#goingtothetardis

Jack knows about her—her whatever it is—with the Doctor, of course. He’d spotted it from a mile away, right when he first met them, and then he’d done everything within his substantial power to tease the truth out of her. It had taken a shot of hypervodka and a PMS-induced crying jag for her to tell him everything—about the Dalek, and about realizing how much that mad alien meant to her while she was pressed up against that door thinking she would die. About wishing for nothing but to see his face again, smiling down at her with that silly grin. To be held again, even just one more time. She’d cried over the memory, and over the fact that months had passed and nothing had changed. They were, she’d admitted, stuck in a gridlock, where the both of them pretended that nothing was different, that their relationship hadn’t evolved at all.

She’d made a complete fool of herself that night, and she and Jack both knew it. He’d cleaned her up, of course, and commiserated about unrequited love. He’d even promised not to tell the Doctor—he was bigger on the inside; bigger than she or the Doctor even knew—but when morning came, he kept her secret with about the bare minimum of subtlety.

“Oh?” He smirks at her as he steps closer. “What are we sketching today? Perhaps that beautiful bit of scenery?” Jack could plausibly be talking about the nebula which still glows, warm and golden, just outside the TARDIS doors. But the way his mouth twitches, the way his eyes dart to the Doctor and back again, makes her think he isn’t. 

She shakes her head, fighting down a blush. “Something like that.”

The Doctor, who has finally taken notice of their conversation, shoots her a lopsided grin, tossing aside his catalogue. “Let’s see it, then! Mind you, we haven’t had an artist on board since… oh, since the eighteen hundreds?”

“And I suppose it was… I dunno, Leonardo Da Vinci or something?”

“Couple hundred years off,” he answers with a chuckle, “but more or less. Nobody impressive.” He rolls up into a seated position, his arm hooking casually around his bent knee. With a little grin, he adds, “Nothing like a Rose Tyler Original.” 

She wonders how he makes it all look so easy, especially when she feels like a clumsy ape half the time. He looks as comfortable as a king in repose. And the way he looks at her, with keen interest like she’s about to present him with the Mona Lisa, makes her want to throw her sloppy sketch right out of the airlock. If they even have an airlock. But she gives her paper over to Jack when he opens his palm, and she tries not to chew her lip to pieces.

“It’s just a sketch, like I said. A gesture drawing, really—it’s about—”

“—capturing the motion or the pose of the body,” the Doctor says. “I know.” Of course he does. The Doctor knows about everything. He could probably teach a class on gesture drawing.

“Well,” Jack says emphatically, “it certainly accomplishes that.” He holds the brown paper about a foot away from his face, gazing at it with a sort of faux-thoughtful expression. He appears for all the world like a serious art critic standing in a museum, down to the way he strokes his chin and squints. “You’ve really… captured the Doctor’s body, Rose.” It’s impossible to miss the way he lingers on the word body, and all hope of stopping her blush is lost.

“Thanks,” she mumbles.

The Doctor, on the other hand, bursts into a beaming smile. “You drew me?” He sounds pleasantly surprised, though she can’t think why. She’s sketched him before—made studies of his hands, the shape of his nose—loads of times. She’s got at least five charcoal sketches of him flapping his wings like a chicken, fussing at the console. And many more on variations of his precise pose. Lounging. Reclining. Whatever it is.

Surely she’s shown him something, or he’s at least noticed her staring at him with an obsessive intensity?

Rose frowns. “Yeah? I draw you all the time—both of you!” She glances back and forth between him and Jack, confused. “I don’t get many chances to just… sit down and sketch someone, you know? Not on the TARDIS, anyway, so my sketchbooks are full of you!” Well, full of one more than the other, but she doesn’t say it.

She’s so busy staring at them in turns that she almost misses the slight droop in the Doctor’s smile. Almost.

Jack, still staring at the sketch, tilts his head. “You’ve really got his proportions down, Rosie. I mean, those shoulders—scrumptious!” He licks his lips salaciously, and Rose rolls her eyes, standing up to snatch it from his hand.

“That’s enough,” she chides, getting ready to stuff the sketch in her back pocket where it belongs—where nobody can see it. But the Doctor, still on the floor, reaches up and snatches it up out of her hands, mid-stuffing.

“Hey now! Don’t I get a look?”

She’s already spinning, ready to reach for it, but he rolls back and all but falls into the open grating, deftly avoiding her hands. Cradling his head with one hand, he holds up her sketch with the other, squinting at it. He turns the scrunched up paper this way and that, and her mortification is reaching a boiling point when he finally says, “And this is me?”

Rose blinks. She feels something like raw shock—like the floor’s just dropped from under her. Is it really that bad? “Yeah.”

“Hm.” His brows are furrowed, like he’s confused. She doesn’t know how he possibly could be: she’s drawn him hundreds of times; his face and his shape are second nature to her. Rose imagines she could draw him blindfolded, in ink or blood, charcoal or dust. But he can’t tell?

He can’t see it?

Mortified, she stutters out an excuse. “I mean, it’s a bit rubbish—”

“C’mon, Doc!” Jack interrupts, crouching by the Doctor’s hidey-hole. “Don’t tell me you can’t see it. I mean, she’s got the jaw for starters. And the nose—you can’t miss that.”

The Doctor glares at him. “I suppose—”

“But it’s not just that, you know? She’s got the way you hold yourself down to a tee.” Jack’s glance flicks up to her for a moment—just long enough to send her a reassuring wink. Or, at least, she thinks it’s supposed to be reassuring. “Proportions are good, too.”

“I know,” the Doctor snaps, pulling the sketch away from Jack’s probing finger. He holds it against his chest as if protecting it, and it stirs something strange in Rose’s chest. Something she knows the name of but refuses to identify. “I do have eyes, Jack. Technically speaking, it's a good sketch.”

“Doctor,” she tries, her voice coming out weak, “it’s fine, you don't—"

"I just don't think it looks like me, that's all."

Rose and Jack look back at him with twin expressions of shock. But the Doctor's gaze slides to her, and she tries to flatten her feelings away, put up some sort of defence. "I mean," he clarifies, "it's a bit pretty."

"Pretty?" Rose gapes.

"And that's a bad thing?" Jack looks even more confused than before. But of course, he's missing a crucial piece of the conversation. He's missing all the times that the Doctor has tweaked himself about his looks—his ears, his nose, his goofy smile, his wrinkled brow and unforgiving buzzcut. All the things Rose loves. And all the insecurities to which Jack isn't party, either because he hasn’t been around long enough yet, or because the Doctor presents such a strong front.

"Alright," Rose says quietly. She gestures for the Doctor to return her sketch, and he does—though reluctantly, she can't help but notice. "I'll do another one. Less pretty this time. You can watch me. Jack?" She turns her gaze up to the Captain, his perfect jaw still dropped in confusion. "Could you run to the junk room and get me an extra torch? I'll need good lighting."

She holds his gaze for a long moment, hoping—willing him to understand. And after a second of seeming thought, he nods and marches off. 

Hopefully not in the direction of the junk room.

The Doctor watches his departure with a narrow, suspicious glance. She’s tempted to sketch that face—another expression she’s so intimately familiar with—but instead, she gets up on her knees and crawls over to the hole in the grating, shoving aside the bits and bobs that litter the place. He’s still got one arm behind his head, and the other reaches up behind his ear to grasp his sonic screwdriver. Typical. He can’t go ten seconds without tinkering.

But he freezes mid-motion. “Do I… need to hold still?”

Rose bites down a smile. “No, just lie comfortably. This isn’t a portrait—just a quick sketch again.” She sets to work immediately, crossing her legs beneath her and unfolding the brown bag in search of a fresh patch of paper. There’s some red ink printed in a vague, blobby shape—some sort of logo—but she can draw over it easily enough. She’s already working out the shape of his head at this angle. The way his chin juts out as he looks up over the top of his head and into the machinery. The way the green light shrouds part of his face in shadow, but glowing in a halo around his prominent ears. The sonic casts a different sort of light, blue and radiant, washing his extended neck in pale shades. 

She tries to capture it all with her nub of charcoal.

“D’you mind if I talk myself through it?” she asks after a moment, glancing up at him. His hand is still frozen in place, as though he can’t decide what to do with it.

He shrugs one shoulder. “Whatever you like. D’you mind if I keep working?”

“Whatever you like,” she parrots, turning back to her sketch. And he fiddles with the sonic, no doubt doing something incomprehensible. A few more moments pass in silence before she gets up the courage to start speaking again. “So, I’m working on your face, yeah? And there’s a lot going on here. You’ve got… sort of prominent features, obviously, but that’s not what makes it complicated. I could draw Roman noses all day long.”

She glances up, and his lips are twitching. Good.

“My real sticking point is the eyes. Obviously, a sketch like this isn’t meant to capture your eyes in any amount of detail, but they’re just so pretty, y’know?” It’s freeing, in a way, to finally give voice to these things—the thoughts that haunt her every time she looks at the man she’d run away with. Even under such a pretext as this, it relieves some of the pressure. Telling the truth. “Blue eyes, I mean,” she clarifies, carefully watching him through her eyelashes. His only reaction is to glanced at her, and then slow-blink the blank expression away.

“And they’re so expressive: windows to the soul and all that. So, if I want to get your face right—your expression, the tension in your forehead, all of that—I need to start with the eyes. But, of course, they’re pretty. Should I leave them out?” It’s a rhetorical question; she smiles at the way he rolls his eyes. “So, then we get to the neck, the shoulders. Jack was right, there—you’ve got good shoulders. Solid, nice and wide. Or maybe that jacket’s just doing you favors.”

He whips it off before she can blink, sitting upright and then settling back again, his mouth twisted into a scowl. The jacket hangs beside her leg, and she’s tempted to reach down and stroke the buttery leather. She could laugh at his display of vanity, but it would hardly be fair. That’s the dichotomy of the Doctor, she supposes. Or one of many—his need to be admired is nearly equal to his self-loathing.

And it is so much nicer to see the cling of the knit. He’s wearing a sapphire sweater today, the v-neck gives her an unobstructed view of the tendons in his neck. They strain and shift as he tilts his head back nonchalantly—though maybe it only looks like he’s nonchalant. 

“That’s better, thanks,” she says absently, sketching in his shoulders. She roughs in the lines of his arm, curled behind his head, trying to capture the flex. “I’m getting your arms down now, but muscle definition is hard to capture in just a sketch. I’ll have to go more in-depth next time and skip them for today.” She sucks her bottom lip between her teeth and releases it again. “Pity.”

He’s on to her now, probably—if his sudden stare is any indication. But it’s still unreadable. His eyes—those pretty blue eyes—are wide open, and burning with that same intensity that always makes her stomach swoop when he turns it on her.

“Your hands, though. I can definitely get the detail in those. Short nails, long fingers, smooth skin. Very clever, obviously. Mobile. You could almost say they’re… pretty.”

He blinks again, and she swallows, ducking her head. She’s determined to continue, no matter how much she wants to hide from him.

“I can get your torso pretty well by now. You’ve got clothes on, so it’s not like there’s much detail to be had, except for a few—yes, a few lines of the fabric.” She sketches in the creases, and the way his hemline rides up. It’s less than an inch, but the scrap of skin makes her itch to touch him. She makes sure to include it. He’ll likely think it another imperfection, but she knows better.

“Belt. Fly. More clothes. So dull.” When she gets to his legs, she tilts her head. “Now, here’s something interesting again. You have this way of holding yourself… sort of sprawling? Or is it reclining? It’s very casual, but sort of… seething with this internal intensity.” She almost snorts at her own description. Of course it is. He’s probably the most repressed creature in several galaxies. He glances up with an arched brow. “Very interesting to draw. And the lifted knee provides a bit of a perspective challenge. But don’t worry—I’ve got the… what was it? Technical ability?”

“Now, Rose—”

She sticks out her tongue. “Oh, hush. I’m just having you on. Anyway, if I get the angles right—that leaning, lying, sprawling thing you do… it’ll come through properly.” Her tongue catches between her teeth as she concentrates on the final lines, smudging them a bit with her fingertips and casting his body in light and shadow. It’s a rough sketch, but it gets the point across.

It feels like him. 

“Alright,” she pronounces. “Finished. Wanna see?”

He sits up again, carelessly abandoning his work; the bare wires dangle, disconnected and ready to spark. She scoots even closer—so close that her feet start to fall into the open space above him. Catching herself, she reaches over and hands him the sketch with a grin that’s cheekier than she actually feels. 

Inside, she feels raw: as if she’s about to be exposed by the strokes of black that make up his body. 

“What d’you think?” she asks nervously.

He looks up at her. And then back at the drawing. And then at her again. “And that’s me.”

“Blimey, Doctor,” she huffs, “it’s like you’ve never looked in a mirror!” Her irritation covers the hurt, though perhaps not well, based on the way his eyes go wide.

“I try not to,” he replies, frowning. “But it’s… it’s very good.”

Rose feels her spine stiffen. Not at his halfhearted compliment—she’s used to the Doctor and his caveats by now. For a human comes to mind. But at the way he expresses his own self-loathing. I try not to. A vague dawning horror takes over her, and she’s moving before she can think better of it. Her only thought is to get close. 

Sliding down into the hole in the grating, her arms curl protectively around him in a heavy hug. She’s practically lying on top of him, her knees scrunched on either side of his waist, but she doesn’t care about the indignity of the position. She instead focuses on physically conveying to him what her drawing obviously couldn’t.

I love you how you are.

The body you wear is worthy of that love.

And dammit, I think you’re… pretty.

She slows her breathing, suddenly aware of the way her breasts are pressed against his chest, aware of his stomach going concave with an exhalation as she breathes deep. Every point of contact makes it more than just a hug. It is the resolution of the need that’s been building up in her body for months now, fed on desperate snatches of touch—holding hands, a nudge with an elbow, an all-too-fleeting hug. Rose flushes red all over, vibrant as one of her pastels, and pulls back. Just far enough to see his face, and to wonder what he’s thinking.

The Doctor looks shocked, for lack of a better word. His jaw is slack, his lips parted. His blue eyes are wide, framed by long lashes and two heightened brows. She could draw it—call it Doctor Disoriented. But she only has her hands, and they are planted on either side of his head, with little wires digging into her palms.

He swallows, and her eyes are drawn to the way his throat subtly bobs.

Details. The Doctor’s beauty lies in the details, and he doesn’t even know.

“I don’t just draw you ‘cause I have to,” she says, so softly that the words probably don’t even carry beyond the Doctor’s ears. They’re right in the middle of the console room, of course, but the wilderness of alien machinery under the grating almost makes it feel… cozy. Safe. Isolated in their own little world, out of sight. And when he hears her words, his chest stutters with a sharp breath. She feels it press against hers, and the contact aches. She looks down at him seriously. “You know I don’t.” 

And then she lets her head fall back down, to the curve of his shoulder. She hugs him so tightly that her heart might burst.

A long second passes. And then she feels his arms wrap—so slowly, so gently—around her.

In time, their breathing syncs. Rose somehow feels both drowsily comforted and intensely aware: of his body beneath her, and the subtle pressure of his hands at her hips. Of their place in the TARDIS. Of her clothes against her skin. The conflicting sensations gather inside her until it’s hard to keep still. The comfort is outweighed by the burning need to do something. To make friction, a spark. 

It takes all of her energy not to wriggle against him, and it’s a divine act of willpower that pulls her off of his chest, propped on her arms.

She chews her lip, looking down at him again. She hasn’t the first clue how to disentangle herself from him, how to go back from this. It’s the closest she’s ever gotten to admitting her feelings outright—and her body is saying more than her words, no doubt. 

She wants to tell him outright, every single thought in her head, but the prospect of his rejection hurts. If the stinging she’d felt when he criticized her drawing was the least of it, then it would only be more agonizing to say more, to risk a fissure forming in her heart. So, she breathes, and tries to think of something to say. Something that will diffuse the bomb growing in her body—a growing, tightening ball of want.

When he reaches up and presses his thumb to her bottom lip, dragging it out from between her teeth, her mind goes suddenly and alarmingly blank. It’s like a flash-bulb going off; one moment, the world exists and the next, it doesn’t. There’s only the salt hint of his fingertip, and the low heat that drops into her gut. Her legs tighten around his waist—an instinct. Automatic. She doesn’t even have time to blush.

His hand cradles her cheek as his thumb swipes over her lip, and then her jaw. Even as the gentle touch rockets through her, he says, “You’re mad, Rose Tyler. I am older and uglier than you know.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

The gap between them is closing again, and with it, Rose feels her sense of awareness further narrowing. To the heat of his breath, and the blue of his eyes. She’s never been this close to his face before. Close enough to breathe the same air—yes. But never like this. Close enough, almost, to touch his lips with hers.

“It will, someday.”

“It won’t.” She sounds stubborn. Petulant, even. And his lips hitch on one side, as if he knows a great secret that he’s content to let her figure out for herself. She frowns. “You don’t scare me.”

And the Doctor replies, “Good.”

Slowly, so as to give her time—an out, not that she’d ever take it—he lifts his head to kiss her. 

The Doctor’s nose nudges and bumps her cheek, a gentle nuzzle that she feels all over, and she’s smiling when their mouths finally meet. 

And then, like it’s the most normal thing in the world, she’s kissing the Doctor.

His lips are soft and full and distracting, and of course, irritatingly clever. It makes her head dizzy: his gentle force, and his thumb rubbing rhythmically over her jaw. She’s embarrassed by how quickly she responds, her body flattening against his to touch every possible inch, her fingers raking over his head. And it’s not long before she loses a sense of time altogether, lost in the varying pressure of his mouth and the dull, disbelieving throb that rebounds through her: This is really, actually happening. 

In her squirming to get closer, her own shirt rides up, and she can feel the cool sliver of his stomach against hers. It makes her feel scorching—a sensation she hadn’t really imagined before now—like his comparative coolness only burns her hotter. She wants to slide her fingers under the fabric, stroke burning lines against his cool skin. But she can’t let go of him, or stop from sliding her fingers through his cropped hair. She can’t stop kissing him.

She lets out a shivery whine when her tongue finally darts out to taste him—because the Doctor tastes like strong tea, and time, and everything she’s ever wanted. And the tightening pressure of his other hand kneading her hips is distractingly heavenly. She rocks against him, some base instinct in her searching for more pressure, more relief. 

The Doctor grunts, low in his throat.

“Oh.” Her mouth pops open, and her eyes fly open, too—ready to apologize, ready to stop. But he doesn’t stop. In fact, he seems unaware of the noise he’d made, focused intensely on keeping his mouth attached to hers. He grips her tighter, one hand traveling into her hair and tangling, and she lets herself sink into him. Into his kiss. Their tongues tangle, taking advantage of her open mouth, and when she whimpers again, he leans into it, sucking her bottom lip into his teeth. He doesn’t have to say it for her to hear it: If you must bite your lips… 

Another time, she’ll probably want to ask him loads of questions. Like how he got so good at snogging, and what this means for them—is everything different now?—and whether or not the Dalek had been telling the truth about him loving her. But for now, her mind is deliciously filled up with the feeling of him—the way he tugs her down and back, grinding her against his hips so that the seam of her denims rubs just right. His large palm cradling her hip, fingers inching the hem of her t-shirt ever higher, sending gooseflesh out over her exposed skin.

The scent of leather surrounds her like a perfume, heady and high. And she feels it growing in her stomach—the release she’s been chasing alone in her bedroom at night, the adrenaline that pumps through her every time she’s suspended at the edge of time and space itself. 

The danger. The fear of falling. The hope that she’ll fly.

She gasps as he lifts his hips, almost thrusting up against her. It sears into her nerve endings, an acute and exquisite pleasure. “Doctor,” she says—or breathes, into his open mouth.

It shouldn’t be this easy for him to read her body, to know what it wants. She’s certainly never come with all her clothes on before. But as he continues to press with that delicious friction, she feels as if he knows her body—better, even, than she knows the shape of his. Better than she knows herself.

Which is why it’s a matter of moments before she’s at the edge. She forces herself to give up their kiss, looking wildly down into his face. His jaw is clenched tight, as if he’s standing at the edge with her. Her voice is a cry. “Doctor, I—”

“Go ahead,” he pants out, his forehead pushing up to rest against hers. His voice is strained and adoring, and it makes her heart flutter up into her throat. “I’ve got you.”

She didn’t know it was what she needed—that reassurance. But, safe in his arms, she falls.

Her channel pulses around nothing, shockwaves of sensation rolling through her whole body. As all the tension floods out of her body and she sags against him, he moves her body for her, sustaining the sensation for as long as possible. His hands are a live wire against her. The aftershocks ripple outward in a wave, and she lets out a long, low groan that bounces around their little cave—out into the rest of the console room. She should be embarrassed, but she’s too sated to care, and the Doctor is looking at her—like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s seen in several lifetimes.

“Well,” comes a voice. “That certainly sounded satisfying.”

Rose rears back, eyes wide and chest heaving.

“Jack.” The Doctor grits out. There’s a vein popping in his forehead, his whole face is flushed red—and no wonder. She’s been grinding against him for so long, she wonders how he’s still holding on. But he simply kneads her hip and takes a deep breath. “You’ve got the worst timing in the world, mate.”

“Yes, well, it’s been an hour. I figured you two’d be done by now.”

She bites her lip to hold back a laugh, but seconds later, the Doctor’s thumb is tugging on it with that same, soft gentleness. He’s so tender with his touch that she can almost ignore the iron rod that’s pressing, unattended to, up against her. She wonders what would happen if she wiggled against him—

But she doesn’t. Because he’s still looking up at her with that strange, almost reverent look. She wants to kiss it off of his face, or sketch it—or both. It’s the prettiest thing she’s ever seen.