AN: Well, another Doctor/River. At present my season six DVDs have gone completely missing in action, and I am going slowly insane without a Doctor Who fix. Hope you all enjoy this. Becs, I can't remember if I asked you to beta this! I am made of fail. If I did: many thanks to Becs for the beta; if I didn't: many thanks to Becs for co-fangirling.

Spoilers: References to the Big Bang double, but only slight.

Passing The Torch

"So, you dated a Nestene duplicate with two heads?" Queries the Doctor as he leans against a wall and fiddles with his sonic screwdriver. His question is apropos of nothing; his voice is striving for idle curiosity, but the intensity of his gaze on his screwdriver gives away his desire to know.

"He didn't have two heads, darling, he had interchangeable heads. Honestly, I would've thought a man of your age would be a little more accepting."

"What? Me? I'm perfectly accepting of multiple-headed men."

"He only had one head." She says between teeth that she is trying not to grit.

"Well, he may've only had on one head at a time, but he did have multiple heads."

"You know, if you were anyone else, I'd think you were jealous." She comments idly.

"Jealous? Why would I be jealous? Just because the woman I love used to date some never-boring-head-changing – "

She cuts him off sharply. "What did you just say?"

His gaze is bemused; he had not intended her to hear his mutterings, hadn't even expected her to pay attention.

"I said I'm not jealous." His eyes are wide with innocence. Innocence does not suit men of his age.

"You said you love me." She replies. Her head swings to face him; her eyes are, if possible, even wider than his.

"Well, I – it's – I mean, - uh – well – Well, I know I don't say it often, but it's not like I've never said it before." The words tumble out of his lips at such a pace that, were she someone who knew him less well, she would not have kept up.

"You've never said that before."

"I've never told you I love you before?" A shake of her head. "That's the first time I've said I love you." A nod this time. "So then – " She presses her fingers over his mouth.

"Can I just have a moment to absorb this, please?" She requests quietly. Thinking it wise not to speak further, he nods as best he can from under her grasp, and remains both silent and still – a near impossibility for him – until he sees the cogs in her brain beginning to slow to a normal number of revolutions per minute rather than spiralling off in the red zone. When he's sure she's ready, he gently peels her hand from his mouth and kisses her knuckles.

"River Song, I love you."

"I love you, too." Breathes the normally unflappable woman standing before him.

"Yes, but I already knew that." He replies, an impish twinkle in his eye.

"That's because I've always loved you. You had to fall in love with me."

"And fall I did." He whispers. River leans forward and kisses him. Her arms snake around his neck of their own volition while his close around her back, and in the spirit of every clichéd romantic movie, her right foot pops off the ground.

"I very much enjoy kissing you." She grins when they break apart. Her eyes open before his, and she takes a moment to enjoy the effect she has on him, the look of combined contentment and desire on his face – and the previously unidentified portion which she can now attribute to love. It makes her smile even more widely.

In a mere moment after his eyes open he's completely changed, though: his face stony, his arms thrusting her away from him rather than keeping her close.

"Oh god."

"What?" She demands. His only response is to rake his hand through his floppy hair, turn on his heel and take two long strides away from her. "What!" She barks, genuinely afraid of what's going on inside his head. The sharpness of her tone makes him turn back to her, albeit excruciatingly slowly.

"That's the first time I've ever said that to you."

"Yes." She nods, her lack of immediate comprehension surprising him.

"The first time, River."

"Oh..." The word is little more than a puff of air escaping her suddenly parted lips, a glitch in the system. Her breathing is slow, but he can see in the set of her arms that she is warring to keep it so. "Your firsts are my lasts." She says softly.

"And your firsts are my lasts." The words settle in the room between them like dust: gritty, dark, and out of place in their usually light-hearted banter.

"No. No, that doesn't make sense." She says, suddenly bursting into action. "Because I know you. I know you now so I should've forgotten you by the time we have lasts – "

Her babble is cut off by his measured response: "it's my last, River. Not yours."

He sees her chest begin to rise and fall unevenly with ill-fought-off tears. "No. No." She insists. "No, because I'm moving this way and you're moving this way and we – " even though her attempting to draw their ill-fated timelines in the air is making him smile, he stops her.

"River. It's okay." She begins to cry in earnest then, tears spilling from her eyes and chest rising in fits and starts as she attempts to control herself. He looks away from her, for the first time in his exceedingly long life completely unable to fix the situation.

"Tell me again." She instructs him suddenly, sounding more in control of herself, more like the woman he expects to find beside him with a gun when things get tricky.

"What?"

"If you say it again it won't have been the last time. We can keep saying it. You can keep saying it, further and further back in the timeline."

"You know I can't do that." He tells her gently, finally crossing back to her and cupping her face tenderly in his right hand. "We'll get to a point when you'll think 'who is this strange man who wears a bow tie and keeps telling me he loves me?'" She lets out something between a laugh and a sob, and nestles into his hand. Her tears begin streaking along the rise of his thumb and down his wrist. In all his years of knowing her, he has only ever seen her cry like this once before today.

"River..." He breathes soothingly. A smile breaks upon his lips as tears have the temerity to well in his own eyes. "I can't believe under that cold-blooded-killer exterior you're such a kitten." Again she sob-laughs. For a long moment he pulls her against his chest, cradling her to him and trying to will the tears from his eyes.

"Now you listen to me River Song," he says, pulling away from her and making her look him in the eye. "This might be my last day of saying the big scary 'L' word, but you have hundreds and hundreds of years left of me telling you exactly how much I love you. So you really shouldn't be crying. This is your first. God, cry on your own last, it's my turn today!" He teases, this time earning more of a chuckle than an actual laugh. He presses his lips first to her forehead, then to her lips.

"We're only just beginning for you, River. You and me and all of time and space" he says, mirroring something she said to him long ago in his past but way out in her future.

"Now it's your turn to watch us run."