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He is the Bringer of Darkness, the Oncoming Storm, the Nightmare That Monsters Dream Of, and he has faced Daleks and Cybermen and Zygons and Weeping Angels. None of those things, nor nearly a thousand years of travelling through Time and Space, stands the Doctor in good stead when River walks into the console room in Those Shoes.
He thinks it should be impossible, that she shouldn't remember, but she wears them and they make both hearts race a little fast, his mouth a little drier. He frowns at the console and needlessly adjusts something. Anything that keeps his eyes averted from red heels and legs that seem to go on forever.
Not that it makes the slightest difference – since the TARDIS changed, her floor has been metal grating and the damn heels click at each step. He feels every tiny vibration as an electric jolt. His hands shake and he tries very hard to remember that he is nearly a thousand years old.
It doesn't help much.
The Doctor glances sideways. Her dress is a paradox, because nothing that covers so much should also be able to reveal so much. It's black as night, but so sheer he can see the outline of her legs, the shadowed vee between them. He swallows, oddly breathless, and looks back to the monitor. He cannot remember where they were supposed to be going.
“What's the matter?” she asks, and he jumps as if stung. River steps back. His hearts ache at the sudden uncertainty on her face. She's been wearing that expression a lot, lately.
“Nothing.” He grins, wider than he feels, and captures a hand. Pulls her closer. “Nothing at all.”
She stares at him. Sometimes he thinks he can see the old future in her eyes, but perhaps that's just his memory of it. He pushes it away, unwilling to remember. It doesn't happen that way, not now. He's rewritten the future. Rewritten her.
Not completely, though. She is still River Song and when she smiles, his wife gleams from those eyes instead. The woman who stopped time for him. There is nothing he will not do for her.
“I love you,” he says; foreign words that fail to encompass exactly what he feels. River leans in. She tastes of strawberries and sin. His knees tremble. The universe should be afraid of her, he thinks; when she is everything to him and he has burnt worlds for less. It should fear what she makes of him and of what she could make him do, if she so chose.
The Lonely God, lonely no more. He has a Goddess now.
And such a Goddess she is. Black fabric pools on the grating, leaving her bare and golden in the light of the Eye of Harmony, her hair a halo. He bends a knee to her. Her teeth capture her bottom lip halfway between a gasp and a smile. He shakes his head – he doesn't want to hear words right now. They're not enough. They're never enough.
Her skin is smooth ivory beneath his hands, or warm silk; the sensation seems to shift, or his perception of it does. Relative dimensions. He smiles, slides a hand down from flesh to leather. The contrast of cool and warm where shoe meets foot.
“Should I?” River says, a soft whisper that carries through the console room.
“No.”
He doesn't know why, but it's important that she doesn't. His fingers follow the ridiculous length of one heel. The angle isn't natural; it throws her weight forward and arches her calves. Stretches legs already long enough to wrap around time and space. Crazy as that notion is. But crazy or not, in Those Shoes she is more River Song. The impossible woman who has captured his hearts, his soul.
Time Lords have no deities, but he could worship her. Wants to. Wants her. Desire comes so sudden, so strong that he's no defensive against it, even should he wish to mount one. It occurs to him that Those Shoes are the same red as her lips. The leather doesn't taste of strawberry, though.
Neither does her skin as he trails his tongue ever higher. Fingers tangle in his hair and he can hear her breathing quick and sharp. She doesn't taste of strawberry there, either, but of earth and water and a touch of salt. She whimpers and he feels the sting of pulled hair. He sweeps the length of her legs from thigh to the tip of her red heels and pushes his tongue deeper. His name is a cracked groan from her mouth.
He can undo her again, he knows. She shivers for him, and him alone. As he quakes for her. It doesn't make much sense but is, he supposes, what love is about. He's forgotten that, really. Only his memories are ones he's made himself forget. All the pain and the loss, but also the joy and the love. Might as well have become a Cyberman, or a Dalek filled with nothing but hate.
The Doctor scrambles to his feet. He is not that. Never that. River squeaks when he hitches her up, but then she laughs and circles his hips with her long legs. She doesn't kick off Those Shoes. The wicked gleam in her eyes lets him know she's figured it out. Her deft fingers loosen the bow tie and she drapes it around her neck, so all she wears is that, the heels and a wide smile.
“It's a new one,” she notes, then gives a soft gasp when he shifts closer and slips inside her. The quiver that wracks her echoes through him and he buries his face in the chaos of her amber curls.
“Those shoes,” he breathes between thrusts deeper and deeper into her core, “are cool.”
“As long as it's me wearing them,” she retorts. “They're really not your colour.”
He laughs and it feels so free. So full of joy. In saving her, he's saved a part of himself; revitalised his ancient, time-worn soul. He thinks of what the diary held, and of his promise to her. He needs to replace her memories. This isn't replacing. It's adding. He'd not said anything about that, except for another promise. To have and to hold.
“Where were we going?” He squeezes words past his pants for air. “Was it Asgard?”
“Ah.” River closes her eyes and breaks around him. It takes her some time to refocus, but inside the TARDIS, time doesn't matter. Especially not when he could watch her come apart forever and still not be tired of the sight. “I think so?”
“A picnic.” The Doctor holds her even as he slips away from her heat. The loss spreads through him, so he kisses her deeply, to remind himself it's just a temporary thing. “A picnic at Asgard.”
River stretches out, naked and glorious, and stares at her feet. “In these shoes? Sweetie, I don't think so. Think of the scandal we'd cause.”
He picks up her paradoxical dress and tosses it at her. “My love, that's exactly what I was thinking about.”