Title: Missing Links: Epilogue

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: I'm sure you all know the drill by now. If you've seen it somewhere else before, I don't own it.

Summary: Rose and the Doctor are getting married. They both need to do some . . . hem . . . research in advance.

Notes: So, if you've clicked on this without reading Missing Links first, this is supposed to come after it, and doesn't make sense if you don't know that story. I'd have added it to the other as another chapter, but since this is M rated I don't want to change an otherwise K+ rated story just for the one chapter. The point is, don't read it if you're a) too young or b) likely to be offended by adult material.

Notes 2: Yes, I've thrown my hat into the alien reproductive equipment ring with this one. Just be glad I didn't, as Jackie had asked, give him, "Two of anything else." I'm also not giving you the reunion between Jack, Rose and Ten, because it's been done to death and I'm pretty sure we all know how that goes.

Rose hesitantly knocked on Farahetiakret's door, glancing around to be sure no one was coming down the hall. She didn't want or need to deal with anyone taking the mick about the questions she was going to ask and she didn't want to talk to the Doctor's . . . well . . . mum and dad about it. "Rose?" Farah asked when she poked her head out. "Is something wrong?"

"Not . . . exactly," Rose said. "But I wanted to talk to you, since you're the closest I've got to a girlfriend here and it's sort of . . . girl talk, yeah?"

Farah looked intrigued and invited Rose into her room. "So, what did you want to talk about?"

"Well, I . . . y'see, since I'm not Galfrian, I wanted to . . . needed to know if sex works differently for you lot. And the thing is, as much as a book would probably answer a lot of my questions about how different it'll be to shag the Doctor, there's, I dunno how to say it exactly, but what if there's things that are so different, but you lot think of them as being fundamental that it's not in a book?"

"Mmm." Farah hummed consideringly and nodded. "Right. Because just because you look the same as we do with all your clothes on, doesn't mean you do with them off."

Rose nodded. "And what about . . . erm . . . technique, yeah? I mean, different people like different things, sure, but there are some things that seem to work on pretty much everyone. Except I don't know if those things'll be the same with the Doctor."

That caused Farah to frown consideringly at her a moment. "Rose, forgive me if this is . . . intrusive, but have you . . . had sex before?"

Blinking in surprise, Rose answered, "Yeah. Is that a problem?"

Eyes wide, Farah said, "Really?"

"Is that really bad here?" Rose asked her. "I mean, I know there's a lot of people back where I'm from that make a fuss about only having sex after you're married, but Jack always said that it came out of . . . how did he put it? Patriarchal something-or-other relating to bad birth control becoming a taboo and not anything really important about relationships. And if there's anything Jack'd know, it's sex."

After a moment or two of Farah's silent gaping, the Professor's voice spoke up from behind them. "Sorry to interrupt, but Farah, you were shocked enough that your mother asked me to check on you." He stepped in and asked, "What were you both talking about?"

Suddenly a little curious about whether this would work on the Professor the way it had worked on other men she'd been that blunt with when chatting with her girlfriends back home, Rose replied baldly, "Sex."

He tilted his head, intrigued. "What in particular?"

Rose sighed and explained again. "Basically, I wanted to know if sex for a Galfrian was different in significant ways than sex for humans, because when the Doctor and I get married properly I don't want to . . . I don't know, hurt him because he's got something that's totally different from what I'm used to, or for it to be bad for him because I don't know where I'm supposed to touch him or what."

Farah spoke again. "But you've had sex before?" she asked, sounding somewhat upset.

"Why's that a thing?" Rose asked. "I mean, like I said, for humans it's kind of a social construct, that's what Jack said about it-"

The Professor shook his head, halting her speech. "It's not that simple, Rose," he told her. "You must recall that physical contact for Galfrians intensifies telepathic contact. Something as physically intimate as that can have unfortunate consequences."

Suddenly Rose understood. "You mean people could, like, accidentally bond or some such without meaning to at all." As the Professor nodded, she took a deep breath. "Right. Farah, you have to keep in mind that humans don't have telepathy. So sex is really . . . erm . . . intimate, but you can have casual sex because the consquences are pretty much pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases or just emotional, but there isn't any bonding sort of thing."

"A different social paradigm created by biological differences," the Professor mused. "Such an interesting area of study that must be."

"Anyhow," Farah interrupted the potential descent into academic contemplation, "I think you'd best talk to mum about this."

Rose winced. "It's just really awkward, 'cause I mean, she's my fiancé's mum, yeah?"

"Perhaps Verce's bondmate?" the Professor suggested. "Laviniartinilal's a lovely woman."

"I'll call her," Farah promised. "In the meantime, I'll take you out to the library and we'll dig something useful up."

"You do that," the Professor said. "I just realised I have something I need to do," he told the two young women vaguely.

The Doctor was happily wrestling with Galen and Ana beneath silver-leaved trees on red grass, ignoring the clear eyerolls from his now-adopted bond-brother, because it was all in good fun. Their game of tackle-the-Doctor was interrupted by the Professor, who pulled him aside and indoors. "Sorry to interrupt," the Professor said, "But I realised I needed to have a quick word with you about a few things."

"Of course," the Doctor said. As much as he didn't need a second father, he had to admit he'd have got along far better with the Professor than he ever did with the biological donor that was his 'real' father. "What did you need to talk about?"

"I hadn't thought of it, but Rose raised a few questions she's asking Lavi about, and it occurred to me I needed to speak with you about it as well," the Professor told him. "When you and Rose finally become intimate, I expect you'll have a problem a lot of new couples have, which is keeping that from getting to everyone in the family bond unit," the Professor said. "And while you're certainly stronger and better at keeping anything out of the bond you don't want to head down it, particularly to the children, you might have some more trouble with that when you're . . . distracted. By Rose."

The Doctor felt his eyes widen. That was something he hadn't thought about at all. "Ah. Are there any tricks I should know?" he asked.

They spent the next half hour going over some specific shortcuts that blocked that sort of thing out of the bond generally, and then the Doctor hastily shed Ana and Galen on his way out the door in a rush. Upon getting to the local library, he spotted Rose, Lavi and Farah all hanging about together and whipped back out the door before they spotted him.

This was going to take some research. Elsewhere.

So he went elsewhere, plumbed the library as fast as he could, then realised he needed to go somewhere else. He needed to talk to someone who was an expert on interspecies relations.

"Well, you're a little bit early for your bachelor party," Jack said when he emerged from the TARDIS into the UNIT Cardiff hub, glancing about worriedly.

He sighed in exasperation, "Jack, I've told you, I'm not going to participate in that ridiculous ritual."

They'd met up with Jack again, something that had happened after Rose had told Sarah Jane they were getting married in order to invite her to the wedding, and Sarah Jane had called the Brigadier, who had contacted everyone he knew of who'd ever worked with the Doctor at UNIT, which meant that word had got to Jack in Cardiff about it. There had been blame and tears (on Rose's part) and he'd apologised for abandoning Jack while out of his mind from regeneration energies, then being too much the coward to go back for him. Jack had forgiven them both and was going as one of the groomsmen, along with Harry Sullivan and his bond brother, Verce. The Brigadier had agreed to be the Doctor's best man as his friend of longest standing.

Jack had, in defense of the Doctor, got in contact with UNIT to prevent the Torchwood organisation from continuing their mission of, 'Destroy the Doctor at any cost,' and 'Steal all the alien technology you can in order to better perform acts of violence against nonhumans'. The two groups had been merged, and Jack now worked on top of the rift in Cardiff. In fact, Rose had bonded (the human way) with Jack's team member Gwen, who rounded out Rose's bridesmaids, because Jackie insisted there needed to be equal numbers of groomsmen and bridesmaids, which meant that Rose had needed one more after Shareen, Sarah Jane and Farah.

Now the Doctor needed Jack's help with something a little more important than human rituals involving too much alcohol and exotic dancers.

"Anyhow, I need to ask your . . . advice? Help? Perhaps just a quick run-down on things to expect, given that I've been given the impression that it's better to refer to practical experience in this case than on books, and Rose is sufficiently distracting that perhaps I'd be better off with-"

"Explaining what you need my help with?" suggested Jack, looking amused. "If I didn't know better I'd say you were asking me about what to do with Rose on your wedding night."

There was a beat of silence, then the Doctor admitted. "I really rather am, actually."

Jack stared at him, blinking, then towed him into a small, empty, conference room. "Okay, you're going to need to explain that one to me," he told the Doctor. "Because I could have sworn we had this whole conversation when we first met about how you danced, and you being all insulted that Rose and I wouldn't believe you."

"What does that have to do with it?" the Doctor asked, bewildered. "We . . . oh. Ooooohhhhh. You thought . . . I was talking about dancing," he said with great emphasis. "The two-step, the jitterbug. I spent a great deal of time waltzing in my eighth body. I am an excellent dancer. Sometimes."

The other man was staring again. After another long silence, he asked slowly, "So, you've never had sex before?"

The Doctor shook his head. "No. After all, on Gallifrey we'd done away with sexual reproduction in favour of the looms. It just made sense, you know. Simplified everything quite a lot, was easier to do genetic modifications as well and skipped all that messy pregnancy stuff." He flushed a little. "Actually, this body's one of only a couple I've had that even had really functional sexual organs, and it just never came up." The topic of conversation made him horribly aware of double entendre all of a sudden. "So to speak."

"Oh Jesus," said Jack, who sounded a little like he was at a complete loss. Then he looked up at the Doctor and asked, "I don't have to tell you the basic biological facts, do I?"

He hastened to assure his friend, "Oh no. I've read plenty on the straightforward mechanics and all, but I don't want to disappoint Rose." He looked anxiously at the former time agent.

"Okay," Jack said on a forcefully expelled sigh. "First things first. Are you and Rose actually physically compatible?" he asked. "Because working around practical incompatibility is a whole different thing than if you can manage the human 'tab A into slot B' paradigm."

That, at least, he could reassure Jack on. "No, the basic mechanics are the same from what I've seen, although the details are a little different."

Jack didn't ask further and just started in on a rather lengthy lecture about how to be an excellent bed partner. This included everything from commonly enjoyed actions to how to tell when Rose (well, women generally really) liked something better or worse. He also included a lot of rather obscene physical movements with the intention of practical demonstration, and also because it was Jack and he clearly just couldn't help himself with all the ridiculous 51st century prurience.

Once he'd finished, the Doctor quite shocked at the complexities involved that he'd always dismissed as simple human obsession with a messy, awkward act of reproduction, Jack offered, "Of course, if you'd like I could join you both. You know, act as a guide-"

"No." The Doctor was quite adamant. Not only did he have no intention of bringing Jack into anything so personal to do with himself and Rose, but the idea of Jack showing him up, as he no doubt would in such a scenario, was intolerable.

What Rose discovered from talking to the Doctor's sister-in-law was unsurprising when she thought about it. The bulk of what made up sex for the Galfrians, and thus logically the Doctor, was telepathic. It was sort of eighty percent mental stimulation and maybe twenty percent physical. In fact, she and Lavi had wound up having a very equitable exchange on the topic.

The next afternoon, in fact, Lavi had excitedly chatted with her about how so many of the things Rose had talked about had pretty much livened everything up between her and Verce, and it gave Rose no small sense of relief that things weren't so different between humans and Galfrians that the sex would be too weird, or worse, that the Doctor wouldn't like what she did.

Still, she took the time to carefully examine the pictures taken from various books on physiology and all, making sure she'd memorised what did what and when so she wouldn't be surprised by anything in an unpleasant way.

The wedding itself went off splendidly. Galen and Ana eagerly did their jobs of flower girl and ring boy respectively, and Rose's gran and aunts and uncles and cousins were all very impressed the Doctor had been able to afford such a lavish wedding. The Doctor had been more than willing in the end to ferry friends he and Rose had made on New Galfry over to Earth, and she'd shared a lengthy and brilliant afternoon chatting with several of the Doctor's previous companions.

And then they'd finally dropped the Galfrians back to their homes, Galen and Ana with a metric tonne of pictures to show their friends at school about the alien wedding on the alien planet, Jack had made his last double entendre and her mum had said something to the Doctor that had made him amusingly alarmed.

"Alone at last," Rose said to him, admiring him in his tuxedo one last moment before pulling him into a kiss.

He pulled her close, and she felt the still-strange sensation of him in her head, doing his sort of telepathic snogging to accompany the real snogging.

With one last kiss, she stepped back and told him, "Meet me in the bedroom, yeah? I've got a surprise." Then she winked and did her best sexy sashay out of the console room and down the hall to where she'd stashed her lingerie for the evening. She'd carefully picked out a red and orange set to match what he'd said at one point were his 'chapter' colours, whatever that actually meant, and she did like what the corset did for her figure.

Once she was done changing, she walked into the room they now shared and struck a sexy pose in the door way. She was a little dismayed that he looked like an animal caught in the headlights, but he was down to just his trousers and vest, so she hoped it was a positive sort of shock.

"Rose?" the Doctor heard himself squeak. He felt a surge of interest in touching her that he nearly forgot he didn't need to suppress anymore. Even as he relaxed his stern conscious control over his physiological chemical responses, he felt a brief stab of concern from Rose that his slack-jawed gaping was a bad thing.

That wouldn't do. He was across the room, pulling her close and letting her feel the surge of hormones he'd finally allowed himself to produce, affecting his emotional and physical reactions to her. Kissing her was brilliant of course, and then he felt her, still tentative as she learnt her way through the new mode of communication that was her telepathy, and he shuddered at the pleasurable sensation.

Gallifreyans, being telepathic, tended to connect far more on a mental level, and he'd never realised just how tactile human beings were until this moment. It was as different as his current regeneration was from his last one. The mere act of his pulling her close had sent floods of things through her, and her natural impulses to touch him bled into his desire for her.

For a few minutes there was an incredibly sensual exchange as she got him out of his vest and trousers and he groaned over the lovely feeling of being pressed up against his Rose with nothing between them at all. He was so lost in experiencing the sensation of the Roseness that was Rose's mind, that it took him by surprise when she sat up, saying, "As brilliant as this is, I'm really really interested in getting to the main show." He wasn't entirely sure he could be coherent if he spoke, and wordlessly tried to burrow back into her mind where it was all warm and Rose-y feeling.

She responded with her own feelings, and his body answered by releasing more of his hormones into his bloodstream. He felt the phallus in its hinged pouch stirring with interest in the proceedings, which was something he'd never felt before. Frankly, with no sexual reproduction on the Gallifrey of his youth and the ability to consciously keep his various chemical responses under control, he'd simply never felt the urge. But with Rose's very human, very tactile and very powerful want pouring through his mind, it completely overcame his centuries of habit and training.

"Rose," he managed to get out. He had to tell her. It wasn't fair that she not know this, but his instincts were now running too much of the show for him to express himself clearly outside of their bond. When she suddenly looked poleaxed, he rather suspected he might have overdone the strength he'd used to push the concept into her mind.

"You're a virgin?" she asked, sounding incredulous. "And you went to Jack for advice?"

To make sure I could do this properly for you.

"Then let's start by seeing if I can do this properly for you, yeah?" she asked. Before he could give her any cogent response, she slid down to gently press her fingertips to the two corners of the phallic pouch.

Gallifreyan males had a phallus, but unlike humans, it was mobile, containing a very small collection of cartilage within, forming a sort of spinal cord, as well as a small degree of muscle and tendon within allowing movement. Interior to the Gallifreyan female was an internal connection that contained a similar cord that connected directly to the brain. In effect it was like a secondary psychic contact point. The bulk of the time the male phallus was in a sort of pouch with a hinge like an Earth mollusc's shell.

Unlike the shellfish, though, Rose's delicate stimulation along the place where the opening was, the way she pressed her fingers into the corners of the hinge, it was exceedingly pleasurable, and the Doctor couldn't help but let his head fall back to the bed and enjoy the purely physical sensations as Rose tempted him out of his shell, so to speak.

And then she was using her mouth on him, and his lower body seemed to fly completely out of his control. The tip of his phallus was close, so close to her brain it catapulted him into her mind's physical processing centres, all but shutting down his higher functions and leaving him a bundle of solely sensual response. It was a burst of ecstasy, slamming up and down his spinal cord, and he shouted, feeling himself spasm in unfamiliar but brilliant ways before lassitude overtook him and he collapsed to the bed, trembling.

Rose was in his arms a moment later, the wonderful warm armful of human giggling over the purr he couldn't help in his contentment.

"Good, then?" she asked him with a cheeky grin.

In the aftermath he was finally able to reconnect his communication centres to verbal speech. "You know it was," he told her. Feeling more together, he said, "Now, I spent all that time listening to Jack lecture me about human female anatomy, I'd like to see if I can put what I learnt to a practical application."

Although Rose had used her mouth before on previous partners, the Doctor was the first one who'd effectively made her feel what he was feeling as he did it, which made an act that was kind of icky in some ways into something that made her feel fantastic. Because she'd reduced the Doctor and his unstoppable gob into a puddle of happy Time Lord.

And now he was returning the favour, making Rose feel like she was losing her mind. If she wanted him to do something, add a finger, press harder, go up or down or any which way, he reacted instantly to what she wanted. She was pretty sure it was the fastest orgasm she'd ever had in her life. He was touching her as though he were her. In a way he was, she supposed, him being in her head with the bond and all.

By the time she'd recovered from that, he was pressed against her, and the strange feeling of something wriggling against her made her glance down with the instinctive rush of adrenaline that there might be a snake or something there.

It was weird to see his cock wriggling, clearly seeking her out, and when he shifted, it was just as strange feeling it wriggle into her, rather than the thrust she was used to feeling from a human partner. He was just a little ridged from where the penile spinal cord was, and what he lacked in hardness by comparison with a human was made up for by the fact that she felt him probe around and hit her g spot.

There was less thrusting and more grinding and rocking as they figured out a rhythm and movement that worked for them both, and Rose felt the Doctor doing that thing where he was using her mind like a sort of warm afghan for cuddling under on the sofa and she was clutching at him with her arms and legs and bearing down with her inner muscles at the same time. It was a little awkward, a little weird, very sexy and slightly disjointed. And then for one perfect moment it all aligned.

Rose felt the tension snap, her orgasm washing over her, feeling her feelings pull the Doctor over with her, and then they collapsed together on the bed. He was purring again, which was sort of really brilliant, 'cause it made him even cuddlier than he was normally.

She let out a happy sigh, snuggling into his side, resting her head on his gently thrumming chest and enjoying the way she could think how much she loved him directly into his mind, not breaking the satiated and quiet communion with talking.

Naturally, because he had a gob on him, he couldn't not speak. Because he was the Doctor with his gob that wouldn't stop. "Rose?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"I think I owe you, and maybe Jack, an apology for everything I ever said about randy humans."

"Apology accepted," she told him, amused. "Does this mean we'll be doing this more? Because I don't think I'd really complain about never needing to . . . erm . . . borrow your spare sonic screwdriver again."

He went still, and Rose could almost feel his brain beginning to whirr. "Is that why . . . oh Rose," he groaned. Then he bolted from the bed, scrabbling in a drawer and coming up with another model of the sonic. "What settings did you use?" he asked eagerly as he played it over her, his phallus already wriggling back out of its pouch again.

She should have known he'd be one for toys.