Work Text:
**
Among the swirls and eddies of their twining timelines, it is sometimes too easy for the Doctor to forget that River Song is not always who he expects her to be. They meet on parametric paths, always somewhere in the middle of linear time, on oblique angles to the straight and narrow. The tide of history inexorably pulls them back to front, but it does so in fits and starts. On the small scale it goes like this: he materializes to the thunder and squall of Stormcage prison; she smirks and snaps her diary shut; they pick an impossible direction and run.
He forgets that there's a reason for her imprisonment. It's always the endings he's running from; he forgets there's also a beginning. So he lands, opens the TARDIS door, and nearly walks right into her before stopping short.
"Hello, sweetie." She smirks, all youth, bravado and challenge, but there is something else he glimpses in her eyes behind that mask, something dangerous in its truth. She dangles a pair of handcuffs in front of his face, and the look is gone.
"River--" he starts, his eyes focusing on the cuffs, but then she moves again, pressing something into his hip, exploding stars across his vision before everything fades to black.
**
He wakes, slow and sluggish, on his back on a firm but forgiving surface. He feels the familiar hum and rumble of the TARDIS around him, the white noise shushing in his ears and the subtle vibrations coming through the contact with his skin. He realizes he's on an old fashioned mattress, the springs supporting his weight and strumming his ship's restless wanderlust through pinprick pressure points on his thighs and bare back and buttocks. He swipes a hand across the expanse around him and discovers two things; the mattress is bare except for a thin fitted sheet that resettles past his fingers with a cool puff of air, and his hand drags a thin chain after it that locks against his movement half-way through its arc, steel clinking and sliding upward against brass, initiating a metal bite on his wrist muted by something soft.
He tries to move his other arm to explore the chain and the bed frame but it locks up almost immediately. He blinks his eyes open in dim light to see its long chain looped and fastened to itself, tightly securing his wrist to the second brass bar in from the support post on the headboard. A beige lamb's wool restraint cushions the bite of steel against bone.
A hand catches his other wrist and he turns toward it, discovering almost immediately that his ankles are similarly secured against the foot of the bed, and all he can really move is his head.
"You . . . you tased me," he says, struggling with the words. River gathers the length of chain and secures it together with a carabiner's clasp, locking his hand in place and immobilizing him.
"Mmm," she answers, sitting back. The silky folds of her loose-fitting black dress brush the inside of his elbow and he shivers. His hearts pound sympathetically against the cage of his chest, and for the first time he wonders how early he is in her timeline.
She reaches for something out of his line of sight and he tenses, but she just brandishes the object with a flourish. "Bored and clever, terrible combination," she says. The object is a palm-sized mishmash of tech, cobbled together from what looks like sheet metal screws, a P.A. speaker and part of a telephone. "I tapped it into the electric grid for the cell forcefield barriers. Worked better than I'd hoped. Of course now"--she lays the contacts on his chest and he suppresses a yelp, but it just gives off a vibration and a tiny itch of current--"it's nearly out of juice. I thought I could find a replacement somewhere in the TARDIS, but she's locked most of the interesting doors."
"Dependable old Sexy," he mutters, studying River's face as he pulls against the restraints.
She smiles and raises an eyebrow. "Then again, your medical bay is positively primitive. Sweetie, do you even know what kind of equipment she stores in those cabinets?"
He sucks in a breath and freezes as with a rustle of plastic, something cold and thin teases its way up his inner thigh and runs across his flaccid cock. The blunt tip tickles a twitch of sensation through his groin, and River's eyes flick downward. Then the contact is gone and she's waving something encased in a sterile plastic cover in front of his eyes. It's the size of a hemostat; a ten-inch tapered steel rod. A medical sound. The rod curves upward two inches from the end, like a beckoning finger, tipped in a slightly rounded ball bearing. River twirls it through her fingers and, through the plastic cover, studies the words stamped in the wide, flat tip on the back end.
"Van Buren, fifteen millimeters," she reads, and leans over him. "I think you can take it."
He tries to keep calm but he can't stop the panic shorting his breath. He can feel his pupils dilating from the adrenal reaction he hasn't managed to suppress. He doesn't understand what's going on; he can't read her face and she's not giving him anything to go on. The room is huge and cold and he feels completely exposed. "Is this s-supposed to to be a turn-on?" he asks.
"Not yet." The bed creaks as she repositions herself.
"River--"
"Shush." She puts a finger to his lips and trails it down his chest. "Or do I have to gag you?"
His eyes widen and he shuts up. She retreats and he stares up at the ceiling, letting the dim, far away lights take their time burning negative echoes into his vision. Then he closes his eyes and breathes sharply through his nose as he hears River snap on a pair of surgical gloves and prepare the old fashioned sound for insertion. She doesn't have to worry about his cock hardening before she gets started; there's nothing arousing about any of this. Right now he's still in the pure terror stage. He curls his hands into fists in the cuffs, and flinches as he feels her stand his cock upright. Cold wetness works its weight into its tip. He lets out a short gasp and he feels the strangest urge to piss as the sound slips in.
One false move, one hitch or push or twitch of her fingers, will send him into gagging pain and they both know it.
"You'd better relax," she says, coyly ignoring his silent panic, and then her voice hardens. "Or don't you trust me?"
And that's it, isn't it? That's the bit he's missing. Something coiled inside him releases itself, and he sighs and goes slack against the restraints, letting his head fall to the side and baring his neck in front of her. She nips at his ear and then turns her attention southward again.
"More, I think," she says. The sound slips smoothly through his flaccid length, the tip exciting the inside of his cock like a reverse ejaculation, pressure on the edge of pain, his confused nerves trying to disentangle the pleasure of release with the inexorable feeling of hardness filling him up from the outside in. The curved tip sinks slowly and nudges against a hard bundle of something in his groin, sending a shock of sensation jolting tightness through everything from his arse to his balls. He groans, pulling against the wrist restraints and feeling his toes curling. His bladder feels ready to burst.
"No," he whispers, staring at her impassive face. "No, please, I--"
"Nearly there," River says, and the sound is suddenly pushing through the sphincter opening and releasing a rush of wetness down and out around the obstruction. It's intimate and humiliating, and he's done much worse in his lifetimes and had much worse done to him, and it shouldn't bother him. It shouldn't. It shouldn't make him feel . . .
He closes his eyes again.
River straightens his cock out, sending the tapered end inside him brushing up against his swollen prostate and he whimpers and cries out, feeling a rush of pre-come follow the contents of his bladder, seeping out of him around the rod filling his opening. She cups his balls and flicks her wrist, sending the sound's tip brushing against sensitive nerves again and he feels his cock harden and grow, clenching around the obstruction and sending spasms of warmth, pleasure and pain across his groin.
She releases him and squeezes his thighs. There is no muscle he can contract in response, gravity forcing the sound moving again inside him. "River!" he gasps before he can stop himself, tugging hard against the restraints trying to reach his throbbing cock. A tongue flicks across the skin at its base as she tastes him. He struggles and bites back a cry, feeling hot tears leak out past his tightly shut eyes. He doesn't know if he wants her to stop or keep going; he can't tell if more will lead to pleasure or pain.
"Open your eyes," River says, cupping the base of his cock again and sliding the other hand up his chest to his cheek.
He obeys, staring up at her, uncomprehending of anything beyond the strange ecstasy coiling into his groin. She moves her hand from his cheek and waves something in front of him . . . a hand-held blur that it takes him a moment to place. When he recognizes it, his stomach clenches in involuntary response, shuddering tight pressure on the brink of pain through his insides.
"I can't!" he cries, but she just releases his cock and pushes her hand down on his chest. Starbursts streak his vision as the sound settles again but she won't let him look away.
"Yes you can," she commands. "Watch."
It's all he can do for her: watch as she takes the taser's contacts and brings them to the metal end of the sound filling his rigid cock. Breathless and panting, he can see it coming, but nothing prepares him for the feel of it, vibration surging through into the deepest part of him, the tiny itching jolt of before lighting up all of his nerves at once. He clenches everything, throws his head back and screams in release. Wrists biting into the cuffs despite the wool, he spasms against the rigid sound and feels wetness leaking out past it again.
It takes him an endless second to realize the contacts are gone, and he falls back onto the mattress, shuddering as River holds his aching cock. Dizzy, he turns his head away from her, unable to stop the sob that works its way up out of him.
"Please--" he begs, but River just tightens her grip.
"More," she says, and touches the contacts again.
**
He never really passes out, but by the time he's soft enough to disgorge the sound, he's too numb to feel it. River works it out, slowly and clinically, without a word, and he's too spent to do anything but shudder. The sheet is soaked through with sweat and piss, sticky with come and lube, and he doesn't care. She releases the carabiner clips and his hands fall limply down. She releases his ankles and rolls him to one side, away from the mess.
He dreams about her soft lips brushing his hair, whispering words at his ear that he can't place.
When he wakes, the room is dark and cold, and his sonic is on the nightstand within his reach. He releases himself, clumsily pulls on his trousers and stumbles out into the corridor, his muscles trembling, his groin aching and sore. He searches, calling for her, but he doesn't find River until he reaches the console room and finds the TARDIS outer door open. "River, are you all right--?" he starts, but stops when he reaches the door.
She's on the bunk in the corner of her cell, knees pulled to her chest, her eyes rimmed red and her jaw set against the scream of despair she's trying to contain.
"Go," she tells him.
"Oh, River." He tries to move toward her and sags against the door. "Where are we?"
She curls up tighter into the corner, the rain beating a rush of static against the wall at her back. "Just go."
**
It's another week before he collects his strength to visit her again. He opens the TARDIS warily this time, but on the first step out he finds his ears ringing as he's thrown back against the cell wall and held there by strong hands. She has one at his throat and another slams his arm into the dull gray concrete when he tries to placate her.
"I hate you," she snarls at him. "Let me go."
He coughs against her hold, trying to focus on her face. "River--" he tries to say, I'm not the one choking the life out of their well-meaning visitor, but he can't get the words out and she doesn't relinquish her grip.
When his respiratory bypass kicks in and his vision clears, he looks into her eyes. He doesn't know what he was expecting--rage, cold fury, or the mark of the weapon he knows lurks in his future--but not this. Not trapped, animal terror. She blinks, as if coming back to herself. Her grip relaxes almost imperceptibly and suddenly she's looking at him like he should save her or kill her. She's looking at him like she can't tell the difference.
"It's not me, in here," she says. "You said . . ." Her grip tightens and her eyes harden again. "I need to get out. I can't do this."
Oh, those timelines. Always spinning left when he expects right. "You made a promise," he chokes out, and that's still all he knows about it.
"Three days is as far as promises get you!" She hurls him aside to land heavily on his hands and knees. "There's nowhere to run if you don't come back, and look at you! You don't even know who I am, do you? Well I'm learning, too. I've had three days to think about it, and Time can rot for all I care! I've done enough and I can't. Do. This."
He puts a hand out against the wall to steady himself and stands. His groin aches with the movement; he's still not fully recovered. The TARDIS door is open and inviting behind him but River makes no move toward it. With a start, he realizes that whatever her oath is, she's still trying to honor it.
"Yes you can," he says. "You will. River, I--"
"Rule number one!" she shouts. She backs away, pacing around him, and he has never seen her this fractured, this dangerous. "No power, no control, no guarantees, and you want me to trust you!" she growls. "Do you have any idea what that feels like?"
He straightens, and meets her eyes. "Yes, I do," he says quietly.
She takes a step toward him. He lets go of his panic, reminding himself that no matter when or where the timelines twirl, she is still River Song. He loves her, whenever, wherever, whoever she is. He understands that now. He feels the trembling terror in the fingertips gripping his biceps and he realizes she's only now understanding the consequences of loving him.
"Prove it," she tells him. Then her voice wavers, and she sounds impossibly young. "Prove it, sweetie, and I'll stay."
**