A/N: Music for the chapter: Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.
Like he had promised, the Doctor knocked on her door around 7pm that evening. Clara opened it to find him with a smug smile across his face, one hand carrying a bag of take out, the other holding tightly to his violin case. She let him in.
Although she didn't resemble at all like he'd last seen her — completely naked — instead wearing the same baggy clothes from before; her hair, however, announced that she had recently showered. Her face wasn't colored by the make up she'd have on every time she went out, and he found her beautiful.
He walked straight towards her kitchen, laying his violin case in the floor and the takeout above her table. Even if he didn't have his eyes on her, she still stood inside his vision field, "I didn't know what you liked so I decided to be safe and get some pasta. Everybody likes pasta, right? You can't do wrong with pasta."
He was talking ahead of himself; Clara thought him cute. "Yeah, pasta is fine."
Realising her lack of initiative to do anything, he made himself at home and pulled two plates out of a cabinet. He searched her fridge for any beverage and could only find some OJ that looked like it had been there for the past decade or so. He decided against it.
She remained perfectly still, leaning against the door frame. "I'm sorry, I'm such a bad hostess today. It's just… this day…" her gaze fell to the ground, "I can't seem to function this day."
Forgetting all about the food, he walked in her direction, towering over her. Her eyes remained down at the floor, seemingly more interested in all the invisible life happening there than in the visible being right next to her. "There's nothing to apologize for, Clara."
"Right," she mumbled, a hint of irony in her voice that couldn't be ignored, not by him.
The Doctor brushed away locks of her hair from her face, bringing an unwanted emphasis on her saddened features. His heart ached from a sorrow so familiar to him. "You don't have to be sorry for grieving, Clara."
The sound of his raspy voice so close to her lured her head up and she was drowning inside his ocean eyes. Clara definitely blamed it on her mourning when she smoothed his lips with her own, trapping the flesh of his mouth between her teeth. Her lust could only be explained through her grief.
Clara wasn't falling in love with him — at least, she hoped she wasn't. But she loved the way he deprived her lungs of oxygen, the way her heart beat faster when next to him. She loved every little sensation his presence brought to her skin. He made her body feel weak and fragile; he made her feel the strongest in her mind and soul.
The Doctor slipped both his hands underneath her blouse, holding her by the bare skin of her belly; his cold hands brought her goosebumps. He was the one to pull apart, resting forehead against forehead. "Dinner will be cold."
Although a little frustrated, Clara agreed with her head. She felt him locking her wrist within his thumb and index before being pulled towards the table. Under any other circumstances, she would have given him hell for pulling the seat out for her — because, under any other circumstances, she would be capable of doing it herself.
Soon after, they were both having their meals. Unlike him, she played with the food in front of her, drawing circles and invisible lines with her fork, only bringing it up to her mouth when he'd dare to shoot a look on her way — if only she knew he was thoroughly watching her the entire time.
"I'd like to propose a toast," Ellie broke the awkward silence they were all trapped in, regardless of the noise from tingling metal and nearby conversations from the surrounding tables. She rose her champagne glass in the air, "To Clara and Amy, who have so beautifully brought the music to life tonight. To music."
The two musicians and the father weren't in the mood for a toast; toasts required a happiness that the promise of death denied them. But they followed the dying woman's lead — society demanded that the dying had their voice heard and got their wishes come true. Even the most futile desires, such as proposing a frivolous toast to music.
Clara drenched herself with all the content in her glass with a single gulp, despite Amy's hand on her thigh, encouraging her to slow down. The alcohol was rapidly traveling up to her head, otherwise she wouldn't have stated, "Our music was a mess. Nobody wants to hear angry music. They should reclaim their money's worth."
"Clara," Amy pinched her leg under her dress, trying to shut her up before she said something she would regret later. She was uncertain whether the pianist was reproducing something she had heard from her or if she really believed the chaos of her sound.
"Who told you that?" Ellie was a little baffled — she definitely blamed it on the booze, not on the possibility her cancer was devouring her brains. "Everybody around me was astonished, and so was I. Your music was so powerful, it brought chills to all of us."
The laugh that shook through her closed lips wasn't legit, it was full of disdain — a disdain directed at herself. To her eyes and ears, she hadn't been powerful. She had been weak and scared, and her music was the mirror of her feelings. She dreaded the image it formed of her.
She hated the music she brought to life.
Perhaps the music was dying, too.
Clara felt Amy strongly holding her hand under the table. Preventing her from slipping away; preventing her from losing the grip over everything that made her who she was; preventing her from dying inside when everything around her was dying, too.
Giving up on the hope she would finish her meal, it being a torture to watch her trying, the Doctor licked his lips and got up. The sound of the chair screeching against the floor clearly started her, bringing her back to reality from wherever her mind has traveled to.
Clara's eyes were remarkably reduced as she watched him amble back to her living room. With frown lines across her forehead, she went after him after a few seconds, finding him standing in front of her shelf full of CDs.
Although his eyes remained glued to the cabinet, he heard her heavy steps approaching. He pressed his fingertip alongside all the titles. "You're right handed, correct?!"
She stopped by his side, her shoulder brushing his upper arm. "Yes…?"
His head swung up and down in a single motion, a crooked smile shaping the corner of his lips. "Your favorite tracks are on the right side of the shelf, in the most accessible height for your overly small stature."
She merely shuddered, "And you can tell that only because I'm right handed?!"
"Psychology explains everything," he stated, trading glances between her and the shelf to estimate the right stature. Once he did, he was obliged to bent down on his knees to properly look at the collection, before pulling out a CD. "Ah. I love this."
He brought Beethoven's Piano Sonata no. 14 to the stereo and soon the music echoed through the air. Had Clara become bothered by the sound, she showed no signs of it. Instead, she grinned at the image of his fingers dancing and spiralling according to the piano — and she was the pianist one.
"I don't like it," he spoke up, his mouth pouting, "It's too fast, this is not a race. You played it much more beautifully that one concert."
Her cheeks blushed immediately. "That was what, almost 10 years ago. I was just a child, I had no idea what I was doing."
The Doctor whiffed, "And yet you played with your soul, not with your mind — like they are playing. They think themselves master of the music, whereas you make the music your master. That's, Clara, why you'll always be the better pianist."
She buried her teeth into the flesh of her lower lip. "How do you even remember that concert?"
"Because I was there…?" he teased, sardonically. "They've uploaded it to youtube, Clara. It's got over 500 thousand views. I'm surprised you didn't know that."
"I'm sorry if I don't stalk myself on social media," she grunted, arms crossed before her chest.
He didn't allow her traits to remain crossed for long, however. With that same smug look he had dominated, the Doctor approached her, placing one of his hands on her hip, the other fighting to get a hold of her fingers.
A little reluctant, Clara loosed her lips, offering him full control of their movements. He raised their joined hands high in the air, their torsos gridding in the course of their closeness. The laugh she expelled was melodical when he started to lead their bodies in a waltz.
The music held a sad melody and they danced to its rhythm full of sorrow. The Doctor continued, "I like your version better. This is… too robotic. It doesn't bring the same joy and pleasure to our ears as you playing it with your emotions. As you giving all of yourself in the name of music. I love watching you play. It's poetic."
Clara glared right into his eyeballs, swearing she could see specks of his soul trying to break free. "You're just flattering me."
"Of course I'm flattering you," he agreed, seeing himself one step from being swallowed by the black holes of her eyes — so much destruction she held inside; so much beauty that lured him in, like the song of mermaids that attracted the sailors towards their calamitous and eminent ending. "But it doesn't make my words any less truthful. It wasn't my words that turned you into the world's greatest pianist."
She wished their height difference wasn't so remarkable, and she would have the perfect angle to kiss him. She had no idea why she felt that way, nor how he brought all those feelings to her; sensations so atypical to her, and she was high on them. "Now you're just exaggerating."
The Doctor pressed his forehead to hers, their feet glued to the ground, but their bodies still swung in a rhythm only they knew. "No, Clara. I'm not."
Distracting herself from all the lust thundering in her veins, Clara laid her head across his chest; his heart beat in a composition comprised only for her. "Thank you, Doctor."
He buried his nose in her hair — it smelled like flowers. "For what, telling you the truth you've long forgotten?"
"No," she offered the fabric of his shirt a closed smile. Even if he had reminded her of things she didn't know anymore, she was thankful for so much more than that. "Thank you for helping me forget. Even if just for a while."
Beethoven came to an end at the same instant he searched for her lips.
A/N: Let me know what you think :)