Eyes Bigger Than Her Appetite

He pushes into the TARDIS, slamming the door behind him, and she has about half a second to notice him fire a satsuma at the wall before he's on her, a hand at her back, the other at the back of her neck, pulling her upward so quickly that the edges of her robe trail like a cape, and she can do nothing, she can't speak— she could probably have protested, if she'd really wanted to— and he sets his thin lips on hers, without delicacy and without precision, breathing warmth into her and taking something— she isn't sure what— in return. She sets her hands on his narrow shoulders, and he pulls her impossibly closer, so she opens her mouth and she lets this go on, and on; the most enthusiastic hello she's had for a long time, and she doesn't mind.

He brushes one last open-mouthed kiss to her temple, and breathes, "Thank you."

She manages a slightly squeaky, "Don't mention it."

His eyebrows draw down a bit.

"Okay," he says.

And he doesn't.

They set a fire in the eighteenth century.

"Air quality," he says, and his mouth grows smaller, briefly, in an expression of distaste. "Terrible."

"And you think that this will help," she says, eyes fixed on the wavering flame of his match. He holds it up in long slender fingertips, and his eyes flick from the brightness to her, and then back again. He shrugs.

"Can't hurt," he says. "Let's find out."

It's the Thames. They've set the Thames on fire.

"It will burn out quickly," he says, coming to stand behind her, his breath in her ear, and she feels his long, slim, straight body like a drain pipe at her back. "One brief bright flare, a flash, and it's gone. Nothing left but ashes."

She watches for the brief, blight flare. She wants to pull out a stopwatch and time this, but she can't move. She counts— slowly, deliberately— and the brief bright flash goes on, it lasts longer than expected. She wonders what he is trying to tell her.

"Let's go to Berlin," he says.

"We've been to Berlin."

"Let's go back."

He takes her back to Berlin. It is February, and the TARDIS dresses her in a long black coat with a fur-lined inside, and after a very good, exorbitantly expensive dinner— he manages to put off payment by judicious use of the psychic paper— he walks her or she walks him down the street, to stand on the corner, to watch their breaths mingle and freeze in the air like things remaining unsaid.

She says, "Since when do you ever go back?"

He says, "Since none of your business. Are you cold?"

She shrugs her shoulders inside the enormous coat. "Nope. Furred inside. You ought to have bundled up, you know. Gloves, at least." His hands must be freezing. He brings them up to his mouth and curves his fingers over and puffs on them, but the warmth from his breath is fleeting and his knuckles are white in the cold.

"Doctor," she says, "let's go somewhere warm."

But he isn't paying attention, he is stepping closer to her and unbuttoning the middle button of her coat; which seems an unlikely intrusion, she thinks, but her tongue is suddenly as frozen as her breath, and so she says nothing as he reaches in and slides his arms around her; she can feel them at her back. He turns one hand awkwardly palm-outwards and pets the inside of the coat.

"Thought you were against hugging," she manages.

"You thought I was against going back, too."

"But really against the hugging. I remember very clearly."

"This isn't a hug," he says. "I can see you."

He can, too. His eyes are fixed on her face, on her mouth, as though she's all that is. As though she's all that's ever been. So she leans up, and he leans his head back, straightening the weathered column of his neck, lifting his chin.

"I wouldn't, if I were you," he says. "I'm a dangerous man, Clara."

And she only laughs at him because there is nothing she can think of to say. There is nothing to be said.

Bermuda.

"You're really keen on things that start with B, these days, aren't you?"

They're on a beach, no less. They've been on a beach before; she settles into the memory of it. Waking on some foreign shore to find him scribbling words in the sand, words that the TARDIS did not translate. Loops and swirls and circles with bites taken out of them; words in his own language. Words in the language of his hearts.

"You said to go somewhere warm."

She shields her eyes against the sun, and squints at him. "Since when do you listen to me?"

"Afraid of what might happen if I don't," he says, mockingly, and holds his palms up as though to ward something off; ward off what, she can't say. A blow, poorly aimed, or another slap. Or another hug. Because he doesn't do those. It's been mentioned. He jerks his chin at the water.

"Go and have a bathe," he says.

She raises her eyebrows. "Are you trying to tell me something?"

"Only that you smell like a human," he says. "Which is bad enough. Can hardly stand to sit here by you." His hand is creeping over the sand towards her as though it has a mind of its own. He catches it and pressed it firmly down, fingers making divots deep into the white grains. She shivers away from his grasp, and pushes her own hands down against the sand, pushes herself up and off of it.

"Haven't got a bathing suit."

His eyes, in the sun, are pale as milk. They glitter, and she steps away from him.

"Improvise," he suggests, delicately, and she trudges off towards the water, desperate suddenly to get away from him, and waits till there is the alien equivalent of a palm tree between them— more or less— before she pulls her top over her head, shimmies out of her trousers, and makes a last desperate rush for the comfort of the water. When she glances back at the beach, it seems he isn't even looking. Thank God for small mercies, she thinks, angrily, and goes under. The water turns everything blue and peaceful, and she decides she won't bother with him anymore; she'll swim to Japan. Every planet has a Japan.

She ignores the dress that the TARDIS offers her in favor of something reddish orange, like burnt gold, like sunsets and explosions and disastrous events.

The Doctor doesn't look up at her as she comes into the console room.

"Comfortable?" he asks.

"Yes," she lies. She marches up to him and leans against the console, elbows back. "I want to ask you something."

He's on guard. At least, his eyebrows are. But he says nothing, just looks at her, so she has to screw up her courage that little bit further, and lean in closer, and say, "Would you have come back for me anyway? Or was it just the adventure?"

"That's a difficult question to answer," he says, "things played out the way they played out. I don't have time to go around looking at all possible permutations of all possible scenarios just to amuse you, I've got croquet to invent."

She is momentarily distracted.

"Croquet?" she says. "Why croquet?"

"To annoy people," he says. "Anyway, what you really mean is, did I want to come back for you."

She starts to protest, and stops immediately. That is what she wants to know, really, after all. Who wouldn't want to know that? Was she worth coming back for? Had he thought of it, in whatever time had passed for him before they saw each other again?

She had.

"To answer the question you didn't ask," says the Doctor, sternly, "yes."

She takes a deep breath, and holds it.

"Why?" she says, when she's able to let it out. "Why did you want to come back for me?"

He yanks on a lever with a particularly violent hand.

"I missed you," he says, in the same tone of voice that he uses to condemn villains and put small-minded people on their toes, the same tone of voice he will use to inspire riots and quell supernovae into submission. The same tone of voice he's said her name in, once, at the leaking leaping border of a volcano. Angriest man in the universe, her Doctor. Sometimes. She seems to bring it out in him.

"Right," she says, with a tucked-edge smile. "That's all I wanted to know."

They have a conversation once. It isn't this conversation, but it means the same thing, so. Close enough.

Since when do you go back, she says.

Since sometimes back is the way forward, he answers.

Since when do you go back for someone, she asks, and she's insistent.

Since the someone is you, says the Doctor. He takes her hand.