Work Text:
“Clara?”, he enquired one night in the console room.
He sat in his wingback chair on the upper levels, nose tucked into a dusty tome, not taking his eyes off the page he was on as he foraged in his nigh-infinite coat pocket.
“Yes, Doctor?”, she responded with divided attention from her flight chair on the lower deck, her hand busily marking Courtney’s latest “essay”, if you could call a 2-page rant on the futility of reading War and Peace an “essay”. She made sure to write the words “See me after class” in bold red ink at the top of the page.
Having one-handedly procured a crumpled scrap of paper the Doctor set his book down in his lap and attempted, in vain he soon realised, to smooth out the creases with his palms.
“Ahem.”, he cleared his throat just a little too loudly to not be making a point.
Clara shut her eyes and let out an annoyed sigh at being interrupted from her marking. She set the train wreck she called her career aside and granted him her full attention.
“I’m listening.”, she said as she turned her searchlight eyes on him. Those eyes that always seemed to look deeper into him than he expected. Always probing, questing, questioning. Unnerving him and setting him on edge so high up he felt he might not survive the fall from that height. He felt he might just regenerate on the spot from the weight of her stare boring into his hearts.
He wadded up the paper and tucked it back into his breast pocket.
“Never mind.”, he said and prattled on about something to do with a false alarm and incorporeal entities and how you can never really be too careful you know.
She just shook her head and returned to her marking.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
“Mmm. What is that smell? Is that chicken fricassee? Since when do you know how to cook?”, Clara asked in disbelief.
“Clara.”, he tutted.
“I’m over 2,000 years old and you think I can’t make a simple French stew?”, he asked wearing a look of mock offense and, if brows could speak, his would have been screaming, “I wholeheartedly disapprove!”
“Honestly, Clara, sometimes I wonder why I keep you around. You’re obviously much more invested…”, he paused to finish finely chopping his cremini mushrooms.
“…in stroking your own ego than…”, he whipped around to snatch the heavy cream out of the fridge and turned back to face her.
“…you are mine.”, he accused before his expression fell entirely.
Clara was standing directly in front of him with an odd look on her face, one eyebrow raised, and he suddenly felt the overwhelming urge to correct himself.
“Ego. M-my ego. Weren’t you listening? You humans and your 10 second attention spans. It’s a wonder you can even dress yourselves.” He silently prayed to the powers that be that his bluster overcame the rapid beating of his hearts at her proximity.
The air seemed to crackle with energy and, just for a nanosecond, his gaze wandered to her dainty mouth before he schooled himself back into a more wholesome frame of mind.
Clara rolled her eyes and scoffed, only allowing a small satisfied smirk to creep onto her face once she had spun on her heels toward the kitchen island behind her. “Are you always this grouchy when you cook?”, she asked anxiously thumbing the edge of the worktop to occupy herself.
He seemed to think about it for a moment, “I’ve been told that, when I’m stressed, I tend to insult other species. Don’t take it personally. Life must be so much harder on those with only one heart.” He sampled the simmering white cream sauce and adjusted the seasonings accordingly.
“How you ever manage to tolerate us inferior beings so frequently is beyond me” she said in a tone drenched in sarcasm even as she hopped up and squirmed onto the edge of the work surface, lightly kicking her stockinged feet.
“It’s not without effort, Clara.”, he said with a grin and dipped a small spoon into the sauce again. “Here, taste.”, he brought it to her with a hand cradled beneath it to catch any drips, and waited expectantly for her to try it.
She blushed profusely at the intimacy of the gesture and sipped so quickly that she choked some of it down the wrong way. “It’s good.”, she sputtered out, suddenly shy and very aware that he was watching her lick her lips clean and studying her hand tucking a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. He stood perfectly still observing her and she felt the silence might very well swallow her up.
“Clara.”, he said almost breathlessly.
“Yes?”, she whispered back.
He leaned against the worktop with one long arm bracketing her in on either side.
“Clara, I-.”
GONG GONG GONG!
The cloister bell chimed loudly in alarm as Clara slid down off the worktop and they both ran full tilt towards the console room.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
The fire crackled and roared behind the iron screen. The occasional pocket of air hissed and popped sending red embers sparking up into the chimney. Clara was nestled down snugly on a plush chaise lounge with a cable-knit afghan spread over her extremities. She laid facing the hearth, propped up on one elbow with a first edition of Sense and Sensibilities splayed out open before her.
She was so entranced by the story that she hadn’t heard him enter the library. Only now did she notice the Doctor standing in front of her, blocking the firelight, and casting a shadow over her sleepy form.
“I have excellent news!”, he said excitedly, clapping his spindly hands together for emphasis.
“You’ve fixed the dimensional stabilisers and we can finally land the TARDIS?”, she asked hopefully, snapping her book shut and sitting up.
His expression dropped, “Well, no.”, he admitted, prompting Clara to groan and pinch the bridge of her nose.
“Doctor, your cards.”
“What?”
“Cards. We thoroughly discussed the difference between importance and urgency just last week. Find the right one.”
“Oh…right.”, he rummaged through his breast pocket and found a piece of paper that looked like it might be the social cue card he was after. He began to read aloud, “Clara, I have always-”, he intoned before cutting himself off abruptly.
“Ah…Nope. Wrong one! Starting to rethink the wisdom of using Time Lord engineering on my pockets, to be honest. I can almost never find what I need when I need it, though it is awfully good for storing jelly babies.”, he babbled on.
He reverently praised the TARDIS, telepathically, for keeping the recessed lighting down low in the library. The dim lighting now served to hide the deep flush creeping up his neck.
“Oh, no no no no no.” Clara said standing up and trying to snatch the paper from his hands. “What was that? Let me see it for a moment. I don’t remember writing anything like that.”
He hastily folded up the paper and stuffed it down deep into his pocket in the hopes it might not embarrass him like that again in the future. “Nothing! Nothing at all. Less than nothing, really. Not even one iota of something. I thought I might…make my own cue cards to broaden my collection a bit more. That one’s not finished yet is all.”, he said with arms flailing and folding and unfolding in an effort to look casual. He settled on resting one hand on his hip and letting the other hang loosely as he ardently examined the crown molding with an air of disinterest.
She looked as if she didn’t believe him one bit but she decided to drop it since he was clearly so uncomfortable sharing whatever it was with her. “Fine. Look, never mind. Just tell me what the good news is.”
“I found the pool!”, he exclaimed.
“What? How is that even possible? The TARDIS told you last week that she jettisoned it after the whole ‘I-said-no-slime-in-the-console-room’ fiasco.”
“Evidently she took mercy on us and jettisoned the hot springs instead.”
“To be fair, the water was more pink goo than liquid afterwards. It probably needed replacing anyway.”
“I think she may have relocated the macaques to the zip line room instead.”, he said.
“Fancy a swim? I could use a bit of cold water to wake me up. It’s going to be a long night of childminding, getting you to focus on finally fixing the stabilisers.”
“You go ahead. I’ll be along in just a bit. Take 3 lefts, 1 right, it’s the 5th door on the left after the water fountain. If you reach a sauna, you’ve gone too far.”
Once she was gone, he let out the breath he didn’t know he had been holding. That was a close one. He had realized the other night that time was evidently almost never in his favor. He’d tried to find the right moment to tell her how he felt about her, how he needed her, how he didn’t want to imagine a universe without her…but the moment never quite seemed to make itself known to him.
He was a Time Lord, for Rassilon’s sake. Couldn’t time just cooperate for once and bend to his will? But he remembered how it always worked out when he tried to control it. So, with a heavy sigh he discarded his first few layers and went to his room to find some swim attire.
Tomorrow, no more excuses and lies.
Tomorrow he would tell her how he felt for sure.
ooooooooOOOOoooooooo
But tomorrow never came and she grew steadily bolder, braver, more like him. But, not like him, at least not in the way that counted.
You are beautiful. Beautiful human fragile skin. Like parchment.
And there were ravens, confession dials, lies and deflections between them. Avoiding the hearts truth like one would a pothole in the road.
Four and a half billion years?
If she says so.
All of her anger and her kindness and her eyes pinning him to the spot and demanding answers from him. Her question asked in blind indignation.
Why would you even do that to yourself?
He’s surprised he even has to say it.
I had a duty of care.
Clara drops down to her knees in front of him with tears in her eyes and streaming down her round cheeks. She told him her time was up. She told him between one heartbeat and the last is all the time she had left. She told him they should say things to one another and she told him she would do so now.
It seemed to him as good a time as any to interrupt.
He reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a single folded piece of rumpled paper.