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Me flipped the sign on the front of the diner to ‘Closed’ and turned to face the couple behind her. She was wearing an expression that Clara was getting very used to and had to hide her amusement.
“You’re really sure you don’t want to see the spiral rainbow waterfalls?” she asked as though Clara had lost her mind. “Because they are spiral rainbow waterfalls. The only ones of their kind in the universe.”
Clara glanced over her shoulder where she saw Jenny already edging towards the mass of grimey tents and stalls that made up the market behind them. There was more than one plume of smoke climbing towards the lavender sky and the smell of oil was probably going to be clinging to their clothes for days.
“Certain.”
Me sighed with a roll of her eyes. “You are pathetically transparent, Clara Oswald.”
Without a goodbye, she made her way through the thick crowds heading up the hill towards the sky carts that would eventually take them to Yishnald’s famed waterfalls.
Clara took a moment to watch the carts float towards the mountains, but was interrupted by someone pulling on her sleeve.
“C’mon, then,” Jenny insisted, still tugging.
Failing to keep a straight face, Clara made a show of not moving until Jenny finally dragged her towards the market. She fell into her and the pair of them giggled.
“Thank you for coming shopping with me,” said Jenny. She pecked Clara on the cheek, who then hooked her little finger around the other woman’s.
“Someone needs to stop you getting enough to make a second rocket.”
Jenny bit her lip guiltily.
It had been nearly three months since a chance meeting had led to Clara and Me finding a storage room in their TARDIS for a spaceship. Its latest journey had left it in need of a handful of new parts that Jenny was hunting down in between exploring the universe with her new friends.
It had been awkward at first, with Me insisting she didn’t need an idiot cheerleader pushing buttons to see what they did, but Jenny soon made a point of proving her worth. Her technical knowledge of the TARDIS had floored both of them and, when the trio had been arrested together for the first time, she’d worked out four different escape plans before Me had managed to feel properly inconvenienced. Since then they’d equally shared being the root of and solution to any scrapes they got themselves into.
It wasn’t until Jenny had insisted they left a planet they’d just landed on because she had a ‘funny feeling’ that Clara started to wonder exactly where she had came from.
“You know what a transdimensional shock absorber looks like, don’t you?”
“Nope.”
“Vortex stabiliser?”
“No.”
“Vortex stabiliser fan?”
Clara shook her head and Jenny’s shoulders slumped. She rubbed her arm in sympathy and was rewarded with a tiny smile. Jenny scanned the general area on tiptoe, her keen eyes scouting for a sign of anything to help her. When she dropped back down to eye level, she leant forward, wrapped her arms around Clara’s neck and kissed her.
Even though she could feel the judging eyes of everyone in the market square watching them and heard a disgruntled parent tutting, Clara reciprocated. It had taken some getting used to, Jenny’s lack of shyness towards affection, but now she found it refreshing. Whether it was bravery or that she simply had no understanding of these things, Clara didn’t know. She didn’t care either. After years of men not wanting to look soppy in front of their mates or nineteenth century novelists hiding their relationship, she thought it made a nice change.
It was this sort of spontaneity that had preceded their first kiss. They’d been walking around a forest made of singing trees, hand in hand. They’d never discussed why they held hands; they just always had and neither seemed inclined to stop. They never discussed anything about their relationship. Clara had been tempted to on several occasions, but never knew where to start. Jenny, though eager to understand the human traditions the others mentioned, was still clueless when it came to a lot of them.
If Clara ever got around to asking if she considered them more than friends, she dreaded how long that would take to explain, let alone any follow up questions.
Anyway, things were nice how they were. Simple, yet thrilling. She was laughing more than she had since she stole a TARDIS and ran away and was hesitant to change anything.
It was about this point in Clara’s latest internal debate about the Jenny Issue, that Jenny stopped, smiled and kissed her.
Clara had only just realised what was happening and had made the formal decision to deal with explanations and repercussions later, when Jenny pulled back with a frown.
“Don’t worry,” she said, cupping her cheek. “This isn’t a divisionary tactic or anything. I just wanted to.”
“Oka-”
Bloody hell, she was better at this than anyone had right to be.
“Wait - is it normal to want to kiss someone for no reason?”
Blinking, Clara took a step back out of Jenny’s arms. Standing close enough to feel her breath on her face was distracting and apparently she needed to be using words.
“Define ‘no reason.’”
“Well, there’s no purpose to it, is there?” Jenny chuckled, pushing a strand of hair out of Clara’s face.
More than used to working out Jenny’s thought patterns, Clara asked, “so why do you want to?”
“We’re friends,” she replied, “and I like the way your face looks. I like the way all of you looks,” she added, giving Clara a once over. “It made me want to kiss you.”
Feeling herself blush, Clara moved forwards again and nuzzled her nose against Jenny’s. “That is very normal.”
“Brilliant!”
It wasn’t long afterwards that Clara had discovered Jenny’s double heartbeat and she discovered her complete lack of one. Me had nearly cried with laughter when she heard Jenny’s story and saw Clara’s stunned expression.
It took the pair of them less than an hour to find the fan Jenny had been after. There was a quick celebratory hug, then they went to discover what Yishnald did in way of snacks. They were in the process of weighing up the pros and cons of blue goo or purple stick things when a large mob pushed through the crowd.
“UNHAND ME, YOU CRETINS!”
While everyone around her looked worriedly at the official looking mob dragging the screaming woman along with them, Jenny was roaring with laughter. “Can’t we take her anywhere?”
Clara elbowed her in the ribs. “Don’t let on we know her.”
Jenny did her best to keep her expression blank but her eyes were dancing with mirth.
Subtly pushing through the crowd to keep up with Me and her newfound enemies, Clara side-eyed Jenny. “Got a plan, yet?”
Straight away her gleeful eyes snapped to those of the soldier she was supposed to be. “Small detonation to distract the guards. I sneak in and extract the target. You take out any obstacles on my exit.”
“And where exactly do we find a-” Clara watched as Jenny rushed over to a stand and threw her credit stick at the alien behind the counter. “-detonation.”
Jenny hurried back, ripping wires out of what looked like a space-age bop-it. The bop-it was already smoking by the time she reached Clara.
“Meet you back at the TARDIS,” she smiled. She pressed a kiss to Clara’s lips and chucked the device at the people taking Me. Before Clara could reply, Jenny was off, ducking, diving and darting straight towards the small explosion that had caught everyone off guard.
“Oh, to have a normal life,” Clara said, not meaning a single word as she chased after her.