Wolf Moon: Chapter Twenty-Seven
Feb. 29th, 2008 12:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amberfocus
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Soothing Thoughts
He hadn’t meant to fall sleep. The risk he had just taken in trying to sate Rose’s hormones by driving her through several successive orgasms while giving her an early and double dose of the pink pills meant that he should have stayed awake to monitor her but he’d exhausted himself bringing her to completion and he’d barely made it more than a minute or two without his eyes falling shut. How he’d fallen asleep with such a raging hard-on was a complete mystery to him. It was still there when he came back to the land of the living, but he was distracted from focusing on it by something disturbing, only he wasn’t quite sure what it was.
He narrowed his focus until he realized there were tiny, spider-like tendrils reaching out for his mind in wisps of gold. It was Rose’s soft cries that had woken him, her little shuddering gasps of emotional pain, both mentally and aloud. He struggled to clear his head and pulled away from the warmth of her body with a great effort.
“Rose?” he said softly. He settled himself beside her on the palm fronds and reached out a hand to touch her shoulder. She didn’t answer him and he turned her head towards him but she showed no sign of awareness. “Rose?” he said louder, giving her shoulder a shake. She did not respond other than to whimper loudly. He made a much more vigorous third attempt but she was stuck inside whatever it was that was hurting her mind.
The Doctor brushed his hand against her temple and realized she was dreaming. Tears squeezed from her eyes as she cried in her sleep. As gently and non-obtrusively as he could he tried to soothe the chaos in her mind. Her sub-conscious was castigating her mercilessly. She felt she’d been acting like a tease with him, leading him on for days, giving him just a little but never what he wanted.
But then her mind turned a somersault and decided that he didn’t want her at all…she’d offered, he’d refused and he didn’t need her like she was needing him. She wasn’t what he wanted, how could she be? Then back again, like mental pacing, upset that he’d taken her the way he had but not the way she’d wanted him to.
She was also angry with herself because she’d left him aching and given him nothing in return, but had selfishly reveled in the sensations he’d given her and what incredible sensations they had been. How was it possible to do that with your tongue? Superior Time Lord physiology struck again. But why hadn’t he made love to her? Oh, he’d said he didn’t want to hurt her but she hadn’t cared anymore, so why wouldn’t he just give in? Was it because she was human? On and on her thoughts circled in opposing directions and they were continually contradicting themselves.
Underneath it all was an intense fear of losing him. Losing him like she’d lost her first Doctor. And her guilt at wanting him more than she ever had her first Doctor whom she had spent so much more time with and had loved first. And her realization that she loved him already, loved him more than should have been possible, and how could she after such a short time with him? And were those feelings real? They had to be real.
Her desire to tell him warred with her anxiety that he’d think she was being ridiculous so early into their relationship. Her fear buried even deeper that once they did make love his desire for her would go away, that it was only caused by the newness of the pheromones and there would never really be anything deeper on his side once they had completed the act.
Mostly though, she wailed at her inability to control herself and the biological changes that were rewiring her reactions. She felt so afraid of her own desires and yet she wanted to dive deeper into them and say good-bye to every common sense objection she could raise to stopping herself from doing just that. What must he think of her?
Telepathically he inserted the ideas that he thought she was amazing, beautiful, clever, smart, and kind, that he’d want her to be with him even without the chemical changes, that her other Doctor had been a fool for not understanding what he had in her, and that he was not that kind of fool. He reassured her that he wanted her emotionally and not just physically and that more than that, after such a solitary existence he knew that he needed her. Not just someone like her, but her. She had brought him joy and laughter and her presence was bringing him to life in a way he had forgotten existed. With her he could build a life, a pairing of equals beyond what he had ever imagined.
Then very carefully he planted the notion that he would never turn his back on her just because she was scared or unsure of how to be around him sexually, nor would he ever demand reciprocation in trying to control her need of him. Finally he lay down a layer of his emotional desire for her that wasn’t attached to lust, not in words at all but pure feeling. Slowly and carefully he withdrew from her mind as the maelstrom calmed, trying to if not hide his tracks then make them less obvious. He was pretty sure she’d be able figure out he’d tampered with her mind. She was too clever not to put the pieces together.
Her tears had stopped and she’d settled into a more restful sleep. He sat up, found his leather jacket and covered her naked body with it. Then he rose and made his way back to the hot springs to take care of his erection. He didn’t want Rose to feel in any way obligated to take care of him when dawn broke in an hour or two.
That done he dressed and returned to their impromptu bed and lay down on his side with his back to her. Snuggling up with her would likely undo all the good he had just done himself in the hot springs and there’d been more than enough contact that night to keep the skin hunger at bay. He needed to figure out what he was going to tell Rose. As much as he wanted to keep what he’d done from her, she deserved to know what he’d done.
He didn’t think he would sleep again, but the effort of using so much telepathy on Rose’s untrained mind had worn out his brain and he did indeed drift off. In his sleep his body sought hers anyway, turning and pulling Rose back into his arms despite his waking intentions. She snuggled against him with a soft sigh, the last of her tension dissipating against his body as she did so.
Rose woke with the now familiar weight of the Doctor’s arm around her waist and the heaviness of his leather jacket draped around what she slowly became aware of was her naked body. She closed her eyes tightly against the memory of the previous night. All of its glorious passion and pleasure was overshadowed by the fact that she had utterly thrown herself at him like a cat in heat.
“Doctor?” she asked softly. There was no response. He couldn’t actually be sleeping could he? It hadn’t been that long since he’d slept and he shouldn’t have needed it yet after only one day of vigorous exercise walking through the rainforest. “Doctor?” she tried again a little louder, this time nudging him with her elbow.
He let out a contented, “Rose,” and sighed, shifting his weight and pulling slightly away from her. She slid out from under his arm, taking the leather jacket with her and slipping it about her body. It took her a moment to find her knickers. She rummaged in her backpack and found a change of undergarments and a bar of soap, then headed towards the hot springs to bathe, wash her previous day’s underwear and get dressed.
She found her bra from the night before on a rock to the side of the pool and blushed in remembrance of her hoyden behavior. What had she been thinking coming on to the Doctor that way? She hadn’t been thinking at all. Whatever had gotten into her? She felt perfectly calm and rational this morning. Even as the memory of what he could do with his tongue stole over her she remained steady. It had been amazing but she felt like it had happened to another person. Her intense need was gone.
Quickly she washed out the dirty undergarments with soap, rinsed them well, and laid them out to dry in what was quickly becoming a very hot morning’s sun. Then she returned to the pool and washed her body. Really she felt so much better this morning. In control. Almost like she was a different person. She felt beautiful, intelligent, and well-loved emotionally. Strange that. She didn’t think she was stupid or ugly, but the opposite terms were not ones that just bounced into her head of their own volition, either.
Rose frowned and set the bar of soap down on a rock at the edge of the pool and rinsed her body well, waiting for the pool to clear as the spring carried the residue away. Her head ached on the inside so she sank low in the water, hoping the warmth of the spring would suffuse her skull. Having a headache was odd when she felt like she’d slept fairly well. She wasn’t prone to them. She wrung out her hair and stepped out of the pool and onto the bank to dress.
“Rose?” At the Doctor’s voice Rose saw a fine tracery of silver webbing flare to life behind her eyes. It quickly died away to nothing and she wondered if she’d simply imagined it.
“I’m over here,” she called out. He came through the bushes and stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes sweeping over her body. She jumped to grab his jacket and held it up in front of her.
“Can you give me a minute?” she asked.
“Rose, I saw you naked last night.”
“I know, but…” She flamed red. “That was last night and I--.”
“You’re beautiful,” he said softly as his eyes traced the curves of her body. “Don’t hide from me.”
She sighed then dropped the jacket to one side. “Oh, I suppose it doesn’t matter.” She used her fingers to wipe the water from her body, the sun helping the remaining droplets to dry off quickly and then she pulled on her clothing, all under the Doctor’s dark, watchful gaze. “I’m sorry,” she told him when she was fully dressed and could meet his eyes again. “About last night, I’m sorry.”
“I’m not,” he said. “It’s what you needed.”
She dropped her gaze to the ground. “I feel much better this morning,” she said. She rubbed at her forehead. “Except for this headache. Thank you for not…” Her fingers caught in her hair as she tried to run them through it nervously. “Ouch, tangles.” She looked at him again. “Thank you for not listening to me…about the sex. I don’t know what happened.”
“I do. You’re body is metabolizing the medication a lot faster than it should be. That part of your DNA shouldn’t have been tweaked yet, but obviously it has been. So we need to make sure you take two tablets every night until we get back to the ship. That should help,” he told her.
“That’ll be enough? It must be, though. I feel so much…saner this morning,” she mused.
“I think you’ll be okay now. You should be.”
She could tell from his voice that there was something he wasn’t telling her. Had she done something she couldn’t remember last night? “Doctor, are you hiding something from me?”
“What makes you ask that?” he replied carefully not answering her question. He wouldn’t meet her eyes anymore, either.
She stared at him as her mind tried to put the clues together. The Doctor unwilling to be straight-forward, the loss of her insatiable desire for him, the headache niggling in the back of her mind, his not meeting her gaze and the fine tracery of silver webbing behind her eyes…
“Doctor?” she said a little too loudly.
His eyes focused on the hot spring for a long time and then he shifted them back to meet hers. “I went into your mind last night,” he finally admitted. His expression was uncertain as he waited for her reaction. “I won’t lie to you about it, Rose. You need to know that I went in there without asking.”
A flash of anger rolled through her. “Why?” she asked pursing her lips tightly. “Why would you do that? You know how I feel about you going in there without permission!”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “Rose, you were crying in your sleep and I couldn’t wake you up. I was just trying to calm you down, make it so whatever was hurting you would go away.”
She put her hands on her hips and looked at him steadily. She wasn’t quite glaring. “What did you do in there?”
“Just…calmed you down. Reassured you. Soothed your thoughts,” he told her.
“What thoughts needed soothing?”
“The one that stood out the most was that you thought I didn’t need you on more than a physical level.” Rose groaned and turned away from him. “But I do, Rose. I want everything with you. I feel everything with you. I like who you are, not what you can give me.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Not that I don’t like what you can give me,” he told her. “I love touching you and holding you and you doing that to me. I adore bringing you pleasure and receiving it from you. But it’s you, underneath everything, your heart and your mind, that I’m attracted to.”
“How can you be? It’s been a week, Doctor. Are you saying without all the heat you’d still want me with you? Say as just a companion?” she wanted to know.
“I did, you know. When we were talking before the pheromones cycled up the first time right after I met you. I thought you were someone worth putting a lot of effort out for. Someone I’d like to keep around to travel with. You have a sparkle about you, Rose. A zest for life,” he explained.
“And you could tell all that from a few conversations?” she challenged.
“Yeah, I could.” He closed the gap between them and brushed his fingers across her cheekbone. “I like you, Rose. Not what you can do to me or for me. You.” He kissed her softly without aggression and then broke away from her. “I’ve got breakfast ready.” He held out his hand. She hesitated.
“Did you see anything else in my head?” she wanted to know.
“Not really,” he said. He wiggled his fingers at her and she finally took his hand.
“Please don’t go in again. Even if I’m having nightmares. I need to know that my mind is private from you until I’m ready to let you in there.”
He sighed. “I don’t like seeing you hurt.”
“I need to be able to trust you. And if you invade my mind like that again, how can I? I’ve asked more than once that you not do it. I mean it, Doctor.” They arrived at the little camp stove the Doctor had pulled out of his pack and he lifted up the tea kettle and handed Rose a tin mug with a tea bag in it. She sat down heavily and reached for the bowl of oatmeal the Doctor had set out before coming to find her.
“I’ll try,” he said. “I just hated seeing you hurting. I wanted to fix it.”
“You need to do better than try. My head isn’t some place you need to be mucking about in. I can work out the mess all on my own, thank you.” She sighed. “I’m glad you told me,” she said. “I’m glad you didn’t lie.”
“I think you’ve had enough disappointments in your life, Rose Tyler. You don’t need the man you love lying to you, too.”
Ch. 28: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/17355.html
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Date: 2008-02-29 01:43 pm (UTC)In other news I hope you feel better soon! Thank you for the update despite your feeling ill. *hug*
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Date: 2008-02-29 05:13 pm (UTC)Thanks for the get well wishes.
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Date: 2008-02-29 01:57 pm (UTC)Oh Doctor - once again in following your instinct to make everything better, you've cocked it all up.
Another fab chapter! Can't wait for more, and hope you're feeling better!
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Date: 2008-02-29 05:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 06:32 pm (UTC)Very curious to see what it was that happened to Rose on that Torchwood Case.
Glad to hear you're heading towards feeling better!
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Date: 2008-03-01 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 03:40 pm (UTC)Love the give & take of thoughts & feelings between these two. If Rose doesn't want him ...(heh heh!)
And I hope you get well soon! So sorry you've been sick so long. *hug AND a back rub*
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Date: 2008-02-29 05:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-29 03:51 pm (UTC)Great chapter I can't wait for more:D
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