Advent Calendar 13 onwards

[sap1066]

Story: 'Advent Calendar'
Characters: Nine/Rose
Rated: Adult
Disclaimer: I resent the BBC. They own the lot.
Content: Romance; Graphic Sex; Humour; PWP.
Chapters: 13-24
Summary: 24 days. 24 positions. Seriously.

December 24

Ten minutes before midnight. 24th December. A church, blazing with light and laughter, its candles casting sparkling shadows on the snow shrouded ground outside. Doors thrown wide despite the chill, a defiant trumpet call of music echoing against the watching starfield. A crowd, a band, a throng of revellers, gathered in tight knit circles of conversation, or scattered resting on the pushed back pews. A couple, dancing in the aisle to a slow rhythm only they could hear, her dress flashing white against his darkness.

This time, he had got it right, the TARDIS behaving itself perfectly to deposit them in the right time and place for a party.

‘So, what will happen if I don’t eat the turkey?’ he asked, just to make absolutely sure she meant what she said.

‘We’ll have to stay till New Year’s Eve,’ she repeated. ‘I mean it.’

‘Ah, the end of the world then.’ He nodded sagely. ‘I’ve seen a few of those. Think I’ll take my chances. It can’t be any worse than your mother’s cooking.’ He had to kiss the frown off her face.

‘So when do I get my present?’ she asked, tightening her arms around his neck.

It was his turn to frown. He’d been so busy avoiding Jackie all day on a series of pointless errands that he hadn’t managed to buy Rose anything at all. Plus, he’d had to spend the rest of his free time keeping an eye on the TARDIS, just to make sure no one went within twenty paces of it carrying tinsel. Still, he had another five minutes, and there was absolutely no point in being a Time Lord if you couldn’t come across a spare couple of hours down the back of the sofa to go Christmas shopping.

Delaying, he responded: ‘As soon as I’ve had mine.’

His heart sank as he watched her walk away to retrieve the little bag she’d insisted on bringing, wondering if he could reasonably get out, come up with the most fantastic gift ever invented, and be back before she noticed.

She kept an eye on his slightly shifty looking face as she picked her way through the crowd, fully expecting him to go swanning off at any minute. She guessed that he hadn’t bought her a present, but there was only one thing she really wanted and she suspected he was never going to give her that anyway, no matter what she tried. She’d be happy with a new pair of trainers. She found the bag she’d brought with his present in it under a pile of coats. She’d bought it a couple of weeks ago, and she’d been absolutely sure she knew what she was doing, but walking back into the embrace of that ice-blue stare, she couldn’t help feeling a bit nervous. He had called out for help, even if he didn’t know it, and this was the only way she could think of to answer.

She held out the bag sheepishly, and he took it, his eyes wide with wonderment. She didn’t know when he’d last been given a present; mostly he seemed to spend his time doing things for other people, rather than having them think about him. He opened the package, carefully lifting out the small red leather bound book like it was some priceless artefact. She felt vaguely embarrassed at the attention he was giving it. He opened the front page, read it. ‘Rose Tyler - Owner’s Manual’ it said.

He raised an eyebrow at her. She shrugged apologetically. ‘Thought it was a bit less cheesy than jumping out of a present.’

‘Slightly less, maybe,’ he answered, flicking through the pages. ‘Why’s it blank?’

She took a deep breath, held it, poised on the edge of a plunge, and dived in. ‘Because there aren’t any rules.’

She had his undivided attention now, his eyes bright and sharp, boring into her as if he were trying to see through her skull, as he replaced the book in the bag, and the bag in his pocket. He had told her everything apart from the one thing she wanted to hear, the only thing he couldn’t bring himself to say. She knew, as sure as her heart was pounding through the walls of her chest, as sure as the shake in her hands, that he loved her. He couldn’t, wouldn’t admit it. But it was her only way to rescue him.

She continued. ‘Because I trust you. I mean it. You can do anything you like. I know you won’t hurt me.’

She threw his own words back at him. ‘And because I love your smile. You don’t smile enough. I know why, now. But I’d give anything to make you happy. Go anywhere you want. As long as you want me to.’

There was a question she needed to ask. A question that had become more and more urgent since the touch of his strong fingers and the call to run had dragged her unprotesting from her old life, and into his. She couldn’t meet his gaze any more, and her voice dropped. ‘As long as you’re mine.’

She could feel the burn of his stare for an instant before he took her hand, led her surefooted through the crowd and out into the snow. His mind raced fast enough to leave his mouth at a standing start, for a change. He had to find an answer, wasn’t sure whether the one waiting within him was the right one, the only one.

He looked at her, watching him from under her eyelashes, her hair cascading around her face, impossibly precious. He would never tire of finding any excuse to take her in his arms and spend a couple of hours just looking at her. She shivered, standing in her thin white dress, luminescent in the patchy starlight, and he put his coat around her automatically. It was hers, whenever she needed it.

He was a man who had nothing, and she had given him everything he had ever wanted. He had never found the courage to tell her how he felt, because he was far too much of far too many things that made him entirely wrong for her. And because of that ‘I love you’ was a selfish thing to say, when all he had ever wanted was to carry on making her happy, asking for nothing in return. He knew that he could live years with her, and it would never be enough time - he couldn’t honestly offer her forever. Nothing else was good enough.

But she was part of him now, he’d let her in, and she knew the secrets he was keeping, because she’d re-lived them beside him, holding his hand, and she’d said she loved him anyway. She loved him despite everything he was, everything he had done, or perhaps because of it. ‘I love you’ was ‘stay with me’ and ‘take your chances’ and ‘no going back’ for both of them. He had had a glimpse of his life without her again, a life alone, suspended, waiting for something to happen. It felt like the end of the world. And as he stood frozen, overwhelmed by the depthless warmth of her eyes, he had never wanted so badly to take the gift she was offering, and have something to call his own. To answer her question. To have someone to belong to. He wanted to be saved.

She was waiting for him to answer, like she had been waiting for him for twenty four days, or longer, each day giving him a bit more of herself, opening a door onto something new, a countdown to this moment.

The church clock tolled midnight and the snow drifted lazily down from the skies, covering her hair in a veil of white. It was Christmas Day. No more days left on the calendar, at last, he had run out of time. He didn’t have forever to offer her, all he had was himself. He wasn’t sure if that would be good enough, but it was the only gift he had to give.

‘I love you,’ he said, stroking away the snowflakes and the swift tears mingling on her cheek.

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘And I love you.’

He would have sworn it was the first time he had looked into her eyes, the first time he had bent his head towards her, the first time he had felt the soft brush of her lips against his. She knew she had never kissed him before, never opened her mouth to the gentle urging of his tongue, never breathed with him as one. This was a new dawn, the first day of a new lifetime and there was so much else that they could be together, apart from just lovers.

He bowed formally, extended his hand. ‘Shall we?’ he asked, and without waiting for a response he swept her into his arms. As lost in her as she was in him, they moved together through the snowstorm.

Rose and the Doctor, dancing.

December 22&23

December 23
When the Doctor came out of the TARDIS on the 23rd of December, he noticed someone had pinned a very large, very conspicuous, very prickly holly wreath to the front doors. He stared at it for a while, wondering if this was some new form of alien attack - death by humiliation possibly - before tossing it in the nearest rubbish bin and heading upstairs. He had parked in his usual spot at the bottom of the block of flats, except that this time someone had left a shopping trolley in his space. He’d got out, and looked at it, hoping it was going to turn into a fiendish bit of hostile weaponry, before giving up, kicking it out of the way, and then reversing back in. Then it had occurred to him that he couldn’t just turn up to Rose’s house empty handed and he’d had to spend twenty minutes hunting for scissors and glue in the cupboard under the stairs.

In all that time the TARDIS didn’t break, no distress calls were received, and the world didn’t teeter on the brink of ending. He was disappointed. He watched the sky through the window as he climbed the concrete staircases, looking for an invasion, a gigantic spaceship, or even a suspicious looking flock of pigeons to turn up and save him. It wasn’t going to happen. He knocked on Jackie’s door.

The universe liked him after all - Rose opened it. He was so pleased to see her that he swept her into a tight embrace, practically lifting her off her feet in his eagerness to have her close to him again. One day spent apart was twenty four hours too long. He was busy showering her face with kisses when a terrifying voice, icy with disdain, froze him where he stood. The monsters had arrived at last.

‘Take your hands off my daughter,’ said Jackie, from right behind him, and he dropped Rose like a hot potato, or an overly warm chip.

Jackie advanced towards him, her face promising death and destruction, or at least, a really good slapping. He reminded himself that he was a nine hundred year old superior life form, privy to the secrets of time and space, and he wasn’t going to be intimidated by a woman in a lilac tracksuit.

‘Rose told me exactly what you’ve been getting up to,’ she started.

He shot Rose a look of pure and absolute horror, instantly deciding never to let her out of his sight again.

‘And you can stop it right now,’ Jackie continued. ‘Chasing my daughter around all day when she’s really not interested. Shame on you.’

Rose gave him the beaming, innocent stare of of a woman who knew she was in for trouble later and didn’t care.

‘If you even think about coming anywhere near her while you’re here, I’ll be after you faster than you can say ‘dirty old man.’

He believed her. If mauve was the universal warning for danger, lilac was what happened when the danger actually arrived. The smile plastered across Rose’s face made him think that not coming near her was going to be very, very difficult indeed. Glumly, he took the last look of a condemned man at the peaceful, completely normal, un-disaster-strewn day, and followed Jackie inside the flat.

The Christmas card he had made was not a great success. He’d only been able to find psychic paper, and he’d been without Rose for a whole day - as it stared down at him from the mantelpiece he realised that Santa’s little helpers were helping Santa out a little too much. Ten minutes later, he was shoved out of the door again to go and get the Christmas tree, because, as Jackie said, that was a man’s job and he was the closest thing to a man they had. Rose suggested he lash the tree to the roof of the TARDIS, just to get into the spirit of Christmas, and he had to remind her in an undertone that he still had the lash he’d bought and it wasn’t too late for him to go and fetch it either.

But when he arrived back at the ship, he found someone had put spray snow on the corners of all the windows in little triangular patches. He had to spend two hours with a toothbrush and a can of solvent scraping it off.

Inevitably, Jackie didn’t like the tree he had fetched, even though it cam straight from the planet of Norway, ten thousand years in the future, when the inhabitants of that country had colonised a whole world in order to pursue the only thing they were actually famous for apart from fjords- growing Christmas trees. She went out for a plastic one instead.

As soon as the door closed Rose grabbed his hand and tugged him into the bedroom. He wouldn’t have minded if it had been her bedroom. He looked at the frilly duvet cover. He closed his eyes. Opened them again only to find that sadly, nothing had exploded and he was still in Jackie’s bedroom with her daughter giving him the biggest grin he had ever seen. He shook his head with a desperation born of blind panic, but Rose went down on her knees and thirty seconds later he couldn’t have escaped if he’d tried.

Ten minutes afterwards, lying on the flouncy bed, buried inside Rose, who was bouncing happily up and down on top of him, he heard the unmistakeable sound of a key in the lock, and he realised the world was ending after all.

‘Just a couple of seconds,’ panted Rose, slamming down a bit harder, his fingers wedged between her legs. Jackie’s footsteps advanced down the hall and his hand was a blur as he tried to encourage Rose to finish quickly and get off him before her mother came in and caught him with his sonic screwdriver on display. At the very thought of it he found his enthusiasm for the whole adventure wilting, even more of a reason to give Rose a bit more encouragement. She was mercifully silent when she came, and time seemed to slow without any intervention at all while she got dressed, opened the door, and headed off her mother into the kitchen.

But her rosy cheeks and dishevelled hair made Jackie suspicious and for the rest of the afternoon he was tortured. So much so that he started reminiscing about Utah dungeons with affection. The Destroyer of Worlds spent two hours in the kitchen dressed in a pink pinny, up to his elbows in flour, being lectured on how to make mince pies by his newly appointed mother in law. Another precious hour was spent up a ladder, fixing up tinsel and streamers, after he’d come across Jackie trying to hammer nails into the walls with one end of his beloved screwdriver. He endured a barrage of ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ from the Tyler women, before he realised that the genetic disposition toward the sight of his backside up a ladder clearly ran in the family, and he climbed down in a sulk. He wrapped so many presents he was sure he’d be tasting sellotape for the next hundred years and there was enough glitter on his coat to make him look like a refugee from a 1970s glam rock party.

He had met Daleks with more mercy than Jackie Tyler. At length, she was distracted by a crowd of people who had turned up to drink themselves into a festive stupor, and Rose said she was going to run a bath. He sat on his own in Rose’s shockingly pink bedroom and cursed the evil fate that meant that even if he killed himself, he would still regenerate and have to go back out and sing ‘Little Drummer Boy’ with the rest of Jackie’s coven.

Then, Rose dragged him into the bathroom, locked the door behind them, and cheered him up considerably. She was entirely naked under her bathrobe, and the bath itself was filled to overflowing with bubbles and steamy hot water. He held her bare flesh against him, enjoying the way she tried to wriggle away from the roughness of his jeans, the coolness of the jacket he hadn’t felt comfortable enough to take off.

He sucked her tongue into his mouth, giving it gentle bites with his teeth, making her squirm even more, before he bent her head back and kissed her to within an inch of her life. Deftly, she stripped him and put her finger on her lips for silence, but she led him over to the bath with her hand wrapped around the evidence of how much he’d missed her yesterday. He climbed into it, a bit of water slopping out over the sides, and there weren’t enough bubbles to hide his arousal, sticking up out of the steam.

She leaned over the side and kissed it, and he reached out his hand to find her wet already, and waiting for him. She started to make little mewling noises as he touched her, the delicious sound of his fingers sliding inside her, stroking her intimately, carefully, as she found it harder and harder to stay still. With a sudden movement that caused as small flood over the side she climbed in on top of him, and he lay back, reclining against the cool plastic.

Unfortunately, the disaster he’d been hoping for all day chose that moment to strike. She faced him, and she tried kneeling up, her legs folded flat on top of his thighs, but it was impossible to find a good position. Her legs were caught against his waist, jammed against the side of the bath and she couldn’t get low enough to seat herself on top of him properly. He was only an inch or so within her, jabbing upwards uselessly, seeking a better way in.

‘Try harder,’ he begged.

‘I’m not the one having problems with ‘harder’’ she reminded him.

More water slapped onto the floor. There was a knock at the door, the tap-tap of terror, the banging crash of catastrophe coming to call.

‘Rose? Are you in there? Alone?’ Jackie’s voice, managing to sound slurred and hostile at the same time.

‘Yes mum’ she called, hurtling out of the bath, throwing his clothes back at him and pointing at the window. ‘He went back to the TARDIS hours ago.’

He had no choice but to run. With only his jeans and his coat to cover his dignity, he opened the window and jumped out, finding himself back on the balcony in front of the flat. One of his boots sailed past his head. The other signally failed to follow. From his position crouched on the floor he heard Rose open the door and start spinning her mother a web of lies. He was obviously not going to be invited back in.

He had to hop, one shoe off and one shoe on, back through streets still resolutely refusing to be covered in snow, sending out a silent prayer to anything that might be listening that the alien invasion he had hoped for wouldn’t turn up any time soon. It would take him more than four regenerations to live this one down.

But when he got home he found that a string of red and yellow fairy lights had been tied around the big blue bulb on top of the TARDIS. It seemed that the Sycorax, the Sontarians, or whoever else it was had given up trying to kill him and were now attempting to annoy him to death instead. There was only one reason he was putting up with it.

December 22
After 9am on the 22nd December the Doctor didn’t see Rose once all day. It was the longest time they had spent apart in a month. Already that morning they’d had goodbye sex. And a goodbye kiss. And then goodbye sex again. Eventually, he had had to put the bag of dirty washing into her arms and push her bodily out of the door. The engines were going before she had time to take more than a few steps away, and he was off, running for the stars before Jackie could hear the TARDIS and come to investigate. He had dropped Rose home for a bit of last minute Christmas shopping with her mother, and after twenty two days, he knew her well enough to refuse to go with them point blank. The endless loneliness of space didn’t seem so bad when Jackie Tyler was the only other option.

But without Rose beside him, he found he was a bit lost. He paced the silent corridors of the TARDIS for a while, hearing only the echoes of sudden emptiness reflecting back at him, only the sound of his own footsteps breaking the quiet. This was how it had been before, he recalled. A solitary winding path, from death and desolation into uncertainty, hopelessness. Before he found her, before he found himself again.

Several times, he thought he heard a familiar tread behind him, and he turned with a half smile, finding only absence, and an aching disappointment.

There wasn’t anywhere he wanted to go on his own. He knew he should find a world to save, even if it was only a small one, but the joy of the saving seemed tarnished somehow, lacking someone to share it with. He retreated to the part of the ship that felt most like home, the engine that powered and supported his wandering. For once, he didn’t find it in the console room, not in the restless movement of machinery, but in sheets and in pillows, in the solid, secure comfort of their bed.

The only fiddling with the TARDIS he could think of to do involved building her a bigger wardrobe because her clothes were scattered all over the floor again. He piled the abandoned jeans, the discarded t-shirts on top of the mattress, inhaling the scent of her that drifted heedlessly through the still air. He found he could remember the last time she had worn each one, the way she had arranged her hair, the turn of her face towards him as she smiled.

It was going to be a long night. Luckily, there were an awful lot of cabinets to put up. So he parked a couple of hundred years away and tried to think of something to get her for Christmas while he mastered the art of flat pack furniture assembly.

At lunchtime, she rang. ‘Guess where I am?’

He thought for a minute. ‘In London. In a shop. In a changing room. Wearing something I’d like - yes?’

He could hear her swear. ‘Just once, couldn’t you try to be a little bit less telepathic?’

‘That’s not telepathy, it’s logic,’ he pointed out. ‘You’re ringing because you’re thinking about me. You’re out clothes shopping and you know exactly what sort of thing I like taking off.’ He paused. ‘I miss you, too.’

‘I miss you’ didn’t cover it. An utterly inadequate expression to describe the sensation of a life on hold, of time hanging suspended, waiting.

She let his comment fall into silence, then made a joke of it, awkwardly. ‘Hmm,’ she replied. ‘I miss parts of you more than others.’

He wasn’t going to rise to that. Not yet anyway. ‘Rose, buy whatever it is you’ve got on and ring me back when your mother isn’t standing right outside the door.’

He spent all day hanging round the phone like a teenage girl. She called him back much, much later.

‘Alright, where are you?’ he asked in his best and-now-I’m-going-to-seduce-you voice.

‘In my bed. On my own. Wearing my new outfit. What’ve you got on?’

That was a very stupid question, as far as he was concerned. ‘Take a wild guess. Now - what are you doing?’

‘What do you want me to be doing?’ she shot back.

For the oncoming storm, that was a storming come on, and it worked every time. He swallowed. ‘Right. I want you to slide your hand down until your fingers are between your legs. You know where. Tell me when you’ve done it.’

‘I’m there,’ she replied. ‘I wish you were.’

He ignored her. ‘Now, off you go. Start slowly. Up and down. Gently. Imagine it’s me.’

He heard her breathing start to come quicker. ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Now, side to side. A bit faster.’

‘What are you doing?’ she asked on a sigh.

He paused, guiltily. ‘Well, I’m listening to you touch yourself down the other end of a phone line and I’m here all on my own. What do you think I’m doing?’

There was a muffled laugh.

‘How come you can still speak anyway?’ he asked. ‘Go faster. And push down harder. I thought I already showed you how to do that properly?’

Silence on the phone line for a long while, punctuated by occasional sighs and the sort of heavy breathing that some people would pay good money for.

‘Doctor?’ she said at length. ‘I need to…’ She trailed off, and there was the horribly familiar sound of a button being pressed, and a buzzing noise that almost immediately got much fainter.

‘I distinctly remember putting that in the bin,’ he said disgustedly.

Her laugh was choked. ‘Mr Funboy and I have become very good friends,’ she replied, and the phone went dead.

He rang her back. ‘Put me on handsfree then, if you must,’ he offered in resignation. ‘But you’re on your own with that thing.’

‘Ummm, certainly am,’ she replied. ‘You’d be jealous if you could see me now.’ The electric humming noise was progressively louder and quieter in the background.

His laugh was tinged with remorse. ‘Me? Jealous? Why?’

She caught her breath, and he heard the whine of the motor shift upwards into second gear. ‘Well,’ she managed. ‘He’s got better technique. He never claims to be resonating concrete. And my mother would like him too.’

He hung up.

When she called back he could only tell it was her by the occasional cries and half moans echoing down the phone. ‘Rose,’ he said quietly, ‘let me hear you come.’

And he did, although from the sound of it, Mr Funboy was having quite a good time too.

‘Sweet dreams,’ he replied, as he replaced the receiver and after a brief distraction, went back to putting up shelves, and counting off hours.

He hadn’t told her loved her. He had told her everything else. That would be enough.

December 19-21

December 21
The evening of 21st December lasted a lifetime. Neither of them could bear to leave the haven of the ship so he stoked up the fireplace in the library with enough logs to last until Christmas and they lay, wrapped around each other on the battered leather sofa and bathed in the glow. The flickering light spread her hair in a wave of molten gold over his chest and the hard angles of his face seemed softened, less severe in the gentle darkness. She made him laugh with stories of her childhood, little, inconsequential details like dew drops of history, strung out on a wire. He fed her so much chocolate she claimed to feel sick but the sparkle in her eyes when she closed her mouth around it was captivating, a secret pleasure. She smiled so much her face ached. He felt like he had never been alone.

And gradually, by fits and starts, he told her about the war. It weaved its way into the conversation on the warp and weft of their relationship, a loose thread she had never untangled, never tried to unpick. She wasn’t sure how he started, the words slipping through the dancing firelight towards her like they had found a gap through the bars. Layer on layer of images falling in snowdrifts all around her, a soft blizzard of remembered pain. She didn’t speak, she let the words come, and she sat and she held his hand as he talked. His eyes glistened in the shadows, and she knew she was the first to hear this tale.

When he had finished, he couldn’t remember why he hadn’t told her before. She was closer to him than anyone had ever been, so much an extension of himself it almost felt like he was explaining things she already knew, because she had lived them beside him. Her hand was a lifeline though the storm of recollection, holding him fast. Even after the end, she didn’t let him go. It was the last part of himself he had held back, he had given her everything else that mattered.

In the heavy silken silence that wound around them she touched his face. ‘I love you,’ she said again.

And he kissed her. His heart was peaceful, floating; he still knew the weight of the burden he carried, but it seemed to press more lightly on his shoulders. She could think of nothing else about him she needed to know.

Caught in the net of bright radiance thrown by the fire, they discovered each other again, making love for hours, face to face, skin to skin. He kissed every delicate pore of her throat, shifted his lips over the supple firmness of her breasts, drew her nipples into his mouth as softy as the whispering breeze of summer. Her hands traced featherlight patterns on his chest, tripping over the taut muscles in his arms, going lower, reminding herself how smooth he was, how hard, how sure. His fingers slipped into her warmth with an assurance born of long practice, moving easily against her flesh as the lazy tides of orgasm washed over her. She lay on top of him, full length, looking down, lost in his eyes. He raised his hand to her cheek as he pushed her hips down, joined them together, sliding home.

She lost count of the number of times she trembled, cried out, shuddered around him. His desire for her was without limit, and for every rushing satisfaction she gave him, there was another, and another just waiting to be set free.

He stared at her, and ‘I love you’ was in his eyes, in the touch of his fingertips, in the beating of his hearts. She could taste it in his kiss. But the sadness of the tale he had told stilled his tongue and he was silent.

Neither of them could bear to leave the haven of each other. The night of 21st December would last a lifetime.

December 20
On the twentieth of December the Doctor was defeated in mortal combat by his most dangerous foe. More wrinkled than Davros, more scheming than the Master, and with a grating voice that any Dalek would be proud of, Jackie Tyler called, and poor, sweet innocent Rose answered the phone. They were in the middle of the library, and Rose had insisted on hanging stockings on either side of the fireplace, even though he had pointed out repeatedly that if there was actually a way into the TARDIS through the chimney they’d both have been sucked out into space long ago. One of the stockings already had something inside it, and since he was leaving his shopping until Christmas Eve, it must be for him.

It was quiet when the phone rang, and quiet after it was answered, because Rose spent the next ten minutes listening - butting in with a yes or a no every so often. It was a call to arms. It was a declaration of war. He knew exactly why Jackie was on the phone to her much missed and much absent daughter only a week before Christmas. Like any good military commander, he had anticipated her tactics, and had a strategy of his own. He was going to fight dirty.

So he walked over behind Rose, pushed her hair out of the way, and exposed her free ear, before he wrapped his arms around her waist, pulled her tenderly back against his chest, and began nuzzling her neck. In her other ear, the relentless onslaught continued.

Rose rolled her eyes, put her hands over the speaker. ‘She wants to know if we’re coming for Christmas.’

He blew into her ear, felt her shiver in response, tugged on her earlobe with his teeth.

Eventually, Rose got a word in edgeways. ‘No mum,’ she said. ‘We’re really busy. People to save, things to do, you know.’

He rewarded her, sucking at the delicate tracery of nerves where her neck met her shoulder, nipping at her skin as she relaxed against him. He was definitely winning.

‘Yes, I did say ‘we’,’ Rose answered as he walked his fingers up the front of her top, and curved his hand around her breast. ‘Hmm?’ she replied to something distractedly, pushing forward to make sure he had a better grip. ‘Are we? What? Am I? With him?’

She froze, her face flushing bright red and one hand came up to her mouth in horror. She stared at him. Jackie had struck a decisive blow.

‘What do I tell her?’ Rose whispered, pushing away from him and spinning round so she could face him properly.

He shook his head vigorously, made cutting motions with his hands. The very last thing he wanted Jackie Tyler to know, was that he had shagging her daughter every way he could think of for the last nineteen days, and he wasn’t about to stop now.

Rose’s face went white. She held out the phone. ‘She wants to speak to you,’ she said.

He took a step backwards as if he had been slapped. Again. He looked at Rose, the pleading appeal in her eyes tearing at his heartstrings, and he looked at the phone, knowing it for the knock out punch it was. He took it from her gingerly, holding it far enough away from his ear to avoid permanent injury. ‘Hello?’ he tried.

‘If you don’t bring my daughter back for Christmas I’ll make sure you never lay another finger on her again, for as long as you live.’

That was below the belt. She hit him where it hurt. She was also factually inaccurate because Rose always needed more than one finger, but he wasn’t going to put her straight. Jackie couldn’t really prevent him from seeing Rose, all she could do was cause a scene, make his life difficult and upset her daughter. He didn’t want Rose upset. Jackie knew it. She had outsmarted him, and that was saying something. Besides, Rose wanted to go home for Christmas, he could read it in the anxious expression in her eyes, but she was leaving the decision to him. He fell on his sword. Nodded, handed the phone back.

‘He says yes,’ she crowed and for the next twenty minutes he was forced to listen to her chatter on about presents, and shopping, mince pies and who knew what else. The thought that he’d have to spend at least a whole day in Jackie Tyler’s company while she watched him like a hawk left him depressed. The thought that he might be expected to buy her a present made him suicidal. Rose could tell what a sacrifice he’d made by the beaten sag of his shoulders as soon as she put the phone down.

Stripping off her trousers, she bent forwards over the sofa, upside down with her arms and her head resting in a half headstand position. With her bottom in the air, she offered him the spoils of victory. He took them, and he took her, splitting her legs apart even further and pushing down into her with his hands on the soft flesh of her behind. Gymnastics had a lot to answer for, he thought, launching himself inside her with resignation. He had to start slowly though, too fed up to muster more than the bare minimum of enthusiasm and it was only the tight heat of her wrapped around him, and the way her hands rocked her whole body back against his in more and more urgent actions that stopped him from giving up completely. She was trying so hard to please him that he felt duty bound to have her as fast as he could, working up a sweat with quick, half formed strokes, grinding in and out and digging his nails into her bottom. And although she gripped him fast, and although he came so hard and so strongly he could see trails of himself running back out of her when she straightened up, Jackie’s eyes were watching him the whole time.

Christmas was an impatient mistress, and it was coming so fast that not even the skill of a Time Lord could slow it down. There weren’t many days left on the advent calendar.

December 19
On the 19th of December, the Doctor took her up the aisle. And not the kind of aisle he had been thinking about on the 1st of December either. This was strictly the nudge-nudge wink-wink variety. After her dream, she wanted to try it out.

She said it was the one adventure she had never had.

Afterwards, they agreed it was the one adventure they would never bother with again. Unless there was significantly more alcohol. Or significantly more lubricant.

December 16-18

December 18
‘Not exactly like this, no,’ said the Doctor, entering Rose for about the hundredth time on December 18th.

She looked up at him, her hands behind her head, flat on her back, her body at right angles and her legs locked comfortably over his waist and his thighs, holding him in. ‘Like what then?’ she asked.

He gave her a quizzical expression, propped up on his side, and slid his way out of her again, thoughtfully. ‘Less messy, for one thing,’ he noted, removing his hand from the hot gap between her legs and licking his fingers appreciatively.

She curled her chest and shoulders forward, deftly caught his straying digits and put them back where they belonged.

‘And less noisy,’ he continued, penetrating her again and filling the bedroom with the moist little noises she made as he worked away at the slick flesh inside her.

She shivered, raised her back off the bed, fitting her pelvis more tightly against the teasing fast flick of his fingers and the taut sliding within. ‘So what was it like then?’ she asked, once his pace had subsided to an easy rub that left her warm and relaxed.

He rested his head against his hand, pulling out, and delving in again, a bit more deeply. He adopted his standard ‘rational explanation’ tone, idly tracing circles round and round with his fingertip glued to her soft ridges, enjoying the alternate tightening and loosening of her muscles around him.

‘There’s been a lot of speculation,’ he started. ‘You wouldn’t believe some of the things I’ve read. Like - Time Lords can only have sex if there’s some dodgy chemical involved. Do I look like the sort of man who needs to drug a woman to get her into bed? Actually… don’t answer that. And there’s some serious interest in our equipment.’

He spent a couple of minutes showing her how seriously interesting his equipment could be all on its own. When she had stopped gasping and was lying back down again, he continued: ‘But the ‘how’ never mattered to me. It’s why you’re doing it that counts.’

He felt her tensing around him again and wondered if she was building up to a question he wouldn’t want to answer, so he rushed on. ‘If you really want to, I can have a try. No promises mind.’
She nodded, and he disengaged, earning himself a hefty pout of disappointment that only lifted when he deliberately inserted his fingers into her mouth and made her lick her own taste off his hand. Then his shining clean fingers crept to her temples and her mind exploded.

Later, she realised that ‘exploded’ was nowhere near the right word. It was like all her thoughts had been taken apart and rearranged in a different order, a jigsaw puzzle put together by a very small child, not quite slotting back into the right holes. She could feel him inside her head, an intrusion more intimate than the simple biological match of his body with hers. There was a sudden rush of images she recognised, like a potted history of all the pleasure she had ever known, and then a stabbing, lancing ecstasy shooting straight through her mind, bypassing crude physical reactions and transporting her directly to the place she only saw when she was on the verge of coming. He held her there; she could feel him doing it, exploring her in the darkness behind her eyes with the whispering caress of his mind. She lost contact with her senses, knowing only the absolute warmth and acceptance pouring out of him, the devouring strength of his need to make her happy.

In seconds, with a white noise that blanked off every other feeling, a cascade of raw joy swept her away, rising up from every side at once; a thousand times stronger than the moments she had spent writhing under his tongue, sharper than the heat of him pounding within her. And the instant it arrived, it was gone, along with his presence, and she found herself lying on the bed, drenched in sweat, with her muscles twitching and the Doctor above, watching her with anxious eyes.

‘If I asked how was it for you, would you laugh?’ he said.

She pinned a glittering smile to her face. ‘Lovely,’ she replied, but she sounded hollow to herself.

She needed time to think. She pushed him flat on his back against the sheets and clambered on top, deliberately facing away into the dark so he couldn’t meet her gaze. As she opened herself up and welcomed him in, she could hear him groan in response behind her, and she had space to consider the lingering taste he had left in her mind. The impression of him was still stamped across her brain, and behind the boundless willpower, the confidence, and the obvious desire, there hid a ravaged soul. But it was only a trace, a hint of locked down pain, the suspicion of walled up secrets he wouldn’t share.

She quickened the speed of her hips, jolting against him, her hands resting on his knees, listening to the occasional cries he made absently. She was glad he couldn’t see her face.

The brief passage of his thoughts in her head had taught her more than he knew. She could sense he was giving her everything, throwing every spark of happiness, and need, and hope he possessed her way, but taking nothing in return. She understood why he wouldn’t tell her how he felt. To do that, he would have to let her in. He’d have to let her love him. He’d have to love himself. ‘I love you’ was selfish. ‘I love you’ was forever. He thought that only forever was good enough.

She heard him start that long indrawn breath he always did before his orgasm took him, and she held him as hard as she could, trying to comfort him in the only way she knew. He surged up into her as he came, crying out her name, and she heard it as a call for help.

December 17
When the days of December hit on seventeen,
They went to a place that she never had been,
The TARDIS had stopped at a place and a time,
Where the people who lived there spoke only in rhyme.
Stepping out of the door, she tripped and then cursed,
Was amazed to hear herself swearing in verse.
‘This is great. I can’t wait,’ he said, patting his ship,
And he dragged her off, swearing, with an arm round her hip,
They walked to a town which was jam-packed with people,
And a market, a town hall, a church with a steeple,
Some half timbered houses, just post mediaeval,
But wide open drains where the smell was quite evil,
‘Stop moaning, and kiss me, my fine fettled wench,
And mind you don’t slip, you’re quite close to that trench,’
Quoth he, with a grin that she wiped off his face:
‘I’m not coming near you till we’re out of this place.’
‘Alright them, we’ve come here to broaden your mind,
Let’s go have a look and see what we find.’
They decided on Shakespeare, or some other great play,
But too early for evening, they’d missed matinee.
He suggested a walk and set off for the beach,
But she kept him at arms length and quite out of reach.
He whispered sweet nothings as they walked on the sand,
And slowly she smiled and she gave him her hand,
He made a suggestion, and she shook her head,
He changed it, just slightly, she nodded instead.
So down on the sand, with the sound of the surf,
They tried the position known as soixante-neuf.
She got on top, and he was beneath,
And she sucked at his cock with her lips and her teeth,
He raised his hand slowly, spread open her slit,
Explored with his tongue till he hit on her clit,
He licked it, he nipped it, he made her quite sore,
So she stroked him, she teased him, till he begged for more,
His fingers within her, her back arched, she cried,
And all that she wanted was to feel him inside.
Her mouth was around him, all hot, strong and tight,
But he tried to hold on for as long as he might,
She rocked and she bucked at his now-faster pace,
And really, quite quickly, came over his face.
He didn’t have leisure to joke or to gloat,
Because quick as a shot, he came down her throat.
Both sated, exhausted, they slept side by side
Until they awoke with the touch of the tide.
Dressed now, and rowing about who came the hardest,
They held hands and walked their way back to the TARDIS.

December 16
On December 16th, the Doctor lost his inhibitions. And his coat, which worried him a lot more. The TARDIS had crash-landed - not an enormous surprise since its hit rate for successful journeys was only about twelve in every thirteen. It seemed almost impossible to take a trip through the vortex these days without meeting up with yourself on the way back. The TARDIS just hadn’t been the same since Rose had smashed it open with that tow truck and gone joy riding.

But when she opened the door and saw they were on a deserted beach, she let out a scream of delight that he had only heard in her wildest dreams.

‘Look,’ she cried, clapping her hands together. ‘It’s Christmas already.’

And she raced down towards the sea, stripping off her clothes with heedless unconcern and dumping them on the sand. He shook his head, wondering why the use of coathangers and the concept of folding were such a mystery to her. She waved at him from the water, her naked breasts lifted by the rolling tide.

‘Come in,’ she called. ‘It’s paradise.’

He looked down at his clothes. He looked back at her. There was no way he was going skinny dipping. No Time Lord had ever been skinny dipping in all the long history of Gallifrey. Rassilon had been very stern on the subject. But he didn’t remember anything specifically forbidding underwear though. Sitting down, he took off his boots, rolled up his socks, and, to a series of bad wolf whistles from the sea, peeled off his jumper.

Rose trod water and watched him strip. It was difficult to do both things at once. Partly because she was laughing so hard she kept gulping in mouthfuls of seawater instead of air and partly because from her vantage point she could see the very big sign that the TARDIS had parked half in front of -a sign that the Doctor hadn’t yet turned round to see. ‘Welcome to Paradise’ it read - ‘Marbella’s biggest nudist beach’.

He was standing with his top off, fiddling uncomfortably with his belt buckle, looking down at the sand squeezed between his toes. She paused to admire the corded muscle in his shoulders, the stomach so flat she could have eaten her dinner off it - and had, on a couple of occasions when he’d got a bit carried away. He was doing the most disappointing striptease she had ever seen, and possibly, the most disappointing striptease the people watching him from the car park behind the beach had ever seen too.

‘Promise I won’t look,’ she called, putting her hands dramatically over her eyes.

There was a splash as he entered the sea, and then his arms were round her from behind, his body pressed to hers as she sat back in the water. Confused, she groped behind, feeling some very wet, very tight fitting material and not a lot else.

‘I’m cold,’ he explained apologetically.

He didn’t stay cold for long. She dived under the water to remove his last remaining hiding place, letting the tide carry the black pants, with their gold figure of eight monogram, away. Then she set to work on warming him up, rubbing vigorously until he was back to his usual self.

His fingers opened her up to the shock of the cold water, bring a lubricious chill to her innermost flesh when he found the right spot. The sea was ice cold, and his hands weren’t much warmer, turning his every caress into something hard and fierce, tiny hammerblows of pleasure between her legs. He pushed into her with his arms still around her waist from behind, so that she was sitting on top of him facing away, with both of them looking out to sea. He was freezing inside her, a column of fire and ice, burning heat when he pushed in and out but revealing a chilly core every time he was still. Because he was treading water his thrusts were unusually random, periodically trailing off until his foot touched the bottom again and he surged suddenly up into her, and made her whole body spasm. Her orgasm was sharp and unexpected, jumping out at her when she wasn’t looking and hiding away again a couple of minutes later. It was so cold she had to spend far more effort than usual making sure he came too, eventually changing position and angling forward to lock her legs around his back.

As soon as he had finished, she swam away to the beach as fast as she could. ‘Back in a minute,’ she shouted, leaving him still recovering.

He watched her walk up the sand, picking up their discarded clothing with approval. Clearly all those over exaggerated sighs and disapproving sniffs as he stepped over enormous piles of dumped t-shirts in their bedroom were having the desired effect. It was only when he noticed the sign peeping out from behind the TARDIS that he started to work out the odds of actually crash-landing on a beach in Marbella in 1989. He had the sneaking suspicion that he was being ganged up on. He watched the door slam shut on Rose’s naked backside like the crack of doom.

For the first ten minutes, he decided to stay in the sea and just wait for her to come back, preferably bringing all his clothes - or at the very least his coat, with her. For the twenty minutes after that, he decided to stay in the sea and wait for the nice couple who had arrived from the car park to finish their picnic and leave. For the following sixty minutes he decided the stay in the sea while the friends of the nice couple, and their friends, and all their friends, and anyone they’d ever met in their whole lives ever stopped setting up their towels and their umbrellas and generally covering the entire expanse of sand in naked flesh. Fifteen minutes after that, the beach was so full that he decided he had to ignore the person erecting a stripy sunshade off the side of the TARDIS and pretend not to care that they were chipping his paintwork. Another fifteen minutes was spent hiding underwater from the very large man, with the very large smile who kept tipping him very large winks and swimming much too close. He decided after two hours, that it was time to leave the sea. Having prove-a-point sex with Rose in public didn’t bother him, because he had been so scared of losing her he couldn’t string a sentence together, let alone care what anyone else thought. But walking back up the beach in the middle of the daytime on his own, totally naked, was another matter entirely. He was rarely without his coat, let alone his dignity.

But, he had never actually died of embarrassment before, and, he thought, even if it happened now, he could just regenerate into someone that nobody on the beach would ever recognise again. Determinedly, he walked out of the water, and because he’d been in there for two hours, and because he was still very, very cold, no one paid him the slightest bit of attention or even gave him a second glance. He couldn’t help feeling just a shade disappointed.

He knocked on the TARDIS door and Rose answered, wearing nothing but his missing leather coat and a very wide smile. He felt a bit warmer.

She looked him up and down. ‘Bedroom?’

‘You read my mind,’ he replied, barging past her on his way down the corridor.

‘Annoying isn’t it?’ she answered, her hands on the buttons of his coat.

December 13 - 15

December 15th
Early in the morning of December 15th Rose Tyler sat up with a start, the aftermath of her dream washing around in her head. Her fantasies weren’t usually quite so explicit, and they didn’t usually have such a physical effect on her either. She found that the thin material of the chaste pyjamas she had put on before going to bed was soaking, and there was a painful aching throb inside that wouldn’t go away. She was slimy with sweat and she had twisted the covers beside her hands into knots. She rolled onto her side, trying hard to control her breathing, praying that the Doctor wouldn’t hear how fast she was panting and ask her just why she couldn’t keep her legs together. There was no chance of going back to sleep, much as she might want to pick up the threads of her dream.

He was snoring beside her, but she decided not to bother waking him up, resenting the time it would take to get him up to speed, and dreading the inevitable laughter when she had to explain why she wanted him so badly. She could take care of herself.

She slipped her hand down between her thighs, following the well known path that the Doctor had traced out time and time again over the last few weeks. It was actually a shock to feel a set of warm fingers down below, since he was usually colder, and often, slightly less delicate. Touching herself rapidly, and skilfully, she arched her hips up off the bed to get a better angle, holding her breath as the warmth built up and regular hammering shudders forced all her attention down to the sharp rub-rub of her hand.

She closed her eyes, bit down on her lip, tried hard not to move too violently, but a little moan escaped her anyway when she shook herself into orgasm. Falling back, the tension drained out of her and she heard him clear his throat, no longer even pretending to be asleep. She had clearly made enough noise to wake him up. In fact, it was impossible to tell how long he had been awake for. She cursed the size of his ears.

‘Very nice,’ he said, taking her hand, putting her fingers into his mouth and sucking them clean. ‘Now let me show you how to do it properly.’

She cursed the size of his ego. He wasn’t a gentleman, when it came to sex he had absolutely no morals whatsoever, and he would try anything on her once, even invading a perfectly good dream to try out a telepathic threesome. One Doctor was annoying enough, but two were more than any woman could be expected to take for more than a few minutes at a time. But he clearly thought that two of him was every young girl’s fantasy. She swore to herself that somehow, she would bring him back down to size.

December 14th
On the fourteenth of December Rose Tyler brushed her teeth, took off her clothes and went to bed as usual. Inasmuch that any night spent in the same bed as a Time Lord could be considered usual. This particular one was sleeping soundly however, when she crept beneath the covers, exhausted from a day of mental activity that hadn’t included her at all.

In the morning, they’d landed on some inconspicuous planet and by lunchtime he’d achieved some neat bit of diplomacy that had eluded the inhabitants for several thousand years. By evening they were guests of honour at an enormous dinner party, sitting on the top table and being stared at by the multitudinous throng. During the starter he’d slipped his fingers under the table cloth, up her dress and between her thighs.

He reached over, breaking a stem off the table arrangement and handing it to her as the main course was served. ‘So,’ he whispered urgently. ‘This is dinner, I’ve given you a flower, and how’s this for a surprise?’ And he proceeded to finger her leisurely under the table for the rest of the meal.

She had a stimulating conversation with the man on her left about the digestive benefits of tofu, she was so enthusiastic about soya beans that she couldn’t sit still and by dessert she was positively ecstatic on the subject of nut roast. Only a short period spent choking into her port, while the Doctor rubbed her back saved her from complete disgrace. So when she went to bed on the fourteenth of December she hadn’t slept with the Doctor all day.

But she dreamed in glorious technicolour, and in very bad language. She was naked - again - and in the console room - again - and sitting firmly on the Doctor’s cock as he leant back in the jumpseat. It was one of her most favourite places to be. All but the most important part of him was completely relaxed as he watched her, breasts bouncing up and down as she rode him, with one leg crouched on either side of his hips, his feet tapping against the floor. She was having one of those sessions where she just couldn’t get enough. He was thick and straight within her, by far the biggest thing she’d ever had between her legs, but some days, even that didn’t hit the spot.

‘Harder,’ she ordered. ‘Fuck me harder.’

He loved it when she talked dirty. He sat up a bit straighter, put his hands on her hips and forced her down on top of him. She was already so turned on she was dripping but she could feel a tremendous orgasm hanging around and she was determined not to let it get away. The feel of his hands squeezing her breasts was amazing, and she looked down to see familiar fingers tugging at her nipples, and then, she noticed, a second pair of exactly the same hands still locked onto her hips.

Abruptly, she felt lips on her neck from behind, and heard that deep, husky voice he put on when he was about to seduce her. ‘Very nice,’ he said. ‘Now let me show you how to do it properly.’

Questions flooded her mind, half dazed with too much sex. ‘What?’ she managed. ‘Two?’

The Doctor behind her shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Maybe I’m from an alternative universe. Maybe this is some horrible accident in time. This is your dream, make up your own plot device.’

His hands slid down to cup her bottom, pushing her forward slightly, spreading her apart. She felt a coldness on her back, a liquid wetness rubbed into the space between her cheeks, and then, as the pace of the cock between her thighs quickened, a finger entered her from behind. It was a totally new experience, tight and rough and it made her feel utterly wanton, capable of anything.

The climax kicking around in her brain got louder and she gasped out what she wanted, her voice raw and broken. ‘Again. Harder.’

She felt hands on her back, tilting her forward against the pressure on her hips and something altogether larger prodded at her other entrance. She stopped moving immediately, rising up off the erection jabbing into her from below, braced for pain. There wasn’t any, but a brief, hot discomfort, an insistent, throbbing pressure ramming into her and not stopping, not slowing, until she was spread further than she thought she could go. She was filled by it, tighter and tighter, stretching her, demanding that she take all of it in. Then two sets of hands, one on her shoulders, one on her hips settled her gently back down onto the swollen heat below. She felt it slide inside her, forcing her open and her body tried to protest, tried to contract, but a hand, teasing fingers rubbing at her clit, relaxing and calming her, bringing pleasure back as together, they started to move.

She held both of them inside her, as one withdrew, the other pushed in, one pulled out, the other thrust forward, a delicate alternating pattern that got faster and faster. A warm mouth sucked at her the skin of her neck, there were hands on her breasts, strong and sure, fingers rubbing and stroking between her legs.

‘Harder,’ she begged. ‘Harder.’

She was completely overwhelmed by the cascade of sensations flooding through her, an orchestra of pleasure drowning everything out and building to a crescendo.

Every touch, every drive, every kiss was only to make her happy. The hard grind of two men inside her told her how powerful, how in control, how experienced she was. She was the focus of all their attention and she felt wanted, desired, cared for, as she had never been. Three bodies, one climax. Although she knew that in space no one could hear her scream, she had a very good try at deafening anyone within earshot.

December 13th.

Her hands were splayed against the console, her hair dishevelled, hanging in lank, sweat stained strands on either side of her face. She was going to come. Her knickers were round her ankles, her skirt pushed up and out of the way, her legs spread. The Doctor behind her, buried inside her, stabbing at her with short, angry strokes, his hand curved round her waist, fingers pressed tightly between her legs, manipulating her into orgasm. She had never needed to tell him exactly how to touch her, that was one of the many things she loved about him. He was going to make her come, hard. And soon. She bit her lip, deciding she wasn’t going to cry out his name, tell him she loved him again, do any of the things she had done yesterday. Any of the things he had ignored.

But she needed just a little bit more force, she wanted him to give it to her just that little bit more roughly. She thought for a moment. ‘Can we go to my mother’s for Christmas?’ she asked.

That was much better. The movement of his hand and his now even angrier thrusts were too much to bear and she couldn’t fend off the sharpness of the climax that exploded within her, clamping her legs closer together to hold him within, shaking in controllable waves, a gasp wrung from her mouth. His determined panting grew deeper for a second, and she could feel him lose his orgasm inside her, with an indrawn breath that was still annoyingly restrained. He withdrew immediately, and she heard him fastening his trousers, marching loudly out of the room. She sighed, picked herself up, pulling up her underwear, rearranging her skirt. She fell back on the jumpseat, exhausted.

She thought back. An hour earlier, they were sitting together over the breakfast table. The Doctor was silent. ‘Silent’ and ‘Doctor’ didn’t belong in the same sentence together so she found a random vein of conversation, and opened it.

‘I like this tea,’ she said, sipping. Their combined love of tea was practically the foundation their relationship was built on. ‘What’s it called?’

He reached over, took her cup, drank out of it and gave it back, pulling a face. ‘Tastes like Earl Grey or something,’ he replied, concentrating on his toast.

‘Well, I like Earl Grey then,’ she answered, drinking a bit more. ‘It’s very smooth, very subtle.’

He gave her a sharp look. ‘Wouldn’t have thought you would go for smooth. Or subtle for that matter. I’d have said you were a girl who liked her tea plain - just tea, and none of that fancy stuff.’

She shrugged. ‘I like Earl Grey. It’s more refined. What’s that you’re drinking?’

He took a gulp. ‘Doesn’t have a name. Doesn’t need one. It knows what it is - honest, no nonsense, straightforward tea. Tea you can rely on. I thought it was your favourite.’

She met his level stare. ‘Most of the time, it is,’ she replied. ‘But sometimes, just occasionally, I like Earl Grey. Earl Grey does things for me that other teas don’t. Earl Grey’s full of surprises, the sort of tea that takes you out to dinner and buys you flowers when you’re not expecting it. You don’t get that with ordinary tea. It expects you to like it without putting in the effort.’

He put his cup down with a clatter. ‘At least ordinary tea doesn’t make you any promises it can’t keep. Ordinary tea doesn’t ask you for anything in return, it just wants you to carry on drinking it.’

She sighed, returned her own cup to the saucer. ‘But that’s why I like Earl Grey sometimes. Because it’s out of the ordinary. It doesn’t hold anything back. You don’t have to keep guessing what Earl Grey’s thinking. Earl Grey’s spontaneous - it tells you how it feels.’

He pushed his chair back. ‘Then Earl Grey’s a mummy’s boy,’ he answered and strode out of the room.

Half an hour later she found herself spread against the console, being shown in no uncertain terms how the Doctor felt, even if today, that was mostly angry. She knew he thought of her as his, and she knew he’d do anything to make her happy, but it wasn’t enough. She had told him she loved him and he hadn’t replied. He wouldn’t talk about it, got annoyed with her when she tried to force him into it. She’d just have to let him get there in his own time.

She shouted after the noise of his retreating footsteps. ‘That wasn’t spontaneous. I heard you coming.’

He didn’t dignify that with a response.