A/N: Wow, I am beyond sorry for the hideous delay in updating this story. This chapter kind of got away from me at multiple points, and I had to figure out how to reign it back in and make it coherent. Plus, you know, school.
Anyway, I'm planning for this to be a kind of mini-collection of Twelve/Clara AUs, with each chapter taking place in a slightly different universe. I have a couple more chapter ideas in mind, but if anyone has specific AU prompts that they're interested in seeing me tackle, just send them my way (either here or on tumblr), and I'll try to make it happen!
A bar in space then.
It doesn't matter what she looks like, what he looks like; they are them.
It's a Wednesday - a space Wednesday she likes to call it, just to watch Mathiax roll his eyes - when he shows up on the rickety stool across the bar from her.
"What can I get for you?"
He looks startled by the question, almost slips and falls right off his stool in surprise. "Nothing," he says sharply, too fast. It takes a split second for him to realize he's made a mistake. "Or. I don't know."
Clara bites back a laugh. He's adorable, despite his gruff exterior, and she feels a sudden urge to wrap him up and keep him safe from the world somehow. His eyebrows are ridiculous, his limbs too long - it's possible he reminds her of a newborn foal, all legs and confusion.
"I don't know what I want," he repeats, almost imploringly.
"Okay…" She wipes down a glass, watching him from the corner of her eye. "Well, we have pretty much anything you could want. Alcohol. Chips. This weird dipping sauce that glows - "
He nods. "Okay." And then he promptly stands up from the bar and walks out of the building.
"Um." She watches him go, confused and, yes okay, a little attracted to this strange man who walks into places and then just as quickly walks right back out of them.
It is, Clara thinks, one of the most singular experiences she's ever had. And she works in a bar. In space.
It's exactly three weeks before she sees him again.
"My name's the Doctor, by the way."
She looks up from making a Venusian Twist with a splash of absinthe and he's just sitting there. At the same stool. Like he never even left. "Sorry?"
"My name." He points at himself, makes a face like maybe he realizes his brain is moving faster than hers. "The Doctor."
Her mother taught her to be polite, she really did, but. "Where the hell have you been?"
"What?"
"It's been three weeks."
"No it hasn't."
"It has too."
"Hasn't."
She practically throws the finished drink in her hand at his head. "I'll be the judge of the time," she says, and it's icy. She doesn't know why it's icy. She doesn't even know this man.
He deflates almost instantly; at least he seems to recognize that he's lost this fight. "Okay. Three weeks." Now that he's accepted it he looks kind of stricken by the realization. "Wow, I really misjudged that landing."
Clara moves to the other side of the bar to hand off the Venusian Twist and uses the moment to swallow around her anger, resets her face into a slightly more neutral look. There's no reason she should feel this upset with a man she's met exactly twice. A deep breath, calm. When she turns back around he's pulling handfuls of toothpicks out of his coat pockets and trying to use them to build a pyramid.
"Spaceship troubles?"
He nods without looking up, gaze focused as he delicately balances one toothpick on top of three more. "My spaceship has a, uh, mind of its own."
They don't talk much after that. A rush of locals floods the bar all at once, and so Clara is a little preoccupied, mixing drinks and cleaning glasses. Smiling widely so that maybe, just maybe, she'll earn a few extra tips. Whenever she catches a glimpse of the Doctor he's still playing with his toothpicks, head down, blocking the world out. No one sits down next to him.
Finally, she walks past him with a half-finished Asteroid Belt balanced in one hand, and he says, out of nowhere, "You could come with me."
She almost trips over herself, barely managing to right the electric blue colored drink before it spills all over the nearest patron. "What?"
"You could," he says again.
"I barely know you."
"That hasn't stopped people in the past."
Her heart rate kicks up a notch; she imagines the stars at her fingertips, the whole universe ready and waiting for her to explore. She imagines the two of them in a spaceship together, next stop everywhere. "You're joking," she says, disbelieving. "You don't know me at all either! I could be a...a serial killer, or, I dunno, a warlord. I could be one of those people who waits until you're asleep and then absconds with all of your belongings in the middle of the night."
He looks a bit taken aback by her answer. "Well, are you?"
"No, but - "
Before she can say anything else, a large cheetah-looking creature down the bar from them clears its throat, inclining its golden head toward the drink still in Clara's hand.
"Oh! Right, I'm so sorry about that," Clara apologizes, and reaches for the nearest container of rock crystals, plunking a few into the drink, and then taking it over to the waiting creature. When she turns back around, the Doctor is gone, and instead of a pyramid of toothpicks, there is a toothpick message, bright against the dark varnish of the bar.
I'll be back, the message says, and to her surprise, he is.
He sits with his feet stretched out across the stool next to his this time, his chin in one hand. It's a slow day at the bar, so he's watching her count maraschino cherries to pass the time.
"What kind of rubbish name is the Doctor anyway?"
They're not talking about the fact that he asked her to run away with him. They're also not talking about the fact that he came back even after she basically turned him down.
"It's a reminder."
"It's an occupation." She pops a cherry in her mouth, watching him expectantly.
After a moment, he shrugs. The explanation means unbearably much to him, and he wants her to understand. "It's a promise."
"To whom?"
He shrugs again, but this time he doesn't say anything else.
"I'll give you a tenner if you can guess what that man over there does for a living."
The Doctor glances over his shoulder at the man in question, wrinkling his nose as he thinks. "Let's see...Is he an intergalactic agent for people's pets?"
"Not quite. Definitely close though."
"A nutmeg wholesaler?"
"A what?" Clara starts laughing in earnest, one hand over her mouth. "What on Urstine's seven moons is a nutmeg wholesaler, and how is it similar to a space agent for pets?"
He starts laughing too. The way her face lights up when she laughs, the dimple in her cheek that deepens slightly - she's infectious. "Well I don't know!" He wants to defend himself, but it's hard to think straight when they're both laughing so hard. "You try it, you can't possibly do better."
"Oh I most certainly can," she shoots back. "I'll bet you all my tips from tonight that I can do better than a nutmeg wholesaler."
"Do you have a gambling problem? Because it sounds like you have a gambling problem."
Clara reaches over the bar and smacks him lightly on the side of the head. "Shut up." But they're both still laughing.
His fingers catch on her wrist momentarily, and he can feel the delicate shift of her bones beneath skin, the way her heart beats so steady and sure. "I'm just asking as a friend. I need to know these things, Clara, so that I know what I'm getting myself into," he says, and if there's a smirk pulling at his mouth by the end of the sentence, who can really blame him?
She rolls her eyes, but something in her face has softened. "Believe me, gambling is the least of your worries when it comes to me."
"That's such a relief."
"Isn't it though?"
Mathiax likes to drink while on the clock. This mostly isn't a problem, except that sometimes it is. The thing is, when he's drunk, he likes to talk.
"Why d'you keep coming back here if you never buy anything?" He practically sprawls himself across the bar, his fingers steepled in front of his face in an attempt to look scholarly. The question is directed at the Doctor, who sits across from him, folding napkins into decorative origami creatures.
"Maybe I just like the company."
Mathiax scoffs at that. "Yeah right." He gestures around at the bar's clientele. "Drunks and people hiding from their families or the law. So, tell me, Doctor," he drags out the name, title, nom de plume (whatever the hell it's supposed to be - Clara's half-explained it to him, but he wasn't really listening), "who are you hiding from?"
"Shouldn't you be serving someone right now?"
"Clara's got it."
On the opposite side of the bar, Clara's swamped with all manner of hands and tentacles and claws snagging drinks from her or waving their chosen method of payment around wildly. She looks exhausted and annoyed and also like maybe she'll snap off the arm of the next person who tries to not-so-subtly get her attention.
The Doctor finishes a fold on a napkin crane, and then frowns down at Mathiax. "You should go help her," he says, and it's not a suggestion.
Mathiax's eyes widen; there's a sudden clarity in his face that comes only from being completely and unapologetically smashed. "You like her."
The Doctor doesn't say anything, but it looks, very much, like he might be blushing in the dim lighting of the bar.
Mathiax starts laughing, straightens himself up, and then takes a breath. Collects himself. He looks at the Doctor now like he's seeing him for the first time. "All right," he says after a moment, nodding and still kind of chuckling to himself, "I'll go help her."
Later, after the rush has died down, Clara brings it up.
"Hey, did you say something to Mathiax?"
"What?" He jerks his head toward her so sharply that he almost falls off his stool. For a moment, Clara flashes back to the first time they met; his look of surprise hasn't changed much in the past few months. "Noweweren'ttalking," he says, all in one breath. "Why?"
She shrugs. "It's no big deal, but he came over and helped me, and he doesn't normally do that when he's wasted. It was just...It was a nice thing for him to do."
"So you think I had something to do with it?"
Clara shakes her head; she can't quite put into words how she knows, she just knows. "Mathiax isn't nice."
"What makes you think that I am?" he asks, frowning. He has been accused of being many things by many people, and being nice has never made the list.
"Okay," she admits, laying her palms flat against the bar and leaning in toward him just a little bit. His eyes remind her of the sea after a storm, and, this close, she can even make out the delicate curve of his eyelashes. "Nice may not be the right word." She struggles with the feeling in her chest, how to make sense of it. They know each other. Sometimes it feels like she might know precisely how he takes his tea or exactly how he looks after a long day of saving the world even though she hasn't actually experienced any of these things firsthand with him.
And every so often, when she catches him smiling at her or finishing her thoughts before even she knows where they're going to end, she thinks that maybe he feels the same way about her.
"Clara?"
She says, simply, without quite knowing why, "I see you."
The only sound in the bar is the soft tinkling of glass and Clara's whispered swearing as she sweeps up a broken bottle off the floor. She's alone for the first time all day, and of all the things she wants to be doing right now, cleaning this mess up is not one of them.
In the still quiet it's easy to hear the door open.
She doesn't even bother looking up. "Oi, can't you read? We're closed."
Footsteps, coming closer. Clara tightens her grip on the broom, ready to bash the intruder over the head with it if need be.
"You said you could see me."
It's the Doctor. He stands right across from her, on the other side of the bar, frowning like he's trying to understand. (He can't possibly tell her what this means to him, can't even begin to find the right words.)
Clara nods, only a little startled. They had that conversation a week ago now. "Yes."
Without even realizing that he's doing it, he leans as far across the bar as physically possible, like getting closer to her might make everything make sense. "Did you mean it?" he asks.
"Yes." She doesn't even have to think twice about it. Then, "Doctor, what's going on? Why - "
He reaches for her, fingers catching on the hem of her shirt, and then tugging her closer. Then his mouth is on hers, his hands in her hair. He tastes like mint and the wide-open sky, and, and...The bar is seriously impeding Clara's ability to climb him like a tree right now.
She makes a noise of discontent, grabbing hold of his shoulder and then trying to pull herself closer to him - trying to get to a point where maybe she can press, full-bodied, against him - and then suddenly he is gone.
They're both breathing heavily, but he's practically on the other side of the room now, hand pressed against his mouth, aghast.
"I don't know why I did that," he confesses, right before he spins around and flees from her.
He's waiting for her when she shows up for her shift the next day, expectant and suddenly shy. He looks like he's made a decision but doesn't quite know how she'll respond to it.
"Clara."
She raises an eyebrow at him.
"I'm sorry."
"For…?" In another life she would probably make a fantastic teacher, disciplining ne'er-do-wells, inspiring students to speak up in class and share their ideas. He pictures her, for a moment, in front of a chalkboard, going on about the Brontes or George Eliot.
"For...yesterday," he says, stumbling over the words. "For kissing you and - Well actually no, I'm not sorry for kissing you as such. But the way I went about it wasn't really my finest moment, and - "
"Okay, okay." She's laughing, just a little bit, and waving her hands at him. "It's okay, apology accepted."
He smiles, something like relief flooding his face. "Excellent. That makes the next part of this sufficiently less awkward."
"The next part?"
The Doctor shakes his head, gestures for her to come closer. "Will you come away with me?" he whispers, honey-sweet and full of wishes, and she's never seen him look so hopeful; it takes her breath away.
"What?"
There is space dust in his lungs, the weight of time pressed into his shoulders, and every day he sees her he feels like stars are being born in his bones, brilliant and divine. "Clara," he says, like this is the start of everything, "do you want to be my companion?"
She stares at him. "Is that a euphemism?"
The Doctor laughs, smiles a charming, sideways grin. "Sometimes."
She pretends to consider it, squinting at him in the dim lighting of the bar. Slowly, he reaches his hand out to her, palm up. It's an offer, it's a request. A supplication. Her fingers fit against his like they were made for each other.
She says, softly, "All right," and then adds, "But you better take me to see something awesome."