amberfocus | Nightmare to a Dream (1/1) (Reply)

A/N: An unabashedly fluffy, sweet, romantic, gently steamy Nine/Rose fic written as a birthday present for HonorH. Not work friendly, I'm sure you know by now what it means when I say that. *grins* Hope you enjoy!

Nightmare to a Dream

The Doctor stepped from the shower into a bathroom still heavy with steam and reached blindly for a towel, finding something soft and warm and plush beneath his fingertips. Snagging the thick Egyptian towel from the bar he dried his body slowly, taking just a little too much time to do so before venturing back out into the room he had to share with Rose. A room where she was sleeping under a thin cotton sheet in something tiny that didn’t cover enough of her body to stop him thinking completely inappropriate thoughts about his little companion who was also soft and warm and plush in that silk scrap of nothing.

He wrapped the towel loosely around his waist. It felt wonderful and he thought maybe a trip to Egypt was due to replace the standard TARDIS towels that Rose had lately been complaining were too rough against her skin. Her young, pink, tender skin that he had been noticing far too much about in recent days. He wondered when he started thinking about doing things simply for the sake of Rose’s comfort, thinking in terms of what Rose would like.

A sudden scream from the adjoining room had him dashing out into the bedroom the Marvorkarians had assigned to the pair of them for the duration of their stay because he had made the mistake of saying they were together, not realizing what the connotations of that word meant on this particular planet. Rose had accepted it with a laugh and her usual megawatt grin and he’d chosen not to correct the error when he’d realized his mistake despite the inner voice urging him perhaps not quite as loudly as it ought to have been to do so.

He flung open the door to the bedroom and at first he didn’t see her, swallowed as she was by the pale blue gauze and lace that floated frothily around the four poster bed. But there she was, her flushed pink face sticking out of the midnight blue silk duvet, one creamy shoulder exposed as she thrashed in the throes of nightmare fighting off some villain or creature. Even terrified she was beautiful, even terrified he wanted her and he cursed himself that her frightened writhing was enough to stir his longing to break the final barrier between them and make her his.

He knew he should wake her, but as she fought the monsters in her sleep the sheet was kicked free and he was painfully distracted by the long length of her legs now so fully visible to him it took his breath away. His fingers ached to touch her skin, to slide his hands from calf, to knee, to thigh. He took a deep breath and fought to clear his mind of thoughts he should not have for this young woman under his care.

He hesitated on the edge of the bed but then her cries of terror changed to whimpers of pain and she called out in a pitiful voice that frightened him at his reaction to it, “Doctor! Doctor, help me. I need you. Please…Doctor, don’t leave me…not again…not alone.”

He’d only lost track of her for a few hours, but she’d had a very rough go of it during that time and she’d been so brave when he’d found her, so grateful and happy to see him again, that he hadn’t thought anything more of it. Perhaps he should have realized that the way she had clung to his arm for the rest of the day had meant she’d been more affected than she’d ever let him see. He should have probed a bit deeper, made sure the stress and fear of the day’s events hadn’t been harder on her than it had appeared. Of course it was coming out now in her dreams.

He lowered his weight to the bed, reached across and tenderly stroked the hair from her face, and said her name gently, “Rose…Rose, wake up.” His hand moved to her exposed shoulder, his thumb caressing her collarbone before he can stop it, and he gave her a gentle shake. “Rose, you’re having a nightmare. Wake up.”

Rose catapulted from sleep and was clinging to him, her arms tightening desperately around him. “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me,” she whispered against the smooth skin of his chest. “I can’t lose you.” His arms closed reflexively about her and his fingers stroked the luxurious fabric of her sleeping attire as it hung loosely against her back. He tried to keep his hands from straying up to the smooth skin above it or from tangling in her vanilla scented hair. This was about comfort, not pushing his unwelcome lust on the girl in his arms.

“Never,” he whispered back to her, his breath tickling against her ear before he could stop the words from slipping out. “Never going to leave you, Rose. I'll always come for you.”

Her heartbeat calmed under his caresses, the adrenalin of fright soothed away by his expert touch. The tension left her body and she was soon boneless in his arms. “Bad dream?” he asked her gently then.

“I lost you today,” she whispered back, her arms tightening again. “And my mind was playing it out. Only it twisted. It got worse than what really happened. You died. I was so afraid.”

“You’d be stranded, without me to take you home.”

“I didn’t care about that. I lost you, Doctor. And…and I…I couldn’t bear it.” And suddenly she had shifted in his arms and was pressing her lips into his chest, her fingers sliding desperately against his skin, seeking to touch as much of him as she could, to reassure herself that he really was still alive.

When her hands slid up to his hair and she pulled his head down towards hers he said, “Rose. Rose, I don’t think…I don’t…” He allowed the kiss because he couldn’t stop it, didn’t want to stop, never wanted to stop it, but though it nearly broke him he didn’t react to it. At least his mouth didn’t. Other parts of him had very clearly come to attention underneath the towel.

Rose’s tongue flicked across his bottom lip and he fought with himself to keep the kiss chaste. He turned his head from her then and said, “Rose, you don’t know what you’re starting here.”

She was undeterred, her lips pressing instead into his neck, then along his jawbone. She was gently insistent as she kissed along his face, turning his head again with the light pressure of her fingertips. “I’ve wanted this for so long,” her mouth murmured against his skin.

“You have?” Despite her words he was afraid to believe her. How could she want someone like him, old and cross and sometimes even mean to her when she couldn’t quite keep up with their life together or accept things as quickly as he thought she should?

“Desperately,” she told him catching his lips with hers once more and again seeking entry to his mouth. The word fired him with hope, yet still he hesitated. Because this sort of thing didn’t happen. Not with companions. Not with Rose. But he wanted it to. Oh, yes, he wanted it to.

“Rose.” She took the moment he said her name in and fastened her lips fully on his and slipped her tongue into his mouth and he was lost, drowning in the pull of her enthusiasm for him. She explored him without hesitation or reluctance or fear. She was eager to find every corner of his mouth and her tongue danced across the roof of his mouth, the edges of his teeth, even his gums.

He fought for self-control, knowing this had to end and end now, but when he felt an exploratory little hand creeping towards the edge of his towel and realized just how fully his little Rose wanted him, all thought of restraint left him. He let her tug the towel open and shuddered as she reached out to stroke him. Her hand stopped just shy of his masculinity and her eyes caught his in the half-light.

“This okay?” she asked him suddenly unsure of herself as he gained full surety. In response he reached out and took her hand, pulling it forward and pressing it against him, his hand covering hers as it grasped his erection.

“Yessss.,” he hissed as her touch shot through his being. He had thought he was hard already, but it was nothing compared to what her grip around him was doing as he stiffened further under her touch. He was almost embarrassed at the moan that issued from his throat when she brought her other hand down to caress his balls.

“Touch me,” she invited and his hand rose up, all thought of hesitation gone as he glided his hand across the top of her barely-there gown and dipped inside the neckline to caress her breast. She gasped as his questing fingers found her nipple and sought to bring it to attention.

He didn’t know how much time passed as they touched each other. It wasn’t like him to lose track of time like that but all thoughts, all emotions, everything was now focused to a pinpoint on Rose. How she was making him feel. How she was responding to his touches. Everything about it felt timeless. He wasn’t sure when exactly her garment was removed. He had no memory of it. One moment it was between them, the next it was gone. Her knickers dissolved similarly until she was lying there with nothing between them, his towel long since abandoned.

He stared at her, his eyes dark and heavy as they left her welcoming eyes, slid across her nose to her full and pouting lips, her tongue flicking out to moisten the surface as he skimmed his gaze across it. He let his glance fall to the strong line of her jaw, down the graceful curve of her neck, across her collarbones and stopping to memorize the gently rounded handfuls that were her breasts, with the sweet little pink areolas and risen buds that were begging to be mouthed.

He held off, instead dragging his gaze to the inward curve of her waist, the beautiful little dip of her navel and the swelling of her hips. His eyes lingered on the soft, light brown curls at the apex of her thighs, his fingers twitching at the need to finger her, to bring her pleasure, to have her cry out his name in ecstasy as he did so. He tore his eyes from the temptation, lowered them to slide down the soft pink thighs, well-defined from running and slightly raised on the surface of the bed, on to the downward slope of her legs and to the well-turned ankles and graceful feet.

When he brought his eyes back to hers he realized she was studying him similarly and he smiled at the delight he saw echoed there as she traced the plains and lines and angles of his body and did not find him wanting. As she finished her inventory she brought her eyes back up to his and then very deliberately, so there could be no mistaking it, she spread her thighs and beckoned him to her.

All thoughts of learning her body slowly left him, all rational thought left him and he held on only long enough to make sure that she was slick and ready as he crawled between her thighs, nestled himself at her opening and with one sure, slow thrust entered her body. She cried out his name and her fingers dug into his shoulders and then she was pulling him closer to her body, denying the very air space between them. He wrapped his arms tightly around her torso, his hands coming to rest over the tops of her shoulders from behind.

He did not rush this, only moved long and deep but gently within her. His cheek brushing against hers with each movement forward and again with each withdrawal. Rose wrapped her legs around him, shifting him deeper inside her with the change of angle in an effort to draw him even closer. He could feel her thoughts on the edge of his awareness, see her trying to share his very skin if only she could get close enough; that she felt like even now they were not close enough, she did not have enough of him.

“Rose,” he whispered roughly against her. “Rose, share your mind with me.”

“Yes,” she answered softly and he matched his temple to the side of hers and sought her out, offered a tendril of his own thoughts and felt her grab on with a fierceness that surprised him and should have scared him if the shining heat of her suddenly within him hadn’t knocked all other thoughts from his mind. She was there with him with an immediacy he had never felt before.

He realized then how much she had been hiding from him, how much she had been keeping back in their day to day lives. She loved him. Wholly, completely, fully. There was not one glimmer of doubt in her mind that he was it, the one, the only, the person she’d spend the rest of her life with if only he’d let her. The depth of her desire for him, the longing she’d withheld amazed him.

The Doctor had known she loved him for a while but he’d always thought it was with the awkward sort of affection reserved for a slightly backwards favorite uncle. He’d never suspected this, never dreamed she’d feel for him the amount of passion that he’d been carrying for her for months. And she did and had quite possibly for as long as he had. They’d wasted so much time!

He could feel Rose moving amongst his own thoughts, his own memories. He watched her realize how he saw her, pink and yellow and flushed with excitement, brown eyes filled with a lust for life and a thirst for knowledge. He saw the moment when she understood just what it was he felt for her, the love, the honor, the way he cherished her presence and the way he burned for her, how hard he’d fought against the strength of his desire.

She found the fantasies he buried deep when around her, the ones he’d only let out at night when he was safely away from her and he could seek refuge in his own bed, seek relief in his own hands as images of her blazed across his mind. She found his lust, fell into it and came hard around him, her tight inner muscles contracting with a power he’d not even dreamed of. He felt the pressure building within him with each clench of her muscles and he let himself go, the almost painful surge of his cool seed releasing inside her and contrasting sharply with her blazing heat.

It took several long seconds for him to come back to himself, for her to withdraw from his mind and seat her conscious thoughts firmly back within her own head. She did not complain about his weight, in fact had not unwrapped her legs from around him as she lay breathing deep, still clutching him with her arms. He made to pull away but she wouldn’t let him go, so instead he simply rolled them over on the bed until she was atop him, her legs loosened a bit so they were not underneath him. He was still firmly lodged within her and was beginning to wonder if his penis had any intention of softening at all. But then he decided it didn’t matter. He was content to lay like this for the rest of his lives if she let him. What need had he of food or water or sunlight when he could be encased in Rose instead?

He smiled as he heard the gentle sound of a very soft snore issue from the beautiful woman. No, moving away from her physically could wait. Moving away from her emotionally he’d never do again. He stroked her hair softly trying to parse out the new emotion filling him. He couldn’t remember ever having felt it before and it took him a while to puzzle it through. Contentment. That’s what it was. He was content.

She'd made him this way. This little human woman. So alive and happy to be that way. And he loved her. He loved Rose Tyler. And he was never going to let her go. She smiled in her sleep and he felt her lips move against his skin. “My Doctor,” she said on a deep sigh. He smiled because he knew that he was. And he always would be.