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“Rose?” the Doctor’s voice came from beside her and she realized it was his arms that were holding her, not some emotionless jailor. She burst immediately into tears, simultaneously cursing her hormones for making her so emotional. “Rose? What is it?” he asked with concern, his hand rising to touch her face and stroke her hair.
When she didn’t answer him because she couldn’t he said, “Lights, low please,” and waited while the TARDIS brought up a dim glow. “Shh, shh, it’s okay, Rose. It’s okay. Whatever it is, it’s okay. I’ve got you.”
“How do I believe that?” she finally asked him through her tears. “I want to. You have no idea how badly I want to, but I’m still scared you’re going to walk away from me.”
“I thought we’d got that all sorted out,” he told her.
“Why? Because we just had sex?” she blurted.
“No, because we’ve been talking for days and working through our problems. Least I thought we were. Haven’t we made any progress at all?” the Doctor asked sounding wistful.
“I’m scared you’re only staying with me to keep Charlie and Jack alive,” she said. “Not because you want me.”
“Didn’t I just prove to you how much I wanted you?” he asked her.
“No, you just proved to me how much you wanted sex,” she said flatly. “Damn hormones just got me so horny. I shouldn’t have let this happen,” she muttered against his chest. His arms tightened around her as she began to pull away. “Let go,” she said.
“Rose, please,” he started.
“Let go,” she repeated and he loosened his hold on her. She moved away from him and rolled onto her back, clutching the duvet across her chest.
“I want you, Rose. Even if it means never making love with you again. Even if it means you end up wanting to just be platonic partners in the raising of this babe.” His hand slid under the duvet and came to rest on her abdomen. “I don’t care. I want you here with me any way I can have you.”
“You don’t care? You don’t want to make love with me anymore?” she asked, suddenly hurt.
“Rose, that’s not what I meant. I want everything with you, but I’ll settle for whatever you’ll give me. If you think this was too soon, that we moved too fast, then I’ll slow down to whatever pace you want to set. I’ll wait,” he told her.
“I’m confused,” she told him after a long pause.
“So I’d gathered,” he said dryly.
“How do I get past this? How do I have any kind of belief, any kind of faith in the future that you’ll be here for us?” Rose asked.
“I will be. I promise you, Rose, I will be.”
“But how do I know for sure?”
“There are no absolutes in this world, Rose. No guarantees. But I won’t leave you,” he reassured her.
“I wish I could be as sure of that as you seem to be.”
“Well, there’s a way,” he said somewhat reluctantly.
“What? How?” she asked.
“I can let you in to my mind, let you see my thoughts, how I feel about you, how I feel about Charlie. If you want.” He looked at her with such vulnerable eyes that for a moment she was frightened to see it. “Trouble is I’d be in your mind, too. It’s the only way to establish the link. And I know how much you hate people messing inside your head.”
“Without asking,” Rose corrected. “I don’t like people messing with my mind without asking. This…it’d be different. It’d be like giving permission.”
“Sort of. There’d be a level of intimacy like nothing you’ve ever known.”
“Doctor, you’ve seen me naked. You’ve been inside me. How much more intimate can two people be?” Rose asked him.
“A lot,” he told her. “Our minds, our thoughts, would be laid open to each other. That’s being truly naked in my mind, no barriers at all between where I end and where you begin. You’d know with no doubts at all how I feel about you and what my intentions are, but I’m warning you, it’ll change you forever. And I don’t know if you’re ready for that kind of change.”
“How would it change me?” she asked rolling on her side to face him. He turned to face her, too.
“It would link us. There’d always be a little bit of a path between our minds. Especially during lovemaking. You’d know what I was feeling and thinking and I’d know the same about you,” he explained. “And…”
“And?” She plopped back onto her back again and he turned and looked up at the ceiling.
“Well, we’d be bonded,” he said.
“Bonded?” she asked.
“Mated,” he said. At her blank look he replied, “Partnered? For life.”
“Married?” she asked.
“If you want to call it that,” he said.
“I don’t want to call it that. I don’t want to call it anything. I don’t want to be married.”
“You didn’t mind being married to Jack,” he said somewhat sulkily.
“You can’t seriously be upset by what some alternate version of me did. Especially since it was your own actions that were the cause of it!” she snapped.
“And I wasn’t asking you to be my wife anyway,” he replied grumpily. “Just thought you should know about the option if you need it in the future. To trust me.”
“You’d bond to me just to get me to trust you?”
“No,” he said. “Bonding’s not to be treated that lightly. I’m just saying if we ever were to do it, then you’d know you could trust how I feel about you, that I’m never going to leave you.”
“Doctor, do you want to be married to me?” she asked bluntly.
“Marriage is for showing other people what we are,” he said reaching out for her hand. She hesitated before placing it in his. “I already know what we are. It’s between us. Private. Don’t feel the need to announce it the world.”
Rose rubbed her belly ruefully. “Other than with this bump, you mean?”
The Doctor grinned in the half-light. “That just proves I’m fertile.”
Rose smacked him with her free arm. “Which is what got us into this mess in the first place, if you need your memory jogged. You’re acting like you’re proud you did this to me.” The Doctor was silent. “Oh, you are, aren’t you? You are such a man!” she said with a snort. “This does what? Validates your masculinity to the rest of the universe?” she queried. “Makes you feel like a member of the testosterone club? Is that why you bought me that show-offy outfit? Not because I looked good in it, but so everyone could see the results of your efforts?”
“I bought you that outfit because it made me hard just looking at you in it,” he said gruffly, his hand tightening on hers.
“Oh.” She blushed under his hot gaze.
“Though lately, just looking at you makes me hard,” he said.
“Thought it pretty much always had,” she replied cheekily.
“Not like this,” he said darkly. They lay in silence for a few minutes before the Doctor spoke again. “This wasn’t a mistake, Rose.”
“What wasn’t?”
“The baby. You getting pregnant.”
“How can you say that? Neither of us wanted a child when it happened,” she said.
“He wasn’t a mistake. He was an accident, yes, Rose, but he wasn’t a mistake. And he’s wanted. And so are you,” he told her. He rolled onto his side and reached out to touch her far hip, tugging a little until she turned to face him.
“I’m scared,” she said coming back to her earlier sentiment.
“So am I,” he admitted.
“You’re scared? What do you have to be scared about?” she wondered.
“I’m scared that I won’t be able to convince you that I want you here, that I want you, and that you are going to want to leave me,” he said.
“But you wanted to send me away.”
“No,” he said. “No. I never wanted to send you away. I just, I thought… Rose, do you understand how vulnerable this makes me? To have a son and a…a Rose that I…that I…” He broke off unable to continue and rubbed anxiously at his short hair. He took in a deep lungful of air. “How did I ever let you become my life?” he breathed. “I could lose you. I could lose you both and then where would I be?”
“You were sending me away to protect your heart?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“Because sending me away wouldn’t break it, too?”
“Yeah, but at least you’d have been safe. Only…” He broke off again.
“We weren’t. Idiot.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “That was the mistake. Thinking I could live without what I wanted most of all. You. And our baby. I’ve been so afraid to let myself want you and him, but I do, Rose. You have no idea.” He sighed. “You are going to stay with me, aren’t you, Rose?”
Rose sighed. His eyes were so desperate as they looked into hers and she couldn’t stand it. She edged her body closer to his and pressed her lips against his mouth. His arm came out and pulled her closer still, circling her waist and pressing her hips firmly against his erection. She hooked one leg up over his thigh and reached a hand down to grasp his shaft, guiding him to her entrance.
He pushed into her body and tumbled them over so he rested on top of her and he made slow and gentle love to her, his eyes never leaving hers until she came and then only closed them in the throes of his own powerful undoing. He seemed to not have noticed that she’d never answered his last question as he rolled off her and pulled her tightly into his body. She did so now.
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