Fic: Mellowship Slinky (1/1)
Title: Mellowship Slinky
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Word Count: 5,263
Summary: It’s an anonymous room, a nameless bed, a faceless shag - or so she thinks. For skyhiatrist’s doctor_donna Ficafest Prompt #47: The Doctor and Donna do the nasty, triggering her memories. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey's End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Author’s Notes: Still drugged, still in pain, and still writing like no tomorrow. I wonder if the vicodin makes me more lucid? Hmm... anyhow - this little baby pretty much wrote itself; I stumbled across the pairing and the prompt by complete chance last night, and this was the result. I figure, when inspiration strikes, I’d be a fool to fight it - so I roll with it instead ;) It’s a little more... fast-paced than I’m used to, a little more jumbled and less cohesive, but I kind of liked the effect of that, in the end. And there is no real significance to the title, in case you were curious - it just happened to be what I tentatively named the document, nipped from my playlist, and it was catchy, so it stuck.
Mellowship Slinky
“Oh, fuck!”
It’s an anonymous room, a nameless bed, a faceless shag; it’s on her credit card, a hotel within stumbling distance from the pub. She doesn’t remember meeting him, speaking to him - she’s not even sure that they were drinking together, but she can still taste the gin on her tongue, and its mingling with something in his mouth that she knows she hasn't touched in at least ten years, so she’s sure they’re both appropriately shit-faced to be in their given situation, particularly in their current state of undress.
“So close,” she gasps, the courageous left strap of her violet-lace bra still clinging to her shoulder while the hooks slowly give way against her spine, leaving tiny indents as he slams her back against the hard, unforgiving mattress - they’ve already made easy work of the bedclothes, the sheets tousled and thrown to the floor for the most part.
“My,” it’s a stammer as she’s sucking in a breath, her mouth close to his head as she pushes on his shoulder blades, relishing the grunt from his throat and the tiny shower of sweat from his hair as he arches against her. “God, I, I...” She can’t breathe, and she’s dizzy, and he’s panting hard against her, the bony lines of his bare chest caving into the soft flesh of her stomach, the line of his sternum firm and pronounced in her cleavage.
“Fuck!” she cries out, tangling her fingers at the nape of his neck, losing grip and grasping again, holding on her dear life as she slides her back up at an angle, leaning heavily on the shoddy headboard, uncertain if it’s going to last as long as she will, given the creaking of it under her weight versus the growing heat between her legs.
“Fuck!” It’s the only word she knows, apparently, but that’s okay - she’s never been the brightest bulb in the light fixture, really. She feels his hard shaft pull farther from her, the sticky friction, the suction of her thighs slowly giving way but not entirely, his wet length dangling from the tip, where he’s still just buried in her warmth, and the air vanishes from her lungs as he plunges back into her, hard and quick, without warning, his breath on her collarbone as he goes deeper, harder, further into her than anyone before. She’s never felt the places he’s touching before - never knew they existed before that very moment, that very groundbreaking, earth-shattering still-frame in time.
She hisses, and it’s barely coherent; her neck snaps back against the bed with a crack and it hurts like a bitch, but she doesn’t feel it; all she feels are the tiny hairs leading up to his navel rubbing against her sensitive flesh on every downstroke as he rocks against her, the bounce of his knees on hers as she lifts her hips to meet him.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers without a voice - the words are just words, but they’re lovely words; it makes her a little sad that she can’t make out anything unique about the tone that delivers them, though. She clings onto him as she feels him tense, her thighs wrapping around his hips, her shins crossed behind his calves with her ankles tucked between. His breathing is erratic, and she rides his orgasm before succumbing to her own, reveling in the dual pleasure as she feels the burn of his pooling seed against her before the rolling explosion of lights behind her own eyes takes her and she moans, bucking slow and rhythmic in time with the throb of her muscles, the beat of her heart.
“Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh......” she breathes, and she hears him chuckle appreciatively at her side, his form draped across her, his right hand contoured over her middle ribs, his left cradled behind her neck.
It takes her longer than she wants to admit before she can speak again, in real words, and its in between the sort of panting that betrays her age that she marvels, palm on her forehead and eyes on the water stains in the ceiling; “Fucking hell!”
She feels his head turn into her, squished against her right breast, nose nudging at the fabric still covering it, and she can discern the curl of his lips into a grin as he nips at her underwire, kisses the line of the undergarment. “That,” she began, toying absently with his hair, smoothing it with the perspiration, mussing it carelessly, and replacing it again in rapid succession. “That was...”
“Mmmmm,” was the answer she got, a low rumble in his chest that vibrated against her side and tickled vaguely; it sent an echo of warmth through her as it faded. It was a good answer, she supposed - she couldn’t think of any better way to put it, at any rate.
“That was, just...” she tried, completely awed, still trying to make sense of the high she was only slowly stumbling from. She’d never come like that, not ever - and she could by no means be labeled as inexperienced. She’d never been that completed, never been that satisfied, and never felt that whole before during sex. It hadn’t even been sex, really; she imagined, with frightening certainty, that what she’d just experienced was what they meant when they used the phrase “making love.” It had been so much more than a dick stuck in her vag, at the very least, so she figured that was the next logical step.
Her musing as cut off by a quick, sharp pinch at her nipple, and she gasped a bit at the pain, short-lived though it ended up being. “I’m sorry,” a voice, suddenly heavy and gilded in gold, came from below her chin in apology as the body on top of her shifted a bit, folding in over her, but she didn’t hear it; not really.
“What?” she whispered, suddenly a million miles away - light years, galaxies apart from the present.
“I,” the voice was light, meaningless again, or else, it tried to be. She couldn’t help but hear more, though; hearing truth in the cadence, in the subtle mix of breath and sound. “Just, here,” his hand stoked over her bra-clad nipple again, indicatively, and she shivered hard at the touch, feeling it impossibly against her head, palms on her temples, instead of at her breast.
“You’re sorry,” she repeated, attempting stoicism but failing miserably, her voice trembling and her eyes wide in the dark, pupils dilated almost painfully as she tried to make something, anything, out about the man lying in the bed with her, knowing somehow in the depths of her soul that it was necessary, crucial to her survival.
“For snagging you,” he said, his features scrunched into a frown, confused as he propped himself onto his hands, elbows digging into the box of the mattress. “Didn’t it hurt?”
“No,” she shook her head fiercely, the effort making her a bit nauseous; the high from the sex fading, the glaze of the alcohol resettling in around her brain, “no...”
Her eyes snapped to him, tracing the shadows where they fell on his cheekbones, outlined the sockets of his eyes, played of the dampness of his hair where it spiked messily out of control from his scalp. The words were out of her mouth, real before she understood them: “You’ve said that before.”
There was enough light from the window that she saw the flicker in his eyes - his colorless eyes, too dark to make out, that she knew in her gut were really a gorgeous chocolate shade that glowed amber when he was angry, and shone like fire when he was excited. He gave no other indication of having heard her, or of her words having made any sort of sense, but he didn’t have to. It was enough.
“I know you,” she spoke with certainty, flashes of a suit over that pale, freckled skin; the socks - his only remaining article of clothing at the moment - buried in cream-colored trainers and laced haphazardly; those smooth, skilled legs running gangly after something fearsome, something unreal - something out of the very nightmares of humanity.
“No, no, we’ve never met.” He didn’t move, but he felt colder against her flesh, and it made her feel suddenly lonely, abandoned; it scared her to the very core. She placed her hands on his arms, dragging them both upwards to sit properly on the bed, her open hands automatically landing over either of his taut nipples, their warmth against the heat of the centers of her palms electrifying as they touched.
“Two hearts.” She was surprisingly unconcerned with the biological abnormality of this discovery as her hands covered both sides of his chest at once, measuring the gallop of two very separate, though equally strong beats beneath her touch. It seemed as if she’d felt it before, in a drunken haze perhaps - something in her imagination; or the fading echo of a dream. They felt like a warm fire, or hot cider; they felt like coming home.
“No, sweetheart, no,” he whispered, cooed almost, gently peeling her hands from his warm skin and gathering them between his own, drawing them to his mouth and kissing the folded tips of her fingers. “You’ve just had a bit too much to drink, love. Bit tipsy yet, s’all.” He leaned in to press his mouth to her forehead, close enough to her eyebrows that her eyes slid shut on instinct as he lowered her head back down onto the flimsy pillow awaiting her. “Just sleep, shhh.”
And she almost gave in, too - she almost breathed in deep of the bleach on the sheets and the strange, sterile apple scent of the air freshener - but as he let his hands trail on her just a moment too long as he drew back, she felt her heart leap, and she couldn’t give up. She was sitting up in an instant, eyes wild as she shook her head. “No, no...” she mumbled, frustrated, her eyes darting from the windowsill to the lines on her palms, a tingle at her back as he glanced in the mirror on the way to his eyes, losing herself in them, a tinge of the color she’d predicted now visible in them as her eyes finally adjusted to the dark, giving her hope.
“There’s something else,” she insisted stubbornly. “Something important.”
She reached out, and he didn’t fight when she gathered his hand in hers, running her fingers over his knuckles and encircling his wrist. “Something I’m forgetting.” He sucked in a sharp, tense breath, and her pulse raced against her will.
“You taste different.” She met his eyes, and knew without thinking that he was meant to taste like honey and wine, like cool mint and the fathomless, unquenchable depth of the universe.
“What?”
She tilted her head in consideration, knowing she’d been this close before; but when? “Have I snogged you before?”
He broke the intense connection of their gazes, staring at their still-entwined hands and directing all of the soul-searing power of his glance there instead, making her joints burn as she clutched him tighter. “Donna...”
“How do you know my name?” She didn’t like that he sounded patronizing, sad. She bristled indignantly at it, on the surface, but her lungs stiffened in fear deeper down.
“You told me earlier,” he explained slowly, softly. “When we were talking at the bar.”
“No, no I didn’t.” She hadn’t. They hadn’t even been drinking together, she’d been with her friends; they’d run into each other at the door... she’d been off-balance, unsteady on her feet, and he’d just walked in...
“I’m not going to hurt you, Donna.” There was a grief, a sorrow in his tone, plainly written on his face that he didn’t even try to hide. It broke her heart, and she wanted to melt into the floor as she saw him reach for her only to draw back hesitantly, realizing that she’d caused it, that she’d pulled away from him without even knowing it. “Please, don’t fear me,” he pleaded, slowly pushing his fingers to brush hers where they lay flat on the mattress. “I’m your friend, Donna. Your friend.”
And of all the things that the concept of friendship could have spurred in her conscious, let alone her unconscious mind, she could produce only one viable response, something she barely understood, something she thought sounded a bit like Russian, maybe, and that strangely made her think of calamari. “Ood.”
“What?” His voice was tense, sharp - it was somehow fitting, like that was how he was meant to sound, how he was known to sound - but she could tell that he was nervous. She’d hit a nerve, she could see that much, but whether it was in his foot or in his jaw, she couldn’t guess.
“My friend,” she repeated, dazed; snow and ice and insects and large machines, and hard domes, and fat, of all things, lots of blobs of fat, and wonderful reasons to support her mild arachnophobia all flooding her mind at once as her eyes glazed and she whispered; “You’re my friend.”
And he must have seen it, because she could vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, feel the way he grasped her, hard and firm by the forearms, like he meant to, like he’d done it before - confident and sure and scared out of his wits as his breath came hot in a single, frightened note of terror against her lips: “No.”
“You were my life,” she murmured, images of her in a wedding dress and a woman in a shiny purple coat; the coast of Norway, or Sweden maybe, the taste of tea served by women in white somewhere beyond a Cascade, a Proclamation...
She gasped as memories began wracking her, a fire in her mind as they rewrote her recollections; things she knew weren't hers, were from the man who held her close, but ones that tugged at her heart nonetheless. “It burned,” she breathed as he rocked her back and forth, their naked flesh both hot and freezing cold all at once. “It all burned, oh God...” She felt the tears trailing down her cheeks, and wondered if they had managed to fall all the way to her shoulders on their own, or if the shaking figure wrapped about her was feeling it too.
“No, Donna.” The words were stark against the torrent as everything fell into place - moving mountains and metacrisises, backfeed reversal loops and threshold manipulators and Charlie Chaplin. Doctor Donna. “Look at me.”
She obeyed, seeing him for the first time in so long, outside of dreams in which he wasn’t whole, wasn’t finished; she was a part of him, and she had been all this time - she’d only been half of herself, half a person, for so long, without him... lost...
Maybe that had been why the sex had been so damn good.
“Everyone gone,” she muttered, seeing the destruction of his family, his people - things she’d known after the transfer, after the change, but hadn’t had the time to process - a loss not her own, but that she owned now, and that she had yet to mourn properly. “Everyone dead, all gone, and the flames...”
“Donna,” his voice was choked, his eyes wide and wet as he shook her by the shoulders. “You have to stop.”
She cried out, her eyes clenched shut as her head jerked back, her neck limp as she felt this energy, such energy - the vortex filling her, the whole of time and space bolstering her up again to fill her potential, to feel worthwhile once more. “It hurts,” she moaned, falling lifeless, boneless against the Doctor where he sat before her. “Oh, it hurts.”
“You’re going to kill yourself, Donna!” His voice was higher pitched than normal, his fingers digging into her, threatening to bruise for how desperately he held to her, how helplessly he pleaded with her.
Something stronger than herself - or perhaps it was just the real her, finally shining through again - took hold of her, grabbed at her psyche and took control, and she spun upon him with a blaze behind her eyes as she raged. “You stole it from me! You took everything!”
He paused, taken aback. “I had to!” he retorted quickly, the passion real and fierce behind the delivery. “There wasn’t any choice!”
“I wanted to be with you!” Donna lashed back, unable to contain herself, now that she had returned with a vengeance, like some wild animal finally unchained. “I didn’t care!”
“It would have killed you!” Some part of her recognized the pain, the utter heartbreak in his eyes as he said it, considered it, but that part was not at all concerned with her mouth.
“You did kill me!” she screeched at him, shoving hard at his chest in anger, wishing she could hurt him, wanting him to feel just like she had - lost and useless, meaningless, dispensable; incomplete. “You killed every good thing about me, you took it all away!”
She gasped hard, swallowing the sobs that were about to consume her - she’d be damned if she broke entirely. She brought her hands frantically to her cheeks, trying to wipe away the tears only to have the streaks renewed as soon as she stopped. “How could you?” she finally asked in a whisper. “Didn’t you want me?”
Looking as if he’d been slapped across the face without any of the satisfaction of doing it on Donna’s part, the Doctor bowed his head, biting at his lip as he framed Donna’s face with his hands. “Of course I did,” he breathed against her upper lip. “I do.” He laughed softly, his eyes filled with regret. “Stars above, Donna Noble, can’t you understand?”
He caressed the jutting bones of her cheek, the lines of her jaw with his thumbs - they were rougher than she remembered, like he’d been through more since she left, took care of himself less. “I want you,” he breathed, deep and harsh against the still air. “I need you. I was going to lose you either way; but knowing that you were alive somewhere, living your life...” he diverted his gaze, trailing off meaningfully, but missing the mark, knowing how selfish he sounded, how selfish he was - he would rather rob her of her shining glory than suffer another loss of his own, to feel his hearts break one more time.
She snorted coarsely, and he fought a grin in response - it was so typically her that it hurt to hear. “This isn’t a life,” she scoffed. “This is...” her face fell as her voice dropped in something like despair. “This is a shell. A mockery.” A fucking disgrace, is what it was - she’d seen the universe, she’d been important, she’d been... better, so much better, and she’d been useful! And what was she now? Still a boring, shallow temp whose WPM had dropped to 92 somewhere in the past eight months. “What did I do to deserve this?” she asked, bitter and betrayed, her eyes searching his desperately for the truth.
“Nothing,” he answered her, the warm exhalation of the word fluttering on her skin as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, playing with the dangling earring hanging from her lobe. “Nothing, Donna; my sweet, sweet Donna.” He smiled at her, and she didn’t remember ever being the subject of quite that smile before; it was close to the ones she recalled, in a way, but there was something extra in it, something more - it made her stomach drop and her heart tremble in her chest. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he assured her softly, still stroking at the lock of hair between his fingers, brushing it back with his nails as he grinned, all of the mischief and pride in the whole of the world in his smirk as he beamed at her. “Oh, but all of the things you did right.”
“I would rather’ve died knowing,” she confessed to him, so close against him. “Remembering... I would have rather died with you,” she tightened her grip on him, pressed into him that impossible bit more, feeling the heat from him acutely, the rush of his blood; “than have lived on like this, alone.”
The Doctor sighed, pulling her into his chest and tucking her beneath his chin, bare arms wrapped tight around her shoulders in a protective circle. “You cannot ask me...”
“Please, Doctor,” she begged, her words muffled against the shaking skin against his throat. “Don’t do it again.”
The pressure was building behind her eyes, a combination of the knowledge and the tears as she tried to lose herself in him, tried to focus on the rise of his chest, the beautiful, powerful drumbeat of his pulsing hearts, tried to make that count for everything in the word, tried to replace the reality she’d once saved with the sounds of his existence in her ears. “Don’t take it from me,” she begged hoarsely, too overwhelmed to be embarrassed, to feel weak or ashamed. “Don’t take you from me.”
“But Donna,” his voice echoed against both her ears, from the inside and the outside, and the way his hearts sped as he spoke made her feel a guilt she couldn’t swallow down. “Your mind-”
“I know,” she assured him with a nod, pulling back to look him in the eye. “I know.” And she did; she’d known the first time. She knew so much, so many spectacular and unbelievable things - all crammed into her head; silly little Donna Noble, suddenly brilliant, suddenly worthy. “But it’s time, inn’it?” she said sadly, smiling with the anticipation of the end. “It’s time.”
“But Donna,” the Doctor shook against her, his shattering hearts audible in his voice. “I-”
“I’m tired of chasin’ shadows, Doctor,” she murmured, her voice tired. “Tired of wasting away in my dreams. Let me go,” she urged him, voice warm, “knowing full well that what’s there in my heart is real, that it all really ‘appened. Please.”
“But you’ll die.” She cursed him inwardly for saying it out loud like that, plain as day and undeniable, his voice breaking on the final syllable; she could feel it already, if she was honest, the searing ache behind her skull, the expanding pain of energy and light bouncing around her bones and vying for dominance, for release. It wouldn’t be long.
“Do ya love me?” she asked suddenly, amused and nervous as his eyes turned quick towards her, wide and taken by surprise.
“What?”
She smiled soft, running her hands over his chest, his arms as she spoke. “I love you, Doctor. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’d chop off my right hand and sell it if you told me to, and you wouldn’t have to even say why.” She giggled a bit, tearfully, thinking fondly of all the times it had nearly come to something much worse than even that. “Anything you asked, ever, would’ve been yours. So I’m asking you,” her hands stopped, fingers curled over his shoulders, the heels of her palms resting over each respective heart, “if you love me, if you ever did... give me this.” She rested her head against him, reveling in the rapid fire intake of air that rushed loud and drafty through his lungs, crushing her body against his. “Let me remember this, let me remember you,” she tilted her neck, looking up at him, the pout of her full bottom lip undoing him in an instant. “Let me remember everything, and let the chips fall where they may.”
The silence was unending, but oh-so-fast, and there was something in her chest that snapped when she saw the tears fall from his eyes as he eventually nodded, the motion slow and his voice almost lost as he choked against his vocal chords; “Alright.”
He leaned down and pulled her up to him, tracing her features with his hands before delicately lifting her lips to his, guiding her to him in a chaste moment of bliss that made her heart feel heavy and sore, that made the room spin around her. “Alright, Donna Noble,” he spoke deliberately against her lips, his tongue touching hers innocently with the diction. “Let the chips fall where they may.”
She barely felt him lift her, as if she were a feather; he set her on her feet gently, and she had to hold to him - she hadn’t realized how little energy she had until the blood rushed from her head and gathered swiftly in her feet. She swayed, and breathed easier as his arms steadied her, helped her with her clothes, dressing her carefully with a watchful eye as her own eyes drifted closed every so often, her consciousness unpredictable.
She felt a jolt of realization when she entered the TARDIS, cradled in his arms like a babe, or a blushing bride; he propped her against the control panel and held her tight from behind, helping her pilot to a destination that she was too unfocused to determine, too unsteady to discern. She shook, and he pulled her tighter against him, and there was a connection between the pair of them and the ship they were helping to steer that made her feel grounded, safe, even as the time machine hurtled out of control through space, but strangely not through time.
“Where are we?” she asked after they’d landed, as he guided her out; she leaned heavily on him, trying to conserve the energy she had left, focusing herself onto the mental capacities she’d gained rather than wasting her strength on the physical niceties. She trusted him, and he provided in kind without hesitation - she didn’t even have to ask.
“Doesn’t matter,” he breathed, maneuvering them both towards a balcony. He stopped when her toes hit the railing, steeling himself and planting his feet against the shimmering ground as he wrapped his arms around her and let her lean back against him. “Can you hear them?” he whispered into her ear, his hands folding over her stomach as he rested his head in the crook of her shoulder.
“Hear?” she asked, uncertain, trying to find what it was she was meant to be noticing, but too distracted by colorful spires of glass, of ice; the mystical wonder of this planet, wherever it was; the crystalline snowflakes that fell like powder from above, the deep aquamarine color of the canopy of trees, the sweet milky tang on the air.
“Listen,” he instructed her, his voice picking up on the lilting end of a measure, the stanza of a poem that wafted her way, notes both beautiful and magical in a language that she didn’t know, but that the TARDIS did, the words slowly making sense in her mind - a song a praise, of jubilation - it made her feel happy and light, just at the sound.
“They’re singing about you,” he whispered between humming, keeping time with the music that drifted from far away.
She spun to him, startled, her eyes wide as they met his warm, loving gaze. “About me?”
“Donna Noble,” he confirmed with a smile, running his finger down her cheek as he studied her, awe in his gaze. “The woman with a heart of gold and a will of iron. The woman with a soul worthy of the stars,” he kissed her forehead and held her close again as they searched the heavens together, the patterns of stars and suns and moons and meteors, the fire and the ice in the sky. “The protector and savior of reality itself.”
She’d never seen anything more beautiful, never heard or felt or known anything like that very moment; her modesty was lost in the sheer wonder she felt at the brilliance surrounding her as she protested weakly, “They aren’t saying all those things.”
He smiled into her neck as he rocked her from left to right. “Ah, just wait till the next verse.”
She felt lightheaded, felt faint as he turned her to face him, the outline of his body wavering, but his features still strong as she watched him watching her. “Donna Noble,” he said fondly. “Defender of the cosmos, the whole of creation.” She grinned, grasping his hand, suddenly very scared as she felt weaker with every breath, as the pain gathered again in full force behind her eyes, against her throat, strangling her slowly.
“You’re magnificent,” he whispered softly into her hair, stroking the lines of her frame to ease the tension he knew was growing, tears beginning to stream openly down his face as he smiled down at her, watery and thin. “So very special, Donna. My Donna.”
He kissed her as her legs gave out, hard and long, and the pain dissolved at the contact, as if he were sucking it all from her. She wanted to pull away, afraid of what he was doing, afraid he was going to erase everything again, but she couldn’t, it felt too wonderful - his lips on hers, the freedom from the agony, the constant pressure. The lights surged blindingly behind her eyes for a second, and she moaned into his mouth as it burned her retinas; she tried to open her eyes but she could see nothing; he wasn’t in front of her anymore. Her hands groped to find his where they were fixed on her sides, lacing their fingers together and holding on, knowing it was all over.
He was whispering to her, words she didn’t know, and they were heavy in overlaying the song that still filtered in the background. In her mind’s eye, what was left of it, she saw beautiful things - beautiful worlds and beautiful people, memories of days gone by, and she saw him, always - always her Doctor.
She’d made a promise once, that she would be with him forever; that she’d stay by his side for the rest of her life.
Everything grew cold, even his hands on her, and the last thing she knew before a great wave of sleep took her completely was his voice in her ear, singing soft and heartbroken along with the final verses of the song about a little temp from Chiswick who stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime, who rose to the occasion and proved she was somebody. Proved she was special. Proved she was worthy.
Proved she was loved.
She smiled to herself as it all went black - not half bad, really. Not half bad.
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Ten/Donna
Word Count: 5,263
Summary: It’s an anonymous room, a nameless bed, a faceless shag - or so she thinks. For skyhiatrist’s doctor_donna Ficafest Prompt #47: The Doctor and Donna do the nasty, triggering her memories. Spoilers for Doctor Who 4.13 - Journey's End.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. Title belongs to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
Author’s Notes: Still drugged, still in pain, and still writing like no tomorrow. I wonder if the vicodin makes me more lucid? Hmm... anyhow - this little baby pretty much wrote itself; I stumbled across the pairing and the prompt by complete chance last night, and this was the result. I figure, when inspiration strikes, I’d be a fool to fight it - so I roll with it instead ;) It’s a little more... fast-paced than I’m used to, a little more jumbled and less cohesive, but I kind of liked the effect of that, in the end. And there is no real significance to the title, in case you were curious - it just happened to be what I tentatively named the document, nipped from my playlist, and it was catchy, so it stuck.
Mellowship Slinky
“Oh, fuck!”
It’s an anonymous room, a nameless bed, a faceless shag; it’s on her credit card, a hotel within stumbling distance from the pub. She doesn’t remember meeting him, speaking to him - she’s not even sure that they were drinking together, but she can still taste the gin on her tongue, and its mingling with something in his mouth that she knows she hasn't touched in at least ten years, so she’s sure they’re both appropriately shit-faced to be in their given situation, particularly in their current state of undress.
“So close,” she gasps, the courageous left strap of her violet-lace bra still clinging to her shoulder while the hooks slowly give way against her spine, leaving tiny indents as he slams her back against the hard, unforgiving mattress - they’ve already made easy work of the bedclothes, the sheets tousled and thrown to the floor for the most part.
“My,” it’s a stammer as she’s sucking in a breath, her mouth close to his head as she pushes on his shoulder blades, relishing the grunt from his throat and the tiny shower of sweat from his hair as he arches against her. “God, I, I...” She can’t breathe, and she’s dizzy, and he’s panting hard against her, the bony lines of his bare chest caving into the soft flesh of her stomach, the line of his sternum firm and pronounced in her cleavage.
“Fuck!” she cries out, tangling her fingers at the nape of his neck, losing grip and grasping again, holding on her dear life as she slides her back up at an angle, leaning heavily on the shoddy headboard, uncertain if it’s going to last as long as she will, given the creaking of it under her weight versus the growing heat between her legs.
“Fuck!” It’s the only word she knows, apparently, but that’s okay - she’s never been the brightest bulb in the light fixture, really. She feels his hard shaft pull farther from her, the sticky friction, the suction of her thighs slowly giving way but not entirely, his wet length dangling from the tip, where he’s still just buried in her warmth, and the air vanishes from her lungs as he plunges back into her, hard and quick, without warning, his breath on her collarbone as he goes deeper, harder, further into her than anyone before. She’s never felt the places he’s touching before - never knew they existed before that very moment, that very groundbreaking, earth-shattering still-frame in time.
She hisses, and it’s barely coherent; her neck snaps back against the bed with a crack and it hurts like a bitch, but she doesn’t feel it; all she feels are the tiny hairs leading up to his navel rubbing against her sensitive flesh on every downstroke as he rocks against her, the bounce of his knees on hers as she lifts her hips to meet him.
“You’re beautiful,” he whispers without a voice - the words are just words, but they’re lovely words; it makes her a little sad that she can’t make out anything unique about the tone that delivers them, though. She clings onto him as she feels him tense, her thighs wrapping around his hips, her shins crossed behind his calves with her ankles tucked between. His breathing is erratic, and she rides his orgasm before succumbing to her own, reveling in the dual pleasure as she feels the burn of his pooling seed against her before the rolling explosion of lights behind her own eyes takes her and she moans, bucking slow and rhythmic in time with the throb of her muscles, the beat of her heart.
“Oooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhh......” she breathes, and she hears him chuckle appreciatively at her side, his form draped across her, his right hand contoured over her middle ribs, his left cradled behind her neck.
It takes her longer than she wants to admit before she can speak again, in real words, and its in between the sort of panting that betrays her age that she marvels, palm on her forehead and eyes on the water stains in the ceiling; “Fucking hell!”
She feels his head turn into her, squished against her right breast, nose nudging at the fabric still covering it, and she can discern the curl of his lips into a grin as he nips at her underwire, kisses the line of the undergarment. “That,” she began, toying absently with his hair, smoothing it with the perspiration, mussing it carelessly, and replacing it again in rapid succession. “That was...”
“Mmmmm,” was the answer she got, a low rumble in his chest that vibrated against her side and tickled vaguely; it sent an echo of warmth through her as it faded. It was a good answer, she supposed - she couldn’t think of any better way to put it, at any rate.
“That was, just...” she tried, completely awed, still trying to make sense of the high she was only slowly stumbling from. She’d never come like that, not ever - and she could by no means be labeled as inexperienced. She’d never been that completed, never been that satisfied, and never felt that whole before during sex. It hadn’t even been sex, really; she imagined, with frightening certainty, that what she’d just experienced was what they meant when they used the phrase “making love.” It had been so much more than a dick stuck in her vag, at the very least, so she figured that was the next logical step.
Her musing as cut off by a quick, sharp pinch at her nipple, and she gasped a bit at the pain, short-lived though it ended up being. “I’m sorry,” a voice, suddenly heavy and gilded in gold, came from below her chin in apology as the body on top of her shifted a bit, folding in over her, but she didn’t hear it; not really.
“What?” she whispered, suddenly a million miles away - light years, galaxies apart from the present.
“I,” the voice was light, meaningless again, or else, it tried to be. She couldn’t help but hear more, though; hearing truth in the cadence, in the subtle mix of breath and sound. “Just, here,” his hand stoked over her bra-clad nipple again, indicatively, and she shivered hard at the touch, feeling it impossibly against her head, palms on her temples, instead of at her breast.
“You’re sorry,” she repeated, attempting stoicism but failing miserably, her voice trembling and her eyes wide in the dark, pupils dilated almost painfully as she tried to make something, anything, out about the man lying in the bed with her, knowing somehow in the depths of her soul that it was necessary, crucial to her survival.
“For snagging you,” he said, his features scrunched into a frown, confused as he propped himself onto his hands, elbows digging into the box of the mattress. “Didn’t it hurt?”
“No,” she shook her head fiercely, the effort making her a bit nauseous; the high from the sex fading, the glaze of the alcohol resettling in around her brain, “no...”
Her eyes snapped to him, tracing the shadows where they fell on his cheekbones, outlined the sockets of his eyes, played of the dampness of his hair where it spiked messily out of control from his scalp. The words were out of her mouth, real before she understood them: “You’ve said that before.”
There was enough light from the window that she saw the flicker in his eyes - his colorless eyes, too dark to make out, that she knew in her gut were really a gorgeous chocolate shade that glowed amber when he was angry, and shone like fire when he was excited. He gave no other indication of having heard her, or of her words having made any sort of sense, but he didn’t have to. It was enough.
“I know you,” she spoke with certainty, flashes of a suit over that pale, freckled skin; the socks - his only remaining article of clothing at the moment - buried in cream-colored trainers and laced haphazardly; those smooth, skilled legs running gangly after something fearsome, something unreal - something out of the very nightmares of humanity.
“No, no, we’ve never met.” He didn’t move, but he felt colder against her flesh, and it made her feel suddenly lonely, abandoned; it scared her to the very core. She placed her hands on his arms, dragging them both upwards to sit properly on the bed, her open hands automatically landing over either of his taut nipples, their warmth against the heat of the centers of her palms electrifying as they touched.
“Two hearts.” She was surprisingly unconcerned with the biological abnormality of this discovery as her hands covered both sides of his chest at once, measuring the gallop of two very separate, though equally strong beats beneath her touch. It seemed as if she’d felt it before, in a drunken haze perhaps - something in her imagination; or the fading echo of a dream. They felt like a warm fire, or hot cider; they felt like coming home.
“No, sweetheart, no,” he whispered, cooed almost, gently peeling her hands from his warm skin and gathering them between his own, drawing them to his mouth and kissing the folded tips of her fingers. “You’ve just had a bit too much to drink, love. Bit tipsy yet, s’all.” He leaned in to press his mouth to her forehead, close enough to her eyebrows that her eyes slid shut on instinct as he lowered her head back down onto the flimsy pillow awaiting her. “Just sleep, shhh.”
And she almost gave in, too - she almost breathed in deep of the bleach on the sheets and the strange, sterile apple scent of the air freshener - but as he let his hands trail on her just a moment too long as he drew back, she felt her heart leap, and she couldn’t give up. She was sitting up in an instant, eyes wild as she shook her head. “No, no...” she mumbled, frustrated, her eyes darting from the windowsill to the lines on her palms, a tingle at her back as he glanced in the mirror on the way to his eyes, losing herself in them, a tinge of the color she’d predicted now visible in them as her eyes finally adjusted to the dark, giving her hope.
“There’s something else,” she insisted stubbornly. “Something important.”
She reached out, and he didn’t fight when she gathered his hand in hers, running her fingers over his knuckles and encircling his wrist. “Something I’m forgetting.” He sucked in a sharp, tense breath, and her pulse raced against her will.
“You taste different.” She met his eyes, and knew without thinking that he was meant to taste like honey and wine, like cool mint and the fathomless, unquenchable depth of the universe.
“What?”
She tilted her head in consideration, knowing she’d been this close before; but when? “Have I snogged you before?”
He broke the intense connection of their gazes, staring at their still-entwined hands and directing all of the soul-searing power of his glance there instead, making her joints burn as she clutched him tighter. “Donna...”
“How do you know my name?” She didn’t like that he sounded patronizing, sad. She bristled indignantly at it, on the surface, but her lungs stiffened in fear deeper down.
“You told me earlier,” he explained slowly, softly. “When we were talking at the bar.”
“No, no I didn’t.” She hadn’t. They hadn’t even been drinking together, she’d been with her friends; they’d run into each other at the door... she’d been off-balance, unsteady on her feet, and he’d just walked in...
“I’m not going to hurt you, Donna.” There was a grief, a sorrow in his tone, plainly written on his face that he didn’t even try to hide. It broke her heart, and she wanted to melt into the floor as she saw him reach for her only to draw back hesitantly, realizing that she’d caused it, that she’d pulled away from him without even knowing it. “Please, don’t fear me,” he pleaded, slowly pushing his fingers to brush hers where they lay flat on the mattress. “I’m your friend, Donna. Your friend.”
And of all the things that the concept of friendship could have spurred in her conscious, let alone her unconscious mind, she could produce only one viable response, something she barely understood, something she thought sounded a bit like Russian, maybe, and that strangely made her think of calamari. “Ood.”
“What?” His voice was tense, sharp - it was somehow fitting, like that was how he was meant to sound, how he was known to sound - but she could tell that he was nervous. She’d hit a nerve, she could see that much, but whether it was in his foot or in his jaw, she couldn’t guess.
“My friend,” she repeated, dazed; snow and ice and insects and large machines, and hard domes, and fat, of all things, lots of blobs of fat, and wonderful reasons to support her mild arachnophobia all flooding her mind at once as her eyes glazed and she whispered; “You’re my friend.”
And he must have seen it, because she could vaguely, somewhere in the back of her mind, feel the way he grasped her, hard and firm by the forearms, like he meant to, like he’d done it before - confident and sure and scared out of his wits as his breath came hot in a single, frightened note of terror against her lips: “No.”
“You were my life,” she murmured, images of her in a wedding dress and a woman in a shiny purple coat; the coast of Norway, or Sweden maybe, the taste of tea served by women in white somewhere beyond a Cascade, a Proclamation...
She gasped as memories began wracking her, a fire in her mind as they rewrote her recollections; things she knew weren't hers, were from the man who held her close, but ones that tugged at her heart nonetheless. “It burned,” she breathed as he rocked her back and forth, their naked flesh both hot and freezing cold all at once. “It all burned, oh God...” She felt the tears trailing down her cheeks, and wondered if they had managed to fall all the way to her shoulders on their own, or if the shaking figure wrapped about her was feeling it too.
“No, Donna.” The words were stark against the torrent as everything fell into place - moving mountains and metacrisises, backfeed reversal loops and threshold manipulators and Charlie Chaplin. Doctor Donna. “Look at me.”
She obeyed, seeing him for the first time in so long, outside of dreams in which he wasn’t whole, wasn’t finished; she was a part of him, and she had been all this time - she’d only been half of herself, half a person, for so long, without him... lost...
Maybe that had been why the sex had been so damn good.
“Everyone gone,” she muttered, seeing the destruction of his family, his people - things she’d known after the transfer, after the change, but hadn’t had the time to process - a loss not her own, but that she owned now, and that she had yet to mourn properly. “Everyone dead, all gone, and the flames...”
“Donna,” his voice was choked, his eyes wide and wet as he shook her by the shoulders. “You have to stop.”
She cried out, her eyes clenched shut as her head jerked back, her neck limp as she felt this energy, such energy - the vortex filling her, the whole of time and space bolstering her up again to fill her potential, to feel worthwhile once more. “It hurts,” she moaned, falling lifeless, boneless against the Doctor where he sat before her. “Oh, it hurts.”
“You’re going to kill yourself, Donna!” His voice was higher pitched than normal, his fingers digging into her, threatening to bruise for how desperately he held to her, how helplessly he pleaded with her.
Something stronger than herself - or perhaps it was just the real her, finally shining through again - took hold of her, grabbed at her psyche and took control, and she spun upon him with a blaze behind her eyes as she raged. “You stole it from me! You took everything!”
He paused, taken aback. “I had to!” he retorted quickly, the passion real and fierce behind the delivery. “There wasn’t any choice!”
“I wanted to be with you!” Donna lashed back, unable to contain herself, now that she had returned with a vengeance, like some wild animal finally unchained. “I didn’t care!”
“It would have killed you!” Some part of her recognized the pain, the utter heartbreak in his eyes as he said it, considered it, but that part was not at all concerned with her mouth.
“You did kill me!” she screeched at him, shoving hard at his chest in anger, wishing she could hurt him, wanting him to feel just like she had - lost and useless, meaningless, dispensable; incomplete. “You killed every good thing about me, you took it all away!”
She gasped hard, swallowing the sobs that were about to consume her - she’d be damned if she broke entirely. She brought her hands frantically to her cheeks, trying to wipe away the tears only to have the streaks renewed as soon as she stopped. “How could you?” she finally asked in a whisper. “Didn’t you want me?”
Looking as if he’d been slapped across the face without any of the satisfaction of doing it on Donna’s part, the Doctor bowed his head, biting at his lip as he framed Donna’s face with his hands. “Of course I did,” he breathed against her upper lip. “I do.” He laughed softly, his eyes filled with regret. “Stars above, Donna Noble, can’t you understand?”
He caressed the jutting bones of her cheek, the lines of her jaw with his thumbs - they were rougher than she remembered, like he’d been through more since she left, took care of himself less. “I want you,” he breathed, deep and harsh against the still air. “I need you. I was going to lose you either way; but knowing that you were alive somewhere, living your life...” he diverted his gaze, trailing off meaningfully, but missing the mark, knowing how selfish he sounded, how selfish he was - he would rather rob her of her shining glory than suffer another loss of his own, to feel his hearts break one more time.
She snorted coarsely, and he fought a grin in response - it was so typically her that it hurt to hear. “This isn’t a life,” she scoffed. “This is...” her face fell as her voice dropped in something like despair. “This is a shell. A mockery.” A fucking disgrace, is what it was - she’d seen the universe, she’d been important, she’d been... better, so much better, and she’d been useful! And what was she now? Still a boring, shallow temp whose WPM had dropped to 92 somewhere in the past eight months. “What did I do to deserve this?” she asked, bitter and betrayed, her eyes searching his desperately for the truth.
“Nothing,” he answered her, the warm exhalation of the word fluttering on her skin as he tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, playing with the dangling earring hanging from her lobe. “Nothing, Donna; my sweet, sweet Donna.” He smiled at her, and she didn’t remember ever being the subject of quite that smile before; it was close to the ones she recalled, in a way, but there was something extra in it, something more - it made her stomach drop and her heart tremble in her chest. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he assured her softly, still stroking at the lock of hair between his fingers, brushing it back with his nails as he grinned, all of the mischief and pride in the whole of the world in his smirk as he beamed at her. “Oh, but all of the things you did right.”
“I would rather’ve died knowing,” she confessed to him, so close against him. “Remembering... I would have rather died with you,” she tightened her grip on him, pressed into him that impossible bit more, feeling the heat from him acutely, the rush of his blood; “than have lived on like this, alone.”
The Doctor sighed, pulling her into his chest and tucking her beneath his chin, bare arms wrapped tight around her shoulders in a protective circle. “You cannot ask me...”
“Please, Doctor,” she begged, her words muffled against the shaking skin against his throat. “Don’t do it again.”
The pressure was building behind her eyes, a combination of the knowledge and the tears as she tried to lose herself in him, tried to focus on the rise of his chest, the beautiful, powerful drumbeat of his pulsing hearts, tried to make that count for everything in the word, tried to replace the reality she’d once saved with the sounds of his existence in her ears. “Don’t take it from me,” she begged hoarsely, too overwhelmed to be embarrassed, to feel weak or ashamed. “Don’t take you from me.”
“But Donna,” his voice echoed against both her ears, from the inside and the outside, and the way his hearts sped as he spoke made her feel a guilt she couldn’t swallow down. “Your mind-”
“I know,” she assured him with a nod, pulling back to look him in the eye. “I know.” And she did; she’d known the first time. She knew so much, so many spectacular and unbelievable things - all crammed into her head; silly little Donna Noble, suddenly brilliant, suddenly worthy. “But it’s time, inn’it?” she said sadly, smiling with the anticipation of the end. “It’s time.”
“But Donna,” the Doctor shook against her, his shattering hearts audible in his voice. “I-”
“I’m tired of chasin’ shadows, Doctor,” she murmured, her voice tired. “Tired of wasting away in my dreams. Let me go,” she urged him, voice warm, “knowing full well that what’s there in my heart is real, that it all really ‘appened. Please.”
“But you’ll die.” She cursed him inwardly for saying it out loud like that, plain as day and undeniable, his voice breaking on the final syllable; she could feel it already, if she was honest, the searing ache behind her skull, the expanding pain of energy and light bouncing around her bones and vying for dominance, for release. It wouldn’t be long.
“Do ya love me?” she asked suddenly, amused and nervous as his eyes turned quick towards her, wide and taken by surprise.
“What?”
She smiled soft, running her hands over his chest, his arms as she spoke. “I love you, Doctor. You’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. I’d chop off my right hand and sell it if you told me to, and you wouldn’t have to even say why.” She giggled a bit, tearfully, thinking fondly of all the times it had nearly come to something much worse than even that. “Anything you asked, ever, would’ve been yours. So I’m asking you,” her hands stopped, fingers curled over his shoulders, the heels of her palms resting over each respective heart, “if you love me, if you ever did... give me this.” She rested her head against him, reveling in the rapid fire intake of air that rushed loud and drafty through his lungs, crushing her body against his. “Let me remember this, let me remember you,” she tilted her neck, looking up at him, the pout of her full bottom lip undoing him in an instant. “Let me remember everything, and let the chips fall where they may.”
The silence was unending, but oh-so-fast, and there was something in her chest that snapped when she saw the tears fall from his eyes as he eventually nodded, the motion slow and his voice almost lost as he choked against his vocal chords; “Alright.”
He leaned down and pulled her up to him, tracing her features with his hands before delicately lifting her lips to his, guiding her to him in a chaste moment of bliss that made her heart feel heavy and sore, that made the room spin around her. “Alright, Donna Noble,” he spoke deliberately against her lips, his tongue touching hers innocently with the diction. “Let the chips fall where they may.”
She barely felt him lift her, as if she were a feather; he set her on her feet gently, and she had to hold to him - she hadn’t realized how little energy she had until the blood rushed from her head and gathered swiftly in her feet. She swayed, and breathed easier as his arms steadied her, helped her with her clothes, dressing her carefully with a watchful eye as her own eyes drifted closed every so often, her consciousness unpredictable.
She felt a jolt of realization when she entered the TARDIS, cradled in his arms like a babe, or a blushing bride; he propped her against the control panel and held her tight from behind, helping her pilot to a destination that she was too unfocused to determine, too unsteady to discern. She shook, and he pulled her tighter against him, and there was a connection between the pair of them and the ship they were helping to steer that made her feel grounded, safe, even as the time machine hurtled out of control through space, but strangely not through time.
“Where are we?” she asked after they’d landed, as he guided her out; she leaned heavily on him, trying to conserve the energy she had left, focusing herself onto the mental capacities she’d gained rather than wasting her strength on the physical niceties. She trusted him, and he provided in kind without hesitation - she didn’t even have to ask.
“Doesn’t matter,” he breathed, maneuvering them both towards a balcony. He stopped when her toes hit the railing, steeling himself and planting his feet against the shimmering ground as he wrapped his arms around her and let her lean back against him. “Can you hear them?” he whispered into her ear, his hands folding over her stomach as he rested his head in the crook of her shoulder.
“Hear?” she asked, uncertain, trying to find what it was she was meant to be noticing, but too distracted by colorful spires of glass, of ice; the mystical wonder of this planet, wherever it was; the crystalline snowflakes that fell like powder from above, the deep aquamarine color of the canopy of trees, the sweet milky tang on the air.
“Listen,” he instructed her, his voice picking up on the lilting end of a measure, the stanza of a poem that wafted her way, notes both beautiful and magical in a language that she didn’t know, but that the TARDIS did, the words slowly making sense in her mind - a song a praise, of jubilation - it made her feel happy and light, just at the sound.
“They’re singing about you,” he whispered between humming, keeping time with the music that drifted from far away.
She spun to him, startled, her eyes wide as they met his warm, loving gaze. “About me?”
“Donna Noble,” he confirmed with a smile, running his finger down her cheek as he studied her, awe in his gaze. “The woman with a heart of gold and a will of iron. The woman with a soul worthy of the stars,” he kissed her forehead and held her close again as they searched the heavens together, the patterns of stars and suns and moons and meteors, the fire and the ice in the sky. “The protector and savior of reality itself.”
She’d never seen anything more beautiful, never heard or felt or known anything like that very moment; her modesty was lost in the sheer wonder she felt at the brilliance surrounding her as she protested weakly, “They aren’t saying all those things.”
He smiled into her neck as he rocked her from left to right. “Ah, just wait till the next verse.”
She felt lightheaded, felt faint as he turned her to face him, the outline of his body wavering, but his features still strong as she watched him watching her. “Donna Noble,” he said fondly. “Defender of the cosmos, the whole of creation.” She grinned, grasping his hand, suddenly very scared as she felt weaker with every breath, as the pain gathered again in full force behind her eyes, against her throat, strangling her slowly.
“You’re magnificent,” he whispered softly into her hair, stroking the lines of her frame to ease the tension he knew was growing, tears beginning to stream openly down his face as he smiled down at her, watery and thin. “So very special, Donna. My Donna.”
He kissed her as her legs gave out, hard and long, and the pain dissolved at the contact, as if he were sucking it all from her. She wanted to pull away, afraid of what he was doing, afraid he was going to erase everything again, but she couldn’t, it felt too wonderful - his lips on hers, the freedom from the agony, the constant pressure. The lights surged blindingly behind her eyes for a second, and she moaned into his mouth as it burned her retinas; she tried to open her eyes but she could see nothing; he wasn’t in front of her anymore. Her hands groped to find his where they were fixed on her sides, lacing their fingers together and holding on, knowing it was all over.
He was whispering to her, words she didn’t know, and they were heavy in overlaying the song that still filtered in the background. In her mind’s eye, what was left of it, she saw beautiful things - beautiful worlds and beautiful people, memories of days gone by, and she saw him, always - always her Doctor.
She’d made a promise once, that she would be with him forever; that she’d stay by his side for the rest of her life.
Everything grew cold, even his hands on her, and the last thing she knew before a great wave of sleep took her completely was his voice in her ear, singing soft and heartbroken along with the final verses of the song about a little temp from Chiswick who stumbled upon the opportunity of a lifetime, who rose to the occasion and proved she was somebody. Proved she was special. Proved she was worthy.
Proved she was loved.
She smiled to herself as it all went black - not half bad, really. Not half bad.