* Hey guys. I knocked off a couple of chapters last night so here is Chapter 4 nice and early because I love my readers. As ever thanks to everyone who reads, reviews, follows and favourites, all the comments mean a lot to me but it's also nice to know people are interested in the story. This is quite a fluffy chapter, in which Clara takes the Doctor to her favourite place in the universe. Enjoy :) *

The Doctor straightened his bow tie once more. He was nervous. Very nervous. Clara was taking him on a tour of some of her favourite places in London. He knew he had to take her home to Blackpool sooner or later, he was sure she'd have many favourite memories from there to show him. But for now, he supposed London would have to do. He was nervous. Of course he was nervous. Showing Clara the whole of time and space was easy. Fitting into her world, was somewhat harder. Without being able to show off, how could he impress her? He told himself to breathe. Clara was sharing, that was a good thing. A very good thing. She loved him, she'd said so. So why did he have this pit in the bottom of his stomach? Emotions, he thought, were best left to the humans. He checked his reflection for the umpteenth time then decided to move the TARDIS so it wasn't in Clara's way.

"I'm just taking her somewhere out of your hair," he yelled, the TARDIS magnifying his voice so she could hear him and she wouldn't think he was abandoning her. "And breathe Doctor," he told himself. "It's just Clara. Your Clara. You can do this."

He stepped out the front doors. He'd left the temporal engines off, so there was no way in hell he could've made any sort of time jump. He was sure of it. He passed a rose bush on the way and plucked a gorgeous red rose from it, to give to Clara. It would occur to him, much later on; that he hadn't even thought for a moment about the girl associated with the flower, so transfixed was he on the girl waiting for him inside the house. He knocked on the door and took one more deep breath. Clara.

She opened the door. The Doctor's eyes almost popped out of his head. Clara looked absolutely stunning. She was wearing a long, velvet dress of the bluest blue. She normally stuck with red, but tonight she was playing to his strengths. Her hair was lightly curled and shone, her eyes twinkled and her skin was still lightly tanned from their trips to various sunny places. But what caught the Doctor was her smile. She had a light, addictive smile playing on her lips, her red lipstick only bringing out the joy associated with a Clara Oswald smile. The Doctor stepped forward and showed her the rose, placing it in her hair delicately. He was wearing a black jacket and bow tie to match and he was feeling about as fancy as he could feel. She giggled, stepping out of the house and onto the pavement below. It was late autumn and there was a light breeze toying with her hair, but it wasn't cold.

"Thank you Chin-boy," she teased as she shut the door behind her and he took her arm. "The rose is lovely."

"I picked it myself," he said proudly.

"I can see," Clara smirked. "You made a right mess of that bush, Mrs Alberry will not be pleased in the slightest, even if I tell her you did it all in the name of romance."

"I'm 1200 years old Clara," the Doctor informed her proudly. "I know a thing or two about romance." Clara just snorted with laughter at that.

They walked, arm in arm, for nearly half an hour. Normally, the Doctor would have been impatient, but walking with Clara felt very different to normal walking. For once in his lives, there didn't need to be a destination. It felt good to be walking, without having to be walking somewhere. She giggled every now and then, mainly at him, rather than with him but he took that as a sign that she found him charming rather than that he was constantly tripping over his own feet. Maybe she found it charming that he tripped over his over feet. Until, suddenly and rather too abruptly for the Doctor's taste, they stopped walking. They'd arrived apparently. The Doctor looked at the name of the restaurant they'd arrived at. It was called Fialli's. He wracked his brains. It wasn't famous for anything. It wasn't even popular. It was in fact, by the Doctor's reckoning, although probably very nice, just a restaurant. He was almost disappointed. It's important to Clara, he told himself.

"You know," Clara said, as they waited in line to go in. "For a man who spends an inordinate amount of time straightening his bow tie, your bow tie is rarely ever straight!"

The Doctor tried to think of a retort as she reached up to straighten it for him, but it was lost among her eyes and her smile. She leaned up to kiss his cheek and then they linked arms again as they reached the front of the queue.

"Do you have a reservation?" asked the nice blonde lady at the door. The Doctor's eyes widened but Clara nodded with a smile.

"Doctor and Mrs Oswald?" she informed the lady, who checked their names off and nodded, guiding them through the busy restaurant to a small table in the corner. A waiter came over and lit a candle between them, leaving them a bottle of water and a wine list and promising to return shortly.

"How did you get reservations? You didn't know we were coming?" The Doctor asked, with a raised eyebrow. "And Doctor and Mrs Oswald?"

Clara shrugged. "We're a young couple in a fancy restaurant; it only makes sense that we're married. And as for how I got the reservations, I didn't. You're going to nip back a few weeks into the past when we're done here and book it for us," she winked. "Time is relative, didn't you say?" The Doctor looked at her with a strange look, a mixture of pride and shock. "This restaurant," Clara continued. "Was where my dad took my mum for their 20th Wedding Anniversary. Shortly before…" The Doctor reached out and clasped her hand. "I've been telling myself I'd come here, on a date. But I was just waiting for the right man…"

The Doctor blushed. He leaned forward and kissed Clara gently on the cheek. In the process, without noticing, he managed to set his bow tie on fire on the candle. Clara, giggling senselessly despite herself, leaned forward to grab the water. She ripped his bow tie off and dropped it in the water before the flames managed to spread. The Doctor sent her a look of shock and horror.

"You set it on fire," Clara explained.

"I did nothing of the sort," he insisted indignantly. "I was merely testing the flammability of it using the candle. And it seems very flammable is the answer, it'll have to be replaced. I can't have a flammable bow tie. Flammable bow ties are not cool."

Clara was giggling again. If the Doctor thought she was going to accept his ridiculous excuse for even a second, then he was sorely disappointed. The meal itself was exquisite, the finest spaghetti Clara had ever eaten, and although she heard the Doctor muttering something about 15th Century Italy at some point, he smiled and ate up and she was certain that he was enjoying the food more than he was willing to let on. He was telling her about the time he met the Pope when dessert arrived and she had ordered one to share. She shoved her spoon in his mouth to shut him up as he reached the bit about the Cybermen turning up and he spluttered ice cream as she giggled, earning them yet another haughty look from the couple on the table next to them, who had been glaring at them the whole night. Or at least, the woman had. The poor bloke sat opposite her looked thoroughly miserable and completely jealous of all the fun Clara and the Doctor were having. The Doctor had managed to extract the spoon from his mouth and was flicking cream at Clara's face. She gasped as cream sprayed her face and got in her hair. The Doctor looked completely innocent as she shot him a death glare.

"What? Have you got some sort of Time Lord rule against actually eating pudding?" she asked in a mock irritated tone. "Or do you just want to try and annoy me?"

"I'll have you know," the Doctor informed her. "That the great War Council of Gallifrey once got into the greatest food fight of all time. Which, I'd like to point out, I won after smashing Rassilon in the face with a giant Yorkshire pudding. So there."

"You made that up!" Clara insisted, wiping leftover cream from her cheek with her napkin.

"Maybe, but wouldn't life be a lot more fun if everything happened the way I said it did?" The Doctor asked her with a grin. "They're still out there somewhere. All of them. I can still make it happen. I can start the greatest food fight in history. And I'll do it in the name of the great and beautiful Clara Oswald, who didn't believe I could accomplish such a feat!" he was almost shouting by this point and stood as if to prove a point.

Clara dragged him back into his seat, laughing hysterically as she apologised to the nearby couples. She couldn't help but blush at the compliments the Doctor gave her. She'd never thought of herself as beautiful until he said it. But the way that he said it, coming from a man who had seen almost every kind of beauty there was to see…she could almost believe it to be the truth. Clara paid the bill, despite the Doctor's insistence that he could negotiate their way out of it and then they left, back out into the chill of the night. Arm in arm, they strolled down the street, back to Clara's apartment. Clara shivered despite herself at the chill of the night and he swept his jacket around her before she even had a chance to tell him to stop. She shot him an inquisitive look and he shrugged, his arm wrapped around her shoulder, pulling her in close to him.

"London's such a beautiful city," he mused. "So many amazing things to discover. It's like a mini-universe all of its own, tightly packed into such a small area. And the people here, they can change lives. Even mine."

"Someone's feeling poetic," Clara teased.

"Poetry is music for the soul Clara," he informed her. "And you've restored the poetry to my life. The music to my soul. The spring to my step."

"The annoying cryptic way of speaking that must drive women either to swoon or kill themselves?" Clara added. "Which one do you think I'll be Chin-Boy?"

"I didn't. I mean. Shut up!"

They arrived back at Clara's apartment and the Doctor showed her to her door. She giggled as he opened it for her and then he nodded to her and kissed her hand.

"Thank you Clara Oswald, for an incredible night," he said and headed off back to the TARDIS.

"Oi!" she called after him, a faint and amused smile playing on her lips. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Back to the TARDIS," he told her, looking confused. She smiled at how sweet he was. Her Doctor. She'd have to practically drag him into bed with her.

"I mean, don't you want to come in?" she asked quietly. Nerves were kicking in now and she felt a rush of blood surging through her. "I mean for a cup of tea?" she asked weakly.

"I'd love to," the Doctor said after a moment, a warm smile on his face. "I mean yeah, it's just tea. The old girl's not going anywhere."

The Doctor stepped inside Clara's apartment and she guided him into the lounge. She disappeared into the kitchen and while she was gone, he examined her table. She had a set of photos. One was of her with the Maitlands. Another was of her as a child with both her parents. A recent one of her with her dad. One of just her mother. But it was the last two that caught his attention. They were him. The first one was just him, one she'd taken of him the day that he'd taken her to the beach. Nothing special, just Brighton coast in the 70s. The second one was of both of them, wearing their normal clothing, just a few months ago. The day they went to the National Gallery. The day she convinced him to save Gallifrey. In the end, the Doctor thought he convinced Kate to take it for him, but he couldn't be sure.

"What're you looking at Chin?" Clara asked lightly and he span on the spot. She was holding a red mug and blue mug and as he smiled at her she handed him the red one and sat down. "I fancied a change," she told him as he raised an eyebrow of surprise. Blue was his mug and red hers. That had always been the tradition.

"I was just admiring your photo collection," he smiled. "I'm surprised I'm in there. What do you tell people when they come round?"

Clara chuckled, almost sadly and the Doctor frowned. "You're the only one I ever invite round," she said with a smile. "I never think about what anyone else will think of you, but I like looking at it every day. Reminding me of who's important. What they mean to me. What you mean to me."

The Doctor smiled and threw himself down beside her on the sofa. He relaxed his arm around her, his tea in the other hand and he drank deeply from it. It was still piping hot but refreshing and she also relaxed, leaning against him with her head resting on his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head.

"Stay here," she whispered, glancing up at him. "Doctor, my Doctor, stay here with me. Even if it's only for tonight. Please."

"Of course I'll stay Clara," he said, smiling. "I'm always here to guard you."

She settled into position and they didn't speak for a while, merely cuddling up together, drinking tea and deep in thought. The Doctor was tired, so he suspected Clara must've been absolutely knackered. She needed a lot more sleep than he did, being human and he knew she must've been struggling to stay awake, just to lie with him. He felt her drop off in his arms. After a little while, when his tea was all gone, the Doctor picked Clara up into his arms like she weighed nothing and carried her to her bed. He'd never been in her bedroom before and he smiled as he stepped inside. It was painted a pale red, with one wall the bluest blue he could imagine. She had a desk up against the blue wall and on it; there was a photo of them together, a different one to the one that he had seen in the lounge. They had been to the opera and they were wearing smart clothes and beaming. They were holding hands in the picture, the Doctor realised. He probably hadn't even noticed at the time. She was stood on a step so she was almost his height and they looked like the perfect couple.

The Doctor set Clara on her bed. He tucked her under the covers and as he was about to leave, her hand shot out and grabbed his arm.

"Stay with me Doctor," she whispered, barely awake but smiling warmly at him. "Stay here beside me and tell me a story."

The Doctor smiled and climbed into bed beside her. She rested against him and he told her a story, as she requested. It was a story about a girl named Clara, who met a madman with a box and who ran away with him. Who saved a little girl on a planet far away, who stopped an evil alien blowing up planet Earth, who helped free a trapped ghost in an old house. Who ended up stuck in his box and having to escape. And who bravely led a group of warriors to victory against the evil Cybermen. A girl, who sacrificed herself to save him. And, when she was asleep, he told her the next part of the story. How the madman fell in love with her.