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The M55 is a vast, endless stretch of unmoving vehicles, all of them idling under the dark English sky, heavy clouds burgeoning with impending rain. Clara huddles in the backseat of the small car and clutches the handle of her umbrella, prepared to open it any second and wondering why River had to choose the convertible in a whole car park full of vehicles to steal.
Long, thin frame folded into the passenger seat, the Doctor taps his fingers against his knee and stares balefully through the windshield at the traffic in front of them. “This is why I wanted to take the TARDIS.”
River huffs a curl from her eyes, tucking it back into the colorful scarf tied around her head. “You wanted to go undercover. Undercover means no conspicuous time machine.”
“Well at least the TARDIS has the good sense not to get stuck in traffic,” he snarls, then pauses, thoughtful. “Most of the time.”
It’s impossible to tell with those gorgeous vintage sunglasses on her face, but Clara is pretty sure River is rolling her eyes right now. “There’s nothing for it now, sweetie. You might as well enjoy the ride.”
“What ride?” He makes a sweeping gesture around him, scowling. With his new eyebrows, it’s a bit more impressive than it used to be. “We’re sitting!” He turns to her, blue eyes pleading. “Let me drive.”
“Drive where? Besides, you barely remember how to fly the TARDIS. I’m hardly going to set you loose on a road with people.”
“The TARDIS is a bit more complicated than a car, dear.”
“You couldn’t even remember Clara’s name. The not-me one ringing any bells?”
Clara shrinks back into her seat with a sweet smile as the Doctor turns to glower at her. “Gossip.”
“Amnesiac.” She sticks out her tongue.
River tsks patiently. “Children, I will turn this car around right now and go back home.”
The Doctor turns back to the front seat, fingers starting a newer, more agitated rhythm against his knee. “I haven’t forgotten everything, you know.”
River smirks. “I certainly hope not.”
Before, in his younger face, the Doctor would have blushed red, flailed a bit, and then stuttered over a boyish, cross reply. This Doctor isn’t quite so out of his depth and Clara watches in absurd fascination as he returns his wife’s wicked smirk and picks up her hand from the gearshift, kissing her knuckles. “Would you care for a demonstration?”
“I’ve already had one.” River hums, pleased, and turns her eyes from the unmoving cars in front of them. “But I wouldn’t say no to another. Or several.”
“I bet you wouldn’t, bad girl.”
Horrified, Clara draws her knees up to her chest and buries her face in them. The car suddenly feels two sizes too small, River and the Doctor’s obscene flirting taking up most of the space. River laughs softly suddenly and Clara lifts her head warily, hoping she isn’t about to witness something scarring. Instead, she finds River watching her in the rearview mirror.
“Later, my love.” She sighs, drawing her hand from the Doctor’s. “We mustn’t break Clara. Again.”
“Tease.”
“Granddad.”
“Deviant.”
“Oh, absolutely.” River practically purrs, turning to eye her husband with blatant interest, causing the Doctor to lean toward her, grinning madly.
“Music!” Clara sputters, panicking. It isn’t that she minds the Doctor snogging his wife – she knows well enough what he was like when River was gone and she has no wish to see him cry like that ever again – but these two are utterly shameless and without the boundaries normal humans have. The last thing she wants is to sit huddled and forgotten in the backseat when they start undressing each other. She wishes she could say it would be the first time.
The Doctor and River pause scant centimeteres from each other, turning as one unit to stare at her. River looks amused and the Doctor both annoyed at being interrupted and skeptical about Clara’s reason for doing so.
She pastes on a bright smile, clutching her umbrella to her chest. “How about a bit of music to make the time pass?”
Sighing, the Doctor settles back in his seat and reaches for the radio knobs with a muttered, “You’re fooling no one, teach.”
Clara shrugs. “Only trying to protect my eyes.”
“Your eyes? What about my eyes?” He grumbles, fiddling with the radio frequency. “Tell your sodding boyfriend the TARDIS has locks on the doors for a reason.”
“Oi, try knocking next time!”
“I shouldn’t have to knock before entering my own kitchen!”
Clara frowns, kicking out a foot to playfully nudge his elbow. He pauses, turning to glower over his shoulder at her, and the sound of a techno beat fills the car, along with a man’s bizarre, nonsensical warbling. She groans, all too familiar with the song.
The Doctor stares at her with wide eyes, head tilted as he listens intently. “My god,” he mutters. “This is horrendous.”
She snorts in surprise, gaping at him. “But you love this song!”
Stupid bloody fox song – he used to play it so often she would hear it in her sleep.
He shudders, turning from her to swiftly change the station. “Not anymore.”
Clara slumps against her seat in relief, staring up at the clouds still threatening rain and thanking her lucky stars that even music tastes change with regeneration. The next song is some crooning boy band tune, which the Doctor listens to for only a moment before his face twists into a grimace and his hand flies to the radio knob again. “What is this tripe?” He mutters, glancing at his wife. “Is all music like this now? It’s dreadful!”
Busy glowering at the unmoving car in front of them with a backseat filled with screaming children, River only says, “Not every generation is fortunate enough to have the Beatles, my love.”
“Yellow Submarine!” The Doctor points a finger at her, eyebrows knitted together solemnly. “Now that is a good song in any regeneration.”
River pats his knee with a fond smile. “Yours was the most enthusiastic rendition on karaoke night. Jim the Fish always said so.”
Clara snorts, covering her mouth with a hand. “Karaoke night? Seriously?”
“Oh yes.” Meeting her eyes in the rearview mirror, River grins. “He was quite the performer.”
“Was?” The Doctor scowls. “The face may change, River Song, but the ability to dazzle a crowd never does.”
“Of course not, sweetie.”
The ballad comes to a close, immediately followed by the opening riff of a rap song, which bizarrely, the Doctor doesn’t mind. He listens intently, completely silent save for the rhythmic tapping of his fingers against the car door. Clara sinks down in her seat and tries to make herself invisible, admiring River’s cool composure as the thumping beat vibrates the car and they collect dubious stares from people in neighboring vehicles.
Instead, she checks her lipstick in the mirror, fluffs her curls, and waits patiently for the song to end, totally unruffled by both the Doctor’s newfound love for rap music and the traffic jam they’ve been stuck in for an hour. Clara wonders if it’s one of the things the Doctor fell in love with about her – it can’t be often he meets someone so unflappable in his maddening presence.
“Popping Molly…” The Doctor muses, and River sighs as though she had been waiting for this all along. “What a colorful phrase. What does it mean?”
Clara purses her lips tightly together, arching a brow and waiting for River’s response. Unsurprisingly, the curly-haired enigma doesn’t miss a beat. “It’s a drug, darling. He’s making the reference that his drug is fashion rather than a narcotic.”
The Doctor lights up with understanding. “Ah. How inspiring.”
Clara drops her forehead to her knees, biting back a giggle. Sometimes, even now, she can see glimpses of the man he used to be, the oblivious, gangly young thing with a goofy grin. River looks at him like she sees it too, like she sees all of him every single time she looks at him, her smile soft and loving.
As the radio station begins to play that awful Jason Derulo song that Clara has no desire to hear River explain to the Doctor – which she no doubt would with shameless glee – the sky above emits a low, ominous rumble. Clara shivers as the wind picks up, wrapping her thin cardigan tighter around her frame.
River’s headscarf ruffles slightly with the breeze and she lifts her sunglasses from her face to inspect the sky carefully. “Ten minutes,” she says, her voice matter of fact.
The Doctor frowns and licks his index finger, sticking it in the air. Squinting for a moment, he shakes his head. “Eight minutes.”
“Care to make a wager, husband?”
“Always.”
Clara eyeballs the sky above them uneasily. “Eight minutes until what?”
“Ten minutes, “ River corrects with a smirk. “Until we drown.”
Groaning, Clara reaches for her umbrella again and braces her thumb against the mechanism that will pop it open and protect her from the rain, silently cursing River’s penchant for sleek convertibles all the while. “Why aren’t we moving?” She cranes her neck, trying to see a car crash or a UFO or something that would explain nearly an hour sitting in traffic with two smitten near-immortals.
Thunder rumbles louder this time, jarring even the road beneath their car, and Clara jumps in fright, sinking back into her seat. The Doctor is too busy turning up the radio to notice, scowl firmly in place once more. As the sound of the music reaches her ears over the growl of thunder and the wind whipping around them, Clara identifies the song with disgust.
I hate these blurred lines. I know you want it.
Before she can express her adamant wish for a different station, the Doctor beats her to it, turning the radio knob so violently it nearly comes off in his hand, muttering about despicable songs and men who need a swift boot up the arse. She snorts, unable to resist leaning up and pressing a quick, affectionate kiss to his temple.
He blinks at her in surprise. “I’m not sure how I feel about head kisses now.”
“I’m still not sure you get a vote.”
“He definitely doesn’t,” River chimes in, glancing at them with a smile.
Clara kisses her temple too, just for good measure.
The Doctor’s eyebrows furrow. “And definitely not sure how I feel about you kissing my wife.”
“Oh, so you get to snog your companions but I don’t?”
“I don’t snog my companions!”
River stares at him in abject disbelief. “Name one companion you’ve had within the last thousand years that you haven’t snogged -” She holds up a hand when the Doctor opens his mouth. “And don’t you dare say my father because I know that isn’t true.”
The Doctor promptly shuts his mouth again.
Clara stifles a grin and looks back and forth between them, intrigued.
“Fine. Clara.”
River snorts. “Maybe not this one. How many versions of her did you run into? You snogged one of them, surely.”
Clara drops her eyes guiltily and the Doctor does much the same, fidgeting more like a little boy than the old man he looks like. “It wasn’t – it’s not -” He huffs, lifting his head to fix his wife with a warm, blue-eyed stare. “It’s never like that, dear.”
“Oh, don’t be an idiot, of course it isn’t.” River huffs. “You think I don’t know that?”
Above them, thunder rumbles again, so loud it makes Clara’s ears ring. She checks her watch. Three minutes.
“If you know then why do you insist on bringing it up?”
River grins. “Because your new accent is thicker when you’re flustered.”
The Doctor growls, shaking his head as he rakes his eyes over his wife – the bright little sundress, the vintage headscarf wrapped around her wild curls, the mischievous gleam in her eyes. “You are the biggest pain in the arse I’ve ever married.”
River beams. “Thank you, sweetie.”
“That wasn’t a compliment!”
Clara settles in with a sigh to watch yet another round of old married couple bickering but they both surprise her by stopping right in the middle of sparring to turn and stare at the radio. A new song has begun to play, a soft croon filling the air.
And every time I see you grin, I’m such a happy individual…
Slowly, the Doctor and his wife turn to look at each other with equally soppy smiles on their faces, all their squabbling forgotten. The Doctor captures River’s hand in his, looking so in love Clara suddenly feels like she’s intruding. She curls herself into the backseat again, stunned and confused by the sudden change in the atmosphere.
Stroking his thumb over the back of her hand, the Doctor smiles. “Now this one is an old favorite.”
River gazes at him hopefully. “You still like it?”
“Why wouldn’t I? It’s our song.”
She bites her lip. “Tastes change, remember?”
“Ah, but not when it comes to you, River Song.” He smiles winsomely. “No matter the new palette, you’ll always taste just right.”
Clara wrinkles her nose, torn between disturbed and touched, before quickly deciding on touched. It’s strange sometimes, watching the usually grumpy Scot turn into such a sap with his wife, but honestly, she wouldn’t have it any other way. She isn’t quite sure she ever wants to meet a version of the Doctor who isn’t hopelessly in love with River Song.
Looking like she’s thinking much the same, River brings the Doctor’s hand to her lips and kisses the ring on his finger, her eyes soft and her smile just a bit wobbly.
With another crack of thunder above their heads, the clouds finally break and the sky opens, pouring rain down on their heads in sheets. Clara yelps, scrambling for her umbrella and springing it open. She holds it aloft to protect her head as water begins to fill the open-topped car. The other people on the road around them turn frustrated, stuck in traffic in the pouring rain, and some begin to honk out of sheer impatience.
Blinking water out of her eyes, she peers at the Doctor and River. Water soaks their clothes and clings to River’s lashes; it rolls in fat droplets down the Doctor’s cheeks and makes his hair a darker gray while River’s bouncing curls turn to lank tendrils down her back. They don’t seem to notice any of it – not even the cacophony of traffic around them, entirely too wrapped up in their little moment of bliss.
The rain pours down in buckets; Frank Sinatra continues to croon. The besotted pair in the front seat lean in close and this time, as their lips meet, Clara doesn’t stop them.