A/n: I'm kind of surprised I got this one finished so fast! Bit of a cliffhanger at the end, sorry, but I've finally cleared up my block on this so updates should be MUCH more frequent. I'm not going to have a set schedule, because those never work for me, but there will probably never be more than a week between updates. Don't forget to review if you liked it (or didn't)! Feedback keeps me writing!

The sun was setting by the time they made it back to Clara's flat. The Doctor had insisted on walking her home, saying it was just the right thing to do, and Clara had turned away to hide the flush that rose in her cheeks as well as the way she clenched her eyes shut for a second against the guilt gnawing away at her stomach. Then she'd turned back and smiled and said thank you, and they'd taken almost an hour and a half to get her home because they got lost half a dozen times. He'd taken her hand somewhere around the twenty-minute mark and something about the way his fingers had curled through hers had felt so familiar, but so different at the same time. One part in the back of her mind whispered that maybe it was because this time had been with different intent, different emotion, but she'd forced the little voice into silence and just enjoyed the feeling of holding hands with him that she'd missed for so long.

Now they were standing in front of her flat, and Clara was almost stumbling along next to him, gripping his arm, in a fit of laughter over their most recent request for directions.

"We were down the street!" She giggled, pressing her face into his jacket sleeve to hide the tears of mirth in her eyes.

"All the streets look the same!" He protested, though she could tell he was trying not to laugh just as hard as she was. "I couldn't tell! For all I knew, we could have been three blocks away!"

"We could have," Clara replied, pulling her face away from him to raise her eyebrows at him, "But I distinctly remember that I looked at you and I said, 'That's my flat, over there!'" To emphasize her words, she pointed up the walk towards the front door.

"Okay, yes, that's true, but you haven't lived here long either! How awkward would it have been if you'd just walked up and tried to go into some stranger's flat? But we avoided that, see, by asking for directions!"

She shook her head. "You're ridiculous," She replied, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.

He grinned. "Okay, maybe I am," He said, running a hand through his hair, "just a little bit."

Their laughter subsided after a few more moments, and Clara found them enveloped by a strange, unfamiliar silence. It wasn't uncomfortable, exactly, but it held some sort of tension that she couldn't quite place. She cleared her throat uneasily, and took a small step towards the front stoop. "I should go in," She finally told him, breaking the silence that hung in the air.

"Right. Um." He nodded slowly, and she realized that her hand was still in his when he squeezed her fingers gently. "Well, Clara, I really enjoyed this. I'd like to do it again, if you don't mind?"

The flush that crept up her cheeks burned so much that she almost had to raise her arms and press the cool backs of her hands to her face. Her thoughts screamed at her not to, because this could only end badly.

She was his companion. She was his friend. She was not going to date him.

Their situation would go on for a month, and then they'd be back to the way they were before. She couldn't let something else get in the way of that. She'd have to tell him no.

Clara steeled herself to decline. She looked up, met his gaze, opened her mouth, and…

"Yeah. I'd love to do this again." The words were blurted out before she could stop them, and Clara's eyes widened a fraction, her hands clenching up so they didn't fly up over her mouth.

He smiled. "Great! Wonderful! I'll call you." The corner of his lip twitched and Clara saw the curtain at the front of their flat shift out of the edge of her vision. She was just about to turn away when the Doctor leaned forward and pressed a quick kiss to her cheek. Heat flooded over her skin and she stammered something out as he nodded slightly and turned away.

He was almost a block away when Clara's feet finally remembered how to move and she stumbled up the walk to the house, unsure if she was going to smile for the rest of her life or be sick. She'd messed up. Oh, god, she'd messed up.

Halfway up the steps, she was stopped in her tracks as the front door was flung open. Nina's face was overly excited, but the look in her eyes was smug as she marched down the steps to Clara and jabbed a finger into her chest. "I knew it!" She squealed. "I told you, didn't I? I did!"

Clara could only groan and bury her head in her hands. "Yeah, I know, but I really don't have the time for this, okay? I just… I just need to..." She trailed off, ducked her head and hurried past her friend into the flat.

Inside, she shoved through the doors and into her darkened room, almost tripping over the extra crib that had been set up by the wall for Lila. She wasn't sure which emotions were boiling inside her as she flopped down on the bed, kicking her shoes off and pressing her face into the pillows, but she was pretty sure it was a mix of primarily guilt and euphoria. Her cheek was still on fire from where his lips had brushed against it, and she wanted to scream because this was something that had never happened to her before, not when she was around him. What had changed? She wanted to punch her pillow because if these feelings had existed before, she must have been really good at concealing them. A coffee date and suddenly she couldn't stop thinking about him? It was infuriating, to say the least.

Clara rolled over on her back and rubbed her hands over her face, running them through her hair in frustration and then dropping her arms against the mattress. She stared up at the ceiling for a second, before snapping out of it and rolling up into a sitting position. She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out the fob watch, running her fingers over the engravings, fine as hairs, that decorated its surface. As usual, its ticking—somewhere between the steady clicking of a normal watch and the familiar four-beat pulse of his Gallifreyan hearts. As she curled her hand into a fist with the small gold thing glinting through the gaps between her fingers, she let its mechanical pulse sink into her skin. With a deep breath, she slipped it back into her pocket, head feeling a little clearer with the reminder of what she was protecting. It still didn't slow her heartbeat down from the weird, semi-excited semi-panicking jitter that it had been in ever since she got inside, but she was able to comb her hands through her hair and stand up to leave the room.

There was a knock on the door and Nina stuck her head in. "Hey," She greeted the other girl, with a nod that made her curls bounce. "You okay?"

Clara let out a small laugh. "Fine, yeah," She managed. "I think I'm fine."

The door opened wider, casting bright light from the hall onto Clara, and she became suddenly conscious of the fact that rubbing her face had probably destroyed her makeup entirely. Nina visibly grimaced. "Go clean yourself up," She said. "And put on some nicer shoes, for god's sake."

Clara nodded mindlessly, but was halfway to the doorway before she stopped. "Wait, why?"

Nina flashed her a sympathetic smile. "You don't look okay," She replied. "You look like you need a drink."

Drinking had been nice. Between teaching and travelling with the Doctor, Clara barely ever had a chance to go out to the pubs anymore. She and Nina had met almost half a dozen other women there, all of whom Nina seemed to know but who were all strangers to Clara. They'd stayed out until past midnight, at which point they'd been about to head home when one of Nina's friends had gotten a call that resulted in a breakdown, and a tipsy Nina had leaned over to Clara and explained that this one was going to be an all-nighter, then slung her arm around the sobbing friend and left Clara to walk home alone.

She didn't mind much—It gave her a second to clear her thoughts. She hadn't had much at all to drink, so she was still thinking clearly enough to wonder why she hadn't made Nina walk home with her. It was dark and she barely knew the streets, what if she got lost? Or something happened to her. She shuddered and instinctively drew her coat closer around her to drive off the chill in the air.

Behind her, something moved in the shadows.