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The Doctor hadn’t really remembered London ever being this cold. Funny how that happened. It was one thing to visit, and another thing entirely to bunker through November, 1969 in a drafty, subdivided flat that had inexplicably escaped the slum clearances.
All the more reason to get out of the mould and the wet mist seeping through the window-pane, and go for a walk. And pick up groceries, as Martha had not-so-kindly reminded him and slapped five pounds into his palm. He’d had to learn quite a bit about the vagaries of human life, these past few weeks. He doubted it was enough to get them through one meal, let alone two days. Or at least get Martha through two days. He was on a bit of a food holiday, himself. A diet – there, that was what you called it.
Probably wasn’t helping the cold either, that.
It wasn’t terribly far to Tesco. But it was far enough his fingers, deep in his pockets, were growing numb. The mist of his breath clung about his face: would follow him home and into the damp of their shared bed, swirling in the dull, sulphurous light from the street while Martha slept. She’d insisted upon taking the couch, but the bedbugs – which the Doctor had bravely offered to bear instead – had rapidly evicted them both from most of the furnishings. She was up before the sun, most days, all huddled in her two pullovers and woolly socks. On her way to work, alone in the dark.
He wondered what would happen on Coronation Street tomorrow.
He didn’t pay much attention to the blustery underpass. Didn’t notice the group of men sheltered there, smoking. Didn’t hear them whistling and laughing as he walked past.
‘Oi,’ said the Doctor, when one of them walked into him. ‘‘Scuse me.’
The man didn’t seem to particularly want to excuse him. He leant closer, blocking the Doctor’s path. Bottles clinked in the background. ‘Where you going, mate?’
The Doctor frowned. ‘Just shopping. That a problem?’
The man – big, unshaven – looked him up and down and laughed. ‘A poof like you? Yeah. Yeah, round here, it’s a problem.’
He opened his mouth to disagree, but a beer bottle found his face before the words did, and toppled him in a burst of glass along with whatever he’d wanted to say. Caught off-guard, he flung out a hand for balance and found nothing but air. He hit the ground. Someone cheered.
Disoriented, the Doctor pushed himself up on an elbow, blood beginning to ooze down his cheek. They were surrounding him, now, three—no, four of them. ‘Alright,’ he said, and winced as the corner of his mouth pulled on split skin, ‘You’ve had your fun.’ This seemed to be uproariously hilarious to them. Something told him now was a very good time to leave.
Which he did try to do. But they’d obviously made a decision against that, because one of them kicked his arm out from under him, and another drove a peeling boot into his stomach, and someone jumped on his legs and pinned him to the ground, and from there it stopped mattering who was who. He fended off the worst of the blows until a heavy, roughened hand gripped him by the hair and slammed his face into the frozen asphalt, and did it again. And again, until his nose crunched audibly through his skull. Running away stopped feeling like such a bright idea after that.
His vision was swimming by the time they let him up to breathe. He gasped shallowly into the cold, each hitch of breath a bright point of pain at the base of his ribs where one of them had stomped him into the ground. The hand in his hair – the first man – hauled his head up to face them.
‘Your sort,’ he said, and spat directly over the Doctor’s face, ‘Should all be fuckin’ sterilised. Rounded up. You live ‘round here?’
One of them rifled around his pockets, patting him down—looking for a wallet, the Doctor realised.
The man slapped him. ‘I asked you a question, fag.’
‘Look at this,’ said the other one, bright with triumph, and pulled out Martha’s hard-earned five pound note. ‘Five quid!’
‘You can have it,’ the Doctor muttered, ‘just take it.’
Another one took a drag off his cigarette, smiled something with too much teeth, and said, ‘It’s a bargain at five quid a pop, innit?’
‘You ain’t wrong, mate, you ain’t wrong,’ said the fourth, clapping him on the back. The Doctor kept careful eyes on him as he circled out of view.
Another rough jerk of his hair, the smell of alcohol on the man’s human sweet-rot breath. ‘You’d like that, wouldn’t you. I’ll give you fifty p. for the lot of us.’
The Doctor bit back on a pained groan, and tried to shake him off. His face felt sticky. ‘Just take it and let me go,’ he said, wanting nothing more than to get some blasted bread, get warm, and curl up on that ratty, bug-infested couch with a movie.
‘We’ll take it, alright,’ said the skinny one behind him, and started tugging off his coat. The Doctor didn’t press the issue. Didn’t help them, either, and the one became two, holding his arms behind him, pulling it down his back where he resisted.
Janis Joplin gave him that coat. Oh, blimey, he loved that coat. He really did.
Two thin hands rolled it off him – had to let go of his wrist – and the Doctor tore his head free, scrambled to his feet, and ran. Tried to run. Someone caught hold of his foot and the momentum catapulted him face-first into the ground. The impact conducted through his temple like a hammer striking a brick, the dull chink splintering across his skull. His vision fell grey. Blood pooled around his mouth, gurgling, and there was laughter and the lights strobing in and out around the impressions of the men looming around him, and the floor burning his palms with its cold.
Things got blurry after that.
‘Don’t,’ he protested, ‘don’t,’ as something groped underneath him, pulled his tie out of his suit, tugged his shirt from his trousers. They were undressing him. He struggled. Really struggled, this time, feet and fists and teeth but there were four of them and he couldn’t see straight, couldn’t think through the pain in his head, reverberating from face to spine with every beat of his hearts. The wind froze over his back, his stomach, the men rolling him side-to-side to hitch his shirt higher, pinning his arms within the fabric. His sonic clattered to the ground.
‘Oh?’ asked someone, and waved it in front of his face. ‘What’s this, then?’
The Doctor shook his head weakly, forehead rubbing on the ground. ‘It’s nothing, please,’ he said. Tried to sound casual about it. Couldn’t land it anywhere beyond desperate.
‘Don’t look like nothing,’ agreed a voice. The sonic buzzed for a moment.
‘Take it,’ the Doctor said, ‘Please, that’s all I’ve got,’ and when they laughed and someone tipped their beer over him, fizzing sharp as nettles on his skin, ‘I just want to get home, I won’t bother you.’
‘You’re already bothering me, faggot,’ said the first one, and threw something to the others. ‘Go on, give him a go.’
They held his legs bent apart, a knee and a set of hands on each. Thick fingers roamed across his crotch, finding the fly of his trousers, tugging them open and down. Even unbuttoned, they struggled to get them over the swell of his hips, until two pairs of hands hooked beneath the waistband and jerked trousers and pants down his thighs in two sharp motions.
He heard a blade click into place. Felt it trace a line up the inside of his exposed thigh—terror, singular and primal, enough to drown out the pain clamouring for his attention. Strength he’d held back for far too long burst out of him; a strung bow of adrenaline, its violence suddenly released. Dislodged the man straddling his left foot, ripped his arm through the seam of his jacket and pushed himself up, head reeling, his other fist flying blindly towards the man in front of him, flesh smacking into his knuckles.
There was a guttural noise, the shape of the man curled and staggering back, the angered cries of the others around him. The one on his right was laying blow after blow into his back, side, but the Doctor was insensate to it, braced with his left hand, half-upright and trying to escape and kick the assailant’s face at once—
Something unnaturally precise punched through the back of his hand. It took a fraction of a moment – the plasma-bright afterimage of the knife speared through his palm – before the pain. Too much of it, too fast. He was screaming through clenched teeth. Couldn’t think, couldn’t move, still couldn’t block them out – ‘Fuckin’ whore!’ ‘Get him, get him!’ – couldn’t ignore the hands shoved between his thighs and up, gripped around his bollocks, and the Doctor clenched his fist around the blade in spite of himself and reared back. Mistake. He registered it for a brief second: the foot now hurtling towards his jaw.
He was next aware of a pair of hands pressing his mouth into a denimed crotch, the weight of a man on his back, and fingers pulling his buttocks apart. It didn’t make sense, until abruptly it all did. The reality struck him between the hearts: that he wasn’t going to make it out of this. Not this time.
A finger, dry, pried and forced its way inside him—God.
‘What’s he like, then?’ cried one.
It hurt, hurt like nothing else ever had, but his startled yelps were muffled by the outline of an erection under his lips, the way it smelt of sweat and human sex, the pain as his nose was mashed into bone. The hands threaded in his hair pulled him down further still, grinding into his broken face while a pair of knuckles popped into him with a furious sting.
The man behind him whistled. ‘Tighter than a bird.’
He was clutching at the leg of the man smothering him. Clinging onto him like he was holding on for dear life, his other hand twisted and trapped behind his back. His palm bled a brisk, shiny inkblot across the jeans, the other side of the wound dribbling down his forearm to collect in the crook of his elbow. And the knife was—the knife was a hard corner trapped between his head and the hand keeping it there.
‘Greedy little whore, aren’t you,’ murmured the man, riding the crest of his nose and brow. ‘Hungry for a real man’s cock.’
A hand pulled the Doctor's genitals out from where they hung between his legs, circled tight around the base. The Doctor begged them to leave it there. Begged them not to touch him. He heard the click of a lighter, the drag of a cigarette. Felt the little glow of heat threatening punishment between his legs. There was nowhere to go, and fear still made him struggle, brought him up short against the fist squeezing his cock and the bright, searing pinpoint of agony beneath it. His screams snuffed themselves out between his own bloodied mouth and the human penis straining at it through the damp slip of denim. The stink of burnt hair wafted into his breath anyway.
He clutched the man’s leg tighter.
The stinging, gritty pain of the fingers inside him hadn’t even quietened before they were stabbed in and out of him, tearing like barbs. It was ripping him open. It had to be.
The one rubbing himself on the Doctor's face had managed to get his zip down, the organ flushed red and engorged and choking him with the smell of unwashed musk. He wouldn’t – couldn’t open his jaw. The man redoubled his grip on the Doctor’s hair and took down one hand to guide his penis into the Doctor’s mouth, and when that failed, rubbed it around his lips, swiped the tip through the blood on his chin.
He’d wanted nothing more than the fingers inside him out and found out it only hurt worse when they did. Then—no, no, not this, no—
‘Please! Don’t, I can’t—mhfff!’ and his mouth was filled with hot, human cock. A burst of spit struck haphazardly between his spread cheeks. The hands on his legs clamped down hard and oh, he’d known better than to bite, he had, he had, but it was too much, it was ripping him apart. The man in his mouth roared back and struck him, ear ringing, and then hands on his hips wrenched him down, down, over the thing impaling him like rusty iron. Again. Another, and he didn’t have the breath for more than a strangled sob as the pain spread through him like wildfire.
A mute detachment came over him. In his failing vision, blood and saliva dripped onto the concrete. He couldn’t feel his fingers, didn’t know where his feet were. Couldn’t tell how long it had been. They were shouting, jeering. Grunting. Some of the noise was his own.
The cock was prodding at his mouth again, and the Doctor shied away from it. His body convulsed down to his guts as the other one fucked his way in deeper still. Except it wasn’t flesh in his mouth, now, but metal pressed back along his teeth, and a vicious sneer above him as the man dug the tip of the knife in and slit his cheek open from molar to lip.
The pain was difficult to comprehend. It shouted at him, but he was weak and cold and confused, and imperatives had stopped making sense some time ago. The remnants of his shirt and tie were soaked with beer, blood, clinging to his flesh wetly. His face was numb, thick. Fuzzy. He couldn’t say the same for the other half.
It was getting faster, now, the thrusting. The fucking. Easier. Something dripped down his thigh— didn’t know if it was sweat or blood or both. The pain was blossoming deeper, acid-drenched, sweat springing up across his back. His jaw hung slack, splattering noisily onto the ground, and the man pushed into his mouth as if he were a corpse. Out of sync, they tugged him back and forth over the floor, anchored by hips and head, and the only comfort was the agony and its mindless, overwhelming waves. The body around and inside his face thrust up and pulled hard, deep down the back of his throat, and the Doctor fought not to retch, but the other man was driving in rapid at full-force and his stomach was already roiling.
It only took one firm strike of pelvis into nose, the crepitations vibrating up his head, for the Doctor to vomit around the cock in his mouth.
It didn’t make it stop.
At some indeterminate point, it ended. The rape. The Doctor had no desire to move from where he was slumped on the floor, was neither able nor willing to fight. He’d been angry, before. Maybe pitying. He was too tired now for either.
Except it wasn’t over, not really, of course it wasn’t. A fresh, colder pair of hands took hold of his hips and pulled him up. No warning this time, just another white-hot jagged thing being forced into him, over and over. He looked at the other one, the last one, eagerly palming his crotch. Begged with his eyes, reached for him with hands, tried to open his ruined mouth and invite him closer. Please, let him have his mouth. Please.
It seemed the dangling flesh of his disfigured face and the bile dripping around it was too off-putting.
Worse still, when a pair of big, heavy hands cupped his own genitals. Squeezing his soft cock, rolling his balls, trying to work him in time to the thrusts. The Doctor, face already half-buried in his blood and snot and puke, tried to sink lower, curled his arm over his head and gripped his hair with his swollen palm, and even that meagre protection felt like nothing more than despair.
The last one wasn’t as big, but long enough to feel him all the way in the Doctor’s chest, to make the pain not just where he was being torn apart but deep inside him, like a battering ram against his organs. The retching wasn’t doing much anymore, except to make him clench down on the man’s cock. The pressure, the burning was impossible. Everywhere from the waist down felt like it was aflame and bursting from the inside. He had a vague realisation that he was pissing himself.
He didn’t quite know how it had ended. At some point in the night, the whine in his ears had receded to a dull thrum, and the remains of his clothes were drying sticky and colder still on his skin. Everything was wet. Everything hurt. He couldn’t see anymore.
Getting himself upright was difficult. His hearts were beating too fast, his head going dark as he crawled onto one side. Semen and blood sluiced out of him with each movement, new warmth feeling its way over the icy skin of his legs. Unsure what else to do, he pulled his soiled trousers back around himself, hardly able to withstand the effort. His coat was there, hazily, a shape pooled against the ground.
It seemed like such a pointless thing, now. It wasn’t even warm.
He touched the blurry mass of his face and hardly recognised what he felt.
Only one thought held any power over his body: that he’d be entirely at the mercy of the next human to find him if he didn’t move. The street throbbed towards him, suffocating as the belly of a beast.
He slumped against the door frame. Things weren’t working right. Fingers, shaking coarsely, catching on the edge of his pocket as he tried to fumble inside.
Keys gone. Right.
He felt his way over the shape of the panel and plunged his thumb into the blunt plastic of the doorbell. A drop of blood struck the lapel of his coat. He watched it roll its way down, bounce onto the encrusted moss of the welcome mat. The bead flattened and soaked into the filth there. His breath came shallow and rapid, a harsh snuffle caught by the blood pooling in his throat.
He pressed it again.
The silence closed in on him, pulsing with the darkness behind his eyes. On the other side, he could make out the noise of footsteps, the unlatching of a chain, and another wave of adrenaline clung to him like a cold sweat. He heard, more than saw, the grief striking Martha's face. The panic. She gasped, a stiff figure of shock backlit by the tunnel of his vision. Her voice sounded like agony.
‘Sorry,’ he said, dully. ‘Forgot the milk.’