Chapter Text
His day starts relatively normally, like it has been for the last two months, except in order for a day to actually start, the previous one has to end, and he’d been awake through the night with Mia.
(Not that he minds, he doesn’t need nearly as much sleep as Rose does, and well…he can’t get enough of her if he tries.)
“I was thinking,” Rose calls out to him from the ensuite, “we could go out tonight. Check out that new place Jake was talking about.”
The Doctor hums in acknowledgement, one hand splayed over Mia’s chest as he carefully lowers her onto the changing table.
He doesn’t particularly want to sit in a crowded restaurant, surrounded by strangers when he could be at home with his family, but he’ll do it if it’s what Rose wants. He could never really deny her, and especially now, after everything she’s given him.
Honestly, he’s a bit surprised she’s bringing it up at all—they haven’t had a lot of time for each other recently, with all the adjusting, and he’d love to have some, of course, but she’d told him before that it was a fine line. There’s a part of her that wants nothing more than to be with their daughter all day, while the other part desperately needs some sort of reprieve.
“I’ll call mum,” she continues, “ask her to babysit so we have a few hours to ourselves.”
“Sounds good,” he says, pulling a face at Mia. He doesn’t actually mind, although he’d never admit it aloud. Being a grandmother suits Jackie, makes her calmer and gentler and better; his brilliant girl has that effect on everyone.
His fingers fumble at the fasteners on the sides of the nappy adorned with tiny whales, snapping them off and depositing a clean one under her bum, before deftly sealing the velcro sides back up.
Her chubby pink legs kick merrily and he laughs, grabbing her tiny feet in his palms and squeezing.
Theoretically, he knows that at this age, Mia’s feet are mostly just fatty tissue, muscles, ligaments and tendons—squishy and pliable, but when he brings them to his lips to pepper with kisses, he’s pretty sure they’re the softest things he’s ever felt in all nine hundred years of his existence.
And then the oddest desire—he finds himself wanting to bite them.
He shakes his head.
‘Just once,’ he thinks. ‘ Just this one time. Just to see what it’d feel like.’
‘Don’t be stupid,’ he thinks again, mentally kicking himself. ‘You don’t want to bite your daughter.’
He’s still squeezing her feet he realises, letting go as if he’s been burned. He doesn’t want to clamp down on those ridiculously tiny toes, with those itty bitty nails, he doesn’t, he doesn’t, he doesn’t .
Except he does.
God, what is wrong with him?
Mia makes a noise at his sudden lack of attention to her and he jumps into action, lips being drawn to her soft head like a magnet, inhaling a whiff of her so potent he thinks his one stupid heart is going to explode.
She’s intoxicating, clean and fresh and full of that baby smell, the greatest being in existence in any universe, eyes big and round and looking at him like he’s hung the moon and all he wants to do is—
No, no, no.
What?
He withdraws hastily, plonking himself on their still unmade bed, his hands a safe distance from the baby. He shoves them under his thighs for good measure.
Collecting himself, he racks his mind. Think, think, think. Was it something he’d eaten? The lack of sleep? That manticore venom he’d accidentally ingested three years ago? Some godforsaken Donna trait he’d picked up—the need to cannibalise his own offspring?
No, this is all him. He can feel it. This is him, finally fucking everything up.
He’s not surprised, really.
It was bound to happen, something terrible; maybe his body wouldn’t sustain the metacrisis, or maybe his memories would go, or maybe Rose was horribly colour-blind and she hadn’t meant to choose this him at all—he’d thought of everything.
Well, except this.
It’s not really the outcome that’s unexpected, but the catalysis.
For the first few years in this universe, he’d been waiting for the proverbial shoe to drop, wanting to just get over with it already—but it hadn’t happened.
And then somewhere between all the domestics and take-out and alien invasions and Rose, he’d forgotten.
So, of course, because it evidently hated him, in a valiant effort to restore balance to itself, the universe had thrown this at him.
“Doctor?” Rose calls, and she must’ve called for him multiple times if her confused face is any indication. She’s frowning, one hand holding her toothbrush, still lathered with paste. “What’s wrong?”
The words die in his mouth.
How is he supposed to tell her? What is he supposed to tell her?
“Nothing,” he lies.
Immediately, he feels terrible.
They’d decided together, years ago, that this would only work between them if they made a constant effort to be as open as possible with each other—the unspoken having danced between them for so many years.
He feels like one of those awful people in zombie movies, the type who gets infected early on and never tells anyone. He needs to tell her. He should just tell her.
Rip the bandaid, take the plunge, bite the bullet, reveal himself as some sort of weird…cannibalistic…alien… weirdo.
But how could he? How could he risk everything being taken from him? Because that’s what would happen, he’s sure—Rose wouldn’t allow her zombie-infected-freak-of-a-husband anywhere near their daughter, and he loves her for it really, but he wouldn’t survive it.
Coward, any day.
And so he struggles through the rest of their routine, or rather, he struggles through watching Rose go through with their routine, which includes hours of nappies and burp cloths and stuffed toys and Rose attempting to get an uncooperative Mia to latch while she screams her head off.
Usually he’d be all over it, trying to calm her down, offering to take her, to help somehow, but now he’s afraid that if he did try, he’s going to do something unforgivable like unhinge his stupid mouth and eat her.
“Doctor?” Rose grits out through a plastered-on smile, seconds away from screaming her head off. “A hand?”
“Oh,” he says. “Oh, right.”
He can do this. He can do this easily.
As a Time Lord he had such control over his mind, the ability to banish thoughts, to focus on a million things or to sift through them and concentrate on just one.
He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s more human than he thought, but whoever it was that decided that the human brain can’t help but think about something it’s not supposed to think about deserved eternal punishment. Just shoddy design, really.
‘Don’t think about the biting,’ he tells his brain, so of course, that’s all he can think about when Rose carefully shifts the wailing baby into his arms.
He clamps his jaw shut as he bounces her. Don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t think about it. Instead, he focuses his gaze on Rose’s form in the kitchen, opening and closing cabinets, running a pumped bottle from the fridge under the tap, warming it. Mia squirms for several long seconds, before snuggling further into his chest and settling with a final whimper.
“That’s just unfair, that is,” Rose grumbles lightheartedly when she returns, flopping onto the sofa. She pats the space beside her, so he shuffles over, keeping up the rocking motion till he sits down, and then he’s trying his best to avert his gaze as Mia latches on like a champion.
Rose groans. “There’s only one bottle left. Had trouble feeding last night, too.”
It’s like a reflex for him at this point, the innate need to comfort her so overwhelming that he responds without thinking. “It’s alright, really,” he tells her. “She isn’t going to starve, Rose.”
“I know, it’s just—it’s hard.” Lowering her head to his shoulder, she sighs. “You’re so good with her.”
Usually, he’d preen at the affection, maybe quip something about how their daughter obviously prefers him and get smacked in the back of his head for it. Now he just smiles, trying furiously to think of something else, anything else.
The ceiling. The paint peeling on the kitchen wall. Ooh, that rhymed. Sort of. Jackie Tyler. Daleks. Daleks in their big metal cases. Squishy Daleks. Weeping angels. Don’t think. Don’t think. Don’t think. Raxacoricofallapatorious. Slitheen. Slitheen had feet.
“Look!” Rose says, awed, whacking his arm.
He does look.
And—oh, bollocks.
“She’s smiling,” he says dazedly. And she is.
And there it is.
He’s almost frightened at how strong the urge is, to squeeze Mia as tight as he can, to eat her.
Where the hell was this coming from?
“Here,” he says hastily, passing her back to Rose, who says nothing, all too happy to dote over the child while he tries his best to think about things that are decidedly not the frankly disturbing thoughts he’s been having all morning.
It’s hours later, hours of playing and cuddling and bouncing and feeding again, (or more accurately, watching Rose do all aforementioned things while reluctantly stepping in from time to time), when Mia is dropping off for her afternoon kip and Rose is shrugging on her coat, that he realises what day it is.
“Going somewhere?” he asks as casually as possible, crossing his arms over his chest and one ankle over the other. That probably looks stupid. He uncrosses his ankles.
“Doctor’s appointment, remember?” Rose murmurs distractedly, buttoning up before glancing at him. “Should be done in an hour or so.” She steps closer to him, her arms going around his neck. “And then, we are going to finally spend some time together.”
The kiss she presses to his lips is short and sweet, and it makes him feel a little giddy. His mouth stretches into a goofy smile.
The thought of spending time with Rose again, after the almost chaos life has been for the last few weeks, is so tempting that it almost makes him forget the immediate problem that stems from her stepping out of the house.
Him, alone, with their extremely vulnerable and defenceless daughter.
“Wait,” he says. “I’ll come with you.”
Rose chuckles, a little confused. “What about Mia?”
“Right,” he nods, tugging on his ear. “Course. Here’s what we do—you stay, I’ll go.”
Her laugh is more genuine this time. “What?”
“What?”
“Doctor— my appointment—last I checked, you’re not the one who pushed—”
“Oh!” he says loudly. “Of course. Sorry. You’re right. That was stupid.” She’s nodding slowly, brows drawing together when it hits him. “I’ve got it. Call you mum! Call Jackie—tell her to come over.”
“Call my mum?” Rose repeats warily, and she looks concerned now. “Doctor—it’s going to take her nearly an hour to get here—”
“Well, then you’d be doing her a favour by phoning immediately—”
“Besides, you’ve managed alone for longer before, just last week—”
“Rose—”
“And you love being with her, what’s wrong—”
“Rose Tyler,” he says sharply, hands pressing into her shoulders. “Listen to me very, very carefully, because it is imperative you understand this. You cannot leave me alone with her.”
He’s pretty sure he’s shocked her into silence for the first few seconds she doesn’t respond.
Then,
“What are you talking about?”
He grimaces, letting go of her to pinch the bridge of his nose. His Rose, always asking the right questions. Damn her.
“Doctor, are you alright?”
He should do it. Just tell her. What’s the worst that could happen?
(He doesn’t want to know.)
“I love you,” he breathes. “And I love Mia. Just…remember that, yeah?”
“You’re scaring me,” Rose tells him. Then she gasps. “Are you dying?”
“No,” he says mournfully. If only it was that simple.
“Am I dying?”
“What? No! No, it’s…” He scrubs his palm over his mouth. He can’t exactly back off now, can he? He’d scared her now, and he wonders briefly if he can pass it off as something else before kicking himself.
She deserved the truth.
“I’m the infectee, Rose,” he blurts miserably. “I got bitten or scratched by a zombie ages ago and I never told the rest of the group because I was afraid, but it isn’t too late, because I’m telling you now, and—”
“Okay, slow down!” She takes a long breath, before blinking. “What zombie?!”
“Sometimes,” he whispers, squeezing his eyes shut, “I look at her, all pink and soft and adorable, and I feel like… biting her.” Voicing it makes it worse, and shame floods him, head to toe. “I haven’t, obviously, and I don’t want to—or well, I do, and that’s the problem—”
“Oh my god.”
He braces himself. This was it. He doesn’t think he can bear to see the disgust in her eyes, to know what she’s thinking. He also can’t bear to not know what she’s thinking.
He opens his eyes and Rose is staring at him, her eyes suspiciously wet.
“Is that it?”
The Doctor frowns. Is that it? Didn’t she understand what he was saying? The gravity of their situation?
“I get that feeling too,” she tells him, and his mouth freezes on its way to forming a response. “A lot of people do! Ever seen a cat so cute you just wanted to squeeze it to death?”
“No?”
He must look bewildered, because Rose laughs, hands coming up to frame his face.
“It’s this weird thing the brain does,” she explains, kissing his nose. “You see something so cute it’s overwhelming, and it’s your mind’s way of expressing it, you know? Of…handling the cuteness.”
“Oh,” he says. He snaps his fingers. “Oh! Like a…dimorphous expression of positive emotion!”
“If you like.”
“That’s mad.”
Rose shrugs. “I suppose I’ve never really thought about it. I mean, we’d never actually do it, you know.” She looks a bit shifty all of a sudden. “Well, not hard enough for it to hurt or anything.
“In my defence,” she says at his questioning glance, “we made one incredibly cute baby. I’m only human.”
He nods. She had a point, Mia was insanely cute.
And then bizarrely, (or maybe not so bizarrely considering the day he’s had), he feels laughter bubbling up within him, and then Rose is laughing too.
“Oh my god,” she giggles, wiping her eyes. “You were so upset about it, too! The entire day, I thought something was off, thought maybe you were just tired—because I know you’ve barely been getting any sleep—and it was this!” She doubles over, overcome with laughter.
He can’t find it in himself to be even a little miffed at her amusement, with the sheer weight lifted off of his chest. It feels like he’s floating, not a care in the world, and maybe, maybe there isn’t another shoe after all, maybe this universe finally got it right.
The need to see Mia is overwhelming, and not a second after the thought’s crossed his mind, it’s answered by an incredibly familiar cry echoing down the hall from their bedroom.
“I think we were a bit too loud,” Rose says guiltily, and then she’s grabbing his hand and pulling.
Indeed, Mia appears to have been startled awake, and rocking her while she settles has never felt so good. There’s a moment where she looks up at him, eyes full of trust, babbling incomprehensibly, brilliantly, when the instinct surfaces.
“Unbelievable,” he says to Rose, who gives him a knowing look, reaching for the baby as well.
*
“I can put her down,” he offers later, after gratuitous amounts of cooing and fawning and cuddling from the both of them, and one rescheduled appointment. He moves to take her from where she’s fast asleep in her mother’s arms.
“Wait.” Rose shifts, before lowering her voice. “Maybe…maybe we should stay in tonight. Just the three of us.”
He nods, grinning. He likes that idea. He likes it a lot.
“Rose Tyler,” he whispers, unable to stop grinning, really. And then he does stop. “Please don’t tell your mother about this.”