oooOooo
He was reading in his room when he heard a tap at the door. He lowered the book, a collection of Shakespear's Sonnets, and half-rose from his seat. "Yes? Peri? Is everything all right?"
She'd opened the door and slipped into the room after hearing her name, hesitating on the threshold before closing the door behind her and looking around curiously. "This is your room? Just this? I pictured something a lot larger."
"What, a larger than life room for my larger than life personality?"
"I wanted to ask you something," she side-stepped the question with a wry grin and shake of her head, but there was something, a tension about her, and he immediately realized she was returning to their almost-argument of the other day, and the roundabout way he'd come to admit he had feelings for her. Gods above, he hated that term, but had to admit it was the easiest way to express things right now. An Earth phrase for an Earth woman.
"Ask away." He settled back into his chair, indicating the second one if she wanted it. After a moment, she walked toward him, her eyes still taking in the details of his untidy life. The bed, king-sized, four-postered and only haphazardly straightened, centered grandly on the far wall near the door to his private bathing chamber. The faithful coat-rack, now standing next to the main door, with his coat of many colors and a variety of other clothes hanging from the hooks. The out-sized dresser, tucked away discreetly in a corner, with a row of shoes lined up beneath it, toes hidden, back ends protruding immodestly. The fireplace he'd added only recently, or at least the TARDIS had, on the wall opposite the bed, flanked by two chairs with a small but sturdy mahogany table between them. There was a Victorian-looking mock-gas lamp on the table, positioned to shed decent lighting if a reader chose either of the comfortable wing-backs to sit in. There were also matching mahogany bookshelves flanking the fireplace, stuffed to the gills with classics from more than one world, but with a preponderance of Earth literature crowding the shelves.
She gave a grunt of surprise as her feet sank into the thick Persian carpet in that covered the space between his bed and the fireplace, then impulsively kicked off her shoes to better appreciate its luxuriant nap. "This is great!" she exclaimed, sinking down into the chair he'd indicated, looking at the elaborate marble fireplace (with a sock hanging over one end, he noted disapprovingly), admiring the silver candelabra on the sockless end, contemplating the vivid landscape hanging above it...looking everywhere, he realized, but at him.
"Peri." He said her name softly, but with a firmness that surprised both of them, startled her into looking at him, directly into his eyes before ducking her head down to study her feet, or the carpet. Or the other sock resting half-under her chair, he really needed to pick up after himself once in a while...Now he was doing it. Focusing on the inconsequentials. She'd come to talk but was hesitating; one word from him would no doubt send her from the room, the issue still unresolved, and he discovered that he didn't want things to go on as they had.
With no destination in mind, they'd not made planetfall, not left the TARDIS, for several days. Days in which each managed to continually miss the other except in passing. He'd spent the time catching up on some badly needed maintenance, doing a bit of this and that, noting each time he saw her where she'd been; the pool, obvious by her bathing costume (which he'd greatly admired as she hurried past him with little more than a muttered "Hello"). The kitchen with the fantastic pastry maker, as the tell-tale crumbs on the front of her blouse told him...and what he'd been doing looking at the front of her blouse he hadn't dared admit to himself. But now was the time to stop dodging. He'd left it up to her, and here she was. No backing out allowed, for either of them. "Peri." He said her name again, his voice cajoling, and she looked up, reluctantly, this time holding his gaze until he spoke. "What did you want to ask me?"
"What made you think I was interested in Jamie? That way?" She blurted the question out immediately, as if unable to hold it in any longer.
It wasn't the question he'd been expecting; he grunted a surprised "Huh" before leaning back in his chair. Breaking eye contact again. "Nothing concrete," he finally answered, his gaze captured and held by the dancing flames in front of them. "Nothing substantial. Just a feeling, I suppose. Perhaps the way you looked at him, or more likely the way he looked at you."
"He looked at me?" Peri sounded surprised, and he turned to find her leaning against the arm of her chair. Towards him. "I mean, I know he looked at me, but you think he looked at me like...that?" She floundered to a stop; obviously he'd surprised her with his response as much as she had surprised him with her question.
The Doctor nodded. "Oh yes, there was no mistaking it." He'd been a long row of regenerations away from traveling with Jamie McCrimmon, but he still recognized the boy's way of looking at a lass he fancied.
"So he looked at me that way, and you thought I looked at him? That way?" She was seeking clarification he wasn't sure he could offer, but he nodded anyway. He hadn't actually seen her doing any such thing, but at the time he thought he had. The intensity of his reaction to that perceived interest on her part toward his former traveling companion had taken him by surprise, and he told her so before he could stop and think about it.
"That's when I realized I was beginning to have feelings for you," he concluded. That phrase again; how he was starting to loathe it. He leaned on the arm of his chair, unconsciously mirroring her pose so that they were physically closer together than when she'd first taken her seat. Their faces, anyway. "And instead of putting them aside, as would have been appropriate, and letting myself process them, I immediately acted like a jealous fool. I'm sorry." The apology was as impulsive as the entire confession, but just as sincere.
"Feelings and attraction," Peri murmured, her gaze gone distant. "But not love?"
He wasn't sure how to take that question, and answered with caution. "I think it would be rash of me to say that when I've just realized I felt more for you than friendship." He hoped that would do.
Apparently it was the right thing to say. Peri smiled suddenly, and nodded. "Good. I was afraid you were rushing things. After all, I don't even know your name."
"Theta." The word was out before he could stop himself, a name, a nickname, really, from a past so distant he'd almost forgotten it. "You can call me Theta. If you like."
"Theta." She tried it out, then straightened in her seat and held out her hand. "I'm pleased to meet you, Theta." Then, as he tentatively reached out to clasp her hand in his own, she wrinkled her nose. "I don't know. It'll take some getting used to."
Her hand was warm in his, and she showed no sign of wanting it back. "So."
"So." She was still smiling, still allowing him to hold her hand. "So what?"
"So what next?" he asked, grinning at the silly turn the conversation had suddenly taken.
"So maybe you want to know if I return your feelings? Feel the same attraction?" Her voice was gently rebuking as she reminded him that he hadn't asked those extremely important questions.
"Maybe I do," he admitted in a murmur. "Maybe I'm afraid to know."
"Maybe you shouldn't be," she murmured back. She'd leaned forward again, smiling expectantly, and he leaned toward her as well. Their lips met, hesitant at first, but quickly growing in eagerness as the kiss continued, longer by far than the Doctor had dared to hope.