I blame a dream I had for this one. Apparently this is what happens when I eat food right before going to bed.
Ok, warnings: Dubious consent of a ... complicated nature in the second chapter. I honestly don't know what to call it or how to describe it here without spoiling it. But this fic does feature Ten going behind Rose's back and enacting a plan of his own that she has no knowledge of or consented to.
More notes: The details of Gallifreyan anatomy and sexuality in this fic all come from sources in the Expanded Universe and explicitly-implied canon/fanon (is it fanon when it's pretty well implied in canon?) as well as my own headcanon concerning Ten's sexuality. There's also Ten's statement in Journey's End that there has never been a human-Time Lord hybrid, which I take to mean that humans and Gallifreyans are incompatible when it comes to reproduction (and if anyone mentions Leela/Andred or Susan/David: Lungbarrow is incredibly acephobic; Susan and David all adopted children and then had their son Alex created via test tubes). Feel free to disagree, but that's how I interpreted it.
Honestly, this whole fic is best summed up as:
Me: Doctor, don't do the thing.
Ten: I'm gonna do the thing.
Audience: Doctor, don't do the thing.
Ten: Too late, I did the thing!
Chapter 1
All I want is everything.
Am I asking too much?
All I want is everything
Like the feel of your touch.
—Def Leppard, "All I Want is Everything"
"Doctor?"
The Time Lord looked up from his book to see Rose Tyler standing in the doorway to the TARDIS's library. "Yes?" he asked, marking the page he'd been reading and setting the book aside.
It had been two months since he found her again, since the 2009 Dalek invasion of Earth. They'd managed to foil Davros' plans for the Reality Bomb with the help of several of the Doctor's past companions and former current companion Donna Noble. Donna had decided to go back home after that, which left him traveling with Rose.
She was older now than when they'd last seen each other—around twenty-six or twenty-seven, he guessed. Her blonde hair was longer, and the lisp she'd developed traveling across universes had faded. Sometimes the Doctor couldn't believe she was actually here, back with him in his TARDIS.
Rose walked over to him, perched on the arm of his chair. "I was just…" She hesitated, suddenly looking nervous, and wet her lips. "I was wondering if…" She shifted, rested her hands in her lap. "You said you were a dad once." Her head turned slightly away from him, as if she was afraid of his reaction.
The Doctor's eyebrows furrowed as he puzzled over where she was going with this. "Yes, I was, but it was a long time ago. Why do you—?"
Rose took a deep breath, finally looked him in the eyes. "Would you ever want kids again? With me?"
For ten long seconds his respiratory bypass kicked in and left him breathing only through his skin as the implications of what she was asking hit him full-force. Then his pulmonary tubes started working again even as his hearts threatened to stop and sink.
Even if he wanted to—and suddenly he did—he couldn't give her what she was asking. Gallifreyans as a whole were infertile—sterile—as a result of both the last of the Pythia's curse and Rassilon wiping out the native Gallifreyans and rebuilding the genome to his specifications. The Doctor himself had been Loomed—woven a body from already-existing biodata—along with others long since then—but he could remember a time before he'd been Loomed into a Gallifreyan body in the Prydonian House of Lungbarrow. This particular incarnation and only a few of his previous ones were able to feel sexual attraction, yes—but only with someone he had formed an emotional or romantic bond with. In this tenth body, that amounted to Rose and only Rose. Most of his other bodies—and Time Lords in general—were asexual. Gallifreyans hated touch—blame it on being highly telepathic and a hivemind—and the Time Lords especially thought of sexual intercourse as primitive, barbaric, and well beneath them. There was a reason they used the phrase "breeding like humans" where humans would say "screwing like rabbits," after all.
Even without taking all that into account, his internal anatomy and Rose's anatomy were too different. The Doctor, like all Gallifreyans, was more insectoid than mammalian in terms of internal anatomy: he didn't have lungs; had a binary vascular system; his eyes, while they weren't compound eyes, reflected in the dark like those of a cat; he had more internal organs than humans did; and his core body temperature was fifteen degrees Celsius.
As for his previous children and granddaughter, Susan, they had either been Loomed or adopted. Marriages on Gallifrey had been more to strengthen political ties between Houses than anything else. But how could he explain all of this to Rose in a way she would understand?
The Doctor opened his mouth to try and explain, but Rose had already taken his long silence as an answer in the negative. Her expression clouded over with disappointment. "Right, then," she muttered. "Forget I mentioned it." She slid off the arm of the chair and started to walk away.
The Doctor reached for her—Rose, wait!—but it was too late. She was already gone.
He sighed, leaned forward and dragged his hands down his face before rubbing at his temples. Later he would go after her, talk to her, try to explain that he couldn't give her children even though he wanted to and it was what she wanted as well.
Wait.
His eyes narrowed as a sudden thought occurred to him and a plan started forming in his mind.
-x-
Hours later, once he was sure Rose was asleep, the Doctor made his way to the console room and asked his TARDIS to move her room far, far away. Once he'd received confirmation from his Ship that Rose's room was indeed moved, he took them out of the Vortex and materialized his timeship on Earth, mid-21st century, somewhere in the UK. Then he locked the front door, went back to the console, and called up the Chameleon Arch. It took him five minutes to code in the desired genetic sequence—human—and fix the fob watch in place.
Let me retain my personality and at least some of my memories, he silently told his TARDIS. Please.
Then he settled the Arch over his head, turned it on.
He lasted one minute before he started screaming in agony.
-x-
Rose tossed and turned in her sleep, snapped out of her dream as a sense that something was very, very wrong settled over her. She threw back the covers, crossed the floor to her bedroom door, and started to run.
It took her a few moments to realize that it was taking her far longer than it normally did to reach the console room. She growled to herself in frustration and doubled her speed, slowing only to negotiate turns in the corridor and make her way up or down flights of stairs.
The Doctor was in trouble, she was sure of it—and she had to get to him.
-x-
His screams died away as the last changes were completed. Panting, he tore the device from his head, fingers clawing at the fob watch and prying it from its clasp. He managed to slide it into his pocket before he crumpled to the floor.
Vaguely he was aware of the Chameleon Arch moving out of sight, of his single heart pounding and the blood roaring in his ears. Good. It worked. His lips turned up in a faint smile that faded when he became aware of a faint, familiar voice calling his name.
"Doctor? Doctor!"
Rose.
He pushed himself to his feet, grabbing hold of the yellow chair for support, and sank down into it with one hand slipping into the pocket that contained the fob watch just as Rose entered the doorway. She leaned against it for a few moments, catching her breath, then stalked toward him once she'd recovered.
"You're all right!" She sounded surprised.
He raised an eyebrow. "Course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"
"I… I just had this feeling…" Rose looked troubled for a few seconds; then she seemed to shake it off and hugged him in relief. He hesitated a second before returning her hug, all too aware of the fact she was wearing only her pajamas (which consisted of a tank top and sweats).
"Yeah, well, as you can see, I'm fine." Much to his relief, she pulled back from the hug after that and he pushed himself up into a standing position. She flashed him a smile that he returned before it faded.
"Doctor, I—"
"Rose, I—"
She stopped. "You first."
As discreetly as he could, he slipped his hand back into his pocket and palmed the fob watch. "No, you go ahead."
She bit her lip. "I'm sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have brought it up. I'll just… go back to bed."
His single heart skipped a beat. Tell her, the voice of his Time Lord self insisted.
Before she could walk away he grabbed her wrist with his free hand. "Wait. Stay with me tonight, Rose, please." He brought her hand to his mouth, pressed a light kiss to her palm. "I was just surprised earlier, that's all. I do want that with you, honest." This was his Time Lord self speaking just as much as it was this new human self. It looked as though the TARDIS had kept his personality and a few of his memories intact—such as their earlier conversation, him using the Arch. (Though, touching the watch was probably having something to do with it as well, allowing more of his Time Lord self to bleed through.)
Her golden-brown eyes flicked to where he was holding her wrist then up to meet his dark brown gaze. She nodded, drew in a shaky breath, and smiled. "Okay."
He pressed another kiss to the pulse-point in her wrist, then led her to his room.