Chapter Seven
Rose spent the rest of the afternoon watching him work, handing him things he needed and listening to him talk. He told Rose that he had brought three small velvet bags from the TARDIS, two filled with gemstones, the third with gold and silver coins, intending to sell the contents to provide the necessary startup capital to begin to build a new life. He had left his counterpart with enough gems of his own as an emergency fund. And not all the stones could be sold, he informed her. Some weren't naturally occurring on the Earth and would be difficult to sell, as well as possibly dangerous in that by selling them it could attract unwanted attention to him. Still, there were more than enough there to guarantee he could afford to buy whatever property he wanted in Cardiff, as well as set himself up with a shop and whatever equipment he needed for growing and outfitting the new TARDIS.
While he talked and worked on his sonic, she had begun to absentmindedly sort the stones on the workbench, first by color and then by size, as if they were just playing pieces of a child's game.
"Not like that. You're arranging them by outward appearance," the Doctor said. "If you're gonna sort them, at least do it properly."
"Properly?" she asked in amusement. "How would you do it then?"
"By type of gem and planet of origin," he told her. He didn't say of course, but Rose could hear it in his voice anyway.
"But I don't know what they are or where they come from," she answered pointedly.
"Well, the green one in your hand may look like an emerald, but it's really a diamond. It was given to me by His Royal Greatness Rowhan the Third on Telaxia 6 when I managed to solve a little problem for him regarding a warp field generator and his daughter's pet guinea pig…."
As he continued to work on his sonic, he told her stories about each stone, what it was and where he had acquired it.
"Now that one I actually got in Barcelona. The planet," he clarified. He pointed to a light pink stone with his long-handled tweezers. "I always wanted to take you there," he said thoughtfully. "We never did make it there, did we? Well, maybe we can go to the one in this universe eventually, see if they have dogs with no noses here." He grinned at her.
She grinned back. "So how did you get that one?" she asked. "Meritorious service to the Emperor or something?"
"Ah. Well. Not exactly."
He returned to working on his sonic. When he didn't continue talking, a rarity for him, she stared at him suspiciously.
"You nicked it, didn't you?"
"Nicked is a pejorative term," he informed her. "I prefer… acquired. Besides, can you really nick something from someone who has nicked it from someone else?"
"Yes," she stated flatly. "Since obviously you didn't give it back to whoever originally owned it."
"There was some question at the time who the rightful owner was," he said. "Besides, nothing to be done about it now. Not like I can give it back, given that it was a whole different universe and everything."
Rose laughed, and he continued to tell her stories about the stones while he worked. Eventually she suspected she was distracting him too much for him to effectively work on his new screwdriver, so after kissing him on the cheek, she went back upstairs to finish up her mother's 'to do' list.
~oOo~
After a late dinner they held hands, fingers entwined, and walked up the stairs to their rooms. When they got to her door, the Doctor stopped and turned to her.
"I'm gonna go back down and work on my sonic a bit more," he told her. "I'm finally making progress, and if I really hit it hard, I might even finish it tonight." He leaned towards her and gave her an extremely short, extremely chaste, kiss on the top of her head. "G'night, Rose," he said and immediately walked back down the stairs.
Running a hand through her hair, Rose stared after him. Now she really did wonder if he was trying to avoid being alone with her for some reason. He had seemed fine in her stepdad's workshop earlier, but now it looked like he wasn't just walking down the stairs, he was fleeing down them.
Entering her room, Rose shut the door behind her. She was confused. Very confused. And frustrated. Really frustrated. The Doctor had once accused her of sending mixed signals, but he was the king of mixed signals as far as she was concerned. Back when they had been traveling together she had always wondered how he truly felt about her, but on the beach at Bad Wolf Bay he had made his feelings clear. Or at least she had thought he did. And since they had been back in London, he had again tried to make his feelings known. He had actually told her he loved her. More than once, in fact. And, according to him, he had loved her since the earliest days of their traveling together.
And they had shared some extremely hot kisses.
And then… nothing.
And now he hadn't even properly snogged her in days.
There had been the one night, right after she had been kidnapped, when he had come into her room in the middle of the night to check on her. That night she had been sure, well almost sure, that they almost…. But then they didn't.
And they still hadn't. Ever since he had discovered the fact she was having nightmares, he had begun holding her at night. Actually even before that, from the time she had fallen asleep on him in Cardiff. But despite sharing a bed a portion of just about every night, all they ever did was sleep.
And so she was frustrated. And confused. And a little bit worried. How could someone so attractive, so incredibly sexy, not want to…. Especially when he had told her he loved her. And his kisses had been so hot. Toe curling hot.
She swore the sexual frustration was gonna kill her. Literally kill her. Did people die of that? If not, she might be the first. God, it was as bad as when they had been traveling. Only worse, because the kissing was definitely giving her ideas that were quickly becoming obsessive fantasies in her mind.
For more than a week she had forced herself not to remember the events on the beach. But thinking back on it, even before the TARDIS had left he had offered to spend his life with her. And then later, just a week ago, he had said forever when she had asked how long he was going to stay with her.
But nowhere had the idea been discussed about them shagging each other six ways from Sunday. Although that idea had been in the forefront of her mind constantly since they had begun sharing a bed.
Rose's thoughts spun out of control. For a moment, the thought occurred to her that maybe Time Lords didn't. And maybe, despite the human DNA, maybe he was still too much Time Lord to want to. But that didn't make any sense, she told herself, because her first Doctor had definitely made it clear that he had danced before.
Of course, the way he had said it, it didn't sound like he did it a lot.
Maybe, despite saying he loved her, despite the kissing, maybe he didn't want to dance with her.
Oh, God, she hoped that wasn't true, because that would make the next 50 years or so incredibly frustrating.
And of course, despite their newfound openness, as was typical between them they weren't talking about it. Although Rose had to admit her mother was right, talking wasn't exactly the kind of communicating she had in mind.
Mind out of the gutter, Tyler, she told herself.
~oOo~
The Doctor walked quickly down the flights of stairs. He knew he was confusing Rose, it had been written all over her face, but before she began to ask questions that he didn't know how to answer, he did what he had always done under difficult circumstances. He ran. Figuratively this time, rather than literally, since he didn't really want it to be obvious that he was running away.
He had initially been heading to the workshop, but before he realized he had done it, he had exited through the kitchen door and found himself in the garden. Outside, although night had definitely fallen, the moon was up and was providing enough light to see so he decided to take a walk.
Before he reached the stand of oak trees that bordered the edge of the lawn, he turned and looked back at the mansion. There was a light on in one of the rooms on the second floor. Rose's room. She was still awake. Perversely, he wanted to go and ask her to go for the walk with him despite the fact that the reason he was even outside was because he was avoiding her.
The cooling night air felt good. He wasn't feeling as hot as he initially had when he first found himself in this body, but he still wasn't entirely used to having a new core temperature. Actually, he was beginning to get used to most of the part human changes to his systems. Except for the lack of the respiratory bypass, which he did miss, his breathing wasn't really all that different than it had been. His ability to see timelines hadn't really been affected, although he suspected a number of his other Time Lord abilities, like his old ability to influence time around him, might be gone. He wouldn't know that until he actually tried to use them. His singular heart still felt odd, and its rate was much slower than it had been, but it wasn't particularly bothersome. But he was having a very difficult time adjusting to one very significant change.
The very human hormones coursing through his system.
As a full Time Lord, he had had moderate control of all of his body, from his hearts rate to his breathing, from his need to eat to his need to sleep. His body had been able to detox itself from poisons, alcohol intake, and even moderate amounts of radiation. And he had had almost complete control over his endocrine systems.
Not anymore.
Being part human, and if he were completely honest with himself possibly as much as half human in some areas, he had control over almost none of it. Particularly the hormone business.
From the earliest days that he had known Rose, he had desired her, but he had always been able, or mostly able, to control himself around her. The hand holding, the touching, the hugging…. He had wanted more but, in true Time Lord fashion, he had been able to repress those feelings and limit their relationship to a very close, but mostly chaste, friendship.
But now… being around her was frankly overwhelming. Kissing her, touching her, holding her hand… blimey, sometimes just being in the same room with her made his pulse, among other things, react. And instead of having it get easier to deal with, it was getting more and more difficult.
And other than holding her and caressing her face, he hadn't even touched her yet because he didn't trust himself to stop there.
Touching her in any way at all, and having her touch him, affected him so much he almost wanted to go back to his previous habit of wearing three shirts under his suit jacket. He probably would have, had it not been summer in London. His whole body ached from the need of her.
If this was normal, par for the course for humans, how on Earth did they cope with this?
After wandering for a while, he found himself at the man-made pond near the mansion that he and Rose had found the previous week. Sinking down on a large rock near the shore, he put his elbows on his knees, dropped his head into his hands and tried to figure out how to be around Rose without the sexual frustration killing him.
~oOo~
An hour later, after tossing and turning, mind racing over her worries, frustration and confusion over her relationship with the Doctor, Rose was still wide awake. Well, she might not be able to sleep, she thought, but on the bright side since she was awake she wasn't having a nightmare either.
Finally giving up on trying to sleep, she got up and decided to head down to the workshop to see how he was doing on his sonic. She automatically turned to grab a dressing gown and then changed her mind, deciding that the t-shirt and shorts were enough. The night was cooling off, but it was still fairly warm.
Rose tiptoed down the stairs, trying not to wake anyone, and made her way to the cellar. To her surprise, the workshop was dark. He wasn't there.
After flipping on the lights, she crossed the room and sat at the workbench. The pieces of his sonic weren't laid out on the countertop, so he probably hadn't even been here. Where could he be? She sighed, shaking her head. He had always told her not to wander off but had no compunction against wandering off himself.
After a few minutes, she decided that it was useless to sit in the empty workshop and pointless to go back to bed, so she went to the kitchen to make tea. As long as she could remember, her mother had always had that last cup of tea before bedtime, and she found she was developing the same habit.
Lord, she hoped she wasn't turning into her mother.
Scaring herself a bit with that thought, she comforted herself by deciding that in no way she would allow that to happen. She loved her mum but really didn't want to be like her.
As she boiled the water and pulled a box of teabags out of the cabinet, she heard the door softly open and close. Turning, she saw the Doctor appearing to sneak into the house. He stopped short when he saw her in the kitchen.
"Rose," he said in surprise. "I thought you had gone to bed."
"Where have you been?" It came out much sharper than she intended and she saw him wince. Inwardly Rose chided herself. Hadn't she just decided she wouldn't turn into her mother?
"I, uh, I mean I thought you were going to work on your sonic," she continued in a gentler tone of voice.
"When I got down here, I decided to take a walk instead," he told her.
"Want some tea?" she asked, turning to face the cabinets. Not knowing what to do with her nervousness and concerns about their relationship, she was intentionally not looking at him. "I was just going to make myself some."
"Sure. Can I help?"
"You could take the milk out of the refrigerator, and maybe put the sugar on the table."
As she heard him open and close the refrigerator door, inwardly she came to a decision.
"Doctor, are you upset with me?" she asked quietly, still facing away from him. "Did I do something wrong?"
"No, of course not," he said, surprise evident in his voice. "Why would you think that?"
Rose turned back to face him. "'S just, you've been acting different all this past week," she said. "Almost like you've been avoiding me."
Oops, the Doctor thought. He had hoped she wouldn't notice. He stared at her, wondering for a split second how to answer.
"Nope," he replied with false cheerfulness. "Just been busy. Busy, busy, busy. Busy with Torchwood, busy with my sonic, just busy with... everything, really."
She crossed her arms and stared back at him. He could tell she wasn't sure whether to believe him. Well, to be fair, he wouldn't have believed him either if he were in her shoes. Then she got a mischievous smirk on her face.
"Well, if that's the case…" she said. She crossed the room, grabbed him and kissed him.
As Rose kissed him, to the Doctor it felt different from the ways she had kissed him before. This was more than a simple kiss; it was a promise. Even more than that, it was an invitation. He instinctively responded, closing his eyes and wrapping his arms around her. At her silent urging his lips parted under hers. It was intoxicating, kissing her like this, feeling her lips and her tongue against his. Surely kissing Rose was one of the most fantastic experiences he had ever had, in any body, and for a moment he regretted every second they hadn't spent kissing ever since this version of him had been created.
Or actually ever since run.
She tightened her grip on him, slipping one hand under his jacket to wrap around his waist and moving the other upward to first caress the back of his neck and then run her fingers through his hair. The feel of her nails gently scrape his scalp set his body on fire from desire. He stifled a groan and gave himself over to the experience.
Eventually he became aware of how out of control he was beginning to feel. His heart was racing, his body was reacting…. Every cell in his body was screaming at him to shag her against the wall, on the table, on the floor… not just anywhere, but everywhere in turn. With great difficulty, he forced himself to gently push her away, hands shaking slightly with the effort.
It about killed him to see the hurt, confused expression on her face, especially knowing that he was the cause of it.
"What's the problem?" she asked a little breathlessly. "I thought… well, I thought you were attracted to me."
He stared at her in disbelief. She was so beautiful, particularly now, with her skin flushed with desire and her hair slightly mussed. How on Earth could she not know how much he wanted her?
"Of course I am," he said, trying to catch his breath and somehow slow his heart rate. "Rose, I'm sorry. It's just, I can't…." His voice trailed off as he tried to remember why he had thought shagging her against the wall was a bad idea.
"You can't?" she asked, wide-eyed. His eyebrows shot into his fringe when he realized what she was thinking.
"Oh, no, no, no, I can, I definitely can," he said quickly, trying to reassure her. "Just not... here. Not at the mansion. Not with Jackie just down the hall." He grimaced. "And certainly not in here," he joked to lighten the mood, gesturing around him at the kitchen.
"Oh," she said with a sigh of relief. "Oh, thank God. You have no idea what I was thinking."
"Right now I have a pretty good guess," he said dryly.
She laughed. "Okay, I understand. And I guess I don't blame you," she said. "But you should know, Mum's thought we've been shagging the whole time."
"What?" he exclaimed. "Ever since I've been here?"
"No," she said. "Well, yeah, just about ever since you've been here, but that's not what I meant. What I mean is that she thought that while we were traveling. The whole time we were traveling," she added meaningfully.
"What!" It almost came out as a squeak. "Even before…"
"Even before you regenerated. When you were all leather and jumpers," she confirmed. "Why'd you think she slapped you so hard?"
"But… but I thought," he said, stuttering a little. "Well, I've always assumed that you told her we weren't."
"I did," she replied. "She just didn't believe me."
Running his hands through his hair, he took a deep breath and blew it out in a rush. Jackie Tyler, the answer to his raging hormones. He scrubbed his face with his hands and wondered if he'd be able to look Jackie in the eye the next morning.