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petraTitle: Sohcahtoa (7100 words)
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Summary: One of the first truths the Doctor had tried to instill in her, and in so many of his travelling companions, was that it was never too late to run.
Pairing: Nine/Rose/Jack
Rating: Adult (R)
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jamjar for Britpicking and betareading.
Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. I am not employed by them and I make no money from this story.
Saddle our horses
Matters didn't come to a head until Rose started craving éclairs.
"All creamy on the inside," she said, leaning against the TARDIS wall and half-closing her eyes. "Sweet, you know, and the chocolate on top -- they're brilliant."
"Those are the long ones, right?" Jack asked, winking at her. Sometimes she made flirting entirely too easy. "And donuts are round with a hole?"
She waved her hand at him, but her smile said she wasn't offended. "'Course they are."
The Doctor shook his head at them. "The best pastries are in the 63rd century on Pygian Three during the Fourth Flowering of Democracy. They use them as gifts. Housewarming? New baby? Welcome to the planet? You get a big box of the most delicate stuff ever baked."
"I don't want delicate," Rose said, crossing her arms. "I want proper old-fashioned rich dough with cream in. Nothing fussy."
Jack had never visited Pygian and didn't share any of Rose's nostalgia for her own time, but he could sympathize with it. "All that lard. There's nothing like it."
"Right, shut up about it," she said, wrinkling her nose. "If you go on about the nasty stuff in them, I won't want them any more."
The Doctor's grin widened. Jack headed him off with a quick, "I'm sure the Pygian pastries aren't any better for you."
"The finest modswede flour," the Doctor said.
Rose made a gagging noise. "That sounds even worse than the time Mum tried to make bread."
"Your mum, making bread?" The Doctor laughed. "Bet you could use it for a doorstop the second it cooled down."
Jack stepped back from the conversation and enjoyed the flush that crept up Rose's cheeks as she picked up the challenge. "I'd like to see you do any better."
"Oi! I've got a little more practice around the kitchen than your mother, but I've also got the sense not to try it." The Doctor flipped a few switches on the TARDIS console. "If you want pastries, we'll go somewhere with pastries. Pastry-full, in fact."
"Are there any cultures that didn't have some kind of sweet bread?" Jack asked.
"You should see what some people call sweetbreads," the Doctor said, and engaged the engine.
"What, like tripe and stuff?" Rose grabbed the console as the TARDIS lurched and shook her head. "No thanks, really."
"Tripe's the least of your worries on Zarion Twelve, what with the taste the natives have for fetid vegetation. They've got the biggest flowers in that region of the galaxy, bred special, and they wait 'til they've gone past and wilted into puddles before they pick them and chop up the stamens for lunch." The Doctor glanced at Jack. "Funny how many people like pollen, really."
Jack winked at him so as not to let a perfectly good opening go by. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it."
The Doctor gave him the same fond but somehow impartial smile that he often used to respond to flirtations. "Oh, I have tried it. That's why we're on Earth, thirty-second century, instead of Zarion."
Rose had been on the verge of opening the door, but she paused. "Thirty-second century? Why then?"
"You could just as well ask, 'Why now?'" The Doctor strode up to her and put an arm around her shoulders. "And the answer in any case would be, 'Because of the renaissance of nonprocessed food in the first decade.' A reaction to people who thought the only way to get a really square meal was to put it in a pill."
"Nutrition in a pill isn't so bad if you're taking a long trip," Jack said, thinking of several trips that would have resulted in inexperienced Time Agents eating poisonous local foods if their own rations hadn't been as portable as they were. "But it suffers by comparison to actual cooking." He put his arms around both of them, testing the current state of affairs and exactly how much they'd let him get away with on this trip.
Rose kissed his cheek. "Next time we're on Earth, you're coming over for dinner."
The Doctor laughed. "That'll make you appreciate lunch-in-a-capsule like nothing else." He shrugged Jack's arm off and opened the TARDIS door.
"Enough," Rose said, pursing her full lips. "I can make fun of my mum 'til this star burns out, but you can't."
He shrugged at her with an ease Jack envied. They knew each other so well, all the pitfalls of things not to be mentioned that he was still learning. But then the Doctor grinned. "Try and stop me." He ducked out the door, and Rose followed him with a cheerful battle cry.
To no one's surprise but the Doctor's, they were not in the century he had been aiming for; fortunately, the pastries of Greater Paris were just as lovely in the sixty-third century as they would have been in their actual destination. After several servings each -- and the requisite foiling of an anti-unionization program in the global infonet -- they retired to the TARDIS.
"I'll never eat again," Rose declared. Her cheeks were flushed and she still had a trace of powdered sugar in the corner of her mouth. It was too endearing to point out to her. "I'm going to go lie down." She went to her room in the TARDIS, not coincidentally taking along one of the remaining bakery boxes.
The Doctor watched her go. "That should hold her for a while."
"Hold her?" Jack tried to read his expression, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in his calm smile.
"You were going to buy me a drink," the Doctor said, turning back to the console. "Unless you stuffed yourself, too."
The abrupt shift in their apparent relationship brought Jack up short for all of a breath. "So I was. And no, I didn't." He glanced at the doorway. "I have no idea if the French vintages from this decade are any good, but we could go find out."
"We could, at that." The Doctor ran his hand over the console. "The TARDIS and Rose can look after each other for a while. I hope."
Jack laughed. "I don't know which of them you're more worried about."
"Rose is better at getting herself into trouble. The TARDIS generally gets me into a bind but makes sure she stays clear enough to come to my rescue." He gave the console one last pat, waggled his finger at the central column, and turned toward the door. "Wine it is."
The pressing of Bordeaux -- a spelling long since reformed in every other context, but maintained in its ancient state for the purpose of selling wine well into the year 100,000 -- was reasonably priced, particularly with the Doctor's screwdriver to serve as bank card. The Doctor leaned back in his chair, lounging in a way he rarely allowed himself while they were on duty in any measurable form, and pointed out four different landmarks visible from the café that he had personally preserved from destruction at some point in their history. "And the old Eiffel Tower, well, that place was almost as popular a stomping ground for megalomaniacs as the Tokyo Tower used to be, or the Yurinitz Plaza."
"Yurinitz?" Jack refilled his own glass and offered the Doctor the bottle, but he waved it away. "Was that Sol Six or Seven?"
"Nine, actually. Crowning glory of the only New Earth that's claimed to be the only one -- and more full of explosives in their planetary government than the nearest twelve systems combined." The Doctor shook his head. "You humans, always wanting to be unique."
Jack winced, but hid his expression in his wine. Any second now, the Doctor would start calling him an ape. It was entirely out of line with the seduction he had more or less asked for, and exactly whose fault that was -- wasn't important. "Technically, each of us is."
"Singular as the stars in the heavens, but what does that get you?" The Doctor shrugged. "Lonely and full of hot gas."
"Not quite as full as the Time Lords," Jack said, if only to change the subject.
It won him the quick smile he'd come to treasure, but the Doctor sat up as if he was about to charge back to the TARDIS and redeem his species. "I do go on. Call it species prerogative. I've got to use all these words or they'll back up and choke me."
This wasn't getting them anywhere close to affection, let alone seduction. If the Doctor weren't so addicted to hairpin turns of fate, Jack would have started worrying. "It's part of what makes you unique, isn't it."
Some of the pain went away at that. The Doctor refilled his own glass. "And charming, don't forget charming."
"Not for a second." Jack grinned at him. "But really, Doctor, I've got a question for you."
"Wouldn't be the first time. There was this time on Occipitus --"
Jack leaned over the table toward him to cut him off. "Does your species actually have sex, or do you just talk each other to death?"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "What, there's a difference?"
"Not necessarily," Jack admitted, leaning back, "but much though I'm enjoying your company, I thought you were up for a little -- dancing."
"The Occipitans were really quite angry with me when I gave them a complete answer to the question, 'Why are we here?'" the Doctor said. "So many species would be grateful, but they weren't pleased to learn they were the descendants of a transport ship full of book-worshipers whose databanks were fried by a sunspot before they ever landed on Occipitus. Made their own animistic faith with all bells and tree-hugging, very pretty, excellent food, too -- but they didn't like the truth."
"This isn't about me," Jack said.
The Doctor glanced in the direction of the TARDIS, invisible in its alleyway. The police box was all too noticeable in public spaces. "Isn't it?"
"I'm not the one ducking and weaving."
"Speaking of weaving --"
"Is this foreplay?" Jack asked, and then winced at the irritation in his tone.
The Doctor shrugged. "We could go dancing if you like."
"What does she see in you?" Jack laughed at himself and his own frustration. "No wonder she fell into my arms if this is what you do to everyone."
"No."
There were long stretches of time in which it was perfectly possible to forget that the Doctor was as old as he was, that his homeworld and civilization were ashes and faint whispers in everyone's memory but his. When the smile left and the teasing stopped, when the endless lectures on planets that may or may not have existed were over -- or at minimum on hold -- then the truth became much harder to ignore.
There was tension in the corners of his mouth and an eon of pain in his eyes.
Jack didn't have a paternal bone in his body, as he'd told any number of overly willing young things, but something in that expression answered all his questions. What Rose could see in the Doctor, in particular, but also why it was anyone would stay with him.
There was something intoxicating in being needed so badly, and in the sheer nakedness of someone else's need to be known, no matter how many defenses he'd raised between himself and the world.
Jack kissed him, wine and loneliness and all.
The Doctor made a strangled noise, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and kissed him back for just long enough not to be rude when he patted Jack's shoulder and broke it off. "I'd say humanity will be the death of me, but it's already been true enough times that I'd rather not tempt fate. Not that fate exists, per se, but that's no reason to tempt it."
There was half a second in which Jack was sure he was pushing his luck too far, but he'd never let the twanging sound of stretched luck stop him before. Accordingly, he kissed the Doctor again, half to shut him up and half because it was the only way he had to provide any of the warmth they both needed.
He expected to be dodged again, then rebuffed with a joke. The Doctor squeezed his shoulder and pushed him away, taking a deep breath.
It was a long enough pause for Jack to consider the employment opportunities of his current century, just in case he'd gone entirely too far this time. But the Doctor said, "As long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses," and got up, taking Jack's hand. "The TARDIS is much harder to frighten than any mere horse."
Jack spared a glance for the cold fusion cars that shuttled silently and efficiently along the Parisian streets. "Whatever you like."
"Sunsets," the Doctor said, and started walking more briskly. "Bananas. Laughter. That feeling you get when you wake up and there's nothing to be done for hours yet. The oceans on Tromoli B. London, in general, though you can keep Islington."
Jack squeezed his hand. "We can do that, you know. All of it."
"Hard to get sunsets and lazy mornings at the same time," the Doctor said, "and while I'm sure you can get plenty of bananas in London even in the benighted twenty-first century, if you go back even a few decades -- to your favorite decade, even -- you haven't got a hope of finding a fresh one. And you can't import a whole ocean, or London to Tromoli B --"
Jack resolved to find an excuse to kiss the Doctor some time when he wasn't rattling on. It absolved his conscience for using the tactic yet again, three steps from the TARDIS.
So did the way the Doctor put an arm around his shoulders and held him there, almost as if he'd been daring Jack to try it again.
Jack had a philosophical problem with kissing being the quiet, peaceful option, but he was willing to deal with that dilemma at a later point, sometime after the Doctor was willing to admit that this just might happen again without the benefit of wine.
The way he sighed between kisses was slightly reassuring on that front, but then again, Time Lords could indubitably maintain several contradictory points of view on any given point at the same time. It was up to Jack to make sure that the voices arguing for affection were louder than the rest of the chorus. The Doctor was leaning on him a little, enough to be encouraging. If Jack could just get him to relax enough, whatever enough meant, and believe that this wasn't going to be ripped out from under him, it would be all right.
Better than all right.
Jack squeezed his shoulder.
"What -- oh," Rose said, from the direction of the TARDIS. "Sorry."
It took a second for Jack to regain his balance when the Doctor dashed for her, calling her name.
It just figured.
"It's all right," Jack said, but they were both inside the TARDIS and might as well be kilometers off for all they could hear him. He followed them at a more leisurely pace, wondering exactly where he went wrong.
*
Canter along happily
Rose was blushing so hard it very nearly hurt from the second she realized just what they were about. She heard her mum's voice reminding her exactly how alien the Doctor was, and Mickey's, and even Clive's. Not like us. Not human.
And the human race was a lot more flexible by the fifty-first century.
She'd thought -- it didn't so much matter what she'd thought, but she felt a right fool for having said anything at all. Bad enough when the Doctor went off with some tree or other, but she'd found Jack first, and if she hadn't put in the effort to convince the Doctor that he was trustworthy, it would still just be the two of them.
Odds were good that they still wouldn't have been kissing like that -- she blushed again at the thought and pulled her door shut behind her. Rose hadn't taken the offer of traveling in time and space for the hope of maybe someday kissing the Doctor and getting him to kiss her, but that didn't make it easier to think about.
Not so much the kissing, even, but he'd looked so relaxed. As though that was just where he'd wanted to be, and just what he needed.
Rose sat on her bed with a thump. She couldn't decide whether it would be easier to just ask to go home and leave them to it, or to wait until the Doctor offered.
One of them knocked on her door. It had to be one of them, even if the TARDIS door had been left ajar, because no one else could have guessed which room was hers. She hadn't decided what to do about anything at all, or even what to think.
"Rose?" the Doctor asked.
Of course Captain Jack would never leave off a good snog just to check on her, she thought, and then laughed at herself for being angry with him for it. It would've been easier if they'd just kept at it.
"That was quick," she answered, and got up to open the door for him. All the calmness he'd had a minute ago had gone right away, and instead he looked horribly worried, as if she was in mortal danger again. "I know he's a fast mover, but --"
"I'm sorry," he said, and it didn't make her feel the slightest bit better.
Rose frowned at him. "For what?"
He glanced down the corridor. Even in the shadows, she could see the worry lines on his face. "That you're upset."
She made her decision and took his hand. And lied. "I was surprised, is all. I'm not upset."
The Doctor smiled at her, but it was one of the weak ones where all of the fear still showed right through. "Aren't you?"
"You didn't complain about Mickey. Or Adam, right?" She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn't begin to feel. "Just -- be home by midnight."
He squeezed her hand harder than he would if he was just trying to comfort her. "I'm as home as I'm going to get."
Rose frowned at him. "That's no reason to just leave him hanging." She pointed toward the hall with her free hand, feeling as though she was going a bit mad, what with the selflessness of the gesture. "Go find Jack."
The Doctor looked confused. Downright bewildered, come to that. "Why should I?"
"To kiss him!" She pulled her hand away from his. "Look, he's gorgeous, why shouldn't you think so too, just -- go already, would you?"
"He was mostly kissing me," the Doctor said, and he went on not leaving the room.
"Mostly?" Rose ran her hand through her hair. "And you were complaining so much. You didn't even call him a stupid ape for it. Go on, I think you've got a crush."
"Not in the least." The Doctor pushed her door open, paused for a second to say, "Hello again," and strode out.
Jack put his head into the room. "What did you do, slap him?"
"No!" Rose stared at the doorway. "He just came in here and apologized -- and left when I told him to go snog you."
"Contrary, isn't he?" Jack leaned against the left side of the door. "Running off from what seemed to be a perfectly good kiss --"
"It looked like one to me," Rose said.
"-- and I thought I'd find you two half-naked by now at least, but -- nothing?"
Rose spread her hands and laughed. "Not even a peck on the cheek. I can't say I'm surprised. I've met him, and he doesn't go in for the sudden bouts of getting off. Not very laddish, you know?"
Jack glanced out into the hall, then came into Rose's room. "Not the word I'd use for him, no."
"You, on the other hand --" She hadn't stopped having a crush on Jack since she fell into his arms, no matter how much the Doctor tweaked her about it. It wasn't so important as some other things, so sometimes she'd go all of ten minutes with him right there without thinking about it, but -- he was right there.
Right there, left hanging mid-kiss, and she hadn't had so much as a good snog since the last time she'd seen Mickey.
Rose was never clear afterward on whether she'd started it, or whether Jack had kissed her.
It didn't matter once they were kissing, anyway. Good, long, sweet kisses, just the sort Jack was good at -- though she was willing to bet a flexible guy like him could kiss just about any way and do it pretty well. When she tried him out on a faster smooch, he followed right along.
More or less swept her along, too. Not that she minded a bit.
*
Towards other adventures
The joy of living in an infinite universe -- or, to be perfectly accurate, multiverse, though the neighbors had stopped coming to call quite so often since the row with the Daleks -- was that anything was technically possible. The only thing that made it bearable for the small-minded (using the term in the least judgemental way possible) species was that most things weren't probable.
For the more perceptive kids on the interstellar block, in which category the Time Lords would have included themselves and which description the Doctor applied to himself with only a tinge of chagrin, the probability factors made life in all its infinite majesty quite the Technicolor show. Humans were small-minded enough that they only started thinking about probability in a realistic sort of way when they'd had a somewhat stable society for a few eons -- and not stable by their standards so much as by the planetary-level ones. Schrödinger and his cat, and all that.
The reality of the situation was much more complicated, which the poor man had probably known even before he'd stuck a cat in a box and peeked in at the two possibilities. It was always possible to open a box that had only had a cat in it and discover that it had been replaced by an angry inhabitant of a far-distant star system, whose only method of communication was via the transmission of bodily fluids.
It had only happened to the Doctor once, but the incident had been extremely embarrassing for both of them.
Sentients made the matter that much more complicated. Stick a highly evolved cat -- or a highly evolved simian, for that matter -- into a blue box, and who knew where it would end up. Halfway across the galaxy, pining for its mum, covered in Marmite, or possibly even believing itself in love with another inhabitant.
The Doctor wasn't certain that the latter outcome wasn't predetermined on some level by his choice of boxes, but he'd never quite got around to having words with the TARDIS on the subject. In the case of Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness, though, it hadn't even taken a box. The whole of the Blitz had been good enough for them -- dip them in, open it up, and there they were.
Trying to get people to dance when they should have known perfectly well that it was ridiculous to even ask.
Also falling in love, if that was something Jack would admit to doing.
Rose did it all too easily, which made her much more dangerous to herself than to other people, unless those other people happened to have her welfare in mind (by their own volition or not, thank you very much, Jackie Tyler, woman of little faith). Pop her in a box with just about anyone, or a century, or a Mini, and she'd be swooning all over herself.
The only wonder was that she hadn't fallen into a heap at the Doctor's feet that first day, but then a department store wasn't much like a box at all, and after that they'd been a bit distracted.
Under no circumstances whatsoever did the Doctor begin to regret her lack of swooning.
Except on alternate Tuesdays, for about thirty minutes, at tea-time, but only after he'd also allowed himself to regret losing most of the humans he'd ever had traveling with him, as well as a preemptive moment of longing for the ones it was incredibly unlikely he should ever have the pleasure of abducting.
He'd reserved a solid five-second block for Albert Einstein, just after the longing sigh of wistfulness regarding Sarah Jane Smith.
In any case, Rose's failure to have a crush on him didn't faze the Doctor even slightly, and he certainly didn't waste any time trying to work out just what it was she did feel about him. He never analyzed her probability fields, even when they were thick enough in the TARDIS that he could practically see them. Even when he caught her naked on the console floor, straddling Jack.
They weren't actually there, though the likelihood of their being there within five minutes and being just as naked as the day they were born, with or without the spanking, was extremely high until the Doctor set a course for the planet that had first invented pie, and the probability field winked out of its theoretical existence. If Rose or Jack had happened in at the time, they wouldn't have seen anything, but the Doctor had felt smug about averting the incident for several hours, even after he'd had to prevent Rose from being made into pie herself. The inhabitants were less picky about the quality of their materials than he had remembered; the amount of preservatives alone in her bloodstream would have prevented them from considering her, the first time the Doctor had visited the planet.
The Doctor was increasingly certain that Rose was going to kiss him at some point in the not terribly distant future, not least because she kept nearly doing it, near enough for him to feel it. Jack was just as bad about it. To non-Time Lord perception, he would have seemed even stranger than Rose, as he kept his distance a bit better, but was just as -- likely. The last thing the Doctor needed was the two of them feeling any more at home than they already were. There were enough sensitive systems under the TARDIS floor that if he'd actually caught them risking bodily fluids in the area, he might have had to toss them out as they were.
He resolved that the next time he caught Jack and Rose in some utterly human passionate clinch, he'd leave them to it until they were actually engaged in whatever act struck their fancy, just to see if it kept his personal space slightly more clear of their probability fields.
The part of his own probability that warmed to the thought of just maybe having a quick snog with them --
-- again, in the case of Jack --
He tried to tell it to go away. That Rose was better off making that odd gasping noise Homo sapiens sapiens (pull the other one, it's got bells on) made in the heat of passion.
It took the Doctor rather a long time, by his standards, to realize that it wasn't some possible Rose making that noise, but the actual one, and that the reason he was hearing it had to be because her bedroom door had been left ajar. Not so sapiens at all, really.
Rose made the gasping noise again.
The Doctor wished with at least one of his somewhat metaphorical hearts that she would stop.
The other heart and both of his feet were engaged in walking towards her bedroom.
The parts of his brain that knew the most about humans were utterly enraged by this, and pointed out the flawed pairbonding strategies employed by the people of Rose's time period, and the ways in which engaging her in any sort of romantic endeavor would make her even less likely than the human norm to part from him amicably when the time came. And it would come, as surely as the probability fields included her death and Jack's death, and even the Doctor's.
The human-understanding parts of his brain weren't ones he listened to very often, though he admitted they had something of a point in the case of Jack, who was less invested in the pairbonding matters than Rose was culturally conditioned to be. The Doctor pointed out to himself the matter of Mickey, Adam, and the way Rose's breathing paused for a moment and the ways in which that was almost certainly linked to Jack.
By then he was at the door, and could see not only what they might be about to get up to, but what they were actually doing. Rose had her top off and Jack was licking her nipple in every sign of somewhat regressed enjoyment.
It didn't look anything like pairbonding, certainly not in the Time Lord style, but the only person still available to comment on the latter was in no position to do so without making himself look rather foolish. To bring up the matter would bring up Romana and the length of time she had spent travelling with him, and that would be a distinct counterargument to the Doctor's stated distaste for encouraging the cavorting apes to stay a while longer.
"Oh!" Rose said. Her eyes were open, and she'd spotted him.
One of the first truths the Doctor had tried to instill in her, and in so many of his travelling companions, was that it was never too late to run.
He tried to remind himself of this while Jack looked up and gave him a grin that made him wonder whether something odd and vulpine hadn't somehow made it into the man's ancestry, but before he managed to ask whether Jack's great-great-grandmother was a Yukonian, Jack was somehow kissing him again and leaning on him quite heavily to get him onto the bed.
It was only luck, as far as the Doctor could tell, that prevented him from landing on Rose. Nothing prevented him from landing on where she might have been. It tingled slightly.
She laughed and took his hand. "You really ought to share."
Considering that the main thing that had saved him from thoroughly probable seduction by Jack not so very long ago was Rose, he wasn't sure whether to apologize or thank her. Either one required breaking off the kiss.
"If either of you mind my cutting in --" the Doctor began, and Rose shook her head.
"Sometimes you really take a comparison too far," Rose said, and she kissed him, too.
He supposed that counted as sharing, particularly given that Jack had started unfastening the Doctor's pants. "When you've got a good single entendre, why let it go?" he asked, and got his arms around both of them.
It was entirely likely that at some point in the very near future the Doctor was going to be entirely naked with what the majority of the members of his species would consider lesser life forms. Fortunately, none of them were around to complain about the matter, even had it been their business in the first place, which it wasn't. The TARDIS wasn't going to make fun of him for the incident, though he was prepared for her to take him to some timeframe with rather higher-level sentients the next time he asked for London.
"Jokes get old," Rose said, and she grinned at the Doctor. "Unlike kissing."
"There's a species that aban--" --doned kissing due to boredom, the Doctor attempted to say.
It seemed like a slightly less important anecdote when Rose kissed him again, and he let the train of thought go careening off the tracks when Jack nuzzled his ear. "Focus, will you?" Jack said softly. "You can tell us about the whole wide universe later."
"I am focused," the Doctor said, and got his arm around Jack's shoulders long enough to kiss him properly and kick off his shoes at the same time. "On kissing."
"So stop talking and do it for a while," Rose said, and she patted the Doctor's backside.
The demand for silence was an entirely ridiculous one, but to point this out would require slightly more oxygen than the Doctor could presently muster. He had to content himself with appreciating the texture and weight of Rose's breasts without telling her about them, in part because she kept on kissing him and in part because he wasn't entirely sure, once they'd got his jumper off, precisely what was going on at any given moment.
It was all splendid, he knew that, but their actual hands were all muddled in with probable hands, and the more they touched him, the more likely it got that he ought to be reciprocating. When he'd managed that after a false start -- a probable Rose's thigh had turned out to be actual Jack, which meant a slight reevaluation of the necessary gestures.
He was certain for several minutes that he'd found Rose's actual breasts, and that she was making that particular human sound again, but he wasn't entirely sure when she pulled away. She was entirely likely to do it at any moment, and he didn't want to stop long enough to warn her that he might not be able to tell.
In the event, it took him some short but human-perceptible amount of time to notice that she'd moved, and that she was kissing Jack again at an angle that left her breasts entirely inaccessible. "Polyamory is sacred in several hundred human religions," the Doctor said, and gave Jack a squeeze that made him make a different and lovely human noise. "Though mostly in those that have found a way to make the spread of venereal diseases stop in some effective way." It had been accomplished well before the years when Jack was born, and the following plagues hadn't hit until the fifty-third century.
"Doesn't have to be sacred to be fun," Jack said, his normally well-modulated voice sounding strained. Not anxious, but -- strained.
Rose reached for the Doctor's free hand, unless she was sitting up to kiss him again, and spreading her legs a bit, suggestively. Both seemed equally likely. "Kind of the opposite, really."
"What do they teach them in these schools?" It turned out, when the Doctor closed his eyes and tried touching Rose, that she'd just been taking his hand, but when he patted her thigh, she was more than willing to act as though she'd been asking for rather more.
Humans sometimes took the whole matter of sex so seriously they could very nearly be Time Lords, and sometimes they didn't take it half seriously enough. The only option in the latter case was to explain it to them, except when there was a chance to show them.
The Doctor had always been in favor of hands-on instruction, with a bit of tongue-wagging for flavor. Doing both at once would've been complicated for a species with a lesser ability to focus, but he managed it. It did cut back rather a lot on his ability to notice the probability of whatever they were getting up to next, but considering the likelihood of Jack reaching orgasm and the near certainty of Rose's thighs tensing, close enough for the Doctor to feel them -- though they cut back rather on his hearing -- the problem worked itself out.
There followed an interlude of some confusion. The Doctor was disinclined to stop what he was doing. Rose kept making encouraging noises, and it wasn't as though Jack was trying to stop them, but the probable Jacks came back into the Doctor's perception. Some of them were quite fresh.
He stopped long enough to say, "Get on with it, then," and looked up to find them kissing again.
Rose looked at him and turned a becoming shade of pink. "You're a mess," she said, as though they hadn't got themselves far messier in much less intriguing pursuits.
"Speaking of holy rites, that's one too," the Doctor said, seizing the teachable moment. "Even in cultures that don't think of multiple partners as particularly sacred."
"I met a priestess once who insisted on that form of worship," Jack added, reinforcing the lesson in a most useful way. "The first time we, ah, went to church, I thought my jaw was going to fall off. I've never had so much fun in a religious ceremony."
Rose said, "Maybe we should go to one of those places that's big on polyamory."
The Doctor grinned at her and saw her -- entirely her -- for a moment, probability and all. She was learning, then. Growing. Maybe someday he'd find a way to show her that whenever he looked at her, he could see her soul getting that much bigger, and also her dying, and how beautiful both of those things were.
He hadn't managed to get that across to Jack yet, and Jack had had a lot more experiences in time travel, though not necessarily probability. It was a lesson for another time. Might as well stick to the simplicity of comparative religions for the moment.
"There's a festival on Zarlion B in the spring of the southern continents. BYOP, that one, without a lot of sharing around like they do in the Iritian faith and its derivatives." The Doctor patted her thigh. "If you wanted, we could go there." Also if the TARDIS let them. It would be an interesting test of her opinion on the whole matter. She was generally accepting of his companions, but this particular tangle -- it would be worth a test.
"Already planning the next trip?" Jack moved down the bed and kissed the Doctor again. "You haven't even taken advantage of the R&R."
"A change is as good as a rest," the Doctor said, and he wasn't at all surprised to find both of them pushing him up the bed and back against the pillows. Only one of them was actually doing it, but they were both equally likely to have done it. He was entirely amenable to the action, so in the end it was irrelevant.
Whichever of them kissed him next, and whichever of them ran warm hands down his chest -- it was perfectly all right, for the moment, though he couldn't always tell what the reality was. It could be Rose's mouth on his neck and Jack's tongue on the tender parts of his genitals, or the other way around. Whomever it was doing whatever it was they were doing, the probability of it all becoming orgasmically pleasant was increasingly large.
The possible use of that concept as the definition of becoming one with the universe was something he'd have to save for a later discussion, as there was simply no way to express it without taking a deep breath, which led to a moan instead of the words he'd tried to form.
Rose squeezed his hand.
Jack squeezed his hand.
Both of these things were equally true, and the thing that was most true was that they wanted him to let go of all of the distractions -- most of all, though they might not have thought of it consciously, of the impossible wish for this to somehow make things better in a lasting way.
Better than --
Better than being alone. But he wasn't alone, he was surrounded, overcome by two simple creatures, through the sheer force of their being, and the one to one probability that they wanted him to feel better.
He hadn't felt so good in a very long time, and he reminded himself to tell them so just as soon as the physical sensation of orgasm passed. Until then -- and it felt as though it might be a long way off -- he was temporarily as alone as ever, without the ability to reach out to their minds.
It wasn't necessary, and he hadn't warned them. It would be entirely inappropriate to invade their mental space any more than he could help.
It was enough to know, with every tingling nerve ending, that this was what they wanted for him.
It had to be enough. It was all he would let himself have.
This time.
The probability of coming back to himself with one of them on each side of him, far too warmly pressed against him, was also one. Possibly greater than one, but such things were frowned upon by the Time Lords back when they'd had mouths to frown, and in that case, they had had something of a point.
The post-coital glow was no time to bring up the bits of sex that hadn't been as utterly perfect as they otherwise might have been, but it seemed like an excellent time to head other sorts of disasters off at the pass. When the Doctor had caught his breath, he said, "You really oughtn't to have sex in the TARDIS console room. We oughtn't, for that matter. It makes her tetchy."
Rose sat up enough to stare at him. "It never occurred to me."
The Doctor was loath to call her on a lie while she was still flushed and lying quite so warmly next to him, but he remembered the probability of it as strongly as what they'd just done. He patted Jack's chest. "That probably makes at least one of you. And don't. It would be a shame to get stranded in a backwater timeline just because you couldn't keep your knickers on."
"I don't wear knickers," Jack said. "Though if you really wanted me to --"
"Pink and frilly. Ugh." Rose reached over the Doctor and poked Jack. "They wouldn't suit you."
"Not in the least," the Doctor agreed. "Besides, you'd only end up taking them off again."
Jack kissed his cheek. "For you, anytime."
He'd made that abundantly clear in the past, but it was one thing as theory and another entirely with actual proof of nudity.
The Doctor laughed and wondered exactly how soon it would be appropriate to raise the issue of varying sexual needs of different species, and exactly how much practicality he could incorporate into the discussion. "I figured as much."
"Though not by the console," Rose put in, and the Doctor gave her a squeeze.
"Just so."
Fandom: Doctor Who (2005)
Summary: One of the first truths the Doctor had tried to instill in her, and in so many of his travelling companions, was that it was never too late to run.
Pairing: Nine/Rose/Jack
Rating: Adult (R)
Notes: Thanks to
jamjar for Britpicking and betareading.Disclaimer: Doctor Who belongs to the BBC. I am not employed by them and I make no money from this story.
Saddle our horses
Matters didn't come to a head until Rose started craving éclairs.
"All creamy on the inside," she said, leaning against the TARDIS wall and half-closing her eyes. "Sweet, you know, and the chocolate on top -- they're brilliant."
"Those are the long ones, right?" Jack asked, winking at her. Sometimes she made flirting entirely too easy. "And donuts are round with a hole?"
She waved her hand at him, but her smile said she wasn't offended. "'Course they are."
The Doctor shook his head at them. "The best pastries are in the 63rd century on Pygian Three during the Fourth Flowering of Democracy. They use them as gifts. Housewarming? New baby? Welcome to the planet? You get a big box of the most delicate stuff ever baked."
"I don't want delicate," Rose said, crossing her arms. "I want proper old-fashioned rich dough with cream in. Nothing fussy."
Jack had never visited Pygian and didn't share any of Rose's nostalgia for her own time, but he could sympathize with it. "All that lard. There's nothing like it."
"Right, shut up about it," she said, wrinkling her nose. "If you go on about the nasty stuff in them, I won't want them any more."
The Doctor's grin widened. Jack headed him off with a quick, "I'm sure the Pygian pastries aren't any better for you."
"The finest modswede flour," the Doctor said.
Rose made a gagging noise. "That sounds even worse than the time Mum tried to make bread."
"Your mum, making bread?" The Doctor laughed. "Bet you could use it for a doorstop the second it cooled down."
Jack stepped back from the conversation and enjoyed the flush that crept up Rose's cheeks as she picked up the challenge. "I'd like to see you do any better."
"Oi! I've got a little more practice around the kitchen than your mother, but I've also got the sense not to try it." The Doctor flipped a few switches on the TARDIS console. "If you want pastries, we'll go somewhere with pastries. Pastry-full, in fact."
"Are there any cultures that didn't have some kind of sweet bread?" Jack asked.
"You should see what some people call sweetbreads," the Doctor said, and engaged the engine.
"What, like tripe and stuff?" Rose grabbed the console as the TARDIS lurched and shook her head. "No thanks, really."
"Tripe's the least of your worries on Zarion Twelve, what with the taste the natives have for fetid vegetation. They've got the biggest flowers in that region of the galaxy, bred special, and they wait 'til they've gone past and wilted into puddles before they pick them and chop up the stamens for lunch." The Doctor glanced at Jack. "Funny how many people like pollen, really."
Jack winked at him so as not to let a perfectly good opening go by. "Don't knock it 'til you've tried it."
The Doctor gave him the same fond but somehow impartial smile that he often used to respond to flirtations. "Oh, I have tried it. That's why we're on Earth, thirty-second century, instead of Zarion."
Rose had been on the verge of opening the door, but she paused. "Thirty-second century? Why then?"
"You could just as well ask, 'Why now?'" The Doctor strode up to her and put an arm around her shoulders. "And the answer in any case would be, 'Because of the renaissance of nonprocessed food in the first decade.' A reaction to people who thought the only way to get a really square meal was to put it in a pill."
"Nutrition in a pill isn't so bad if you're taking a long trip," Jack said, thinking of several trips that would have resulted in inexperienced Time Agents eating poisonous local foods if their own rations hadn't been as portable as they were. "But it suffers by comparison to actual cooking." He put his arms around both of them, testing the current state of affairs and exactly how much they'd let him get away with on this trip.
Rose kissed his cheek. "Next time we're on Earth, you're coming over for dinner."
The Doctor laughed. "That'll make you appreciate lunch-in-a-capsule like nothing else." He shrugged Jack's arm off and opened the TARDIS door.
"Enough," Rose said, pursing her full lips. "I can make fun of my mum 'til this star burns out, but you can't."
He shrugged at her with an ease Jack envied. They knew each other so well, all the pitfalls of things not to be mentioned that he was still learning. But then the Doctor grinned. "Try and stop me." He ducked out the door, and Rose followed him with a cheerful battle cry.
To no one's surprise but the Doctor's, they were not in the century he had been aiming for; fortunately, the pastries of Greater Paris were just as lovely in the sixty-third century as they would have been in their actual destination. After several servings each -- and the requisite foiling of an anti-unionization program in the global infonet -- they retired to the TARDIS.
"I'll never eat again," Rose declared. Her cheeks were flushed and she still had a trace of powdered sugar in the corner of her mouth. It was too endearing to point out to her. "I'm going to go lie down." She went to her room in the TARDIS, not coincidentally taking along one of the remaining bakery boxes.
The Doctor watched her go. "That should hold her for a while."
"Hold her?" Jack tried to read his expression, but there was nothing out of the ordinary in his calm smile.
"You were going to buy me a drink," the Doctor said, turning back to the console. "Unless you stuffed yourself, too."
The abrupt shift in their apparent relationship brought Jack up short for all of a breath. "So I was. And no, I didn't." He glanced at the doorway. "I have no idea if the French vintages from this decade are any good, but we could go find out."
"We could, at that." The Doctor ran his hand over the console. "The TARDIS and Rose can look after each other for a while. I hope."
Jack laughed. "I don't know which of them you're more worried about."
"Rose is better at getting herself into trouble. The TARDIS generally gets me into a bind but makes sure she stays clear enough to come to my rescue." He gave the console one last pat, waggled his finger at the central column, and turned toward the door. "Wine it is."
The pressing of Bordeaux -- a spelling long since reformed in every other context, but maintained in its ancient state for the purpose of selling wine well into the year 100,000 -- was reasonably priced, particularly with the Doctor's screwdriver to serve as bank card. The Doctor leaned back in his chair, lounging in a way he rarely allowed himself while they were on duty in any measurable form, and pointed out four different landmarks visible from the café that he had personally preserved from destruction at some point in their history. "And the old Eiffel Tower, well, that place was almost as popular a stomping ground for megalomaniacs as the Tokyo Tower used to be, or the Yurinitz Plaza."
"Yurinitz?" Jack refilled his own glass and offered the Doctor the bottle, but he waved it away. "Was that Sol Six or Seven?"
"Nine, actually. Crowning glory of the only New Earth that's claimed to be the only one -- and more full of explosives in their planetary government than the nearest twelve systems combined." The Doctor shook his head. "You humans, always wanting to be unique."
Jack winced, but hid his expression in his wine. Any second now, the Doctor would start calling him an ape. It was entirely out of line with the seduction he had more or less asked for, and exactly whose fault that was -- wasn't important. "Technically, each of us is."
"Singular as the stars in the heavens, but what does that get you?" The Doctor shrugged. "Lonely and full of hot gas."
"Not quite as full as the Time Lords," Jack said, if only to change the subject.
It won him the quick smile he'd come to treasure, but the Doctor sat up as if he was about to charge back to the TARDIS and redeem his species. "I do go on. Call it species prerogative. I've got to use all these words or they'll back up and choke me."
This wasn't getting them anywhere close to affection, let alone seduction. If the Doctor weren't so addicted to hairpin turns of fate, Jack would have started worrying. "It's part of what makes you unique, isn't it."
Some of the pain went away at that. The Doctor refilled his own glass. "And charming, don't forget charming."
"Not for a second." Jack grinned at him. "But really, Doctor, I've got a question for you."
"Wouldn't be the first time. There was this time on Occipitus --"
Jack leaned over the table toward him to cut him off. "Does your species actually have sex, or do you just talk each other to death?"
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. "What, there's a difference?"
"Not necessarily," Jack admitted, leaning back, "but much though I'm enjoying your company, I thought you were up for a little -- dancing."
"The Occipitans were really quite angry with me when I gave them a complete answer to the question, 'Why are we here?'" the Doctor said. "So many species would be grateful, but they weren't pleased to learn they were the descendants of a transport ship full of book-worshipers whose databanks were fried by a sunspot before they ever landed on Occipitus. Made their own animistic faith with all bells and tree-hugging, very pretty, excellent food, too -- but they didn't like the truth."
"This isn't about me," Jack said.
The Doctor glanced in the direction of the TARDIS, invisible in its alleyway. The police box was all too noticeable in public spaces. "Isn't it?"
"I'm not the one ducking and weaving."
"Speaking of weaving --"
"Is this foreplay?" Jack asked, and then winced at the irritation in his tone.
The Doctor shrugged. "We could go dancing if you like."
"What does she see in you?" Jack laughed at himself and his own frustration. "No wonder she fell into my arms if this is what you do to everyone."
"No."
There were long stretches of time in which it was perfectly possible to forget that the Doctor was as old as he was, that his homeworld and civilization were ashes and faint whispers in everyone's memory but his. When the smile left and the teasing stopped, when the endless lectures on planets that may or may not have existed were over -- or at minimum on hold -- then the truth became much harder to ignore.
There was tension in the corners of his mouth and an eon of pain in his eyes.
Jack didn't have a paternal bone in his body, as he'd told any number of overly willing young things, but something in that expression answered all his questions. What Rose could see in the Doctor, in particular, but also why it was anyone would stay with him.
There was something intoxicating in being needed so badly, and in the sheer nakedness of someone else's need to be known, no matter how many defenses he'd raised between himself and the world.
Jack kissed him, wine and loneliness and all.
The Doctor made a strangled noise, somewhere between a sob and a laugh, and kissed him back for just long enough not to be rude when he patted Jack's shoulder and broke it off. "I'd say humanity will be the death of me, but it's already been true enough times that I'd rather not tempt fate. Not that fate exists, per se, but that's no reason to tempt it."
There was half a second in which Jack was sure he was pushing his luck too far, but he'd never let the twanging sound of stretched luck stop him before. Accordingly, he kissed the Doctor again, half to shut him up and half because it was the only way he had to provide any of the warmth they both needed.
He expected to be dodged again, then rebuffed with a joke. The Doctor squeezed his shoulder and pushed him away, taking a deep breath.
It was a long enough pause for Jack to consider the employment opportunities of his current century, just in case he'd gone entirely too far this time. But the Doctor said, "As long as they don't do it in the street and scare the horses," and got up, taking Jack's hand. "The TARDIS is much harder to frighten than any mere horse."
Jack spared a glance for the cold fusion cars that shuttled silently and efficiently along the Parisian streets. "Whatever you like."
"Sunsets," the Doctor said, and started walking more briskly. "Bananas. Laughter. That feeling you get when you wake up and there's nothing to be done for hours yet. The oceans on Tromoli B. London, in general, though you can keep Islington."
Jack squeezed his hand. "We can do that, you know. All of it."
"Hard to get sunsets and lazy mornings at the same time," the Doctor said, "and while I'm sure you can get plenty of bananas in London even in the benighted twenty-first century, if you go back even a few decades -- to your favorite decade, even -- you haven't got a hope of finding a fresh one. And you can't import a whole ocean, or London to Tromoli B --"
Jack resolved to find an excuse to kiss the Doctor some time when he wasn't rattling on. It absolved his conscience for using the tactic yet again, three steps from the TARDIS.
So did the way the Doctor put an arm around his shoulders and held him there, almost as if he'd been daring Jack to try it again.
Jack had a philosophical problem with kissing being the quiet, peaceful option, but he was willing to deal with that dilemma at a later point, sometime after the Doctor was willing to admit that this just might happen again without the benefit of wine.
The way he sighed between kisses was slightly reassuring on that front, but then again, Time Lords could indubitably maintain several contradictory points of view on any given point at the same time. It was up to Jack to make sure that the voices arguing for affection were louder than the rest of the chorus. The Doctor was leaning on him a little, enough to be encouraging. If Jack could just get him to relax enough, whatever enough meant, and believe that this wasn't going to be ripped out from under him, it would be all right.
Better than all right.
Jack squeezed his shoulder.
"What -- oh," Rose said, from the direction of the TARDIS. "Sorry."
It took a second for Jack to regain his balance when the Doctor dashed for her, calling her name.
It just figured.
"It's all right," Jack said, but they were both inside the TARDIS and might as well be kilometers off for all they could hear him. He followed them at a more leisurely pace, wondering exactly where he went wrong.
*
Canter along happily
Rose was blushing so hard it very nearly hurt from the second she realized just what they were about. She heard her mum's voice reminding her exactly how alien the Doctor was, and Mickey's, and even Clive's. Not like us. Not human.
And the human race was a lot more flexible by the fifty-first century.
She'd thought -- it didn't so much matter what she'd thought, but she felt a right fool for having said anything at all. Bad enough when the Doctor went off with some tree or other, but she'd found Jack first, and if she hadn't put in the effort to convince the Doctor that he was trustworthy, it would still just be the two of them.
Odds were good that they still wouldn't have been kissing like that -- she blushed again at the thought and pulled her door shut behind her. Rose hadn't taken the offer of traveling in time and space for the hope of maybe someday kissing the Doctor and getting him to kiss her, but that didn't make it easier to think about.
Not so much the kissing, even, but he'd looked so relaxed. As though that was just where he'd wanted to be, and just what he needed.
Rose sat on her bed with a thump. She couldn't decide whether it would be easier to just ask to go home and leave them to it, or to wait until the Doctor offered.
One of them knocked on her door. It had to be one of them, even if the TARDIS door had been left ajar, because no one else could have guessed which room was hers. She hadn't decided what to do about anything at all, or even what to think.
"Rose?" the Doctor asked.
Of course Captain Jack would never leave off a good snog just to check on her, she thought, and then laughed at herself for being angry with him for it. It would've been easier if they'd just kept at it.
"That was quick," she answered, and got up to open the door for him. All the calmness he'd had a minute ago had gone right away, and instead he looked horribly worried, as if she was in mortal danger again. "I know he's a fast mover, but --"
"I'm sorry," he said, and it didn't make her feel the slightest bit better.
Rose frowned at him. "For what?"
He glanced down the corridor. Even in the shadows, she could see the worry lines on his face. "That you're upset."
She made her decision and took his hand. And lied. "I was surprised, is all. I'm not upset."
The Doctor smiled at her, but it was one of the weak ones where all of the fear still showed right through. "Aren't you?"
"You didn't complain about Mickey. Or Adam, right?" She shrugged with a nonchalance she didn't begin to feel. "Just -- be home by midnight."
He squeezed her hand harder than he would if he was just trying to comfort her. "I'm as home as I'm going to get."
Rose frowned at him. "That's no reason to just leave him hanging." She pointed toward the hall with her free hand, feeling as though she was going a bit mad, what with the selflessness of the gesture. "Go find Jack."
The Doctor looked confused. Downright bewildered, come to that. "Why should I?"
"To kiss him!" She pulled her hand away from his. "Look, he's gorgeous, why shouldn't you think so too, just -- go already, would you?"
"He was mostly kissing me," the Doctor said, and he went on not leaving the room.
"Mostly?" Rose ran her hand through her hair. "And you were complaining so much. You didn't even call him a stupid ape for it. Go on, I think you've got a crush."
"Not in the least." The Doctor pushed her door open, paused for a second to say, "Hello again," and strode out.
Jack put his head into the room. "What did you do, slap him?"
"No!" Rose stared at the doorway. "He just came in here and apologized -- and left when I told him to go snog you."
"Contrary, isn't he?" Jack leaned against the left side of the door. "Running off from what seemed to be a perfectly good kiss --"
"It looked like one to me," Rose said.
"-- and I thought I'd find you two half-naked by now at least, but -- nothing?"
Rose spread her hands and laughed. "Not even a peck on the cheek. I can't say I'm surprised. I've met him, and he doesn't go in for the sudden bouts of getting off. Not very laddish, you know?"
Jack glanced out into the hall, then came into Rose's room. "Not the word I'd use for him, no."
"You, on the other hand --" She hadn't stopped having a crush on Jack since she fell into his arms, no matter how much the Doctor tweaked her about it. It wasn't so important as some other things, so sometimes she'd go all of ten minutes with him right there without thinking about it, but -- he was right there.
Right there, left hanging mid-kiss, and she hadn't had so much as a good snog since the last time she'd seen Mickey.
Rose was never clear afterward on whether she'd started it, or whether Jack had kissed her.
It didn't matter once they were kissing, anyway. Good, long, sweet kisses, just the sort Jack was good at -- though she was willing to bet a flexible guy like him could kiss just about any way and do it pretty well. When she tried him out on a faster smooch, he followed right along.
More or less swept her along, too. Not that she minded a bit.
*
Towards other adventures
The joy of living in an infinite universe -- or, to be perfectly accurate, multiverse, though the neighbors had stopped coming to call quite so often since the row with the Daleks -- was that anything was technically possible. The only thing that made it bearable for the small-minded (using the term in the least judgemental way possible) species was that most things weren't probable.
For the more perceptive kids on the interstellar block, in which category the Time Lords would have included themselves and which description the Doctor applied to himself with only a tinge of chagrin, the probability factors made life in all its infinite majesty quite the Technicolor show. Humans were small-minded enough that they only started thinking about probability in a realistic sort of way when they'd had a somewhat stable society for a few eons -- and not stable by their standards so much as by the planetary-level ones. Schrödinger and his cat, and all that.
The reality of the situation was much more complicated, which the poor man had probably known even before he'd stuck a cat in a box and peeked in at the two possibilities. It was always possible to open a box that had only had a cat in it and discover that it had been replaced by an angry inhabitant of a far-distant star system, whose only method of communication was via the transmission of bodily fluids.
It had only happened to the Doctor once, but the incident had been extremely embarrassing for both of them.
Sentients made the matter that much more complicated. Stick a highly evolved cat -- or a highly evolved simian, for that matter -- into a blue box, and who knew where it would end up. Halfway across the galaxy, pining for its mum, covered in Marmite, or possibly even believing itself in love with another inhabitant.
The Doctor wasn't certain that the latter outcome wasn't predetermined on some level by his choice of boxes, but he'd never quite got around to having words with the TARDIS on the subject. In the case of Rose Tyler and Jack Harkness, though, it hadn't even taken a box. The whole of the Blitz had been good enough for them -- dip them in, open it up, and there they were.
Trying to get people to dance when they should have known perfectly well that it was ridiculous to even ask.
Also falling in love, if that was something Jack would admit to doing.
Rose did it all too easily, which made her much more dangerous to herself than to other people, unless those other people happened to have her welfare in mind (by their own volition or not, thank you very much, Jackie Tyler, woman of little faith). Pop her in a box with just about anyone, or a century, or a Mini, and she'd be swooning all over herself.
The only wonder was that she hadn't fallen into a heap at the Doctor's feet that first day, but then a department store wasn't much like a box at all, and after that they'd been a bit distracted.
Under no circumstances whatsoever did the Doctor begin to regret her lack of swooning.
Except on alternate Tuesdays, for about thirty minutes, at tea-time, but only after he'd also allowed himself to regret losing most of the humans he'd ever had traveling with him, as well as a preemptive moment of longing for the ones it was incredibly unlikely he should ever have the pleasure of abducting.
He'd reserved a solid five-second block for Albert Einstein, just after the longing sigh of wistfulness regarding Sarah Jane Smith.
In any case, Rose's failure to have a crush on him didn't faze the Doctor even slightly, and he certainly didn't waste any time trying to work out just what it was she did feel about him. He never analyzed her probability fields, even when they were thick enough in the TARDIS that he could practically see them. Even when he caught her naked on the console floor, straddling Jack.
They weren't actually there, though the likelihood of their being there within five minutes and being just as naked as the day they were born, with or without the spanking, was extremely high until the Doctor set a course for the planet that had first invented pie, and the probability field winked out of its theoretical existence. If Rose or Jack had happened in at the time, they wouldn't have seen anything, but the Doctor had felt smug about averting the incident for several hours, even after he'd had to prevent Rose from being made into pie herself. The inhabitants were less picky about the quality of their materials than he had remembered; the amount of preservatives alone in her bloodstream would have prevented them from considering her, the first time the Doctor had visited the planet.
The Doctor was increasingly certain that Rose was going to kiss him at some point in the not terribly distant future, not least because she kept nearly doing it, near enough for him to feel it. Jack was just as bad about it. To non-Time Lord perception, he would have seemed even stranger than Rose, as he kept his distance a bit better, but was just as -- likely. The last thing the Doctor needed was the two of them feeling any more at home than they already were. There were enough sensitive systems under the TARDIS floor that if he'd actually caught them risking bodily fluids in the area, he might have had to toss them out as they were.
He resolved that the next time he caught Jack and Rose in some utterly human passionate clinch, he'd leave them to it until they were actually engaged in whatever act struck their fancy, just to see if it kept his personal space slightly more clear of their probability fields.
The part of his own probability that warmed to the thought of just maybe having a quick snog with them --
-- again, in the case of Jack --
He tried to tell it to go away. That Rose was better off making that odd gasping noise Homo sapiens sapiens (pull the other one, it's got bells on) made in the heat of passion.
It took the Doctor rather a long time, by his standards, to realize that it wasn't some possible Rose making that noise, but the actual one, and that the reason he was hearing it had to be because her bedroom door had been left ajar. Not so sapiens at all, really.
Rose made the gasping noise again.
The Doctor wished with at least one of his somewhat metaphorical hearts that she would stop.
The other heart and both of his feet were engaged in walking towards her bedroom.
The parts of his brain that knew the most about humans were utterly enraged by this, and pointed out the flawed pairbonding strategies employed by the people of Rose's time period, and the ways in which engaging her in any sort of romantic endeavor would make her even less likely than the human norm to part from him amicably when the time came. And it would come, as surely as the probability fields included her death and Jack's death, and even the Doctor's.
The human-understanding parts of his brain weren't ones he listened to very often, though he admitted they had something of a point in the case of Jack, who was less invested in the pairbonding matters than Rose was culturally conditioned to be. The Doctor pointed out to himself the matter of Mickey, Adam, and the way Rose's breathing paused for a moment and the ways in which that was almost certainly linked to Jack.
By then he was at the door, and could see not only what they might be about to get up to, but what they were actually doing. Rose had her top off and Jack was licking her nipple in every sign of somewhat regressed enjoyment.
It didn't look anything like pairbonding, certainly not in the Time Lord style, but the only person still available to comment on the latter was in no position to do so without making himself look rather foolish. To bring up the matter would bring up Romana and the length of time she had spent travelling with him, and that would be a distinct counterargument to the Doctor's stated distaste for encouraging the cavorting apes to stay a while longer.
"Oh!" Rose said. Her eyes were open, and she'd spotted him.
One of the first truths the Doctor had tried to instill in her, and in so many of his travelling companions, was that it was never too late to run.
He tried to remind himself of this while Jack looked up and gave him a grin that made him wonder whether something odd and vulpine hadn't somehow made it into the man's ancestry, but before he managed to ask whether Jack's great-great-grandmother was a Yukonian, Jack was somehow kissing him again and leaning on him quite heavily to get him onto the bed.
It was only luck, as far as the Doctor could tell, that prevented him from landing on Rose. Nothing prevented him from landing on where she might have been. It tingled slightly.
She laughed and took his hand. "You really ought to share."
Considering that the main thing that had saved him from thoroughly probable seduction by Jack not so very long ago was Rose, he wasn't sure whether to apologize or thank her. Either one required breaking off the kiss.
"If either of you mind my cutting in --" the Doctor began, and Rose shook her head.
"Sometimes you really take a comparison too far," Rose said, and she kissed him, too.
He supposed that counted as sharing, particularly given that Jack had started unfastening the Doctor's pants. "When you've got a good single entendre, why let it go?" he asked, and got his arms around both of them.
It was entirely likely that at some point in the very near future the Doctor was going to be entirely naked with what the majority of the members of his species would consider lesser life forms. Fortunately, none of them were around to complain about the matter, even had it been their business in the first place, which it wasn't. The TARDIS wasn't going to make fun of him for the incident, though he was prepared for her to take him to some timeframe with rather higher-level sentients the next time he asked for London.
"Jokes get old," Rose said, and she grinned at the Doctor. "Unlike kissing."
"There's a species that aban--" --doned kissing due to boredom, the Doctor attempted to say.
It seemed like a slightly less important anecdote when Rose kissed him again, and he let the train of thought go careening off the tracks when Jack nuzzled his ear. "Focus, will you?" Jack said softly. "You can tell us about the whole wide universe later."
"I am focused," the Doctor said, and got his arm around Jack's shoulders long enough to kiss him properly and kick off his shoes at the same time. "On kissing."
"So stop talking and do it for a while," Rose said, and she patted the Doctor's backside.
The demand for silence was an entirely ridiculous one, but to point this out would require slightly more oxygen than the Doctor could presently muster. He had to content himself with appreciating the texture and weight of Rose's breasts without telling her about them, in part because she kept on kissing him and in part because he wasn't entirely sure, once they'd got his jumper off, precisely what was going on at any given moment.
It was all splendid, he knew that, but their actual hands were all muddled in with probable hands, and the more they touched him, the more likely it got that he ought to be reciprocating. When he'd managed that after a false start -- a probable Rose's thigh had turned out to be actual Jack, which meant a slight reevaluation of the necessary gestures.
He was certain for several minutes that he'd found Rose's actual breasts, and that she was making that particular human sound again, but he wasn't entirely sure when she pulled away. She was entirely likely to do it at any moment, and he didn't want to stop long enough to warn her that he might not be able to tell.
In the event, it took him some short but human-perceptible amount of time to notice that she'd moved, and that she was kissing Jack again at an angle that left her breasts entirely inaccessible. "Polyamory is sacred in several hundred human religions," the Doctor said, and gave Jack a squeeze that made him make a different and lovely human noise. "Though mostly in those that have found a way to make the spread of venereal diseases stop in some effective way." It had been accomplished well before the years when Jack was born, and the following plagues hadn't hit until the fifty-third century.
"Doesn't have to be sacred to be fun," Jack said, his normally well-modulated voice sounding strained. Not anxious, but -- strained.
Rose reached for the Doctor's free hand, unless she was sitting up to kiss him again, and spreading her legs a bit, suggestively. Both seemed equally likely. "Kind of the opposite, really."
"What do they teach them in these schools?" It turned out, when the Doctor closed his eyes and tried touching Rose, that she'd just been taking his hand, but when he patted her thigh, she was more than willing to act as though she'd been asking for rather more.
Humans sometimes took the whole matter of sex so seriously they could very nearly be Time Lords, and sometimes they didn't take it half seriously enough. The only option in the latter case was to explain it to them, except when there was a chance to show them.
The Doctor had always been in favor of hands-on instruction, with a bit of tongue-wagging for flavor. Doing both at once would've been complicated for a species with a lesser ability to focus, but he managed it. It did cut back rather a lot on his ability to notice the probability of whatever they were getting up to next, but considering the likelihood of Jack reaching orgasm and the near certainty of Rose's thighs tensing, close enough for the Doctor to feel them -- though they cut back rather on his hearing -- the problem worked itself out.
There followed an interlude of some confusion. The Doctor was disinclined to stop what he was doing. Rose kept making encouraging noises, and it wasn't as though Jack was trying to stop them, but the probable Jacks came back into the Doctor's perception. Some of them were quite fresh.
He stopped long enough to say, "Get on with it, then," and looked up to find them kissing again.
Rose looked at him and turned a becoming shade of pink. "You're a mess," she said, as though they hadn't got themselves far messier in much less intriguing pursuits.
"Speaking of holy rites, that's one too," the Doctor said, seizing the teachable moment. "Even in cultures that don't think of multiple partners as particularly sacred."
"I met a priestess once who insisted on that form of worship," Jack added, reinforcing the lesson in a most useful way. "The first time we, ah, went to church, I thought my jaw was going to fall off. I've never had so much fun in a religious ceremony."
Rose said, "Maybe we should go to one of those places that's big on polyamory."
The Doctor grinned at her and saw her -- entirely her -- for a moment, probability and all. She was learning, then. Growing. Maybe someday he'd find a way to show her that whenever he looked at her, he could see her soul getting that much bigger, and also her dying, and how beautiful both of those things were.
He hadn't managed to get that across to Jack yet, and Jack had had a lot more experiences in time travel, though not necessarily probability. It was a lesson for another time. Might as well stick to the simplicity of comparative religions for the moment.
"There's a festival on Zarlion B in the spring of the southern continents. BYOP, that one, without a lot of sharing around like they do in the Iritian faith and its derivatives." The Doctor patted her thigh. "If you wanted, we could go there." Also if the TARDIS let them. It would be an interesting test of her opinion on the whole matter. She was generally accepting of his companions, but this particular tangle -- it would be worth a test.
"Already planning the next trip?" Jack moved down the bed and kissed the Doctor again. "You haven't even taken advantage of the R&R."
"A change is as good as a rest," the Doctor said, and he wasn't at all surprised to find both of them pushing him up the bed and back against the pillows. Only one of them was actually doing it, but they were both equally likely to have done it. He was entirely amenable to the action, so in the end it was irrelevant.
Whichever of them kissed him next, and whichever of them ran warm hands down his chest -- it was perfectly all right, for the moment, though he couldn't always tell what the reality was. It could be Rose's mouth on his neck and Jack's tongue on the tender parts of his genitals, or the other way around. Whomever it was doing whatever it was they were doing, the probability of it all becoming orgasmically pleasant was increasingly large.
The possible use of that concept as the definition of becoming one with the universe was something he'd have to save for a later discussion, as there was simply no way to express it without taking a deep breath, which led to a moan instead of the words he'd tried to form.
Rose squeezed his hand.
Jack squeezed his hand.
Both of these things were equally true, and the thing that was most true was that they wanted him to let go of all of the distractions -- most of all, though they might not have thought of it consciously, of the impossible wish for this to somehow make things better in a lasting way.
Better than --
Better than being alone. But he wasn't alone, he was surrounded, overcome by two simple creatures, through the sheer force of their being, and the one to one probability that they wanted him to feel better.
He hadn't felt so good in a very long time, and he reminded himself to tell them so just as soon as the physical sensation of orgasm passed. Until then -- and it felt as though it might be a long way off -- he was temporarily as alone as ever, without the ability to reach out to their minds.
It wasn't necessary, and he hadn't warned them. It would be entirely inappropriate to invade their mental space any more than he could help.
It was enough to know, with every tingling nerve ending, that this was what they wanted for him.
It had to be enough. It was all he would let himself have.
This time.
The probability of coming back to himself with one of them on each side of him, far too warmly pressed against him, was also one. Possibly greater than one, but such things were frowned upon by the Time Lords back when they'd had mouths to frown, and in that case, they had had something of a point.
The post-coital glow was no time to bring up the bits of sex that hadn't been as utterly perfect as they otherwise might have been, but it seemed like an excellent time to head other sorts of disasters off at the pass. When the Doctor had caught his breath, he said, "You really oughtn't to have sex in the TARDIS console room. We oughtn't, for that matter. It makes her tetchy."
Rose sat up enough to stare at him. "It never occurred to me."
The Doctor was loath to call her on a lie while she was still flushed and lying quite so warmly next to him, but he remembered the probability of it as strongly as what they'd just done. He patted Jack's chest. "That probably makes at least one of you. And don't. It would be a shame to get stranded in a backwater timeline just because you couldn't keep your knickers on."
"I don't wear knickers," Jack said. "Though if you really wanted me to --"
"Pink and frilly. Ugh." Rose reached over the Doctor and poked Jack. "They wouldn't suit you."
"Not in the least," the Doctor agreed. "Besides, you'd only end up taking them off again."
Jack kissed his cheek. "For you, anytime."
He'd made that abundantly clear in the past, but it was one thing as theory and another entirely with actual proof of nudity.
The Doctor laughed and wondered exactly how soon it would be appropriate to raise the issue of varying sexual needs of different species, and exactly how much practicality he could incorporate into the discussion. "I figured as much."
"Though not by the console," Rose put in, and the Doctor gave her a squeeze.
"Just so."
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no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 01:06 am (UTC)I feel approximately as competent to comment coherently on the awesomeness of this story as I am competent to write a technical manual for the TARDIS.
Consider me on the bandwagon of loving your POV strategy.
I just -- your characterisation *of the TARDIS alone* would've been enough to knock my socks off, *without* the peeks inside Jack's and Rose's heads, never mind the *Doctor's*, much less the sex scene.
This is me, fallen at your feet in awe and gratitude.
no subject
Date: 2007-12-03 01:25 am (UTC)I had a great deal fun with the POVs in this story. I hope that shows.
The TARDIS loves the Doctor more than any Companion has yet managed, and he is ever faithful unto her. I don't do OTPs, and you know this, but I believe in that one.
Thank you so much for enjoying this story.