Supper

"You're sure it's alright to be here?"

"Clara, it's my father's spaceship, of course I am," Jenny assured her.

"I just feel like I'm an intruder. Someone's going to come in and have a go at me."

"Anyone who has a go at you has me to deal with," she said firmly, "And I'm strong enough to pull teeth out with my fingers." Ravenwood remained uncomfortably on one of the sofas while Jenny was up to no good in the kitchen, cooking something. Clara hadn't bothered to ask what it was, and Jenny was often very deceptive about her cooking anyway, until it was done. "I told you, we're only here because your kitchen is rubbish."

"If you want my house gutting and having a new kitchen fitted, then it's Adam Mitchell you need to be schmoozing, Jen," Clara advised her.

"Do you want me to ask him?"

"Not really. I can't be bothered having people in the house refurbishing it just for you."

"What do you mean 'just' for me?"

"I don't really care about you, that's all."

"Oh, thanks." Jenny looked up long enough to see Clara smile at her, which meant Jenny instantly forgave her for anything she may have done or said. "Do you want to do anything else after dinner?" Currently, it was just after midnight; Jenny had waited specifically for everyone to vanish off to bed before she risked bringing her girlfriend on board, because Clara was right about people not liking her being there. They always worried Jenny was trying to move her in.

"Can't think of anything off the top of my head – but that reminds me, I was going to ask you out."

"Oh really?"

"Mmm, so, it's Thursday now, do you want to come over on Saturday? I had this idea today, and it's totally romantic, but it's a surprise," Clara said. She was leaning over the back of the sofa with her arms crossed, watching what Jenny was doing but not remotely understanding.

"The night after next?"

"Yeah."

"Sure."

"It's gonna be so great, just you wait, you're going to fall in love with me. Like, again."

Jenny laughed, "If you say so."

"Wear a dress, too. A cute one."

"Okay. But, tonight, though? Any thoughts? Apart from sitting in your living room watching reality TV and getting wine-drunk?" Clara's favourite thing to do recently was watch TV and get wine-drunk, but it was usually with Sally Sparrow, which Jenny was not remotely bothered about because she didn't like to drink.

"I'll let you know right away if I think of something. Promise." All of Clara's ideas revolved around food, though, and considering Jenny was already painstakingly cooking something gourmet, they were all irrelevant. Clara began thinking again about her plans for the coming Saturday, while Jenny was engrossed almost right away by her cooking, and so they didn't talk for a few minutes. "Dylan asked me if I believe in aliens today."

Jenny laughed, "Really? And, do you believe in aliens, Clara?"

"Tricky question. I suppose I'm on the fence. Like, do we really have any concrete evidence that aliens exist?"

"I'll give you some really concrete evidence in a couple of hours," Jenny said wryly, catching Clara's eye and winking.

"He keeps asking to meet you."

"Why? He's your boss, you're not even friends."

"Probably because he thinks you're amazing."

"Why does he think I'm amazing?"

"Because I told him you're amazing. And I never shut up about you. It's very annoying." Jenny's hearts swelled hearing that Clara never stopped talking about her to other people, even people she had never met, like Dylan Danvers. "He wants to meet Esther, too, but I think that's because he reckons he might be able to make a girlfriend out of her."

"Doesn't he know she's not into that?"

"No. Me and Sally haven't told him. Sally said it'll be funny if he asks Esther out."

"…But she'll say no." Clara nodded. "That's mean, Clara. Don't go along with Sally, it's cruel. Although, that reminds me, what's going on with her and James Elliott? I thought she talks to you about that stuff?" Jenny was right, Sally did confide in Clara about 'that stuff', like when they mocked the television and got drunk, or went to the pub. Because she couldn't well confide in Esther. Of course, Esther would listen loyally and carefully if she had to, but she wouldn't have any solid advice.

"Damned if I know. She doesn't even know," the doors in from the console room opened as Clara continued to talk, "I told her to just be friends with benefits if she thinks he's fit but doesn't want a relationship and she was like – 'that's rich coming from you.' And I'm like – excuse you – Jen and I are very happy together."

"What's this?" the newcomer inquired. It was only Nios. Jenny hadn't seen her at all for the whole day, which she thought was unusual, because Nios usually bided her time in Nerve Centre and the console room exclusively.

"Sally Sparrow and James Elliott. You know, from Undercoll," Clara said, "You know Undercoll?"

"Erm… yeah."

"Of course she does," Jenny smirked, "Didn't I tell you? She's totally got a hot date with one of them." Nios looked like if she could blush, she would be, but her expression actually just looked quite angry and a bit threatening. "Did you have it today? Is that why you haven't been around?"

"No. I've been on the ship, in Oswin's lab mostly. Has she been talking to you?"

"She's been talking at me," Jenny said, "I get dozens of texts every day with a running commentary of her life. Well, mainly it's other people's lives, she's not so forthcoming about herself."

"What are you doing?" Nios very obviously went to change the subject, and Jenny did not persist with asking her about her alleged date, which she had barely even confirmed existed. Jenny was a real advocate of privacy, though, and didn't think it was anything to do with her what Nios got up to. She didn't think it was anything to do with Oswin, either.

"Cooking dinner," Jenny answered.

"But… what is it?"

"This alien shellfish called a kaggon," Jenny explained. The shells were circular and about the size of her palm, and she had quite a lot of them and had begun scraping them out of the shells and into a bowl to boil them. Before that she had been making a sauce using a garlic substitute paste she had found in the future which recreated the flavour (near enough) without any of the toxic components (allyl) that would throw Clara Ravenwood into anaphylactic shock.

"You're doing shellfish? Again?" Clara asked, "Trying to get me into bed?"

"I'd get you into bed no matter what I cooked you. And actually, because these are alien, they're not aphrodisiacs like those oysters. You'll like these, they go blood red if you cook them right," Jenny said, then her hand slipped and she ended up dropping the sharp knife on the countertop and wincing.

"Are you okay?" Nios asked.

"It's just my thumb," Jenny said, "Hard to scrape the meat out properly with this thing." She showed it to Nios, who saw that it was still bruised and yellow and bearing marks from where all of the stiches had been.

"Can I help?" she offered, and Jenny stared at her.

"You, um… since when did you offer to help people? Has Oswin been messing around with your programming? I heard she's been involving herself a little intimately with AIs lately."

"I'm not evil. And it… looks interesting."

"…Alright. You can help. But I'm closely supervising," Jenny said seriously, letting Nios come over. Again, Clara wondered how the holobox worked, because she had not yet been able to work it out. Jenny thought this was amusing, because Clara had lived with them for a few weeks a while back, and so didn't put her out of her misery with it. "Okay, so, the thing about kaggons is they're very poisonous if you cook them wrong-"

"Oh, maybe I shouldn't-"

"I'm not going to let you actually cook them, and lucky you won't accidentally kill yourself licking your fingers after you cut these, so," Jenny pulled her over by her waist and gave her one of the kaggons in its silver shell to hold in her left hand and the unusual, curved knife Jenny had been using to fillet them in the other, then Jenny stood more or less with her arms around Nios to show her what to do. "You have to hold it with your thumb firmly and then slide the knife into the side of the shell wherever you can find an opening because you don't want to puncture it – they sort of burst if you do this wrong – but you've got to kill it before you open the shell. Or it'll go for you."

"It'll…? What?"

"They're like leeches, they sort of latch on and… suck. Wouldn't do anything to a synth but it leaves a nasty mark, like a hickey."

"You're going to feed me hickey fish?" Clara asked.

"Technically it's not a fish. And I never remember you complaining about hickeys before."

"I've never had one that might kill me before."

"Well that's not true, what about when the vampire bit you?"

Clara grimaced and changed the subject, "You know, when you said you were going to supervise her closely…"

"You are quite close," Nios said to Jenny, having to lean to her right to turn her head enough to see Jenny.

"In a 'lover's embrace' kind of way. If you were doing pottery instead of cooking it would be just like in Ghost."

"Maybe I do love Nios, what's it to you?" Jenny remarked.

"I reckon I've seen porn that starts like this. Ooh, why don't you scrape the meat out of my sexy clam," Clara mimicked.

"Well you must watch some weird porn," Jenny shook her head and went back to directing Nios in what she was doing, hovering her hands right about Nios's to guide her while she stabbed into the lining of the circular clam and cut down, "You have to stay along the back of the shell to make sure it's definitely dead – it can't survive without being attached to the shell, like turtles, or snails."

"So it's dead now?" Nios asked when she finished scraping.

"Hopefully. Just twist the shell, like opening a jar."

"I wish you would teach me how to cook," Clara muttered.

"Never as long as I live. I'll teach you how to do something else. I'll teach you how to dance, there, that involves plenty of touching and closeness, so you can stop being jealous of Nios for getting to stab alien scallops to death." Nios twisted the shell apart, which took more strength than she anticipated, and something white and slimy fell out into the bowl underneath.

"Is it dead?"

"I think so," said Jenny, then she kissed her cheek lightly and slid the bucket full of shells over, "You can do the rest of them now, if you like. I have to go stop Clara from being insecure about our relationship." Nios didn't know what that meant, not until Jenny vaulted over the back of the sofa to land on Clara, and then Nios averted her eyes and went back to carving into the shellfish very carefully. For their sake, she hoped nobody else came into the room to see them kissing.

Her phone buzzed two shells later and she dropped the kaggon and the knife to check it right away.

"Who texted you?" Clara asked, making her jump. She glanced at them and saw they had sat back up, with Clara looking at Nios and Jenny watching Clara and playing with her hair.

"Nobody, just somebody, asking about…"

I saw a film once where these people built these hyper-realistic sex dolls. They were like computers only the CPU fans were between their legs and all these penises got mutilated. Is that what your charging port is like? read her message from Dr Cohen.

"…about… um… you know, like… IT support…"

Nios replied: No, and put her phone away again.

"Was it from the boy you have a date with?" Clara asked.

"It's a girl," Nios said.

"Ah! So it is from them, though?" Clara persisted, and Jenny decided to leave her alone and return to the kitchen after that.

"No!" Nios exclaimed. Clara raised her eyebrows. "Alright, maybe." Her phone went again, and she read the message while Jenny went to get a large saucepan and fill it with water.

I once saw this fourteen year old boy who got a very similar injury involving a vacuum cleaner.

"What's she messaging you about?" Clara asked. Another text.

Well it wasn't really an injury because he died from massive blood loss, there's a lot of veins in the male penis.

"Just, um… normal stuff," Nios said, "You know? The usual." She picked up the kaggon again.

"Who is she, anyway? What's she like?"

"She's… a person."

"Most people are persons."

"She's a doctor, isn't she?" Jenny said.

"…Yes."

"Are you nervous?" Clara asked. Nios didn't say anything. "She's totally nervous, Jen."

"Why wouldn't she be nervous? Everyone gets nervous about people they fancy. Right now I'm nervous about if you're going to like this weird food," Jenny said.

"Is that true?" Nios asked abruptly.

"About me being nervous around Clara? Sometimes," Jenny shrugged, "Like when she wakes up next to me I worry about what I'm going to say because I think 'good morning' is a bit boring. Or when I show up at the bookshop and surprise her by having made lunch and brought her some extra blood. Or just when I haven't seen her for a few days and I forget how pretty she is."

"How do you forget how pretty someone is when you live with two clones of them?"

"Well I was out in the jungle with Jack and River for days, that's what I'm talking about," Jenny explained, putting the pan of water on to boil. "I'm sure Clara must get nervous around me sometimes. She definitely gets jittery whenever she has to go talk to Sally."

"Sally's very attractive, it's not my fault," Clara defended herself, "And it's not every time, I talk to Sally quite a lot."

"But do you, though?" Nios persisted, "Get nervous?"

"Nervous about if she's actually going to like my surprise, romantic date I've planned," Clara said, and Jenny smiled, "What are you anxious about, though? She must like you if she's texting you and you got her phone number."

"I just don't think I'm very interesting."

"You're a time travelling android from the future!" Jenny protested, "That's fascinating! And now you know how to fillet a kaggon, that's interesting, and impressive. Not many people can cook these without killing someone; they're like puffer fish."

"I better not die from eating this, Jenny," Clara warned, "I won't be very happy with you if I die."

Jenny scoffed and said dismissively to Nios, "Women."

"So, what are you doing while I do this?" Nios asked Jenny, not recognising any of the vegetables she was chopping up.

"Making a very complicated marinade for those things," Jenny said, chopping the veg into the tiniest pieces possible and then sliding them off the board and into a mortar, "Lucky thing I have this synthetic garlic paste instead of actual garlic, makes it easier to rub in."

"Please, talk dirty to me," Clara remarked, listening in.

"What we're gonna do," Jenny blanked her completely and kept talking to Nios, "Is boil these until all the poison evaporates out of them, then wash them in the sink over a sieve, then cover them in this stuff I'm making now with the pestle and shallow fry them. If you want me to teach you how to actually cook ordinary things, though, I will."

"I'm not sure…"

"Let her show you, it'll make her happy," Clara said, "Give her something to do. I'm always telling her to get a hobby."

"I'll show you how to make a Full English, then everyone on the ship will love you. If you really want I could show you how to kill and skin animals as well, but no one ever seems as interested in that. They all talk about how hunting is bad, but you know, it's all about not over hunting. Clara would tell me off for it but she's never complained about the alligator meatballs, have you?"

"I don't tell you off for hunting," Clara said, "Because I know you only do it when you want to eat something. If you did it for sport, though, that'd be grounds for us to break up." Jenny was actually surprised by Clara saying that, especially since Clara was serious, and thought it was lucky she never had hunted something for sport. If she wanted to get thrills that badly, she would go steal the crown jewels. She'd actually been meaning to steal the crown jewels for a while, just to see how hard it would be (and to one-up Christina de Souza.)

"Well, anyway, everyone here would love you if you cooked breakfast for them," Jenny said, "But I have to admit, Ni – it does seem a bit odd now that you suddenly want to, like, do things." Nios was taken aback by Jenny calling her 'Ni', the same obnoxious nickname Oswin called her. But maybe it was growing on her, so she didn't argue.

Before Nios could answer – or let Jenny know she had just about finished murdering the shellfish – unusual, male giggles emanated through from the Bedroom Circle, heralding the arrival of none other than Captain Jack Harkness and his newest flame. When they came in, Jenny got considerably more aggressive with the pestle and mortar, so much so that Nios worried she was going to start grinding up the solid marble as well as the vegetables. It seemed like Jack had been in the middle of tickling Ianto, but stopped immediately upon seeing the three girls in Nerve Centre. Jack cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets.

"Jenny," he said, nodding at her, "Nios." Then a longer pause. "…Clara."

"Hi," said Clara, trying to be polite. Jenny said nothing, and neither did Nios, but Nios often didn't say anything.

"Hello," Ianto didn't quite seem to grasp the awkwardness of the situation. Or maybe he did and he was just significantly more mature than everybody else. "We haven't met, have we?" he looked between both Nios and Clara.

"This is Nios, my new culinary prodigy," Jenny introduced, "And that's Clara."

"But I've heard there are a lot of clones of her, or something."

"There's two of us, sort of," said Clara.

"This Clara is my girlfriend," Jenny said, "She's the best one."

"Right. So. Hmm. Is this awkward? Should we leave? We should probably leave," Ianto said to Jack.

"No, it's fine," Jack said, "We were only cutting through. And it's good you're here, actually, because I… hang on, is one of you growling at me?" They all frowned, and Jack turned to Ianto and said, "Do you hear growling?" When they all strained their ears, they all most certainly did hear a very low and rumbling growl, which seemed to be coming from underneath the sofa Clara was sitting on. "What is that? Some kind of territorial vampire thing?" But his question was answered when a black mass of hair shot out from under the sofa and went for him.

"Oh my god, what is that?" Clara exclaimed.

"It's the cat," Jenny answered, she and Nios both dropping everything to go and help Jack, who was shouting and getting mauled by a kitten. And maybe it was a Maine Coon, so it was still rather large, but it was still a kitten.

As soon as Jenny drew near, it turned and hissed at her and brandished its claws, and she saw for the first time that this tiny beast had red eyes. But when it was distracted by Jenny, Nios decided to be the brave one and grab it, pulling it off Jack as it clawed at him. And remarkably, it did not turn to attack Nios. It did wriggle considerably to try and get out of her grip (and she was very careful not to hold it too tightly) but it did not hiss or try to maim her.

"What do I do with it?" she held it at arm's length.

"You're going to hurt it," Clara said, coming to try and take it from Nios. The thing then practically jumped out of Nios's hands for Clara, and for an instant Jenny was terrified it was going to start slashing at her as well, even though Clara was immune to cat scratches and it would be like trying to gouge the eyes out of a rock to go for her. That was when they heard it purr. "What's wrong with this cat?" Clara asks.

"Seems alright with you," Ianto pointed out.

"It shouldn't be, cats hate me, all animals hate me," Clara said, "It's a vampire thing. Babies and toddlers cry when I walk past."

"It must be because you're a vampire that it likes you," Jenny said, "And that's why it doesn't ever attack Adam Mitchell, or Nios. Nios is a machine and Adam's in cryostasis."

"So it hates me because I'm too alive?" Jack questioned.

"Hates all the Time Lords as well."

"What are you doing with these cats, anyway?" Clara asked, taking it with her to go and sit back down on the sofa. Jenny walked the long way around the furnishings to get back into the kitchen to cook.

"I don't know. I don't think dad wants to keep them here, though."

"So they're… you know. Up for adoption?"

"What? Clara, you can't adopt a cat that's going to savage me. When that thing grows up it's going to be the size of a lynx, it's massive."

"Well… you know. You're a big girl."

"Clara!"

"Where else is it going to go? It's either going to stay on the TARDIS or come with me, and you're going to be in both of those places," Clara said, "I'll protect you from the kitten." Jenny was very unhappy with this turn of events, and so went back to her angry mashing with her pestle.

"…Back to what I was saying," Jack talked again, "I just wanted to apologise to Clara."

"What for?" Clara asked suspiciously.

"For letting her be in a very dangerous situation this week for… arguably selfish reasons," he said, "And I thought that to make up for her being at risk of dying, I'd… well, if you ever want some blood that comes from someone who isn't genetically identical to you, I'll be glad to donate some."

"Oh, really?" Clara's eyes lit up at the mention of blood, "I could always do with more blood."

"Yeah, well, I'm busy at the moment, but I'm sure Jenny will be more than thrilled to find me and slit my throat at some point." Jenny didn't say anything, just glared at the pestle and mortar. "Well, we'd better go then, leave you to your.. are you making fried kaggon?"

"Yes, and you can't have any," Jenny snapped. Jack raised his eyebrows at her.

"We were just leaving," he said, and finally he did drag Ianto away.

"It was nice to meet you all," Ianto said.

"You too," said Clara. Nios smiled at him. As soon as the door closed behind them, Jenny stared at the metal. "Ianto seems alright." Jenny still didn't speak. "Jen, it's going to be ages until the cat is old enough to take away from the mother anyway. And I let you keep all those guns in my house, you could at least let me-"

"It's fine," Jenny sighed, "It'll be better for the cat. It's not its fault it has a disposition for the undead, though personally I'd rather you adopt the floating one with the tentacles. I like the one with the tentacles, and it wouldn't look out of place in Hollowmire." Going by the look on Clara's face, Nios assumed that she had never seen the floating cat with the tentacles. "Anyway, I just thought of somewhere we can go."

"Oh yeah?"

"Let's go to a UFO hotspot and mess with people."

"That does sound fun," admitted Clara with a grin, "I guess it's a date. As soon as you finish teaching Nios how to not poison people."