Hunger Moon: Chapter Twenty-Eight

[amberfocus]

                                                                                                     Banner by Angelfireeast

Title:  Hunger Moon (28/?)
Series:  Better With You (Book 2)
Author: amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  Alt!Nine/Rose Tyler, Jackie Tyler/Pete Tyler, Sarah Tyler, Kyle Tyler, Davin McBain, Mickey Smith/Suzie (Costello) Symmonds-Smith/Jake Symmonds, Toshiko Sato, Ianto Jones, Katie Harper/Owen Harper, Andy Davidson
Genre:  Action/adventure, romance, alternate universe, fluff, angst, humor, smut
Rating:  Adult, some chapters NC-17 with graphic sex
Betas: 

amyo67, jeprdyfrndly, and theteshfor the math bits.
Summary:  The psychic attacks of the Monoc'teru on the population of Pete's world sidetracks the Doctor and Rose's search for the spheres of Thessalameka, the second assignment on their quest to save the fabric of reality from unravelling forever.  Set ten years post-Doomsday in a world where Journey's End never happened.  Sequel to Wolf Moon http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/259862.html.

Previous Chapters:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/263134.html

 

 

Chapter Twenty-Eight:  Making Peace

 

The Doctor slept longer than usual.  He had noticed that since the genetic adaptations had begun in his own body he’d needed more shuteye than normal, and with Rose in his life, he didn’t try to avoid sleep like he had for so long after the Time War.  On occasion he still had the nightmares that had plagued him after that horror, but his wife would always awaken him and kiss him and cuddle him or make love with him and help to erase the immediate terror that seeing those images in his subconscious mind always invoked in him.   He’d cling to her sometimes afterwards, but she never made him feel any less for it.  Sometimes she’d have to ease his grip to breathe properly.

He rolled on his side and gazed at her.  She’d moved away from him in sleep and was sprawled on her back, the sheet at her waist, one hand up by her head and tangled in her pale brown hair.  He watched her chest rise and fall, the naked skin pink and so lush he couldn’t resist reaching out to softly cup the breast closest to him, before resting his hand on her stomach.  She was warm and inviting and as he felt his erection beginning to stir he had to firmly tell himself no.  Rose still needed to sleep at least another four or five hours.  She had been very clear on that point on the few times he’d attempted to seduce her in the middle of the night.

Normally he was loath to leave the bed.  Most nights he didn’t, he simply stayed with her, reading a book or tinkering at the desk he’d moved into the room for just that purpose.  A lot of the time he just held her and let his mind be calm.  Tonight he felt restless and he wondered if there wasn’t something he could be doing to help down in the lab.  He knew Davin and Tosh were pulling all-nighters.  Maybe he should go spell one or the other so they could get some sleep.

He sighed.  He ought to make peace with Davin for Rose’s sake.  He knew deep down that the man, while not a saint, was a decent bloke.  He knew Rose wouldn’t have been in his life if he hadn’t been.  And he seemed intelligent and curious and honestly, if he told the truth, he was exactly the sort of man the Doctor would have invited along as company years ago.  Not liking someone just because they loved Rose was extraordinarily foolish.  Who could know Rose and not love her, after all?

He eased away from her, sitting up and shifting his body in her direction, pulling the blanket and sheets down further so he could see more of her body.  His eyes trailed down her stomach, over the dense patch of light brown curls, the small mole just above them, down her thighs and further still to the delicate arch of calf and ankle and her pretty little toes.  She was so beautiful and all his.  There was no threat to their relationship, not unless he made there be one, and he needed to come to terms with that.

Tonight they’d come so close to achieving rapport.  Rose’s defenses were slowly coming down with him.  He had seen her feelings for Davin for what they were and he knew he now had to reconcile them to that position in his own mind.  Rose didn’t want Davin. She only wanted the Doctor.  And he did need to do something, be the first one who gave in for Rose’s sake.  Marriage was all about compromise.  He could do this for her.

The Doctor eased out of bed without waking Rose and adjusted the covers back over her body.  She slept naked because he got impatient with bedclothes getting in his way and had torn more than a few from her body in the early stages.  That didn’t mean she stayed warm in the bed without his meager warmth beside her.  He tucked her in snugly and left a kiss on her forehead, then unable to resist, her lips.  She smiled slightly in her sleep and murmured his name.  He grinned and went to the desk, quickly penning a note to Rose in case she woke up and found him missing.

“You are clearly wrapped around her finger,” the TARDIS said in his head.  The sound of a whip crack echoed through his thoughts.

“You’re one to talk.  You let her move her entire family in here,” he threw back, but there was no malice in their gentle teasing.  Another reason to be grateful to Rose.  He was no longer really fighting with his ship on a daily basis.  Rose had helped him to extend an olive branch to her.  Considering how much that had improved his life, it was only fitting he do so with Davin as well.

“If you really are going to extend the olive branch, perhaps you should shower first,” the TARDIS told him.  “I doubt he’ll be receptive to your words if you show up reeking of sex with his former lover.”

“I don’t smell that bad, do I?” he asked.  He’d gotten rather used to the scent, considering how much of the time they both smelled of it.

“If my sensors can pick it up, you do.”  A gentle wave of humor rippled through her thought speech.

“You know I am sorry about the console,” he said.  She was silent.  “And the infirmary,” he added.

“Thank you,” she said only a trifle petulantly.  He smiled.

He decided to follow his ship’s advice.  Even just a few days ago he’d have gone to see Davin smelling like Rose and sex just to get under the man’s skin.  He knew he could be a right bastard when he wanted to be and his jealousy of Davin had certainly been bringing that out in him.  He didn’t even have the excuse of being affected by the alien spheres.  This was all on him.

Once done in the shower he dressed in a red t-shirt and black jeans, combed his hair—he’d really need to get it cut when this was all over—and pulled on his boots.  With one last check on Rose to make sure she was still asleep, he left the ship and headed down the stairs.  From there he went to the lift and headed into the cellar.

The soft murmur of voices led him to his target.  Davin sat in front of a bank of computers, Toshiko behind him reading something from the screen over his shoulders.  One of her hands rested on his neck and she was kneading the muscles slightly.  “That feels good,” said Davin pushing back from the computer.  “Damn, but this situation has me all tied up in knots.”

“Me, too,” she said.  “Maybe you can return the favor when I’m done.”  She put a second hand down and began to work on the muscles in earnest.

“Don’t let me interrupt,” the Doctor said from the doorway.  Tosh turned to glance at him.  “You’re not interrupting,” she said mildly.  “In fact I’m glad you’re here.  Davin thinks he found something.”

“Does he now?” the Doctor asked.  He didn’t mean to sound that supercilious.  Sometimes he just couldn’t stop himself.

“Yes,” said Tosh with a half smile, her fingers digging deeply now against Davin’s tense neck muscles.  “We were just going to draw straws in a minute to see who got to beard the lion in his den.”

“Hardly a lion,” the Doctor grumbled.

“Hardly a lamb, either,” Tosh said pointedly.  “This is my work area, Doctor, and if you’re just going to turn it into a posturing, testosterone flinging war zone, you can turn yourself right around and go back to your big, pink box.”

“I’m not,” he said holding up his hands.  “I was awake, Rose still needs a few more hours of sleep, and I got bored.  I thought I’d see what I could do to help or see if one of you needed to take a break.”

“Davin’s just come off a two hour kip and I’ve finished archiving the pile of stuff that Ianto left for me.  We were just ready to get back to it.”  She yawned suddenly with embarrassing loudness.

“Looks to me like you could do with a bit of sleep as well,” Davin said turning in his chair.  Tosh’s arms fell to her sides.

“You do look tired, Toshiko.  Davin and I can hold down the fort for a couple of hours while you get some sleep,” the Doctor said.

“As long as the fort is still in one piece when I get back,” she said.

“It will be.  Go on.  Sleep,” the Doctor encouraged.  With another jaw-cracking yawn she tottered off into the next room and fell like a cut tree face first into the small zed bed, one of many that littered the room.

Davin rubbed at the back of his neck and watched her out of the room and then turned to look at the Doctor.  “Let’s see what we can get done,” the Doctor said reaching for Tosh’s chair and turning it about.  He sat down on it backwards and leaned on the back.

“If you’re just here to needle me about Rose—.”

“I’m not,” the Doctor said holding up his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

Davin studied him for a long moment, brilliant blue eyes drilling into steely blue ones.  His jaw was set but it gradually softened and he nodded abruptly, running his hands through his dark hair.  “To be honest, I’m getting nowhere.  I just didn't want Tosh getting discouraged.  Mickey’s decryptions have been running for a few hours now and I can’t make heads or tails out of what it’s coming up with.  I’ve stared at it so long I’m going cross-eyed.  There are bits of it that almost make sense and then…they don’t.”

“Let’s have a look,” the Doctor said flinging his chair back to the table where dozens of sheets of paper had been laid out.  He picked one up and then another.  “I can see what you mean.”

“I’ve tried treating them like a puzzle and piecing them together in separate ways but—.”

“It’s in code,” he interrupted the younger man.

“This is a decryption process,” he said sarcastically.

“No, I mean, it’s being decrypted but it’s got a logarithmic coding sequence running on top of the decrypted words.  This is gonna take a lot of work.  Are you up for it?”

“You mean you think we can crack it?”

“You are working with the most amazing mind on the planet,” the Doctor said.

“So I’ve been reminded, frequently,” Davin said dryly.

“And Rose says your no slouch in the brains department, yourself,” he responded.

“Rose said that?”

“Apparently you’re not just a pretty face,” he admitted grudgingly.  “Let’s get started on the maths.  Once we’ve solved each equation, it’ll represent a letter of the alphabet.  Hopefully the human, English one, but if not, my ship should be able to translate.”

“I thought she was telepathic.  How’s she going to be able to translate the written word?”

“She gets in your head, interprets what you see, and alters it to look like, well, in your case, English.  You’ve read some of the books in the library while you were recovering from the psychic energy channeled through you to remove the Lurvins.  None of those were in Earth languages,” the Doctor shrugged.

“Actually it was in Gaelic,” he said.  “That’s my native tongue.  English I learned in school.”

“Well, whatever the receiver’s primary language is, that’s what she’ll translate it as.”  He picked up the first stack of papers.  “You any good at calculus?” he asked.

“I make do,” he said.

“Good.”  The Doctor handed him his own stack.  “Let’s get started solving these equations and then we can feed them into the computer and see what letter each one stands for.”

It took them nearly four hours to complete the work and when they fed it into the computer it began to merrily hum away as it began the decryption process anew.  It chattered on for five minutes before it came to a screeching halt.  “Oh, what now?” Davin asked.  “It’s just halted.”  He typed frantically on the keyboard.  “It’s just stopped working.”

“Can I?” the Doctor asked.  Davin rolled his chair out of the way and the Doctor slid his forward.  He queried the machine, his eyes flying over the large, clear screen.  “Oh, damn it,” he swore.  “I should have seen it.”

“What?” demanded Davin.

“Right there,” the Doctor said touching a line of coding on the monitor.

“Oh, hell,” said Davin.  “That is so not good.”

“What’s not good?”  Toshiko, who was up again, had just returned with breakfast and coffee with Andy who had just reported in, saying all was calm.

“It’s a rolling logarithm cipher,” Davin said whirling about in his chair to look at Tosh.

“And not just that,” said the Doctor.  “It’s a random rolling logarithm cipher.”

“Meaning?” asked Andy who was standing quietly in the doorway.

“Meaning that even when we get one solved, it won’t necessarily be the same for the next one.  Or it could be.  We could get four or five letters before it changes and we have to write a new program.  Or we could get one.  It could change every five minutes or every one minute or every hour,” the Doctor explained.

“It went five minutes with the last one.  We got two letters of the alphabet,” said Davin. 

“I’ll get started on writing another program.  It’s going to take me an hour to write and at least another hour to run.  This is going to take all day at this rate,” Tosh said with a slight frown as she stood there munching on an egg sandwich.  “Davin, why don’t you grab some food and some sleep.  Doctor, I won’t need you for a bit if there’s anything else you’d like to work on.”

“Okay.”

“And can you go and wake up Mickey and send him down to help?  This’ll go a lot faster with his expertise.”

The Doctor nodded, snagging one of the coffees to take to Rose.  He made a brief stop to find Mickey and checked briefly on Suzie in the Zero Room before heading back to his wife.  He timed it just right, placing the drink on her bedside table and sliding back into bed with her as she was beginning to stir.  She rolled towards him, one hand reaching for his chest.  Her eyes came open.  “You have clothes on,” she accused him.

“Was working,” he said.  “I brought you coffee.”

“Torchwood coffee?” she asked with a frown.

“No.  Tosh went out.  She says it’s the best place in Cardiff.”

“Should she have done that?” Rose asked.  “It was chaos last night.”

“She was careful.  Andy went with her.  It’s calmed down a lot.  There’s refuse in the street and a lot of broken glass but the police are patrolling and the general citizenry seems back to normal.  Though it’s early yet.”

Rose took a hesitant sip of the coffee then smiled.  “It’s good,” she said taking a fuller drink.  “Have there been any further reports of sphere activity?”

“Not that I’m aware of.  Davin and I spent the last few hours solving equations.  We’re close to breaking the code beneath the decryption.”  Rose, who had tensed at Davin’s name, relaxed when he added, “I behaved myself, Rose.  I’m trying.  I promise.”

“Thank you.”  She leaned over and kissed him softly.  “What’s on the agenda for today again?”

“We need to go and visit that man who was attacked by a sphere, but it didn’t succeed because his friend fought it off with a baseball bat,” he said absently.  “The computer is probably going to take all day to run the program, so it’ll be nice to get out of here for a bit.  The TARDIS is getting a bit antsy being stuck in this dark conference room.  She’s up for a little jaunt.”

“What about my family?  The kids are going stir-crazy.  Is there anywhere we can take them, give them a bit of an outing?  Or maybe something for a little longer?  Maybe until this is all over?” she asked.  “Somewhere safe?”

“I’ve been thinking about that.  There’s a resort colony on the moon in 2265.  It’s never had an accident and they’ve got therapeutic pools to aid in your dad’s recovery.  Plus counselors that specialize in trauma like he’s been through.  There’s a camp set up for children and a huge domed park for them to play in that covers several acres.  I think it might be good for them to go.  They’ll be well out of harm’s way by a couple of centuries.  And if something happens and we don’t get back, I’ll make sure they have enough credit to set up new lives for themselves.”

“You’ve been thinking about this a lot, haven’t you?” Rose asked.

“The TARDIS suggested it.  I think she’s about had enough of being grand central.”

“What about Suzie and Mickey and Jake?” Rose asked.

“Suzie needs access to the Zero room until this threat is over. And I won’t kick her men off the ship while she stays,” the Doctor said.  “But it’s those kids, Rose.  They’re driving both me and the ship spare.”

“I thought you liked my siblings.”

“I adore the twins.  I do.  I just…don’t want to adore them from quite so close up and for so long a time,” he said.

“If we have kids, you know that they’re going to be around all the time, don’t you?  We’re not just going to ship them off when things get irritating.”

“That’ll be different.  We’ll be raising them from babes, not getting saddled with two rambunctious nine-year-olds.  And we’ve got years to go before we are able to conceive a child.  I wasn’t expecting to play brother-in-law for so long this soon into our relationship,” the Doctor said.

“Well, but you are their brother-in-law now.  You’re going to have to get used to them being in our lives because I want to see them and my parents.  But you’re right.  There was a reason I moved out of the mansion as soon as I did.  My family can be a little much 24/7,” Rose said.

“So you’ll talk to Jackie about it?  See what she thinks?”

“Yeah.  And Ianto.  If we’re going to take a side trip he needs to know about it.”

“Rose,” began the Doctor.

“He’s in charge of this situation, Doctor.  I won’t usurp his authority.  By the way, did you get a chance to see if you could get that bionic eye working for him?” she asked.

“Nope, not yet.  I’ll look at it before we leave to see the victim who escaped.”

Rose yawned and stretched and then slipped out of bed.  He watched her walk to the loo, the gentle sway of her naked bum alerting his body that it had been several hours since they’d made love and it had been waiting quite patiently.  When Rose returned he was staring at her quite intently.

“I know that look,” she said with a grin.

“You should do.  You’re the only one who gets to see it.”

“Someone’s randy,” she told him.

“You, too, hmm?” he asked and she laughed.

“We don’t have a lot of time, Doctor,” she said regretfully.  “We really do need to get back to work.”

“I have been working, Davin’s taking a nap, Katie stumbled past me as I came back to the ship, Andy and Tosh are on the job, and Ianto won’t be in for another hour.  He has a meeting with President Jones.  She came up last night to view the damages.”

“I still need to eat and shower and do my hair,” she told him.

“Quickie, then?” he asked.

“All right.”  She couldn’t help but smile at him as he shucked his clothes off like he was trying to meet an all time speed record and rejoined her on the bed.  It was the last chance they would have to make love for three days.

Ch. 29:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/292796.html