Title: Memories of Blue
Author:
radiantbabyRating: G
Prompt: 017. Blue [
doctorwho_100]
Claim: Ten/Martha
Table:
HereWord count: 880
Characters/Pairing: Martha, with allusions to Ten/Martha
Spoilers: S3 - “Smith and Jones”
Summary: An ode of sorts to the Doctor’s blue suit.
Disclaimer: All your Doctor Who are belong to us Sadly, I own nothing related to Doctor Who. I am just playing around in their sandbox for a bit of fun.
Author Notes: This story takes place soon after the events of my story ‘Reversing the Polarity’ (for the ‘Smell’ prompt of
doctorwho_100 -- see table), but can also be read on its own. Thank you to my beta
persiflage_1. Feedback is happy-making, so please leave a word or two if so inclined [even if I am a bit slack in responding, your comments always make my day].
+ + +
She sees it - his blue suit crumpled and curled on the bed before her, its colour a stark contrast against the pale white of the sheets below it.
He is not there with her, but taking a shower alone instead, washing the grime from their latest adventure from his (alien) skin. She wonders for a moment how much of this life one can truly wash away and she imagines adventures and pain and happiness and loss all swirling in minute droplets down the drain.
She would have joined him as he bathed, of course, always delighting in running her fingertips along his naked skin and the soft sighs evoked from him whenever she does so, but even as they begin a tentative shift in their relationship, he still holds a bit back from her, still hides just that little bit.
(And she lets him, as she always does, for it is that invariable dance between them - pushing and pulling, giving and taking.)
She sits on the bed and her fingers caress the suit instead, her mind conjuring images of how he - sometimes even wearing that very suit -- often lays across the bed in a similar way, his long and sharp-angled limbs bent inward as he curls upon himself into a ball, almost foetal.
She thinks it is almost as if his own body is also discarded much like that suit in those times - crumpled and curled on the mattress as he finally releases himself to the inevitability of exhaustion and sleep. It seems that even a great Time Lord needs rest eventually, much as he - like a petulant child in some ways - seems to fight the very idea of it, pushing and pushing and pushing himself until his edges finally fray and he starts to untwine before her.
She thinks of how open his face looks in those placid moments, his demeanor no longer as rigidly controlled as it often is in his waking hours. There is almost a childlike innocence there - the darkness that usually hangs in his eyes now hidden (safely) behind the lids and buried in dreams only to sometimes (rarely) rise to the surface in fitful movements across the bed, in incomprehensible melodic words tumbling from his lips, or simply in quiet delicate whimpers that make him seem so very small and afraid (urging on her instincts to protect and heal him with everything she is).
She thinks of how his hair looks as it falls across his eyes, slightly matted to the skin there from perspiration, yet still as disheveled as it always is, the rest of it sticking up in thick spiky clumps at many an angle. It is soft to the touch -- always so soft - and she loves to caress it as he sleeps, running her fingers along its ends and his scalp. It is an act so simple, but oddly it seems to make him shirk from her a bit most times she attempts it when he’s not sleeping, and she wonders if he is fearful of the small intimacy of it in some way.
-- She shakes her head at the thought of how much pleasure he seems to deny himself and wonders what damaged him so thoroughly to bring him to such a point (and if she found the answer, would it be beyond her comprehension?) --
She imagines him there lying before her, filling out the suit with his impossibly thin arms and legs, fondly remembering that first day he kissed her on the Moon and how it had made her feel truly alive for the first time. It was really no wonder, she muses, that she essentially kissed him back to life that day as well, restarting those ancient hearts with the urgent touch and press of her hands and mouth (it was only fair, of course, tit for tat.)
That day on the Moon was the first time she’d ever seen that suit, a memory of blue colouring those moments as they rushed through hospital corridors hand in hand, and when she fell in love with him just that little bit (and she thinks - believes, hopes - he did too). The suit would always bring that back for her, its fabric evocative of first impressions of deep lines of red that are like lifeblood running against the colour of the blue sky -- truly the veins of a traveler of the heavens.
(In fact, she muses, the suit is probably as much a part of him as his eyes or hands or legs are.)
Soon he emerges from his shower, now clad only in the brown-striped trousers from his other suit, chest and feet bared, and rubbing his wet hair down with a towel. She looks at him, her gaze roving over the fabric pulled tight against his body, fabric from a suit that he wore in that fleeting flash where he’d first spoken to her and later that evening when he’d seduced her into being his (companion).
That suit is also a part of him as well - blue on brown, sky against dirt, heavens and planets - but as she reaches down and continues to draw her fingertips along the suit beside her, she thinks the blue one will always be the more special to her.