A/N: Woo, revivalverse. This idea grabbed me and I wouldn't let me go until I wrote it. Partially inspired by a feeling that came up in Mantra, another Toby/Doctor piece, that I couldn't explore there because it wouldn't've fit. And, to give credit where credit is due, partially inspired by the Innuendo Bench (if you don't know what that is, you don't need to). The characters are not mine, they are Sondheim's, Christopher Bond's, Hugh Wheeler's, John Doyle's and their respective actors'.
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It starts with an ache.
It starts when she lies down with an ache in her back as she drifts to sleep. Her body is always strained, from stooping and feeding and washing and restraining and wanting and disciplining and "healing" and stopping. Sometimes her head flares red and heat from being constantly barraged with screams and dim light that makes her eyes lean out to see. Sometimes her stomach empties into itself from the stench that permeates every crevice of her senses. When it is those, it can't be helped. But when it is a bandage of overwork burning through her back onto her shoulder, then it starts.
It comes to her, nameless, faceless, just the contours of a body, and hands. They're all she feels, at first, those hands around her neck. The way to cure pain is pain, they say as they dig into her shoulders, hurting more than the ache and the knots ever could. They churn and roll and keep digging, and she almost says to stop, or be gentle, but she cannot form the words. A crunch into a fist, and she's about to cry out for mercy, but the cry comes as an almost indecipherable exhale as her head tilts back and her eyelids flutter and she feels exposed. And relief. And again. Press, until she feels she is about to explode, and more until she does. Until the pressure climaxes so she is forced to release it herself with an entirely too feminine sigh. Hearing it, it is a sigh of pleasure. Living it, it is a sigh of repression, and a fear that she has surrendered.
She thinks, about everything other than her body's reaction, everything except the tortured pleasure. Ignore, distract, resist. She tries to focus on her surroundings, but she looks and there's only colors, blacks and deep reds, like a pulse. So to look, she feels and she feels that she's held, her back against a man's legs. Or is it a woman's? Press, press, curl, dig, crunch, inhale - does it really (constrain) matter? Release, sigh (oh). She feels the face, invisible - or can she just not see for the colors around her? - she feels it undressing the barriers she's put on her emotions, smirking, watching her reactions. Watching her eyes roll backwards into her skull. Watching her be controlled and helpless and everything she tries not to be.
She feels she should be embarrassed, but before she has the chance, press, gasp, exhale. Or she wants to give herself over, but (oh god, it hurts, someone, help me, stop, oh god - oh . . . g.. od . . . ) whisper, ragged breaths - all she can do is wait for the next impulse. Follow, but keep it restrained. The hands are watching. Can't let her guard d ... (ow) . . . n. Crescendo, then silence. In reality, she's fighting against herself, as she's pulled, constricted, manipulated into barely voiced moans. It is a conflict of interests; freedom or release.
And they move. The hands move on a carefully chosen path down her spine. Knuckles roll against vertebrae, and they're gears grinding their way down her back. And they reach the point where they press a valve, open something in her and she's forced to arch her back suddenly then slow, like an attack of a snake. She scrambles for control, and her hands grope for the strings that control her body. She can only find the head's, so instead of letting it fall back, too, she forces it forward and down, trying to show the hands, the gears, the face, that they don't have all of her, but they laugh and move back towards her neck and shoulders.
Neck, shoulders, spine, that is all, the pointed Y of a path. It will not be more than this. It will never lead to a kiss, to chapped lips and sweating palms. The hands will never make their way to her waist, her hips, her breasts, her forearms, thighs, ankles or stomach. There is never a caress, an embrace, only the squeezing out of misty breath. Sometimes her skin aches for more, reaches out of her pores, and it scares her. Sometimes, she wants to grab the hands and compress the life out of them, making them stop so she'll never have to feel again. Twist and contort and release everything in them.
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Her back begins to ache as she washes the boy, from the bend and wear on her spine and the constant babble pouring from the child like the hot water that starts to feel pleasant, then scalds. She continues, knowing that later she will return to the bed, but she's not sure whether she wants it or not.
Toby's in a good mood, she thinks, trying to distract herself from herself. Once, he'd splashed her, the droplets changing the starch white of her blouse to almost translucent spots, the tone of her skin bleeding through a mask. She would have disciplined him, but she had been tired and hurt and it never did much good anyway. A drop of water had fallen on her cheek, landing where a tear would have, in years past.
Out of the tub, she helps him dress. His body is wracked with shivers from the cold air outside the protective womb of the water. His pajama bottoms on, she moves to help him with his shirt and pauses. Her fingers stroke his back lightly. Still wet. She aches. If he put on his shirt now, when he's still wet, it would absorb the water and the water would absorb the cold and he'd sit in his room freezing. Her hands work their way to his shoulders, and she feels the his tiny hairs stand erect from the exposure, the cold, and (she suspects) her touch. She begins to rub his shoulders.
Toby's confused, but she starts gently and he giggles and melts to her touch. She hears him say "coo, mum," and finds that ironic. She jerks into it the same way she arches her back, suddenly then slow, she contracts his tiny shoulders into her hands. He does cry out, a quiet, surprised wail. And she keeps going, grabbing as much of his bone and muscle as her hands can hold and milking what she can out of it. He starts to struggle to get away, but she forces more pressure on his shoulders and he stops. She thinks he is crying. He does not have the same kinds of responses as her. She wonders if it is because she is female. She digs, and her fingernails draw blood.
She aches, and her skin is alive and reaching out again, and she wonders what it would be like to let go, completely. To let her hands break the path they've never traveled, and move from the neck, shoulders and spine and wrap her arms around his body and hold him close to her, so close their skin would mold together. Or let her hands push down his chest, extending and feeling the curves of his still soft stomach in the tense hallow of her palm.
Instead, she explores the neck. Starting from the dip in the collarbone, where everything becomes tender and fragile, she works her way up and around, with a slightly lighter touch - but only slightly. She can feel the inner workings of his throat (he swallows). Her hands rove to the place where the head and the neck connect, and she searches that joint, Toby's head moving with her direction. She thinks she senses a smile through the tears, and she tightens her grip again and he breathes in and she can feel his pulse and it's getting faster. She can cover his entire neck with her two hands, every part of it. She feels a tiny Adam's apple. (If she crushes it, will she get apple juice?)
Her hands find their way, winding up into his hair and she lets her touch dance lightly across his skin, barely any pressure. She closes her eyes and pretends she can only see colors and uses her hands to paint a complete picture of Toby's face. Her fingers trace the complex curves of his ear, and her hands slide down the cheekbones. Still wet, from the tears. He has stopped crying, but she can feel a crystal of salt water on his eyelashes. Her fingers fall, one by one, down his nose, to brush across mouth, helping it slide slightly open. He barely breathes. She lets two fingers circle the inside of his lips, then drape down the teeth, catching a small, exposed amount of tongue, allowing him to taste her. The weight of those fingers brings the lower lip down as they leave, and it springs back into place once released. Down, down the chin back to the neck.
But first, she cradles his head in her hands and leans towards him. She can smell his damp hair, and it's not the same smell that gives her the headaches, so she kisses it. A soft, maternal kiss on the head and Toby smiles, or cries. And she hovers, just above his head, mouth open, letting warm exhales dry his hair. And she lengthens her spine to let her head fall forward and down, not back, to show the hands and the gears and the face that she's in control, and lets her hands rest at his neck again, like a necklace. And she lets the necklace get smaller and smaller, tighter and tighter and Toby's making noises that she can't hear and her eyes are still closed so her world is pulsing blacks and deep reds, and she can feel structures crumbling inside and her arms shake from the strain, and his chin hits the necklace, hits her hands and the colors in her mind stop pulsing and she lets go. And she lays him down and decides the shirt's too much of a hassle to bother with, and leaves, ready to go to her bed because somehow, she doesn't ache anymore.