"You didn't tell me there was a pool," she said, her voice echoing strangely off all the old stone, coming back unrecognisable.
"Terribly important, the thrill of discovery," the Doctor said. The words were all right, all ihim/i, but the tone was flat, hollow, wrong.
Martha crossed the room and crouched down beside him, balancing on her heels. She slipped a hand into the water. It was cool. She'd expected that.
She dried her hand on her trousers and studied him in profile for a second, the way he held his chin (just a little too high), the way he held himself (just a little too still). He hadn't flitted off, or started jabbering away, and that was an invitation; she understood that, now.
Martha rocked back and sat down properly, folding up her legs and letting one hand drop down beside her, onto his.
It was warm. She'd expected that, too.
"Why not get in?"
He didn't answer at first, long enough to make her think he might not be going to. "Didn't want to," he said, finally. Another silence, and he turned his hand so that he was holding hers, and turned his face to her, and smiled. "But now I do. Ready?"
Martha only let herself be taken aback for as long as it took to blink. She hadn't exactly meant herself, she didn't have a bathing suit, she was not wearing somebody else's... "Not quite," she said, rising to her feet. She turned her back. Her tank was dark and so was her bra, her knickers were too and covered as much as any suit would. She slipped out of her shoes and trousers, and turned back around. "Okay, ready," she said. "Er. Aren't you at least going to take off your jacket?"
"Right, yes, right, of course," the Doctor said, his eyes fluttering wildly around a point somewhere over her shoulder.
Martha grinned to herself, and then grinned some more as the Doctor shrugged out of the jacket, gave it more thought, pulled off the button-down shirt, gave it a little more thought, undid the trousers and hopped out of them in the manner of an off-balance stick insect. He stood there, finally, in t-shirt and shorts, and it was plenty of clothes, far more than she was wearing, but he usually wore so many... Martha found her gaze fluttering too, no matter how much she liked what she saw, because he was the Doctor and it was wrong for him to be exposed like this, wrong...
He stretched out a hand to her, and she took it. They walked to the edge of the pool together and Martha stared down into the water. She couldn't see the bottom, and somehow she doubted that just was because there wasn't enough light in this shadowy room; there was every possibility it didn't have one. She squeezed the Doctor's hand, and decided it didn't matter.
"On three?" he asked.
"On three," she agreed, and they counted it together. One, two, three-
-and cold and dark and she knew the air was up but getting there was out of her control, the only part of her that felt like anything at all was her fingers, tight around the Doctor's, holding on, everything else was lost to her, part of the cold and the dark -
They broke the surface together, and the Doctor looked at her and said, "Thank you, Martha Jones," and she threw her free arm around his shoulder and hugged him. Not because he was solid and warm, although he was (but getting cooler, the clinical part of her brain noted, good, definitely getting cooler), but because she suddenly understood a little better what had happened on that ship, when he'd been lost in something so much larger than himself, and sometimes when words were useless bodies weren't.
She pulled back when she felt herself beginning to sink, and began moving one arm in the water, keeping herself afloat, while her other hand still clasped his, just under the surface. Their shoulders bumped, and he lifted one corner of his mouth in a smile. Then, suddenly, no warning, he pulled himself back under again, and her choice was to let go or go down with him - she thought back to that ship again, to his voice (Martha where are you?) - and it wasn't a choice at all, she went.
They broke the surface again, and this time he threw an arm around her; and maybe it was because he looked so little like the Doctor and so much like a drowned rat, with his plastered-down hair and t-shirt, or, no, maybe it was because the idea of what was and wasn't the Doctor was shifting in her head, more and more and more (I'm so scared), but she turned her head and did something that wasn't life or death or spiralling into a sun, but frightened her almost the same.
Martha kissed him, and, after a heartbeat, he kissed her back.
She was hot, she was cold, she was floating, she was drowning, the only parts of her body that mattered were the parts touching him, and they were burning, electric, on fire. Suddenly there was stone against her back, the wall of the pool, he'd manoeuvred them against it, and she was glad even as she was annoyed. He shouldn't be thinking rationally, if her brain had blown out his should have too, and she dropped his hand, finally, and grabbed his waist, pulling him to her, entwining legs instead of fingers, pressing together hips instead of palms.
He didn't mind the substitutions. He wasn't so alien that she couldn't tell.
She rocked against him and he rocked back; back and forth, back and forth, gently, kissing and rocking, taking it in turns to be the waves, to be the shore.
Things skittered through Martha's brain, important things, fractures of distress - alien sex, alien diseases, alien babies - oh God - but this wasn't going to work anyway - water everywhere, nothing but water, nothing to stand on, no support - oh God - but the Doctor tugged at her knickers with a finger, and after he slipped them off he slipped a finger up and she couldn't think anymore but that didn't matter because he never stopped -
Slow at first, slow, slow, slow, around and around, and then he pushed at her sodden tank and bra and then his mouth was on her breast, slow, slow, slow, and she grabbed a fistful of wet hair and pulled his head up and took his mouth, not slow, not slow at all, and he got the point, faster, faster, and she felt herself drawing up, coiling like a spring and she couldn't kiss him any more, could only hold on -
She spun apart, infinite pieces flying into the dark. He held her together and when she opened her eyes, he was smiling.
Martha reached below the water, and took him in her right hand, using her left to tug gently on his shorts; she held her breath for a moment, because she wouldn't be surprised at all if he shut down, pulled away, turned this into just a favour to her that would never be spoken of again.
His eyes were desperately serious but his shorts slid away and Martha held him to her, between her hand and her stomach, and slid her fingers up, feeling him twitch. His eyes fell closed, and she began.
Slow, slow, slow.
She'd been wrong before, Martha thought, suddenly fanciful now, holding a Lord of Time in the bottomless dark of a dead civilisation. It was life or death, what she'd started, it was iexactly/i that, it was life elemental, and maybe it was because he'd put his life in her hands once today already that he could do this. It had been why she could.
Faster, now, faster, and this time she didn't shy away, she let herself look at him, exposed, let that finally slip into the picture of Doctor, let it be right.
He didn't shout when he came, or call her name, but laughed a little with his face pressed against her shoulder, and she knew better than to take offence.
She kissed his cheek, and they stayed there for a while, tangled together, the two of them.
When she was ready to go he was floating on his back with his arms outstretched and his eyes closed, barely moving, still in a way that looked like peace, or death.
It wasn't either, of course.
She let herself out.