measure loss and gain
You are new in this skin that you have always had.
You drag rough fingers over the unbroken flesh of his face and neck and discover a new existence, one with noses and lips and lashes. You resent him a little for the feelings this shared body has, for the way he needs the alchemy of this motion.
Beneath you -- beneath him -- Rose squirms.
You revel in sensation, the thumps in his chest and the novelty of nerve-endings. As this fanatical beast of Time, you work with bone and sinews, manipulating the casing around you, this casing that is you. You drop his hands lower and dip his mouth to Rose's.
Rose breathes life past your borrowed lips.
"Stubble," and she giggles.
Borrowed emotions tumble and stir inside you, but this is what you wanted, this is what Rose wanted, this is what he wanted. It is logical and perfect and animals minds are too slow for them to see this.
These creatures are malleable in a way that you will never be; he might entertain ideas that he controls you and your destination, but he is only a pilot. As you pave the road you walk, so you pave theirs.
You put his fingers on Rose's stomach and laugh.
Rose is soft and makes this body tingle with something that feels like electricity, makes it charge up and become energised.
"Oh," Rose says, and in this body you become hard and hate her. This is not what you saw when you reached for the Doctor.
Ideally, you should have more control. You reach, and when you grasp, the screwdriver is cold in his fingers. You depise these creatures for their deceptions. This body that reacts to hers, to the girl who doesn't care who controls him. Pressing the screwdriver lightly into her hip, you lean so that it stabs into the cave your thigh makes. You put his mouth to her ear and ask if this was what she wanted.
She gasps. "Stop." You drag it along her skin and put his mouth over the swift pulse in her throat.
"Who are you thinking of?"
You fight against the heat racing through you, try to will away passions you've never had to learn to cope with. You wonder how he lives in this body, in this uncontrollable wreck.
When her breath comes out, it's as weary and jagged as an old shore, but it's their activity and not fear that makes it that way.
"Sometimes," she says, and she's looking you right in the eyes, "you've gotta take what's given to you and steal what you want."
She disgusts you.
"He can hear us."
"He's known that about me a long time -- he's never given me anything."
You run his fingers over her, watching her move and flush. "Isn't it strange that he never took you up on this?"
Her eyes are cold and burning, "He's too scared of himself."
You move between her legs and settle over her. "Last chance to change your mind."
She just stares right at you and moves her hips to his.
For all her time on board, you've been aware of the Sounds Rose Makes. You know how she sounds when she's nervous and excited: the quick scruffle-scruffle-skip of her shoes as she starts following the Doctor as he paces the room, planning whatever it was they planned together. You can tell by the giggles and stiffled chortles that she's teasing the Doctor. These belong to Rose, and to you, they're as much her person as her toes or the inside of her knees.
The quick, almost pained gasp she gives when he enters her is something curious indeed. You leer down from his lofty height at her.
You watch the muscles in her face move in a chorus of expression, smirk at the strange sounds that tumble past her lips. However little control he has, it seems that she has less, and you stay perfectly still over her.
She regains herself and gazes up through wide pupils. "Don't you know what to do?" she asks.
"I'll work it out as we go," you say, pulling her legs around him and pushing further into her. "Muscle memory."
Your learning curve is high; Rose has found something at which she is very good (and you don't wonder, what with all the practice she's had). The muscles in his back twitch as Rose drags her nails down it, and the three of you find your own rhythm without thinking. His voice is growling unintellible syllables, so you lick the salt off her collarbones. You've watched over and nudged in on the infrequent love lives of your occupants for more years than the Doctor; your experience tells you that this is fantastic.
You bite her neck.
"Doctor," she sighs, and you've sighed it too.
He should forgive you for this. You remember this from nowhere, and you work with the knowledge that you should be doing this harder and slower and that this body hasn't - technically - done this before. You know how to navigate though, and you move his mouth across every part of her that you can reach. You taste, and this is your second ever memory of salt.
You want her to beg.
Rose is tight and hot and all you can hear is blood and her.
"He wouldn't be here," you hiss. "But he's gone, and now we're stuck with him, and you're the only one who can't see them both. Can't have them all."
"You'll never touch them again." Rose waits for you to look at her before continuing. "I win."
His hands cup her arse as she arches her back like a question, the smell of lust and sex pervading the senses you've stolen.
"You're thinking of him."
"Of course I am," she pants, and it's as close as she gets to begging. The Doctor in you screams for silence.
His laugh is different and strange from what you remember. You lift his hand and slap her thigh; the sound reverberates sharply in his head.
"Not him. The other one." A sneer plays across his lips, and it's all yours. "You're thinking of him while fucking him." Somewhere inside you feel him break. And you lose some more respect, because it matters more that you stole the wrong body
He comes, and her head slaps the floor as you slam into her, and a half-a-moment later, you know she's come too.
And it is nothing, what they feel is nothing. You expected more, somehow. Rose shivers and squirms out from underneath you.
You let go and the rage you expect isn't there. He slouches back to himself, slowly, carefully. It hurts when his feelings start filtering in, all sharp edges and clarity.
He wanted to know. And you... well, you were just his vehicle again. Something to protect him from the things he wants to touch.
The starkness of her outline in the dark makes you shiver.