Fic: Tickles (Doctor Who)

[keep_counting]

Title: Tickles
Characters/Pairings: Ten/Rose
Rating: Teen
Warnings: References to sex, talking about sex, dark themes, Doctor!Angst regarding the Time War
Genre: Humor/Romance/Hurt-comfort/Fluff
Word-count: 3,481
A/N: I woke up with this story in my head today. It is basically just the Doctor and Rose talking and being in love. You might get the urge to go floss afterwards though. You have been warned.
Summary: "Is that what you were categorizing? Sex-fantasies?" - Because sometimes talking about sex after actually having sex turns into something a little different. But only a little.

Someone was tickling her. She was having the loveliest dream ever – a dream that wasn’t too different from last night in fact – and someone was interrupting it by tickling her on the nose.

Bastard.

”Stop it,” Rose mumbled, swatting at the long fingers on her face. She missed a bit and ended up slapping lightly against her own face, a fact that made her opponent chuckle in mirth.

”You’re mean,” she said, still with her eyes closed. She felt him move closer, arm already over her side, breath fanning over her cheek. He was as naked as she was, and still unusually warm (for him) after last night’s activities and sleeping next to her all night.

”You’re really mean,” she protested as he started tickling her sides this time. She kicked out at him, but he just caught her leg, pushing it back against the mattress again.

”That’s not what you said last night,” the Doctor laughed, fingers moving up to brush across her jawline. ”In fact, what I believe you said was more along the lines of…”

”Ugh!” Rose groaned, rolling over in bed so that her back was to him. The Doctor laughed.

”No, not exactly, but close enough.” Not deterred by her mood – Rose was always cranky in the morning – he moved so that his front was pressed against her back, his arm hooked around her waist.

”If you start tickling me again, I will throw you out of this bed,” she mumbled into her pillow, leaning into him despite her words.

”You can’t do that – this is my bed!”

”I sleep in it much more than you do,”

”That is only because you sleep more than I do.”

”Yes – I would also like to sleep right now, in fact.”

The Doctor was silent for a few seconds, apparently pondering her request. Then he shrugged, pressing even closer to her.

”Okay. I’ll let you sleep.”

Rose’s eyes snapped open. ”What?”

”Didn’t you hear me? Sleep away.”

”Nonononono…”

”What? But that’s what you just said you wanted?”

”Yes, but I was expecting you to fight me on it!” She protested, craning her neck so she could look at him.

”Oh – so you wanted me to fight for you to stay awake?”

Rose frowned, feeling just a bit like she’d been had. Then she sighed.

”I guess. You’re always complaining that I sleep too much.”

”That is because you sleep too much.”

”I sleep a reasonable amount for a human being.”

“Human beings sleep too much,” he merely stated. Rose let out a huff.

“Fine – what are you going to do to keep me awake, then?”

“Oh, we’re keeping you awake now?” he smirked.

“Yes!”

“Ah, good,” he murmured, burying his face in her neck. “That’s very good.”

She reached over and pinched his hip, causing him to yelp and shoot up.

“What was that for?”

“Talk to me!”

He pouted. “But…”

“Doctor…”

“Rose…?”

“Really. We’ve had sex for about a week now – and I mean, non-stop, sex for a week…”

“That’s actually not true, though now that you mention it, maybe we could…”

“Are you going to let me finish?”

“I’m going to have to, aren’t I?”

“Yes.”

“Shutting up now.”

"We," Rose started again. "That is you and I, have had sex again and again and again. We've been like doomsday-bunnies on a Duracell-battery. We've been like the alien and the female versions of Jack." 

“And it’s been great,” the Doctor broke in, clasping a hand over his own mouth at her withering look.

“Yes,” Rose relented. “It’s been great. Stop looking so smug. My point is… can we talk?”

The Doctor blinked. “Yes, I believe we can. We’re doing it right now.”

“You know what I mean! I mean this… it’s… can we just… lie here and… talk for a while? You know, like we used to, only not in bed and not naked?”

He pouted at her again. “I didn’t realize the sex was boring you.”

“Oh yes, the sex is very boring, as demonstrated just last night,”

He grinned impishly at her. “Yes. Those sounds you made were definitely out of boredom.”

“I wasn’t moaning, I was yawning.”

“And the only reason we’ve been lying in bed so long is that we actually passed out… from the boredom.”

Rose snickered. “See? This is what I mean. We used to do this all the time – not the sex, the talking bit.”

“Right,” the Doctor said. “And you were worried we were going to lose that now? That me, the man who never shuts up, and you who has been raised by the biggest gossip Britain has ever seen, you were worried we would stop talking?”

“Silly, right?”

“Not at all. Only last night I was worried you would panic and leave.”

Rose blinked. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“No, but… Doctor?”

“Hm?”

“You worry too much. I would never leave.”

“Ah,” he said, flipping unto his back and pulling her to his side. “That’s good.”

“Yeah. Apparently me sleeping isn’t a good thing. It makes you think too much.”

“Yes, which is exactly why you shouldn’t do it and have se… I mean, talk with me instead.”

“What else do you think about? While I sleep?”

The Doctor gave her a look like she was five and had just sneezed on his console. “Rose, my brain is, quite frankly, huge and magnificent and I could not even begin to list all of the things I think about while you sleep your little human sleep.”

Rose smiled. “You sit and stare at me, don’t you?”

“No!”

“Yes, you do. You’re getting all defensive.”

“I’m not getting defensive.”

“Very defensive.”

“This is not defensive! If you would like to see defensive, I can take you to the lost colony of Ferland: its people held their fort against the Sontarans for eight years, and that’s quite something considering that the…”

“You’re trying to distract me now.”

He stopped and pressed his lips together. “I don’t just… sit and stare like some lovesick teenager.”

“I wouldn’t mind if you did. Or, okay, maybe I would mind in the long run, because I think we both need to get some other hobbies besides just the sex, but… wait, did you say ‘just’?”

“I might have.”

“So, what do you do?” She smiled smugly. “Besides stare at me.”

“I… categorize.”

“Categorize?”

“Yep,” he mumbled, popping the p.

“And what do you…” she lowered her voice dramatically. “Categorize?”

“Well, as I said… my brain is amazing and magnificent and brilliant, and it’s easier for me to… that is, whenever I have the time to spare – and I am a Lord of Time, I have lots of time to spare… most of the time… some of the time… once in a while…”

“So you’re saying your brain is like… like a filing cabinet?”

“Rooose!” He whined.

“It is, isn’t it?”

“Only a little bit,”

She snickered. He pouted.

“So you file away memories?”

“Yes. Memories, facts, knowledge. After 900 years of time and space, it’s… easier to remember if I know where to look for it.”

“Huh,” Rose muttered. “You do realize what I’m imagining now, right?”

“Rose, my brain isn’t locker-shaped.”

“That would be cool though.”

“I can’t imagine how.”

“So what where you filing away before you so rudely woke me?”

He went silent. Rose’s smile fell.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m not trying to pressure you into anything.”

“No, it’s not…” he sighed. “It’s just… you.”

“What?”

“I was… sort of… filing away you. Or, you know, my memories of you. And sort of… you know… in order of timeline, and um… first kiss, first real kiss…”

“That is… incredibly romantic,” Rose said, a wicked grin spreading over her face. “You are sappy!”

“No, I’m not!”

“Yes, you are,” she poked him lightly in the ribs. “It’s good though, I like it.”

“Really?”

“Yep,” she said, mimicking his way of saying that tell-tale word. “You’re not telling the truth though. At least not all of it.”

“Oh? And how would you know that?”

“Well, for one, you’re blushing. After some of the things you did to me last night, I wouldn’t have thought you were capable of the feat.”

If possible, the Doctor blushed even harder.

Rose laughed. “You’ve been up all night thinking about sex, after we had sex all day.”

“No, I haven’t!” he protested again.

“Yes – admit it, you were filing away the sexy adventures of Rose and the Doctor… in his bed.”

The Doctor burst out laughing, the blush still in place though. “I really didn’t, but I’m going to now!”

Rose poked him again. “C’mon, tell me! What was it then, were you thinking about sex with other women? Because I know you’re alien, but that is generally not…”

“I wasn’t.”

“Well, you were thinking about sex.”

“You can’t know that!”

“Even your ears are blushing now.”

“Dammit Rose!”

“S’not my fault, I didn’t even think you could do that!”

“Me neither! I’ve never blushed before in my life!”

Rose raised an eyebrow. “Never?”

“Well, never before in this life.”

She smiled and snuggled closer. “C’mon then, you can tell me. Really, Doctor. Is it anything I would laugh about?”

The Doctor sighed. “Rose, can I ask you a… rather personal question?”

She frowned. “Um, yeah, sure. I doubt there’s little you don’t know.”

“You can just say you don’t want to answer if that’s the case, yeah?”

“Sure.”

He looked like he was gathering courage, searching for words, his tongue peeking out to sweep over his lips and distracting her in the meantime, remembering what that tongue had been doing only hours earlier.

“How long have you… that is… how long have you know that you… and me… with me… I mean…”

“How long have I been in love with you?” she interrupted, the words flying out of her mouth before she could stop them. He stared at her.

“Yes….” He started. “And no…. I mean have long have you been… you know…”

Rose frowned. “Um?”

“Oh, come on… how long have you wanted to have sex with me?”

Rose blinked. “Oooh.”

“You don’t have to answer.”

“No, it’s fine. I just have to think… it’s been so long,” she mumbled. “Um, since… that basement in Cardiff?”

The Doctor stared at her. Rose stared back, a blush grazing her own cheeks now.

“Oh. That is long.”

“Yes, I know.”

“So did you…”

“Have wild, crazy fantasies about the two of us for the first time that night?” She bit her lip. “Yes.”

“I… see…”

Rose’s eyes widened. “Is that what you were categorizing? Sex-fantasies?”

The Doctor buried his face in his pillow and groaned.

“Oh, it was!”

“Please don’t tell anyone.”

Rose couldn’t help but laugh. “No, no, of course I won’t. What did you think, I’d put it on the internet? No, I think its sweet… so were there a lot?”

Silence. Rose’s eyes widened.

“Doctor?”

“Um…”

“How many?”

“Well…”

“No, seriously.”

“Actually…”

Rose leaned forward until her lips where gazing his forehead. “You can tell me. I mean, I guess they are of me, right? Because otherwise, just stop talking now and distract me with sexy-times or tea, yeah?”

The Doctor snorted. “’Course they’re of you.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“How long? It can’t have been longer than me.”

“It was.”

“What?”

“Rose…”

“You have to tell me now! Was it after Platform One? It can’t have been right after the Nestene… you barely knew me.”

The Doctor turned around to look at her, no blush visible on his face now, his eyes staring directly into hers.

“Barely knew you? I don’t think so.”

She blinked. “What do you mean?”

“I’ve had many companions, Rose. I’ve had humans and aliens, I’ve had males and females. I’ve had robots and cyborgs and a tin dog that could speak. I’ve travelled with a being that was mostly only air and I’ve travelled with beings that only existed in our thoughts. Some of them disappointed me, let me down, for different reasons: reasons that I might understand better today now that I’ve moved on a bit. Some of them – almost all of them – broke my hearts when they left, willingly or because they had to or because I told them to. And some of them died. A lot of them died,” he stopped for a short moment, swallowing heavily. “Do you know what all of those people have in common?”

“They all loved you,” Rose said, not doubting for a second that you could travel for long with the Doctor without loving him in some way or another. “And you loved them back, in your own way. All of them.”

He smiled, a little sadly. “No, Rose. What they have in common is that they were brave. That they are brave. Both with me and without me. It’s in the set of their shoulders, in their eyes when something unexpected happens. It’s that sense for something going wrong, for wanting to fix that because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s always worth it to try.”

“And you’re telling me that you knew me because I was brave?”

“You’re always brave,” the Doctor said, and Rose wasn’t entirely sure if he was talking to just her or referring to all of them. But he was starting to look so sad now, and that is not what she wanted.

“So…. You’re saying you had sexual fantasies about every single one of your companions?” she teasingly asked, determined to get his mind away from the pain and loss. “Even Mickey?”

The face he pulled made her roar with laughter.

“Rose, you didn’t let me finish.”

“I just knew you and Jack were getting it on behind those closed doors.”

“Rose!”

She snickered, but finally got control of herself. Looking at him, he was smiling down at her while simultaneously trying to look stern.

“Sorry,” she muttered, still smiling. “You were saying?”

“I don’t make it a habit of shagging my companions.”

“Good, I’m glad.”

“I actually have a rule against it.”

“Well, that went out the metaphorical window, don’t you think?”

“It’s been aiming for it ever since you got on board.”

Turning a bit more serious, Rose swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in her throat. “So you’re saying, first night? But that was right after we saw the Earth burn, yeah? I went to sleep there for a few hours, it was before you took me to Cardiff.”

“I can’t begin there, it’s…” he stopped himself, raking a hand over his face. “I wasn’t… after the Time War, I didn’t see them anymore. I used to, you know, all of those bright and shining people, all of those brave people that inhabit the universe. I’ve always had companions because I am so drawn to that, because I’m selfish and I think that if I keep them around, it’ll rub off on me and I’ll be… Rose, don’t argue, please let me finish?”

She closed her mouth again, nodding slightly.

“I couldn’t anymore. All I did was repair the TARDIS as good as I could and… if I hadn’t had my ship, I wouldn’t have done anything. Chances are I would have just… killed myself, until I stopped regenerating. I didn’t even look in a mirror properly before I was in your house, I had no idea what I looked like at that point, but it didn’t matter to me anyway. I felt completely blind. The TARDIS shipped me off to all kinds of places, random planets that needed saving, and I just did it, not thinking about it, not responding, not seeing the people I’d helped. And for some reason she kept returning me to Earth, kept dumping me off there and acting up, even if there wasn’t any disaster for me to prevent. I figured she thought it was her best shot of getting me out of that state: there have been so many companions from there and…” he trailed off, staring into the air, far away.

“I landed on a planet where more than half the population had been turned into plastic replicas. I helped the remaining survivors get their home back, but it didn’t kill the mother bee: I tracked the signal back to Earth, and thought I’d found the Consciousness inside a shop in London, of all places. Not the first time I’ve been up against the Nestene, so I knew exactly what to do: rigging a bomb and sneaking in, and it was only a few minutes after it had closed, so I had to check for any human lifeforms, anything that I didn’t want to blow up.”

“And there was,” Rose quietly said.

“Yeah,” the Doctor said, suddenly smiling. “Busy getting killed by mannequins she was, so I of course had to run in and heroically save her.”

“And you grabbed her hand and said ‘run’…”

“Great entrance, don’t you think? One of my best.”

Rose giggled. “I was suitably impressed, even if it went downhill from there.”

“Oi!” He protested, leaning over to smack her with his pillow, resulting in a short wrestle-fight that ended with him pinning her to the bed, Rose twisted so much in the sheet she could barely move.

“Okay, okay, finish the story,” she laughed, blowing a lock of hair out of her face. “What happened then?”

“You know what happened then, you were there.”

“Oh, that’s right. Saved your life, didn’t I?” She smiled. “I am so impressive.”

“Yes,” the Doctor murmured, leaning over to kiss her. Rose quickly moved her head, his lips landing on her cheek instead.

“You didn’t answer my question – so you had a fantasy about me back then?”

“Well, I was really tired so I sort of fell asleep a little bit and well…”

“You had a sexy, sexy dream about me?”

“Not really.”

Rose’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Well, I mean, we had sex, but that wasn’t…”

“How does it count in the sex-category then?” She muttered, her turn to pout now. The Doctor smiled.

“It counts because we did have sex, but it wasn’t about the sex.”

Rose snorted. “Sounds like a lame dream to me.”

“No,” the Doctor protested, leaning down to kiss at her collarbone. “You’re missing the point of my story.”

“Please do explain then.”

“The point is you,” he said. “Just you. You were the first person I saw after the War – not in the sense of actually seeing, but… everything else is a blur. People dying, screams and fire and then I walk around, hollow and empty and there’s just nothing. No emotion, no light, nothing. Right until I’m standing in an elevator and this little annoying blonde is talking to me and she just gets my curiosity up enough for me to ask her name, just in case, and then all of the sudden she’s there again and again and everywhere I go.”

Rose was at this point glad that his face was resting on her collarbone: it meant he couldn’t see the tears in her eyes. “Is that why you asked me to come twice?”

“Yes. I was afraid that I would only be able to see you, that everyone else would be just as faded as they had been since the War, and I thought if I could take you with me, then it…”

“… it would rub off on you,” she echoes his words from earlier. “You would be able to see again.”

“See the universe, for all its wonder. It gets old after 900 years. It’s not so old when you look at it through the eyes of someone wonderful.”

Rose let her fingers flutter through his hair. “And in the dream?”

“You let me hold you. Like you let me hold you last night and right now.”

“And that’s…”

“Amazing. For someone who believes he doesn’t bring anything but death and destruction.  It’s humbling and thrilling. It’s the best dream I’ve ever had.”

She wasn’t sure what to say to that, wasn’t sure how to convey how much it meant to her that he’d told her, so instead she settled for holding him a bit tighter, her fingernails lightly scratching across his scalp. It could have been minutes or hours, but it felt like infinity, lying there and holding him, and being held by him.

Finally he moved though, gently pushing up and lying down beside her, still holding on as if afraid she would walk away if he let go.

“Didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said in regret, and Rose realized that some of the tears had fallen down and left long marks on her cheeks.

“It’s fine. I’m not sad,” she said, smiling. “Not at all.”

He kissed her forehead. “So…”

Rose lifted an eyebrow. “So?”

The Doctor’s grin turned huge. “Sex now, right? OW! Rose!”