He might seem imposing, wild and inaccessible at first, but if you give him time, he's a raw diamond.

He cleans up nicely, for once; He can look so beautiful whenever he actually bothers to run a comb through his hair. He is one of these people who, through posture or body language or unflattering hairstyles, somehow manage to squander much of their natural appeal, or perhaps more like those girls who could look like a dozen distinct people just by going for a different shade of lipstick – there were those times, when he would stand up straight at his full height and let her get a good look at the broad sharpness of his frame, when their surroundings were crazy enough for that red lining to work as the simple, yet effective optical accentuation it was probably intended as, instead of something slightly-over-the-top that you'd expect to see on a stage performer, when he took the situation serious enough to speak with an imposing, velvety gravitas that immediately took over the entire room and fixed all glances onto himself;

She had surely noticed, and it wasn't as if she hadn't seen others notice it, too, Marian, Saibra, anyone who cared to look past the silly veil of first impressions; There was no lack of things to notice – Those elegant hands, his sleek palms combined with fingers that were long, but even in breadth, powerful instead of spindly, and usually adorned with one or several gem rings that sparkled in the artificial lights of spaceships and underground complexes; His sleek waist and hips outlined by the dark fabric of his close-fitting pants when he placed his hands in his pockets, radiating practiced ease and an understated challenge;

There were his long, sinewy limbs that took up all the space wherever he chose to spread himself out, the sort of narrow, aquiline nose one would associate with a man of leadership, the edgy, yet refined construction of bones that made up his forehead, and what she was hesitant to refer to as "high aristocratic cheekbones", given that would probably compare that term to a large, festering pimple in terms of favorability, although it might have softened the blow if he let her get to the point in the description where she'd state that the uneven lines beneath probably balanced that out, as did the presence of his oddly rectangular lips as a little, distinctive trait that imbued his already striking visage with additional charisma.

Then, there's the voice that spills forth from those lips, that deep, gravelly wonder, with that very characteristic, gruff, dry tinge added by his accent, which, in an otherwise quiet room, with her disorderly emotions in an appropiately receptive state, was already quite enough by itself to get her uncomfortably bothered by the feeling of warm tingles in her center.

And, last but not least: The largest, most expressive eyes she could have conceived in her thoughts, sparkling with the sweetest of sadness, gray like treacherous, overcast april skies, of the sort that, depending on the lighting, could appear to contain the palest flicker of color, every bit as hard to place as he could be, and every bit as beautiful, although he didn't know it… but of course, that idiot was so hung up on those blasted eyebrows that he never noticed what was right beaneath them, and she was afraid that it might be slightly her fault, too.

For her most precious, and at the same time, the most bittersweet thing about this form of his, the meaning that it always holds, the truth it incessantly reminds her of, is that he took it because of her, not to have it please or charm her, or anyone else, not even primarily because she contributed to his survival, because she was there to be the first thing he perceived before even the realization of existence, but that it had been a sign of his trust in her, his belief that, after all she had seen of his secrets, she could handle him just as he was, and guide him through his time of weakness –

And then, she had gone and squandered it all on a simple misunderstanding, because she didn't want to be the one who got it wrong, because she was uncertain and confused –

It was never a matter of what he looked like; She had seen him worn down from the Time War, witnessed his wasted form on Trenzalore, and held him all the same; It was her own inability to predict every thing he was going to do and know every single thought in his head that she couldn't forgive, and when she took it out on him, there was certainly no shortage of passive-agressiveness on his part, but ultimately, he took all the blame onto himself and assumed that it was all his mistake, thinking himself a ridiculous, deluded old man misjudging his place, expecting too much, giving up the person he had loved even after being trapped without her for enough time for empires to rise and fall, the person he had once taken into his arms like they had never parted, because he had never gotten to hear any of her sheer outrage at the mere suggestion that their connection had never gone beyond a shallow, superficial infatuation with his exterior.

When the other girls her age had plastered their rooms with the images of fresh-faced boyband-singers, she had hidden away with her books and only let herself be moved to strong feelings of awe by the beauty of the written word, the thought of ideas and philosophies; When others were aimlessly dreaming their days away, she had known from the beginning what she wanted to do and dedicated herself to her studies, while they were partying their nights away, she stayed to look after two children who shared her life's pain.

She never had the slightest interest in pretty young men, but she had loved him so much that she still loved him even when he looked like one of these;

It wasn't merely that she had looked past some surface that wasn't quite her type; Rather, she had grown to love that wide nose and that square, oversized chin at the same time as she had grown her affection for the soul that lived within, somewhere behind the lies and the rehearsed glittering of his Aura; She loved him because he was the man who had peeled off her masks before she even knew they were there; She loved that ridiculous dark quiff and that dorky nasal voice because they were him, and she had a place in her heart that would always be set aside for those lively cholorophyll greens, his protracted, heavily-amended metaphors and the sheer sight of him, hanging in a swing-like construction like a strange fruit in a rainforest of cables and wires, with everything about him covered in engine grease, from his shoes, to his dark waistcoat, the once shiny golden chain leading to his watch, his silly bowtie, those dark-rimmed glasses and that radiant, open smile that was ever inviting –

Regardless, she would have to extremely resent any notion that she might not be able to do the same with this new set of outward decorations that, just for the record, was much closer to her personal preferences for what little such superficial things even mattered to her –

But never were those little cracks and discrepancies between what she aspired to be, and what she actually succeeded at being more apparent than in the belated realization that she had brought this upon herself, because of her pathological need to have everything take place on her own terms, her inability to accept the spontaneous and accept the unforseen, because she wanted to have her cake and eat it, too, present him to her family as she had done in all those only slightly truncated stories she told him were unrelated, made-up pretense without having to breach that boundary once and for all, that she had acted as if their time together could be trusted to go on forever and failed to make use of the offer contained in that brief misunderstanding – Back then, when he mistakenly thought she was asking him to be hers, he just agreed without thinking, like it was just the long overdue stating of the obvious, and, judging by his incoherent mumblings about manuals, even seemed ready to get on with the lovemaking right then and there, and she'd just dismissed it, not expecting that they might be separated, or that he might feel compelled to act and clarify the situation himself before she got around to it –

And now, he still takes her out into the nights, allows her to wrap herself in the most luscious finery from both their wardrobes, to sparkle alongside him in the city lights.

He leads her, with an elegant, gentlemanly taking of her hand, into restaurants and festivities and before sights that have nothing to envy from these, for he understands that both their exquisite appetites prefer their dinner with an extra serving of thrills, and even she cannot have remained unaware of this for much longer –

And if she had not known better, she might have been tempted to suspect that just maybe, just sometimes, in certain ways if never in the obvious ones, he silently indulged in seeing her at her most radiant, glittering at the world with her bracelets and rings, adorning him with the envy of men and women alike with her actions and words, and ever so deliberately dosed, if not necessarily sparingly, allowing him the sight of her awed face, when he outdit himself in the orchestrasting of her entertainment, advertizing the sights in a way that almost allowed her to pretend that he was her showy, exuberant weekend-lover presenting her an extravagant idea for a date or little romantic vacation, (which was, incidentally, just what he sometimes called when he was out of her earshot, where his foolishness could do no harm, and not even wistfully, but brimming with life - "Beat that for a date!") or when he faced down the shadows as her champion, always the one to speak the magic words or defy the nameless horrors, and she was struck, for the tiniest of moments, by how he looked sort of heroic and knightly, no matter how quickly the obnoxiousness of his incredibly lame puns or the sight of his ridiculous, improvised weapons moved to dissipate that impression.

And somewhere along the way, they would walk through the unsuspecting masses with their arms linked, and some attentive soul would pick up on what they themselves had been so quick to deny from the very beginning, and perhaps, suspect that he was some lucky, wealthy bastard taking his pretty young bonnie out for a walk, and they would just let them stare and inwardly smirk to themselves, knowing that they were so much more than that, and in no need of such a silly, superficial thing when they had this rare connection they found with each other, best friends, kindred spirits, the most efficient pair of comerades and mutual muses, each other's earth and sky, heaven and hell and nothing in between –

But in addition to that, and in no kind of mutual exclusion, existed the fact that they both really welcomed the flattery, but the motions of that delight were cursed to take place under wraps, for each closed off from the other, and rarely ever without a twinge of guilt.

In cool nighttime air, the heat inside them slowly simmers.

A/N: Both (narrow taste) fangirls and people who complain about fangirls: Can we please stop acting like Mr. Capaldi is in any way unattractive? The guy's brought his own hordes of fangirls to the mix, not that there's probably much overlap to the Tennant brigarde, but he's got enough fangirls to get embarassed about it by random interviewers. He's also just fifty-something, just slightly older than the actress who plays River, not ancient or anything. Granted, he wear deliberately unflattering hairstyles/clothes for the role and gives dear Twelvie a host of odd mannerisms, which is, ultimately, only appropiate for the character, as an aesthetic choice; He might be one of the few men who can pull off "unkempt beauty" and "refined gravitas" at the same time, (although Twelvie is usually rather more ridiculous than that). He's also obviously gotten the job for his unreal levels of sheer skill, detailed performances and enthusiasm and love for the show, which should be the main point, but, there should be no complaints from the fangirling perspective, either. And now that we're at it, don't lump David and Matt under the pretty boy denominator. They gave very distinct portrayals using distinct techniques, especially considering the question just where the lines where mundane and cosmic meet run across this character.