Chapter Text
The weird thing was, Rose Tyler wasn't gay.
Or bi, or pan, or particularly curious.
Really.
As a teen she'd kissed girls on dares and a few times when she was drunk, yeah, but the possibility of actually being attracted to someone who wasn't male wasn't really on her radar.
To be fair she met the love of her life when she was 19, and had had boyfriends pretty consistently before that, so there hadn't been much call to question the fact. Still, everyone has fantasies, and hers tended to be about men.
So when she began having some extremely intense sex dreams starring a woman she'd never met, she was more than a bit confused.
–
She was home alone when it started. The Doc— John had taken Mia on a special trip for her eleventh birthday (eleven was an historically significant and cosmically powerful number, he'd said, which was why so many works of fiction revolved around big things occurring at that age), and they planned to be gone a few days at least. Rose could see by the twinkle in his eye that while she'd be welcome to come along, he really was excited to take a trip just with his little girl.
Rose had no problem sitting this one out. She was in the middle of a particularly sticky conundrum at Torchwood which required a great deal of diplomacy and emotional energy, and the chance to come home to a quiet house was extremely appealing.
She got in fairly late that night, and stayed up at least an hour watching trash telly with a glass of wine. It was almost 2am when she finally fell into bed and straight to sleep.
The first dream was fuzzy and vague.
She would remember darkness, shot through with orange, blue, gold. Little streaks of light in a black void. She would remember a feeling of excitement, that familiar lurch behind her belly button that told her something big was happening. Something scary and exciting. Something that told her to run, but not in terror, to run with a hand clasped in hers.
The feeling that she could make anything happen.
There was no particular narrative Rose could recall, but she knew someone was there with her. A woman. She couldn't see a face or body, but she remembered pale, slender hands and a flash of platinum hair. She knew, as one does in dreams, the woman was intelligent and playful. Lonely. And this was someone Rose trusted with her life.
Most notably, Rose was turned on. Hugely turned on. She ached for this woman, whoever she was. And not in some oblique, existential way, but in the primal, red blooded, gonna-need-a-cold-shower way. But even as Rose reached out to hold on to her, the farther she slipped from her reach.
Rose woke up agonizingly aroused, and with no one in bed with her to give her a hand. She groggily dug in the side drawer for her wand, and finished herself off within a minute. Without much more thought she drifted back to sleep.
–
The next day, the dream kept popping into her mind. Odd, disconnected things kept bringing it back to her - voices, clothing, a turn of phrase would trigger a vivid but disconnected memory. She was also surprised to discover it was still having an effect on her, making it hard to concentrate on her diplomatic work.
She couldn't even really wish John were home to take the pressure off. Somehow, she knew it wouldn't help. It was like an itch she couldn't scratch.
There'd been such a familiarity between her and the other woman, the intimacy of a partner, but the longing of someone lost. It felt like an opportunity missed and regretted forever.
She barely made it through the day, and tried to tell herself she was only going to bed early because she hadn't slept well the night before. Really, she just wanted to see if it happened again.
–
The second dream was entirely different, and at first there was nothing to tie the two together.
The images were disconnected, but much clearer - first she was being chased through an empty train, next she saw a dark workshop in an abandoned warehouse. Then, she was staring up at high scaffolding in a dark construction site.
She felt terror, confusion, exhilaration, grief. Hope and resignation bundled together.
Finally the scenes resolved and the subject became clear. It was the same woman, Rose knew it. The solitary figure sat on a metal staircase, darkness all around her. Her features were now clear as day.
She looked about Rose's age, slightly thinner, more androgynous, with a sharp jaw and dark eyes. Her hair - she had great hair - was a blonde bob, currently swept over and shading her eyes. She leaned over, elbows on her knees, staring vacantly at her clasped hands.
Rose came closer and sat on the step beside her, unseen, or at least unacknowledged. She watched the figure closely, feeling anxiety wafting off her. Rose wanted to smooth her hand over the worry lines in the woman's forehead, kiss the crease of her eye and the tiny wrinkles there.
She wasn't surprised when the woman shifted towards her, laying her head on Rose's shoulder. It felt so natural, her dream mind just accepted the situation. She slipped her arm around the woman's back and pulled her closer, half cradling her against her chest. She pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“It'll be different this time,” the woman said half heartedly, “I'll be careful.”
Rose loved the sound of her voice, bright and somehow gravely at the same time. She tucked her knuckles under the woman's chin, and lifting her face, kissed her like she'd done it a million times before. Rose felt a hand in her hair as the kiss lengthened, and she felt her pulse speed up. She let herself be eased back against the stairs, and she ran her hands down the woman's back pulling her body close.
It should have been uncomfortable with the woman's weight pinning her against the metal stairs, but the dream only let Rose feel the good parts. She got the slide of soft lips on hers, and the hum of approval when Rose's fingers tickled the skin below the woman's t-shirt. She got to feel the pressure of the leg pressing between her thighs and the vivid pulse of heat at the contact.
Rose hooked her heel around the woman's thigh and pushed her hips up against her, earning a little moan. They started to move their hips against one another, and Rose pulled her mouth away, trailing her tongue down the woman's neck instead. It felt so right.
“God, Rose, I miss you,” the woman breathed, and her hand grasped Rose's waist. Her thumb brushed the skin of Rose's stomach. Rose squirmed, encouraging the hand to continue. She felt the thumb stroke gently higher, pushing her shirt up inch by inch.
“Mmm, please,” she kissed the woman again running her tongue against her bottom lip—
Rose's eyes shot open at the sound of her morning alarm. She quickly turned it off, then lay blinking at the bright sunlight streaming through the window. She was breathing hard again, throbbing from the interrupted dream.
Slowly she oriented herself, and realized the ache between her thighs wouldn't go away. She moved her hand under the blankets, slowly slipping under the waistband of her pajama bottoms and between her legs.
She was soaked, slippery and hot. Her fingers slid easily through the folds of her lips, and she ran a gentle fingertip over her clit, and fire erupted through her. She squeezed her thighs together around her hand, already breathing heavy. Her fingers pressed for more, a finger slipping inside, and she began to rock her hips, rubbing slick against her palm.
She drew it out this time, enjoying the feeling of teetering on the edge and pulling herself back. In the privacy of her mind she let herself indulge in the fantasy, trying to bring back the exact details of her dream woman's face, imagining what her body might feel like, what she might look like under her clothes...
She thought about the woman's warm thigh rubbing against her, and Rose came hard, every muscle tightening, feeling the walls of her vagina pulse around her curling finger.
She lay in bed a long time afterwards, staring at the ceiling and thinking.
The woman's face wasn't familiar, but the feeling certainly was. A creeping suspicion began to take root.
–
The Doctor pulled herself suddenly into consciousness.
She didn't really sleep much these days - well, she never been much for sleep, if truth be told - but if she had nothing better to do she would find a comfortable spot to think, to meditate, and, yes, occasionally to doze.
The past few days had been a firestorm of emotions. Mere days into a new regeneration and she'd already gotten someone killed. It was no use telling herself Grace's death wasn't her fault. It was always her fault. Her mere existence seemed to put people in danger.
The Doctor had retreated into her mind and memories for comfort, and found herself in a fantasy. Now that she'd had time to examine her new body, her new face, she couldn't help but be reminded of Rose. The strong, thin frame. The dark eyes and blonde hair. She even thought she looked about the same age Rose would be now.
The Doctor hadn't thought about Rose for a long time. Well, it would be more accurate to say she refused to think of Rose for a long time. For years she had placed a firm wall in her mind against the guilt and doubt - the heartbreak - that the thought of Rose conjured, until it had become second nature. It had worked for years, decades. The Doctor had made friends, found family, and even loved again. And lost them, again, and again.
She would have thought that thinking of Rose now would have been acid in a fresh wound, but to her surprise the memory of her was soothing. Her mind had supplied a version of Rose who was happy, who'd found joy and purpose in the life the Doctor had forced on her, who'd thrived. She'd imagined a Rose with no regrets or blame, who would always love her. A Rose who welcomed the Doctor's new body. Who even liked it…
She stood from the little corner nook the TARDIS had provided her, and tried to repress a fresh surge of arousal. Going down that road wouldn't do her any favours. Not when she'd never see the real Rose again.
---
A haze of distraction followed Rose through the next few days.
She couldn't shake the feeling that the dream woman had been the Doctor. And not her John, but the real… The original Doctor. She couldn't explain why she was so certain.
But if she was right, then why had Rose's brain put him in that completely unfamiliar body? Twice? Was she really harboring some deep-seated desire to be with a woman, and that had latched on to a memory associated with regret?
And why now?
The first year with John had been filled with mixed emotions. She was ecstatic to be with him after searching for so long, and that joy filled her with guilt. She'd left the real doctor in favor of the human one. And John really was him, in almost every way. His brilliant mind, his goofiness, his fierceness. His love for her. It all felt the same.
Sometimes she would forget he was a copy. She'd forget there was a man out there who loved her and had lost her and didn't have this. The one with two hearts. And forgetting made her loathe herself.
Sometimes she felt like, in kissing John on that beach, she'd committed an enormous betrayal, like it was a test of her love and loyalty and she'd failed it. And at other times she felt certain the doctor had been right to leave John with her, a human who could be everything the Doctor was to her. More. None of them would have this life now if she'd stayed with the time lord.
Anxiety dreams had certainly followed her on and off in those days.
Over time she had come to feel more and more that she'd made the right decision. She would never fully rid herself of the what if’s, but she did love John, she wanted to grow old with him. She loved her daughter more than words, more than life. Deep down Rose knew they'd all had avoided an even deeper grief by choosing this life.
Those doubts almost never plagued her anymore, so it was baffling to have these subconscious memories resurface like this, after all these years.
A tiny part of her was beginning to wonder if it hadn't really been a dream at all. What if the Doctor needed her now, and was reaching out for her?
What if that giant, psychic brain of his - of hers? - could make its way through time and space and through the barrier of their universes to seek Rose out.
She told herself that was ridiculous. She almost believed it.
Now that it had happened, Rose could no longer pretend she was as straight as she'd always thought. She couldn't banish the thought of that pelvis pressing hers into the stairs. She couldn't stop thinking of the fingers that had come so close to her chest. Fantasies bloomed unbidden in her idle hours, thoughts of pulling that shirt off the woman's compact body, of knowing what it would be like to feel hard nipples against her tongue. When she masturbated she now imagined her fingers sinking into someone else's cunt, wondering how wet she could get.
For the first time in her life, she wondered how it might feel to press her face between a woman's thighs, to slide her tongue between a pair of lips, dig her fingers into her hips and work her to climax…
Rose was clear on one thing - she needed that dream to happen again.
—