True to his word, the Doctor was only gone for a short time before he returned to the bedroom. Alba had almost drifted off to sleep when she felt his weight on the bed beside her. She opened her eyes to look up at him, peering down at her with something that looked like concern. His expressions were so stoic sometimes, it was hard telling.
"I brought you a glass of water, and a cool washcloth," he said, helping her to sit back up against the pillows.
"Thanks," she whispered weakly, accepting the washcloth first to dab at her tear-stained cheeks, which still felt a little hot. The cool dampness of the expensive swath of fabric was a welcome relief. When she's finished, she folded the cloth and awkwardly set it on a small outcropping of rock near the bed and within her reach. The Doctor waited patiently until she was settled again before handing her the glass of water and climbing back in on the other side of the bed.
"Are you alright?" he asked, watching her drink like someone might watch a deer drinking at the edge of a stream.
"Not really, no," she said, taking a large swallow. She set the empty glass down on the smooth rock that served as a bedside table. "I haven't talked about all that or thought about it in a long time. It hurts...remembering after all this time."
"All those years ago that happened...and you still think it's your fault?" he asked her, propping himself up on his elbow.
"It's not anyone else's. No one forced me to get involved with Jimmy. I knew my mother didn't like him, and that was half the reason I did. Petty and stupid, y'know? It was my choice to drop out of school, my choice to move out, my choice to drink with him and his mates, my choice not to insist he use condoms. All those choices were what lead me to where I ended up. Jimmy beat me pretty badly. I couldn't have gone back to school after that right away even if I had wanted to. And then eventually, I was just so embarrassed and ashamed that I didn't want to ever go back at all."
"I think you're being awfully hard on yourself, considering all this happened when you were only sixteen. You sound like Simone de Beauvoir, not a nineteen year old New Londoner. Earlier, you said yourself you had your reasons for wanting to leave-even if they seem stupid to you now, they felt real to you at the time. And they were real. I can only imagine what it was like growing up without a dad-my own was never around, but I did see him from time to time. I mean, obviously it was hard on your mother...but it would've been hard on you, too. You deserve to forgive yourself at least a little bit. At least you learned something from the experience-that's obvious. What happened to you didn't happen for no reason at all," he said, rubbing gentle circles across her shoulders with his fingers.
"Suppose you're right...I did grow from it emotionally. Maybe that's the silver lining," she sniffed. 'It made me grow up, become less selfish, which I needed then I guess. So what terribly stupid thing did you do at sixteen?"
She felt his hand on her shoulder go still for a moment. "Ah well...I guess my story isn't entirely different from yours, I suppose. Only I never fancied myself a rock star. I got my best friend pregnant at sixteen, just being careless because it felt good at the time. Our families are both the old-fashioned sort-obsessed with preserving the integrity of the family lines. Romana's family was of a similar social standing to my own, so when it happened our parents decided that a marriage was the only appropriate outcome. So we got married, because they didn't give us a choice otherwise. But familiarity breeds contempt, I guess...after they forced us to marry, and the baby was born, things were never the same between us," he said softly.
"Did you two just not get along anymore?" she asked.
He got a far-off look on his face before he started speaking again. "Maybe it was something like that. It's funny...this was our bedroom. I can't remember the last time I actually slept in it, though. Towards the end, it was always the sofa. Or in the chair in the baby's room. But never in bed with her though, never next to Romana. The last time I remember being in here with her, we fought about the fact that I was always at work and she was always at home with the baby. She wanted me home more...and I pulled away. Because I was overwhelmed, and I resented being pinned down by her and the baby. It wasn't her fault, of course...but I wasn't always especially nice to her. Maybe a bit like what you went through with your mum. She certainly didn't deserve half the shit I gave her, and she was absolutely right to want me home more. Who knows...if I had been, perhaps what happened to them…," he said, his voice cracking.
"What did happen to them?" she pressed gently, letting him pillow his head on her chest. She had gotten this much out of his, surely she could get the rest?
"I can't. Not today. Maybe another time...but not today. The memories...it's too much," he whispered.
"Then maybe it's time both of us tried to make some new memories. Good memories. Because I can't bear this, the melancholy," she said, pulling her fingers softly through his hair and making it stand up, mimicking the nervous gestures he made with his own hands. He didn't say anything to this, just tilted his head up to look at her. She couldn't believe he wasn't even thirty when he looked at her like that-his deep brown eyes seemed fathomless, their depths hiding an ageless darkness she wasn't sure anyone quite grasped the limits of, least of all herself.
"Perhaps you've a point," he said, shifting to bring himself closer to her. He tangled his fingers in her golden hair and pulled her against him for a kiss, taking the time to taste the inside of her mouth with his tongue.
iRather a bit like tears…/i he thought to himself, gently nibbling on her lower lip. He felt her arms wrap around him and he let his lips slip from her mouth to the curved hollow between her shoulder and her jaw. When he nipped at the delicate skin there, she moaned softly and shivered and he felt the beginning stirrings of his own growing arousal.
Gathering the hem of her nightgown in one hand, he pulled the material to the side and slid his other hand up across the bare skin of her torso to cup her breast. He watched her intensely, her eyes closed, lips just slightly parted. The hand cupping her breast moved, the fingers tracing hard circles around her areola until the sensitive skin had pulled itself into a taut little peak. He pinched her nipple gently, and was rewarded by her thrusting her chest up against his palm with a sigh. He let go of her nightgown and let his fingers move to graze the top of her knickers. Without prompting from him, she raised her hips just enough that he was able to tug the scrap of lacey fabric over her waist, which she toed to the side after he'd slipped them down her legs.
"Are you absolutely certain this is what you want, girl?" he asked her roughly, pausing his ministrations. He was asking her permission to go on, but there was something else deeper implicit in the question. From this point on, anything could happen. He needed to know she was ready for the possibility.
She opened her eyes to look at him, seeming to consider this proposition. "No. But right now I'm certain it's what we need," she said, tilting her head up to kiss him. He took this as her consent and began to tug at the straps of her nightgown, slipping them off her shoulders so she could lift her arms up and through them. He pulled the molded cups of the garment away from her breasts and began to shimmy the fabric down her body until she was free of it. When he'd done that, he tossed the offending garment to the side of the bed and turned back to where he was kneeling above her to gaze down possessively on her now naked body. Quickly, he removed his own pants and tossed those on the top of the pile.
"You are so beautiful," he murmured quietly, running his hands up the smooth, creamy expanse of her thighs. His fingers just skated through her curls before moving softly across her belly to rest on her hips. She watched him do all this with a slightly hooded gaze. His hands moved from her hips to trace their way up to her breasts. He paused, cupping one in each hand and thumbing her nipples for just a moment before moving to trace the curve of her lips with his fingers.
"Who are you seeing now?" she implored him softly, his fingers still resting on her lips.
"My second chance," he answered her. "My lovely Rose." He punctuated this statement with a kiss to the corner of her lips, but she tilted her head fully into it and grabbed the back of his head, pressing him firmly against her and deepening their kiss. He hummed in pleasure before parting her lips with his questing tongue, and this time it was his turn to moan when he felt her suck his lower lip into her mouth and begin to nibble on it.
The arrangement of their entwined bodies left her hips pressed and grinding against his own, and he felt himself growing painfully hard against her inner thigh, nudging closer to her folds the more aroused he became. Their tender kisses turned quickly to passionate snogging, each of them clinging tightly to the other like the only still port in a seething storm. When she raised her hips off the bed and wrapped her legs around his waist, locking her ankles behind his back, it forced him up and into her and they both gasped with the relief of two people coming home.
Sheathed in her slick heat, he began to thrust urgently against her, wrapping his arms around her delicate frame and holding her against his chest the way he had when they'd done this before, though she wouldn't be able to remember that he thought sadly to himself. In return, she clutched tightly back at him, her nails digging into the scant flesh of his shoulders for purchase. They remained locked at the lips as they moved against each other, desperate for the intimate physical contact. What they communicated now was all in their fevered, pleading touches and hot kisses. There were no words, only moans and sighs of gratification and soft, keening cries of pleasure as the pace between them grew steadily more frenetic.
"Oh Rose," he moaned into the hollow of her neck, his feverish pitch and pace letting her know he was close.
"Doctor," she purred in response, feeling the familiar pooling of heat in her belly that signaled the approach of her own climax. When the white hot light finally ripped through her, she clenched tight around him and cried out, causing the Doctor to illicit his own inelegant exaltation as he emptied himself into her. They both collapsed back against the bed in a panting, sweaty pile, spent with the effort of their delirious lovemaking. She settled naturally into the gap between his chest and his arm, and he folded her into his embrace, rolling onto his side to spoon her. He tugged the comforter up around them, and settled down against the bed with her, sighing contentedly against her shoulder.
"Maybe now you'll finally rest," she mumbled from her cocooned space under the comforter.
"Maybe," he agreed softly, stroking his fingers through her hair.
"Doctor?"
"Yes, Rose?" he replied, brushing her hair back over her shoulders and running his fingers lightly over the skin at the nape of her neck.
"Sometimes you scare me, you know...but I don't think you're a bad person. Maybe just a little lost. But then so am I...so maybe we're not so poor a match after all."
She couldn't see the expression on his face, for which he was relieved. "That's kind of you to say," he said, not bothering to debate her on the point that she didn't think he was a bad person. If she stayed long enough, he was sure she'd come to find otherwise on her own. For now, he thought he would savor this moment, before she inevitably realized what kind of a monster he really was.
