Ficlet/drabble: The Murderess
Title: The Murderess
Author: lylo369
Pairing: Eleven/River
Rating: PG
Summary: River Song has been naughty girl and the Doctor is very cross.
Just a little light, unbeta'd drabble to get the woefully dormant creative juices flowing again. All characters are the property of BBC and no copyright infringement is intended, etc, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Saving time was really a silly concept when you were the owner of a vortex manipulator, but River Song still kept the coordinates to the Stormcage on ‘speed dial’ just for the sake of convenience, and in case one of her adventures necessitated a quick escape, which they often did. This time was no different, so it was a pleasant and welcomed surprise to find the Doctor waiting in her cell. There was nothing she enjoyed after a narrow escape quite as much as a vigorous shag and she hadn’t expected to see him so soon after their recent spirited adventure in the Lyra constellation. His reaction upon seeing her, however, was less than encouraging.
“My god, River! What have you done?” he cried out lividly, his face contorted in an almost pained expression, stopping her dead in her tracks.
“Well hello to you too, sweetie.”
The Doctor didn’t respond, but simply circled around her, one hand covering his mouth, the other pointing at her accusingly. She raised an eyebrow and rested a balled up fist on her waist as she waited for him to pull himself together long enough to explain his ire.
“You! You…”
“I what, dear?”
He shook his head disappointedly, looking at her as if she had broken time itself. Again. “Oh River, how could you do it?”
There would be no flirting her way out of this one. The Doctor must have somehow found out about the chaos she had just left behind and was now exceedingly cross with her. She turned away from him and walked into her cell to gather her thoughts, the blue flashes of the lightening outside combining with the glow of the Tardis to give a luminous, almost ethereal glow to her white evening gown despite the scattered assortment of tears and dirt smudges along the hemline.
“Alright, I’ll explain.” She started rambling breathlessly, and would have been amused at how much she was starting to sound like him if it hadn’t been for the shockingly serious look on his face. “It all started out with a simple trip back to 1958 for a New Year’s party at Billy Wilder’s house, where I was just going to have a little talk with our ‘friend’ Marilyn. I didn’t know that she had been drinking Tony Curtis’ special martinis all night and before I knew it, she was falling into the pool--and yes, she FELL. I absolutely DID NOT push her--and then suddenly there were people screaming and police sirens and…”
“But…” he stuttered, shaking his head, “you…you…killed…”
“Killed?” She gasped. “I didn’t kill anyone!”
“What? Anyone? Don’t be silly. Of course you didn’t kill someone.” The Doctor ambled up and tapped her on the nose, his tone taking on a curiously less critical tone. “At least not this time. But you most certainly killed something.”
“Some…thing?” Suddenly, it became very clear that despite his frenetic demeanor, the Doctor had no idea about Marilyn or pools or the gun she had just slipped under her mattress. “What in the name of sanity are you talking about?”
The Doctor crossed his arms in front of him and walked towards her, pouting as if she had broken his favorite toy. “Your hair. You murdered your hair.” He reached over, hesitating for a moment, then poked at a strand of it that was draped along her neckline. “As if it wasn’t bad enough that you seem to amuse yourself by killing my hats, now you’ve gone and become a murderer of hair!”
“My hair?” River rolled her eyes and burst into laughter.
“Yes! If that’s what you want to call it now.”
River turned towards the small mirror that hung askew over her sink, leaned over for a closer look and cocked her head to the side. Even after her recent exertions, her hair was as perfect as it was when she first styled it, every inch of her previously wild and glorious curls now neatly flat-ironed into smooth and stunning strawberry blond waves, neatly pinned back on one side in a way that would incite envy in the most glamorous of screen sirens.
“It took me two hours to get it like this.”
“Ha!” the Doctor huffed, sauntering up behind her until his own reflection was side-by-side with hers. “That’s two hours wasted that you will never get back.”
“Ah,” she pouted teasingly, “and I was so careful to find something that was more appropriate to the time period that my usual hairstyle. After all, you did tell me that I had to be less conspicuous when I went out.”
“Yes, but I didn’t mean...this.” He flailed his hands around her head, avoiding any contact with her hair. “It was so much more...fun before! All twirly and spirally and wibbly-wobbly. But now it’s just so…boring. Boring and linear. Although, the rest of you is rather…” He stepped back, arching his brows as he motioned up and down her body, every curve accented alluringly by the snug cut of the dress and the plunging neckline. “Um…er…”
“Rather what?” She purred coyly and turned to face the Doctor, leaning quite seductively against the sink while the mile-long slit in her gown exposed nearly the full length of her perfectly-toned legs. He swallowed hard.
“Rather…conspicuous.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, Doctor Song. I’m afraid that if your intention was to not draw attention to yourself, you have failed most exceptionally.”
Even in the low light of her cell, River could see that the Doctor was blushing, bless, and she responded with a sultry, satisfied chuckle. “So you don’t approve?”
“Well,” he hesitated briefly, biting his lip to suppress the delighted smile that was threatening to betray what was left of his ‘indignation’ even though the smooth and throaty change in the tone of his voice had already done so. “I certainly don’t approve of this.”
He leaned forward, bracing one hand against the sink in a way that left River pressed against his chest in the little space that remained while he used the other hand to twirl a strand of her hair between his fingers, frowning ruefully when it simply unraveled back into a delicate wave along her shoulder.
“I see. Then I guess I’m just going to have to change it back.” She slipped away from him playfully and slinked to the center of the room.
“Good! Excellent! Brilliant!” He answered, spinning to face her, waving his finger at her sternly. “And you must swear to me NEVER to do anything like this again!”
“Alright!” she answered with a giggle. “I swear! Goodness you really are a daft man sometimes. Now why don’t you come over here and help me with this.”
The Doctor’s eyebrow furrowed as he watched her take her jewelry off and drop each piece onto her bed before struggling with the zipper on the back of her dress. “River…what are you doing?”
“Exactly what you want me to do, dear.”
“And, um…what, exactly, would that…be?”
“Ah, well you see, my love, I think I may have been a little too generous with the hairspray, so I fear the only way to get my hair back the way it was will be to wash it. Thoroughly.” She winked at him as she finally unhooked her zipper and very slowly pulled it down enough so that she could slither out of the dress as it dropped to her feet, leaving her wearing nothing but what could barely pass as a pair of white lace panties and a matching corset with the faintest hint of blue piping…Tardis blue. “But the water pressure here is rubbish, so I’ll have to use the shower in the Tardis. And I expect it will take a good long while. Hours even.”
The Doctor’s eyes opened wide as River kicked off her shoes and strolled over to him to undo his bow tie, twirling each end around her fingers so that she could use it to lead him forward until his arms were wrapped around her. He leaned his chin on her forehead and gently pulled her hips into his while his fingers traced the lace edges of her knickers.
“Hours you say?”
“At least.” She answered, slipping her hands under his tweed jacket and around his back as she traced the line of his neck with kisses and gentle bites.
“Mmm, River Song. Enchanting murderess of hats and hair. And the woman who married me. You do remember that time is relative in the Tardis. Hours can last as long as…OOH!”
The Doctor’s eyes nearly rolled into the back of his head as River’s hand worked its way from his back down into the front of his pants.
“You were saying, my love?”
“Nothing…nothing! Shower. You wanted a shower. Yes…I think that would be rather nice. Right now, don’t you think?”
“Oh, absolutely!”
Moments later, they were inside and Tardis disappeared in a flash of light and wind, sending River’s dress dancing softly across the floor. To the delight of both River and the Doctor, for the entire week that the hour lasted (as well as every day thereafter), neither Marilyn Monroe nor that bloody flat iron were ever thought about or spoken of again.