I haven't posted here in more than a year but I'm back from the grave to give a little tribute for Doctor Who's 57th anniversary! I was rewatching Season 9 and the urge to write this hit me - and since it's Doctor Who's anniversary I obviously couldn't ignore it! So here's a little one-shot exploring The Doctor and Clara's relationship through the five love languages.
Note: This isn't necessarily about romantic love because I don't ship them lol just interpret this however you want to :)
1: Quality Time
Love is a strange thing.
Sometimes it's slow and gradual, changing you in a way you wouldn't notice. It's subtle and secret, something that tells you to do something so out of the ordinary and somehow convinces you that it is completely ordinary. It's the days you spend with it festering deep inside you, never realizing how it changes your every step.
The Doctor never noticed it. All the slowness and gradualism and subtlety and secrecy; all the ordinary and unordinary and the festering and change.
And it's when Clara calls and asks him to come over and play inane games or try her newest baking misadventure that these changed steps go unnoticed. It's when they spend hours on end wandering a perfectly safe and peaceful planet with purple skies and apple-scented grass that this love festers and bubbles over.
It's when the Doctor spends hours and hours with Clara, with him feeling like he's spending his last days with Clara Oswald because somehow every second is about her and every minute is spent for her and he neither realizes nor thinks twice about this because hasn't it always been this way?
For love is like a ticking clock whose counts muddle together and the next thing you know, it's dark outside but the ticks and tocks still sound the same and it's like nothing's ever changed.
2: Acts Of Service
Love is a strange thing.
Sometimes it's firm and strict, grounding you before you float up to the stars. It's sure and certain as you do exactly what you have to do. It's the sense of purpose that weighs on your chest and back and the compass that points you to north when you're about to travel west.
It's something that leads you and guides you and pushes you and pulls you and some people don't listen as they face the wrong direction. But some people...some people hear it and run as fast as they can, for they've been running all their life and here's something they can finally run towards with every sense of purpose and dignity.
The Doctor's a runner. Everyone knows it, but not many know why he's running - sometimes, not even him.
He just knows he's meant to run as he searches for Clara Oswald on a planet where speed is always constant and so there really is no point in running, but he has to find her. He knows he's meant to run as she's about to leave with her grey hat crooked, and straightening it would be of little help to her outfit but it would be of help anyway. He doesn't run when he brings her coffee while she's working past midnight after a particularly harrowing adventure and right before a meeting with some parents but he adds in extra cream and sugar, which should count for something.
Because really, running is all he knows how to do. And love is like a street with signs pointing exactly where to go.
3: Gifts
Love is a strange thing.
Sometimes it's brilliant and wonderful, reflecting the twinkle in your eyes and the bounce in your step. It's precious and individual, and you treasure every single ounce of it you have. It's something that looks so simple when you're on the outside looking in, but when you're in, it's all so heavy and light and you suddenly see a thousand words you can't quite understand yet. It's a bottomless well in a wading pool and the brightly-colored scarves up a magician's sleeves.
It's something you can only truly understand when it is between you and your loved one, passed between each other with much more meaning than words could ever hold.
And so when the Doctor gives Clara a portrait he painted of her a lifetime ago, only the two of them know the meaning behind every stroke. Only the two of them know the painter and the painted, because it's them and yet it isn't - the Doctor was young and torn, obsessed with an impossible mystery with an impossible girl and wallowing in regret and loneliness while Clara was simply a copy, a splinter into an age and time when she risked it all and paid the price.
The gift was precious, but only to them. For love is a painting with cheap oils and chipping paint; with stains in the corners and smudges on the edges; with tears that long blended into the pigments and an image that is but not quite.
4: Physical Touch
Love is strange.
Sometime it's warm and enveloping as you sink into it and forgetting everything else. Sometimes it's sudden yet comforting, providing a premise of solace and even euphoria. It's something so blindingly obvious and achingly quiet, and you never want it to end.
Sometimes it's just a way to hide your face.
The Doctor doesn't like hugs for exactly that reason, and yet he finds himself wrapping his arms around Clara Oswald as she unravels, because what if she's falling apart and it's his job to hold her together? What if she's cold and lonely and he's her only source of warmth? What if she's drowning, and he's her lifeline?
So he holds her and grips her shoulders and strokes her hair because what else is he supposed to do as he hides his face?
Love holds you together and warms you up and keeps your breath and it doesn't matter if your face is hidden or not, because your soul is already bared.
5: Words of Affirmation
Love is strange.
Because sometimes, it's just that. A word. And sometimes, you say it just how you say every other thing. With words.
Clara: If you love me, in any way, you'll come back.
The Doctor: I'll come back for you, I swear.
- Before The Flood (9x04)