The Doctor walks around the TARDIS control room, pressing buttons and switching gears that are closest to his hands. He feels the need to slump into the leathery-plush-looking chairs behind him but refrains from doing so, remembering that another Wednesday awaits him.
He has terrible timing for Earth time and weeks; Clara says: "see you next Wednesday!" it very well could be a Wednesday two weeks from now, one a month before, or he could show up on a Friday. But never a year later – the Doctor is careful of that.
The TARDIS groans as it barrels top first through the time vortex, causing the alien in the box to tumble, fall, and bang his head a few times against the floor.
"Argh!" The man exclaims, reaching up and clutching at the railing for support. The Doctor stands to his full height and stretches, cracking his back in the process; he shakes out his arms and legs. "All right, then! It's a Wednesday – hopefully! – which means Clara is waiting!"
There was a time when the Doctor would have been comfortable coming out of his blue box without anything fancy on, now, because of Clara Oswald, he is prone to making sure that his hair and clothes are in perfect order. Humans call it an OCD. But, he would never admit to Clara that he does specific things for her.
He walks out of his space ship with a jump to his step, closing the door behind him before looking up at the large apartment structure before his eyes. Walking up the numerous amount of stairs adds to his extra work out every Wednesday when he takes Clara to a new planet; he does that just so he can see her beautiful brown eyes light up with the thrill of being chased or running from another species of alien. But he ascends the staircase rapidly, taking two steps at a time.
When the Doctor reaches her floor he knocks on the correct door and waits, restraining himself from wringing his hands and fidgeting around. It feels like hours, when it was actually seconds, before Miss Clara Oswald opened the door to her flat.
"Doctor!" She exclaims, smiling almost nervously. "Let me just finish my tea, then we can go. Come on in,"
Sometimes the alien-man feels different with each of his regenerations – not just mentally but also physically wrong. With his other companions he was comfortable in their presence with the new body that he took on, but with Clara it's different. The Doctor realizes, almost with a fright, that he is close to one-thousand rather than his previous nine-hundred-and-forty-five age and that Clara is most likely one of the youngest companions by his side. It doesn't make him feel confused, more awkward than anything because he is incredibly old and put in a body that is clearly around his friend's current age. But, Clara doesn't seem too affected by this.
Clara to another room in the flat while the Doctor looks around, now noticing that she's been putting the gifts that he's gotten for her at each planet they've been to in the front room. It brings the house together.
"So," he clears his throat. "Where do you want to go today? I was thinking we could go to Bleeding Hollow. It's only two-thousand years old – practically a baby! Lots of exotic foods, demons, a different culture, all of that stuff! You'd like it,"
"Will there be running involved?" Clara asks, getting that voice where she sounds smarter than him but also subduing her curiosity.
"Possibly," the Doctor answers, realizing he was leaning down he straightens up, wringing his large hands out in front of him. "Running is exercise, Clara – we all need it, frankly. Too many over-weight apes here. Why is that?"
She noticeably chokes on her tea, suppressing laughter. "It's called McDonalds, Doctor."
"McDonalds?"
"Yes,"
He walks around her small living room, scratching his forehead. "Well, that sounds unpleasant… What – What do they sell there? Is it a supermarket? A shop – I love shops!"
"No, Doctor, it's a fast-food 'restaurant'." Clara makes air-quotes, giggling slightly. "It just so happens to be a place where they make burgers, chips, and other stuff at. There's a lot of controversy as to whether the food is processed or frozen – even both."
"A fast food restaurant that sells burgers and chips?" Doctor asks, rummaging in some of Clara's pull-out drawers in the kitchen. "Do they deliver? Are they alien? What type of quality is their service?"
"Fast!" Clara exclaims, chugging down the rest of her tea and washing the cup in the sink. "That's why they call it fast food, Doctor. They don't deliver – haven't you ever seen a fast food joint? It's worldwide, you must have seen one at some point in your travels."
His longer fingers cease their adventure in the paper-stuffed drawer, and he removes them to start tossing around other things in search for a menu for this establishment. "Menu, menu, menu! CLARA – a menu! Does this McDonalds have a menu!?"
"DOCTOR! Why are you throwing papers around?!" Clara yelps, standing a little too close to the Doctor now, nearly being hit by his flailing hands.
"Menu, Clara! A menu!"
Clara suddenly starts batting at the Doctor's arms to make him stop, eventually he does. "They don't have menus anywhere but at their joint. We can go and get some if you want."
"What about our plans for another planet?" He asks, clearly confused as his brows start to crinkle together. "Do I have to dress fancy?"
"It's fast food! We can eat it in the TARDIS or here whenever we get back. Since when do you need to dress up for a chain-restaurant?"
"I don't know! Humans dress up for everything!"
"You're weird," Clara says, staring at him with appreciative eyes, starting to smile. "Let's go. No sense in wasting time in the present when you've got a time machine!"
The Doctor and Clara show up at the closest McDonalds in two minutes flat and exit the TARDIS onto a bustling street that neither of them can pin-point. But, in the distance Clara can see the large golden arch of the rubbish restaurant; she proceeds to yank the Doctor in this direction.
The two of them scamper into the large lit-up floor and wait in line behind a few other people. Clara can feel the Doctor starting to get a little antsy at waiting, knowing that he hates anything that takes more than three minutes in his mind when it's truly only twenty seconds.
"That's the menu," Clara tells the man beside her, pointing up at the illuminated pictures at level with the ceiling.
Clara watches curiously as he starts rubbing the back of his neck, staring up at the different choices before his eyes. He honestly seems a little bit startled and even more overwhelmed, silently wringing his hands, holding himself back from sonic-ing every square inch of the room.
"What's a chicken nugget?" He finally asks.
Clara breathes a sigh of relief at this question, finding that she's slightly amused by it. "Chicken in the form of a lump."
"Why don't they call it chicken lumps, then?" Clara shrugs. "Honestly – you think that I'm weird when your people chicken lumps!"
"Do you want them?"
"NOOO!"
Thirty seconds pass before the line starts moving up and away. Before the Doctor realizes, there is a woman looking at him with annoyed expression plastered on her face; she wears a lack shirt and black visor on her head.
"What can I get you?" She asks, clearly bored.
"Um," is all the Doctor can muster. He glances at Clara for a second, wondering silently why there are so many different things on the glowing board above his head.
He loses track of time, not one of the first, and starts blanking out. Unfortunately, the Time Lord's mind isn't supposed to compensate when it comes to human foods – or anything regarding human relations at all. He's just supposed to save them, not eat their food.
"Doctor," Clara says at his elbow, tugging on his tweed-coat sleeve.
"Mm?"
"You need to order. Now rather than later," she mutters, looking behind her with a nervous stare.
"Mate," a man behind them speaks up. "Come on, we've all got places to go. We're waiting on our food and you're holding up the line!"
The Doctor whirls around, "Oi! I'm thinking!"
"Clearly you think too much," the guy mutters.
He's about to say something when Clara rests her hand on the alien's arm, calming him almost immediately. "Just order something random. We should be going anyway,"
The time traveler turns back around towards the woman in front of him. "Alright, casher-lady. I'll have a large of your finest chips, and some chicken lumps! No sauce or whatever it is you think is sauce – clearly it's not sauce. Nothing should have little bits in it like yours does, which is honestly quite curious."
"Will that be all, sir?" The woman asks again, rolling her eyes.
"Yes! Was I supposed to order more, Clara?" He asks, leaning down to her height.
"No, you don't need to," she laughs, bringing her hand up to cover her mouth.
"Then why did she ask?"
"It's all a part of the job," Clara tells her time traveler.
Back in the safety and comfort of the TARDIS, the Doctor opens up the paper bag that is artfully covered in colorful pictures of animated food with eyes, weird looking toy characters, and even some people that Clara identified as football players.
"You know," the man mutters around a mouthful of chips, "these aren't half bad but I'm skeptical about those chicken lumps. They don't look promising. Why are they in different shapes?"
Clara reaches over into the chip container, plucking out a long one and nibbling on it. "I think it's to entertain kids, but I'm not sure. I'll make you a deal – if you eat one, I will too. If you don't want the other two we'll just throw them out, okay?"
"Sounds alright with me,"
His smart companion takes the box of chicken nuggets out of the paper box and sets it down between the two of them on the call box's floor. She presses down on the top of the box, which opens up underneath her fingers, then proceeds to hand the Doctor a nugget.
"Cheers," she giggles.
"Cheers," he murmurs, taking a tentative bite into the meat.
Clara watches her doctor chewing carefully on the chicken nugget, shifting the contents around and around in his mouth with curious eyes. She sees him taking several bites before the whole lump – as he calls it – is gone and he's reaching for the second one in the box.
"I take it you like them then?" His companion asks, smiling after swallowing her mouthful of fast food chicken.
"I can't taste a difference between this and Time Lord food," the Doctor smirks. "Why is that? Do you think that Time Lord food and human is alike – that would be an interesting topic to study! I should do that, don't you think? I dunno – maybe I'll do something fun."
"What?" His companion asks, confusion written all over her face.
"What – nothing! Bleeding Hollow, right? – I said we were going there for an adventure!" He laughs, standing up and starting his usual pulling of leavers, flicking switches and the like.
"What's there that is so adventurous?" Clara asks, taking the last nugget out of the box and tossing it into the control room's trash bin.
Her doctor smiles happily as the TARDIS around them both shakes uncontrollably as the police box enters the Time Vortex. "Exotic foods, demons, these beautiful little shops – you remember how much I love them, don't you, so we'll be going to a few of those, obviously. Right about now, actually, is when the Feast of Heart is taking place! That's when the demons take prisoners of war and eat their bodies as a right-of-passage."
Clara turns a light green just thinking about the Feast of Heart. She can deal with running away with the Doctor if they show up on some absurd planet that doesn't welcome visitors often, but she can't deal with another alien species eating hearts. Not after being on that Soviet submarine with Skaldak running loose. Seeing those human bodies ripped limb from limb so that the Martian could figure out human anatomy scarred Clara enough to give her nightmares. But she would never say no to a day out with her doctor.
"That sounds a bit different than all of the other places we've been to before," she tells the man clutching at the metal panel in front of him.
"Yeah – it's a bit different! But different is good – just look at me; I regenerate once I'm bored with this form, sometimes it's for other reasons, though…" The Doctor looks a little upset at him bring up his regenerations but doesn't say anything else. "But, every civilization is different, Clara, and that's how specific civilizations continue to thrive and generate new life-forms over centuries and years. It's a mystery, Miss Clara Oswald, but they are worth solving."
Once the TARDIS stops spinning and groaning, he comes over to his companion and hugs her gently, reassuringly. He can tell that she's nervous about this journey and he wants to make his companion as comfortable as possible today and every journey after this one.
"We don't need to stay here if it's going to make you uncomfortable, Clara," he takes Clara's hands in his, giving them a gentle squeeze.
Clara looks up into his spectacular blue-green eyes, responding to the squeeze with one of her own, smiling hesitantly. "I want to. I'm just nervous that I'm going to see something that will scare me…"
A flash of pain and respect ripples through the Doctor's eyes and he leans forward to look down into her equally perfect chocolaty brown ones. "Clara, you're under my protection. And if something were to ever happen to you – I don't know how I could live with myself."
"Don't get all sappy on me, chin-boy," Clara laughs, gently kissing his cheek.
Secretly, that is exactly what Clara needed to hear but she would never let the Doctor know that it made her feel safer than ever before. She knows that right on the Doctor's Time Lord skin is exactly where the truth lies about just how far he's willing to go to make Clara happy and confident during their adventures.
The Doctor pulls away and grabs Clara's coat by the front doors of the TARDIS. He turns towards her with a large grin. "Ready to go?"
Clara takes her coat from the Doctor's out stretched hand, raising her eyebrows. "Let's do this,"