DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of these characters. Doctor Who is the property of the BBC. No profit is derived from this work, it is for entertainment and mental agreement between likeminded fans only.

AUTHOR'S NOTES: This is my first fanfic post! I'm still trying to get a hold of the basics, but I do intend to write more, so this is very much a kind of Act 1 while I get my thoughts in line.

If you've enjoyed - or hated - this, a review on what is okay or could be done better is always helpful.

Thank you for reading!

CHAPTER ONE:

He hadn't seen her for two days now. Not that he particularly minded, after all, what does he have to hide from the Impossible Girl, who had traced his own history and saved him a hundred times over? – Apart from everything, you mean-

But she barely remembers anything!

It had taken almost a whole second before he began arguing with himself, muttering under his breath as he fiddled with knobs and switches at the TARDIS console aimlessly.

Clara had asked if she could get to know the TARDIS, and the request seemed simple enough. So he unthinkingly allowed her to traverse the labyrinth alone, led only by her near morbid sense of curiosity. Hunching over the console, he smiled at the floor.

She wasn't so different from him.

Perhaps a touch more stubborn from time to time, but she wore her heart on her sleeve, a quality he'd long since needed to outgrow.

When she had asked him, he had, of course, been too busy studying an obscure collection of cutlery he'd found locked away in some dirty trunk in a half hearted archive room. Which was possibly just a cupboard with better intentions.

It would be perfectly safe for her. To avoid encountering any decrepit Clara doppelgangers like they'd encountered during his last regeneration, he'd previously embedded countermeasures into the TARDIS mainframe. Besides, he could always monitor her whereabouts with some gadget on the console, and if not, he could always just throw some sort of device together.

But even with a machine that could travel through time and space, and a brain as large as his, the Doctor still felt a sliver of concern for Clara's absence.

Maybe it wasn't even concern, but a sense of boredom without her.

Sure enough, the floor of the console room was littered with several solved Rubik's cubes, a fish tank full of Vaseline, innumerable old books, a sequined taxidermy parrot, 2 unfinished sandwiches, and the walking stick stolen from the Emperor of Parmesan. The Doctor leaned back into his chair, and kicked his thin legs out to rest on the railings. He sighed into his leathered hands, reaching up to scratch at his hairline as he arched his neck backward.

In the dim light, the Doctor could see something violently yellow hovering above him. His legs swung beneath the chair as he swivelled around, finding a yellow sticky note pasted onto the bookshelf behind him.

He pressed the note with two fingers as his eyes focused. His breathing agitated slightly when he recognised Clara's handwriting, and read aloud to his empty audience:

"HIDE AND SEEK. COME FIND ME, DOCTOR"

Snug in a sizeable corner of her living room, the TARDIS had recently become another ornamental addition to Clara's décor. It was abnormal for the Doctor to stay in one place for so long, but after the year she'd had, and last Christmas, she was enjoying the new laziness of the Doctor during the school holiday break.

He'd occasionally appear in her kitchen and hand her a cup of tea or a biscuit. And sometimes he'd stay for dinner, trawling out a roast chicken having claimed he had cooked it himself. He wouldn't always necessarily be there at an ideal time, but she supposed, the main factor was that he was there.

Clara smiled to herself as she approached the TARDIS. She admired her own audacity to challenge the Doctor, whilst simultaneously providing herself an opportunity to nose around the avenues of the TARDIS. In truth, Clara wanted to feel as at home in the TARDIS as the Doctor seemed to be in her apartment.

The note was loosely sticking to her index finger, and she wiggled it a little with quiet glee as she folded her arms casually behind her back. She mustered a deep breath to suppress her smile, and unlocked the TARDIS door.

Stepping inside, she glanced around at a vacant console room.

"Doctor?"

"Yeah, Clara, I'm in here – now have you ever seen such an exquisite spoon? Its shape is actually an imprint of the first recorded meteor crater in your solar system. It's not exactly to scale but no amount of ice cream could fill the real thing.

See, now this is the kind of information that you should be teaching in school!"

As he waved the spoon, The Doctor could practically hear Clara's expression of mixed bewilderment and disinterest as she replied with an unconvincing "Sure".

His head popped out from behind a doorframe to quip back at her, but Blackpool got the better of him when she interrupted him first.

"Side-tracking from the spoons for a minute, I was thinking… You know, Doctor, maybe it'd be a good idea if I had a look around the TARDIS, you know, uh, try to bond with it." Clara said, awkwardly patting the console with her free hand.

"Her!" he called back, raising his eyebrows with a twinge of defensive frustration.

Clara sighed as the Doctor continued, stepping out of the doorway and returning to his collection of cutlery.

"Y'know, with that attitude Clara, it's probably a good idea if the two of you could make amends!"

Now thankful that he couldn't see her, Clara's face furrowed – amends? I haven't even done anything to it – agh. Her!

She tiptoed over to the Doctor's brown leather armchair and stuck her note above it, sure that he'd see it eventually, though gladly not immediately, given his current cutlery fetish.

"Well, I guess I'll be off then…" she paused, returning to the centre of the console.

"Doctor - Aren't you going to wish me luck?"

From the doorway, the Doctor's face reappeared as she turned to face him.

"Sure", he replied, with a smug smile tugging at his lips.