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"What... what did you do that for?"
The Doctor is staring at Clara the same way he'd stare at Strax, if Strax had just offered to perform Odette’s signature scene from Swan Lake. Eyebrows drawn, shoulders hunched, mouth crooked, but not in that way that she occasionally finds charming despite herself. More in that way that makes her want to tell him that people who are effectively without lips should never try to curl their lack of them and Elvis was dead anyway, so please stop making that face.
"I don't know," she says. She wants to sound confused. Or confident, maybe she wants to sound confident. "You were standing there, smiling, and looking all... happy." Oh god, that's not confident, that's defensive.
"Right, so... if I look happy then... you do... that...?" His face is getting even more crooked. Strax has not only offered to perform Odette’s signature scene, he has suggested doing so in full costume.
It's terrible. Why had she thought kissing him would be a good idea? It was a terrible idea and his face is reflecting the terribleness. Not just his face. She knows by now when he is exaggerating his aversion to touch for theatrical effect and when he is genuinely uncomfortable. Right now his lean muscles are so tense underneath the fabric of his clothes that, combined with his low body temperature, touching him is unfortunately reminiscent of touching a corpse in the throes of rigor mortis.
A terrible reaction to a terrible idea, which she will definitely, never, ever repeat.
"It just... happened," she says. "No reason! Sometimes things just happen and there's no reason and then they don't happen again and everything is fine."
"Right. Okay." His breath is cool and shallow against her lips. Which means they're still really quite close to each other. She should move. She should definitely move.
"It's fine," she repeats. "It happens all the time, doesn't it? Just a friendly kiss on the mouth, a friend kiss, like they do in France, or that planet with the talking blancmanges."
"Of course," he replies. "Not the ideal planet for that custom, that one, it tends to get a bit messy."
He clears his throat, but doesn't step back. Neither does Clara.
"Are you okay?" she asks. The Doctor blinks.
"...What do you mean, 'Am I okay'? Why wouldn't I be okay? Have I gone another colour, or are my sentences all jumbled up like we've got stuck in a time eddy and I'm answering your questions before you've even asked them?" His expression becomes suddenly alarmed. "Have my eyebrows gone all anemic again?"
"I mean, your pulse, is... fast. Like, really fast." Clara is so close she can actually see his pulse throbbing in his neck, racing away like the beat in a feverish dance mix. "I'm not accidentally giving you some kind of heart attack, am I? I mean you are two thousand years old --"
"Two hearts, remember?" he interrupts, his voice sharp. But she still hears the quaver in it.
She had almost kissed him before. On the train. Standing outside their rooms in that narrow corridor, feeling her stomach drop when she looked into his hooded eyes and realised, This is really it. Our last time. Our last chance.
That was what had stopped her, in the end. She hadn't wanted her last memory to be of him flinching away from her, of him saying something stupid about her too tiny hands or her too big eyes or her silly human hormones. Anything that might have kept him from sometime, someday, coming back to her.
She's always had clear boundaries with the Doctor. Clear rules. They travelled on Wednesdays. He dropped her off no more than a few minutes after he picked her up. She was her own woman, with her own life, and the Doctor was a part of that life -- he didn't direct it. So maybe sometimes they travelled on a Monday, or a Friday. Sometimes he dropped her off a little late, or a little early (she now had a great mental map of all the supply closets at Coal Hill and exactly when they were likely to remain unopened). Sometimes he challenged her in unexpected ways, with new experiences, new perspectives, but she'd always challenged him right back.
Until he'd pushed too far.
Clara leans back. The crooked curl to the Doctor's lips has faded, stripping away the comical aspect of his expression and leaving behind an ingenuous sort of uncertainty. Clara watches each minute change in his features as she brushes her fingers past his collar and up the soft, sensitive skin of his neck; how his thin eyelids flutter as her fingers settle on top of his too-fast pulse.
Clara doesn't like feeling helpless. She doesn't let people in her life make her feel that way.
So after what happened on the moon, she'd made new boundaries for the Doctor, new rules. But in that corridor on the Orient Express she'd unexpectedly, unfairly, found herself helpless again. The Doctor had showed her that he would respect her rules. He’d respect them so very well that she'd still lose him.
Their bodies are close, almost touching, so she can't help but feel the slight shudder that goes through the Doctor as she gently wraps her hand around his throat.
"Clara," he breathes. His eyes have closed, but his brows are drawn together in concentration, and he's holding himself perfectly, painfully still.
She kisses him again.
For a few agonising seconds, he doesn't respond at all, but stands frozen, not even breathing. Then, just as she's deciding to pull away, desperately trying to come up with a joke to defuse the situation -- just testing you weren't a blancmange, oh god please let the TARDIS fly into a black hole right now -- he leans ever so slightly forward and kisses her back.
Clara feels his pulse thundering away even faster than before. She slides her fingers around the nape of his neck, and he shudders again. A noise escapes his open mouth, something plaintive and longing, a kind of noise she'd never imagined he would, or even could, make. I did that, she thinks, and a thrill runs through her, excitement and a touch of fear, because this is real. It's not a fantasy, or an alien plot gone wrong, or a bloody school play -- she is standing in the TARDIS, kissing the Doctor, kissing her best friend, while her phone lies on the TARDIS console, still warm from Danny's last call.
The Doctor’s kisses are hesitant, but not naive; like slowly remembering the unique twists and turns of a path you used to walk every day, but haven't visited for a very long time. Clara gently coaxes him, teaches him, and in this, as in all things, he is a quick student. She kisses him on the jaw, the throat, and he follows suit, trembling deliciously when she nips the skin behind his ear. She opens his mouth with her tongue, and runs her hand up his arm, still tense beneath his clothes, and up into his hair, so she can card her fingers through the thick, coarse curls.
One of his hands comes up, and tentatively touches her bare forearm; the closest they've ever come to a mutual embrace.
"You can use both hands," she murmurs into the Doctor's mouth.
"Of course," the Doctor responds, but he doesn't move.
She takes her hand from his hair and brings it down to his free hand, which is suspended away from both their bodies, wavering in the air. She threads her fingers through his and brings their interlocked hands up to her chest.
"Does that help?" she asks.
"I don't know, does it?" He tries to sound cutting, but only manages to sound rather lost.
In answer, she raises his hand in hers and studies it; the long, lean fingers, the bony wrist, the strange, elegant ring that he insists upon wearing in this regeneration. He watches, eyes heavy-lidded and dark, as she raises his hand to her lips and kisses each of his prominent knuckles, one after the other, then carefully places his hand on her own shoulder. His eyes widen as she reaches up to the collar of his shirt and starts to undo the button.
"I'm not --" he starts, but Clara kisses his throat and he falls silent. His adam's apple bobs under her lips as he takes a nervous, reflexive swallow. She undoes one more button before letting her hands slide down to rest over his galloping hearts. If she spreads her fingers, her hands can easily span the width of his narrow chest. She tries not to think about the contrast with Danny's broad muscularity.
"Just wanted a bit more access," she reassures the Doctor, and kisses him in the newly revealed dip between his collarbones.
"Oh," he says.
Clara's never been this close to him for so long. She remembers studying his features as he lay unconscious in Madame Vastra's guest bedroom, looking at the thin, papery skin around his eyes, the way they seemed lined, almost sunken, even in sleep. But she hadn't touched him more than it had been necessary to get him to bed. And he is so aloof in this regeneration -- no more hugging, or cuddling, or hand-holding, no more forehead kisses. He hasn't relaxed, even now. He may have even got worse, his body more rigid and unyielding beneath her hands than she has ever felt, muscles so tense she thinks it must actually be hurting him.
He's stopped kissing her, and is looking down at her hands on his chest, and clearly trying very hard to keep his breathing regular and even. What is she doing? Clara’s stomach does a flip. He'd said it to her, he'd said it to her right after their first adventure, I'm not your boyfriend. He wasn't built for that, she didn't even want him to be. He was a mad two-thousand-year-old alien whose greatest love affairs were with a dead woman preserved in a computer and the bloody time machine that he lived inside. He’s strange and awkward and gawky and she’s seen him try to dance, it’s not remotely attractive; so what is she doing, kissing him when she’s only the pull of a lever away from being able to kiss the man she actually loves? She and the Doctor – they do love each other, of course, but they’re not lovers, they’re friends, bestfriends. She doesn't want him like this.
"Do you want to stop?" Clara asks, quietly.
The Doctor blinks at her for several long moments before finally giving her a slight, silent shake of his head.
Relief crashes through Clara like a tidal wave. Of course she wants him like this, how could she not want him like this? And he wants her too. He does.
The Doctor reaches out and touches her face with a gentle hand, tilts her chin up and gives her a long, deep kiss. And another. And another. These kisses lack his earlier hesitancy, unfamiliarity. She feels his fingers run through her hair, and feels his lips trail their way from her mouth, to her cheek, to her temple, and finally to the top of her head, where he pauses to take in a great breath.
"Going to analyse all my hair products by their scent?" she asks.
"Maybe later," he murmurs into her hair. There is something in the distracted tone of his voice that makes Clara's heart skip a beat.
She decides to take a chance.
She closes the last distance between them, pressing herself up against his body, from head to toe. Her arms wrap around him, so it's easy to feel the slight hint of relaxation she'd carefully cultivated instantaneously leave his body, leaving her feeling as if she's pressed herself up against a great plank of wood.
"Why are you so afraid of touching?" Clara asks, her cheek pressed against his chest, trying not to feel personally rejected.
"I'm not," he answers, but his hands are hovering in the air above her shoulders.
Clara sighs, and starts to pull away when the Doctor suddenly grabs her shoulders in a strange, tentative grip.
"Don't," he says, instantly stilling her movement. "It's just... a lot. A lot of signals, sensations. I've got to process them all, all at once. It's difficult. I can't remember...." He trails off. "Please don't go," he pleads, voice small.
"Okay," she says into his shirt. A minute amount of tension leeches from his body. “As long as you want me here, I'll be here."
"I want you here," he whispers.
She slides a hand up his shirt, rests her fingers on his next button. She undoes it, then the one below that, until she's stopped by the presence of his waistcoat, and slides her hand into his half-open shirt. His skin is cool, even here, but she fancies she can see a slight flush to his pale skin, despite the dim, mechanical light of the console room. He's only got a smattering of chest hair, and she smiles because it's as grey as the hair on his head.
"You smell really good," she says. He does. There's something new about the way he smells -- the way a baby or a newborn kitten, underneath their particular odours, smells new because their bodies literally are new, just formed. He's two thousand years old, and looks to be in his fifties, but this body of his has been around barely a year. Well, a year for her... he might travel enough by himself in between their adventures that his body could be a year old, or two, or twenty, and she'd never really know.
"You smell like... hairspray," the Doctor says.
Clara laughs into his chest. Then she kisses his sternum. Then a nipple. She licks it, and he shivers.
"I want to try something," she says, looking up at him. He is gazing down at her, tracking her every movement, the way a bird watches a house cat.
"Anything you want," he replies, and another incredible thrill runs through her, because she knows he means it. Anything. Anything for her.
Clara keeps her eyes on his as she trails her hands down to his belt, and starts to unfasten it. His eyes widen, but he doesn't move as she reaches the fly of his trousers. He closes his eyes briefly as she slides a hand in and cups his soft cock through the smooth fabric of his pants. She rubs her thumb up and down his length and feels his flesh begin to firm up underneath her fingers.
She leans her face into the crook of his neck and kisses him just behind his jaw, lets her tongue press against the stubble that's just starting to make itself known after a clean, close shave the previous day.
"I want to feel you in my mouth," she murmurs into his ear. "I want to taste you."
His hands flex involuntarily at her shoulders, just for half a moment, but he otherwise stays perfectly still. She pulls back to meet his eyes. His mouth opens to say something, but nothing comes out. He blinks at her for several long moments before finally giving her a single, silent nod of his head.
She gives him a kiss on the mouth and then slides his jacket off of his stiff shoulders, tossing it over the railing closest to them. His trousers are next; she slides them down his slim hips until they finally pool around his ankles, his belt buckle tinkling as it hits the floor. She unbuttons his waistcoat, and the rest of his oxford, but leaves them on. She doesn't want to make him naked, here, in the middle of his console room; it seems like that might really be too much, for reasons she can't articulate. His pants are dark, with red trim, and made of soft, silky material; sexier than she would have expected him to wear, if she were honest. They match his jacket perfectly, and she smiles as she slides them down his hips to join his trousers.
When she kneels in front of him, he doesn't guide her with his hands, as she'd hoped he would, but actually lets go of her entirely. She looks up at him, and sees him staring down at her, hands clutching at the edge of the console as if it's the only thing keeping him anchored to the here and now. She runs her hands up his pale, skinny thighs, and leans forward to kiss the spot where his thigh meets his hips, just above his groin. His whole body jerks at the touch of her lips there, and he draws in a harsh breath.
His cock is half-hard by the time she takes him into her mouth. She feels him grow firmer still against her tongue, and she thinks that sensation has never been more erotic than it is now -- each throb of his flesh a tangible manifestation of the Doctor yielding himself to her desire. Danny is never half so much work; so responsive, so giving, so effortlessly in touch with his own body, and hers -- but she can't think about that right now, so she pushes those images and feelings away and concentrates on how the Doctor tastes -- subtle and musky, with the slightest hint of honey, if it were possible for honey not to be sweet; how he feels -- how cool his flesh still is, just barely starting to warm up from the contact with her own mouth.
He's fully hard, now, and she licks away the almost-sweet precome leaking from his tip, then takes him in deep, until the smooth, blunt head of his cock is hitting the back of her throat. She swallows around it, making him gasp, then pulls back, until just the head is left in her mouth, and sucks. The Doctor cries out, a cross between a moan and a sob, and Clara can feel his thighs trembling beneath her hands. She looks up, and is surprised to find he's not watching her suck him off, as men normally do, but actually has his head turned away, one hand thrown across his face.
She pulls back, releases him gently from her mouth.
"Doctor?" she says. His grip on the console is white-knuckled. She thinks about how cool his cock was in her mouth -- how hot did her mouth feel to him? What if it hurt? What if this is all too much? Guilt and concern well up instantly in Clara's chest. "Doctor, are you okay?"
"No," he groans, and Clara's stomach drops. "I mean, yes -- I mean, I mean --" She can see the hand across his face shaking as he rubs his eyes, screwed tightly shut. "It's, it's --"
"Oh my god, " Clara says, stumbling quickly to her feet. "Was I hurting you? I was hurting you and you didn't even say --"
"No!" he insists. He grabs her with both hands, and Clara is shocked into stillness by the gesture. "No no no, Clara, you didn't, you aren't --" He stumbles over his words, blinking at her with wide, pale eyes. His hands flutter over her, uncertain, trembling, until he cups her face between them and stares at her.
"I'm sorry," she whispers. Why do they both always have to be pushing each other, just to see how far the other will go?
The Doctor's eyes sweep over her, his face falling. "Clara," he says, and she feels tears well up at how lost and confused he sounds. "Clara," he says again, and then kisses her.
Clara is too surprised to protest. His kisses are eager, almost sloppy now, and she has to coax him to slow down. He follows her lead, as he always does. As he calms, he leans forward, bows down, and rests his head in the crook of her neck. One of his hands reaches for Clara, trailing a thumb over her palm, her slight wrist. She twines her fingers together with his, and gives him a reassuring squeeze as he presses one last, slow kiss to her collarbone.
She can feel him hesitate for a long moment before he finally, carefully moves her hand to his cock, and wraps her fingers around his flesh, still hard and straining.
The Doctor breathes into her neck, waiting. He’s placed himself in the palm of her hand, far beyond the literal reality of their intimate touch. Her rules. Her decision.
His pulse throbs against the palm of her hand, a sensation she could not have even imagined an hour ago, now a memory that will be indelibly burned into her mind for as long as she lives. Clara carefully imagines stepping back, letting go, and looking the Doctor in the eyes as she buttons his shirt back up and carefully helps him to once again re-don his armor, inside and out. She imagines his expression -- disappointed, confused, resigned. Relieved. She imagines standing in her dark living room as the TARDIS dematerialises, imagines riding the Tube to Danny's and feeling him wrap her up in his strong arms. Did he push you too far again?
Clara takes her time, imagining all of those scenarios, and the Doctor waits, patient and trusting and still.
And when she finally moves, it is to give the Doctor one long, slow stroke of her hand.
The Doctor breathes out, equally slow, and leans just that little bit more heavily against her. Clara raises her free hand to the back of his head and holds him close as she strokes him again, sliding his foreskin up his cock and then back down, deliberately, tenderly. She kisses the corner of his jaw and slides her hand from his hair down to the nape of his neck, just as she strokes him again, and her supposition about the sensitivity of that area is confirmed by the way he shudders and moans into her shoulder in response. She wants to ask, Is that an alien thing? Or just you? but that would be playful; bantering almost. This doesn't feel playful.
She can feel moisture beading at the tip of his cock, and god that is sexy, that she is making him hard, and wanting, and wet. She rubs her thumb into his slit, trails that moisture up his length. He is beginning to pant against her shoulder, to rock into her hand, and part of Clara thinks nothing could be sexier than to keep stroking him, pushing him closer and closer to the edge until he finally tips over, falls, and spills himself into her waiting hand.
But another part of her would find that infinitely unsatisfying.
"Doctor," she murmurs into his ear.
"Clara," he answers, voice hoarse and strained.
"I need to feel you. Inside me." She kisses the shell of his ear. "Please."
He exhales lightly but doesn't immediately move. A few moments later she feels his hand on hers, stilling her. Her heart is pounding as the Doctor gently moves her hand away from his cock and then straightens.
The Doctor raises her hand between them and looks at it, at his own moisture smeared across her fingers, her palm. His expression is aloof, fierce even, and Clara is almost afraid; afraid she's finally pushed him too far, too close to that edge, and this will be the moment he reconsiders everything. He studies her hand, and then, incredibly, licks across her fingers, slow and deliberate like he's testing them, testing the way he and she both taste mixed together.
The Doctor's gaze shifts to her and she sees him searching her face again -- for what, Clara is uncertain. His breathing is still fast, almost harsh, and she has a strange urge to comfort him, at the same time that she wants to be comforted, wants to be reassured that she has not forever ruined the most important thing in her life.
"Turn round," he finally says, voice hushed.
Clara hesitates, confused, until he reaches towards her, turns her gently toward the console. He steps close, closer; for a moment she can feel his bare chest where her dress swoops low and reveals the skin of her back. The Doctor bends her over, moves her hands into place on the console, and she is reminded of that first time she used the TARDIS telepathic circuits, how he stood pressed up against her as he gently guided her hands, his fingers brushing slowly against hers, and it had been strangely electrifying. Now, his hands trace down her body, and when one cool hand slips underneath her dress to slide up her bare thigh the thrill that runs through her isn't strange at all.
His hand continues between her legs, and Clara stifles a sound in the back of her throat as deft fingers slowly glide along the underside of her panties. She's wet, wet enough that the Doctor must feel it soaking through the sheer material, leaving slick evidence of her arousal on his hand, just as he had left the same on hers. One long finger slips inside the fabric and slides gently across her slippery flesh, tracing the contours of her labia, sensitive and full with desire. When that finger reaches her clit, she can't help the little gasp that escapes from her.
"Doctor," she breathes.
He kisses the nape of her neck, and slides his finger inside of her.
Clara cries out and shivers, and the Doctor sighs against her skin, his cool breath making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. He kisses her nape again, then again; runs his tongue across the taut skin as he strokes her from the inside. She wonders if he knows that spot on her neck doesn't do the same thing for her that it does for him; that it must have done for all Time Lords, when he hadn't been the only one left in the universe.
"Good?" he asks her, and kisses her nape again, and emotion wells up in Clara's chest as she suddenly realises, of course he knows; that he is deliberately sharing something precious with her, trusting her with this piece of himself, his history, his home.
She wants to say so much – to thank him, to tell him how much this means, how much she understands – but all she can manage to say in response is, "Yes."
It is good. It's so incredibly good, with his thumb stroking her clit as he pumps two fingers in and out of her, that Clara's knees are starting to shake, and it occurs to her that the Doctor might think this is what she meant when she said she wanted to feel him inside her, that he might make her come just like this when she wants to feel so much more. She reaches down and stills his hand with her own, a mirror of his own gesture minutes before.
"I'm close," she says, breathless and strained. There's a long moment where she is afraid he will ruin the moment with one of his overly literal observations, but instead he simply pulls his hand away, leaving a wet trail along her inner thigh. He shifts, and she can feel his cock brushing against her, just underneath her buttocks, like a question. "Yes," she answers.
He moves closer, until the bare skin of his chest is once again pressed against her. Clara feels his long fingers come up again, hooking themselves into her underwear, but instead of sliding them down and off, the Doctor just pulls them to the side. His hearts are thundering against her back, but she thinks her own solitary heart might be giving his a run for the money as she feels his cock slide just inside the lips of her vulva. His hips flex as he moves forward, then back, so slow she'd think he was teasing her except for the way his breath is stuttering in her ear. Finally, she feels the head of his cock rest against her entrance, and he pauses; almost, but not quite, pressing inside.
Clara squirms, presses back against him, and they both gasp as the tip of him sinks into her. The Doctor stills her with a rough squeeze of his hands.
"Patience," he admonishes, but his voice is too shaky to sound truly commanding. He is sweating -- she feels it along her back, where they are touching skin to skin. She can count the number of times she's seen him sweat on one hand, with fingers left over; even on that desert planet, when she'd nearly been sick with heatstroke, his greatest reaction to the heat had been to wipe his brow a couple of times. She can affect him more than the hottest sun and she basks in that knowledge, letting it warm her from head to toe despite the coolness of his skin pressed against her.
By appearance alone, the Doctor's cock was pretty average, though well-proportioned. But the sensation as he finally, finally pushes into her, one slow inch at a time, is something else entirely. Clara fancies she can feel his alien heartbeat throbbing inside her, as his flesh, cool and hard, sinks deeper into hers, hot, wet, and soft. He is filling her, he is surrounding her, and time itself seems to slow for her, letting her appreciate every stutter of his breath, every flex of his fingers on her skin, every needy little sound that escapes his throat. It's almost too much, and she wonders if this is what it's like to be him, all the time -- seeing, hearing, feeling everything, all at once.
"Oh, Clara," he says, the words long and low and almost pained, like they're being physically dragged from his throat.
They're moving together now, and he is back to kissing her neck, her throat. Clara reaches up, clutches at the back of his head with her own hand, and feels him groan into her skin as she strokes down the nape of his neck. His tongue presses against her skin, then his teeth.
"No no no, don't bite," she exclaims, "don't --" don't leave a mark. The Doctor's rhythm falters, but only for a moment.
"I won't," he promises with a kiss. "I won't," he repeats, and never mind biting, Clara thinks she would swallow him whole in that moment, if only she could. She takes one of his hands from her hip and raises it to her mouth, so she can kiss his knuckles, his fingers. She trails her tongue against the lines of his palm, and he nearly whimpers. His whole body trembles against her and she knows he is close.
"I want to feel you, Doctor," Clara breathes. The hand holding her panties to the side tightens against her, and his thrusts quicken. "I want to feel you come." His breath is whistling desperately in her ear as he fucks her harder, and he's close, he's so close, but he can't quite make it --
"Doctor," she tells him. "Let go." And as simple as that, he does. The sound he makes as he comes is so gorgeous she can almost hear it echo inside her own head.
The Doctor is still shaking with aftershocks as Clara brings his free hand down to her cunt, and slips his trembling fingers onto either side of her clit. She keeps her hand on his as he strokes her, guiding the movement of his fingers. He is only just beginning to soften, so he continues to slowly thrust into her, pressing her hips into their joined hands. She digs her nails into the nape of his neck as she rapidly approaches the edge.
"Please, Clara," he says into her hair, and then hisses at the hard scrape of her nails across his sensitive skin as she comes. The Doctor stays with her through it all, whispering her name over and over into her ear, until she is finally still, and spent.
He slides his softening cock out of her and lets her knickers slip back into place, or as close as possible considering how he's stretched the fabric. Clara is about to turn and snog the life out of him when he wraps his arms around her and simply holds her, his grip almost uncomfortably tight.
"Doctor," she says after almost a minute. She likes feeling him hold her, but she wants to see his face. Maybe even hold him back. She hears him take a deep breath, and then release it; not really a sigh, but more the sound of someone legitimately in need of oxygen. He presses a soft, lingering kiss against her temple, and steps back. Clara turns round, and every fun, sweet, sexy thing she was going to say dies on her lips at the sight of the Doctor's face.
Clara had thought they were both playing at the edge of a precipice. Somehow, without realising it, she'd pushed the Doctor right over. And it looks like it was a hell of a fall.
For one long, agonising moment Clara is genuinely afraid he is about to cry, and she quickly runs through every possible reaction, every possible way she can think to fix this. Instead, the Doctor blinks his pale, wet eyes, and quietly begins to button up his shirt.
"Let me," Clara says, reaching out to help. He stops her with a gentle hand.
"It's all right, Clara," he says. I'm all right, she hears. His eyes are rimmed with red, but his hand doesn't tremble. Maybe it's true.
Clara takes a step back, and watches as he slowly, carefully re-dons his armor by himself. When he leans down to pull up his pants and trousers she sees that the scratches she left on the nape of his neck are an angry red. She broke his skin.
He is tucking his shirt into his trousers, and she takes a moment to fix herself, smoothing and adjusting her dress, checking that the pins holding her hair are still in place. When she looks back to the Doctor she sees that he is watching her with an unplaceable expression on his face. But he looks himself again. Or nearly so.
The Doctor walks around the console -- away from her, Clara's mind interjects -- and flips a switch on a panel opposite her. The TARDIS doors open, and Clara can't help but let out a gasp of wonder at the sight they reveal.
"The Magellan Greater Planetary System, eighty million years before we last saw it," the Doctor says, and someone who didn't know him as well as she did would think he sounded completely normal. "No black hole. Not yet, at least." The Doctor tips his head toward the doors.
Clara’s instinct is to walk to the doors, look outside, pretend everything is normal. Pretending everything is normal is her specialty. It should be no trouble at all to lock everything that just happened into a little box, and pretend fucking the Doctor 80 million years in the past means nothing to her relationship with Danny 80 million years hence. Pretend that when the Doctor had yielded to her pressure and opened up a private, fragile part of himself, she hadn’t clumsily, selfishly crushed it under the weight of her own desire. Pretend she couldn’t still feel the traces of him now, in the wetness between her thighs, the burn where his stubble had scratched against her skin. Pretend that the adventure of it all wasn’t setting her heart pumping even now, with the promise of further wonders to experience beckoning to her right through the TARDIS’s open doors.
She wants to pretend. It’s just that her legs won’t move.
"Come on, Clara, give it a look!" the Doctor urges, his usual impatient edge creeping back into his voice. "At this rate by the time you make it to the doors it'll already be swallowed up, and we'll be right back to dealing with invisible mummies and homicidal AI programs." She meets his eyes, and even though his expression doesn't change, she sees this is something he needs.
She walks to the doors.
Planets stretch through space as far as the eye can see; planets with rings, planets with moons, swirling gas giants and water worlds, planets made of ice, of obsidian, of acid, all orbiting a massive, flamingly blue star. The blackness of space has been almost entirely replaced by a spectacular, shimmering glow of blue, violet, indigo, green; like an aurora that could span hundreds of millions of miles.
"Oh, Doctor," Clara says, her hand over her mouth. She thinks she might cry.
"Beautiful, isn't it?" he says, joining her at the doors. "Ninety-nine percent of the system is absolutely hostile to all forms of life. The planet of the shrubs is as friendly as it gets, and that's still quite rough. But it is very beautiful."
Without thinking, Clara turns and hugs him tight. He stiffens, but after a few moments, lays one hand on her arm. Clara pulls back abruptly.
"Sorry," she says, wiping her eyes. "And after everything else..."
"It's all right," the Doctor repeats. He leans closer, like he's inspecting her, then turns and lopes across the console room towards his jacket, still hanging over the railing where Clara had tossed it earlier. Clara expects him to put it on, the last piece of his armor, but he just rifles through the pockets until he pulls out the sonic screwdriver, then lopes back.
"I noticed, er, on your neck," he says, awkwardly. "I must have nipped you a bit. Couldn't see it in the dim light before, but this blue-spectrum hypergiant is a wonder of luminosity." He moves to her side, raising the sonic screwdriver up. "Tilt your head forward and I'll have you good as new in a few seconds."
Clara does as he asks, and feels the tips of his fingers touch her neck, ever so briefly, then a tingling sensation as the sonic buzzes and heals her bruised skin. She doesn't have to look into a mirror to know her neck is now as unblemished as it was when she walked onto the TARDIS yesterday. Still following her rules.
"What about you?" she asks. The Doctor blinks at her, confused, until she reaches up to touch his neck, and he flinches -- whether from pain, or simply from her touch, she's not sure.
"Oh, that," he says. He waves a dismissive hand.
"It must hurt," she insists.
"I'm not human, Clara," the Doctor says, looking straight into her eyes. "I heal very quickly."
She wants to kiss him again. He must be able to see it, but he doesn't pull away, just stands there, gazing at her with his pale blue eyes reflecting the light of the fiery blue sun. The choice is hers. He will follow, even if it hurts.
She looks down and sees the hint of blood underneath her fingernails. Thinks of Danny, who won’t be born for tens of millions of years. Who is only the pull of a lever away. Thinks of the Doctor, standing so close in that dark corridor on the Orient Express; the way the dim light had shone off his champagne glass as he said, I thought that’s what you wanted.
To turn away from him, in this moment, is a physical feat – like pulling herself out of setting concrete. But she manages, somehow.
"You said the sun was a blue hypergiant," she says, deliberately looking out again at the spectacle before them. “What does that mean?”
She can feel the weight of the Doctor’s gaze on her as she lets her own eyes drink in the otherworldly beauty surrounding them. But as always, he respects the rules she’s made.
"Ah, well, it's not exactly a regular hypergiant, and when I said it was a wonder of luminosity, I meant it,” he replies. “Generally, the most luminous stars in the universe are red hypergiants, 250,000 times more luminous than the puny little star your planet orbits — you can find them all over the Magellanic Cloud," the Doctor continues, relaxing into his familiar role with a wave of his hand. "But this star dwarfs even those, creating a singular gravitational phenomenon that's strong enough to trap thousands of planets in its massive orbit, and bright enough to light nearly all of them."
They are standing next to one another, almost, but not quite, touching. Clara blinks in surprise when she sees the Doctor offer her the crook of his shirtsleeve-clad elbow as he talks, but she threads her own arm through it anyway, just as she'd done the night before on the Orient Express, when they'd been looking at the same view, 80 million years hence.
"And then, in a few million years, it becomes a massive black hole and destroys everything we're looking at," Clara says, thinking of that swirl of dust and debris and blackness she'd seen through the train window.
"Essentially, yes," he replies. "But that future destruction doesn't mean it's not beautiful now."
Clara lets out a long breath at that. She looks up at the Doctor, and sees the veneer he's been able to construct in the last few minutes is already starting to crack. It's unbearable to see him like that, so she quickly looks back through the doors.
"Which one of these is the infamous shrub planet, then?" she asks.
It takes him a moment to answer. "There," he says, pointing. "Behind the great big oil-slick-looking one, above the one with all the rings, to the side of that one covered in perpetual storms."
"It's not even green," Clara says. "It's all kind of yellowish orange and aqua. And it looks like the seas are almost red."
"Well, you're clearly an English teacher," he mutters. "Chlorophyll only looks green under the light of your yellow sun, Clara."
"Let's go there," she says. "You said it's rough, but not totally inhospitable. Let's go there now."
"We can do that," the Doctor answers, slowly.
"And let's pick another planet for next week. And another for the week after."
"Planning to see them all, then?" he asks, and his voice is deceptively light. It doesn't fool her, though.
"Maybe," she says. "Why not?"
"I'm not good at plans. They never turn out. I stopped trying about eighteen hundred years ago."
"We can keep it flexible. We've got loads of places we're going to see, after all."
Clara looks up at him again and sees the beginning of a delicate smile tugging at his lips.
"Do we now?” he asks, and that bloom of happiness is so tender, so hopeful, she can’t help herself from stretching up on her toes to kiss him softly on the cheek.
“We do,” she answers.
It's all right if the Doctor's terrible at plans. Clara's brilliant at them.
She'll make it work.
end