with a faery hand in hand

Everyone needs an editor

Summary: The first time Matt sits at a table read-through with Alex Kingston, she steals his script. Takes place during Series 5 and 6.

Rating: M 

A/N – Written because Charina is a Mattex whore and I’m her dealer. Plus, she promised me Doctor/River smut. Story title taken from the Mates of State song. Enjoy!

The first time Matt sits at a table read-through with Alex Kingston, she steals his script. During a quiet break while Steven makes a change to the last few pages, Alex reaches out a hand and snatches Matt’s battered copy right out from under his nose. He stares, dumbfounded, as she curls her arm around the pages protectively and bends her head, scratching out an entire line of dialogue and writing something else in its place.

 

He may be new to this whole television show business but he doesn’t think nicking someone’s script and making changes without the permission of the writer is the usual protocol. He’s pretty sure someone would have mentioned that to him on his first day.

 

Alex hands the script back to him with a wink and turns back to hers without another word. Matt glances down only long enough to notice that her handwriting is quite neat and full of curlicues before Steven calls everyone’s attention back to the first page and they begin again.

 

By the time they get to the page Alex had desecrated, Matt has completely forgotten about her strange behavior. He goes through his lines like he normally does, gesturing with his hands as his eyes skim the page. When he comes across inked out dialogue and Alex’s handwriting, his eyes bulge and he almost chokes.

 

He’s gone over the script enough times to know what it’s supposed to say but instead of what it should say, it reads, ‘I’m not going to be there with a condom every time you feel like jumping my bones.’

 

Next to the edit is a doodle of a banana trying to yank its peel back on.

 

Fighting off a blush and stifling the urge to giggle, he utters the line he’s meant to (‘I’m not going to be there every time you feel like jumping out of a spaceship!’) in a strangled voice that garners him a few bemused looks. When he can manage it without looking suspicious, he glances over at Alex to find her smiling down at her own script.

 

“Nicely done,” she murmurs with approval.

 

For some reason, Matt feels like he has just been tested. For what, he doesn’t know. He also doesn’t know why he feels so inordinately proud to have passed it.

 

—

 

She does it again for the reading of The Pandorica Opens, editing her own lines on his script.

 

His pages now read, ‘Oh Doctor, why do I let you out (of the handcuffs!)?’ and ‘Don’t raise your voice, don’t look alarmed, just fuck me.’

 

Matt swallows laughter, instead sitting through the script-reading with a red face and Alex Kingston radiating smugness next to him.

 

—

 

The next time, he steals her script. It’s only fair.

 

He expects Alex to protest but she only smiles widely at him and offers her pen for his use. He takes it, and it’s still warm from the curl of her hand around it. Matt flexes his fingers around the pen absent-mindedly and flips through the pages as quietly as he can while Karen reads her lines.

 

Finding the spot he’s looking for, he grins and shoos Alex away when she tries to peek. Crossing out ‘I’m sorry’, he scribbles in its place, ‘Harder, my love’ and passes it back to her.

 

Alex snorts and mumbles quietly, “Amateur.”

 

A little insulted, he doesn’t protest when she grabs his script. He listens to the scratch of her pen as she writes in her own version of dialogue and then the crinkle of paper as she gives it back. Matt glances down at the page and sees, ‘Hi honey, I’m horny.’

 

He bites his lip to keep from laughing and reaches out a hand, scribbling out messily over the lines, ‘And what sort of shag do you call this?’

 

Arthur nudges him and Matt realizes with a start that it’s his turn to speak again. “The TARDIS put her in a time loop to save her. She is right at the heart of the explosion.”

 

Next to him, Alex shifts in her seat and her leg brushes his. Matt fights a shiver and tells himself that he did not just go warm all over from that small bit of contact. He is not that pathetic.

 

Really.

 

And then he realizes he’s still supposed to be speaking and jumps, hurrying to recite his line, “Hi honey, I’m hor-home. I’m home.”

 

He feels Alex’s shoulders shaking with the effort of not bursting into laughter and while part of him wants to crawl under the table and wait for the earth to swallow him up, he still finds himself smiling down at his newly edited script and admiring her penmanship.

 

—

 

When filming starts for series 6, Matt is excited for the new season and playing the Doctor again but he can’t deny a lot of his enthusiasm has to do with seeing Alex again.

 

She smiles radiantly at him when she sees him, making his stomach turn over and he could swear his heart skips a beat. When she walks over to him and wraps her arms around him in a hug, he presses a suddenly sweaty palm against her back and returns the embrace. She always smells like flowers and he can’t even begin to comprehend why. She may have a garden in Los Angeles but she’s been here for days already and after plane rides, cab rides and the general London smog, she shouldn’t smell so bloody floral. It doesn’t make sense.

 

Alex doesn’t say a word about their little additions to the script last year but then, they never do. It remains a silent exchange that never leaves the table at read-through and speaking of it elsewhere is comparable to sacrilege. Truthfully, Matt likes it that way. It’s almost like he has a little secret with her that no one else does.

 

While Alex doesn’t say anything about the scripts directly to him, she certainly doesn’t disappoint at the first read-through of the season. During the scene when the Doctor and River are comparing diaries, she changes all the locations they’ve visited to sex positions from the Kama Sutra. Complete with diagrams.

 

Matt spends the read-through trying not to imagine Alex in all those positions – can someone really bend that way? – and fails miserably. She’s very distracting that way; all those curls and curves and smelling like flowers right next to him. How can a man be expected to read without a squeak to his voice when she’s right there and writing dirty things on his paper?

 

He retaliates the best he can but Alex is a pro and he’s merely her pupil in this respect. He likes to think he’s learning and he knows Alex takes pride in corrupting him – he can see it in the way she smiles every time he steals her pen.

 

When they start filming, his script is chockfull of Alex Kingston additions and doodles. It makes him smile every time he rehearses his lines but that smile promptly slides off his face when Karen loses her script and asks to borrow his.

 

He stares at her, wide-eyed. “What?”

 

She huffs, holding out a neatly manicured hand impatiently. “I can’t find my script and I need to go over this scene before we start shooting. Please? Just really quick?”

 

He shakes his head, heart rate climbing. If Karen opens this script, she’ll find dirty limericks, perverse stick-drawings and sexually suggestive line changes – all in Alex’s handwriting. Matt has grown rather protective of his and Alex’s little ritual and he doesn’t fancy Karen finding them out.

 

“Um, you can’t. I need this one.”

 

“I’m not going to keep it,” Karen says, frowning at him. “I just need to see it for a second.”

 

“No, you can’t. It’s -”

 

With a roll of her eyes, Karen reaches out and snatches the script from his grasp before he can stop her. “Geez, what is your problem today?”

 

“Kaz, please give it back. Before I hurt you.” He licks his lips nervously as she ignores him and begins flipping through the pages, looking for the scene she needs.

 

Before long, her eyes widen and Matt grows increasingly antsy the higher her eyebrow climbs. Finally looking up, Karen smirks. “Get bored during read-throughs? It might help your acting if you paid attention, stupid face.”

 

She’s laughing at him, but what’s more, she thinks he’d written it all on his own. He doesn’t know why but he’s relieved he hasn’t implicated Alex. Scowling at the redhead in front of him, Matt yanks his script from her hands and begins to stalk off.

 

Karen guffaws, calling after him, “Nice handwriting! Very girly!”

 

As Matt walks away from Karen, he spots Alex standing off to the side with Arthur, holding a cup of coffee and watching him with a little smirk. Bad mood dissipating instantly, he tucks his script under his arm protectively and winks at her.

 

—

 

After that, Kingston ups the ante.

 

During a their lunch break between filming A Good Man Goes To War and Let’s Kill Hitler, she comes up behind him and steals his script from where it sits next to him while he tries to nick some of Arthur’s chips. “Oi!” He calls after her as she scurries away. “That’s mine, Kingston!”

 

She turns to smile at him over her shoulder. “You’ll get it back.”

 

He shakes his head as she walks away with her prize, turning back to Arthur only to find his friend staring at him. “What? What’s wrong?”

 

Pursing his lips, Arthur says nothing and pushes the chips toward him. “Not a thing, mate. Not a thing.”

 

When their lunch hour is up, Alex promptly delivers his script to him with a twinkle in her eyes and a naughty smile that makes his insides turn to jelly. Matt nearly drives himself mad looking for new additions she might have made but there’s nothing new at all. He’s starting to think she only took it to just to take the mickey out of him when he turns his script over and finds a paragraph written in Alex’s hand on the back.

 

Intrigued, Matt finds a shadowy corner while Amy and Mark film together and hurriedly scans the words. His stomach drops the further he reads.

 

It’s a story about River and the Doctor. Well, story is probably too generous. It’s porn – there is porn about the Doctor and River on his script and Alex Kingston is the one who wrote it.

 

Glancing around casually and finding no one watching him, Matt licks his lips and turns back to the page in front of him. He reads greedily, his heart pounding, until he comes across ‘The Doctor moaned as River took him into her mouth, burying his hands in her hair and thrusting his hips forward.’

 

Blushing down to his toes, Matt closes his eyes and tells himself it’s wrong to be so turned on by this. Alex is just taking the piss, waiting for him to cave and admit defeat. He won’t do it. The Kingston is not going to win this game.

 

Jumping to his feet, Matt goes to find a pen.

 

—

 

When Alex comes back to film the season finale, Matt has gotten quite good at this whole dirty story business. He might have researched erotic literature to brush up, not that he’ll ever admit it to anyone. Ever. However, he feels fairly confident in his skill now and he’s looking forward to stealing Alex’s script and making her just as uncomfortable as she likes to make him.

 

The first chance he gets, he writes about River and the Doctor using his sonic screwdriver for recreational purposes on the back of Alex’s script and tosses it back to her with a smug grin. He watches her read it from across the room, pleased when she crosses her legs and bites down on one knuckle.

 

When Alex takes his script in retaliation, he doesn’t see it again until it’s time for their first read-through. Sliding into the seat next to him at the table, Alex pushes his script toward him without looking at him, her face bare of the mischievous look it usually holds when she’s written something naughty. Frowning, Matt opens his script and turns to the right page to read what she has written while Steven introduces the episode.

 

As soon as he begins to read, he understands why Alex had looked so nervous about giving this to him because it’s not a dirty story about River and the Doctor. It’s a dirty story about them.

 

Matt and Alex, deep in the throes of passion, scribbled in Alex’s curling scrawl across the page.

 

Oh god.

 

Swallowing hard, Matt shifts in his seat to ease the sudden strain in his trousers and finds that it doesn’t really help. He reads the words ‘Alex dragged her nails up his back and moaned as he buried his cock inside her’ and stifles a groan.

 

Christ, what is she trying to do to him?

 

He doesn’t dare look at Alex and spends the entire read-through straight-backed and painfully hard. The whole session is a blur; he barely remembers even speaking his lines but he must have because soon Steven is declaring it a successful meeting and dismissing them all.

 

When Alex goes to stand, he reaches out and snags her wrist, wrapping his fingers around it tightly and holding on. Her skin is warm and the contact feels like it’ll burn through his fingers but he doesn’t let go. Without looking at her, he says, “Stay.”

 

Alex says nothing, tugging her wrist from his grasp, but she sits down again.

 

After the room is emptied of the very last person, he finally turns to look at her and says in a low, incredulous voice, “What the bloody hell was that?”

 

“Didn’t you like it?” She asks lightly, still not looking at him. “I thought you’d appreciate -”

 

“Alex, that was you and me,” he says. “Completely different from the rubbish we’ve been writing. Just a bit of fun, but this -”

 

It feels strange, talking about what they’ve been doing. Their little edits usually pass unspoken between them, and it feels like he’s breaking some kind of rule by directly addressing it.

 

Alex finally turns to look at him, green eyes pained. “I’m sorry if I offended you. I wasn’t thinking, I just -” She glances down to avoid his gaze and stops abruptly.

 

He follows her gaze and sees her staring at the noticeable bulge in his trousers. There’s no hiding it and with the way Alex is suddenly looking at him, he finds that he doesn’t want to.

 

She smiles slowly, sliding her eyes up to meet his again. “Liked it, did you, Matthew?”

 

“Was that your goal?” He asks tightly. “See how hard you can get me for you? Is that what you want, Alex?”

 

She licks her lips, looking pointedly at his lap. “It’s what you want, obviously.”

 

Matt leans forward suddenly until he’s almost nose-to-nose with her. She inhales sharply but she doesn’t try to back away and they’re suddenly so close he can smell that inexplicable floral scent on her again and see the flecks of hazel in her eyes.  “And what about you, Kingston? Is it what you want?”

 

She smiles softly, looking oddly serene for someone who just wrote a very explicit sex scene between herself and her co-star. “I haven’t been writing sexual innuendo in your script all this time for nothing.”

 

Matt stares at her, speechless.

 

“You weren’t getting the hint, so I decided to change the names.” Reaching up, Alex runs her fingers lightly over the stubble on his cheek and Matt closes his eyes, leaning into her touch. “You’re a bit dense, honey.”

 

Eyes flying open, Matt surges forward and kisses her before he has time to talk himself out of it. Alex gasps, bringing her other hand up to cup his face as her eyes flutter shut. Matt smiles against her mouth and slips an arm around her waist, pulling her into him.

 

Dense he may be, but stupid he is not.

 

Alex swipes her tongue over his lips and he opens his mouth instantly, letting her slip her tongue inside. She tastes brilliant, like tea and mint and something else unidentifiable. He kisses her harder in hopes of figuring out what it is and Alex whimpers, sliding one hand down to fist in his shirt.

 

Hands on her hips, Matt pulls until Alex gets the hint and climbs into his lap, straddling his thighs without breaking away from his mouth. She nips at his lip, smiling into their kiss as she settles onto his lap. His erection presses insistently against her core through their trousers and they both hiss, pulling away from each other with a gasp.

 

“All this time,” Matt breathes, one hand slipping under her shirt as he begins sucking at her neck. “You were really writing about -”

 

“Us.” Alex ruts against him and Matt swears, digging his fingers into the bare skin of her back.

 

Running his hand over the expanse of her back before sliding it around to trail up her stomach, he asks, “Why didn’t you say anything?”

 

“I tried,” she says, gasping when he cups her through her bra. “I wasn’t exactly being subtle.”

 

Leaning forward, he nips at her collarbone at the same time his fingers tweak her nipple through the fabric of her bra and Alex moans. “Yes, because dirty script edits are a totally normal way to tell someone you fancy them.”

 

Alex rakes her fingers through his hair, nails dragging over his scalp deliciously. “If you want normal, darling, you should probably go snog someone else.”

 

“Normal is overrated,” he agrees, and Alex rolls her hips, pressing her core right against his erection. “Fuck.”

 

“That’s the idea,” she whispers, laughing softly.

 

Growling, Matt grips her by the hips and kisses her again, standing as he does. Alex clings to him until her feet hit the floor, and then he pushes her away and reaches for the button on her jeans.

 

“Oh god yes,” she breathes, and moves to unzip his trousers.

 

“Door’s open,” he says raggedly. “Gotta be quiet, Kingston.” She nods hurriedly and he slips his hand under the elastic of her knickers, brushing past a patch of soft hair before his fingers dip between her slick folds. He skims his fingers over her clit briefly before moving to circle her entrance, and the gathering wetness on his fingers makes him bite his lip against a groan.

 

Alex bites at his shoulder through his shirt to keep from moaning and he swirls his fingers around once more before pressing two of them inside her knuckle-deep. Unable to hold back a whimper, Alex bites down harder but Matt barely feels it, too focused on that faint little noise she’d made.

 

She’s trying to be quiet and he can’t help but wonder what she sounds like when there’s no one around to hear. He intends to find out – just not now.

 

He curls his fingers inside her and she moans softly, gasping out, “Matt, please -” Alex brushes her palm over his erection and he jumps, hips jerking forward of their own accord.

 

“Turn around,” he orders, pulling his hand from her knickers.

 

Alex complies without hesitation, one step ahead of him as she shoves her jeans and knickers down her thighs. She bends over the read-through table, palms flat on the surface.

 

Mouth watering a little at the supple skin on display in front of him, Matt runs his hand over her bum reverently. Alex wriggles back against him impatiently and he pulls away, hurriedly shoving down his own trousers and pants.

 

Resting his hand on the small of her back, he asks softly, “Ready?”

 

“More than,” she breathlessly; and he grasps his throbbing cock, guiding it into her tight heat. Alex arches her back, fingers gripping the edge of the table until her knuckles turn white. “God, yes.”

 

Holding her hips as he pulls out and sinks back into her again, Matt fights back the urge to moan out loud. She’s perfect – hot and slick, fitting around him like a glove. He vows that next time – and there will be a next time – they’ll do this someplace quiet where he can undress her and worship every single inch of perfect skin and tell her in filthy detail exactly what she does to him, what she’s been doing to him from the first day he’d laid eyes on her.

 

Alex moans quietly as he pounds into her over and over again, and if she’s this loud when she’s trying to be quiet, he can only imagine how gloriously vocal she’ll be when there are no restrictions on volume. He grunts as she pushes back against his next thrust and the sound of bare skin slapping against skin fills the room.

 

If anyone walks past the door to this room, they’ll have a clear view of him fucking Alex over the read-through table but he can’t stop. Not now, not when he’s so close and she’s so wet, velvet heat tightening around his length with her fast-approaching orgasm.

 

Gripping her hips tight enough to bruise, he changes his angle slightly and Alex jerks, trembling beneath him. Matt smirks, knowing he’s found that magic place deep inside her. Hips snapping back and forth furiously, he hits that spot repeatedly until Alex lets out keening, sobbing little moans. “Come on, Alex,” he pants. “Want to think about you every time I sit down at this bloody table.”

 

At his words, Alex arches back against him with a cry, squeezing around him like a silken vice and over the sound of blood rushing in his ears and her panting, Matt makes out the faint sound of his name escaping her lips.

 

And that’s all it takes.

 

With one last push deep inside her, he comes hard, the white-hot rush of his orgasm leaving his vision blurred and his heart racing.

 

Boneless, he allows himself a brief moment to rest against her back, pressing his face into the back of her neck. Breathing in the scent of her hair, he struggles to regain his breath and blink away the colored lights behind his eyes.

 

Trembling beneath him, Alex reaches around to slide her fingers over his at her hip. “Well, that was certainly worth all the ink.”

 

He snorts, pressing his lips into her hair and leaving a kiss there. “You’ve been wooing me with erotica. That’s going to be the most awkward ‘how we got together’ story ever.”

 

Alex laces their fingers together. “You say awkward, I say memorable.”

 

“You’re mad,” he says fondly, finally pulling away and sliding out of her. He tucks himself back into his trousers and watches as Alex pulls her knickers and jeans back up. He mourns slightly at the loss of all that naked skin but he promises himself he’ll see it again soon.

 

Turning to face him, Alex smiles brightly and it’s so magnificent that he wonders why it took him so long to understand what she has been trying to tell him since the beginning. She has known all along, biding her time and waiting for him to catch up.

 

He really has been dense, he thinks as he leans in and kisses her.

 

Thank God for read-throughs.