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The water looked like it stretched on forever, right into space. Clara braced a hand on the metal archway and poked her head into the room, blinking at the bright light, a stark contrast from the grey walls and low lighting of the TARDIS corridors. The surface of the pool glittered with reflected starlight. Huge panes of glass spanned the walls and domed ceiling, giving an unobstructed view of the universe. There were so many more stars out in space than you could see from down on Earth.
She stepped into the room. The pool was surrounded with smooth white stone that gleamed in the starlight. She couldn’t see any gaps between tiles, as if it had been carved from a single massive block. There was no stinging chlorine smell, just salt air and the faint scent of candyfloss, like Blackpool beach when she was a kid.
She slipped off her shoes and lined them up neatly. Standing by the edge, she dipped one foot into the water and found it pleasantly cool but not cold.
“You've found the swimming pool.” The Doctor's voice came from close behind her.
Startled, she grabbed the top of the pool ladder to keep from falling, then straightened up and turned to face him. He wasn't wearing his coat, just a shirt and waistcoat, with his sleeves rolled up his forearms. For him, this was almost relaxed.
“I went wandering,” she explained. “Trying to get to know the ship better. Were you following me?”
“No, I was wandering, same as you. In the same direction. At a distance.” He crossed his arms, uncrossed them, and leaned sideways against the archway. “It's easy to get lost in here.”
Clara stood under the archway with him, leaning against the other side, making him turn his back to the wall to face her in the small space. Sometimes it felt like he looked right through her. He could look right at her and not see her, just like he was always talking but never said anything. She wanted to pin him down and get answers to all of her questions.
“You still haven’t taken me anywhere,” she said. She didn’t really mind. Just being in this place was amazing. But it was his home, and the Doctor wasn't the homebody type. “It’s been– how long have I been here?” It was hard to keep track with no days and no nights, and clocks didn't seem to work right in here.
“It’s been no time at all,” the Doctor answered. “Like you said, we haven’t landed. We're outside of time.”
“But there’s time passing for us, or we wouldn’t be moving about and talking.”
“Your body has aged about six hours, if that’s what you mean.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Does it show?”
The briefest glance down, and then he pointedly looked anywhere but at her. The Doctor nodded towards the pool. “You can borrow a swimming costume from the wardrobe, if you like.”
“Why bother? We're both grown ups, aren't we?”
She reached back and undid the button at the back of her collar. Watching his face, she tugged her dress off over her head and dropped it on the floor. Sometimes he played innocent, all flustered and offended by the idea that he might have impure thoughts. But she knew he looked at her. Now he was stubbornly placid, acting like nothing out of the ordinary was happening.
Standing barefoot in her bra and knickers, she made a choice. Never do anything by halves. She unhooked her bra, slipped off her knickers, and climbed down the ladder into the water. Pushing off from the wall with her feet, she floated on her back, drifting gently away.
The Doctor tilted his head, eyes lingering on her body. He watched her like she was something to study.
“Well? You coming in?”
He snapped out of ogling her. For a moment she worried he would turn and run, but he started unbuttoning his shirt. She grinned up at him.
The Doctor undressed, revealing a smattering of hair on his chest, long legs, and finally, a perfectly normal cock. She didn't know if she should be relieved or disappointed. He jumped in like a child, big splash that rained over her and made her laugh. He surfaced and swam over to her, long limbs cutting through the water.
“Are those real stars, or are we looking at a screen or something?” she asked.
“Course it's real.”
“But how can we see outside from here?”
“I said they were real, I didn't say they were outside.”
She squinted at him. “I never know when you're being serious.”
“Oh, I try never to be serious.”
She treaded water, bobbing up and down slightly as she kicked her feet, while the Doctor was perfectly still. Looking down through the water, she saw his feet were touching the bottom, water only chest high on him even though it had been deep enough to dive.
“Trans dimensional engineering,” he said in answer to her unspoken question. “The water's deeper on the inside.” Toes pointed, she tried to reach the bottom, but her legs were still too short. Annoyed, she grabbed onto his shoulders and pulled herself closer, hooking her legs around his waist and looping her arms around his neck. He placed a hand on the small of her back to steady her. His skin was cool to the touch, chilled from the water. She’d been warned by an empathic psychic that the Doctor had a sliver of ice in his heart. Maybe he did, but he had a spare. She'd seen him fight an ancient god the size of a planet to protect one little girl.
“Clara,” the Doctor said, considering her face carefully. “Do you want to have sex with me?”
She laughed, naked, her tits in his face, legs wrapped around his torso. “Aren't you a clever boy? Yes, Doctor, I'm trying to have sex with you.”
“Well then.” His other hand cradled the back of her neck. She kissed him hard. His hand stroked down her back to squeeze her arse, supporting her as she let go of his shoulders to cradle his jaw and run fingers through his hair.
He lifted her up to sit on the edge of the pool. She slid back and braced herself with her hands behind her as the Doctor climbed out and lay beside her, brushing his wet hair back from his face with one hand. Fingers under her jaw, he gently tilted her chin up and brushed his thumb down her mouth, parting her lips slightly. They were outside of time, so it was impossible to say how long the moment lasted.
The Doctor leaned in to kiss her and the hand under her jaw moved to cup her breast. His tongue slid against hers as his thumb brushed over her nipple. She grasped at his shoulder, unbalanced, wobbly, when his hand moved between her legs and parted her lips with his fingers. Easing herself down, she lay flat, thighs parted. He rubbed circles over her clit with his thumb and slipped a finger inside her, making her back arch. She grinded up against him, wanting more. He gave her another finger, curling them both. The tension in her body reached a breaking point and she cried out, hips jerking. He stroked her through her orgasm, keeping steady pressure to draw out every possible burst of pleasure, only pulling out when her hips went still.
Clara caught her breath, watching him suck his fingers into his mouth and lick them clean. He let her roll him onto his back, and she lay on her side against him.
She wrapped her hand around his cock, stroking from the base to the tip and back down. “You can't get me pregnant, can you? We're not even the same species.”
“No.” Those ancient eyes looked a bit sadder than usual. She filed that away somewhere for later.
“Good. Because I want you inside me.”
She straddled his hips and guided him to her entrance, letting out a sigh as he filled her. Steadying herself with her palms on his shoulders, she rocked forward and sank back down on his cock. The Doctor moaned as she settled into a rhythm. His fingers dug in to her hips, forming sparks of pain where his nails pressed too hard, balancing the warm pleasure of his cock inside her. In moments like these you could almost mistake him for an ordinary bloke, a higher dimensional lifeform stripped back to animal desire.
He rubbed circles over her clit with his thumb, bringing her closer to the edge. Her muscles contracted around him and she cried out, the controlled movement of her hips turning erratic, involuntary, as she rode out her orgasm. He was muttering to himself in some language the TARDIS either couldn't or wouldn't let her understand, and it didn’t take long until he caught up, hands around her waist as he came inside her with a groan.
Clara eased herself off of him, laying on her back and looking up at the universe. The floor was solid under her head, but she felt like she was still floating, like she could drift away, up into the air.
“We shouldn’t do this again,” the Doctor said beside her.
“Why not?”
“I don't know. There's probably a reason. There always is.”
She turned her head to the side, the stone cold against her cheek. “Is it because of the thing you're not telling me?”
“What makes you think there's only one thing I'm not telling you? I'm over twelve hundred years old. If I started telling you all the things I'm not telling you we'd be here for days.”
She sighed. Why did he have to be so impossible? “Do you think talking like that makes you sound sexy and mysterious?”
“Does it?”
“No.”
“Ah. Well.”
She turned back to the stars. The high of her orgasm was wearing off, replaced with a wave of exhaustion.
“You're cold,” the Doctor said.
“I'm fine.”
“I can feel it. Come here.” She shifted towards him and let him pull her close. With his hands on her, she felt as warm as if they were cuddled up under a duvet in front of a crackling fire. She rested her head on his chest. Shifting her ear from side to side, she tried to listen to his heartbeats, but she could only seem to hear one at a time.
Her half asleep brain processed what he’d said. “What do you mean you can feel it?”
“My people have a sort of low level telepathy. More sensitive with physical contact.”
She blushed. “You mean you could read my mind, while we–”
“How could I be inside your body and not inside your mind?” the Doctor asked, as if it should be obvious, as if it made no sense whatsoever not to be like him. “I don’t go looking for anything personal,” he assured her. “There was nothing I couldn’t tell from your face.”
Clara wondered if he was in her head now, and tried to think of something that might get a reaction out of him, but he’d never be caught out so easily. It was just a part of him, she reasoned, as natural as sight and hearing was to her.
“Just tell me something real. Something that doesn't matter. You said you had a granddaughter.”
“That's something that doesn't matter?”
“I didn't mean it like that. What’s her name?”
“Susan.”
“Are you married?” She had a right to know about that, surely.
“I have been. Widowed, I guess you could say. But that’s complicated when you're a time traveler. Nothing's ever over.” There was a positive ache in that. She decided she'd pried enough for one day.
“I should shower, before my hair turns green.” She disentangled herself from his arms.
“Oh, I should have warned you about that.”
“What?” She grabbed the end of her dark hair and held it up to the light, trying to discern any change in hue.
He laughed, looking light and goofy and young again, the mask slipping firmly back on. But that was fine.
She went to grab her clothes, calling back over her shoulder, teasing, “You're a jerk.”