Yowzah Oneshot Collection (1)

37(G)7

                       CHAPTER - 7

the secret language of eyebrows

She’s always prided herself on her ability to read people. It’s a necessary skill really, especially when you spend your childhood running from monsters – the ability to know who to trust and who not to trust. Not that it’d helped her much in the end, but still. It was a skill she’d honed over the centuries.

But this man – Basil – she couldn’t quite put her finger on what was going on behind that lined face – he’s all sharp nose and more eyebrows than ought to be decent. The Doctor would love that, she thinks, he hearts twinging. He’d be so jealous, bless.

She can’t read him, though, this grumpy old scot with his prickly personality and his predilection for cursing. It bothers her entirely, throughout their time together. At times he seems offended, other times sad, but he’s always always looking at her with warmth, always laughing with her or trying to make her laugh and it’s oddly incongruous.

He’s funny, she’ll admit it. He’s clever and a pain in the arse and useful, even though she wishes he wasn’t. A surgeon – a brilliant one, apparently. But his tone underlying his words is always something different from the look on his face, which never seems to match up to the expression in his eyes – she hasn’t a clue what to make of him, and it annoys her more than it ought to.

So naturally, she pokes at him. Pushes at him, teases him, mothers him and snipes at him for reasons she can’t quite understand. Except that she can’t read him and it drives her sodding mad.

“River,” he says her name the same way every time – long and drawn out like his tongue can’t quite let the last syllable go. She’s not paying attention to his mouth though, or his eyes or even the expression on his face. His body language is meaningless, but she stares at him as she notices – the quirk of his left eyebrow as his voice rolls over her name. “River!” There it is again, and she smiles, reminded suddenly of translating alien languages in dusty caves in her youth. Sometimes the smallest things lead to breakthroughs.

“I heard you,” she speaks absentmindedly, and he nods at the console in front of them, before looking to her, brows lifted in question. More than question though, she thinks as she focusses on the panel in front of them, it looks oddly like hope on his face. Not on his face exactly – in the eyebrows.

He grins at her then, one brow lifted just a touch higher – pride. Which is odd because he doesn’t even know her – why would he be proud? But she takes notice – thinking she’s got it now. He’s an enigma, wrapped in a grumpy old Scottish man, but she thinks she’s on to him. It’s all in the eyebrows, really.

So she pays attention. To how those brows drop in to a natural frown when he speaks to almost anyone else. To how those brows lift and soften when he looks at her – except when she’s kissing someone, and then that furrowed brow is turned on her, but it’s still softer somehow. Not a glare, just utter confusion, written across his brow like a neon sign.

A slight twitch and the confusion looks a lot like disappointment, and she doesn’t understand it at all. Even if she does feel utterly chastised when she catches the expression on his face. Like she’s done something wrong, and she doesn’t understand why on Earth she would feel that way. Hollow, and guilty – when she’s done nothing wrong.

Sometimes when he speaks to her – about her diary, about the Doctor – she can read the sympathy in the furrow of his brows and she feels oddly comforted by it, compelled to speak more. Something about his face – how he looks at her, how his hand hovers over the small of her back, how he touches her – something about him makes her trust him.

And she’s not quite sure she could name a reason why, other than the fact that she likes the line of his brow when he looks at her, his face open and relaxed. It’s not until he says those words – hello sweetie – that she understands.

He can’t be here, not with this face, but he is. “No, I know all his faces, yours isn’t one,” she protests, unwilling to believe.

“New set,” he shrugs, his brows lifting just a degree – he wants to impress her – and her eyes search his face intently, as if she can see beyond the lines, and the rumpled grey hair and the nose (her father would have loved it, frankly), blue eyes again and she gasps. It’s not that she can see him there – in his face, but she suddenly feels everything slide in to place and click. How he looks at her is what is familiar – like slipping in to a warm bath, it soothes her to see the pure affection there – written not in the warmth of his eyes, but in the lift of his brow as he stands in front of her nervously.

And oh she wants to be mad – he’s never told her – but she knows it’s because his very existence is a spoiler. She wants to be relieved, because now – a whole new set – this means she’ll never have to watch him die. And with both of them on their last lives, it’s sadly a thought she’s been plagued by more often than not.  But all she can be is simply flabbergasted by her own blindness, because of course it’s him. She swallows, trying to think of something to say as he stands there, eyebrows all expectant and nervous and in love as he looks at her.

“Basil?” Is what finally pops out of her mouth, and he grins in surprise, before he barks out a laugh, followed by another until she is laughing with him, her cheeks straining from her smile.

“If I’d said John Smith you’d have known right away,” he finally offers, his eyes searching her face as she frowns. He reaches up quickly, smoothing her brow, erasing the lines as he looks at her, eyes soft and brows lifted just a touch. “I’m sorry,” he apologises quickly – so quickly she knows instantly by the tick of his brow that he doesn’t mean it. He’s not sorry at all. “I just wanted to see you, without me, for once.”

“And what did you think?” She asks him seriously, her hearts beating sharply against her ribcage as his face relaxes, but his eyebrows don’t – constantly enamoured they are, lifting and arching as he looks at her with a grin.

“You’re infuriating and mad and a bloody pain in my arse,” he growls, not meaning a bit of it – she can tell. “And fucking brilliant beyond all words – my River. Utterly amazing.”

“So the usual then?” She is smug, and he laughs at her, leaning in until his nose brushes against hers gently, his hands never leaving her face.

He pulls back then, just enough to let her look at him and see the faint grin on his lips and the familiar light in his eyes. But she’s never seen that expression on his brow, the way they pull together, sincerity – a study in eyebrows. “The absolute usual, I adore you, love.”

She beams in response, wriggling a hand between them so she can stroke one finger over the line of his brow as she gazes up at him. “I like the eyebrows,” she offers ins a soft voice and he preens a bit – and she can she echoes of his old selves there for a moment, like an afterimage.

“Do you now? Not too aggressive?”

“Not toward me,” she speaks softly and he leans down, his mouth hovering over hers as he chuckles once more.

“No, I expect not.”