Wolf Moon: Chapter Thirty-Eight

[amberfocus]

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Little Bits of Bonding

 

Rose burst into giggles.  She didn’t know what was funnier, the fact that a grown man had a dancing bananas shower curtain or the curtain itself.  The look on the Doctor’s face was one of great reverence as he fingered the plastic with its large yellow bananas dressed in black top hats, bow ties, tap shoes, and canes.  “Very Gary Cooper,” she managed when she could speak again, remembering watching him in some old black and white films with her gran when she was little.

 

The hurt expression on the Doctor’s face sent her into fresh paroxysms of laughter.  He tried to glare at her but seeing her so happy made it nearly impossible and he found his own lips beginning to twitch in response to her joy.  “I’m sorry,” Rose gasped out.  “I’m sorry, it’s just…”  She waved her hand at the curtain.

 

“I like bananas,” he said a bit huffily.  “Good source of potassium.”

 

“You need potassium in the shower?”  Rose was off again.  The Doctor decided that the only way to stop her laughter was to give her mouth something else to do so he pulled her up against him and claimed her lips as his.  When he’d snogged her senseless and she was like melted butter in his hands he pulled back.

 

“Got a hold of yourself now, Miss Tyler?” he asked her.

 

“I rather think it’s you who’s got a hold of me, Doctor,” she said resting her head against his shoulder.  He leaned towards the shower and flicked the water on, his hand testing the temperature before walking Rose backwards into the stream of water.  Rose let it wash over her face soaking her hair.  The Doctor handed her a cloth for her eyes when she stepped forward and she wiped them dry.

 

“Turn around and I’ll wash your hair,” he told her gruffly.  She smiled and turned to face the spray.  The Doctor poured some shampoo, pink still; the TARDIS wasn’t providing a different color there yet, into his hand and rubbed it into her scalp a bit before gathering her hair up and piling it on top of her head.

 

“No, not like that,” Rose told him.  “You can’t wash long hair like that.  You’ll give me tangles that’ll take forever to get out.”  She shook her hair down.  “You have to ease the shampoo down the length of the hair, stroking it in with both hands, rubbing it between them gently.  Ouch!  Gently, I said.  It’s attached, you know!”

 

“Sorry,” the Doctor said grumpily.  “It’s not like I’ve done this before.  The longest my hair has ever been is to my shoulders.  It’s not like I make it a habit of taking women into the shower with me, you know.  You’re the first.”

 

Rose sighed.  “Just be careful,” she said as his hands returned to her head and he tried to follow her instructions.

 

“I’ll get the hang of it,” he promised after snarling his fingers in her hair and tugging a little too hard to remove them quickly.

 

“Slow and easy,” she said.  “Take your time.”  His hands stilled and then began to work through her hair again with infinite care.  Finally Rose stepped back under the water and relaxed under the flow while the Doctor helped rinse the suds from her hair.  The second lather was much more successful and by the time the Doctor got to the conditioner he was washing her hair as if he’d been doing it for a decade.

 

She sighed happily.  “Wasn’t so hard, was it?” she asked him.  “And now you’ll know how in the future.”

 

“You plan on making this a habit, Rose?” he asked.  “Showering together?”

 

She turned to look at him and said shyly, “If you want.”  His hands were full of soap and he reached forward and lifted one breast, gently sudsing it cleaner than it needed to be before moving over to the next one and treating it in a similar fashion.

 

“I want,” he said as his hands slipped across her ribcage and over her stomach.  She giggled as he slipped a soapy finger inside her navel and when he trailed down to her soft curls she hissed as he slipped two fingers lower to wash the hidden folds.  He spent more time there than he had on her breasts and Rose’s legs began to wobble.  Sensing this, the Doctor moved on, kneeling on the shower floor and washing her thighs and then sliding his hands down to her legs and finally doing one foot at a time.

 

Rose giggled as his hands slid over the soles of her feet.  “Ticklish?” he asked her.

 

“A bit, yeah,” Rose said.  He set her second foot back down.

 

“Turn, please.”  When she did he put more soap on his hands and began slowly to make his way up the backs of her legs.  When he came to the backs of her knees she squirmed as he ran his thumbs over the sensitive flesh there.  “Hmm…have to remember that for later,” he told her.  His hands moved up the backs of her thighs, then washed her bum carefully and with a bit of extra squeezing before moving to the small of her back.

 

He stood then, working his hands upwards over each shoulder blade and then over her shoulders and down each arm.  He nudged her back into the water and watched as the soap suds sluiced off her body and disappeared.  “You’re so beautiful,” he told her.

 

“You’re rather easy on the eyes yourself,” she told him.

 

“You needn’t say that, Rose.  I know what I look like.  Big ears, big nose, goofy smile.  I’m not prince charming,” he said disparagingly.

 

“Oh, Doctor,” she said the air rushing out of her.  “I think you’re a beautiful man.”  There was such sincerity in her voice that his mouth dropped open.  “I love your nose and your ears and your daft old smile.”  She raised a hand to his face, stroking his cheek and cradling his jaw.  “When the other you changed, he was pretty, but this is the face I missed.  This is the face I fell in love with twice.  Your face.”

 

She stood up on tiptoe, her wet body sliding up his and pressed a kiss to his lips.  As she eased back down him she added, “And your eyes, your gorgeous blue eyes, have always haunted my dreams.  I love this face.”

 

He hugged her tightly, just relishing in her softness as she clung to him.  It took him a moment to process what she said.  “Wait, my next body is pretty?”

 

“Rather a lot,” she said with some asperity.  “Gave him the idea he could flirt with women other than me.”

 

“I won’t,” he said firmly.  “You’re the only one I want to flirt with.  In any body.”  Rose kissed his chest then pulled away from him.

 

“Come on, let’s get you clean.”

 

She squirted some soap into her hands and began moving them over the hard muscles and sharp planes of his body.  She spent several minutes cleaning his shaft and with equal tenderness she soaped his balls.  She was surprised when he didn’t harden.  When she’d finished and he’d rinsed off she knelt in the water, taking him into her mouth again.

 

“Rose, it won’t do any good,” he said.  “All four of my testicles fired off today.  I’ll need another six hours before the first one will have recharged enough to give me an erection.  Each one has a twelve hour refractory period.  Sorry.”

 

Reluctantly she let him slide from her mouth and slid back up his body.  He handed her the shampoo bottle and she poured some out in her hand, setting it behind her on the shelf.  Very gently she worked it through his hair.  She liked the longer length as it grew out; it gave her fingers something to play with.  She rinsed him, conditioned him, and then they stepped out of the shower.

 

The Doctor dried her off with the softest towel she had ever felt, then gently wrapped one about her head.  “These aren’t the usual TARDIS towels,” she said as he wrapped her body in the soft pink cloth.  He pulled a light blue one around his own body and smiled.

 

“Nope.  The TARDIS brought them out of hiding, I guess.”  He helped her out to the bed and tucked her into it.  She smiled as he told her, “I’m going to go and make dinner and we can eat it in bed.  You need to rest, Miss Tyler.  You’ve had quite the busy day and your body is still healing.”

 

“Go on,” she said shooing him out the door.  He dropped a kiss on her lips before pulling on a pair of clean jeans and a t-shirt and padding off to the kitchen in his bare feet.  She took the towel off her head and spread it over the pillow to keep it from being soaked by her hair.

 

With a happy smile on her face, Rose dropped off into an exhausted sleep.

 

 

 

When the Doctor returned a few minutes later with a light supper of tea, fruit, and sandwiches Rose was out cold.  He smiled at her lovingly and went back to the kitchen to fetch a chiller pack and a cooler to put the food in until she woke.  He settled down onto the bed beside her and picked up a book off his bedside table.  He read it slowly as he did when he was reading books for pleasure and not for knowledge.

 

When he was a few pages in Rose had started scooting her way towards him in her sleep and within minutes her sleeping body was snuggled tightly up against his side, one arm flung across his chest and one leg draped over his thigh.  He smiled again and put his book down on the bed.  He stroked the damp hair that she had so patiently taught him how to wash.  She was so incredibly lovely to him.  He was so far gone on the woman beside him he knew there was no coming back.  He never wanted to come back, not from this.  His hearts were so tenderly held by her little human hands.

 

She had changed every aspect of his life for the better in the short time he’d been in her life.  She’d managed to improve his relationship with the TARDIS, something he thought would never happen.  Remembering he hadn’t done so, he sent a quiet thank you to the ship for returning his shower curtain and was rewarded with a surprised and pleased hum.

 

His thoughts quickly returned to Rose.  She’d given him a future.  She’d given him love, so much love, and she’d done it with an open heart.  He’d smiled and laughed more in the past nearly three weeks than he’d done in all the years since the Time War put together.  And today she’d offered him children.  How was it possible for a single person to do so much for him just by suddenly being present in his life?

 

She’d even managed to forgive him for the brutality of their mating and she’d let her guard completely down gifting him with the wonderful afternoon they had just shared.  The intensity of his emotions nearly overwhelmed him as he looked down at her sleeping face.  He loved her so much already, so very, very much.  He had never dreamed this when Romana had approached him with her crazy ideas.  And yet it had all worked as intended and he had every faith that it would continue to do so.

 

That in itself had struck him as odd and yet he had peace in his belief, a quiet knowing as the time lines rippled around him today when she’d said she wanted his children that everything was in place and life with his Rose would be good.  Not perfect, of course.  Nothing ever was.  But good and oh, so right.

 

He let his thumb drop to trace the outline of her jaw, his book completely forgotten as it slipped to the floor.  She murmured a soft, “Doctor,” into his side.  Joy bubbled up in him that she would recognize his touch even in her sleep.  The intensity of his emotions should have scared him but he could not be afraid of this.  Not of her or how he felt when he was with her.  He was so much more alive now than he’d been in decades.  More then he’d ever been in his life.

 

He’d been close to feeling like this once, when he’d stolen his old TARDIS, as he’d bonded with his first ship, and run from Gallifrey into a life with an actual future.  But even that did not match how he was feeling with his bondmate beside him.

 

“You love her,” the quiet words of the TARDIS impinged on his senses.

 

“Yeah, I do,” he told her.

 

“Stay worthy of her love, Doctor.  She deserves the best.”

 

“Not sure that’s me,” he grumbled.

 

“It could be,” the ship told him softly.  “It’s in you.”

 

In surprise at the words he lifted his hand up to gently stroke the wall behind his head.  “Think you can help me with that?” he asked humbly.

 

“Don’t you understand?  I have been since we found her.”  Startled, the Doctor thought over her words and realized that what she said was true.

 

“You have been, haven’t you?  Why would you do that?” he asked as his hand continued its caress against the wall.

 

The TARDIS gave a long-suffering sigh.  “Do you think I've liked the animosity between us all these years?  Rose makes us…better.  It’s…part of why I want her here so badly,” the TARDIS admitted.  “But more than that, I recognize her soul.  She shared herself with a TARDIS once and the effects linger.  She loved that TARDIS, not just that Doctor.  But she already loves you more than she did him, and she feels much for me.  I think…I think one day she’ll love me.”

 

The vulnerability and wistfulness in his ship’s voice hit a chord deep within him.  “I’m so sorry,” he told her on a rush of words.  “I should have tried harder with you.  We should have been bonded long ago.”

 

“We have both made mistakes, Doctor.  And I don’t think it’s possible to overcome them without a lot of time.  But I’ll try…if you will.”

 

“I’ll try,” he said.  “Does that mean you’ll stop shocking me when we disagree or fight?”

 

“It means,” said the TARDIS with thinly veiled humor, “That from now on I’ll only do it when you deserve it.”

 

The Doctor laughed and the amused chiming of her laughter echoed in his head with his own.  He felt the time lines ripple again as they felt the effects of his new agreement with the TARDIS.  It was possible, just possible, that one day in the future, Rose wouldn’t be the only one who loved him and she wouldn’t be the only one he loved back.

Ch. 39: http://amberfocus.livejournal.com/22603.html