amberfocus | You're What?: Chapter Sixteen (Reply)

Chapter 15: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/85666.html

Chapter 16: Frustration

Rose was close to her breaking point. She had woken up ridiculously randy that morning and even if she knew it was related to her hormones and not to her emotions, she wanted the Doctor to do something about it. And she wanted it in lieu of fixing it with medication. She wasn’t sure if she was entirely over his earlier bad treatment of her or not, but at the moment she didn’t really care.

She’d been wanting a good tumble for days, ever since she had started feeling almost normal again, and had even fleetingly thought about asking Jack when the Doctor had given her absolutely nothing to work with, but she’d come to two firm conclusions. First, that asking Jack would embarrass her practically to death, and she was firmly convinced that yes, you could indeed die from such things, and second, though it might be temporarily satisfying it would do nothing for her heart or her emotional state, and third, that despite everything the Doctor had done she wanted it only from him and she wanted it soon.

Okay that was three conclusions, with several sub conclusions, but still. She missed him, missed making love with him and honestly, he was trying so hard since the day they’d been locked up together it was beginning to turn her on. And by beginning she meant for several days now. Rather constantly. And consistently.

Only she didn’t really want to admit it to him. She wanted him to take the matter out of her hands, take the initiative as it were, and she had done everything she could think of to subtly entice him and yet he seemed to have the willpower of a…well, she couldn’t think of anything suitably willpowery at the moment, but something with a lot of willpower.

Sure, he was allowing the conversation to be laced with innuendo once she’d not reacted negatively to his first attempt four weeks ago. But he wasn’t even approaching the level of seduction she wanted from him. She’d tried on several new sets of clothing and purchased what appealed to both her and the Doctor, though mostly to the Doctor and she was pretty sure it was appealing to his hindbrain rather than his forebrain, but she didn’t really care.

When he’d suggested a quick run back to the TARDIS to drop off their packages, she had hoped he’d gotten the message and that when they got there he’d pull her inside and whisk her away for her desperately needed shag, but he had simply pitched the bags up the ramp and turned back to her and they’d wandered back into the stalls and she’d tamped down her frustration because she simply wasn’t ready to swallow her pride and just jump him. Or ask him to jump her.

She wondered if it was normal to feel this horny whilst pregnant. It wasn’t like she had anyone she could ask. Even if her mother had known she was pregnant it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing she would want to find out from Jackie. “Hey, Mum, when you were preggers did you ever just want to toss Dad down on the ground and ride him until you broke him?” didn’t exactly seem like the sort of thing Jackie would appreciate coming from her nineteen-year-old daughter and even thinking it had put an image into Rose’s mind that would take weeks to get back out again.

Rose supposed she could always ask Jack. He tended to know things like this, but asking him any sort of sexual question had its risks. She’d either end up admiring the inventiveness of one his past conquests and it would make her even more frustrated than she currently was or she’d be wishing she had a bucket of bleach with which to clean out her mind afterwards. Generally it was a toss-up.

Eventually the Doctor steered her over to an exotic flower seller and asked her to pick out her favorites. Once identified, he had the florist create a wreath for her hair and placed it on her head when the man was done.

“Your Sera-qua outshines the flowers,” the little old man said, “but that is as it should be.” Rose blushed.

The Doctor smiled in agreement and turned to Rose. “You do look beautiful,” he told her as the little ribbons settled against her hair.

“Thank you,” she said. He held out his hand and she smiled as she took it. This time he’d initiated the hand holding and she liked the way that made her feel. As they headed back into the milling throng Rose said, “I’m thirsty, Doctor. And the baby and I are starting to get hungry.”

“Oh, the baby and you are, are you?” he asked with a grin. The little wrinkles at the corners of his eyes when he made that expression shot a bolt of desire through her that she bit back hard.

“Yeah,” she managed. “Something really cold would be good.”

“They have torstiana. It’s crushed fruit juice ice. Would that do while we look for food?” he asked her.

“Sounds perfect,” she said. He led her to a nearby booth and the girl behind the counter let her sample a few different flavors before she decided on one that tasted like sweet blackberries with the sharp undertone tang of kiwi fruit. The Doctor said his was similar to casaba melon and pineapple. They were served with wide straws in tall, thin aluminum tubes that kept the ice very cold and he let her sample his, too.

“What type of food are you in the mood for?” he asked her as they walked along, their joined hands swinging between them. “Fruit? Veg? Meat?”

Rose frowned. “I don’t suppose you’ll let me eat anything on a stick?” she asked hopefully after a moment of deep thought.

“Skewers or kabobs, yes,” he said. “Fake meat wrapped in breading and deep-fried? Even if you’d keep it down in this heat, you know it’s not good for your health right now, Rose.”

She stuck her lower lip out at him in a pout and liked very much the way his eyes focused sharply on it. “Tell you what,” he finally said. “You eat something relatively good for you and Charlie, and I’ll get you a surprise treat afterwards.”

“Like what?” she asked him.

He tweaked the end of her nose. “I said surprise, Rose.” He lifted his head and sniffed the air deeply. “Come on. I smell something delicious this way.” He tugged her through the crowds until they were standing in front of an open air barbecue. They picked out a table under an open air pavilion and Rose sat down grateful to be off her feet and out of the blazing sun. She asked the Doctor to surprise her with something he thought she’d like.

She ended up with something remarkably like beef in what tasted like a sweet Zulu sauce, though what a concoction from Africa would be doing this far across the universe she didn’t know, with vegetables that she could have sworn were asparagus and tomatoes. When she mentioned it to the Doctor, he said that lots of plants that looked and tasted like asparagus existed and that it was indeed a tomato and that the tomato was a very common fruit and had first come to Earth as seed spores that had been expelled in the destruction of a planet that had exploded when it’s sun called Serialitonis went supernova around ten thousand years before she’d been born. The same explosion had seeded half the universe’s fertile planets with the fruit. It was also responsible for potatoes and deadly nightshade.

Rose wondered as she often did if he was pulling her leg with his long and rambling explanation, but the look of utter seriousness on his face as he talked convinced her that this time he wasn’t kidding. As she ate her skewers she listened to the Doctor talk. He was going on about some of the other food plants that had not originated on Earth and she listened rather happily, her guard completely let down. It had been ages since she’d just sat with him while he talked to her about nothing and it amazed her how good it felt, how normal, to be having this almost conversation with him. She’d missed this, too, without knowing she’d missed it.

When she’d finished her food she reached for the last of her fruit ice and rested the cool cup against her forehead, then moved it down to the back of her neck, then finally to rest between her breasts for a moment. She realized that the Doctor had trailed off and was staring at the narrow aluminum tube nestled rather snuggly against her. “Just cooling off over here,” she told him.

“Just heating up over here,” he muttered. Rose placed the container back on the table and reached across it to lace her fingers through his.

“I’m very sticky and hot,” she told him in a low voice. “Perhaps we ought to call it a day and head back to the TARDIS?” She ran her thumb absently against the webbing of his hand.

“Yeah,” he managed and rose awkwardly to his feet. He put a protective arm around her shoulders as they made their way back out into the marketplace and he found a less crowded alternate route through the stalls. They were almost to the TARDIS when a small boutique they hadn’t seen before caught the Doctor’s eye.

He pulled Rose with him and she realized it was full of baby clothes. The Doctor picked up a tiny infant gown that was TARDIS blue and said, “Daddy’s Boy,” on it. Or at least that’s what it appeared to say on it. The TARDIS was probably translating it. But the sentiment was there. The Doctor fingered the little scrap of cloth and then turned to look at Rose with a tender expression. “I’ll just be a minute,” he told her and he walked over to the peddler and purchased the little garment.

That one simple act of his, buying the piece of clothing for their son all on his own, did far more for Rose’s healing than anything else could ever have done. It told her that the Doctor really had accepted Charlie’s role in his life; that he honestly did want the boy, and he was preparing for his arrival. She wanted to laugh and cry. Instead, when he returned to her, she pulled him around the corner of the booth and out of the crowd and raised herself up on tiptoes and brushed her lips against his. Her hands crept up around his neck and she felt his settle at her waist. He let her lead the kiss, afraid perhaps that she might pull away from him even though she had initiated it. It was tender, slow and sweet and when she finally broke away from him, she leaned her head against his shoulder.

“My Sera-qua,” he whispered. “My beautiful Rose.”

“What is that word? I’ve heard it several times today. Why isn’t the TARDIS translating it?” she asked him pulling back and looking into his eyes.

“It’s standard trader language, sort of a mishmash pidgin dialect. There isn’t a direct translation for it, but roughly it means mother of my unborn child and…” He trailed off and looked at her uncertainly.

“And?” she prompted him.

“Most…”

“Most?”

“Beloved of my heart. Or in my case hearts.” The words rushed out of him.

“All that in three little syllables?” He nodded. “Do you mean it?” she asked him nervously, biting her lip.

“Yeah, Rose, I do.” He hugged her tightly into him then pushed her back a bit so he could look her in the eyes. “I am sorry,” he told her softly and sincerely, “for being cruel. For ever making you doubt me or how I feel about you. For hurting you. And I am sorriest of all for letting you think for even one moment that I don’t want you or need you, because I do. With every breath I breathe, I do. You are my Sera-qua.”

“And is there a word,” she asked slowly, “for the father of my unborn child and most beloved of my heart?”

“Seri-lua,” he told her.

She looked at him for a long moment and raised her hand to cradle the side of his face. She opened her mouth. “There you two are. I’ve been looking for you for hours! Oh, sorry, am I interrupting something?” Hastily they jumped apart and turned to face the very smug looking face of Captain Jack Harkness.

Ch. 17: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/87172.html