Enjoy ;)

Chapter 10

It was a Friday morning and Clara had just come back from dropping off Isabel at school. She came home and immediately started looking for her husband, whom she found sitting in front of his typewriter.

"Hey honey, are you busy?" she asked.

"No, almost finished the next column. I was about to go outside and do some work in the garden."

"So I should be expecting a surprise shower?" Clara laughed at him, "Which, by the way, wasn't so very funny."

Clara suddenly remembered why she had come looking for the Doctor in the first place.

"Listen, I met one of the other Mums today. She is the mother of Isabel's best friends and she seems really nice."

And she's not an alien, Clara added in her thoughts.

"I invited them over for dinner," she said, waiting for the Doctor's reaction.

"I hope they're not as boring as our neighbours. Seriously, I can't stand another evening like this," the Doctor complained.

"They're not. She seems nice and Isabel talks about the twins all the time. It would be nice for her – and they said they wanted to see her puppy. I'll make dinner, you don't have to do anything."

"Alright, alright, you convinced me," the Doctor said and got up from his office chair.

He put his arms on her hips and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "I'll be outside."

"And I'll be in the kitchen."

Clara loved the kitchen. It was by far her favourite room of the whole house, although she dearly missed some of the modern kitchen appliances that made a lot of things easier. But cooking and baking was still basically the same and she loved that. She had been looking through her handwritten cook book for a while, pondering over the dinner question. She could make a casserole, something both adults and children would eat and a chocolate tart for dessert.

Clara started collecting the ingredients for the tart. As she was walking over to the cupboard, her eyes gazed out of the window for a second and she saw the Doctor working in the garden. She stopped and watched him for a while. His white shirt was soaked with sweat and almost transparent as it clung to his chest and back. Clara could see every muscle working underneath. And she liked the look of it.

It wasn't until a few minutes later that she realized she had been watching him work for for long enough. She wanted to smack something really heavy over her own head.

You're not supposed to like him, she told herself, he's the Doctor. Clara went outside to put an end to the distraction.

"Maybe you should wear something else," she shouted over to him, "You'll get dirt on it!"

"What?" came a voice back, "I can't hear you."

Clara sighed and walked over to him.

"I said maybe you should wear something else. That shirt's too good to wear it for gardening," she explained.

"Yeah, you're right," the Doctor said and looked down on his soaked shirt.

Clara knew she had to get back inside. She had never understood what women liked about sweaty men but now she did. Now that she was so close to him she couldn't imagine anything better than the scent of his cologne mixed with the scent of his sweat, so masculine, so inviting, so. . .

No! This had to stop. Clara turned around and walked back into the kitchen to continue her baking, but the Doctor followed her. Damn, why did he follow her? To change, of course, as she had told him. Why did he always have to listen to her? It was maddening.

Out of the corner of her eye Clara saw something that made her turn around, although she wished, truly wished she hadn't. When she turned to face him, she saw that he had taken off his shirt and thrown it over one of the kitchen chairs.

"Wh-what are you doing?" she stuttered.

"Taking my shirt off. Like you told me to," the Doctor explained with a smirk.

Oh God, he knew! He knew what was going on in her mind! How did he know?

"I, I told you to change," Clara said, slowly backing away as he came closer,"You could change upstairs."

"No, I think I'm going to do it. Right. Here." Clara's back hit the counter. There was nowhere to run to now, nowhere to hide. She wanted to hide so desperately and yet didn't want to. She wanted him now more than anything, while the voice inside her head, the one that constantly screamed No, slowly faded away.

Then everything happened so quickly. Clara couldn't tell who started it but she found herself on the counter seconds later, her legs wrapped around his hips and both their lips locked together in a passionate kiss.

So this is it, Clara thought, this is where the ship of all the good resolutions sinks. No, it wasn't right. But if it wasn't right, why did she want it so much? Why did he want it? Why in God's name had the TARDIS made them husband and wife? What would the Doctor do when he was back to normal and remembered them doing this?

That thought made her stop at last. Clara broke the kiss and pushed him away from her. She jumped off the counter and positioned herself on the other side of the room. She watched the Doctor tearing at his hair and walking around for a minute, before he started shouting at her.

"What's the matter with you?"

Clara was too shocked for a moment to reply. She hadn't expected him to get angry.

"Clara, please, help me out here. I don't understand it!"

"I'm not. . . in the mood," she whispered carefully.

"That's a lie. Don't you think I don't know you well enough? You wanted this," he shouted at her, "Otherwise I would have never tried to. God, Clara, you're my wife. I love you!"

Still, she remained silent.

"I don't know why you keep building this wall between us but one day I woke up and it was there and I don't know if you do this to keep me out or if you're just trying to make me jump through hoops because, I don't know, I can't even think of a reason. But this isn't us, Clara. Please, just tell me what's wrong so I can try to fix it."

Clara shook her head. She was close to tears already. She couldn't stand to see him so unhappy but giving in to John Smith would be like betraying the trust the Doctor had put in her, taking advantage of a situation he couldn't control.

"It's not you," Clara only said.

"Then what is it?" The Doctor walked over to her and put his arms around her, "Clara, if you're unhappy, you need to tell me. We can work it out together."

And at that moment Clara began sobbing again. But this time there was him, holding her in his arms, comforting her, without even having the slightest idea as to what made her sad.

"I am terrible person," she said in between sobs.

"Why on earth do you think that?" he asked.

"Because you're perfect and I keep screwing things up. I'm so sorry."

"You can't screw up hard enough to make me stop loving you," the Doctor said and kissed her head, never breaking the embrace.