A Collection of Whouffle

The Slap

Prompt: Clara and the Doctor go back to a famous author. Sent in by iron_hulk_084. Enjoy!

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The a Doctor whirled around, clicking buttons that had no purpose and flicking switches that were merely decoration to make the console look neat. It certainly impressed some of his companions when he pressed all of e buttons and such, mostly because they didn't know what they did. Clara highly suspected that they did nothing at all and that it was the just the silly man showing off.

"Doctor, why do you have all of the buttons and switches and levers if only about a quarter of them actually do anything?" Clara asked as she smiled at his efforts.

"Um...they all do things. Why would I have buttons and levers that didn't do anything?" he said, very quickly and what Clara noticed as very defensive.

"Really? So you mean if I went around," Clara said, hitting all of the buttons and levers she had watched ten Doctor press (knowing that they indeed did not do anything), "we might die?"

The TARDIS did nothing as Clara proved her point. The Doctor mumbled something that Clara suspected was not at all nice and giggled. She earned a scowl from the Doctor who contined to keep pressing buttons and such.

"So where to today?" he asked her, obviously trying to move on from the uncomfortable silence that had overcome the atmosphere of the console room.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. And she really wasn't. All of time and space. HW are you supposed to decide?

"Like any people or anything?" the Doctor prompted.

"Um...how about," Clara mumbled before her mind finally clicked, "Edgar Allen Poe!"

"But he's so gloomy and dark..."

"But his work is fantastic!"

The Doctor didn't really have anything better to do, so he typed in the coordinates while Clara hung onto him and the railing. Once they landed, Clara gave the Doctor a smile he hadn't seen in a long time: one that was of pure happiness and feeling. He returned her smile, noticing how her eyes lit up and yet had a sense of longing in them. He just didn't know what they could be longing for.

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As they walked out into the streets, Clara was glad she had decided to wear pants that day. It was freezing, and the Doctor was shivering even under all of his layers of clothes.

"Are you okay?" she asked him, her teeth chattering a little bit. He nodded and took her into his arms, rubbing them quickly to help get some warmth into her limbs.

He had his hands around her middle, hugging her behind, and spinning around a little bit. They were both laughing, just small little giggles, mostly because of the absurdity of the situation they were in.

"Maybe we should go get some coats from the TARDIS?" Clara suggested, which was followed by a quick nod from the Doctor. They emerged two minutes later wearing thick coats that fit into the time period.

"So, Edgar Allen Poe. Why him?" the Doctor asked as they walked down the street in search of the famous author. This earned him a small smile from Clara, who shurgged.

"I don't know. I just really like his work, and whenever I read it, I wonder what it was like for him to write it. What he was like in real life. Must have been the most sad and miserable man around, honestly," she said. "Maybe we could go into one of these pubs and look for him? It'd be warmer in there."

The couple looked in four different pubs, all of which lacked an Edgar Allen Poe. And finally, in the fifth and final pub that existed in the city, there he was. He was sitting by himself, writing something down on a piece of paper. Clara smacked the Doctor's arm and pointed one finger at Poe.

"He's here!" she practically shouted. The Doctor smiled and grabbed her hand to lead her up to Poe.

"Excuse me, Mr. Poe?" he asked, a little bit cautious around the man. He knew how much this meant to Clara so he didn't want to screw it up.

"What," Poe said without looking up.

"Um, my name is the Doctor, and this is my friend, Clara Oswald," he continued.

"So?" the author grunted at them. Clara frowned a little bit, but spoke instead of the Doctor this time.

"I'm a very big fan of your work, Mr. Poe. And I just wanted to thank you for your writing because it has honestly changed my life and the way that I look at things," Clara said. Poe actually looked up this time, and stood to shake her hand.

"Um...thank you, Miss Oswald was it?" he said, taking her hand in his and shaking it again.

The Doctor was a ittle bit offended that he would pay attention to Clara and not him, but he couldn't say he exactly blamed him. Clara was much smoother when she talked to Poe (there was less flailing and such), and she was pretty. The Doctor knew that that's why people would pay more attention to her when they were men, she was beautiful. She was also naturally tiny, so it made her seem more precious than she really was. Clara could handle hersef and people were always surprised to find that out about her.

He was taken out of his trance of thought when he heard a loud slap and a cry from Edgar Allen Poe. Clara grabbed the Doctor's hand and stormed out of the pub.

"Hey! What happened?" he asked her.

"That creep told me we should ditch you and find a paid-by-the-hour hotel room! I mean, I forgot they even had those back this far! And then, when I reminded him that he had a wife, he said 'She doesn't have to know'. Can you believe that? So I slapped him, and here we are, back on the freezing streets of wherever the hell we ended up and I just slapped one of my favorite authors," she said, whispering the last part. "Oh my god what did I just do? Doctor-I just slapped him! He's gonna hate me forever."

"It doesn't matter if he hates you forever, that's what he gets for being a pervert," he said, pulling her into a hug. "Don't worry about it, okay?"

"It just sucks. No one else I've ever met has really taken a liking to me, and the one person who does, I slap. Granted, I wouldn't have ever done anything with him, but-" she was cut off by the Doctor.

"I took a liking to you...maybe not in the same creepy one as him, but a liking nonetheless."

"Yeah, but we're friends. Not the same thing," she reminded him.

"Maybe it's the same thing for me," he muttered under his breath. She didn't hear him. Clara grabbed his hand and pulled him into the TARDIS.

"Thank you for trying," she said.

"Always," he said as a promise to her, and a secret declaration to himself.

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That's it! Vote, comment, and review? The reason I chose Edgar Allen Poe is because he is one of my favorite authors. In real life he was a bit sexually aggressive...but he writes well, so... Anyways! Thank you all for reading, and please send in those prompts! (If you have not read any of Poe's work, I highly recommend you do so. Try reading "A Tell Tale Heart", "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Raven", or any of his poems. "The Raven" is actually one if his poems.)