Bonds 8: Stronger Together
A/N: this is the short version of the chapter, only 3 pages long. The long version of this chapter is really explicit, super smutty, and about 5 pages longer :D As always, that version can be found on AO3 and Tumblr, same username as I use here. I've also put a link to it in my profile.
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The next morning, or what passed for morning on the TARDIS, Rose woke up, sprawled out over half of the spacious bed. The Doctor laid next to her on his side, facing her, one of his hands laid on her stomach. He looked so peaceful. The other Doctor wasn't in the room, and a quick query to the ship told her that he was in the lab where they were growing her TARDIS. She considered just laying there until the part human woke up, but her body had other needs.
Ten minutes later, she walked into the lab where the Doctor in brown was, while pulling a hairbrush through her locks.
"Hello," the Doctor greeted her as soon as she stepped through the door. He held the little log book that Rose used to keep notes in his hands, and she was sure he was going over the little one's growth.
"Hi," she replied.
"This little beauty is growing phenomenally well," the Doctor praised. "Aren't you?" he cooed to the coral, which was approximately the size of a football, and had a few branches sticking out of it.
Rose had to fight the urge to laugh, as she always had when he took to stroking and babying the TARDIS coral. She realized that she did the same herself. She went over to the tank that housed the coral and said to it, "Good morning, Sweetie."
The Doctor handed her favorite mug to her. She took it thankfully and took a sip of the hot liquid.
"Mmm, caffeine," Rose moaned. She almost missed the look that the Doctor gave her out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to put down her mug and hide her grin. "So," she asked, getting down to business, "what have you done?"
"Just finished checking the nutrient levels and all the little things that you do twice a day. I wanted to scan you while you were transferring artron to the TARDIS," he told her.
"Why?" she asked, her brows furrowed, she was starting to feel like a science experiment.
"Welll, I haven't done it before," he answered. "And I'm curious as to what's going on."
"Curiosity killed the cat, you know," she informed him.
"More lives than a cat, me," he bantered back. "That phrase used to be 'care killed the cat.' Shakespeare used it in his play Much Ado About Nothing. 'What though care killed a cat, thou hast mettle enough in thee to kill care,'" he quoted.
She still didn't like Shakespeare. Nothing he could do or say would make her like those plays. Or Elizabethan English for that matter.
She rolled her eyes and put her hand out to the coral. The moment her hand touched it, she felt the coral pulse in her mind, and it slowly started to glow, like the branches in the console room did when the lights were low. She stroked the coral for about 15 seconds, then pulled her hand back.
"Did you get what you needed?" Rose asked as she picked her mug back up.
"Oh, yes," the Doctor replied. He studied the three different scans he had taken. "But that's-"
"What now?" Rose interrupted, not wanting to hear the word she was 99 percent sure that he was going to say next.
"Well, as we knew already, the artron you're using is just a little bit of what's in you, and there's no ill effects," he told her.
"But that's not what's got you all worked up," Rose observed.
"The coral grew," he said, his voice was a little high pitched. He stared at the object in question.
"It's supposed to do that," she told him in a mock whisper. "That's the whole point of this." She bumped his shoulder and received an eye roll from the Doctor for her cheek.
"In 15.4 seconds, it grew 0.6% in volume," he marveled, and scribbled something in the log. She was certain it was the fact he had just cited.
"Wow, that's quite a bit." She was impressed. Old Rose would have asked if that was good. New Rose knew that that was quite an achievement in such a short time, even if she couldn't do the math in her head to find out just how much of an achievement it was.
Just then, the other Doctor walked past the open door, then backed up and walked into the lab. He ruffled his hair and yawned. The Doctor who was fully dressed rushed over to him and started babbling about what just happened. The part human Doctor looked at him like he was spouting gibberish, even though he should know everything.
"Oh, bugger off," he snapped as his two hearted double as he rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
"What?" the Doctor in brown's eyes went wide.
"I just woke up, get outta my face and lemme get coffee," the ex Time Lord said slowly.
"What? Your brain not working properly?" the Time Lord teased.
"No, I don't want to be attacked with babble first thing when I wake up. There's a difference," the part human retorted.
Rose watched this exchange with amusement. It was times like these that the differences between them became more apparent. Their teasing one another could get out of hand, though. They'd sometimes show just how much they hated themselves. One day, they'd learn just how much stronger they were together.
"Hello," Rose interjected before they could go farther.
"Helllooo, Beautiful," he replied, grinning. The partially clothed Doctor then walked over to her and the tank that the coral was held in and looked down in it. He wrapped his arm around Rose's waist and said, "So, we had 5.251 cubic centimeters of growth in just a few seconds, huh?"
"Oh, so you can still work the maths!" the Time Lord exclaimed.
"A loomling could work that equation," he replied derisively.
Rose just shook her head, pulled from the Doctor who held her, and walked out of the room, sipping her coffee. She went to the galley and poured herself a bowl of cereal. Both of them walked in behind her a minute later, acting suspiciously in sync.
"Are you two done taking shots at one another now?" she asked calmly, pleased that they had stopped.
After a quick breakfast, she left them bantering with each other while she went to get ready for the day.
Half an hour later, she stepped out of the shower, dried and brushed her hair, and began applying her makeup. She favored much less now than she used to, and it made her look a few years older than she did without it. She left off the lipstick this time, only applying a small amount of vanilla flavored chap-stick.
She found some dark blue jeans and a dark pink T shirt and put them on, then walked over to the Doctor's room, where she was told they'd be waiting for her. Her nervousness from the night before returned as she stepped through the door.
She stepped inside and saw the Doctor in brown sitting comfortably in the plush, wing-back chair in the corner of the room. The other Doctor sat on the bed by the headboard with one leg hanging off. He'd also gotten dressed for the day, wearing a maroon oxford and no tie. Despite his calm, almost cocky exterior, she could feel that he was also nervous.
She strode across the room to the bed, kicked off the Chucks she had donned to walk the grated halls, and sat on the bed cross-legged like she had the night before. The Doctor gave her a half grin and took his position in front of her.
"You ready for this?" he asked softly and took her hands.
"Yeah," she replied. "Just tell me what to do."
"Just mirror what I do and we'll be fine," he assured her.
The Doctor put his fingers to her temples and closed his eyes as Rose did the same. She felt him at the edge of her consciousness, and welcomed him in. The same time he stepped into her mind, she stepped into his.
It was an odd sensation. Just like when she had bonded with the other Doctor, she could feel and sense everything the Doctor felt, his heart beating, the way her skin felt under his fingertips, everything. Then came the moment where she couldn't tell whether she was the Doctor, or Rose. During it, she caught a handful of memories: Running hand in hand across a bridge; what looked like a crystal ball that had dark shapes swirling inside; a blank, white wall; pushing a lever with another pair of hands on top of his, and being terrified and sickened at what he was doing; carrying a sack with a box in it across a desert to a shed.
Finally, the moment ended where she didn't know who she was, and her identity separated back into itself. She felt disoriented and a bit dizzy. She felt the bed shift as the other Doctor crawled into the bed behind her. He put his legs to either side and hugged her from behind.
"Are you okay?" she heard both from behind her and in her mind.
"Yeah. Jus' got a bit dizzy for a mo'," she assured them. The muddiness and vertigo had passed quickly.
They both pulled back from one another's minds, removed their hands from each other's heads, and opened their eyes. The Doctor then took Rose's hand in a test. At skin contact, she felt the need that she had felt every time the man sitting behind her had touched her for most of the past two weeks. They both gave into it immediately.
The Doctor wearing blue gave a chuckle. "That's amazing," he happily said.
"I know," the Doctor behind her agreed. He pushed some of her hair behind her ear and kissed her just under it.
The man in front of her leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers softly. His kiss turned deep quickly, and he pulled her onto his lap, despite the light noise of protest from the man behind her.
Hands roamed, and somehow his suit jacket disappeared off of him, though she couldn't say where it had disappeared to, or quite how it left his body. The Doctor behind her had a hand at her waist, her shirt up a little so he could rub the skin there. The other hand held her hair back, so he could pepper her neck with kisses and little nips.
She ground against the part human Doctor's length, eliciting a deep groan from him. He broke away from her mouth and gazed into her eyes, his brown orbs full of lust. At the same time, she reached for the buttons of his shirt as he reached for the button on her jeans and turned her head to meet the Time Lord's lips.
Between the two Doctors, they quickly had her divested of the clothing she had been wearing all of twenty minutes.
"I love you," the part human Doctor whispered, just before he slid within her. The was the last full sentence in English that came from his mouth for a while.
Their connection this time was nothing like how it had been the night before, it was animalistic, a flurry of feelings and passion. Rose reached completion more times than she thought possible.
When it was all over, she laid there in the middle of the bed, breathing heavily and shaking a bit, a Doctor on either side of her in much the same state. Both of them were touching her, and she'd forgotten which one was which. A quick check of pulse would sort that out, but it didn't matter. Damn, the things they could do when they worked together.
When her heart calmed down, she drifted off into a light sleep.