Author's Note: Because I'm really nice (but mostly because I'm excited I finally get to watch the fourth series of Doctor Who), I decided to post early.

This is the last chapter of 'Language of Hands', but it's now a part of my first series 'Incompatible'. The next couple of stories are missing scenes from Series 2 that go along with this. The first one up will be called 'Almost Perfect'. Keep an eye out.

Enjoy!

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His back is to her when she wanders into the kitchen. She pauses, watching him, waiting for him to notice her. She does that often- in fact, she has always enjoyed her stolen moments of watching him when he is the most open to her.

He's not wearing his jacket and she wonders vaguely if she noticed it still in her room. His sleeves are rolled up and the gentle tufts of hair that are so rarely exposed wave in the breeze he's creating with his movements.

Just as she begins to notice the scent of bacon in the air, he turns. He's startled- it's in the slightest movements by his eyes and mouth- but he brushes past it and beams at her.

"Eggs?"

She smiles shyly at him, "Smells great."

She takes her normal seat, twisting her legs under her and curling her hands around the steaming mug of tea he set out for her. Two plates clatter onto the table and he folds himself into his chair beside her, a piece of bacon already being torn between his teeth and a fork preparing the heap of eggs to be scooped up into his mouth. She just grabs the slice of bread off the corner of her plate.

"So… I ran a few tests on my blood. Looks like the hormone is completely foreign to both Gallifreyans and Humans. Can't produce it on our own. Now that we're not ingesting it, it'll degrade and be cleaned out of our systems in no time. Be fine by the end of the day. You know…"

She's sure he's still talking- quite the gab he's got- but she's not listening to him any more. He's probably degraded into something terribly technical or theoretical or something that has nothing to do with anything any longer.

She's not listening because her own thoughts have rattled away from her. It's all terribly domestic, isn't it? Them sitting there, chatting over tea and the breakfast he made her after a night of incredible sex. He might scold her for thinking it, but in that moment, as he shovels food into his mouth and chatters around it in that excited way he has, he's just like every other man she's ever known. If they weren't sitting in the kitchen of a living ship and he wasn't an alien talking about an alien hormone, she would have said that they seemed pretty normal.

His plateful of food is suddenly gone and he quiets as he swallows down the last of it. She realizes then that, somewhere between his ramblings and her musings, she's only managed to nibble off about half the toast in her hand and that she had offered him the majority of her plate. He takes them both, rinsing them off and leaving them in the sink. The TARDIS will take care of them later.

"Was it all the hormones?" God, did she just say that out loud? He turns and looks at her. "Last night. All that. Was that nothing of you at all?" She knows that she must be blushing furiously. She wants to look away, to keep him from noticing that she's embarrassed, or better yet to keep from facing the look of pity on his face. But she can't.

He opens his mouth to speak, but he looses the words in a sigh before he returns to his seat. "No. No, that… The hormones just made me… lose my inhibitions." She can't quite decide if that's what she wanted to hear or not. It might have been easier if he had just tutted at her and claimed the right of being a superior alien. Probably not.

His eyes are so open, so soft and dare she say pleading, as he asks, "And you?"

It might have been easier to brush him off, claim it was nothing, that she's only into humans. But she can't. "Same."

"Yeah… Look, the thing is… Our cultures look at relationships a lot differently. See…" He tugs at his ear and tries to look away. She's always thought he's at his cutest when he's embarrassed. "The way you and I act with each other, on Gallifrey, we'd have been considered quite close. Intimate, really."

"Intimate, without sex?"

"Unless you wanted children." All the blood drops away from her face. "What's wrong?"

"I haven't been on the pill in a while and we didn't use a condom."

His eyes fall onto a speck of syrup on the table, his mind working over her words as if something she said didn't quite translate. She waits until she sees understanding dawn on him. "Oh, um, yeah, no… I'm sort of… condom impaired."

"Condom impaired?" she laughs.

"Wouldn't really work with something in the way."

"Oh… right…" She lets herself take that information in, before she finds her voice again, "Are we… There's no chance that I-?"

"No… no, you're… Don't think so. Pretty sure that the odds are incredibly high against you getting… Naw, you're fine."

"You sure?"

"Pretty sure. Welll, when I say sure…" He clears his throat uncomfortably and she lets his comment slide.

"On Earth, we would be considered blind idiots." His confusion makes her laugh and she takes pity on him, explaining, "You said, on Gallifrey, we'd be considered intimate. On Earth-"

"Blind idiots." He nods and she nods back in agreement. "I… See I never wanted to get involved with a human that I travelled with because… well you Humans like sex. You have an insatiable sex drive and I can't even begin to understand your mating habits and I don't- I don't want to muck things up. I don't want things to be complicated. I just… I just want us to be like we've always been."

"Oh…"

She knows he doesn't mean it like that, but she can't help the disappointment leak into her single word. He groans, "See right there! I said something wrong and I didn't mean to. It's not… it's not that I didn't enjoy last night- I did, I really did. But I… but I just don't do that."

"I don't need sex every night," she laughs at him.

"I know that," he rolls his eyes, "But you'll still want it and I'll never notice the signs. Gallifreyan women give off specific pheromones that stimulate the male sex drive. I don't want things to be complicated and weird."

She finds his hand across the table, squeezing it comfortingly, "Me neither. That's okay. We don't need to push this into uncomfortable territory." He nods a little, smiling down at their joined hands. "But, if I asked, outright asked, no confusion-" His brows are furrowed at her, waiting, as a slow smirk parts her lips and lets her tongue poke out, "Would you make love to me again?"

He grins widely at her, flashing teeth, "I do like the kissing."

"Me too."

Quiet descends over them. Rose listens to the soft humming vibrating throughout the TARDIS. "Can I ask you something? About last night?"

"Hmm?"

"When I- when…" A blush is burning her checks and this time she does look down as she finishes asking, "You didn't want me to rise off you. You kind of freaked out on me."

"Oh, that," she glances up at his tone to find that he's looking down. "Well… It's… When Gallifreyans have sex, it's to procreate. There isn't pointless sex, waste of bodily fluids."

"That's why there's no self-pleasure."

He smiles, albeit awkwardly, and nods. "Yeah… It's instinct to complete the act. Once I've flared inside you- that's what it's called- it's like I'm gripping you, inside. If you pull away, it… well, it would hurt. A lot. It's just… we don't pull away prematurely. I didn't think; I should have warned you about that."

"It's okay," she smiles gently.

He looks at her for a moment. There's a question in his eyes and she just waits for the words to make their way to his tongue. "So you move during sex, you Humans?"

She wants to laugh, but holds it back, making her voice drop lower and leaning partly across, "It's all about friction. But I have to say, I like your way better."

"Huh…" The Doctor nods, standing abruptly and running a hand through his hair. Rose flops back into her chair, staring at him. He's at the doorway when he turns on his heel. "That was a sign, wasn't it?"

"That was."

"Right… This isn't something I'm going to learn quickly, is it?"

"Very few Human males have put it together either." She gets to her feet, patting him on the shoulder as she brushes past him, "Don't worry, you're not alone."

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THE END