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“Be careful what you wish for,” Rose’s mother says after putting her to bed early with a sore tummy.
It all starts when Jackie gives her a chocolate bar after school. Rose sulks when she isn’t allowed another before tea time and then, while Jackie nips to the neighbours, Rose constructs an elaborate system of plastic chairs and jenga blocks, whereby she can reach the top shelf in the kitchen. There, she finds the wealth of chocolate and, a little drunk on smug- and greediness, she steals every last chocolate bar to her bedroom.
Jackie finds her curled up on her bed, surrounded by a halo of scrunched wrappers, tiny hands clutching at her stomach, face pink and swollen from crying.
At seven years old, Rose learns that sometimes fulfilled wishes aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
***
The very second that his image fades on Bad Wolf Bay, Rose wishes that the he will return to her. She wishes that he’ll profess his love for her and swaddle her in his coat, protect her from the chill with a warm kiss.
Before too long – her wishing and longing and whining being fruitless – she sets out to find a solution. There are years of tireless work before she finally gets back to him.
And then they’re together again, on Bad Wolf Bay, exactly how she wished all those years ago.
When the new Doctor wraps his arms around her and presses his lips to hers, she feels a pang of pain in her stomach. It feels oddly familiar.
***
In the beginning, when the half-Time Lord, half-human Doctor and Rose move into a one bedroom flat together, both are too busy to notice the gaping hole between them. The first month of their new life together is full of distractions like introductions to friends, catching up on one another’s adventure stories and lots of experimental sex (they're surprised to discover that they like it equally as filthy as each other). But in the second month, their indifferences become something of an elephant in the room.
There’s this barrier between them, a physical force, like two negative poles pushing one another away. The Doctor seems to have blurred lines between his definitions of sex and love, so often he’ll wordlessly move his hand up Rose’s thigh and she goes with it, because they’re just so good at making each other come.
She puts his incessant need for sex down to a result of his newly formed human libido.
It’s another reminder that he’s not the man she fell in love with.
***
She still loves him – she’s almost certain – but not in the way she used to.
She’s heard that absence makes the heart grow fonder but thinks that absence makes the heart grow might be more accurate. Because that’s what the issue is, really: she’s grown, and he’s grown, and they’ve lived their lives apart for six years and even though he scrunches his nose the same, and she still catches her tongue between her teeth in thought, they’re different people now.
Rose isn’t a companion anymore, she’s the leading lady, and she’s had all these experiences and solved so many alien-related problems, because Torchwood are happy for her to take the reins on missions – they encourage her to – while the Doctor always refused to give her even an ounce of control.
He still talks to her like she’s that doe-eyed 19-year-old sales assistant and she hates it.
***
She manages to swindle the Doctor a job in Torchwood but to his dismay, it’s in IT; far away from any of the exciting timey-wimey, alien-bashing, world-saving stuff that he craves. He almost laughs in Rose’s face when she tells him brightly that he’ll have his own desk and a company laptop. He wants to slam his fist on a table and say You remember who I am, right? The Oncoming Storm, The Destroyer of Worlds. I’m The Doctor, for crying out loud.
But he figures the lack of work required at Torchwood will allow him full focus on his own private project.
***
Soon, every small thing he does annoys her to no end.
The milk is in the last thing to go in a cuppa, not the first, the toilet paper faces out, not in and the tomato sauce goes in the cupboard, not the fridge, God damnit.
One evening, she throws a toilet roll at the back of his head and he pounces on her. On the floor, they wrestle for dominance. They do this sometimes – play fight, that is – because it’s socially acceptable to leave love bites on your partner’s neck. Plus, they both enjoy it (they found that out in the first week of being together in a post-coital debrief where Rose whispered abashedly you can be rougher if you want) and it reminds them that although there may not be unbridled love there anymore, there’s other, more tangible things, like passion and attraction and lust.
With the sharp stinging of the Doctor’s bite on her collarbone, Rose is grateful to know that she’s still capable of feeling some things.
***
Rose notices the way he’s never still. Always counting, shifting, cognizing, never resting. When they watch TV, he bounces his knee and Rose has to put her hand on his leg to remind him that being bored while watching telly isn’t normal.
But she knows, even though he’s different, he’ll never be completely human. You can’t dull a Time Lord’s inherent sense of time passing. Not even if you duplicate them and remove one of their hearts.
***
A month into the Doctor’s time at Torchwood, Rose's manager tells her that he can tailor her and the Doctor's shifts so that they have the same days off.
She says it sounds like too much hassle and not to worry about it.
***
She catches him stealing little things, every now and then, slipping them into his pocket inconspicuously. She only says something about it when he’s nicked the toilet plunger and when she does, he goes all red and flustered and if they could still link telepathically, Rose is certain she’d be able to hear him internally cursing his weak part-human physiological reactions.
“Taking up part time work as a plumber?” she asks, fingers curling around the doorframe of the living room.
The drawer he’s rifling through slams shut but Rose has already seen its contents: the toilet plunger, a thermometer, a USB cable, a pestle and mortar, a handful of paperclips and an earring of hers (so that’s where it went).
“What’s going on, Doctor?”
She can read his face, knows he’s mulling over his options in his head – he forgets that she knows him so well – and when she arches an eyebrow, it reminds him of getting a telling off from his mother and the truth comes spilling out.
“I’m building a ship.”
It’s both exactly what she expects and completely out of the blue. She strides into the room (has to refrain from skipping) and hates that the possibility of travelling again has reduced her to a frolicking school girl. Her fingers wrap around his arm and she feels the rhythmic pulse of his heart in his elbow ditch.
“I can’t wait.”
“Well, hold on,” he says, cowering away slightly. “I’m going out on my own.”
Rose laughs into his shoulder. “Yeah, good one.”
“I’m not joking.”
And in that moment, she swears she loathes him.
“Are you mad?”
“I’ll soon be if I live here much longer,” he whirls his finger around the room. “It won’t be for long. Just a couple of days every now and then.”
“Why do you have to be alone?”
He sighs, deep and heavy. “Rose. I love you, you know that. My love for you exceeds the comprehension of any and all language. But being here, living a static human life… it’s mind-numbingly tedious. I don’t want to grow old slowly resenting you.” He moves forward, places the very tips of his fingers on her forearm and she flinches like he’s made of ice. “I think this will be good for us.”
She stares straight into his pupils, feels a cramp tugging in her abdomen. And she walks away.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m not letting you do this to me again,” she replies, her voice thinning away through twisted hallways.
A bang comes from the bedroom. He debates whether to validate her tantrum with his interest. When he does eventually let his feet lead him to her, Rose is hunching over a suitcase and launching books and socks and toiletries into it.
“Where are you going?” He repeats, even though he knows better; she gets irritated when she has to say the same thing twice.
“I’m not letting you do this to me again,” she says without bitterness.
He scratches the back of his ear. Something inside him aches because his tried-and-tested tactic to annoy her fails.
“This is all utterly unfair,” he says.
“Unfair?”
“Yes.”
“Why’s that then?” she asks, throwing a deodorant can into the suitcase.
“Because you’re not really angry at me.”
“Is that right?”
“You’re not angry at me. You’re angry at him.”
Rose clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and shrugs.
“No. I’m angry with you.”
“Why? I haven’t done anything.”
“Exactly. Don’t pretend like you’re the only one who’s drawn the short end of the stick.”
“I’m stuck here, Rose,” he scoffs. “I’ve been banished against my will.”
“So have I!” She actually stomps her foot on the ground. “I’ve been here for six years already.”
And it’s all your fault, she doesn’t say. I could’ve been content with shopping lists, rush hour traffic, council tax, takeaway dinners, but you had to come along and show me the whole universe and then get me trapped here. You’ve ruined me for another life. She keeps it all inside, though, because it’ll only pet his ego to know he has such effects on her.
“It’s not the same,” he says.
Rose shoves her shoulder against his as she returns to the front room. He follows closely behind.
“Is that because of your evolutionarily superior brain?”
“Something like that.”
“Well guess what, Doctor?” she snarls, turning on her heel and jabbing him in the chest with a surprisingly hard solid finger. “You’re like me now. Just some boring old human with one heart and an inferiority complex.”
He lets out a pained grunt and he’s not sure if it’s in response to the poke or what she said or the realisation that she’s changed. He pushes at her shoulders – not with all his strength – and she falls somewhat pathetically onto the arm chair. There’s a moment where they just stare at each other. An unspoken conversation. They’re well versed in the practice of transmitting sexual interest just through eye contact. Rose sends a kick the Doctor’s way. He grabs her ankle before it hits him and uses it to yank her onto the floor.
He collapses on top of her, jamming his tongue inside her mouth without a moment’s hesitation. She wraps her legs around his waist and squeezes hard with her thighs.
“You’ll miss this if you leave,” he growls.
“Beg to differ.”
The Doctor tears her blouse.
“That was expensive!”
“I. Don’t. Care.”
He pushes her bra up and takes her nipple between his teeth. Her toes slip under the waistband of his trousers and pants, pushing them down to his knees.
The Doctor leans up, discards his garments fully. He springs free and Rose can’t help but admire him. “Stop staring and take your knickers off.”
“You take them off.”
Rose rests the flat of her feet against his thighs and pushes up, so when he peels her knickers off, he gets an eyeful of how turned on she is. When he drives himself inside of her, they’re silent, both stubborn enough to keep in all the screams of pleasure in the other’s favour, and the room fills with muffled grunts and groans and the wet squelch of the Doctor’s cock pumping in and out of Rose.
She bites his neck in the same spot over and over, harder and harder, only stops when she tastes the metallic bitterness of his blood. The Doctor hisses and turns her over so her chest is against the floor, his neck out of her reach.
“Cannibal.”
Rose’s cheek scours against the carpet as he thrusts mercilessly. The friction makes her skin hot and irritated but the way he’s moving makes for delightful pressure on her clit. She’s mewling now, her worries of feeding his masculine pride burning away as helpless, throaty hnggggs escape her lips.
He brings her body up slightly, rests his hand at the base of her neck and she reaches back to dig her fingers into his stomach. He clenches his hand around her throat – not too hard, not too soft, just right, the way he knows she likes – and then she’s coming, her words strangled by the Doctor’s hand, so they come out in half-words ck me, ck me doctr yuh like tha uh uh yuh yuh. When her spasms subside, they shift so they’re chest to chest again. She looks up at him with just-fucked, droopy eyelids and licks her lips.
He’s right; she would miss this. But is sex a good enough reason to stay?
“You fuck me so good, Doctor,” she groans and he knows she’s putting on her porn voice to help him along but it’s working. If he wasn’t so absorbed in chasing his orgasm, he would say she looks almost bored. She presses a shaky finger up to the purple mess she made on his neck. “Come on me, Doctor.”
He pulls out, batters himself, concentrating on the filth coming from Rose’s mouth. She brings her own hand in between her legs, fucks herself with her fingers and it sounds wet and sloppy and with one final squeeze, he spills over her breasts. A few rogue spurts land on Rose’s blouse.
“Fuck sake,” she says as she wipes a finger over the stain developing on the chiffon. “I suppose I wasn’t going to be able to fix this anyway.”
***
They take turns for bathroom trips (Rose gets priority) and regroup together in bed. They speak a little before they sleep but it’s nothing consequential or even particularly interesting, just divvying out menial household tasks and deciding when to visit Rose’s parents later in the week.
They fall asleep, their arms touching – but not reaching or curling around – one another and it’s okay. It’s not exactly the make-up sex the Doctor has seen in films but it’s a step in the right direction.
***
When the Doctor wakes up in the morning, he’s alone in the bed. He tells himself that Rose has just popped to the shops to get some milk, even when it starts to get dark outside and all of her clothes are missing from the wardrobe.