ooOoo

The Doctor pulled back, gasping for breath. He tasted the iron tang of blood on his lip, and dabbed automatically at it with his tongue. Leela was breathing just as hard, her skin flushed as she pushed her dark hair away from her face. She reached for him again, pulling him closer, and he let himself be pulled, as eager to continue the experience as she was...

"No otters!"

The Doctor frowned as Ace interrupted the narrative in strident tones overlain with veins of panic. He looked at her. She, too, was flushed, but not with passion. Well, not the kind of passion that marked his relationship with Leela. "Ace, are you telling me, after all attempts to get me offer up exactly this kind of detail, that you have changed your mind?"

"That was just teasing," Ace mumbled, fiddling with the handle of her tea cup. "And you never were going to tell me, least I thought you weren't, but now you kind of are and I guess I'mnotreadytohearit."

"What was that?" the Doctor asked innocently.

Ace glared at him. "You heard me."

The Doctor settled back in his chair with a chuckle. "So I did. And I'd promised myself not to tease you, but here I am doing it again. Sorry."

"No you're not." Ace was sullen.

"Actually, you're right; I'm not," the Doctor admitted. "But you started this, so why are you backing down now?" His eyes were challenging.

Ace raised her chin. "I'm not backing down, Professor. I'm just...changing my mind."

The Doctor wasn't backing down, either. "Why?"

Ace shrugged and played with her tea spoon. "Because you're right, it's none of my business," she admitted. "None of this is, but you've been super about sharing, so I guess I should, I dunno, respect the boundaries you put up."

It was a generous admission, and the Doctor was surprised and touched. "Thank you, Ace," he said. "I appreciate that." Simple words, but he meant them as much as she meant what she said, felt them as deeply.

However, it also left him pondering exactly how to proceed from this point. Not that he'd had a plan, exactly, but any vague thoughts he'd had as to how to handle this particular conversation had flown away.

It had been very different with Leela, more than he would ever be able to admit to Ace. Sarah Jane's curiosity, Tegan's brashness, Romana's intellectualism, Peri's freshness...they all brought something beyond mere physicality to the relationship. Even the dichotomy they often presented gave it dimension. Sarah Jane's gradual dependence on him, Tegan's emotional vulnerability, Romana's occasional arrogance, Peri's rather more frequent obtuseness all brought different levels to their interaction. But with Leela, what you saw was what you got, as they saying went. The Earth saying. She aspired to nothing more than taking everything as it came, one day at a time, and reveled in her ignorance of the greater universe even while embracing the challenges it threw at her. With gusto.

That, at least, was something he felt comfortable sharing. "Leela had a great deal of zest for life," he said. "She was quite passionate, and not just in the 'otter' sense. She essentially stowed away on the TARDIS, entering it without my permission and to my very great annoyance. Once I tracked her down, she managed to persuade me to allow her to stay, and so I did..."

The "persuasion" she used had been her body. She'd literally tackled him in the wardrobe room, there was no other way to put it. He remembered it quite vividly; no amount of regenerative trauma was a match for that particular moment. He fell silent as the memories washed over him, feeling Ace's eyes upon him but knowing damn well that he would tell her very little about his time with Leela. Certainly not the part he was remembering now...