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Still buzzing from the festivities of the evening, Clara props her elbows over the table. Seated in the little yellow kitchen, she watches the Master curiously as he pulls something from the fridge. After a perfectly pleasant night of sipping cocktails and successfully persuading him into dancing with her, she anticipated more than anything that he’d follow her back to her bedroom, as he has most post-adventures for the better half of the past month.
Instead, he whisked her here, motioning for her to sit before spinning around and leaving her both amused and slightly bemused. Only occasionally does he make an effort to cook for them; typically they go out, or she takes the time to prepare, or the TARDIS has something already available. Early on she’d woke to him cooking pancakes one morning and found the scene so bizarre that she could only laugh.
Over seventy years of a reluctant living on Earth forced his hand into actually learning, apparently, and when he explained she didn’t find the situation so funny.
The Master turns, places a plate on the table, and her eyes widen.
It’s a cake, white with red trim and an inscription of thin icing.
“Happy 6 months of not dying together,” she reads aloud, then breaks into a grin. “Oh my God, you remembered.”
“You suggested a milestone,” he says, “of course I obliged.”
Clara laughs, putting a hand up to her mouth. “Did you bake this yourself?”
“Obviously,” he says, lips quirking into a smile. He quickly turns to pull out another two plates from a cabinet as well as cutlery, setting them on the table before sitting next to her.
She casts her memory back to exactly what she’d said, fumbling her way through the darkened halls of Jantün and offering an idle response in an otherwise imminent situation. Realization hits and she warms at the sheer, unexpected sweetness of it, a word she never would have associated with the Master save for the dangerous, saccharine facade that Missy could play into.
“This was a night out,” she says, “hang on, you planned this? Actually, genuinely thought about it for more than a day?”
He raises his eyebrows. “Given that much of my life has centered around plotting, I’m almost offended at your surprise of my ability to hold onto an idea for barely a month.”
“Since I mentioned it, then,” she replies, pleased.
“I do listen to you,” he says, then indicates to the cake. “Red velvet. Elysian frosting. Gelatin lettering, as I enjoy the illusion of blood, and this is a celebration for the both of us.”
Clara looks at him. His dark eyes, bright with satisfaction at her reaction and lighter than she’s ever seen them. Lips curved into a smile she can only describe as soft, and it’s with this that she knows he means it.
“You’re adorable,” she announces, if only to see his eyes widen. “No, don’t think too hard about it. This is really, really lovely. Thank you.”
He settles. “I almost wrote 6 months of not killing each other, though I realized this might be the longest I’ve gone without seriously considering murdering another person.”
“Aw,” she says, “that’s very sweet. You must’ve missed all my attempts.”
“If that’s true,” he replies, “then I’ve truly overestimated your abilities.”
“How generous,” she says, grinning, “cake and a compliment. All we need now is that obligatory social media post.”
“You don’t have any social media,” the Master says drily.
Oh, right. Not that there’s a dearth of intergalactic social platforms, but she couldn’t keep an interest in any of them for long. For a while, she entertained a forum for time travelers, but by god, the chronology of that was a mess.
“I could log into my old Instagram,” she muses. “Make a post before my alleged death.”
The Master gives her a pointed look. “Clara. They presume you dead because you go missing. Please understand that Agent O does not need a sudden investigation into the disappearance of the girlfriend he doesn’t even know he has.”
“Ooh, am I your girlfriend?” she laughs. “Yeah, alright. Don’t need to meddle with the timeline like that.”
“Yes, because we care so very deeply about meddling with the timeline.”
“Only when I like the present,” Clara concedes. She’s curious if he’ll catch the first of her comment, refute or oblige, but he leaves it unanswered. Still in this tentative space that neither of them wants to quantify. The vague, all-encompassing term of partners seems to fit well enough, and she doesn’t care enough about further specification to actually talk about what it is they’re doing.
Still, as he slices the cake and serves her a piece, she can’t help wondering when something’s going to break. The easy moments like this never fully lull her into a sense of security, because she’s present for all the other times. His volatility, the rage, the sudden despair; how she manages by bottling herself, holding herself together so not to burst with him because it’s so very tempting to give in as well. All that pain they met each other with on the cliff-side is still there, and not talking about it isn’t making it go away.
But he cools, settling after burning, and she handles it as the key measure of control in this relationship; with an awareness that should she cede to the desire, they’ll both be consumed in the flames.
He watches intently as she takes a bite, and looks somewhat pleased with her gratified smile.
“Incredible,” she tells him, pushing aside her other thoughts.
The old English teacher in her slides back a note of irony as she eats the cake, casting a dubious glance over her internal insistence that no, she isn’t trying to have it too. And even if she was, she’s accomplished more impossible things.
There’s no point in questioning the future, and she gave up on long-term planning practically the minute she left Earth. So for now, she silences the voice, and lets herself appreciate the moment.