This chapter was very rushed because I wrote it while I was on vacation, again. Oh well. Hope you like it anyway. Thank you for reading and reviewing!
Prompt from BADWOLF1221: "CIBLOFFIT"
There was a voice in her dream.
Clara was lying on the ground, staring at a far-off ceiling, and there was a voice calling her, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once. It was repeating her name over and over. "Clara... Clara... Clara..."
And then it changed into a very loud, very brusque, and very Scottish voice which declared, "Clara Oswald, I will roll you out of your bed if you don't get out right now."
She cracked her eyelids open. That first voice, the one in her dream, had that belonged to the Doctor as well? She hadn't known that his voice could be so soft.
"I will find all your ticklish spots," the Doctor threatened. "Every one. Get up."
That was more like the Doctor she knew. Clara stirred and rubbed her eyes, squinting at the dark, spindly figure hunched over her. Her bedroom on the TARDIS was dark, but light seeped through the door, which had been left a crack open, casting a faint golden sheen on the Doctor's silver curls. "No," she murmured sleepily, deciding that her beauty sleep took precedence over whatever he wanted. "Go away."
He let out an exasperated sigh. "Clara. I need you for a thing!"
"I don't care," she muttered, turning away. "I'll help you later."
The Doctor leaned over her, his warm breath tickling her ears. "Later is too late," he complained. "It even has the word 'late' in it."
Clara tried to drift off to sleep, but found, to her annoyance, that this was now impossible. "What time is it anyway?" she asked blearily, curling her knees up to her stomach beneath the covers.
There was a pause. "... In Earth time?" the Doctor finally answered.
She eyes him suspiciously beneath half-closed lids. "Yes, Earth time."
The Doctor cleared his throat. "Well. That's a little hard to calculate, since there's really no concept of time on the TARDIS -"
"Just tell me."
"4:21."
"A.M.?!"
"I think so," the Doctor admitted, looking remarkably like a child despite his lined face as he shuffled around and fidgeted guiltily.
"Let me get this straight," Clara said, still not deigning to face him. "You woke me up at 4:21 A.M. A. M. As in, in the morning."
"Well, when you put it like that -"
"There is no other way to put it," she cut him off flatly, wrapping her pillow around her head and firmly holding it in place. "I'm going back to sleep. Good night." Her voice was slightly muffled by the pillow.
The Doctor hesitated, internally wrestling with himself. "I'll give you something if you come," he whispered in Clara's ear, listening to her even breathing and watching the gentle rise and fall of her chest.
He knew his companion well enough to know that she was interested. Although the tempo of her breathing didn't change, Clara's body language told him that she was waiting to hear more. "Breakfast in bed," he promised. "And. And, and, and. Shoes!" he exclaimed suddenly. "I'll buy you a pair of shoes. Er, two pairs. And some other silly pointless human thing. Flowers." He spread his hand over Clara's shoulder, tracing his thin fingers over the smooth skin between her neck and cheek. "Please?"
"I also want a full spa, manicure, and pedicure."
The Doctor threw his hands up in exasperation. "What is it with these spa things?" he growled. "Isn't two pairs of shoes and breakfast in bed enough?"
Clara yawned exaggeratedly and burrowed deeper beneath her covers. "Too bad, looks like I won't be coming with you then..."
"Okay, okay," the Doctor added hastily. "You can have your spa. Is it a deal?"
Although he couldn't see it, a small smile twitched on Clara's lips, deepening the dimple in her cheek. "Done," she agreed.
The Doctor released an audible sigh of relief. He slid off Clara's bed, his lanky body towering over her prone form, and reached over to turn on the lights.
"Oh my God," Clara shouted as the light seared itself onto her unaccustomed eyes. Swearing loudly, she dove beneath the covers, her vision pulsing with spots. "What the hell are you doing?"
"Language, Clara!" the Doctor chided her, hastily dimming the lights. "Why are you hiding under the covers?"
"Hmm, let's think about that," Clara shot back. "Firstly, because you just bloody exploded my vision. And secondly, I'm not decent."
"You're not?" the Doctor asked, confused. "In what way?"
Two angry brown eyes peered over the covers, boring into his very soul. "I refuse to answer that question."
He scoffed, holding his hands up in surrender. "Well, sorry. I'm not accustomed to human sleeping habits. Also, your hair looks like something's been nesting in it." This was true. Apart from having dark bags under her slightly bloodshot eyes, Clara's hair looked like it had become home to a family of rats.
She sighed. "Thanks for that."
She began to slide the covers off, and the Doctor hastily turned around. "I thought you said you weren't decent."
"And then I decided it doesn't really matter. After all, you've met millions of my echoes. Who knows - you might have seen them in the bath or something."
The Doctor's face flushed, and he raised a hand to his ear - something Clara knew that he did when he was nervous. "I think I would remember that."
"My, my," Clara hummed, her eyes gleaming, coming up behind and wrapping her arms around him so that she was leaning against his back. "Was that a compliment?"
The Doctor blushed harder. He didn't know how to handle Clara when she got in these flirtatious moods. "Yes," he said abruptly. "I mean no. Maybe. I don't know. It was a way to get you to stop talking, but it evidently didn't work." Clara made no response, only pressing her head against his back. "Can I... turn around then?" he inquired hoarsely.
"Yes." Clara grabbed his hand. "I'm not really that indecent. It's just my sleeping clothes."
This was true. Her white pants were loose and baggy, and her brown tank top had perhaps a lower neckline than necessary, but there was nothing really indecent there. "Appropriate enough for you?" Clara teased.
"You look beautiful," the Doctor answered simply. Despite the rats'-nest hair and tired eyes, Clara looked beautiful. She always did. And this morning in particular, she was too beautiful for him to not tell her.
She appeared taken aback. "Thank you."
The Doctor suddenly remembered himself and cleared his throat gruffly. "Anyway. Things to do." He started for the door. "So, here's the -" He stopped, suddenly realizing that Clara wasn't following him. Glancing behind, he noted that her arms were wrapped around her chest and she was trembling slightly. What was that trembling? Why was she hugging herself? "Are you alright?" the Doctor demanded, rushing back to her. "You're not sick again, are you?"
"No, it's called shivering. I just realized how cold it was. Oh my stars, it's freezing in here. Don't you have a central heating system?"
"Maybe. I haven't discovered it yet if there is one." The Doctor hesitated. "But there is something else I can do." He slipped his velvety coat off of his shoulders and draped it over Clara's, smoothing her tumbling brown hair out of the way. "There. Better?"
"Much," she said gratefully, leaning against his shoulder and giving it a quick kiss. "Thanks, Doctor."
Clara looked comically small beneath the Doctor's coat; the bottom reached past her thighs and the sleeves covered her hands. The Doctor felt a surge of protectiveness for his petite companion. He felt around in the sleeve for her hand and grasped it gently, drawing her out of her bedroom. "Come on." Clara followed him, stumbling slightly on the hem of her pajama bottoms as she rubbed sleep from her eyes.
They soon reached the console room, which seemed cold and silent in the early-morning calm. The Doctor dropped Clara's hands and ran into the room, spinning around in a circle with his hands outstretched. "Good morning, Sexy!" he bellowed. "Ready to get your wiring fixed?"
Suddenly Clara was wide awake, both because the Doctor had called the snogbox 'sexy', and because he was going to fix the wiring. "Doctor," she called, "please don't tell me you woke me up at 4:21 to fix the bloody wiring."
His guilty silence told her everything she needed to know. "Doctor! I don't even know how to fix wiring!"
"Oh, you don't have to fix it," the Doctor replied, already crouching down near the console. "I just need you to stand there and hold things and fetch me the occasional banana or bag of chips."
"So you woke me up so I could be some kind of - of caddy," Clara snapped, unimpressed.
"Basically." He fumbled for his sonic screwdriver and scanned a panel in the console, which instantly popped open to reveal a coiled set of multicolored wires.
"My breakfast in bed had better be really gourmet," Clara muttered, wrapping his coat tighter around herself.
The Doctor grunted and stuck his head into the hole in the console, simultaneously snapping on a pair of thick gloves that he'd found in his pants pocket. Sparks flew from the wires, and despite her irritation, Clara felt a pang of worry. She hoped he knew what he was doing. He wrenched out a blue wire, which fizzed dramatically, and thrust it at her. "Hold this."
Clara eyed it uncertainly. "Is that a live wire?"
"It's not hurting me, is it?"
"You've got gloves," she pointed out.
"Oh, right," the Doctor remembered. "Well, it could be live. I don't really know."
She scooted backwards. "I think I'll pass."
He rolled his eyes. "I'm joking. It's not live. Honestly, Clara, do you think I'd be so careless as to give you a live wire?"
She opened her mouth to say yes, and instead found herself saying, "No, of course not." And even as she said the words, she knew they were the truth.
The Doctor nodded in satisfaction. "There you go. I've got a duty of care. I'm not going to mess it up."
"But you've messed it up before," Clara responded, and instantly regretted the words. She tried with horror to stop herself from talking, but the next words rose in her throat anyway and she couldn't stop them from emerging. "All the people who came before me. They're gone now."
The Doctor's shoulders slumped, and for a moment, he looked so ancient and broken that Clara felt her heart throb with pity, and tears welled in her eyes. "I know," he murmured hoarsely, his voice raw and fractured. "I know. I failed them. I had a duty of care for them too, for all of them, and I let them slip through my fingers." Then he looked up to meet his companion's gaze, his eyes brimming with sudden determination. "But not you," he continued fiercely. "Never you, Clara Oswald. I'm not letting you leave me."
She nodded, a lump in her throat. "I'm not going anywhere," she managed.
The Doctor's piercing blue eyes bored into her warm brown ones as he nodded. "I know you won't," he whispered, so softly that Clara barely heard it. "I know."
And then he abruptly turned back to his work, leaving no doubt that the conversation was over.
Clara watched the Doctor very carefully for the next few minutes, gauging his emotions while trying to act like she wasn't watching him at all. His eyes seemed slightly wetter than normal, but that was the only sign he gave of his internal misery.
But then she heard a word that put all thoughts of trying to comfort him out of her mind.
It was a swear word, a very, very bad one, and it had been uttered by none other than the Doctor.
Clara stared at him in shocked surprise that was tinged with both horror and amusement. In all the many years that she had known the Doctor, he had never used a single swear word. Not one.
He was carrying on like nothing had happened. "Erm -" Clara hesitantly cleared her throat - "what did you just say, Doctor?"
"What did you hear?" he countered, deftly welding a blue wire and a coppery one together.
"Well - it sounded like - a swear word."
The tips of his ears reddened. "Nonsense. I used the word 'cibloffit'. It's a word used on the planet Axetron when something goes wrong. It's sort of like 'oops'."
"I don't think it is, Doctor," Clara said, somewhat apologetically. "It certainly sounded like (the following word has been deleted due to its extremely rude and inappropriate nature)."
The Doctor jumped guiltily. "What? I don't swear! That's not what it means at all."
"Doctor, the TARDIS translates everything," Clara fired back, suddenly confident. "So don't lie. She translated cib - whatever you said to, well, that."
He sagged. "You caught me."
"Why did you lie?" she demanded. "I'm a big girl. I can handle bad words."
"I was trying to protect your ears," he muttered. "That's all. I just forgot the TARDIS was going to translate it anyway."
"I don't need babying."
"You do to me. Think how young you are compared to me."
"But why did you swear in the first place?"
"I didn't mean to," he grumbled, fiddling idly with some wires. "It just slipped out. I accidentally snapped a wire."
"Cibloffit," Clara mused aloud, just to have the satisfaction of watching the Doctor cringe. "I'll have to add that to my arsenal of bad words. And weren't you just telling me not to use bad language this morning?" Her eyes were twinkling roguishly.
The tips of the Doctor's ears were still red, and his cheeks were tinged with a blush. "That was different," he protested.
"It was not. And hey - breakfast in bed. Come on, Mister." She crooked his finger.
"I'm not done yet."
"Yes you are. I just saw those little green lights by your finger turn on as you connected those wires, and then the TARDIS's engines hummed, which means she's happy. So you've just finished fixing her."
"You never miss a thing, do you," the Doctor sighed, extracting himself and resealing the panel.
"Who, me? Of course not! But you are apparently missing the fact that it's time to make me breakfast."
The Doctor got to his feet. "Fine. Come help me find the kitchens."
"I don't think so," Clara snorted. "I'm going back to bed. Come wake me up when you're done." She winked slyly and marched back down the corridor, still wearing the Doctor's coat.
"You forgot to give me my coat," the Doctor called after her.
"I didn't forget," she answered mischievously as she rounded the corner. "I'm just not giving it back. It's mine now."
A rueful chuckle sprang to the Doctor's lips. "The sacrifices I make for you..." he breathed softly.
Four hours later, the Doctor kicked open Clara's room door, his fingers splayed out beneath a red tray. True to her word, she was fast asleep again, her mouth hanging open. Soft snores were emanating from it.
The Doctor flipped on the lights and then hastily dimmed them - he didn't want a repeat of earlier that morning. He smirked at her open-mouthed state of sleep and perched on her pillow. He tapped her nose with his knuckle, still balancing the tray on his other palm. "Clara. Breakfast."
She cracked an eyelid open. "Oh. Hi again." Yawning massively, she propped herself up on her pillows and stared blearily at the breakfast. "Wow. It does look gourmet."
The Doctor raised an eyebrow. "It better be. It took four hours to make." There was a plate of potatoes and some white mass that looked like eggs, next to another plate that held a stack of pancakes. Clara grinned as she noticed that the top pancake had a lopsided smiley face etched into it. The Doctor had also provided a glass of apple juice. She was touched by how much effort he had put into making her happy. She flicked her eyes upwards, preparing to thank him, but the words diet on her lips. "What happened to you?" she finally managed, suddenly wide awake.
"Breakfast happened," the Doctor grumbled, resentfully indicating his jacket, which was covered in bits of egg. His face was white with flour. "I tried to sonic the eggs to make them finish faster but they exploded." He prodded the eggs on the plate, revealing a burnt and blackened underside. "I don't know if I'd recommend eating those, but I thought I would bring them just in case."
Clara giggled and swiped some of the flour off his cheeks. "Thank you all the same," she told him sincerely. "It looks good."
The Doctor settled the plate on her lap. "Go ahead," he murmured, his Scottish accent warm and gentle. "I'll stay with you."
Clara carved out a bite of pancake and placed it in her mouth. Hints of syrup and butter flooded her tongue, along with the taste of pancake. The Doctor had somehow figured out how to put them inside the pancake. "This is delicious!" she exclaimed. "Oh my stars, you need to come and work in my kitchen."
The Doctor beamed proudly and reached his hands up to his throat. But all of a sudden his smile vanished and he lowered his hands, looking troubled and a little wistful.
Clara's sharp eyes picked up on his motion. It was a very familiar one - he had done it all the time, once, reaching up to proudly adjust his bowtie whenever Clara complimented him. But he was different now; there was no more bowtie.
Her eyes softened. Now she knew that the Doctor missed his last regeneration as much as she did. So she reached out and straightened his collar instead, pausing to gaze into his eyes. "There's always a bowtie there," she murmured softly. "And there always will be."
"I know," the Doctor sighed.
"But..." Clara patted his cheek. "For the record, I think black waistcoats are very handsome."
His mouth flickered in a smile. "Good to know."
Clara winked at him as she settled back against her pillow. "Now stop talking. I'm trying to eat."
"Hey!" The Doctor frowned indignantly, his hedgy eyebrows drawing together. "You were talking first."
As Clara ate her pancakes, the Doctor began to regale amusing stories of his youth to her. Clara loved the way he talked, pouring his whole body into his stories, using his arms and fingers expressively to illustrate his words. "... And they told me to leave," he finished. "I mean, can you believe that? All that time and effort I poured into saving their silly little planet, and they just kicked me out."
"You know what you tell people like that?" Clara asked, smirking a little.
"What?"
"Tell them to go cibloffit themselves."
The dumbstruck expression on his face stayed with her for the rest of her life.
If any of you are wondering, the kitchen the Doctor used was the one from way back in chapter 9. There were leftover ingredients in there from Clara's soufflé experiment.
Thanks for reading! Please review, I love to hear your opinions, and have a nice Sunday.