TITLE: Stay

AUTHOR: NNWest

DISCLAIMER: Sadly, none of them are mine... They'd never let me torture them like this.

AN: Thank you to my betas, Dark Aegis, LJ's wendymr, & LJ's ponygirl72, who assured me that this should see the light of day. Thanks for all the assurance, m'dears!

I wonder if we'll make it to the bed this time. We always used to before. Hardly ever these days.

It's funny the things that go through the mind at times like these, times when he's got me pinned up against the door to my quarters, rasping that broad tongue with which he seems intent on sampling everything across the stubble of my neck. And I would laugh, but he'd take it wrongly, or worse, he'd ask what was funny and then I'd have to explain and I don't want him to stop what he's doing. I probably should--no, I know I should--but I don't.

Still, it's funny that I should compare this new Doctor to the first Doctor--I should say, my first Doctor. After all, who the hell knows how many times he's done this--died, changed, regenerated, whatever--because he sure as hell isn't going to tell me. I could ask, but I don't think I care. They're the same guy. The same smug, egotistical, do-gooding bastard. It took a few minutes to recognise it, but he's still the Doctor.

Figured that out in the middle of the battle royal of our remeeting. Him, all cold anger and recriminations, apparently ticked at the universe that I was alive in the first place, ticked at me for working for Torchwood--as if I ever had a choice in the matter. Me, pissed at him for what he did, for dumping me without explanation on a trashed space station with only corpses for company. Left for dead, sure. So maybe I expected too much from him--that he had cared enough not to just let me rot where I fell. Guessed wrong, didn't I. If that'd been the case, he would've found out then that I was alive and not a year and a half later when he stumbled across my Torchwood personnel file during his clandestine intel gathering.

I swore to myself a long time ago that I was not going with him. If I ever ran across him again, that I would not set foot aboard the TARDIS. That I would say my piece and walk out on him and back to the life I had going in Cardiff. Go back to the organisation who'd embraced the fucking bastard as their sworn enemy.

That was months ago, and I have yet to leave. Yet to work up the courage to get him to take me back.

So I stay. Full circle, coward to coward, and I stay. Following his orders like a good little soldier. Letting him use me--my talents and my body--just like I always have. Hating him, despising myself.

Should've left. Should leave. That's my mantra these days. Would've left that day... until he dropped the Rose bombshell. And it was over. That one statement, "Rose is gone," his pain and grief enough to bind me to him. Rooting me to the spot that day in the console room as he shoved me against the support strut and ripped open my fly, my body responding by rote, hating--loving--every minute.

I didn't kid myself--and I still don't--that it was about me. Never has been. Why should it start now?

Nope, never has been since I seduced his blue-eyed, black-jacketed version almost by accident. I liked him back then--some people would say loved. Rose, too--but I knew there was no way in hell I could ever get between him and Rose. So it floored me when I offered a kiss of comfort to him in a dark moment and he took a hell of a lot more.

And he kept coming--take that any way you like. But time after time, month upon month, it was me he sought in the middle of ships-night. My hands undressing him, caressing him. My mouth on his. All of it neatly hidden from the ship's third occupant as she slept away blissfully unaware, in love with the Doctor. The Doctor in love with her. Never wanted to hurt her, either of us. It just happened, and the way we never said word one about it, it might as well have been a dream.

But, no, it was never about me. I didn't need him to slip just that once, moaning her name as I sucked him off. No, the way he looked at her from the first moment I saw him was enough. Why he'd marked her as off-limits, I'll never know. Yet another thing I have no intention of asking because I don't care. Not any more.

I know exactly why I marked her off-limits. She was a friend--I'd say my best, but I was screwing the man she loved behind her back. She was out of bounds because the Doctor would've killed me. Though, in retrospect, I would've been better off fucking both of them. Then at least there'd've been a chance of the Doctor finding out and kicking me out right then.

And I wouldn't be here now. Wouldn't be in my current position, his hands, and all my blood, headed south. Me, giving back exactly what I'm getting.

And I still can't help but to compare him to himself. For all the black-leather-wearing and being dark and brooding all the time, the Doctor's tastes used to be as vanilla as they come. Not so much with his brown-suited replacement. The whole oral fixation adds a welcome little kink. Things are a little rougher, too. He lets himself go like he didn't before. Probably because he doesn't have Rose to hide it, hide us, from.

He's also a little better at hiding the fact that it's not really me he's fucking. Even though my name is on his lips, Rose's ghost is still very much present and accounted for. Even now, I'm filling in for his fantasy of her. Fine, whatever. Let him lie to me, lie to himself. Isn't the first time I've played the stand-in. Won't be the last.

Doesn't seem as concerned with Marty finding out, either. Martha's a big girl and she can take care of herself. He's not in love with her. And she hasn't had time to fall head over heels with our oh-so-impressive Time Lord. Lucky her. Anyway, I'm pretty sure she already knows. Rose once told me that the Doctor only takes the best--I still wonder how I made it in--and Marty has proven she is one of the best. She's certainly no fool. She hasn't said anything, but she knows. She has to.

More than once I've found myself wondering what he would do if I seduced Marty. Oh, it wouldn't be easy--she's seen me in action, knows my type--but it would be possible. My luck it probably wouldn't even provoke a reaction. He's never demanded anything like fidelity from me and he doesn't have need of the protective jealousy for her as he did with Rose.

I'm stuck here, never asking myself--never daring--why? I'm too terrified of what the answer might be.

So I lose myself in the Doctor's ministrations. Again. And I'll smile and joke and play my charming part.

And I'll stay.