They were closer than they'd ever been. They'd never needed to be this close before. And he'd been so careful to preserve this particular distance.
Later, the Doctor would punish the man on the planet for making her sick. And he wouldn't tell her how.
"Was an honest mistake wasn't it?" she would ask and he would fix her with that dark look that said he was older, much older and knew of things she hadn't dreamed of. All of them terrible.
It was the farthest she felt from him, that look. If she had known better she might have recognized it as an 'I love you'. Nine hundred year old men didn't get angry unless something precious to them was threatened. But he was careful to keep his burdens from her and love was the greatest.
But all of that was later.
For now there was only the experiment. Cut off from the protection of the TARDIS and exposed to a variety of particularly horrible viruses.
"Time Lords are the most incredible aliens," the man had breathed, clearly a bit mad, too mad to be called a scientist, "What an amazing opportunity! The immunities we can sample and study! The advancements we can make!"
Later, in the dangerous bit of conversation the Doctor had with him before punishing him, he explained that regenerative properties were not an inoculation and could never be farmed and used as one.
"But why would you travel with an alien that looks just like you but isn't the same species?" the man would ask.
No answer to that. He didn't deserve to know about Gallifrey. Who could understand loneliness? Who could know what Earth meant to him? A planet full of people who looked so very like him. And no one must ever know what Rose meant to him.
Now there was Rose collapsing in his arms, breathing stuttered, skin changing colour, eyes gone red. A timeline so utterly improbable they had not seen it. Not he, nor the TARDIS. It had been decided in the impulse of the moment by this arrogant, selfish man.
"She's human! She's human!" he heard himself screaming through the glass, realizing the man's mistake, thinking they were both from Gallifrey. But even as he said it, that taste on the air, they could save her but the pain of it would be worse than the virus. And that was when he realized the man had known, perhaps not right away but before this last virus for sure.
He had decided to test something else about Time Lords. Something the Doctor was now forced to if he wanted to keep Rose from suffering. But it was close. Closer than they'd ever been. Too close to keep her safe from his burdens.
Rose was clutching him in pain and terror but her voice croaked out, "It's not your fault." And he was reminded of another time, another Rose staring down death and saying, "I wouldn't have missed it for the world!" Her only thought for him. Her bravery the most selfless 'I love you' ever given to him.
And so he gathered her to him tasting sickness and Rose, terror and love. He forced her to stand supporting her completely and dragged her under the shower head in the corner. He was talking non-stop, promises and comfort but she was reading the truth in his face. Her eyes blinking back pain and trying to sooth him too. Finally he stared into her eyes, forced himself to forget the man, the glass cage, the terrible punishment he would exact for this, all his feelings. He stopped the world for them, she felt it. He changed the feeling of time and there was only silence, not the hiss of the scalding water and the medicine as it started.
"Here comes the medicine Rose," he said very calmly, "But we're going somewhere else for a while."
He cupped her face in his hands and Rose felt the pain slowly fade. She stopped trembling and seizing. Her breath came easily. She was standing in a bright light, the Doctor's hands at her face. He gently released her and smiled. The light faded and they were in a meadow of endless red grass, mountains in the distance.
"Where are we?" she heard her voice ask, but the sound was changed, not real.
"Gallifrey," he replied casually, eyes not meeting hers, "My home, as it was."
She looked around in wonder, then back to him with a frown, "So where are we really?"
She could feel herself forgetting the way she had come, just as he had planned for her to. But she seized in sudden pain and turned to look back. He had her in his arms in an instant, forcing her to look at him, "Don't. Rose, don't."
She frowned and he added, "You're with me, in my mind while the medicine works so you don't have to feel any pain. Stay with me. Don't look back."
"Medicine," she said slowly, "I got sick. But you didn't. Time Lords don't get sick."
He nodded and her face lit with understanding, "They thought I was a Time Lord!"
The Doctor smiled, "Well, you look like one."
She smiled her cheeky smile, his favorite, "Never thought of it like that. I always just think you look so human."
Her eyes studied his face, "Must make you feel a little less lonely, seeing a whole planet of us eh? I'm right aren't I?"
Sadness crept into just the corners of his eyes. She'd seen it before and she hated it. "You're always right Rose Tyler."
Her hand came to rest over his hearts, then she replaced it with her cheek, listening and he didn't stop her.
"Two hearts," she murmured. Her face turned up, close to his, a little glazed with endorphins. Good, it was working.
"What else is different?" she asked thickly.
"Oh, lots of things," he smiled.
"Taste," she remembered, "And hearing."
Her hands suddenly dug into his shoulders, her eyes widening in pain. She tried to hide it from her face but he felt it. Then she steadied herself and took control. Of everything. Of course she did. She was Rose.
The Doctor looked down and found himself in the pajamas from Christmas Day. They were in the field by New New York, then in the TARDIS, then in her room back home. They were a little bit everywhere and he liked that.
Her hands relaxed, adjusted his collar (why the pajamas? didn't she like the suit?) then slowly slid up into his hair and goose bumps broke out along his spine. She was reaching for pleasure. She understood exactly how this worked. And he let her.
"Does it feel different for you?" she asked because Rose was more gentle with him than anyone ever had been.
"Does what feel different?" he heard his voice hitch as her hands kept at his hair.
"Being like this?" she asked, "Being close?"
She came closer and broke up that incalculable protection he had been so careful to maintain. She sent it away with one beautiful, elegant reaching made of perfect intentions. And she changed in his arms. This was different.
"You change," he said quietly, "The way you..."
He had no real words for this. He'd seen it before, between other people. But it had never been directed at him this way. She tasted differently just about the skin, he could feel it without touching. Desire, arousal and traces still of bad wolf, of time bound and held for her purpose and he would never forget how she did that for him.
She pulled back to look in his face, reading that memory, "Well! And were you ever gonna tell me that? Thanks a bleeding lot!"
Then she read it all. Bad wolf. And how he died for her. And why he regenerated with a face she could so easily love, a body closer to hers. Secrets she realized he never meant for her to know. Intimacies he couldn't control.
"Doctor," she breathed and her fingers traced tiny sensations of love across his skin, physically careful with the vulnerability she found, "But you know I feel it too."
The words were low and still they cut him. So she kissed him and the rush of euphoria she felt when he let her and kissed her back washed over her like a wave. And he felt himself caught in it too. Rose, suffering under a hot shower of alien medicine was blotted out entirely by this one moment. Imagined. A thousand timelines were borne of it and he traced each one against his will. They burrowed into him and he could not force himself to turn away, to regret, to fight back. They were each of them pleasure and she dreamed them all. She imagined their happiness and he let himself vanish into it the way he vanished into a moment of stillness back on Gallifrey when two Time Lords let their paths cross this closely and all possibilities became only one.
But Rose was human and senses lit up in her that distracted him until he pulled back, breathing laboured and gasped out brokenly, "You taste...like...you want me."
Rose let one hand wander to his face and grinned at him, "Yeah, well, this is my dream so you taste a bit like...chips. Perfect!"
There was a laugh and who it belonged to didn't matter. And then there was only coming together. Pheromones, skin temperature, a calamity of chemistry making her sinuous and beckoning him in the human way to change with her, to share themselves and open that blissful place of creation. It was different than with Time Lords. It was better.
Always the scientist, her voice chided in his mind. Her hands were under his pajamas then she was joining their bodies and he was burning. Were they in her bed? On Gallifrey? He couldn't tell and he did not care. He vanished truly into the moment for the first time in hundreds of years and tasted Rose. He forgot that Rose would have to forget this or she would remember the pain. He forgot that they were only in his mind. He forgot the man, the glass box, the virus, the planet and finally the stars.
It was only when his senses narrowed to catalogue each piece that he realized what was happening. There was Rose, bare, warm, legs wrapped around his hips, hands on his shoulders as she led the rhythm. Her mouth over his. Her breathing laboured. Her beautiful face when she pulled away. Her hands running up into his hair again and again when he took control, hands on her hips, tremors of pleasure threatening to break his last anchor with reality. Then there were his hearts beating together as one. Impossible. They did not work that way. He wasn't feeling this like a Time Lord anymore. He was feeling it like a human man. He was riding a timeline. It was a timeline so strong it would certainly come true though he could not imagine how. But there it was. A human version of himself would be with Rose.
"You're thinking again," Rose chided, "I want you completely, just once. Can I have that with you?"
She asked it honestly. She accepted the possibility that it was not possible for him with his all that is, was and will be brain at the helm.
He smiled, hands disappearing into her hair, "Actually, yes it is."
An undreamt of peace took root in his chest. A human timeline. Improbable. Echoing back to this memory with its power. Now it granted him the capacity to give this to her, even before it became reality. It let him taste it before he could. This might be the only time for him, in a way. But he could offer himself completely.
So he let one heart beat measure the rhythm of pleasure and stopped thinking altogether. Closer and closer they came and he let her read everything because someday he would. He felt her, even past the physical, love like gentle fingers in his mind, tracing places of interest with care. Deeper and deeper she went until she was outlining his name. She could not say it, not yet, but she felt it.
"Is that how that works?" she breathed.
He answered her with his mouth, warm and urgent until words and names washed away. And he granted himself this echoed moment of the future and let it play like a note of music in the now. Rose, coming apart in his arms, the pleasure letting him gently sow in the seeds of forgetting already. But just before they took root he surrendered and she had what she wanted the most. What she would always have. Her mouth curved into a bright smile. He got this smile when they had a particularly great adventure. Together.
Then he took them back to Gallifrey and let her rest against him. Euphoria and the aftermath of the medicine timed together nicely. Each stroke of his hand, of time passing, tucked her memories away a little further, of pleasure, of pain. His human self could decide whether to unearth them. He put a tiny word in front of them and left it there.
Then he was back on the planet, in the glass cage, under that shower, holding Rose and she was cured. The planet existed again and so did the stars. They bore witness to his fury and Rose did not. It was over by the time she woke and she did not remember it.
"Was an honest mistake wasn't it?" she asked later on the TARDIS and he gave her that dark look. She missed the angry love because she had already forgotten being so close. There was no pain, or pleasure.
She missed how the TARDIS had laid out pajama's for the Doctor as she headed for bed later. He stuffed them away with a low curse and shot his ship an exasperated look.
Later, much later she smiled brightly at him over an order of chips and informed him, "There really isn't anything better than chips you know. Sometimes I wish everything tasted like chips."
He choked on his soda and blamed his straw.
And a very long time later he gave his human self a list of things for Rose. His human self had not come with this memory because he had experienced it before it was made. He could only read it in Rose's thoughts if she remembered.
So the human doctor was left to puzzle over chips, men's pajama's and one tiny, seemingly insignificant word.