Gift horses and dire warnings

Move along, nothing of any literary value to view here. This is pretty much smut with no real plot to it. Set just before Fear Her, in which Silver Sniper pointed out they have a very "freshly fucked" giddiness to them. Thanks to Silver for beta'ing and Lamia for pre-reading.

He was doing it again. Even with her back to him, Rose knew The Doctor was staring at her; wide, brown eyes unblinking as she wriggled around under the TARDIS console, looking for the mobile phone she'd just dropped. Technically, he was staring at her arse - and technically, she was overdoing the wiggling. At least she couldn't be accused of dropping the phone on purpose. That was down to his jerky steering of the machine.

Rose wasn't sure when things had started to change. The atmosphere had been intense since they left behind the impossible planet, intense in a different way to normal. It'd only got worse since that incident last week - the one where he surprised her in a dash from the shower to her room, soaking wet and wrapped only in a stamp-sized towel (she'd left the proper one on her bed, hence the need to dash). For the first time ever she'd seen the glow of a blush on his cheeks, and found him stammering for words. She'd just kept running, collapsing into stifled giggles when the door to her room was shut behind her.

Flirting with the Doctor was a part of life, alongside hand-holding and hugging, but she'd sort of come to the conclusion that he might not have much of sex drive. She'd seen he had the right parts on a few occasions, but he'd never given any indication that he was at all attracted to her (or anyone else, she was pleased to note) in thatway. So whatever feelings he might harbour for her - feelings she was quite sure he'd stubbornly refuse to vocalise - their relationship would never develop past the friendship-with-added-flirting-thing they had going. After all, she had no idea whether Time Lords had sex, or any idea how they reproduced, and there was no one around to ask. She was once tempted to ask him, just to witness his prudish reaction, but decided it wasn't worth the awkwardness, and the TARDIS library was annoyingly lacking on the subject. She guessed that a machine built to be used by one species wouldn't need reference material about the same species, but it was still a pain in the arse.

Except now he seemed to actually be showing hints of what she presumed was sexual attraction. That was the only way she could explain his sudden interest in her bum, and her chest, and tongue, and thighs.

Deciding she'd teased him enough, she grasped the phone and slid back out from under the console, keeping her back to him so he had time to wipe the glazed-eye, slack-jawed expression from his face. She'd caught sight of it several times over the past week in the mirrors over the console, and although it still thrilled her, she wasn't in the mood today to dance around the tension between them. If she pretended it wasn't there, if she didn't know he'd been staring, then they could just get on with their day, and she could get into the shower at the end of it and relieve some of it.

"So why exactly did you slam the brakes on so hard then?" she asked, pretending to check her eyeliner in the mirror. He was away with the fairies, his gaze still intently memorising her backside. The Doctor was definitely an arse man. Who knew? "Did you forget something?"

His mouth moved several times, opening and closing before he rejoined the land of the living, the spark returning to his expression. He was excited about something. Something other than her - this was normal Doctor excitement, the kind that meant there was adventure and probably danger waiting for them.

She couldn't help but return his smile, feeling the excitement bubble up inside her too.

"Well," he began, and she couldn't help following the movement of his tongue with her gaze. "You know the fellow who upset your mum the other day?"

"That creep," Rose spat, her anticipation sparking instantly into anger. The Doctor'd had to listen to her make various threats against the bloke for hours. "What about him?"

"I've just found him. Do you want to have a word?"

'***'

The confrontation with Elton hadn't gone exactly as Rose had planned, and the adrenaline was still flowing when she stomped back into the TARDIS. She ranted to the Doctor for a little while, until she realised he'd been silent for an entire minute. The Doctor did not dosilence.

"Are you okay?" she asked, turning to find him still just inside the TARDIS door, leaning back against it, the weight of the world on his shoulders and in his eyes.

"That thing - the Beast, or Satan, or whatever it wanted to be called. It said you were going to die in battle."

It took Rose a moment to remember the Beast's prediction, on the planet that had circled the black hole. "It said I was going to die and it was going to live. Kinda gave Mystic Meg a run for being a crap fortune teller." She rolled her eyes, brushing it off like she'd thought he would.

"It was right about other things."

Rose was not in the mood for dealing with an emotionally fragile Doctor. He didn't normally take this stuff to heart, so why now? "The way people felt, not things that were going to happen. Right at that moment, I probably did think I was going to die fighting. I almost did. Doesn't mean I actually will. I'm more likely to get murdered by my mum for not dropping in often enough."

He pouted, hands in his pockets and his shoulder slumped. "I just feel like I should be taking better care of you."

"I can take care of myself."

"Can you?" he murmured. "Just today we ran into that thing -" he pulled a face at the memory of the Abzorbaloff "- and if I'd put a little bit more thought into it, we could have avoided it completely."

"Believe me, being absorbed by that thing is not on my list of good ways to die, but if we hadn't been there, Elton would have been killed by it and it would have gone on to kill other people too. I trust that you wouldn't have let it...absorb me."

"Do you?"

"Yeah. I trust you with my life. Don't you know that by now?"

To give her words sincerity she had to meet his gaze, and meeting his gaze meant falling into his eyes and not being ready to let go. The expression in those eyes changed from concern, to gratitude, to something heated in the space of a few heartbeats, and Rose took a step back, deliberately breaking the link.

"I need to shower. You figure out where you're taking us next."

She practically ran out of the control room and into the corridor, glad that the bathroom was only a few turns away in the maze of TARDIS rooms. She'd never thought she'd find herself running away from the Doctor when he looked quite so...heated...but she'd read situations wrong with him before. She definitely didn't want to do that again, not if her intention was to throw herself at him. "Figure out where you're taking us next," she muttered to herself. "Like a library that could actually tell me whether Time Lords are the teensiest bit interested in sex, or whether it's my own frustration that's got me imagining things."

Her shower - after she checked she'd definitely brought a proper towel with her this time - was fast and cold. Her fingers needed a break and if she was going to spending the rest of the evening with the Doctor anyway, self-relief wasn't going to help. She'd just got her hair towelled and combed out when there was a knock on the door.

She froze in the act of rubbing her calves dry and peered at the door like it would suddenly grant her the option of seeing through it to whoever was on the other side. After a few seconds of silence, she decided she must have imagined it and began drying herself off again.

Her toenails needed painting. The blue had all but chipped off. Should she do them in blue again, or go for the sparkly red this time?

Another knock. "Who's there?" Stupid question. Barring an invasion of the TARDIS - she wrapped the towel around herself defensively - there was only one other person on board. A person who had never before come to interrupt her shower...although one who hadbeen around lately whenever she got out of the shower.

"Rose, can I come in?"

The oddness of the question left her stammering, asking for him to repeat it, even as she pulled the towel even tighter, making sure it was tucked in properly so if she moved her hands it wouldn't fall away.

"I said, can I come in?"

For some reason she glanced down at her legs, freshly shaved and nicely tanned after a recent pitstop to a planet with a lot of beaches.

"If you want?"

The door was flung open so hard that it bounced off the tiles and Rose was yelling "Careful!" before she could catch herself. Then she remembered she was stood, half-wet and half-naked, in front of a very frenzied looking Doctor.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"No, I'm really not." He licked his bottom lip and pulled at his tie, which was already loosened. "Ever since the Beast said what he did, I've been going mad, wondering if I am destined to lose you, if when I do it will be my fault. Because we don't have eternity ahead of us - I have no idea how long I've got with you and I'm terrified of the day I have to say goodbye. What will I do without you?"

"Wow."

It was the only word - if it even counted as a word - that Rose could come up with at that moment in time. The Doctor seemed to take that as an invitation to continue babbling.

"I've lost a lot of people before and that's changed how close I allow myself to get to anyone, and that's not fair on you. Quite frankly, I've lost the will to keep doing it. If I only have you for a brief amount of time, then I need to be making the most of it, don't I? I know I might not always seem like I am...interested...in you -"

"Besides the flirting?"

"We flirt?" He seemed genuinely surprised.

"We flirt."

"Oh." He seemed to take a moment to add this to his version of reality, his eyebrows doing that arching thing, then carried on. "Well, besides the flirting, I think I may have held you at arms length and concealed how, um, amorous I feel about you."

It was the most uncomfortable declaration of feelings she'd ever witnessed and still nowhere near close enough to him finally telling her that he loved her. Still, Rose Tyler wasn't the type of girl to look a gift horse in the mouth.

So she kissed him.

It was a fierce kiss but it only took the Doctor a millisecond to respond, and a good portion of the fierceness was coming from him. Teeth and noses bumped as they explored, the newness of it all making them clumsy, but it didn't diminish the raw power of the kiss. He had her pressed up against the wall, the tiles cold against her bare shoulders and back, which made her aware of how low the towel had slipped. His long fingers were wrapped around her shoulders, tight but not painful, like he had to hold onto her to make sure she didn't slip away or he didn't fall. She understood that completely; it was why one hand was clutching the front of his suit and the other was curled up in the hair at the nape of his neck.

For a long, glorious moment, it was about his mouth on hers. Though Rose was all too conscious of the ifs and buts of their relationship, she let them fall away, dropping them like discarded clothes to be picked up later. For now, she just wanted to experience.

The fierceness couldn't last forever and after a time it melted into something softer, sweeter. There was still an intensity behind it all, which was why Rose didn't release her grip on the Doctor. He seemed quite happy that she was wasn't going anywhere and his hands slipped down from her shoulders, ghosting down her arms to her hips. While she was still caught up in that thing he did with his tongue - he'd apparently picked up skills over the years - his clever, elegant fingers tugged at her towel.

She was distracted enough that she didn't even realise her towel was gone until those fingers found their way onto damp, bare skin, and she pulled away to gasp.

"That's not fair, is it?" she asked, tugging at his tie. She'd never been any good at getting them undone.

His grin was bright and cheeky, though his expression was too impassioned to be boyish. His gaze kept flicking down her body then leaping back up, like he thought he shouldn't be looking and was scared of getting caught.

"By all means, do what you feel you must to rectify the situation," he said. She fumbled with the tie again, the knot refusing to loosen.

"Always with the big words," she said.

"You'll have to try harder," he replied. "Takes a lot to shut me up."

"I have my tricks." She flashed him a grin of her own, giving up on the tie, using it to pull him back to her mouth. "Tell you what, you get this tie off and I'll show you some."

He didn't need telling twice. He had the tie, suit jacket and his socks off before she'd finished undoing the buttons on his shirt. His trousers were a joint effort, though her wandering hands might have been more of a hindrance, and they disappeared over his shoulder to join the other flung-away garments. She left the shirt in place, nuzzling into his neck instead, enjoying the warmth of him just above his pulsepoint and how he seemed more potent just there. The Doctor always smelled clean, a freshness that was more than just soap, but there he was heady and vital.

His hands found their holy grail, cupping her bum, squeezing lightly and tracing small circles on her skin. She let him be lulled by her soft touches under the hem of his shirt, capturing his mouth again while she explored his skin. He didn't feel like other men, his skin cooler and smoother - definitely less hair than she was expecting. She avoided touching her holy grail though, moving from his thighs to his belly, so she could feel his impatience through the kiss. She had warned him. He leaned into her again, dipping her head back so he could control the kiss, and she broke the it, dropping to her knees instead.

It was a good thing the towel was there to absorb most of the shock to her knees. Her muffled grunt was lost in his yelp as she wrapped her lips around him.

"Oh, that's -" he began, but the rest of his words lost in a moan. She glanced up at him and cocked an eyebrow. If he thought this was cheating, he didn't understand the rules.

Rose had a chance to really look at him now. He was all long and pale like the rest of him, although thankfully nowhere near as skinny. In full working order, thank you very much. He buried his hands in her hair and let her explore. He was far from silent as she worked (and maybe it wasn't fair to call it work, because she was enjoying this too), moaning and mumbling and letting out all those Doctor-y sounds. Lots of 'well's and 'oh yes's and a dozen other things that didn't make sense. But did he ever? The intelligibility of his little outbursts was decreasing though, so she needed to move things along.

She was back on her feet and pushing his shirt off before he had chance to blink.

"Now, that's reallyunfair," he protested, pushing her into the wall again, and now they were all skin to skin, not a thread between them.

"This is foreplay, Doctor." She licked along his collarbone and thrilled at his sharp breath. "Not sure what you're used to, but where I'm from, it's just a warm-up for the main event. A taster. A teaser."

He seemed to get the idea anyway, his fingers skimming along the seam of her thighs, not quite touching or delving further.

"Is this teasing reciprocal?" he asked.

"Sometimes." She grasped his hand and guided it to where she wanted it. "That'd be one way of keeping you quiet, I suppose - oh." Yeah, he'd definitely learned a few tricks of his own. "But not today. Right now, I'm tired of waiting. Tired of teasing."

It was true. Already her skin felt ready to crawl off her bones, just to get closer to him if she wouldn't oblige. Her nerves were alight and jangling, needing to feel more. She didn't have the patience, didn't think she could handle his talented mouth exploring new places.

She hitched one leg, wrapping it around his slender hip so his fingers could slide deeper.

"Well, in that case..." He guided her other leg in the same way, so she was suddenly a few inches off the floor, all her weight held up by him where their hips joined. He was stronger than he looked. "Allons-y."

She giggled, laughter bursting out brightly at the absurdity of it, but he was already inside her and she didn't have the breath to continue laughing. He muttered a curse and froze.

"I've never heard you swear before," she said, and she watched his Adam's apple as he swallowed. All she wanted, was quite sure all she would ever want, was him to move, to keep moving, and to never ever stop.

"I try to save them for special occasions."

"Glad to hear you count this as special."

"Extremely. Very special. Too special." He shifted his hips fractionally, and that made her body very happy. "When you giggled...sensory overload."

It took her a moment to figure out what he was talking about. "Oh! You mean if I do this -" she squeezed lightly, "it feels good?"

"Mmm." He nodded vigorously, and she became aware that his hands had gravitated back to her arse, where his fingers had a firm grip. "You probably shouldn't do that, unless you want this to be over before it starts."

Rose was tempted to do it one more time, just for the rush of power in knowing she affected him that much, but he was right. She was nowhere near ready for this to be over.

"Okay then, Doctor. Show me you've got stamina human men can only dream of."

She got her wish, and then some. Her words seemed to focus him. He caught her in his gaze, a hunger she'd never seen in him, never thought he was capable of, burned in his eyes, as his hips moved against hers. In the position they were in she was pretty much pinned, unable to move much, so she let her mouth do the work, kissing, licking, sucking lightly and biting gently where she could reach. He still wasn't quiet, but then neither was she.

Funny how whenever anyone else had touched her there she'd never been bothered, but every barely-there swipe of his tongue seemed to be affecting her where they were joined, a hotwired path of pure electricity. Her first orgasm crept up on her between one breath and the next so she had no chance to warn him, and then she was too busy praising Gods and galaxies she'd only ever heard of in passing, the sounds she was making reverberating off the tiles in a cacophony she should have been ashamed of.

He'd stilled again, but he wasn't done, so when she could grasp at the threads of reality, she brought him back to her with a nip on the jawline.

"On the floor," she commanded. For a second they were an awkward tangle of limbs, dangerously close to slipping on the tiles, and he had to pull out of her, which she didn't approve of at all. When he was on the floor, sat upright but with legs sprawled everywhere, she straddled him, their chests touching and faces level.

"I'll show you stamina," she told him, kissing him and taking him back inside her simultaneously.

She was a bit more leisurely than he'd been, but even then her thighs began to burn as she moved above him. Taunting him about stamina probably hadn't been the best idea, but all she had to do was hold out until he left go, and that couldn't be far off now. What was coming out his mouth was complete gibberish.

She changed the way she was moving just to give her thighs a break, rolling and twisting instead of rocking up and down, and that seemed to do it for him. He didn't last another minute, his hands finding her bum like homing devices, his teeth sinking into her neck as he thrust up wildly. In a last-ditch remembrance of chivalry, his fingers slid between them, circling in time to her hips so she let go once more, the world fragmenting into silver and white as he slumped against her.

He'd been utterly silent as she came, she realised as they disentangled, sprawling out on the floor, her on her back and him on his belly facing her. She had an absurd thought that had her giggling once more, but he could only raise an eyebrow in question.

"We forgot to use the tie," she explained. "Oh well, next time..." He didn't reply, just stared at her, expression dazed. "I did say I had my tricks," she reminded him smugly, then lay back on the tiles, letting them cool her down.

Some time later, when the feeling was just about returning to Rose's legs and her pulse had finally slowed, he turned to her what the grin that told her he'd just dreamed up their next adventure.

"How do you feel about going to the Olympics?"

Thus ends my first Who fic. I have a multi-chapter story in the works. Consider yourselves wanred.