Author: Regency
Title: that thing you do
Pairing: River Song/12th Doctor
Warnings: None.
Rating: G/Everyone
Summary: There's something about River Song the Doctor can't resist. River has no idea what it is, so the Doctor decides to enlighten her.
Author's Notes: Post-THoRS, obviously. I needed more besotted Twelve and disbelieving River, so I wrote it! *shrug*
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters recognizable as being from Doctor Who. They are the property of their actors, producers, writers, and studios, not me. No copyright infringement was intended and no money was made in the writing or distribution of this story. It was good, clean fun.
River checks the environmental readings for the planet Polnaxx 56 Earth years after their original arrival. The Doctor had grown bored of waiting for the cultural revolution after helping to depose their despotic king, so here they are skipping ahead.
"You're staring."
"I'm not."
"You absolutely are. I can feel your eyebrows boring into me from here. What are you looking at? Have I got something on my face?"
"Nothing I haven't seen before."
"And what is that supposed to mean?"
The Doctor moseys toward her as casually as only he can. With far more grace than his bowtie-clad self but still as though he's a touch bewildered that he has so much leg and arm.
"It's normal for you. All this." He gestures inelegantly toward her features. "You know."
"I don't know." She leans on the console and crosses her arms. "My face is what?"
"Doing that thing it always does. Being all…" He cocks his head. "Beautiful."
Her jaw drops before she can snap it shut. She didn't expect that.
"Don't look so surprised."
"I thought you didn't notice beauty in this body."
"I don't–when it's other people." He steps toward her again. "You're not other people."
"Oh dear, you've gone all suave this time 'round."
"I have. No more Mr. Shaky Knickers."
"Did that sound very clever in your head?"
"It did. It was rubbish. Forget I said that."
She wrinkles her nose. "I'll certainly try, but I might need a bit of help getting my mind off of it."
He runs a bony finger down the bridge of her nose. She laughs. It's an oddly sensitive part of her where he's concerned. He cannot keep away from it and she can but react to his fascination.
"Beautiful," he echoes of his previous declaration.
"You've said that."
"It's doubly true."
She rolls her eyes while being doubly touched. He wears his adoration on his sleeve in this regeneration. She is still learning to believe in it.
"Oh, hello, there's something," he murmurs worriedly, brushing the tips of his fingers underneath her jaw.
River straightens. "What?" She touches her face. "What is it?"
"Nothing at all. Just something…" He swoops down to kiss her, softly, just above his fingertips. His lips are warm and dry. His hands go just where they should, cupping her face protectively between his palms, thumbs massaging tender circles into the apples of her cheeks. Time-drenched emotion seeps from his mind to hers: I love you in the language that hung stars and burned planets and eulogized races great and terrible alike. I love you in thirteen voices, all of them his, all of them hers to love. I love you like the sunset admires the horizon it leaves behind. I love you always, a promise that means everything for a Time Lord.
He pulls away and she stands a little dazed, leant against the console to keep to her feet.
"There, I think I got it."
She was quite sure once that it would be the Doctor's Eleventh incarnation who would be her Doctor. But the more he loves her with this open, adoring face, the more he kisses her and then swaggers away all self-satisfaction, the more she begins to wonder if she's guessed wrong. Their story's wound through centuries and twists nearer to its first millennium by the hour, but perhaps, just perhaps, they've only just begun.
Her smile widens until she's beaming at him, drawn to his daft robin's egg blue eyes that are never far from her.
"Charmer."
He quirks those absurd eyebrows, smug and daft and all over sexier than should be allowed.
"Only for you, dear."
In this life, she believes it.