We're Fighting (DW Fest Day 2)

“Knock knock knock-knock knock knockknockknockknockknock.”

“Are you serious,” was all Clara managed to utter out as she dragged her feet on the carpet of her flat. She pressed her palm into her eye socket while unlocking the front door, heaving a yawn while opening it and remaining completely unimpressed upon seeing who was disturbing her morning.

Yes, it was precisely who she thought it would be.

“Good morning dear,” the Doctor greeted before sliding past Clara and into the flat, jerking around on his heel to face her. His smile, which would've looked forced on any other person, was a bit too broad for the amount of sunlight filtering in the window, and Clara's only response was to blink.

“Why are you here so early,” she asked in monotone, shuffling back towards her room. “I don't have to wake up for another hour.”

“Then it's a good thing I came when I did,” the Doctor replied, clearly not taking the hint as he jumped in front of her and blocked the path back to her room. “A whole hour Clara, there's so much you can do in an hour!”

She rammed her head into his chest, backing up and repeating the action a few times before growling and staring up at him from under her creased brow.

“I can sleep for an hour.”

“Sleep?” The Doctor bent at the waist, twisting his neck and poking his companion in the forehead. “Sleep can be done anytime, why -”

“Yup, and I'm doing it now.” Clara shouldered her way past the Doctor and forcefully shut the door to her room, the creeeak of the mattress giving the hint that she had flopped back down into bed.

“What am I supposed to do?” the Doctor called after her, turning on his heel again to face the shut door of her room, shoulders slumping.

“Entertain yourself,” was her muffled response.

Fine. Be that way.

- - -

Fifty-six minutes later and the digitized wind chimes that was the default alarm on her mobile broke Clara from the sleep she had managed to slip into, finger swiping the screen without thought to put the chimes on snooze, but a whiff of something cooking caught her attention.

She lived alone. Was there a mysterious chef that broke into her flat to cook?

Mobile clenched in one hand, Clara slipped out into the hallway before peering into her nook of a kitchen and sighed. No, the Doctor arriving at 5 in the morning had not been some strange mundane dream. But the sight before her was probably better delusional dream material anyway.

There was the Doctor, in an apron smudged with batter and flour, sleeves rolled to his elbows and his jacket neatly folded over the back one of the kitchen chairs. He was posed as if ready to strike at the stove, which was housing a frying pan led to by a trail of batter extending to the counter and a mess-covered bowl. Clara raised an eyebrow before knocking on the door frame, causing the Time Lord to fling his arms up.

“Clara!” he shouted quickly as he stepped backwards deliberately. “Are you awake this time or are you going to sleep for another hour?”

She rubbed her eyes with one hand in response, leaning on the frame with her other arm. “I have to go to work. I'm awake.” She paused before adding, “You have to go to work too,” fighting off morning drowsiness enough to smirk a bit.

The Doctor jerked his head to her, jutting out his bottom lip and clicking his teeth. “I know that. That's why I'm here.” He swerved with a slight flourish, extending his hand to the table. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, Miss Oswald. Do you eat breakfast?”

“I do,” she lied, following his hand flourish and pulling out the empty chair at the small table. There were three plates set – a larger serving platter with broken remnants of what she gathered were pancakes, and two smaller plates flanked with various condiments pulled from her refrigerator. Butter and syrup and marmalade, good, but also ketchup, sour cream, cottage cheese, and a container of peach yogurt. Clara raised an eyebrow but shrugged it off, spearing a few of the pancake bits and landing them on her plate before dressing them with syrup.

All things considered, the pancakes did not taste bad.

The Doctor slid down in the seat with his jacket, still donning the apron and eagerly stabbing and sliding several of the pancake onto his plate. He beamed with pride upon cutting them apart, sliding his hand holding the fork to the small container of sour cream and cracking it open, unaware of the grimace Clara gave him.

“You – excited?” Clara attempted small talk, deliberately avoiding looking at the mess of food the Doctor had before him. He had proceeded to drizzle ketchup on top, followed by a few pats of butter, and she was doing her best to not imagine the taste that would've resulted. The Time Lord grinned at his plate, clearly delighted in his creation, before responding.

“It's nothing too serious, is it now?” he pondered, stabbing a chunk of the mess and shoving it in his mouth. Clara buckled her head towards her plate as her stomach churned. “I'm not there for the job, I'm there for the information access.”

“Yeah, well, don't tell the headmaster that.”

“What, I'll be gone before the first paycheck is deposited.”

Clara looked up, fork in mouth, eyebrow quirked. “What bank account did you give them?”

He shrugged. “Made one up. Just numbers and such. Perhaps some lucky fellow will wake up and find some extra coin in his account, that's not a bad thing.”

“And then get called for suspicious account activity?”

“It's more money, not less, it isn't fraudulent charges.”

“'Sir',” Clara imitated, pitching her voice lower, “'at what point in time were you employed by Coal Hill Secondary School?' 'Uh, I never was.' 'Sir are you aware that your account has seen increased activity within the past week?' 'It has? Oh no, has my account been hacked?' 'No sir it appears -'”

“All right, fine,” the Doctor grumbled, slopping up his condiment mess aggressively with several bits of pancake on his fork. “What do you propose I do?”

“Go back in time?”

“That wouldn't fix this timeline.”

“Find the bloke whose account you accidentally hacked, I guess.”

The Doctor threw his head back. “But Claraaaaa...” he whined, slumping in the seat. “That would take so much time...”

Clara tapped her fork on her plate, leaning onto her elbows and poking her face out. “Time. Machine,” she punctuated before stretching her arm and spearing up the last remnants of pancake left on the platter.

“Time is still time, it's not like I'm going to get any younger by chasing after this man.”

“Isn't age a moot point at – what are you, a healthy two thousand?” Clara mused while nibbling on the burnt edge of the pancake.

The Doctor scrunched his upper lip into his nose, focusing at the wall above his companion's head. “Something like that I suppose, give or take a few decades.”

Clara giggled before fighting off a yawn, running a hand through her hair as she slid the last bite of pancake through the last streak of syrup on her plate. “Oh – thank you for breakfast, Doctor. I normally don't get anything this -”

The Doctor's fist hit the table, his eyes wide as the dishes clattered and he started at the now-empty center plate. “What – what happened to the food?”

“We...we ate it.” Clara swiftly pulled her fork from her teeth, chewing the last bite of her breakfast as the Doctor stared at her, his mouth slightly agape and exhaling shallow breaths.

“You...you ate it?”

“It was there, I assumed it was free for me to eat.”

“But you're – you're so small!” The Time Lord set his utensils down in confusion, rising from his seat slightly and staring harder at the plate, as if the slight change in level would cause more pancakes to appear. “You ate more than I did!”

“You were counting?” Clara huffed, throwing down her fork with a bit more force than intended, and glared at the man across the table. “Excuse me for eating food made with ingredients I bought!”

“There were seven! Three for you, four for me – that makes sense!”

“Then why didn't you take it to begin with?”

“I didn't want to take four right away, the table would be unbalanced! If anything I thought you might only eat two and -”

“We are not having this conversation,” Clara shot back firmly, scooting herself out from the table and standing up. She punched one fist towards the ground, jabbing an accusing finger with her other hand towards the Doctor. “This is my flat, with my food, and until you feel like contributing your funds to it, then I will do as I wish with whatever is in here.”

“Oh – oh I get it.” The Doctor stood to his full height, sneering at his small companion who did not shrink back one iota. “I come here and make you breakfast and – and this is how you feel you can treat me, huh?”

“It's called generosity,” she sniped, her bottom lip curling. “You know, selflessness. Or maybe, I occasionally freeload off my mate, I should be nice to her.”

The Doctor's head jerked back. “Mate?” he asked cautiously.

“Oh don't you dare,” Clara growled, leaning onto the table with both palms, glaring up at him. “Don't you try to change the subject – not when you're the one being immature over a pancake.”

The Doctor continued the stare for a moment longer before snapping his jaw shut and slamming one hand to the table.“Okay. You see this?” With his free hand, he motioned between the two of them. “This right here? We're fighting.”

“Fine,” Clara spat, turning on her heel and marching out of the kitchen. “Don't be late for work, Mister Smith.”

- - -

“...Miss Oswald?”

Clara finished writing a sentence on the whiteboard before turning to face her class. “Yes?”

The student whose hand had been in the air shrank in his seat when he saw the slight glare in his teacher’s eyes. Whatever had been eating her this morning was still caught in her system. “Um, it's...the caretaker, he's...staring in the window again.”

She held her gaze with the student for a moment longer before her eyes darted to the bank of windows lining the wall. The Doctor's head was creeping up from below, eyebrows furrowed and glaring in, and he made sure their sights connected before he ducked down again.

“Ignore him, please, Mister Ingman.”

“O...okay...”

The strange new caretaker was not helping his case by seemingly creeping on Miss Oswald, appearing here and there around the building as she went about her morning. He had been there when she arrived, glaring straight across the parking lot, he had been there down at the end of the hall when she walked to her classroom, glaring again, and he was standing in the doorway of the main office, once again glaring, as she brushed past him to check her mailbox. If Mister Smith wasn't so good at showing up right where he needed to be when duty called, he most likely would've been fired within the first hour of the day.

But Clara's students were more concerned with the nonchalant attitude of their teacher, who seemed to pay no need to the grumpy owl of a man and instead brush off his behaviors. Was this...normal? Did Miss Oswald just have a thing for strange men? Where was her bowtie-clad square-headed boyfriend? He always seemed to show up at odd times, especially right before things happened, but he had been strangely absent the past few months.

...Wait, hadn't they seen Mister Smith before?

“Aren't you worried?” a student finally piped up, causing Clara to stop writing mid-letter. She hesitated before looking over her shoulder at the girl in the front row who had interrupted. “I'm sorry Miss Oswald but – my mum is always telling me about things happening to young women and saying I need to be careful, so I just...”

Clara quirked her lip, processing the words before a small smile came to her mouth and she returned to writing. “That is very thoughtful of you, Miss Durnin, but you don't have to worry about me.” And before the implied arrogance could settle in, she added, “The caretaker and I go way back.”

An audible wave swept through the classroom, and Mister Ingman found it fit to speak. “You know him?”

“Yes, actually.” Clara continued to write on the board, suddenly nervous about turning to find her pupils staring at her in whatever emotion they chose to feel – probably a mix between confusion and curiosity with maybe a dash of shock. She grabbed a breath before continuing. “Mister Smith – that's the caretaker – we're – friends.” Hopefully they didn't pick up on the jilted words, and judging by the continued murmur, they hadn't. “He can sometimes be a bit on the grumpy side but he's otherwise harmless.” She looked over her shoulder again, smiling a bit wider. “No need to worry about me, or about him for that matter.”

There was another question hanging in the air, and a rather obvious one – how on Earth does someone like you get to be friends with someone like him? But nobody was willing to ask it, and the sudden sing-song way their teacher was behaving was enough to really stop anyone from trying to pry. When Miss Oswald was in a good mood, class went better. When she was in a bad mood, it meant way too much literary analysis.

If only the caretaker would stop pretending they couldn't see him from the windows.

- - -

Clara found the Doctor exactly where she thought she would: his little shed that was designated as 'his office', and a quick knock on one of the doors had it spring open to reveal the still-glaring, still-not-that-intimidating man staring back at her.

“It's lunchtime,” she said, lifting a takeaway bag. “Your first day, so I bought fish and chips.” With a slight smile she added, “You like those, right?”

The Doctor wordlessly snapped his arm out to grab the bag, still glaring at her, but she managed to pull it out of his reach. “I got some for me too you know.”

He continued glaring, but followed in silence as Clara stepped back from the shed-office and made to go sit on the curb from the sidewalk that led to the parking lot. She tucked her legs to the side and looked up at him, patting the concrete next to her while maintaining a tight grip on the bag.

“No sits, no chips,” she said, and with a roll of his eyes, the Doctor sat himself next to her, the muffled thump on the sidewalk resulting from a spry fall that seemed to defy his apparent age (Time Lord semantics aside). Once satisfied, Clara opened up the bag and handed him a Styrofoam container, holding onto it a bit longer as he tried to take it from her hands.

“What do you say?” she chided, and he shot his eyes at her, still glaring, still with his upper lip curled.

“Thank you,” he muttered quietly, and she smiled cheerfully while letting go of the box. The Doctor quickly hunched over it, snapping it open and popping a chip in his mouth without much delay, before quickly throwing a few more in to follow.

“This doesn't change anything,” he said while chewing, though he obviously figured however much food was in his mouth was appropriate to talk with. “We're still fighting.”

“Oh are we now?” Clara broke apart one of her fish strips, tossing it in her mouth and chewing before continuing to speak. “Because from what I can see, it's just you pretending we're fighting so you have an excuse to be angry and try to make me feel guilty for eating what was rightfully my food.”

“No. We're fighting.”

“I think to be fighting, we both have to be in agreement that we're fighting.” Clara ate the other half of the fish before pinching a few of the chips in her fingers. “And you know, I think it was about the fourth time you were at my window and disturbing my class that I realized that we're not fighting, you're just being a cosmic five-year-old.”

“I am not,” the Doctor spat quickly, bits of potato falling from his mouth. Clara frowned at his etiquette and stared at him, chewing her food while giving the most unimpressed face she could muster. “How is it selfish that I, as the creator of the food of which you partook this morning, would perhaps want a bit extra for my efforts?”

“You just said it. You – you literally just said why you were selfish.”

“It's equal compensation, it isn't selfish. Selfish would be if – if you were to make me something, and I ate more because I felt entitled to it.”

“So you're saying that I was selfish, then.”

The Doctor paused, looking up and staring across the parking lot, his eyes running a mile a minute as his chewing slowed and he began to realize he was speaking words that had actual meanings attached to them – and that he was doing this to an English teacher.

“No.”

“Yes, yes you are.” Clara smirked, continuing to put pressure on the man by keeping up her gaze but still eating her lunch. “I'm entitled? Is that it? You're trying to spin this that I'm the selfish one?”

Hastily stuffing more food in the mouth, the Doctor kept up his stare, chewing rapidly at a pace that made Clara think he was trying to keep up with his brain. “N-no, darling, that's not, you're not...you're not...”

Clara stood up, putting another strip of fish between her teeth and patting the Doctor on the head with her free hand, twitching her fingertips slightly for a light scratch at his curly hair. “If I made something for you, I'd let you eat more, because I am your hostess and you are my guest. That is how manners work. None of this 'compensation' business.” She paused, leaning down so her chin was level with his ear, her hand still on his head. “And again, I need to remind you – my flat. My food.”

“I cooked,” he grumbled, snapping back to his mood of minutes previous. She sighed.

“Here I thought you were being nice.”

Clara picked up the takeaway bag before straightening up and heading back towards the side door she had come out of earlier to see him. “Well, I have some papers to photocopy, I should get going.”

“We're still fighting,” the Doctor muttered, stuffing another strip of fish into his mouth and ripping it in half.

“Of course we are.”

- - -

Against his better judgment, the Doctor had given in to Clara's invite to her flat after school, saying that it was just a good a place as any for them to discuss whatever “intel” he had gathered. He knocked on her front door again, having learned that despite being given a key (“don't tell the landlord, they don't want duplicates made but they want too much money for a second”), it was always better to knock first.

Well, that's what Clara said, and what did he know about living in a flat.

So there he was with the early-evening sun to his left, tapping his foot impatiently as the person inside rattled around and eventually made her way to the door. After a few turns and slides, the door opened and revealed Clara – a Clara in an apron and with a slight bit of powder on her sleeves. He raised an eyebrow at her appearance.

“Come in,” she said, her tone more of an order than an invite, and the Doctor followed with wordless compliance, hesitating only slightly as he debated if he should take off his shoes or not. He observed that her feet were bare, her toes digging into the carpet, so he decided to quickly kick off his shoes before following her deeper into the flat.

The air smelled of melted butter with a light whiff of vanilla, which only intensified the closer to the kitchen they got. The Doctor followed his companion in silence, swerving into the kitchen seconds after she did and coming to a complete stop upon transitioning to tile floors.

Clara was standing next to the small table, both hands pointed dramatically at the table. It was set-up exactly like it had been in the morning, down to the condiment containers. The only difference was there was merely a single plate on the table, and on it, a single pancake.

“There.”

The Doctor stared at it before looking up at her, his eyes wide but brows furrowed in a mix between confusion and continued grumpiness. He opened his mouth slightly, which Clara had picked up how to respond to rather quickly.

“You wanted a pancake. There you go. And it's in one piece, so dare I say it's better than the original one that I swiped this morning.”

A few seconds passed before the Doctor quietly made his way to the table, cautiously pulling the chair out and gingerly dolling out the dressings as he had half a day earlier before eagerly cutting into the singular flat cake before him.

It was perhaps one of the best thing he'd eaten since getting the new face. Clara was a blessing of a cook to have around.

“Are we still fighting?” she asked cheekily, returning briefly to the stove and moving the frying pan to the sink. The Doctor was attempting to savor what little food there was to eat, but it was difficult to control given how well all the flavors and textures were mingling.

“No dear, no,” he managed to speak through his bites. “We're not fighting, and I apologize for...”

The Doctor stopped mid-thought when he looked up at the noise of Clara's chair scraping against the floor. In her hand, something that she was casually already halfway through with eating, was a pancake.

“...What is that?”

“Hm? You mean – the pancake?”

“Yes,” he answered curtly, his jaw twitching.

“There was enough batter for another one, why would I not make it? That'd be a waste.”

The Doctor inhaled sharply through his nose, setting his fork down on the table and lowering his brow again. “We're still fighting.”

“No we are not.”