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River often arrives home from her weekly Friday excursion with a gnawing sense of dread, never knowing just what awaits her after the Doctor and their son have had an entire day to themselves. Sometimes nothing is out of place but a few sofa cushions and she finds the Doctor attempting to make dinner in the kitchen, Roman hanging off his leg and giving him instructions like add more marshmallows! or I don’t think it’s supposed to be on fire, Daddy to the Doctor’s exasperated yes lad or then why don’t you be a good little whelp and fetch the extinguisher?
Sometimes she lets herself into the quiet cottage and finds them both sprawled on the sofa and sleeping, looking a bit singed and rumpled but otherwise unharmed. And then there was the day she’d come home just in time to save her little family from invading forces, her unarmed husband wielding a screwdriver, Roman clambering onto his shoulders. He’d smirked at her like he’d known she would be right on time and it was only the presence of their son that had saved him from a good slap.
So when she appears outside the garden gate in a puff of smoke and a sizzle of vortex energy – ruining her hair again – River holds her breath and stands absolutely still, listening. She doesn’t hear the sound of explosions, no fire alarms, not even her husband shouting no lad, not that button! With a little smile, she decides that unless they’re both tied up and gagged somewhere, this is one of the quieter days. And then she hears it – the unmistakable sound of her son’s giggle.
Smile widening, River drops her dusty knapsack in the middle of the front yard and edges toward the garden gate, peering over the top. She stifles a soft laugh at the sight of her son tearing across the yard as if hell itself is on his heels. A low growl draws her attention away from her little menace to her much bigger menace, bent low and stalking across the yard, clearly hunting their son.
Pressing a hand over her mouth, River watches with growing amusement as Roman trips more often than he runs, and the Doctor’s valiant struggle not to laugh at him. The boy scrambles to hide behind a tree and the Big Bad Doctor pretends to sniff for him, prowling around muttering about being able to smell little boys even from galaxies away. Roman giggles and River notes fondly the way the Doctor’s mouth twitches as he pretends not to hear.
As unprepared as he’d been when he first stumbled upon them entirely by accident and as terrified as he’d still been when she eventually showed up on his TARDIS years later, pregnant and equally horrified, the Doctor has taken to fatherhood as naturally as a duck to water. Granted, he’d had a bit of practice a few hundred years ago. He’s gruff and a bit inept at times but there is nothing he excels at more than bedtime stories. He relishes a game in the garden with his son just as much as he does Wednesday afternoon adventures with his companion. To his own complete surprise but just as River had predicted, the Doctor is a brilliant, if unconventional father.
He pauses on the opposite side of the tree where Roman is huddled, curled into a ball and face pressed into his knees, floppy brown hair and small hands the only truly visible part of him. “I smell… a wee little mite. Four -” He sniffs again. “Perhaps five.”
Roman quivers with suppressed laughter.
“He smells like… blue crayons and jam and his mummy’s favorite tea.”
Roman squeaks.
Biting her lip against a bout of laughter, River watches the Doctor leap out from behind the tree and pounce. He snatches up their son in his arms, hauling him up against his chest. Roman screams, flailing and kicking until the Doctor sprawls him across the grass and begins an assault of growls and tickles. The flailing and kicking increases tenfold, this time with accompanying giggles and screeches for mercy. Honestly, if the neighbors weren’t so used to the noise they’d think the boy was being murdered outright.
One flailing little hand happens across the abandoned toy blaster in the grass – a gift from Uncle Jack the Doctor still grumbles sourly about – and very much like his mother, Roman clutches the gun in his grasp and wastes no time taking aim. The Doctor ducks and rolls, managing to disarm Roman and pin him in the grass again in one swift movement that belies his age.
“Ah ah, whelp.” He shakes a finger in Roman’s pouting face, a mockingly cross look on his own. “What have I said about using guns?”
Roman huffs and recites dutifully, “I’m not allowed unless it’s Uncle Jack or Mummy shoots first.”
“Clever little tyke.” The Doctor ruffles his hair and then he grins, bending his head to whisper something to Roman.
The boy lights up instantly, scrambling out from the Doctor and clambering to his feet. His head swivels instantly in the direction of the garden gate where River still lurks and when she smiles and waves at her son, he races right toward her. He stumbles over his own feet and River laughs, taking the extra time to open the garden gate and stoop. When Roman regains his feet and throws himself at her, she catches him easily.
“Hello, my darling,” she laughs, cradling him close. She smoothes his hair and dislodges a few wayward blades of grass in the process. He smells like the tree he’s undoubtedly spent the day climbing and River breathes him in, looking over his shoulder as the Doctor approaches, watching her with a smirk.
She blows him a kiss and he arches a heavy brow at her.
It’s only been a day for them – she’d left them at the breakfast table that morning, Roman still in his pajamas and strawberry jam smeared over his mouth, the Doctor scowling into his coffee and grunting at her when she kissed him goodbye – but it’s been a whole month for her. She has missed her boys something dreadful.
“Did you miss us, Mummy? How long were you away? Did you bring me a present? Mummy, you smell dusty.” Roman sniffs her again. “And like Jammie Dodgers. Did you bring me any?”
River snorts, pulling back to take a good look at the young face beaming at her. It’s overwhelming sometimes, how desperately she loves him. This little reminder of the man she married, the spitting image of the face she fell in love with first. “Your father’s sense of smell, I see. Yes, I missed you terribly. I wasn’t gone long at all, couldn’t bear to be away from you. And I brought you something much better than biscuits, silly thing.”
“Really, where is it? Is it a gun? A real proper one this time? Like yours?”
The Doctor mutters something rude under his breath.
River shakes her head. “Spoilers. You can see after you’ve washed up.” She stands, ruffles his hair one more time, and pats him gently in the direction of the house. “Quickly now, we’re going to Auntie Vastra’s for dinner.”
“Will Strax be there?”
“Yes,” River says, at the same time the Doctor adamantly says No. She rolls her eyes. “But no more nicking his grenades and taking them home, young man. Don’t think I won’t be searching your pockets before we leave!”
Roman sulks all the way into the house.
With a sigh, River turns to her husband and finds him leaning far too close – well, he’s never quite close enough for her taste. She smirks, tilting her head to the side and letting him bury his face against her neck. “Missed me, did you?”
He inhales deeply and then lifts his head so abruptly she starts, blinking at him. He scowls. “You reek of him.”
She stares, all innocence he probably doesn’t buy for a moment. “Who, sweetie?”
“Jammie Dodgers,” he spits, looking like a jealous child.
“You do realize you are him, don’t you?” She asks dryly.
He scowls. “Don’t remind me.”
“No petty grumbling about your previous regenerations, sweetie.” River tugs on the collar of his shirt and pulls him close, her nose brushing his. “Rule one.”
“Is not.”
“It is today.” She smirks, dodging his kiss. “How was our darling spawn?”
“He tried to shoot me. Your fault.”
River sighs. “Everything he does can’t be my fault.”
“I agree.” The Doctor smirks, “When he’s sleeping or being incredibly clever, he’s mine. When he’s awake and being a terror, he belongs to you.”
“That’s hardly fair.”
“Neither is leaving for -” He sniffs her again and River sets her jaw, determined to be unaffected by his closeness. “An entire month just to shack up with Baby Face.”
“It was not a month of shagging!” She scowls, shoving him away. “It was a month of sitting in a trench in the desert, followed by a quick shag against the TARDIS console, as I’m sure you well remember. Hardly the same thing. You know, being jealous of yourself might be a new low for you.”
The Doctor huffs, eyeing her with thinly veiled possessiveness, and River smirks back at him, fondly noting the grass in his ruffled gray hair. “I’m not jealous.”
She hums, shrugging one shoulder casually. “Could have fooled me.”
“He may have been here first…” The Doctor trails off, crowding close once again. River feels a little thrill shoot up her spine and doesn’t back down, tipping her head up to look into twinkling blue eyes. “But I’m here now. He doesn’t get this.”
River swallows, feeling the Doctor’s hand in her hair. Even now she feels guilty about keeping his son from him for so long but she tells him now what she told herself every day for a long time, “He wasn’t ready.”
“No.” The Doctor presses his forehead against hers and sighs. “And I pity him for it.”
“My, what a sap my old man has become.” River smiles and pats his chest, ignoring his scowl. “It might interest you to know Vastra has agreed to babysit our precocious offspring for the evening.” His brow arches in clear interest and she doesn’t miss the twitching at the corners of his mouth, a smile threatening to break free. She pretends not to notice, walking her fingertips coyly up his chest. “If you’re a very good boy, I might just smell like you again by the end of the night.”
Before he has time to reply, she winds her arm around his neck and pulls, drawing him into her and leaning up to capture his mouth with her own. She kisses his scowl away with determination, not satisfied until the Doctor groans softly and wraps his arms around her, all pretense of annoyance gone.
“Yuck.”
They part with a regretful sigh on the Doctor’s part and River winks at him, turning to face their son. The sight of him makes her bite her lip against an outright grin. It will never stop being completely hysterical to see this little miniature version of her pacifist husband carrying a toy gun over his shoulder. The Doctor glances at her, mouth pursed in disapproval, as if to reiterate YOUR FAULT.
River shrugs, thinking of the holster in her knapsack she’d brought back just for Roman and the Doctor’s inevitable ire. In the history of things the universe can blame her for, her son is one of the very few things for which she takes great pride in claiming responsibility.