Fic Commentary: Dream Sequencing
Moving forward with the fic commentary meme! If you'd like to get in on it as well (which I encourage whole-heartedly--I love writing these things to a shameful degree), here's the original post.
Oh boy, we're in for it now. I rather imperiously commanded jaradel to pick a fic for me to commentate on and since the one she actually wanted I did in the last round, look what she's making me do instead! I told her I needed a distraction from politics, and a distraction this will indeed provide.
The origin of this fic is simply this: I find Tencest to be unspeakably hot. I am not normally a writer or consumer of slash. Nothing against slash, but it's just not really my kink. I think the actual moral of this story is that the Tenth Doctor is hot to imagine anyone having sex with, and two Doctors is just incendiary. I make exceptions to pretty much all my normal rules when it comes to him. I would also like to take this moment to invite everyone to google "Tencest"--no, really. Look what the first hit is. My mom would be so proud.
However, how to make the Tencest happen? Without a handy pre-existing 'verse like fid_gin 's Loved-verse, I was left to come up with some vaguely plausible (like time and space, plausibility is relative in the Whoniverse) plot that would get both Doctors together in the same place and time. This is not easy. I thought and I thought and I thought about it for days. My breakthrough came while contemplating my personal canon that the only way the existance of Voyage of the Damned can be rationally explained is that what the Master did with the Paradox Machine somehow injured the fabric of time and space temporarily and that VotD never actually happened. So, thought I, what else cold happen when time and space have a boo-boo? Well, travel to other alternate universes, apparently. And also crazyhot threeway sex.
"So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I do not fear time"
This is from the incredibly cheesy song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes". However, I defend my use of it here by saying that Nina Simone's version will in fact move anyone to tears upon contact. It makes me think of Doctor/Rose every single time I hear it, and it makes me weep.
The Doctor sat bolt upright in bed, eyes flashing in the dim glow of the street lamps coming through the louvred blinds. He wasn't a terribly deep sleeper, and Rose initially attributed the movement she felt on his side of the bed to his not-infrequent nocturnal restlessness. She foggily waited for him to settle again, but when he didn't she opened one eye a crack to look at the clock. Three in the morning, and the Doctor was now swinging his legs out of bed and reaching for his dressing gown.
"What's up," Rose sleepily mumbled, half in to her pillow. She wasn't even really listening at first when he answered, she was so much expecting just to hear, "Nothing."
"He's here," whispered the Doctor urgently, coming around to her side of the bed. "At least, it feels like he is."
Because in my world, even the half-human Doctor can sense other Time Lords. Especially his own self.
Rose rolled over on to her back to look at him standing over her. He didn't look like he was sleepwalking, or talking in his sleep--both of which he'd done plenty of in the past year that they'd been together.
I am married to a sleep-talker/yeller/freaker-outer. You get used to it.
"Who's here? Where? There's no one here. Come back to bed."
He ran a hand through his hair, which was getting long and needed a cut, and was now flat on the side he'd been sleeping on and sticking straight out on the other. "Not literally here here. But somewhere in this universe. Close."
He sat down on the edge of the bed next to Rose and she curled her body around his like a parenthesis, protecting the ragged logic of his words.
A bit too lyrical for porn? I dunno. I like the image.
"More information, please." This had become her patient catch phrase with him, so often did he fly off in to some bout of utterly lateral thinking, forgetting that she was not, could not be, in his mind with him. He was like a child in this way sometimes, unable to comprehend that his thoughts were not the thoughts of everyone else as well.
"The Doctor, and the TARDIS. They're here."
Dun dun duuuuhhhhhnnnnn!!!! In my mind, this is where the funky porn music starts playing.
~o0o~
The TARDIS shuddered and the lighting systems flickered disconcertingly. The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches, turning cranks, fiddling with knobs, but nothing seemed to be working. He felt suddenly that time and space were both wrong, there was something out of joint, off-kilter, like words sung to music a half a bar out of time. With a thud, she materialised and all systems shut down.
I always seem to have to include some business about the Doctor's time sense. Note to Stephen Moffet (cuz I know he totes reads my porn): please clarify this more in series 5. Enquiring minds want to know.
"What is it, eh?" he asked out loud, though he needn't have. She always sang in his mind, but as he reached for her answer, he found quite unexpectedly that someone else was there as well. With a sickening mixture of panic and hope, he immediately thought of the Master--but that was impossible. He'd just watched his body burn to ashes and not regenerate. He'd only just begun to truly mourn the only other of his kind left in the universe, when all of a sudden, here was another.
"Not alone, indeed!" he huffed, utterly dumbfounded and at a loss as to where to start. Repair his ship or find an answer to this conundrum?
He flipped on the view screen to see where he'd landed, as he was strangely unable to intuit that information on his own.
"Where'd you bring us?"
There was no relief behind his realisation that he wouldn't have to explain this bothersome state of affairs to Martha, or Jack, or anyone at all. And still the hum of this Other in his hind brain--instinctive, primal, like the way a mother knows the sound of her own baby's cry.
Though of course he can't really figure out who this other is because Alt!Ten hasn't been born yet in his timeline.
The view on the screen was simply of the same London suburb he thought he'd just left. There was the Jones house, though a good deal later at night than when he'd left. He hadn't gone anywhere at all, it seemed. Being turned in to a paradox machine had not been easy on the old girl, and while he thought he'd taken care of her well, had a short trip to Cardiff to drop Jack off as a test drive, clearly not all was right with the TARDIS. After all she'd been through, he owed it to her to write the muddle in his head off to an echo of the Master, and give her the care she needed.
He flipped the screen off just a few seconds too early to have seen the lights of a zeppelin glide with a distant whirr across the sky.
Just some dots-connecting. Since we all know zeppelins=altverse. It's such a useful shorthand. Thanks, RTD!
~o0o~
He was pretty sure that in all of his nine-hundred years he'd never been so surprised. "What?" did not even begin to cover it. He'd need to also employ "How?" and "Who?" and possibly also "Why?" He'd just assumed the knock on the TARDIS door had been Martha popping out to enquire after why he was still there, which he expected to be a mildly awkward moment. But this, this was something on a whole other plane of bizarre.
Opening the doors, he had come face to face with himself. And not just himself, but a slightly older, more dishevelled self wearing jeans and a t-shirt, who smiled and wiggled his fingers while nonchalantly saying, "Hello."
The man who looked like him but wasn't him (clearly, from the lack of the universe ending in a timeline-crossing disaster) then gazed directly in to his eyes with a look that he'd never been on the receiving end of before. So much knowledge, such great wisdom, and complete and utter pity. He had to wonder, did he himself go around looking at other beings like this? It was highly disconcerting. He felt naked.
Because he totally does go around looking at other beings like that, and it has to be ~freaky~ when he does it to you.
"What?!" he stammered.
I really do have a very soft spot in my heart for "What? What?! WHAT?!?"
The other man's response was simply to embrace him in a hug that seemed to take them both out of time for its duration.
"Well," the stranger with his face said when he released him, "this is unexpected. And rather paradoxical, which I wasn't really counting on. My mistake."
Because of course Alt!Doctor wouldn't really know at first what version of himself he'd be meeting up with and from when. I'm just imagining him assuming that it would be all linear and nonparadoxical. Whoopsie!
"Who...?" The Doctor again tried to form a sentence amidst his utter dumbfoundment.
"We haven't met yet, I'm afraid. But I've got someone else here with me, and she wants to see you very much. Is that all right?"
The Doctor just opened and closed his mouth several times without anything coming out.
"Oh, of course it's all right, why am I even asking? I'm you. I can see where your timeline is now and I'm going to make an executive decision here, if you don't mind." The other man turned towards a robins-egg blue Morris Minor that was parked down the street and waved his hand.
Robins-egg blue Morris Minor=The One True Free Life 'verse. This is my wink that that's where this story is taking place. If you haven't read that epiclong fic, this is the car that the Doctor winds up with by the end of that, and it's sort of his TARDIS-replacement. Not that it does anything special, it's just a car, but I think it really tweaks him in that it can become sort of a trade mark in the same way the TARDIS used to be.
The passenger-side door opened and the word astonished was grossly inadequate to describe the Doctor's feelings when he saw Rose Tyler run up the street, right up to the doors of the TARDIS, past this other strange man and directly in to his own arms.
Because of course this Doctor is still in series 3 and is deep deep deep in mourning.
"He hasn't...yet," the other man stage-whispered to Rose as she continued to squeeze the Doctor round his middle. "He's from the past."
Rose let him go and while he'd been too shocked to really return the hug as it ought to have been, he now felt bereft.
"Oh, yeah, I can see. There's something about him. Look! He's wearing your suit!" she squealed and hit the man on his arm for effect. She turned back to the Doctor with full eyes, though they were not sad, but wistful. "Look at you," she sighed.
Okay, yes, a little nod to River Song. So sue me.
"Rose." The Doctor finally managed to utter the name that had been at his lips so often since they'd been separated. "And...me?"
Both Rose and the other Doctor walked past him and in to the TARDIS without an invitation. Which is, of course, exactly what he himself would do in such a situation.
"I'm not you. Not really. Not as far as our timelines are concerned, that is. That would have been a very bad idea, indeed. We're way smarter than all that, I think."
Rose touched the console gingerly. "What's wrong with her?"
The Doctor rubbed the back of his head as he shut the door and walked up the gangway. "That sort of depends on where I am. Where am I?"
The other Doctor sat himself down on the jump seat and put his feet up on the console. "You're in an alternate universe, mate. The same alternate universe you always seem to be dropping in on. Don't you find that odd? Of all the alternate universes out there, you keep winding up in the same one? Not that we're complaining." He looked at Rose who gave him the thumbs-up with a cheeky grin. "Also, you're in the future. About...well, it's hard to say, time moves faster here. But for you, I'd guess about two years, maybe three."
Because in my 'verse, the Alt!Doctor is still very Doctorish. I also like Rose giving the thumbs-up here. It shows that what they're about to do they've definitely been planning together. She's all like, "It's go time!"
"And who, exactly, are you?" The Doctor's features started to turn angry and he cast a dark, suspicious look towards Rose.
Rose approached him, seeing the way he was looking at her now. "No, it's okay," she cooed. "It's me. It's your Rose. Really. Please don't be cross with us. We wanted to see you so much." She held out a hand to him, aware of her other Doctor's gaze on the both of them. "There's so much we wanted to tell you."
I really felt that after all that BS with the Master, the Doctor would find it really hard to trust anyone, and would instantly start to think that there was some foul play afoot that was causing this to happen. And also in Rose's response, more hints that this is something she's been talking over with her Doctor.
He cocked his head to one side and gave her an appraising look. "You do look older."
"That's because I am. Like we said, you're in the future."
The other Doctor cleared his throat and they both looked over to where he'd made himself quite at home at the TARDIS controls. "She brought you here on purpose," he pronounced. "Oh, Rose, that's just brilliant. The most powerful being in the Universe, and she cares so much for her old friend, even when she's in so much pain herself." He stroked the console and reached up to touch the rotor. "There's nothing wrong with her, Doctor. She brought you here to see us. Took advantage of the temporal turmoil created by what happened on the Valiant, and dropped right through to here, like a marble through a wet piece of paper."
So I pretty much ship Doctor/TARDIS under all cirucmstances. I'm also incredibly protective of her. Use the Doctor as a punching bag, make him miserable, he's so much better that way, but hands off my TARDIS! And also: Who Temporal Skience! Voila!
"The Valiant...how do you know about that?" The Doctor was incredulous again and moved away from where Rose was still reaching out to touch his hand.
"I was there, or course. That whole year, the pain, the waiting, the trauma of it that I never admitted to anyone." He looked at Rose meaningfully. "Well, not for a long time. And the guilt, knowing it was Martha out there risking her life for me, and all the time wishing she was someone else."
Forgive me, Martha-fen, but...yeah. Maybe I should just leave it at that.
The Doctor's intake of breath was an audible hiss. "Who are you?" he demanded fiercely, raising his voice sharply.
"You can hear me in your mind. You know who I am. The particulars don't matter."
Rose came up behind the Doctor again and touched his shoulder. "It doesn't have to make sense, does it? Can't we just spend some time together before you have to go again? There's so much we want to tell you, and show you, even if it doesn't make complete sense now. It will, and it's important."
He turned and placed a cool hand on her cheek. "It's you."
She smiled against his palm and thrilled to the feel of the way he stroked his thumb against her skin. "It's me."
Little callback (call forward?) to the "You're still you/I'm still me" line from Journey's End.
"One night only, I'm afraid," came the other Doctor's voice from behind them. He placed a palm against the console and looked as if he were listening to someone calling him from very far away. "Then the damage that was done by the Master starts to repair itself, and you've got a lot to do in that other universe before we all see each other again."
One night only. Which means I can never write these three again. That may in fact be a good thing.
"We've got time for a drink though, yeah?" Rose said jauntily and strode down the corridor that she hoped would take her eventually to the nice study where the Doctor kept a cabinet of strangely coloured liquors from distant galaxies.
~o0o~
"Well, cheers," said Rose brightly as she handed a crystal glass of sapphire-coloured liquid to both the Doctors, who were sitting side-by-side on the sofa, before sitting herself next to them. With them wearing completely different outfits, it was easy to tell them apart, though if they both started talking at once, she'd never be able to discern them with her eyes closed. As it was, however, the Doctor in the blue suit was unusually quiet, his eyes roving freely between her and the man seated on his other side.
So, normal (did I just refernece anything about this situation as being "normal"?) shorthand for the two Doctors is Blue Suit and Brown Suit. I had to go back and watch the end of Last of the Time Lords to see what the Doctor is sporting and it is unfortunately (on so many levels) the blue suit. So, he's wearing the blue suit here, which shoots all to hell the natural way of dealing with two characters who look the same and have the same name interacting with each other. I thought it would be confusing if I kept referencing the Proper Doctor as the one in the Blue Suit because to me, and I'm sure to a lot of other people, that just calls to mind Alt!Doc. So I rarely refer to him as such, and had to come up with other ways to differentiate them.
"So, limited time, lots to show you," the casually-dressed Doctor said brightly after finishing his drink and pouring himself another.
"Are we going somewhere?" the other Doctor enquired, looking a bit shell-shocked now.
"Nah," said Rose. "What we mean is, well, we've talked a lot about you since we last saw you. Which of course hasn't happened yet, but it will. This bloke here, he likes to talk about himself just the same as you do, so believe me when I say there've been many hours spent on this topic."
OMG they just talk and talk and taaaallllk don't they? Shut up and get to the sexin', cheesus.
"I've got a whole new perspective now, you see," the Doctor in jeans remarked emphatically, turning towards the Doctor in the middle, who was beginning to look overwhelmed and beset upon from all sides. "And I think what you need to know, more than anything else, is how loved you are, and how happy we are here together. We think about you all the time, we try to send our love to you but we know we can't, not through the boundaries of reality." He grinned a broad toothy grin that made the apples of his cheeks shine in the warm yellow light of the study. "But here you! A bit on the early side, it's true. We'll have to do something about that before we leave, because you have so much to accomplish back where you came from, and we don't want to mess that up. I've got some ideas along those lines, and I think if we get the TARDIS--"
And who doesn't like David Tennant in jeans? Anyway, this goes a bit of the way to explaining how we go from "Hey! Let's go see the Doctor cuz he's very cool and we like him!" to "Hey! Let's go totally sex up your exact duplicate!" Because of course just because the Doctor shows up in their universe doesn't mean that they have to screw him. Except that of course they do because that is the entire point of this fic. So I wanted to present their relationship to the proper Doctor in absentia as being one of really intense love.
"Doctor," Rose muttered in to her glass, draining the last drops of her second drink. "You're sort of babbling."
"Right. Sorry."
The Doctor in the middle turned his head from side to side as if he was watching a tennis match, looking at this doppleganger of himself on one side, and the woman he thought he'd never see again on the other. "I babble when I'm nervous," he said.
I'm not sure this line accomplishes what I wanted it to do which is to signal proper Doctor's acceptance of Alt!Doctor as "himself."
Both of these strangers who were not strangers at all then beamed at him and Rose gave a bright laugh that nearly broke his hearts to hear again.
"Look at that woman over there," the Doctor on the end said. "That gorgeous, brilliant woman. She loves me, and I'm you. She's always loved you, right from the start. Even when you were horrid to her, even when you were thoughtless or broke your word. Even when you couldn't say the one thing she'd wanted to hear from you. She forgives you, she knows you aren't free to be what she needs, and she loves you anyway. And now's your chance, mate."
Rose sat quietly, a look on her face that could only be described as veiled.
Anyone weirded out by Alt!Ten pimping Rose out to himself? Because...it's a bit weird, and it keeps happening in this story.
"My chance for what?" the Doctor whispered, never taking his eyes of Rose now that he'd turned them on her fully. He felt like he was in a dream, and perhaps he was. That whole year had been one long nightmare, and maybe now the TARDIS was consoling him with this vision, benevolent soul that she was. What happened next confirmed his suspicions, and slotted in nicely with the few other pleasant dreams he'd had in recent years.
"Oh, sod it," Rose said with exasperation, having grown tired of the one Doctor's cryptic ramblings and the other's confused inaction. She leaned forward, placed a hand behind the Doctor's neck, and gave him one last sidelong look before covering his mouth with hers. She felt his posture stiffen and she half expected him to pull back, but he didn't. As he began to part his lips slightly and press back in to her with equal force, she opened one eye a crack and saw her Doctor over his shoulder, watching with quiet pride.
As kisses go, it was on the chaste side, but it was the emotion heavy in the moment that had all parties, even the one merely observing, breathing raggedly and regarding one another through dazed eyes when it was over.
"You see?" said Rose finally. "You'd never let yourself feel that before, and I understand. Truly, I do."
This was originally a bit of Alt!Ten dialogue but I moved it over to Rose. I found that she wasn't talking very much, which was giving the impression that she wasn't an active participant in the seduction, which just makes the Big Pimpin' weirder.
The Doctor on his other side continued her thought, as if they were one person. "You'd never be free to give her that and you thought you were being kind to withhold yourself from her. But it doesn't matter now. You don't have to be anything for her after tonight. When we leave here, she'll still have me. I'll lend you my freedom. One night only."
So, if you've read The One True Free Life this means something fairly significant. The central theme of that story is, obviously, freedom, on a number of levels. But one is that the Alt!Doctor is free in a way that the proper Doctor can never be, and he's immensely thankful for that freedom and finally understands its significance. So I really liked the idea of Alt!Ten "lending" the Doctor that freedom for a time, to give him a bit of what he can never really fully have.
Rose licked her lips and discreetly brought a thumb up to one corner of her mouth to remove a trace of the kiss she'd just shared. "I think one more drink, yeah?" she said suggestively, decanting in to the three glasses again, and then taking hers with her as she crossed the study to a vintage phonograph she'd always been fond of when she was a resident on the ship. "And some music. There's no need to be so dour, Doctor." She made it clear she was speaking to the one in the suit, the one looking quite bedazzled now, the one who continued to be at a rather uncharacteristic loss for words. "This is a happy occasion."
No need to be so dour, the_tenzo. Yeah, that was me trying to snap myself out of making this just a huge Angst-Fest.
She flipped through the understandably quite large and eclectic record collection, and found one of her old favourites still close to the front, almost where she'd left it.
In my mind, it's Nina Simone. But I don't like to name-drop popular music in my fic.
After placing the needle on the vinyl, she was going to turn back around to share a wink with both Doctors at her selection, but instead found herself rooted to the spot. The two men faced one another on the sofa, each with a hand behind the other's neck, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed.
What about these two touching each other like this is so heartbreaking and sweet? I can't place my finger on it. But....awwwwww. They're so awesome.
Her Doctor had started talking about this on their drive to find his counterpart, but had then stopped himself and grown taciturn for a few miles before changing subjects. It was the silence in his head that made him wake in the middle of the night and pace, it was the one dark blot on his otherwise sunny demeanour, the only thing he had a hard time talking to her about. To have gone nine hundred years and at least always had the TARDIS, even when the other voices fell terrifyingly silent, and then to have nothing at all--he'd insisted sadly that it really was beyond her understanding. She'd offered to let him in to her own thoughts, but even that was not possible for his human body. The mind was capable, but the flesh was not. He needed his opposite number to forge the bridge and end the silence, at least for the time that they were together.
Not sure if I really made clear what the actual pseudo-science going on here is. The Doctor is always shown as needing to touch whoever it is to forge a psychic link to non-Time-Lords. My wanking here is that Alt!Ten, because he is in a human body, lacks whatever biological whatsit that the Doctor seems to possess in his fingers that allows this to happen. So while his mind is capable of all of the things the Doctor's mind is capable of, when it's something that needs non-human physiology to fully accomplish, he can't do it. And that is very sad.
The warm analogue sound of the singer's voice on the record made the eyes of each man flutter open, and as one they turned their heads towards her so they were cheek-to-cheek. The Doctor in the suit rose from the couch. Rose saw that they had been holding hands and as he walked toward her, her Doctor seemed to be reluctant to let go. Rose took one last sip of her drink before putting the glass down. She'd seen the look now on this Doctor's face enough times on the other's to know that there probably would not be a good deal more drinking going on for a while.
She reached her hand out to him, and he took it, leading her back over to the sofa where they sat as they'd been before, but with a whole new level of energy crackling between them.
"Kiss her again," the Doctor on the end prompted, and the words were barely spoken before Rose was making small mewling sounds under the mouth of the other. The music of her little moans combined with the shared feelings and impressions of his counterpart was more than enough for him to feel as if he were kissing her himself, which of course he'd done thousands of times in the past year. The filter of experiencing it all through the mind of someone for whom this was the first time was entirely new, shockingly intense, and drove him wild with a desire that was very much human. He hadn't meant to intrude on the moment, but he didn't realise the moans that had been percolating from his own throat until he noticed that Rose and the Doctor both had turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.
Nothing like a little psychic!sex, that's what I say. I didn't want to get too in to that aspect in this because this shit is complicated enough as it is. But a little bit is nice. Also, more Big Pimpin' from Alt!Doc. I don't know why that turns me on so. But it does. My version of Alt!Doc is much more confident, his head is screwed on better, he's *nice*. He's been in the alt!verse with Rose for quite a while (in my head it's been over a year) and all that normalcy, not to mention the very regular booty, has indeed made him in to a better, nicer, happier, more confident person.
"Sorry," he panted, and the other two smiled benevolently. "It's just...well, I'm so sorry but watching that is hot."
The Doctor in the middle smirked quite smugly and muttered, "Humans."
"Oh?" the other Doctor said with a note of challenge in his voice. "That so?" He leaned awkwardly over, his hips hovering over his twin's, and caught Rose in a deep, and quite literally breathtaking kiss, his hand gaining precarious purchase on the back of the sofa over the Doctor's shoulder. Plunging his tongue in to the familiar warmth of Rose's mouth and then pulling back and waiting for her to reciprocate, he felt movement as the Doctor began to writhe and moan and under him.
I had a devil of a time writing that paragraph so that it was clear who was doing what. I think that was the first moment of, "Oh my god, what have I done?" that I had. At first I was like, "Tra la la, I will write Tencest, and lo, it will be good!" But then once I started actually getting in to the meat of the story, it became clear what a complete and utter pronoun nightmare I had signed myself up for.
Point proved, and perhaps just a few extra moments of sweetness taken after, he settled back down at his end of the sofa again and enjoyed the view of the Doctor and Rose both flushed, breathing heavily and blinking. The Doctor loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt, not making eye-contact with the winner of this particular debate.
"I can see this is going to be quite a night for you both," Rose finally said, the corners of her mouth quirking up coyly. "But let's not forget who we're here for." She directed this at the Doctor she'd arrived with and then turned her honey-brown eyes back on the other. "Can we...you know, to your bedroom?"
The Doctor in the blue suit's eyes got rather more round than they already had been and he looked towards the door. "Oh yes," he said thoughtfully. "If I'm dreaming, might as well make it the really good kind."
"Might as well!" said the other Doctor enthusiastically as he stood up to reveal just exactly how looking forward to this next bit he was. "You two go on, I'll just, ah, tidy up in here, shall I?"
So why does Alt!Doc initially stay behind upon this extremely flimsy excuse? Narratively, it gave me a moment to get just some simple one-on-one snogging accomplished, and number two, I still needed to do more to establish the *why* of this situation. I mean, why do they all jump in to bed together? They could have gone apple-picking, they could have sat around and played Scattagories. So I needed to have some sort of moment where the Doctor and Rose are alone together and the Alt!Doc is purposefully brought in to the situation. It doesn't go all the way towards explaining why this happens, but I think the Doctor and Rose getting together makes complete logical sense in this situation, and if they then sort of invite the other Doctor, the sense that them being together makes extends to him as well. I dunno. I may or may not be full of shit.
"He's not coming along?"
Rose couldn't tell if the Doctor's question contained a note of relief or surprise.
"I think he's waiting for you to say it's okay." Rose pushed the familiar door to his bedroom open and the Doctor grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close as soon as they entered.
"If he's me, then he should already know the answer, shouldn't he?"
Clear as mud, right?
He held her tightly as he spoke, his words a cool zephyr across her cheek, and he wasted no further time--if he was dreaming then the waking would come soon enough. He backed her up against the wall next to the door, wanting to first explore how her curves felt against his own body, and savouring the contrasts. She was at a distinct advantage, knowing as she already did that the Doctor was powerless against a well-placed kissed directly below his right ear, that sucking and nibbling on the tip of each finger was the easiest way to get him from the supper table to the bedroom in under twenty seconds, and that he had a wee bit of a foot fetish.
Doctor: foot fetishist? It could happen. Also, I think snogging up against a wall is way hot. Wall!sex, maybe not so much, becuase I think we all know how the physics of that situation pans out in real life. But wall!snogging=yes plz. It's so very "OMG I MUST HAVE YOU NOW!!!"
She kicked off a shoe and began to run her foot up and down his calf. He shuddered and bucked his hips in to her, and it took her a moment to remember that the hard need that she felt there was not that of her usual lover. Or rather, it was but it wasn't. It was like going back in time, or the nearest she'd be able to get to doing that for the rest of her life.
Except going back in time would not include two sets of hands stroking the bit of bare skin between her shirt and her trousers, and two mouths running kisses along her jawline and neck. She opened her eyes to see both Doctors rather indiscriminately getting carried away by the moment. Giving the one in the t-shirt a gentle tug to the hair, she raised an eyebrow as best she could while trying to think through the fog caused by the other's hands beginning to roam under her shirt and trace along the outline of her bra.
"He said it was okay," the Doctor said hopefully, smiling.
Psychic link. He said it was okay in his mind. Handy, that.
She faintly heard the other moan "Brilliant" in to her ear before he plunged down on to her mouth again, sucking at her bottom lip and then playing his tongue around the tip of hers.
Her Doctor moved behind the other and began to help him out of his clothes, as it occurred suddenly to Rose that once they were naked and equally rumpled, there'd really be no telling them apart unless she felt for heart beats or subtle differences in body temperature. The thought was unexpectedly tantalising and she wanted very much to know what it would be like to simply abandon all attempts to keep their identities straight.
Tell me that is not knickers-combusting to think about, not being able to tell the difference. Did I just find the root of the twincest kink? ~shudders~ That is not okay.
Helping his counterpart off with his jacket and tie, the Doctor experienced a vivid flash of the passion and long pent-up need that the other was experiencing the release of, involuntarily thrusting forward and grinding his hips in to the other man's rear. This caused a chain reaction that led to Rose letting out a bit too much air, and left the two men gasping for entirely different reasons.
Does this bit of physical comedy work in this context? I kept going back and forth on that. Though as readers of That Other Fic That I Keep Referencing will know, laughing!sex plays a role in the Alt!Doctor/Rose sex life.
"All right, gentlemen," she panted after they both realised the very real danger of breaking her, and moved back a couple of steps. "This whole big room with that whole big bed and we're all huddled here in the corner like a bunch of hoodies."
They looked at one another guiltily.
"Everyone take three giant steps back," she said, like a dinner lady policing the food line. To her great surprise and eternal amusement, they both did exactly what she asked, except that at about two and a half giant steps back they each hit the edge of the bed and toppled backwards on to it.
"Oh, I'm drunk with power!" she hooted, delighting in the really rather dumb looks on both of their faces.
I am positive that I have stolen this line from someone else.
She nibbled on the tip of her thumb as she slowly moved towards them, considering the possibilities. "I think," she began thoughtfully, "that while I get a bit more of my kit off here, you two should just, you know, help yourselves."
They looked at one another, and then back at her again.
"It amuses me," she said imperiously, pointing a finger at them both before bending over to remove her other shoe. When she stood back up, she realised that she needn't have put on the Queen act, as they were both quite enthusiastically enjoying what looked to be a fairly intense telepathic feedback loop.
And here's where I just take the plunge. Sod the "why". These two want to get it on, far be it from me to stop them. You go on, gentlemen, don't let me stand in your way.
Rose stood back and watched for a while. She'd expected them to be aggressive with one another, unromantically efficient and focused on simply getting the job done as men tended to be when they masturbated, but it wasn't like that at all. It was beautiful, tender.
I'm quite fond of this observation. I've seen my share of men masturbating and it just seems so very mechanical, a bit aggressive and very goal-oriented (as guys tend to be in sex). But these two are behaving like lovers, and I'm chalking that up to Alt!Ten really actually being very much in love with the Doctor and wanting specifically to demonstrate that through physical love.
Her Doctor, the one on the right, still wearing jeans but without his t-shirt now, gently pushed the other down on to the bed and laid down next to him, propping himself up on an elbow and landing kisses along his rib cage while fumbling one-handed with clasps and zips. The other, prone on the bed and seemingly transported, grabbed at the duvet with his hands and rocked his hips forward and back under the other man's trouser ministrations.
Just watching them, her body was responding intensely.
You and me both, sister.
Her hands hovered over a button of her shirt, forgotten about for the moment. Her lips parted and she licked them to try and simulate how her Doctor was now running his tongue along the swollen lips of the other, in between outrageously deep kisses that had him bringing his head up to seek more. When she saw the familiar hand of her lover reach out and do something quite unfamiliar, parting the other Doctor's trousers at the zip and take a firm grip that prompted him to lift his hips well off the bed, Rose felt a spreading warmth that was more than just metaphorical. She quickly shucked the rest of her clothing, and saw both men take a deep breath in as the scent of her arousal permeated the room.
"You don't think you deserve this, but you do" her Doctor said softly as he shifted himself downward and pulled the other's trousers off completely. "You don't even like to lose control when you're all alone, but it might do you some good. You can take that piece of advice for free." He looked over at Rose and gave her a small nod, but the other Doctor seemed to be too far gone to notice. She approached the two of them and laid herself down in the crook of the Doctor's arm, on the opposite side from where the other was gently and slowly sliding his tongue up and down his cock.
Take Alt!Ten's advice: Masturbate regularily for better mental health! And hello everyone I said "cock." I really have such issues with anatomical terms. I'm like the prudiest porn-writer in the known universe.
Rose had a brief moment of remembering every joke she'd ever heard about men trying to go down on themselves, but the groan ripped from the prone Doctor's throat was in and of itself enough to create another surge of warmth between her legs and to blot out all thoughts of how weird this must look. She pressed her body against him and whispered encouragements in his ear.
"I want you to feel the pleasure," she sighed, arranging herself so that if she moved her hips just so against his thigh she could start a rolling wave of sensation that would spread out all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes before gathering back at her centre again. Her Doctor continued his achingly slow progress down the other's shaft and back up again. "Tell me how good it feels," she whispered against his neck, as she prepared to hit that spot below his ear that she knew would drive him wild.
Rose dirty talking is also hot. She should really do that more. Anyway, this is where the "mission" that Rose and her Doctor are on becomes completely clear. They're here to show the Doctor a Real Good Time and to prove a point about his self-loathing issues.
His hand, which had been fisting the covers rather spastically now came up and took hold of her firm, round rump. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out by vowels, all of them ragged and lacking any kind of volume control.
"He's quite good, isn't he?" she said, hot against his ear, but not low enough that her Doctor didn't hear her and shoot her a rather smug look.
"Yes," the Doctor hissed as he tossed his head back in response to something the other was doing with his hands out of Rose's view.
"He knows exactly how you want it."
"Yes," the Doctor gasped again and Rose craned her neck a little to see what her Doctor was doing. They'd had a discussion once, she and he, about things men like that are often best left in the hands of other men, such as what he was doing now with his hand palm-up on the sheet under his twin's rocking hips.
I can't write about bum play. While I may have some big issues with the usual terms for male and female genitalia, there are NO non-squicky terms for bunghole. None. So, we make do with euphamisms. In case anyone missed it, Alt!Doctor is giving Proper!Doctor a bit of a fingering.
"And you deserve it, don't you?" she prompted, running a hand over his nipples and scratching it through the fine hair on his chest.
"Oh yes," he moaned, and she pressed herself to his thigh again so he could feel how warm and wet she was.
"Say it. Say you deserve this pleasure," her Doctor prompted, working gently with his long, slender fingers before moving his mouth back down on to him.
Rose brushed the hair away from the Doctor's forehead, where pinpoints of sweat were beginning to stand out. When he opened his impossibly black, wide eyes again, she was already looking in to them and waiting, lips red and parted, cheeks golden-pink. "Say it," she mouthed soundlessly.
He closed his eyes again, unable to hold her gaze as he spoke the words.
"I deserve it."
Aww. Also ~fans self~ I'm getting massively turned on re-reading this. Is that wrong?
Rose looked down at her Doctor, who paused in his activity and gave her a proud little smile before taking the other Doctor in to his mouth again, now at a faster pace. He began to make his own low sounds of pleasure around the other's cock, reminding Rose that they could share something she never could be a part of, though she wasn't jealous.
I think Alt!Ten does a bit too much proud smiling in this fic. He needs to lay off that. And I need to come up with some more expressions for him to make.
Rose knew all the signs; the flexing of his feet, the deepening tone of his moans, and she began to feel quite selfishly upset that she was not going to get to have a go with her original Doctor.
With a great spasm through his whole body, and a shout that made her glad for the dimensionally transcendent soundproofing of the TARDIS, the Doctor released in to the mouth of the other, who made gentle sucking sounds as he brought him back in for a gentle denouement.
Rose could not manage to wipe a pouty look off of her face, and as both Doctors opened their eyes, they caught it and looked at one another with very cheeky grins.
I think I wrote the Doctor being really standoffish in the non-sex parts of this fic, so I'm just going to claim that at this point, he realises there's pretty much no reason to be such a pill any more and can finally just relax.
"Oh, poor Rose!" her Doctor said, wiping his chin and sitting back on his heels. "You see what horrible beasts males are? Given the opportunity to fuck ourselves, we just can't help it."
Snerk. It wouldn't be a Tencest fic without that observation. It's funny cuz it's true.
The other Doctor continued to gain his breath and composure back, but she heard him make a low chuckling sound deep in his chest. "You haven't told her, have you?" He winked at his other self.
"Why would I tease her with what she can't have? I'm only human, don't want her comparing me to the other version. That wouldn't do at all."
Rose sat up and looked back and forth between them with annoyance. Her entire body ached and she consoled herself with the thought that at least her Doctor was still straining under his jeans, even if that wasn't what she'd originally had in mind.
"What are you two on about?"
"Time Lord." Her Doctor pointed at the other. "Binary vascular system. Are you connecting any dots here?"
"Doctor, you know I can't think straight when you've got me all...flustered."
"Two hearts, two circulatory systems, quite enough stamina to go two rounds."
Rose looked at the other Doctor in shock. "And you are keeping yourself from the women of the universe for what reason again?"
LOL Okay, I did crack myself up with that line. The Doctor having Super! Time Lord! Sexual! Stamina! (and no refractory period!) is a bit of a silly fic cliche, but I tried to inject a small amount of science in there to explain it. Because I am not done with him yet.
"Well, let's not get full of ourselves," he said modestly while shooting her Doctor a look that was very much full of itself.
There was probably a lewd pun in there somewhere, but Rose was at a loss. Her Doctor stood and began to unzip his jeans and step out of them.
"Is that what my bum looks like?" the other Doctor drawled, propping himself up on his elbows.
"It's a very nice bum," Rose assured him. "A bit flat, but we can't all have an arse like mine, can we?"
Her Doctor turned around, his erection pointing right at them quite proudly. "Let's have a look then," he demanded. "It is a capital bum. I'm quite fond."
And again with Alt!Doctor having a proud...something. Enough with the pride. God, my vocabulary is weeeeaaaak. Also, totally love the talk about the bums, because you know that's the first thing the Doctor would notice--how he looks from the back.
Rose knelt on the bed and turned her back to the both of them, giving her own behind a little smack for good measure.
"That's quite a view," the Doctor laying on the bed noted matter-of-factly to the other. Rose looked coyly over her shoulder, enjoying the ego boost.
"It is. I love to have her from behind so I can look at it." Her Doctor crawled on to the bed again and knelt behind her, his cock bumping up against the small of her back and sending a wave of anticipation through her. "In fact, I don't think I can help myself." He reached down and spread her legs, rubbing firm circles on her rump as he did so.
TMI time! Yes, it's my personal favourite position. It's a constant struggle to NOT write this position in to every piece of smut that I author. It's hard being me. And again with the Doctor spreading Rose's legs. I'm noticing a lot of similar tropes in my writing.
She leaned over on to her elbows and could see just out of the corner of her eye the other Doctor's prick begin to twitch and grow pink and firm again. She couldn't be sure, but it felt as if she was so wet it might actually be a bit unbecoming.
OMG I SAID "PRICK"!!! Did I really write that? Lordy. Also, the pinkness...caucasian cocks are already pink pretty much all the time. What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn't.
Her Doctor moved back from her and arranged himself, then took her hips in his hands and brought her up and back, to completely take him inside of her in one smooth movement, made easy through a lot of studied practise.
Practise makes perfect. Clearly this is one of their favourite positions as well.
All was silence for a few moments, the only sound the wet sucking noises coming from where she and the Doctor were joined and moved together. She finally let out a long low moan as he withdrew from her entirely, and she felt the bed jostle a little with movement.
When she was entered again, it wasn't at first obvious that it was a different man. She bucked her hips back, and it was only the hesitation that gave him away. Her Doctor would have gamely thrust forward, but the man inside her now didn't move at all, but just clutched at her hips and let out a little sound of wonder.
We're almost done with the damn story and finally the Doctor gets to make love to Rose. Took long enough. Anyway, I was kind of concerned about getting too much of a "gang bang" vibe going on here. I mean, that's actually what's happening but when I think gang bang I think absolutley horrific porno and also a lot of non-consensual ick. So, that's one of the reasons why Alt!Doc is doing quite a bit of talking and encouraging (and more pimping), to make it a more tender moment than the situation would otherwise imply. And I did like the opportunity it afforded to differentiate the Doctors by how the respond sexually to her. How Alt!Ten is all "woo ride 'em cowboy!" and the Doctor is sort of filled with wonder and awe and hesitation. Because of course Alt!Doc has gotten all his wonder and awe out of his system--he's been sleeping with Rose long enough that he's more or less through that phase.
"It's okay," she heard her Doctor say. "You deserve it. She's so beautiful, isn't she?"
The Doctor's only response was an even further hardening inside of her, and she had to lean her forehead against the bed to keep from collapsing with the pleasure of it.
"She loves you and she wants you to fuck her," her Doctor continued.
But she was suddenly empty again and she gasped with the simultaneous pleasure of the Doctor's shaft leaving her, and the ache of being left. She looked back over her shoulder, eyes pleading but unable to form words.
Shaft. Heh. ~facepalm~
"You see?" her Doctor said gently, lining himself up behind her again. "It's like she glows when I make love to her, like the Bad Wolf never left her." He entered her with just the tip at first and then thrust in hard. She cried out his name, and it was only in retrospect that she wondered if she should have made that plural. But four or five glorious, long, slow, timeless plunges in and out, and he was gone again.
This time there was no hesitation or pause between them and the other Doctor was taking her before she could recover from the leaving of the first, who was now laying down at her side and looking up in to her eyes.
"Say her name," he said, bringing a hand up to brush some hair away that had been falling in to her mouth.
And the other Doctor did say her name, with each thrust in to her, he said it like a prayer. She closed her eyes just to listen to him and to hold close all the subtle differences between the way he said it and the way she'd grown accustomed to hearing it. She felt hands now roaming all over her body and finally gave up trying to figure out who was who. Someone placed a thumb within her folds that made her press down in to it, two fingers were squeezing and releasing her nipple, a palm rubbed and smacked at her bum and felt herself slowly tumbling forward.
They continued to take turns until Rose was breathless, teased with hands and fingers to within an inch of release, when she heard the Doctor, hers she assumed through the note of authority in his voice, speak again.
"What do you want, Rose?"
Alt!Ten really is a Top in my universe. He's so manly and RAWR and confident. He's not like that in The One True Free Life (which only deals with like his first week in the altverse), but I sort of saw him heading there by the end of it.
She wasn't able to answer in words and was barely able to answer in actions, but found the strength to get back up on to her hands, sit up and face them both as they knelt side by side. It was as she predicted. Without clothes and equally at loose ends with lust, they were identical. She looked back and forth between them, and placed her hand on the chest of each in turn. Where she felt two rapidly beating hearts, she kept her palm there and pushed backwards. The Doctor yielded easily as he had done earlier for her Doctor and she did not hesitate to move over and straddle him.
And now we move to my other personal favourite position. Mr. Tenzo is a lucky man, y/y? I'd also like to remind our viewers that neither of the human participants in this fic has had an orgasm yet. That, my friends, is why it is called fiction.
She looked at her Doctor with a silent question on her lips and he nodded in reply. Her movements were quick and smooth, but when the Doctor closed his eyes with the pleasure of this new angle, she stopped. "No, I want you to see me."
Rose speaks! I've got a lot of Rose POV in this fic, but she actually doesn't talk much. That troubles me a bit, actually, and I might give her a bit more to say if I were to do this over again. But let's face facts: the interesting couple in this scenario is Ten/Ten.
Her Doctor knelt next to them, his erection bumping up against her thigh periodically as she leaned forward and back, rocking gently and slowly and finding her own pleasure. When she did at last make the final minute adjustment that would allow every movement to send a jolt of fire through her veins, she reached over and took her Doctor in her hand, rubbing his tip with her thumb in time with the movements of her hips.
All three broke out in to a spontaneous moan of each others names and the Doctor Rose was now riding raised a hand up rather impotently to search for some small part of the other Doctor that he could bring pleasure to, finally taking over the rubbing and stroking from Rose.
Somewhere in the back of her head Rose knew this would probably be something for the record books, but what could one expect when one fucked two men who were in fact the same man? Completely simultaneous orgasm would probably be a bit much to hope for, but both men seemed near enough that she decided to speed things up for herself with a judicious lean backwards and a finger that she'd had the Doctor previously sucking on.
My nod of the head towards the fact that this entire scenario is utterly ridiculous. Extremely hot, yes, but completely ludicrous.
The sight of her touching herself and licking her lips in concentration drove her Doctor over the edge, despite the increasingly erratic ministrations of the other, and he spilled on to the rumpled sheets with a hoarse cry of a word that was perhaps not English but was definitely dirty.
Gallifreyan? I don't know. That's a bit of a fic cliche too, that the Doctor dirty-talks in Gallifreyan. I just didn't know what to make him say that wouldn't sound really cheesy.
He quickly moved away from them and collapsed on to a heap of pillows to watch and admire what would probably be the only time he'd ever get to see what they looked like when they made love. Feeling the hazy warmth of relief spreading through his limbs, he couldn't help but whisper encouragements to them.
"She's close," he said to the other Doctor. "Open your eyes and see what she looks like when she comes."
The Doctor complied, his jaw clenching with tension and the effort to not let go until she did.
"Do you love her?" the observing Doctor prompted.
Rose leaned forward now and increased her pace, driving herself down hard on to him, shaking her head to get the hair out of her eyes so they could see one another.
"Oh yes!" the Doctor cried.
"Tell her," demanded the other Doctor firmly.
Rose had already started to feel the clenching of her muscles and the start of her orgasm spread a white glow around her vision when the Doctor bucked hard up in to her, his eyes welling up as he whispered, "I love you. I love you. I love you."
There now. I sort of feel like I kind of went down the list of Doctor/Rose Things That Need to Happen and ticked everything off. And now I give in to my occaisional need to inject angst in to my smut.
The two men lay face-to-face, just inches apart, each with an arm thrown over the other's slender waist.
Um. *gulp* Yeah. Let's just stay with that image for a while. My face just went numb thinking about it.
The soft sounds of Rose's slumber struck them both as the most wondrously beautiful thing they'd ever heard.
"Thank you," said one softly. "That's really all we wanted to say. Thank you."
"Humans do have a smashing way of showing their gratitude," the other replied.
They both smiled, mirror images of each other.
"Well, we may have gotten slightly carried away."
The other arched an eyebrow. "Just slightly?"
"You sacrifice so much so that others can be happy. And we are happy. So, when the time comes, let us go and know that for the rest of our short lives, we'll love you for making the choices that no one should ever have to." He brought a hand up to touch the other man's cheek gently.
"Doesn't sound like such a good deal for me."
There was nothing but sympathy in the Doctor's eyes. "Would you rather watch your own self and the woman you love age, get sick, and die?"
Silence.
Because, really.... Really. These are pretty much the options. There is no real fix-it for the situation the Doctor winds up in by the end of S4. This is as close to fix-it as I could in good conscience get. So, in this universe, Alt!Doc and Rose in a timey-wimey River Song-y way actually are the ones that engineer the end at Bad Wolf Bay. They are happy together, in a way the Doctor never could be. The Doctor makes sacrifices so others can be happy. It's who he is and it's why he can never be free.
"You'll remember this as a dream, and I daresay the TARDIS will make sure of that. But you'll know what you have to do when it's time, and then she'll let you feel this moment again." He kissed the palm of the other Doctor's hand and brought it up to his own temple, pressing it there as he closed his eyes and did what he had to do to protect the timelines.
This is me waving my hands around about all the psychic stuff.
When Rose woke, the Doctor was putting his jeans back on, and the other Doctor lay sprawled next to her on the bed, face innocent and smooth in repose.
"Is he sleeping?" she whispered incredulously.
"I sang him a lullaby," the Doctor said simply, and offered her a hand out of the tangled sheets. "Time to go."
As Rose dressed, she fumbled around in the pockets of her trousers and pulled out a small key strung on a simple metal chain. She placed it lightly to her lips, kissed it, and left it in a small wooden box on a low bookshelf near the door.
In The One True Free Life, Rose still wears the TARDIS key, which causes Alt!Doc some amount of insecurity. So here she's finally letting it go forever.
In the console room again, the hand the Doctor had been born from percolated away in it's glass jar. Best to not go anywhere near that, that really would cause some paradoxical chaos. He savoured the feel of the controls under his fingers for one final moment before flipping one last switch and saying his goodbyes to the TARDIS and all that she represented, thanking her for her extreme benevolence.
As soon as they shut the doors behind them, the familiar wheezing began, and as dawn broke over a suburban London street, a blue police box evaporated in to thin air while a man and a woman turned their backs and walked hand-in-hand to a robin's egg blue Morris Minor.
And there we are. Porntastic! Really though I am happy with the way it turned out, and I am still quite in love with the idea behind it. I've made my peace with Journey's End, primarily through concocting a fic universe in which the Alt!Doctor and Rose are happy. Not like instantly so, but there are choices one has to make about one's personal happiness. Sometimes you don't get to make the choice about your circumstance, but you do get to choose how you react to them. You can choose to be a miserable sod and harp all over the unfairness of what has happened, or you can choose to move on and find your happiness regardless. While in my fic Rose teaches Alt!Doctor a lot about being human, Alt!Doctor teaches Rose about just moving on and being happy (and being a smashing lay). Oh hey and when did this become the commentary for a total other fic? Sorry. ~sheepish grin~
Oh boy, we're in for it now. I rather imperiously commanded jaradel to pick a fic for me to commentate on and since the one she actually wanted I did in the last round, look what she's making me do instead! I told her I needed a distraction from politics, and a distraction this will indeed provide.
The origin of this fic is simply this: I find Tencest to be unspeakably hot. I am not normally a writer or consumer of slash. Nothing against slash, but it's just not really my kink. I think the actual moral of this story is that the Tenth Doctor is hot to imagine anyone having sex with, and two Doctors is just incendiary. I make exceptions to pretty much all my normal rules when it comes to him. I would also like to take this moment to invite everyone to google "Tencest"--no, really. Look what the first hit is. My mom would be so proud.
However, how to make the Tencest happen? Without a handy pre-existing 'verse like fid_gin 's Loved-verse, I was left to come up with some vaguely plausible (like time and space, plausibility is relative in the Whoniverse) plot that would get both Doctors together in the same place and time. This is not easy. I thought and I thought and I thought about it for days. My breakthrough came while contemplating my personal canon that the only way the existance of Voyage of the Damned can be rationally explained is that what the Master did with the Paradox Machine somehow injured the fabric of time and space temporarily and that VotD never actually happened. So, thought I, what else cold happen when time and space have a boo-boo? Well, travel to other alternate universes, apparently. And also crazyhot threeway sex.
"So come the storms of winter
And then the birds in spring again
I do not fear time"
This is from the incredibly cheesy song "Who Knows Where the Time Goes". However, I defend my use of it here by saying that Nina Simone's version will in fact move anyone to tears upon contact. It makes me think of Doctor/Rose every single time I hear it, and it makes me weep.
The Doctor sat bolt upright in bed, eyes flashing in the dim glow of the street lamps coming through the louvred blinds. He wasn't a terribly deep sleeper, and Rose initially attributed the movement she felt on his side of the bed to his not-infrequent nocturnal restlessness. She foggily waited for him to settle again, but when he didn't she opened one eye a crack to look at the clock. Three in the morning, and the Doctor was now swinging his legs out of bed and reaching for his dressing gown.
"What's up," Rose sleepily mumbled, half in to her pillow. She wasn't even really listening at first when he answered, she was so much expecting just to hear, "Nothing."
"He's here," whispered the Doctor urgently, coming around to her side of the bed. "At least, it feels like he is."
Because in my world, even the half-human Doctor can sense other Time Lords. Especially his own self.
Rose rolled over on to her back to look at him standing over her. He didn't look like he was sleepwalking, or talking in his sleep--both of which he'd done plenty of in the past year that they'd been together.
I am married to a sleep-talker/yeller/freaker-outer. You get used to it.
"Who's here? Where? There's no one here. Come back to bed."
He ran a hand through his hair, which was getting long and needed a cut, and was now flat on the side he'd been sleeping on and sticking straight out on the other. "Not literally here here. But somewhere in this universe. Close."
He sat down on the edge of the bed next to Rose and she curled her body around his like a parenthesis, protecting the ragged logic of his words.
A bit too lyrical for porn? I dunno. I like the image.
"More information, please." This had become her patient catch phrase with him, so often did he fly off in to some bout of utterly lateral thinking, forgetting that she was not, could not be, in his mind with him. He was like a child in this way sometimes, unable to comprehend that his thoughts were not the thoughts of everyone else as well.
"The Doctor, and the TARDIS. They're here."
Dun dun duuuuhhhhhnnnnn!!!! In my mind, this is where the funky porn music starts playing.
~o0o~
The TARDIS shuddered and the lighting systems flickered disconcertingly. The Doctor ran around the console, flicking switches, turning cranks, fiddling with knobs, but nothing seemed to be working. He felt suddenly that time and space were both wrong, there was something out of joint, off-kilter, like words sung to music a half a bar out of time. With a thud, she materialised and all systems shut down.
I always seem to have to include some business about the Doctor's time sense. Note to Stephen Moffet (cuz I know he totes reads my porn): please clarify this more in series 5. Enquiring minds want to know.
"What is it, eh?" he asked out loud, though he needn't have. She always sang in his mind, but as he reached for her answer, he found quite unexpectedly that someone else was there as well. With a sickening mixture of panic and hope, he immediately thought of the Master--but that was impossible. He'd just watched his body burn to ashes and not regenerate. He'd only just begun to truly mourn the only other of his kind left in the universe, when all of a sudden, here was another.
"Not alone, indeed!" he huffed, utterly dumbfounded and at a loss as to where to start. Repair his ship or find an answer to this conundrum?
He flipped on the view screen to see where he'd landed, as he was strangely unable to intuit that information on his own.
"Where'd you bring us?"
There was no relief behind his realisation that he wouldn't have to explain this bothersome state of affairs to Martha, or Jack, or anyone at all. And still the hum of this Other in his hind brain--instinctive, primal, like the way a mother knows the sound of her own baby's cry.
Though of course he can't really figure out who this other is because Alt!Ten hasn't been born yet in his timeline.
The view on the screen was simply of the same London suburb he thought he'd just left. There was the Jones house, though a good deal later at night than when he'd left. He hadn't gone anywhere at all, it seemed. Being turned in to a paradox machine had not been easy on the old girl, and while he thought he'd taken care of her well, had a short trip to Cardiff to drop Jack off as a test drive, clearly not all was right with the TARDIS. After all she'd been through, he owed it to her to write the muddle in his head off to an echo of the Master, and give her the care she needed.
He flipped the screen off just a few seconds too early to have seen the lights of a zeppelin glide with a distant whirr across the sky.
Just some dots-connecting. Since we all know zeppelins=altverse. It's such a useful shorthand. Thanks, RTD!
~o0o~
He was pretty sure that in all of his nine-hundred years he'd never been so surprised. "What?" did not even begin to cover it. He'd need to also employ "How?" and "Who?" and possibly also "Why?" He'd just assumed the knock on the TARDIS door had been Martha popping out to enquire after why he was still there, which he expected to be a mildly awkward moment. But this, this was something on a whole other plane of bizarre.
Opening the doors, he had come face to face with himself. And not just himself, but a slightly older, more dishevelled self wearing jeans and a t-shirt, who smiled and wiggled his fingers while nonchalantly saying, "Hello."
The man who looked like him but wasn't him (clearly, from the lack of the universe ending in a timeline-crossing disaster) then gazed directly in to his eyes with a look that he'd never been on the receiving end of before. So much knowledge, such great wisdom, and complete and utter pity. He had to wonder, did he himself go around looking at other beings like this? It was highly disconcerting. He felt naked.
Because he totally does go around looking at other beings like that, and it has to be ~freaky~ when he does it to you.
"What?!" he stammered.
I really do have a very soft spot in my heart for "What? What?! WHAT?!?"
The other man's response was simply to embrace him in a hug that seemed to take them both out of time for its duration.
"Well," the stranger with his face said when he released him, "this is unexpected. And rather paradoxical, which I wasn't really counting on. My mistake."
Because of course Alt!Doctor wouldn't really know at first what version of himself he'd be meeting up with and from when. I'm just imagining him assuming that it would be all linear and nonparadoxical. Whoopsie!
"Who...?" The Doctor again tried to form a sentence amidst his utter dumbfoundment.
"We haven't met yet, I'm afraid. But I've got someone else here with me, and she wants to see you very much. Is that all right?"
The Doctor just opened and closed his mouth several times without anything coming out.
"Oh, of course it's all right, why am I even asking? I'm you. I can see where your timeline is now and I'm going to make an executive decision here, if you don't mind." The other man turned towards a robins-egg blue Morris Minor that was parked down the street and waved his hand.
Robins-egg blue Morris Minor=The One True Free Life 'verse. This is my wink that that's where this story is taking place. If you haven't read that epiclong fic, this is the car that the Doctor winds up with by the end of that, and it's sort of his TARDIS-replacement. Not that it does anything special, it's just a car, but I think it really tweaks him in that it can become sort of a trade mark in the same way the TARDIS used to be.
The passenger-side door opened and the word astonished was grossly inadequate to describe the Doctor's feelings when he saw Rose Tyler run up the street, right up to the doors of the TARDIS, past this other strange man and directly in to his own arms.
Because of course this Doctor is still in series 3 and is deep deep deep in mourning.
"He hasn't...yet," the other man stage-whispered to Rose as she continued to squeeze the Doctor round his middle. "He's from the past."
Rose let him go and while he'd been too shocked to really return the hug as it ought to have been, he now felt bereft.
"Oh, yeah, I can see. There's something about him. Look! He's wearing your suit!" she squealed and hit the man on his arm for effect. She turned back to the Doctor with full eyes, though they were not sad, but wistful. "Look at you," she sighed.
Okay, yes, a little nod to River Song. So sue me.
"Rose." The Doctor finally managed to utter the name that had been at his lips so often since they'd been separated. "And...me?"
Both Rose and the other Doctor walked past him and in to the TARDIS without an invitation. Which is, of course, exactly what he himself would do in such a situation.
"I'm not you. Not really. Not as far as our timelines are concerned, that is. That would have been a very bad idea, indeed. We're way smarter than all that, I think."
Rose touched the console gingerly. "What's wrong with her?"
The Doctor rubbed the back of his head as he shut the door and walked up the gangway. "That sort of depends on where I am. Where am I?"
The other Doctor sat himself down on the jump seat and put his feet up on the console. "You're in an alternate universe, mate. The same alternate universe you always seem to be dropping in on. Don't you find that odd? Of all the alternate universes out there, you keep winding up in the same one? Not that we're complaining." He looked at Rose who gave him the thumbs-up with a cheeky grin. "Also, you're in the future. About...well, it's hard to say, time moves faster here. But for you, I'd guess about two years, maybe three."
Because in my 'verse, the Alt!Doctor is still very Doctorish. I also like Rose giving the thumbs-up here. It shows that what they're about to do they've definitely been planning together. She's all like, "It's go time!"
"And who, exactly, are you?" The Doctor's features started to turn angry and he cast a dark, suspicious look towards Rose.
Rose approached him, seeing the way he was looking at her now. "No, it's okay," she cooed. "It's me. It's your Rose. Really. Please don't be cross with us. We wanted to see you so much." She held out a hand to him, aware of her other Doctor's gaze on the both of them. "There's so much we wanted to tell you."
I really felt that after all that BS with the Master, the Doctor would find it really hard to trust anyone, and would instantly start to think that there was some foul play afoot that was causing this to happen. And also in Rose's response, more hints that this is something she's been talking over with her Doctor.
He cocked his head to one side and gave her an appraising look. "You do look older."
"That's because I am. Like we said, you're in the future."
The other Doctor cleared his throat and they both looked over to where he'd made himself quite at home at the TARDIS controls. "She brought you here on purpose," he pronounced. "Oh, Rose, that's just brilliant. The most powerful being in the Universe, and she cares so much for her old friend, even when she's in so much pain herself." He stroked the console and reached up to touch the rotor. "There's nothing wrong with her, Doctor. She brought you here to see us. Took advantage of the temporal turmoil created by what happened on the Valiant, and dropped right through to here, like a marble through a wet piece of paper."
So I pretty much ship Doctor/TARDIS under all cirucmstances. I'm also incredibly protective of her. Use the Doctor as a punching bag, make him miserable, he's so much better that way, but hands off my TARDIS! And also: Who Temporal Skience! Voila!
"The Valiant...how do you know about that?" The Doctor was incredulous again and moved away from where Rose was still reaching out to touch his hand.
"I was there, or course. That whole year, the pain, the waiting, the trauma of it that I never admitted to anyone." He looked at Rose meaningfully. "Well, not for a long time. And the guilt, knowing it was Martha out there risking her life for me, and all the time wishing she was someone else."
Forgive me, Martha-fen, but...yeah. Maybe I should just leave it at that.
The Doctor's intake of breath was an audible hiss. "Who are you?" he demanded fiercely, raising his voice sharply.
"You can hear me in your mind. You know who I am. The particulars don't matter."
Rose came up behind the Doctor again and touched his shoulder. "It doesn't have to make sense, does it? Can't we just spend some time together before you have to go again? There's so much we want to tell you, and show you, even if it doesn't make complete sense now. It will, and it's important."
He turned and placed a cool hand on her cheek. "It's you."
She smiled against his palm and thrilled to the feel of the way he stroked his thumb against her skin. "It's me."
Little callback (call forward?) to the "You're still you/I'm still me" line from Journey's End.
"One night only, I'm afraid," came the other Doctor's voice from behind them. He placed a palm against the console and looked as if he were listening to someone calling him from very far away. "Then the damage that was done by the Master starts to repair itself, and you've got a lot to do in that other universe before we all see each other again."
One night only. Which means I can never write these three again. That may in fact be a good thing.
"We've got time for a drink though, yeah?" Rose said jauntily and strode down the corridor that she hoped would take her eventually to the nice study where the Doctor kept a cabinet of strangely coloured liquors from distant galaxies.
~o0o~
"Well, cheers," said Rose brightly as she handed a crystal glass of sapphire-coloured liquid to both the Doctors, who were sitting side-by-side on the sofa, before sitting herself next to them. With them wearing completely different outfits, it was easy to tell them apart, though if they both started talking at once, she'd never be able to discern them with her eyes closed. As it was, however, the Doctor in the blue suit was unusually quiet, his eyes roving freely between her and the man seated on his other side.
So, normal (did I just refernece anything about this situation as being "normal"?) shorthand for the two Doctors is Blue Suit and Brown Suit. I had to go back and watch the end of Last of the Time Lords to see what the Doctor is sporting and it is unfortunately (on so many levels) the blue suit. So, he's wearing the blue suit here, which shoots all to hell the natural way of dealing with two characters who look the same and have the same name interacting with each other. I thought it would be confusing if I kept referencing the Proper Doctor as the one in the Blue Suit because to me, and I'm sure to a lot of other people, that just calls to mind Alt!Doc. So I rarely refer to him as such, and had to come up with other ways to differentiate them.
"So, limited time, lots to show you," the casually-dressed Doctor said brightly after finishing his drink and pouring himself another.
"Are we going somewhere?" the other Doctor enquired, looking a bit shell-shocked now.
"Nah," said Rose. "What we mean is, well, we've talked a lot about you since we last saw you. Which of course hasn't happened yet, but it will. This bloke here, he likes to talk about himself just the same as you do, so believe me when I say there've been many hours spent on this topic."
OMG they just talk and talk and taaaallllk don't they? Shut up and get to the sexin', cheesus.
"I've got a whole new perspective now, you see," the Doctor in jeans remarked emphatically, turning towards the Doctor in the middle, who was beginning to look overwhelmed and beset upon from all sides. "And I think what you need to know, more than anything else, is how loved you are, and how happy we are here together. We think about you all the time, we try to send our love to you but we know we can't, not through the boundaries of reality." He grinned a broad toothy grin that made the apples of his cheeks shine in the warm yellow light of the study. "But here you! A bit on the early side, it's true. We'll have to do something about that before we leave, because you have so much to accomplish back where you came from, and we don't want to mess that up. I've got some ideas along those lines, and I think if we get the TARDIS--"
And who doesn't like David Tennant in jeans? Anyway, this goes a bit of the way to explaining how we go from "Hey! Let's go see the Doctor cuz he's very cool and we like him!" to "Hey! Let's go totally sex up your exact duplicate!" Because of course just because the Doctor shows up in their universe doesn't mean that they have to screw him. Except that of course they do because that is the entire point of this fic. So I wanted to present their relationship to the proper Doctor in absentia as being one of really intense love.
"Doctor," Rose muttered in to her glass, draining the last drops of her second drink. "You're sort of babbling."
"Right. Sorry."
The Doctor in the middle turned his head from side to side as if he was watching a tennis match, looking at this doppleganger of himself on one side, and the woman he thought he'd never see again on the other. "I babble when I'm nervous," he said.
I'm not sure this line accomplishes what I wanted it to do which is to signal proper Doctor's acceptance of Alt!Doctor as "himself."
Both of these strangers who were not strangers at all then beamed at him and Rose gave a bright laugh that nearly broke his hearts to hear again.
"Look at that woman over there," the Doctor on the end said. "That gorgeous, brilliant woman. She loves me, and I'm you. She's always loved you, right from the start. Even when you were horrid to her, even when you were thoughtless or broke your word. Even when you couldn't say the one thing she'd wanted to hear from you. She forgives you, she knows you aren't free to be what she needs, and she loves you anyway. And now's your chance, mate."
Rose sat quietly, a look on her face that could only be described as veiled.
Anyone weirded out by Alt!Ten pimping Rose out to himself? Because...it's a bit weird, and it keeps happening in this story.
"My chance for what?" the Doctor whispered, never taking his eyes of Rose now that he'd turned them on her fully. He felt like he was in a dream, and perhaps he was. That whole year had been one long nightmare, and maybe now the TARDIS was consoling him with this vision, benevolent soul that she was. What happened next confirmed his suspicions, and slotted in nicely with the few other pleasant dreams he'd had in recent years.
"Oh, sod it," Rose said with exasperation, having grown tired of the one Doctor's cryptic ramblings and the other's confused inaction. She leaned forward, placed a hand behind the Doctor's neck, and gave him one last sidelong look before covering his mouth with hers. She felt his posture stiffen and she half expected him to pull back, but he didn't. As he began to part his lips slightly and press back in to her with equal force, she opened one eye a crack and saw her Doctor over his shoulder, watching with quiet pride.
As kisses go, it was on the chaste side, but it was the emotion heavy in the moment that had all parties, even the one merely observing, breathing raggedly and regarding one another through dazed eyes when it was over.
"You see?" said Rose finally. "You'd never let yourself feel that before, and I understand. Truly, I do."
This was originally a bit of Alt!Ten dialogue but I moved it over to Rose. I found that she wasn't talking very much, which was giving the impression that she wasn't an active participant in the seduction, which just makes the Big Pimpin' weirder.
The Doctor on his other side continued her thought, as if they were one person. "You'd never be free to give her that and you thought you were being kind to withhold yourself from her. But it doesn't matter now. You don't have to be anything for her after tonight. When we leave here, she'll still have me. I'll lend you my freedom. One night only."
So, if you've read The One True Free Life this means something fairly significant. The central theme of that story is, obviously, freedom, on a number of levels. But one is that the Alt!Doctor is free in a way that the proper Doctor can never be, and he's immensely thankful for that freedom and finally understands its significance. So I really liked the idea of Alt!Ten "lending" the Doctor that freedom for a time, to give him a bit of what he can never really fully have.
Rose licked her lips and discreetly brought a thumb up to one corner of her mouth to remove a trace of the kiss she'd just shared. "I think one more drink, yeah?" she said suggestively, decanting in to the three glasses again, and then taking hers with her as she crossed the study to a vintage phonograph she'd always been fond of when she was a resident on the ship. "And some music. There's no need to be so dour, Doctor." She made it clear she was speaking to the one in the suit, the one looking quite bedazzled now, the one who continued to be at a rather uncharacteristic loss for words. "This is a happy occasion."
No need to be so dour, the_tenzo. Yeah, that was me trying to snap myself out of making this just a huge Angst-Fest.
She flipped through the understandably quite large and eclectic record collection, and found one of her old favourites still close to the front, almost where she'd left it.
In my mind, it's Nina Simone. But I don't like to name-drop popular music in my fic.
After placing the needle on the vinyl, she was going to turn back around to share a wink with both Doctors at her selection, but instead found herself rooted to the spot. The two men faced one another on the sofa, each with a hand behind the other's neck, foreheads pressed together and eyes closed.
What about these two touching each other like this is so heartbreaking and sweet? I can't place my finger on it. But....awwwwww. They're so awesome.
Her Doctor had started talking about this on their drive to find his counterpart, but had then stopped himself and grown taciturn for a few miles before changing subjects. It was the silence in his head that made him wake in the middle of the night and pace, it was the one dark blot on his otherwise sunny demeanour, the only thing he had a hard time talking to her about. To have gone nine hundred years and at least always had the TARDIS, even when the other voices fell terrifyingly silent, and then to have nothing at all--he'd insisted sadly that it really was beyond her understanding. She'd offered to let him in to her own thoughts, but even that was not possible for his human body. The mind was capable, but the flesh was not. He needed his opposite number to forge the bridge and end the silence, at least for the time that they were together.
Not sure if I really made clear what the actual pseudo-science going on here is. The Doctor is always shown as needing to touch whoever it is to forge a psychic link to non-Time-Lords. My wanking here is that Alt!Ten, because he is in a human body, lacks whatever biological whatsit that the Doctor seems to possess in his fingers that allows this to happen. So while his mind is capable of all of the things the Doctor's mind is capable of, when it's something that needs non-human physiology to fully accomplish, he can't do it. And that is very sad.
The warm analogue sound of the singer's voice on the record made the eyes of each man flutter open, and as one they turned their heads towards her so they were cheek-to-cheek. The Doctor in the suit rose from the couch. Rose saw that they had been holding hands and as he walked toward her, her Doctor seemed to be reluctant to let go. Rose took one last sip of her drink before putting the glass down. She'd seen the look now on this Doctor's face enough times on the other's to know that there probably would not be a good deal more drinking going on for a while.
She reached her hand out to him, and he took it, leading her back over to the sofa where they sat as they'd been before, but with a whole new level of energy crackling between them.
"Kiss her again," the Doctor on the end prompted, and the words were barely spoken before Rose was making small mewling sounds under the mouth of the other. The music of her little moans combined with the shared feelings and impressions of his counterpart was more than enough for him to feel as if he were kissing her himself, which of course he'd done thousands of times in the past year. The filter of experiencing it all through the mind of someone for whom this was the first time was entirely new, shockingly intense, and drove him wild with a desire that was very much human. He hadn't meant to intrude on the moment, but he didn't realise the moans that had been percolating from his own throat until he noticed that Rose and the Doctor both had turned to look at him with raised eyebrows.
Nothing like a little psychic!sex, that's what I say. I didn't want to get too in to that aspect in this because this shit is complicated enough as it is. But a little bit is nice. Also, more Big Pimpin' from Alt!Doc. I don't know why that turns me on so. But it does. My version of Alt!Doc is much more confident, his head is screwed on better, he's *nice*. He's been in the alt!verse with Rose for quite a while (in my head it's been over a year) and all that normalcy, not to mention the very regular booty, has indeed made him in to a better, nicer, happier, more confident person.
"Sorry," he panted, and the other two smiled benevolently. "It's just...well, I'm so sorry but watching that is hot."
The Doctor in the middle smirked quite smugly and muttered, "Humans."
"Oh?" the other Doctor said with a note of challenge in his voice. "That so?" He leaned awkwardly over, his hips hovering over his twin's, and caught Rose in a deep, and quite literally breathtaking kiss, his hand gaining precarious purchase on the back of the sofa over the Doctor's shoulder. Plunging his tongue in to the familiar warmth of Rose's mouth and then pulling back and waiting for her to reciprocate, he felt movement as the Doctor began to writhe and moan and under him.
I had a devil of a time writing that paragraph so that it was clear who was doing what. I think that was the first moment of, "Oh my god, what have I done?" that I had. At first I was like, "Tra la la, I will write Tencest, and lo, it will be good!" But then once I started actually getting in to the meat of the story, it became clear what a complete and utter pronoun nightmare I had signed myself up for.
Point proved, and perhaps just a few extra moments of sweetness taken after, he settled back down at his end of the sofa again and enjoyed the view of the Doctor and Rose both flushed, breathing heavily and blinking. The Doctor loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt, not making eye-contact with the winner of this particular debate.
"I can see this is going to be quite a night for you both," Rose finally said, the corners of her mouth quirking up coyly. "But let's not forget who we're here for." She directed this at the Doctor she'd arrived with and then turned her honey-brown eyes back on the other. "Can we...you know, to your bedroom?"
The Doctor in the blue suit's eyes got rather more round than they already had been and he looked towards the door. "Oh yes," he said thoughtfully. "If I'm dreaming, might as well make it the really good kind."
"Might as well!" said the other Doctor enthusiastically as he stood up to reveal just exactly how looking forward to this next bit he was. "You two go on, I'll just, ah, tidy up in here, shall I?"
So why does Alt!Doc initially stay behind upon this extremely flimsy excuse? Narratively, it gave me a moment to get just some simple one-on-one snogging accomplished, and number two, I still needed to do more to establish the *why* of this situation. I mean, why do they all jump in to bed together? They could have gone apple-picking, they could have sat around and played Scattagories. So I needed to have some sort of moment where the Doctor and Rose are alone together and the Alt!Doc is purposefully brought in to the situation. It doesn't go all the way towards explaining why this happens, but I think the Doctor and Rose getting together makes complete logical sense in this situation, and if they then sort of invite the other Doctor, the sense that them being together makes extends to him as well. I dunno. I may or may not be full of shit.
"He's not coming along?"
Rose couldn't tell if the Doctor's question contained a note of relief or surprise.
"I think he's waiting for you to say it's okay." Rose pushed the familiar door to his bedroom open and the Doctor grabbed her wrist and pulled her in close as soon as they entered.
"If he's me, then he should already know the answer, shouldn't he?"
Clear as mud, right?
He held her tightly as he spoke, his words a cool zephyr across her cheek, and he wasted no further time--if he was dreaming then the waking would come soon enough. He backed her up against the wall next to the door, wanting to first explore how her curves felt against his own body, and savouring the contrasts. She was at a distinct advantage, knowing as she already did that the Doctor was powerless against a well-placed kissed directly below his right ear, that sucking and nibbling on the tip of each finger was the easiest way to get him from the supper table to the bedroom in under twenty seconds, and that he had a wee bit of a foot fetish.
Doctor: foot fetishist? It could happen. Also, I think snogging up against a wall is way hot. Wall!sex, maybe not so much, becuase I think we all know how the physics of that situation pans out in real life. But wall!snogging=yes plz. It's so very "OMG I MUST HAVE YOU NOW!!!"
She kicked off a shoe and began to run her foot up and down his calf. He shuddered and bucked his hips in to her, and it took her a moment to remember that the hard need that she felt there was not that of her usual lover. Or rather, it was but it wasn't. It was like going back in time, or the nearest she'd be able to get to doing that for the rest of her life.
Except going back in time would not include two sets of hands stroking the bit of bare skin between her shirt and her trousers, and two mouths running kisses along her jawline and neck. She opened her eyes to see both Doctors rather indiscriminately getting carried away by the moment. Giving the one in the t-shirt a gentle tug to the hair, she raised an eyebrow as best she could while trying to think through the fog caused by the other's hands beginning to roam under her shirt and trace along the outline of her bra.
"He said it was okay," the Doctor said hopefully, smiling.
Psychic link. He said it was okay in his mind. Handy, that.
She faintly heard the other moan "Brilliant" in to her ear before he plunged down on to her mouth again, sucking at her bottom lip and then playing his tongue around the tip of hers.
Her Doctor moved behind the other and began to help him out of his clothes, as it occurred suddenly to Rose that once they were naked and equally rumpled, there'd really be no telling them apart unless she felt for heart beats or subtle differences in body temperature. The thought was unexpectedly tantalising and she wanted very much to know what it would be like to simply abandon all attempts to keep their identities straight.
Tell me that is not knickers-combusting to think about, not being able to tell the difference. Did I just find the root of the twincest kink? ~shudders~ That is not okay.
Helping his counterpart off with his jacket and tie, the Doctor experienced a vivid flash of the passion and long pent-up need that the other was experiencing the release of, involuntarily thrusting forward and grinding his hips in to the other man's rear. This caused a chain reaction that led to Rose letting out a bit too much air, and left the two men gasping for entirely different reasons.
Does this bit of physical comedy work in this context? I kept going back and forth on that. Though as readers of That Other Fic That I Keep Referencing will know, laughing!sex plays a role in the Alt!Doctor/Rose sex life.
"All right, gentlemen," she panted after they both realised the very real danger of breaking her, and moved back a couple of steps. "This whole big room with that whole big bed and we're all huddled here in the corner like a bunch of hoodies."
They looked at one another guiltily.
"Everyone take three giant steps back," she said, like a dinner lady policing the food line. To her great surprise and eternal amusement, they both did exactly what she asked, except that at about two and a half giant steps back they each hit the edge of the bed and toppled backwards on to it.
"Oh, I'm drunk with power!" she hooted, delighting in the really rather dumb looks on both of their faces.
I am positive that I have stolen this line from someone else.
She nibbled on the tip of her thumb as she slowly moved towards them, considering the possibilities. "I think," she began thoughtfully, "that while I get a bit more of my kit off here, you two should just, you know, help yourselves."
They looked at one another, and then back at her again.
"It amuses me," she said imperiously, pointing a finger at them both before bending over to remove her other shoe. When she stood back up, she realised that she needn't have put on the Queen act, as they were both quite enthusiastically enjoying what looked to be a fairly intense telepathic feedback loop.
And here's where I just take the plunge. Sod the "why". These two want to get it on, far be it from me to stop them. You go on, gentlemen, don't let me stand in your way.
Rose stood back and watched for a while. She'd expected them to be aggressive with one another, unromantically efficient and focused on simply getting the job done as men tended to be when they masturbated, but it wasn't like that at all. It was beautiful, tender.
I'm quite fond of this observation. I've seen my share of men masturbating and it just seems so very mechanical, a bit aggressive and very goal-oriented (as guys tend to be in sex). But these two are behaving like lovers, and I'm chalking that up to Alt!Ten really actually being very much in love with the Doctor and wanting specifically to demonstrate that through physical love.
Her Doctor, the one on the right, still wearing jeans but without his t-shirt now, gently pushed the other down on to the bed and laid down next to him, propping himself up on an elbow and landing kisses along his rib cage while fumbling one-handed with clasps and zips. The other, prone on the bed and seemingly transported, grabbed at the duvet with his hands and rocked his hips forward and back under the other man's trouser ministrations.
Just watching them, her body was responding intensely.
You and me both, sister.
Her hands hovered over a button of her shirt, forgotten about for the moment. Her lips parted and she licked them to try and simulate how her Doctor was now running his tongue along the swollen lips of the other, in between outrageously deep kisses that had him bringing his head up to seek more. When she saw the familiar hand of her lover reach out and do something quite unfamiliar, parting the other Doctor's trousers at the zip and take a firm grip that prompted him to lift his hips well off the bed, Rose felt a spreading warmth that was more than just metaphorical. She quickly shucked the rest of her clothing, and saw both men take a deep breath in as the scent of her arousal permeated the room.
"You don't think you deserve this, but you do" her Doctor said softly as he shifted himself downward and pulled the other's trousers off completely. "You don't even like to lose control when you're all alone, but it might do you some good. You can take that piece of advice for free." He looked over at Rose and gave her a small nod, but the other Doctor seemed to be too far gone to notice. She approached the two of them and laid herself down in the crook of the Doctor's arm, on the opposite side from where the other was gently and slowly sliding his tongue up and down his cock.
Take Alt!Ten's advice: Masturbate regularily for better mental health! And hello everyone I said "cock." I really have such issues with anatomical terms. I'm like the prudiest porn-writer in the known universe.
Rose had a brief moment of remembering every joke she'd ever heard about men trying to go down on themselves, but the groan ripped from the prone Doctor's throat was in and of itself enough to create another surge of warmth between her legs and to blot out all thoughts of how weird this must look. She pressed her body against him and whispered encouragements in his ear.
"I want you to feel the pleasure," she sighed, arranging herself so that if she moved her hips just so against his thigh she could start a rolling wave of sensation that would spread out all the way to the tips of her fingers and toes before gathering back at her centre again. Her Doctor continued his achingly slow progress down the other's shaft and back up again. "Tell me how good it feels," she whispered against his neck, as she prepared to hit that spot below his ear that she knew would drive him wild.
Rose dirty talking is also hot. She should really do that more. Anyway, this is where the "mission" that Rose and her Doctor are on becomes completely clear. They're here to show the Doctor a Real Good Time and to prove a point about his self-loathing issues.
His hand, which had been fisting the covers rather spastically now came up and took hold of her firm, round rump. He opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out by vowels, all of them ragged and lacking any kind of volume control.
"He's quite good, isn't he?" she said, hot against his ear, but not low enough that her Doctor didn't hear her and shoot her a rather smug look.
"Yes," the Doctor hissed as he tossed his head back in response to something the other was doing with his hands out of Rose's view.
"He knows exactly how you want it."
"Yes," the Doctor gasped again and Rose craned her neck a little to see what her Doctor was doing. They'd had a discussion once, she and he, about things men like that are often best left in the hands of other men, such as what he was doing now with his hand palm-up on the sheet under his twin's rocking hips.
I can't write about bum play. While I may have some big issues with the usual terms for male and female genitalia, there are NO non-squicky terms for bunghole. None. So, we make do with euphamisms. In case anyone missed it, Alt!Doctor is giving Proper!Doctor a bit of a fingering.
"And you deserve it, don't you?" she prompted, running a hand over his nipples and scratching it through the fine hair on his chest.
"Oh yes," he moaned, and she pressed herself to his thigh again so he could feel how warm and wet she was.
"Say it. Say you deserve this pleasure," her Doctor prompted, working gently with his long, slender fingers before moving his mouth back down on to him.
Rose brushed the hair away from the Doctor's forehead, where pinpoints of sweat were beginning to stand out. When he opened his impossibly black, wide eyes again, she was already looking in to them and waiting, lips red and parted, cheeks golden-pink. "Say it," she mouthed soundlessly.
He closed his eyes again, unable to hold her gaze as he spoke the words.
"I deserve it."
Aww. Also ~fans self~ I'm getting massively turned on re-reading this. Is that wrong?
Rose looked down at her Doctor, who paused in his activity and gave her a proud little smile before taking the other Doctor in to his mouth again, now at a faster pace. He began to make his own low sounds of pleasure around the other's cock, reminding Rose that they could share something she never could be a part of, though she wasn't jealous.
I think Alt!Ten does a bit too much proud smiling in this fic. He needs to lay off that. And I need to come up with some more expressions for him to make.
Rose knew all the signs; the flexing of his feet, the deepening tone of his moans, and she began to feel quite selfishly upset that she was not going to get to have a go with her original Doctor.
With a great spasm through his whole body, and a shout that made her glad for the dimensionally transcendent soundproofing of the TARDIS, the Doctor released in to the mouth of the other, who made gentle sucking sounds as he brought him back in for a gentle denouement.
Rose could not manage to wipe a pouty look off of her face, and as both Doctors opened their eyes, they caught it and looked at one another with very cheeky grins.
I think I wrote the Doctor being really standoffish in the non-sex parts of this fic, so I'm just going to claim that at this point, he realises there's pretty much no reason to be such a pill any more and can finally just relax.
"Oh, poor Rose!" her Doctor said, wiping his chin and sitting back on his heels. "You see what horrible beasts males are? Given the opportunity to fuck ourselves, we just can't help it."
Snerk. It wouldn't be a Tencest fic without that observation. It's funny cuz it's true.
The other Doctor continued to gain his breath and composure back, but she heard him make a low chuckling sound deep in his chest. "You haven't told her, have you?" He winked at his other self.
"Why would I tease her with what she can't have? I'm only human, don't want her comparing me to the other version. That wouldn't do at all."
Rose sat up and looked back and forth between them with annoyance. Her entire body ached and she consoled herself with the thought that at least her Doctor was still straining under his jeans, even if that wasn't what she'd originally had in mind.
"What are you two on about?"
"Time Lord." Her Doctor pointed at the other. "Binary vascular system. Are you connecting any dots here?"
"Doctor, you know I can't think straight when you've got me all...flustered."
"Two hearts, two circulatory systems, quite enough stamina to go two rounds."
Rose looked at the other Doctor in shock. "And you are keeping yourself from the women of the universe for what reason again?"
LOL Okay, I did crack myself up with that line. The Doctor having Super! Time Lord! Sexual! Stamina! (and no refractory period!) is a bit of a silly fic cliche, but I tried to inject a small amount of science in there to explain it. Because I am not done with him yet.
"Well, let's not get full of ourselves," he said modestly while shooting her Doctor a look that was very much full of itself.
There was probably a lewd pun in there somewhere, but Rose was at a loss. Her Doctor stood and began to unzip his jeans and step out of them.
"Is that what my bum looks like?" the other Doctor drawled, propping himself up on his elbows.
"It's a very nice bum," Rose assured him. "A bit flat, but we can't all have an arse like mine, can we?"
Her Doctor turned around, his erection pointing right at them quite proudly. "Let's have a look then," he demanded. "It is a capital bum. I'm quite fond."
And again with Alt!Doctor having a proud...something. Enough with the pride. God, my vocabulary is weeeeaaaak. Also, totally love the talk about the bums, because you know that's the first thing the Doctor would notice--how he looks from the back.
Rose knelt on the bed and turned her back to the both of them, giving her own behind a little smack for good measure.
"That's quite a view," the Doctor laying on the bed noted matter-of-factly to the other. Rose looked coyly over her shoulder, enjoying the ego boost.
"It is. I love to have her from behind so I can look at it." Her Doctor crawled on to the bed again and knelt behind her, his cock bumping up against the small of her back and sending a wave of anticipation through her. "In fact, I don't think I can help myself." He reached down and spread her legs, rubbing firm circles on her rump as he did so.
TMI time! Yes, it's my personal favourite position. It's a constant struggle to NOT write this position in to every piece of smut that I author. It's hard being me. And again with the Doctor spreading Rose's legs. I'm noticing a lot of similar tropes in my writing.
She leaned over on to her elbows and could see just out of the corner of her eye the other Doctor's prick begin to twitch and grow pink and firm again. She couldn't be sure, but it felt as if she was so wet it might actually be a bit unbecoming.
OMG I SAID "PRICK"!!! Did I really write that? Lordy. Also, the pinkness...caucasian cocks are already pink pretty much all the time. What was I thinking? Clearly I wasn't.
Her Doctor moved back from her and arranged himself, then took her hips in his hands and brought her up and back, to completely take him inside of her in one smooth movement, made easy through a lot of studied practise.
Practise makes perfect. Clearly this is one of their favourite positions as well.
All was silence for a few moments, the only sound the wet sucking noises coming from where she and the Doctor were joined and moved together. She finally let out a long low moan as he withdrew from her entirely, and she felt the bed jostle a little with movement.
When she was entered again, it wasn't at first obvious that it was a different man. She bucked her hips back, and it was only the hesitation that gave him away. Her Doctor would have gamely thrust forward, but the man inside her now didn't move at all, but just clutched at her hips and let out a little sound of wonder.
We're almost done with the damn story and finally the Doctor gets to make love to Rose. Took long enough. Anyway, I was kind of concerned about getting too much of a "gang bang" vibe going on here. I mean, that's actually what's happening but when I think gang bang I think absolutley horrific porno and also a lot of non-consensual ick. So, that's one of the reasons why Alt!Doc is doing quite a bit of talking and encouraging (and more pimping), to make it a more tender moment than the situation would otherwise imply. And I did like the opportunity it afforded to differentiate the Doctors by how the respond sexually to her. How Alt!Ten is all "woo ride 'em cowboy!" and the Doctor is sort of filled with wonder and awe and hesitation. Because of course Alt!Doc has gotten all his wonder and awe out of his system--he's been sleeping with Rose long enough that he's more or less through that phase.
"It's okay," she heard her Doctor say. "You deserve it. She's so beautiful, isn't she?"
The Doctor's only response was an even further hardening inside of her, and she had to lean her forehead against the bed to keep from collapsing with the pleasure of it.
"She loves you and she wants you to fuck her," her Doctor continued.
But she was suddenly empty again and she gasped with the simultaneous pleasure of the Doctor's shaft leaving her, and the ache of being left. She looked back over her shoulder, eyes pleading but unable to form words.
Shaft. Heh. ~facepalm~
"You see?" her Doctor said gently, lining himself up behind her again. "It's like she glows when I make love to her, like the Bad Wolf never left her." He entered her with just the tip at first and then thrust in hard. She cried out his name, and it was only in retrospect that she wondered if she should have made that plural. But four or five glorious, long, slow, timeless plunges in and out, and he was gone again.
This time there was no hesitation or pause between them and the other Doctor was taking her before she could recover from the leaving of the first, who was now laying down at her side and looking up in to her eyes.
"Say her name," he said, bringing a hand up to brush some hair away that had been falling in to her mouth.
And the other Doctor did say her name, with each thrust in to her, he said it like a prayer. She closed her eyes just to listen to him and to hold close all the subtle differences between the way he said it and the way she'd grown accustomed to hearing it. She felt hands now roaming all over her body and finally gave up trying to figure out who was who. Someone placed a thumb within her folds that made her press down in to it, two fingers were squeezing and releasing her nipple, a palm rubbed and smacked at her bum and felt herself slowly tumbling forward.
They continued to take turns until Rose was breathless, teased with hands and fingers to within an inch of release, when she heard the Doctor, hers she assumed through the note of authority in his voice, speak again.
"What do you want, Rose?"
Alt!Ten really is a Top in my universe. He's so manly and RAWR and confident. He's not like that in The One True Free Life (which only deals with like his first week in the altverse), but I sort of saw him heading there by the end of it.
She wasn't able to answer in words and was barely able to answer in actions, but found the strength to get back up on to her hands, sit up and face them both as they knelt side by side. It was as she predicted. Without clothes and equally at loose ends with lust, they were identical. She looked back and forth between them, and placed her hand on the chest of each in turn. Where she felt two rapidly beating hearts, she kept her palm there and pushed backwards. The Doctor yielded easily as he had done earlier for her Doctor and she did not hesitate to move over and straddle him.
And now we move to my other personal favourite position. Mr. Tenzo is a lucky man, y/y? I'd also like to remind our viewers that neither of the human participants in this fic has had an orgasm yet. That, my friends, is why it is called fiction.
She looked at her Doctor with a silent question on her lips and he nodded in reply. Her movements were quick and smooth, but when the Doctor closed his eyes with the pleasure of this new angle, she stopped. "No, I want you to see me."
Rose speaks! I've got a lot of Rose POV in this fic, but she actually doesn't talk much. That troubles me a bit, actually, and I might give her a bit more to say if I were to do this over again. But let's face facts: the interesting couple in this scenario is Ten/Ten.
Her Doctor knelt next to them, his erection bumping up against her thigh periodically as she leaned forward and back, rocking gently and slowly and finding her own pleasure. When she did at last make the final minute adjustment that would allow every movement to send a jolt of fire through her veins, she reached over and took her Doctor in her hand, rubbing his tip with her thumb in time with the movements of her hips.
All three broke out in to a spontaneous moan of each others names and the Doctor Rose was now riding raised a hand up rather impotently to search for some small part of the other Doctor that he could bring pleasure to, finally taking over the rubbing and stroking from Rose.
Somewhere in the back of her head Rose knew this would probably be something for the record books, but what could one expect when one fucked two men who were in fact the same man? Completely simultaneous orgasm would probably be a bit much to hope for, but both men seemed near enough that she decided to speed things up for herself with a judicious lean backwards and a finger that she'd had the Doctor previously sucking on.
My nod of the head towards the fact that this entire scenario is utterly ridiculous. Extremely hot, yes, but completely ludicrous.
The sight of her touching herself and licking her lips in concentration drove her Doctor over the edge, despite the increasingly erratic ministrations of the other, and he spilled on to the rumpled sheets with a hoarse cry of a word that was perhaps not English but was definitely dirty.
Gallifreyan? I don't know. That's a bit of a fic cliche too, that the Doctor dirty-talks in Gallifreyan. I just didn't know what to make him say that wouldn't sound really cheesy.
He quickly moved away from them and collapsed on to a heap of pillows to watch and admire what would probably be the only time he'd ever get to see what they looked like when they made love. Feeling the hazy warmth of relief spreading through his limbs, he couldn't help but whisper encouragements to them.
"She's close," he said to the other Doctor. "Open your eyes and see what she looks like when she comes."
The Doctor complied, his jaw clenching with tension and the effort to not let go until she did.
"Do you love her?" the observing Doctor prompted.
Rose leaned forward now and increased her pace, driving herself down hard on to him, shaking her head to get the hair out of her eyes so they could see one another.
"Oh yes!" the Doctor cried.
"Tell her," demanded the other Doctor firmly.
Rose had already started to feel the clenching of her muscles and the start of her orgasm spread a white glow around her vision when the Doctor bucked hard up in to her, his eyes welling up as he whispered, "I love you. I love you. I love you."
There now. I sort of feel like I kind of went down the list of Doctor/Rose Things That Need to Happen and ticked everything off. And now I give in to my occaisional need to inject angst in to my smut.
The two men lay face-to-face, just inches apart, each with an arm thrown over the other's slender waist.
Um. *gulp* Yeah. Let's just stay with that image for a while. My face just went numb thinking about it.
The soft sounds of Rose's slumber struck them both as the most wondrously beautiful thing they'd ever heard.
"Thank you," said one softly. "That's really all we wanted to say. Thank you."
"Humans do have a smashing way of showing their gratitude," the other replied.
They both smiled, mirror images of each other.
"Well, we may have gotten slightly carried away."
The other arched an eyebrow. "Just slightly?"
"You sacrifice so much so that others can be happy. And we are happy. So, when the time comes, let us go and know that for the rest of our short lives, we'll love you for making the choices that no one should ever have to." He brought a hand up to touch the other man's cheek gently.
"Doesn't sound like such a good deal for me."
There was nothing but sympathy in the Doctor's eyes. "Would you rather watch your own self and the woman you love age, get sick, and die?"
Silence.
Because, really.... Really. These are pretty much the options. There is no real fix-it for the situation the Doctor winds up in by the end of S4. This is as close to fix-it as I could in good conscience get. So, in this universe, Alt!Doc and Rose in a timey-wimey River Song-y way actually are the ones that engineer the end at Bad Wolf Bay. They are happy together, in a way the Doctor never could be. The Doctor makes sacrifices so others can be happy. It's who he is and it's why he can never be free.
"You'll remember this as a dream, and I daresay the TARDIS will make sure of that. But you'll know what you have to do when it's time, and then she'll let you feel this moment again." He kissed the palm of the other Doctor's hand and brought it up to his own temple, pressing it there as he closed his eyes and did what he had to do to protect the timelines.
This is me waving my hands around about all the psychic stuff.
When Rose woke, the Doctor was putting his jeans back on, and the other Doctor lay sprawled next to her on the bed, face innocent and smooth in repose.
"Is he sleeping?" she whispered incredulously.
"I sang him a lullaby," the Doctor said simply, and offered her a hand out of the tangled sheets. "Time to go."
As Rose dressed, she fumbled around in the pockets of her trousers and pulled out a small key strung on a simple metal chain. She placed it lightly to her lips, kissed it, and left it in a small wooden box on a low bookshelf near the door.
In The One True Free Life, Rose still wears the TARDIS key, which causes Alt!Doc some amount of insecurity. So here she's finally letting it go forever.
In the console room again, the hand the Doctor had been born from percolated away in it's glass jar. Best to not go anywhere near that, that really would cause some paradoxical chaos. He savoured the feel of the controls under his fingers for one final moment before flipping one last switch and saying his goodbyes to the TARDIS and all that she represented, thanking her for her extreme benevolence.
As soon as they shut the doors behind them, the familiar wheezing began, and as dawn broke over a suburban London street, a blue police box evaporated in to thin air while a man and a woman turned their backs and walked hand-in-hand to a robin's egg blue Morris Minor.
And there we are. Porntastic! Really though I am happy with the way it turned out, and I am still quite in love with the idea behind it. I've made my peace with Journey's End, primarily through concocting a fic universe in which the Alt!Doctor and Rose are happy. Not like instantly so, but there are choices one has to make about one's personal happiness. Sometimes you don't get to make the choice about your circumstance, but you do get to choose how you react to them. You can choose to be a miserable sod and harp all over the unfairness of what has happened, or you can choose to move on and find your happiness regardless. While in my fic Rose teaches Alt!Doctor a lot about being human, Alt!Doctor teaches Rose about just moving on and being happy (and being a smashing lay). Oh hey and when did this become the commentary for a total other fic? Sorry. ~sheepish grin~