Yowzah Oneshot Collection (2)

69(M)

                  Algolagnia (n.)

                       leiascully

"Come along, Doctor," River says, imperious as a queen. She's twenty-one today, halfway through her archaeology program. She's always been too clever by half; there's the influence of the Time Vortex, he thinks, half-proudly. She represents their people proudly. He's fairly certain the other students in her class must loathe that about her for that and the swaggering grace with which she walks, dead certain that she's the most dangerous thing in any room. He couldn't save her all the pain and difficulty of her childhood, the training and conditioning they put her through, but she's made an amazing recovery. She hasn't given him that look like she wants to kill him in three or four years now. She may still be a weapon, but she wields herself now, and usually for the side he's on, which is frankly a relief.

"Where are we going?" he asks, closing the door of the TARDIS.

"Wherever I want," she says, maddeningly. "It's my birthday. Today, I have officially attained my majority on every world where humans exist, and that includes the stupid ones where I ought to have been adult for three years now, and I'm going to do what I like."

"On my planet, you'd be barely out of diapers," he mutters.

She pats his arm. "Yes, but you're ancient." She looks him up and down in a appraising, approving gesture he knows well. "Extremely well-preserved, but ancient."

It is completely mind-bogglingly difficult to be around her today. River Song: newly minted, positively exhaling pheromones and sensual appeal, lean and sleek and confident in her short blue dress that shows more of her cleavage and her legs than he can help himself looking at. Pythia knows it took her long enough to accustom him to the idea that it was all right, even encouraged, for a Time Lord to give in to the pleasures of sex, after the long lonely years and the curse and all. At any moment he expects her to cup her hand around his head and drag his mouth down to hers, for her fingers to fumble apart the knot of his bowtie. But he promised Amy and Rory that he'd keep her safe, and that means from his own influence as well, at this point.

It's completely different when she's a child; he sees her differently, the few moments he's spent around the girl River instead of the adult, especially since those were all pain and fear and panic and wide eyes and rescue missions and misplaced anger. She reminds him of her mother at that age, little Amelia who grew up to flirt with him too, but who trusted him enough then to put her tiny hand in his and walk out into the wide universe. He doesn't have to remind himself then not to let slip anything about their future to River-the-child, because it's as if she's a completely different person from the River he fell in love with. He's never once this early in her timeline been attracted to her, but today she walks down the street as if every person they pass wants her, and from the looks of the faces on them, she isn't wrong. Today, she's transformed.

"So what have you got for me?" she asks, taking his hand and dragging him down an alleyway. "I know you didn't come without a present. You never miss my birthday, not since I was small."

"And I never will," he promises. It's a promise that's easy to make, when he knows he'll have already kept it.

He's glad he met River when she was older, wiser, enough of life behind her to understand their situation even when he didn't. The last time he saw her was a few months from now in her timeline. He wonders now if that was the last time, their first time.

"Out with it, then," she says, sidling backwards somehow, though he would have thought it improbable at best in the shoes she's wearing, high strappy sandals that make her hips sway when she walks.