"This is wrong. It's all wrong. I'm too early." Rose can't stop turning in place, taking in everything that's different about this TARDIS: the sterile white walls and floor, the hard-edged console, the viewscreen opposite where she's standing. Yet so much is the same — the room is still honeycombed with roundels, and the console still looks like a half-finished mess of blinking lights and partially stripped wires. And there's the Doctor, looking at her as curiously as she's looking at her surroundings. A younger Doctor Rose recognises from photographs, though she's not sure which one. Even so, the mass of curly hair and the preposterously long striped scarf are unmistakable. "In my experience, 'early' is a relative concept," says the Doctor. "You're probably wondering 'relative to what, exactly,' but that's a much longer conversation." Rose chuckles. "Well, at least now I'm sure I found the right man." "Just a moment ago you said everything was wrong." "It is. Oh, trust me to cock it up completely. Sixty minutes before Control's going to drag me back, and I find you, but you're not you. Not the you I was looking for." "I see," says the Doctor, and rocks back and forth on his heels thoughtfully. "And this other me, he looks like ..." "Not telling you that," she says, but quirks her head at him, noticing something long-lost and familiar. "Funny, though. Your eyes ..." She touches his face gently with the tips of her fingers, brushing aside chestnut curls that have strayed too close to his cheek. "Your eyes ... they were just like this when I first met you. I'm so used to the brown, now — never thought I'd see these again." The Doctor doesn't shy away from her touch, which is both surprising and reassuring. When he speaks, his voice is soft and low, but all Rose can concentrate on is the ice-blue of his eyes. "What are you doing here, Miss ...?" "I can't find him," she says. She sucks in a breath. "Will you take me to him?" "The TARDIS is in no condition to travel right now, I'm afraid. You caught me mid-repair." The Doctor covers Rose's hand with his, interlocking their fingers and moving the hand from his cheek, but he doesn't let go. "I'm sorry, I must ask: exactly what sort of relationship do you have with me?" Rose bites down on her lower lip and finally tears her gaze away from the Doctor's eyes. "It's hard to explain. But I need him. I need you." "I'm not him yet." "You will be," Rose says, and makes her decision. "And until then, I'm gonna take what I can get." She startles him with her kiss, but it doesn't take long before he's pulling her close against him and kissing back just as forcefully. He always was a quick learner, Rose thinks. Rose drags him down the hallway by his scarf, tossing a loop of it around her neck and walking backwards, giggling and holding the scarf ends in her hands like reins. Halfway to his bedroom, the Doctor stops, pressing her against the roundelled wall to kiss her again, savouring the way she slides her tongue over his, the way she pulls back to lick his lips and nip at his throat. When she flicks his reins and draws him further along the hallway, the Doctor says, "I could have sworn my bedroom was on the opposite side of the ship this morning." Rose sparkles a smile at him. "The TARDIS likes me," she says. "My name is Rose." The Doctor curls the end of his scarf around Rose's wrists, twisting it into a knot to bind her to the bed. "Tighter," she says, and he adds another knot. He winds the scarf around her head, folding it in thirds as a blindfold, and drags its rough woolen edge across the soft skin at her neck. Rose shivers, taking in a short, quick breath and licking her lips. "Lift your arms," he says. Rose complies, the scarf end tugging her wrists close to a bedpost. She wraps her hands around the lacquered wood. The scarf continues looping over and around her naked body. The Doctor is cool against her back, pressing kisses into her shoulderblades and tickling her with the scarf's tassels. Rose arches her back when the scarf, as well as a hand, slide between her legs for the first time. "You're tied to me now, yeah?" she asks, sighing as the Doctor slips a finger beneath the scarf and inside her cunt, warm and wet. "You're not going anywhere," he murmurs. "I can promise you that." Another finger joins the first and slowly starts to move. Rose shifts her leg backwards, over the Doctor's, feeling knitted fabric looped around his thigh as confirmation he'd been telling the truth. She moans when his fingers find a steady rhythm, and louder still when he brushes his thumb across her clit, flicking it slowly in time with the motions of his fingers. "Don't ... don't let me go," she pants. The Doctor wriggles an arm beneath her, reaching for her breasts and rubbing lightly, pinching her nipples. "No," he says. "No, of course not." And then Rose feels him remove his fingers from his cunt and thrust his way inside her, shallow at first, then deeper when he grips her thigh for leverage. The scarf's stitches scratch at her, itchy little pinpricks on tender skin. But when Rose cries out, it's in pleasure and not in pain, the scarf's presence a tether to the Doctor instead of a distraction. Even if she can't see him, she can feel him surrounding her, inside her, his skin warming from her body, his tongue lapping sweat from her neck. Her bonds tauten when he withdraws, preparing to thrust again, and when he plunges into her, the knitted fabric he's looped around himself presses hard against her. At last he shudders stiffly at her back, slumping next to her, releasing his grip on her thigh, and fussing with the scarf in a way Rose realises, to her disappointment, means he's unwinding it from himself. "No," she whimpers. "Not yet." "Shh," says the Doctor, and then Rose feels the scarf loop around and around her leg, and hears the Doctor tie it to a post at the foot of the bed. She's now spread diagonally across the sheets, immobilized by knitted wool, and the Doctor grasps a hank at her knee. "I told you I wouldn't let go. Besides, we're not finished here," he adds, and Rose bucks against his lips when she feels them seal around her clit. She's at his mercy, bound so tightly she can only flex one leg while the Doctor's tongue and fingers explore inside her. He doesn't tease her for long, the thrashes of her body giving away just how close she is to coming; he simply licks broad strokes around her clit, then short flicks across it, until the pleasure overtakes Rose so quickly she has to beg him to stop, suddenly too sensitive to be touched. The Doctor prises off Rose's blindfold, and she blinks while her eyes adjust to the light, dim as it is. "Thank you," she says quietly. "My dear girl," he replies, "I think I should be thanking you. Before you showed up, I had a long afternoon of soldering planned, and this was considerably more enjoyable." Rose grins at him. "Better have been." There's another prickling on her skin now, more electric than the touch of the scarf, a tingling sensation she recognises with dismay. "Oh. Oh no. How long have I been here?" "About an hour. Fifty-eight minutes and thirty-two seconds, to be precise." "Oh, bugger. Naked it is, then." Rose peers down at her bended knee and can just barely begin to make out the folds of the blanket through her thigh. The prickling intensifies, and she knows she's only got seconds left. "Please, Doctor. Please, tell yourself — your tenth self — tell him I'm ..." Rose fades away before she can finish. She leaves behind her favourite leather jacket and a striped scarf, once tightly knotted, now slack in overlapping folds, upon the rumpled sheets. | ||||
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