amberfocus | Need

A/N: So I'm having a hard time writing the argument between Rose and Jackie for Hunger Moon and my brain is just not cooperating. It decided to go sideways a bit instead. So this is Nine/Rose, set after WWIII and before Dalek. It's probably just a one-shot. Extremely angsty.

Need

Rose senses him in the doorway before she sees him and opens her eyes, the light from the corridor barely enough to shadow his lanky frame in sharp relief. But she knows he’s there, can feel it, his presence like a dark fire burning with his need to not be alone. She shifts in her bed, moves to one side, says nothing but pulls the blankets away from the edge and the door shoves open and he’s there suddenly shrugging out of his leather jacket and she can feel the bed shifting under his weight as he rests his body on it and he removes his boots and his socks.

She feels the bed move as he rises again and in the darkness she hears the slide of his belt as he pulls it from his jeans, the zipper loud in the silence as he slides it down, the denim shifting against itself as it falls at his feet and he steps out of it. She can feel the air move behind her as he shucks off his jumper and is naked save for the boxer briefs that protect his modesty, or hers, she’s never quite sure.

He says nothing to her, simply slides himself beneath the covers and then he is pulling her body up against his, resting her back against his chest, fitting his thighs to the backs of hers, and holding onto her as if he were ever to let her go he would drown. He grunts in surprise at the backless nature of the gown she’s wearing tonight, the expanse of skin tickled by his light sprinkling of hairs as he pulls her closer than normal, holds her tighter.

She feels his roughened fingers sliding across her stomach, seeking warmth, splaying against the silk and her breath hitches in her chest as it always does when he is this close to her, when he touches her so intimately and yet not. Desire floods her body and she knows he must be able to smell it on her, yet he says nothing, does nothing; simply holds her. It is never more than this.

Though he comes to her and comes to her often he has never taken it beyond this and every night she aches for him to take that step. She has been afraid to push for it herself, afraid that if she does he will stop these midnight visits that she has come to crave, this closeness he almost always hides from in the light of day. He seeks comfort from her body without taking comfort in her body, a distinction she can barely see the difference in anymore, but it is a line he does not cross and a line she’d like to scuff out forever.

When morning comes he is gone. He is always gone. They never speak of it, these moments that he comes to her, and she wonders sometimes if she dreams them all. She is careful to keep this part of them separate from everything else, to not allow her nighttime thoughts to intrude on her daytime friendship with this strange and alien man. But she wants him and there are times when she knows it bleeds through into the daytime, sometimes when he holds her too closely or too tightly or his lips brush her forehead and she dreams of his lips brushing hers instead, of whispers in the darkness and hands and bodies seeking more than it seems they have any right to.

One night she tires of the ruse and as she prepares for bed she thinks it will be different. She will make it different. She lays in the darkness for a while and as the time approaches for his appearance she goes to find him. He is huddled over the console adjusting one of a multitude of levers or switches, warring with himself on whether or not he will give in and go to her. He always does these days.

“Come to bed,” she says softly and he looks at her startled. His eyes drift over the diaphanous fabric of the gown she is wearing, drifting down to the expanse of bare leg that starts midway down her thighs, back up to the neckline that shows more than he is used to seeing, the little straps that hide nothing of her creamy shoulders and well-proportioned arms. One hand reaches out for his arm and he flinches away before she can touch him.

“Rose, I…” He looks away from her, down at his hands, anywhere but at her face. Anywhere but at her body.

“It’s every night now, Doctor. Every night you end up in my bed. Why don’t you just start there to begin with?” she asks him gently. “You know by now that I will not send you away.” His arms cross his chest, the leather rasping as they fold and he does meet her eyes now, glares at her for daring to speak of it, this thing between them he means to keep hidden from the light.

“I don’t do that,” he says abruptly and she knows he thinks this will put an end to her words. It does not. She persists.

“Don’t do what? End up in my bed? Yes, you do.”

“I won’t start there. It’s…domestic. Anyway, I don’t need it. I don’t…” He looks away and when he looks back he makes the words intentionally harsh. “I don’t need you.”

They fall on her like a physical blow. Rose tries not to let the hurt on her face show and she lowers her eyes from the blue ones that won’t quite meet them anyway. “Oh,” she says in a voice she tries to keep carefully neutral and she keeps back the tears of frustration that fill her throat but not her eyes. “Oh!” she says again as they sink still further into her and the shock of them does leach into the word this time. She turns away from him, thinks she hears an intake of breath, but she leaves the room before he can say anything else to her designed to wound. This night she locks her bedroom door.

Hours later, the Doctor pauses in the hallway outside her door, frowning to see that it is closed, though he doesn’t know what else he should expect. She has always left it ajar from the morning following his first visit to her bed. He knows that his words have hurt her, were meant to hurt her, to keep her from growing more attached than she already has and he knows that he lied when he spoke them.

He does need her, does need these nights with her when he seeks solace by holding her warm body against his own. Needs them more and more as the nightmares grow in his daytime hours and he fights to keep them from overwhelming him. Even without the need for much sleep, without her awake and beside him to keep the memories at bay, he needs this at night. Her presence fights his demons.

He hates himself for this weakness, this want of her warm body in his arms and her gentle acceptance of his battered, bitter self into her room every night. It is a liberty he has allowed himself to take since the day he laid himself naked and open before her in 10 Downing Street declaring that he could save the world but lose her. She told him to save the world and she had fitted her body into the space next to his in that tiny closet, held tight to him and whispered to him in the darkness that if she had to die at least it was in his arms. That holding him made her feel safe even in the worst of dangers.

He could not admit until that night that holding her made him feel safe,too, held back all the monsters, and gave him some semblance of peace. And the desire to hold her again had been so strong that he had intruded, walked into her bedchamber at night and stood hovering above her. She had stirred, turned to him and said nothing, but she had understood what he had needed, had thrown the covers back and had held her hand out to him inviting him into her bed. As he had slid in beside her he had felt her body tuck itself into his, her hands seeking to find his skin beneath his jumper, to move more intimately to his jeans, and he’d had to turn her away from him, pull her back up against his chest, before she got the wrong idea, or maybe the right idea, but an idea that he could not, rather would not, allow himself to follow through on.

He reaches out his hand to turn the knob, finds it does nothing more than rattle, and realizes she has locked him out, realizes he deserves it for the words he said to her, the lie that had tumbled so easily from his lips to keep her from needing him the way he needed her. His hand rises to rest against the door and his body presses into it seeking out the jumbled emotions on the other side that have always been so clear to him, the tumult of a mind that was distinctly Rose and could be no one else in its familiarity.

He feels denial in her thoughts as she hears the door knob try to turn, her refusal of him clear and loud and painful. She will not give him the solace he seeks any longer because she cannot bear it, she cannot bear to be just the body he holds at night. She cannot bear that he does not need her. He aches to go to her, to tell her that he does, that his words were lies, that he needs her more than anyone or anything he has ever needed in his life. That there is a dull and empty place within him since the Time War that she has slowly been filling with her bright smiles and the warmth of her touch and her very presence in his life.

He knows that she wants him as a man, has known that she finds him physically attractive despite his big ears and nose and daft old face or maybe because of them. He can smell the physical changes in her when he holds her close, the pheromones she releases at night as their bodies touch in the dark. He can hear the race of her heartbeat, feel the pulse pound in her wrist, the way her body tenses at first contact before relaxing into his almost bonelessly. He knows it is hard for her to not act on her desires, can feel the frustration as she holds herself back. She has never tried to push for physical release with him since that first night he pushed her hands away from his body, never tried to make their nights anything more than he allowed.

She has always given him exactly what he needs, he has become accustomed to that, expected it without question and now he knows he has been an unreasonable and foolish old man with her emotions, played upon them and then destroyed them with his carelessness. He backs away from her door, knowing he has lost any right he thought he might have had to her comfort. He deserves the nightmares he knows will come when he closes his eyes, the ones that will come even if he does not close them.

He has taken one step, two, three, four, five away from her door when he hears the lock snick, the door open and turns back to see her standing in the doorway. There are tears on her face and he curses himself for making her cry. She says nothing to him, does not meet his eyes, simply steps back into the room and stands clear of the doorframe and waits for him to enter.

To Be Continued in Want: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/37081.html

Current Mood: discontent
Current Location: home
Current Music: Natalie Imbruglia