Fic: White Tie
Title: White Tie
Author: stick_poker
Rating: Adult, yep, back to the smut again
Characters: Eleven / younger River and someone else offscreen
Spoilers: For the finale of S5.
Note: This is what the previous thing was originally the backstory to. It was written for the same kinkmeme prompt, and so originally it was mainly a cheap excuse to think of Eleventy in various states of undress, and then it got some emotions and stuff and I don't know how well the splicing has worked. Or how mean I've been to River.
Summary: It would take a peculiar sort of mind to start writing everything down right from the earliest part of a relationship, wouldn't it... What significant moments may go unrecorded?
The Doctor always danced at weddings, and he danced at this one, the royal couple’s nieces and nephews laughing and joining in, while Amy hob-nobbed with the top brass and Rory tried to keep her on the right side of local etiquette. By the end of the evening she’d tired of her games, and she let Rory take her off to their guest room, somewhere else in the palace. She’d shot the Doctor an arch look as they left the ballroom, and it was true that he was flirting with the new Princess’s twin sister, but his hearts weren’t really in it. He suspected hers weren’t either; the full white-tie outfit didn't quite translate, and he would never be able to grow thick enough neck-plates to look really impressive in this culture anyway.
The party was winding down now, and the humans would be hours yet, with their affections and then their sleep. Wandering in the sumptuous gardens, he leaned against the corner of a gazebo draped in night-flower vines, breathed in their heady scent and looked up at the stars. They looked different from every planet, from every place you stood, and every time you stood there; with a mind like his he could use them to calculate his position with great precision, but sometimes he preferred just to look at them. He thought about River; the endless questions, the way she always left just as the answers were in danger of appearing, and the way he'd so nearly pinned her down to something last time he was dressed like this. Maybe that's why they'd come here; Amy would say it was because she'd asked to go to another wedding, but why had he agreed? So he could mope around and dream about River like a love-struck boy?
She appeared on the path opposite, lightning crawling over her, and glared at him.
“Oh, you are insufferable!”
She stabbed at the vortex manipulator on her wrist and vanished with a flash.
Interesting. What happened if he thought of her again?
The lightning returned, sparking out to the ends of her spiral hair. Panting, she raised her hand to point at him, and shouted, “Don’t you dare think you can get round me like this!”
Another stab, another whoosh-zap, another departure.
He stepped out of the gazebo and onto the path, to just about here, and three, two, one...
Another cocoon of lightning, and she staggered into his arms. He held her close while she struggled, trying to get her orientation and breath back, and then let her go as she found them and tried to wriggle out of his grip.
She was fiddling with the controls, evidently still trying to get to somewhere, somewhen, but he closed his hand around her wrist to stop her.
“No. You'll hurt yourself.”
She looked up at him; was it the starlight or her anger that made her look so young?
“Two of you! You’re ganging up on me! And you don’t even know why.”
“No, but I bet I’m right.”
She shook her free hand in exasperation. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t so... unreconstructed! Old-fashioned. How to deal with a hysterical woman, oh, you old fool...”
He’d never seen her so vocal before, so unguarded. This was her, all right, but from before she had so many secrets to keep?
“Sending me off to the clueless professor, dressed up in some pretty boy outfit. Ha! You don’t even know what I’m here for, do you?”
Come to think of it, no. “Of course I do.”
“You’re still a terrible liar. This is a bit of down-time for you, yes? Nothing dangerous about? You were thinking of sloping off to play with the TARDIS?”
“Well, who knows what might be about to happen? A sudden break-out of republican fervour at the palace, or instability in the local star’s magnetosphere disrupting the, ah...”
She put her free hand on her hip and glared at him again. “I don’t know what happens tonight, and neither do you. But someone does, and that someone has sent me here to calm down. Which means no revolutions.”
“Okay.” He tried to get a handle on the situation. Calm down? “Well, these night-flowers are very calming.” He looked around, waving an arm at the gazebo behind him. “They make an essence out of them, you know...”
Her hand was still defiantly on her hip, but she was smiling now. “Not the night-flowers.”
“We could go back to the TARDIS. Nice cup of tea?”
This time she said nothing, but breathed a deep sigh of exasperation. She was wearing something that looked like sleep clothes, jersey shorts and a small vest, and the effect of the sigh was noticeable. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
“Straight into automatic self-denial mode, then. You’re allowed to notice, idiot,” she declared, twisting the wrist he still held out of his grip, putting her newly-freed hand on her other hip and sticking her chest out at him.
She was young, not so young that it felt wrong, but oh dear, young enough. He did try to control his expression, but it was no good. She was laughing at him, a purling, silvery laugh like moonlight.
“Oh dear, I hadn’t realised the Boy Professor would be so much fun. What number are you, anyway?” She reached up to lift the top hat from his head, and placed it on her own, making a pouting pose with it.
“You don’t know?”
“You probably told me but I can’t keep it all straight. I ought to start writing things down; you’d approve of that, wouldn’t you?” she smirked, wrapping her arms round his neck, and before he had time to think of what to say to that, she had caught his mouth in an enthusiastic kiss.
I could send her back. I could send her back... forwards, he thought. But he did nothing, apart from respond to the kiss, feel her pressing her body against his. His hands rose to her back, seemingly of their own accord, and then there he was, responding again, feeling her smooth skin under the thin fabric of the vest.
“Mmm, hello again, sweetie,” she murmured, breaking the kiss. “Come on, let’s find somewhere a bit less obvious.” She looked around, caught sight of the gazebo and then grinned at him, taking hold of his hand and towing him towards it.
Into the deeper shadow of the flower vines, where she pressed him up against a post and kissed him again, her hands stroking over him, investigating the shape of him, running over the regular texture of the tightly-woven wool of the suit, and returning again to smooth the silk scarf down over his chest.
“This is a great outfit,” she murmured. “Where on earth did you get it?”
“On Earth, as it happens,” he replied, “in Victorian London. It was bespoke, done properly. I went to lots of fittings.” He was still proud of his patience over that one.
“Ha, let me guess... late Victorian London? About 1896 or so? Lots of mysterious vanishing, hoping to run into someone who’d read Wells’ Time Machine and make them gape at you?”
1893, just to avoid that, he thought, but decided not to say. And she evidently didn’t know about the things he’d got up to with Wells himself, either. Was this really how it was going to happen? There would be a sort of pretend symmetry if they both appeared young, he supposed, but he’d thought... well, he’d assumed she’d know.
“Honestly, time travel is so tawdry, sometimes,” she said.
It was becoming increasingly important to make her shut up. And his choice of ways in which to do it were narrowing. He thought of the someone who knew what happened tonight, and got the feeling he was being laughed at.
He let his hands slide down her back, cupping her bum, and squeezed. That made her giggle, and kiss him again, which at least stopped her talking. He took the kiss more seriously this time, bending over her. She was shorter without her heels, and he tipped her back until his hat fell off her head, unregarded.
Right. He’d got her attention, at least. Unfortunately, it really had been a while from the perspective of this new body, and he was a bit stuck for where to go next. The nagging feeling that this wasn't right, that this wasn't quite her, yet, didn’t help. And she was used to some other iteration of him, and she was talking to that one, not the one holding her.
She pulled away again for a moment, and sighed. "I'm doing this wrong, aren't I?"
"Are you?" Something wasn't right, but he couldn't quite bring himself to think about stopping.
"I'm still new to this, to you with all these faces, to different versions of you. And I don't know this one yet."
I’ll see you again soon, and I’m sorry... She had already apologised to him, hadn’t she? For the thoughtlessness of her youthful self. Somewhere, somewhen she knew what happened here too.
"I think we're all the same person, more or less." Was that even true?
Her fingers curling in the hair above his collar, the flash of her smile in the shadows.
"Maybe I should check and find out."
He smiled in return, but his uncertainty remained. Her presence, her frankness, her proximity, they were intoxicating, but were they making him lose his head? He could ask her all sorts of things now, and the danger was that she might tell him.
"Now, then. Such pretty wrapping, but it's in the way, don't you think?" She tugged at the white bow tie, pulling it undone, all the way off him, and throwing it over her shoulder. He saw it catch on a vine leaf; it hung behind her, glowing in the dim light. Her hands found the silk scarf again, moving down along it over his chest, and then slipped underneath the short front of the coat, going up to his shoulders to push it off.
He leaned forward as if she'd told him to, the coat falling behind him with a soft thump. He bent his face to her mass of curly hair, trying to work out what made him stand still as she tucked in close to him, her arms around the satin back of the waistcoat, feeling the shape of his long body, laughing into his chest, and then her fingers were busy with the small buttons at the front. Hands on his chest again, pushing the waistcoat off his shoulders too, to slide in a pool onto the coat.
Back down his chest again, and her fingers found the braces of the high-waisted trousers. "Mm, I've heard about you and braces," she laughed, tugging playfully at them and letting them snap gently back to his chest. That brought a tiny flutter of panic, and something else he didn't want to think about yet. Was it reassuring to know that you had a future, when you used it to do this to yourself? She slipped the braces off his shoulders, and then turned to the fastenings of the shirt and collar.
Fingers at his neck, running down over his throat, parting the shirt over his chest, and then lips following; bits of this brain that hadn't really been used yet were waking up fast. This time his hands weren't unguided as they travelled down her back and found the curve of her hip, as his fingers slipped under the waistband of her shorts. So many secrets, and here was one within hands' reach...
"Hey!" she said sharply. "This is me checking you, not the other way round." Another flash of a smile, and she took hold of the opening of his shirt and roughly pulled it down over his shoulders. The cuff-links were still in place and the shirt bunched around his forearms, restraining his arms close in to his sides. She stood back for a moment to regard him, somewhere between stripped and trapped, and her grin suggested she liked what she saw.
Why was he letting her do this to him? He could stop it at any time, untangle himself, walk away, send her away, but the answer, the temptation, was in the question. How could he untangle himself from her, knowing even the few things he knew? So why not let her tangle herself around him even further?
She bent to the floor, picking up something white; the silk scarf had fallen. She draped it around his neck, dragging it slowly along the bare skin, wrapping the ends in her fingers, and then jerked it, pulling him forwards. Once he was off-balance and moving he felt hands at his waist, steering him across the deeper shadows under the vines. There was an edge behind his knees; she pushed him down and he sat on what must have been some sort of bench. A further push and he laid along it, the stone scratching at his naked back, arms still caught in the shirt round his waist.
Her fingers were busy again, unfastening buttons on his trousers, pulling them open, finding soft linen and more buttons underneath. "Ooh, authentic," she laughed, fiddling with the knot on the drawstring, loosening everything off. "Come on. Up," she said, patting his hip brusquely, like he was being slow in not guessing what she wanted next. Still unable to stop responding, he braced his shoulders and feet and lifted, and she yanked on the layers of fabric, leaving everything halfway down his thighs in another trapping tangle. The stone bench was cold and sharp against his bare skin as he lay back flat again. He looked up at the fragments of starscape in the gaps between the vines. There were too few of them, now, the view too partial, to work out where and when he was.
Looking down again, he saw her quickly strip off the shorts and vest, but the darkness was too deep to see anything more than outlines and contrast. His eyes tried to fasten on the shadowless shapes of her breasts, the darker outline of nipples, the shadow between her legs, but there wasn't enough to hold on to. She swung her leg over the bench and he felt her settling astride his thighs, but his trousers were still in the way and he couldn't feel her directly. He tried to reach her with his fingers but couldn't move his arms enough to touch her; she had him under her control, and exposed, as open to her as his skin was to the cool night air. He closed his eyes on the teasing stars, aware of the cold stone and her warm weight, the dim light but his obvious erection, the cool breeze and his own breath hot over his lips. How many times had he already asked her to trust him? He had to trust her in return.
The scarf was sliding around his neck again as she pulled on one end. The white of it made a sharper contrast against her skin, and she wrapped loops around each hand, holding the length of it out in front of her. He caught his breath when the silk landed across his stomach, and then felt her slide it lower, catching underneath his cock. She pulled the scarf taut, and then began sliding it around, the impossible feeling of silk on sensitive skin, and after a moment her hand gripped him through it, feeling the length and weight of him. Behind his eyelids, whole new areas of memory were opening up again, all the things he hadn’t done yet with this body coming back to life with raw new potential.
And still no way to touch her. His hands made fists at his sides and he pulled against the shirt, the cotton taut against his hips, but it didn't help. He tipped his head back, gasping as the silk caught at him. He wanted her against him, wanted to know all the things that she was still holding back. His future, her past, pinning him down in the now, nothing but the merest tissue of fabric between them, but it might as well have been forever.
Her hands moved away again, taking the scarf with them. Her weight lifted from his thighs and he looked down quickly, afraid she might be about to leave him again already, before his questions were answered, but she was standing over him, looking at his outline in the dim light. He strained his hands up against the shirt again, wanting to reach her, but still couldn't bring himself to say anything, do anything, make a move for or against.
Another flash of a smile, and she laid the scarf neatly across him, over his cock again, and then leaned forwards, putting her hands on the bench by his arms. He felt her thighs close over his wrists, and just for a second he couldn't work out what she intended, but then she settled delicately down, her labia pressed to the underside of his cock. He could feel the heat of her through the silk, the nub of her clit pressing on him, sliding back along him, and then his hands were full of her arse. What he'd wanted, and yet another denial.
He groaned at that. His fingers kneaded at her smooth skin, and she lazily tipped her hips, slicking her cunt along him, every movement stirring the unfolding new sensations in his groin. Her wetness began to soak through the scarf, transmitting her heat all the more faithfully. Instead of slipping between them, the wet silk clung to him, bringing her touch one movement closer. He heard her moan, finding the right combination of friction and pressure, and the sound thrilled through him, the sound he’d been waiting to one day hear.
"Please, River... please." He tried not to grab at her too hard, hands still frustrated with their limited range, head turning from side to side, trying to rein himself in. The new feeling inside was spreading fast, too fast, like a steel hawser whipping out of a tight coil. His fingers clutched at her, and his hips rocked, disrupting her neat rhythm. Today was not the day for slow savouring, not from this side.
She laughed at him again. “Oh, sweetie. Has it been a while?"
"Yes," he hissed, even then unable to just ask, ask for what he wanted.
Maybe it was her youth, or her uncertainty about him that stopped her teasing him further. There was an instant of shock when the scarf was pulled away and he felt her directly, that smoothest of skin against him, and then he was inside her and it was relief. Everything, all those memories boiling into the new reality, uncoiling further, her hands on his chest, holding on while he thrust into her, not caring about the scrape of rough stone on his back, or his trapped, half-useless hands, just trying to be inside, deeper, surrounded. He wasn't going to last long and there was no way to back off, only to ride the rising surge of it, one more breath and then the crest, the crash of it, pumping into her, making all sorts of senseless noise, a whole new manner of inexplicable joy found in undignified base physicality. It never made any sense, in any body, and that never mattered.
And then it was the work of seconds to sit up, pull the shirt back up over his shoulders, and grab hold of her, cling on to her, push his face into her chest and call her name again. He could have held her any time, all that time, all those times they'd met already, and he'd always assumed he couldn't, shouldn't, other stupid words that surely never applied to them. He kissed her frantically, overwhelmed at finally knowing that this was real, and she pulled him close, hands in his hair and on his back.
It took him a while to notice that she was still moving her hips, trying to carry on and reach her own satisfaction, but already he was softening and it wouldn't work. He smiled into the kiss and then laid back down again, hands on her hips, pulling her away and up. "Here, here, let me..."
Her weight shifting again and the loss of the hot pressure as his cock slipped out of her, a trail of fluid moving up his body, and then her warmth at his face, settling herself on his mouth. He took her gratefully, swallowing away the remains of himself and delighted to finally taste her. Anyone watching, he thought, would assume this was the subservient position but they didn't know, they didn't know what he knew, what he could taste in her. Knowledge was power, and he tried not to laugh with it, drunk on all the things he found. Did she know yet how much this gave away? Not facts, not history, but emotions, the argument she'd been having with the other version before she arrived, her nervousness at the unfamiliar him, her delight at watching him struggle. The tension in her dominated everything; no wonder they'd been fighting.
He carefully worked her, lapping and sucking and flicking, balancing her excitement and the tremble in her legs, his own enjoyment and the way she clung to the post in front of her. It was odd, given whatever else came and went, that it took no effort to remember how to do this. He ran his freed hands along her thighs, coming to rest on her arse again, helping to support her. Just a little longer, building the fire as high as possible, tasting her pleasure, and then her tension turned into a shiver and a low, drawn-out moan, a shaking that threatened to bruise his mouth, and a new flavour of wetness. Eventually she subsided, dropping into his hands again, and he guided her down, letting her lie full length along his body, holding her tight around the shoulders as she recovered herself. He licked his lips clean. Definitely his new favourite flavour.
"It's nice to know you're always good at that," she said breathlessly.
"I wonder if I might have been designed for it," he mused. “Always seems to be there, me and mouths, and it’s only getting worse as I get older.”
“Even when there's something else that might take over... And it’s ironic that you had to, of course.”
He frowned, feeling the edge of a secret again, a wall of the maze of secrets they necessarily built between them, the only way to make this possible. Why would she know now? She thought it had been a while, not his first, not their first. And when would he eventually tell her? He kept his silence for now, and only kissed her forehead. His fingers ran idly along her spine, feeling the faint goosebumps on her skin in the night air.
He ran too cool to keep her warm. He wondered, briefly, if this would even work without its confusion, whether he was ever enough to keep her without the added dimensions, without being however many people he was for her. She had been, would be, something amazing for him. Even just the one of her was sometimes more than he could handle. She sighed against him, and then shivered, and he knew it was nearly time to lose her again.
He lifted her wrist, the one with the vortex manipulator still absurdly strapped to it, and she let him, her amusement illuminated by the faint light of its screen. He thumbed the controls, watching the locations flip between here and there, the two places it had been locked to. A later River wouldn’t have let him see where she’d come from. In some ways, he thought, she was learning surprisingly slowly.
“I think this would be an appropriate point, when you get back,” he felt her shift against him, “to start writing things down.” He flicked the button, pulled his hands away sharply and smiled into the sparks.
Author: stick_poker
Rating: Adult, yep, back to the smut again
Characters: Eleven / younger River and someone else offscreen
Spoilers: For the finale of S5.
Note: This is what the previous thing was originally the backstory to. It was written for the same kinkmeme prompt, and so originally it was mainly a cheap excuse to think of Eleventy in various states of undress, and then it got some emotions and stuff and I don't know how well the splicing has worked. Or how mean I've been to River.
Summary: It would take a peculiar sort of mind to start writing everything down right from the earliest part of a relationship, wouldn't it... What significant moments may go unrecorded?
The Doctor always danced at weddings, and he danced at this one, the royal couple’s nieces and nephews laughing and joining in, while Amy hob-nobbed with the top brass and Rory tried to keep her on the right side of local etiquette. By the end of the evening she’d tired of her games, and she let Rory take her off to their guest room, somewhere else in the palace. She’d shot the Doctor an arch look as they left the ballroom, and it was true that he was flirting with the new Princess’s twin sister, but his hearts weren’t really in it. He suspected hers weren’t either; the full white-tie outfit didn't quite translate, and he would never be able to grow thick enough neck-plates to look really impressive in this culture anyway.
The party was winding down now, and the humans would be hours yet, with their affections and then their sleep. Wandering in the sumptuous gardens, he leaned against the corner of a gazebo draped in night-flower vines, breathed in their heady scent and looked up at the stars. They looked different from every planet, from every place you stood, and every time you stood there; with a mind like his he could use them to calculate his position with great precision, but sometimes he preferred just to look at them. He thought about River; the endless questions, the way she always left just as the answers were in danger of appearing, and the way he'd so nearly pinned her down to something last time he was dressed like this. Maybe that's why they'd come here; Amy would say it was because she'd asked to go to another wedding, but why had he agreed? So he could mope around and dream about River like a love-struck boy?
She appeared on the path opposite, lightning crawling over her, and glared at him.
“Oh, you are insufferable!”
She stabbed at the vortex manipulator on her wrist and vanished with a flash.
Interesting. What happened if he thought of her again?
The lightning returned, sparking out to the ends of her spiral hair. Panting, she raised her hand to point at him, and shouted, “Don’t you dare think you can get round me like this!”
Another stab, another whoosh-zap, another departure.
He stepped out of the gazebo and onto the path, to just about here, and three, two, one...
Another cocoon of lightning, and she staggered into his arms. He held her close while she struggled, trying to get her orientation and breath back, and then let her go as she found them and tried to wriggle out of his grip.
She was fiddling with the controls, evidently still trying to get to somewhere, somewhen, but he closed his hand around her wrist to stop her.
“No. You'll hurt yourself.”
She looked up at him; was it the starlight or her anger that made her look so young?
“Two of you! You’re ganging up on me! And you don’t even know why.”
“No, but I bet I’m right.”
She shook her free hand in exasperation. “I wouldn’t mind so much if it wasn’t so... unreconstructed! Old-fashioned. How to deal with a hysterical woman, oh, you old fool...”
He’d never seen her so vocal before, so unguarded. This was her, all right, but from before she had so many secrets to keep?
“Sending me off to the clueless professor, dressed up in some pretty boy outfit. Ha! You don’t even know what I’m here for, do you?”
Come to think of it, no. “Of course I do.”
“You’re still a terrible liar. This is a bit of down-time for you, yes? Nothing dangerous about? You were thinking of sloping off to play with the TARDIS?”
“Well, who knows what might be about to happen? A sudden break-out of republican fervour at the palace, or instability in the local star’s magnetosphere disrupting the, ah...”
She put her free hand on her hip and glared at him again. “I don’t know what happens tonight, and neither do you. But someone does, and that someone has sent me here to calm down. Which means no revolutions.”
“Okay.” He tried to get a handle on the situation. Calm down? “Well, these night-flowers are very calming.” He looked around, waving an arm at the gazebo behind him. “They make an essence out of them, you know...”
Her hand was still defiantly on her hip, but she was smiling now. “Not the night-flowers.”
“We could go back to the TARDIS. Nice cup of tea?”
This time she said nothing, but breathed a deep sigh of exasperation. She was wearing something that looked like sleep clothes, jersey shorts and a small vest, and the effect of the sigh was noticeable. He dropped his gaze to the floor.
“Straight into automatic self-denial mode, then. You’re allowed to notice, idiot,” she declared, twisting the wrist he still held out of his grip, putting her newly-freed hand on her other hip and sticking her chest out at him.
She was young, not so young that it felt wrong, but oh dear, young enough. He did try to control his expression, but it was no good. She was laughing at him, a purling, silvery laugh like moonlight.
“Oh dear, I hadn’t realised the Boy Professor would be so much fun. What number are you, anyway?” She reached up to lift the top hat from his head, and placed it on her own, making a pouting pose with it.
“You don’t know?”
“You probably told me but I can’t keep it all straight. I ought to start writing things down; you’d approve of that, wouldn’t you?” she smirked, wrapping her arms round his neck, and before he had time to think of what to say to that, she had caught his mouth in an enthusiastic kiss.
I could send her back. I could send her back... forwards, he thought. But he did nothing, apart from respond to the kiss, feel her pressing her body against his. His hands rose to her back, seemingly of their own accord, and then there he was, responding again, feeling her smooth skin under the thin fabric of the vest.
“Mmm, hello again, sweetie,” she murmured, breaking the kiss. “Come on, let’s find somewhere a bit less obvious.” She looked around, caught sight of the gazebo and then grinned at him, taking hold of his hand and towing him towards it.
Into the deeper shadow of the flower vines, where she pressed him up against a post and kissed him again, her hands stroking over him, investigating the shape of him, running over the regular texture of the tightly-woven wool of the suit, and returning again to smooth the silk scarf down over his chest.
“This is a great outfit,” she murmured. “Where on earth did you get it?”
“On Earth, as it happens,” he replied, “in Victorian London. It was bespoke, done properly. I went to lots of fittings.” He was still proud of his patience over that one.
“Ha, let me guess... late Victorian London? About 1896 or so? Lots of mysterious vanishing, hoping to run into someone who’d read Wells’ Time Machine and make them gape at you?”
1893, just to avoid that, he thought, but decided not to say. And she evidently didn’t know about the things he’d got up to with Wells himself, either. Was this really how it was going to happen? There would be a sort of pretend symmetry if they both appeared young, he supposed, but he’d thought... well, he’d assumed she’d know.
“Honestly, time travel is so tawdry, sometimes,” she said.
It was becoming increasingly important to make her shut up. And his choice of ways in which to do it were narrowing. He thought of the someone who knew what happened tonight, and got the feeling he was being laughed at.
He let his hands slide down her back, cupping her bum, and squeezed. That made her giggle, and kiss him again, which at least stopped her talking. He took the kiss more seriously this time, bending over her. She was shorter without her heels, and he tipped her back until his hat fell off her head, unregarded.
Right. He’d got her attention, at least. Unfortunately, it really had been a while from the perspective of this new body, and he was a bit stuck for where to go next. The nagging feeling that this wasn't right, that this wasn't quite her, yet, didn’t help. And she was used to some other iteration of him, and she was talking to that one, not the one holding her.
She pulled away again for a moment, and sighed. "I'm doing this wrong, aren't I?"
"Are you?" Something wasn't right, but he couldn't quite bring himself to think about stopping.
"I'm still new to this, to you with all these faces, to different versions of you. And I don't know this one yet."
I’ll see you again soon, and I’m sorry... She had already apologised to him, hadn’t she? For the thoughtlessness of her youthful self. Somewhere, somewhen she knew what happened here too.
"I think we're all the same person, more or less." Was that even true?
Her fingers curling in the hair above his collar, the flash of her smile in the shadows.
"Maybe I should check and find out."
He smiled in return, but his uncertainty remained. Her presence, her frankness, her proximity, they were intoxicating, but were they making him lose his head? He could ask her all sorts of things now, and the danger was that she might tell him.
"Now, then. Such pretty wrapping, but it's in the way, don't you think?" She tugged at the white bow tie, pulling it undone, all the way off him, and throwing it over her shoulder. He saw it catch on a vine leaf; it hung behind her, glowing in the dim light. Her hands found the silk scarf again, moving down along it over his chest, and then slipped underneath the short front of the coat, going up to his shoulders to push it off.
He leaned forward as if she'd told him to, the coat falling behind him with a soft thump. He bent his face to her mass of curly hair, trying to work out what made him stand still as she tucked in close to him, her arms around the satin back of the waistcoat, feeling the shape of his long body, laughing into his chest, and then her fingers were busy with the small buttons at the front. Hands on his chest again, pushing the waistcoat off his shoulders too, to slide in a pool onto the coat.
Back down his chest again, and her fingers found the braces of the high-waisted trousers. "Mm, I've heard about you and braces," she laughed, tugging playfully at them and letting them snap gently back to his chest. That brought a tiny flutter of panic, and something else he didn't want to think about yet. Was it reassuring to know that you had a future, when you used it to do this to yourself? She slipped the braces off his shoulders, and then turned to the fastenings of the shirt and collar.
Fingers at his neck, running down over his throat, parting the shirt over his chest, and then lips following; bits of this brain that hadn't really been used yet were waking up fast. This time his hands weren't unguided as they travelled down her back and found the curve of her hip, as his fingers slipped under the waistband of her shorts. So many secrets, and here was one within hands' reach...
"Hey!" she said sharply. "This is me checking you, not the other way round." Another flash of a smile, and she took hold of the opening of his shirt and roughly pulled it down over his shoulders. The cuff-links were still in place and the shirt bunched around his forearms, restraining his arms close in to his sides. She stood back for a moment to regard him, somewhere between stripped and trapped, and her grin suggested she liked what she saw.
Why was he letting her do this to him? He could stop it at any time, untangle himself, walk away, send her away, but the answer, the temptation, was in the question. How could he untangle himself from her, knowing even the few things he knew? So why not let her tangle herself around him even further?
She bent to the floor, picking up something white; the silk scarf had fallen. She draped it around his neck, dragging it slowly along the bare skin, wrapping the ends in her fingers, and then jerked it, pulling him forwards. Once he was off-balance and moving he felt hands at his waist, steering him across the deeper shadows under the vines. There was an edge behind his knees; she pushed him down and he sat on what must have been some sort of bench. A further push and he laid along it, the stone scratching at his naked back, arms still caught in the shirt round his waist.
Her fingers were busy again, unfastening buttons on his trousers, pulling them open, finding soft linen and more buttons underneath. "Ooh, authentic," she laughed, fiddling with the knot on the drawstring, loosening everything off. "Come on. Up," she said, patting his hip brusquely, like he was being slow in not guessing what she wanted next. Still unable to stop responding, he braced his shoulders and feet and lifted, and she yanked on the layers of fabric, leaving everything halfway down his thighs in another trapping tangle. The stone bench was cold and sharp against his bare skin as he lay back flat again. He looked up at the fragments of starscape in the gaps between the vines. There were too few of them, now, the view too partial, to work out where and when he was.
Looking down again, he saw her quickly strip off the shorts and vest, but the darkness was too deep to see anything more than outlines and contrast. His eyes tried to fasten on the shadowless shapes of her breasts, the darker outline of nipples, the shadow between her legs, but there wasn't enough to hold on to. She swung her leg over the bench and he felt her settling astride his thighs, but his trousers were still in the way and he couldn't feel her directly. He tried to reach her with his fingers but couldn't move his arms enough to touch her; she had him under her control, and exposed, as open to her as his skin was to the cool night air. He closed his eyes on the teasing stars, aware of the cold stone and her warm weight, the dim light but his obvious erection, the cool breeze and his own breath hot over his lips. How many times had he already asked her to trust him? He had to trust her in return.
The scarf was sliding around his neck again as she pulled on one end. The white of it made a sharper contrast against her skin, and she wrapped loops around each hand, holding the length of it out in front of her. He caught his breath when the silk landed across his stomach, and then felt her slide it lower, catching underneath his cock. She pulled the scarf taut, and then began sliding it around, the impossible feeling of silk on sensitive skin, and after a moment her hand gripped him through it, feeling the length and weight of him. Behind his eyelids, whole new areas of memory were opening up again, all the things he hadn’t done yet with this body coming back to life with raw new potential.
And still no way to touch her. His hands made fists at his sides and he pulled against the shirt, the cotton taut against his hips, but it didn't help. He tipped his head back, gasping as the silk caught at him. He wanted her against him, wanted to know all the things that she was still holding back. His future, her past, pinning him down in the now, nothing but the merest tissue of fabric between them, but it might as well have been forever.
Her hands moved away again, taking the scarf with them. Her weight lifted from his thighs and he looked down quickly, afraid she might be about to leave him again already, before his questions were answered, but she was standing over him, looking at his outline in the dim light. He strained his hands up against the shirt again, wanting to reach her, but still couldn't bring himself to say anything, do anything, make a move for or against.
Another flash of a smile, and she laid the scarf neatly across him, over his cock again, and then leaned forwards, putting her hands on the bench by his arms. He felt her thighs close over his wrists, and just for a second he couldn't work out what she intended, but then she settled delicately down, her labia pressed to the underside of his cock. He could feel the heat of her through the silk, the nub of her clit pressing on him, sliding back along him, and then his hands were full of her arse. What he'd wanted, and yet another denial.
He groaned at that. His fingers kneaded at her smooth skin, and she lazily tipped her hips, slicking her cunt along him, every movement stirring the unfolding new sensations in his groin. Her wetness began to soak through the scarf, transmitting her heat all the more faithfully. Instead of slipping between them, the wet silk clung to him, bringing her touch one movement closer. He heard her moan, finding the right combination of friction and pressure, and the sound thrilled through him, the sound he’d been waiting to one day hear.
"Please, River... please." He tried not to grab at her too hard, hands still frustrated with their limited range, head turning from side to side, trying to rein himself in. The new feeling inside was spreading fast, too fast, like a steel hawser whipping out of a tight coil. His fingers clutched at her, and his hips rocked, disrupting her neat rhythm. Today was not the day for slow savouring, not from this side.
She laughed at him again. “Oh, sweetie. Has it been a while?"
"Yes," he hissed, even then unable to just ask, ask for what he wanted.
Maybe it was her youth, or her uncertainty about him that stopped her teasing him further. There was an instant of shock when the scarf was pulled away and he felt her directly, that smoothest of skin against him, and then he was inside her and it was relief. Everything, all those memories boiling into the new reality, uncoiling further, her hands on his chest, holding on while he thrust into her, not caring about the scrape of rough stone on his back, or his trapped, half-useless hands, just trying to be inside, deeper, surrounded. He wasn't going to last long and there was no way to back off, only to ride the rising surge of it, one more breath and then the crest, the crash of it, pumping into her, making all sorts of senseless noise, a whole new manner of inexplicable joy found in undignified base physicality. It never made any sense, in any body, and that never mattered.
And then it was the work of seconds to sit up, pull the shirt back up over his shoulders, and grab hold of her, cling on to her, push his face into her chest and call her name again. He could have held her any time, all that time, all those times they'd met already, and he'd always assumed he couldn't, shouldn't, other stupid words that surely never applied to them. He kissed her frantically, overwhelmed at finally knowing that this was real, and she pulled him close, hands in his hair and on his back.
It took him a while to notice that she was still moving her hips, trying to carry on and reach her own satisfaction, but already he was softening and it wouldn't work. He smiled into the kiss and then laid back down again, hands on her hips, pulling her away and up. "Here, here, let me..."
Her weight shifting again and the loss of the hot pressure as his cock slipped out of her, a trail of fluid moving up his body, and then her warmth at his face, settling herself on his mouth. He took her gratefully, swallowing away the remains of himself and delighted to finally taste her. Anyone watching, he thought, would assume this was the subservient position but they didn't know, they didn't know what he knew, what he could taste in her. Knowledge was power, and he tried not to laugh with it, drunk on all the things he found. Did she know yet how much this gave away? Not facts, not history, but emotions, the argument she'd been having with the other version before she arrived, her nervousness at the unfamiliar him, her delight at watching him struggle. The tension in her dominated everything; no wonder they'd been fighting.
He carefully worked her, lapping and sucking and flicking, balancing her excitement and the tremble in her legs, his own enjoyment and the way she clung to the post in front of her. It was odd, given whatever else came and went, that it took no effort to remember how to do this. He ran his freed hands along her thighs, coming to rest on her arse again, helping to support her. Just a little longer, building the fire as high as possible, tasting her pleasure, and then her tension turned into a shiver and a low, drawn-out moan, a shaking that threatened to bruise his mouth, and a new flavour of wetness. Eventually she subsided, dropping into his hands again, and he guided her down, letting her lie full length along his body, holding her tight around the shoulders as she recovered herself. He licked his lips clean. Definitely his new favourite flavour.
"It's nice to know you're always good at that," she said breathlessly.
"I wonder if I might have been designed for it," he mused. “Always seems to be there, me and mouths, and it’s only getting worse as I get older.”
“Even when there's something else that might take over... And it’s ironic that you had to, of course.”
He frowned, feeling the edge of a secret again, a wall of the maze of secrets they necessarily built between them, the only way to make this possible. Why would she know now? She thought it had been a while, not his first, not their first. And when would he eventually tell her? He kept his silence for now, and only kissed her forehead. His fingers ran idly along her spine, feeling the faint goosebumps on her skin in the night air.
He ran too cool to keep her warm. He wondered, briefly, if this would even work without its confusion, whether he was ever enough to keep her without the added dimensions, without being however many people he was for her. She had been, would be, something amazing for him. Even just the one of her was sometimes more than he could handle. She sighed against him, and then shivered, and he knew it was nearly time to lose her again.
He lifted her wrist, the one with the vortex manipulator still absurdly strapped to it, and she let him, her amusement illuminated by the faint light of its screen. He thumbed the controls, watching the locations flip between here and there, the two places it had been locked to. A later River wouldn’t have let him see where she’d come from. In some ways, he thought, she was learning surprisingly slowly.
“I think this would be an appropriate point, when you get back,” he felt her shift against him, “to start writing things down.” He flicked the button, pulled his hands away sharply and smiled into the sparks.