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“So we’re stuck here?” Clara leaned back against the console and looked expectantly at the Doctor. Around them, the console room was dimmed even more than normal, the second level roundels flickering meagerly and the central column was nearly dark. The TARDIS didn’t sound any stronger than it looked, but it was, at least, humming very slightly, a sign Clara took to mean things weren’t completely dire as of yet.
The Doctor shut the door and squared his shoulders as he walked back to the console. “Not stuck,” he said, sounding more sure than Clara knew he was. “Recharging. That’s why we are where we are–she’s drawing energy from a collapsing star nearby, should only be a few hours.” Under his breath, he added, “Maybe.”
“Right,” she said. She eyed him dubiously. “So what do we do for a couple hours?”
“Watch the collapse? Not something you see every day.”
“So just open the door and stare at a dying sun for a while?” She frowned. “Doesn’t seem like something you do for more than a couple minutes before it gets weird.”
Rolling his eyes, he took her lightly by the shoulders and guided her to the hall. “We won’t open the door,” he said. “I’ve got better options than that.”
Two turns and a few wrong doors later, they were at their destination. Cautiously, the Doctor opened the heavy wooden door–the last one had hidden a few things he wasn’t even sure why he ever had, and he didn’t want to add to the already embarrassing list of questions that the last room had drawn from Clara.
“Here we are,” he says triumphantly and not without a strong note of relief. The room opened up large, with the wall opposite the door fully taken over by a floor to ceiling windows; it was nearly completely dark aside from the light from the dying star, and quiet aside from the hushed whisper of the ship itself. “Bit better than opening the front door, no?”
His proud grin dropped when he turned to look at Clara. She was completely entranced, her face lit golden by the star, her eyes bright and wide with awe. “This is amazing,” she breathed.
“Care to watch for a few hours?”
“No,” she said, suddenly confident. The Doctor frowned; things tended to go a little topsy turvy for him when she was confident outside of life or death situations, and it always bothered him how little he minded and how much he looked forward to it. “No, we’re having a picnic.”
*
One picnic basket, two bottles of wine, and an armful of blankets and pillows later, they had their picnic. “Alcohol has no effect on me,” he’d announced as they’d set up, and she’d simply smirked and grabbed a bottle of ginger beer.
In retrospect, he probably should never have told her about that. Too late now.
He had to admit, though, that things did look a little better after the ginger beer and a couple glasses of wine. The star’s death a more elegant dance before them, the glow a little more golden on Clara’s skin. Her laugh a little sweeter. Her presence a little warmer.
“It’s too quiet in here,” she said suddenly. “Have you got a radio?”
“My dear, I have more than a simple radio,” he said. “Any station in all of time and space is at your command.”
She smiled, her nose crinkling as she held back a giggle. “‘My dear?’ You’re getting bold, aren’t you.”
He felt heat rising in his cheeks. “Just channeling a former self. You never met him.”
She sipped her wine and smirked before laying back against a bank of pillows. “You sure about that?”
“No,” he admitted quietly. “But I like to think I would remember.”
She was silent for a moment after that. Then she stood, as though sensing a shift in mood and not really liking it. “Come on, music. Where’s that intergalactic radio of yours?”
*
Earth, mid twentieth century, something soft with a piano that sounded just this side of sweetly dangerous. The Doctor wasn’t sure, entirely, that it was a marvelous night for anything at all–day and night had no meaning where they were–but he let Clara pull him out away from their little nest of food and pillows, towards the window in front of them. “I haven’t done this in a long time,” he warned, nerves skittering up his spine all of sudden.
“Then let me lead,” she said.
Without thought, his voice dipped low and quiet, rough as sandpaper as he looked down at her. “Don’t I always?”
It wasn’t a question posed with malice and she knew it. Her left hand in his right, her right on his hip, she stopped and looked up at him, smiling. “If you know what’s good for you.”
He did, and they danced.