amberfocus | Frustration (2/2)

Chapter Two: Mend

Once in the medical bay he dashes over to one wall and hits a series of buttons. A panel slides to one side and a large white tub emerges from the wall and begins to fill with a thick pale green fluid that is part antiseptic, part topical analgesic, part antibiotic and part absorbable narcotic. He runs back to Rose’s room. “Come on,” he says holding out his hand to her.

“Where to?” she asks.

“The infirmary. I need to treat those burns. Can you walk?” he asks.

“Yeah, they don’t hurt unless I touch them.” But even as she stands it is obvious that if this had once been true it no longer is.

“My feet!” she cries out.

“I’ll carry you, only, it might hurt, Rose.” She nods and he picks her up. She winces as his arm comes into contact with the backs of her knees, but she doesn’t complain. He walks as smoothly and quickly as he can down the corridor and then deposits her on the examining table. Carefully he makes a visual observation of each of her welts, having her turn on her side so he can inspect the back sides of her arms and legs.

“You’ve blistered the backs of your knees and the bottoms of your feet,” he says calmly as if he were commenting on the clemency of the weather. “Most of the burns are second degree, but there are a couple of third degree ones. We need to get you treated.”

“How come I can’t feel it unless there’s pressure on it?” Rose asks and he can feel the fear in her voice.

“I imagine the electrocution scrambled some of your nerve endings. They’ll heal but…you should have told me, Rose. If we’d waited until tomorrow to treat you, the damage might have been permanent.” There is not quite accusation in his tone, but there is admonishment.

“You sent me away,” she says and there is no disguising the hurt in her voice. “I didn’t want to bother you.”

“Rose, I don’t care about whatever else is going on between us,” he says tilting her chin up and making her look in his eyes. “If you are injured you must tell me.” She pulls her head away from his grasp and shrugs her shoulders. This angers him but he forces it back down. “Promise me you’ll always tell me if you get hurt,” he demands.

She says nothing and he repeats sternly, “Promise me!”

“I…okay.” Finally she meets his eyes and gives him a tiny nod. “I promise.” His hands move to the hem of her shirt and he begins to lift it upwards. “What are you doing?” she asks.

“We need to get you into that bath,” he says. “The medication in there will speed your healing.”

“Doctor, I’m far too tired to stay awake in a bath.” There is an edge of panic in her voice.

He looks at her grimly then over at the tub. “You have to. I’ll hold you up,” he says. This time when he pulls her shirt up, she lets him. He tries to keep his mind on the fact that Rose is his patient and not his lover and that the removal of her shirt means nothing more than that it is in the way of medical treatment. Still he can’t help the way his eyes jump to the soft satin encasing her breasts.

Because she has shut her eyes against the pain, he lets his eyes drift from her collarbone across the swell of pale pink fabric and down the smooth abdominal muscles and the indentation of her navel to the slightly rounded stomach, telling himself he is simply checking her torso for burns. His gaze wanders further down to the matching pink knickers that leave his imagination jumping at just the hint of translucency. He swallows hard. For now Rose is his patient. He has to clear his head.

He stands up and turns his back on her, shucking off all of his clothes but his boxer briefs, wishing he were stripping off his clothes for an entirely different reason. He turns back around and his breath hitches as he catches Rose’s eyes wandering down the length of his body. He’s always undressed in the dark before and she’s never had a moment like this to just drink him in the way she is doing.

Her pupils are dilating and her nostrils flare, her pink tongue creeps out and moistens her lips and then he is aware of her pheromones dumping into her system as Rose’s body signals its desire, its willingness to be ready for him despite the pain in her extremities. She tears her gaze away from his body and he watches as she deliberately pokes one of the welts and hisses. The scent of her arousal suddenly dampens as her pain causes the room to fill with different body chemicals, ones representing pain.

He picks her up off the table and steps with her into the bath. As the fluid surrounds them he hears her sharp intake of breath as it works its numbing magic. His own skin is more resilient, as everything in the bath is tailored specifically to Rose’s DNA, though there is a mild reaction. There are no human remedies in it, he’d risk too severe an allergic reaction even having them on the ship, but the medicines he does have he has tweaked so they will work on her body chemistry and not have a full effect on him.

She sits in his lap, back to his chest, and her arms and legs floating free in the medicated liquid. Her head leans back against his shoulder and the scent of her strawberry banana shampoo invades his senses, the pale strands of her hair brushing lightly against him as he rests his chin on her hair. She makes a little sigh of contentment.

His hands slide slowly around her waist, grasping her just above her stomach and holding her firmly so her head does not slip down beneath the surface if she happens to doze. It is a good thing, too because before long she has relaxed into the warmth of the fluid and the comfort of his body and sleep hits her hard. The TARDIS dims the lights at his request and he relaxes in the darkness in ways he has only ever been able to do before when he’s holding Rose in bed at night.

He sits with her in the bath for four hours, the lights in the infirmary turned down low as he frets over her injuries. His higher tolerance to electricity gave him little more than a slight sunburn type of skin rash and he hadn’t even thought to check Rose for injuries once they’d seen the Jagrafess safely blown to kingdom come. It was a stupid mistake on his part. It could have left her with nerve damage and he hadn’t even thought to check her over. He’d been so consumed with his own emotions he hadn’t even considered their torture had hurt her.

He doesn’t want to be the one to leave permanent scars on her precious body. It is bad enough he is probably leaving permanent scars on her heart by his inability to…well, that is assuming she feels for him what he wants her to feel for him. He grunts in the darkness. It is the first time he’s admitted it to himself and it shocks him. He wants her to love him. His mind tries to crouch away as the word burns its way across his thoughts.

Love is supposed to be an abstract word for Time Lords. They loved the universe, they loved life, and they loved watching history take place. They did not love little human women like Rose. Only, this Time Lord, the last Time Lord, he looks at Rose and he does. He loves her. And not like he loves humanity or great works of literature and art. He loves her like a man loves a woman. He loves her and it frightens him.

It shouldn’t be possible for him to feel the way he does and yet when he holds her he feels the surges within him and just once, one time, he wants to make love to her. He knows better than to try, though, because if he ever gives in to that desire he will never be able to stop at once. And she doesn’t deserve to be saddled with his darkness even if he dares to hope that she might love him back one day. Might love him back already.

Rose sighs in her sleep and then she is shifting, turning her body and tucking into him, one hand creeping up to his shoulder and snuggling herself more tightly into him. He dares to drop a kiss on her forehead, his lips lingering far too long for it to be gentlemanly.

Eventually it is time to wake her and she struggles against sleep to rise from the tub. The Doctor pulls out the drain and then turns the lights up enough to examine her body. She shakes a bit from the loss of the warmth of the tub. “You’re healing nicely,” he says. “Now we just need to get you into the shower and get this stuff rinsed off and then we can get you into bed.”

Rose is able to walk now though she snakes an arm about his waist and holds tightly to him as they make their way down the corridor to the bathing area just off her room. He runs the water to a comfortable temperature and she steps into the shower.

The Doctor surprises Rose by stepping into the shower with her, but she says nothing as he helps to rinse away the medicated goo that she’s been floating in for the past four hours. She is tempted to remove her bra and knickers just to see what he’ll do, knows she’ll have to take the wet garments off before going to bed anyway, but she dare not do anything that might stop his solicitous care as he washes her body with a delicate sponge. Her burns have faded to a light red, her blisters gone.

It is a grating disappointment when he finally steps out so she can finish the last of her shower by herself and take off the last of her clothes. He hands her a towel around the end of the curtain and then steps out of the bathroom altogether. She notes that he has left a fresh tank top and pair of knickers for her on a chair and she changes into them.

When she emerges from the room he is waiting for her, his eyes glancing at her arms and legs. “I think that did the trick. You’re going to be okay now, Rose.”

She sits down next to him on the bed. “No, I’m not,” she says.

“You’re hurting?” he asks a note of worry coming into his voice.

“Yeah, I am.” She reaches over and picks up his hand. “Right here.” She places it over her heart.

“It’s possible the electricity damaged your heart. I best get you back to the infirmary and do a scan--.”

“No, Doctor.” She presses his hand flat across her chest. “It hurts here.”

He seems to understand because he takes in a deep breath that comes back out with the word, “Rose,” tumbling from his lips.

“I’m scared,” she says. “I’m scared.”

“Of what?”

“That you’re going to take me home.”

“You are home.” The words seem to rush out of him before he’s even aware of what he’s said.

“What?” He pauses for a long time.

“This is your home,” he says finally. He turns his head, looks at her almost shyly. “That’s what…when I gave you the key I was…I was asking…I was…” He took in a deep breath, shook himself and started again. “You live here. I gave you the key because I…want you here. All the time, Rose. Living with me. It’s a…I thought it meant, well, anyway, I was asking you to stay with me.”

Rose meets his eyes. “Doctor, were you asking me to move in with you? Not just travel with you and have my own way into the ship, but move in with you? Is that what the key meant to you?” Her voice is strong and her gaze stronger and the Doctor looks down at his feet as he feels the tips of his ears turning red. He manages to nod.

Rose’s hand slips into his hoping he can’t hear how fast her heart is racing. “Is that why you’re mad at me? Because I gave the key to Adam? Because the key meant…it meant…what does it mean?”

“It means I don’t want you giving it away to anyone, Rose. I gave it to you. It’s yours. It’s for you only. Please don’t…please don’t give it away again.”

She feels joy burst through her heart and lets go of his hand and edges closer to him on the bed, snaking her arm around his back and the other one around his waist. She hugs him, this beautiful, broken man. “I won’t. I’m sorry. I didn’t know it meant that. You didn’t say. I won’t ever do it again.” She raises her head and looks up at his face and as she breaks the hug one hand creeps up to touch his face, runs over the light day’s growth of stubble there.

She presses her lips to his cheek for far longer than she normally would, and he lets it go on far longer than he normally would. She feels him lean into the kiss and let out a sigh. She breaks from him eventually and then gives out a spectacular yawn. He laughs gently. “It’s time you were in bed. You need to finish healing”

“Stay with me?” she asks softly. “Please?” she adds when he hesitates.

“Yes,” he says finally. He stands and waits for her to slide into the bed and then he gets in beside her. He turns out the lamp and she waits for him to pull her to him, but he doesn’t. Instead he lies on his back and reaches his arm out and slides it about her shoulders and she turns towards him, facing him. She tucks her body into his side, grateful that she is mostly healed so it does not hurt to lie like this. One arm creeps out to encompass his waist and her leg rests lightly against the top of his.

His lips brush the top of her hair and she smiles against his chest, before yawning again. She is still somewhat confused as to what everything means between the Doctor and herself, but the furious frustration has passed. They’ve made progress tonight, taken a step forward together. She doesn’t know exactly what it means, but she knows now that he cares more than she ever thought he could.

His arm tightens around her in the darkness. “Rose?”

“Yes, Doctor?”

“Thank you.”

“For what?” she asks curiously.

“For being Rose.” He doesn’t explain what he means by that and she doesn’t ask. She simply moves her hand up from his waist to rest over his furthest heart and tells him he’s welcome. And he is. He's welcome to everything. And when the time comes he's going to know it. She'll make sure of it.

To Be Continued in Pain: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/40223.html