crouch. His shoulders moved in a graceful shrug beneath the blue jumper as he shook his head like a lion shaking his mane. Jack grinned and matched his urgent stance, their feet moving slightly in a near-shuffle to the steady rhythm, stamping hard to accentuate heavy, syncopated beat that Rose could not quite wrap her head around.
The voice surprised her, a deep, haunting male sound that started in a low, growling register. Jack performed a version of the shrug-headshake gesture, stepping close enough on one of the hard beats to butt his head against the Doctor’s shoulder. Both of them laughed, but stopped long enough to throw up a hand with a hoarse shout to punctuate a line of singing. More instruments, mostly percussion, layered in, creating a more complex texture and steadier, still-syncopated rhythm. Jack was more controlled, his movements obviously that of a dancer, but there was something so primal, so animalistic about the way the Doctor moved, and as he shrugged and lunged, his head aimed for Jack’s shoulder.
Rose caught her breath, and then suddenly, his long throat was arching, his sharp cheekbone rubbing against the side of Jack’s head, pushing it against his own shoulder. She was reminded again of a lion, cuffing a cub with a massive paw, affectionate… for now. So much potential danger.
As both men flung their arms up in another shout, she could see the astonishment on Jack’s face, the aroused dilation of his eyes meeting the predatory glint in the Doctor’s, gone almost black but for a ring of silver. They dropped back down into the half-crouch, another level of rhythm layered on the music, and the voice moved into a higher, more strained register. The dancers’ torsos began to arch and stretch obliquely to the beat, a sway introduced to the low stance as they started to circle each other like wrestlers, their slow shuffle accented by stamps.
After another punctuating shout, Jack moved in for another head butt, even before their arms had fallen back to their sides, but the Doctor slid his shoulder down, pressing against Jack’s collarbone, holding him as he rolled his head against Jack’s, turning his body entirely around the pivot. Straightening, he shoved in, bumping his chest hard against Jack, who grabbed his bare forearms, holding their bodies against each other.
Rose was unaware that her mouth was hanging open, but her body was responding strongly to this display. That Jack’s was, too, was plainly evident, and it seemed unlikely that the Doctor was unaware of it as he bowed his head, resting his forehead against Jack’s shoulder for a moment. Then he curved his long neck, rubbing his cheekbone hard against Jack’s head.
A shudder passed over Jack’s tense body, but the Doctor kept the pressure up. They both shot their hands up in the air again, chests remaining pressed together as Jack pushed back with his head, bringing his hips in contact with the Doctor’s. The music crested and reached a plateau, the rhythm grinding intensely as the two bodies strained against each other.
As the music released, they stood, pressed close for an intense moment, then the Doctor brought a hand up to clasp the back of Jack’s head, resting against his shoulder. He patted firmly, squeezing Jack’s nape before he eased back. He barely moved, but the firelight flickered between them, and Rose released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Jack raised his head, invitation unmistakable in his eyes, with just a hint of pleading on his parted lips.
The Doctor smiled softly, his voice low and warm and clearly drawing a line under the moment. “Thanks for the dance, Jack.”
Rose felt her stomach clench with a disappointment she could not quite fathom, and Jack brought his hand up to mirror the Doctor’s, cupping the fierce skull. His lips softly caught the Time Lord’s in a kiss that managed to be both chaste and sensuous. “Thank you.”
They stepped back from each other as if breaking a magnetic seal, hesitantly at first, then relaxing as the space between them snapped the connection. Their hands slid down shoulders and arms to clasp together in a friendly squeeze, as the Doctor turned to Rose, cold mug clutched in her hands.
“Still awake?” A smile curved his lips as his fingers slipped away from Jack’s.
“A bit hard to sleep through that performance,” she stated, setting the mug on the end table as she kicked off the afghan and swung her bunny slippers to the floor. “That was amazing.” Her eyes went to Jack, who was grinning a bit wistfully, his arms crossed on his chest as his weight rested on one foot, and her last words were spoken to him. “Really amazing.”
“Looks like it’s time you were in bed,” said the Doctor, going to take his jacket off the piano and slide it back on. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Do we?” Even Jack was curious.
“I thought we’d go see the Harvest Festival on Mirwadi Prime. What do you think?”
“Archaic, classic, modern, post-modern, or neo-post-modern era?” asked Jack, running his fingers through his hair.
“Archaic, ’course,” retorted the Doctor. “That’s when it’s all fresh and exciting and unpredictable, right?”
Jack just grinned, shaking his head as the Doctor came to take Rose’s hand.
“Unpredictable,” he echoed. “Right.”
Thanks as always to wendymr for the beta reading.
Chapter Seven - Ritual
The hot water hit the nape of her neck and seemed to spread throughout her body, down her spine, across her shoulders, up over her scalp. She wasn’t just sore from the headlong dash from the dragon’s nesting place - well, they weren’t really dragons, but flying reptilians that nested in the cliff of a thrust-fault in the depths of a just-above-freezing rain forest. Close enough.
She stretched her arms over her head and back, tilting her head under the water. She was still carrying tension from last night, and the niggling worry that persisted since yesterday morning. In the bigger scheme of things, last night hadn’t been the worst. It was almost…normal. It just hadn’t had the same triggers.
Rose planted her hands against the tiles, bowing her head and shoulders under the pounding power of the shower. That first time she had slept with him had been so serene, so hopeful. The second time…
The second time had shown her the dangers of getting what she hoped for.
She shuddered, gasping a little as the water ran down her face, around her cheeks and into her mouth.
…
There’s no one - I would know.
The empty look in his eyes haunted her, and after getting Adam settled with fresh clothes, fresh linens, tea with milk and two sugars, and a turkey sandwich with Swiss cheese, lettuce, brown mustard, no tomato - honestly, he was worse than Jamie Simmons down the end that she used to babysit, and Jamie was three - she went in search of the Doctor.
He was not in the console room, the galley, the observation room, the library, or the machinery shop, all the places she normally could find him. She found herself wandering down spiraling corridors with no doorways, and although she felt as though the TARDIS was guiding her, she also felt some resistance. As she was having to take the long way around.
She was beginning to be quite self-conscious of her own sweaty, disheveled state when she fetched up at a plain wooden door with iron hinges, the kind one found in listed buildings. It was even a little canted, as if the TARDIS were somehow suffering from subsidence. It was an ordinary enough looking door, but she couldn’t help feeling as if it had a big red “KEEP OUT” sign on it.
Twisting her fingers together as she chewed on her lower lip, she thought about knocking, but something stopped her. She turned away hesitantly, but before she had taken two steps, she heard the latch sigh open, and she turned back, watching the door swing open onto near darkness. A wedge of taupe linoleum was all she could see.
She approached cautiously, alert but concerned, and called out softly, “Doctor?”
“Rose! Don’t-” His hoarse response was too late. At her touch, the door swung open, allowing the weak light from the corridor to spill over the bare, simple room. The Doctor was lying on a narrow, plain bed with a dark spread, highlighting the paleness of his skin as he was bare from the waist up.
Her overwhelming first impression was human. Lean. Thin, really, except for the strength of the wiry muscles. Shoulders that seemed to be broad and narrow at once, collarbones sharp as razors beneath his skin. He had raised himself on one elbow, twisting toward her, but she could see the effort registering on his drawn features, and as she drew closer, her eyes adjusting to the murky light, she could see the pale shadows of bruises all over his torso, the deepest in the hollow of his far shoulder. Another settled in the arch of his ribs, and she could see the delineation of knuckles in the abraded skin. But that was not the worst. Patches of pink and white mottled the flesh, some peeling like sunburn, others appearing to be in the early stages of blistering.
She was speechless, horrified for a moment, then was at his side in an instant.
“Come with me to the medlab.” She tried to find places to put her hands, determined not to think about anything but treatment for the moment.
“I’ve been,” he said simply, lips a little pale from pressure as he eased himself back against the thin mattress with its shallow pillow. “It’s all right, Rose, I’m healing. It’ll all be okay in a few hours. Go back to bed.”
“I think I’ll stay right here,” she said firmly, pulling the bucket-shaped caster chair at the roll-top desk closer to the side of the bed. “He tortured you, didn’t he? Like he did the Dalek?”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, just moved carefully to settle into a flat position on the bed.
“What’s this?” she asked, picking up a silver implement from the corner of the desk. It looked like a fatter version of the sonic screwdriver; it even had a blue glowing light on one end and was humming so softly that she didn’t really hear it until she picked it up.
“Dermal regenerator.” He closed his eyes.
As if that was going to stop her.
“Can this fix the burns?” she asked, turning it over and examining the light more closely.
“Careful,” he warned, reaching out with breathtaking suddenness to deflect the light from her eyes. “Yes.”
“Show me.”
“Rose-” He looked at her with an expression that came as near to helplessness as she ever wanted to see from him, then he took the tool from her, adjusting the setting. “Look, this isn’t a magic wand. You have to focus it on the burn until the flesh underneath heals; then the blister will start to peel. It takes several minutes per square inch, even on burns this superficial - just the by-product of his imaging scan that’s more useful for metal than flesh. I’ve done the worst ones, and I heal pretty fast. The rest can wait until morning.”
“Don’t think so.” She reached over to turn on the desk lamp, providing enough light for both of them to blink uncomfortably for a moment. Then she was off the chair and onto the side of the bed. “Budge over a little.”
Just a flash of rebellion in his eyes, and she gave him a warning look.
“Look, if you can wait until morning, you can move over six inches.”
She almost regretted her insistence when he seemed to get suddenly…small with his tiredness and shifted over to give her a bit more room to sit beside him. “So the ones that are peeling are the ones you’ve already done?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I’m going to start with this one,” she said, indicating a hand-sized blister on his left breast. “Teach me.”
He took a deep breath, settling his hips a little more toward the wall and said, “Focus the beam on the blister. Start from the edges and work towards the center.”
Rose held the beam steady on the edge of the blister, watching as, at first, it seemed to get worse, then the skin on top started to thin.
“You won’t be able to heal one spot at a time,” he explained, lifting his head to watch. “Let it get about like that, then move on and come back around. It helps if you can massage a little as you move, behind the beam. Gets the blood flowing. My circulation isn’t as fast as yours.”
Rose used the pads of her fingers to massage the healing flesh, backing off toward the edges a bit more when he hissed through his teeth, and she fell into a rhythm as she worked inward towards the center as the old, dead skin started to peel away, leaving new flesh underneath.
She was pleased with her quarter-hour’s work. “Better?”
She was pleased even more by his soft, “Well done. Thank you.”
Trying to avoid the bruises, Rose fell into a rhythm of healing the blisters, the bigger ones first, then the smaller ones. As she checked his expression periodically, she was relieved to see his face relaxing, his eyes growing softer, more dilated, a darker blue that generally seemed to indicate happiness in him.
She rested for a moment, brushing the small flakes of dead skin away, out of the surprisingly abundant, but almost invisible fine blonde hair on his chest. Feeling an odd flutter, she pressed her palm lightly against his chest. “What’s that?”
“My heart,” he said, as if she were particularly thick.
“What, it’s on the other side?” She grinned, feeling a little thrill at this proof of alienness.
“There’s one on either side.” His tone practically added, “Everybody knows that.” But then his face and tone softened as her mouth fell open in amazement. “I’ve got two.”
“Really?” Without even thinking about it, she bent her head to press her ear over first one side, then the other. “Wicked!” As he sucked in his breath, she realized her hair was spilling across blisters and brand-new skin which must be especially sensitive, and she swept it back from her face as she sat up. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“’S okay.” His voice was soft as his eyes traced her face. “Thank you.”
Smiling gently, she started to work on some of the smaller blisters. His breathing, always slower than seemed normal to her, settled into a relaxed tempo, and she was relieved that he was falling asleep. He had not slept, as far as she knew, since she had known him, which was some vague time in the TARDIS, but surely more than a few weeks now.
She had done all the blisters and even worked a bit on some of the areas that were half-peeling, until she was sure he was asleep. The exhaustion of the day started to hit her, and she found a light woven blanket at the foot of the bed, which she wasn’t sure had been there all along. She spread it gently over him, and after only a moment’s hesitation, she lay down on top of the blanket beside him, pulling the edge over her bare shoulders.
She was never sure exactly what awakened her, the flash behind her eyelids as she remembered the Dalek exploding, the strangled scream of anguish, or the shock of hitting the floor, elbow first. She didn’t have time to think of the pain sparking almost cartoonishly from her affronted funny bone before another hoarse, shrieking cry - inhuman, but unmistakably full of pain - assaulted her ears.
She scrambled up to her knees beside the bed, seeing his body stretched rigid on the small surface, tendons and muscles stressed, eyes open and staring. “Doctor?” She reached out tentatively to touch his arm, and he jerked, shoving back against the wall, his hand stretched defensively toward her. She pressed her palm against his, lacing her fingers through his, repeating his name. It took a moment before he seemed to focus, and then the horrible emptiness filled his eyes once more.
“I’m sorry, Rose,” he said, his soft voice raw.
“It’s all right.” She eased closer.
He blinked, and his eyelashes suddenly spiked wetly. “Oh, Rose, they’re all gone.”
“I know.” She squeezed his hand, her heart tightening at the violent shudder that went through him. “I know.”
She found a clean jumper on the desktop and he pulled it over his head hungrily. Almost in the same motion as he thrust his arms into the sleeves, he gathered her into his arms, and she went eagerly, holding him tightly.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked softly, and she could feel him shake his head vigorously. He can be just like Jamie Simmons, too, she thought with a bittersweet smile, her hand smoothing over his close-cropped hair. It was the first time she had touched it, and the softness amazed her. “That’s okay, you don’t have to.”
He had tried to get her to leave, but his eyes pleaded for her to stay. And she did. She held him through the violent shudders, the screaming in languages that the TARDIS did not translate, and the particularly the stretches when exhaustion left him limp and hardly breathing, asleep or unconscious, she was unsure. She could only imagine what was going on in his head; she didn’t really want to know. If he could not bear it, she was not sure she could either, and it didn’t alter in the least her desire to be there for him.
She awoke curled up in the middle of the small bed, covered by the blanket, to find him leaning back in the desk chair, long legs crossed, leather jacket sitting firmly on strong-narrow shoulders as he gazed at her over the rim of his black glazed tea mug, the one with the gold inscription in the circular script that he scribbled on the Post-Its scattered over the console. He was a bit paler than usual, the taut skin around his eyes and mouth a little more lined, but his eyes seemed soft, and he reached out to hand her the tea mug that had been sitting on the corner of the desk.
“Thank you,” she said gratefully, her own throat a little raw as she downed a warm, milky mouthful of honeyed tea.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine.” She took another sip of tea. She found it somehow difficult to ask the reciprocal question, feeling his defenses rebuilding.
“Ready to show your new boyfriend a little taste of time travel?”
The twinkle in his eyes caused her to grin in relief, even as she retorted, “He is not my boyfriend.”
“Ah, well, the lady doth protest…” he teased, and she made a face at him, relieved to fall into the familiar banter.
He chuckled, taking another sip of tea.
It was then that they heard Adam’s querulous voice drifting in from the corridor.
“Your boyfriend’s calling you.”
“Oh, hush, you.” Rose couldn’t stop grinning as she untangled herself from the blanket and climbed out of the small bed, miraculously without spilling her tea. “I’m coming!” she called, as she slipped her feet into the trainers that she had kicked off sometime in the night.
“Rose.”
The Doctor’s voice was so deep, so rich, despite the edge of roughness, and she looked at him with a subtle shiver of unexpected pleasure. He leaned forward and reached out with his left hand to squeeze hers.
“Thank you.”
She moved towards him, her arms opening for a hug.
“Rose?”
Adam’s voice sounded like it was right outside the door, but the Doctor stood up quickly, giving her a quick, fierce hug. “Go get ’im, Tiger.”
…
She made herself remember all of it, including the gentle playfulness of the next morning. It didn’t matter to her so much that they never talked about it. She felt guilty that she treasured those moments as much as she did, when they cost him so much.
Rose turned off the tap and reached for a towel, rubbing her steamy pink skin quickly so that she could meet the Doctor in the medlab before he came looking for her.
***
Showered, shaved, and dressed in loose navy cotton trousers and a white t-shirt, Jack made his way to the medlab in soft glove-leather slippers that had appeared beside his bed while he was in the shower. They almost felt like they were massaging his feet, and he patted the corridor wall gratefully -and only a little lasciviously - as he rounded the corner.
He was surprised to find the Doctor alone in the medlab, checking a huge, old-fashioned leather-bound book on a stand that looked out of place in the gleaming, utilitarian room. The décor was reminiscent of Earth’s high modernist period in Europe, mostly white and straight lines, though the visible metal had a softer sheen than chrome, closer to white gold.
“Ah, there you are.” The Doctor looked up from the book and patted the padded table as he passed by on the way to a glass-fronted cabinet.
Jack hopped up on the table as the Doctor took out a vial of pale pink liquid, a small pot made of dark amber glass, and a short, slender tool.
“Foot up.” The Doctor dipped the tool in the pink vial as Jack obeyed, pulling the wide leg of the trousers up to his knee. The smooth tip of the tool was set against the muscle of his calf, a few inches from the slightly inflamed scratch, and Jack felt a slight, brief puff as the medication was injected by some sort of air-pressure mechanism. The pinkness was already starting to fade as an opalescent ointment from the little pot applied directly took away the swelling and itch.
“Fantastic!” declared Jack as the Doctor placed the lid back on the pot and raised an eyebrow. Jack grinned, unrepentantly cheeky, and the Doctor shook his head slightly, turning away to wash his hands in the basin behind him.
Rose shuffled into the medlab in her ridiculous bunny slippers and oversized pink flannel pajamas, also decorated with bunnies. Her clean hair was loose around her shoulders, and tiredness was evident in her face.
Jack watched as the Doctor’s quiet concern drew the sharp features taut. Rose’s hand looked tiny in his as he lifted it up for examination. A quick injection of the pink liquid, and the Doctor brushed his thumb over the puncture mark, which was almost healed over already.
He reached up to brush her fringe tenderly out of her eyes with a forefinger, his palm cupping her cheek as his other hand continued to hold the injured one at their sides. “Feeling anything out of the ordinary?” he asked, blue eyes intent into brown.
“I’m fine,” she reassured him with a smile. “Just tired.”
The Doctor swallowed visibly, his thumb gently stroking the apple of her cheek. “I’m sorry,” he murmured finally.
Her smile was so warm, Jack could feel it even when it wasn’t directed at him. “’S not your fault,” she reassured him. “Well, not much. Startling the dragon-things, that kind of was. And landing us in a briar patch, that kind of was, too. And I suppose-”
“Yeah, all right,” he interrupted her, eyes twinkling even as he pretended to huff, his arm dropping around her shoulders as he turned to Jack. She practically melted into his side, grinning broadly as he asked, “Jack. Care for a dance?”
***
Rose curled into the corner of the leather couch in the library, her feet tucked beneath a soft afghan as she cradled the cocoa mug in her hands, blowing across the hot, sweet liquid. Although Jack had offered her the first dance, she had been happy to take up the sidelines, out of fairness and curiosity as well as tiredness.
The huge four-storey room was dim except for the fire roaring in the huge fireplace opposite her. Jack and the Doctor had rolled up the big, ornate rug to bare the wooden floor, once highly polished but now mellowed to a dark, buttery brown.
“It’s not a ballroom, but it’ll do,” declared the Doctor, dusting off his hands as he went to the old Victrola sitting on a table near the piano, over in the corner. “What’ll it be? Minuet? Twist? Foxtrot? Afoxé?”
Jack was standing in the middle of the impromptu dance floor, hands on hips as he watched the Doctor flipping through records. “I’d like a waltz, please.”
The soft, rich tone of his voice stirred something almost uncomfortably pleasant in Rose’s belly, and the Doctor turned to look at him. For a moment, she thought he might be angry, but the taut look in his face seemed to be something else, something she couldn’t quite read. It caused Jack to lower his arms and relax his body. A smile eased slowly over the Doctor’s face, and he took a large disk from the stack in his hands.
“A waltz it is,” he declared, turning to put the disk on the turntable and wind up the mechanism. He adjusted the horn and set the needle on the disk, then stepped towards Jack as the scratchy sounds gave way to a tinny orchestral introduction.
Jack lifted his arms, and with no trace of awkwardness, the Doctor swept him into the gentle curves and lobes of the dance as the lilting first strain began. As if it was a movie, the small sounds of the acetate record were subsumed into a full-bodied, live sound that seemed to come from all around them in the room, and the dancers orbited each other smoothly as they traced an ellipse around the floor.
Jack’s grace wasn’t a surprise to Rose, and the Doctor’s shouldn’t have been, as she had experienced it first hand; but it astonished her how easily they moved together. Their heights were so evenly matched (Jack made up for a slight deficit with the extra elevation in his hair), but their bodies - though both so masculine - were utterly different. Jack was classic, solid, muscular, and yet he looked smaller against the Doctor’s lean length.
As the waltz descended into the whirl of its coda, Rose realized that, although they had started a relaxed arm’s length apart, their bodies were now almost touching, their eyes locked. For a brief moment, as the music ended, all of them seemed to hold their breaths.
Then the opening strains of “In the Mood” riffed from the walls, and the grin that split the Doctor’s face was equal parts challenge and glee as he pushed Jack away and caught him by both hands. Jack laughed, willingly spinning under the Doctor’s arm as they bounced into an easy swing jive.
…
The yawn ripped through her grin as she watched Jack and the Doctor bobbing up and down in some bizarre puppet-like manner, which - she was informed by Jack - was a Xaxaha’an hunting dance. They had been going for hours now, through the galliard, the Watusi, the schottische, Zulu war dances, and Indonesian wayang tupang before an argument over whether a highly stylized series of posturing was medieval Japanese or from the planet Messurawa sent them spiraling off into dances from other places, other races, some of which weren’t even bipedal. Watching Jack writhing on the floor as if he were some intelligent caterpillar had them all in gales of laughter.
Jack’s hair was frizzing a bit with the perspiration that slicked his t-shirt to his body. The Doctor had even shrugged off his leather jacket sometime back, the sleeves of his cobalt-blue jumper shoved up his heavily veined forearms. They were both a little out of breath and laughing as the skirling music shrieked to a stop.
The music began again, something that sounded vaguely Middle Eastern to Rose’s unsophisticated ear. It had a steady but asymmetrical rhythm on various percussion instruments, and a weird, wailing stringed instrument - almost like a violin playing a blues guitar riff - sailed over the top. Blue eyes met blue, in something like a challenge, a dangerous smile curving the Doctor’s mouth as he dropped into a half-crouch. His shoulders moved in a graceful shrug beneath the blue jumper as he shook his head like a lion shaking his mane. Jack grinned and matched his urgent stance, their feet moving slightly in a near-shuffle to the steady rhythm, stamping hard to accentuate heavy, syncopated beat that Rose could not quite wrap her head around.
The voice surprised her, a deep, haunting male sound that started in a low, growling register. Jack performed a version of the shrug-headshake gesture, stepping close enough on one of the hard beats to butt his head against the Doctor’s shoulder. Both of them laughed, but stopped long enough to throw up a hand with a hoarse shout to punctuate a line of singing. More instruments, mostly percussion, layered in, creating a more complex texture and steadier, still-syncopated rhythm. Jack was more controlled, his movements obviously that of a dancer, but there was something so primal, so animalistic about the way the Doctor moved, and as he shrugged and lunged, his head aimed for Jack’s shoulder.
Rose caught her breath, and then suddenly, his long throat was arching, his sharp cheekbone rubbing against the side of Jack’s head, pushing it against his own shoulder. She was reminded again of a lion, cuffing a cub with a massive paw, affectionate… for now. So much potential danger.
As both men flung their arms up in another shout, she could see the astonishment on Jack’s face, the aroused dilation of his eyes meeting the predatory glint in the Doctor’s, gone almost black but for a ring of silver. They dropped back down into the half-crouch, another level of rhythm layered on the music, and the voice moved into a higher, more strained register. The dancers’ torsos began to arch and stretch obliquely to the beat, a sway introduced to the low stance as they started to circle each other like wrestlers, their slow shuffle accented by stamps.
After another punctuating shout, Jack moved in for another head butt, even before their arms had fallen back to their sides, but the Doctor slid his shoulder down, pressing against Jack’s collarbone, holding him as he rolled his head against Jack’s, turning his body entirely around the pivot. Straightening, he shoved in, bumping his chest hard against Jack, who grabbed his bare forearms, holding their bodies against each other.
Rose was unaware that her mouth was hanging open, but her body was responding strongly to this display. That Jack’s was, too, was plainly evident, and it seemed unlikely that the Doctor was unaware of it as he bowed his head, resting his forehead against Jack’s shoulder for a moment. Then he curved his long neck, rubbing his cheekbone hard against Jack’s head.
A shudder passed over Jack’s tense body, but the Doctor kept the pressure up. They both shot their hands up in the air again, chests remaining pressed together as Jack pushed back with his head, bringing his hips in contact with the Doctor’s. The music crested and reached a plateau, the rhythm grinding intensely as the two bodies strained against each other.
As the music released, they stood, pressed close for an intense moment, then the Doctor brought a hand up to clasp the back of Jack’s head, resting against his shoulder. He patted firmly, squeezing Jack’s nape before he eased back. He barely moved, but the firelight flickered between them, and Rose released a breath she hadn’t realized she was holding. Jack raised his head, invitation unmistakable in his eyes, with just a hint of pleading on his parted lips.
The Doctor smiled softly, his voice low and warm and clearly drawing a line under the moment. “Thanks for the dance, Jack.”
Rose felt her stomach clench with a disappointment she could not quite fathom, and Jack brought his hand up to mirror the Doctor’s, cupping the fierce skull. His lips softly caught the Time Lord’s in a kiss that managed to be both chaste and sensuous. “Thank you.”
They stepped back from each other as if breaking a magnetic seal, hesitantly at first, then relaxing as the space between them snapped the connection. Their hands slid down shoulders and arms to clasp together in a friendly squeeze, as the Doctor turned to Rose, cold mug clutched in her hands.
“Still awake?” A smile curved his lips as his fingers slipped away from Jack’s.
“A bit hard to sleep through that performance,” she stated, setting the mug on the end table as she kicked off the afghan and swung her bunny slippers to the floor. “That was amazing.” Her eyes went to Jack, who was grinning a bit wistfully, his arms crossed on his chest as his weight rested on one foot, and her last words were spoken to him. “Really amazing.”
“Looks like it’s time you were in bed,” said the Doctor, going to take his jacket off the piano and slide it back on. “We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
“Do we?” Even Jack was curious.
“I thought we’d go see the Harvest Festival on Mirwadi Prime. What do you think?”
“Archaic, classic, modern, post-modern, or neo-post-modern era?” asked Jack, running his fingers through his hair.
“Archaic, ’course,” retorted the Doctor. “That’s when it’s all fresh and exciting and unpredictable, right?”
Jack just grinned, shaking his head as the Doctor came to take Rose’s hand.
“Unpredictable,” he echoed. “Right.”