Doctor Who: Birthday Souffle

The TARDIS was in her kitchen.

Clara came home and there it was, like some unfathomably twee appliance—something to keep in all the Mason jars of snacks you might see on Pinterest. She opened it up, hoping the Doctor hadn't been waiting long—it'd been a long day at Coal Hill and she'd taken a long supper grading papers before finally heading home. She hadn't heard the distinctivevworp-vworpof the TARDIS materializing as she'd gone up the walk, and her ears had become hypersensitive to that sort of thing. So odds were that it'd been there at least a little while.

Inside, the console room was quite empty. It was hard to tell with the disarray, but there didn't seem to be any signs of a struggle. She doubted that the Doctor could be compelled to leave the TARDIS, but from the way there was some method—or maybe lack of method—to the madness, she got the sense he hadn't been dragged away from some adventure or intellectual curiosity partway. Everything was waiting to go—books on their first page, levers neatly waiting to be thrown, phone on the hook and the time rotor was cooling off. From all indications, it'd been a safe, stable landing, the Doctor just popping in for a visit and finding her not at home.

"So where is he?" Clara asked the TARDIS, and it gave a slow pump of the time rotor in response, the vast architecture wheezing a bit. Clara had gotten good at reading the room over the years—literally—and took this to mean the Doctor was inside. Ducking back into her kitchen, Clara poured herself a glass of port and then went back inside, headed into the bowels of the TARDIS.

It'd been a while since she'd explored the vast innards of the old girl. She hadn't lived on the TARDIS for quite some time, instead simply using it as conveyance from wherever the Doctor had picked her up to wherever the Doctor had taken her. All those many rooms and hallways and other such had become something like the glovebox or trunk of a friend's car.

"Doctor?" Clara called in a gentle voice, aware he could be in the midst of some sensitive scientific experiment, or seeing how long he could balance a battle ax on his nose. She sipped from her wineglass. "Doctor?"

From one of the rooms came a noise that sounded much like this: "Hmfhurglplikmacuuu." Instantly, Clara's lips twitched upward in amusement. Shehadonce looked for a bathroom and stumbled upon a vast, Victorian-decorated parlor with a four-poster bed dumped right in the middle, by the fireplace, much where a Chess set and a pair of wingchairs would go in a Sherlock Holmes movie. In it, the Doctor was fast asleep, but tossing and turning in response to her stimuli, his covers drawn down to his waist.

He was wearing a set of pajamas—tailored, but slightly too big for his springy frame, the blue and white pinstripes making the long lean lines of his body appear longer and leaner. A nightcap dotted his head, sagging over one eye, its cap falling down at his lips to stir with his breath. He looked adorable.

Clara pictured it: him arriving to pick her up, finding her out, waiting on her—she could imagine him with his feet up in the console room, playing some music obnoxiously loud to announce himself, or reading a paperback, or admiring how his sonic sunglasses sat on his prominent nose. Then he'd gotten bored, and tired, and decided to take a nap while he waited. With the way he drove himself, Clara couldn't imagine he got much sleep. When it hit him—when the adrenaline all sapped away—he must've slept like death.

Finishing her wine, Clara went to check his day planner, which looked rather more like a paper fortune teller than anything else. Currently, it showed a string of letters and numerals that she took to be the day on the Doctor's personal timeline. Scrawled below that official-looking number was, in the Doctor's scratchy handwriting, "2,840 years young!"

It was his birthday! Clara picked up the day planner and opened it up, seeing a list of activities arrayed out like some diagram explaining a Christopher Nolan movie. He had all kinds of things planned. Petting the first dog on Earth. Riding Apollo 12 into orbit. Dinner date with the cannibals of New Guinea (this had been Xed out). And instead, all he'd ended up doing was napping on Clara's doorstep—or linoleum, rather.

"Silly old man," she said, making a b-line for the TARDIS's kitchen.

***

The Doctor woke to snatch the nightcap from his face, wondering as usual why he went to sleep with a thing that inevitably acted like a pet spider when he woke up with it on, then just as usual tossing it onto the fireplace's mantel to put it on again the next time he slept, in a week or two. It was a good jolt... better than coffee, which he distrusted.

Something told him he hadn't completed his fifty hour sleep cycle, not even close—he'd awoken from something rather startlingly repressed about Donna. In fact, taking in his surroundings, he'd woken up to Clara Oswald sitting on the side of his bed, a soufflé held proudly aloft.

"Happy birthday Mr. President..." she drawled in a bad American accent.

"I was only President twice," the Doctor demurred. "And 'the President' sounds like the name of a bad Frank Sinatra impersonator."

Clara offered him the soufflé. "Chocolate," she declared. "Even you can't turn down chocolate."

"Clara, I have been busy all day—repair work, vortex manipulation,cleaning—you know how many dirty dishes you can pile up in a few hundred years? Let me finish my nap."

"You aren't ready to celebrate your birthday?" Clara displayed her bare leg as if someone might pick her up hitchhiking. "Look! I took off my kit—I'm in my pants."

"All very agreeable," the Doctor said complimentarily. "Certainly a leg that's very functional, but with quite a bit of form as well. I still need my sleep."

"One bite," she insisted, digging a spoon into the soufflé and offering it to him.

The Doctor made it disappear like a magic trick. "Yes, quite a confection, very much a confection,I'm tired."

"I'm in my knickers," Clara reiterated, pulling on the waistband of her panties as if displaying the Calvin Klein logo that ran across them. "That doesn't wake you up?"

The Doctor yawned. "It takes a lot out of a Time Lord, I'm afraid, running from the Daleks and the Cybermen and the paparazzi. When I finally do curl up, I really do need my sleep. And look at this bed, it issocomfortable, the pillow issosoft—"

"Alright then." Clara set the soufflé aside. "Move over."

"Hey now!" the Doctor cried out indignantly. "I really am about to pass out, and I would not appreciate having my virtue soiled while I'm not in to enjoy it!"

"Kinkshaming, Doctor? I'm dismayed." Clara gave him a firm nod and a look of reproof and, bahing, the Doctor shimmied across the bedspread, making room for Clara to wiggle in beside him—the bed comfortably infused with his warmth. "Oh, this is nice. I understand the appeal. Been a long time since we cuddled, eh?"

"I thought you young people weren't into that sort of thing. Just wham, bam, thank you ma'am. Certainly seemed to work for you."

Clara blushed fiercely. They hardly everdid itin the TARDIS, excepting the time he'd bent her over a railing. Far more often, there'd be some break in the action, some waiting period, some moment between them, and suddenly he'd be kissing her, pulling up her skirt, drawing aside her panties—she rarely even saw him take his cock out. Then he was in her, and somehow he always seemed to know when she'd gotten wet, so that there was barely any preamble. Just sex, hard and fast and sudden, orgasms like fireworks behind her eyes, and by the time she'd caught her breath and he'd done up his trousers, there was some new way to attack the problem, some genius deduction he'd come up with.

Not much for romance, her Doctor. At least, not the conventional kind. But she liked unconventional.

"A proper bed and a bit of full frontal nudity is nice too, every once in a while. You don't like it? Having your clothes off for a change? Just being skin to skin with me, is that so bad?"

"I'm a Never-Nude."

"You arenot!"

"Okay, I'm not. But I am sleepy and tired and while I really would love to flirt with you and do sex with you and such some, my eyes are closed. Look how closed my eyes are." They were closed. "I could be asleep now, only we're debating—having sex in beds? We had sex in that bed in Mongolia, remember?"

"Under the sheets, Doctor, not just using it as a surface to...basteme on. You might've well have done me on the floor."

"I know that's your preference, but it's a dirt floor, Clara, you would've ruined your outfit."

Clara scoffed and scooted in next to him, feeling him stiffen in resistance a moment before he obligingly locked his arms around her, the spindly muscle holding her tight, the fabric of his pajamas surprisingly soft and supple against her bare skin. But she preferred his calloused, spindly hands on her waist, fingers settling where her blouse rode up to expose her pale belly.

"There. That so bad?"

"No," the Doctor said, and all the teasing had gone out of his voice. It was low and dark. "Quite nice."

"Proper bed with a proper bedmate. Not a bad way to spend a birthday."

"No. Not bad at all," the Doctor yawned, smacking his lips. Poor dear really was tired.

Still, Clara couldn't resist needling him just a bit more. "Doctor, I thought you got rid of your sonic screwdriver. What'sthis?" she asked, and wheeled her hips back so her ass was pressed to his crotch.

The Doctor groaned inwardly. "You know damn well what it is, Clara."

"Guess not all of you wants to go to sleep..."

"It can wait until morning."

"Sure, sure. But if you want me to suck it, just let me know, birthday boy."

The Doctor let out a long sigh, eyes flying open. "Thatwould not help mesleep. You are familiar with the concept, yes? I've had to time-travel you back to 6 AM so you could stay in bed till noon often enough."

"And just think, we could've been sharing that bed..."

"Clara... you're overdressed."

Clara smiled to herself. "Oh, I am, am I?" She began to draw her blouse up her belly, but the Doctor slapped her hands away, quick as a snake. And instead, his hands went to her panties.

"Oh yes," he said, peeling them down her pubis. She felt the shift of fabric, the press of his pajamas against her bare buttocks. The material didn't feel so soft now. It felt irritatingly, frustratinglynil. None of the character she wanted, none of the feeling of his body—bone and hair and wrinkles, that was what she wanted, the feel of all the years in the man she'd fallen in love with. "Take these off," he commanded, when they were down at her thighs.

Christ, she felt like a schoolgirl getting disciplined by some stern headmaster; her fantasies were embarrassingly retrograde. (But a good reason to wear lots of skirts and jumpers.) Drawing her legs up her body, she pulled her panties down them.

"Give them here," the Doctor ordered, and she handed them to him. Heard his pillows shuffle as he placed them underneath them, then laid his head back down.

Clara was suddenly burning fiercely with need, all the little flirtations echoing inside her. How did he get her so wet, just by ordering her around a little, rearranging her panties some? "Alright, Doctor, alright..." She reached down to hold herself open, wondering if he'd even want her pussy tonight. Sometimes he wanted her ass and that would be just perfect for his birthday: having him pound into her until she was nice and sore, wearing the ache of the pleasure he'd given her for the rest of the day.

The Doctor didn't do anything. His touch was soft and flaxen, his grip loose, his body relaxed.

Clara turned as best she could in his embrace and saw his face. No longer taut or tightly knitted with his fierce intelligence, but relaxed in sleep, smoothed and slackened with rest.

"Doctor!" she moaned before she could think better of herself. God, she was boiling over...! "You have to take care of me!"

"I'm asleep," he replied, sounding genuinely like he was mumbling in his sleep, like he was all but in a coma. "Best take care of yourself."

"You're going to make me—"

"I told you, I was tired." He yawned, one last time. "Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite."

And then he started snoring.

Clara waited a moment, thinking that perhaps he was playing a prank on her. Then she tried recapturing her arousal, touching herself, trying to relive how he had first pulled her panties down, then made her take them off the rest of the way. But his presence—the sexual charisma that so effortlessly engaged her—was far away.

Good masturbation was one thing, but trying to revive a dead orgasm was almost depressing. She stopped and gave in to the Doctor's own sleepy vibe, her kinked up tiredness from work, and the slightly leaden feeling of a bellyful of wine.

It took a long time, but she finally managed to go to sleep. And it was nice. Not being teased by the Doctor, but thinking of how he would tease her more.

***

Clara, not a morning person, woke up feeling surprisingly energetic. She smiled to herself; she felt aroused, even, like she'd been having some kind of naughty dream. Her nipples were stiff, dragging electrically against her blouse, and she had a pleasant reminder of being bottomless, feeling the bedding all up and down her groin and buttocks.

And something else—a touch so light, so subtle, that it was hard for her to register it. Fingers, working playfully at her sex, like a magician would handle a deck of cards. Long, nimble fingers. Not enough to wake her up, but just enough to tease her, provoke her, to build up the kind of wetness that her chaste upbringing associated with sluttishness. She was so wet, it feltwrong.

Which she'd decided was very, very right.

"Doctor!" she moaned fitfully, and suddenly she was in motion, whooping with glee as he turned her over onto her belly and drew her hindquarters up, her face shoved down in the bedspread, her bare ass now up in the air. She felt his legs against hers, his presence behind her—she was prostrate like some devout worshipper to his pillow, while he was crouched behind her like some animal about to pounce. And pounce he did, driving his full length into her in one restless motion.

Clara thought she was saying something like "Oh God!" or "Fuck!" or some other epithets that was equally appropriate to just how fast he was fucking her, how suddenly she was aroused and being fucked and, Christ, about to come. Then she listened to herself—she literally heard herself think—and found out that she was saying "Make me take it" into the mattress pad like some kind of would-be sub.

She climaxed almost instantly, her clit throbbing hard, filled with blood to the point of bursting from the Doctor's busy fingers. But the Doctor didn't stop. He gripped her by the hair and pulled her face up from the bedspread, letting her hear herself cry out in orgasm—embarrassingly high-pitched, mouth so wide open her jaw ached, her nipples clawing at the inside of her blouse and demanding as much attention as the rest of her body. Then she was shoved back down, facefirst, into the bed and the Doctor once more was pistoning into her like some kind of wild animal, some savage beast that could only consume her through this act. She came again. This time, the Doctor let her muffle her cries with the tangled sheets beneath her.

The Doctor rarely made love to her. Usually he fucked her. This wasn't even that. This was rutting, making her feel the sheer boundless depths of his passion for her, his need to possess her body, before he could no longer contain that surging desire. He came inside her—so much, so hot, the sound of his defeated groan so loud in her ears—and she came with him, shocked to find tears in her eyes, the bitter taste of them in her mouth. She was crying. Crying, she'd come so hard.

He pulled out of her and Clara turned around, wondering if he'd want her to clean him off with her tongue—it'd been so hot when he'd done that on Mars, her so worried someone would walk down their dark alley, then just when she'd thought the delicious tension of that worry would dissipate, he'd prolonged it by pushing her down onto her knees and asking, so sardonically polite, if she could get some of her juices off his cock—but he was tucking himself back into his pajamas, reaching for his housecoat.

"Ready to join us at last, sleepyhead?"

Clara gave up on trying to catch her breath. Just panted out "I'm up, I'm up."

"Good. I've decided best not to go on some adventure for my birthday—get into trouble, spoil the whole thing with a few people dying. No, let's just laze around the TARDIS, be decadent. After all, between you and the old girl, we're all friends here. I should spend the day with my friends, right?"

"That sounds like a marvelous idea," Clara said, after letting out a breath she'd thought was deep enough to satisfy her racing heart. "Now where are my knickers?"

"Oh, my birthday present? Quite a thoughtful gift, thank you. I put it somewhere for safekeeping, I'll take good care of them, I promise."

"And my trousers?"

"Ack, those ratty old things? I threw them out. There were big holes in them!"

"Those were pockets, Doctor."

"Oh, really?" He grinned mischievously. "I'll get you a new pair. Once it's not my birthday. Bad luck to give someone else presents on your birthday. Everyone knows that."

"So... I should just swan about the TARDIS totally bottomless for the whole day? Letting it all hang out?"

"I've checked extensively, and I don't think anything'shanging, per se—"

Clara grinned at the old pervert. "And, uhh... how will you get any work done? With the, ah, temptations on display?"

"Oh, Clara, I am used to resisting temptation." He smiled back at her. "After all, it's not like you keep your mouth covered."