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Jamie presses his face into the Doctor’s unruly hair and tries to fall asleep. He’s lying on his side behind him, chest pressed flush with the Doctor’s back, and he can feel his familiar double-heartbeat, low and gentle, steady as it goes. There’s a comfort to the rhythm, but more than that, Jamie likes to feel the Doctor asleep in his arms. There’s something unbearably warm about it, the way his face loosens, eases with trust.
Now he feels his pulse thrumming through him, through his foolish-looking pinstripe nightshirt. Jamie runs like a furnace at night and prefers to sleep in pants, but the Doctor insists on his whole getup. He’ll never understand how his pajamas are neater and sharper than his day clothes. No matter. The Doctor is a whole other person when he sleeps.
Jamie remembers the first time he saw the Doctor sleep, back when Ben and Polly were still traveling with them. He worked tirelessly that trip, day and night, and only after a week did Jamie finally catch him asleep.
“He looks so young,” Polly said softly. “Like this.”
“He always acts a child,” Ben pointed out. “Running about an’ challenging everythin’ an’ whatnot.” Jamie rather liked that part of the Doctor, though it did get them in heaps of trouble.
“Oh, but you know what I mean. It’s hard to imagine this is the same grouchy old man we met when he’s all — relaxed like this.”
Jamie knows the Doctor had a different face before he came along, which was hard enough to wrap his head around before, but after learning he was just shy of five centuries certainly gave him a fright. It only took a bit of thinking to figure that, while the Doctor might seem eons-aged to him, among his own people he might not be that old.
Now he gets to see him sleep every night. He always protested that he didn't need to sleep that much, but Jamie’s love for naps was contagious, because eventually the Doctor grew to enjoy curling up and resting. He needed it more than anyone else, that was for sure.
Jamie wraps his arm tighter around the Doctor’s waist and turns his head. He seems so small like this, swallowed in Jamie’s arms and broad frame, his sharp intelligence and glittering gaze hidden under his closed eyelids and sleeping form.
The rise and fall of the Doctor’s sides as he breathes, even and deep, is hypnotic. He’s so alive , so fragile . I like to hold you, he told Jamie one time. I like to feel you next to me. He says he likes to protect Jamie, in his arms. Jamie thought it foolish. He always protected the Doctor, not the other way around. But he gets it now, holding him when he’s so unguarded.
I’ll never move, Jamie decides suddenly, in the warm, dark bedroom, with the warm, small person lying beside him. Only a moment later, however, the Doctor makes a short, soft sound and shifts. He rolls over in Jamie’s arms with a series of grumbles, until he faces him properly. The Doctor pushes his head into Jamie’s neck, hands coming up to clasp over his ribcage. Jamie likes this, too, heartbeats almost touching, falling asleep in a tight embrace, as though the very state of sleeping might pull them apart.
Snuffling, the Doctor wriggles even closer, until there are no more gaps between them, before turning his head to press his ear into Jamie’s chest. Jamie breathes slowly, in, out, quiet cycles of his lungs made thunderous in the silence of the room. He matches the Doctor’s breath, sinks into the lull of his rhythm, feels exhaustion tug at his bones until he finally begins to nod off. Then:
“Are you awake?” Jamie whispers, terribly suspicious of the way the Doctor’s hands have begun to run teasingly over each bump of his ribs.
“I won’t be soon.” The Doctor whispers back. “You’re delightfully warm, you humans.” His nose presses into Jamie’s throat and he shivers.
“Oh, aye,” Jamie says, squinting at the Doctor in the darkness. “Bed down with many of us, do you?”
“Hmm.” The Doctor’s voice rumbles in his chest. “I feel as though my continued warmth may hinge on my answer.”
“Hey!”
“No, Jamie, just you,” the Doctor laughs, looking up at Jamie, eyes crinkled with mirth. Before he loses the nerve, Jamie kisses his forehead, stomach alighting with the thrill when the Doctor closes his eyes and gives a contented hum. He turns his face up and juts out his lip in plea. “That’s lovely. One more?”
Jamie presses a quick kiss to his expectant mouth, the electricity of it all crawling up his spine. He still can’t believe he can just — he kisses the Doctor’s temple — do this whenever he likes. The Doctor loops his arms tighter around Jamie and kisses him again.
“I thought you were going to sleep?” Jamie asks with a cocked brow.
“Oh, yes. Quite right.” He squirms until Jamie laughs and tries to hold him still, then pushes Jamie down onto his back and props himself up on his elbows and takes a fancy to kissing a path from Jamie’s collarbone to his cheek. “In a bit.”
The Doctor kisses him slowly, gently, like the low, deep drone before the tune. His lips are thin and chapped and perfect. Jamie lets him proceed as he likes, fingers tracing his bare shoulders and prodding the knobs of his spine until it grows to be too much.
Jamie wriggles about, dissatisfied until he can pull the Doctor on top of him.
”Oh, dear,” the Doctor eagerly clambers over and flops down heavily onto Jamie. He’s draped wonderfully across Jamie’s body, his weight secure and comforting, and Jamie shifts underneath him with a giggle. It’s nice, the press of his body, like he’s pinning Jamie safe, the mattress bowing low.
The Doctor doesn’t mind either, cupping his face in his hands to watch him closely. “I wonder…” he starts vaguely, but the thought ends with him kissing Jamie again, mouth warm and wet. He pulls back, looking down at Jamie fondly, thumb stroking his cheekbone. “Yes, I wonder.”
He keeps on staring, eyes dark with affection, for so long that Jamie’s face starts to go red, a deep, horrible blush that crawls down his throat and chest. The Doctor places a hand on his sternum, and Jamie’s suddenly hyper aware of his breathing, how his body moves under the Doctor’s hand, and he feels horribly vulnerable.
“Och, stop it, you,” he says hotly, half-sitting up to kiss the Doctor again, a little firmer this time. Their mouths slot together tight, like the door to their world clicking shut.
The Doctor soon melts into it, pushing Jamie back down and kissing him fiercely. His hands shift to tangle in his hair, tugging lightly, until Jamie parts his lips in a soft sigh and the Doctor’s curious tongue licks into his mouth, explores the damp warmth of it all.
I love you, Jamie thinks dimly as he wraps his arms around the Doctor’s waist to secure him close. He can never say it, of course, because no, no, that will never work. The Doctor is too far away. He’s making soft, high sounds into Jamie’s mouth now, yes, shivering on top of him, so alive, so near, but he’s miles off, from another world, one he’s running from, one he’s still in, one Jamie can never see. They may be friends, dear friends, best friends who share the earths they walk between them, but there are some things Jamie can never say, no matter how tacitly true they flow. I love you.
Because—
Well—
Even if he did say it — the Doctor’s hands skim down his sides now, settling over his chest, mouth working lazily against Jamie’s — and even if it did, somehow, float out between them safely, what if the Doctor didn’t say it back? Perhaps Jamie doesn’t need to hear it. Perhaps he can just know. But saying it would be worse. So — he sighs as the Doctor’s hands skate back up his chest, and the Doctor swallows the sound — I love you.
What Jamie doesn’t know, of course, is that this close with him, the Doctor’s touch telepathy is rolling across him in deep, warm waves and Jamie’s overwhelming affection is the only thing leaking through. I love you.
(They’re just words. They’re all words. The Doctor has taught Jamie the power of words, the Doctor has taught Jamie the dangers of the inaction they can incur. Words can be everything and words can be nothing but—)
The Doctor pulls back gently, mouths parting with a slick sound, and opens his eyes slowly, giving Jamie a foolish grin that stretches his flushed face. He moves his hand to Jamie’s chin and drags his thumb over his glistening bottom lip. “Well, that’s not too terrible a way to say goodnight, now is it?”
When Jamie is too struck dumb to respond, he makes to roll over, back onto the mattress, but is stopped by Jamie’s grip on him.
“You cannae be sleeping now,” Jamie protests, a whine pitching up his voice.
“Oh, dear, why not?” He prods Jamie’s thigh innocently, hands cool against his skin.
“Kiss me proper.”
“I just did!”
“I meant proper.” And then Jamie grabs the Doctor’s nightshirt by the collar and yanks him down into another deep kiss, tongues brushing and sending hot shivers down Jamie’s belly. He needs the taste of the Doctor lining his mouth, needs the clash of their teeth and the soft give of his lips to be ingrained into his memory, the way his hands flutter indecisively around Jamie before settling back in his hair with a drawn out groan. He kisses harshly, digs his teeth into the Doctor’s lips, tries to commit the feeling of it all to memory.
I love you. He wishes he had a better way to express it than kissing the Doctor. He wishes he could tell him without saying it. Maybe he already has, and he just doesn’t know it yet.
The Doctor lets out a thin sound, disgruntled, shifting to pin Jamie down firmly. “Enough of you.”
Jamie grumbles back petulantly, but kisses the Doctor gently, with finality.
The Doctor kisses his cheek, his nose, his chin — he may have been aiming for his mouth all three times, but Jamie doesn’t much mind. “I want to sleep.” With that, the Doctor sinks onto Jamie’s chest and tucks himself nicely under the covers, hair tickling his bare chest, ear pressed over his heart.
Jamie sighs and tilts his head, wrapping an arm tight around the Doctor to rub circles down his back. “Oh, so warm,” the Doctor whispers softly, yawning. “I shall have to bed down with you humans more often.”
Jamie snorts, but it comes out more amused than indignant, and the Doctor merely pushes his head against his chest, hand seeking out his to tangling their fingers.
“Good night, Doctor.” Jamie says, hushed. But he’s already asleep. “I love you.”