Smut!Fic: The Echo and the Fulcrum (3/5)
Title: The Echo and the Fulcrum (3/5)
Author: doona_rose
Rating: M, lots of M.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Summary: A very epic, very, very smutty look at the relationship between Rose and the human version of the Doctor she was left with. Rose feels obligated to try for a relationship because that’s what the Doctor would have wanted. The Doctor she’s left with falls back in love with her overnight. This all builds to a flashpoint when Rose decides to attempt a date but makes it all too clear she’s doing it for the wrong reasons. Angst, sex, dialogue follows.
Spoilers: Set after the finale of Season Four.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, quite obviously.
A/N: Oops, running late with this update. Sorry! And thank you to everyone who reviewed part 2, I'll get around to saying a proper thank you tomorrow, thought you might want Part Three.
It is very smutty and at times a bit dark but it’s my take on the somewhat difficult relationship between Rose and her human Doctor and how it might have worked out. Much thanks to chicklet73 who has been looking at bits and pieces of this for almost two years. Please let me know what you think, adjustments are still being made to the ending and I do value any feedback, happy, not so happy, critical or not. Other than that, I can only ask that you enjoy it.
( Part One)
( Part Two)
With his eyes empty and his lips set in a grimace, the pair of them look ridiculous and immediately she sets about finding her clothes, her top’s a little bit dirty and missing a button and as she smoothes her skirt back down she struggles to recognize the tatters of her stockings and knickers. He quickly slips his trousers and shirt back on and, still looking at the ground speaks, his voice low, defeated. “I didn’t want it to be like this. All those years...years of waiting, I didn’t want it to be like this. I imagined,” he swallows, “I imagined that I would be able to take my time, that it would be all for you, hours and hours and hours of exploring and practice and anticipation and when I took you, it would be slow and careful, I’d watch you every moment, have you shaking at the pleasure of it. And now I’ve gone and done this, in an alleyway, I’ve trapped you, yelled at you and fucked you up against a wall. I hurt you and I didn’t even notice...” his voice trails off only to be replaced by a strangled groan of self-loathing. “I can’t even...”
She’s a bit beyond understanding the man in front of her and she wonders if it isn’t because he’s still finding himself. And in spite of herself she’s aching at the loss of a half-fulfilled dream. His voice little more than a whisper, he utters “I’m sorry,” and then turns on his heel and starts to walk away, close to running back onto the street, into the night and away.
It takes only a moment to react, to realize that the play of guilt and destruction that she’s just witnessed was untempered, and if she’d really believed him before then the agony would have been expected. In such a man as this, thinking he had hurt her, it should have been expected. The utter anguish would have been predictable. But it wasn’t. It was a hard fuck in a dirty alley, it was their first time and it felt wrong, yes, in a delicious kind of way, but it wasn’t the way lovers such as they made love for the first time. Lovers such as they. Star-crossed, inexplicable, inescapable, insurmountable lovers such as they. It was wrong. That was obvious now. That was what his logic told him: that for them it should have been the utter epitome of the perfect first time. She agreed: for lovers such as they. And suddenly - inexplicably, inescapably, insurmountably - she realized she was head over heels in love with him.
Reason be damned.
Then race after him. She half-stumbles back to the street, stopping at the edge of the light. A moment’s thought for the state of her clothes and hair is cut short as she realizes she can’t see him and has no idea which way he would have gone. Hopelessness washes over her in a wave: having finally put the puzzle together, of feeling her blood thrumming in her veins and recognizing that it’s him she wants, she’s left standing by herself with no clue as to how to get to him.
She’s not even sure it’s now possible.
But this is Rose, and Rose doesn’t give up. If she did she’d be dead several times over and certainly have never had the chance to love a man like this. So she clenches her jaw, breathes deep and stalks in the direction of home. It’s across town and a fifteen minute drive. It will take her hours to walk it and the cold’s nipping at her bare thighs, wind whipping at her skirt. The first taxi she sees she’s throws out an arm and climbs in as it rolls to a halt.
Muttering directions, she settles in the backseat and continues to search for options. Is still searching, and to no avail, when the cab stops outside the apartment block. It’s only when she’s up the stairs and fumbling for her keys that it occurs to her that he might have beaten her home. Freezing, she does her best to prepare herself for whatever is waiting for her on the other side of the door. Will he be heartbroken? Angry? Will he ignore her? Does he think this is it? Everything finished?
What does she plan on saying? Even assuming that she can make him listen to her, what could she possibly say that will make him believe her? He ran because he had hurt her and she can neither deny that there was pain, that he fucked her in that moment without anything you could categorize as love or care, nor that him being upset about that was a good thing. If he hadn’t stopped, had gone through with it, she knows she would have felt dirty afterwards. Not because it was an alley, or because it was so inherently primal, but because lovers such as they did not have first times such as that.
And they almost had.
But what could she say?
The door opens silently in front of her and she peeks inside, ready to face whatever’s there. But she’s forgotten that there’s a chance, a good chance, that he wouldn’t have come home. On the best of nights he sometimes stays out until dawn simply wandering the streets. Tonight is not a good night for him. He might not come home for days.
An empty apartment greets her, no lights, no sound. She checks quickly to see if his car keys were still there, then the fridge to see if the leftovers from the night before have been touched. No sign of him. Suddenly lost as to what to do next, she wanders from room to room, searching. Without even thinking she pours herself a glass of wine and swallows a mouthful and breathes deep.
She has no idea where he is, no idea when he’ll be back. All she knows is that she’s strangely fatigued, feels sore and sticky, and that she loves him and she desperately needs to fix things. But how to get him home? She pulls her phone out and calls him, sparing no time in again mulling over what to say. She calls him again when he doesn’t answer, and then again. By the forth call she’s standing in her bedroom doorway, staring at his neatly made bed and barely conscious of the ringing. She moves into his room, running her hand over the sheets and then walking into his en suite. His bathroom is bigger than hers and has a bath. After the longest days with the hardest running she waits patiently for him to shower and then settles in his bath with a couple of candles and a book.
Pressing redial she turns on the water and pours in the scented bubble bath. She’s lost count now of the number of missed calls he’ll have but tries again anyway, lighting the two candles either side of the sink and turning off the lights. The room’s dark now and the lack of focus draws her attention to the feeling of shredded, sticky clothing on her skin.
The phones vibrates against her ear and, startled, it hits the tiles at her feet, narrowly missing the half-filled bath. Clambering, she picks it up and sees the text message. It’s him and all it says is “Are you okay?”.
She realizes that the constant calls might have worried him and instead of feeling a pang of guilt a smile plays at her lips for the first time in hours. She knows how to get him home.
“I need you. Come home.”
She turns the water off and quickly sheds her mangled clothes, shoving them out of sight behind the unclosed door. She’d like him to find her like this: naked in his bath. Sinking down into the heat she feels her muscles ache a little, another remnant of tonight’s misadventure and feels a sting across her back as the water enters the scratches there. It makes her smile again and that gives her hope.
Her phone rings. It’s him. She doesn’t answer.
As her mind drifts and her eyes close, she acknowledges that he’s probably racing home now, worried sick and that she should feel terrible for doing it but she’s too busy dissecting the situation. The rest of her glass of wine is swallowed and she resists the urge to keep going, knowing she needs to be sharp for whatever is ahead.
Trying to assess the situation critically, knowing full well that’s a habit she’s picked up off him. So what: She loves him. He loves her. He probably won’t believe she loves him. He’s close to hating himself for an accident. A complete accident. It wasn’t a lack of care that made him do it, it was a complete loss of control. Control which she’d taken. She just hadn’t realized at the time that he was quite so tightly wound. Probably because at the time she was too busy having sex, enjoying him, to realize the implication. She won’t make that mistake again. This time, she’ll take control knowingly.
Seduction. That’s what it’s about now. Seduction and truth.
The water’s cooling and her phone stopped ringing a while ago. Her eyelids are struggling to stay open and, surprisingly, sleep is tugging at her consciousness. It certainly won’t do for him to come home and find her drowned in his bath so she steps out and, unthinking, takes his towel from the rack. The smell of him runs rife over her as she wraps herself in it, tucking it snugly beneath her arms and walking back to his bedroom, her hair still wet.
That’s where he finds her fifteen minutes later, finally succumbing to the need to storm into the house and find out why he’s seen no movement, no light, nothing other that the a slight flicker from his bathroom windows. He’s been standing on the street for a little over an hour, trying to work out whether it’s a trick of if she really needs him and, seeing no evidence that plainly states she’s fine, he’s finally slipped soundlessly into the house, convinced he will find her, and then leave her, asleep.
And there she is, asleep, snoring just slightly. But she’s on his bed, in a towel and smelling like vanilla and his aftershave. He feels sick at the lust that stirs quick and deep in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t make a sound but suddenly her eyes have snapped open and she’s sitting up in front of him.
“I fell asleep?” she murmurs.
He nods soundlessly, then, his voice much rougher than he’d like it. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah,” she answers, still not quite aware of the circumstance.
Quickly he replies and moves towards the door. “Then I’ll be off.”
She hears the unsaid implication that he won’t be coming back for a while and panics, suddenly wide awake and well aware of everything that could go wrong. Why doesn’t she have a plan? She reaches with the hand that isn’t keeping her towel securely around her and grabs him by the wrist. “No.”
He only stops because she’s touched him, only listens because he can’t help himself.
Her voice drops, “I’m not okay.”
They fall into silence, her not wanting to say anything to make him run, him aching because he knows it’s his fault. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
The look she gives him, catching his eyes and imploring him, “Don’t be.”
He’s shocked to hear his sincerity mirrored back, but he ignores it, looking away and slipping his hand from hers. He’s leaving, even if it kills him, because he hurt her, he pushed her, even though he knew she didn’t really want him. Not like he wanted her. He needs to say that but just opening his mouth prompts her and her voice slices through his before he gets out a word.
“Don’t talk. Hear me out.”
And then he cuts across her, his voice strong for the first time since he entered, now with agony lacing his words. “It doesn’t matter.” You don’t, can’t, shouldn’t love me.
She huffs, suddenly frustrated with how stubborn he’s being, how he’s blowing it all out of proportion. “Hear me out,” she repeats, more demanding now.
He shakes his head, not to say no, but to admit defeat, and leans back against the wall, refusing to meet her eyes but listening.
What to say? She barely understands it, she can’t put it into words, she wants desperately for him to catch up with her, to understand what she now knows and she’s convinced him to listen but she has no idea how to word it.
“I love you.” He stills at her words and she presses on, shocked at how easily the phrase rolls from her tongue and how quickly a tingling glowing warmth spreads beneath her skin. “I do. I didn’t, or I didn’t know I did. But as soon as you left me there I knew. I never realized you loved me like that.”
“Like that?” he says, spitting the words out as though they taste foul. “I hurt you.”
“Yeah,” she says, voice rising and then mellowing when she sees him wince, “like that.” His mouth shuts. “You can’t control yourself around me.” She smiles and he can barely believe it. “Do you have any idea how much of a turn on that is?” He doesn’t interrupt this time, can’t seem to operate his vocal chords. “I get that you’re upset that it wasn’t the most comfortable sex I’ve ever had and you think it should have been perfect and, I guess, if I wasn’t so slow on the uptake then maybe we could have had a proper dinner and come home and I would have understood it better.” He’s staring at her and she thinks the expression is incredulity. “But sex is never perfect, it takes practice.” Her voice drops to a whisper, like she’s about to tell him a secret and this time he can’t help but meet her eyes and wait, hope dwelling even if he’s ignoring it. “You know, I’ve never had really, really good sex.”
He’s a bit dumbfounded by that. Sure, she’s young and all the boyfriends he knows of certainly wouldn’t have been that impressive but it never occurred to him that she might say that.
“And I’ve had much, much worse sex than that.” Now he’s gaping a bit at her, stunned wordless at her bluntness and she knows it. “And you made me,” she can’t quite bring herself to say the word she wants to say but he knows what she means. “My god, I’ve never felt like that.”
Silence falls because she can’t think of what else to say. He’s not convinced, caught somewhere between thinking it’s a dream and thinking she’s mistaken but in spite of those thoughts, he doesn’t move from the wall.
“I love you,” she repeats.
“You don’t.”
She looks disappointed at that and he can’t blame her. He’s actually rather surprised that she doesn’t look utterly disgusted with him. When she first rang him, he thought it had been to tell him never to come near her again so this entire conversation is a bit of a mystery to him. Sadistic now, wanting to test how far the farce can be pushed, he says. “I didn’t even make it home, only got two streets down and found a dark corner.”
Where ever she was planning on taking this conversation, it’s veered off course and she’s momentarily confused. “What?”
He grins, self-deprecating. “Even having hurt you, fucked you in an alleyway,” a pause and a dark look crosses his eyes, “having been utterly disgusted by my actions, I was still hard. And desperate enough that I found somewhere dark and quiet and...” he lets his voice trail off and shrugs, watching her like a hawk.
Predictably, she shifts uncomfortably, swallows, and he wonders if she’s fighting the urge to vomit. She sees his eyes go a shade darker and a small smile of triumph pass over his lips and with a start she realizes what he must think and opens her mouth, her eyes going wide.
He thinks she’s disgusted with him, thinks that she’s confirmed his suspicions. He couldn’t be more wrong. She realizes that he’s on the edge, ready to run. He’s got all of his proof and reasoning lined up and he’s about to walk. In that instant she wants to hit him across the face as hard as she can for being so utterly dense.
“Is it true that you’ll last longer this time, then?” she asks, pleased with her decision to say that and not try and convince him, again, that it’s that extreme attraction he seems to have to her that makes him so very darkly attractive to her.
It’s his turn to respond with a sharp, “What?”
Grinning in spite of the levity, “One of my mates told me that guys take much longer the second time.” He still looks confused, bless him. “In bed, they last longer.”
Understanding dawns and his eyebrows shoot up before he remembers he’s meant to be a self-loathing basket case and in the process of walking out.
“Well?” she asks.
She doesn’t really care but he no longer looks like leaving so she continues with the same tact. “Did you think of me?”
“What?”
“When you touched yourself, did you think of me?”
If this was payback for what he did it was well deserved and well delivered because he can already feel the beginnings of a migraine (damn this human body) and, in spite of all efforts to not react, he can feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up, his skin flushing and a tightness in his jeans.
“What did you think?” Of course I thought about you,” he grinds out.
“What about me?” she purrs.
“About what I did to you in the alley.”
The way he says it makes it apparent that now he’s not referring to the pain.
“Anything in particular?”
“What I did with my mouth, the noises you made when I used my tongue, the way your back arched and you pulled my hair when you came.” He’s shocked by his audacity and by hers.
He misses her gasp but what she says a moment later is just as breathy and makes that omission inconsequential. “You’re making me wet.”
“Rose,” and it comes out in a strangled moan.
“I’m serious,” her voice says it too. “I love you and you’re making me wet.”
“It’s a physiological reaction.”
“Rubbish. If you were just some guy, I’d be weirded out, not gagging for it.”
Staring at her, he knows she’s trying to seduce him. At some point in the last five minutes she’s completely twisted this around and she’s got him well and truly turned on and he can’t even remember why that’s a bad thing.
Ah yes, because he hurt her and she should hate him and she couldn’t possibly love him. And yet, she’s sitting there, trying to seduce him, talking to him as though she’s going to be as good at verbal foreplay as he is, telling him he’s making her wet and that she loves him.
Somewhere over the last five minutes hope has muscled in and now he so wants to believe her. He can’t fault her logic, the way she’s moved through the mistakes from earlier and written them off as minor despite, not a half hour before, his simple view that he’d ruined it all. She’s right, he over-reacted.
And now she wants him, claims to love him, and there’s passion stirring inside him and he’s searching for a reason to tell her ‘no’.
Looking up from the floor where his gaze has been focused, he regrets it instantly, any thought of logic or reason darting away; she’s in his towel on his bed, staring, waiting, hoping. And, his mind helpfully reminds him, she’s wet. For him. She looks hopeful and soft and a tad delicious and he’d be mad not to try again, not to just kiss her one more time and hope it’s all better. He can be better, they can be great.
There must be something in his eyes that says he’s close to losing his resolve because her hands start to fidget in her lap, the movement drawing his attention there and then up to her tilted head. Watching him the entire time, she deliberately raises her hands, skimming over her breasts and relieved to hear him suck in a breath as she grasps the material. Soundlessly, her fingers pull free the tucked-in end and let the towel fall to her lap.
She’s naked from the waist up. An offering.
She shifts under his very intense scrutiny, determined not to get shy or bashful now because that would be ridiculous and because she asked for this and if he’s finally going to give it to her she will not stop him. Somehow, he drags his eyes up from the spot between her breasts and returns the stare, letting her see the reflected desire and passion before he even realizes he’s succumbed.
Her lips curve and she smiles broad and happy and that’s the moment he truly starts to believe her. Then she purrs, seductively, “Turn off the lights and come to bed.”
“No!” It’s a whispered exclamation, almost as though she said something blasphemous. He sees her startled look and the twitch of a finger as she fights the urge to cover up and quickly continues: “You want this to happen the way I’ve only ever imagined, the lights have to stay on.”
The way he says it is too serious for blushing and sounds too good to be argued with, none of which matters because he’s crossed the small distance between them and with a hand on either cheek, his body stilling above hers, their lips touch. It’s gentle: he’s testing the waters. Still testing her to see how such a terrible mistake could still have her sitting here, almost naked, unflinching, and occasionally talking filth.
When she responds, melting against him as best she can while she’s sitting and he’s standing she opens her mouth and lets him in, begging him with her tongue to take her on. He can’t fight her on that front and the kiss turns more desperate, wetter and harder and it’s so much better for him because he’d given up on ever feeling this again. It’s so much better for her because his hands have found her breasts, caressing with reverence, gentle and mapping, each finger taking the time to trace each millimeter of skin. She moans against his lips and he responds in kind, back and forth, time unraveling.
His mouth leaves hers and he groans at that, she thinks at the loss, his hands giving one last stroke over each breast and then he leans forward at the waist resting his hands beside her hips, his head low, hair tickling her chest. Collecting himself.
“Scoot up,” he tells her and she doesn’t have to be asked twice but smiles like the devil at him as she’s left to interpret his exact meaning.
He wants her on the bed but he hadn’t expected her to shed the towel, move to the top of the bed and sit there, knees up, but spread, back against the headboard.
Watching him as he drinks her in, she waits, happy to know he’s staring openly at her and ignoring her normal reaction of modesty and embarrassment in the wake of the sheer desire in his gaze and the clenching of his jaw.
Speech, even for him, is over-rated now, and when he talks it’s to the point. “How would you like to come this time, Rose Tyler?”
And there’s part three. Again, sorry about the slight wait on that, got very much caught up writing something far more boring for uni. Ick. Anyway, as always, I'll love you a lot if you review. Smut proper to follow in parts 4 and 5.
Author: doona_rose
Rating: M, lots of M.
Pairing: Ten/Rose
Summary: A very epic, very, very smutty look at the relationship between Rose and the human version of the Doctor she was left with. Rose feels obligated to try for a relationship because that’s what the Doctor would have wanted. The Doctor she’s left with falls back in love with her overnight. This all builds to a flashpoint when Rose decides to attempt a date but makes it all too clear she’s doing it for the wrong reasons. Angst, sex, dialogue follows.
Spoilers: Set after the finale of Season Four.
Disclaimer: I don't own them, quite obviously.
A/N: Oops, running late with this update. Sorry! And thank you to everyone who reviewed part 2, I'll get around to saying a proper thank you tomorrow, thought you might want Part Three.
It is very smutty and at times a bit dark but it’s my take on the somewhat difficult relationship between Rose and her human Doctor and how it might have worked out. Much thanks to chicklet73 who has been looking at bits and pieces of this for almost two years. Please let me know what you think, adjustments are still being made to the ending and I do value any feedback, happy, not so happy, critical or not. Other than that, I can only ask that you enjoy it.
( Part One)
( Part Two)
With his eyes empty and his lips set in a grimace, the pair of them look ridiculous and immediately she sets about finding her clothes, her top’s a little bit dirty and missing a button and as she smoothes her skirt back down she struggles to recognize the tatters of her stockings and knickers. He quickly slips his trousers and shirt back on and, still looking at the ground speaks, his voice low, defeated. “I didn’t want it to be like this. All those years...years of waiting, I didn’t want it to be like this. I imagined,” he swallows, “I imagined that I would be able to take my time, that it would be all for you, hours and hours and hours of exploring and practice and anticipation and when I took you, it would be slow and careful, I’d watch you every moment, have you shaking at the pleasure of it. And now I’ve gone and done this, in an alleyway, I’ve trapped you, yelled at you and fucked you up against a wall. I hurt you and I didn’t even notice...” his voice trails off only to be replaced by a strangled groan of self-loathing. “I can’t even...”
She’s a bit beyond understanding the man in front of her and she wonders if it isn’t because he’s still finding himself. And in spite of herself she’s aching at the loss of a half-fulfilled dream. His voice little more than a whisper, he utters “I’m sorry,” and then turns on his heel and starts to walk away, close to running back onto the street, into the night and away.
It takes only a moment to react, to realize that the play of guilt and destruction that she’s just witnessed was untempered, and if she’d really believed him before then the agony would have been expected. In such a man as this, thinking he had hurt her, it should have been expected. The utter anguish would have been predictable. But it wasn’t. It was a hard fuck in a dirty alley, it was their first time and it felt wrong, yes, in a delicious kind of way, but it wasn’t the way lovers such as they made love for the first time. Lovers such as they. Star-crossed, inexplicable, inescapable, insurmountable lovers such as they. It was wrong. That was obvious now. That was what his logic told him: that for them it should have been the utter epitome of the perfect first time. She agreed: for lovers such as they. And suddenly - inexplicably, inescapably, insurmountably - she realized she was head over heels in love with him.
Reason be damned.
Then race after him. She half-stumbles back to the street, stopping at the edge of the light. A moment’s thought for the state of her clothes and hair is cut short as she realizes she can’t see him and has no idea which way he would have gone. Hopelessness washes over her in a wave: having finally put the puzzle together, of feeling her blood thrumming in her veins and recognizing that it’s him she wants, she’s left standing by herself with no clue as to how to get to him.
She’s not even sure it’s now possible.
But this is Rose, and Rose doesn’t give up. If she did she’d be dead several times over and certainly have never had the chance to love a man like this. So she clenches her jaw, breathes deep and stalks in the direction of home. It’s across town and a fifteen minute drive. It will take her hours to walk it and the cold’s nipping at her bare thighs, wind whipping at her skirt. The first taxi she sees she’s throws out an arm and climbs in as it rolls to a halt.
Muttering directions, she settles in the backseat and continues to search for options. Is still searching, and to no avail, when the cab stops outside the apartment block. It’s only when she’s up the stairs and fumbling for her keys that it occurs to her that he might have beaten her home. Freezing, she does her best to prepare herself for whatever is waiting for her on the other side of the door. Will he be heartbroken? Angry? Will he ignore her? Does he think this is it? Everything finished?
What does she plan on saying? Even assuming that she can make him listen to her, what could she possibly say that will make him believe her? He ran because he had hurt her and she can neither deny that there was pain, that he fucked her in that moment without anything you could categorize as love or care, nor that him being upset about that was a good thing. If he hadn’t stopped, had gone through with it, she knows she would have felt dirty afterwards. Not because it was an alley, or because it was so inherently primal, but because lovers such as they did not have first times such as that.
And they almost had.
But what could she say?
The door opens silently in front of her and she peeks inside, ready to face whatever’s there. But she’s forgotten that there’s a chance, a good chance, that he wouldn’t have come home. On the best of nights he sometimes stays out until dawn simply wandering the streets. Tonight is not a good night for him. He might not come home for days.
An empty apartment greets her, no lights, no sound. She checks quickly to see if his car keys were still there, then the fridge to see if the leftovers from the night before have been touched. No sign of him. Suddenly lost as to what to do next, she wanders from room to room, searching. Without even thinking she pours herself a glass of wine and swallows a mouthful and breathes deep.
She has no idea where he is, no idea when he’ll be back. All she knows is that she’s strangely fatigued, feels sore and sticky, and that she loves him and she desperately needs to fix things. But how to get him home? She pulls her phone out and calls him, sparing no time in again mulling over what to say. She calls him again when he doesn’t answer, and then again. By the forth call she’s standing in her bedroom doorway, staring at his neatly made bed and barely conscious of the ringing. She moves into his room, running her hand over the sheets and then walking into his en suite. His bathroom is bigger than hers and has a bath. After the longest days with the hardest running she waits patiently for him to shower and then settles in his bath with a couple of candles and a book.
Pressing redial she turns on the water and pours in the scented bubble bath. She’s lost count now of the number of missed calls he’ll have but tries again anyway, lighting the two candles either side of the sink and turning off the lights. The room’s dark now and the lack of focus draws her attention to the feeling of shredded, sticky clothing on her skin.
The phones vibrates against her ear and, startled, it hits the tiles at her feet, narrowly missing the half-filled bath. Clambering, she picks it up and sees the text message. It’s him and all it says is “Are you okay?”.
She realizes that the constant calls might have worried him and instead of feeling a pang of guilt a smile plays at her lips for the first time in hours. She knows how to get him home.
“I need you. Come home.”
She turns the water off and quickly sheds her mangled clothes, shoving them out of sight behind the unclosed door. She’d like him to find her like this: naked in his bath. Sinking down into the heat she feels her muscles ache a little, another remnant of tonight’s misadventure and feels a sting across her back as the water enters the scratches there. It makes her smile again and that gives her hope.
Her phone rings. It’s him. She doesn’t answer.
As her mind drifts and her eyes close, she acknowledges that he’s probably racing home now, worried sick and that she should feel terrible for doing it but she’s too busy dissecting the situation. The rest of her glass of wine is swallowed and she resists the urge to keep going, knowing she needs to be sharp for whatever is ahead.
Trying to assess the situation critically, knowing full well that’s a habit she’s picked up off him. So what: She loves him. He loves her. He probably won’t believe she loves him. He’s close to hating himself for an accident. A complete accident. It wasn’t a lack of care that made him do it, it was a complete loss of control. Control which she’d taken. She just hadn’t realized at the time that he was quite so tightly wound. Probably because at the time she was too busy having sex, enjoying him, to realize the implication. She won’t make that mistake again. This time, she’ll take control knowingly.
Seduction. That’s what it’s about now. Seduction and truth.
The water’s cooling and her phone stopped ringing a while ago. Her eyelids are struggling to stay open and, surprisingly, sleep is tugging at her consciousness. It certainly won’t do for him to come home and find her drowned in his bath so she steps out and, unthinking, takes his towel from the rack. The smell of him runs rife over her as she wraps herself in it, tucking it snugly beneath her arms and walking back to his bedroom, her hair still wet.
That’s where he finds her fifteen minutes later, finally succumbing to the need to storm into the house and find out why he’s seen no movement, no light, nothing other that the a slight flicker from his bathroom windows. He’s been standing on the street for a little over an hour, trying to work out whether it’s a trick of if she really needs him and, seeing no evidence that plainly states she’s fine, he’s finally slipped soundlessly into the house, convinced he will find her, and then leave her, asleep.
And there she is, asleep, snoring just slightly. But she’s on his bed, in a towel and smelling like vanilla and his aftershave. He feels sick at the lust that stirs quick and deep in the pit of his stomach. He doesn’t make a sound but suddenly her eyes have snapped open and she’s sitting up in front of him.
“I fell asleep?” she murmurs.
He nods soundlessly, then, his voice much rougher than he’d like it. “You’re okay?”
“Yeah,” she answers, still not quite aware of the circumstance.
Quickly he replies and moves towards the door. “Then I’ll be off.”
She hears the unsaid implication that he won’t be coming back for a while and panics, suddenly wide awake and well aware of everything that could go wrong. Why doesn’t she have a plan? She reaches with the hand that isn’t keeping her towel securely around her and grabs him by the wrist. “No.”
He only stops because she’s touched him, only listens because he can’t help himself.
Her voice drops, “I’m not okay.”
They fall into silence, her not wanting to say anything to make him run, him aching because he knows it’s his fault. “I’m sorry. I really am.”
The look she gives him, catching his eyes and imploring him, “Don’t be.”
He’s shocked to hear his sincerity mirrored back, but he ignores it, looking away and slipping his hand from hers. He’s leaving, even if it kills him, because he hurt her, he pushed her, even though he knew she didn’t really want him. Not like he wanted her. He needs to say that but just opening his mouth prompts her and her voice slices through his before he gets out a word.
“Don’t talk. Hear me out.”
And then he cuts across her, his voice strong for the first time since he entered, now with agony lacing his words. “It doesn’t matter.” You don’t, can’t, shouldn’t love me.
She huffs, suddenly frustrated with how stubborn he’s being, how he’s blowing it all out of proportion. “Hear me out,” she repeats, more demanding now.
He shakes his head, not to say no, but to admit defeat, and leans back against the wall, refusing to meet her eyes but listening.
What to say? She barely understands it, she can’t put it into words, she wants desperately for him to catch up with her, to understand what she now knows and she’s convinced him to listen but she has no idea how to word it.
“I love you.” He stills at her words and she presses on, shocked at how easily the phrase rolls from her tongue and how quickly a tingling glowing warmth spreads beneath her skin. “I do. I didn’t, or I didn’t know I did. But as soon as you left me there I knew. I never realized you loved me like that.”
“Like that?” he says, spitting the words out as though they taste foul. “I hurt you.”
“Yeah,” she says, voice rising and then mellowing when she sees him wince, “like that.” His mouth shuts. “You can’t control yourself around me.” She smiles and he can barely believe it. “Do you have any idea how much of a turn on that is?” He doesn’t interrupt this time, can’t seem to operate his vocal chords. “I get that you’re upset that it wasn’t the most comfortable sex I’ve ever had and you think it should have been perfect and, I guess, if I wasn’t so slow on the uptake then maybe we could have had a proper dinner and come home and I would have understood it better.” He’s staring at her and she thinks the expression is incredulity. “But sex is never perfect, it takes practice.” Her voice drops to a whisper, like she’s about to tell him a secret and this time he can’t help but meet her eyes and wait, hope dwelling even if he’s ignoring it. “You know, I’ve never had really, really good sex.”
He’s a bit dumbfounded by that. Sure, she’s young and all the boyfriends he knows of certainly wouldn’t have been that impressive but it never occurred to him that she might say that.
“And I’ve had much, much worse sex than that.” Now he’s gaping a bit at her, stunned wordless at her bluntness and she knows it. “And you made me,” she can’t quite bring herself to say the word she wants to say but he knows what she means. “My god, I’ve never felt like that.”
Silence falls because she can’t think of what else to say. He’s not convinced, caught somewhere between thinking it’s a dream and thinking she’s mistaken but in spite of those thoughts, he doesn’t move from the wall.
“I love you,” she repeats.
“You don’t.”
She looks disappointed at that and he can’t blame her. He’s actually rather surprised that she doesn’t look utterly disgusted with him. When she first rang him, he thought it had been to tell him never to come near her again so this entire conversation is a bit of a mystery to him. Sadistic now, wanting to test how far the farce can be pushed, he says. “I didn’t even make it home, only got two streets down and found a dark corner.”
Where ever she was planning on taking this conversation, it’s veered off course and she’s momentarily confused. “What?”
He grins, self-deprecating. “Even having hurt you, fucked you in an alleyway,” a pause and a dark look crosses his eyes, “having been utterly disgusted by my actions, I was still hard. And desperate enough that I found somewhere dark and quiet and...” he lets his voice trail off and shrugs, watching her like a hawk.
Predictably, she shifts uncomfortably, swallows, and he wonders if she’s fighting the urge to vomit. She sees his eyes go a shade darker and a small smile of triumph pass over his lips and with a start she realizes what he must think and opens her mouth, her eyes going wide.
He thinks she’s disgusted with him, thinks that she’s confirmed his suspicions. He couldn’t be more wrong. She realizes that he’s on the edge, ready to run. He’s got all of his proof and reasoning lined up and he’s about to walk. In that instant she wants to hit him across the face as hard as she can for being so utterly dense.
“Is it true that you’ll last longer this time, then?” she asks, pleased with her decision to say that and not try and convince him, again, that it’s that extreme attraction he seems to have to her that makes him so very darkly attractive to her.
It’s his turn to respond with a sharp, “What?”
Grinning in spite of the levity, “One of my mates told me that guys take much longer the second time.” He still looks confused, bless him. “In bed, they last longer.”
Understanding dawns and his eyebrows shoot up before he remembers he’s meant to be a self-loathing basket case and in the process of walking out.
“Well?” she asks.
She doesn’t really care but he no longer looks like leaving so she continues with the same tact. “Did you think of me?”
“What?”
“When you touched yourself, did you think of me?”
If this was payback for what he did it was well deserved and well delivered because he can already feel the beginnings of a migraine (damn this human body) and, in spite of all efforts to not react, he can feel the hair on the back of his neck standing up, his skin flushing and a tightness in his jeans.
“What did you think?” Of course I thought about you,” he grinds out.
“What about me?” she purrs.
“About what I did to you in the alley.”
The way he says it makes it apparent that now he’s not referring to the pain.
“Anything in particular?”
“What I did with my mouth, the noises you made when I used my tongue, the way your back arched and you pulled my hair when you came.” He’s shocked by his audacity and by hers.
He misses her gasp but what she says a moment later is just as breathy and makes that omission inconsequential. “You’re making me wet.”
“Rose,” and it comes out in a strangled moan.
“I’m serious,” her voice says it too. “I love you and you’re making me wet.”
“It’s a physiological reaction.”
“Rubbish. If you were just some guy, I’d be weirded out, not gagging for it.”
Staring at her, he knows she’s trying to seduce him. At some point in the last five minutes she’s completely twisted this around and she’s got him well and truly turned on and he can’t even remember why that’s a bad thing.
Ah yes, because he hurt her and she should hate him and she couldn’t possibly love him. And yet, she’s sitting there, trying to seduce him, talking to him as though she’s going to be as good at verbal foreplay as he is, telling him he’s making her wet and that she loves him.
Somewhere over the last five minutes hope has muscled in and now he so wants to believe her. He can’t fault her logic, the way she’s moved through the mistakes from earlier and written them off as minor despite, not a half hour before, his simple view that he’d ruined it all. She’s right, he over-reacted.
And now she wants him, claims to love him, and there’s passion stirring inside him and he’s searching for a reason to tell her ‘no’.
Looking up from the floor where his gaze has been focused, he regrets it instantly, any thought of logic or reason darting away; she’s in his towel on his bed, staring, waiting, hoping. And, his mind helpfully reminds him, she’s wet. For him. She looks hopeful and soft and a tad delicious and he’d be mad not to try again, not to just kiss her one more time and hope it’s all better. He can be better, they can be great.
There must be something in his eyes that says he’s close to losing his resolve because her hands start to fidget in her lap, the movement drawing his attention there and then up to her tilted head. Watching him the entire time, she deliberately raises her hands, skimming over her breasts and relieved to hear him suck in a breath as she grasps the material. Soundlessly, her fingers pull free the tucked-in end and let the towel fall to her lap.
She’s naked from the waist up. An offering.
She shifts under his very intense scrutiny, determined not to get shy or bashful now because that would be ridiculous and because she asked for this and if he’s finally going to give it to her she will not stop him. Somehow, he drags his eyes up from the spot between her breasts and returns the stare, letting her see the reflected desire and passion before he even realizes he’s succumbed.
Her lips curve and she smiles broad and happy and that’s the moment he truly starts to believe her. Then she purrs, seductively, “Turn off the lights and come to bed.”
“No!” It’s a whispered exclamation, almost as though she said something blasphemous. He sees her startled look and the twitch of a finger as she fights the urge to cover up and quickly continues: “You want this to happen the way I’ve only ever imagined, the lights have to stay on.”
The way he says it is too serious for blushing and sounds too good to be argued with, none of which matters because he’s crossed the small distance between them and with a hand on either cheek, his body stilling above hers, their lips touch. It’s gentle: he’s testing the waters. Still testing her to see how such a terrible mistake could still have her sitting here, almost naked, unflinching, and occasionally talking filth.
When she responds, melting against him as best she can while she’s sitting and he’s standing she opens her mouth and lets him in, begging him with her tongue to take her on. He can’t fight her on that front and the kiss turns more desperate, wetter and harder and it’s so much better for him because he’d given up on ever feeling this again. It’s so much better for her because his hands have found her breasts, caressing with reverence, gentle and mapping, each finger taking the time to trace each millimeter of skin. She moans against his lips and he responds in kind, back and forth, time unraveling.
His mouth leaves hers and he groans at that, she thinks at the loss, his hands giving one last stroke over each breast and then he leans forward at the waist resting his hands beside her hips, his head low, hair tickling her chest. Collecting himself.
“Scoot up,” he tells her and she doesn’t have to be asked twice but smiles like the devil at him as she’s left to interpret his exact meaning.
He wants her on the bed but he hadn’t expected her to shed the towel, move to the top of the bed and sit there, knees up, but spread, back against the headboard.
Watching him as he drinks her in, she waits, happy to know he’s staring openly at her and ignoring her normal reaction of modesty and embarrassment in the wake of the sheer desire in his gaze and the clenching of his jaw.
Speech, even for him, is over-rated now, and when he talks it’s to the point. “How would you like to come this time, Rose Tyler?”
And there’s part three. Again, sorry about the slight wait on that, got very much caught up writing something far more boring for uni. Ick. Anyway, as always, I'll love you a lot if you review. Smut proper to follow in parts 4 and 5.