DSL

by blackberri

A sleazy comment at a New Year's party and a promise to go clubbing in the 29th century make things very hard for the Doctor. Figuratively and literally.

The Doctor was putting in an earnest effort to appear focused on Tardis repair. He'd come equipped, sonic and a slew of other tools shoved into the (trans-dimensional) pockets of his suit jacket. He had even removed the grating so he could get under the console to repair a circuit that, in all fairness, really was sparking. Any rational observer would conclude at a glance that he was concentrated on his work.

Alas, none of this was true.

Instead, he was staring up Rose Tyler's skirt and calculating how many seconds it would take him to spring up and have her against the console. She didn't have stockings on underneath. That would shave off the four seconds or so it might have taken to slide them down her legs, or—a more likely outcome, at this point—the two he would have devoted to just ripping them plain off.

Rose's voice drifted down from the jump seat, "You alright over there, Doctor?"

The Doctor jolted guiltily, his hand slamming down onto the circuit. It sparked at him, singing his shirtsleeves and nipping at his bare palms, but he paid it no mind. Sheepish, he forced himself to shift his gaze from Rose's thighs up to her face.

She was peering at him over the spread pages of her magazine, through the gaps in the grate. When

their eyes met, she set the mag down on her lap and smiled one of those lovely smiles she reserved for moments like these.

He hadn't actually seen her in full yet, since she'd made it out of bed to join him in the console room long after he had sequestered himself under the grating. In fact, he'd spent half the night and most of the morning, relative to Rose's conception of time, cooped up down here. He hadn't accomplished anything of use, but it was a convenient bolthole, since Rose had neither the technical knowledge nor the slightest desire to fiddle with the wiring on her own, and he was thus unlikely to be distracted by her there.

Now that he was taking her in properly, he wished he had chosen to retreat to his room instead. Over the accursed denim skirt, she had on a form-fitting red top. Its sleeves stopped just above her knuckles where her fingers poked out, small and soft-looking. In fact, he knew first-hand that they were indeed very soft, always nice to hold and to squeeze. They would feel even more wonderful somewhere else, if she just—

"Earth to Doctor?" Rose said, drawing him out of his thoughts. She was waving a hand out in front of her face. A bit cliché, and really not an ideal way to get someone's attention. Strange Earth custom, it was. "Seriously, are you ok?"

It was a very good thing that she wasn't telepathic, because he answered her very emphatically in his mind. Aloud, he replied, "Just peachy, thanks."

The circuit let out a low, indignant hiss, unhappy that it was being pushed aside in favour of some good old-fashioned ogling. The Doctor empathised; he knew the feeling.

"Well," he amended, and scratched at one sideburn. "Mostly."

Rose laid her chin on her hand, leaning over so she could take a closer look at the circuit, which had started to vibrate in an ominous fashion. Her fingers drummed absentmindedly on her cheek, nails—painted an offensive shade of pink—glowing in the shadow of the time rotor. He wondered how they would look wrapped around his cock.

"Need any help?"

"Nah," the Doctor said cheerfully. "The Tardis is just cranky, no need to worry. Don't let me distract you from your—" he squinted to make out the cover of the magazine open in her lap, more thespian exaggeration than necessity, because Time Lords didn't squint "—er, guide to 29th century nightlife."

Satisfied with his competence, she slumped back in the jump seat, her skirt riding up on her thigh as she opened the magazine again and resumed her reading. "Don't knock it till you try it," Rose said, flicking to the next page. "You promised me a trip tonight, yeah? I'm doing research."

The Doctor glanced at the scantily clad blue figure on the cover, and he swallowed, throat dry. If she planned on donning anything like the tiny band of fabric the Flatraxan sprawled across the page had on, there was a not insignificant chance that he would regenerate on the spot, and that wouldn't even be the worst of all potential outcomes. Though humiliating for him and deeply traumatic for the both of them, on second thought it actually seemed rather a grand way to die.

Slightly concerned by how indifferent he was to the prospect of Rose-induced spontaneous combustion, he forced out a laugh. "Research for Rose," he chirped. "Right-o. Right as rain. Resplendent, even." He scrunched up his nose. "No, too many r-words."

Unfazed by his alliterative prowess, and insensitive to the slightly panicked flow of his babble, all Rose did was giggle. Attention turned from him now, she turned over another page of her magazine, which was still rather distractingly spread across her lap. Helplessly, the Doctor's eyes tracked the flipping page, glossy under the blue light, and nearly burnt his finger on the circuit again when he saw that plastered across the mag was a scandalous-looking bikini that consisted of little more than string and holographic strips.

He swallowed again, daunted by the mere prospect of the outfit, circulatory system failing—but quickly logic intervened. The club she had picked out for the evening didn't have a marine theme, and even in the 29th century a bikini would be unusual for a night out on the town. The 58th? Well, that was a different story, but he hadn't visited Earth in that particular window of time since he was in his 300s, and for good reason.

The Doctor was on the verge of telling her as much when Rose began to nibble idly on her bottom lip, and all of his internal reflections on the nude beaches of New York III and the tidal warfare that ensued deserted him. Her tongue swept over its swell, worrying her Cupid's bow. Rassilon above, blessed be his name, he envied that fucking tongue with all he had.

Rose glanced up from her magazine again, starting a bit when she met his eyes. The Doctor schooled his expression into as pleasant and non-creepy a smile as he could manage. He had experience being caught in the act—she hadn't expected for him to be looking in that moment, obviously, but he doubted she could really be that surprised. It seemed to him that he spent most of their time together in that habit.

Instead of scolding him for being a dirty old pervert as she ought to have done, Rose only gave him one of those cheeky tongue-in-teeth smiles, and waved at him. With all the dignity of a worm, the Doctor waved back, and slinked under the grate.

These were truly, he lamented to himself as the circuit gave off another threatening plume of sparks, the worst of times.

**
The Doctor's newfound sexual fascination with Rose was not a problem of his own making.

Well. That wasn't entirely true.

In his ninth body he had allowed himself on three occasions—or four, or five, or twenty, but who was counting, really?—to appreciate her . Of course he had noticed, if only as an impartial onlooker who spent a lot of time in her presence. He had been aloof and suave about it back then, as was his leather-jacketed way, but he had been neither blind nor a saint. He could acknowledge, privately, that she was attractive: all pink and yellow and wide smiles and tight t-shirts, and she knew it.

It was also objectively true that she was attracted to him, which was, from a purely objective standpoint, rather flattering. The Doctor was naturally inclined to pick up on her tells: the slight dilation of her pupils in his presence, the rapid throb of her heartbeat, her scent. He could admit to himself that her looking at him and finding something worthwhile was gratifying. Given the extent of his ninth self's discipline over his urges, the admission hadn't mattered. His intimate interest in her wasn't a problem so long as he didn't plan on doing anything about it beyond dancing with her in the strictly non-sexual sense, even though, upon reflection, he had sort of implied that he wouldn't be adverse to doing it in the sexual sense either. Semantics, really.

When he regenerated into his current self, he understood the second he opened his eyes and saw

her there, clutching the coral and completely terrified, that the strange thing between them had changed in the blink of an eye. Though he couldn't see them, he could practically feel his timelines unfurling, reaching out for her. On a logical level, the attachment made sense: he had died in reverence for her, chock full of the vortex energy that she had absorbed for his sake. It didn't help that this new body was formed on the heels of a fantastic kiss, which lingered on his superior taste buds till the very end of his ninth body's last cell.

Yes, he had known even then that his new body would inevitably bear her influence. But he was the Doctor. He had been a literal monk for thirty odd years during his misspent youth, not counting the centuries he had spent living like one. His self-control was unparalleled. As much as he resented the stuffy ethics and logos and whatnot of the Gallifrey of yore, he would become the paragon of the Time Lords' esoteric-celibate-guardians-of-Time ideal for Rose's sake. All of that repression and restraint would a good tour guide make. He would lead Rose Tyler on a PG trip all around and across the universe, and they would have a wonderful, platonic time of it.

It had to be this way, regardless of how amenable he and Rose were to the idea of something more. There were all sorts of reasons why allowing anything to progress past this point would be a terrible idea—the age difference, the species difference, the thousand years of experience and guilt and foresight she knew nothing of. That he would inevitably lose her, would outlive her by centuries and centuries, until she would exist only as a memory inside his head.

These were all good reasons. Important reasons. And the Doctor was the senior party in this situation, so much so that the mere thought of the age gap made him wince, therefore it was on him to rise to the occasion and make the right choice for the both of them. He would approach Rose as a mentor would his favourite student: with appropriate distance and a firm, guiding hand that ventured nowhere near her arse.

And then he strode into Jackie's for Christmas dinner from the wardrobe room, and she smiled at him from the table, all dimples, and his pretence of objectivity went down in flames and chunks of ash in the atmosphere with the bloody Sycorax. The plan was promptly thrown out the window.

That part of it could perhaps be attributed to his personal failings, and to certain pre-existing sentiments. But everything else had started with a party in Keisha Selby's flat.

As a rule, the Doctor found New Year's Eve suspicious. It was a longstanding position, which had only been reinforced by the unfortunate incident of the Eye of Harmony and Dr. Holloway; just more proof that the universe never liked it when the Doctor stuck around to watch its passing.

Naturally, when Rose told him that Keisha was hosting a party, and that Shareen and the girls and maybe Jay would be there, and Mickey couldn't come because he and Keisha didn't get on so Doctor could you please, he had given her a firm no thank you.

He was willing to oblige most of her requests, but this was beyond his limits. It was an amalgam out of his worst nightmares: the Doctor disdained 21st century house parties, he was distrustful of New Year's, and though he had no idea who the man was, he was certain he would dislike Jay.

Rose gave him a look from beneath her thick, dark lashes. She laid a small hand on the crook of his arm, the warmth of her palm bleeding through his suit to heat his own cooler skin, and she repeated in a small voice, "Please, Doctor."

And so the Doctor was coming to the party. It helped that this incarnation was not so virulently opposed to all things domestic. He could tolerate the odd pub quiz. He almost liked them—out of

the ones he had partaken in since Christmas, he had won almost all. (Damn that Howard from the market and his surprisingly vast knowledge of Earth's architectural history.) Sitting at a table and eating chips on occasion, he reasoned, did not a human make.

Rose would never admit it to him, but he suspected she rather liked introducing him to her friends. She was proud of the life she had built for herself, that she had achieved what none of her former boyfriends or old clubbing mates had expected of her, even if none of them would ever know the full extent of it. The Doctor thought that entitled her to a bit of bragging, and if that meant that he would occasionally have to make an appearance at a function, then so be it; he owed her as much. But that didn't mean he had to be happy about it.

When Shareen and Keisha opened the door for them arm in arm, already well on their way to being sloshed at eight in the evening, the Doctor recognised instantly that this was the sort of thing he was committed to avoiding across all regenerations. This was mauve alert, cloister bells, all four horsemen charging ahead at full speed. This was—

"Coming?" Rose called out over her shoulder, as she slipped past the door jamb and into the flat.

The Doctor's eyes trailed after her figure, in that tight, black dress. Then he was sighing, pressing through the throng of sweaty bodies and hoping the brownie points this earned him would be worth their weight in Schnapps.

Rose had gotten halfway through a pint when he reached her again, and she treated him to a brilliant smile when she noticed his arrival. Her cheeks were flushed, mouth pink and wet, and there was the slightest residue of froth on her lower lip.

The Doctor reached over to brush it off, his thumb swiping absently over her skin. Rose's eyes were wide, her pupils blown out. He smelt the faint arousal buzzing beneath her skin—he always did, as much as he tried to tune it out for her sake.

Now, he liked that he knew. It reassured him. His new self hated leaving her alone at events like this nearly as much as he hated attending them. He always wondered in his previous body, alone in the Tardis while he waited for her to rejoin him, which of her old crowd would try to take her out for a dance. Would some Rickey the Idiot copy clutch her body close to his own, arms wound around the midsection of her snug dress? Would he tell her how much she's changed, how much he missed her?

His thumb trailed up to stroke the arch of her cheekbone. None of that mattered, because she had come here with him. She was loyal. Anyone who may have tried to earn her attention obviously hadn't been successful. The thought, and the fact that even a light touch from him had managed to excite her, pleased the Doctor more than his highly rational and lucid Time Lord brain would allow him to admit.

Rose blinked at him, slack jawed.

The Doctor frowned, uncomprehending, and then the implications of what he'd just done set in. Tactile new body or no, that was an intimate gesture in human terms, out of the bounds of the established conventions of their relationship. No wonder she was looking at him like he'd grown a third eye.

Ah, well. The damage was done.
"Nice party," he commented, nonchalant as ever, hands dropping to his sides.

"Yeah," she agreed. Fortunately, she seemed willing to follow his lead and ignore what he'd just done. "But I'm surprised you think so." She gave him a nudge and teased, tongue between her teeth, "Thought you didn't like parties, mister anti domestics."

"Me? I love parties," the Doctor sniffed. "I just prefer proper ones. Have I ever told you about the time on Drusillex B? Chocolate fountain with singing frogs to match, ear stoppers crystallised from old Earth champagne, now that was a party. Weeeeell, I say one time. More like six. Weeeeell, I say six."

Rose laughed. "Take me to one," she entreated. "Not that I don't like the trenches of Apladi or the beaches of, ehm, Raxacallico—"

"Raxacoricofallapatorius."

"—Raxawhatsit," she said, nodding, "yeah, s'what I said. Anyway, not that I don't like running for our lives, but a party might be nice every once in a while."

She was being facetious, of course. Rose didn't think that he would ever take her to a party, and certainly not one at a club. For his former body that would have even been true; she knew him well enough to think that such a suggestion would be promptly brushed off. But this new body was fun, and he was determined to prove it to her. Right now he would like a party, he suspected, all the nibbles and the ambience and the music.

And moreover, his current self felt that both of them had earned the right to some relaxation after the whole regeneration ordeal. A trip to one of the best eras for a night on the town on Earth would also be an opportunity to show her the synthetic waterfalls of Beta Nevada, if she was so inclined. It was even a period that bore certain cultural similarities to the 21st century with regard to etiquette. No Captain Jack would be waiting to entice her.

"Tell you what," he said. "I'll take you to Las Vegas in the 29th century for a good party. Say what you will about the Earth Empire, I know I have, but they know what's what in that department."

"Really?" Rose said, eagerly, leaning in to take hold of his arm. "Will there be singing frogs?"

The Doctor waggled his eyebrows, and pulled her in closer to his side. She nestled in without protest, and let out a soft exhale against his shoulder. This kind of touching was normal for them— the post-Christmas normal, anyway—so he allowed himself to indulge in the moment and breathe in her light perfume, which he knew she'd nicked from Henrik's in Year 11. Just underneath lay the distinctive tang of Rose. Buzzed, warm, content Rose. Easily one of the top ten scents in the universe. Top three, if he was feeling particularly honest.

"No frogs," he confided. "But singing, yes, always. What would a party be without music?" "Cheers then," Rose said, smiling into his coat. "I can't wait."

They stood there together in comfortable silence for a while, her breath coming slow and steady against his shoulder, until Keisha rounded the corner with another girl on her arm and began stalking toward them with purpose.

Reluctantly, the Doctor relinquished his hold on her. "Think you're wanted elsewhere," he said, jerking his head in Keisha's direction.

Rose sighed. It was one of his favourite sounds, that half bemused, half irritated huff of breath. She always sighed before she did something brilliant, or when she was cross with someone, or when she thought he'd put his foot in it, in his Doctorish way.

Keisha was upon them before the Doctor had time to reflect more on the subject.

"Rose," she said, barely able to speak through her laughter, "you'll never guess who's come, I can't believe it, you're gonna die. Jay brought his mates, yeah, and one of them brought that girl from the butcher's. You know, the skanky one who got with Patrick."

The Doctor found all of this incomprehensible, but Rose was fluent in Keisha. She leaned in to absorb the details of the story that the girl he didn't know had launched into explaining. It was
only another moment of hushed chat before she was being tugged away, stumbling after her friends in the low heels she'd dug out from the closet in her room. She cast him a glance over her shoulder, mouthing 'sorry,' but he only waved her off with a loose smile.

His eyes followed her to the far corner of the room. She was a vision in black and pink and yellow, under the cheap multicoloured lights strung on the ceiling to brighten up the flat. Her smiles and laughter, freely given always and even more now that she'd had a few, were magnetic.

"Oh," came a slurring voice from beside him. "You mus' be that...that fella of Rose's."

The Doctor turned, assessing the interloper. Bleary eyed and wobbling on his feet, dressed in a tee shirt and low-hanging jeans, his cap on sideways. Obviously pissed, and not someone he recognised. He had found over the years that interesting conversations often ensued with drunk strangers, but not as of yet with Rose's former school friends, most of whom seemed to think he was paying her to sleep with him. Then again, he had nothing better to do now that she had left him on his own for the time being. And this fellow had approached him deliberately; it would be rude and not very ginger of him to ignore such an address.

"Yep," he replied, good-naturedly. "That's me."

The drunk nodded. "Thought so," he said. "Only some kind of a doctor would wear a suit to a party."

Moderately put out by this presumption, the Doctor frowned. "I'll have you know this suit is highly versatile," he said, and was about to begin his explanation of the many functions of pinstripes when the other man let out a chuckle, effectively derailing his train of thought.

"She's fit these days, Rose is, when she's around," he said, and jammed his elbow conspiratorially —and painfully—into the Doctor's middle. "It's a nice dress she's got on. You bought it for her, then?"

The Doctor rubbed at his ribs, his eyes narrowed with suspicion. "Actually, she bought it for herself."

"Right, 'course she did."

The drunk was still looking at her even when he fell silent, a sleazy smile settled on his face. The Doctor wondered how angry Rose would be if he just wrapped her up in his coat and carted her off to the Tardis. She looked happy, but appearances could be deceiving. Wouldn't she prefer to go to see the waterfall? There was no reason they couldn't nip out for a quick visit now. They could even make it back for the countdown, if she really wanted.

He was about to avail himself of this idea when the drunk let out a wistful sigh. "Man, you lucked out," he said. "She's got major DSL, all the guys 'round here think so. But you mus' know all about that."

"'DSL?'" the Doctor repeated warily.

His patience with the conversation was wearing thin. He had no interest in listening to any more of this crass discussion of Rose. To the contrary, he was considering the merits of cramming his tie down the man's mouth.

The drunk leaned in close, breath hot against the Doctor's cheek. "Guess they don't teach you that in med school. Look there," he said, pointing to Rose's laughing face. "DSL—means she's got dick sucking lips. Don't you reckon?"

"Doctor," Rose said as he tugged her down the staircase, abandoning the party behind them. "Tell me, what's happened, what's the emergency? What happened with Rob?" She peered over at him. "And where's your tie gone off to?"

Jaw tensed, knuckles throbbing, and in want of a tie, the Doctor said nothing in return save for a laconic, "Tardis repair. Urgent business."

To keep up the charade when they made it inside, he poked half-heartedly at a sticky lever for a few minutes. Rose teased him about what constituted an 'emergency' in his books while he worked, leaning against a Tardis coral, until he spun around and declared it all better. She seemed suspicious about this, but when he grasped her hand in his and pulled her after him, all she did was laugh and hold onto his arm.

They were not going back to that party under any circumstances, so instead they went for ice cream, pistachio for her and banana nut for him. Hand in hand, they enjoyed their spoils on an empty bench near the shop, under the stars, and witnessed the passing of one year into the next. When the clock struck midnight (the Doctor was a more accurate countdown announcer than anyone on in the news, thank-you-very-much) she kissed him on the cheek. Strictly platonic, of course, but it was a nice kiss. He decreed 2007 would be a great year for the Powell Estate if only for Rose's presence in it, and she laughed, and elbowed him in the side until he relented and let her sample his flavour.

It was a good night. He had returned to the Tardis after dropping Rose off at Jackie's in high spirits, humming a little tune as he went along, oblivious to what was already beginning to occur. But it was too late; the process had started.

Because the Doctor had assumed that, having left the culprit in a heap on the floor with a tie shoved halfway down his throat, his offensive remark would be lost to time, never to be thought of again. Rose hadn't heard it, which meant the only person who knew it had happened at all was him, and he would certainly never bring it up, so it would be fine.

But he had underestimated the power of suggestion. He had somehow forgotten, even after lording it over Harriet Jones, how easy it was to implant an idea in someone's head and just sit back and observe as it wreaked havoc.

And then the other shoe had dropped.

The Doctor came up with New Earth for their first trip. It had hover vehicles and shops, which she would love, and then he had gotten a properly enigmatic message on the psychic paper. All the beginnings of a great adventure.

Rose raced into the Tardis in the morning, duffel on her back and newly cut hair spilling out of her

cap. She grinned at him, lips so plump and pink, stretched around his cock and sucking—

He shuddered, and jerked the lever he was working down with such violence that the time rotor groaned in protest.

"You ok?" Rose asked as she set her bag down on the floor, out of breath, chest heaving beneath her blue zip-up.

"Oh yes, I'm always alright," the Doctor lied, blithely, as he righted himself. He smiled at her, perhaps a little too wide for nine in the morning London time, but before she had the chance to scrutinise his expression they were off hurtling into the vortex.

For all Rose knew, the matter was dropped. But all was not alright. The matter could not be dropped. It was too late to quell the tide of ideas and images rattling around in his brain.

The seed, as it were, had been planted.

** Then there was the matter of bloody Cassandra.

On that very same trip to New New York, she had decided to throw herself at the Doctor wrapped in Rose's skin. It only stood to reason that he, a being of very high intelligence, had stood there in dumb silence while she snogged the living daylights out of him.

He could mount an argument in his defence: he was already going through a crisis of the sexual variety, and Cassandra had taken advantage of his weakness. Psychograft or not, the body, with all its chemicals and odours, was still pure Rose—of course he would be overwhelmed.

It was less defensible that he had gotten halfway through an attempt to calculate the location of the nearest broom closet so he could throw her in it before his brain caught up with his libido and he realised that this was a highly improbable situation. There was the matter of Rose getting lost, of her indifference to the patients in Ward 26, the accent, the outdated terminology. Even the unbuttoned shirt felt off, though he would have preferred to believe that bit was her.

So not Rose, then. Someone was using Rose's body, taking advantage of her defenceless mind to manipulate him. The notion had made him furious, and he'd redirected all blood back to his brain and away from his now thoroughly disinterested bits as they examined the terminal on their way to intensive care. The moment was henceforth lost.

Once the pyschograft was discovered and the mystery solved, it was just a regular day. A productive day, actually, if a bit disappointing for their first trip since Rose was being compressed for most of it. He saved the New Humans with a little help from Cassandra and the Sisterhood's magic potions, and Rose was restored to her normal, not-inclined-to-kiss-the-Doctor self. Cassandra got her goodbye and dissipated into the atmosphere, where she belonged. He'd even been a little touched by it. Easy peasy, molto bene, bien fait.

But not bien fait, actually, because now that Rose was safe and returned to him in good condition, he could not manage to forget how he'd gotten really, thoroughly kissed by her body.

Did she really think this new body was foxy? Had she been looking? Did she like it?

He could have sworn that he didn't use to be like this. In his ninth body he had cared for her deeply, so deeply he had been torn between saving the world and not for fear of losing her, so deeply a Dalek had pointed it out to him, so deeply he had given up his life for her. But he hadn't

craved her body incessantly, like a human would.

And yet the evidence was irrefutable that right now he desperately wanted her. When they lounged around in the console room later after having explored the city, her shirt was still half unbuttoned, her lips swollen, hair pulled up into a haphazard bun that only made him think more about her sucking him off.

They would look so good on him, those lips, her little tongue sweeping over that one vein on the underside of his cock. He could almost feel her blonde head bobbing in his lap, see those big eyes batting their lashes up at him while he tugged her hair out of its hold and fisted his fingers in it. It didn't help that now he knew exactly how soft that mouth was, how well it fit with this body.

He really disliked Cassandra.
New New Doctor indeed. Rose had no idea.

All of this was to say that it wasn't actually the Doctor's fault that he was becoming a reprobate of the highest order.

Rob Delaney and Lady Cassandra O'Brien.Δ17 were to blame for all of the staring up Rose Tyler's skirt he had caught himself doing. They had made it the Doctor's burden to bear, this relentless prurient interest in her. The consequence being his sanity, obviously.

It was for that reason a terrible idea to follow through on his plan to take her to the 29th century. He had managed to put it off with promises of Ian Drury in 1979 (when the werewolf incident was over with, they did manage to get there—she got up on his shoulders for a better view, and the Doctor thanked the stars she had elected not to wear the bin bag) and the electro-synth-rock revival of 2568, and the jacuzzi drumbeat symphony of the year three billion and seventy-six, which was really 5089, but no one except the Doctor seemed to take umbrage with that.

After four of these sorts of trips, this strategy of diversion and distraction began to fail. Finally at dinner she asked him plainly if he ever intended on taking her.

He had half a mind to just say no. But she looked so hesitant to broach the subject, biting on her lower lip and glancing up at him with such diffidence that he was already inclined to change his mind before she even spoke.

And then she opened her mouth. That hazardous mouth. It never did bode well for him when Rose's mouth was involved.

"I know you know what's best," she said, hands clasped in her lap, "so if you really think it's dangerous or something, then I'll drop it, I really will. I just thought it might be nice for us to have a break, that's all—to let loose a bit." She tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear and said, softly, "I forced you to go to Keisha's New Year's do, and I just wanted to try something more your speed."

The Doctor was so weak to that face, it was embarrassing. The tribunal would probably have exiled him again, if there were still a tribunal to try him, or a Gallifrey to be exiled from. "No, no danger, not unless you count the, er...well, nevermind. We'll go," he assured her. "Best party in the world —29th century, Vegas, you and me."

"Yeah?"

"Yes," he said. And then, because he didn't want to seem a complete pushover, he added sternly, "No nude beaches on the 58th, mind. Now that would be dangerous."

"Wouldn't dream of it," she replied, tongue between her teeth.

The Doctor cleared his throat, and tried not to think about other places on his body that tongue could be. "Good."

So they were going to the 29th century.

It didn't help that the Tardis was conspiring against him. His ship, his ship, had set her up with the magazines and, after they'd had their lunch, ushered her to a corner of the wardrobe apparently devoted to dancewear.

Who had come up with that idea? Certainly not the Doctor himself. He might dance (at the present moment he 'danced' in isolation just about every day, because of bloody Cassandra and Rob Delaney) but he didn't wear a feather boa whilst doing it. At least not in this incarnation.

As did anything that embarrassed him, it had delighted Rose. "I can tell you dance," she'd shouted to him, laughter echoing up from the bowels of the wardrobe room. "God, please tell me you used to wear this stuff!"

At least the Tardis hadn't deigned to show her the technicolour coat. No one believed him when he explained that it was the height of fashion at the time.

He sighed, slouching into the jump seat. Rose had been down there for twenty four minutes and forty six seconds, and each passing moment made him more nervous. Had she gone with the strappy bikini? Surely not. He had explained to her last night in painstaking detail the disastrous war between the nude-beach-goers and the tide-dwellers, and how awful it would be for her to be mistaken as a warrior seeking refuge in time. Not that this was a particularly likely scenario even if she did wear a swimsuit. But still, better to be safe than sorry.

The time rotor wheezed in what the Doctor construed as agreement. Heartened, he gave it a pat. "Now, now," he said. "Intergalactic aquatic warfare isn't so bad. At least some good fruity drinks came out of it."

"What, like sex on the beach?"

"No," replied the Doctor without thinking, looking instinctively to the mouth of the staircase, "that was—ah."

Rose smiled, biting her lip. "Go on," she prompted. "Give us an explanation."

She was wearing a dress, if it could be called a dress at all. It was a purple-coloured swatch of fabric wrapped around her body like clingfilm, held up by sheer force of will. It covered her arse, and that was about it—she hadn't put on stockings, because of course she hadn't.

His eyes lingered on the bare column of her neck, drinking in the valley of her collarbones and the suggestion of cleavage that lay below. She had a light black shawl slung over her elbow. The Doctor couldn't decide whether he wanted her to wear it to cover something up, or whether he wanted to chuck it into the vortex along with the dress so he could have her against the Tardis doors, assembled hordes of Genghis Khan be damned.

"Sex," the Doctor sighed, staring at her chest.

Rose laughed. "That's one part of the name, yeah," she said indulgently, leaning on the coral beside her. "Figured that much out myself."

The Doctor forced himself to look back up at her face with painful effort. It wasn't much of a reprieve—she was still smiling, a languid, shy sort of smile that made his trousers uncomfortably tight.

"Er," he began. "Well, a Floridian barman called Ted claims to have invented it in 1987, but I happen to know for a fact that he made the whole thing up."

"Let me guess," Rose said. "You were there when some other guy came up with it."

"Actually, no," said the Doctor. This was a safe subject. Nothing exciting about Florida in the 1980s. "But I was there with Ted at Confetti's, and I watched him nick it from a Bartenders' School book. Then he made a website when the Internet came about and purported to have come up with it. Tsk tsk, no bueno. He should be ashamed of himself."

She pondered this. "But then you don't know whose idea it really was," she surmised. "Sex on the beach."

Being forced to watch Rose say 'sex' was a unique brand of torture. It required immense concentration to divert his blood away from his cock, to tune out the pheremones seeping from her every pore, and to retain the steady mantra of I will not fuck Rose in his head. This concentration reallocated some of his mental faculties, it must have done, because no thoughts currently available in his head were in the least appropriate.

Higher functioning at work elsewhere, he replied, "Probably a traveller and his companion. Could even be us from the future. That would be an interesting loop to fulfill."

Rose's black-rimmed eyes went wide as she stared at him, startled. His brain was still busy, because he didn't attempt any damage control. Instead, he was reckoning with his own internal battle; he had to admit that Rob Delaney, as distasteful as he was, had a point. Her mouth, wide and ever so slightly open, would look incredible sucking on his cock. She even had on a touch of lipstick. When her lips dragged down his skin, would they leave red smudges as they went? Would she lick them off with her tongue?

The time rotor gave a plaintive groan. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he got the impression the Tardis was laughing at him.

The Doctor cleared his throat. "Well," he said, rising from the jump seat to offer Rose an arm. "Vegas awaits. Shall we?"

She took it with a little curtsy, and together they stepped out of the Tardis. Looking around—and very much not at Rose—the Doctor let out an appreciative whistle.

Even for Beta Nevada in July, the height of the tourist season, this neighbourhood had been glitzed up to the extreme. Silent fireworks went off in the sky, exploding into tendrils of light. Glowing billboards loomed above, casting the pavement in tawdry purples and blues. There was glitter everywhere on the streets, in trails of footprints and other patterns.

"Talk about glamour," Rose breathed. "You weren't kidding, we really are in Vegas." She released him and bent down, scooping up a handful of glitter so she could hold it up in the light. It twinkled in her palm, before slipping like sand through her fingers, their tips stained a soft green. "What's all

this?"

"They keep the lights low inside because of these kinds of external displays," he explained to her. "Too much light pollution for the city if the night industry is lit up. At first they just went dark, but then no one could see. Imagine that! You've no idea who you're talking to, what you're drinking. A night out became a massive gamble."

"Sounds like home," Rose teased.

"Weeeell, maybe a little," the Doctor acknowledged. As he spoke, they began to walk the short path from the kerb the Tardis had landed on to the club, arm in arm. "But their solution was brilliant. They decided that the people themselves should do the job."

"That's a bit cheap, don't you think?"

"Practical though," said the Doctor. "That's what the glitter is—it's absorbed by sweat and circulated through your body, and gives the skin a temporary lustre. It's not bright, but spread across enough mass it creates a viable light source inside that doesn't contribute to the pollution. You'll see, they filter it down from the ceiling when you go in."

"So what you're telling me is I'm gonna glow," Rose reasoned.
The Doctor beamed at her. "We both are," he agreed. "Fun, eh? I told you it was a party."

Rose answered by resting her head on his shoulder. When she was so close, he could smell the apple-scented shampoo she used, the faint Henrik's perfume she dabbed at the base of her throat. Beneath the surface, there was that odour that was simply Rose. He breathed it in, greedy for as much as she would give him.

"Thank you, Doctor," she said when she pulled away. "For all of this."

"The pleasure is all mine," he said, squeezing her hand. "Now, come on. Don't want to wait too long."

There was a short queue in front of the building, leading up to the front doors. The bouncers—who weren't really bouncers, but Rose thought the notion was funny, so he let it slide—were two green Apladans with sixty eyes each. They stood guard, checking each clubgoer's identification before allowing them to proceed inside. It was only surface level age verification; the club he had chosen was hospitable to non-humans.

The Doctor knew he could pass so long as there wasn't any scanning apparatus, but he had assumed Rose would prefer to see what the 29th century was really about, xenophilia in its prime. Judging from her awestruck look as she glanced at the various species standing in front of them, he had been right.

"You still need ID," she whispered. "I thought they would have, like, X-rays or something. That way no one could just nick their mum's driving licence to sneak in."

"Speaking from personal experience, I presume," the Doctor answered, under his breath. "But no. That technology is expensive, even in the 29th century. Beta Nevada gets too much tourism for every club in the district to waste money on biometric scanners rather than aesthetic effects and other comfort services. Competition is the driving force of the industry."

When they reached the front of the queue, he flashed the psychic paper at the bouncers. The Apladans gave them synchronised nods, in acknowledgement that they could enter. The doors

behind them opened (the nod must have been some sort of trigger, which the Doctor thought was probably more for show than function, but it seemed to impress Rose well enough) and together he and Rose walked through and into the club itself.

"Look," the Doctor said once they were inside, pointing to the glitter that had already begun to trickle from the ceiling. He stretched out his hand, allowing it to land on his palm and sink in.

Rose shrugged off her shawl and wrapped it around her waist, too warm in the stuffy corridor to bear multiple layers. Following his example, she reached up to catch some in her cupped hands. The tiny, glowing beads spilled between the gaps of her fingers, dripped onto her bare arms, pooled in the valley of her collarbones. Within moments, the expanse of skin not covered by her dress was coated in a slight golden sheen.

"Wow," she breathed, admiring the colouration of her palms. "It's beautiful."

He stared at her, throat thick. He had presumed this would be a possibility, but he hadn't anticipated that the likeness would be so strong. Drenched in this colour, she resembled almost too much the being she had briefly become on the Game Station. It was only her eyes, warm and brown rather than the ethereal gold of Time itself, which reaffirmed that he had in fact taken the vortex out of her and that this was still Rose, not the second coming of the Bad Wolf.

"Doctor, you alright?"

He swallowed down his unease. "Er, yes," he said. With a disarming smile, he waved his own hand at her. "See, there are all sorts of different colours. I'm going silver. Blimey, I'll look like the Tin Man."

"Not that I'm gonna see any of it," Rose admonished. Hands on her hips, she sized him up. "How many layers have you got on? You're gonna get heatstroke."

"Time Lord," clarified the Doctor, vaguely.

Now that he was focusing on her, Rose in gold was distracting. Nearly naked Rose in gold was very distracting. Nearly naked Rose in gold with her hands on her hips talking about undressing him was very, very distracting.

"Time Lord?"
"Lower body temperature. Come on, Dorothy, don't want to hold up the queue."

Grasping her hand again, he tugged her into the main dance hall. When they stepped in, the floor beneath them trembled, thrumming with the current of the beat, and she sucked in a breath.

The Doctor had only seen this club once before, and he was sure it would be just as grand the second time, but he wasn't examining the room in front of them. Rather, he was watching Rose's face for her reaction. That was what he had been wanting to see when he had suggested this trip in the first place. In for a penny, in for a pound; the Doctor aimed to impress.

"Jesus." Rose's hand loosened in his hold. She glanced from corner to corner, unsure of where to look. "Not exactly Keish's flat."

Thousands of humans and a variety of offworld species were crammed together on the dance floor, their glowing bodies moving in time with the loud music that pulsed above. Others milled about on the couches to the side of the room, in clusters or pairs, chatting in as many languages as there were people. The bar had a massive selection of bottles on display, ranging from old Earth alcohols

to drinks from the Scarlet System. It was, in a manner of speaking, wizard.
He looked back at Rose, who was still rapt. "Like what you see?" he asked smugly.

She rolled her eyes at him. "Shut up." When he pouted, she nudged his side. "Yes, you nutter. It's incredible."

The Doctor was inordinately pleased by this. "Not exactly Keisha's flat, indeed," he echoed. "So. What's first on the agenda for tonight, Dame Rose?"

Rose beamed up at him, tongue in teeth. Her skin gleamed with flecks of gold, fluid in the dim glow emanating from the dance floor. It would be so easy to kiss her, barely any effort at all to rest his hand on the small of her back and press her soft body into his.

"Drinks, obviously," she said. "I've always wondered, how much does it take to get a Time Lord pissed?"

The Doctor had attempted to explain to her that his metabolic capabilities were too high for him to become properly inebriated, at least not with any of the alcohol here (hypervodka was a different story), but Rose had dragged him off to the bar anyway and sought out the barman so she could order.

Three minutes later, she plunked a drink down in front of him. It was of a yellowish colour with a thick layer of froth on top, served in a simple tall glass.

"What's this?" he asked.

"Poison," said Rose, and sat down beside him to set her own drink on the countertop: a bright pink concoction with a bendy straw, a fruit like a blood orange speared on its rim. "Just try it, you'll see."

The Doctor gingerly took a sip. It was an Earth alcohol, which he expected—she didn't know enough about any of the other systems to order anything else—but not among the ones he had been dreading, like vodka or gin.

"Rose Tyler," he pronounced, delighted, "is this banana flavoured?"

"I pay attention, you know," said Rose exasperatedly, but she had a look on her face that suggested she was relieved he liked it. "Your babbling isn't for nothing."

"Quite right, too," said the Doctor, taking another sip. It was hardly alcoholic to begin with, and his body metabolised anything that could have intoxicated him in two seconds flat, but it had a good flavour, and cooled him down in the sweltering heat of the club. Not that he would ever admit it to her, but it was hot in here, even for a Time Lord.

Rose snickered at him. "You've got a foam moustache," she said. "Let me get it for you."

She leaned forward in her stool to wipe the substance off his upper lip. The Doctor would have tensed when she touched him, but it was too fleeting even for that. In 2.57 seconds, she was gone.

"There," she said softly as she pulled away. "All better."
The Doctor smiled. He was enamoured with little moments like these—with Rose's desire to look

out for him, even for something as silly as a foam moustache.

"I couldn't make it a day without you," he said fondly. "I'd be the laughingstock of all the universe."

"You'd have jam stains on all your shirts," Rose said, shaking her head. Her mouth curved up in a lovely half-smile. "And muddy trainers tracking dirt everywhere you went."

"At least I can cook," he said. "I suppose that's one thing you need me for, eh?"

Rising to the bait, she crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. "I can cook, you know," she said. "I survived nearly twenty years with out you. Just cos my mum can't make a good roast doesn't mean we're hopeless at it."

"Unfortunate for us that there are no Sundays on the Tardis, then."

Rose frowned. If they had been in the Tardis, he was certain that this would be the moment she dragged him into the kitchen and whipped up a meal just to spite him. She seemed to realise that this was a point she could not prove whilst in the club, though, and her attention shifted to the as of yet untouched fluorescent drink in front of her.

The Doctor peered at it. It looked alarmingly pink. "I thought we were sticking with New Year's flavours, but that doesn't make a very appetising pistachio."

"No, ta," said Rose, her nose scrunching up in disgust. "I asked about fruity flavours, and they gave me the in-house special. It's called Viva Las Vegas."

"What, like that awful Elvis film?"
Rose shrugged, impervious to his disappointment. "That's what the barman said."

"Not his best work," said the Doctor critically. "Although, that reminds me, we really should go to see Elvis. If you thought Sheffield in 1979 was a laugh, Elvis in New York? It's practically a different planet, no pun intended. We'll have to beat the fans off with a stick."

Charmed, she stroked his knuckles. "Then let's go after this. You and me, Elvis, New York." "Consider it done," the Doctor said, raising his glass.

She squinted at her own drink. "Well," she sighed after a moment of silent inspection, twirling her straw around its murky depths. "Hope it's better than the film."

"Rose, anything would be better than that film."
With a laugh, she popped the straw in her mouth and took a long sip, savouring the flavour. When

she swallowed, she let out an obscene moan. "Sod the film. God, this is gorgeous."

The Doctor wished he could disappear. His grip on the glass wobbled, palms slickening with sweat from the heat and from his own rapidly rising internal temperature. It was all he could do to look on in horror as Rose continued to suck on her straw. She worked its length, slurping up her Viva Las Vegas with voracious hunger, as if it would disappear if she left it undrunk for too long. When she pulled off at last, her mouth was stained with bright pink food colouring.

"Mmmmmhhh," she sighed, tongue sweeping over the residual sugar on her lower lip. "I love the taste. It's not like anything you can get back home."

Were it not for his superior circulatory system the Doctor was certain his face would be a brilliant red. If such a place existed, he had a one-way ticket to hell.

Rose slid her glass across the table over to him. "Want to try some?"

Throat dry, the Doctor ignored her offer in favour of continuing to stare at her. He could imagine it so clearly—his mouth on her, tasting her flavour between her thighs. Rose's sultry voice, offering her body up for him to sample. Not like anything you can get back home indeed.

"Doctor?"

The sound of his name brought him back to himself. "No," he near-shouted, pushing it back toward her. When she blinked at him, uncomprehending, he tried again, "Er, I mean. No. Thank you, but no."

"Yeah, I heard you the first time," she said, with a laugh. "No cocktails for the Doctor, then. That just means more for me."

The Doctor sniffed. "Honestly," he said, affecting an offended air. "It's an insult to my masculinity, Rose. You might as well shove a parasol in it and nail my coffin shut."

"And we wouldn't want that," teased Rose. "You'd prefer to stick with your own very manly fruity drinks."

"Exactly," said the Doctor, and leaned forward to clink the rim of his glass against hers. "At last someone understands."

Rose giggled. "You know, when I was in secondary, all these spotty teenage boys would pretend to like whiskey to impress the girls. We could all tell they thought it was rubbish, the whole thing was like pulling teeth." She took a sip, and said, pensive, "I'm glad you don't do stuff like that. It's all a bit silly."

It was entirely false praise, since the Doctor was more inclined to do something ridiculous on a major scale to impress a girl than most whiskey-drinking sixth formers. He supposed taking her to watch the Earth blow up in the year Five Billion didn't count as showing off. To be fair to her, they had all missed the big event, ended up almost getting murdered, and she'd ended up paying for chips, which just about evened the playing field.

"I can appreciate a good glass of whiskey, Rose Tyler," the Doctor protested, though he was reasonably sure (but not one-hundred percent, since his untested tastebuds hadn't yet been put to work to that end) that he would hate the taste. "And I don't need to pretend to do anything to impress the girls."

"Yeah, cos you think you're so impressive," Rose said, grinning.

He smiled at the memory. The first time she'd said that, he had been bragging about the New Roman Empire in 12005, which they never did actually see. Pity, that. Maybe they could take a trip after Elvis. But that could wait for tomorrow. For now there was a script to keep to, and she was looking at him expectantly.

"I am so impressive," replied the Doctor on cue.

Rose rested her chin on her palm, observing him in thought. Loose strands of hair caught between her gilded fingers, and he was reminded, pointlessly, of Rumpelstiltskin.

"You wish," she murmured at last, completing the line.

The Doctor didn't realise he was holding his breath until his respiratory bypass kicked in. She was still looking at him as if she were trying to gain access to his thoughts. She couldn't literally, because she wasn't telepathic in the least. But Rose, he sometimes felt, could understand the inner workings of his mind better than anyone who could see it.

Then the music changed to Old Earth pop, and her inexplicable mind-reading was interrupted by Shakira.

"I love this song," Rose commented, mouthing the lyrics along to the beat. When the chorus began —something ominous about a wolf in disguise, which made him vaguely nervous—she cast a longing glance toward the dance floor. It was so quick he was certain that she had not intended for him to see it, but he had.

Sensing her meaning, he jerked his thumb in its direction. "Go on, then. Get out there and shake a leg," said the Doctor. "That's why we came."

Rose turned to him, an unspoken question in her tentative look. Do you want to dance with me, Doctor? he envisioned her asking, teeth digging into her lip, twiddling a hoop earring between her fingers.

He wanted to dance with her very much, double entendre included, and if she had asked him outright he might have said yes to all of it on the spot, helpless to resist her as he had become.

But she didn't. Instead she smiled at him, grateful for his permission, and said, "You'll guard the drinks, yeah? Don't want anyone putting weird 29th century drugs or something in mine."

"You have my word, madam," he replied solemnly.

"Thanks." She hesitated, and he thought for the briefest of moments that she really was going to ask him. But she only smiled again, and said, "See ya."

Rising to her feet, she gave him one last wave before she headed to join the crowd. He followed her golden body until it slipped into the mass, and then she was out of sight, leaving him behind with the two drinks and a rather phallic bendy straw.

The Doctor gave the untouched blood orange a morose flick with his finger. It put up a fight, wobbling on the rim before at last it tipped out onto the countertop and landed in a pulpy heap of its own entrails.

"You and me both," he said.

Annoyed by both the prospect of Rose dancing and by his own inaction, he sighed, and reached for his drink. It would be his companion for the evening, while she rubbed elbows with a bunch of people from all across the universe who could ogle her golden skin and purple dress in his place. At least it tasted nice.

**
He moped for twenty two minutes and thirty four seconds exactly before he began to get antsy.

That was a long time for Rose to be dancing without coming back to him, wasn't it? She could understand anything said to her thanks to the Tardis' translation, but there were hundreds of species not native to Earth who could be offering her a turn about the room, and the implications of their

expressions and gestures would be lost on her. For the Paladins of Kotmor, even taking her hand would be grounds for a legal engagement. She might be impressed by the lanky lizards' chivalry, up until they were hauling her off to the mainland for a volcano wedding.

The Doctor rapped his fingers on the table, considering his options. She would be annoyed if he aborted a dance out of paranoia, certainly, but any risk of annoyance was far less important than her safety. He looked over his shoulder at the crowd. Rose could be anywhere. Was it worth it to wade through the whole bunch just to affirm his confidence that she was safe, which in truth he was almost entirely certain she was?

Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a greenish blonde in a red dress being crowded against a wall by her dancing partner. Not Rose—she was all gold and purple tonight, two thirds of a Mardi Gras arrangement—but it could be her. Because at the moment, she was Schrödinger's Rose: simultaneously kissed and not kissed, dancing and not dancing. If he didn't seek her out, he might never know.

His jaw clenched, and he stood. The Doctor was going to open the box.

Apologising silently to Rose for leaving her shawl and their drinks unattended (though if she complained he would just buy them new ones, since he'd stowed a stick with unlimited credit in his pocket), he stalked onto the floor, pushing his way past the clusters of people dancing together. Were it not for his superior senses, it would have been impossible to make out anything in the dim light of the glitter; as it was, he could just about see the faces of everyone who surrounded him. No Rose yet.

It took him another three minutes and eleven seconds before he caught a glimpse of her. She was talking to someone—an androgynous humanoid, with short, black tufts of hair sticking out of their head. Laughing, but not kissing. Not even standing very close.

This was the point at which he should turn around. He had ascertained that she was alright; he couldn't sense any distress coming from her, nor did her posture or expression betray any tension. And it was good for her to make friends. Sometimes, he got the impression that she found their life a bit lonely, though she had never told him as much herself. When she beamed at her conversation partner and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, though, he knew that he could not leave her.

He strode toward them with purpose, hands shoved in his pockets. Rose's acquaintance noticed him before she did; they said something to her, inaudible over the sound of the music, and it was only then she turned. She looked surprised to see him, but not displeased, which was a good start.

The first thing she said to him when he reached her side was, "I thought you were watching the drinks."

"I'll get you another," he muttered, crossly.

Rose laughed, and laid a reassuring hand on his arm. "It's alright," she said. "Er, Cress—this is the Doctor, my friend who I came with. Doctor, this is Cress."

Cress dipped their head at him. "Hey," they said coolly.
They were inscrutable. The more the Doctor looked at them, the less he felt he could surmise. "Cress told me they live in the city," said Rose. "They mentioned a waterfall?"

"Oh, yes," the Doctor said eagerly, before Cress could even think about cutting in and explaining for him. "The falls are artificial. They were constructed in the 26th century to counteract the

drought, but had the unintended consequence of altering the environment, which caused all sorts of trouble. By now, though, they've managed to solve most of that, so it's just another stop for tourists. Apparently the water is even a good hangover cure for humans."

Cress shrugged. "It's an urban legend," they said. "I don't think it's actually true."

The Doctor quite nearly glared at them. What did they get off on, tearing apart his credibility in front of Rose? He hated when people did that. "Weeeell, yes," he sighed, "that's why I said apparently. I suppose Rose and I will have to verify the myth for ourselves."

"I don't think either of us will have a hangover tomorrow, we've hardly had anything to drink," Rose put in, rather unhelpfully. "And I thought you metabolise alcohol."

"My brother does that, too," said Cress. "He's got a condition."

Rose peered at the Doctor, curious. She seemed to be scrutinising his features to determine whether he would be likely to have such an affliction, as if he hadn't related to her in great detail the machinations of his biological response to alcohol.

"I don't have a condition," the Doctor spluttered, somewhat belatedly.
Cress sighed. "Me neither," they said. "It's not hereditary, it's acquired. He got it at a truck stop in

Missouri."

That piqued the Doctor's curiosity, and he was debating whether it would be worth it to probe further when Rose tugged at his sleeve.

"Doctor," she said to him, evidently put off by the idea of hearing more about this disease. "Cress was just telling me about their band. They play all sorts of clubs in Vegas, it's like a contractual thing."

Of course they played in a band. Maybe taking Rose to see Elvis wasn't such a good idea after all.

"Yes, well live music is much preferred in this era," the Doctor said. "Most advanced speakers in the world, but it's not enough for you lot—you need the full kit and caboodle. That's part of the reason why running these establishments is so expensive."

"And so they use paper IDs," Rose said, sagely. The Doctor grinned. "Exactly."

Cress glanced between them. "I can tell you're not from around here," they said. "Rose said you're travelling, yeah? Must have come a long way to get in. I heard the queue for the city limits is days long."

"We had a bit of a fast pass," said the Doctor. He shot Rose a glance, hoping she would be appropriately impressed, but she only looked confused. Bugger.

At least Cress seemed to appreciate the gesture. "Some ship you've got, in that case," they said. "Most can't pass through the scanners, and loads of people try to sneak in to avoid the wait."

Rose grinned, catching on at last. "The Doctor's my designated driver," she told Cress. "Not much one for queues, though. He prefers to go through the back door."

The Doctor let out a bleating cough. When Rose looked at him, puzzled, he smiled, trying to bury

any thoughts of her back door. "Yep," he said. Evidently he hadn't recovered yet, because both she and Cress continued to stare at him. "That's me. Back door-goer."

There must have been some good karma left in the universe, because just when he wanted the ground beneath his feet to swallow him up, a door to their right swung open. A bright pink humanoid with an orange glow and a guitar slung across their chest emerged, heading their way.

"We're staring up in five minutes," they said to Cress. "You ready?"

Cress nodded. They turned to Rose, and reached out to grasp her hand for a quick shake. "Keep in touch, yeah?"

Rose smiled politely, returning the gesture. "'Course."

They didn't offer the Doctor any goodbye, which was rude, but probably for the best since he was still sort of choking. In 10.34 seconds, they were sequestered back in the music booth, presumably off to play the drums or whatever other obnoxious instrument they'd chosen for themselves.

"Keep in touch," repeated the Doctor once they were gone. There would certainly be no clandestine phone calls with Cress from the 29th century on his ship. "Did they give you their, er," he stopped, realising that he had no idea what technology they had used. "Phone number?"

Rose laughed, tongue in teeth. "Yeah," she admitted. "Took me by surprise, I didn't think they did that anymore. Bit vintage. But I don't think they'll be getting any calls back." She glanced at the booth, and said under her breath, "I pawned Mickey's number off on them."

The thought of Cress calling Rose only to be met by Mickey the Idiot pleased him enormously. He was on the verge of saying something witty to that effect when the music blaring overhead shifted to something fast-paced and electronic, so loud it made Rose jolt in surprise.

"This is rubbish, isn't it?" he remarked, struggling to make himself heard over the whine of the piano-esque instrument. "I bet that's Cress on the synth."

Rose nodded her agreement, but her attention had been drawn elsewhere. She was glancing at the people dancing around them. All throughout the hall, dancing had commenced in earnest—bodies of all different shapes and colours were pressed up against each other, rubbing and grinding and bumping elbows to the pulse of the beat. The glow of their bodies lit up patches of the floor; the Doctor could see his own reflection on the tiles, the imposing silhouette of his coat like a cape in the dim light.

He stepped closer to her, unwilling to let her focus be stolen away by these strangers. "I suppose they like it," he said. "Looks rather fun, actually."

She looked up at him. Her expression was impenetrable in the low light, the golden colour of her skin masking some of her normal tells. "Not really your area."

"Not my area?" he repeated, aghast. "Rose Tyler, you wound me. Didn't I show you before, on the Tardis? I've got the moves."

A tentative smile took shape on her face. "Then show me your moves," she said, holding out a hand.

The responsible thing to do would be to deflect and guide them back to the bar, order that new round of drinks he had promised her. The even more responsible course of action would be to leave her for someone else, maybe Cress, once they emerged from their techno hell, to dance with. But

he wanted this dance for himself, and Rob Delaney and Cassandra and bloody Cress be damned, he would have it.

He took a step toward Rose, and reached out so he could show her what he had in mind. He had intended to settle his hands on her hips so they could dance face to face, but the crowd was shifting, closing in on them. There were thousands of people in the room, each seeking their own dance with their own partners, unwilling to accommodate the strict bounds of the Doctor and Rose's strictly sexless friendship. In the jostle she ended up pressed flush against him, her back to his front.

The Doctor swallowed. His palms were on her sides, low on her stomach, her arse pressed up against his crotch. He wasn't hard yet; his semi-manual circulatory system could be thanked for that. But there was only so much he could do to stave it off, and in a minute or so, he would be and she would know.

Rose looked at him from over her shoulder, eyes half-lidded. Her pupils were dilated, irises more black than brown, and she bit her lip. It was always his downfall, that pouty lower lip. His cock twitched in his pants, and he knew she felt it this time from the slight hitch of her breath.

"This doesn't feel like dancing," she said.

His hands stroked her ribcage, skimming the underwire of her bra. Her hips had begun to move against his in slow circles, arse shifting into the growing bulge in his trousers as she swayed to the beat. He slid a hand up to cup her breast, thumb stroking her pebbled nipple languorously through her dress. Rose sighed, and continued to rub against him in slow, easy movements, long since out of sync with the music.

With his free hand, the Doctor stroked the curve of her thigh. He allowed her time—one second, two seconds, three, three point five—to pull away. She didn't; instead she went still, body tensed like a bowstring. Slowly, his hand crept up her skin, expecting to encounter the fabric of her knickers. It was only when he was so close to her centre he could almost feel her heat, the pads of his fingers slightly damp with the wetness that had built up between her thighs, that he realised that he wouldn't. She wasn't wearing any.

"Rose," he rasped, breath coming hard against her ear. "Rose?"
She bit her lip. "The dress is tight," she mumbled. "I didn't want a visible panty line."

The Doctor had to close his eyes, overwhelmed by this revelation. Rose had been like this the whole evening: listening to him babble about Sex on the Beach, holding his hand, dousing her skin in gold, ordering him a ridiculous cocktail at the bar because she didn't want to drink alone. All without knickers, maybe even wet for him.

She was going to give him a hearts attack. He'd been alive over nine hundred years, and never had a piece of knowledge affected him so carnally. It opened up a whole new realm of possibility. Rob Delaney's lewd suggestion couldn't hold a candle to this.

"We're done here, don't you think," he said, without room for argument. Mercifully, Rose nodded, slipping her hand into his. "Let's go back home," she said.

The Doctor got the impression that she didn't mean Jackie's flat. His adam's apple bobbed in his throat as he swallowed, nodding, and squeezed her wrist.

He had her up against the Tardis doors in less than three minutes.

As a Time Lord, he should have been able to calculate it to the zeptosecond, but the precision of his time sense was the last thing on his mind as his hands drifted over all that was bared of Rose's golden skin.

He crushed his mouth roughly to hers, unable to wait to get inside the Tardis, his urgency spurred when she bucked into him. Her lips were so fucking soft, fervid against his much cooler flesh. Already he wanted to pursue kissing her as a scientist would an experiment, catalogue her flavour and feel and sound under a thousand constraints in the service of research. He chased the residual zest of her drink, his tongue slipping past the seam of her lips with ease so he could taste the full extent of her.

Rose eventually had to pull away for breath, for her lack of a respiratory bypass. "Doctor," she said, squirming in his grip as he nipped at her jaw. "We should—mmmh, fuck."

Undeterred, the Doctor buried his face in her neck, and latched onto the exposed skin of her throat. "Getting there, I hope," he muttered against her pulse.

"We should go inside," she tried again. The sincerity of this request was diminished when she tipped her head back to grant him more access even as she spoke, rocking against the thigh he had shoved between her legs. "Doctor."

He pulled away, appraising the trail of love bites he'd left up her neck. They had begun to redden; his knowledge of her pattern of bruising assured him that before long they would darken considerably. Brilliant.

"Don't want to."

"Inside the Tardis I can take off my dress and we won't get arrested for public indecency," she coaxed him, pulling his tie out of his button-up. "It's boiling out here. Come on, it'll be so much nicer."

She did have a point there: the thought of fucking her in his ship satisfied his base, covert sense of possessiveness. And it would be just his luck to get carted off to a holding cell whilst the Doctor was, for the first time in two bodies, trying to dance.

Impatient, he let her down so he could shove a hand into his pocket, sighing with displeasure when the fabric tightened around his straining cock. The pressure was relieved only when his fist closed around the Tardis key, and he fished it out, handing it to Rose. She took it from him eagerly, sensing or sharing his desperation, and unlocked the door; he pushed it open and tugged her inside after him. It shut behind them with a definitive click.

The rotor's lights were dim, and for all its usual wheezing and groaning, the Tardis was near silent. The Doctor leaned against the console, and looked at Rose, who was herself leaning against the door.

Whatever decision there was to be made in that moment, she made it for him. She took hold of the top of her dress and began to tug it down. Almost reverently, she revealed to him her breasts, still encased in the black lace of her strapless bra, and the curve of her waist, and then she was naked before him, her dress pooled at her ankles.

The Doctor stared. He had seen parts of her naked, for a whole host of not very sexy reasons, but never Rose in her totality before. He absorbed the sight of her piece by piece: first her tangled hair,

her kiss-swollen lips, her neck; then her breasts, and their dusky nipples; the flat of her belly, and the dip of her hips and navel. At last he settled on the apex of her thighs. It was covered by a light dusting of hair, dark curls that had at one time been shorn, but had since been permitted to grow out a little.

Rose allowed him to look. She trembled near-imperceptibly under his gaze, embarrassed to be observed so closely, but she did not cover herself up, having grasped somehow his need to see her.

Braced on the console, the Doctor said, "Come here." I think you need a Doctor, he didn't say, but thought for her benefit.

She knelt to undo her shoes and disentangle her dress from her ankles, and then suddenly she was back in his arms, his hands on her arse, their mouths moving together. It was erotic, her naked body pressed to his fully-clothed one, his coat spread out underneath them. He tucked that away to explore another time, when they weren't so frantic.

She threw his tie to the ground and unbuttoned his suit jacket. As soon as that was done, her small hands started to work on his oxford. "I've only seen you twice without this bloody thing, no way you're keeping it on," she muttered darkly. "It's giving me a complex."

The Doctor huffed out a laugh. "Wouldn't want that," he said, shrugging his coat off his shoulders to help her along. It fell onto the console, unfolded across the various knobs and levers scattered across its breadth.

Rose only made it halfway through the line of buttons when the Doctor, keen to continue, brought one hand up to fondle her breast, the other still kneading her arse. He lowered himself so he could take her nipple into his mouth, and she sighed when his tongue swept over the tender peak, her fingers threading themselves in his hair.

"You're just trying to distract me from undressing you," she whispered.

It didn't seem to be a complaint; she was letting out all kinds of wonderful sounds, sighs and gasps and half-moans. He wanted to coax more out of her, desired to hear his name in that tone most of all. The matter of removing his shirt, in comparison to that, could wait.

"I'll let you do it later," he said.

He sucked bruises into her skin, dark imprints with his tongue and teeth spread across the valley of her breasts, on their undersides and tracing back up to the hollow of her throat. By the time he reached her mouth, she had grown restless. She tugged him in for a hard kiss, a hand sliding down to the front of his trousers.

The Doctor groaned against her lips. He had gotten himself off in this body many times before, but the feel of her hand cupping him was an entirely different beast, warm and clammy in a way that his own cooler one could never be.

"You like that?" she teased, squeezing him a little tighter.

The fiery pits of hell would be a reprieve. The Doctor was perfectly willing to imagine Sisyphus happy—he would join him in a heartbeat, if it meant he didn't have to listen to Rose talk like a fucking porn star.

"Rose," he hissed.
She smiled, all sweetness, her fingers tugging at the zip of his trousers. "I knew you were a briefs

man," she said, pleased with herself.

The Doctor's hand covered hers, stilling its path. He wanted her to touch him, fuck he wanted her to touch him, but her hand alone wouldn't be enough tonight. This time, he wanted all of her. "Save the party for later," he said, with great effort.

"Yes, Doctor," she said, batting her lashes up at him. The gesture was intended to be cheeky, obviously, but his cock gave an interested twitch under her palm—yet another thought filed away, to be explored on another occasion.

Rose raised a brow at him. She looked intrigued by the prospect of his interest, which was much too much for him to think about in any detail if he wanted to last, so he pulled her into a kiss instead. His cock was painfully hard against her hip. Every movement of her body on his felt as if it was bringing him too close to the edge. He needed desperately to be inside her.

His hand slipped between her thighs, two fingers dipping without warning into her heat. She whimpered, taken by surprise, and the Doctor couldn't suppress his own answering groan. Her cunt was so wet; she was so wet, so tight. She was more human than ever in that respect, her body eager to accommodate him as he curled his fingers inside her.

"Doctor," she murmured. "Please."

The Doctor suspected he would have enjoyed teasing the end of that sentence out of her under different circumstances, but—pushed nearly to the brink already—he shared in her urgency. He moved himself out from under her, and lifted her up onto the console, her back shielded from its bumpy surface by the coat.

Rose's ankles hooked together at the base of his spine, drawing him closer into her; slotted between her thighs, his erection brushed her centre. He bit out a curse, so low he had hoped she wouldn't hear it. But she did, and despite the situation she laughed.

"I've never heard you swear before," she said, reaching out to wind her arms around his neck. "And we've been together all this time."

"You must have at some point," said the Doctor, though thinking back he thought it was possible that she was correct. It endeared him, that it was this that she was thinking about on the verge of such a momentous occasion, so he said to humour her, "I'll try to do it more often, if you'd like."

"Please do," said Rose. She leaned up to kiss him, her hands seeking purchase in his shirt. She didn't say anything, but he could feel her impatience, the implicit permission—her demand to continue—in her touch.

Keen to oblige, the Doctor aligned himself with her entrance and began to slide into her, so slowly he almost didn't realise until his hips were pressed against hers and she let out a choked gasp—of discomfort, he worried, or maybe just of surprise. His eyes squeezed shut, inundated with new, old sensations, inch by inch.

If her skin had been warm on his cock, then her cunt was impossibly hot around him, unlike anything he'd felt before. Maybe it had just been so long that he'd forgotten, but he didn't think he had ever had sex like this. He couldn't get enough of Rose's breath in his ear, her naked breasts pressed against his chest, her heat engulfing him.

He withdrew just enough so that he could slam back inside. The console shook with the movement, the Tardis' displeasure with being rattled about clear through their link, but the Doctor didn't give

a damn. He was concerned only with moving in tandem with Rose, with burying himself again and again inside her until his need was satiated. Her nails dug sharp and hard into his shoulder blades; her whimpers were indistinct, but he could make out his name in his favourite sighs and breathy moans. It pleased him immensely to know that even in the midst of her pleasure she had not forgotten who was giving it to her.

The Doctor buried his face in the crook of her neck, lapping his tongue over her racing pulse. He catalogued the slightly salty flavour of her skin, her perfume, that distinct taste of Rose that he'd always detected in her scent. It made him harder, his thrusts sloppy and quickly gaining speed, and he was realising that was far too close, far too soon. But he felt like he had been close since Christmas. Before then, even.

He brought the heel of his palm to where their bodies were joined, moving over her clit in desperate strokes. She keened, ankles tight on his arse, her human biological instinct tethering him over her. He crushed his mouth to hers, rubbed her once, twice, thrice—and then she tightened around him, back arching off his coat, her body flushed pink and gold with her release.

She eased out of it slowly, clutching to him even after she finished, her breath coming out in uneven pants against his lips. It took all he had for the Doctor not to continue the second she came; he waited for her to recover, teeth gritted, forcing himself to stay still within her.

Before long she was kissing him again, rocking her hips into his to urge him on. It only took a few strokes until he was thrusting into her with abandon, all thoughts aside from the pursuit of his own completion pushed aside. He was on the precipice; his hands instinctively sought out her temples, and he stopped only when he was about to touch her, fingers hovering just above her skin. She was a human, not a telepath who could bear the brunt of his mind. Somewhere in the midst of all this, he'd lost track of that.

She didn't, couldn't know what he'd been intending, but Rose kissed him viciously, a reminder of who and what she was. It was then that the Doctor let himself go. Eyes clamped shut, he came inside her. His body trembled, braced above hers, unaccustomed to feeling pleasure so thoroughly. She rubbed his back as he shook, and the feel of her hands on him pulled him away from the threads of timelines entangling in his mind, back to the two of them together in the console room.

He rolled off of her onto his back after one minute and thirty four seconds—Rassilon obviously hadn't been interested in cultivating the art of the post-coital nap—and peeked over at her when he felt himself enough to open his eyes. Rose was sprawled out on his coat, more disheveled than he'd ever seen her before, even more than when she trudged out of bed each morning to meet him for a cuppa in the galley. The sleepy, sated smile she offered him when she met his gaze was the most beautiful thing he'd seen since Arcadia.

"Have I ever told you you're brilliant?"

"Not often enough," she said. She was being honest, he realised with a pang of alarm, but she said it with such fondness that he quickly gathered that his lacking verbal reassurance didn't bother her too much. Then, she sighed one of his most favourite sighs, black-rimmed eyes drifting heavenward. "You never actually got your kit off. At this rate I really am gonna end up with a complex."

The Doctor looked down at himself. It was true: his oxford was only half-unbuttoned from when she'd tried to take it off, and his trousers hung around his hips, loose but decidedly on.

"Well," he began, contemplative. "We could always give it another go."

**
"I've been wondering, what did Rob Delaney actually do to you?"

The Doctor propped himself up on an elbow. "I was under the impression that it was bad form to say another man's name in bed."

Rose gave his arm a halfhearted smack. "Shut up," she giggled. "You're not gonna distract me, I want to know. Keish rang me ages ago and told me you had a scrap. Apparently Trisha's up the wall cos she thinks it's about Mickey."

"Weeell, maybe it was," he mused. "You never know, I could be highly invested in the social life of your ex-boyfriend. Always good to keep tabs on the competition."

She nestled into his side, pulling herself under the patch of blanket he had appropriated. "I'm just gonna make your ego even worse, but Mickey was never your competition."

He smirked, pleased by this admission, though he had long known it to be true. "Be honest," he said. "It was the dressing gown that converted you, wasn't it? I was rather dashing."

"The first time around it was the time travel, actually," said Rose. Then abruptly she sat up, sheet slipping from where it was wrapped around her shoulders. "But that's not what we were talking about. What happened?"

The Doctor was distracted by the sight of her bare breasts; he stared at them for a moment until Rose cleared her throat pointedly, brows raised.

"Doctor," she insisted.
He sighed. Perhaps she had a point. It would be better for her to know that to not; it wouldn't do

for her to cross paths with this Rob Delaney character in the future, unaware of his true nature.

"He made a rude remark about you, of a sexually explicit nature," he answered reluctantly, rubbing at the back of his neck. "It doesn't deserve repeating."

Never mind that the Doctor had been repeating it to himself on loop since the moment he'd heard it. That she didn't need to know.

"What, that's all?"
The Doctor squinted at her. "Isn't that enough?"

"Doctor, I really don't care if some idiot wants to make a comment," she said, with a laugh. "I've heard 'em all working in the shop. Most of the men at Henrik's were married and middle-aged. Buying clothes for their girlfriends."

The Doctor frowned at the thought. In retrospect, for several reasons, he really was pleased that he had blown the shop up. "That doesn't make it right."

Rose grinned, pleased that she knew something he didn't for once, privy to some wisdom of the universe that was beyond him. Then, almost as an afterthought, she scolded, "You shouldn't go picking fights on my behalf, it's really not worth it."

"But I was defending your honour," he protested. "It was all very chivalrous."
"Good to know shoving your tie down someone's mouth is chivalry now," she said. "I'll have to

watch out for that in the future." When he didn't reply, put out, she poked at his shoulder. "Come on, don't be annoyed with me. You've got to tell me what it was."

"Something unpleasant," he said, with a discontented sigh. "Does it really matter?"
"No, not really," Rose answered. "But it's got you all upset. Can't blame a girl for being curious."

The Doctor sighed again, more to himself than to her. She was very skilled in the convincing department, Rose; she could always come up with a good response to address his highly thought- out arguments. Or maybe it was just that she wasn't wearing a shirt, and the sight of her breasts made him gormless. When she pouted, nibbling on her lower lip, he at last relented.

"He said you had DSL," he confessed. "I had to have him explain it to me. Not my best moment, I'm afraid."

She stared at him, uncomprehending, but he didn't clarify. It took her another moment before she rolled her eyes, the correct combination of words evidently having presented itself. "Oh. That's a bit rude."

"I did tell you," he said. "And besides, I should hope he's learned his lesson. When we visit your mum next I'll have to request my tie back, if he hasn't appropriated it for himself by now."

Rose fell silent, considering. "Dick sucking lips," she said. Hearing the words aloud made the Doctor, who had rather hoped that the conversation was over, wince a little. "Interesting sort of compliment."

Desperately trying not to think about how interesting he found it, he let out an ineffectual hum. "Not really a compliment to a human in the 21st century, don't you think?"

"I dunno—it could be, to some people," she said, fixing him with a knowing look. It was another 3.16 seconds before she continued, casual as anything, "What about you, Doctor? Do you think it's a nice thing to say?"

In fact, the Doctor had spent many months obsessing over how it was a nice thing, for days and nights on end. Unwittingly, cock stirred beneath the sheet. "I suppose it's a good quality to have," he said vaguely. "Generally speaking."

She leaned forward, the sheet slipping further down her body in the process. "And not generally speaking?"

"Couldn't say," the Doctor answered, his attention momentarily diverted to the revelation of her hips. When he glanced back up at her, there was a filthy grin spreading across her face. Awareness dawned on him. "Weeeell. Perhaps I could be convinced to reevaluate my position, if my partner were very persuasive."

Rose crawled into his lap. "I could volunteer to be your tester," she murmured against his lips. "Why, Miss Tyler," he said, "I thought you'd never ask."