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“Clara, why are you making that noise?”
Clara looked up from her battered copy of Pride and Prejudice to see the Doctor watching her, a frown creasing his face. “What noise?”
The Doctor waved his hands near his neck. “The not-singing one. That sound with your throat.”
“You mean humming?”
“Yes! That!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Why are you humming?”
“Because I’m happy?” It sounded like it was more of a question than a statement, as if Clara were questioning her happiness. Or maybe just the Doctor’s ability to comprehend happiness.
“Well, stop it. I’m trying to concentrate, and you’re distracting me.” He turned away and continued scribbling on his chalkboard. He was almost done with what he was working on, but she didn’t need to know that.
Clara sighed and rolled her eyes at the Doctor.
“Clara, I can sense you rolling your eyes. One of these days you’re going to sprain something doing that,” he warned.
She sat up straighter in the chair at that. “Is that really possible?” Clara wondered.
“I was joking. Of course it’s not possible.” The Doctor paused. “Well, maybe in some species of chameleons.” He started to make his way to the stairs, babbling about some chameleon-filled planet, then stopped. “There you go distracting me again,” he scolded.
Clara shook her head. “I think you’re just trying to blame me for your own attention problems.” The Doctor predictably ignored her as he passed by. “I’m serious,” she insisted. “I saw it in my students all the time. They would claim they couldn’t concentrate on their classwork. When I talked to their parents, it turned out the real reason was the poor students had a -” she quickly clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the rest of the sentence from escaping.
The poor students had a crush on her. There was no way the Doctor would take her argument seriously if it was that he was essentially an infatuated teenager. Not to mention how completely ridiculous the idea of him having a crush on her was. Clara’s cheeks burned at the thought.
The Doctor had stopped ignoring her. In fact, his entire demeanor suggested he was trying to hide the fact that he was hanging on her every word. “Had a what, Clara?” he asked softly. He leaned against the railing closest to her, eyebrows furrowed. His tongue poked out of his mouth to swipe across his lips, and Clara blushed harder when she realized she was watching it.
She quickly snapped her gaze back to his eyes and cleared her throat. “They had a… um,” she looked at the bookshelf near them and prayed. For what, she wasn’t exactly sure, but Clara knew she wanted out of this conversation. “Brain parasite,” she finished as she read the spine of the first book she saw in English before looking back at the Doctor.
“Your students routinely had brain parasites?” The Doctor’s eyebrows shot up. Whatever he had been expecting, it certainly wasn’t that. At Clara’s nod, he continued with a smirk, “I hope you didn’t drink the water there then.” His smirk faded as the implication set in. “Are you saying you think I have a brain parasite?” he demanded indignantly.
Clara shrugged and gave her own smirk. “I’m just saying don’t rule out any possibilities.” She exhaled quietly when the Doctor moved away and started grumbling that Time Lords are impervious to brain parasites. That was a close one. She opened her book again and continued reading. This time she stayed as quiet as possible to avoid starting another awkward conversation.
Clara was so caught up in Elizabeth and Darcy’s story she didn’t notice that the Doctor had finally solved whatever problem he had been working on and had crossed back to her and the bookcase. He ran his fingers over the titles, pausing at Brain Parasites and Other Things That Might Kill You. The Doctor removed the book from the shelf and sat down in the chair next to Clara’s. He started flipping through the pages looking for a particular picture. The Doctor grinned manically when he found it, and he looked at Clara, waiting for her to finish reading. He estimated that she only had about ten pages left, so it shouldn’t take long.
When she finished, Clara closed the book, smiled, and hugged it to her chest. She closed her eyes and leaned back in the chair with a content sigh. Next to her, the Doctor’s manic grin was giving way to an irritated scowl. He opened his mouth to get Clara’s attention, but closed it when he realized she was humming again. The Doctor listened for a little bit, acknowledging that it was the same song as earlier and that it was vaguely familiar to him, but he wasn’t able to place it. Deciding he had heard enough, he reached over and gently pinched Clara’s nostrils together, and the humming immediately stopped.
Clara’s eyes snapped open. “What the hell was that?” She swatted his hand away and set her book down on a table next to the chair.
“Did you know it’s physically impossible to hum with a blocked nose?” he asked conversationally. “The air has nowhere to go, so you have to breathe through your mouth.”
“What’s your point, Doctor?”
“You were humming again, Clara. The song is familiar, but I don’t know where I heard it.”
Clara decided against taking a cheap shot at him not knowing. “It was used in a movie we saw recently that you hated,” she hinted.
The Doctor looked at her blankly. “That’s most of the movies we’ve seen recently. I’m not letting you pick anymore.”
Clara rolled her eyes. On the occasions she had let him pick a movie, he hated his own choices worse than the ones she picked. “Love Actually?” She saw a flicker of recognition in the Doctor’s eyes. “All You Need Is Love. From the wedding scene.” At the Doctor’s nod, she started humming the song from the beginning and was delighted when he softly sang the lyrics.
They sat together this way, Clara humming to keep the rhythm and the Doctor singing until they reached the end of the song. “He loves you yeah yeah yeah.”
Clara’s breath caught in her throat. Had he changed the lyrics on purpose? And when had he gotten so close? They were practically nose-to-nose, and it wouldn’t take much on her part to lean over and kiss him. Before she could act on that impulse, the Doctor closed the distance between them. It was a quick, chaste kiss, and he pulled back to gauge her reaction.
“Look at you. All eyes.” The Doctor frowned. Had he misread her signals? He could have sworn that’s what she wanted. He hated being wrong. His hearts sank, and he had a pit in his stomach. He desperately wanted to apologize and take it back. He was running calculations in his head on how to go back in time and smack himself upside the head without causing a huge paradox when Clara put both her hands on his cheeks and pulled him in for another kiss. He closed his eyes and eagerly kissed her back.
They broke apart and smiled at each other like idiots. Clara removed one hand from the Doctor’s face and grabbed his hand instead, lacing their fingers together. “Do you want to take this somewhere else?”
The Doctor nodded mutely, and they stood up. The Doctor’s book clattered to the floor, and he bent over to pick it up.
“What’s that?”
The manic grin reappeared, but he decided not to show her the picture after all. He held it up so Clara could see the cover then placed it on the vacated chair. “Turns out I may have a brain parasite when you’re around.”
Clara laughed and tugged on his hand. “Never rule out any possibilities.” Together they giggled and ran down the TARDIS corridor, eager to explore this new development in their relationship.