"Clara? Clara? Clara!"
She opens her eyes to find him standing over her, beaky nose about six inches from her own.
"Too close, Doctor," she says, screwing up her face and yawning. He withdraws obediently, still staring down at her from height. She briefly debates the merits of trying to explain why looming over her like this is an unacceptable waking strategy, but decides to cut her losses. "What time is it?"
He gives her a disgruntled look. "How can I possibly answer that?"
She raises a finger. "How much time has passed since I went to bed?"
"Better," he retorts, checking his watch with a flourish. A show, a sham; she knows he could tell her with absolute accuracy without any sort of chronometer, but she lets the theatrics pass without comment. "It's been about four hours."
"Four. Hours."
"Yes, give or take."
"Doctor!" She sits up, and he retreats to the safety of the foot of her bed. "I remember, very clearly a conversation about human sleep patterns."
"Uh, yes," he says, not meeting her eyes, "But it's an emergency, you see."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"I don't hear the Cloister Bell."
"She doesn't ring that for everything," he retorts, and she marvels at how similar this two-thousand year old alien sounds to her teenage charges back at school. "Only things that directly affect the TARDIS."
"In which case," she says, sensing victory, "It's not an emergency that can't wait until I'm awake."
"No-"
"Shut up, you just said yourself 'How can I possibly answer that?'" He raises an eyebrow at her poor imitation of his accent, but she is warming to her topic now. "If we're outside of time, you can sit and do repairs, or read a book or-or… self-pollinate or whatever it is you do when you have time to kill by yourself."
His mouth hangs open, planned retort forgotten. "Self-pollinate?" he says, looking genuinely disgusted.
"Forget I said that bit," she replies, putting a hand to her forehead.
"I'm not some grubby species that-"
"Yes! Fine! Okay. Emergency. Go."
He shakes his head, clearly unwilling to let her flippant remark slide. "Yes. Important. Emergency thing that…Er." He looks thoughtful, tongue sticking out as he struggles to think.
"You've forgotten, haven't you?"
"No."
She folds her arms, waiting for his eureka moment.
"Emergency," he repeats slowly, as if the word alone can jog his memory. "Yes! That's it. You're my wife."
There is a beat of total silence. His hands are spread wide in dramatic flourish, a slightly manic expression beginning to slide into confusion as she stares.
"Not my actual wife," he continues, licking his lips nervously, "A pretend one." He drops his hands, fiddling with the bottom of her duvet for a moment, before glancing back up to see if her expression has changed.
It hasn't.
He coughs. "You know, now I think of it… A-hem. Maybe I will just go and-"
"Stop," she commands. "Explain. Why am I your pretend wife?"
"Didn't think you'd agree to be my real one," he says quickly; the strange staccato delivery of something he thinks is obvious, but the rest of the universe needs explaining.
Silence balloons again. "Um," she manages, deciding to steer clear of the perilous chasm that particular statement opens up. "Okay. But why do you need any sort of wife?"
"Because I may have… accidentally invented one."
"Why?"
"I want to go and see the Sixth Church of the Rangooth. There's talk of ghosts. An evil presence." He flaps his arms, more than half a cadaverous ghoul himself. She's tempted to join him now, in spite of her annoyance. Still, there's such a thing as going down fighting.
"So go, why drag me into this?"
"Sixth Church is only open to those who are bonded," he explains with a shrug.
"You can't get in as a single-rider?"
"Nope."
"Huh. That's a bit… weird, isn't it?"
He make a strange noise, somewhere between a sigh and a childish blown raspberry, as if the endless complexities of the vast array of humanoid cultures spread throughout the galaxy have long since ceased to surprise him. Or so she imagines.
I'm so going to regret this.
"Go on then," she says.