Immovable Object, Unstoppable Force (3/3)

[amberfocus]

Title:  Immovable Object, Unstoppable Force (3/3 Complete)
Author:  amberfocus
Characters/Pairings:  Ninth Doctor/Rose Tyler
Genre:  Romance, angst, hurt/comfort, smut
Rating:  Adult--This Chapter NC-17
Betas:  amyo67, jeprdyfrndly
Summary:  After giving in to temptation months ago, the Doctor told Rose that a romantic relationship between them was a mistake.  She's starting to believe him just as he's coming to realize that holding himself away from her is really the biggest mistake of all.
Warning:  Not work safe, school safe, or child friendly!
A/N:  This fic is a belated birthday gift for mitashade, who has been so incredibly generous with her time and artwork this past year.
 
Ch. 1:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/317474.html  Ch. 2:  http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/318163.html

Chapter Three

When Rose wakes it is to dead stillness. There’s an eerie green light glowing on the cave walls around her. She’s seen that before. This isn’t the first cave she’s been stuck in with the Doctor. What’d he call it? Bio-something. Luminescence? Yeah, bioluminescence. Tiny little creatures or plants that radiate light in dark places. It’s enough light to see that the Doctor isn’t beside her. She sits up and then stands, walking the few brief paces to the bend in the cave.

The Doctor is sitting in the cave mouth, staring out at a sheet of water still coming down. “Tornado’s passed,” he says without turning. She always wonders how he can do that. No matter how quietly she moves he always seems to sense her presence. “Still raining, though.”

“I can see that,” she says, but there is no asperity in her tone. “I need to pee. Is it safe to go out?”

“Thunder and lightning’s passed now. I dug a latrine just the other side of that ridge.” He points. She can just see it in the twilight.

“How long was I out?”

“Five hours. Here, take the sonic.” He flicks onto the torch setting and she takes it from his hand without touching him. She’s gone for a few minutes, then finds a place in the rock wall of the ridge where rain water is streaming down to wash her hands. She washes her face, too, clearing away the stains of her tears. She can feel the Doctor’s eyes on her.

She lets out a deep breath, closes her eyes and steels herself. There’s going to be fallout from what she told him. She isn’t sure what kind, but she knows that it’s not something he’ll be able to let pass. For so long she’s just been angry. Anger was okay to feel because it masked the pain, it masked the hurt, it masked the heartbreak. That mask has been peeled away today. Stuck in the dark with him she hadn’t been able to hide the truth from either of them. She loves him and he doesn’t love her and that’s the way it is.

She might be going home, she thinks dully. He had said that he didn’t want her to, but that was before she’d made her profession of love. Maybe it’s for the best if she does go home. It might be the only way to mend her broken heart. Staying with him isn’t going to do it. And going on like they have been won’t work either. The wound just festers. It’s more than she can take anymore. Always so strong, right now she feels shattered. Rose opens her eyes and turns around. Shattered or not, she still has her pride. She’ll face this like the woman she is and not the girl he thinks of her as.

She’s dripping wet by the time she returns to the cave. The Doctor’s eyes don’t leave her as she approaches. He holds out his hand as she nears him. “Sit with me?” he asks. She takes his hand, thinks it might be the last time she ever does, and sits beside him. The silence stretches on so long that she jumps when he finally does speak. He pulls her hand into his lap, clutching it with both of his. “I was wrong, Rose.”

“I know. We’ve had this discussion before. You regret making love to me.”

“No,” he says. “I don’t. I regret pushing you away from me after we did. I was wrong to do that. I was wrong to ever let you think that you weren’t enough for me or that I didn’t care. It was never about that. You’ve always been all that I needed, Rose. I do care. More than I should. I…” He swallowed hard, his grip on her hand tightening. “My feelings are so strong that they scare me to death. I haven’t…I haven’t allowed myself to…well, I haven’t allowed myself to face them, Rose, because every time I love something, I lose it. Every person that I’ve ever loved has been taken from me.”

She tries to talk, but he shushes her. “No, let me finish. If I don’t say it now, I never will.” She nods and he continues. “I’ve been hiding behind old laws, laws that died the day that I killed everyone on my planet to keep the universe from being overrun with evil. It was easier to pretend that I couldn’t break the rules, that I was taking advantage of your innocence, that I was too old for you, that I didn’t deserve you, than it was facing up to the truth.”

He sighs. Her hand is starting to ache from the tightness of his grasp, but she doesn’t care. He’s never been so open with her before. “Then I died and your dad, clever old Pete Tyler, found a way to put the world right again, to bring me back, and I thought…I thought this was my second chance, that the universe had forgiven me enough to grant me that, and the one thing I wanted, the only thing I wanted, was you. I didn’t let myself think about anything else, just you. I didn’t…I didn’t really think you’d accept me, that you’d want me and when you did, when you said yes, I…Rose, I let everything else just fall away. I let it all vanish. There was just you and me and two bodies and everything was so perfect, so perfect for once in my life and I let myself believe it would be okay.”

He looks down, then up into her eyes and she realizes that tears have streaked his face. She stares at him with rapt attention. “Then reality intruded. I realized what I’d done, that I’d crossed a line that I’d never crossed before. I’d let myself…I’d let myself love again. I let myself love you and Rose…everyone, every single thing or person I have ever loved has been taken from me, whether by my own hand or someone else’s…and I thought I’d rather have the pain of losing you then than losing you later when those feelings had just had time to get stronger.”

“You’re not gonna lose me,” she says, heart beating so fast she thinks it might just burst through her chest. He loves her?

“I could. And the very idea of it scares me so much sometimes I stop breathing. But this, all this business of pushing you away…I was stupid, because it didn’t make the feelings easier to handle. They didn’t get any less. They just got stronger, only now you were hurting, and once I started hurting you, I couldn’t seem to stop. I thought I knew what I was doing, but I was wrong. I don’t know if you can forgive me, Rose, for being so stubborn. I’ve always wanted you. You were so brave and so strong and so clever. My life has been better from the day I met you and the idea of going one more day without you knowing that I’m sorry, that I—that I love you,” he says on a rush. “I can’t bear it.”

“You…you love me?” He nods solemnly. “How…how do I know that you’re not just going to change your mind again? That you’re not gonna do what you did before, and take me to bed because you can’t stand not to and when you’re done with what you want, tell me we can’t anymore. How do I know?” she asks.

“I’ve tried so hard, Rose, to stay away from you, but I can’t. I want you. I want you so much that I feel a physical pain here.” He raises their hands and thumps himself above the hearts. “I love you so much that I can’t bear the idea of going on like we have been ever again. I know that what I’ve done has shattered your faith in me. I don’t think I can ever say sorry enough to take that away, but if you’re willing, I’m going to spend the next several years building that faith back up again if that’s what it takes. I will spend every day letting you know that you are the most important thing in the universe to me. If it’s what you want. If…if I’m what you still want.”

She’s sure that she shouldn’t give in to him, sure that there’s a hundred very good reasons why letting him back inside her heart to break it again is a very bad idea, but right now there’s only one thing that she knows. She hurts without him and she doesn’t want to feel that anymore. “I will always want you,” she says, eyes clenched tightly shut as she makes her leap of faith.

They don’t make love that night. They go back inside the cave and he holds her. They don’t talk. They just are. It’s what they both need, more than sex, more than surrender. They just need to be together. He holds her until morning, until the storm passes and the sun comes out again and the world looks like a brand new place. He holds her and for that moment it’s enough.



When they return to the ship the Doctor finds a crate of thermic regulator parts in the corner of his workshop, something he swears wasn’t there before. There are enough parts in there to keep the ship going for the next six hundred years. When he questions her about it she makes it clear to him that she’s a very big ship and she can’t be expected to keep track of everything on board. He keeps his suspicions to himself that she hid them on purpose to force an end to the impasse between Rose and him. If she did she would never admit it and really, he can only be grateful.

It’s a month before they do make love. A month spent rebuilding the lines of communication and trust between them. In the meanwhile they’ve held hands and they’ve kissed and they’ve held each other through the night while Rose slept and when she’s ready, she tells him so.

She tells him so by coming to him in a very small baby doll nightgown made of sky blue silk, spaghetti straps already falling down her shoulders. He’s sitting in the library reading a book, but he knows it the minute she walks into the room, looks up, sees her, smiles. “Make love to me tonight,” she says softly.

“You’re sure?” he asks.

Rose smiles and nods and holds out her hand. She feels almost shy. She never felt shy the first time, never felt shy that entire weekend in bed, but now she nearly does. It’s different this time and they both know it. There is passion beneath the surface, of course there is, there always is, but it’s more than that, too. She leads him back to the bedroom and she looks at him, just looks at him and she can tell that he feels it, too.

This is the moment that everything changes. Not all those many months ago and not even that moment back in the cave when the truth finally came out. This moment, right now, when he looks at her and she feels faith in her heart again, this moment is the one that Rose will remember.

She slips the gown down off her body, lets it fall at her feet, and stands for a moment, letting him look at her. He does so with shining eyes, his hands twitching, so ready to touch, yet holding back. She closes the distance between them, her fingers getting a grip on the hem of his jumper and tugging it up. He raises his arms obediently and she pulls it off, dropping it to the floor and reaching out, running her fingers from his chest to his abdomen and smiling when he sucks in his breath at her touch.

Rose unbuckles his belt and pulls the row of buttons open, then stands back. He’s barefoot so he makes short work of his jeans and his boxer briefs and kicks them away. Her eyes trace his body, note his arousal, return to his face. He’s watching her with such ineffable tenderness and still such hesitation in his eyes, as if he’s afraid that if he dares to touch her first he might break her again.

She understands and she closes the distance between them, simply hugging him, bodies pressed close until the last of his wariness flees. As his body relaxes she raises her face to his, silently asking for a kiss. He does not resist, there is no resistance left in him, his mouth dropping to hers. He sweeps his tongue along her bottom lip and she opens, but barely. Just enough to flick her tongue against the tip of his, once, twice, three times, before pulling back.

She holds his hand, guides him to the bed and she lays down, pulling him down beside her and releasing him. They lay side by side, facing each other, and she looks into his eyes as she runs her hand over his shoulder and down his arm to lace her fingers through his for just a moment before starting the return journey up his arm until she reaches his neck and then his face.

Cradling his jaw in her hand she kisses him. He’s passive, waiting for her to push forward, and she does, enters his mouth and takes careful, patient inventory of his teeth and tongue. Hers is a slow dance, no hurried passion erupting now. This is about claiming in a way that is different from everything that came before. This is about permanence.

She pulls back just enough for him to follow, to move the kiss into her mouth and for him to have his turn. He glides against her in lazy circles, all of the time in the universe at his disposal as he learns and relearns what gives her pleasure in this simple act of kissing. She thinks that no matter how much time they spend doing this, it can never be enough.

He strokes his hand down her body, hands gentle against her warm skin. Rose brings one foot forward, caressing the back side of his calf and down again as his hand slips up to rest lightly against the curve of her breast. She lets go of his face, touches his chest instead, runs her fingers through his chest hair, follows where it narrows and goes low, continues until she touches him, so lightly, just fingertips gliding across his length.

He lets out a soft, breathy sigh of pleasure and her eyes close, blink open again, and meet his steady blue gaze only for a moment, because she’s closing them again as he makes tiny little circles around her nipple with his thumb. It hardens under his touch, puckering against the roughened digit. She closes her hand around his shaft as he continues to tease the bud that now aches for more.

A few soft strokes and then she raises her hand to his head again, urging him downwards with gentle pressure until his lips close around the nipple, sucking gently at first then more firmly, tongue circling and stroking, teeth grazing lightly. She runs her fingers over the closely cropped hair then onto his face, tracing one strong cheekbone, his aquiline nose, and then down to where his mouth meets her breast.

As his mouth continues to mete out pleasure on her breast his hand trails down to her stomach, to her soft curls, one finger slipping past them. Rose angles her hips back toward the bed, opens her thighs and feels him slide one finger down to her entrance. He captures moisture, slides back up to her clit, and makes tiny little circles against it. It rises up and his pressure becomes stronger both there and as he sucks her nipple more forcefully.

Rose gives a short, sharp cry of pleasure, and the Doctor begins to circle faster against her clit. She’s surprised at how close she is. He slips his thumb into her body, adding little circles inside her now and the sensation intensifies. He presses his body closer, his penis hard against her thigh, his movements faster, shorter, stronger. She cries out as she comes, lost in the flood of orgasm as her body clenches over and over again. She is panting and spent and as worn out as a rag doll by the time it ends.

The Doctor pulls away from her, raises himself up enough to look at the satisfaction on her face and smiles. She gives him a happy grin in return, and finishes rolling completely onto her back, reaching for him. He arranges himself between her thighs and she reaches down to guide him in. She shudders as he pushes inside her in one delicious stroke.

He makes love to her as slowly, as thoroughly as he kissed her. It’s a gradual build as he takes his time in restoking a fire that has already burned through her once. As quick to action as he can sometimes be, she knows that in many other ways he is a very patient man. It shows, here, now, as all he seems to focus on is bringing her pleasure, in making it last as long as he can. The long, powerful strokes have even longer pauses between them. Each thrust fires nerve endings within her, each withdrawal shooting little waves of bliss through the center of her being.

Her focus becomes pinpoint. They are no longer Rose and the Doctor, but RoseandtheDoctor, merged as one flesh that seeks only joy. She feels him, hovering on the edge of her conscious mind and he asks without words if he can come in. She answers him the same way, waves of positive reassurance directed at him. It makes her gasp, makes him stop, as he enters her mind. From that moment forward it is nothing but sensation and elation doubled, tripled, quadrupled as a dizzying wash of pure emotion, love, light, happiness takes possession of everything they are.

It takes a moment before she feels him moving again, before the array of colors and scents and music that floods her mind and becomes a part of her as much as he is, as much as her own body is. She shivers and jolts and shudders in gasping, stuttering paroxysms of pure feeling. This is what love looks like, smells like, tastes like. This is what they both desire to keep between them always.

She feels tossed, as if by an ocean wave, rising, falling, rising again. Electricity seems to fire through her, a mild shock of it, while something coils tighter and tighter, low in her womb. Everything seems to pull in, to contract to one infinitesimally small bundle, balancing so precariously for longer than she thinks she can stand and then she falls. It’s like a rush, a jump from a cliff, a dive from an airplane flying so high she cannot see the ground and then she is buffeted about, warmth, sensation, pleasure lifting her, taking her somewhere she does not recognize, but will forever think of as familiar, as home, in the way that the Doctor is now home to her.

Belonging, acceptance, trust, belief, faith. Everything that she’s wanted, everything they’ve worked so hard to build crashes through her with her orgasm. He falls with her and rises with her, and comes with her, crying out her name over and over again until he collapses atop of her, nothing left to give because he’s given all of it. They lay there, stunned, shocked, sated. Neither of them can move nor think of anything to say. There is nothing left to say. Words are not necessary when minds have shared this kind of awakening together.

At last he rolls them over, still within her, still holding her as if he never intends to let her go. She is boneless against him. She will stay right here forever if it’s what he wants. She smiles, laughs against his skin. Words are not necessary, but she says them anyway, says them to hear the sounds as the words fall from her mouth.

“I love you.”

His arms tighten around her and he kisses the top of her head.

“I love you,” he repeats. Yes, words are not necessary, but nonetheless they are beautiful to hear.

Comments

[amberfocus.livejournal.com]

Me, too. She's a clever little sweetheart. *grins* Aw, but the Doctor does come around in the end. Which is a good thing, too, or we'd never get happy time smut.