Doctor Who fic -- "All's Well ..." (1/1, NuWho, AU, Teen)

[dameruth]

Title: "All's Well That Ends Fantastic"
Author: dameruth
Characters/pairings: Nine/Jack/Rose
Rating: Teen for brief mentions of nekkidness.
Disclaimers: No ownership involved, just love . . . and great fistfuls of fluff.
Series: Bliss
Summary: This is the last (or the first, depending on how you look at it) in the series of "Bliss" bidding-incentive short fics , written for taffimai , who hiked the bidding to $100 (!) and requested a prequel to the other two request-fics, "Under Orders" and "Catty Remarks. The request read: "Well, worn out Jack is pretty appealing, so maybe a prequel to 'Under Orders?' Either some of the action or the 'collapsing into bed' bit?" Pure fluffy goodness from Jack's POV, yet again.

Jack fumbled for his TARDIS key. After a couple of tries, he got it into the lock and opened the door, nearly falling through it in the process.

"Watch out!" Rose said from behind him, reaching forward to catch his arm and steady him. He appreciated the gesture, but he wasn't so far gone he couldn't keep moving forward in a controlled manner to clear the entrance. If there was one useful thing the military had taught him, it was how to keep going even if he was nearly asleep on his feet. Which he pretty well was.

Rose followed him into the TARDIS interior, and the Doctor came last of all, lugging the last of the scientific equipment they'd used to pinpoint the location of the temporal whirlpool. The Time Lord set the big, blocky spectrophotometer down on the deck precisely enough, but when it was down he remained leaning against it for a moment, arms braced and elbows locked, before straightening slowly. With a sigh, The Doctor closed the TARDIS doors and turned to climb the ramp to the controls. His stride was as long as ever, but without the subtle, athletic spring Jack was used to seeing.

It actually made Jack feel slightly better to see the Doctor showing signs of exhaustion. It certainly made him feel like less of a sissy as he climbed the ramp even more slowly than the Doctor had, using the handrail to help haul himself along since his feet felt like they weighed eighty pounds each. The mass of swamp mud still plastered to his feet and the lower legs of his jeans didn't help, probably. He'd made a half-hearted attempt to scrape some of it off, then given it up as a lost cause. He was so covered with the stuff already, a little more didn't seem worth the bother.

Tunnel vision was setting in. Joy. It had been a long time since he was this physically exhausted. It hadn't really hit him until just a little bit ago, either. Adrenalin kept him going through the closure of the whirlpool (a fiddly, knuckle-biting process; fortunately the Doctor apparently had scads of experience with just that sort of thing -- no surprise), but he'd started to feel tired while they were taking their leave of the locals and the Doctor lectured them about warning signs of whirlpool formation in the unlikely event another would form.

Then, about halfway through the walk back to the TARDIS, it had all come crashing down on him. The last few hundred yards had been torture. Now, just staying upright was as much as he could manage.

"Hey," Rose said from beside him, putting her hand on his shoulder. He'd been so out of it he hadn't really noticed her. "Not much further now," her voice was gentle, encouraging.

"I'm fine," he told her, a little giddily.

"Liar," she said, and slid her hand down his arm to where the sleeve of his once-white T-shirt ended. When the palm of her hand reached his bare skin, there was a sharp jolt. His vision cleared, and he suddenly felt much lighter than he had -- a little light-headed, in fact. It was like getting a deep breath of oxygen at high altitude, or the first burst of a stimulant hitting the bloodstream.

"Don't," he told Rose warningly, trying to glare at her and send a pulse of command down the link for emphasis. She glared back at him and batted aside the empathic pulse as if swatting a fly, her lips tight. She was very pale, even in the dim, orangey light of the control room, and there were dark smudges under her eyes. She might not have been shifting equipment for almost twenty-four hours straight, but she'd been shifting complacent bureaucrats and suspicious local authorities for at least that long, which wasn't exactly easy, either. "You can't have much to spare."

"More than you," she snapped back, and he couldn't disagree. "I need to keep you moving. If you pass out here, I'm never getting you to bed by myself." She jerked her head in the Doctor's direction as she tugged Jack along, getting him all the way up the ramp. "He's in as bad a shape as you are; he won't be any help."

Given that the Doctor was currently working the TARDIS controls to put them in a holding pattern in the Vortex, that wasn't exactly comforting . . . With the temporary clarity imparted by Rose's energy boost, Jack could see how tightly the Doctor was concentrating, lost in his own tunnel-vision trance, everything he had focused on the controls. The Doctor's end of the link ended in something like a solid black wall, nothing radiating outward. He flipped the last switch home, then simply stood, arms braced against the console, head down, strands of loose hair escaped from its knot hanging down around his face. Jack had the impression he was still upright only because he was too tired to fall down.

"Right," Rose said with a good attempt at briskness. She crossed to the Doctor, Jack still in tow, and reached up to brush some of the hair from the Doctor's face with her free hand, so she could rest the palm of her hand on his cheek.

The Doctor's head snapped up, and his head swiveled so he could glare at her in much the way Jack had. "Rose," he began warningly, voice deeper and rougher than usual.

Rose was having none of it. "Strip," she told him, meeting his steel blue eyes fearlessly. "You too," she added, shooting a glance over her shoulder at Jack.

"What?" both men said, almost simultaneously.

Rose gestured irritably towards the laundry hamper that hadn't been there a few minutes before. "I'd say that's as strong a hint as we're ever gonna see. The TARDIS doesn't want you tracking muck through her, and neither do I. So, strip."

Blearlily, they complied, Rose helping as necessary and shedding her own clothing at the same time. By the time they were done, the energy bursts Rose had transferred were nearly worn off.

Jack blinked at the metal grating of the control room deck and thought how comfortable it looked. Flat, solid, dry, and blessedly slime-, insect- and mud-free. He considered just lying down where he was.

"No, you don't," Rose said, her jaw clenched almost angrily against her own exhaustion. She grabbed his arm and the Doctor's and positioned herself between them. "We're gettin' you cleaned up and somewhere you can really rest." They moved forward under her direction, both Jack and the Doctor leaning heavily on her. Jack knew, dimly, that she was struggling to keep them all from falling over, but he didn't seem able to do much to help.

"Please," he heard her say, the meaning echoing through all levels of communication at her disposal: vocal, telepathic and empathic together. "I can't get them that far by myself . . ."

When she fumbled open the door that normally led to the corridor reaching into the depths of the ship, it opened instead on their shared room. Rose sighed. "Thank you,", she told the TARDIS. The Doctor murmured (or thought) something too, but Jack was immediately distracted by the sight of their wide, inviting bed -- and not for the usual reasons.

Rose was cruel, though, and wouldn't let him flop down as he was.

"Shower first, you've got muck everywhere your clothes weren't," she said.

"Slave driver," Jack groaned as she horsed the three of them through the bathroom door (which seemed wider than usual).

"You better believe it," she told him, tart acid cutting through the increasing tiredness of her voice. "You blokes are mine, and I plan to keep you in the best condition possible." As if to drive the point home, she slipped her arms around the others' waists, and with a hand pressed to each man's spine between the shoulder blades, sent a sharp bolt of shared energy into each of them. In turn, Jack and the Doctor, momentarily revived, caught Rose as she sagged between them.

"There," she said, getting her feet back under her with some help. "That'll get us all through a wash without breaking our necks, I think."

It did, and if everything was a bit disconnected and haphazard, with a little shared assistance they exited the shower in at least bed-worthy condition.

Then the moment Jack had been longing for -- a short stagger, followed by a faceplant into bed. A little jostling and rolling, and the three of them had sorted themselves into something approaching comfortable positions, wrapped together in a glorious combination of clean, dampish skin and fresh bedsheets.

"Oohhh, God, I take back that slave driver comment," Jack groaned. "This is way better than crashing on the control room floor. This is heaven."

"That'll teach you t' trust me," Rose said with smug satisfaction, already starting to drift off as she relaxed into the healing contact of the link.

"No worries," the Doctor murmured. "We already do." A flicker of his usual toothy grin, more sensed than seen. "Been a fantastic day, hasn't it?"

Rose and Jack were just awake enough to agree in silent unison before the three of them dropped over the edge into blessed darkness.

[majiklmoon]

I wish I watched Dr. Who so I could give this the comments it deserved - it LOOKS great and reads well - I just don't have a clue

[dameruth]

Heh -- here's an assembly of clips from the episode that convinced all of us OT3 shippers that Nine/Rose/Jack was a very real possibility:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1H0K7Y_AFQ

I think you can probably follow a long at least enough to get an idea --it shows the characters very clearly; Mickey is Rose's boyfriend at the time this episode starts, though they kinda-sorta break up by the end of it (which is when, in my "Bliss" AU series, the Nine/Rose/Jack relationship begins).

(Also, FWIW, in my AU, the Doctor begins letting his hair grow long near the start of the OT3 relationship, which is why I mention him having long hair knotted back even though canon!Nine has essentially a buzz cut.)

I hope you enjoy, I always get a giggle out of these scenes . . . :D

-- Ruth

[dreaming of the incrowd]

This rocked - you're a fantastic writer! I love your Rose

[dameruth]

Aw, thanks! I love writing Rose -- she's a very no-nonsense sort of person.