AN: I'm gonna be honest with you, it's looking like until Day 148, the storylines are going to be very heavily focused around who I like to call the "Usual Suspects," they being Whoufflé, Adwin, Clarenny, and Clarteen. After that it is meant to ease up a bit (still with a generous amount of Jenny), but you know the fic is generally better when I'm writing about my favourites.

Promenade

Eleven

"What if Wade's right, though? What if there is an issue with the way you speak to me? You did call me a 'horrible creature.' Even when we're alone you're sometimes saying these things, and they you go say something nice and sweet-talk me… what if I'm experiencing Stockholm Syndrome? What if you're actually, legitimately, abusive, or something, and I just can't see it? Because I've been stuck on the TARDIS for so long? And you're manipulating me with presents when you're actually not nice to me at all. And don't I deserve someone nice, at least? Even if I am as hateful as everyone always makes out – calling me annoying and barely wanting to be in the same room – am I still not allowed to be happy with someone who treats me properly? As opposed to deriving me in front of my friends and family – our friends and family – just mocking me? Maybe that's what I'm getting tired of, and not really the TARDIS at all?"

The Doctor stared at his wife. "Darling, all I asked was do you want me to pass you the vinegar."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, sure," she said, and he handed her the little bottle and she gave her fish and chips a very liberal coating of the stuff, and an even more excessive dusting of sea-salt.

"I shall stop with it all if you want me to, but you always seem rather amused," he pointed out. She was sat there eating chips with her fingers at one of those shiny, aluminium tables outside of a fish and chip shop. There must be a thousand fish and chip shops in Blackpool, and even more hotels. It was the evening, but it was still very light, being as it was mid-August. It had been a blessing to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat hiding out in the aquarium, and even now it was only somewhat cooller. All day, Clara's lightning scars had been getting stares from the people they passed, though she did not appear to mind. His tracking device was sat on the table top between them, still not done deducing what they were after.

"Maybe it's bad that I'm amused?" she asked.

"I don't think you ought to fret this much over a passing comment made by a boy you haven't spoken to for ten years," he said, "He doesn't know anything about us. And it isn't like you didn't ask me for divorce papers this morning. We're as bad as each other." She still seemed rather put-out by her ex's comments, though. "What was he like when you were dating him? And how long was that for?" Clara thought this over, and then get an odd look about her, as though she knew he wouldn't like the answer to that question.

"Six months," she answered, and his jaw dropped. A mushed up bit of chip fell out of it and she pulled a face at him.

"Six months?"

"Yeah."

"We've only been married for nearly five…" he grumbled.

"I was fifteen, sweetheart, and I did break up with him, like, a week after I finally let him shag me. Besides. We've met Thirteen. I think the two of us will definitely be together for longer than six months. Forever, in fact. I'd hope so, at least, since I don't have any kind of fall-back if our relationship were to collapse. I'd have to go live with my dad," she muttered.

"You could get back together with Wade Sawyer on the rebound."

"Very funny. He was clingy and we had nothing in common. Honestly, Melanie and I used to just make fun of him all the time when I was with him," she said indifferently, cramming a rather large chip into her mouth with one of those tiny, insufficient plastic forks.

"Who's Melanie?"

Clara held up a hand to him to indicate she was chewing and couldn't speak, so he waited a few seconds for the answer, "The girl I dumped him for in the end. Ex-best friend. And ex-girlfriend, I guess? I don't know, we were never really… an official thing…"

"Ex -best friend? What happened?" he asked. She frowned.

"Did you listen to what I just said? I slept with her, that's what happened."

"You know, you can be a very chaotic woman sometimes, Mrs Oswald," he said, and she didn't appear to know whether to take that as a compliment or not. "That's the fourth new person you've told me about just today you once slept with."

"Does it bother you that I sleep around? Or – used to sleep around?" she asked carefully.

"No! Of course not. Should it?"

Clara shrugged, "It usually does."

"Bothers humans, you mean. I'm not a human. It's not any of my business what you got up to before we ever met," he said, "Besides, all this kissing other women nonsense – I'm quite sure I believe you when you say it isn't your fault. I probably wouldn't have been able to do a lot if Jane Austen tried to kiss me, either." She laughed. This fish and chip shop was practically right next to the Dolphin, their hotel, just around the corner. Only a short walk back whenever they finished eating.

"You don't know how grateful I am to hear you're not angry about it."

"Why should I be? I'm miles better than any Jane Austen, or Wade Sawyer, or Melanie. Or the bloke who does the crosswords in the Blackpool Gazette." Clara laughed pleasantly, and went back to her food for a while, too involved with it to do much speaking.

"You know," she said, halfway through her battered fish fillet, "Fiona's always going on that I'll never find anybody to marry me. As if marriage is the only goal for a woman, first of all. But second of all… I don't know," she trailed off her point.

"Why wouldn't you?"

She slumped, and resentfully explained, "Because Wade Sawyer has literally been my longest relationship to date. Not for much longer, I'd hope – about a month or so longer, in fact – but, still."

"Well I, personally, think we're made for each other. As I told you last night." She blushed at the memory. "Sod what your Aunt Fiona thinks, the woman is a hollow spinster." Clara snorted.

"I'll call her that the next time she tries to pick on me."

"Your family is frightening. We shan't be having any socials with them, you know, I'm putting my foot down, as your husband."

"Who's 'them'?"

"Everyone. Except your father. And your grandmother, she likes me."

"She fancies you," Clara jibed, and he gawked at her.

"She's too young for me."

"Then what does that make me?"

"Someone who has lived a thousand different lifetimes. Just because they don't affect you visibly, and you can't remember anything much of them. Although, I suppose now maybe they do affect you visibly," he motioned to the scars crawling up her left arm. Anyway, enough of this, we're supposed to be relaxing together."

"Til your machine goes off," she nodded at it.

"Ignore the machine – I have to talk to you. Husband-to-wife. Marital business."

"Oh, really?" she asked, intrigued, then she smiled, "I like you calling us husband and wife."

"Well if you like it I shall have to stop. How does pensioner and jailbait sound, Coo?" he asked jokingly. He had finished his food. She was still eating what was practically soup with three main ingredients: dregs of batter, mashed-up chips, and a ghastly amount of vinegar. It made a yellowy lake in the polystyrene tray, and it reeked.

"If this is about us getting our own microwave again, I keep telling you we don't need one," she said sharply. A newish disagreement of theirs he kept bringing up because he desperately wanted one.

"It's not about that, but I still want one, don't think you've heard the end of it," he said, "No, it's about our wedding."

"Our wedding?" a smug grin crept onto Clara's face, "Here you are, willingly bringing up our wedding. It must be a birthday miracle."

"Yes, but I have to talk about something important to do with it, not placeholders or favours or something else meaningless." She glared at him, but didn't argue. No doubt he would get an earful later. The next time he brought up the microwave issue, most likely. "I was thinking about my best man."

"Oh, right."

"I don't really know what to do about it – what do you think?"

"What do you mean? It's your best man. Not that you even need it to be a man, when my uncle got married he had a best woman." Eleven stared at her.

"Well now you've just made everything even more complicated."

"Sorry… but it's your decision. You know I'm having Oswin as my maid of honour."

"Yes, of course you are. I'm sure there was never a doubt in your mind about that."

"I thought I might try and convince Angie Maitland to be a bridesmaid… not that this matters right now, we can't go stealing Ten and Rose's limelight. And the pair of them have been wedding planning ever since he 'proposed,'" she did inverted commas with her fingers to indicate the accidental nature of their engagement, "so who knows how soon that'll happen?" Clara had just about finished now, and when he reached to pick up his device, she followed suit and stood up, gathering their rubbish to go and put it in the bin.

"Still, though. Jack keeps asking me," he called after her as she trotted away briefly to get rid of their trays, hers still nearly overflowing with a sea of vinegar and floating islands of fried potato.

"Jack? You can't have your ex-son-in-law as your best man. That's weird."

"I know, I told him that, told him if he was that upset about being rejected for the position then he could go tell Christina de Souza all about it. That shut him up." They began to walk back in the direction of their nearby hotel, his machine still working.

"Adam, then?"

"Adam Mitchell?"

"We don't know any other Adams."

"I hardly know that Adam. He's your sister's boyfriend. Make him a bridesmaid, he'd love that." He could smell the warm sea air, and the golden beach ran along on their right on the other side of the road. Tramcars trundled up and down every now and again; it was quite busy. Probably because it was such a gorgeous weekend. He thought perhaps it had been nice growing up there.

"Okay, Adam isn't being a bridesmaid, and you don't have to be rude to him. You've already nicked his car today. If anything happens to that thing I'm blaming you, by the way," she said, and he scowled for a moment. "Haven't you just asked Rory?"

"He was the best man at the last one!"

"Well, so what?" she laughed, "He's your best friend. And you were the groom at the last one, should I go and find somebody else to marry?" They approached the front of the Dolphin, which had to be one of Blackpool's fancier hotels (and it did have so many hotels), and Clara went to go open the front door.

"I'm sure your father would like it if you did. Wade Sawyer, for instance," he said, and she pulled an almost repulsed face at the idea, holding the door for him.

"No thanks. The Ponds are always going on about how I've stolen you away from them, anyway," she sighed, "Make the effort, Chin. You can't break ties just because you have a wife."

"But you're my wife." The door swung gently closed behind them. His device still didn't say anything new. They went to go towards the stairs, him smiling politely at the man behind the desk.

"And I keep telling you, I have other people I can spend time with aside from you! This is what Wade never understood – personal space."

"I've never known you to remotely care for personal space, Clara – ever since you crawled into my sleeping-bag with me the second day we were together*." She didn't say anything to that – she appeared to be distracted, watching the process of her own feet as she walked up the blue-carpeted stairs to get back to their room, since there was little else for them to do.

On their way, they passed a window, and again he looked out at the sea. It was bluer than he supposed it usually was, since the sea around England was more often an angry green or surly grey, bitter and frothing. "Do you ever miss it here?" he enquired.

"Blackpool? I missed it last night, didn't I?" she reminded him. She followed his gaze to look out of the window.

"You're enjoying being back, then?"

"Yeah. I like knowing where I am. In the TARDIS… there's this sense of displacement," she shrugged, "I do like being by the sea. So does Adam, you know, he's from the coast. The south coast, so it's obviously shit, but-"

"Oh, of course," he agreed with her sarcastically as they began to meander up the stairs again.

"Oi! Blackpool is the Las Vegas of the North; I'll have you know." He burst out laughing.

"There aren't any casinos, so how could it be?"

"There's still the theme park," she muttered, then frowned when she reached their door, "Do you have the key?" He said nothing, because he couldn't remember. Then she groaned. "It's in my jacket, in the car."

"Darling, you are aware that you can walk through walls? Or would you prefer I use the sonic screwdriver?" he asked. She frowned.

"Why'd we even pay for a room in the first place… I'm still sick of superpowers. Use the sonic, I know you hate phasing." He did hate phasing – after all, he was not a ghost. He wasn't meant to pass through solid objects. So, the screwdriver it was, and within a moment they were back in their hotel room. He was glad she had not suggested going to stay with her father.

"Y'know, Jane Austen wrote a book about a seaside resort town," Clara was saying absently. Light still poured in through the open curtains, and she wandered over to go look at the clear, pink sky and the yellow beach and the tourists. He did know this about Jane Austen, of course, but he let her explain uninterrupted. "Well, she started to write it, died before it was even close to being finished... It's called Sanditon. People think it's a homophone for 'sandy town.'"

"How very imaginative."

"Has a character called Clara in it."

"You're infatuated."

"I am not!"

"You are. It's ghastly. It's like I'm witnessing a courtship and the woman isn't even in the same century." Clara pouted.

"I'm not being courted by Jane Austen. Can we not talk about this?"

"You brought it up! But yes, gladly," he said, enjoying tormenting her about it.

Clara stood still with her arms crossed, silhouetted against the seaside view outside, for only a few seconds, until something possessed her to turn around and ask him wryly, "Are you jealous?"

"Jealous? I'm the Doctor; I don't get jealous."

"Sounds like something somebody jealous would say."

"Well I'm not. You can have Jane Austen, and I shall keep Marilyn Monroe. Does that suit you?" She soured when he reminded her of that old fling of his.

"I'm still trying to decide whether or not you make fun of me too much, Chin."

"I'll stop if you ask." She didn't ask, she only thought. "…Do you want me to apologise…?"

"What? No," she said softly, but she seemed distracted. He went to stand next to her, looking out at the summer seafront as well. "I just…" she put her head in her hands, "There's all these problems recently."

"Are there?" he puzzled.

"Well, I don't – I don't know. Other people seem to think so."

"Why should it matter what other people think of us? Other people think all sorts about us on the TARDIS and it doesn't seem to matter to you," he said.

"It's a very surreal experience having all these old friends and family members knocking about, and then having you there on top of it all, somehow bridging these two very different parts of my life. I'm tired of people today – I wish it was only the two of us."

"It is only the two of us. We are all alone in this room together. A room with a very nice bed, I might point out, and we have a lot of time to kill while that machine works…" she looked at him with her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but a smile played on her lips, "And I must say, Coo, you seem awfully wound up. I would say some stress relief is in order. I am a doctor, you know."

"Oh, really?" she asked, standing on tiptoes, while he was leaning down, "What kind of stress relief do you have in mind, Doctor?" They were eye-level, their heads almost touching.

"The, um… the kind of…" She had been looking at his mouth, but when he faltered she glanced up to meet his eyes, "I can't think of anything to say now – you know I'm bad at this sort of… adult talk…"

"Then let's not talk," she said, standing even taller on her tiptoes so that she could manage to kiss him.

"You read my mind."

*chapter 35 (yeah, seriously, chapter 35 of 3D9C, my earliest reference so far)