"Do you have to?" Rose questioned the necessity of him drawing her blood with the needle.
"You can refuse Rose, but its a good idea for me to test the chemical balance of your blood. To make sure you're not deficient in anything, or harboring anything you shouldn't be." He waved the syringe at her.
"I'm just not a fan of needles is all," admitted Rose.
"I promise you I'll be as gentle as can be and it'll be over quickly. Its just one little prick really," the Doctor elaborated.
"You promise?" Rose checked with him.
"Cross my hearts," he said, altering the familiar expression.
"Okay," she agreed and let him wrap a tourniquet around her bicep. She braced herself for the horrible pain as the needle pierced her, but he was skillful and it didn't hurt as much as she expected.
"Well done, Rose," he congratulated her bravery as he capped off the vial of her dark blood to test later and taped a cotton bud over the injection site. "I want to listen to your chest now," the Doctor stated.
Rose started a little at that. Would he be able to hear the way her heart fluttered at his touch, at his very presence? Was it silly to think her heart might betray her and he'd hear the very infatuation she had for him? She tried to breathe deeply and calm herself, but she didn't have a lot of time, as he was already reaching for the stethoscope around his neck. "I'd like you to take your shirt off."
"My sh-shirt?" Rose stuttered.
"Yes, if that's okay." The Doctor had a look of concentration, as he used one hand to manipulate the buds into his ears. The other hand lifted the bell to his mouth, so he could warm it on his breath. "You can leave your bra on. It will just be easier; especially if I'm to give you the proper massage you need after all this."
"Sure." Rose's voice came out a bit chipper, even to her ears. She had only a t-shirt on and crossed both arms across herself to tug it off and over her head. Momentarily, she forgot what bra she had put on that day. Looking at it, she was remembered it was one of her more comfortable ones, not a particularly lacy number or anything. She usually stuck to comfortable, these days when it ended up they were running for their lives more often than not.
"Molto bene." The Doctor was pleased that she'd removed the barrier between them and he could get in easily to listen to her chest sounds. Rose tried to remain calm, but her brain was thinking of little more than the fact that she was topless with the Doctor touching and listening to her in an intimate manner. Her heart wasn't complying, thudding along heavily and quickly and the Doctor would surely be hearing that.
The Doctor seemed to sense her unease. "The fact that humans manage with one heart is alien to me. Yours seems a little fast. That could be normal for you. I'm worried about your stress levels though Rose, especially considering the lifestyle we lead and the tension headaches."
"Maybe I'm just not used to being examined by someone I-" Rose started, but stopped herself. She thought on how she would describe their relationship, before finishing her sentence with, "-know so well."
"Hmmm." The Doctor's brow furrowed into a frown. "I thought that could be a contributing factor." His expression lit up immensely, however, when an idea sparked in him. "Would it help, if you had listen to my hearts as well?"
"You what?" Rose giggled at the Doctor's charming, yet absurd enthusiasm. He was already loosening his paisley tie and unbuttoning his eggshell oxford. It wasn't long before his chest was exposed. He had forgone any sort of vest and Rose's heart didn't so much flutter as nearly leap from her throat at the site of his lean, but well-defined muscle. His skin was pale and a smattering of hair adorned his chest in a display of manliness. The sight made Rose feel quite like ravaging him there and then. The stethoscope that hung somewhere between his nipples was a distant calling reminder of where they were and what they were supposed to doing. As calmly as possible she collected herself and reached out toward the instrument.
"May I?" Rose asked hesitantly. She had let him listen to her own heart and now he was returning the gesture. She had listened to his chest before, but that had been while he was laid up with regeneration sickness at Christmas. They had both been working, but to what capacity she did not know and then he'd had a neural implosion when he woken up too early and one of them had stopped all together. She had certainly felt them before too, when they'd been squashed up together in a tight situation, while on the run. She had felt them thudding away with the pumping of what could only be Time Lord adrenaline. Her own hadn't been too different sounding at the time either. Now he was offering to listen to them up close and personal during a calm moment, when he was healthy. It was the defining difference between their physiology.
"Of course," the Doctor said, handing her the stethoscope while he still grinned proudly. Rose put it on less smoothly than the Doctor had, accidentally poking herself with one of the ear pieces, but he just smiled more broadly at her. Mimicking what he'd done earlier, she breathed on the chest piece and placed it to the middle of his chest. What she heard didn't sound like a heart at all and she frowned. "You'll only get an echo there," the Doctor told her, shaking his head. He placed his cool hands over her warm human one and guided her so that she could listen to each side intermittently.
"That's amazing," Rose commented, still astonished that two hearts could work together like that.
"Why thank you." The Doctor took the complement with a side of smugness. She batted him playfully.
"My turn again?" she wondered.
The Doctor took the stethoscope back, despite Rose's initial reluctance. She liked the opportunity it had given her and didn't really want to give that up, but the Doctor insisted that he had to carry on with his examination of her. He neglected to do up his shirt, which hung open distractingly while he instructed her when to take a deep breath and when to hold it. He listened to her chest from the back as well, paying particular attention to the sound of her lungs and took her pulse for good measure.
"I don't think we have anything to worry about there," he commented eventually, putting her at ease. However, he still felt the need to write in his notebook. "I'm going to check your tummy now. If you'll lie back?"
"Okay," Rose responded, trusting him. The Doctor got Rose to lie back in the chair, which he reclined so she was comfortable. Again, he tried to warm his hands, but then decided better and rolled across the room, to snap on a pair of latex gloves. "Love that sound," he commented idly at the rubber thwacking on skin. "Let me know if anything is too tender, or painful, for any reason."
"Sure," Rose responded.
"That's a good girl."
Rose thought she may have preferred his cold touch, than the feel of the clinical rubber against her skin, but she didn't say anything. There was something calming about his professionalism as well as the gentle intimacy. He had a good long feel of her abdominal region, probing with his fingers and a concentrated look on his face.
"Where did you learn to be a Doctor?" Rose asked him, not used to having to fill the silence between them.
"Glasgow," he simply stated, leaving Rose think on that, as he used the stethoscope to listen again. "Sorry, I need you to open your jeans and pull them down a little, to get a better feel." The Doctor seemed apologetic and sheepish again.
"Sure." Rose didn't like seeing him feel uncomfortable in this situation and helped him, by exposing her midriff to him a little more. She wondered idly whether or not he would want to examine her lower than that and if that had been his intention all along with this. Get her vulnerable and trusting, using this role-play and finally touch her where she'd wanted him to for so long. The thought sent a rush of heat down south and she could feel a wetness in her knickers.
"Very good, thank you," the Doctor almost congratulated her on her effort.
"My pleasure." Rose meant to reply coolly, but almost choked on her tongue in doing so.
She wished there was none of this confusion of feelings and boundaries between them. If it could all be suddenly stripped away completely, she'd happily let him take her on this medical couch, during an examination. But their relationship was so much more complicated than that and dare she say, better. Not that she would mind at all if that were the way things should swing. She wondered again, like so often she had done before, if the Doctor had reciprocated feelings towards her. Not that they ever had time to talk about that sort of thing, with their fast paced adventures and all. She thought now might be the time, but also that it might be inappropriate.
She thought about what happened at the school too, when he'd been so sad because he was going to live a long time, while she'll get old, eventually die, and he would continue to live on. 'The Curse of the Time Lords' he'd called it. She watched him with a sadness and wondered if he ever got to experience a proper intimate closeness with any of companions, or if these medical examinations were the closest he ever got. Especially now that his own people were gone. He was still a man, after all. Surely he still had needs?
If the Doctor noticed where her thoughts had gone, he didn't let on, using two fingers on her at her groin, he hunted for pulse there and tutted, removing his glove for a better contact with her flesh. Rose had to fight a raging battle within herself to keep calm at this point. After feeling for and counting out the rapid pulse there, the Time Lord made a 'hmm,' noise and continued to finish up with his examination at her lower end, pressing down on her pubis flatly, ignoring the hair growth there, with his own naked hand, that he liked to boast was manly and hairy, despite the contrary. His other hands remained glove clad and he explored her belly with it, before stripping off that one off as well.
At first, Rose didn't know whether to feel relief, or disappointment as he took her hands back off her, but quickly decided that it was the latter. She practically ached for his touch. But he took no notice and returned to his damned notebook. The way he paused to mouth the end of his pen in thought was maddening. Did he know how sexy that made him look, especially with those glasses of his on? The tease. She inspected the profile of his face and trailed her eyes down, getting lost in the perfection of his form, for a moment.
"Rose," the Doctor cleared his throat and she saw he had finished writing. "If you'll turn over, I'd like to perform that massage I mentioned on you now. You've earned it."