Work Text:
He goes exploring between her thighs as if he’s not sure what he’ll find there. He kisses her, slowly, softly, mouths her neck and ears, tasting her – he’s tasting her, all over, quite methodically, almost scientifically (almost).
And he’s exploring between her thighs with his fingers, just as gently, just as intently, pushing up the hem of her skirt, fingernails grazing her legs, her skin prickling. With his other hand he’s stroking her plain white standard issue Marks and Spencers knickers with the dodgy elastic, because all her fancier ones are in the wash and she’s due her period any day now so she wasn’t going to put on her favourite Little Miss Sunshine ones or her lucky Batgirl ones or her new purple polkadot ones that morning. So yes apparently she’s going to shag the Doctor in her granny pants. Not that that’s going to put her off.
She gives him another kiss, just to make sure he knows who’s in charge here, taking his face between her hands, cupping his ridiculous chin.
“I’m not her, you know,” she points out, firmly, trying to keep her voice from wobbling even though his fingers and the granny pants combined are creating some really interesting friction.
“Mm – what?” He’s a bit more distracted than usual, which she supposes is understandable.
“Her – whoever, whichever friend you lost who made you sad. I’m not her. I’m me. You’d better actually be shagging me, not thinking about her, okay?”
“No,” the Doctor agrees, after a moment’s consideration. “I mean – yes. I mean – you’re very pretty.”
He’s searching her face, to see if he’s said the right thing, so she kisses him again, wondering what this is going to be like. He’s 1000 years old so he must know a thing or to, surely? Though he also sort of strikes her as the type who’s probably learned everything in the universe except what a clitoris is (or if he does know he pretends not to because he can’t say the word outloud without giggling). It’s a shame she’s never going to be able to boast about having done it in a spaceship, really – no one would believe her – let alone with an actual alien. What’s he got between his thighs, anyway?
She doesn’t care, she decides. She doesn’t care what he’s got, she doesn’t care that she’s in her granny pants, she just cares about how careful and gentle he is, handling her like he’s frightened he’ll break her, looking at her with this sort of disbelief, like she might disappear any moment in a puff of smoke. It’s sweet and it’s lovely and actually this is a bit weirdly profound, isn’t it? He’s so old. He’s older than anything she’s ever put her hands on before, he’s older than anyone on earth, and here she is stroking his skin made of cells that are alive, feeling him breathe, feeling where he has two hearts that have been beating since before she was anything but dust. Maybe that’s why he’s being so careful with her, she’s so young compared to him. What’s that bit in Lord of the Rings with Arwen and Aragorn? Something about saplings…
“I don’t normally do this,” he explains, half mumbling it into her shoulder. “You should know that. I’m not – in the habit…”
“Bit rusty, are you?”
“What? No,” he blinks, “I mean, I’m not – in the habit of – bringing young girls back here and – ”
“Of course you aren’t,” she’s teasing but he seems hurt and she regrets it, seeing the furrow to his brow – so this isn’t just shagging to him, either, is it? (Not that that’s surprising – actually what’s more surprising is that his earnestness is a relief).
He takes his hand off her skirt hem and brushes a stray, sweaty strand of hair back off her forehead, behind her ear, and it feels more intimate, somehow, than his fingers touching the dodgy elastic on her knickers.
“You’re beautiful,” he tells her, “beautiful and fragile and – ”
“Here,” she points out, “and real, and alive, and you won’t break me, Doctor, I’m not – I’m here. Okay? Here.”
She grasps his wrist, where his fingers curl around the waistband of her knickers, and guides them down. His forehead’s damp where it rests against her own, his breath warm – the entire TARDIS feels warmer than usual, almost humid (maybe it’s finally taking a liking to her? Certainly makes it easier to start pulling off layers of clothing….) and when his fingers brush against where she’s open and slick it feels good. Domestic, even, like they do this all the time, deliciously familiar.
There are some things, at least, that turn out not to be at all mysterious, and Clara considers for a while but ultimately decides that it’s reassuring, not disappointing, that the Doctor has sex a lot like most other men have sex.
A bit awkwardly, a bit messily, a bit passionately. She hugs him close, because he needs holding, really – that’s what he wants, someone to hold – and because it feels good how hot and real and normal his body feels against hers. They haven’t actually managed to get out of all their clothes yet – this has all happened rather quickly, one minute running round a planet saving the day like normal, the next in a tumble of arms and legs and mouths in the TARDIS, pressed up against the guardrail that’s presumably meant to stop them both tumbling down into the guts of the thing, the TARDIS console humming sharply and throwing blue light over everything so Clara’s skin looks slick silver-grey under the Doctor’s fingers.
They can worry about clothes in a minute – right now, right at this moment, all Clara’s brain activity is being brought to one singular point of need. The tip of him, finding the right point at which to enter her: she uses her fingers, pushing her knickers out of the way with one hand, grasping him with the other.
He’s only half way kicked his trousers off, she’s having to fight his boxers – swears, loudly, that his elastic is much more efficient than hers, and he laughs and she laughs because this is really fucking ridiculous oh god – he presses into her, quite quickly, and it’s like all the breath goes out of her.
“Sorry – did I – ” He feels her tense and stops, worried.
She can’t talk, so she wraps her arms around him, fumbling fingers through his hair, kissing his neck, his ears, pulling him close – she needs him to do that again, please, yes, good, immediately.
He does, a little more gently, this time, and it’s absolutely bloody heavenly.
“Oh – god,” she manages, bunching fists in his shirt. He breathes out into her hair, nuzzling at her temple, moving in short, careful little thrusts.
Alright, so, maybe she’s wanted this on a slightly cruder level than she’d ever admit (it’s been a little while, it’s not easy to have sex when you live in a house full of other people, grieving people, children). So that bit is just… good. And the way everything’s just gone really quiet except for the scrape of clothes and slither of skin to skin and gasping, hitches of breath and the little noises she’s trying not to make in the back of her throat. It’s like they’re the only people in the universe, this the only moment that matters, theirs the only world that counts for anything. Just for a little while she’d like to believe it.
The Doctor kisses her neck, nips at her ear – the gentle pressure of his teeth feels so good she could cry. She keeps one arm tight around his shoulders to support herself and reaches with her free hand to rub at the point where they’re joined, because the Doctor is having to hold onto her with both hands to stop them both tipping over the railing. It’s only take a little –
She hits the crest of an orgasm just as the Doctor whispers her name into her ear, and somehow that just about helps her up, over the edge of it, and then she’s spiralling through white hot heat, thrown across her skin as the Doctor kisses her open mouth, mumbles her name again and again as his thrusts speed up.
He must finish as she’s still coming down from it, because she’s still rather hazy and warm and limp feeling when he’s suddenly scooping her up, gathering her to his chest and then laying her down on his jacket on the floor, kicking off his shoes and trousers before joining her.
Clara fits herself to the Doctor as soon as he lets her, hooking her leg over his thigh, tucking herself up against his chest, tugging at the buttons of his shirt – she wants to rest her ear against his bare skin, listen to his hearts (because when else is she going to get the chance to listen to someone with two hearts breathing?)
He has tugged off her granny pants in the move from rail to floor, and is now equally preoccupied in unbuttoning her dress.
“This is inconvenient,” he tells her, yawning, when he finds her bra under the cotton.
She snorts, kissing him. “For you, maybe.”
“Yes – for me – that’s rather the point – ” he mumbles the words between kisses, gives up, goes back to kissing her.
“Don’t you have a bedroom we could do this in?” She asks, because really, if there’s a swimming pool, there must be a bedroom.
“Um, well, yes…” the Doctor glances back, over his shoulder, at one of the labyrinthine corridors leading out of the console room, “several, actually, but I keep losing them – and I was worried if we went looking before we – we – or you – or I – might get distracted by an adventure and then we wouldn’t get to the sex part at all and that would be a pity.”
“It would indeed,” Clara agrees. She’s stroking his chin again – she likes his chin.
He grins at her – smug and sheepish all at once – taking her hand to kiss it, examining her by the dim silver-grey of the TARDIS. “You are beautiful, Clara Oswald.”
“Am I?” She asks, because she’s enjoying the way he’s looking at her. “All the things you’ve seen, in a thousand years, in all the universe, there must be more beautiful things out there than little Clara Oswald all the way from Earth, surely?”
He considers for a moment, his lower lip pouting in his concentration so that she has to sit up and bite it (gently), and when she’s finished he’s shaking his head. “Nah. Nothing so beautiful as little Clara Oswald all the way from Earth, not a thing, not a chance.”
He must be lying, but he’s looking at her that way again – that wondering way, like he’s in awe – and no one’s ever looked at her in all her life like that. It’s enough, for now.