Fic: Non-Linear Love Story (2/6)

[rallalon]

Title: Non-Linear Love Story
Author: rallalon | Rall
Beta: vyctori, latintabasco
Rating: Adult (For clarification on my take on the alien aspects, it's the same as in Scratching the Itch.)
Character Focus: Doctor, Eighth.
Disclaimer: Do not own. Credit to Vyc for finding the song (for she is brilliant and knows her stuff).
X-Posted to halfhumandoctor

Summary: He’s been spun by world after world, hurtled through stars and flung through time, but it’s being in her orbit that has him unbalanced. He remembers himself enough to realize that he has no idea what to say and so resorts to his default: “Jelly baby?”

I.


II.

Three years, one month, two weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, eighteen minutes and thirty-three seconds later, he meets her in a bar.

His hearts separate, fly in two directions, one lodging in his throat and the other sinking into his stomach. She doesn’t see him, and he dares to hope that she doesn’t know him yet.

It could be now.

She’s sitting at the bar, patrons on either side of her, and really, he can’t be certain it’s her, not with her back turned to him, but it feels like her, feels like another fantasy of her. Any second now, she’ll feel his stare and turn and become another woman with her blond dyed hair but without her tongue-touched smile.

After telling his companion to get back to the TARDIS eventually, he sits on the other side of a man who’s trying to chat her up, takes the closest available barstool and looks into the mirror behind the counter. Bottles and cans and pretty glass structures are arranged on multi-layered shelves, all in front of a shining reflective surface that would make lesser mortals dizzy in combination with the lights.

Moving his head, he can almost make out her face, can almost see her eyes behind a bottle of hyper-vodka. It’s difficult to tell and really, it would be much simpler just to tap her on the shoulder, but he’s already been doing that for three years, one month, two weeks, six days, twenty-one hours, twenty-one minutes and forty-nine seconds. He’s had enough of that, of interrupting and trying to explain why.

The man between them keeps waving his hands and even from this angle, he can see that the fellow’s facial scales are turning a lusty orange as he leans forward, probably claiming that he needs the proximity for his internal ears.

The Time Lord orders his drink with a calm voice and refrains from kicking the man in the shins. He’d only hurt his foot, if he’s thinking of the correct species. He’s almost - not quite, but almost willing to take that risk.

The fellow asks her for a dance and a voice he’s imprinted irrevocably onto his mind replies, “Could you maybe switch seats with me instead?” The music is loud but not loud enough to confuse his ears. Nerves he hadn’t thought he had come to life, send a heady mixture of excitement and fear through his body.

“Sssure thing, gorgeousss,” the man hisses and the urge to run combines with the urge to kick the man. With his legs confused, he simply sits there, the man moving away to reveal her.

She smiles at him, hopping over to the recently occupied stool as the scaled fellow takes her seat in the assumption that this is some sort of mating ritual. “Much better view from here,” she announces before taking his cravat in hand to snog him hello.

Needless to say, the reptilian man leaves.

This is not a fact that is noticed or taken into account for forty-eight seconds. And two thirds.

She breaks for air, her forehead pressed against his, the glorious scent of her flooding through him, perfectly distinct amid the smells of the establishment. Her strong, powerful heart beats so slowly under his hand and he reminds himself that this is a very quick speed for a human. He imagines her heartbeat will always frighten him, the pauses between so unnaturally long as if the next might never occur.

They’ve both turned on the barstools and if he were in a saner state of mind, he might be appalled at how quickly he’s pressed his knee between hers, driven her legs apart. There’s something wrong with him, something incredibly wrong with him and he’s utterly unwilling to admit that it’s her. She’s not wrong at all. Frustrating and impossible and not where she should be - which is on his lap, he likes to think, or at least in his TARDIS - but wrong? Never.

The motions of her breathing press her breast into his hand or maybe it’s completely deliberate on her part or maybe it’s really just because he can’t not touch her.

“Hello,” she says, kissing him again.

“Hello,” he answers, dizzy, pulling back so he won’t fall off of the stool. He’s been spun by world after world, hurtled through stars and flung through time, but it’s being in her orbit that has him unbalanced. He remembers himself enough to realize that he has no idea what to say and so resorts to his default: “Jelly baby?”

She looks at the bag in his hand and laughs, a peal of joy that resounds in his ears until he realizes that this is the wrong paper bag. Shoving the packet of spare parts into his pocket, he makes a mental note to start using his toolbox again and not store confusing bags in his coat.

He gets the bag right this time and she takes one with a smile, holding the orange sweet between her fingers with a considering expression. It’s not the reaction he was expecting, not the reaction he usually gets from Londoners. Usually, it’s the non-Londoners who get confused, people like Leela who assume the sweets are literally jellied babies.

Instead of popping the sweet into her mouth, she raises it to his lips. He accepts it, sustaining eye contact and admiring the flush of her cheeks, adoring her audacity all the more for her awareness of it. Orange for lust, he thinks and samples the pad of her thumb with a flick of the tongue, kisses the digit pressed lightly to his lips.

Her other hand tangles in his hair and his highly intelligent brain makes a guess as to what’s going on as she kisses him, encourages his mouth to open. He passes the sweet back to her, well aware that he will never again be able to eat another without thinking of her. Maybe just the orange ones, if he’s lucky.

He wonders if he wants to be unlucky.

Releasing him, she chews thoughtfully. He picks up the tumbler that has appeared at his elbow, sips the liquid contained within it without knowing whether or not if it’s what he ordered, let alone when the drink arrived. They swallow at the same time and he can’t help but ask, “Does it taste better like that?”

She blushes and once again he wonders at her boldness. “It does, actually,” she replies.

“Who was that?” he asks, nodding in the direction he assumes the scaled man must have left.

Shrugging, she replies, “Dunno. Some random alien.”

“And I’m not?” he questions, needing to know. He remembers everything she’s said, everything she’s told him and it’s impossible. Perfectly impossible and he wants it so badly that words fail him. Thousands of languages at his disposal, but the only words he’s interested in hearing are the ones coming from her lips.

“I’ve never done this before,” she’d said. “Never took a bloke to a hotel just to shag him, never hooked up for a one-nighter, never . . . wanted to.” It wouldn’t be the worst lie he’s ever been told, only the best truth he’s had to surrender. He wants it to be true, just for him, only ever for him.

“You’re a very specific random alien,” she tells him and touches his face. “I didn’t love that bloke at all.”

“Oh,” he says, cheek warmed by her palm. He can’t hear the chink of his glass as he sets it upon the counter, can barely hear her over the poor excuse for music.

“Plus you have hair,” she adds, that twist of humour he remembers resurfacing.

“Chestnut,” he agrees, says it because it made her happy before, because it might make her kiss him again. He’s a genius after all, so it’s no real surprise when he’s right.

“Dance with me?” she asks and it astonishes him, the way she seems to think he might say no.

He looks out into the crowd of humanoids, watches the shifting mass of grinding bodies, the couples and trios and groups breaking apart and reforming and touching without specific purpose. He decides he likes specific, a good thing for a very specific random alien to like. The music’s awful, too, all New Era techno. His companion catches his eye from the horde of the horny, gives him a gesture that either means “Good pick” or “Take her from behind.” He frowns in return and isn’t taken seriously; it’s a mutual sort of irreverence they have for each other. Overall, the establishment is not a place he wants to be, he’ll readily admit, but he’s grateful indeed he allowed himself to be dragged here.

“Not to this,” he tells her and takes her hand. “I’ve something better in mind.”

Only when she puts down a coin of the local currency on the counter for him does he remember that he’s forgotten to pay and by then it’s too late. “You paid at the hotel,” she reminds him, mouth close to his ear as they navigate the crowded building, making a none-too-subtle beeline for the exit. “I can at least buy you a drink.”

“Who bought you yours?” he can’t help but ask her.

“A very specific random alien,” she replies, then kisses his neck. “Don’t worry: he wasn’t ginger.”

He is at once confused and bizarrely reassured. And then he’s simply confused. “There you go again,” he tells her, his hand on the small of her back as he escorts her out the door. “Not making sense.”

“I don’t make sense anywhere,” she answers cheekily, her arm around his waist, hand dipping into the back pocket of his trousers. It’s a lie, of course, but perhaps she doesn’t know it is.

She makes perfect sense here, really she does. Right here, with his arm around her under an unfamiliar sky. Right here, pressed against him with enough trust to break him, break him so gently that the pain can only be described as exquisite.

He leads her to the TARDIS and watches her face when she sees it, when she recognizes his ship, his home. There’s so much she’s trying not to let him know, so much he imagines he knows already. “This is my timeship,” he tells her needlessly.

Seeming to see something in his eyes that he didn’t mean to put there, she stalls, asks, “You’re not taking me anywhen, are you?”

The thought is one that has visited his mind more than once, tempted him utterly. “Just here,” he promises. “Just now.”

He unlocks the door, takes her hand, and brings her inside his third heart.

Her eyes light up as she looks, human curiosity turning her head. He wonders what she expected, sees that this isn’t it. The eternal hum changes, shifts to suit their guest and he knows immediately the extent to which she will one day belong here. The extent to which she does already.

“You didn’t say it,” he marvels, the suspicions confirmed and the Time Lord bewildered.

“Say what?” she asks, turning to him, swinging their hands between them.

“That it’s bigger on the inside,” he clarifies.

She looks around, thoughtful consideration clear not in the lines of her face but the curves, in the way her lips move and her eyebrows rise. “It’s sort of obvious, isn’t it?”

In that instant, he loves her so much that he’s afraid there isn’t enough room between his hearts to fit her.

He knows it and he also knows that he’s never been good with gestures. Fortunately, the TARDIS is, dimming the lights for him and turning on the newly installed sound system. He hadn’t known she could do that and there’s a moment of pain as he misses his broken record player.

The music is a Strauss - a cliché, he knows, but for good reason - and he turns his hand in hers. “Will you?” he asks, attempting manners and dignity and trying so hard to impress.

“You waltz?” she questions, almost insultingly skeptical.

It’s not the reaction he was aiming for. “I waltz,” he confirms, gathering her in his arms. “Very well.”

She smoothes the fabric of his frock coat over his shoulder, rubs the velvet both ways before resting her hand there. “I don’t know how,” she admits, nervous with him for what he hopes is only the first time.

“I’ll teach you,” he promises and they both pretend he’s only speaking of dancing.

They move together and he almost likes it better like this, the way she stumbles against him and uses him so naturally to support herself, the way their legs tangle and chests collide, the way she laughs when the mood of the piece changes from pensiveness into joy. She catches on soon enough, or she almost does.

“Stand on my feet,” he tells her and she does, her arm around his neck, her hand in his. He tightens his arm around her waist and whirls them about in a way a human his size would be hard-pressed to manage. As expected, as hoped, this display doesn’t frighten her, merely delight her - if “merely” could apply to this, to her body fitting against his, to her joy spilling over into the sound of her, the scent of her.

She asks into his ear, warm breath giving him shivers, “What’s this song?”

“Rosen aus dem Süden, originally,” he replies. “A Johann Strauss waltz. Not the best recording of it. Of course,” he adds, “nothing can really compare to opening night.” He lets her down, leads the dance properly and immediately misses her heat. She’s blazing, always blazing.

Her eyes are so close to his, her mouth tempting his admittedly poor impulse control. Those eyes crinkle around the edges; her mouth turns up in a playful smile. “Are you trying to ask me out on a date?”

He raises his eyebrows. “What do you think this is?”

“A seduction,” she replies simply and he can only laugh, laugh until he’s dizzy with the feel of her.

“I suppose you would know,” he murmurs into her hair.

She pulls back, looks up at him in a way he thinks might be offended. “You saying I seduced you?”

“Not at all,” he replies, smiling softly, stroking her back gently. “Several very irritated individuals with sinister ulterior motives have assured me quite emphatically that I am seduction-proof.”

“’Course you are,” she says and does something very deliberate with her thigh. If her smile weren’t proof enough, this certainly feels as if he’s forgiven. “What about my sinister ulterior motives?”

“You mean the ones I cunningly tricked you into revealing just now?” he asks and kisses her smile.

“Yeah,” she replies when he lets her. “You’re so impressive like that.”

“I am,” he agrees, spinning her a little faster as the song draws to a close. It goes against the beat, just a little, but it pulls her against him.

“You’re so full of it!” she laughs, forcing him to either snog her or make quite the crude remark. Personally, he enjoys the snogging more, even if the unsaid remark was quite witty.

Breathless is a look that suits her, which pleases some instinctually male part of him that he isn’t supposed to have. Her eyes are blissfully closed, her lips parted for air, and when he leans in to murmur his question into her ear, she very nearly answers.

“Who are you?”

Her fingers tightening in his hair, the beat of her heart changes, hastens. “Me,” she replies.

“How very concise,” he says, still using his murmur against her skin, still attempting the completely unfamiliar with this woman. Maybe this is a seduction after all.

He can hear her smile as she asks rhetorically, “Aren’t I?”

It’s not a question he answers, not one he needs to, the change of song supplying a slight change of mood. She senses the shift in him the way she seems to be able to sense all changes in him. He wonders all the more at her for it, is at once frightened and delighted to be so known.

“I need a name for you,” he tells her seriously.

“I’m your very specific random alien,” she replies, somehow equally serious in tone if not word choice.

He chuckles, liking the first two words best. There’s such possibility in them. “That doesn’t quite seem as if it would roll off the tongue during climax.”

She draws back enough to look at him and he realizes that they’ve stopped moving for the most part, they’re simply standing and holding and he doesn’t know how long they’ve been like that. “Are you propositioning me for sex?” inquires the woman who shoves her tongue in his mouth instead of saying a simple hello.

“I’m asking for something to call you,” he corrects, interpreting her obtuseness as a teasing attempt at stalling. “I don’t need your name, simply something you respond to.”

“So says the Oncoming Storm?” she asks and he tells himself he should stop being surprised at her.

“So says the Oncoming Storm, yes,” he replies. “And Time’s Champion. And Merlin.”

The last one makes her look as if she’s sorely tempted to comment and yet she doesn’t. He wouldn’t have minded if she did, though. Not at all. Instead, she considers, wonders. “I’ve been called the Valiant Child,” she offers quietly, but he shakes his head.

“You’re not a child,” he says, confused, then dismissive. “I wouldn’t do this with a child.” Whatever “this” might be, might become.

“I think Shakespeare said it best,” she decides after a moment, taking his statements seriously for once, taking him seriously. “In Romeo and Juliet, yeah?”

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet?” he tries to quote but she giggles halfway through, kisses his mouth shut as incomprehensible amusement flows freely from her. He loves her laughter but he craves her attention and decides something must be done about this.

He shifts his hands on her, holds her close until her laughter subsides, until he instills in her a precious stillness. Resting his head against hers, he whispers to her, twists verse into a statement of his own making. “So Valiant would, were she not Valiant call’d,” he murmurs, brushing her hair away from the delicate shell of her ear, twining the strands between his fingers, “retain that dear perfection which she owes | Without that title. Valiant, speak thy name | and for that name which is unknown to me . . .”

His hands ghost down her sides, fingertips brushing the clinging cloth of her top. She shivers beneath his light touch, leans into him with shaking breath, cradles him with her hips.

“. . . Take all myself,” he finishes softly, pressing a kiss to her hair.

“Yeah,” she breathes shakily, lips brushing his neck as her warm breath caresses his skin, “definitely a seduction.”

His lips quirk and he shifts, presses into her for her gasp more than physical satisfaction. “How am I doing?”

There are moments when the world turns without him, when all the worlds turn without him, when his feeble tugs at the strings of time give the result he strives for. There are moments that last forever in the gap of a heartsbeat, that last and last and last until he has taken his fill of them. There are moments when he stands outside of time and strains his ears for the infinite reward that is the heartsbeat of the universe.

It doesn’t seem fair, when she answers him, when she gives him a fleeting glimpse into her mind, that this isn’t one of those moments but only a instant as ephemeral as true instants are.

“Take me to bed,” she says, hesitancy and trust twining behind her words. It’s a command and a request and a plea and he knows in that instant, in that fleeting instant, that he will never be able to deny her anything.

.-.-.-.-.-.

She’s in his bedroom.

She’s on his bed.

Her jeans and knickers are not.

This, he thinks, is quite promising.

He shucks his frock coat, unbuttons his cuffs and his vest, all the while watching her watch him. Her top fits her snugly, has ridden up until it barely covers her navel. She rises to her knees, reaches forward to untie his cravat. “S'like unwrapping a present,” she’d said before. Her attitude towards this hasn’t changed, doesn’t seem to have changed.

She’s never so serious as when she’s undressing him, never so uniquely focused as when she’s studying his clothes and body. Her touches tempt, but they’re not meant to tease. It’s an exploration of him, feels like one, her fingers stroking skin and fabric alike, testing the textures.

Shirtless, he unbuttons his fly for himself only for her to catch his hand. He frowns and she smiles, slinks off the bed with her palm pressed against him, fingers cupping. A noise wells desperately in his throat, attempts to take shape and ultimately fails: he still doesn’t know her name.

She pulls his trousers and pants down to mid-thigh and murmurs for him to sit.

Thinking she might be picking up his speech habits, he does, expecting her to complete this task she seems so fond of.

She kneels instead.

He’s fairly certain he knows what’s about to happen, has gone so far as to purchase a copy of Interspecies Sex for Dummies: With A Human to be sure about the general situation. He knows humans do this to each other, didn’t think she’d do this to him. He’s certainly not human and besides, it’s an odd way of expressing affection, isn’t it, licking one another’s private bits and -

“Ah,” he says as her mouth closes around him. “That’s- That’s certainly. That’s.”

Her tongue. Oh, her tongue. She. Her tongue. There, and. She’s. Oh. Yes, that. Yes. Oh.

Chapter twenty-seven of his handy reference source - the bit about receiving oral sex - makes itself immediately useful. His hands fist in his sheets, cling to the duvet instead of pulling at her hair. He fights to keep his hips still, panics slightly as he realizes he can’t move his legs, still trapped in his trousers. Her hands are already at his waist, keeping him from rocking up into her.

“You,” he says. “You.” Thousands of versions of that one pronoun enter his mind, attempt to flood through his mouth. One of them has to fit her, at least one, something to call her, something to call on, oh please.

Cheeks hollowing, she, oh, she’s sucking on him, she’s, ah. It feels like, like withdrawing, like pulling out of her except he stays inside, except it doesn’t hurt. It’s unnatural and bizarre and he can’t imagine why it doesn’t feel wrong. All that is tangible and true in this universe has shrunk somehow, condensed itself into this. He flares inside of her mouth, watches her eyes widen.

She makes a noise, a startled noise, and his cry is twice as loud. He forgets a bit of chapter twenty-seven in the end, forgets a great deal of topics he can’t vaguely name. Pushing at her shoulder, half-mad from biological inability, he gasps, “I’m not going to- I can’t-” He needs to be inside of her, inside more than her mouth. His body refuses to climax, forbids useless release and if instinct is to be followed here, all of instinct must be obeyed. She would wear her jaw out before he came and he’s far too impatient to let her try.

With a foresight he can’t believe she has, she opens her mouth wide as she releases him, not tugging at his sensitive flesh at all.

He collapses backwards, falls from seated to sprawled and tries to comprehend, tries to take his very unTime Lord-like feelings and make sense of them. Impossible. It’s impossible and she’s ridding him of his trousers fully, at last, finally and he’s still flared and it’s the strangest thing he’s ever felt, being flared without being inside of someone. His hips jerk uncontrollably and he yells a strangled shout, his body demanding sensation. That bizarre panic returns and he flounders until the universe rights itself.

She mounts him, wet heat enveloping him, stretching and molding and pressing down with blazing firmness. Panic turns to ecstasy with enough speed to wind him. Penetration has never felt like this, never occurred with him in this state. It’s glorious, exquisite, utterly overwhelming.

His hearts hammer against her hands, his back arching, hips rolling, grinding upwards. They’re so close to the edge of the bed and if she falls off, it’ll kill him, he’s almost certain it would kill him now, but there’s no stopping to readjust, to reclaim balance. He doesn’t want balance or objectivity or reason or any of the things that separate the Time Lord from the Gallifreyan; he doesn’t care at all, not now, not with her in exchange.

Her hair falls about her face, hides her features and taunts him, too far for him to touch. He holds her hips, his hands gripping out of their own volition, gripping with enough strength to bruise, enough to hurt her and that’s the last thing he wants or possibly, horribly, the second-to-last thing he wants, because in reality, the last thing he wants is to let her go.

One hand leaves his chest, leaves him cold and blazing, and she touches herself. He recalls chapter three, recalls basic biology and fingers her clitoris, keeps at it until her back arches and she shudders around him, primed and ready for his release. He gives it to her, cries out wordlessly as she shouts his name.

After, still on top of him, still around him, she kisses his face, brushes her lips across his cheeks, his eyelids, his brow. Her sweat-dampened top clings to her more than ever, rubs against his chest. He breathes slowly, feels almost tired enough to sleep.

“Valiant,” he breathes. “From valliant of a slightly different spelling, meaning brave. That from valoir, which is ‘be worthy’ or, originally, ‘be strong.’ That from valere,” he concludes. “Meaning . . .”

“Yeah?” she asks softly, brushing his hair back from his face.

Unknowingly, he nuzzles into her hand. “‘Be strong’,” he says. “‘Be able.’ ‘Be well.’ ‘Have worth.’ ‘Have-’”

She shifts on top of him, both sighing as he slips out of her, both now conditioned for the withdrawing.

“‘Have power,’” he concludes, opening his eyes to watch hers.

“Over you?” she asks, the smallest frown of confusion crossing her face.

He reaches up, brushes her hair out of her face, the sweat-soaked strands sticking to her skin. “Yes,” he says, comforted, reassured once more that this isn’t some needlessly complicated trap. “You are.” He’s referring to her position, obviously, nothing more.

She rolls her eyes at his deliberate obtuseness, stills as his hands tug lightly at the hem of her top. The fabric stretches in his hand, explaining how it fits her so well. The fabric is also slightly itchy against his chest and he feels it might interfere with the approaching cuddle.

Placing her hands over his, she looks at him in seriousness, an expression rare enough from her to make him take immediate notice. “I want to show you something. Something I got on Anlosia.”

He thinks of lights and of being on fire, thinks of unexpected rescue. “Was this before or after we met there?”

“After,” she replies. “Definitely after.”

“Are you going to give me dirty thoughts again?” he inquires, not fully understanding where this is going. It scares him a little, how he can’t ever fully understand her.

“And something else to think about, yeah,” she agrees. She draws her top off, drops it onto the duvet next to them.

He raises his hand, touches the mark on her shoulder. Her head tilts to the side, bares her neck to him. “I,” he says and stops.

“You,” she replies and nods, reaching behind her back to unhook her bra.

There’s too much wonder in his mind to allow room for proper appreciation. She doesn’t take offense, simply rolls off of him to press against his side, properly naked.

For the sake of scientific reasoning - or so he’ll claim - he lowers his mouth to her unmarred shoulder, bites and sucks and nips and leaves his mark with her clutching at his back. The end product is not the exact mirror image of its partner, not arranged exactly symmetrically - but it’s not like he was trying for that. It is, however, very close. Though he’s not an expert in reading this sort of thing, it does seem to be a match, once differing angle is taken into consideration.

“How?” he asks her.

“Told you,” she says simply. “Non-linear love story.”

“I took the slow path,” he realizes, numb with amazement. “I never take the slow path.”

“You do for me,” her shining eyes tell him and he quakes at the sensation of belonging to someone so much smaller and so much larger than himself.

Unaware of this, she shrugs and says with her mouth, “Guess you do sometimes.”

There’s so much to ask her, only one question she might answer. “When will I see you again?”

She cups his cheek and kisses him with a sadness he believes comes from parting ways. “When you need me,” she answers.

He holds her tight against him, too much night left for her to leave just yet. “Tomorrow, then?” he asks, forcing himself to be playful simply to see her smile.

There’s no smile, only a shake of her golden head. “Tomorrow,” she says, “for me.”

.-.-.-.-.-.

The following day, the Cloister Bell rings.

Every Cloister Bell rings.

.-.-.-.-.-.

The Time Lords are going to war.

.-.-.-.-.-.

III.