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The little tin dog landed in jail again, and the Doctor looked even more cross than either of them had thought possible. “This game,” he pronounced, “is rubbish.”
“It’s not rubbish,” Clara said. “You just don’t know how to play it.”
Outside, rain was pattering against the dining room window; on the table sat a board with three tin pieces, an array of red and green buildings, cards and fake cash. Any and all invasions, destruction, or general mayhem were put on hold due to the weather. Around the table sat the clear winner through cunning and backstabbing, her human boyfriend who was sort of getting by all right, and her rather frustrated alien boyfriend who was in debt and in jail for the third time.
(It had taken a moment for Danny to wrap his mind around that last bit. But they were in a new era of honesty, and they’d talked, and at the end of the day no matter what his personal feelings about the man himself, he was happy if she was happy, and you know what, he was alive again after being dead for a while and in the grand scheme of things “his girlfriend’s alien boyfriend” was hardly the strangest thing about their lives.)
Anyway. Frustrated alien boyfriend. “I know how to play,” he said. “Move the bits around, collect other bits. I just don’t understand—why do you go to jail for landing on the wrong square? Why do you have to pay to get out?”
“Did you never have to worry about money before?” Danny asked, fully knowing the answer.
The Doctor looked at him with a face that was simultaneously outraged and abashed. “I just print some when I need it,” he said. “Or I go to a cash machine.”
Clara boggled at him. “You have a bank account? Well, of course, being on UNIT payroll-”
“No, I mean there’s money inside the machines, I just—” He flapped his hand in a sort of vaguely instructive way. “Sonic. Machine. Money comes out.”
“You. You steal,” Danny said. Alien boyfriend. Doesn’t care about earth conventions. “You steal other people’s money?”
“Danny,” Clara said quietly, a warning note in her voice.
“It’s not other people’s money,” the Doctor said weakly, that look of outrage melting into confusion and slight insecurity. “It’s just paper.”
Danny smiled tightly. Maybe not careless as much as confused. “True. Just paper. You probably shouldn’t do that, though. I mean, going forward, if you need money, just come to one of us.”
“Or just withdraw from your own account,” Clara said helpfully. “You know, since you get paid.”
His eyes went almost comically wide. “I do get paid. How much do I get paid?”
“Probably a question for UNIT,” Danny said. “Come on. Are you going to pay your way out of jail, or try to roll?”
“I want a house,” the Doctor said.
“Doctor,” Clara started; she looked like she was choosing her words and tone carefully. “Did you really read the rules?”
“I did, they’re stupid, I don’t like them,” he said.
“But you remember what we said about rules you think are stupid,” she said. Danny remembered that conversation with a cringe. Technically, the Doctor hadn’t been at fault there. Not really.
The Doctor scowled at her. “I maintain it was hot, the environmental controls were simply not working correctly and I needed to be comfortable while fixing them.”
She grit her teeth and smiled coldly at him. “That may be true but you don’t invite people into your TARDIS when you’re naked.”
“Look, here,” Danny said, cutting off any further argument. He placed a small home in the jail, next to the Doctor’s little dog. “You’ve got a home.”
“You can’t loan him a home,” Clara said. “That’s against the rules.
Danny glared at her; the rules had been a little too good to Clara, he thought, and not so good to either himself or the Doctor. “I’m loaning him a home as well as bail money,” he said. “Clara, you have half the board, we’re ganging up on you. This is officially an uprising against our capitalist overlords.”
“I do like a good uprising,” the Doctor chirped merrily. “Can I leave jail?”
“No,” Clara said, at the same time Danny said, “Yes.”
“I like his answer better,” the Doctor said, and he moved his dog and his house to Mayfair.
Clara glared at the both of them. “Do you like sleeping on the couch, Danny?”
“I have an extra bedroom in the TARDIS,” the Doctor said. “Actually, I have an infinite number of bedrooms on the TARDIS. Your choice, PE.”
Danny smiled serenely at Clara, waiting for the steam to start coming out of her ears.