Work Text:
His mouth travels down the plank of her stomach and feels the jump of her muscles as she sucks in a breath. Her fingernails scratch his scalp in encouragement and oh, how he’s missed this. The salty taste of her skin and the smell of apples and the crisp air of fall, and something else that he can’t place because its new.
A whole month he’s been away from her, ordered to an assignment in France’s fledgling Torchwood where they had a backlog of alien tech the size of the TARDIS (on the inside). Pete apologizes when he calls him with the orders but insists it has to be him and no, Rose has to stay behind to run their Cardiff branch as usual. It’s the longest they’ve been separated since being left here in this world four years ago and neither cares for it. Nightly phone calls are so inadequate and the moment he comes through the door at midnight she is trotting down the stairs to wrap herself around him.
And now here he is, home, finally, letting his tongue taste the inside of her thigh and then he hooks said thigh over his shoulder. His mouth moves to her center, gently sucking and running his tongue along tender flesh. Her hips rock beneath him and he hears a hum from the back of her throat, fingers tightening on his hair. He explores deeper, but then blinks as he pulls away slightly and furrows his brows. Something’s off - something’s there in the sweat and arousal that wasn’t there before. He shrugs it off and delves back in, but then his head snaps back up. He smacks his tongue against the roof of his mouth, calculating. He squints and smacks his tongue again.
“Doctor?”
“You taste different,” he blurts out.
He glances up at her, then. She looks a little disgusted with a scrunched brow and pouted lips.
“What?”
“You taste different. And there’s a smell—”
“I smell?”
“Well, it’s not bad just not usual.”
“Seriously? What, did you want me to shower or something?”
He ignores the question and licks at her experimentally. He hears her head flop back in exasperation rather than pleasure, while he mumbles about increased progesterone levels and HCG. Then he jumps back onto his haunches, his jaw drops, and he stares down at her.
“No way.”
Her jaw jets out, while her fingers scratch at her temple. She stares up at him with impatient eyes and raised brows.
“What?”
“You’re pregnant.”
“No I’m not. Don’t be daft.”
“No, no, no. Yes you are. Your hormones, Rose, they’re different. That’s why your smell, your taste are different.”
He moves forward suddenly, running his nose up her torso as he breathes her in, as if double checking his hypothesis.
“Oi! Get off of me.”
She practically growls it as she shoves him off her. He nearly tumbles off the bed, while she heads to the loo and slams the door behind her. He sits up and stares at the open bedroom door, listening for movement in the loo. There’s none and he realizes his jaw is still hanging open. He snaps it shut and shoves his fingers through his hair.
A baby? All he can see is his long lost children, Susan, the short lived Jenny and that ache he never wants to feel again. But this is Rose. He can see her in his mind swelling with a life they’ve created - a beautiful impossible life. He can see a little brown haired girl with her mothers wide grin toddling towards him to grip his leg just as clearly as how he used to see timelines click into place.
Blimey.
He pushes himself out of the bed and drags on a pair of pajama bottoms mid-stride to the loo. He leans against the door frame, centimeters from the white door.
“Rose?” He calls.
He reaches for the knob but then the white door scratches against the frame as it flies open. She’s wrapped up in her dressing gown, arms crossed around her middle, and stares up at him.
“We’ve never talked about this. Kids, I mean,” she says. “Wasn’t even sure if you were human enough to be compatible. You never said-”
“You never asked.”
“So this is my fault?”
“What? No! I mean, fault, implies that some wrong has happened. A mistake. And I don’t…” He trails off looking at her glassy eyes. “You think it’s a mistake?”
“I don’t know. Never really thought about it, did I? I knew what promising you forever meant a long time ago. I knew this wasn’t part of it.”
“Yeah, but we’re different now. I’m different.”
“Are you? You still can’t sit still. If we don’t go on regular holidays you get completely impossible-”
“I do not!”
“We can’t drag a baby around on a zeppelin for two months. Or rough it in the Amazon for a month with a toddler in tow.”
“So, we don’t travel for a few years. Or for shorter stretches. It’s fine-”
“And what about me? What about my job? I love my job. And I don’t want to give that up. I won’t.”
“Who’s asking you to?” He asks. “This doesn’t have to change anything-”
“Doctor, it changes everything. It’s a baby. Things will change.”
“Okay. Yes. Things will change and we’ll have to…adapt. But adapting doesn’t mean giving something up completely. It just means a little more…improvising. Compromising.”
“But is that fair to it? Us living our lives the way we do? How could I be a good mum always swanning off to some threat or disaster?”
“You’d be a brilliant mum. Just look at - and don’t tell Jackie this, but look at the role model you had,” he says. “Your mother is a force of nature. Sometime a terrifying one, mind, but she loves you and Tony so fiercely. And I know you have that in you. I’ve seen it. You’d. You’d be a beautiful mum.”
She blinks and he can’t quite read her expression. But her arms loosen from her middle and he sees her throat work as she swallows.
“You…you want a baby?”
“Well, I…I hadn’t really thought about it either, but now that its happened. I suppose, yeah, I do.”
“But, when you told me about Jenny you said you couldn’t do that again. I thought that meant-”
“It did. At the time it did,” he says. “But now, I can see the possibility of her and-”
“Her?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’m only about seventy percent sure about that. Well, I say seventy, but its more like sixty-five. Sixty-four.”
“And what do you mean see the possibility?”
“A potential timeline. Not that my time sense is what it used to be, but if I concentrate…”
“And what do you see?”
He steps closer and meets her wide eyed gaze. His hand slips into her dressing gown until he palms the skin of her abdomen and then closes his eyes. There was a time he would have been able to feel the jar of a new time line the minute of conception, but with these ruddy human senses he has to search it out - narrowing his mind to one thought until there she is. He grins.
“A little girl. Two years old. Two and half. Brown hair. Your nose. And mouth. My eyes. Your laugh. Oh, but she’s clever. Of course no surprise there, I mean just look at her dad.”
He feels the playful slap to his arm and hears her muttered “git.”
“Oi! I’m your git and you love it,” he says opening his eyes.
He doesn’t find the cheeky grin that he heard in her voice, but a trembling bottom lip and tears filling the corners of her eyes. He pulls her into him with a distressed noise and clutches her back, feeling her shaky breath.
“I hadn’t even thought about this and now its just happened,” she says against him.
He huffs against her hair. She’s not ready and maybe he isn’t either. They really hadn’t talked about this since they’ve been so consumed with each other and Torchwood and adventuring whenever they can.
“If you’re not ready, then, we won’t go through with it,” he says, but it just makes her sob against him. “I know you’re the one that has to make the immediate sacrifices, I do. But after, we’d even it out.”
She lets out a watery laugh.
“What you gonna stay home with a baby while I go save the world?”
“Could be. Not exactly your average 21st century male here. Not tied to the same gender constructions you lot are. In fact, if we were in the 51st century I could even be the pregnant one. Fancy that, eh?”
She pulls back to look at him, a small smile gracing her lips and slight roll of her eyes.
“You’re mad.”
“You still love me though,” he says, as he lifts his fingers to wipe at the wetness of her cheeks.
“Yeah, I do,” she says. “I want to go the Hub first thing and run a test to be sure-”
“I am sure-”
“I know, but I can’t see it or…taste it like you. I need to see for myself.”
“Okay. Might have to swipe some things from Owen’s med-bay, but then we should be able to do everything in my lab.”
“Okay. And then, then, we’ll figure out our next move, yeah? When, how, to tell everyone.”
He flashes the same manic grin he gave her after emerging from fire and dark leather.
“Oh, yes.”
He pulls her to him. He can still feel her uncertainty under his hands as he rubs at the tension in her shoulder blades. But they’ll figure it out. They have to. They always do.