New fic: Five And A Half Hours
Title: Five and a half hours
Pairing: Nine/Rose (no surprises there)
Content: Graphic Sex; Drama; Humour; Angst; Romance; Everything else you can think of
Rating: Adult for later chapters
Chapters: 9/10
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even close. In fact, this one has written itself.
Summary: Life didn't have a rewind button. There wasn't any going back. Unless...
Chapter 9: School re-Reunion
What a wonderful, marvellous fantastic language that had the word ‘unless’ in it, she thought. With the Doctor, there was always a saving the world type plan lurking somewhere at the back of his brain, even when he pretended there wasn’t. Things could get as bad as things could possibly get, and then he’d start in with the ‘unless’. She really didn’t care about all the other doom and gloom and more doom things he’d said, because there was that shiny, sparkling ‘unless’ tacked on the end. She pinned her hopes to the back of the ‘unless’ and waved it in the face of destiny, and time, and the pitiless universe, and all the other icy certainties that were choking the love and the life that had flared into being when the Doctor kissed her.
Unfortunately, that ‘unless’, that word that was her hope, was all there was.
She stared at him expectantly, avoiding the drips plonking down through the roof of the rain spattered bus shelter. She was sure the solution was something to do with that flying scrapyard he called a ship. He’d said when she saved her father that his people could have stopped this sort of thing, and that what she’d changed would stay changed. There was bound to be some sort of amazingly complicated Time Lordesque plan hiding in his back pocket.
But he didn’t go on. ‘Why are you so interested?’ he asked, instead.
More cider went down her throat as a not very subtle distraction mechanism, and by the time she’d swallowed, she’d got her reactions back under control. ‘No reason.’
She brushed it off, although the reason was sitting in front of her with a battered sausage half eaten in its fingers.
He gave her another searching look, which she returned for as long as she was sure he wouldn’t find anything. Giving up, he dumped the rest of his grease mountain in the bin. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’
She ignored the vibrations of the phone, set to silent mode and stashed in her pocket, stood, and took his outstretched hand. ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ she said.
She left the cider to the covetous hands of the first passing tramp that should happen along.
‘Right - your choice,’ he offered, typing pointless commands into the ship, and humming softly under his breath. ‘Who do you want to go and see next?’
‘Surprise me,’ she answered, although she would have been more surprised not to be digging out her naughty schoolgirl outfit within the next couple of minutes.
But she didn’t feel sick, and she relaxed in the jumpseat and just smiled at him, hugging her ‘unless’ with a secret stranglehold. It was a fire of hope that warmed her soul. He watched her from across the room as the ship dematerialised, pottered about a bit, and turned up somewhere else.
‘Did I mention that I love you?’ he asked eventually, dashing down the ramp and leaving a grin hanging in the air behind him.
‘Couple of times, maybe,’ she responded, her heart lifting for the first time in days.
He flung open the doors. ‘Good. Remember it.’
Her phone rang, she looked at Mickey’s number flashing on the screen and decided to answer it at last, because it didn’t seem to matter one way or the other what she did. She could accept the entrance of Krillitanes and stupid oil because she knew that a solution was waiting in the wings, and as soon as she got back to that frogs-legs spaceship it would take to the stage, and deliver its happy ending.
‘Hello?’ she said.
Mickey didn’t answer. She could hear the Doctor outside, his voice raised in a question as he saw where they weren’t. ‘Hello?’ And then: ‘Oh. It’s you. Hello.’
Mickey replied as she stepped out of the ship. ‘Yeah. Hello back. Where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing for days.’
Her phone still in her hand, and not even glancing in the Doctor’s direction she gave Mickey a tight hug, and let him go. ‘Phone must be broken.’ She shrugged.
‘Ha, you can tell he’s been messing with it,’ observed Mickey, and the Doctor snatched it out of her hand with a sigh of exasperation.
Her definitely ex-boyfriend followed the movement with his eyes, and then narrowed them, grabbed her left hand and let his face fall slack with shock.
He pointed to the ring. ‘Oh my God.’ Looked up at her. Pointed to the ring again. ‘Oh my God.’
Rose could feel the embarrassment warming her cheeks and she knew she was playing with a royal flush. Mickey’s face veered from surprise, to hurt, to laughter as he watched her shake her head and rush to start tugging the gold band off her finger. She didn’t dare look up at the Doctor, feeling very young, and ashamed at having been caught hanging onto something that meant nothing, while pretending to herself that it did. She fumbled to get the mistake off her finger as quick as she could, gabbling a bit.
‘It’s not what you think. We’re not married or anything. We met Queen Victoria, and, well, it’s just a joke really. Only a joke.’
The Doctor’s hand closed around her wrist. He was standing very, very close, staring down at her with that precious something parading around in his eyes. ‘Do you see me laughing?’ he said quietly, pushing the ring back onto her finger again. ‘Leave it.’
She wandered into the blueness of his gaze and got lost.
Mickey found her again. ‘Oh my God,’ he said again, and a lot louder. ‘You and him? Him? And you? In there?’ Nodding towards the TARDIS.
The incredulity in his voice snapped her consciousness back into place, but she couldn’t look him straight in the eye.
The Doctor turned slightly, put his arm obtrusively round her waist. ‘Yeah,’ he said, eyeballing Mickey while she examined the dirt on her shoes. There was a ‘do you want to make something of it,’ unspoken in the tense silence.
‘Can I tell your mum?’ Mickey pleaded at last, a lot more quietly.
Rose shrugged, not really wanting to think about her mother’s reaction to having the Doctor as a potential son in law. She doubted she would escape with her eardrums intact.
‘So what are we doing here?’ asked the owner of the vice-like grip on her side.
Mickey frowned, and from the sneaky glance she threw him, she could see he was still staring at her. ‘Lots of UFO sightings, a school getting really good results.’ He pointed behind him. ‘That’s it over here. I thought you’d be interested, but I’ve been calling for days. I had to get a job as assistant caretaker just to have a look inside.’
She noted he was wearing blue overalls and had a huge bunch of keys dangling from one hand. It didn’t suit him.
‘There’s a new head teacher, and loads of the staff got replaced not long ago. They have all these special classes for the kids and they don’t let ‘em bring sandwiches either. Plus I keep looking behind the bike sheds and there’s nobody smoking, or doing anything…else.’ He trailed off, looking from one to the other of them. ‘You’d know all about that.’
She shifted a bit uncomfortably, moved out of the Doctor’s embrace. ‘So how d’you know all this?’ she queried, not sure a caretaker would have managed to pick up all the relevant information quite so quickly.
Mickey nodded back down the street and she noted a dark haired woman, standing just inside the pool of shadow cast by a flickering yellow streetlamp.’ First night I was here I was having a look round. Caught her snooping.’
The Doctor wandered off towards the woman with his hands in his pockets. She didn’t mind him going. She knew he’d be back.
As soon as he was out of earshot Mickey hissed, ‘What are you doing with him?’ He realised what he was asking and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want the details. But why? He’s an alien and stuff. And how long’s it been going on for?’
She smiled at him, and remembered how much he cared about her. She patted his arm. ‘Only the last couple of days. When I came back home last time, well, everything changed. I didn’t plan it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
Mickey shrugged. ‘I saw the way you were looking at him at Christmas. You really love him, don’t you?’
Her embarrassment saw an opening and sprinted back to turn her cheeks red once again. She nodded.
The Doctor cleared his throat being her. ‘Rose - this is Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane - Rose Tyler. Rose…. travels with me now.’
She regarded Sarah Jane with a lot more warmth than she’d managed to show last time, mostly because she could see the Doctor had that little proud expression hanging around the corners of his eyes again.
Mickey snorted. ‘Travels? The only place you’ve been taking her is… well. You’d know all about that.’
Sarah Jane looked distinctly confused, opened her mouth to ask.
The Doctor changed the subject. ‘Right. Rose, you and Mickey have a look round the kitchens, me and Sarah Jane’ll do the headteacher's office. We’ve got some catching up to do. See you later.’ He leaned down and gave Rose a peck on the cheek.
Sarah Jane looked even more confused, but the Doctor held out his hand to her and they walked off together in the direction of the school.
Mickey patted Rose on the shoulder. ‘I guess he’s desperate for all the handholding he can get. But then, you’d know all about that.’
‘If you’re even thinking about making that your new catchphrase you can stop it right now,’ she said sharply, but she followed the familiar route to the kitchens, glad to have escaped the plastic hat and apron this time.
A sample of Krillitane oil later and she was back at Sarah Jane’s car to find a fully functional K-9, with no hint of battery problems, or a stutter, and decidedly less rust, ready to analyse the chip fat she was carrying. Mechanically minded men could fix mechanically minded things in about half the time, it seemed. The revelation over with, they decided to reconvene at the school in the morning and confront the head teacher.
‘Do you two want to come back to the TARDIS?’ asked the Doctor, more out of politeness than anything else, she thought.
Mickey and Sarah Jane looked at each other and proved that telepathy was alive and well and part of the usual range of human abilities. ‘No,’ they said together.
With the doors of the TARDIS closed behind them, and the doors of the bedroom closed behind them, and clothes unzipped, unhooked and slung all over the floor behind them, Rose crawled on top of the Doctor and threw her leg across his hip.
‘So,’ she said, because now was a good time to ask. ‘Aren’t you bothered about the future?’
He paused with his hands on her breasts, his thumbs caressing her nipples with that callused charm they had, while he probed for the right angle between her legs. ‘Future, past, present - all that ever could be. Kind of a genetic trait. Why?’
She flexed her muscles, pushed the willing wet warmth of her body down, down on top of him, letting him fill the space inside her, before pulling back up. He stilled, tension throbbing through him when she let him enter her, and breathed out heavily as she slid off. ‘You never even mentioned Sarah Jane. You left her behind.’
She dropped on top of him again, straightened her back, because almost the whole of his wide, hard heat was wedged up close between her thighs. He arched his legs off the bed slightly, putting his hands on her hips. ‘More?’ he asked.
As soon as she nodded his strong grip forced her down with a jerk onto the quick upward thrust of his body. She paused there for a while, gasping, wriggling around a bit, getting used to that tight constriction within her again, splitting her open. He inserted a finger into the slot between her spread legs, just in front of the place where their bodies joined, and he rubbed at it until she felt one sort of tension mutate into another and his hand became slippery with her readiness.
He said, after a while, ‘I promised I won’t do that to you. I’m trying not to.’
She started to move then, a slow grind that matched the hot attentions of his hand, a hard punishing routine that gripped the thickness inside her tight, and wouldn’t let it go. The painful pleasure on his face showed that he felt every rock of her hips, every smooth withdrawal, the resistance as he plunged back in.
Pausing for breath, she asked: ‘But why not? She’s aged, but you’ve regenerated. It’ll happen to me too - I’ll decay, I’ll wither away and die. You won’t spend the rest of your life with me.’
He ignored her, jabbed upwards again and made her cry out. ‘Yeah, and then I’ll live on alone, it’s a curse, I know.’
She put her hands firmly on his chest, wiped the sweat out of her eyes, settled him into her again and began to speed up. ‘More,’ he asked through gritted teeth and she spent a couple of minutes watching him strain towards release, with the nails of both his hands digging into her bottom, controlling the increasing violence of her hips as she rode him. He surged up within her, surged up to fill her, combining the wetness of her encircling embrace with the driving hard friction seeking solace between her thighs. ‘More’ he begged, his head pushed so far back her only view was of his throat working convulsively to swallow down the cries he wanted to make as her pace increased. She changed her angle, her hands behind her, and she saw the pressure thrumming through his muscles, the distinctive grunts he couldn’t hold back that marked the start of his orgasm.
He pulled himself back from the edge with a groan. ‘But I love you, and not just for when you’re young and pretty either. So what if you age? I’d rather spend years living with you than dying slowly on my own.’
He was buried inside her body, but he had also lodged himself deep within her soul. She couldn’t hold him tight enough, couldn’t fit him in far enough, couldn’t slam down to meet him fast enough, or often enough, or hard enough to tell him how much she loved him. She made him come. She forced him to come. She knew what he liked and she didn’t stop giving it to him until his hands were curled into fists at his sides, until his eyes and his mouth shut tight, until his body was shining with effort and need. He jerked up into her one final time with a long drawn out cry, and she felt the convulsions power through her with the force of his climax. Crawling into her place at his side she was full of him, slick and wet with her own flood of pleasure but with an aching heart that throbbed just as loudly. She wrapped herself around the talisman of her ‘unless’ and hoped beyond hope, hoped beyond reason, that fate would blink, and she would never have to let him go.
‘Unless,’ he said. ‘You end up looking like your mother, in which case I take it back.’
The next morning there was an awful lot of dithering, she thought. Quite a lot of time wasting too, with a smattering of prevarication and side order of putting things off. She just wanted to get back to the TARDIS and back into bed as quickly as possible. She was uninterested in the possibility of the Doctor becoming a god. She didn’t think God had done her any favours so far. The Doctor spent some time posturing with the strange headmaster though, until she ran her hand down his trousers and gave his backside a squeeze. That seemed to destroy his concentration somewhat. Not nearly as much as the headmaster’s was affected when she flicked the remains of her Krillitane oil at his face with a handy ruler. Well, she thought, naughty schoolgirls had to live up to their reputation sometimes.
The Doctor looked at her following a short interlude of running away, Sarah Jane and Mickey catching up, fresh from watching children playing green crossword puzzles. ‘So I’m thinking kitchens, oil, great big explosion - you?’
She looked round. ‘Not so great at causing explosions but I’m sure I had a big sign saying ‘chase me’ somewhere.’
He sighed. ‘Alright then, but take Mickey and K-9 and run fast.’
Sarah Jane was sent off with instructions to clear the school and far less of an impact on the situation than she’d had last time. There was some shooting, followed by angry flapping noises, and then some more running (and rolling) down corridors, before they all made it into the kitchen and out the other side in time for the Doctor’s impromptu explosion. Job done, thought Rose, only one more place to go before we fix this timeline and ditch the deja-vu - and the French. She shivered a bit at the thought of all the shouting still to come, and then shivered a bit more when she thought of all the making up that would follow it.
First, there were goodbyes to be said. Mickey kept following her into the TARDIS, looking vaguely surprised when she said she was leaving and he wouldn’t be going with her.
‘Look after yourself then,’ he said, shaking off the little voice that was obviously telling him to stay. ‘Make sure he takes good care of you.’
She smiled at him sadly, realising at last just how precious the ordinary, practical parts of life actually were. ‘You’d know all about that,’ she said, and he looked a bit tearful as he turned away.
The Doctor returned from whatever farewell speech he’d been giving Sarah Jane and she thought he looked a bit tearful too. She put a hand on his arm. Finally, it was confession time.
‘Take me anywhere,’ she said. ‘And then I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Anywhere’ was a misnomer, because there was only one place they could possibly end up next, and that was back at the beginning.
Chapter 8: Sheffield http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11277.html
Chapter 7: Claw and more claw http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11209.html
Chapter 6: A mechanically minded man http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10823.html
Chapter 5: New new Earth http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10690.html
Chapter 4: Barcelona http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10275.html
Chapter 3: The Christmas invasion http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10233.html
Chapter 2: Unparting the ways http://sap1066.livejournal.com/9740.html
Chapter 1: The girl in the TARDIS http://sap1066.livejournal.com/9627.html
Pairing: Nine/Rose (no surprises there)
Content: Graphic Sex; Drama; Humour; Angst; Romance; Everything else you can think of
Rating: Adult for later chapters
Chapters: 9/10
Disclaimer: Not mine, not even close. In fact, this one has written itself.
Summary: Life didn't have a rewind button. There wasn't any going back. Unless...
Chapter 9: School re-Reunion
What a wonderful, marvellous fantastic language that had the word ‘unless’ in it, she thought. With the Doctor, there was always a saving the world type plan lurking somewhere at the back of his brain, even when he pretended there wasn’t. Things could get as bad as things could possibly get, and then he’d start in with the ‘unless’. She really didn’t care about all the other doom and gloom and more doom things he’d said, because there was that shiny, sparkling ‘unless’ tacked on the end. She pinned her hopes to the back of the ‘unless’ and waved it in the face of destiny, and time, and the pitiless universe, and all the other icy certainties that were choking the love and the life that had flared into being when the Doctor kissed her.
Unfortunately, that ‘unless’, that word that was her hope, was all there was.
She stared at him expectantly, avoiding the drips plonking down through the roof of the rain spattered bus shelter. She was sure the solution was something to do with that flying scrapyard he called a ship. He’d said when she saved her father that his people could have stopped this sort of thing, and that what she’d changed would stay changed. There was bound to be some sort of amazingly complicated Time Lordesque plan hiding in his back pocket.
But he didn’t go on. ‘Why are you so interested?’ he asked, instead.
More cider went down her throat as a not very subtle distraction mechanism, and by the time she’d swallowed, she’d got her reactions back under control. ‘No reason.’
She brushed it off, although the reason was sitting in front of her with a battered sausage half eaten in its fingers.
He gave her another searching look, which she returned for as long as she was sure he wouldn’t find anything. Giving up, he dumped the rest of his grease mountain in the bin. ‘Do you want to go somewhere else?’
She ignored the vibrations of the phone, set to silent mode and stashed in her pocket, stood, and took his outstretched hand. ‘Thought you’d never ask,’ she said.
She left the cider to the covetous hands of the first passing tramp that should happen along.
‘Right - your choice,’ he offered, typing pointless commands into the ship, and humming softly under his breath. ‘Who do you want to go and see next?’
‘Surprise me,’ she answered, although she would have been more surprised not to be digging out her naughty schoolgirl outfit within the next couple of minutes.
But she didn’t feel sick, and she relaxed in the jumpseat and just smiled at him, hugging her ‘unless’ with a secret stranglehold. It was a fire of hope that warmed her soul. He watched her from across the room as the ship dematerialised, pottered about a bit, and turned up somewhere else.
‘Did I mention that I love you?’ he asked eventually, dashing down the ramp and leaving a grin hanging in the air behind him.
‘Couple of times, maybe,’ she responded, her heart lifting for the first time in days.
He flung open the doors. ‘Good. Remember it.’
Her phone rang, she looked at Mickey’s number flashing on the screen and decided to answer it at last, because it didn’t seem to matter one way or the other what she did. She could accept the entrance of Krillitanes and stupid oil because she knew that a solution was waiting in the wings, and as soon as she got back to that frogs-legs spaceship it would take to the stage, and deliver its happy ending.
‘Hello?’ she said.
Mickey didn’t answer. She could hear the Doctor outside, his voice raised in a question as he saw where they weren’t. ‘Hello?’ And then: ‘Oh. It’s you. Hello.’
Mickey replied as she stepped out of the ship. ‘Yeah. Hello back. Where’ve you been? I’ve been ringing for days.’
Her phone still in her hand, and not even glancing in the Doctor’s direction she gave Mickey a tight hug, and let him go. ‘Phone must be broken.’ She shrugged.
‘Ha, you can tell he’s been messing with it,’ observed Mickey, and the Doctor snatched it out of her hand with a sigh of exasperation.
Her definitely ex-boyfriend followed the movement with his eyes, and then narrowed them, grabbed her left hand and let his face fall slack with shock.
He pointed to the ring. ‘Oh my God.’ Looked up at her. Pointed to the ring again. ‘Oh my God.’
Rose could feel the embarrassment warming her cheeks and she knew she was playing with a royal flush. Mickey’s face veered from surprise, to hurt, to laughter as he watched her shake her head and rush to start tugging the gold band off her finger. She didn’t dare look up at the Doctor, feeling very young, and ashamed at having been caught hanging onto something that meant nothing, while pretending to herself that it did. She fumbled to get the mistake off her finger as quick as she could, gabbling a bit.
‘It’s not what you think. We’re not married or anything. We met Queen Victoria, and, well, it’s just a joke really. Only a joke.’
The Doctor’s hand closed around her wrist. He was standing very, very close, staring down at her with that precious something parading around in his eyes. ‘Do you see me laughing?’ he said quietly, pushing the ring back onto her finger again. ‘Leave it.’
She wandered into the blueness of his gaze and got lost.
Mickey found her again. ‘Oh my God,’ he said again, and a lot louder. ‘You and him? Him? And you? In there?’ Nodding towards the TARDIS.
The incredulity in his voice snapped her consciousness back into place, but she couldn’t look him straight in the eye.
The Doctor turned slightly, put his arm obtrusively round her waist. ‘Yeah,’ he said, eyeballing Mickey while she examined the dirt on her shoes. There was a ‘do you want to make something of it,’ unspoken in the tense silence.
‘Can I tell your mum?’ Mickey pleaded at last, a lot more quietly.
Rose shrugged, not really wanting to think about her mother’s reaction to having the Doctor as a potential son in law. She doubted she would escape with her eardrums intact.
‘So what are we doing here?’ asked the owner of the vice-like grip on her side.
Mickey frowned, and from the sneaky glance she threw him, she could see he was still staring at her. ‘Lots of UFO sightings, a school getting really good results.’ He pointed behind him. ‘That’s it over here. I thought you’d be interested, but I’ve been calling for days. I had to get a job as assistant caretaker just to have a look inside.’
She noted he was wearing blue overalls and had a huge bunch of keys dangling from one hand. It didn’t suit him.
‘There’s a new head teacher, and loads of the staff got replaced not long ago. They have all these special classes for the kids and they don’t let ‘em bring sandwiches either. Plus I keep looking behind the bike sheds and there’s nobody smoking, or doing anything…else.’ He trailed off, looking from one to the other of them. ‘You’d know all about that.’
She shifted a bit uncomfortably, moved out of the Doctor’s embrace. ‘So how d’you know all this?’ she queried, not sure a caretaker would have managed to pick up all the relevant information quite so quickly.
Mickey nodded back down the street and she noted a dark haired woman, standing just inside the pool of shadow cast by a flickering yellow streetlamp.’ First night I was here I was having a look round. Caught her snooping.’
The Doctor wandered off towards the woman with his hands in his pockets. She didn’t mind him going. She knew he’d be back.
As soon as he was out of earshot Mickey hissed, ‘What are you doing with him?’ He realised what he was asking and shook his head. ‘No, I don’t want the details. But why? He’s an alien and stuff. And how long’s it been going on for?’
She smiled at him, and remembered how much he cared about her. She patted his arm. ‘Only the last couple of days. When I came back home last time, well, everything changed. I didn’t plan it. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.’
Mickey shrugged. ‘I saw the way you were looking at him at Christmas. You really love him, don’t you?’
Her embarrassment saw an opening and sprinted back to turn her cheeks red once again. She nodded.
The Doctor cleared his throat being her. ‘Rose - this is Sarah Jane Smith. Sarah Jane - Rose Tyler. Rose…. travels with me now.’
She regarded Sarah Jane with a lot more warmth than she’d managed to show last time, mostly because she could see the Doctor had that little proud expression hanging around the corners of his eyes again.
Mickey snorted. ‘Travels? The only place you’ve been taking her is… well. You’d know all about that.’
Sarah Jane looked distinctly confused, opened her mouth to ask.
The Doctor changed the subject. ‘Right. Rose, you and Mickey have a look round the kitchens, me and Sarah Jane’ll do the headteacher's office. We’ve got some catching up to do. See you later.’ He leaned down and gave Rose a peck on the cheek.
Sarah Jane looked even more confused, but the Doctor held out his hand to her and they walked off together in the direction of the school.
Mickey patted Rose on the shoulder. ‘I guess he’s desperate for all the handholding he can get. But then, you’d know all about that.’
‘If you’re even thinking about making that your new catchphrase you can stop it right now,’ she said sharply, but she followed the familiar route to the kitchens, glad to have escaped the plastic hat and apron this time.
A sample of Krillitane oil later and she was back at Sarah Jane’s car to find a fully functional K-9, with no hint of battery problems, or a stutter, and decidedly less rust, ready to analyse the chip fat she was carrying. Mechanically minded men could fix mechanically minded things in about half the time, it seemed. The revelation over with, they decided to reconvene at the school in the morning and confront the head teacher.
‘Do you two want to come back to the TARDIS?’ asked the Doctor, more out of politeness than anything else, she thought.
Mickey and Sarah Jane looked at each other and proved that telepathy was alive and well and part of the usual range of human abilities. ‘No,’ they said together.
With the doors of the TARDIS closed behind them, and the doors of the bedroom closed behind them, and clothes unzipped, unhooked and slung all over the floor behind them, Rose crawled on top of the Doctor and threw her leg across his hip.
‘So,’ she said, because now was a good time to ask. ‘Aren’t you bothered about the future?’
He paused with his hands on her breasts, his thumbs caressing her nipples with that callused charm they had, while he probed for the right angle between her legs. ‘Future, past, present - all that ever could be. Kind of a genetic trait. Why?’
She flexed her muscles, pushed the willing wet warmth of her body down, down on top of him, letting him fill the space inside her, before pulling back up. He stilled, tension throbbing through him when she let him enter her, and breathed out heavily as she slid off. ‘You never even mentioned Sarah Jane. You left her behind.’
She dropped on top of him again, straightened her back, because almost the whole of his wide, hard heat was wedged up close between her thighs. He arched his legs off the bed slightly, putting his hands on her hips. ‘More?’ he asked.
As soon as she nodded his strong grip forced her down with a jerk onto the quick upward thrust of his body. She paused there for a while, gasping, wriggling around a bit, getting used to that tight constriction within her again, splitting her open. He inserted a finger into the slot between her spread legs, just in front of the place where their bodies joined, and he rubbed at it until she felt one sort of tension mutate into another and his hand became slippery with her readiness.
He said, after a while, ‘I promised I won’t do that to you. I’m trying not to.’
She started to move then, a slow grind that matched the hot attentions of his hand, a hard punishing routine that gripped the thickness inside her tight, and wouldn’t let it go. The painful pleasure on his face showed that he felt every rock of her hips, every smooth withdrawal, the resistance as he plunged back in.
Pausing for breath, she asked: ‘But why not? She’s aged, but you’ve regenerated. It’ll happen to me too - I’ll decay, I’ll wither away and die. You won’t spend the rest of your life with me.’
He ignored her, jabbed upwards again and made her cry out. ‘Yeah, and then I’ll live on alone, it’s a curse, I know.’
She put her hands firmly on his chest, wiped the sweat out of her eyes, settled him into her again and began to speed up. ‘More,’ he asked through gritted teeth and she spent a couple of minutes watching him strain towards release, with the nails of both his hands digging into her bottom, controlling the increasing violence of her hips as she rode him. He surged up within her, surged up to fill her, combining the wetness of her encircling embrace with the driving hard friction seeking solace between her thighs. ‘More’ he begged, his head pushed so far back her only view was of his throat working convulsively to swallow down the cries he wanted to make as her pace increased. She changed her angle, her hands behind her, and she saw the pressure thrumming through his muscles, the distinctive grunts he couldn’t hold back that marked the start of his orgasm.
He pulled himself back from the edge with a groan. ‘But I love you, and not just for when you’re young and pretty either. So what if you age? I’d rather spend years living with you than dying slowly on my own.’
He was buried inside her body, but he had also lodged himself deep within her soul. She couldn’t hold him tight enough, couldn’t fit him in far enough, couldn’t slam down to meet him fast enough, or often enough, or hard enough to tell him how much she loved him. She made him come. She forced him to come. She knew what he liked and she didn’t stop giving it to him until his hands were curled into fists at his sides, until his eyes and his mouth shut tight, until his body was shining with effort and need. He jerked up into her one final time with a long drawn out cry, and she felt the convulsions power through her with the force of his climax. Crawling into her place at his side she was full of him, slick and wet with her own flood of pleasure but with an aching heart that throbbed just as loudly. She wrapped herself around the talisman of her ‘unless’ and hoped beyond hope, hoped beyond reason, that fate would blink, and she would never have to let him go.
‘Unless,’ he said. ‘You end up looking like your mother, in which case I take it back.’
The next morning there was an awful lot of dithering, she thought. Quite a lot of time wasting too, with a smattering of prevarication and side order of putting things off. She just wanted to get back to the TARDIS and back into bed as quickly as possible. She was uninterested in the possibility of the Doctor becoming a god. She didn’t think God had done her any favours so far. The Doctor spent some time posturing with the strange headmaster though, until she ran her hand down his trousers and gave his backside a squeeze. That seemed to destroy his concentration somewhat. Not nearly as much as the headmaster’s was affected when she flicked the remains of her Krillitane oil at his face with a handy ruler. Well, she thought, naughty schoolgirls had to live up to their reputation sometimes.
The Doctor looked at her following a short interlude of running away, Sarah Jane and Mickey catching up, fresh from watching children playing green crossword puzzles. ‘So I’m thinking kitchens, oil, great big explosion - you?’
She looked round. ‘Not so great at causing explosions but I’m sure I had a big sign saying ‘chase me’ somewhere.’
He sighed. ‘Alright then, but take Mickey and K-9 and run fast.’
Sarah Jane was sent off with instructions to clear the school and far less of an impact on the situation than she’d had last time. There was some shooting, followed by angry flapping noises, and then some more running (and rolling) down corridors, before they all made it into the kitchen and out the other side in time for the Doctor’s impromptu explosion. Job done, thought Rose, only one more place to go before we fix this timeline and ditch the deja-vu - and the French. She shivered a bit at the thought of all the shouting still to come, and then shivered a bit more when she thought of all the making up that would follow it.
First, there were goodbyes to be said. Mickey kept following her into the TARDIS, looking vaguely surprised when she said she was leaving and he wouldn’t be going with her.
‘Look after yourself then,’ he said, shaking off the little voice that was obviously telling him to stay. ‘Make sure he takes good care of you.’
She smiled at him sadly, realising at last just how precious the ordinary, practical parts of life actually were. ‘You’d know all about that,’ she said, and he looked a bit tearful as he turned away.
The Doctor returned from whatever farewell speech he’d been giving Sarah Jane and she thought he looked a bit tearful too. She put a hand on his arm. Finally, it was confession time.
‘Take me anywhere,’ she said. ‘And then I’ve got something to tell you.’
‘Anywhere’ was a misnomer, because there was only one place they could possibly end up next, and that was back at the beginning.
Chapter 8: Sheffield http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11277.html
Chapter 7: Claw and more claw http://sap1066.livejournal.com/11209.html
Chapter 6: A mechanically minded man http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10823.html
Chapter 5: New new Earth http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10690.html
Chapter 4: Barcelona http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10275.html
Chapter 3: The Christmas invasion http://sap1066.livejournal.com/10233.html
Chapter 2: Unparting the ways http://sap1066.livejournal.com/9740.html
Chapter 1: The girl in the TARDIS http://sap1066.livejournal.com/9627.html