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There had been a certain inevitability to things, in the Doctor’s eyes, since that first hint of Rory's attraction. At least for him there had been; his certainty of the path was borne out of the fact that he had chosen it would come to this and decided to create that path. He had led Rory here, pulling him in the wake of his own desires. He had persuaded even where Rory didn't know he was being persuaded, seduced him almost invisibly and watched the human fall little by little under his spell. Intoxicated by Rory's lust for him, he had pressed on, practising wiles and techniques he thought he had long forgotten, many of them birthed out of his own cultural heritage and tradition. There was an almost-pang of guilt when he thought of this, of Rory's ignorance of the courtship and the games that were played in his homeland - but he comforted himself with physics. Matter cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed; he had simply taken Rory's hidden desire and channeled it.
The first captured scent of Rory’s attraction to him was still a sweet memory. It was the marker which anchored the timeline twisting them together into this precise moment. If he wished to – and he often did - he could pattern his brainwaves to evoke that precise scent once again, also replicating own his response to it over and over if he wished. But however faithful his memory was in evoking the physical reactions of brain, nerves and body; nothing could quite match the reality of a true moment in time. Time tasted as it tasted; electric, smoky, black and acrid yet golden-sweet somehow, and that flavour was lost in recreating the memory. Still.
The hard and reassuring feel of the Tardis floor had been pressed against his knees and shins, wiring from the time rotor spiralling crazily out and wrapping around his wrists as he knelt in the depths of his ship making repairs. That it was Rory approaching was obvious to him. His footsteps down the stars were heavier, slightly flatter footed than Amy’s, the rubber of his trainers thudded against the floor as he neared, a soft vibration coming up through the floor and into the Doctor’s knees. He had begun to turn, swivelling to see what the human wanted, wrists still wrapped into the insides of his ship when had been hit suddenly and unmistakably with the scent of attraction rolling in from Rory’s skin towards him. He’d double checked himself, turning back momentarily to mumble vague noises into the wiring, inhaling strongly and discretely, testing the air with the tip of his tongue. But no, this wasn’t the smell of Amy’s body all over Rory – a smell long familiar to him. Nor was the smell of Rory’s unsated lust for his wife thrumming under the human’s skin. No, the subtle difference between that scent and this, once both were tasted, was both obvious and unique.
This was all for him, and as he played for time untangling his hands from the wires he could sense enough in the pheromones spilling through the air, enough confusion in the heady concoction rolling towards him, to ascertain that this was very new for Rory. Fear, anxiety and a slight hint of shame clouded in layers over a fresh new lust, frightening in its vividness.
He had been taken by surprise by that vivid clarity, and had closed his eyes for a moment, veiling his mind in blackness, swallowing, and letting the scent work its way across him leaving colours behind as it went. This lust was not pink or soft at the edges, nor even the red fire of banked coals and licking flames – instead it was the viridian of a brand new shoot that breaks from the soil and reaches aching for the sun, all its sap rising and yearning for the light. It had intrigued him.
At the time he’d also watched with a growing interest his own reaction to this revelation, to this clarity and colour bursting across him. His hearts first surged, and then settled into a brisker pace, a flush spread warm across the cool of his chest, his wrists became sensitised to the rough scrape of his tweed jacket.
Turning away at last from the circuits in front of him, letting the wires sink to the floor, he’d watched the human closely as they spoke. Minute physical tells in Rory’s face, micro-expressions that would only go subconsciously noticed by humans confirmed the story that the chemicals from his body were singing out into the close air under the platform. He let his eyes drink in the tells, the scent, the colour playing over his mind and he had felt drunk on it.
So had begun a courtship that Rory didn’t know of - at least not consciously. On some level he knew, deep down - he must have done. How could he have not?
He told himself that warmed by Rory’s attraction it had started out initially as a bid for friendship, a tentative reaching out in solidarity to someone of the same gender if not the same species. He’d stopped ignoring the human, started to communicate with him more, made his manner open and easy. He’d encouraged Rory down underneath the platform, and swaying gently in his repair swing he had made half hearted repairs and chattered to the human sitting on the step with his head leaning against a pillar. The blue light had cast shadows that shifted over Rory’s face whenever he moved slightly, outlining his cheekbones, his brow.
He spoke to Rory of random things, things that were of no consequence or meaning - his life in the past, dying stars, planets and places that he knew, all while the human listened wide eyed. It was a nonsense and not the point. All the time – and he told himself that at first he wasn’t doing it deliberately – he dropped in trigger words, built associations patterned by his intonation, teased at Rory’s emotions with his tone, influenced the human’s perceptions and thoughts warmly towards himself. He used the simple fact that when he spoke, this incarnations voice caused stirrings of heat inside Rory, the faintest whiff of arousal on the air. He marked the tone and pitch Rory liked best and used it often.
He couldn’t lie to himself for long that he wasn’t doing it deliberately, or that it was merely a bid for friendship, so then he began to do it intentionally. He told himself it was an experiment, an exercise to test himself in his subtle skills. Quietly he built a relationship; he built trust with the meanings hidden behind the words that he spoke, with the quiet song that he sung behind his tone and his language. He watched Rory’s attraction grow, hanging itself around those words and those stories, with his flesh and deeper mind beginning to respond in ways that he wasn’t yet aware of.
After his voice it was only natural to use his body. He began to mirror Rory slightly when they were around each other. Small things, movements, steps, reachings out. Expressions. He sent out the traditional human signals of attraction, played with his hair, touched his neck, unbuttoned the top two buttons of his shirt – all of it done so subtly that it didn’t stir the calm surface of Rory’s consciousness. He sent out the traditional Gallifreyan signals of attraction too, nuanced tilts of his head, ritualised gestures with his hands, patterns of gazing at and away. He was fascinated to observe that they worked dramatically on humans. He breathed deeply and altered the chemistry of his body, sending out the pheremones that signalled attraction, lust, want in his own culture. They were as different to the human’s scent as were his own gestures and language of attraction – but again, he was fascinated to observe how strongly the human reacted to the chemical changes and subtle signals of a Timelord body.
He was a study, a project, an experiment that the Doctor bent his will to with all the single-mindedness he would for understanding the physics of a collapsing black hole, the intricacies of alien cultures, the mapping of the shape of the Universe. He was fascinated with the place where, for humans, their internal forces met and meshed with external forces. How far could he push, how far could he entice-encourage-seduce before the human reached his own boundaries and snapped back to what was, likely, a mere misplaced lust (humans were ridiculous sometimes, so bound to their innate desires, victims to their own brain chemistry and the primal urge to procreate). It could all be undone as easily as it was done, and no harm inflicted. He just needed proof, confirmation that this grand experiment was working
So all the time, as he worked away on Rory’s deeper levels, he watched and he had waited for an excuse to touch the human, skin to skin, for more than a couple of seconds. A couple of seconds and the endless (for him) space in-between them was all he needed to survey his work and then unravel it. No harm done.
When his chance came, he hadn’t wasted it. It was one late-evening-morning-afternoon - who knew, only it wasn’t night time because Rory was once again sat there on the steps, blue shadows rippling over his face, leaning his head to the pillar while the Doctor told him some random story. He’d pushed the sonic deliberately out of reach with his toes, rolled up his shirtsleeves and then tangled one arm into the wiring and asked Rory to please pass him the sonic.
While not quite as elaborate as a theatre set piece, he was at least a talented actor by now - the long years of being and pretending to be other than himself had seen to that. As Rory passed him the screwdriver, he had reached for it, stretching fingers into the air and leaning out from the swing, grasping at nothingness and then pretending to overbalance forwards. He had gripped at the human’s wrist as if to brace himself, his fingers closing around the shifting tendon and bones - Rory’s skin hot under his cool fingers - and the human’s hand had gone automatically to his bare elbow to stop him from over balancing. In the five seconds or so that he pretended to regain his equilibrium, he had pushed his mind past the edges of his own skin and down through Rory’s. Carefully, gently so as to go undetected - but oh so quickly now he had the chance - he had skimmed the calm surface of the human’s mind, then allowed himself to sink a little deeper.
Oh, and how he had done his work well. Down under the surface, where the subconscious bubbled darkly, sending stirrings and currents up onto the serene surface of the conscious was where all the groundwork was laid; and he could see it all spread out before him and it was astonishing. He was impressed and also slightly shocked with his own work, and the way it had settled – roots twisting deeply down grabbing and clutching – into Rory’s own natural attraction to him. Shadows of Rory’s lust that he was trying to push down and deny himself were being forced into the blazing light of his waking mind by the intricate structure the Timelord had laid down. A structure that was beautiful in its complexity and in its strength, composed of triggers, of words, the movements, the sensory input the human had received, the way his psychology and then his brain chemistry had adapted and shaped itself around it.
A scorching need and a want, so close to the surface now, so close to shattering the glass of Rory’s awareness. Dangerously close. The human under a spell, he couldn’t see, couldn’t even suspect – hints of adoration, worship, passion, captivation, enchantment, and want want want pressed just under the surface….
The Doctor felt awed. Humbled. Stunned by the efficiency of his own work. Staggered at his own genius. Saddened to unravel it. Though he was still firmly entrenched in Rory’s mind (and all of this had taken only 1.5 seconds, he still had time and plenty of it), he could feel the feedback of the human’s hidden adoration beginning to bleed back through into his own mind. It touched and pressed against his own psychology, his own deep seated longings and insecurities. Warmth and devotion spiralled into countless memories of lonely cold nights out there in the black with no one- nothing – to wrap itself around him and buffer him from the huge endlessness of life out there. The image of Rory’s eyes looking up at him, burning, trusting, helpless with wanting spun itself out along one possible timeline.
He was lost. Helplessly pulled along and downwards into the deep sensation of being wanted...adored. It was all he had ever wanted, to be loved to be needed, to fill the aching spaces inside him; and it was so close to his grasp, it was within his power to have it as his own. But not this way. Not like this.
He had sighed sadly inwardly, and then reached to undo everything he had done, feeling the burn of tears at the back of his eyes even as he did so. But his mind betrayed him. Where the sensation of Rory’s feelings had entered into him was now a sticky web that clutched at him, firing off responses in his own nerves, in his body’s chemistry, in his psychology. Panicked and confused, he had pulled himself free and had reached back into Rory along the silk thin filaments that were connecting them. But he had found his abilities quashed there as well. The feedback between them resonated back and forth, numbing his mind, and he could feel threads rooting themselves deep down in Rory and deep down in him.
Shocked and frightened that he would fall further and further and lose his mind in Rory’s and Rory inside his, he had pulled back suddenly and sharply with his mind and his, breaking the connection between their skin and their minds. All of this had happened in under four seconds.
“Doctor? Doctor? What’s wrong,” Rory had asked him, standing there, holding out the sonic, concern etched across his face. The human was still not yet quite aware of the deep seated longing that had entrenched itself deep inside him, of everything the Doctor had seen and done that rested so close to the surface now. But...but eventually it would break through, eventually it would rise and reach out for him, he knew that.
The Doctor’s hearts had thudded fast in his chest as he reached out gingerly to take the sonic, not quite meeting Rory’s eyes.
“Nothing, Rory...just...nothing.”
He had turned back to his wiring, Rory’s presence there radiating towards him like a blast furnace, ready to scorch him open, ready to split him wide and spill out everything he had ever wanted into the space around them. His mind had raced, checking itself, checking himself, seeing where the feedback loop between them had made subtle changes in him.
In his head he had watched as golden timelines shifted and changed, swirling and wrapping themselves around him and the human’s figure next to him, like eddies in a crashing river.