Prompt: The postcard's from a distant country. The postmark on the stamp is local.

A/N: Story set towards the end of series 8, before Dark Water.


Not Your Boyfriend

The TARDIS lands in Clara's small living room, filling the whole space between the television and the sofa. The Doctor jumps outside the doors, wearing a wide-brimmed hat on his grey hair and his sonic sunglasses on his pale nose.

"Fancy a safari trip to Egypt?" he says in an eager and cheerful voice, "I know you've been asking for a long time to go on some wild life adventure and I think the moment has finally come! What do you think of my hat?"

The room looks unnaturally dark. He thinks it might be his sunglasses' fault, so he takes them off, and discovers that the lights are all off in the apartment and all shutters are closed.

"Clara? Are you already sleeping?" he calls for her, and gets no answer. The Doctor walks quickly outside the room to look for her.

"You'll have to wear something light but warm," he continues, "and you'll also need this vaccination for the safari." He takes a syringe out of his trousers' pocket and hold it up menacingly. "Don't be scared, it's just routine, it won't hurt a bit. You don't need to hide."

He enters the kitchen, but Clara isn't there either. He reaches the fridge and opens it, as if he was expecting to find her inside it. The light from the fridge illuminates the calendar hanging on the opposite wall. The Doctor approaches it and checks it out. There's a note in bright read written on the calendar. The calendar box of the current date reads, "Date with Danny." Circled, underlined three times, like an important event that can't be missed.

"Oh."

The Doctor's good mood vanishes. He puts the syringe back and returns to the TARDIS. He doesn't want to bother Clara if she's busy, and there's no point in waiting for her. He'll just have to go on this adventure by himself.

That's not a problem, he loves travelling on his own. He can do what he wants, go anywhere, and nobody tells him off.

But it would have been even a greater adventure if he had Clara to share it with him.


A few days later, the TARDIS lands again in Clara's flat, inside her bedroom this time.

The Doctor pops out of the box, big grin on his face, sunburnt nose from his trip to Egypt. He holds a postcard proudly in his hands, but his grin turns into a frown when he hears loud voices coming from the living room.

He walks slowly through the corridor, not making any sound that could give away his presence. He reaches the living room and pauses on the entry, peering through the slightly open door.

Clara and Danny are sitting on the sofa, embracing each other tenderly. They're watching something on TV, and the volume is loud enough to cover the sound of the TARDIS so they probably didn't hear its landing.

The Doctor looks down, his eyes unveil a bit of disappointment, and a tiny bit of sadness. He'd like to spend some time with Clara but he doesn't want to interrupt anything. She has her own life and the Doctor must not interfere with it.

He shoves the postcard inside his pocket and walks back to his spaceship before they can see him. He closes the door behind him and the TARDIS takes off with its usual groaning sound.

Clara rushes out of the living room, big grin on her face, expecting to see someone in the corridor. But there's no one.

"What is it, Clara?" Danny asks, adjusting himself on the sofa.

"Nothing," she replies, pouting and looking a bit disappointed, "I just thought I'd heard a noise."


The Doctor lands on an empty London road. He needs a bit of fresh air. He walks in the night, without a destination, listening to the sound of silence.

Lots of thoughts are storming in his mind, but there's a recurring one. Clara and Danny are together now, and that's how it should be. Clara should live her normal, human life day after day, and that's the one adventure that the Doctor could never offer her. He and his silly blue box can't fit in her life anymore.

As he's walking around lost in his thoughts, the Doctor almost stumbles upon a red postbox. He remembers about the postcard in his pocket that he wrote for Clara. He feels a bit stupid now for having done so. He takes out the postcard and looks at the picture of the palms and pyramids on it, then turns it over and rereads its back.

Dear Clara,

Hello from Egypt! In the last 24 hours I've been chased by a living mummy and almost got trapped inside an alien sarcophagus. Average. The pyramids are totally overrated. I tried to explain to the locals the real reason why the Giza Pyramids are aligned with the stars of Orion but they wouldn't listen. Also, I've found a hieroglyph that looks like the TARDIS! You should have seen it!

See you soon,
The Doctor.

He stares at the postbox. Since it's unlikely that he'll be able to give Clara the postcard in person any time soon, he might as well send it. He wonders for a second whether it's the right choice, then drops the postcard into the postbox, and walks away.

He has to let Clara settle down, get on with her life. She can't keep on travelling forever, and the longer they keep doing it the harder it will be to stop. She is already looking too much like him, thinking like him, acting like him. He doesn't want Clara to change, to turn into him. To stop being human. And that's what humans do, they have a job, they have hobbies, they get into relationships. They don't fly around.

The Doctor is not Clara's boyfriend, and he must remember it. He can't start thinking like that again, he mustn't make that mistake again. He's a 2000-year-old Time Lord. He knows he can't be anybody's boyfriend.

But that doesn't hurt any less.


The following week, the TARDIS lands again in Clara's flat, at the far end of the corridor. The Doctor checks the local time on the console monitor, and reaches the door of his phone box. He doesn't expect to find Clara in her flat, but he's decided to check anyway. He opens the door and a familiar wide face with big brown eyes and funny nose stares back at him.

"Why have you gone on a safari without me?" Clara asks in an offended tone, with a look of resentment on her face, holding up the postcard from Egypt the Doctor has sent her.

"Hello, Clara," the Doctor says, trying not to look too pleased to see her.

"Besides," Clara continues, "if this postcard is really from Egypt, why is it stamped with a London postmark?"

"I wanted to give it to you in person so I dropped by your house, but you were... busy," he shrugs, as if it didn't bother him.

"Busy?"

"You weren't home," the Doctor corrects himself, "so I put it in a nearby postbox."

"You could have called ahead," Clara replies, crossing her arms.

"You know I don't do that."

"Maybe you should."

"Listen, Clara," the Doctor collects his thoughts, "I know that you have a life here. I understand if you don't want to do this anymore." He does the sad smile he has learnt from Clara.

"What?" Clara can't believe her ears. "Where is this coming from?"

"You've got Danny now. I understand if you want to stop travelling," he repeats, looking down, "don't mind this old man."

"I thought we went over this," Clara reaches for his arm. "Look, Danny is fine with the idea of me and you knocking about. I don't want to stop. I don't want to give you up, Doctor. I never could, and believe me, I tried."

"Maybe you should."

Clara squeezes his arm reassuringly with her hand and moves past him, stepping inside the TARDIS. "Are you going to be this grumpy and insecure all day?" she winks, "come on, give me some planets!"

The Doctor half-smiles at her, this time meaning it, and follows her inside the TARDIS.

He's not Clara's boyfriend. She's a young woman with her beautiful, messy, human life, and he's impossible. It could never work out. But every once in a while, they are together. And that's more than enough.


A/N: Hope you enjoyed this story, thank you for reading it. If you want to leave me your opinions and comments in the reviews I'll really appreciated it.