I have absolutely no idea where the inspiration for this came from, but I like the way it turned out. I hope you do too.
The Doctor had a lot of experience with love, particularly the romantic sort. He had loved Rose ever so completely in his ninth and tenth regenerations, and there had been others before her that he had loved as well, and he had most certainly loved his wife on Gallifrey (there was still a little hole in his hearts where she'd resided; Gallifreyan marriage bonds lasted through regenerations).
But never, ever, since Gallifrey had fallen, had he had any experience with any sort of lust.
Not until River Song, that is.
"You're ridiculous," Amy said as they sorted through hats on the Planet of the Hats (he'd taken Donna there once. Big mistake on his part.). She put on a beret and twirled in front of a mirror. "You're like a little kid. I don't think you've ever fancied anyone before River."
"When were we talking about River?" said the Doctor, suddenly very interested in a large and florid blue hat that was most likely designed for women. "I don't think that we were ever talking about River."
"Seeing as you're only looking at women's hats, I'm guessing that you want to see if you can find a hat that you could give her as a gift," Amy replied, and gave him her Pond Smirk. He really hated that smirk. It only came out when she knew she was right, he knew she was right, and she knew he knew she was right.
"That's not true!" the Doctor sputtered. "I'm looking at all sorts of hats!" He picked up a sunny yellow one that would look rather attractive when perched on flyaway blonde curls-although he hadn't been thinking about that. Any of the hats he'd picked would work on River—damn Amy for bringing his intentions out of his subconscious. Actually, damn his subconscious.
"I like this one," said Amy, snatching the sunny yellow hat from him.
"Give it back, that's for River!" At Amy's shocked/triumphant/amused look, the Doctor muttered a few choice expletives in a few alien languages before muttering, "I did so fancy other people before River. She's just…different. I think she spreads disease."
"How so?" Amy asked with interest, handing him the yellow hat and tossing the beret into her growing pile of castoffs.
"She makes my hearts feel like they're being microwaved," said the Doctor. "Then I can't breathe, and I have to stop talking, and she always wins whatever argument we're having."
Amy snorted. "Sounds like you're in love."
"I am not!"
"Yeah? Sometimes when you're arguing, d'you want to just storm over there and snog her until she can't breathe?" Amy asked innocently.
"That's not love, that's…something else! Some humany disease! You probably made me more susceptible to your humany disease!"
"It's called love, Doctor."
"It's not love, Pond! There's got to be another word for it!"
"Lust?" Amy suggested with a knowing smirk.
The Doctor was all prepared to deny her suggestion fervently (because it wasn't true at all), but then he actually thought about it.
He'd fallen in love before. The last time, Rose, had been absolutely wonderful. He could just be holding her hand and that would be enough for him. Her voice, her laugh, her hair, her eyes-she was an angel, and he hadn't needed to touch her to know that they belonged to each other.
But River…Half the time he was tempted to shove her up against a wall and kiss her, roughly, just because of that damn all-knowing smirk she always donned when he was flying the TARDIS or showing her around an alien planet with the Ponds or even making her tea. The other half of the time he was tempted to sit there and listen to her talk all day, a smugness in her voice that he absolutely adored (and no no no he did not just think that).
"I don't think I've ever lusted after anyone before," he admitted. "Not lust and love at the same time. I don't generally lust after humans."
"First time for everything," said Amy with a little grin. "But admitting it is the first step."
"What?"
"Do you lust after River?" Amy demanded impatiently.
"Ugh, you're so pushy—"
"Do you?"
The Doctor groaned and put down the sunny yellow hat, his mind drifting lazily to River's curves and her hair and her eyes and her mouth and her since when did he care about those sort of things?
"Well?" Amy asked.
"It doesn't make logical sense," said the Doctor. "I'm a Time Lord, Amy. I've only ever felt this way about other Time Lords."
"Felt what?" Amy prompted.
"Lust," the Doctor mumbled grudgingly.
Amy grinned triumphantly.
He didn't know what he felt for River. It had been so much easier with Rose, and Donna, and Martha, and even to a certain extent Amy and Rory, because he could clearly label their relationship to him. Rose: Friend-Who-I-Fell-In-Love-With-And-Lost-Tragically. Martha: Friend-Who-I-Shattered-The-Heart-Of-Because-Of-Said-Friend-Who-I-Fell-In-Love-With-And-Lost-Tragically. Donna: My-Old-Best-Friend-Who-Tended-To-Shout-At-Me-A-Lot. Amy: First-Face-This-Face-Saw. Rory: Noble-Centurion-Friend-With-A-Frankly-Enormous-Nose.
River alternated between That-Infuriating-Woman-Who-Annoys-The-Living-Daylights-Out-Of-Me, Hell-In-High-Heels-Who-I-Really-Want-To-Snog, and One-Of-My-Best-Friends-Who-Is-Off-Limits-Because-I-Saw-Her-Die. And it was extremely frustrating, because every time he thought he knew which one best fit her, she'd give him a coy wink or make an annoyed comment about how he was "using the wrong setting on the sonic screwdriver, sweetie, and it's not meant to be used as a weapon" or do something utterly amazing that he hadn't even considered, and she'd switch from one to the other.
However, he'd noticed that when she was gone, he always thought of her as the second one. It had used to always be the first one, because she had been infuriating back then, with her spoilers and her flirting and her space hair, but he'd grown quite accustomed to (in fact, possibly even fond of) the spoilers and the flirting.
And he loved the space hair, although he'd die before admitting it.
"How are you doing?" River asked him, bending over the console of the starliner they were trying to repair. It was a difficult job, considering that said starliner was mid-flight. "We've got 15,000 people waiting on you, you know, so you might want to use my vortex manipulator to pop out and get the equipment that you need."
"You'd trust me not to leave you?" the Doctor asked in surprise from underneath the console. He couldn't quite see River, but he could see her shoes, which were unrealistically high black stilettos that did shameless things to her legs. Or maybe he was just looking at her legs too much, which was her fault, because she was no normal human and he hadn't had these sorts of feelings since Gallifrey. "I could just go back to the TARDIS and leave you stranded on the starliner."
"If you did," said River, "I would fix the starliner and use it to hunt you down and slap you silly, so I wouldn't recommend that option."
The Doctor would have been annoyed if she had said something like that back on the Byzantium, but now it elicited a besotted little smile, and he was very grateful for the covering of the console. He was certain that she would have laughed at his expression.
"You're doing it wrong!" the Doctor shouted triumphantly. "The code's seven-zero-zero-seven-five—"He suddenly stopped talking. River had finished punching in the code that he'd deemed wrong. The door had beeped and sprung open. She was giving him an amused look. "Bugger," he muttered sulkily. "Why can't I be the right one for once?"
"Because then the entire dynamic of our relationship would be thrown off, honey, now get through the door before we get shot down by Sontarans." River nudged him with her bare shoulder, and he couldn't help but notice how soft her skin was. She was soft, too, which was odd for someone who had a tendency to shoot things, but there were a lot of things surprising about his girlfriend.
"I'm sorry, what?" said River in amusement.
"Hang on," said the Doctor, "was I thinking out loud?" Then, "No! You're not my girlfriend, that was a Freudian slip, that was—"
"A Freudian slip," River recited cheerfully, steering them both through the door and using the Doctor's sonic to lock it, "is an error in speech, memory, or physical action that is interpreted as occurring due to the interference of an unconscious subdued wish, conflict, or train of thought guided by the ego and the rules of correct behavior." She grinned. "Thank you, Wikipedia!" she added, holding up her phone. "So you'd like to be my boyfriend?"
"Yeh—No! No, that's not—that isn't—"
River rolled her eyes and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "You really know how to flatter a girl," she said sarcastically. She sauntered down the corridor. The Doctor, who was stunned into silence by the chaste cheek kiss, might have walked into a wall if not for the fact that River had linked arms with him and was towing him along.
The pivotal moment for the Doctor, when he realized that he'd fallen hard and fast for River, wasn't the kiss in Utah. You could kiss someone you fancied without knowing that it was becoming more. Nor was it when he thought that they were stranded on an alien planet without the TARDIS, and said alien planet was going to detonate if he didn't fix things, and he had ten minutes; not even that could make him admit his feelings.
Instead, it was the day when the Doctor showed off the TARDIS scanner to the Ponds.
"See?" he said proudly to Amy and Rory, flipping it to show them. "Scans everything on the TARDIS. How much food we have, how much water, how many people—"
"But we don't have four people," said Amy, frowning slightly.
"What?" replied the Doctor. "Pond, the scanner never lies. I gave it a tune-up just this morning."
"Well, according to the scanner, there is someone taking a shower in your bathroom, Doctor," said Rory. "Did you have someone over last night?"
"What?" said the Doctor indignantly. "Who's using my shower?"
"There's an intruder who broke in for a shower?" Amy said, raising an eyebrow. "Are you sure you aren't telling us something, Doctor? Do you finally have a love life? Is it River?"
"River Song," said the Doctor, crossing his arms and glowering, "is not taking a shower in my bedroom. River Song was not over last night. I am turning off the hot water. That will make it very clear as to who our intruder is, I'm sure." He pressed a button on the scanner.
No sound.
"Maybe River likes cold showers, Doctor," Rory suggested.
"No, she doesn't," the Doctor huffed. "She mentioned last time I saw her, she specifically said that she liked hot showers—"
"Are you for real?" said Amy in amusement. "Are you, like, actually that oblivious? Is it some sort of alien thing?"
"I'm going to go confront the intruder," the Doctor informed them. "Come along, Ponds."
They ran down a few flights of stairs, took the elevator up, ran up and down a series of twisting corridors for about fifteen minutes, and reached the Doctor's bathroom, where an irritated (and soggy) River Song was shivering against the wall in the Doctor's bathrobe.
"Did he turn off the hot water?" she demanded of Amy and Rory. "Did he? I swear I will seriously injure him if he did."
"Wh—how—what are you doing on my TARDIS?" the Doctor demanded, and never had it been so hard to decide between That-Infuriating-Woman-Who-Annoys-The-Living-Daylights-Out-Of-Me and Hell-In-My-Bathrobe-Who-I-Really-Want-To-Snog. "And why are you wearing my bathrobe?"
"The only other towel in there was a hand towel," said River, "and you're my young sweetie, so I decided to go with the more family-friendly option. Now, you didn't answer my question. Did you turn off the hot water?"
"You're not allowed to just get onto my TARDIS and take a shower!" protested the Doctor indignantly. "You can't just do things like that! You had Amy and Rory and me on red alert, running about the TARDIS for fifteen minutes!"
"What are you going to do about it, spank me?" River responded, crossing her arms and giving him a triumphant smirk. He hated that smirk. That smirk was the one that said I've won, and there's nothing that you can do about it.
Something snapped in the Doctor. Some barrier that he'd erected, some wall that he'd put up, something that had kept him from falling in love with the extraordinary enigma that was River Song. And all he knew was that he would not let her stand there and smirk at him like he was some bloody idiot, so he moved forward and pushed her up against the wall, his mouth meeting hers.
All things considered, it was a very nice angry-kiss. He hadn't actually angry-kissed anyone before, and he really did like it. Especially when it was River, who had grabbed the lapels of his jacket and was kissing him back enthusiastically, and his hands were finally tangled in that space hair that he adored—
Oh.
Oh no.
The Doctor hastily pulled away to stare at a shell-shocked Amy and Rory. River was grinning broadly, her eyes sparkling, and she looked the happiest that he'd ever seen her.
"Ponds," said the Doctor weakly, "I might need a bit of alone time with River."
"I like the sound of that," River purred.
"Not like that," the Doctor huffed. Rory grabbed his wife's arm (said wife's eyes were the size of saucers) and pulled a stunned Amy away.
As soon as the Ponds were gone, River grinned broadly. "I love it when you kiss me like that," she whispered contentedly, her warm fingers curled under a lapel of his jacket. One of her hands had strayed to his shoulder, and she was playing with a strand of his hair.
"I—I—" choked the Doctor, desperate not to make the same mistake that he had with Rose, but unable to make the words leave his mouth.
"I know," said River gently. "You don't have to say it, sweetie, now's not going to be your first time."
"But you know?" said the Doctor desperately. "You know that—that—"
River pressed her finger to his lips. "Don't say it," she said quietly. "I've already heard you say it for the first time. You've still got a bit of time to prepare, honey."
"You know, though?" he asked, and it felt as if a weight had been lifted off of his chest.
"I've always known," she said. "You don't need to tell me that you love me for me to know." She smiled softly, her eyes tired and sad and resigned, and the Doctor wondered sadly at how many disappointments he'd caused her. "But this is when I start losing you, sweetie, if you aren't saying it anymore."
"I'm so sorry," said the Doctor, his hands moving from her hair to rest on her hips before clasping at the small of her back and pulling her close. "If I could say it, would that fix things?"
"You'd rewrite our timelines," said River matter-of-factly. "I don't expect you to."
"What if I told you how I felt about you, but I didn't say the word—you know, the—that word—directly? Would that rewrite anything?" the Doctor asked hopefully.
River frowned at him. "No, but it would mean that you still love me right now, and you lied when you said it for the first time and said that that was the first time that you had told me, and I'm going to be very cross with you in the future, when—" She drew in a shuddering breath. "Wh—when you don't remember any of this, because it hasn't happened for you yet."
The Doctor kissed the corner of her mouth timidly. "I've not felt like this in centuries," he confessed breathlessly, and at River's wide-eyed look, he plunged on recklessly. "It's not just—well, you know, that word, not the way I feel about the humans I take on board. It's lust, and passion, and adoration, and all sorts of things that I would only normally feel for one of my own kind. And I don't understand you, not at all, but that only makes my feelings for you intensify, and I'm certain that it isn't just fascination. It's—you know." A tear trickled down River's cheek, but she was smiling softly. He kissed it away, one of his hands moving from her back to clasp the hand on his lapel. "That's how I feel about you," he said. "You're not set in stone, River. You don't always make sense. You're more like me than I would have thought possible. More like the sort of people on Gallifrey. All confusy-woosy."
River was crying now, silently, but she looked more happy and more open than he had ever seen her, her eyes sparkling, the guard she had so carefully maintained let down. He stared at her in shy amazement. This, he knew, was the woman that he loved; trusting him. "Oh, sweetie," she whispered, her voice shaking.
The Doctor smiled weakly. "You're…um…crying."
"You're handling it well," teased River with a little sniffle. "Honestly, honey, haven't you seen me cry before?"
The Doctor bit his lip. "Um…generally, you're all…" Then he smiled. River had finally found her place, if only temporarily. "You know. That-Infuriating-Woman-Who-I-Really-Like-Snogging."
River laughed wetly. "Tell me, how long did it take you to think of that one?"
"Two years," the Doctor confessed. "Give or take." She kissed him again, her free hand moving to rest on his shoulder, almost like a sort of waltz. She smelled of water, and linen, and his shampoo—
"River!" he said indignantly, pulling away, but his protest to her use of his shampoo died away when he saw the disarming love in her eyes. Love for him. He forgot about his angry reprimand and kissed her again, removing his hand from hers to lift her up off the floor. She made a squeaking noise against his mouth that made him smile.
"I love you," he said the next time he saw her, as soon as she'd fallen smack into his arms because she had jumped out of another spaceship. Maybe it was because it was midnight, and the Ponds weren't up to hear him say it, but the words bubbled out before he'd thought about it and he whispered them to her as they both lay on the floor of the TARDIS. Words that he rarely uttered had never felt so natural to say.
River stiffened in his arms before looking up at him with wonder in her eyes. "That—was the first time you said it, I can tell," she said jerkily. "I'm not going to hear you say it again."
"It's not, because I love you," said the Doctor again, a little louder this time; the Ponds were asleep. "I love you," he told her, "and I promise I'll say it to you a thousand times tonight, to make up for it."
"I love you too, sweetie," River whispered back, gracing him with a small smile and a chaste kiss, and she rested her head against his chest contentedly. "Mmm. I'm tired. Hijacking a spaceship wreaks havoc on my hair. You're a nice pillow. Can you take me up to bed?"
The Doctor smiled. "I love you," he said again, and the words had never tasted sweeter in his mouth, because they were directed at River Song and her eyes were sparkling and shining more beautifully than any constellation.
"You'd better be nice to me, in your past, because now you're stuck with me for good," River replied smugly. At the Doctor's worried look, her smile faded. "Hey," she whispered. "You've still got lots to come, sweetie, and now that I know that you came to this point, I'm not going to be worried anymore about rewriting our timelines. I love you, honey, and I'm not going to give up on you."
"Even when I wear a fez?"
"First of all, spoilers, and second of all, I don't intend on making any promises when it comes to your headwear, sweetie."
"I love you."
"I love you too."
He found that he liked being susceptible to Amy's humany disease.
A lot.
As always, reviews are appreciated.
-The Eclectic Bookworm