Archive of Our Own

Well, there was that one time.

“It’s what?” demanded Rose.

“Carnivorous mud,” the Doctor shouted back, tugging hard on her hand.

“But it’s mud – it doesn’t have teeth!” She panted.

“And do you want it to get yours?” the Doctor asked.

And then they got back to the TARDIS, and the mud was crawling up their heels, and Jack was already tearing his clothes off as they dove into the control room. Rose shrieked, clawing at her pants, feeling the mud thickening in her hair and extending wiggling fingers between her shoulder blades.

“It’ll stop once we’re away from the rest of the mud sentience,” the Doctor said, diving for the controls and squirming out of his sweater. The TARDIS shuddered to life and leapt away beneath them, and abruptly they were just three naked people, completely covered in suddenly inanimate mud.

Jack recovered first. “Well hello, the Doctor is in the house,” he said, doing one of his top-to-bottom, bottom-to-top, right back down again looks.

And the Doctor snorted and turned back to the controls, and Rose picked up her muddy, soaking t-shirt and flicked Jack’s bum with it, and he yipped and flushed and looked at her under half-lowered lids and said, “Please ma’am, may I have another?”

And after watching them for a few more days, Jack finally snapped and cornered Rose to have a talk – by which he meant that he would say all the things he’d been saying since he met them, except he didn’t give her the easy out by playing like he was joking. Rose didn’t mention that he seemed pretty invested in the whole thing himself, but she did listen.

“Are you sure this will work?” she asked doubtfully.

“Can’t fail, trust me,” said Jack. And it was funny, but she did.

So when the Doctor came into the control room and found them on the floor, Rose sighing and moaning with Jack’s dark head between her thighs, she was only a little bit scared. She met the Doctor’s gaze as he stood in the doorway, face blank but for the rage behind his eyes, and Jack’s tongue was flicking hard at her clit and it was so sweet and wrong and just a little bit vicious of them, and for a moment she thought it was all a terrible mistake.

But then Jack lifted his head, and he grinned, and Rose couldn’t tell whether the Doctor was staring at Jack’s red, swollen mouth, or the fingers he was sliding inside her.

And Jack was right – it worked just fantastic.

And then there was the human colony world Athena, fifty-third century by old Earth reckoning. That was all Jack’s idea – all Jack’s fault, too.

“It’s a cultural thing,” he said, dropping his shirt and going for his belt buckle. “The clothing taboo is quite strong.”

“But—“ said Rose.

“Only liars wear clothing on Athena,” said Jack, kicking his pants away. As usual, he wasn’t wearing underwear. “The theory being, in a climate like this, why bother unless you’ve got something to hide?”

Rose thought about protesting, thought about demanding the Doctor take them right back out of there, Jack’s turn to pick be damned (the Doctor would, too). But it would just be one more bullet in Jack’s “the backward twenty-first century mindset” arsenal. And if everyone was doing it . . .

So she took off her clothes, and the Doctor did too, though his grin seemed a bit pasted on. And they went out to enjoy Athena, which turned out to be very enjoyable indeed. Until the Doctor figured out about the parasites, anyway, and Rose found herself standing on a street corner, evangelizing the benefits of some good old boxer-briefs (and why there was a crate of those in the TARDIS, she still didn’t know).

“Look, they’re little tiny buggers, smaller than a gnat – which is a very small bug – and they’re crawling up your asses and controlling your limbic systems. But they’re allergic to synthetic fabrics, see – it’s the silicon traces, the Doctor says – so how about some underwear, yeah? No, I’m not going to take my pants off.”

All. Jack’s. Fault.

And then there was the first time, which was not the first time at all. But there was something about the making of that final connection, the transformation of two and two into three, that made it feel important, even though the three of them had been screwing like minks for weeks.

Jack was fucking her – and it definitely wasn’t the first time for that. Rose had figured out early on that the reason Jack was so brilliant in bed was that his biggest turn-on was making someone else feel good. And if it was making Jack happy, well who was she to argue? His eyes were intent on hers, one hand warm as it lifted her beneath the bum, and she was nearly there and Jack was right there with her.

And then the Doctor appeared over Jack’s shoulder, not smiling. He ran his fingers down Jack’s spine and out of sight, and Rose gasped when she felt them brush against her as he reached down between them, gripped, gently squeezed. Jack’s mouth dropped open, and he shuddered hard, one elbow collapsing beneath him.

“No,” the Doctor said quietly. “Wait.”

And Jack shook again, crying out into her hair. Rose came, fingers digging into his back, and the Doctor watched her, hand still buried between Jack’s thighs, doing things that made him grind thrilled, agonized sounds between his teeth.

Jack pulled out, groaning like it was physically painful, and rolled away. Rose, still trembling, went up onto her elbow to watch. The Doctor had him by the balls with a gentle, implacable grip, and Jack was open-mouthed, gasping. The Doctor rolled him up onto his knees, one hand bracing his chest, the fingers of the other slipping inside him one by one. Rose watched, stunned, and quietly slipped her fist between her thighs, squeezing them tight and slowly grinding her hips.

“Yes?” said the Doctor, leaning over Jack to murmur into his ear.

“Yes yes,” Jack said. “Now now please.”

And the Doctor pushed into him with one long, firm stroke, and Jack came, howling.

And then there was the long, long wait, as they slowly found their way back to each other. It was Rose and Jack first, after the rift spat her out into Cardiff, bloody and weeping, babbling about the world she’d left burning behind her. Most of her loved ones had survived, at least, escaped into space with the fragments of humanity, but she would never see them again.

They had four good years together, learning the new rough edges that hadn’t been there before, waiting, always looking. Jack got an actual apartment and sometimes slept when he curled around her at night, though he didn’t need to. And nearly on a whim, on a late September afternoon, they married.

Three days later, the TARDIS flickered into being right on top of the Torchwood lift, and the Doctor came out, wearing a stranger’s face.

It should have been hard – new Doctor, older Rose, much much older Jack. But ten minutes after setting foot in the TARDIS it was the three of them again, tangled up on the floor, clothes tossed casually over the controls, and things were right again.