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Of the many fights they’d had over the course of their lives, this had by far been among the stupidest. Well - not quite as stupid as that incident with the otters, but it was certainly up there.
River cursed under her breath as she tripped on the path winding up to their cottage, only just managing to stay upright long enough to reach the front step. She stung all over as she stood uselessly at the door, still in her dinner dress that was now torn half to shreds and spattered with blood, flipping her key over in her palm.
The lights were on inside, warm and inviting. So her husband was still home, exactly where she’d left him hours ago. Her head was already starting to thump and she imagined curling up in their bed, her feet tucked between his, feeling his chest rise and fall against her back. She just had to get over her pride enough to make it through the door first.
It all started when she had sweet-talked the Doctor into a trip to the casino after dessert, arguing her case that she should at least be entitled to making some of her hard-earned cash back after he’d nicked the Halassi Androvar and the reward money while she was knocked out, the cheeky sod. Romantic as it was that he’d used it to basically custom-order the date of her dreams, even the fanciest restaurant in the galaxy couldn’t buy her that gorgeous Arcadium-gilded set of archaeology tools she’d had her eye on for weeks.
Unfortunately, down at the casino she had been spotted by a few old… friends of hers. Well. Friends probably wasn’t the right word, judging by the fact that the last time she’d laid eyes on this very band of thugs there were about five times as many of them before she’d arrived with grenades and her crossbow to take out the stragglers.
In her defence, the bastards had just declared war on an ancient and completely innocent civilisation with plans to use a particularly unpleasant form of chemical warfare, so she had no qualms about blowing them to bits. On a not completely unrelated note, she’d been working on her professorship at the time and the innocent civilisation in question would go on to create the artefacts she had based much of her main thesis on. If saving them by committing a teeny-tiny genocide happened to benefit her, well, then why not?
The Doctor hadn’t strictly approved when she’d explained all of this, of course. He’d approved even less when the survivors laid eyes on her and she’d wasted no time cracking their skulls off the roulette table before they could so much as reach for their weapons.
He was still grumbling about the whole thing by the time they got home, and his lingering disapproval scratched at something seated deep in her that she didn’t fancy addressing in a healthy manner, so instead she’d snapped and told him in no uncertain terms that he had no say whatsoever in what she did or didn’t do with her time and if he ever tried to lecture her on this or any subject ever again, she would dig out her trusty crossbow and shove it somewhere he would really rather it not be shoved. Wide-end first.
The whole thing broke down into a bit of a shouting match after that - she couldn’t even remember what either of them had said to each other, only that it involved insults in a colourful array of ancient languages and had ended in her marching right back to the front door and pulling on her boots.
Far too accustomed to storming off to a different time zone or kicking him out at the other end of the galaxy when she couldn’t stand the sight of him because he’d opened his stupid mouth, being confined to the same planet when she was pissed off at him made her feel like a caged tiger. So she had thrown her coat on as she told him she was going out and he was not to follow her under any circumstances if he wanted to live, failing to mention where exactly she was going or when she would be back and slamming the door shut before he could ask.
All in all, it hadn’t been that serious. She was certain they would make up in their usual spectacular fashion later. Nevertheless, it had stung more than fighting with him usually did. That may have had something to do with the fact that it was the first time they had had one of their rows since settling down on Darillium, a little over four months ago now.
They had sunk into blissful mundanity like a warm bath, a much-needed balm after centuries of running. It had been so very easy here, all entwined hands and stolen kisses and quiet laughter all wrapped up in the dark. In all honesty, it had taken them far longer than she’d thought it would to get into a fight over something ridiculous. But she supposed the honeymoon had to end sometime.
She’d stomped through the night with no particular destination in mind, stewing to herself and thinking up the most creative insults to send to his psychic paper, eventually landing in a scruffy tavern a few villages over from their own.
She was at least a dozen shots deep into the strongest liquor they had when a shadowy figure hunched over in the corner had caught her eye. Upon closer inspection she realised it was one of the surviving thugs from earlier, licking his wounds. He hadn’t noticed her, but she’d soon fixed that by taking his pint glass and smashing it over his head.
The ensuing fight took a bit longer than she’d like to admit, given that at the time she was for all intents and purposes a walking bottle of absinthe. She’d still won easily, of course, but ended up with a black eye and busted chin for her trouble along with a few nasty bruises. She’d really wanted to kill him after that - but her stupid husband had gotten into her head, so instead she sent him hobbling away clutching his broken bones with a stern warning to take back to his little friends involving organs and the alphabet, reluctantly handing over her casino winnings to the rather terrified bar owner for the damage.
As she limped out into the night, the cold nipping at her hands, she’d found herself at a loss. In the past, after getting the anger out by shooting at things and occasionally inciting a war or two, she would always go back to Stormcage or flirt her way into a fancy hotel to lick her wounds. But this time, she had nowhere left to go but home.
And to her own surprise, she had felt herself aching for it; a deep sort of ache she couldn’t remember feeling before. When he’d told her the night they arrived here that he’d bought them a little house to live in, windows looking out onto the Towers, she’d been sceptical as to how long either of them would last in a place fixed to the ground. But in this moment, thick clouds drowning out the moons and stars as thunder rumbled overhead, there was nowhere else in the universe she wanted to be.
She stood on the doorstep as drizzling rain began to patter the ground, trying to summon the courage to step inside. Before, they didn’t so much resolve things as she would inevitably run into a version of him too young to have had the argument in the first place, or vice versa, and it would all be put behind them. It had occurred to her that it probably wasn’t the healthiest approach to conflict, but it had always worked. She certainly would never have dreamed of letting him see her like this. But they had both agreed to this; marriage, the long way round. There was no hiding the damage now.
She limped through the door, trying to make herself small and quiet in the hope that he might just not notice her. It didn’t work, of course. She had barely clicked the door shut behind her when there he was, hovering at the other end of the hallway like an anxious puppy.
“River.” He spoke her name softly, his eyes wide with concern. She didn't know what she'd been expecting, but it made her stomach flip. She stumbled on her heels and felt herself growing hot with embarrassment, thinking how terribly human she must seem to him.
She saw his face harden as she stepped into the light and he caught sight of the state of her. He crossed the space between them in an instant, and just having him in her proximity released a flood of tension in her that she didn’t realise she’d been holding.
“I’m fine,” she heard herself saying instinctively in the face of his worried gaze, the words coming out heavy and slurred and instantly tasting bitter in her mouth. She tried to brush past him, feeling tears prick the corners of her eyes, but he caught her by slipping a hand under her chin and she liked it too much to argue.
“Who did this to you?” was the first thing he asked, his voice a low rumble, and despite the pain and nausea she felt a flicker of heat in her belly at the protective fury in his eyes as he tilted her face up to the light to inspect her injuries.
“It was my fault,” she told him, casting her eyes down to focus on his shirt buttons. “I was looking for a fight.”
He sighed softly through his nose, and when she risked glancing up at him she found an understanding she hadn’t expected flickering across his face. “Fine. But I’m still going to need names later. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.”
“I can take care of myself.”
He caught her hand in his as she tried feebly to push him away, too woozy to put up a real fight. “It’s not up to you,” he answered, his voice quiet but firm as he steered her to the bathroom.
She slumped onto the toilet seat as he let her go to rifle through the cabinet under the sink, squinting against the light and feeling her stomach roll. “I feel like shit.”
“Look like it, too,” he muttered as he came to perch on the side of the bath next to her, a first-aid kit in his hands. She glared at the top of his head, stung, but a moment later he glanced up from prying the box open to throw her a wry smile.
She huffed, feeling a knot in her stomach untangle. “You’re an arse.”
“I know. Look at me.” He buzzed his screwdriver in front of her eyes, making her wince. “Two hundred and one, nine hundred and nine, thirty-eight, twelve, twenty-four. Catch.” He tossed the screwdriver up in the air between them, and she caught it easily in her fist. “What are the numbers I just told you?”
“Two hundred and one, nine hundred and nine, thirty-eight, twelve, twenty-four.”
He nodded, satisfied, and pried his screwdriver off her to slip it back in his pocket. “No concussion. Good.”
She pulled a face as she rolled the ache out of her shoulders, and his intent eyes flicked up to her as he rifled through the first-aid kit. “Now, this is a first,” he muttered as he poured some antiseptic onto a cotton pad and began dabbing gently at her wounds.
Her eyes narrowed. “What?”
“River Song, getting her arse kicked.” He quirked an eyebrow as he cleaned a streak of dried blood from her cheek. “How much did you have?”
She groaned under her breath. “I lost track around the fourteenth shot of Hevellian absinthe.”
“Ah, I thought that was what I could smell.” He winced, a teasing smile in place of the disapproving scowl she had been expecting. “You’ll feel that in the morning.”
“And I didn’t get my arse kicked, thank you very much. It was just a lucky punch. Or… three,” she conceded, her voice straining as he pressed the antiseptic to the scrape on her chin. “Ow. You should see him.”
“Oh, I’d like to.”
She couldn’t help but bite back a smile at his growl. “Don’t worry. He’ll be spending much of tomorrow shitting out his own teeth.”
“That’s my girl.” He reached over to the sink to grab the glass on the side and filled it with water, pressing it into her hand before popping painkillers out of a packet.
She took the tablets as he offered them to her one by one, eyeing him warily. “Why are you being nice to me?”
His mouth quirked up at the side, seemingly amused by the question. “Because I happen to rather like you, dear.”
The words threw a lasso around her heart and pulled on it. “Even after the casino?”
He raised his eyebrows, giving her a half-hearted reprimanding glare. “Even after the casino.”
His eyes were all soft and warm as he looked at her and she didn’t trust herself to speak for a moment, sipping at her water as he resumed fussing over her face. “I… worry, sometimes,” she managed eventually, a hundred fears stuck on her tongue.
“I know. But you don’t need to.” He pried off an adhesive strip to seal the wound on her chin, pressing it gently into place. “I’m afraid it doesn’t matter what you do, River. You’re stuck with me,” he said quietly as he worked, smiling to himself. “It’s called marriage.”
She watched his eyes flit intently over her injured face, his brow furrowed in concentration as he added a second strip, and swallowed a lump in her throat. “I love being stuck with you,” she thought, and it was only when his eyes lit up that she realised she was apparently still too tipsy to have kept the thought in her head where it belonged. But he didn’t tease her; in fact he didn’t say anything at all, just allowed the hand that had been tending to her chin to slip down and cradle her jaw.
“I’m sorry about before," she confessed quietly, as his thumb smoothed across her cheek.
“Me too.”
She returned his warm smile, leaning into his palm, and she wondered to herself whether it could have always been this easy. She couldn’t help wondering, too, if he had always looked at her like this and she’d simply been too busy looking away, hiding the damage, to notice.
“Does this mean I’m not getting a crossbow up my arse after all?”
She snorted. “You almost sound disappointed about that, sweetie.”
He laughed, that warm, low rumble reserved solely as a response to her flirting that she’d already come to love so much despite knowing this face for such a short time, as he pulled away from her and snapped the first-aid kit shut with a flourish. “There we go. All patched up. You’ll just need to keep the strips on this one for a couple of days.”
“Thank you.”
“Any time, dear. But I’d prefer it if you didn’t make a habit of this sort of thing while we’re here.”
She rolled her eyes, feeling an old wound pang deep in her chest. “I know you don’t approve.”
“No, it’s not that.” He avoided her eyes as he fussed with the clasps on the first-aid kit. “I… worry about you.”
She felt her cheeks flush, and had to work hard to fight down her smile. When he got up to put the kit away she instantly became aware of the painful throbbing in her head, and the instant he turned back she pulled him to her by his belt to pillow her head on his stomach.
He wound a hand into her curls, massaging his fingertips into the nape of her neck, and she closed her eyes. “Tell me about the silver forests on Gallifrey again, darling?” she asked softly, nudging her nose into his shirt. He must have told her a hundred times before, but she never grew tired of hearing it.
He indulged her, as he always did, giving his spiel like it was the first time. “Ah, the Cadonwood trees! Incredible species. In the mornings, Gallifrey's second sun would rise in the south and the mountains would shine. It looked as though the whole forest was burning.”
“It sounds like the most beautiful thing in the universe,” she murmured, feeling her limbs grow heavy.
“Mmm. Almost.” He pried her head away to kneel in front of her, a stupid sentimental smile on his face, and she simply couldn’t help but lean forward to kiss it. But he tilted his head back before her lips could meet his, leaning just out of her reach.
Her mouth dropped open. “Did you just reject me, Doctor?”
He smiled apologetically. “I’m not kissing you with breath like that.”
“I hate you.”
He chuckled and leaned in to kiss her on the forehead instead, being careful to avoid her cuts and bruises. “Come on. You should get some sleep.”
He stooped to unfasten her heels, slipping them off her feet, and as she watched his fingers she found herself having to blink a sudden stinging out of her eyes.
“The painkillers should be kicking in now,” he muttered absent-mindedly, preoccupied with massaging his fingers over the marks her shoes had left on her feet. “How’s your face feeling?”
She thought of the last time he’d tended to her wounds, sitting on the stairs of the hotel on that horrible day in New York, and smiled down at him. “It doesn’t hurt any more.”