CALLUSES
VI.
"That mouth of yours will get you into some real trouble someday, you mark my words!"
To give credit where credit's due, her mum hadn't been wrong. That mouth of hers had gotten Rose into more trouble than she cares to admit, from flustered primary teachers to disgruntled employers, or the passing murderous alien race she couldn't help but taunt.
Apparently, she's not doing any better with highly sensitive part-humans / part-Time Lords.
"And this thing there?" She'd had to say. "It needs to be exterminated."
She's noticed it, of course, the way he responds to the smallest of stimuli in this new body of his, prone to shudders and startles, along with his newfound adoration for breakfast food – and the occasional breakdown in hotel corridors. Yet she's been so wrapped up in her own head that she's failed to properly assess the severity of his condition, especially on a psychological level.
The fact that her terrible joke puts him on the cusp of another kind of breakdown in the middle of that shop is attesting to that.
"Don't," the Doctor chokes, his eyes closed shut, shaking his head repeatedly, as if trying to chase something away, his breathing becoming more erratic by the second.
She had to go and use the word exterminated in front of the very person who exterminated that very alien race not twenty-four hours ago, a person who possesses every single memory of what always sounded like a traumatic Time War between his people and said aliens.
A stupid ape, that's her all right.
"'m sorry," Rose says, almost pleads as she's forced to watch her Doctor losing whatever battle is raging inside his head, both his hands clutching at his head. "I'm sorry, I'm real sorry!"
Her instincts are going haywire at the sight of him mentally and physically crumpling, yelling at her to help him, to reach out for him, her hands already hovering inches from his locked frame; she doesn't, having experienced these kind of mental breakdowns often enough after Canary Wharf to remember what it felt like, to be touched while your whole body is on overdrive.
She's not surprised when his frenzy eventually sends him to the ground, having backed himself into a clothes rack full of reduced items, being surprisingly quiet in the process, if not for the low, continuous sound escaping his throat. Rose cannot help but glance around, not caring one bit about what people might think, but she's concerned about shop goers or employees trying to intervene, which would only make things worse, but this area of the store remains deserted.
By the time she's crouching in front of him, he's stopped rocking and humming, letting out a stream of whispered words instead, hands curled into his hair; it takes her a moment to make out the words, seeing how they're not making any sense at all.
"…acre, baker, better, breaker, chaser, eater, letter, maker, painter, paper, player…"
"Doctor?" She tries softly, tentatively.
His voice briefly falters, before he speaks again. "Yes, that rhymes, too, well done!"
And just like that, he lets go of his hair and lifts up his head, blinking a few times as he tries to fix his gaze on her. Even when he does, frowning slightly with a bit of a pout, his eyes remain glassy.
"I'd say that makes us even, then?" He asks, his voice low, almost raspy.
She shakes her head, confused. "What?"
"You know. I hurt your feelings, you make me go all kooky. Even Stevens. Eden, Pleven, Sweden!"
Rose takes in a wobbly breath. "Are you…are you okay?"
He waves a hand in front of him with a dismissive scowl, the gesture quick, yet not quick enough for her to miss the tremors in his fingers.
"Bouquet," he says.
"Bouquet?" She repeats.
"Norway!" He exclaims. "Ah!"
"You're freaking me out," she admits, her throat tightening.
"I have no doubt."
"Are you going mad?"
"Just a tad!"
"Doctor!"
Her growing panic rings clear in her voice, and his 'Mad Hatter' smirk freezes on his lips, soon faltering altogether. He blinks a few more times, shaking his head once, sharply, as if to rid it of whatever is still affecting him.
"I…" he starts, before closing his mouth. Next instant, he's nothing short of springing to his feet, almost causing her to fall on her bum.
His reflexes remain better than most humans, grabbing her upper arm in a firm yet gentle hold as she topples backward, and in one swift movement, he pulls her up and flush against him.
"Upright's better," he says after a pause, his face so close to hers that Rose feels the warmth of his breath on her skin. "We've spent quite enough time on the floor today, don't you think?"
Her brain and body are a mess of contradicting signals and urges, one of them alert and focused on his every detail, on the look-out for more signs of impending psychosis, while the other is just as attentive, although on a whole different level. She feels the sturdy hold of his fingers around her arm, his other hand now resting upon her hip…a hip that is very much pinned to his hip, one of her own hands on his shoulder, the other pressed lightly to his chest.
"Sorry about the…coo-coo interlude, there," he says, not moving away any more than she is. "If anything else, you can't accuse me of being boring."
Both his words and the way he says them cause a surge of affection to pierce through the chaos that swirls inside her, his voice and mimics unequivocally him in that moment. Close as they are, closer than they've been since the beach, she sees each details of his face, down to every freckle.
Boring will never be an adjective used to describe the Doctor, no matter his incarnation; that's exactly what made life with him so appealing, back then.
Not that Rose has ever lost her thirst for adventure and thrill, but right now, her concern for him dominates over everything else. And she's spent enough time as his companion to remember what he sounds like when he's deflecting.
"Are you alright, though?" She asks, searching his face. "I'm real sorry about…you know, about what I said, that was stupid. But…what happened after, that wasn't…" She doesn't know how to explain how frightening his behaviour had been.
"Oh, I'm fine," he says, dismissive, already averting his eyes, and her insides clench. "I'll be fine. Molto – "
"No," she cuts him off firmly, drawing his gaze back to hers, and she pushes against his chest, forcing their hips to separate, which also allows her to stand more sturdily on her own two feet. "Don't molto bene your way out of that one. You're not fine. Something's going on with you. Just…let's just keep that honesty thing going, yeah?"
The small contact of her hands on his body is enough for her to feel him tense. His fingers slowly release her arm as his second hand drops from her hip, so that he can put both of them in his pockets.
"What happened to me, the metacrisis," he begins, trying hard to make it sound trivial even as his gaze becomes shifty again, unable to look at her. "The whole thing's…unnatural, as you may have noticed. My body appears to be human for the most part, which makes it…" He pauses, swallowing hard and squinting a little, still not meeting her eyes. "The human body cannot technically cope with a Time Lord consciousness, they're incompatible. Now I'm lucky to have retained enough of my old physiology, specifically the brain part, for it not to kill me. But it's still creating bedlam in there, which is what causes some of my fuses to occasionally…blow. Nothing permanent, I'll adapt, eventually, but it'll take a few days, if not more."
Rose has grown increasingly still as he spoke, until her breathing paused altogether, something huge and suffocating swelling inside her chest, something inconceivable. She doesn't want to understand what he means, wishing she could focus solely on the superficial aspect of his explanation, on the fact that what's happening to him will pass, just as he once stopped breathing out clouds of regenerative energy.
But the reality of what is going on, or what went on, is impossible to ignore.
Especially when it happened a universe away.
"You said…" She speaks at last, her voice weak and shaky. "You said a Time Lord's consciousness's not compatible with a regular human brain."
His eyes still fixed on a distant point, she watches as they begin to glaze over, every muscle in his neck tensing briefly.
"Doctor," she prods, and there is dread in her voice. "Doctor, what about Donna?"
He takes a couple of slow breaths, the steady, calculated move not enough to conceal the slight quiver in each of his inhales and exhales. "Donna will be all right," he says, and his voice is too thick. "He will have seen to it by now."
Rose's denial is booming and expanding as quickly as her understanding. "What does it mean?" Her voice has gained in volume, making the catch in it that much more audible. When he remains still and mute, she pushes against his chest again, too hard. "Tell me what it means!"
"It means he had to wipe her mind to save her life," he says, meeting her eyes at last, and she immediately wishes he hadn't, because what she sees in them is every bit as raw and unbearable as the thing trying to claw its way out of her chest. "Every memory of me – him, or the TARDIS, anything we did together, anywhere we went, it had to go, or she would have burnt up. He wiped her mind clean of any trace of her life with a Time Lord. And then he took her home."
He took her home.
We can travel the universe forever, Donna had said. Best friends. And equals.
Rose, too, had once told him she would stay with him forever. That she would never leave him…only to find herself bruising her palms against cold concrete minutes later, trapped on the wrong side of a Void not even he could cross.
Loneliness, it seems, was always meant to be his forever companion.
…
The Doctor watches, powerless, as Rose's very spirit crumples, hearing the sound of her heart breaking. Her hand leaves his chest, pressing it to her mouth instead, unable to completely muffle the sorrowful sound that escapes her.
He remains as helpless and frozen when she walks away from him.
It takes him too long to start moving again, his gaze having followed her long enough to guess where she was heading. He manages to unstick his feet from the floor, his legs equally cottony and heavy, his body still riding out the last of whatever took over him only minutes ago.
He's incapable of dealing with his own turmoil right now, but he cannot in good conscience let Rose go. Especially when that conscience of his still bears the face and voice and compassion of the most important woman in the universe, born and raised in Chiswick.
And so he follows his instincts, soon finding himself standing amidst a row of small fitting rooms, four of which with drawn curtains. Now he might be lacking in manners and tact, he knows enough not to blindly start pulling at curtains until he finds the right one.
"Rose?" He calls hesitantly, wishing once more that his senses hadn't become so…unreliable. His former self would have been able to find her with ears and nose alone at least ninety-two seconds ago.
Yet again, his 'former self' is not exactly in a better position at this precise moment, quite the opposite, a matter that is at the very core of this unfolding distress. A distress he shares whole-heartedly, considering the fact that less than twenty-four hours ago, he was this former self.
He strains his human ears, trying to block out the dim music playing in the background, as well as the distant yet constant chatter and noises made by shop goers. He eventually picks up on the unmistakable sound of sniffling, which becomes more pronounced as he approaches one of the fitting rooms. He cautiously uses a finger to push open the curtain a few millimetres…then a brave four centimetres, cranking his neck to peek inside, ready to bolt if it turns out not to be Rose in there.
Bolting won't be necessary.
Somewhat concealed in this little corner of privacy, Rose has allowed herself to breakdown rather completely. And boy, is this one insurmountable weakness of his, every single inch of his already aching body suddenly hurting that much more at the sight of her in such a state.
He doesn't ask her if he can join her; he just does.
By the time he's closing the curtain behind him, she's turning away, as if unwilling to let him see her like this. She seems to have forgotten the giant mirror in front of her, which makes it virtually impossible for her to hide. He could have turned away, closed his eyes, or even just looked down. But he doesn't want to.
There is excruciating beauty in her sorrow.
He doesn't speak, couldn't have if he wanted to, his own throat and most of his chest squeezed tight as he watches her trying to get a hold of herself with big, spasmodic gulps of air and a great many pointless face and nose wiping.
Remembering that there is at least one thing he can do to lend a hand, he extracts another (clean) tissue from his pocket, wordlessly offering it to her over her shoulder, moving closer to do so. She accepts it and makes good use of it; he doesn't move back.
Another long lapse of time passes, Rose slowly regaining the upper hand over her emotions.
"Sorry," she eventually whispers with a shake of her head, her breathing still irregular and jerky. "'m such a mess."
"Yes, I am quite put off," he says in his best offhand voice, having miraculously regained the ability to speak at this sudden opportunity to lighten the mood. "All that snot? Absolutely repulsive. Definitely not something that was coming out of my own nose twelve hours ago either."
His efforts are rewarded when she lets out a short, yet genuine watery chuckle, the sound breathless and lovely; when their eyes meet in the mirror, her small smile is even lovelier. She quickly averts her gaze, this fleeting eye contact already causing her face to constrict again, the back of her hand once more pressed against her lips.
He moves infinitesimally closer to her, his every instinct urging him to comfort her, yet terrified to try crossing a line she doesn't want him to cross.
"Rose…"
This soft, almost pleading call is the only thing he can do, his eyes fixed on her reflection, watching as she appears to shudder at the sound of her name.
She drops her hand and lifts her head up, taking another wobbly breath before meeting his eyes. "I just…" she tries, her voice already closing up, and she bites down on her lip in frustration, rolling her eyes at herself with a loud sigh. "I dunno how to deal with any of this."
In his chest, his heart is thumping madly again; it's beating so fast and so vehemently that he feels it pulsing at the base of his constricted throat, inside his ears, and all the way down his toes. He doesn't speak (again, can't), simply maintaining eye contact when she initiates it again, letting her take all the time she needs to say what needs to be said, even as he braces himself for impending rejection.
He only has himself to blame for getting his hopes up, after all; she'd been painfully honest this morning when she'd admitted feeling like he wasn't the same man she'd spent years trying to find.
"This just makes no sense to me," she continues, her voice husky, barely louder than a whisper, bravely holding his gaze. "Not…emotionally, not rationally. It's just too…confusing. And I want it to make sense. I want it to be easy. 'cause when you talk to me, and when you look at me…I know you're my Doctor. I feel it," her hand actually curls and presses against her chest in emphasis. "But then I think about…" her voice catches again, and she raises her eyes to the ceiling as new tears begin to roll down her cheeks. "I think about this other you, all alone again in that other universe when I get to have you, and I can't stand it."
When her body begins to quake with renewed sobs, he makes up his mind. He crosses that line and reaches out for her, having heard enough in her confession to know this is the way forward, if not the right thing to do.
Rose seals his decision by responding to his tentative touch at once, turning around and nothing short of collapsing against him, almost in defeat. Their next moves are both innate and new, her arms slipping under his to cling to his shoulders, her face finding the crook of his neck and burrowing itself there, exactly the way it used to, years and universes ago. He holds on to her just as fiercely, revering in the achingly familiar feel of her, even after all this time, his head and lungs filling up with her scent, peeking through the outer layer of cheap hotel shampoo.
And she cries against his chest, his shirt soaking up salty water while he absorbs each of her reverberating sobs the way he once absorbed the Time Vortex, his body rocking hers in a slow, soothing motion, only half a beat out of sync with whatever tune is playing dimly overhead. He's taking comfort in her as much as she's taking comfort in him, his pain raw and exposed, brought right up to the surface with every one of her tears, these tears she's crying for him, and him, for their loss of Donna, and the TARDIS, and their loss of her, too.
Maybe in time, the Doctor will learn to dissociate himself from his former self, but he's incapable of it in that moment. Because he knows what it feels like, to have a beloved companion ripped away from you the way both your hearts would be ripped out of your chest. He knows it all too well, the woman in his arms having once been severed from him without as much as a warning.
In the end, his right heart was a small price to pay to get her back, his Rose.
Even now, after all she's done and all she's said, he doubts he will ever truly accept or comprehend the reality of it, how she's done it all for him, for every him he ever was with her, and for all those bits in between he survived on his own.
Rose Tyler. His very own Protector. Ready to take in the infinity of Time itself and let it consume her whole rather than to tolerate the thought of him being alone ever again.
The emotion that swells inside his chest and in every single one of his cells is so overwhelming that he fears he might burst in front of her as he twice did already if he doesn't let it out, causing him to choke out the words into her hair.
"I love you."
He doesn't say it hoping for reciprocity. He doesn't say it to get anything from her at all. He says it selfishly and egoistically, only trying to relieve some of that pressure in his soul. Still, he supposes he could have foreseen what her response might be, given the way she reacted that one and only time he'd spoken the words.
He should be forgiven for not anticipating properly – or at all, for that matter; his intellect may not be what it once was, especially when his arms are full of warm, emotional human.
Rose barely moves, yet every single one of these moves she makes is enough to drastically change the intensity of their embrace, her nails slowly raking his back over his suit jacket as her hands come down from his shoulders, while she lets out a long, warm and wobbly exhale right there in the crook of his neck.
His entire body becomes wracked with shudders, feeling those tiny needles prickling the underside of his skin wherever she trails her hands or lets her breath wander – up his neck and jaw, now, a similar yet much more pronounced sensation twisting and tugging somewhere deep and low.
When she pulls her face away just enough to gaze up at him, he wonders if she can see his absolute bewilderment, or how much he yearns for her. Surely she has to know, he himself almost able to feel his every pore opening up to diffuse his pheromones into the air, quite certain from the heady sensation in his head that her body is reciprocating.
And then there is the sight of her tearstained face and blotchy skin, strands of hair sticking to her damp temples, her eyes swollen and bloodshot, a sight that only makes him want to touch her more. He reaches for her face with a trembling hand, fingertips lightly pressing upon her feverish skin as his thumb gently wipes off the misty layer below her eye…unable to stop himself from bringing his thumb to his mouth next, never passing up an opportunity to taste something new.
He realises almost at once that this unconscious move of his affects her just as much as her nails raking his back had affected him, a minute ago. Her breathing halts, her gaze having followed the movement of his thumb from her skin to his lips, her cheeks darkening at the flick of his tongue. And his brand new human taste buds don't disappoint, savouring the bitter saltiness of her.
One of her hands sneaks up to the back of his head, her fingers curling into his hair and tightening just enough to cause his insides to liquify as she pulls him down to her, his palm back on her face, cupping her jaw as their lips meet with an urgency somewhat similar to that kiss they shared on the beach, only worse; or better.
Better, the Doctor decides, as Rose's tongue glides over his lower lip, and the sizzling shock of it causes his mouth to slack open, something she takes full advantage of, even as her fingers flex in his hair and her nails graze his scalp. Definitely better.
There is a noise, and a rather loud one at that; some part of him registers it, even recognises it as him having vigorously pushed Rose back against that mirror as a direct consequence from the flurry of stimuli and chemicals she's released inside of him. All that matters is that he's got something to pin her against, causing the pressure and contact between their bodies to increase tenfold, allowing him to feel her peaks and curves and everything in between.
The next noise comes from him, definitely from him, some kind of raspy, moany breath that ends up muffled into her mouth as Rose's hips press upward against and into him in a slow, deliberate motion; upward, inward, downward…delicious, prickly hot needles of fiery pleasure crawling up his spine and coiling deep inside.
He can't in all honesty say that he hears the noise that comes after that – the curtain being pulled open, as it is lost somewhere in the limbo of all things that are not Rose's warm body pressed up against him. The sound of the very disgruntled shop assistant telling them off in Norwegian is a lot harder to ignore.
Dazed or not – reduced supply of blood and oxygen going up to his brain and all– the Doctor has had to make enough hasty escapes in his life to be able to go from motionless to sprinting without needing much prompting.
Still, it's a good thing that Rose prompts, grabbing his hand and pulling.
She makes them run past the shocked employee and through a series of aisles and déjà vus, until they exit the store, making them take a sharp turn, and running through what feels like half the bloody mall.
"Wait wait wait waaait," he eventually manages to articulate through gritted teeth, forcing them to a clumsy stop.
He collapses onto a bench, bent in half, having just learnt the hard way that a human male body should not be made to run when particularly tickled; he's not exactly in pain, but this is not what he would call pleasant either.
Rose joins him on the bench, slowly sliding an arm around his middle in a surprisingly tender gesture, before pressing her cheek to his shoulder blade as he remains bent forward, heaving a bit, his ears burning in what he presumes has to be human embarrassment.
"Well isn't that wizard," he grumbles to himself, acutely aware that this would never, ever, ever have happened with his old physiology, deciding right here and now that he could have done without this particular human experience.
When he feels the odd spasms that begin to shake her body, he looks over his shoulder in surprise and concern, worried that Rose might be crying again. But she's not crying at all, visibly trying to muffle her rising mirth into his jacket, and doing a poor job at it, too.
"Oi!" he reprimands her in a deeply offended tone and with a matching frown. "Show some sympathy, will you? I could still get us both arrested for public indecency, and I'd let you do all the talking, too, believe you me, see how you get on without my psychic paper or translation matrix to back you up. All I'd have to do is stand right there. Right there, Rose, in front of that tiny old couple waiting to buy some klenäter. Do you see them, Rose, with their cute little matching hats and that ridiculous looking dog? Imagine the shock and how it might affect their cardiovascular system, when you don't even know CPR."
Rose loses it, tilting her head back and laughing loud and clear, successfully attracting the attention of every passer-by, who must think them unhinged indeed, both of them still showing visible signs of their recent breakdowns – and else, her hilarity as intense and fleeting as every other emotions he's seen her go through today.
As soon as her laughter begins to dissipate, her arm tightens around him, her other hand finding his upon his lap, slowly intertwining their fingers. She gives them a squeeze as she presses her face to his shoulder blade again, her breath tickling the back of his neck.
"'m sorry," she whispers in his ear, inducing yet another wave of prickly shivers. "Though I'll have you know I've been CPR certified for almost three years, now." And then she has to add: "We might've to risk it."
Ah well. It wouldn't be the first night they'd spend together in a prison cell.
A/N: I'm being is a bit preemptive with changing the rating to M, I'm shamelessly trying to attract those of you out there with minds as dirty as mine who sometimes ignore T rated stories :p Hopefully you'll trust me when I say I most definitely plan on owning up to that M rating ;)
I'm unfortunately going back to work on Tuesday, which means long hours and a very tired brain. I will *try* to update next weekend, if Real Life allows. In the meantime, any feedback from you would be much appreciated!