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They tumbled through the doors, down to the console, Clara pausing to catch her breath before breaking out in another fit of giggles.
‘It wasn’t that funny!’
‘Oh yes, it was.’ Clara gave him a fond look.
Her very own stick insect, fluffier now than ever, making his way through the alien jungle – well, not really a jungle, more just a thicket of shrubs… His coat had caught on what seemed like every single branch, in his valiant attempts at clearing a path for Clara, and while it had led to a fair few scratches on his hands, and admittedly only a couple on hers, the sight of the Time Lord struggling with some alien bushes (‘They’re not really carnivorous, Clara! They’re just friendly!’) had, for some reason, been extremely funny.
Maybe there had been something in the air, she mused. Some kind of euphoria-inducing chemicals, perhaps?
Whatever the case, they were back in the TARDIS now, safe and sound.
She stepped closer and threw her arms around him from behind, inhaling deeply. The scent of his coat, mixed with the smell of the alien jungle – well, thicket of shrubs – was warm and familiar, and it tickled her nose—
—Wait. That wasn’t the scent tickling her nose. It was a leaf. A small, prickly leaf.
Clara sneezed, picked the leaf off his coat and, not seeing a rubbish bin anywhere (she’d mentioned it to the Doctor, quite a few times over the last two years, that he should really have one in the console room), dropped it in his coat pocket. There’d be plenty of space there.
She hoped the leaf wasn’t of the, uh, friendly kind.
Her gaze travelled upwards, to the back of his head, as he was still busy at the controls, not particularly bothered by what she was doing with him. Fluffy, fluffy curls. She grinned. God, she loved his hair. She didn’t think she’d actually ever told him that, but his hair, all wild and unruly now that he’d decided to drop the stern exterior, dark at the back, silver on top, was one of her favourite things about this particular incarnation of the Doctor.
One of her many favourite things, if she was quite honest with herself. But definitely one of the more tangible ones.
It looked so inviting in the warm glow of the room. As if it was just asking for her to run her fingers through it. All silver fluff, adorned with—
Clara couldn’t help it. She let out another burst of giggles.
The Doctor, having entered whatever important information he’d been so busy with entering into the control panel in front of him, turned around at last.
‘Is there something wrong with you?’ he asked with mock-seriousness, belied by the smirk on his face. ‘More wrong than usual, I mean?’
Clara tried to get the laughter under control. It was, not surprisingly, difficult.
‘Your hair,’ she finally managed.
He looked puzzled. ‘My hair?’
Clara nodded, unable to say more.
‘What’s wrong with my hair?’
She took a step closer, not trusting herself to speak, and ran her fingers through his hair. His lustrous, thick, fluffy, curly hair, currently decorated with an assortment of small twigs and leaves, some of them sticking up proudly, others hiding in the floof. Her fingertips, buried in the surprisingly soft mass of Gallifreyan floof, grazed a small branch.
‘Ouch!’
The Doctor raised an eyebrow.
‘Your hair,’ Clara said. ‘It just bit me.’
The Doctor blinked. ‘Clara… Did you hit your head when we were running back to the TARDIS? On a tree trunk? Did you fall over when I wasn’t paying attention? My hair does not bite people!’
Clara had withdrawn her hand and inspected the tip of her middle finger. It was bleeding, although not much. ‘Not your hair,’ she amended. ‘The friendly flora you seem to have brought back with you.’
His gaze dropped to her hand. ‘Ah.’
‘Yes. Ah.’
She resisted the temptation to suck on the fingertip. Alien twigs. She hadn’t had time to clean up yet; she didn’t want to accidentally poison herself. The Doctor had acted ever so put out by all the trouble she’d caused him the last time she’d done that.
They were still standing close. So close she had to crane her neck to see properly. Not that this was really a problem – she nudged him slightly so he took a step backwards and her toe found the thing she’d been looking for, one of the two low boxes the TARDIS had kindly installed (or grown; one never knew with the Doctor’s ship-slash-beloved) on the floor on either side of the console, so she could also reach the controls higher up on the console.
And which, incidentally, put her on somewhat a more equal footing (or whatever the opposite of footing was, anyway) with the Doctor.
Her new vantage point gave Clara a better view of the mess on top of her dear friend’s head. She let out a slow whistle.
‘Clara?’
‘Shush. I’m thinking.’
‘You’re thinking with your hands in my hair.’ He twisted his head slightly to get a better look at her.
‘Mm-hmm.’ He was right. She hadn’t even noticed it but somehow her hands really had found their way back into the curls. It hadn’t been a conscious decision on her side. She could only assume her brain had taken over, figuring that this would be the best chance, and excuse, she’d ever have to really enjoy the feeling of running her fingers through his hair.
Even with him being so much more relaxed around her these days, and so – surprisingly – comfortable with physical closeness, this wasn’t something she’d attempted before. But now…
‘Just give me a moment,’ she said.
The Doctor was looking at her, she knew that, although she did her best to focus her attention on the fluffy mess in front of her instead of the stormy eyes (they looked quite properly grey now, in the warm light of the console room, and she wasn’t thinking about them at all, not in the least, not even about how they seemed to change colour all the time depending on the lighting and his mood and the angle at which the light hit them).
The mess. Yes. She needed to deal with that before the friendly flora started gnawing and biting its way through those silver curls and down to the skin and then the skull underneath. Wouldn’t want that, she told herself firmly.
‘I could just go and shower,’ he offered. Quietly.
He could, of course. He was a fully grown Time Lord. A man perfectly capable of taking care of himself when he put his mind to it. He probably even owned a comb, somewhere, or had some alien contraption tucked away in some box that was specifically designed to pick twigs and leaves out of unruly hair.
She picked out a small twig, holding it gingerly, in case it bit her. It didn’t.
‘Do you have a bag or something – a bowl, maybe – that I could use?’
The Doctor made some sort of noise she couldn’t quite interpret. And then withdrew an empty lunchbox from an inside pocket, holding it out for her.
Clara turned her attention properly to the task at hand now. She didn’t pause to think about what she was doing; picking stuff out of her best friend’s hair was not how she’d envisioned this particular post-adventure cooling-down period (she’d envisioned soaking in a warm bath in the TARDIS for at least half an hour) but then again, they’d done weirder things together lately so all things considered, it was less strange than it probably should have been.
‘There,’ she said a few minutes later, when she was certain she’d got everything. ‘That should be all.’
‘So can I go now?’
He didn't make any attempt to move, in spite of his words, and she sighed, not wanting to relinquish her position quite yet. Her back was complaining a bit, as were her arms, but this opportunity didn’t come around every day… She ran her fingers through his hair one more time, cherishing the softness of the now mercifully souvenir-free curls, mapping out the lines of his ear with her fingertips, his cheek nuzzled against her palm…
Clara blinked. Her hand was still cupping his cheek, covered with a much larger hand: the Doctor’s, his long slim fingers gentle against hers. They were standing very close, she noticed.
Very, very close.
Clara swallowed.
The Doctor was looking straight at her. And there was something about the way he looked at her, now that their noses were almost touching (damn, those TARDIS boxes were a good thing, she thought), something that almost looked as if he might have wanted to—
Could she? Should she? What if she was reading him all wrong?
What if this would be a horrible mistake?
Could she blame it on the alien twigs if needed? Would he believe her? Probably not, but would he pretend he did, for the sake of their friendship?
Should she?
She wanted to. Oh, she wanted to. But not if he didn’t want it, too… Did he? Did he want it?
Clara was quite sure that regardless of whether he wanted to or not, he’d never make the first move. Not even now when he was so forthcoming with the random hugs and seeked to hold her hand more often than the other way around.
So it would be up to her.
She swallowed again, her throat suddenly dry. Her fingers felt cold and hot all at once against his surprisingly soft, cool skin. She wondered if he could hear her heartbeat, so loud did it feel to herself.
The lunchbox dropped to the floor with a small, sulky thud. Clara only registered it when she realised the Doctor’s hand – not the one still pressed against hers on his cheek; the other one, the one that had been holding the box with the twigs and the leaves – was now on her shoulder, drawing her even closer, so close now that there was barely any distance between them at all—
She closed her eyes, just for a moment, to centre herself.
She would do it. She’d faced armies of Cybermen, she’d fought against Daleks with him and won, she’d seen terrible things and lived. She could do this, too.
So she kissed him.
Her eyes were still closed, she realised, when she figured out that it was the side of his chin that her lips had landed on, not his lips, but it only took a moment for them to put the situation to rights.
The Doctor was a surprisingly enthusiastic kisser, she noted somewhere in the back of her mind. Not that it should really have been a surprise, her mind offered, considering he generally did everything with great enthusiasm.
Might need some more practice though, her mind added to the mental list she was keeping. She’d be happy to help, of course.
It was a while later that they finally had to stop. If this had been a romantic movie, the sun would have set and bathed everything in its golden orange light by the time they were finished; as it was, the TARDIS grumbled a bit and dematerialised when he’d accidentally set the ship off when trying to find a more comfortable spot on the console to lean on, and it was the jerkiness of the take-off that shook them apart.
The lunchbox was lying on one side, mostly empty. Half of the leaves and twigs Clara had gathered in it had disappeared.
‘Hmm,’ observed the Doctor. He cleared his throat while adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. ‘I think they may have fallen through the vents to the lower floor. I’ll try to talk the TARDIS into getting rid of them. We probably wouldn’t want a repeat of this.’
Clara gave him a look.
‘I meant the biting,’ he added quickly. ‘You should probably get that finger cleaned up. And bandaged. Alien germs and all.’
‘Yeah.’
She rose to her tiptoes, gave him another quick kiss and picked the lunchbox up on her way to the bathroom. Once out of sight of the Doctor, she grinned at the twigs.
Friendly flora. Such a lovely thing to have accompanied them back home, all things considered.