embracing moments that seem to be still
jammiedaleks
River was just about to lose herself in the plot of a good book when a loud thwack snaps her out of reverie. Alert, her eyes scan the TARDIS library for signs of danger, but see nothing unusual between the giant columns of haphazardly stacked books. Resting her book and forearm on the plush sofa arm, she resumes reading.
“No no no no NO, you can’t do that!” A yell of frustration emanates from the direction of the paperback fiction piles, followed by several more thwacks of paper versus floor.
River delicately flips a page, paying the commotion no heed.
The lamp beside River’s sofa begins to rattle slightly as loud footsteps approach. Looking up, she catches a glimpse of a thunderous expression as the Doctor marches past her and out into the hallway. River merely smiles and lowers her gaze back to the page.
“I give it fourteen seconds,” she says aloud to the empty room. The screen on a metallic sphere floating by River’s head flickers to life and starts a stopwatch.
She manages to get two more sentences read before he re-enters the room as dramatically as he left it.
The Doctor makes a beeline for River upon spotting her. He flings himself onto the sofa, head hanging over the back as he sighs gustily. The sphere beeps twice, flashing 00:00:13.48 rather gleefully. Fiddling with the hem of his brown tweed jacket, he raises his head to look over at River.
She pays him no attention.
He shuffles ever so slightly closer to her side.
Still no response.
He continues to inch his way closer until they are barely millimetres apart. Anxiousness radiates off of him as he waits to be noticed. He sighs again, louder this time, and his foot taps out an impatient rhythm on the floor. Finally, River relents.
Without looking over at him, she asks casually, “Something the matter, my love?”
Instantly the Doctor leans into her and buries his face into her shoulder.
“How could she do that to her main character, River, it’s just cruel! Hundreds of pages worth of struggle and growth, only to snuff it in a car accident on the last page? Who does that?”
River pats his arm sympathetically. “Was it Jodi Picoult?”
He hums a mournful sound of affirmation, and shifts slightly so that he can press his nose against her neck for comfort. He breathes deeply, and River’s skin tingles delightfully in response. She runs her hand down his sleeve to brush against the back of his hand, but pauses as a thought suddenly occurs to her.
“I thought you didn’t read the endings?”
The Doctor grumpily sits up and jams his hands in his jacket pockets. He fishes out a severely crumpled piece of paper and drops it into her lap. River carefully balances her book on the armrest and picks up the balled up paper. She unfolds the page and read its contents, valiantly trying to keep the laughter out of her voice.
“’Win a fabulous family holiday to Utah’,” she reads, and beside her the Doctor scowls. “’Enter a competition to win an exciting trip to the setting of best-selling novel Hold Your Breath, complete with five nights at a luxurious hotel and a guided tour of the Kennecott Copper Mine.’ I have warned you, ripping out the literal last page of a book doesn’t guarantee you’ve removed the last page of the story. It’s a lucrative spot for advertisers.”
But the Doctor had stopped listening past River reading out the prize details, and was now muttering under his breath about malevolent sentient bacteria that target writer’s coffee mugs, brainwashing them to write shoddy endings to promising storylines.
“Why don’t we go somewhere to take your mind off it?” River suggests, tucking the page into her book.
The Doctor perks up at the suggestion. “I like the sound of that. Did you have anywhere in mind?”
“I thought maybe Salt Lake City. Heard they do a wonderful car crash – I mean car show!”
The Doctor frowns, annoyed. “River, this is no joking matter! Here I am, utterly distraught about something, and you can’t even take it seriously for five minutes?” At the sound of his raised voice, the sphere swoops toward the Doctor. He jerks back in surprise.
“River, what is it doing? Why is it attacking me?” The sphere makes another dive at him, and he throws himself flat on the sofa. His eyes widen as the sphere hurtles past his face, just about missing his nose. River whistles, and the sphere instantly halts, hanging motionlessly in the air.
“I wanted to test some programming on it. Right now it responds to what it perceives as threats to me, and encourages the opposing individual to…rethink their position. I was going to take it for a test run later on some Graske smugglers, but I think it’s proved its success, don’t you?” She whistles again, and the sphere zooms back to her side.
“Who’s a good sphere?” she croons at it. The Doctor crosses his arms petulantly and stares at the ceiling.
“Can’t you take up a hobby that doesn’t revolve around dangerous situations? I mean this,” he gestures towards the sphere, “is a shade better than stunt diving into the TARDIS, but have you ever considered, I don’t know, bee-keeping?”
“I wouldn’t be so dismissive of this particular hobby,” River says in a sing song voice. “You never know, my homemade weapons may prove useful one day.”
She smiles at him, one word written across her face but left unspoken. He can’t help but smile back.
River looks at him still lying down, both legs awkwardly twisted so they were dangling off the sofa. “You can get up now, I’ve called him off.”
“I’m perfectly comfortable as I am, as it happens.”
“You’re going to lose blood flow to at least one of your legs. Do you really want to become regeneration number peg leg?”
“Fine,” he huffs, and swings his legs onto her lap. She stares at him reprovingly.
“That’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
His chin juts out defiantly. “What are you going to do about it?”
Her eyes narrow, giving him a look both playful and dangerous. His hearts skitter in excitement. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”
“Well, I’d say I’m more than a match for your little disco ball, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
The corners of her lips curl slightly. “Oh, I don’t need backup.”
Before he can blink, River is out from under his legs and lying sandwiched between him and the sofa's back cushions. He shifts onto his side to give her more space, and grins at her. She returns the grin as she reaches out with a daintily pointed finger, and firmly prods his shoulder. With a yelp of surprise and futile milling of limbs, the Doctor overbalances and crashes to the floor. River stretches out triumphantly on her conquered territory.
“Remind me never to seek comfort from you in the future,” he says sulkily. “Or the past. What happened to ‘to love and to cherish’, eh?”
River peers over the edge of the couch and snorts. “I never said that.”
“I beg to differ.” He feels his shoulder and makes a great show of wincing. “Probably going to leave a bruise.”
She tilts her head and pouts in mock sympathy. “Poor dear. Want me to kiss it better?”
In one swift movement, the Doctor lunges up, grabs her wrist and pulls her down to fall on top of him. “If you wouldn’t mind.”
River chuckles throatily, and leans down to capture his mouth in a gentle apologetic kiss. Eyes closing, he threads his fingers into the soft curls of her hair and returns the kiss eagerly.
Suddenly he feels a sharp pain in his ankle, and his eyes fly back open. Breaking the kiss to look down, he spots the sphere hovering near his feet. It trills at him angrily.
“Nothing but abuse today,” he says irritably, and pulls out his screwdriver.
“Don’t use that,” River warns.
“Why not?”
“For one thing, you seem to use it as a magic wand. It doesn’t have an app for everything, you know!”
He ignores her and beams a signal at the sphere, which drops to the floor with a thud. Letting out a gleeful laugh, he glances up at River to see her looking sideways guiltily.
“What?”
“For another thing, I may have programmed it to be able to combat most types of hacking.”
“What.”
River scrambles off him and hurriedly picks up the sphere. The screen flashes a countdown at her. “It’s restarting now. We have about thirty seconds before it goes for round three.”
“Can’t you turn it off?”
She whistles at it hopefully. The countdown increases in speed.
“Not without the controller.”
“And where’s the controller?”
“Haven’t gotten around to making it yet.”
“Ah.” He sits up and gestures for the sphere. River tosses it over to him, and he shoves it under a sofa cushion. He grins at her. “Fancy a game of hide and seek?”
She grabs his hand and together they pelt away from the ominous beeping coming from under the cushion