Tipping the Velvet

Thirteen

It was a sight to behold. There they were, two women scandalously dressed for the period, pushing a burned-out Ferrari down the middle of a busy, early-evening, London high street. It was a chore trying to force that mechanical husk through the horses and carriages, none of which wanted to move, and they were getting even more stares than they usually did driving around rural England in a multimillionaire's sports car. Probably because these people had never even seen a sports car before. Had they ever seen any kind of car?

The icing on the cake was that Clara didn't have a phone, and the Doctor didn't have anything except her trusty sonic screwdriver. They were, at present, trying to push their wrecked car up a steep hill, over messy cobbled streets, between dozens of people who just didn't care enough to get out of the way or stop staring. The whole situation was enough to put them in a foul mood, and it did. They pushed and pushed up the incline, neither of them speaking, the Doctor angry at herself for not thinking yet of a way to get them out of this mess, and also assuming that Clara was furious with her. At least Clara's telekinesis made it a bearable task, but she couldn't take the weight of the whole thing. There was still some effort being put into forcing the car up the hill.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Clara asked her, "I swear, the streets look different than I remember…"

"Just trust me," the Doctor said through gritted teeth, her hands on the back of the car. It had been even worse trying to pull it out of its crevice in that market on the bank of the Thames, revealing just how crumpled the entire bonnet was, crushed like an aluminium can. But Clara was right, the streets did look different, in very acute ways. Even the people, the dress… she was beginning to puzzle not about where they were, but when they were. Was this not the 1800s she often frequented?

Shortly after these questions began to arise within her, she had the luck of spying a young boy, no more than ten, standing on a soapbox with a dwindling stack of muddy newspapers at his side, holding the front page up for all to see. When she was able to read the words on the headline she immediately let go of the Ferrari.

"Oi! What're you doing!?" Clara shouted after her, but Clara would be quite capable of keeping the car from slipping back down the hill and running her over for a moment or two. The Doctor wended her way towards the boy, tactfully bumping into some gentleman as she did and profusely apologising – while she slipped a stray hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a fistful of coins.

"How much?" the Doctor asked the newspaper boy when she had managed to discreetly steal from money, flashing the man a smile and letting him go on his way (it was funny, as any other of her selves, that would never have worked, but there were a couple of benefits to being a woman ordinarily assumed of not being capable of most kinds of petty deception.)

"Thruppence, miss," the boy answered, and she found a threepence coin in the collection in her hand and dropped it into the flat-cap in front of the boy's soapbox, picking up a newspaper from the pile and taking her new treasure back to Clara. She hadn't been watching Clara, and when she returned she found her caught up in the middle of a conversation with a man plainly offering to help her push her large, fancy machine up the hill.

"Shouldn't your husband be helping you with that?" the man, another gentleman, but this one a little more smug-looking than the one Thirteen had stolen a handful of shillings from, questioned, "Where is it you're going?"

"Just, erm – Crystal Palace, you see. For the Great Exhibition. It's a machine of the future."

"The Great Exhibition?" the man puzzled.

"Yep."

"Great Exhibition?" the Doctor also puzzled, returning. Clara turned to face her, now having only one hand to hold the Ferrari in place, clearly exerting her telekinesis to keep it there. The gentleman marvelled at this faux feat of strength, while Clara put her free hand on her hip. The Doctor swatted Clara's head (gently) with her newspaper.

"Ow."

"Look at this," the Doctor held it up for her to see and then, as though Clara couldn't read, she read aloud from the pages of the London Herald, "'Titanic sinks. Great loss of life. World's greatest liner strikes ice berg.' It's 1912. The Great Exhibition was in 1851."

"My, my, do you not even know the date, miss?" the gentleman asked Clara, taking off his hat solemnly in the middle of the busy road, "I suppose it is true what they say about women not having the proper faculties for living in the working world. The two of you belong in a household, undoubtedly."

"Thanks," said the Doctor monotonously, "And I suppose if we belong in the household you belong on the streets?"

"The streets! I think not."

"You dress like you live on the streets."

"What a tongue on you!" he exclaimed, "I was only addressing your good friend who possesses more manners than the common Yank."

"The common Yank's good friend would kindly like you to piss off," Clara told him coldly, still with just one hand on the car. He finally did, and they watched him wander away to nurse his injured masculinity somewhere else. "Are we still good to go if this is 1912?"

"There's only one way to find out," the Doctor said, annoyed at the fact they had to carry on their journey while pushing the car along. Before she rejoined Clara in this plight, she went to toss the newspaper into the front seat; the whole front of the car had the broken-off door wedged inside it. Nothing was going to repair that thing, the Doctor was sure, as she resumed assisting her wife.

And so they continued their slow-paced journey through the masses of Edwardian London, following the Thames for what felt like much longer than it really was, passing St Paul's Cathedral – which signified they were almost at their promised destination. They received at least half a dozen offers of help from well-to-do, patronising men who thought the two of them incapable of pushing their car around the streets, and they always refused. Clara was just beginning to tire of the exertion of her telekinesis when they had to push the car around a tricky, sharp corner onto a darkened and very narrow alleyway. The Ferrari sat still on its own now. They must have been going for over an hour, if not two, at least, and the light was very nearly beginning to dwindle above the city slums.

But there they were, just entered onto that old haunt of theirs: Paternoster Row. The Doctor was greatly relieved to see the familiar horse and carriage belonging to Madame Vastra waiting outside, and they rolled the car up to be parked neatly right behind it. The Doctor walked up to the door and banged her fist loudly on it, ignoring the silver knocker that hung there. She had always ignored door knockers. She thought they were pointless, and lazy, and they never worked as well as just knocking normally.

Clara hovered at her shoulder, quite possibly saying something that went ignored by Thirteen, as the door was opened from within by that old buddy of theirs – Strax.

"Hi," said Clara and the Doctor together. Strax stared at them.

"Clara Oswald and her boy-Doctor are the last thing we need," he said in a very grumbling way, unamused by their sudden and unannounced arrival.

"Uh-huh. That's nice. Can we come in?" the Doctor asked him.

"I'm not sure. I'm under strict instructions about who gets let into the house. You've arrived at a very dark time, sirs." The Doctor's hearts plummeted hearing that, and Clara took hold of her arm.

"Oh my stars, what's happened?" Clara asked while Thirteen was rendered silent, then she whispered, "Has somebody died?"

"Far, far worse," Strax shook his head. Well, he sort of shook his whole body as well, Sontarans being the way they were. "It's Silurian mating season."

"Oh," the Doctor was relieved for a few seconds, and then she was not relieved, "Oh. Eurgh."

"Precisely, ma'am," Strax said, "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to leave and return in a few weeks?"

"Weeks?" Clara exclaimed, "How long are they in heat for?" She asked this of Thirteen.

"How should I know? I've never dated a Silurian," she said.

"I tell you, it's been frightful for the last month," Strax said, "It only comes around every few years, but when it does – modesty be damned. It's garish."

"What's garish?" a woman's cockney accent floated in from another room, and here arrived Jenny Flint, who had flushed cheeks and wasn't wearing as much as the period generally considered polite. Clara crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, and the Doctor tried to ignore everything Strax had just told them. "Oh, Doctor. And Clara." There was a pause. "Vastra can't see you right now."

"Surprise, surprise," said Clara, watching her carefully. Judgementally, even. Jenny Flint narrowed her eyes.

"No worries," the Doctor forced a smile, "This isn't necessarily a social call, Flint. We're stranded and we'd appreciate if you'd let us use your telephone to call the TARDIS." But Jenny's eyes had strayed away to something else.

"What the hell's that!?" she nodded at the car, she and Strax still blocking their entry into the house.

"The car we were in when we drove through a rift by accident."

"You can't leave that here; it'll draw undue attention to the house."

Clara interjected, "The occupants of your house are a lizard woman, an anthropomorphic potato and a lesbian; it has plenty of undue attention already." The Doctor snort-laughed and then tried (badly) to make it look like she had just coughed. It didn't get past Jenny, though.*

"Can I please just use the phone? I don't actually have any other friends to call on who are in London right now," the Doctor pleaded. Finally, Jenny and Strax stepped aside to let them into the familiar house, to their great relief, though it was quite dark and stuffy within. Then again, it usually was. Silurians loved their humid climates.

"Phone's down the hall," Jenny pointed, in case the Doctor didn't remember this.

And then the trilling voice of the house's owner called out from whatever depths she was lurking in, "Jenny, dear, can you not find the Vaseline?" and Thirteen nearly dry-retched hearing Vastra's request. Jenny went even redder than she had already been and quickly dug a metal tub out of a nearby door and scurried away upstairs again. Clara watched her go with a look of horror on her face.

"I did warn you," Strax said.

"That you did…" the Doctor muttered, following Jenny's directions to the phone. Clara, having nothing else to do, followed her as she went, while Strax made to linger in the hallway, ready to answer the door if necessary. Their phone was an old candlestick telephone, which the Doctor picked up so that she could dial in the phone number for the TARDIS, lifting the receiver to her ear with one hand and holding the rest of it, mouthpiece atop, with the other.

But the TARDIS did not answer. She must have tried the phone at least five times, and every time it rang out for over a minute, nobody answering. That didn't normally happen. Normally the TARDIS phone was answered far more punctually than it ever had been when she was in command of the ship.

"Is no-one answering?" Clara asked, but she did not respond, instead straining to remember the number for Jenny Ravenwood's mobile.

"Does Jenny's number end in eight or nine?" she asked. Clara shrugged. "I'll try eight." So she did.

"Hi, this is the Babestation chat line, here to fulfil all your erotic des-"

"Wrong number!" she exclaimed, jabbing the button to hang up with her finger. Then she explained meekly to Clara, "It's definitely a nine…" She thought this number might ring out, too, it took her daughter so damn long to pick up.

"Hello?"

"Gee, finally," Thirteen said, "I've been trying the TARDIS for ages. Why are you not answering?"

"Oh, hi to you too, mum," Jenny said, plainly annoyed that the Doctor had cut the pleasantries and gone immediately to telling her off.

"Why didn't you answer the phone?" she persisted.

"We're not on the TARDIS right now," Jenny said, "We're on holiday."

"You're-!? Your whole life is a holiday!" Thirteen exclaimed, "What are you talking about?"

"We're in the Caribbean, we left the TARDIS behind – it's in Orlando. We're on Adam Mitchell's yacht."

"You guys are on holiday on a yacht and we're not invited!?"

"Well you don't live with us! Plus, you don't even want to travel anymore."

"Where are they?" Clara asked her.

"On a yacht, in the Caribbean," Thirteen answered bitterly. Clara looked just as outraged by this as she did. "Look, I need your help. Clara and I accidentally drove through a rift and now we're stuck in London in 1912. We need you to come take us back to 2024."

"I just told you, we're not on the TARDIS. We're, like, a three-day journey away at least, and that's if we turn back now, which none of us really fancy," Jenny said, sounding down the phone like she was shrugging, "1912's not so bad."

"Are you kidding me?"

"What?"

"Just travel to the date when you get back to the ship! It's a god damn time machine, Jennifer! It's April 16th, we're at Paternoster Row," the Doctor said.

"If you're at Paternoster Row then what's the big deal? It's not like you're stuck in the street."

"Nuh-uh, Jenny. We're not playing this game."

"Who's playing anything? You sound like you need a holiday as well," Jenny told her, "You're in a bad mood."

"Of course I'm in a bad mood!"

"You haven't even asked nicely or said please."

"Oh my god – I don't need to say please, I'm your mother, and I'm stranded here!"

"With your friends, in London. It's not like you've just crash-landed on a barren, arctic planet without knowing a soul…"

"That was almost 260 years ago!"

"So what? You're telling me now I should get over it?"

"Maybe you should!"

And Jenny hung up.

"Jenny?" she asked oblivion. Nothing. She clenched her fist tightly around the receiver until Clara took the telephone off her, phasing it out of her grip and putting it back down on the table against the wall.

"What on Earth's the matter with you?" Clara asked her, "Since when did you have a go at Jenny like that?"

"We're stuck here-"

"I heard what she said, she's right. It's not that bad. It's just London and it's only 1912. And you keep ignoring me ever since we got here-"

"Because you're mad at me."

"I'm not," Clara told her. Thirteen hadn't looked at her at all this whole conversation. In fact, Thirteen had been avoiding looking at Clara ever since they first passed through that rift. But now she did, and she saw that Clara's expression was soft, and worried. There was no detectable trace of malice behind her eyes. "Sweetheart… won't you come here?" Clara came and wrapped her arms around Thirteen, and Thirteen held onto her. "Why would you think I'm angry at you?"

"Because this type of stuff happening is exactly the kind of thing you made us move to Earth to avoid!" the Doctor protested, then she buried her face in Clara's shoulder while Clara hugged her.

"Okay, I married the Doctor. These things just happen to you. It's nobody's fault. And anyway, isn't it better that we came through a rift in space-time instead of some unsuspecting schoolkids? Anyone who walked through it would be disintegrated," Clara told her, stroking her hair. "Maybe you do need a holiday. 1912 London could be just what the doctor ordered. Pun intended." Thirteen laughed slightly, but she did not let go of Clara. Then Clara lowered her voice to whisper in her ear, "What do you think they're doing with the Vaseline?"

"Clara!" she exclaimed, "What do you mean, what do you think they're doing with it? It's a lubricant."

"Yeah, but what are they having to lubricate? It was a massive tub."

"I don't want to know."

"I… kind of do want to…"

"Oh, no," Strax, walking past, interrupted. They only stepped away from each other slightly, Clara moving her hands back to the Doctor's waist, the Doctor's to Clara's shoulders, "Not you two as well."

"Don't worry, Strax," Clara assured him, "We wouldn't want to put you through that, especially with those two up there." Yes, Thirteen noted, it was true; Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra upstairs were going to no extra lengths to be quiet. She was really trying to ignore it, the same way the middle-classes ignored homeless people in inner cities. As though they were a blind-spot. He looked at them very suspiciously.

"There's no way I'm going to sleep with her in this house that doesn't have a shower," Thirteen assured him, "That's just not on. When do you think they'll be done, though?"

"When dinner is ready."

"Doesn't Jenny make dinner normally?" Clara inquired.

"Jenny is otherwise engaged," said Strax. They heard a very loud and explicitly human noise of pleasure from above. Yes, the Doctor thought, Jenny Flint most definitely was 'otherwise engaged.'

"I'll do it," Thirteen offered, "Cook something. It might entice Vastra to let us stay."

As it happened, Madame Vastra was very enticed. But not to let them stay. She was rather indifferent to the matter of whether Clara and the Doctor could stay, shrugging and telling Strax he had better make up a bed in one of the guest rooms. When she did this she had her beady, lizard-eyes glued to Jenny Flint, who appeared very exhausted. Dinner was a grim affair. It was grim because Thirteen, Clara and Strax had to sit there while, the entire time, Vastra and Jenny had an obscene amount of eye-sex. They were playing footsie under the table, as well.

"So, uh, as you can… see… we really don't have anywhere else to go… we were just wondering if you'd be kind enough to put us up for a while, until my daughter comes off her pleasure cruise," Thirteen said. Vastra didn't look at her, Vastra played with Jenny's hair. Clara had grown increasingly annoyed by this behaviour – which was definitely rude, 'Silurian mating season' be damned – and was on the brink of telling them off.

"I can think of a whole different kind of pleasure cruise I'd like to embark on," Vastra said sultrily.

"Oh my god…" the Doctor muttered, putting a hand to her head. Clara dropped her fork.

"This is ridiculous," she said, then she waved a hand and the two of them, on their chairs, shot away from each other a few metres.

"Clara!" Thirteen exclaimed, "Don't do that."

"Just listen for five minutes or the two of you aren't going to touch each other at all until you grow out of your horny lizard phase," Clara said sharply to Vastra. Her teacher voice. Thirteen had been right.

"That's racist," Vastra said.

"It's – what?"

"I don't look anything like a horned lizard. You can't say all lizards look alike. I don't even shoot blood from my eyes," Vastra said, "All you apes look the same."

"So now you're being a hypocrite? And one of those 'apes' is the exact person you can't keep your reptilian claws off," Clara said, "Are we allowed to stay in your bloody house or not, you pervy dragon?" The Doctor thought Clara had crossed a line. Had crossed many lines, in fact, with Madame Vastra, who did not generally accept people speaking to her like that. But the fact remained that Clara and Thirteen didn't have anywhere else to stay, and that if she desired, Clara could keep both of them pinned to opposite walls, unable to canoodle. And Vastra knew this, and she obviously cared more about getting her leg over than about Clara being briefly disrespectful.

"Fine," Vastra said, regaining her composure after this embarrassment a little, "Stay. But you're going to contribute to the household chores while you do. This place is gathering dust while Jenny's been so… busy… and Strax can't reach the high places. Not like you and this gift of yours, Clara." She referred to the telekinesis.

"Well that seems more than fair," the Doctor said, trying to diffuse the situation a little, "We'll be happy to do the housework while you're, erm…" she cleared her throat and didn't finish the sentence. Vastra was trying to stare down Clara, but Clara wasn't scared of Vastra.

"Aren't you going to stop this?"

"Are you going to behave?"

Vastra glared, "Define 'behave.'"

"Don't start having sex in a room with three other people?" Clara suggested sarcastically.

"Fine," Vastra said after some long deliberation, like this was a hard thing to undertake. Clara left it a few more moments for good measure, before she relinquished her psychokinetic grip on the both of them. After that, Strax escaped to go and make up this guest room for the two of them, and Jenny and Vastra resumed what they'd been doing earlier, dragging the chairs back to their previous positions.

It was with great relief that Clara and the Doctor finally got to go to bed, Clara very grateful for the roaring fire in the fireplace warming the room up thoroughly, courtesy of Strax. The Doctor was glad of that, too, and took care to assure Strax that he didn't have anything to worry about in regards to them stooping to Jenny and Vastra's level. After their agreement to assist with the housework, he had lost all his bitterness at their presence, and welcomed them and their help with open arms.

"Thank god for that bag of yours," Clara said with relief when Thirteen went about sorting through the contents of her small, transdimensional bag. She took it everywhere with them in their car, just in case something happened. The only piece of alien technology she carried was their old tracking device, but that wouldn't be remotely useful right now. That rift was a one-trick pony; they were going to be stuck in Edwardian London until the Doctor's daughter took the courtesy of picking them up. Clara was mainly grateful for Thirteen's bag because it had spare clothes in it. "Now I won't get stuck borrowing some awful Victorian night-dress."

"No, you can run around wearing hardly anything like you usually do."

"Exactly. Just the way you like me," Clara remarked, and she laughed.

"Enough of that talk," the Doctor said, both of them getting changed at the same time, "We made an oath to Strax. No funny business."

"Don't worry, I'm an old lady," Clara said, "I put those sorts of urges behind a long time ago."

"When? Last night?"

"Yeah. Anyway, c'mere," Clara said. She nearly tripped Thirteen up when she pulled her towards her by her waist and kissed her, which the Doctor quickly pulled away from, "I'm not trying to sleep with you!" Clara protested.

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, I promise – I'm trying to show you how crazy you are for thinking I'd be angry with you about this," Clara said, and Thirteen gave up and kissed her back, but not for long. Maybe it would have been a lot longer, had noises from the room next door (no points for guessing who was in there) drifted through the cracks in the wall.

"Get the saddle," it sounded like Jenny said. Then both Clara and the Doctor visibly cringed.

"Ewww," Thirteen whined.

"A saddle?" Clara whispered.

"Don't think about it."

"I don't need to think about it, I can hear it," Clara remarked, "Anyway, before they started… what I was going to say is, Jenny's right."

"About the saddle?"

"No! Not that Jenny, your Jenny. About you needing a holiday. I think this'll be good. Despite those two. Maybe we'll be here for a few weeks? I don't know, all we'll have to do is clean stuff, and there's three of us to do it. I might write."

"Ooh, new poems? In which case our excursion will definitely be worth it, C.O. Smith," Thirteen called Clara by her pseudonym and made her smile.

"Exactly. Every cloud has a silver lining."

"Show me your saddle sores," Vastra said next door.

"Eurgh!" Thirteen exclaimed, making a horrid face.

"Why do we have to listen to that? Are we sure we can't sleep in the cellar?" Clara asked.

"It's cold in the cellar."

"I'll be plenty warm with you in my arms," Clara said quietly, leaning in to kiss her again.

"Not THAT whip, that's the wrong one," Jenny said, interrupting them.

"If in the middle of the night I mysteriously vanish," Clara began seriously, "I've probably killed myself having to listen to that."

*literally one of my favourite lines I've ever written