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The ship makes a noise when they enter that sounds like welcome home. Clara, in her limited human tongue, quietly says ‘hey’ and leans against the railings. A handshake.
It had always been a difficult relationship. Things had been said, threats had been made. But he thinks the ship knows, now, what this tiny creature means to him. He thinks the ship approves. Which is good: he’s too happy to want to deal with an antique time capsule’s ruffled feathers.
Happy because of, oh, a dozen things, all centering on this being real. On her being real, and really here: the Impossible Girl, his again. ‘Impossible’ had been the wrong word this whole time, he realizes. She’d always been completely possible, he’d just been too short-sighted to realize. And this is a fact, this is a decision, a reality made. The specific set of her shoulders, the size of her. The particular way the rotor’s light hangs on her frame. The weight of her hand in his. Clara Oswald, the Possible Girl, who had accepted when he’d asked, nearly begged, for her to come with him. She is who she is, she is very precisely Clara. He’d missed her more than he can adequately explain.
The ship whistling contentedly. All of time and space; this single moment.
She says, “I’m in my nightie.” And, “Are you sure this is actually happening?”
"Yeah, I noticed," he says. "No, I’m not sure. I think it is, but who knows?" He shrugs.
Settling into one of the chairs, a huddle of floral pattern and battered slippers. “You’re not bothered by the idea that we might still be dying?”
"We’re always dying. Every day, every second. Time is always running out. So how do you want to make the best of it? Where do you want to go?" Hands hovering over the console controls. He’s grinning, that unfortunate teeth-bared grimace he has now, but she’s never been as frightened of him as she should be.
And she’s smiling back. “Oh, everywhere. Anywhere. But right now? Honestly, I kind of want to stay in. I know it was a dream, but I feel like I just ran a marathon.”
He supposes he ought to be disappointed. Adventures, after all. He likes adventures. But she’s here, and he’s here, and the fact of that is enough.
"I just want a quiet day," she says, like she thinks he needs convincing. "No explosions or moral dilemmas, no frantic running. I want to relax, you know? Spend some time with you, without it turning into the end of the world."
"Would you like - " He pauses, racks his brain. "A picnic?"
"Our luck, we’d get five minutes in and then the planet would be invaded by three-headed aliens."
"You shouldn’t say things like that. There’s nothing wrong with having three heads." It’s half a joke. Having three heads is a natural and beautiful thing, for some species. But he is, what’s the word. Teasing. "Some of my best friends have three heads." This is banter. When did he start engaging in banter?
Clara looks mortified, briefly, then suspicious, then exasperated, but possibly also amused. “You know what I mean. I just - I want to enjoy this for a little bit.”
He doesn’t know what ‘this’ is. He has a theory, though. “We wouldn’t have to land anywhere, necessarily. We have a park. I have a park. The TARDIS - there’s a park. If you’d like. There’s also a movie theatre, a bowling alley, potentially a mini-golf course although I may have jettisoned it - “
But she’s okay with the picnic idea. She wants a basket - he doesn’t have a basket - she says the cardboard box is fine so long as he makes sure to brush all the dust off. The kitchen seems a little bit bigger than the last time he used it. The TARDIS is expanding like a deep breath around them. So more space, a counter now at the right height for her to swing up on top of it, nestled between an espresso machine and a pile of bananas. Feet kicking against the cabinets.
She’s watching him make sandwiches.
Corridors go where they want to, but it only takes five minutes and a few dead-ends before he finds it. Somewhere downstairs, or at least they went down a staircase, an unremarkable grey door with a placard reading Dickenson Square. Through the doorway is a smallish city park. Empty, although birds chirping, small clumps of litter rustling along the paved walkway. Squirrels, a handful of scarred wooden benches.
They find a spot of grass far enough away from the TARDIS walls they don’t notice them anymore. He performs the actions he is reasonably sure a picnic requires: blanket smoothed out on the ground, food distributed, thermos of tea thrust into her hands, napkin tossed in the general direction of her lap.
He would be watching her eat a sandwich, but maybe that’s weird, and anyway there’s a squirrel jumping from branch to branch overhead, which is ostensibly more interesting then basic nutritional intake. He’s putting sugar in his tea. The squirrel settles inside a knot on the trunk of a tree, tiny hands held to its mouth.
She’s tossing a balled-up piece of cellophane into the cardboard box. He’s putting sugar in his tea. She’s lying down, and after a while she’s pulling him down to the ground too. Now the only thing he can see is the sky. The occasional bird. He folds his arms over his chest and tries to remember how to stay still in a place for more than five minutes at a time.
"Doctor."
"Mmm?"
"I’ve been meaning to ask you something."
He props himself up on his elbows, fixates on an ant crawling over the blanket. Up the little flannel mountain, carrying a crumb of bread. “Yeah.”
"Why d’you have a park?"
That wasn’t the question he’d been expecting. “Oh. Ah. It’s a long story. Ha ha ha. There was a bit of an accident, a few too many rips in the fabric of time, the fountain turned into a sort of tumor, corrupting everything around it. So, I took the park. There’s not many places to keep a paradox these days. Besides, I like the idea. A park in a spaceship.”
She sits up and looks over at the fountain. It’s not doing much, aside from running in a basic fountain-y sort of way. “We’re inside a tumor. We ate sandwiches inside a tumor.”
"Metaphysically speaking, yes. But it’s harmless now. Don’t worry, time-cancer isn’t actually a thing you can get." He grins in a manner he hopes will be reassuring. "The sky is a recording. August 22nd, 1982. Took a while to find a day without too many clouds, but." He’s not sure where he’s going with this.
Hopefully convinced of her relative safety, she lies back down next to him, moves over and up so they’re face to face. Or they would be, if he weren’t staring up at the holographic projection of a sky, following the paths of the birds. “So what else do you have? Besides the theatre and the bowling alley and the mini-golf.”
He swallows. He wonders where the ant is now. “There’s a library.”
"A library with books from all of time and space? And you never told your English-teacher traveling companion this why?"
"Must’ve slipped my mind." He’ll have to clean it, now. Hide some things, burn some others. For when she eventually finds it.
"What else." She’s shifting, he can see her turning over in his peripheral vision. She settles half on top of him, one arm curled loosely around his shoulder, head tucked under his chin.
"Um. A swimming pool. Wardrobe room, which you’ve discovered already, unless you carry spare chronologically-appropriate outfits around at all times." He breathes in, against the warm weight pressing into his chest. "A New York City subway stop, circa 2004. General storage. Cricket pitch. A video-game arcade. Some lakes. Mountains, I think. A garage-stroke-zeppelin-hangar. Bedrooms, broom closets. There’s quite a few cats, somewhere. Maybe in the gardens. Or the aquarium. I should check one of these days, make sure they haven’t eaten all the fish."
"Are you making this up?"
"I don’t think so, no. There’s also the control rooms, backup console rooms, interfaces, filtration systems…"
She’s not really interested in filtration systems. He’s not really interested in the birds. There is something they are both consciously not doing, he knows.
"Plumbing, electrical," he says, breathlessly. "Data clusters."
She scoots up, turns his face gently towards her, hand on his chin, and leans in to kiss him on the lips. A quick, barely-there sort of thing. She pulls back, gives him a searching look - he blinks back in what might be confusion - then they’re both on their backs staring up at the sky again.
The thought that possibly he just fucked up asserts itself in his head, along with a dozen others. But she’s tugging on his sleeve, bringing his arm up to where she can reach his hand, and she’s weaving her fingers between his.
Clouds drifting. “I’ve always thought that one looked like Abraham Lincoln,” he says, pointing.
"I would have said ‘steam locomotive’, but yeah, I can see that." She gives his hand a squeeze. "How about that one? A frog? Possibly Margaret Thatcher?"
In between witnessing the birth of a star and narrowly avoiding starting a riot in the Earth consulate on Huoxon III, they spend five hours in the library. She’d asked, he’d relented with a minimum of fuss.
Something vulnerable, isn’t there, about a private collection.
He wanders around the balconies and catwalks, trying to recall where he’d left the Librarian-O-Tron. Or had he called it BookBot? Cathy Catalog, maybe. She follows him for a minute or two, then drifts off, pulling the occasional book down from a shelf, losing herself in the stacks. Eventually she heads down to the small but tasteful assortment of armchairs on the first floor, struggling under a pile of guide books and star charts and poetry quarterlies.
Something oddly intimate about her flipping through his dog-eared copy of Lonely Galaxy: Saturn and Surrounding Satellites. He’s watching her smooth out the pages he’d left wrinkled.
"Stop looming from a distance," she calls out. "It’s disconcerting. C’mere."
He comes, of course. He does what she tells him to almost absentmindedly now, unless it’s a matter of life or death.
"Come here,” she says when he sits down in a chair a few feet away. “I don’t bite.” She slides over, pats the cushion next to her.
After some frowns and feigned reluctance, some false starts and awkward shuffling, he manages to squeeze in beside her. And then under her, when she rolls her eyes and wriggles onto his lap. She settles eventually sort of perpendicular, her cheek against his chest, legs over the armrest, book propped up in the crook of his elbow. Clears her throat elaborately until he realizes it’s not that she’s allergic to the dust, but that she expects him to do something, which is put his non-bookstand arm around her back. All these micro-adjustments. It’s just sitting down.
Except it’s not, not really, and he knows that.
"That’s one of my favorite bridges," he says, pointing over her shoulder at the page on New Boston.
"Let me guess," she says. "You were best mates with the engineer."
"Actually, she’s one of fifteen people in the entire universe I haven’t met." He smiles, and finally lets his hand come to rest on her hip.
She starts getting suspicious of the vegetables.
"These peppers weren’t here a minute ago," she says, holding one up as if she thought he might not know what a pepper was. "I thought, ‘ooh, I could really go for a red bell pepper,’ and I turned around and there they were. And come to think of it, I’ve never actually seen you grocery-shopping. Where does this stuff come from?"
"If not seeing something meant it didn’t exist, you’d vanish whenever I closed my eyes. I do the - the shopping things, occasionally. And there’s a garden here as well, which is probably where your mystery produce suddenly emerged from."
"You garden? In that outfit?" She’s still brandishing the pepper, waving it at him for emphasis.
"The TARDIS does all the work. I just make the salad. Which isn’t a bad metaphor for how the whole TARDIS-Time Lord interaction works, actually."
So, of course, she wants to see the garden. Down the corridors, to an unremarkable grey door with a placard reading VEG / SOIL-TYPE B. Through the doorway is a few acres of haphazardly-placed plots, all the things he’s picked up here and there and tossed into the ship’s general sorting system, including a few freshly-harvested pepper plants.
He points out the things that are toxic to humans, and the things that are generally delicious, and the sheer genius of the systems keeping the miniature ecosystem stable. Temperature, humidity, artificial rainfall, a network of dutiful worms, the beehives. The automatic planting and retrieval.
If he could bottle up that look of wonder and giddy disbelief, that shining, bubbling expression she puts on, he would; he’d bottle it and keep it in his pocket and open it only slightly, on rainy days. But emotions like that aren’t exactly things you can chemically synthesize, he’s learned, so he settles for watching her, mostly out of the corner of his eye.
They’re sitting down together next to the tomato plants, cross-legged in the grass. She’s toying with an apple still wet with carefully-engineered dew. He’s listening to the bees swarming nearby.
"Doctor," she says.
"Yeah."
She rolls gracefully, lightly over him, guiding him flat on his back, straddling his waist. Knees getting grass-stained. He tries not to notice how neatly they fit together. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” she says. Fiddling with a button on his coat.
He raises his eyebrows and gestures, translation: go ahead get on with it I don’t have all day. He hopes it’s clear that he’s joking and that he does have all day, he’d spend all day like this.
The palms of her hands resting gently over his hearts. “Is it alright if I kiss you?”
That was slightly closer to the question he’d been expecting.”You did already. Usually if you’re going to ask permission, you do it the first time you-“
"No. Shush. What I meant - what I want to say is."
He waits. She’s still not finishing the sentence. A soft breeze blows through the trees, leaves rattling. Bees again. “Yes?”
"I wrote all this down, you know. Had a whole color-coded system, flash cards and everything."
"You could just say it." He tries not to fidget. Half his brain doesn’t know why Clara Oswald of all people is tongue-tied. The other half has a reasonable hypothesis. The conjecture being, of course, that it’s the same reason he’s now thinking about what it would feel like to put his hands on her thighs. The central issue they are circling around.
"I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t want to mess us up. I want to do it right.” She bites her lip, looks away.
"Not everything has to be perfect. Sometimes it’s okay to wing it and hope for the best. So start over. Ask your question."
She hesitates - he always feels a sad sort of affection when she does that - and visibly steels herself. Asks, “Is it alright if I kiss you? In a non-platonic sort of way?”
He doesn’t trust his voice, the pressure building up in his throat, like he’d open his mouth and his soul would fall out. He nods.
With one hand flat over his right heart and the other beneath his head, she kisses him. Tentative, like she’s afraid she might break him. Which, he supposes, is a reasonable fear. Then, with that expression he likes, the ‘I’ve already won and you just don’t know it yet’ one, she kisses him again. Open-mouthed, tongue running along his lips until he parts them for her. He finds himself stroking her hair.
She’s moaning into his mouth, she’s, what. Sliding her hand down to the waistband of his trousers, undoing the button, unzipping the -
He starts, grabs her wrist, holds it up between thumb and forefinger. “No, no no no. Sorry, but. No. Not - not yet. Is that okay?” He lets go, scrambles out from under her. Zips himself back up and hunches over, looking away.
"Don’t be an idiot," she says. She rubs his shoulders, hugs him - from behind, maybe she knows he’s not great at looking at certain people at certain times - wraps her arms around him. "Of course it’s okay. If anyone should be sorry, it’s me. I don’t want to rush you, make you uncomfortable. I just. I want you, so much." That last bit a whisper pressed into his neck, lips against his skin.
He could say that she has him, but he knows what she means. And he could say that he wants her too, which is the truth, only when he goes to say that sort of thing something else entirely tends to come out. Like ‘your nose is funny’, or ‘I’m bored’. He looks for a phrase, a sentence around the sentiment. He winds up with: “Don’t be sorry.” And, “Thank you.” And maybe she can find an answer somewhere, in the way he’s clinging to her hands crossed over his hearts, that means more than he could ever manage to say.
He’s still not the hugging type. He is the hugging-Clara type, though, and it gets more enjoyable as time goes on. More comfortable, the more she gently but determinedly gets him used to her touch. He can hug back now, he can take her hand. He can kiss her on the lips and a few other places. It’s himself he’s still not all that sure about. She wants him, wants all of him, but the list of things he’s able to relinquish control of is unfairly short: the arm-type region is fine, most of legs, about half his torso. She can pet his hair, if he’s in a good mood. That’s it, that’s all. There’s a sort of block, a dissonance when her hands stray beyond the proscribed areas. Progress is incremental. She’s starting to get antsy.
Back from a jaunt in 18th-century Earth, she’s on him before the TARDIS doors finish closing. Pushes him up against the wall, her need palpable, kissing him like she’s trying to suck his brains out.
He likes, or wants to like, being here: between the two women in his life, helpless between the hard metal of the ship and Clara’s unexpected strength. That steel in her, poorly-hidden beneath the soft outer layer. He wants nothing more than to give in, wants her to take him and break him and encompass him entirely. He wants to unclench the fist that his heart is. He regrets, intensely, all the walls he’d spent so much effort putting up.
But it is what it is, and he’s running away again. Dashing off to repair something that doesn’t need fixing, not looking back. Her face is probably doing that thing again, with the eyes and the six conflicting emotions. He can’t bear to see that, now less than ever.
It’d been so simple, in the dream. The casual touch, the easy stride. They’d both dreamt him more confident, more open. They’d both dreamt him letting go.
And that’s in him somewhere, of course. It had been almost him, in the dream. He’d done things he was almost able to do in real life. Just a half-step over, a slightly better version of him. At least now he knew what he wanted.
He’s gotten the accidental telepathy issue under control (no more static-electric psychic shocks from passing strangers, no fear that he would find something in Clara she didn’t want him to see). But he still startled, and held back, and locked up. The inexplicable discomfort. He wants to hold her, to be held by her; he can barely manage to hold much more than her hand.
Baby steps, Clara had said. No rush. He’s mastered the art of the apologetic smile.
She wants more, he knows. He’d like to give her more. At night, alone in bed, he thinks about it. Focuses on the aching, burning thing he now carries around with him, turns it over in his mind. All the needs and anxieties and sensitivities, the skin-flush and shortness of breath. Like he could write an equation, if he could only understand the variables. A businesslike exploration of his own body, the first time he’s bothered to check. Like this is just a mechanical problem he can solve, as if he’s a machine he’s built. Corresponding the idea of her with the physical reaction: his dick works, that’s a plus.
He’d just sort of - done it, before. With River, not that he’d known what he was doing, but he’d never been quite so hung up. Sex was a thing that suddenly happened. Now, now. Now he’s lying in bed with his hand around his cock, wondering if crying would be an inappropriate response.
She is here, somewhere, maybe also doing this. Maybe also lying in bed, maybe naked, maybe her own uncertainties and vulnerabilities. Maybe thinking about him.
The ship is closing around him, blanketing him. The slightest of atmospheric pressures. A clicking, whispering noise; a sympathetic hand on his shoulder, metaphorically speaking. A thrum in the walls and the floor and in him, searching and caressing. It’s a perfunctory orgasm, leaving him sticky and ashamed and disappointed in himself, but the bubble bath waiting for him when he finally drags himself out of bed is one of the best things he’s ever experienced.
"Thanks," he says to the empty bathroom, voice bouncing off the tiles. The ship burbles back understandingly.
He makes the mistake of mentioning he used to collect cars. And motorbikes, and hovercrafts, and generally anything with an engine that went ‘vroom’. Clara’s eyes light up instantly. She wants, no, she needs to see the garage, right now, let’s go. She starts running off in no particular direction, his hand in hers, and he comes tumbling after. The ship takes them there.
And the ship locks the door behind them, though he doesn’t want to draw too much attention to that just yet.
She presses him down on the hood of a silver Aston Martin DB5 and kisses him hard. Teeth, and her hands under his coat, running hungrily up his sides. One thrust of her hips against his, then she backs off, giggling, wiping her mouth, grabbing his hand again and leading him to what used to be his favorite Triumph.
"That’s a real track and not a holographic projection, yeah?" She’s fastening the straps of a helmet under her chin, slapping another helmet on his head. Swinging her leg over the motorcycle, fluid and confident. Beckoning to him. "Because I really want to know what this thing feels like between my legs."
"It’s real, yeah, okay, are we-? Right." He hops on behind her, sits gingerly until she reaches back for his hands and pulls him tight against her back, arms wrapped around her. She turns the key, throws him a wild-eyed grin, and they’re off.
Flying around the track, fast as anything, full-throttle. She’s laughing, he’s maybe laughing too. Clinging to her for reasons only partially related to not wanting to fall off and die. He loses track of time.
Funny how the universe can narrow down so quickly, down to so few things. The bend in the road and the smell of her hair and the feeling of velocity.
She pulls over when they start running out of petrol. He’d never been good at remembering to keep up with basic maintenance. She takes off her helmet, shakes her hair out, looks up at him with the look he now knows how to categorize. She’s turned on, and she’s doing her best to move past it. “You realize you’re gonna have to let me take this out for a proper spin. Country roads, the wind in our hair…it’s a nice track but nothing compares to that.”
"Maybe," he says. He means yes. "So, uh. One problem. We might be a little bit locked in. So if you had any plans, anywhere you were supposed to be-"
"What do you mean, ‘locked in’?" She rushes over to the exit, tries the handle, tries prying it open, tries the handle again.
"I mean we’re locked in. The TARDIS has become somewhat - invested, in us."
"Invested."
"I think she’s locked us in here together so we’ll be forced to. Spend time together. In, uh, a no-clothes sort of way."
She looks furious. And, what, indignant, that’s the one. She spins around, maybe looking for something to direct her anger towards, some camera or access panel. “Hey! You! Yeah, you, I’m talking to you. I know you mean well, and you care about him, and I understand that you want him to be happy. But do not, do not-” Jabbing at the air with her index finger, still twirling. “Do. Not. Interfere in our relationship. Whatever happens between us is between us, so back off.”
"I think it sort of is between the three of us, actually-"
"Shut up," she snaps. "You’re not helping. And you," to the ship, "open the damn door. Now." She clenches and unclenches her fists. "Please," she says, an afterthought.
He pats the wall next to the door. “I really would appreciate it if you could let us out,” he murmurs. “Don’t worry about me. I appreciate the thought but I’m, I’m alright.”
With a long-suffering wheeze and something that sounds a bit like frustration, the door swings slowly open.
He’s down in the depths of the ship, attempting to fix something that is, this time, legitimately broken. He’s tracked the problem down, to the right junction and then the exact access panel, which he yanks open a little too roughly. The panel cover comes off its hinges, and what seems like half the ship’s inner workings come spilling out. Miles and miles of tubes and wires and conduits and broken bits of circuit boards, slamming him onto the floor and covering him. He tries to get out; he winds up trapped even more thoroughly. Frayed ends everywhere, tangling tighter around him the more he struggles. Connecting to him and not letting go.
It’s the telepathic interface that’s on the blink. This is part of the psychic network. He’s linked to the psychic network. He knows everything that’s happening, everywhere in this ship.
And Clara’s in her bedroom, masturbating.
He swallows, swallows again, takes a few calming breaths, counts to ten and back to one, then fumbles on a radio headset. “Clara. Clara, can you hear me?”
"Yeah, I can hear you. This better be important, I’m busy." She sounds like - she sounds like she’s been doing what she’s doing.
"Yeah, I know, that’s the thing. I, I wanted to inform you that I know what you’re doing. It’s the TARDIS, she’s - it’s not important. Just, if you’re uncomfortable about me accidentally spying on you, you should stop until I can land somewhere and go for a walk."
"Uncomfortable isn’t the word I’d use. Look, I know we said we’d go slow, and I understand if you’re not ready. But I’d really love it if you kept talking to me."
He slumps down further into the pile of tubes and conduits. The ship is thrumming beneath him. “What should I say?”
"Anything. Doesn’t matter. Read an instruction manual or something. Just. Talk to me."
One of the conduits has somehow looped around his upper thigh. The air is warmer, the lighting has dimmed. An image, helpfully supplied by the telepathic circuitry he of course managed to sit directly on top of: Clara biting her lip, eyes closed, one finger tracing a line between her breasts, across her stomach, dipping below the waistband of her panties. Please, he thinks. Stop. The ship warbles disappointedly, but withdraws the image from his mind.
"Can you see me?" Her voice is breathy.
"Not, not as such. But I can sense you." That was the right thing to say, apparently, because her responding moan comes through the radio loud and clear. "Anyway, I have this book, somewhere…" He digs inside his coat pockets, ignoring the wires now gently encircling his wrists, the - whatever that was, brushing against his lower back. "Yeah, okay, got it. It’s, um, it’s called 75 Exciting Vegetables For Your Garden." He opens the book and settles it on his lap, pressing unfortunately against the electrical tubing that’s somewhat suckered up against his crotch. "Introduction. There are many-"
"I take back what I said, about it not mattering what you talked about. I dunno if I can do this. Vegetables?"
"I can skip ahead, if you like." He licks his thumb and turns to the next page. "Chapter One: Turnips. The humble turnip is-"
”Doctor.”
"Are you annoyed or aroused? I can’t tell."
"Both. What. Why did you have a gardening book in your pocket?"
"I don’t know!" he says, more loudly than he’d intended. "It just sort of - showed up. They’re big pockets, okay? They’ve got a mind of their own." A thread of something winds through his psyche, something of hers, a smile and an eyeroll and an insistent ache. "Would you like to hear about aubergines?"
"I hope you know, this is the single strangest sexual experience I’ve ever had, and I’ve had some doozies."
"If I just recite the names of potato varietals, would that do it for you?"
The groan she makes may or may not be erotic in nature. “Might as well give it a go.”
He looks down at the book. Russet potatoes, red potatoes, fingerling potatoes. He makes a decision. “Are you touching yourself right now?”
She gasps quietly, a startled little noise. “Yes.”
"Where?" The conduits and tubes and things are clinging less now, if still throbbing slightly. He has the briefest sensation of being patted on the head.
"Well, I took my hand out of my pants at the word ‘turnip’. So, just the top of my thigh."
"Where’s your other hand? You do still have two hands, yes?" He’s still clutching the book, thumb rubbing circles over the illustration of a Yukon Gold potato.
"Yes, I do. Thank you for asking. It’s on my breast, sort of gently…cupping."
His ears are sweating beneath the headphones. He’s starting to get hard. The linoleum beneath him vibrating, the low machine hum. “I know you don’t take orders, so consider this a request: stop being gentle.”
The ship shakes a wave of psychic energy through him, blood-hot and buzzing. She’s breathing hard. He’s made aware of the fact that she’s curling her toes.
"Another request," he says. "Resume what you were doing before I started talking about turnips." A pause, for nerve-gathering. "Put your hand between your legs." He pushes his voice deeper and quieter than it’s been, the lowest register he can manage. He is aware, mostly abstractly, of the effect this has on her. Maybe it’ll make up for the fact that he has no clue what he’s doing.
"Request granted," she whispers.
He looks skyward, like he’s asking for guidance. From, what, the TARDIS? She’s doing her best but she’s not exactly programmed for this. “I don’t know what to say next,” he admits. “Sorry.”
"It’s fine. Knowing you’re there is enough. Better than just imagining you. Imagining your hands on me, inside me."
His brain is fritzing out, or maybe that’s electrical shocks from the bare wires creeping up his pant leg. “You were thinking about me?”
"Who else would I be thinking about?"
He tries to put Danny Pink’s name out of his head.
"Is this doing anything for you?"
He looks down: yeah. “Yeah,” he says. “But I’m not doing anything about it. I can’t - it’s not you, it’s just that - I can’t. Not yet.”
"It’s fine," she says again. "You’ll get there. I’ll get you there." The line goes silent. "D’you know," she says eventually. "I think maybe you should talk about the potatoes now."
So he talks about potatoes. And then peppers, winter squash, lettuce, at least a dozen of the 75 exciting vegetables to grow in your garden. He listens to her breath speed up, feels echoes of her arousal run around and past him. He focuses on the best time of year to plant carrots.
Half a ship away, Clara hears the phrase ‘water daily’ and, with thumb and forefinger clamped hard on her clit, finally manages to come. “Well,” she says. “That was unorthodox. Functional, but. Maybe next time have a book of erotica in your pocket.”
"I don’t intend for there to be a next time," he says, attempting to extricate himself from the assorted innards of the TARDIS. He shakes the wires free from his leg. "Not like this. I’ll be there. Whatever happens, or doesn’t happen, it’ll happen with me at least in the same room as you."
She laughs, but it’s not a mocking thing, it’s, what, contented, maybe. Charmed in an odd sort of way. “That’s a good first step, yeah. Anyway, I need a shower, but after that I am absolutely ready for a planet. You got a planet for me?”
"Right. Yes. Travel. Adventures and derring-do. I’ll find you someplace wonderful, I promise."
After a few minutes of false starts and falling down, he untangles the last of the conduit knotted around him. The last half-hour goes into a secure, isolated part of his brain. Or at least he pretends to put it there. He’s still uncomfortably, unavoidably hard.
"Shower. Cold shower. I know I left a bathroom around here somewhere," he mutters to himself, stumbling gracelessly through the corridors.
The sprinkler system turns on in full force, drenching him instantly.
"Not like that!" he yells. "Could you just leave me alone? For one minute?"
With an apologetic beeping, the sprinkler slows to a trickle, then turns off. He squelch-stomps towards where towels will hopefully be. “If Clara sees me like this, I’ll, I’ll reactivate that subroutine, the one that makes you itchy. Teach you to mind your own business, right?” His voice echoes through the empty hallways; the ship has already retreated, curling back up into essential functions.
He sighs, stops walking, presses a hand against the wall. “Sorry!” he calls out. “I didn’t mean that. Please don’t sulk. I’m not angry, I promise. I just need you to not push so hard, okay? Dial it down little.” He cocks his head, waiting for an answer. There isn’t one, but the next door he comes across when he starts walking again is to a walk-in closet, containing extravagantly fluffy towels and a dry version of his outfit hung up neatly.
Days pass, weeks pass. He comes to a certain understanding. There’s something he needs to do. He walks, doesn’t matter where. The ship leads him to Clara’s bedroom.
She’s dressed for bed, he thinks. That’s what this particular article of clothing is for, right? The soft one, with the flowers on. Her face isn’t drawn on anymore. The colors are okay, he supposes, but they cover up a sort of private glow about her. He likes her like this. He wants her especially like this.
There appears to be somewhat less of her. Shoes, he reminds himself. She’s usually got shoes on, with the stilts in the back. She’s looking at him like she’s waiting for him to do something. He’s waiting to do something. Instead: browsing her odd little piles of items, the jars of nailpolish, the doodads and decorations. Photographs and hairbrushes and ticket stubs. The cruft of a life. She’s moved in. Not entirely, of course; she still has her apartment, her normal job and normal life. But she’s here as well, more here than she’s ever been.
She’s here, he’s here. They’re waiting. He’s so tired of waiting.
So he makes a decision. Coat off and hung up, cufflinks deposited in a pocket (he hopes he’ll be able to find them again, they’re his only pair), sleeves rolled up to his elbows. He gestures for her to sit on the bed, and kneels on the floor in front of her.
"You don’t have to do this," she says.
"I want to."
It’s amazing how the universe can narrow down so quickly, down to so few things. The arch of her foot, the muscular curve of her calves. Knees, inner thighs. The little mewling sounds she’s making. The involuntary twitch.
The frustrated huff when he kisses a line from thigh to hipbone to belly-button, avoiding the obvious. “You’ve been patient all this time, you can wait another five minutes,” he says. “Hmm?” Up over her ribcage, her breasts, teasing her nipples with his tongue. Teeth to clavicle. Making notes of what things where elicit a hiss of pleasure. It’s important that he do this right.
Her hands clenching the bedspread, white-knuckled. She lifts her body up towards him but he’s still holding himself carefully away, arms locked either side of her, the space between them.
Then back down to his knees, her legs hooked over his shoulders. She’s sitting up now, fingers flexing in his hair like she wants to tug and pull but isn’t. Like she’s riding him, hands on the throttle. He kisses her once on the dark patch of hair between her legs, in a way that would be chaste if applied to any other area, then slips his tongue inside her.
Listening for the rhythm of her arousal, the pace she needs. Catching up, pulling past, slowing down if only for how funny her frustrated wordless complaints are, and the fact that laughing open-mouthed against her makes her writhe. Her thighs occasionally squishing his ears, but he doesn’t mind. He’s diligent, if nothing else: the precise suction, the exact pressure required. Ignoring his own rapidly-mounting arousal - this is for her, it has nothing to do with him.
(Maybe a voice in his head saying Keep telling yourself that, you old fool, but he’s gotten good at ignoring wayward thoughts.)
She’s close, he knows. Closer and closer still. The peculiarities of human sweat, the stifled moan, the way she thrusts up against his mouth, urging him deeper, to go faster, harder. He obliges, of course. And, with his thumb brought up rough against her clit, she yelps and digs her fingernails into his scalp, and she lets go. When the last echoes of her orgasm dwindle out, he pulls away, licks his lips, ducks out from beneath her legs.
"Was that okay?" he asks.
"Not bad," she says, and laughs giddily.
He wipes his face and hand off with a handkerchief he apparently had in his trouser pocket, monogrammed TD. Folds it up neatly and tosses it vaguely towards her laundry basket, settles back on his haunches. Focuses on willing his erection away. A parlor trick, not one he’s ever been all that good at.
"Your turn?" She sounds so hopeful.
"Ah, no. No, I’m fine. I’ll just." He pulls himself upright, joints creaking, and motions towards the door. Fingers twiddling paragraphs of excuses. "I’ll go. Things to be done, you know."
She sighs, face falling. Then the squaring of shoulders he knows indicates a shift into Determination Mode. “You’re going nowhere, mister. I’m going to go take a quick shower. You’re going to take your shoes off and lie down. You’re going to wait quietly until I get back, and then we are going to cuddle.”
"I don’t know how I feel about-"
"We’re gonna snuggle and that’s final,” she says, in a tone that will brook no dissent. “Also you might want to wash your hands.”
She takes a shower. He washes up quickly, with soap that smells like fruit salad, and does not watch her through the shower curtain. He unlaces his boots and kicks them off. Lies down in her bed, which is far too soft for his liking, trying to take up as little space as possible. Trying to distract himself from the basic facts of this.
The ship is dimming the lights, adjusting the temperature. The ship is cooing reassuringly at him.
When she returns, warmer and pinker than usual, he’s already gotten halfway through the Galactic Standard Emoji alphabet. He squeezes his eyes shut. She’s prodding him over, onto his side; she’s aligning herself against his back, tucking her hand between the buttons of his shirt; she’s nuzzling the nape of his neck. “Shush,” she says, pre-emptively.
He relaxes, eventually. He’ll never admit to it, but he might even fall asleep, for a while.
It’s almost a non-event, when it happens. They’re in the movie theatre, watching a documentary on ancient Egypt. Cuddled up on a chesterfield sofa, because what’s the point of having your own cinema if you can’t replace those atrocious seats? There’s no point, is what the point is. He’s commenting loudly on all the inaccuracies, she’s humoring him. He’s dropping popcorn everywhere.
At some point, he realizes he doesn’t really want to talk about pharaohs anymore. Or eat popcorn, for that matter. Clara is an insistent presence next to him, not an anchor so much as a constant pull. He’s the loose thread on a sweater; but so what, honestly, so what if he unravels. He trusts her, and they owe this to each other.
So he says, “C’mere.” And, “Please.” And her name a few times, for good measure.
She grins at him. Maybe it’s pride. “That’s the first time you’ve ever initiated a hug. If I had my stickers with me, I’d put a gold star smack-dab in the middle of your forehead.” She gets up, plops unceremoniously on his lap. “So what inexplicable part of me are you going to fixate on this time? Ears, maybe? I cleaned them extra, just in case.”
He’s taking note of how well they fit together. And they do, really, they do bracket each other perfectly: she’s small but he’s narrow, and she’s round where he’s angles. They make sense, somehow. Even if her nose is all funny. Especially if her nose is funny.
"I want you," he says, finally.
"Yeah," she says. "Figured that one out already."
"No, no no. I mean." What’s the thing that he means. He looks up at her, tries to put all of it in his face, an open book for her. "I dunno what I mean," he says. It’s a cop-out.
But she knows, she always knows. She smiles and leans into him. Kisses him hard and sharp, the unabashed lust, same as when he’d promised her motorbikes. Only she’s expecting more, now.
And for whatever reason, it’s fine. He doesn’t bother to hide the sharp intake of breath, doesn’t bother to keep from obviously grinding against her. Makes plain the desperate want, the base physicality of it all, his erection pressing against his trousers. Takes her little ‘mmm’ of pleasure as the compliment it’s meant to be, not a warning sign. Watches with frank appreciation as she undresses. He doesn’t stop her when she reaches for his belt buckle, the question clear on her face as she slowly undoes his flies. Flinches, a little, when she wraps her hand around his cock and pulls it out. Resets his brain just in time for her to slide down on him.
After a series of choked wheezes, he manages to clear at least a fraction of his mind. “Sorry. This isn’t gonna be spectacular. I, um. I wish I were better. For you.”
"Not everything needs to be perfect," she says. "And you’re more than good enough for me. So what do you say? You wanna let me show you the universe?"
His nose tucked into a hollow beneath her collarbone, he asks: “How could I resist?” It’s a trick question; they both know he never could.
And no, it isn’t perfect. He can’t quite keep track of what it is he’s supposed to be doing, forgets he’s meant to be an active participant. She does all the work, if he’s honest. He tries to keep his eyes trained on her eyes, memorizing that shining, glassy look. Tries to remember to put his hands where she likes, instead of just clumsily flapping at her breasts.
And some of the things he’d been afraid would happen do happen: he does say her name too much, in too hoarse and too open a tone of voice; there are tears in his eyes; he does fall apart, physically and mentally. He does come long before she does, despite gritted teeth and assorted mental exercises; he does have to finish her off by hand. He might even say I love you, once or twice. But she doesn’t mind. The look on her face, whatever it means exactly; she doesn’t mind.
She kisses him again, afterwards, slow and sweet and a little sleepy. “Have I got some tricks to teach you,” she says playfully. “Oh, we’re gonna have fun.”
He feels like a bag of pudding, sort of oozing around her. “Yes ma’am,” he says distantly.
The ship is humming smugly to itself.
"Yeah, alright, I get it," he calls out. "You were right. I owe you one. Now if you could just shut up.”
"Doctor."
"I know, I know. ‘Don’t talk to the TARDIS while conducting an intimate encounter.’ But. She does like you, in spite of how she might act. She’s happy for us."
"I’m happy for us. You’re happy. We’re just one big fucked-up happy family." She grins, then winces. "I really, really do need to get cleaned up, though. There wouldn’t happen to be a shower around here, would there?"
"No no no no, don’t say that, please-"
But it’s too late. The fire-suppressant sprinklers are already turning on, with all the water pressure afforded by a state-of-the-art plumbing system. They’re soaked through in seconds.
"Thank you," Clara yells. "I think. Not really."
"Well, you know. Sometimes it rains inside. And that’s okay, it’s all part of the adventure. Speaking of, I know a very dry, warm place we can go. This planet, nearly everything is terrycloth."
"Why not. Take me to the planet of the towels." She shakes her hair away from her face, like a dog. He tries not to laugh.
And so they go, to find the planet of the towels. Which absolutely does exist, he’s not making it up, it’s just that the TARDIS has been so recalcitrant lately -
(It’s okay, she says, on the fourth failed attempt. I’ll go wherever. With you, I’ll go wherever. Just give me a sec to grab my hairdryer.)