( Read more... )
He nipped off to take his own shower, though he much rather would have shared one with her. She didn’t invite him to and he didn’t want to push the boundaries of their rather fragile new understanding. If he could even call it an understanding. He wasn’t sure he understood anything about what had just occurred between them. He worried a bit as he washed about Rose’s vehement statement that she didn’t want to be married. She hadn’t actually said she didn’t want to be married to him, just that she didn’t want to be married.
Not that he’d been asking her. He’d been trying to ease her mind about his commitment to her. That was all. He’d just been feeling out her opinions on the idea of permanently linking herself to him. It wasn’t like he’d been proposing. He didn’t want to be...well, he didn’t think it was time for…really, their relationship was fine as it had been before he’d messed up and they could get that back. They could easily carry it forward with a child, just this simple one on one relationship with lots of healthy shagging and…and…absolutely no way of telling the rest of the world to bugger off because Rose was his without actually saying the words.
The Doctor dropped the soap. Did he actually want this? He leaned his forehead against the shower wall and tried not to panic. He took in a deep breath. “Truth time. Start with what you know,” he said out loud. “You want Rose. You love her, you need her, and you can’t lose her. You want this baby. You want to be a family. You even want more kids someday. With Rose. You don’t want anyone else to touch her or to love her like you do or to be with her. She’s yours. You want the world to know that she’s yours despite your pretty words to the contrary.”
He groaned and hit the wall of the shower. It was pretty damn obvious what he wanted here. “But I don’t do domestic,” he groaned. He was sure he heard the mind of the TARDIS laughing in his head as she placed the image of him sitting on the sofa with a baby in the crook of one arm, a toddler snuggled against him on his far side and Rose swollen in pregnancy with her feet in his lap smiling at him lovingly. His mind’s eye couldn’t help looking at the ring finger of her left hand.
“Not funny!” he told his ship when he saw the size of the rock there and his heart actually leapt. “I don’t want that,” he added half-heartedly. “Neither does Rose,” he added more seriously. The TARDIS blew him a mental raspberry and replaced the image with a tear-streaked Rose standing alone with a toddler version of Charlie watching his back as he walked away from her. “I really don’t want that!” he protested. “Isn’t there something in the middle?”
The TARDIS hummed soothingly at him and he was left with the very clear impression that yes, there was a middle ground but he was going to have to find it himself. “Fat lot of good you are,” he muttered. “I need help.”
The TARDIS flashed him an image of himself checking in to the psychiatric hospital on the planet Demantate. “Ha, ha, very funny!” His accent actually thickened on the last word. The TARDIS thought it really was. “Look, I don’t want to hurt her more than I already have done. And I don’t want to put pressure on her, but I don’t know what else to do.”
A clock slowly ticking by appeared in his mind. “Fine. I get it. Give her time.” The TARDIS made a noise of approval. “Do you think she’ll ever want to…to bond with me? Maybe? One day?” His mind was so lonely and the thought of having Rose filling the same empty space there that she had already filled in his hearts was enticing. A soft, whispered sigh wrapped around him like a hug, but if the TARDIS had any further opinions on the subject, she kept them to herself.
With a shrug he reached forward, turned off the water and stepped out of the shower. He rubbed himself down briskly with a towel and dressed in fresh clothing. He was wearing the emerald green jumper that Rose had bought for him on the planet Sarasota and claimed brought out the blue of his eyes and the tight pair of black jeans that she particularly liked. He made a short detour to the garden and plucked her a single brilliant turquoise orphelium because it was pretty, firmly convincing himself that the fact that it was a betrothal flower in this star system was entirely incidental and he couldn’t help it how other species might interpret her carrying it around with her tonight. With his shoulders squared he went to find her.
Rose frowned at herself in the mirror as she twisted her wet hair up into a knot on the top of her head and pulled out little tendrils to frame her face. It would dry soon enough; even the evening heat of this planet would assure that. Her hair needed something more. She wished that her little ringlet of flowers had survived her rather vigorous first encounter with the Doctor, but it hadn’t. She’d found it crushed in the bed linens, a casualty of their lovemaking.
She had placed her outfit in the fresher while she’d showered and it had emerged smelling sweet and clean when she’d emerged from the steam. She loved the way the fabric draped around her body, loved the sensuality of it, and loved the way it made the Doctor’s eyes glitter so darkly when he looked at her wearing it. His confession that seeing her in it had made him hard had been a little shocking, but quite pleasurable to hear.
He wasn’t a man given to saying things he didn’t mean, his whole turn to the dark side not withstanding. Rose bit her lip. She wanted to believe they were past that now. She understood, mostly, why he’d done what he’d done, but the uncertainty of how she felt about him, aside from loving him completely and utterly still, unnerved her. She wanted desperately to trust him again. She’d made one step towards that this afternoon.
She hadn’t meant to do more than take what she’d wanted from him when she’d made love to him. She certainly hadn’t meant to let him have her again afterwards. But it was she who had initiated it in some bid to calm his worries. How had it gone from her being afraid he didn’t want her here to him being afraid she’d leave?
His whole speech on marriage, or bonding, or whatever it was, had bothered her. At her age, the idea of being married was…well, honestly it was more frightening than the idea of having a baby. She knew she was being naïve, recognized it even as she thought it. Because being a mother would be far more work than a marriage to the Doctor, wouldn’t it? Being his lover, being with the Doctor period, was already work and she couldn’t imagine making it official making it any harder than it always had been, but she knew somehow that it would.
Besides, she’d never measure up to his beloved Alethe, so why set herself up for failure? He’d been bonded to Alethe. He’d said that they’d had a ceremonial bonding ritual and that had to be this thing he’d talked about having with Rose in a roundabout way, didn’t it?
Her fingers played absently with the ring on her left thumb. He wasn’t really asking her anyway. He’d said as much. And she did not want it. Marriage was…well, it always fell apart, didn’t it? Mickey’s folks had barely made it out of the gate when his dad had run off. Shireen’s mum and dad had had so many break ups and make ups she couldn’t even count them anymore. Most of her mates at school had had divorced parents and the ones who weren’t divorced seemed to hate each other.
Even her own mum and dad, when she’d gone back in time and seen them together, had been completely dysfunctional together despite the love clearly between them. And she’d grown up in an estate where the nights rang with the voices of arguing husbands and wives. What good had she ever seen from that sort of attachment anyway? Just because he was an alien didn’t mean marriage would be different with him.
It would be better if they weren’t formally tied together. That way when Charlie was grown and she had served her purpose and the Doctor decided he was done with her it wouldn’t hurt quite so much. Rose sighed. She knew she’d stay with him as long as he wanted her there, that she’d even sleep with him as long as he wanted her to. Resuming that part of their relationship had felt incredibly good, if not the right thing to do.
She tried to hate herself for it, but she couldn’t. She was making the most of a bad situation. She knew the Doctor was, too. It didn’t matter that she loved him, not really. Not when it came to this. She didn’t want to be married. And anyway, he hadn’t really asked.
Ch. 20: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/98695.html
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
