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The halls of the administration office were all nearly featureless, walls dressed in beige wallpaper and sparsely decorated with plaques congratulating employees on their work, with dry palm trees clinging onto dear life and the occasional half-empty water cooler. Despite the novelty of the technology, materials reminiscent of (so the Doctor had commented) Earth's 1980s, Charley was grateful the course her life had taken so far had not required many visits to office buildings—they all seemed terribly dull. Beside her walked C'rizz and one of the Doctors (they had gotten into some sort of argument on the way and were now pointedly ignoring each other), another Doctor ahead of her and the remaining one behind, muttering room numbers to himself and occasionally stopping to read the name written on a plaque.
It was the Doctor she was fondest of—though the gentle way the unreasonable Doctor had treated her in the cuckoo clock refused to leave her mind and the reasonable Doctor was the one she knew the best—the easily delighted Doctor made something dance in her heart in a way that was decidedly too juvenile. His muttering behind her, she didn't dare turn and look at him out of fear that she would start smiling when she was so determined to be bored right now.
No one knew where they were going. The reasonable Doctor wouldn't admit it, the angry one wouldn't admit anything that made him seem weak, and C'rizz was too occupied with being cross with him. Her flighty Doctor wasn't doing more than following behind, and Charley was getting the impression that she was dragged on a wild goose chase. Walking wasn't distracting her, instead, it was giving her more room to think about things that were unhelpful and silly, things that would only delay them longer, keeping them from the TARDIS, and the two focused Doctors would treat her like a child if she acted on them, but—
Now or never, Charlotte.
"Oh, this is pointless!" she said, stopping in her tracks. The leading Doctor and C'rizz stopped with her, looking at her curiously; the impatient one turned on his heel, fuming; her silly Doctor walked right into her. "You"—she grabbed his arm and he made a surprised noise—"come with me." And she marched into one of the offices.
"Er, Charlotte," C'rizz called after her, "should we wait here, or will you follow on your own?"
The door slammed behind them.
"Charley, what is this?" The Doctor, sunshiney and sweet as a confused puppy, let her lead him, let her survey the room (empty, like all the others), let her back him against the wall. His voice carried laughter, some level of delight that hadn't left it through all the pointless twists and turns, delight that she so dearly missed in the other two. "We can't lose track of the others! Who knows where they'll go without us."
"I'm sorry, Doctor," breathed Charley. It had to be comical from the outside, her backing the Doctor into anything, with their height difference, with his usual composure. Luckily they were alone. "I just didn't know if I'd get this chance again."
"Chance for what?" the Doctor asked and before he could go on, Charley pulled him down by the necktie and kissed him. He froze for a second—still neither tense nor serious, still himself—then melted into her. His arm fell around her shoulder, the other around her waist, her hand still on his collar between them. Charley didn't initiate more and the Doctor didn't attempt to deepen the kiss, so only their lips met, a bit awkwardly, a bit asymmetrical.
Charley broke the kiss first. Unsure, she looked into the Doctor's eyes and found him beaming back at her. "Charley, you—I had no idea—"
Whatever was dancing in her heart had broken into jetés, a full garden of butterflies set loose in her stomach. Bashfully, Charley looked down. She let go of the Doctor's necktie, smoothed it out with both hands and kept them on his chest. It would be too awkward a wriggle to get them back by her side. "Of course you did," she laughed, feeling more foolish by the second. This was all a bit silly: If this Doctor didn't know then he must not have thought about it very deeply as a whole. "Maybe the others do. They're probably wondering what we're up to."
"Let them work it out." Her Doctor cupped her face, tilting up her chin to smile at her encouragingly. "They won't miss us right now, will they?"
"You'd be surprised," said Charley, but then the Doctor kissed her and she forgot every thought of the others in entirety. Rather than pulling him down, Charley stood on her toes this time. Their mouths aligned much more nicely—the Doctor had the better angle for kissing—and when Charley's lips opened, it felt natural. She nibbled on the Doctor's lower lip. He made a surprised noise and held her closer.
His joy must have been contagious: Charley felt positively giddy; for a moment she wondered if there were two more Charleys wandering around somewhere. An angry one and a focused one, and she had been left with all her joy and none of her right mind—then again, she wouldn't split like that. If she split, she would have an adventurous Charley, this happy Charley, and...
Maybe it was best not to entertain the thought for too long.
Standing on her tiptoes was becoming weary. She broke the kiss, ignoring the stars in the Doctor's eyes and the weakness in her knees. His arms hovered expectantly; Charley took his hand (warm and perfect and lovely in hers) and guided him to the barren plywood desk. She sat down.
The Doctor didn't seem to know what he was doing, torn between enthusiasm and etiquette, so Charley straightened out her hair, her clothes. Her face burned; she was hot and out of breath. Even her Doctor was blushing, twin patches of pink on his cheeks and a flush all the way down his neck.
It was impossible to look attractive for him. There wasn't much of a point. Her Doctor, who had seen her frightened, who had seen her sick, who had seen her so angry she couldn't think—though she supposed the same was true for him. Did that make her like him less, or like him even more?
She was nearly at eye level with him, with the height of the desk. Charley placed her hands by her sides, unsure what else to do with them. How did regular people act again? Nothing like her, that much was sure.
"I'd like to kiss you again," said the Doctor.
"Please do," Charley said—before the last word was entirely out of her mouth, the Doctor held her face in both hands, his mouth finding hers like it was the easiest thing in the world. His hands dug into her hair and messed it up again, but Charley couldn't be upset with him. Not with this Doctor. Not ever.
"Do you think they're alright?" C'rizz asked neither Doctor in particular. The one he was meant to be angry at was pacing a few steps away, the other digging in his pockets for something to dismantle while they waited.
"Of course they're alright," the pacing Doctor said impatiently, and C'rizz remembered why he was angry at him again. "It's a normal office. That Doctor may be slow, but he can open a door if he needs help."
"You know as well as I do that the rooms in this place change." C'rizz made his best effort to sound unbothered. "It might not be an office anymore."
"I believe Charley can shout if she needs to." The Doctor had found a small model ship and began prying out wooden planks from the deck. "Besides, the rooms only changed when we weren't looking. That one is small enough that they can keep their eyes on it the whole time."
"If you say so." The Doctor had a point—still, C'rizz wasn't entirely convinced. He set his hand on the door. "I'd like to check on them anyway."
"Don't," said both Doctors forcefully enough that C'rizz jumped away like he had touched something frozen.
"I'm sure everything is alright," the Doctor with the ship added quickly, his eyes trained on his toy.
C'rizz narrowed his eyes. "Are you blushing?"
Charley's senses flooded, overwhelmed by the Doctor surrounding her, wrapping around her like a wool coat in April while all she could do was cling on and hold her own against the heat. She had never been this aware of her body and never this distant from it.
The passage of time seemed like a fairy tale meant to frighten a child while she remained untouchable in the Doctor's embrace: Her hands gripped his jacket, clinging onto the pleats between his shoulder blades, her knee pressed against his hip. His arms fell around her shoulders like they were meant to lie there and nowhere else, fingers weaving through her hair. His lips pressed to her neck, loving and gentle, soothing the marks she had forgotten to tell him not to make.
Charley's lips were raw and sensitive, her nerves attuned to nothing but her Doctor. She shivered and hummed in turn with each kiss to her throat, melting into the Doctor's form. "Should we go back?"
"No," said the Doctor, and pecked a kiss to her lips again.
"We've been gone for a while."
"Time doesn't exist here, remember?"
"It does for us."
"Well, I can't feel it."
"I know you can't." Gently, Charley cupped his jaw in her hand, making their eyes meet. "But they'll go looking for us."
"Pfft, those two wouldn't go looking for me. Besides, we're having fun here, right?" He tried for a sunny grin, holding onto Charley's arms.
"C'rizz will. And I'm sure the other Doctors would too. Don't you want to be together again?"
The Doctor avoided her eyes. "I'm not sure that I do."
"You don't mean that."
The Doctor pulled away and Charley got the pressing feeling she had said something wrong when his carefree smile returned. "Well, maybe I don't. But Charley"—the Doctor held her hands in his, looking at her with a sincerity she'd never felt from this Doctor before—"would you have done this if I wasn't me?"
"I—" Charley's eyes flicked to the door. C'rizz and the Doctors outside. She looked down, the Doctor standing so close he was practically in her lap. Their hands between them. "I don't know."
"See?" And the Doctor leaned in to kiss her again. Charley let him, going along with his lips on hers, sweet, but no longer as passionate, no longer as joyful.
They parted. Charley hovered in the space between them for another moment, not yet daring to retreat. She swallowed. Pulled together her courage. "Would you?"
The Doctor didn't respond. Perhaps that was answer enough.
Charley pushed herself off the desk, still holding the Doctor's hand. "Come on, Doctor. Let's go."
"They've been gone for a long time now." C'rizz watched as the Doctor pinched the model ship's helm back in place.
"Give it a rest, C'rizz," said the unpleasant Doctor.
"I wasn't talking to you," C'rizz snapped back. "You should both care a bit more about a piece of you missing, not to mention Charlotte being gone with it."
"They'll be alright." The Doctor fixed a needle to the sail, sewing the top corners of the cloth back in place. "Believe me, any moment now and—"
The door opened. Charlotte, trying very hard to appear composed, walked out, followed by the Doctor she had dragged in.
"We can keep going!" the Doctor proclaimed, beaming widely as usual.
"Wonderful," said C'rizz dryly. "You took your time—was there any reason you had to delay us here?"
"None in particular," said Charlotte, avoiding his eyes.
C'rizz squinted at her. "What is that on your neck?"
"Why don't you two take the lead?" said the Doctor, letting his miniature ship fall back into his pocket. The frustrating Doctor gave C'rizz a withering glare which C'rizz chose not to return, walking beside him at the head of the group, the flighty Doctor behind them and the reasonable one with Charlotte at the back.
Later, C'rizz would ask Charley if she was in love with the Doctor. Now, in this endless hallway between endless hallways, she watched the two extremes of the Doctor walk before her, the one most understandable to her and the one dearest to her heart, and she still wouldn't have been able to answer C'rizz honestly.
As they walked behind the group, the reasonable Doctor took Charley's hand, their fingers bumping together, then interlacing. "In case you were still wondering," he muttered so softly no one else could tell he was talking, "if I wasn't him—if I didn't have him at all..."
For a moment, Charley didn't dare breathe. "Yes?"
"I still would have gone with you."