Choose Life (2/2)

[preserved_ginger]

Title: Choose Life
Rating: 15 / R
Character(s): Rose Tyler, The Doctor.
Pairing: Doctor/Rose
Spoilers: Journey’s End, technically.
Notes: Beta-ed by both momdaegmorgan and glory_jean. Thank you both so much :D
Summary: This is all about them.

Chapter One

He was so infuriating, this man. She really hadn't missed that about him. They needed to discuss that, when they had the chance but she got the entirely unsettling feeling that she knew exactly what he was going to do, and she didn't like it one bit. She hadn't come back to him just for him to turn around and send her straight back again. She'd been about to give him a piece of her mind, to say precisely that, when he had silenced her with one of his kisses. He'd always been a fantastic kisser – how could he not have been, what with that oral fixation of his? But the fact that just one kiss from him made her melt, beg for more, didn't exactly make her feel very happy.

Still, maybe she would get some more information out of him when they got to wherever it was they were going.

--oO-x-Oo-

He knew she wasn't happy with him at the moment, and after what he'd just told her he supposed he couldn't really blame her. Fretting, he debated with himself briefly the merits of arguing the point, but for once decided it was better left alone for the now. He would explain everything to her eventually, he promised himself. Just let him have this precious little bit of time alone with her, first.

Eventually he drew to a stop outside a plain wooden door and could not help but grin at the wide-eyed expression in her eyes as she took in where they were.

-oO-x-Oo-

It was their room. The one they had shared from the beginning of their relationship until that fateful day they'd gone to visit her Mum. Memories of the War and the parallel universe crowded into her consciousness memory, and it was all she could do to hold back the tears that quickly filled her eyes. When he touched her arm gently, oh so gently – as if she were a fragile thing, easily broken – and asked if she wanted to go in, she closed her eyes, nodding silently, unable to speak for fear of weeping.

The tears spilt from her eyes anyway and she felt him leaning in to kiss them away. His tone, as he breathed her name, left her in no doubt as to the depth of his feelings for her, that they had not changed one bit, were still just as strong as before. She opened her eyes again to find him looking down at her, his expression soft, tender, full of everything he could not say.

She smiled a tiny smile and the creases of worry around his eyes lessened a little as he held out his hand to her. Remembering everything about what that simple act symbolised for them, she took it, allowing him to lead her into their room.

-oO-x-Oo-

"Do you want to go in?"

He was almost frightened to wait for the answer. It had been a long time for both of them and he had to be prepared for the possibility that she might not to want to go anywhere near the place where they had once been lovers.

When she stopped dead in her tracks, closing her eyes, his hearts sank, taking it as a message that she didn't want to revisit that particular part of their past. He sucked in a breath, trying not to think of how much it hurt, trying only to feel grateful – grateful? – that it would make what he needed to do that much less painful.

Rose's breath hitched suddenly then, catching his attention, and as his head whipped around to look at her, he could see the tears on her face and he swore beneath his breath at himself. Look how useless he was as a friend, let alone as a lover – all he could do was make his Rose cry.

Oh no. No, no, that's not right, he thought, and his body was moving to comfort her even before his mind could process the conscious thought. He cradled her head gently with his hands before leaning in to kiss the tears away, murmuring her name repeatedly under his breath.

He was rewarded almost immediately when she smiled a tiny smile up at him. He smiled gently back at her, with his hand held out in invitation, and when she took it, allowed him to lead her slowly into their room, his hearts lightened considerably.

He was rapidly revising his options too. The longer he spent in her company, the more reluctant he became to go through with his original plan. He could not give her up, he simply couldn't. It would destroy him – and her. But enough of what had to be, for now. He had had his wildest dream granted and he didn't want to waste a single second.

-oO-x-Oo-

He wasn't doing anything and that in itself was strange. The Doctor she'd left had been in the habit of running his mouth off at about a hundred miles an hour, with a corresponding inability to stay still for longer than a few minutes at a time. But this one? All he seemed to do was stand there, staring at her with something of a deer-in-the-headlights look about him, doing, saying, nothing at all.

It was starting to feel uncomfortable, and if he didn't say something soon she would have to consider just walking away. Then an expression crossed his face that managed to say a hundred things at once without him uttering a single word, and she sighed in fond exasperation, squeezing his hand. He blinked, as if coming out of some sort of trance, and smiled brightly down at her.

It seemed to her he had come to some sort of a decision. And as she wondered about what exactly that decision could be, he closed the tiny, tiny gap between them and kissed her.

-oO-x-Oo-

She was looking at him in that strange way she had when he was being particularly obtuse, which he supposed he really couldn't blame her for. He'd appeared to want to continue their relationship where they had left off after all, only to then appear to completely zone out on her. Mixed messages were tricky things and he was rather surprised that she was still there with him.

He shook himself, blinking a lot as he did when he was thinking of what to say – although he forced himself not to run his fingers through his hair (fearing that Rose would misinterpret this). She had squeezed his hand though, so the situation wasn't completely beyond his control, which was good. He wanted her to stay with him, he knew that now. Some other solution was going to have to be worked out about his alter-ego.

Decision made (or so he thought), he smiled brightly – one of his trademark grins, which in his opinion you could never have too many of –and closed the gap between them to kiss her again. As he kissed her, he started to move them closer to the bed. He intended to make love to Rose, but none whatsoever of doing it in anything but comfortable circumstances. His hands, which had been holding her to him, started moving too – on a quest for bare skin.

By the time he got her to the bed he had managed to get that leather jacket she was wearing (he refused, still, to think of how similar to his previous self she'd become, despite the mounting evidence that pointed to precisely that) half off her. His fingers had found their way, finally, underneath her purple sweater-like top – as they had been attempting to do with varying degrees of success (complete and abject failure being the two degrees) since he'd set eyes on her again.

Rose had not been idle either. His jacket was discarded, forgotten about somewhere on the floor, his tie loosened and his shirt unbuttoned. Her hands were on his skin, splayed against his chest, and if he were to die and regenerate right now, he would be a happy man. He didn't want her to move her hands at all but he knew that if he wanted to get any further – and as he felt Rose grind her hips into his, felt his corresponding reaction, he knew he did – he'd have no choice.

Just as he moved his hands to cover hers, she moved one of hers to cup him through his trousers and he found himself unable to do anything except moan into her mouth, thrusting fruitlessly against her hand, leaving both of them in no doubt at all about what he wanted to be doing. The next thing he was aware of was her smiling against his mouth as he tried to express through a kiss what he had never yet managed to do in words. Then he found himself gasping for breath as he felt his trousers being unfastened and her hot little human hand fondling and caressing him.

It felt even more marvellous than he remembered, and if she kept this up for too much longer the bed might end up being redundant. He'd forgotten – well, he'd made himself forget, which was almost the same thing but not quite – how much he'd missed her, missed her hands on him. He couldn't believe he was willingly considering giving it up. As if on cue, Rose removed her hand from where she'd been caressing him and he groaned into her mouth at the loss of contact.

And then Rose broke the kiss.