AN: Part of the "3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?" continuity, set after the three main fics in that chronology, Clara X OC Thirteen, doesn't make sense without having read the other fics first.

Brighton Rock

1

The sky was only partially overcast, some blots of grey diluting the pale blue and making it a washed-out, pastel shade, spotted with white patches around the noon sun. Crowds of tourists ambled up and down the boardwalk – families, children, youths there for the nightlife – in the half-term heat Brighton was even busier than usual. Between the streetlamps bunting was draped, which alternated between the rainbow flag and the Union Flag, encapsulating most of the city's ideals in a few sun-bleached slivers of fabric dancing in the gentle breeze above countless ice cream vendors. The seaside summer began early there, it was something Clara was eager to experience as a resident, in the perfect temperature outside of the sweltering heat of August in which they had initially arrived nine months ago.

The Doctor picked apart a piece of warm, greasy bacon with her fingers, looking through the window of the café. On occasion she would thumb through the newspaper in front of her, a Metro somebody else had left behind that morning which she had retrieved from a nearby chair when they had arrived. The front page, dated May 30th, 2064, bore news of yet another space expedition. They were five years after the tragic demise of Bowie Base One on Mars, but the advent of lightspeed ships meant that humanity was turning its attention to interplanetary imperialism – and late the previous night another lightspeed ship had left Earth's atmosphere to attempt to reach Europa. She finished her bacon.

"Are you gonna eat that toast?"

Clara glanced up from her tablet at the question; she was trawling through criteria for the previous years' GCSE examinations in order to put together a comprehensive revision guide for the Year 11s when term resumed the following week. She looked at her plate and the slice of toast, cold by now, she had left with old dregs of baked beans and egg yolk spattering them. She smiled and pushed the plate towards the Doctor. The Doctor moved the Metro out of the way.

"Go ahead," Clara said, "It's got real butter, real butter's a bit rich for me, especially on top of the fried bread I had already." She was right about the butter, which tasted so nice it made the fact the toast was cold and somewhat soggy bearable; she always hated wasting food. Clara's attention returned to her tablet as the Doctor began to chew the toast slowly, flipping open the paper. It wasn't nearly as thick as it had once been, though, and printed only the major headlines and the sporting news. The Metro was one of the only newspapers left which ran a physical print anymore.

"I've always liked newspapers," said the Doctor, looking disdainfully at Clara's state-of-the-art tablet.

"Literature adapts."

"Journalism is literature now?"

"It's propaganda."

"It's supposed to be unbiased."

"If you think journalism is unbiased then the propaganda has worked," Clara jibed. The Doctor smiled. "Propaganda's always been considered art – look at Banksy." Now she laughed.

"That's a fair point," she nodded. She agreed with Clara. "You think our Banksy is propaganda?"

"Pfft," Clara scoffed sarcastically, "Bloody liberal pro-gay propaganda, that's what it is." The piece was a canvas piece which had been given to them as a wedding present once upon a time by Banksy, who Clara had managed to befriend after mutually revealing her identity as the famously enigmatic time-travelling poet, C.O. Smith, whose poems appeared typed-up on old paper and wedged inside editions of her favourite books in libraries until some scholar found them. Suffice it to say, she and Banksy had a surprising amount in common, hence the wedding gift they kept in their attic, the enormous canvas gathering dust because they didn't have anywhere to hang it in the living room. Their Banksy, in particular, was a stencil outline of two women standing in the craters of the moon. They were wearing retro astronaut helmets and holding hands; behind them, instead of the US flag which was stuck into the rock surface, the rainbow Pride flag rippled in the low gravity. It was a gift from their most recent wedding.

"What're you reading about in the paper?"

"Just this Europa mission," she said with a sigh, lifting up the Metro to show the front page to Clara; photos of the astronauts, the space craft, a blurry satellite image of Europa itself.

"Which one's Europa?" Clara asked, squinting at the paper.

"The one with the oceans." Clara made no sign of recognition. "We've been. Underwater hotel. You know, it was like a skyscraper, but it went down instead of up? Had those huge ballasts on top to keep it floating? There was that big whale-thing and those weird venomous leeches crawling in through the leaky pipes? One of them bit you and your leg turned green?" As Clara strained her memory Thirteen finished off the leftover toast, and wondered about ordering another slice or two for herself; she didn't know how long their lunch was going to last.

"Oh yeah…" Clara realised eventually, "What do they want to go there for?"

"I guess humans just love things from outer space."

"Things from outer space? Who would lower themselves to that?"

"Personally, I'd have nothing to do with anybody who wasn't from my own planet," she quipped. Clara laughed, smiled, finally turned off the display on her tablet and set it down so that she could finish her tea. The Doctor's brief amusement dissipated. "They won't get there." Clara met her eyes, perplexed.

"Why not?"

"Miscalculating the trajectory of a comet. It's going to hit the hull and take out their solar panels so they won't be able to generate any electricity. They'll die in space."

"Can't you do anything?"

"I have a nasty history when it comes to interfering with human space missions," she sighed, "No. It's a fixed point. I've learned my lesson trying to twist fixed points around." It had been a long time since she had met Clara, and Clara understood perfectly the frequent conflict invoked by fixed points in time. Clara picked up the Metro and folded it the other way along the crease; when she set it back down the Europa mission headline was obscured and all Thirteen could see was a large full-page advertisement for a new-fangled laxative.

"Fixed it," Clara declared.

"You fixed it with poop pills. Good going, Coo."

"I try my best."

"How long are we gonna stay? I'm thinking about getting more toast." Clara lifted the stainless-steel lid on the teapot between them, peering inside.

"I could get a least another cup out of this," she said, "So feel free to get more toast." The Doctor did just that, meandering over to the counter and asking for another plate of toast on brown bread. The server told the Doctor she liked her accent. Clara, eavesdropping, called over, "Her accent's all mine."

"She's just jealous of how cool I am," the Doctor assured the waitress knowingly as she returned to their window table, and the girl laughed before retreating back into the kitchen. She said quietly to Clara, "One of these days you're gonna go the whole nine yards and just pee on me to claim your territory."

"Lipstick stains are a far more effective way for one to mark their territory, sweetheart," Clara said knowingly, "And I've covered you in those on numerous occasions. Anyway, isn't that what the rings are for?"

"I thought the rings are to sell on to a shady pawnbroker after your spouse dies in mysterious circumstances?"

"Now there's an idea… but, you know; Pride season is about to start. I can't go killing my same-sex partner right before Pride season, in the gayest city in the entire country," Clara said, "Come next week, I'll be wearing my bi flag stud earrings every single day until the end of August. You can wear those ridiculous rainbow tights."

"I love those tights, and I wear them all year round," Thirteen said, "Just like the rainbow shoelaces I have for my red sneakers."

"We live on Earth now, sweetheart, you have to theme your outfits depending on the seasons."

"I don't think you do, I think that's something you think people do, but nobody actually does it." Clara raised her eyebrows at this.

"You think people don't dress for the weather?"

"I mean, like, put on a coat, sure, but anything else is extreme. Why should you let the climate be your master like that? I'm my own person."

"Is that why you wore those leather trousers that time we went to Ancient Greece? When you got heatstroke and almost fainted?"

"I did not get heatstroke," she snapped, "I was just very hot."

"You mean like what happens when you get heatstroke?"

"No – shut up. I looked great in those pants."

Clara scoffed, "I remember when you peeled them off later that night – you could've got gallons ringing them out. And your feet were all macerated. I told you to wear a dress and some sandals." Thirteen scowled as the waitress returned with two fresh slices of toast for her with delicious hot butter melting into the bread. Her scowl turned into a grateful smile as she thanked the girl. "You made me dress for the period…" Clara muttered.

"That's you. I don't need to dress for the period."

"Why?"

"Because. I'm cooler than you." She took a large bite out of the toast and grinned with her mouth full. Clara shook her head.

While the Doctor gorged herself on toast, one of the universe's most delicious foods hands down, Clara poured herself another cup of tea with what was left in the teapot. Looking through the window at the seafront and the throngs of busy, happy people, she was struck down with an epiphany.

"Let's bunk off."

"What?" Clara laughed, stirring sugar into her tea, "It's half-term, sweetheart. We haven't got anything to bunk off from."

"No, no. You've got your nose buried in that tablet trying to make revision resources and mock exams and predict the GCSE questions – let's spend the day together."

"We're together right now. In fact, I daresay we spend all of our time together."

"Clara. You know what I mean. It's our holiday as well. I just wanna be able to have my wife's attention for more than five minutes at a time."

"Hey," said Clara, growing serious, "Don't be like that. I'm worried about the kids, I want them to do their best in these exams, that's all – they're important.

"You need a break, Coo. Come on. Humour me. Just for today."

Clara sipped some of her tea, thinking – but Thirteen knew that her comment about Clara not paying enough attention to her had certainly grated more than she had intended. If the opportunity arose, the Doctor resolved to apologise, but at that moment she merely waited for Clara to answer. "Say, hypothetically, I did decide to humour you – what would this brief holiday involve?"

"I don't know – adventure? Romance? Languorous walks along the beach in the afternoon sun? Buying overpriced ice cream after sneaking through the turnstiles on the Pier? Sonicking a photobooth and taking an embarrassing reel of pictures together pulling stupid faces we'll treasure forever? The possibilities are literally endless, my love."

"Ooh, 'my love', you're breaking out the big guns."

The Doctor winked, "I'm putting the charm on you."

"Laying it on a bit thick."

"Oh, please. I've had you wrapped around my finger from the moment we met."

"Nothing could be further from the truth."

"Whaddaya say, doll?" she asked obnoxiously, leaning on the table towards Clara, "You, me, the open ocean? The blue skies? Let's just cut class and damn it all to hell."

"Why do you always go extra-American every time you want me to do something?"

"Because it works. Because you have a weird 'thing' for what's widely regarded to be one of the most aesthetically displeasing accents on your planet, which is why I've been stuck with it for over forty years."

"Makes you sound like a caricature of yourself," Clara quipped.

"And yet you're even more hot for me than usual."

"I think the warm weather is confusing you – did you put the leather trousers on again?" Clara feigned looking under the table, even though she knew full-well Thirteen was just wearing regular, blue jeans.

"Are you gonna put me out of my misery or what?" she crossed her arms and leant back in the chair, done with her toast. Clara narrowed her eyes.

"Only if you promise that these alleged embarrassing photos are going to be some of the most embarrassing photos we've ever taken."

"Absolutely. I'll moon the camera. Or you could moon it, that would be doubly embarrassing."

"Why would it be more embarrassing if I mooned it compared to you?"

"Because."

"Because what…?"

"Because… you know." Clara scrutinised her. "My butt's cuter."

"What – they'd automatically be more embarrassing because I somehow have an ugly arse?"

"Not ugly. Just uglier. Than mine."

"Well, first of all, screw you, and second of all, screw you."

"In the photobooth? It'll be cramped, won't it?"

"Fine! Fine, you win, you're distracting me enough, making me think about your arse when I'm trying to finish my lunch and do my revision resources – how am I going to make a revision resource with you being all… eurgh." She paused for a few moments. "Are you ready to pay? Go find some of this promised ice cream out there in the tourist trap?"

"You betcha. Whatever you like."

"Whatever you like, you mean, begging me for my attention," she grumbled as she took out her phone so that she could pay on it. That was how everything worked in those days, all digital payment. There was a small light in the centre of the table which lit up blue, indicating to the servers that they had paid and not just run out, even though the Doctor did have a penchant to dine and dash. "Right, then," Clara folded up the wafer-thin tablet (another weird thing about the 2060s) and and got to her feet, "Come on, eye candy, let's go for this walk. And maybe, if you're really well-behaved, I might let you touch me up in the photobooth."

"You and I both know it won't take much convincing for that to happen, but like I said, it's cramped."

"I've done someone in a photobooth before," Clara said, holding the café door open for Thirteen and garnering some very judgemental attention of an elderly woman – ironically, the elderly woman was probably the same age as Clara, or even younger. "It was a really bad move, actually, because it started taking pictures-"

"Oh my god."

"You couldn't see my face, though."

"That's something."

"Just hers."

"Well then."

"She was very… excited. If you catch my drift."

"I wish I knew nothing about you and your drift."

Clara took her arm as they joined the crowds on the promenade ambling to and fro, then whispered wryly in her ear, "I'm pretty sure I kept those pictures, too."

"Eurgh, you're a pervert." Clara laughed at her.

"I fancy some ice cream, now you've got me all hot and bothered."

"I think you got yourself hot and bothered…"

"The weather's gorgeous though, don't you think?" Clara changed the subject away from her womanising ways.

"This is why I wanted to come out and enjoy it with you. You were so desperate for us to move to Brighton instead of just taking the easy way out and going to anonymous London, and yet we never seem to actually do anything." Clara was steering them towards an ice cream stall next to a set of large concrete steps leading down to the beach. The sand was almost completely obscured beneath the sweating mass of beach-goers, splayed out on towels and deck chairs underneath parasols. It was hard to work out where the beach ended and the sea began since both were swarming with half-term tourists.

"We do lots of things! We have date night, don't we?" Clara said. They did have date night, every Friday, as well as the more tacit but equally important date morning on Sundays.

"I guess. I don't know. Maybe I'm craving a little more spontaneity. Not knowing what's coming in the future makes me feel a little better about not knowing what's happened in the past," she sighed. The day-to-day routines of planet Earth made her memory issues and brain damage feel much more pronounced. She had been assured by Itrux, their 'family doctor', that the injuries were not deteriorating, they were only more noticeable now they were no longer on the TARDIS. "You smell, by the way."

"It's hot – it's not a crime to sweat."

"It is, it's a crime to my nose."

"I'll start smoking in a minute, then you'll see how criminal to your nose I can be." Thirteen grimaced; she did not want to put up with the smell of cigarettes, not on a day like today. They joined the rather long line waiting for ice cream and Clara released the Doctor's arm (which she was glad of, considering the heat.) "I do feel you about the spontaneity thing, though. Deadlines and schedules and rotas… there's a real sense of impending doom about everything."

"The sense of impending doom is humanity's unavoidable, rapid march towards death and the whole species doing everything possible to avoid thinking about it. I only really notice how much like fireflies you are when I'm lurking like this."

"Way to be elitist, sweetheart," Clara said, craning her neck to try and get a look at what flavours of ice cream they had, "What do you want to eat?" The Doctor repressed the urge to make fun of her for being short.

"What are you having?"

"Strawberry. They've got hazelnut."

"Hazelnut? Oh my god, I'm literally in love with the idea of hazelnuts. I'll have that and a scoop of mint. There's mint, right?"

"That's the most disparate ice cream palette I've ever heard."

"Ice cream palette? Coming from you? You'd cover yours in mayonnaise if they had some," she quipped as they advanced through the queue.

"That's because mayonnaise goes with everything."

"It doesn't. You're crazy. Never speak to me again." As it happened, she didn't have to speak to her, because it was time for them to get their ice cream. But after about a minute the Doctor got tired of not talking to Clara.

"It's very disturbing watching you eat ice cream."

"You don't have to watch me, pervert." They began to walk away down the boardwalk.

"And you don't have to bite it." It had always made the Doctor uneasy watching Clara bite ice cream. "There's something wrong with you."

"That's homophobic."

"Is not."

"It is – biting ice cream is gay culture."

"Biting ice cream is Clara culture I think you mean."

"And Clara's gay."

"Clara is obnoxious, and it also definitely is not gay culture, you just don't want to accept that you're a weirdo. Quite honestly, you oughta be ostracised from society for this 'habit'."

"I'm going to bite it and there's nothing you can do to stop me. If you have a problem with it, I can just go back to my revision resources-"

"No, no, absolutely not," the Doctor grabbed hold of Clara's hand, "You're mine for the day, no escape." As if to undermine that sentiment completely, Clara took another large bite out of the pink ice cream in her hand. "You're gonna get brain freeze."

"Worth it. Just for that disgusted look on your cute face. Anyway, I've got a question for you, Miss Fake History Teacher."

"That's Mrs Fake History Teacher to you, Oswald."

"Why is Brighton so gay?"

"Well," she laced their fingers together properly and walked even closer, "I'm very surprised you don't know. It's actually been this way since the Napoleonic Wars. What with it being by the sea and all, it's a major port town and important for the Royal Navy – and you'll know that the Royal Navy was the most powerful navy in the world at one point. One of the reasons why Napoleon famously lost the Napoleonic Wars, and because invading Russia is stupid.

"Anyway, soldier prostitution was huge. It was like, the thing to do, these men in the garrisons would be paying each other for sex. Not that it always went well – Brighton might be famous for its liberalism now, but this is England even before Queen Victoria. The people of Shoreham literally burned an effigy of someone they found out was gay, which is totally whack. However, it's been a beacon for lesbian tourism since the 1870s. Angela Burdett-Coutts – the baroness who was literally the richest woman in England and became a huge philanthropist along with her BFF Charles Dickens – used to go on vacay at the Royal Albion with her 'companion,' AKA 'girlfriend,' Hannah Brown. They'd stay there in Brighton every year, and also in Torquay. They were together for fifty-two years until Hannah died, which is longer than we've been together.

"Nothing major happens after that until Radclyffe Hall-"

"Who I've met," Clara interrupted when she took a break from munching her ice cream. Thirteen was licking hers when she paused in between sentences, or to pepper filler-words into her explanations. "She's moody."

"-yeah, until she starts hanging out in the 1930s. The aforementioned Royal Albion Hotel started holding women-only tea dances, and that was when real gay bars started popping up for the first time. Much longer ago than you thought, I'm sure. In the 30s, whizzing off from London to Brighton for a dirty weekend was like leaving Manhattan and going out to West Egg to party with the millionaires Scott and Zelda love so much. And then World War Two happens, so men and women in the armies and air force and working the factories alike are all moving around. And again, Brighton's on the coast, it's important for the navy, to defend against any prospective German invaders. So many soldiers in one place did the same thing for Brighton that it did for Cisco – bohemian capital of the country. Suddenly there were blackouts and air raids all the time, so the police aren't interested in roughing up whatever compromised homosexuals they can get their piggy hands on – there's, you know, the Nazis to worry about.

"And that was when an often-forgotten dude started making it big. I mean, you know I don't think there's a whole ton of difference between the 'official' governments and organised criminal empires in most cases – like, Tony Blair is a war criminal and Al Capone was TIME's 1930 man of the year – and it was just after the war that a guy called Archie Speyer started really making waves. A decorated naval midshipman who risked his life to defuse a sea mine while evacuating people from a U-boat attack in the frosty Atlantic ocean in early '44, parked his boat in Brighton's queer utopia and started taking over businesses from small-time, violent gangs. Made the city safer, through crime and a pretty successful London-Brighton gambling ring, and rumour has it he was a 'friend of Dorothy' himself who snuck out here for more than a few dirty weekends.

"But Speyer's only one part of the liberal progress which swept this here beachfront. The evolution just carried on, into the 60s when it finally became the revolution. The aesthetic centre for counterculture rebellion, the proverbial poster-boy of sex and drugs and rock'n'roll. And of course, London was all that too, this is the decade when Mod started to become an actual thing and you have exports like The Beatles and the second British invasion – not to mention mopeds – but London wasn't a queer, pre-liberal utopia. It just didn't have 'the scene,' while Brighton's like, the Lesbos of Britannia. Only, with guys as well. Obviously, there weren't any guys on Lesbos, it's a dude-free zone."

"I remember it vividly. The pornographic playground of all my wildest fantasies. And there was you, in your leather trousers, melting all over the place."

"Ha, ha."

"This is gonna sound totally lame," Clara began, "But I seriously forget how much stuff you know."

"Well, I read up on my Brighton history about eight months ago and have been waiting for you to ask me about it ever since so that I can sound impressive." Clara stopped walking, still holding her hand, leaning on the top of the sea wall above the beachfront.

"Did you really?"

"As it happens, yes, I did. I don't quite have the retention I used to do, didn't want to fumble any important names. Did it work? Are you impressed?"

"Absolutely I'm impressed. That's really sweet."

"Hang on, was that maybe-? A genuine compliment? Not something loaded, and sarcastic? Who are you and what have you done with my wife? She never says nice things," she joked, grinning, aware that she had ice cream around her mouth.

"Shut up, I do."

"Well, I suppose that I think you're really sweet, too, if we're abandoning the doublespeak thing."

"It does get exhausting." Clara smiled at her but then let go of her hand so that she could lean on top of the sea wall with both arms, still eating her ice cream. "I feel less stressed already, to be honest." Thirteen leant on the wall right next to her, overlooking the beach and the sea with the noon sun beating overhead.

"Who knew that spending time with your significant other could actually be relaxing?"

"Do you think I'm too worried about the kids?" Clara changed the subject.

"Honestly? Yeah. You're totally obsessing. They're gonna be okay, and if they're not okay – well, there's only so much we can do." Clara didn't say anything, continued to stare at the distant ocean. The Doctor tried to finish off her hazelnut-mint combo while she thought of what to say next to help ease Clara's mind. "I get it, Coo. We're coming up to these important exams, the end of your first school year as an actual teacher, but – it's going to be fine. I know it will be because you're a great teacher! You teach me things constantly. Like last week, with the laundry."

"It's not my fault you're over a thousand years old and you somehow don't know how to roll socks into balls," Clara said, she who had done almost all of their laundry for the entirety of their marriage (which was a fair pay-off for the fact the Doctor cooked every meal.) And before she had Clara she had the TARDIS to do everything for her.

"But now I do! Thanks to you! But you have to relax or you're gonna go crazy. At the end, only a small amount of how well they do is actually anything to do with us. We provide the information but it's up to them whether they actually learn it, and it's like that for everyone who's ever worked in education. And they're just gonna resent you if you overload them with revision resources."

"English is a core subject, though," Clara said, "It's important. Not like History, History's not important, institutions and employers don't care about that."

"Hey! We both would've died a long time ago if neither of us knew anything about history."

"It's irrelevant. Who cares about anything old?"

"I know you're just making fun of me, but I'm deeply wounded. Especially when you're a relic of a bygone age yourself." Clara pretended to be offended for a moment and the Doctor smugly licked her ice cream again until Clara laughed and shook her head.

"Wow."

"An ancient relic."

"It just gets worse."

"I'm surprised you don't need help going to the bathroom at your age."

"This after I said you were sweet. Completely unwarranted." Thirteen smiled and went back to trying to finish her ice cream, wondering if Clara had been right earlier about wearing jeans on such a hot day. "Haven't spotted a photobooth yet, you know. They don't exactly have them just on the street."

"They always seem to in rom-coms."

"They're in, like, supermarkets and train stations."

"Maybe we should go to a train station?" the Doctor suggested.

"Or, alternatively, as adorable as reams of photobooth pictures clearly are, there's this thing called a mobile phone and most of them actually have cameras in them," Clara said, taking her phone out of one of the pockets on her dress (because in the future, women's clothes actually did have functional pockets) and opening the camera. "Come on, let's commemorate this moment; we'll have to stop insulting each other for a few seconds."

"I'm never going to stop insulting you," she said, kissing Clara's cheek right when Clara laughed and took the photo. A green-and-beige lip-shaped mark now rested on Clara's face from Thirteen's ice cream, though she didn't notice this right away because she was looking at the picture. "It's totally cute. We should frame it."

"Hmm…" Clara was unsure, "I don't know."

"What else are you gonna do with it?"

"Save it for later?" she suggested, "Masturbate over it?"

"Oh my god. Unbelievable."

"Is it, though?" Clara said wryly, leaning towards her. Then, without warning, she stuck what was left of her strawberry ice cream into the Doctor's face, getting pink all over her nose. Clara laughed but Thirteen swatted at her hand, only Clara's grip wasn't as tight as she thought, and she ended up knocking the whole, partially melted cornet over the edge of the seawall. "Shit!" exclaimed Clara, looking over the edge just in time to see it land on the head of a tall bodybuilder-looking guy who was in the middle of flexing to impress a girl on the beach. "Shit," Clara repeated herself.

"OI!" the man shouted.

"Uh-oh," said the Doctor as he began to advance to the nearby stairs, "Run!" She grabbed Clara's hand and started to drag her in the opposite direction through the crowds. It was unclear what a gigantic bodybuilder was intending to do to a pair of women who were each barely over five feet tall, but the look on his face – after having it covered with ice cream – said that they certainly didn't want to stick around and find out.

They ducked and wove through the flowing tourists as the man continued to shout behind them, then got lucky and passed a zebra crossing right when the light turned green. They disappeared into the large crowd crossing the road and made it to the other side of the promenade where the souvenir shops and stands were all lined up beneath the midday sun.

"In here," Clara hissed, tugging on her arm and pulling her in another direction, into a dark and shady shop that was selling novelties. She pulled the Doctor into the aisles and then found a big, red drinking helmet and stuck that on her head, while she found a pink and fluffy cowboy hat usually reserved for only the sleaziest hen parties. A pair of gigantic, orange sunglasses each and they hid in the shadows and waited for the bodybuilder to rush past outside. He only looked in for a moment in his pursuit, pink liquid dripping down his face, but couldn't see them in the gloomy interior.

"I think he's gone," the Doctor whispered.

"That bloke needs to chill out."

"You would've thought that dropping an ice cream on his face would do that," she quipped, making Clara laugh as she removed her stupid hat and sunglasses. "I've always wanted one of these drinking helmets."

"I don't trust you with a drinking helmet," said Clara, lifting it off her head to her objections, "You'll fill it with Red Bull or espresso or something and then you'll be up all night critically analysing SpongeBob. Again."

"I just think that SpongeBob has a lot more depth than people realise…" she mumbled, ultimately giving in to Clara and letting her put the hat back on the shelf.

"Of course it does, sweetheart," Clara turned to peruse the shelves as they were eyed by the attendant who was only really there to make sure nobody stole anything, since almost no transactions those days required an actual transaction with another person. They would have to buy something so that they didn't look like complete weirdos. Clara gravitated towards a wall filled with various sticks of rock, many of them with inappropriate messages in them, but some relatively harmless. She picked out a black and purple one.

"It says: Suck Me." Clara laughed.

"I like this one," she pulled out a stick which was solid red and showed Thirteen the words on the end. This one merely said: I Love You with a heart in the middle.

"Kinda boring."

"Really? Me loving you is boring?"

She shrugged, leaning on the shelves, "Kinda." Clara retrieved a blue and white one which said: Wedding Day.

"We should get some of these at our next wedding, give them out," Clara said, finally finding the shelf full of rainbow sticks. "Aww, I love this one." It said: Mrs & Mrs.

"…Okay, fine, that one is sort of adorable."

"You know what?" said Clara, "I'm buying it. I'm going to buy it for you because I'm so grateful for you convincing me to leave all my revision planning for the day, even though you did almost ruin it by having some meat-head try to kill us."

"You don't have to-"

"Yes, I do, so don't spoil it. I am also capable of being sweet," she took out her phone and held her debit card app over the barcode on the rock, and it flashed green, meaning the purchase had been completed. A screen in front of the attendant would notify them of the purchase for their records. "Here you go, it's all yours."

"Thanks," she said, trying to suppress her smile and failing as she took the rock from Clara. She debated for a second, then, seeing the attendant's eyes were averted, she stole a kiss from Clara, who went pink in her surprise. "…Where to next?"

"Surprise me."

Heavy rain lashed the beach and the waterfront, making the sand around Palace Pier into a quagmire. His feet, leather shoes slick from the storm, slid as he tried to walk through the mud. He ran a hand through his hair to keep it out of his eyes, going towards an overweight mess of a man who scrambled away through the dirt. It was May 30th, 1964, and the weatherman in the newspaper had said it was going to be a clear evening; how wrong he was.

"Please, please," the man begged as the youth advanced, the rainstorm battening down from above, as though the universe was fighting against what was about to happen. He crawled like one of the stray crabs closer to the rotting, wooden pier, pleading for his life, spluttering on the rainwater. They were going to run out of beach soon, only a sliver remained with the moon hanging overhead, the tide overrunning Brighton's shores. "Please, Baby, you don't have to do this."

"I wanna do it," he said with the trace of a faint London accent, creeping towards the man like a predator and his prey, a menacing look carved into a deceptively young face.

"If this is about the money – I can get you the money! I just need a few weeks to work, to earn it, and every penny's yours, I swears it!"

"It ain't about the money, Fink. Good name, that. Fits ya."

"I wouldn't grass on no one, Baby, you knows that!"

Scrambling, he finally managed to roll over and get back to his feet, making a desperate break for it. The youth followed him, lunged, grabbed the collar of his coat and threw him down into the flooded darkness of the barnacle-covered underside of the large, old Pier. He splashed into the oncoming tide as it sloshed over them both. Thunder clapped overhead, streaks of lightning tore the sky to pieces. Albert Fink, Bertie to his friends, wasn't supposed to die that night; the youth knew that from his dreams. But none of that could change the fact that Albert Fink was, certainly, going to die that night.

"I ain't never talked to the coppers, Baby."

"Naw," said the youth, reaching into the pocket of his heavy coat and drawing out a straight razor, flicking the blade out from its dark wooden handle, "And you ain't gonna, neither." He stamped, hard, on the man's ankle, getting it between his boot sole and a rock. He did it hard enough that Fink screamed, a gargling noise that made the youth feel sickened. There was no way he could escape now.

"Please, let me go – I wouldn't – I won't even go to the hospital – I won't tell nobody anything – not even my wife! I've got a wife, Baby! Kids! Two of 'em! You're gonna take away their father?"

"I didn't have no father," he said, planting a leg either side of poor, doomed Bertie Fink, admiring his own razor in what little light managed to break through the storm clouds in the night sky, "And it didn't do me no harm. Now, then," he reached down his hand and covered Fink's mouth as the man began to weep, "Take a deep breath, this'll all be over soon."

He slashed the razor across Fink's unshaven neck, tearing into the sinew, the veins, his Adam's apple, with the intensely sharpened blade. Blood burst forth from the wound, a few inches deep, covering the youth's pale hands and his shirt sleeves before he had a change to move away. Then he stood up and watched Fink writhe there, gargling on his own blood and blubber, choking, his major arteries severed below his head. The youth waited until Bertie Fink was never going to move again as the tide swept up over his body. His big eyes bulged like a fish as they paled, milky-white, marbles set into the putrefying face of a fresh corpse.

After that, the air tasted different, as though it was electrified. He stood next to the body and felt something visceral course through his body, knowing – though he didn't know how he knew – that the future, his future, had been irrevocably changed from that point onwards.