If you're ever feeling bad about your posture, imagine your favourite character coming up behind you, pressing a kiss to the back of your neck and gently gripping your shoulders, pulling them back to press against their chest.
Warnings: canon divergence, angst, fluff, smut. I have a love-hate relationship with the John Smith episode.
The first time you saw the fear in his eyes, real, cold, hunted fear, you knew this was different.
“They can find me anywhere by my scent,” the Doctor said, hands flying over the TARDIS console with a frantic energy that set you on edge. The central column wheezed and groaned, the ship shuddering through the vortex as alarms you’d never heard before blared in discordant tones. “Every time I set foot outside, every time I even think about running, they lock onto my biodata. Time Lord biology. It’s like a beacon.”
“So we don’t run,” you said, gripping the railing as the TARDIS lurched. “We fight. We always fight.”
He stopped then, hands stilling on a lever, and looked at you across the glowing console. His brown eyes, usually so bright with manic energy, were grave. Haunted. “Not this time. If we fight, people die. Innocent people. They don’t want conquest. They don’t want resources. They want me. The last of the Time Lords. They want to be immortal. And they will tear through anything, anyone, to get what they want.”
You swallowed hard. “What are you saying?”
He straightened, tugging at his tie in that nervous way he had, then ran a hand through his already mussed hair. “I’m saying I need to stop being the Doctor.”
The words hung in the air like a death sentence.
“You can’t be serious.”
“Completely serious.” He was already moving again, circling the console, pulling up holographic schematics you couldn’t begin to understand. “The TARDIS can do it. Rewrite my biology on a fundamental level. Suppress every memory, every scrap of Time Lord knowledge, every regeneration. Make me human. Properly, genuinely human. One heart, one life, one unremarkable biological signature the Family of Blood can’t track.”
Your heart was pounding so hard you could feel it in your throat. “And your memories?”
“Gone. Locked away. Not destroyed, I’ll need a way back if things go wrong, but buried so deep even a psychic probe wouldn’t find them.” He paused, fingers hovering over a crystalline interface. “There’s a catch, though.”
“Of course there is.”
His mouth quirked, just slightly, a ghost of his usual smile. “The process needs an anchor. Someone to hold the key. The TARDIS can create a biodata module, a fob watch, something innocuous, that holds my Time Lord essence. But it needs to be kept safe. And I need someone to watch over the human me, make sure they don’t find me, and…” He hesitated. “And if they do, if it all goes wrong, someone who can bring me back.”
The weight of what he was asking settled over you like a shroud. “You want me to be that someone.”
“You’re the only one I trust.” He said it simply, without artifice, without the usual theatrical flourishes. “I know it’s a lot to ask. I know it’s not fair. But...”
“Yes.”
He blinked. “You haven’t heard the rest of it. The human me won’t know you. Won’t remember anything about our travels, about who I was, about any of it. You’ll have to start from scratch. You’ll have to lie, every day, to someone wearing my face. And it could be years. Decades, even, before it’s safe.”
“I said yes.” Your voice was steadier than you felt. “Tell me what I need to do.”
He stared at you for a long moment, something raw and unreadable flickering in his gaze. Then he pulled you into a crushing hug, his face buried in your hair.
“Thank you,” he whispered. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
You held on tight, memorizing the feel of him, the lean strength of his frame, the double beat of his hearts against your chest, the faint scent of ozone and tea that clung to his suit. You didn’t know if you’d ever feel it again.
When he pulled back, his eyes were suspiciously bright. “Right. No time to waste. There’s a few things you need.”
He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his sonic screwdriver, pressing it into your palm. Your fingers closed around the cool metal automatically.
“Keep this safe,” he said. “It won’t work for the human me, well, it might, if he’s clever enough, but he won’t know what it is. You’ll need it if…when the time comes. And this.”
From another pocket, he produced a simple silver fob watch, unadorned except for delicate circular Gallifreyan script etched into the casing. It felt warm in your hand, almost alive, pulsing with a faint rhythm that matched the Doctor’s hearts.
“My essence. My memories. Everything I am.” His voice was carefully controlled, but you could hear the terror underneath. “When the process is complete, I’ll just be a man. An ordinary man with an ordinary life. The TARDIS will create false memories, a background, a history. She’ll choose somewhere safe, somewhere quiet, somewhere no one would ever think to look for a Time Lord.”
“Where?”
He smiled, properly this time, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Knowing her? Somewhere spectacularly boring.”
The TARDIS materialized in a narrow alley between a bookshop and a bakery, the scent of fresh bread and old paper wafting through the doors when you opened them. Outside, a typical English street stretched in either direction, all red brick and gray sky, bicycles chained to lampposts and a postbox on the corner.
The Doctor, no, not the Doctor anymore, not really, stepped out beside you, blinking in the watery sunlight. One moment he’d been standing at the TARDIS console, the fob watch open in his hand, golden light pouring from his eyes and mouth. The next, he’d crumpled to the floor, and when he woke, the watch was closed, and the man looking up at you had only confusion in his brown eyes.
“Where am I?” he’d asked, and your heart had broken clean in two.
Now, standing in the alley with a bewildered expression on his face, he looked so ordinary it hurt. The same sharp features, the same lanky frame, the same ridiculous hair, but the weight was gone. The centuries of grief and guilt and impossible knowledge that had always lurked behind his smile had vanished, leaving behind something lighter.
“I think I’m supposed to be here,” he said slowly, patting his pockets. He pulled out a wallet, flipping through it with growing confusion. “John Smith. That’s my name. I’m…I’m a librarian? Apparently I have a job interview at the local library this afternoon.”
“That’s nice,” you managed, your voice coming out strangled.
He looked at you properly then, and something shifted in his expression. The confusion didn’t exactly fade, but it was joined by something else. Recognition, almost. Like he was trying to place you and couldn’t quite manage it, but knew, somehow, that you were important.
“I’m sorry,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck in a gesture so achingly familiar that you had to look away. “This is going to sound mad, but…do I know you?”
Your fingers tightened around the sonic screwdriver in your coat pocket. The fob watch was nestled beside it. “Not exactly. We’re…I’m new in town too.”
“Oh.” He smiled then, a shy, tentative thing that was nothing like the Doctor’s manic grins, and your heart did something complicated in your chest. “Well, that’s a coincidence. Or maybe not. I can’t really remember how I got here, to be honest. Everything’s a bit fuzzy.”
“You hit your head,” you said, the lie sliding off your tongue with practiced ease. You’d rehearsed it with the Doctor before the transformation. “On the train. Concussion, the doctors said. You might have some memory issues for a while.”
“Right. Right, that makes sense.” He nodded, seemingly satisfied with the explanation. Then his gaze drifted back to you, and that strange, searching look returned. “I don’t suppose you’d want to…I mean, I know we’ve just met, technically, but I feel like…” He trailed off, flushing slightly. “This is going to sound completely insane, but I feel like I know you. Like I’m supposed to know you. Is that mad?”
“No,” you said quietly. “It’s not mad at all.”
The first year was the hardest because of the sheer, grinding normality of it all.
John Smith got the librarian job. He rented a small flat, all creaky floorboards and windows and a tiny kitchen that always smelled faintly of cabbage. He bought secondhand furniture and started wearing cardigans and joined a local book club that met every Thursday evening in the back room of the local pub.
And you, tasked with keeping him safe, had to build a life beside him.
You found a job at the bakery next to the alley where the TARDIS still sat, hidden behind a perception filter that made it look like an old police box that had been decommissioned years ago. You rented a flat of your own, two streets over, and learned to bake sourdough and make small talk with customers and pretend that you weren’t a time-traveling companion of a centuries-old alien who was now shelving books and recommending Agatha Christie novels to pensioners.
It should have been unbearable. It was, in many ways. But there were also moments that caught you off guard, moments that made the lie feel almost worth it.
Like the first time John asked you to dinner.
“It’s not a date,” he’d said quickly, his ears going pink in a way the Doctor’s never had. “I mean, unless you want it to be. Which you probably don’t. We’ve only known each other a few weeks. But I was going to make pasta, and I always make too much, and you mentioned you don’t cook much, and I thought...”
“John.” You’d touched his arm to stop the ramble, and he’d gone very still under your hand. “I’d love to have dinner with you.”
The smile that broke across his face was like sunrise.
It was nothing like the Doctor’s smiles, which always held a hint of darkness, of secrets, of the terrible knowledge of all the things he’d seen and done. John Smith’s smile was just a smile, and somehow that made it devastating in an entirely different way.
Dinner was pasta with a slightly burnt sauce and cheap wine from the corner shop and conversation that meandered through books and music and childhood memories that had been fabricated by the TARDIS but felt real enough to John that he told them with genuine fondness. He asked about your life, and you spun half-truths from the fragments you could safely share, and when you left that night with a container of leftovers and a warmth in your chest that had nothing to do with the wine, you knew you were in trouble.
He asked you out properly a week later. A film at the little independent cinema two towns over. Then dinner again. Then a walk along the river, where he’d reached for your hand like it was the most natural thing in the world and held it like he was afraid you might disappear.
“I know this is fast,” he’d said, his thumb tracing circles on your knuckles. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I’m just a librarian. I’m not exciting or adventurous or anything particularly special. But being with you feels right. It feels like the most right thing in the world. Does that make sense?”
You’d looked at him, at this gentle, earnest, utterly human man who wore the Doctor’s face and spoke with the Doctor’s voice but held none of the Doctor’s impossible weight, and felt your heart splinter into a thousand pieces.
“It makes perfect sense,” you’d whispered, and when he kissed you, soft and sweet and trembling slightly, you let yourself pretend, just for a moment, that this could last.
The second year was easier. Routine set in like weather, predictable and comforting. You saw John nearly every day: lunch at the bakery, dinner at his flat or yours, weekends spent exploring the countryside or curled up on his sofa reading books he’d brought home from the library. He’d read passages aloud to you, doing voices for the characters, and you’d laugh until your sides hurt, and then he’d look at you with such open adoration that you’d have to excuse yourself to the bathroom to pull yourself together.
The TARDIS sat in its alley, untouched. You visited it sometimes, late at night when you couldn’t sleep, running your fingers over the weathered blue wood and feeling the faint hum of life still pulsing within. The fob watch you kept in a locked box under your bed, wrapped in velvet, its warmth a constant reminder of what you were guarding. Of who you were waiting for.
Some nights you took it out and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script gleam in the darkness, and wondered if the Doctor was still in there. If he could feel the passage of time. If he knew what you were doing, what you were becoming to the man he’d made himself into.
Some nights, lying in John’s arms while he slept peacefully beside you, his single heart beating steady and slow against your back, you wondered if you even wanted the Doctor to come back at all.
Because John Smith was good. John Smith was kind. John Smith brought you tea in bed and remembered how you liked your toast and left little notes in library books he thought you’d enjoy. He had nightmares sometimes: fragments of the Time War bleeding through in dreams he couldn’t understand, images of fire and screaming and a red desert under an orange sky, and you’d hold him until he stopped shaking, murmuring nonsense reassurances until he drifted back to sleep.
“I feel like there’s something I’ve forgotten,” he told you once, in the gray light of early morning. “Something important. Something terrible.” His brow furrowed, and for just a moment, he looked so much like the Doctor that your breath caught. “Does that sound mad?”
“No,” you said, your voice steady despite the ache in your chest. “Everyone has things they’d rather forget.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he turned to you, propping himself up on one elbow, his expression soft and searching. “Whatever it is, I don’t think I want to remember it. I like this. I like my life. I like…” He trailed off, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind your ear. “I love you. You know that, don’t you?”
You’d known it was coming. You’d seen it building for months, in every look and touch and unguarded moment. But hearing it aloud, in his quiet, earnest voice, still hit you like a physical blow.
“I know,” you whispered.
“You don’t have to say it back. I just wanted you to know.” He smiled, that gentle, uncomplicated smile that still undid you every time. “I’ve never been more certain of anything in my life.”
You didn’t say it back. Not then. You kissed him instead, pouring everything you couldn’t say into the press of your lips against his, and when he pulled you closer with a surprised, pleased sound, you let yourself fall into the warmth of him and tried very, very hard not to think about the fob watch ticking away under your bed.
But eventually, you said it. Of course you did. You’d loved the Doctor for years, silently, hopelessly, watching him flirt and charm his way across the universe while you stood in his shadow. Loving John Smith was different, easier in some ways, impossibly harder in others, but it was still love. Still real, still yours.
And he was so happy when you finally said the words. So incandescently, transparently joyful that you almost, almost convinced yourself it could be enough.
The proposal came at the end of the second year.
It wasn’t grand or dramatic. John wasn’t grand or dramatic. He took you to the riverbank where you’d first held hands, spread out a blanket, and produced a picnic basket filled with slightly lopsided sandwiches and a bottle of wine that was far nicer than anything he usually bought.
“What’s the occasion?” you asked, amused.
“Do I need an occasion?” But his ears had gone pink again, and he was fidgeting with the edge of the blanket in a way that made your heart stutter.
Halfway through the meal, he set down his sandwich, took a deep breath, and turned to face you fully. His brown eyes were bright with nerves and hope and something that looked terrifyingly like certainty.
“I know we’ve only known each other a couple of years,” he said, his voice slightly unsteady. “And I know I’m not…I mean, I don’t have much to offer. I’m a librarian. My furniture is secondhand and my cooking is mediocre at best.” He let out a shaky laugh. “I’m not exactly a catch.”
“John...”
“Let me finish, please, or I’ll lose my nerve.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small velvet box. “The thing is, every good thing in my life, every happy moment I can remember, has you in it. You’re the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing I think about before I fall asleep. And I know it’s fast, and I know it’s probably mad, but I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to waste a single moment we could have together.”
He opened the box. Inside was a simple silver ring, set with a small, glittering stone that caught the afternoon light and scattered it into rainbows.
“Will you marry me?”
The world stopped.
For one long, crystalline moment, you let yourself imagine it. Saying yes. Marrying him. Building a life in this sleepy little town, growing old together, surrounded by books and bad cooking and the quiet, steady love he offered so freely. You could do it. You could lock the fob watch away forever, let the Doctor sleep for the rest of John Smith’s mortal life, and take this happiness for yourself.
It would be so easy. So terribly, temptingly easy.
But even as the fantasy bloomed in your mind, you felt the weight of the sonic screwdriver in your bag, the ghost of the fob watch’s warmth against your skin. You remembered the Doctor’s face, grave and trusting, as he handed you his entire existence. You remembered the aliens, still out there, still hunting. And you remembered that this man, this sweet, gentle, ordinary man, wasn’t yours to keep.
“John.” Your voice came out cracked, barely a whisper. “I can’t. Not yet.”
The hope in his eyes flickered, but didn’t go out. “Is it too soon? I know it’s only been two years...”
“It’s not that.” You reached out, cupping his face in your hands, memorizing the lines of him. “I love you. I love you so much it terrifies me. But there are things…things about my past, things I haven’t told you…”
“I don’t care about your past,” he said fiercely. “Whatever it is, whatever you’ve done or been through, it doesn’t matter to me.”
“It matters to me.” You stroked your thumb across his cheekbone, feeling the faint stubble, the warmth of his skin. “Just…give me time. Ask me again. Not now, but someday. Ask me again.”
He searched your face for a long moment, and you saw the exact instant he decided to trust you. It was in the softening of his jaw, the release of tension in his shoulders, the way his hand came up to cover yours.
“Alright,” he said quietly. “I’ll wait. As long as you need. I’m not going anywhere.”
He tucked the ring box back into his pocket and pulled you into a kiss instead, and you let yourself melt into him, hating yourself just a little for the tears that slipped down your cheeks. He mistook them for happiness, or maybe just emotion, and kissed them away with a tenderness that made your heart feel like it was being wrung out like a dishcloth.
That night, alone in your flat, you took out the fob watch and held it in your trembling hands.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered to it. To him. To both of them. “I’m so sorry.”
The watch said nothing. It just kept ticking, marking out the seconds of a borrowed life, waiting for the moment it would all come crashing down.
The moment came on an ordinary Tuesday in spring.
You were closing up the bakery, wiping down the counters and trying to decide what to make for dinner, when the bell above the door chimed. You looked up with your customer-service smile already in place, and felt the blood freeze in your veins.
Three people had entered. They looked human, two men and a woman, all dressed in unremarkable clothing, all wearing pleasant, unremarkable expressions. But their eyes were wrong. Flat. Cold. Empty of anything resembling genuine emotion.
And they moved wrong, too. Too smoothly. Too precisely. Like puppets being operated by someone who hadn’t quite mastered the strings.
“We’re closed,” you said, your voice remarkably steady given the terror clawing at your throat.
The woman smiled. It didn’t reach her eyes. “We’re not here for baked goods.”
“We’re looking for someone,” one of the men added. His head tilted at an angle that was just slightly too sharp to be natural. “A very particular someone. We’ve been searching for a very long time.”
“Sorry.” You gripped the edge of the counter, your knuckles going white. “Can’t help you.”
“Oh, we think you can.” The woman took a step forward, and you caught a flicker of something beneath her skin, a ripple of wrongness, like something was moving underneath the surface. “You see, we can’t find our quarry. We’ve searched every corner of this galaxy, every dimension, every timeline. And then it occurred to us, perhaps our quarry isn’t our quarry anymore. Perhaps he’s become something else. Something…human.”
Your heart was pounding so hard you could barely hear them over the rush of blood in your ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Don’t you?” The second man spoke this time, his voice a flat monotone. “You’ve been here two years. You arrived at precisely the same time our quarry disappeared. And you spend an extraordinary amount of time with a man who, according to all records, didn’t exist until that exact moment.”
“Coincidence,” you managed.
“There are no coincidences.” The woman’s smile widened, “Not where the Doctor is concerned.”
They knew. They knew, and they’d found you, and John was probably at the library right now, shelving books and humming to himself, utterly unaware that death had come to his quiet little town wearing human skin.
“We’ll find him eventually,” the woman continued, as if reading your thoughts. “We can sense him, faintly. The trace of what he was, buried deep. It’s only a matter of time. But it would be so much easier if you simply told us where he is.”
“Never.”
The word tore out of you before you could stop it, and the woman’s expression flickered into something that might have been satisfaction.
“Loyal,” she observed. “Touching. But loyalty can be…painful.”
You stumbled backward, reaching blindly for anything you could use as a weapon, and your hand closed around the handle of a rolling pin.
“I wouldn’t,” said the woman, almost gently. “It won’t do you any good.”
“Maybe not.” You lifted your chin, meeting her flat, dead eyes with as much defiance as you could muster. “But I’ll make sure it hurts.”
For a long, suspended moment, no one moved. Then the woman laughed.
“We’re not going to kill you,” she said. “Not yet. You’re going to bring him to us. Tomorrow, sunset, at the old church on the hill. Make sure he hands us his essence of immortality. If you don’t… well.” She smiled again. “This town is full of fragile little humans. It would be a shame if something happened to them.”
She turned and walked out, the two men following in perfect synchronization. The bell chimed cheerfully as the door swung shut behind them, and you stood there in the empty bakery, clutching a rolling pin and shaking so hard you could barely stand.
You didn’t go home that night. You went straight to the TARDIS.
The old police box was still there. You pressed your palm against the wood and tried to think.
They’d found you, and they’d find John sooner or later, and when they did, they would tear him apart. There was no running this time. No clever escape. The only option was the one you’d been dreading for two years.
You had to bring the Doctor back.
The fob watch was in your bag, along with the sonic screwdriver. Now you pulled out the watch and held it in your palm, watching the Gallifreyan script pulse with soft golden light.
“I’m sorry,” you whispered, for what felt like the hundredth time. “I’m so sorry, John.”
Then you squared your shoulders, wiped your eyes, and went to find the man you loved to destroy him.
John was at his flat, as you’d known he would be. He opened the door with a smile that faltered the moment he saw your face.
“What’s wrong?” He pulled you inside immediately, his hands gentle on your shoulders. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Come in, sit down, I’ll make tea...”
“John.” You caught his hands, holding them still. “We need to talk.”
He went very still. “That’s never a good sentence.”
“Please. Just…come with me. There’s something I need to show you.”
You led him through the darkening streets to the alley where the TARDIS stood.
“What is that?” He stared at the blue box, his brow furrowing in confusion that was rapidly becoming distress. “I’ve walked past this alley a hundred times, I’ve never seen…why have I never seen…?”
“Because you weren’t supposed to.” You pulled out the sonic screwdriver and pointed it at the TARDIS doors, which swung open with a familiar wheezing groan. “Come inside.”
He followed you in a daze, his eyes darting around the impossibly large interior. The central column glowed softly, a slow, sleepy pulse that spoke of deep hibernation. The Doctor had programmed the TARDIS to maintain basic functions but nothing more, keeping her hidden and dormant until she was needed again.
“This is…” John turned in a slow circle, his face a mask of bewilderment. “This isn’t possible. This is…”
“It’s a spaceship,” you said quietly. “It’s also a time machine. And it belongs to you.”
He laughed incredulously. “That’s mad. That’s completely mad. I’m a librarian. I’ve never even been on a plane.”
“You’re not a librarian.” The words tasted like ashes in your mouth. “You’re not even human. Not really.”
And you told him. Everything. The Doctor, the transformation, the two years of lies. You spoke until your voice went hoarse, and through it all, John stood motionless, his face slowly draining of colour.
When you finished, he was silent for a long moment. Then he whispered, “You’re serious.”
“Yes.”
“This isn’t a joke, or a prank, or…or some kind of nervous breakdown?”
“No.”
He turned away from you, his shoulders hunched, his hands shoved deep into his pockets in a gesture that was so Doctor-like that you had to look away. “Two years. Two years, and everything I remember, everything I thought I was…”
“Some of it was real.” Your voice cracked. “We were real. We are real.”
“Were we?” He spun back to face you, and there were tears in his eyes, bright and angry and devastated. “You’ve been lying to me since the day we met. Every moment, every conversation, every...” His voice broke. “Every ‘I love you.’ Was any of it true?”
“All of it.” You stepped toward him, reaching for his hands. He let you take them, though his fingers remained stiff and unresponsive. “I know it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s not fair. But I loved the Doctor, and then I met you, and I loved you too, and I never meant for any of this to happen.”
“The Doctor.” He said the name like he was tasting it, trying to find himself in the syllables. “That’s who I am. Who I was. Some kind of...alien hero?”
“The last of the Time Lords. He’s saved countless worlds. Countless lives.” You squeezed his hands. “And right now, he’s the only one who can stop the alien parasites from destroying this town and everyone in it.”
He looked at you then with devastation in his eyes. “What happens to me? If he comes back, what happens to me?”
You couldn’t answer. You couldn’t tell him the truth, that John Smith would cease to exist, absorbed back into the vast, ancient consciousness of the Doctor like a drop of water into an ocean. That the gentle, ordinary man you’d spent two years loving would become nothing more than a dream, a footnote, a brief flicker of humanity in an impossibly long life.
But he saw the answer in your silence, and his face crumpled.
“No.” He pulled his hands from yours, backing away. “No. I don’t want this. I don’t want to be him. I want to be me. I want to be John Smith, the librarian, who burns pasta sauce and loves you more than anything in the world. Doesn’t that matter? Doesn’t that mean anything?”
“It means everything,” you whispered, tears streaming down your face. “But they are here. They’ll kill you, and everyone else, unless the Doctor comes back. I don’t have a choice.”
“There’s always a choice.” His voice cracked on the words. “Please. Please, don’t make me do this. We can run. We can hide. We can find another way.”
“There is no other way.” You pulled out the fob watch, holding it up between you. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, John. But I made a promise.”
He stared at the watch, and you saw the moment understanding truly hit him. The moment he realized that the thing in your hand contained everything he’d been, everything he really was, and that opening it would mean the end of everything he’d become.
“I love you,” he said, and it sounded like a goodbye. “Whatever else was a lie, that wasn’t. I love you, and I was happy. For two years, I was so happy.”
“I know.” You stepped closer, reaching up to cup his face, memorizing the lines of it one last time. “I was happy too. And I love you. Both of you. All of you. The Doctor, and John Smith, and every version of you that’s ever existed or ever will.”
He closed his eyes, leaning into your touch. A tear slipped down his cheek, warm against your fingers. “Will he remember? The Doctor? Will he remember us?”
“I don’t know.” It was the most honest thing you’d said all night.
“I hope he does.” John opened his eyes, and there was something almost like acceptance in them now. “I hope he remembers that he was loved. That he was happy. That he was a good man.”
“You were a good man,” you said fiercely. “You are a good man. The best man I’ve ever known.”
He kissed you then: soft, desperate, trembling with all the fear and love and grief of a man saying goodbye to his entire existence. You kissed him back with everything you had, pouring two years of stolen happiness into the press of your lips, trying to make him understand without words how much he’d meant to you.
When you finally pulled apart, he was crying openly, and so were you.
“Do it,” he said, his voice barely audible. “Before I lose my nerve.”
You opened the fob watch.
Golden light exploded outward, filling the TARDIS, filling John, filling you. He arched backward, his mouth opening in a silent scream, and you watched as two years of false memories were stripped away, replaced by centuries of impossible knowledge. You watched John Smith dissolve into the vast, ancient, terrible consciousness of the Doctor.
And then the light faded, and the Doctor opened his eyes.
They were the same brown eyes. The same face, the same body, the same hands that had held yours a thousand times. But the expression in them was different. Older. Harder. A universe of grief and fury and cold, calculating rage. “Where are they?”
“Old church on the hill,” you said, your voice hollow. “Sunset tomorrow. They’re wearing human skin.”
He nodded once, sharply, and strode past you to the TARDIS console. His hands flew across the controls with the practiced ease of centuries, waking systems that had been dormant for two years. He didn’t look at you. Didn’t acknowledge the tears still wet on your cheeks, or the way your hands were shaking, or the shattered expression on your face.
“Doctor?” you asked hesitantly.
“Not now.” His voice was clipped, distracted. “I need to think. These are dangerous, but they’re predictable. If they’ve taken human form, they’ll be vulnerable. I can work with that.”
And just like that, John Smith was gone. The Doctor was back. And you were standing in the middle of the TARDIS, clutching an empty fob watch, feeling like your heart had been ripped out of your chest.
The Doctor dealt with the Family of Blood.
You didn’t see him do it. He told you to stay in the TARDIS, and you did, because you couldn’t bear to watch him be the Doctor, cold and brilliant and terrifying, when all you could see was the ghost of the man you’d lost.
He came back three hours later, his suit slightly rumpled, his expression grimly satisfied.
“It’s done,” he said. “They’re in three separate eternal prisons, scattered across three separate dimensions. They won’t be bothering anyone ever again.”
“Good.” You were sitting on the jump seat, still holding the empty fob watch. You hadn’t moved since he left.
He looked at you then uncertainly. “The danger’s passed. We can leave whenever you’re ready.”
“I’m not going with you.”
The words came out before you’d consciously decided to say them, and once they were out, you knew they were true. You couldn’t go back. You couldn’t climb into the TARDIS and fly off to new adventures and pretend that the last two years hadn’t happened. That you hadn’t fallen in love with a man who no longer existed.
The Doctor went utterly still. “What?”
“I need time.” You set the fob watch down on the console, your fingers lingering on the cool metal. “I need to…pack up my flat. Say goodbye. I’ve been here two years. I have a life here. I can’t just leave.”
“You don’t have a life here,” he said, and there was an edge to his voice now. “You had a cover story. A role to play. The role is over.”
“It wasn’t just a role.” You stood up, finally meeting his eyes. “I worked in that bakery for two years. I made friends. I built a life. And I loved John Smith, and he loved me, and now he’s dead, and I need to grieve him. Can you understand that?”
Something crossed his face, too fast to read, there and gone in an instant. “I remember it,” he said, and his voice was quieter now. “The transformation. Two years of memories, all at once. I remember everything.”
“Then you know why I can’t come with you tonight.”
He didn’t argue. He just stood there, his hands in his pockets, his expression unreadable, and watched you walk out of the TARDIS and into the darkening evening.
Your flat was exactly as you’d left it. The half-finished cup of tea on the counter. The pile of library books on the coffee table. The photograph of you and John at the riverbank, taken last summer, his arm around your shoulders and his smile so wide and bright and happy.
You sat on the edge of your bed and finally, finally let yourself cry.
You cried for John Smith, the gentle librarian who had loved you simply and completely. You cried for the Doctor, who had trusted you with his entire existence and come back to find that you’d fallen in love with a version of him that no longer existed. And you cried for yourself, for the impossible situation you’d been put in, for the love you’d found and lost and would never quite get over.
At some point, exhaustion overtook you, and you fell into a fitful sleep, still fully clothed, still clutching the photograph.
You woke to the sound of the TARDIS materializing in your living room.
The wheezing groan was unmistakable, and you bolted upright, your heart pounding. The blue box solidified in the corner of your flat, looking utterly incongruous next to your secondhand bookshelf and the potted plant you’d been nursing for eighteen months.
The door opened, and the Doctor stepped out.
He looked…different. Still the same body, the same suit, the same ridiculous hair. But some of the coldness had gone from his eyes. Some of the fury had ebbed. He looked at you, and for just a moment, you saw something that might have been vulnerability.
“You didn’t come back,” he said.
“I told you I needed time.”
“It’s been three days.”
You blinked. “It’s been one night.”
“Time moves differently in the TARDIS. You know that.” He took a step toward you, then stopped, as if unsure of his welcome. “I waited. Outside your flat, at first, and then inside, when you didn’t come out. And then I…I started thinking.”
“That’s usually where the trouble begins.”
His mouth quirked, just slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile, but it was closer than anything you’d seen since he’d come back. “You said something. Before you left. You said you loved John Smith, and you loved me. Both of us.”
You looked away. “I was emotional. I didn’t mean...”
“Yes, you did.” He crossed the room, stopping just in front of you. Close enough that you could smell the familiar scent of him. “You meant every word. I know you did. Because I remember. I remember everything, and I remember how you looked when you said it.”
“Doctor...”
“I’m not him.” The words came out harsh, almost angry. “I’m not John Smith. I’m not gentle or simple or uncomplicated. I’ve done terrible things. I’ve made choices that would horrify him. I carry the weight of a billion billion lives, and it’s made me hard, and cold, and sometimes cruel.” He reached out and caught your chin, tilting your face up to meet his eyes. “But I am not a different person. I’m just…more. Everything he was, I am. Everything he felt, I feel. And I am tired of pretending that’s not true.”
Your breath caught. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying…” He paused, struggling with the words in a way the Doctor rarely did. “John Smith was a simpler version of me. Unburdened. Free. He could tell you he loved you without the weight of centuries pressing down on him. He could ask you to marry him without hearing the screams of everyone he’s ever failed.” His grip on your chin gentled, his thumb brushing across your cheek. “I can’t be him. I can’t be that unburdened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel what he felt.”
You stared at him, barely daring to breathe. “You remember loving me.”
“I remember everything.” His voice dropped, rougher now. “Every moment. Every touch. Every word. It’s all in here...” he tapped his temple “...and it’s not just memories. It’s not just data. It’s real. It’s as real as anything I’ve ever felt. And I have lived a very, very long time.”
“Then why did you...”
“Push you away?” He laughed, a short, humorless sound. “Because I’m an idiot. Because I was furious at my enemies and terrified of what I’d put you through and convinced that you couldn’t possibly want me...the real me, the whole impossible mess of me, when you’d had him.”
“John Smith was you,” you said, your voice breaking. “Just you. Without the pain. Without the weight. But still you.”
“And you loved him.”
“I loved you.”
Something shattered in his expression. The cold mask cracked, and underneath it was everything you’d been searching for, the Doctor, raw and open and terrified, his ancient eyes bright with something that looked very much like hope.
“Then come back,” he said. “Come back to the TARDIS. Come back to me. We can figure out the rest as we go.”
You didn’t answer with words. You reached up, grabbed the lapels of his suit jacket, and pulled him down into a kiss.
It wasn’t like kissing John Smith. John had been gentle, hesitant. The Doctor kissed like he did everything else: with intensity, with focus, with the barely contained energy of a man who had lived too long and felt too much and didn’t know how to be gentle even when he wanted to be.
He made a sound against your mouth, something between a groan and a growl, and his hands slid into your hair, tilting your head back to deepen the kiss. When you gasped, he took advantage, his tongue sliding against yours, and the taste of him was familiar and alien all at once.
“I’ve got two years of memories,” he murmured against your lips, “and two years of wanting. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To remember wanting someone and not being able to touch them?”
“I think I have some idea,” you breathed.
He pulled back just far enough to look at you, his pupils blown wide, his breathing ragged. “This isn’t going to be gentle. I’m not…I can’t be gentle. Not right now. I've too much burning in my head.”
“I don’t need gentle.”
Something dark and hungry flashed in his eyes. “Good.”
He kissed you again, harder this time, and walked you backward until your shoulders hit the wall. His body pressed against yours, lean and solid, and you could feel the double beat of his hearts thundering against your chest. His hands left your hair to trail down your sides, gripping your hips with a force that would probably leave bruises.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his mouth moving to your jaw, your throat, the sensitive spot just below your ear. “Tell me to slow down. Tell me you need time.”
“Don’t stop.”
He made a sound that was almost a snarl and hoisted you up, your legs wrapping around his waist instinctively. The wall was cold against your back, but he was warm, so warm, warmer than a human should be, his body temperature running high with Time Lord biology and barely restrained desire.
Clothes became an impediment. Buttons were undone with frustrating slowness, fabric pushed aside rather than removed entirely. His mouth was everywhere: your throat, your collarbone, the curve of your shoulder, and his hands were everywhere too, mapping your body with an intensity that bordered on desperation.
“I remember,” he kept saying, the words pressed into your skin like prayers. “I remember everything. Every moment I wanted to touch you like this. Every night I lay beside you.”
“I know.” You tangled your fingers in his hair, pulling his mouth back to yours. “I know. I was there.”
He laughed, a real laugh, surprised and almost giddy, and kissed you again, and this time there was no more talking.
He took you against the wall, then on the floor, then finally in your bed, the TARDIS abandoned in the corner. He wasn’t gentle. His hands gripped hard enough to leave marks, his teeth scraped against sensitive skin, his rhythm was demanding and relentless and utterly, impossibly him. But there was tenderness too, in the way he whispered your name, in the way he paused to check that you were alright, in the way he held you afterward like you were the most precious thing in the universe.
You lay tangled together in the wreckage of your sheets, the Doctor’s arm wrapped around your waist, his face buried in your hair.
“I’m still not him,” the Doctor said quietly, after a long silence. “I can’t be. I can’t give you the simple life, the quiet happiness, the white picket fence.”
“I don’t want a white picket fence.”
“You wanted him.”
You turned in his arms, facing him. His expression was guarded, but his eyes gave him away, ancient and afraid. “I wanted you,” you said firmly. “Every version of you. John Smith, the Doctor, whoever you are tomorrow and the day after that. I didn’t fall in love with a librarian. I fell in love with you. The impossible, infuriating, brilliant, broken, wonderful you.”
He stared at you for a long moment. Then he smiled, a real smile, not the manic grin he used as armor, but something softer. Something that looked almost like John Smith’s smile, but deeper, older, more complicated.
“I don’t deserve you,” he said.
“Probably not. But you’re stuck with me anyway.”
He pulled you closer, pressing a kiss to your forehead. “Good. Because I’m never doing that again. The transformation. The forgetting. I’m never giving you up. Not for anything.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.” His arms tightened around you. “Now get some sleep. We’ve got a universe to explore in the morning.”
You closed your eyes, listening to the steady double rhythm of his hearts, and let yourself believe that maybe, just maybe, you could have both, the Doctor and John Smith, the adventure and the love, the impossible and the real.
a/n: Likes, reblogs and comments are appreciated. <3
a/n: You can donate on Ko-fi, your support helps me write more: https://ko-fi.com/catbayunthestoryteller <3
About: The Doctor and you drink something, not realizing it's an aphrodisiac. Both of you are physically in need of relief but your minds are as clear as ever. And so, you guys have sex to alleviate the symptoms.
A/N: Divider made by @/cafekitsune. If you enjoyed, please like, comment, and reblog! If it wasn’t your cup of tea, simply scroll and ignore! This took me much longer than anticipated but shhhhhh. This isn’t proof-read whatsoever.
You and the Doctor were celebrating a festival of sorts on a planet known for their beautiful ocean festivals. With the sun setting, creating beautiful reds and orange lighting in the sky, the ocean moving harmoniously, live local music taking place as everyone mingled and danced with one another. It was a nice change from the running that you and the Doctor encountered on a daily.
You stood at the shore, your feet bare from your shoes that you had abandoned near the TARDIS after realizing you were at an ocean festival, as you looked off into the distance, watching as the sunset took over the beautiful planet. You had a cup in your hand of some sort of wine you have yet to taken a sip from yet.
The Doctor was stood a few feet away from you, a cup in his hand as well as he spoke to some of the locals. They were humanoid creatures though certainly different from yourself. They had five fingers and five toes, two arms, and two legs. But the were all different shades of purple.
The planet was a peaceful planet with no wars or conflict. The locals only wished to live in happiness. All tourists were welcomed as long as they remained respectful and had no conflicts amongst themselves. Everyday was a soft and calming party.
You were grateful to have landed on this planet, to be quite frank. It had been weeks since you and the Doctor got any sort of reprieve from constant saving of other places, planets, and time periods. Just three days ago, you had been in 17th century Massachusetts, running from the townsfolk as they tried to accuse you and the Doctor of being witches. And just yesterday, you had saved a planet from being oppressed by a the of aliens. It was safe to say that you and the Doctor deserved quite a break.
You took a deep breath, breathing in the salty air before turning around. You took a small sip of your drink and then walked over to the Doctor, who was in an antimated conversation with a local about the history of the planet, and stood next to him. The Doctor paused as the local spoke, listening closely to every word. He took a big gulp from the cup and swallowed as you did with yours as well.
It wasn't long before you felt yourself getting warmer. Your cheeks felt as though they were on fire as a random bout of lust overcame you, blood rushing to your core. You looked over at the Doctor, noticing his similar state of disarray as his cheeks were pinker than you'd ever seen them. The two of you made eye contact and suddenly, the Doctor was apologizing to the local and handing them his glass before grabbing your hand and walking toward the TARDIS.
"Doctor?" you asked, confused by his actions. The two of you were certainly having a good time. And yeah, you were randomly turned on over nothing but it's not like anyone could've known that, especially not the Doctor. Unless he could, with his weird superior Tine Lord genes, and if that were the case then that would certainly be a huge invasion of privacy.
It wasn't until you reached the TARDIS and the Doctor opened the door that he finally said something. He closed the door behind you both as you walked into the console room. "I should've known," he groaned, slapping his hand against his forehead before running his hand through his hair.
You body was still very warm which was unusual as the ship had a coolness to it. Your arousal was still prominent, in fact growing with each moment, yet you ignored it. "What is it?" You asked, hoping to gain the Doctor's attention.
The Doctor looked at you with an apologetic look on his face. "How are you feeling?" He asked, his voice slightly hoarse as he spoke.
You furrowed your eyebrows in confusion, shrugging your shoulders. "Fine," You responded though it wasn't completely truthful. Regardless of whether you admitted it or not, the effects of whatever was happening was overcoming you as you couldn't help the pulsing you felt in your cunt. You wanted nothing more than to run to your room and take care of this sudden horniness you felt but you couldn't.
The Doctor narrowed his eyes at you as he stepped towards you. "Are you sure?" He asked. "You look fairly warm and a bit uncomfortable," he licked his lips. "Some would say perhaps a bit aroused."
Your eyes widened in shock at the Doctor's speculation. "How do you-" You began to ask but the Doctor so kindly interrupted.
"The wine," he cleared his throat, sniffling slightly as he took a step away from you. "It's an aphrodisiac. I should've known simply by smell alone," He cringed at himself for ignoring such a fact. "But alas, here we are."
"And so you know that I'm-"
"Turned on. Aroused. Needing so badly to relieve the tension forming inside of you," He interrupted once more, a small smirk gracing his lips. He was acting a bit different than he normally would. It took all of your will power to not look down at his crotch, to see a possible tent signaling his own neediness.
You cleared your throat and glanced away from the Doctor's face, not knowing how much longer you could wait before you accidentally pounced on him. Being human and he an alien, an alien that showed little to no interest in anything romantic from what you've seen, it would not make for a good situation to pounce on him when he likely felt nothing for you. "So," You began, licking your lips. "We are effected by an aphrodisiac from another planet," You stated. "Can't we just like…take matters into our own hands in the comfort of our bedrooms?" It was awkward talking about such a thing with the Doctor of all people. But it was a conversation necessary to have.
"The use of aphrodisiacs in such a social manner such as the celebration we went to today is meant for people to seek out one another," he explained, running his hand awkwardly through his hair. "Meaning taking 'matters into our own hands' won't really do the trick." He said, making air quotes with his fingers.
You furrowed your eyebrows in slight annoyance. If you cannot solve this problem yourself, then you'll just wait it out because you certainly weren't going to seek out a random stranger from a planet you hardly know. "Then we'll wait it out," You declared.
"Or."
"Or what?" You replied with a moment of wariness.
"Having an orgasm from another person is the prime way to get rid of the effects of an aphrodisiac," He sniffed, cheeks pinked ever-so-slightly.
You rolled your eyes in response. "Yeah, sort of understood that concept," You said sarcastically. "However, I'm not going to seek a random stranger and you don't do that sort of thing with people so it's best to just wait it out.
The Doctor frowned. "What?" He asked, looking at you a bit confused. "I do do that sort of thing," He admitted. "Not with random people but I…can perform. Quite well actually." The Doctor was standing closer to you than he had been before, something you hadn't realized until now. "And if we both are effected by this, then we should…seek out each other."
As the Doctor spoke, admitting his ability to have sex, your mind couldn't stop conjuring up images of the two of you. The idea of being pounded by the man you've been attracted to since you began traveling with him was very prominent in your mind. "So you're saying we should have sex with each other," You whispered, not trusting your voice.
The Doctor hummed in confirmation. "That's exactly what I'm saying," He said lowly. "If you're willing, I'm more than willing. And it can be just sex. It doesn't need to mean anything more if you don't want it to."
"But it would mean more," You admitted, biting your lip as you looked away from the Doctor. Nervousness encompassed you as you confessed that it wouldn't be just meaningless sex to you.
The Doctor was silent for just a moment before taking a closer step towards you. "For me too," he whispered.
You looked up at him, a small shock on your face. "Yeah?" You looked for confirmation, hoping your affections were truly returned before you slept with the man you'd been traveling with for quite a long time.
"Yes," he responded without hesitation, a small smile gracing his lips.
Before you could respond any further, the Doctor's hands cupped your cheeks as his lips captured yours in a kiss. The kiss was soft and slow, almost as though the Doctor was unsure if this truly was meant to happen. But when you began to kiss him back, it was all the confirmation he needed to keep going.
The desire you felt coursed through your veins, protruding through every movement of your lips against his. You've been kissed before, by a few people, but never quite like this. Perhaps the pleasure from a simple kiss was due to the effects of the aphrodisiac but you could hardly care. Not when the Doctor's tongue made its way into your mouth.
Overcome by his own arousal, the Doctor didn't hesitate fiddling with your sun dress, slowly moving the material upwards. He pulled away from the kiss long enough to pull the dress off of you before placing his lips back onto yours, dropping the dress somewhere on the console.
The kiss became needy as the two of you clung to each other in such a manner. Your hands had found their way to the nape of the Doctor's hair, above his neck, while he had one hand on the back of your head and the other placed firmly on your hip.
You weren't quite sure how it happened, everything was rather quick, but it wasn't long before you were pressed against the console, legs spread, with the Doctor's cock nuzzled inside your cunt. His thrusts were anything but soft, the effects of the aphrodisiac surely showing between you both.
The necessity of relief overcame you both as you clung and clawed at the Doctor's back. He was most of the way undressed. His trousers off along with his underwear. His jackets were off as well, leaving only his button up shirt which was undone to reveal his undershirt. But he was gorgeous and you were grateful for such an opportunity to see the man whom you've come to love.
"Doctor," you gasped as he thrusted particularly harsh. His movements were erratic and frantic just as you were wet and needy.
The Doctor, not much for cursing, let a "fuck." He had one hand on your hips while the other on your shoulder as he had you propped on the console, The ship likely didn't enjoy the fact it was being used as a means for sex but alas, it didn't make its judgment known. "You feel so good," He groaned, leaning forward to capture your lips with his.
All you could think about was him and how wonderful the Doctor felt. Part of you worried that he would've been sort-of alien down there, that you wouldn't quite know what to do with it. But as it turned out, just as the Doctor had told you numerous times before, humans were based off of Time Lords, and therefore he had pretty much the parts.
You tried your best to kiss the Doctor back but with the way his cock was moving inside of your cunt, you couldn't help the loud moans that escaped your lips with each movement. His cock hit your g-spot dead-on, leaving you quivering. It felt heavenly, your senses especially heightened due to the heat of the situation.
You knew you weren't going to last long. How could you? With all the sensations filling your very being, you could only take so much before it would begin to unravel.
The Doctor pulled away from the kiss to rest his forehead against yours. The both of you were breathing heavily which for a brief moment made you wonder about that superior respiratory system that the Doctor is always talking about. But that thought quickly faded when his fingers moved between you both and to your clit. He began rubbing that spot, eliciting a whiny moan from your lips. "Doctor!" you moaned, throwing your head back in pleasure.
"That's it," he groaned, feeling the way your cunt clenched around his cock. You were close, that much he could tell. "My gorgeous girl," he said, maintaining that speed with his thrusts.
"I-I'm so close," you whimpered, opening your eyes to look at him. The Doctor was flushed with his brown eyes hazed with lust, a shine of sweat on his brow.
"I know, sweetheart," the Doctor spoke, keeping up with his movements. "Let go for me, yeah?"
With his fingers on your clit, cock hitting your g-spot, it wasn't long before you were arching your back, pulling the Doctor close, and clamping down on his cock like a vice. Your thighs shook as your orgasm overcame you, moaning "doctor" over and over again with a variety of curses.
The Doctor fucked you through your orgasm, not bothering to slow down as he chased his own high. And after just a few more thrusts, he couldn't help but bury himself deep inside of you as he came. His eyes rolled back as he himself couldn't help shaking. Not having an orgasm for a few centuries does that to a bloke, you know.
The console room was filled with nothing but heavy breathing as you both came down from your highs. You were both satiated from the effects of the aphrodisiac. The Doctor eventually pulled out of you and helped you off of the console. Neither of you said anything for a moment, perhaps nervous about what is to come from this situation.
"I think," you licked your lips as you looked at the Doctor, finally breaking the silence. "We should maybe go to your room and explore each other without the effects of something."
The Doctor grinned that goofy grin of his as you spoke. "You know," he began. "I couldn't agree more. Let me just put her into the vortex and we can be on our merry little way." He began messing with the controls, bringing the TARDIS into the vortex.
You looked around at the floor, seeing all of your clothes thrown about. And suddenly you gasped. "I left my shoes," you said, coming to the realization as you looked at the brown haired man working in front of you.
"Well you could always get new shoes," He shrugged, his focus on the controls in front of him.
"They were a nice pair of shoes," you mumbled.
Your issue with your shoes quickly got forgotten as the Doctor grabbed your hand and gently pulled you along to his bedroom. And there, you both explored one another in ways you hadn't even thought possible.
The first time you met him, you spilled coffee on his shoes.
It happened at a little café tucked between a bookstore and a flower shop in London. You were on vacation from the States, trying to make the most of your last day in the city before flying home.
You came out of the café carrying two drinks and immediately collided with a man in a brown pinstripe suit.
Coffee splashed everywhere.
“Oh my God!” you gasped. “I’m so sorry!”
The man looked down at his ruined Converse.Then he looked at you.Then, to your complete confusion, he smiled.
“Oh.”
“…Oh?”
“Oh!” he said again, brighter this time. “Right! You’re here.”
You blinked. “I… yes? I’ve been here all week.”
He stared at you like you’d just solved a puzzle, then he grinned. “Brilliant.”
“You don’t seem upset about the coffee.”
“Nope.”
“You sure?”
“Absolutely.”
You eyed him carefully. “You might be the weirdest British person I’ve met.”
He looked delighted by that. “Thank you!”
Before you could ask his name, Big Ben chimed in the distance.
The man suddenly froze.His expression changed completely. “What time is it?”
You glanced at your watch. “Ten-thirteen.”
He went pale. “Oh, no.”
“What?”
“No, no, no, no, no.”
Without another word, he turned and sprinted down the street.
You stared after him. “Okay then.”
—
The next morning, you woke up.You checked your phone.
July 18th.
Your last day in London.
Again....
You frowned.
That was odd.
You could have sworn yesterday had been July 18th too.
You shrugged it off, lack of sleep, different time zone...Probably.
You got dressed, left your hotel, and walked to the same little café.
And then, you spilled coffee on the same man’s shoes.
Again.
He looked down, then to you then he let out a soft sigh. “Oh, not again.”
You froze. “…Excuse me?”
“You spilled coffee on me yesterday too.”
You slowly lowered your cup. “Yesterday?”
He blinked then his eyes widened. “Oh.”
“What?”
“You remember.”
“Remember what?”
He grabbed your shoulders. “You remember yesterday.”
“Yes?”
He looked genuinely stunned. “Oh, that’s impossible.”
“I’m sorry, what?!”
He was grinning now. “Oh, this is brilliant.”
“No, it isn’t! How do you know me?!”
“I’m the Doctor.”
“Doctor what?”
“Just the Doctor.”
“That’s not a name.”
“Bit rude.”
“You’re acting like we’ve met before!”
“We have.”
“When?!”
“Yesterday.”
“But today is—”
You looked at your phone.
July 18th.
Your stomach dropped.
Slowly, you looked back up at him.
“…Why is it July 18th again?”
The Doctor’s smile vanished. “Right.”
“What?”
“We may have a problem.”
—
Three loops later, you were sitting on a bench in Hyde Park trying not to have a nervous breakdown.
“So let me get this straight,” you said. “Time is broken.”
“Yep.”
“The day keeps repeating.”
“Yep.”
“And you’re an alien.”
“Also yep.”
You stared at him as he offered you a packet of crisps.
You took them. “How are you this calm?”
He thought about it. “Practice.”
“Practice?”
“I’ve had a lot of weird days.”
“You say that like this isn’t horrifying.”
“It is a bit horrifying.”
“A bit?!”
The Doctor looked sheepish. “Fairly horrifying.”
You groaned and buried your face in your hands.
A few moments later, he gently nudged your shoulder.
“You alright?”
“No.”
“Fair.”
You sighed then looked at him. “Why am I remembering the loops?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that bad?”
“Maybe.”
“That’s not reassuring.”
“Could be good too.”
"Also not reassuring."
He smiled.
And despite yourself, you laughed.
—
Loop seven found the two of you eating fish and chips by the Thames.
Loop eleven involved accidentally stealing a police horse.
Loop sixteen ended with both of you hiding under a museum exhibit because the Doctor had somehow offended a time-sensitive alien.
At some point, you stopped panicking.
At some point, spending every repeated day with a strange British alien became… fun.
You learned he hated pears.
You learned he talked with his hands.
You learned he got this distant look in his eyes sometimes, as though he carried the weight of entire galaxies.
You also learned he was incredibly lonely.
By loop twenty-two, the two of you were sitting on the grass in a park watching the sunset.
Again.
“You know,” you said softly, “this is technically the weirdest date I’ve ever been on.”
The Doctor nearly choked. “This is a date?”
You smiled. “I mean… we’re spending every day together.”
He looked suddenly flustered. “Oh.”
“You bought me lunch.”
“Well—”
“And we held hands while running from that weird tentacle thing.”
“That was for safety.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“You think this is a date?”
You looked at him. “Don’t you?”
To your surprise, he didn’t answer immediately.Instead, he looked out at the sunset.
A small smile tugged at his lips.
“I think…” he said quietly, “I wouldn’t mind if it was.”
Your cheeks warmed.
Neither of you looked at each other after that.
—
Loop thirty-one was when everything went wrong.
The sky cracked. Golden light spread across the clouds.
The Doctor’s face went white. “Oh.”
You immediately sat up. “What?”
“It’s collapsing.”
“What is?”
“The loop.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“No.” He looked at you and for the first time since you’d met him, he looked afraid. “When this resets… you’ll forget.”
Your heart sank. “What?”
“You shouldn’t remember any of this.”
“No.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.”
The Doctor looked devastated. “You’ll wake up tomorrow and it’ll really be July nineteenth.”
“No!” You stood. “There has to be a way!”
“I’ve looked.”
"You don’t know that!" You protested.
“I do.”
“You can’t know everything!”
He looked at you sadly. “No. But I know this.”
Silence settled between you.
You swallowed hard. “So… this is it?”
He didn’t answer but that was answer enough.
You laughed shakily. “Wow. Worst date ever.”
He smiled sadly. “Bit rubbish, yeah.”
Tears stung your eyes, and then, very quietly, you asked. “Will I ever see you again?”
The Doctor looked at you for a long moment.Then he stepped forward and gently took your hand.
“I hope so.”
The world began to glow.
The sky shattered completely.
Everything turned white.
—
You woke up.
July nineteenth.
Your actual flight home.
For some reason, you felt strangely sad.Like you’d lost something important.
You couldn’t explain it.
You checked out of your hotel and headed toward the airport.
As you passed a little café, someone crashed into you.
Coffee splashed onto a pair of Converse.
You looked up.
A man in a pinstripe suit stared at you.
Brown eyes.
Messy hair.
And an expression of complete astonishment.
He whispered your name.
You blinked. “…Do I know you?”
For a moment, he looked heartbroken then he smiled. A soft, hopeful smile.“No,” he said gently. “But I was hoping we could change that.”
The question came on a rainy afternoon, years later from what you'd end up looking fondly on.
The TARDIS was parked somewhere along the coast of Wales, the doors wide open to let in the smell of salt and rain. The console room was warm and golden, humming softly as though it, too, enjoyed lazy family days.
Your youngest daughter sat cross-legged on the grating floor, crayons scattered around her. Your son was hanging upside down from one of the railings because apparently inheriting a Time Lord’s curiosity also meant inheriting a complete disregard for gravity.
You were curled on the sofa that had somehow appeared in the TARDIS years ago, a blanket over your legs and a book in your hands.
The Doctor was tinkering underneath the console.
There was a loud clang, followed by a loud. “Ow.”
“You’ve been saying ‘ow’ for twenty years,” you called.
“And every time I’m surprised by it!”
“You hit your head on the same panel yesterday.”
“It’s a very aggressive panel.”
Your daughter looked up from her drawing, eyes wide. "Mummy?"
“Hm?”
“How did you and Daddy meet?”
The Doctor’s head immediately popped out from beneath the console. “Oh! I know this one.”
You smiled. “I’m fairly certain I was there too.”
He ignored you entirely and climbed to his feet, straightening his tie with all the seriousness of a man about to recount a legendary tale.
He sat down beside the children. “I took your mother on thirty-one fantastic dates.”
You nearly choked on your tea.
Across from you, your son gasped.
“Thirty-one?”
“Thirty-one,” the Doctor confirmed proudly.
“That’s loads!”
“It was.”
You lowered your book. “I wouldn’t really call those dates.”
The Doctor looked offended. “They absolutely were.”
“We were trapped in a time loop.”
“Still dates.”
“One of them involved running from an alien squid.”
“A very romantic alien squid.”
“It tried to eat us.”
“It was atmospheric.”
Your daughter giggled.
The Doctor pointed triumphantly. “See? She gets it.”
You laughed and set your book aside. “Your father and I met in London.”
“After she spilled coffee on my shoes.”
“Entirely by accident.”
“Best accident of my life.”
You smiled despite yourself.
Your son frowned thoughtfully. “What’s a time loop?”
The Doctor lit up. He adored explaining things.
“Oh! Right! Imagine it’s your birthday.”
"Okay..."
“And then tomorrow you wake up and it’s your birthday again.”
The little boy’s eyes widened. “Two birthdays?”
“Exactly.”
“And then the next day it’s your birthday again.”
“Three birthdays?!”
“Thirty-one birthdays.”
The child looked completely awestruck. “That’s amazing.”
You snorted. “No, sweetheart. By day fifteen, we were both losing our minds.”
“We stole a police horse.”
“We accidentally stole a police horse.”
“It liked us.”
“It bit your coat.”
“It was affectionate.”
You shook your head.
The children giggled.
Your daughter tilted her head. “So you went on thirty-one dates because time broke?”
“Essentially, yes,” you said.
She considered this. “Then when did you fall in love?”
The room went quiet.
The Doctor blinked.
You blinked.
The children looked between the two of you expectantly.
Your husband recovered first. “Oh.”
He looked at you.
You looked back.
A smile slowly spread across your face. “I don’t actually know.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
The Doctor smiled softly. “I think I do.”
“Oh?”
He leaned back against the sofa. “It was loop twenty-two.”
You laughed. “You remember the number?”
“I remember everything.”
You smiled at that.
“What happened on loop twenty-two?” your son asked.
The Doctor’s expression became almost dreamy as his hand reached out to grab yours. “We watched a sunset.”
“That’s it?” your daughter asked.
“That’s it.”
The children looked deeply unimpressed.
“No explosions?” your son asked.
“No.”
“No monsters?”
“No.”
“No running?”
“Not even a little.”
The children exchanged confused looks. “That sounds boring.”
You laughed.
The Doctor looked scandalized. “It was not boring! It was lovely.”
“What happened?” your daughter pressed.
He looked at you. “You called it a date.”
You felt your cheeks warm even after all these years. “Oh.”
“I’d never thought of it that way.”
“You looked completely horrified.”
“I was surprised!”
“You nearly choked on your chips.”
“I did not.”
“You absolutely did.”
The children burst into laughter.
The Doctor huffed then his expression softened looking at you. “And then she smiled at me and I thought… if I could have one more day, and another after that, and another after that… I wouldn’t mind.”
The room grew quiet again.
Your daughter sighed dramatically. “That’s cute.”
Your son made a face. “Ew.”
The Doctor looked personally offended. “It is not ‘ew.’ It’s romantic.”
“It’s kissing stuff.”
“It’s not even kissing stuff!”
“It feels like kissing stuff.”
You laughed so hard you nearly spilled your tea.
The Doctor looked at you helplessly. “You see what I deal with?”
“Every day.”
Your daughter climbed onto the sofa and curled against your side. “So if you got thirty-one dates…” she said thoughtfully, “does that mean Daddy loved you thirty-one times?”
The Doctor went very still.
You looked down at her then back towards your husband.
He looked suspiciously emotional, finally he smiled down at her. “No, sweetheart.”
She blinked. “No?”
He squeezed your hand gently. “I loved your mummy the same way every single day.”
You felt your heart melt. “And after the time loop ended?”
His eyes found yours.The same warm, wonderful eyes you’d fallen in love with all those years ago.“Then I got very lucky,” he said softly, “because she decided to fall in love with me all over again.”
There was a long, happy silence.
Then your son wrinkled his nose. “Okay, but did you kiss in the time loop?”
The Doctor nearly choked.
You burst out laughing.
And your daughter, entirely unhelpful, leaned forward eagerly.
Playful teasing and familiar chaos beneath alien stars slowly begins to shift into something softer, charged with unspoken feelings and quiet longing as you coax The Doctor into a confession with an unscrupulous method.
Fluff, Slight Crack fic, Did I say fluff? because theres lots of it.
Word Count: 3.3k
The Doctor was handsy, far more handsy than the average human being you were led to believe. Sometimes you would chalk It up to him being from a completely different civilisation with completely different societal norms and values, but other times you felt as though it was something completely specific to him and only him.
You had noticed the way he’d hug someone out of pure glee or unadulterated excitement, or how he’d rest his hand absentmindedly on someone’s shoulder. Just another one of his peculiar quirks you assumed and you had grown to absolutely love those little quirks of his. The way he’d perk an eyebrow up whenever something had caught his attention, or the way he’d stick his tongue out while he tried to concentrate on a task he needed to complete. The way he’d run his hands through his already tousled hair and tug at his roots when his brain was moving far too quickly for him to follow. The way he’d pout when he was genuinely confused or disappointed, the way he could prattle on and on endlessly about something he wanted to explain to you. The Doctor was a man of a thousand words and yet still, when it came to you it was as if he struggled to find them. He knew over eight billion languages and he was completely unable to articulate the simplest things when they involved you.
It was almost funny, watching a being who could and had negotiated peace treaties between warring nations stumble over his words- and sometimes his feet- whenever you smiled at him for too long. His hands, though, never really seemed to have that problem. They had a tendency to speak for him when his mouth couldn’t. A tentative nudge to carefully guide you out of danger. Fingers curling around your wrist to keep you securely tethered to him while you ran and hid. A palm pressed to the small of your back whenever his hackles were up and he needed to usher you behind him or back into the TARDIS, you had a sneaking suspicion that those actions were simply to ground himself rather than to steer you.
Those suspicions only arose when it had stopped being indiscriminate, as at some point his hands began to linger longer on you than anyone else.
There were touches that should have been fleeting, that would now stretch into something more deliberate. His thumb tracing slow circles against the joints of your knuckles while he’d hold your hand, forgetting or rather neglecting to drop it after he had led you somewhere. The way he’d suddenly seek out your presence on the TARDIS and sit impossibly close to you, thigh to thigh as he explained what he had been up to for the last couple of hours. He never really seemed to be too aware of what he’d done in the moment, only realising after he had already done it and pulling away far too late, pulling away when you had grown accustomed to his touch and would begin to mourn its loss.
You wondered if he knew.
If he knew that every casual, passing touch thrusted your heart against your sternum, as if it was protesting not being cradled by his own hands. If he knew that your breath hitched, as if the universe itself had taken your breath away. That when he hugged you, properly hugged you, with his arms wrapped around you tightly and his hearts thumping against you, that your skin began to buzz and tingle after he had let go. That you were tempted to grab on to him and plant yourself into his very being, to be eternally woven into him, an unbreaking fibre of all-encompassing love.
Sometimes, if you were lucky, you would also catch him staring, his brown eyes soft and distant, as if he was seeing every possible version of you across time and space all at once. Whenever you met his gaze, he would give you a coy smile, small and almost ashamed to have been caught in the act. This was one of those moments, when you were fortunate enough to have caught him.
“Doctor?”
You called out into the silence, breaking the stillness of the night.
Eyes snapping back into focus, you grinned, fighting the urge to reach out to him. Fighting away your temptations. Feigning concern, you continued.
“Where have you gone this time Starboy? It’s a bit hard to keep up a conversation if only one of us is doing the talking, you know.”
He blinked, once- twice- like a man resurfacing from deep, deep water.
“Mm?”
The sound escaped him before he could procure an excuse; however, it was followed quickly by that familiar, cheeky grin. All charm and deflection.
“Sorry. Sorry. I was just-thinking. You know, about Barcelona. Suarez, Ronaldinho, Messi, that lot”
A complete lie, he always said that he was ‘thinking’ when what he had really meant was that he had been feeling too much.
“Barcelona? The football club?”
You questioned, disguising your amusement. Before he lost concentration you both had been conversing about Barcelona, yes- but not Barcelona the football club. Barcelona the Spanish municipality.
“Starboy? the slightly offensive title?”
He echoes, mock-offended, placing a hand over his chest as though he had been gravely wounded.
“I’ll have you know that I am a Star-man, given the fact that I am technically older than the human drive to reach said stars, which was, in and of itself, a pretty ambitious feat for your people to have accomplished so early, you know. Reaching for the stars and actually getting there.” He paused, then added quickly, “I am not trying to create a diversion by the way. I wouldn’t do that.”
He finished lamely, gesturing vaguely upwards as if the stars themselves would crashing down to vouch for him. Tearing your scrutinising yet playful gaze away from him, you laughed softly, the sound carrying easily in the quiet field you were both laying in.
“You do realise that we were talking about going to Barcelona, right? Not watching them play on the telly” you pressed, your eyebrow quirking in a way that told him that you didn’t believe a single word of it.
He faltered- just for a fraction of a second, yet still long enough.
“Well- yes! Obviously,”
He said far too quickly, not helping his own case at all. You could even confidently say that The Doctor was incredibly flustered at having been caught in the act. Oh, the horror.
Shaking your head, you peeked at him from the corner of your eyes, he was looking away now it seemed, trying to focus elsewhere lest he lose control of his own eyes once more.
“Where do you go when you do that?”
You asked, completely aware of the fact that you were only asking for a verbal confirmation, for your own satisfaction. Without turning his head, he tore his gaze from the sky above and looked at you from the corners of his eyes.
“Do what?” he whispered, suddenly nervous about where this conversation might lead.
Turning to face him, you took a deep breath, steeling your voice as much as you could physically muster.
“When you stare at me. You don’t do it often but I’ve caught you in the act enough to become curious about it. Do Time Lords have x-ray vision too and you’re actually a bit of a perv?” you deadpanned, trying to sell your faux-seriousness as convincingly as possible.
The Doctor bristled. You could practically feel his blood run hot as his eyes widened and his brows shot up to his hairline, five hundred trillion tonnes of stress promptly piling onto his very being at the accusation.
“What? No- of course not- absolutely not! I would never do that. I’m not that sort of man, I mean I- no! definitely not! “
Cutting him off, you rolled over with a rather hearty laugh, clutching your stomach as you playfully swatted him on the shoulder.
“Relax! I was only having a laugh with you, spaceman.”
Your consolation was abruptly ended as your body surrendered to another bout of laughter. You could feel his accusatory gaze rake across you as it racked through your body, leaving you a heaving mess of howling and giggling. You really did enjoy taking the piss sometimes; his oh-so-expressive face made his reactions even funnier than anticipated almost every single time.
The Doctor slowly turned to face you, gears turning in his head as he formulated the greatest act of revenge.
“Oohhh, so you think it’s nice to poke fun at me, don’t you?”
He purred; his face concealed in the shadows of the night. Wiping a tear from your eye, you sniffed as you looked away.
“Oh, I certainly do, in fact, I think I quite enjoy it. It’s one of the greatest pleasures the universe could offer me.”
You beamed, still reeling in the aftermath of your teasing. Completely ignorant to the unadulterated act of terrorism that was about to befall your poor, unfortunate soul.
“Is it?”
Those two words were the last to leave his mouth before he leapt into action and planted himself on top of you. The Doctor swiftly began attacking your oh-so-sensitive sides- something he had learnt about after you had grown impossibly warm when he had grabbed you by the waist as you both slid down a waste chute on Curdron-3 -in a well-planned tickle attack. His nimble fingers adeptly shuffled, poked and prodded at the most vulnerable spots amongst your sides, while you wailed, shrieked and cried for mercy at this unprecedented act of great evil.
You squirmed beneath him as you tried your best to seek some way out of his evil grip, praying to the stars that he would relent as you screamed out your surrender. Stopping for a moment, The Doctor peered down at you, hands falling to his sides.
“Are you going to stop teasing me?”
He asked, eyes widening at the end of his sentence while he looked down at you over his nose, almost as if he dared you to say no. You had to have known that with the position you were in you really had no choice other than to agree with him. Unfortunately for you, your defiant spirit insisted on doing otherwise.
“Never!”
You bellowed in resistance, shaking your head as tears streamed down your cheeks. The Doctor merely nodded his head in mock understanding as he slowly -menacingly- raised his hands, gearing up for another attack. No sooner had you puffed your cheeks full of air than he began yet another relentless assault: up and down your sides, over your stomach, beneath your armpits, across the sides of your neck. He was ruthless in his strategies, pulling more and more screams from the very bottom of your stomach.
“You will!”
“I won’t!”
“You shall!”
“I shan’t!”
“You must!”
“I will never!” you retorted.
You both carried on back and forth, neither calling it quits. However, you were so busy with being stuck in an ongoing cycle of torment that you barely noticed how his grin had widened into an earnest smile, forcing the crow’s-feet that lay hidden in his skin to surface at the corners of those brown eyes you oh so adored, gleaming at you in the moonlight, completely enthralled by your beauty and joy. How his fingers would linger on your skin for a fraction of a second longer than necessary as he made his rounds.
“I’ll nev- er stop teasing you for as long as I live! I’d sooner die than stop! You are my doctor and you are mine to tease for- for as long as iiiiii wish! Never!! You can tickle me until I diiiie but I will tease you even after I’ve slipped off somewhere into nothingness!!”
You howled, shaking your head and kicking your feet beneath him, thrashing about until you finally managed to grab onto his tie, distracting him for long enough to finally wrestle him off of you and over onto his back. He would never admit that he had simply allowed it.
Sitting on top, your hair was now a disorganised mess, a complete juxtaposition to what it had resembled mere minutes earlier. Planting your feet at his sides, you grabbed his offending hands with each of yours and bound them together above his head with the tie you had ripped loose from his neck during your momentary scuffle. Reaching up to try and tame your stray hairs with the palms of your hands, your bosom heaved as you finally managed to suck in a few steady breaths, nerves still tingling in the aftermath of his onslaught.
“You wicked man! I’ll have you know that I almost soiled myself!”
Pouting, the doctor rolled his eyes, fully knowing he would have been able to force an agreement of sorts out of you before your bladder had lost its fight with your will.
Playfully baring your teeth at him, you reached down to tug at his freckled cheeks, you’d sit there and trace your fingers across every single one if he’d let you, you thought.
Finally, you were the one who had all the power and The Doctor had no choice but to accept the punishment you were about to dish out.
“What shall I do with you, you wretched creature?”
You mused, thoroughly enjoying both the contact and the view.
“You could…let me go?” he tried. “We’re great friends, aren’t we? I think we are. So surely, as my friend, you must be privy to second chances? You could forget my transgressions and I could forgive your relentless teasing? Isn’t that a human saying? Forgive and forget? I’m pretty sure it is!”
He prattled on, far more aware of how precarious the new position was- not that he minded, of course.
Tilting your head, you lifted a hand to brush a few stray hairs out of his face. You were becoming braver by the second, adrenaline coursing through your veins.
“You’re rambling, Doctor.” You breathed, your eyes darting down to meet his own.
“Sorry.”
He whispered bashfully.
The light of the new moon finally peeking through the clouds, illuminating his face clearly enough for you to finally notice the red hue dusting his cheeks and ears.
“I do have one or two legitimate questions for you though, and unfortunately for you I’m not getting off of you until I’m satisfied with all of your answers.”
“Can’t you untie me first?” He whined, shuffling around underneath you as he did.
“Well, I won’t- and you aren’t really in any position to make demands right now” you consoled, patting him on the cheek as you did.
Raising a hand to your chin, your thumb pressed thoughtfully against it as you began to organise your questions.
“Firstly, why do you stare at me like that? Like, actually. I am curious to hear your reasoning. It doesn’t weird me out or anything like that, I just want to know” you inquired.
Breaking eye contact, The Doctor tore his gaze away from your face and looked to the stars. Exhaling slowly through his nostrils, he answered,
“I can’t help it.”
You narrowed your eyes at him as you settled yourself more securely on top of him. He’d need to be far more precise if he wanted you off him anytime soon, although you secretly preferred if he kept giving you what you claimed were ‘unsatisfactory’ answers. Unbeknownst to you, he felt the same.
“Not good enough.”
You asserted.
“But that’s all I’ve got!” he moaned pitifully.
“Still not good enough. I know you’ve got more in that massive brain of yours! You’re able to talk yourself out of conflicts literally all the time- so try and talk yourself into freedom”
You insisted. He was going to pour his heart out to you tonight whether he liked it or not. You were going to settle on the former however, as you knew of the raw strength this man possessed, and the fact that he even allowed you to remain atop him was a good indication that he hadn’t minded at all. That he was allowing himself to be held ‘captive’ and ‘interrogated’. Huffing, he finally looked back at you as he continued.
“That’s the thing though, I quite literally cannot help it. It’s as if my body and mind work against my own will once you’ve settled in my sights, if that makes any sense at all. I don’t know!”
You remained silent, urging him to carry on with a subtle, coercive tilt of your head.
“I just- I like looking, I enjoy it. I like looking at you because it’s a lot easier to give into that temptation without any of the guilt or shame of the other thing. Shit”
Narrowing your eyes, you planted both of your hands at the sides of his face as you lowered yourself down.
“What temptations, Doctor? What other thing?” you pressed.
His Adams apple bobbed as he swallowed deeply, eyes squeezing shut tightly, he finally blurted out what you’d been wanting to hear.
“Sometimes I feel tempted to touch you, I don’t know! I thought I was being obvious! It’s not the easiest thing to hide given that when my skin touches your skin there’s this whole thing that happens when the mechanoreceptors in your skin turns the pressure from mine into nerve signals sent to your somatosensory cortex and- “
You cut him off by pressing your lips to his.
It wasn’t hot or needy, and it wasn’t really meant to shut him up. You just wanted to tell him that you understood in the only way that truly felt right. Words would have never been able to sufficiently convey your feelings. With your free hand, you deftly untied the secure knot you had made, freeing his hands.
Almost immediately, The Doctor grabbed you by the hips and rolled you over, planting himself on top of you instead.
Oh- how the tables turn.
By the time the pair of you had finally parted for air, you were both a dishevelled mess. His hair askew, more so than usual, face reddened and his palms sweaty, tie lost somewhere amongst you both. Your hair lay strewn about in every which way, skin buzzing with excitement, shirt completely uprooted from the tussling about.
Reaching up to tug his collar back into place, you slowly trailed your hand to his face, cupping his cheek as you gave him a tender look. His larger hand enveloped yours as he traced a circle into the space between your thumb and index finger, leaning into your palm. You could feel him trembling slightly, was he always this nervous or was it only when it came to you?
“I’ve always wanted to do that,” you admitted, a slight airiness to your tone.
The Doctor looked at you with the reverence of a man before his god then lowered himself until his forehead met yours, nudging your nose softly with his own.
“As have I”
He confessed, rolling over to lay beside you while keeping your hand locked within his own.
You sat in silence for a few minutes, absorbing everything that had happened in the moment’s past. Tearing your gaze away from the stars, you turned your head to look at him, only to catch him already staring at you once again. Breaking into a grin, you tugged your hands upwards, giving him a tender kiss on his knuckles.
“Well, now you can give into temptation all you want, I surely don’t mind” you encouraged quietly, giving your consent.
Grinning even wider than he had been before, he tugged you over, enveloping you in a hug. This planet had long nights and you two would have so much much much more to discuss.
