Title: An Experiment in Progress
By: angstytimelord
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Mick St. John
Fandom: Doctor Who/Moonlight
Rating: PG-13
Table: fanfic50
Prompt: 44, Experiment
Disclaimer: This is entirely a product of my own imagination, and I make no profit from it. I do not own the lovely Tenth Doctor or Mick St. John, unfortunately, just borrowing them for a while. Please do not sue.

***

The Doctor looked into the bathroom mirror, studying his face. There were no noticeable changes; he couldn't see that he had aged a single day since his regeneration. That was something he was thankful for; he liked the fact that he would look good for a long, long time.

Of course, he did age, but it was at such an exponentially slow rate that it didn't seem to matter. And Mick was the same way, he thought with a smile. His boyfriend wouldn't age either, and he was also very hard to kill. The two of them seemed to be a perfect match.

He'd been more than a bit disconcerted at first by the fact that Mick needed to drink blood to live -- but that hesitation of his hadn't lasted for too long. After all, it wasn't as though his lover took blood from innocent victims, like the vampires of lore. He wasn't a killer.

Mick actually got blood from blood banks, or drank from someone who was willing to have him do so. There were more of those people than the Doctor had thought possible. Once someone knew what Mick was, they were usually quite willing to have such an attractive man drink their blood.

The Doctor had to admit that he felt a bit jealous about that; he didn't particularly like Mick doing something that seemed so intimate with anyone else. But he knew that drinking blood was simply his boyfriend's way to survive; Mick didn't see it as being an erotic undertaking.

Besides, they still didn't know if drinking a Gallifreyan's blood would affect Mick adversely -- and they didn't want to find out. The Doctor hoped that they would never have to find out if doing so would harm Mick in some way; that was a risk that he was completely unwilling to take.

He wasn't going to do anything that might put Mick in jeopardy. So he made sure that they had a steady supply of blood in the kitchen refrigerator of the Tardis. He didn't want to put Mick's life in any sort of danger; if keeping blood around was what it took to insure his boyfriend's safety, then that's what he would do.

Did he worry too much about Mick? the Doctor wondered. He was sure that he did, but then, he had lost too many people he'd loved in his past not to do so. And he was in love with Mick; that was something that he couldn't deny, even if he had wanted to. And he didn't.

He was in love with a vampire. That might seem odd to some people, but Mick wasn't like the vampires that people wrote about in horror novels, or that you saw in the movies. He was more human than some humans that the Doctor had known. There was nothing monstrous about him in any sense.

Others might see him as a monster, but the Doctor could never view the man he loved in such a way. Just the idea that anyone might look at Mick as being something unnatural, some sort of .... creature, made him more angry than he could possibly put into words.

The two of them were really an experiment in progress, he thought with another smile. They were trying to discover whether or not a Time Lord and a vampire could carry on a successful relationship -- and so far, it seemed that they could. There had been no major problems.

He was happier with Mick than he had ever been with anyone. He was in love, and he knew that his love for Mick was only going to grow deeper and stronger over time. He couldn't imagine not being with this man; life without Mick was something that he didn't even want to contemplate.

The Doctor knew what it would be like to live without Mick. It would mean that he would be alone again -- and it would also mean that he had lost one of only two people who could understand what it was like to live for so long and to see the people you loved pass on.

He pushed away the thought of Jack; that relationship had been quite a while ago, and it wasn't one that he wanted to go back to, or even to think about. it was in that past, and one thing that his many lives had taught him was that the past belonged firmly in the past. It couldn't be resurrected.

Well, it could -- but he had learned from experience that tryng to bring back a past relationship and make it what it had been before never worked. It would inevitably either not live up to the memories of the past, or it would be far too different to work for either party involved.

No, he wouldn't choose to bring back the past, even if he could. He had tried that, more than once, and it had never worked out for him. He and Mick might be an experiment in progress, but he would rather be in this relationship than any other he had ever known.

This experiment had been a success so far, but the Doctor was fully aware that there could be pitfalls in the future. Mick might eventually get tired of being with him, though he hoped that wouldn't happen. He knew that losing the man he loved would destroy something in his soul.

But if that happened, then he wasn't going to hold Mick back. He wasn't going to insist that simply because they were both so long-lived, they should stay together; he had done that with Jack, and it had only pushed his former lover further away even more quickly than he was already moving.

If Mick ever decided that he wanted to leave, then he would have the freedom to do so, no matter how much it might hurt the Doctor. The last thing he wanted was to make his lover unhappy; he loved Mick enough to eventually set him free, if that was what Mick decided that he wanted.

Resolutely, the Time Lord pushed that thought from his mind, slamming a door on it and refusing to contemplate it any longer. He didn't think that Mick would leave. He was sure that his boyfriend felt the same way that he did -- that they would be together until the end of time.

Could Mick imagine a life without him? The thought brought a cold chill to the Doctor's very soul; that was another thing that he didn't want to think about. Just trying to imagine a life without the man he'd come to love made him feel cold, bleak, and utterly hopeless.

He wouldn't have to face that life, he told himself firmly. Though their relationship might be something of an experiment, it was working out wonderfully; they were both happy, as far as he could tell. He himself was deliriously happy with his vampire lover, and Mick constantly said that he was happy, too.

He had no reason not to believe those words. If Mick said that he was happy, then the Doctor was more than willing to believe him. After all, Mick wasn't the kind of man to lie about something so important. If he wasn't happy, then he would would want to talk about it, not deny the truth.

And neither of them had any reason to be unhappy, the Doctor thought, smiling this time as he thought of the night that had just passed. They had made love twice -- first fiercely and possessively, then sweetly and tenderly, before falling asleep clasped in each other's arms.

They would continue on in this way -- until the end of time. There was no reason for either of them to be unhappy, or to end what they shared. They would simply keep on in this way, and they would only grow closer, and even happier with each other, as their life together progressed.

This might indeed be an experiment in progress, but in his eyes, it was progressing very well indeed, the Doctor thought with a soft chuckle. With that idea in his mind, he turned and opened the bathroom door, padding down the hall to their bedroom to see if his boyfriend had awakened yet.

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