Sorry for the long wait, ran into a block on this one. (And ironically have now broken through it when I'm meant to be cramming for a test. Ah well, who needs good grades anyway?)

Warning: contains misgendering of a transperson and some not so nice stuff said in regard to said person's being transgender (not sure if I'd go as far as to say slurs, but it's Not Great), so don't read if that's going to be triggering/upsetting.


7 - Accidentally Fake Engaged

"you need a plus-one for your brother's wedding so i'm going as a favor but there's been a misunderstanding and now your whole family thinks we're engaged" AU


"Remind me why I'm here?"

"Because Thete's in hospital having thrown his back out trying to prove he was better at limbo than me."

"Not his brightest moment - everyone knows you're the best at limbo."

"Exactly." Clara and Missy exchanged looks before the latter added, "It was fairly funny though. Bless his wee heart. Not to mention, he looks so put out in that hospital bed."

"That might have had something to do with me putting a picture of him and the balloon you got him on Instagram."

They grinned at each other, and Clara turned her eyes back to the road somewhat reluctantly. She'd keep staring at Missy if she could, because her best friend was looking damn good. Sleeveless dark purple dress, high heeled boots up to her knees, topped off with crimson lipstick and a loose mane of hair.

"Seriously, though, why bring me?" She asked curiously.

"I'm not braving this den of moronic conservative cattle on my own!" Missy said, horrified. "What the hell do you take me for, a masochist?"

"Sort of, yeah," Clara replied, "Or at least, probably in a kinky way." Missy snorted, but Clara could see her grinning. "If you hate your family so much, you just shouldn't come."

"An Oakdown doesn't simply miss an event as important as a wedding, Clara."

"Why not? Since when do you do as you're told?"

"Because-" Missy frowned and waved her hand dismissively. "Because we just don't. I wouldn't expect you to understand."

They pulled up outside the church and got out of the car. Clara smoothed her tight blue dress even though there weren't any wrinkles in it.

"Ready?" She asked her friend.

"As I'll ever be," Missy muttered. She put her arm through Clara's and they headed for the church entrance. An elegant woman in her seventies was standing there, and Clara was aware of how Missy's body tensed immediately.

"Melissa!" The woman said with a large smile that was definitely forced. "So glad you could make it after all. Oh look at you, don't you look lovely. You know, I think you actually look better than half the women here."

"And why shouldn't she?" Clara asked, scowling.

"Leave it, pup," Missy hissed, before giving the woman a sickly sweet smile. "So nice to see you, Sylvia, but we'd best get to our seats. Catch up at the reception."

With that she herded a quietly fuming Clara into the church and into the back row.

"My stepmother," Missy said as they sat down, "Charming woman, as you can see."

"She's your stepmother?"

"Unfortunately. She's about as bad as yours. You think the backhanded compliments are bad, but given that she only stopped calling me Matthew ten years ago, and only then at my father's insistence, I couldn't give a flying pigshit. I know I look better than almost everyone here, I don't need a transmisogynistic bitch in peach telling me so."

"You do look great," Clara said, grinning at her, "Not to mention, your arm candy isn't bad either."

Missy grinned back. "Well, you know what they say, if you don't want to join 'em, beat 'em." She turned her gaze forward. "Alright, so groom is my stepbrother Michael, which you know already, his bride's some Welsh model I've never met, and my father's the one in grey in the front row with superiority infecting his immediate two yard radius."

Clara giggled. "Good to know. What's your dad's name again?"

"To be honest, I'd stick with Lord Oakdown, he only lets people he actually respects address him by his first name."

"Charming." Clara knew about how Missy's family were technically nobility, but that didn't make the title of 'Lord' any stranger to hear.

That was when the bridal march began to play, and they along with everyone else turned to look at the bride. She was pretty, Clara supposed, in a cold sort of way, but that meant she would probably fit in just fine with the Oakdown family, from what Clara knew of it.

The ceremony was boring, and Missy and Clara whispered to each other for most of it, Missy giving Clara the dirt on everyone in the pews in front of them. There were a few times that Clara couldn't keep in her giggles and they were sent a dirty look or two, but neither of them particularly cared.

They ran into Lord Oakdown on the way out.

"Melissa," he said, lifting an eyebrow, "Good to know you still have some measure of decency. Do try to not make too much of a spectacle of yourself at the reception, won't you?"

"Who, me?" Missy said innocently, smirking.

He frowned. "I mean it. I don't care how successful you are, it doesn't give you a free pass for embarrassing this family any further than you already have."

"Noted." Her voice was much colder, and he just sniffed and walked on out of the church.

"Have I mentioned that I hate your family?" Clara said as they watched him go. She was fairly sure her nails were digging into Missy's arm, but the other woman hadn't said anything about.

"You and me both, sister. Come on, we might as well go to the reception. At least they'll have an open bar."


The reception was in the gardens of the Oakdown estate, and Clara couldn't disguise her gaping at the grandeur of the place. Missy, meanwhile, seemed very unhappy to be back at her childhood home.

"God I'd forgotten how much I hate this place."

"We only have to stay a few hours," Clara reminded her, giving her hand a squeeze. "Look, there's champagne over there, let's grab some."

The champagne did seem to raise Missy's spirits, and they were able to find some of Missy's cousins, who for the most part were actually alright and quite pleasant to talk to.

"So what do you do, Clara?" One of them asked with interest.

"I'm a schoolteacher," she said, "English."

"She's too good for the public school system, but she won't go private no matter how much I try to convince her," Missy added, sighing and brushing some lint off Clara's dress because it was annoying her.

"It's the public school kids that need the good teachers more than anyone else," Clara defended, "I won't abandon them to someone who doesn't give a shit about them just for money."

One of Missy's cousins nodded with approval, while Missy just rolled her eyes.

"That's my Clara," she said with exasperation, pushing a stray strand of the smaller brunette's hair behind her ear affectionately, "Always so inherently caring. It's exhausting. I don't know how I put up with it."

"Shut up," Clara said, rolling her own eyes, "You love me really."

"For some reason, yes." Missy turned to her cousins. "I think it's the eyes. I mean, have you seen them? They're so unbelievably beautiful that I can't even think sometimes when she looks at me."

Clara felt her cheeks go red as her friend gestured emphatically. It wasn't the first time Missy had said something complimentary about her eyes, but it was the first time she'd been so direct about it.

The cousins murmured their agreement and the conversation moved onto sports, which neither Clara were particularly interested in, so they went to grab more champagne and were happy enough chatting between the two of them, Missy delivering more of the gossip on members of the family. That is, until they overheard a conversation at a nearby table.

"Sylvia, where's Matthew? Surely he wouldn't miss his own stepbrother's wedding."

Missy's grip on her glass tightened until Clara was sure she was going to break it. The younger woman took it from her before she could hurt herself.

"You mean you haven't heard?" Sylvia's voice said in reply to the first.

"Heard what?"

"I suppose it has been a long time since we all got together like this, but I was sure that everyone knew."

"Knew what?"

"Well, you know how he wasn't quite right in the head? After Ailla cheated on him, he just completely lost it."

"How you mean?"

"I mean that now, he's-"

Missy marched over to them, pulling Clara with her by the hand, and it was very satisfying to see Sylvia's eyes widen with trepidation at the look in her stepdaughter's eye.

"Great Aunt Tess," Missy said, with a sickly sweet smile, "Long time no see. As my dear stepmother here was saying, I'm just completely bonkers these days. I suppose that's what comes with being a woman, isn't that supposed to be part of the deal?"

"Matthew?" Tess blinked at her. "Is that you?"

"Her name is Melissa," Clara said, gritting her teeth.

"This is Clara Oswald," Missy told them, putting her arm around her friend's shoulders, "My shining star, moon of my life. Clara, these are my boring relatives. Now come on, it's time we both were finding-"

"Oh my goodness!" The old woman who was neither Tess nor Sylvia exclaimed, her eyes having fixed on something by Clara's leg. "Melissa, why didn't you say so earlier?"

"Say what earlier?" Missy asked flatly.

Clara looked down at where the elder was staring, and felt panic flood her body. Her mother's ring was glinting in the sun, on the only finger it fit.

"Missy-"

"Not now, dear-"

"You're engaged?!" Sylvia screeched, having also spotted the ring. "Dear god, haven't you done enough already without making this a gay thing as well?!"

Missy stared at her with complete bemusement until she followed their gaze to the ring and blinked. Before she could offer any kind of coherent reply, the relatives at the next table had heard.

"Oh Melissa! Is it true?"

"Engaged? To a woman?"

"Pay your stepmother no mind, that's lovely, dear, we're so happy for you."

"Uh," Missy said, for the first time since Clara had ever met her rendered utterly speechless. She looked like she was finally about to correct them when even more relatives flocked over with even more comments or congratulations to offer.

One of the aunts gave Missy a hug and Clara had to laugh at how Missy's entire body went stiff. Her hand went to Clara for support and she took it, figuring the gesture didn't matter since they all thought they were engaged anyway.

When the aunt let go, Missy looked around at the large number of people who were eyeing her with a wide range of expressions.

"Well, actually-" She said, only to be interrupted by one of the cousins she was less friendly with.

"Is it still gay?" He asked. "You know, given...what you are."

"It's gay enough," Sylvia snapped, scowling at her stepdaughter, "And what she is, is an attention-seeker trying to ruin my son's day."

"You know what else she is, Sylvia? Still standing right here," Missy snarked.

"Oh, pay her no mind, Melissa, I think it's wonderful you've found yourself someone so obviously lovely and very dear to you," a nicer uncle told her, giving her an encouraging nod.

"Come now, we all know it's incredibly easy to find young and pretty lovers when we've got our kind of family money," Sylvia sniffed, "I don't see what other incentive Miss Oswald would have to marry someone as unpleasant as my stepdaughter, when she could settle down with some nice young man, or at least a real woman if she's one of those lesbians."

Clara nearly launched herself at the woman with fury but found Missy's iron grip holding her back. But for once it wasn't necessary, because half of the relatives started shouting at Sylvia too, some defending the engagement and their love and others defending Missy from the disgusting insult.

The din became deafening, and Missy watched with her eyebrows nearly at her hairline as one of the cousins got punched by one of the others.

"Okay, I really think we need to set them straight now, this is turning into a disaster," Clara said to Missy quietly, but her friend just started laughing.

"Are you kidding?" She gasped between cackles. "This is the best thing to happen all day. All week, even. Hell, all year."

Clara took another look at the chaos in front of them, at the shouting and fighting relatives who seemed to have entirely forgotten about the presence of the two people who were the basis of the conflict in the first place. It wasn't hard to see the funny side.

"So what, we just leave them?" She asked, her lips quirking.

"Play along with me, at least for a while?" Missy batted her eyes as she made her request. "Come on, you know you want to, it'll be loads of fun."

"Sure, why not, should keep things interesting," Clara said, snorting into her glass of champagne.

That was when Lord Oakdown arrived on the scene with the bride and groom in tow as well as the photographer, having finished with the professional photographs.

"What in the name of all that is holy is going on here?!" He demanded, his thunderous voice bringing the entire scene to a stop. A good two thirds of the group had the decency to look a bit ashamed of themselves. Others seemed to be holding firm to the belief that it had all been incredibly necessary.

"There have been some conflicting opinions in reaction to my engagement," Missy told him pleasantly.

He stared at her. "Engagement?"

Clara, sensing her cue, held up her hand so that he could see the ring and gave him her best fake smile (one that was usually reserved for the parents of overly difficult children). He turned an interesting shade of purple.

"You can't be serious-"

"Why not?" Missy asked, eyebrow up.

"She's of no status, and twenty years your younger, and a she-"

"Oh please," she said, rolling her eyes, "Uncle William has a trophy wife, I don't see why I should be denied the same pleasure. Or are you just jealous that you're stuck with the peach hag over there while I've got the hottest piece of ass this side of Sunday on my arm?"

Between the comment itself and the sheer outrage and shock on Lord Oakdown's face, Clara nearly died then and there trying to keep in her giggles.

"You like men," he told her furiously, "That was the only consolation through all of this when you transitioned, that at least as a woman you could be respectable."

"There's this incredible thing out there called bisexuality, father dearest, I suggest you look it up sometime." Missy rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you catch me shagging Thete on the couch one time - and oh yes, Sylvia, it was when I was still Matthew, is that gay enough for you? Good, because it was on the nice brown one you like so much-"

"Melissa Tremas Oakdown, you will remove yourself and your fiance from the premises before you make any more of a spectacle of yourself," Lord Oakdown spat, "Right this second."

"Actually, I'd prefer that they stayed," Michael said from behind him, "Given that it is my wedding and my sister in question."

Clara didn't know who looked more shocked at his interruption - Missy or her father. Their expressions of complete bewilderment revealed the first family resemblance Clara had ever seen between the two of them.

"Go on, Missy, give the girl a kiss for us, will you?" Michael said to his stepsister, grinning at her. "I personally believe this party isn't yet gay enough, and would have that rectified."

Missy's eyebrows went up again, and before Clara could say anything, she was being yanked into a firm kiss. Clara had all of a second to freeze with surprise before the feeling of Missy's lips made her kiss back immediately, a warmth flooding her body with such vivacity that she might have been shocked if she hadn't been so focused on Missy's hand winding through her hair or her lips parting against hers.

Clara moaned into her mouth, and Missy used the firm grasp she had on Clara's jaw to kiss her that much harder, her tongue flicking out to press against the seam of Clara's lips.

"That is quite enough," Lord Oakdown snapped.

Instead of pulling away, upon breaking the kiss Missy held Clara's lower lip between her teeth and make a show of pulling on it. As she finally released it, she gave Clara one of the hottest and filthiest looks the schoolteacher had ever seen.

Clara knew it was all for show, but that didn't mean that she wasn't now completely hot and bothered and picturing illicit scenarios that one wasn't supposed to even consider when it came to one's best friend. There was an ache between her legs too, which she pointedly ignored.

Someone - a lone cousin probably - let out a wolf whistle. Lord Oakdown meanwhile looked ready to explode, while Michael and his bride looked quite amused. The larger family varied on a scale from scandalised to delighted.

"Thanks for the offer, Mikey boy," Missy said a little breathlessly, turning to smile at her stepbrother while taking a tight hold of Clara's hand, "But if you don't mind, I think Clara and I are going to take off and have fantastically gay sex in my car on the side of a road somewhere. But really, thank you anyway, and congratulations."

With that and a single cheery wave, Missy dragged Clara from the gardens. Once they were out of earshot they erupted into laughter that lasted all the way back to the car.

"So, where are we going now?" Clara asked as they got in.

Missy glanced at her, with a weight in her gaze that made Clara's mouth go dry. "Well, my dear Clara, that rather depends on you."

Clara swallowed. "Meaning?"

Missy's hand moved to rest on her thigh, light as a feather but enough to make Clara's brain short circuit. "Well, my offer stands, if you're interested."

The image of them parking the car on some country road and having sex in the backseat was enough to make Clara nearly jump her then and there, but she would not give in quite that easily.

"What, I don't even get a bed in one of the dozen country hotels around here?" She asked, eyebrow up. "Car sex, really classy. You know how to make a girl feel special."

"I already make you feel special," Missy said flatly, "Wanting to spread you out across my backseat does nothing to diminish that."

Clara's face felt very hot, but she was determined to cling to some semblance of control. "I don't care. Make an effort."

Missy let out a dramatic sigh. "Fine. Such hard work."

"But worth it," Clara promised, and they shared a smirk. The hand on Clara's thigh remained there as Missy changed course, and when it disappeared up Clara's skirt en route to the nearest hotel, Clara made no complaints.

The next morning, a very satisfied Missy had a very elaborate flower arrangement sent to her stepbrother, having rethought her decision to not get him a wedding gift.


Why do these AUs always end up so sexual I swear this was not part of the plan (but I don't think you guys mind lmao)!

Anyway, good to be back, thanks for reading and let me know what you thought!

-MayFairy :)

Guest Review Replies:

Christine - Thanks so much! I think what's great about Missy (and Clara and the Doctor) is that she is such a versatile character, you can play around with her a lot while not losing the essence of who she is. Writing these different versions of her is great fun and I'm really glad you're enjoying it.

Next time:

"I saw you trying to hit the "door close" button in the elevator but I made it in and then I pushed every single button to make you later for work, but now we're stuck in this fucking elevator as it stops at every single floor and I don't know what to say other than 'you started it' " AU