"When he kisses you he isn't doing anything else. You're his whole universe . . . and the moment is eternal because he doesn't have any plans and isn't going anywhere. Just kissing you . . . it's overwhelming." ~Anon

He's leaning against the bars of her home, and thunder laughs at them both.

The first thing that Stormcage had impressed upon him had been the absolute stillness. It was stillness separate from noise or people. The floor gleamed, slick and damp like the inside of a mouth, and the overhead lights shone wetly down onto the floor. Concrete walls painted beige and concrete floors painted a stale blue-yellow from the lights, and the ventilation shafts running up above all over the ceiling, humming and pitching away as they carried air through to the rest of the prison.

"You could come with us." He's trying and he's failing to not look into her room. River's room. Grey industrial shelves took up most of the wall space, with books and other assorted ends crammed onto whatever available surface. No sink, no toilet, no shower; really no bathroom at all. The bed is white, so spotless a white in that damp and dreary place, and he looks at it and gets a funny feeling in the back of his stomach, like butterflies trying to die.

A Time Lord is blessed and cursed with the ability to think of a multiplicity of things, all at once. It's a bit like a computer screen; having one main page that is being previewed, but having dozens of other pages of odds and ends tucked behind. It's like a computer, but not really like a computer at all, since a Time Lord is able to think of all those tucked away pages at once, so the computer's a bit of a rubbish analogy, forget the computer.

So while he's thinking about the odds and ends on River's shelves—where in the world had she gotten the ingredients to make a hyper vodka, and more disturbingly why?—and about how Amy and Rory were alright now, but there had been the whole baby thing that he really isn't quite sure about, he'll need to ask her about that, and those Silence—worrying creatures, but he'll have to deal with them later, because there was the whole Amy pregnancy thing to work out, and the little girl—he's also looking at River's bed, and he's looking at her bed and noticing how the edges of the sheet are tucked crisply underneath the edge of the mattress, how everything about the bed was neat and tidied away like an army platoon is neat and tidied away in rows of column green. He's looking at her bed, and he can't help but think that it's only big enough for one person, and it doesn't look like it's been slept in for a long while.

Then he has to wonder where River went to inside of the TARDIS, after she'd taken a fall into the pool, how she'd gotten the change of clothes, how she'd dried her hair, because he certainly hadn't seen her lurking anywhere about the TARDIS. She had been nowhere at all. Not that he'd, y'know, looked for her or anything.

Had the TARDIs given her a room, and if she had, why had he not been so informed and are River's bed sheets in the TARDIS as neat as they are here? The stark crispness of them here is slightly depressing.

River smiles at him, and he knows what she's going to say before she says it. The smile says it all. "I escape often enough, thank you." And then she adds, almost with a sigh, "And I have a promise to live up to." Gently, so gently, she straightens his bow tie. She adds, "You'll understand soon enough," and his eyebrows shoot up. A promise to him, he thinks, and then uneasily wonders what sort of promise he'd made, if it makes her look at him like that. As if he's the best thing in the world ever.

"Okay," he says, because he doesn't—he doesn't—oh, he's not sure why he gives in so easily, but that look on her face when he'd yelled at her earlier, all those months ago—

Well. He might not trust her, but he thinks he sort of likes her, just a little bit. After he'd gotten over his initial irritation that they were lying to him—River didn't really count, she lied all the time, he'd come to expect it from her, but Amy and Rory were lying to him. Amy and Rory. And there that woman was, standing there, implacable as ever. He knew that she would be the one most responsible for this whole mess. So he showed her all his ugly words, the things he never allowed his real friends to see, and she hadn't said anything at all. She'd just stared at him, and she hadn't said anything. It would have been better, somehow, if she'd yelled back at him.

Instead she'd looked at him as if she understood and forgave everything, always and completely.

He isn't sure what he's done, to ensure such forgiveness from her, but quite frankly it scares him witless. This woman, with her metal gun and her dry wit and her hair: who did she think she was?

You can tell my anything, he wants to say, but he'd yelled at her, so he doesn't think she will. Not today.

"Up to you," he tells her. I can wait. He turns away from her, standing at the door of her home. He had shoved his hands deep into his pockets the moment she had stopped outside her door, so he didn't—well, he doesn't—doesn't—well, he isn't sure, but hands in pockets seem like a good idea and he keeps them in his pockets now. The rough cloth of his pants scratches the bare skin of his fingers.

That Time Lord brain of his does it's thing again, and suddenly all he can think about is how soft her hair is, so soft, pressing against the back of his neck as they counted out the Silence. So soft, and her shoulders had been so small, pressed against his shoulders.

How can someone with such small shoulders be so, so strong?

And how did she get her hair to look like that? So bouncy and curly and soft—

Ahem. Yes. Well. Hands in pockets. Good idea.

"See you next time," he says. He's sort of resigned himself to the inevitability of a next time. He turns away from her towards the waiting TARDIS, hands in pockets. "Call me," he adds. Somewhere in the back of his brain where there's the number ten he's freaking out, because he's just told River Song to call him. Only his friends get to call him ever, and he isn't sure if River Song is his friend . . . but he's ninety-nine percent sure that she already has his number and the extra one percent doesn't count.

Huh. Look at that. They are friends. Who'd have guessed?

"What? That's it?" she exclaims to his retreating back. He turns back towards her. "What's the matter with you?" She's frowning at him, and his brain kind of goes into overdrive. What in the world is she talking about? He hadn't missed anything, he'd made sure to tell her to call him anytime; that was practically his Stamp of Approval, telling someone to call him, it means that he trusts her, well, sort of maybe trusts her, that he trusts her enough to trust her with his answering machine.

He decides to be glib, throwing his hands out to the sides in the universal gesture of "ha-ha, look at me, joking with you, ha-ha-ha." Maybe if he acts glib enough she'll tell him what he's forgetting to do, and then he can do it, and then he can leave, because her hair—

Shut up about the hair already, he tells his brain, and aloud he tells River, "Have I forgotten something?" and she smiles at him. He's quite suddenly completely and utterly distracted by the way her nose crinkles when she smiles.

"Oh, shut up," she tells him, still smiling. And then her hand, cool at the back of his neck, halfway down the back of the collar on his shirt. She pulls him towards her, and then she does the simplest thing in the world, she kisses him, and

and

and

and

and her shoulders fit under his hands. Exactly. Precisely. Completely. He realizes that his mouth is slanting over hers, and it all fits, this body fits her body. Her small hand

rests

lightly over his cheek, and he shivers at it. Out of his peripheral vision he sees his hands rise up from her shoulders, two giant, clumsy birds wanting to make a nest out of her hair. For a moment his hand cups the corner of her jaw, catching on the softness of her skin. For a moment his skin skims air through her hair, and it spills gold onto the creases of his fingers. Somewhere the small bits of him are running around, arms flailing with panic and screaming bloody murder, but her mouth is cool and sweet and light under his and she is so, so light, like falling through the towers singing. Her lips move and his lips move and

and his mouth, over hers. Teeth and tongue and breath coupling together. Coupling together, and—and his brain catches up with his hands, because her arms slip around his waist and find the small of his back and ignite fire along his spine and into the rest of his body. His arms wheel back, flail a bit, and he has to clasp his hands behind his back, because they want to touch the small of her back too. And maybe her hair. No, scratch that, definitely, her hair.

His brain takes off to catch up with his mouth, which is still busy

kissing

kissing, kissing River. Then she does something with her mouth that makes even his brain just completely stop.

They let go at the same time.

His stomach feels light and swoopy, and the only thing he can seem to focus on is the way her hands had fit the small of his back and how it had felt so good. He really wouldn't mind doing it again, anytime. That is . . . new. This light, swoopy feeling is new, because all he wants to do is kiss her again. All he can concentrate on is the way she had tasted under his mouth.

"Right. Okay. Interesting." And his hand, all of its own accord, reaches out to touch her hair again; he turns it into a nervous tick, scratching his cheek.

"What's wrong?" she asks him. "You're acting like we've never done that before."

He sort of smiles at her a bit, to soften the sting of the blow, but the smile fades quickly. Even though all he wants to do is keep smiling forever and ever, because—

Well. Light and swoopy.

"We haven't."

"We haven't?"

He needs to escape that look in her eyes: that crushed, hopeless bird quivering look. The kind of look soldiers get after returning home: shell-shocked. Blindsided by the unexpected. So he does what he does best and begins to babble.

"Oh, look at the time." Check the watch, look busy and important, even though you are almost as shell-shocked as she is, because all you can think about now is snogging River right there senseless. "Must be off."

Kissing

River

"But it was nice. It was good." Wondrous, stupendous kissing. Superb. Sublime. Beautiful. Figuratively speaking, fireworks. Or dynamite. TNT. "It was unexpected .But you know what they say: 'There's a first time for everything.'"

Who even says that? He never has, certainly not before this, and shut up, brain, shut up shut up shut up!

He's stumbling back towards the TARDIS, whirling back around to face her, talking talking talking, and he almost crashes into the TARDIS doors because he tries to walk through them before they're properly opened.

He can't seem to think straight, and he will do anything to escape that look on her face.

Like he's just killed the thing she loves most.

Anything.

And as he finally manages to open the door and stumble through it and escapes, he does not hear her last words.

An epitaph on a grave-marker, with the daisies pushing up from the earth:

"And a last time."

If he had, he might have stayed.