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Clara could feel the Doctor looming over her shoulder as she takes a lesson in flying the TARDIS. The array of dials and levers was dauntingly massive and unhelpfully unlabeled, and the TARDIS, as the Doctor reminded her, flew along twelve different dimensions, most of which she had a hard time convincing herself actually existed (but which he had had an intuitive understanding of since he was a child).
“Twist the whiz-bang…now!”
“Technical term, that?” she called over her shoulder, just catching a glimpse of him cocking his head to one side with incomprehension.
“Not that one!” The Doctor lunged forward, intercepting her hand before it reached a particular wheel. Her breath caught in her throat. From the Doctor. Being right behind her, hand wrapped around her wrist. Well, that was new.
“What’d I do wrong, backseat driver?”
“Let’s just say I’m not so big a Pink Floyd fan as to let you set the controls for the heart of the sun,” the Doctor quipped as he released her hand..
“The old duty of care raising its head once again,” and she turned to face him, grinning wryly up at him. He glanced down at her, blinked once, and then turned on his heel to pace about the console room. Had he only just realized how physically close they were, she wondered? “Where did you get that from? You never talked about a duty of care when you were wearing the bowtie?”
The Doctor snorted. “Did that face look like one for yammering on about duties?” He paused by one of the bookcases, skimming for something. “You’ve read your Plato, haven’t you?” She nodded. “He talks about using the city as the moral model for the man; I find the reverse tends to be true. Easier to care for a single person than the whole human race writ large. To care about the whole human race via a single person, rather than the other way around.”
“You find it easy? To care for me?” Because, well, she was a little self-centered, she had to admit. “Wait? You - you care for me?” She crossed the console room until she was face to face with him again. “You care for me, too?” she added, quietly. “Hopefully in a slightly different way than you care for the average human being?”
“I should tell you about Jack Harkness sometime,” the Doctor grumbled. “But not introduce you. You’d get along like a house on fire.” He frowned again. “Is that supposed to be very good, or very bad? I can never remember. Actually, doesn’t matter, because I don’t want to see either.” He closed his copy of the Republic and slid it back onto the shelf.
“Doctor, was that a note of jealousy?” Clara needled him. He made as if to turn and flee around the console room again but she grasped both of his empty hands. “Don’t go?” she begged, and slowly, hesitatingly, he turned the half-step back to face her squarely. She stood there, clasping his hands for a moment until finally he was comfortable enough to meet her eyes. Then, only then, did she move her hands up to his lapels, and tug gently, just once. “Don’t feel you have to wait any longer,” she breathed up to him. “Not on my behalf, or anyone else’s.” She stood and tried not to fidget until, at last, he bent to kiss her, hands coming up to cradle her face like some precious artifact.
It was, blessedly, just a very good human kiss, Clara thought. No alien tongue, no magic Time Lord powers. Just a good old-fashioned toe-curler of a kiss. “I’ve wanted to do that since the Orient Express,” she murmured.
“Karabraxos for me,” the Doctor admitted.
“Guess we’ve got a little lost time to make up for, then,” Clara decided, and stretched up to kiss the Doctor again.