Chapter Text
The Doctor sulks glumly over a stiff drink.
He’s sat at the bar in a crowded club floating high amongst translucent grey clouds and moonlight, trying desperately not to watch Rose dance.
She’s got this skimpy little kit on that is attracting every humanoid male in the vicinity and boiling the blood in his own cold, cold veins.
It’s the latest in fashionable dress on Asteria, the third moon orbiting the planet Gaia, a petty papal state of the Fourth Great and Bountiful Human Empire. They’d gone for a lark, him and Rose and Captain Jack, and happened upon a scared Draugr beast haunting one of the high castles of the nuevo-riche, lost and lonesome and so far from home.
Freeing it had been all in a day’s work, of course, but the young Marchioness, daughter of a minor military commander away at battle amongst the stars, had been so grateful to them for coming to her aid that she had insisted on thanking them with a night on the town.
Therein lay the trouble. He’d known he was in for it when the Marchioness had started begging Rose to let her dress her up. Of an age and just as vibrant in their youth, the two girls had been thick as thieves all day. Eagerly, and presumably having spied with envy her extensive closet during the Draugr hunt, Rose had agreed. The Marchioness had promptly dragged her behind a richly embroidered folding screen that was dividing the large, open plan living space. With him on the other side.
At first there was giggling. The Doctor tapped his booted foot impatiently.
And then there was whispering. This will be perfect on you and oh my god, I can’t wear that and yes you can and but I’m way too fat!
Then there was the rustle of clothing sliding down skin, the clunk of a belt buckle hitting the ground, and more giggling, and more whispering. And he had to stand there and listen to it all, like the dirty old man he was instead of the dignified, sexless Time Lord he tried so dreadfully hard to be.
How she absolutely tortured him, his young companion.
Finally, she’d come out and presented herself to him, all proud shoulders and shy smile.
A tiny little green sarong barely covered her wide, womanly hips. Another scrap of silky fabric was wound round her breasts, pushing them up and exposing vast expanses of naked stomach and arms.
“How do I look, Doctor?” she had asked him, biting her lip.
And many answers had raced through his head. Answers like you look like you’re advertising your wares too much and like you’re going out to get fucked by someone who isn’t me, and like the apparition who appears above my bed come night.
“What do I care about women’s fashion?” he’d bitten out derisively instead.
And then her face had fallen like he’d stolen Christmas, and he’d known he was a cad for hurting her, just because she was wearing something that would be considered indecent in his culture of heavy layers and touch telepathy, of a people so shrouded in fabric that even the marital act had been done partially dressed. Just because he’d wanted to grab her by the waist and drag her back into the TARDIS like a caveman and lock the door behind them. Just because he was a jealous, besotted fool.
Jack had burst back into the room at that moment and whistled appreciatively at both women with that brotherly, affable air of his. A smile had broken across Rose's face again like dawn, and their crew had merrily departed.
And when they’d gotten to the sky club, and Rose had tentatively asked him if he wanted to join them on the dance floor, of course he’d just shrugged her off and trudged over to the bar to get himself a stiff drink. Even though he didn’t even really like strong alcohol, vile human stuff that it was. Only, if there was ever a time to be drowning his sorrows…
The Doctor is in love, and it hurts.
He’s admitted it now to himself at least, if not to anyone else.
Wasn’t expecting to fall, not after the war, but there it was. So gradual and sudden that even he can’t seem to untangle the matrix of choices that led him to this timeline, and untangling matrices of timelines is supposed to be his birthright. So natural and extraordinary that he can't seem to figure out how to stop.
But the truth was, she'd brought a tired old solider back to life, and he'd repaid her by falling utterly, irrevocably, devotedly in love with the poor girl.
Somebody tell her to run.
Around him, things are getting increasingly debauched as the night wears on. Another thing the Time Lords would disapprove of. If he turns in his seat just so, out of the corner of his eye he can see Rose flushed and alive and glowing as she dances with Captain Jack and the Marchioness and their retinue of admirers.
The Marchioness leans across to whisper something in her ear, and Rose blushes, and the Doctor quickly takes a swift swig of his whiskey. And promptly coughs and splutters it back up.
There’s an anger to it, this love he has for her.
There’s fury, that her soul has reduced him so. There’s a burning, lovesick jealousy, whenever she so much as glances another man’s way. And there’s double, miserable doubt, that she could ever possibly be seriously attracted to him, though God help him she loves to flirt. She’s just playing with him, really- a steady, older male figure to the girl who never knew her father, someone who she thinks she's safe with. And then there’s guilt and recrimination, most of all, at the wanting. The anguished, wild wanting.
He knows he’d use her badly, given half the chance to bed her. This regeneration is desperate, lonely, and more than a bit of a brute. There are so many sick urges he wants to state in her, urges that would probably shock her. So many things he wants to do to her come night.
“Are you sure you don’t want to join us?” asks a voice by his right shoulder, and the Doctor flinches guiltily.
But it’s just the Marchioness.
The Doctor doesn’t know what has possessed her to ask. He’s hardly the most attractive man in the room. And as she’s not Rose, it’s easy to demure.
But the Marchioness doesn’t seem to mind, shrugging him easily off and signalling to the bartender for a drink with a casual, confident lean. Another human patron sidles up behind her, and commences the usual primitive mating ritual, and the Doctor hopes this consoles.
Only the Marchioness doesn't seem to be interested in this particular male specimen. She tries to shake him off more than once, but the bloke keeps bothering her. Finally, he places his hands on her bottom, and the Doctor sees red.
Gentlemanly instincts pricked, the Doctor launches himself to her defence. But to his surprise, Rose gets there first.
Arms firmly on her hips, Rose gives the pervert a good piece of her mind.
The Doctor settles back down in his seat with a grin and watches, finding it all wonderfully amusing. She’s fierce, his girl. Less Asteria, the namesake of this moon- a Greek goddess who had transformed herself into a quail to run from the amorous advances of a man- and more Diana, the huntress.
In her righteousness, Rose burns like the sun, and the Doctor wants to fall at her feet and worship from her temple, lapping at the holy water between her legs.
And that’s when the fellow gives Rose a firm shove backwards, and she lands in the Doctor’s lap.