Tea and the Universe at Three in the Morning - ElevenxClara whouffle fanfiction
Inspired by this post. A bit of credit to charlieissocoollike for the theory.
Flatmate human!au: John Smith finds Clara when neither of them can sleep and talks her out of an existential crisis. K
It was three am, and John couldn’t sleep.
He was thinking about River and Amy and Rory again. It’d been nearly three years, and he wasn’t so much heartbroken about it still as melancholy - he was thinking, it was just that. But he found himself wide awake even when he tried to curl up into the sheets, and soon when he glanced over at the bright, green numbers on his digital clock, it was 3:05.
He stepped out into the hall. Squinting, he noticed a dim light that was already on in the kitchen, and made his way cautiously towards it. His frown deepened when he heard the soft sound of sniffling and the almost silent clack of porcelain on a marble counter.
Cautiously, he poked his head around the corner, letting his hair flop over his eyes for a moment as he regarded the scene before him.
Clara was sitting on the black-and-gold marble counter of the island in the centre of the kitchen in a tee shirt and pyjama shorts, sloped over a tea mug clutched close to her face. John couldn’t tell exactly if she was crying just from looking, but it seemed the obvious assumption.
Trying to maintain a normal - but not rushed - pace, he moved into the room towards the kettle and glanced at her calmly to signify his presence.
She didn’t jump, nor call out to him about leaving her alone - not even the “don’t look at me” he’d gotten from her a few times when she was flustered. But he could tell she’d noticed him; somehow he could sense her eyes on his back. He hadn’t been totally silent coming in, either.
“Couldn’t sleep?” He murmured as he reached for a mug.
She breathed a half-laugh through her nose. “No.” Her voice was choked. She’d definitely been crying.
It was silent for a moment as he gathered his tea, never having to face her, and being silently grateful for the setup of the kitchen his flatmate had chosen to her own standards. But when he was sure he’d been stirring for just a bit longer than would be considered normal, he sighed. John turned to face her, bodily, but kept his face down and staring at the red-beige of the liquid in his cup. The handle to the oven pressed into his lower back as he leaned against it just across from her.
She’d stopped sniffling, for the most part, and seemed to be waiting for him to say something. He couldn’t think of what to ask or when.
Just as soon as he feared the moment had become stale and he was either trapped to endure the silence for the remainder of the night or to walk off awkwardly and leave her alone, crying, at three am, only to have to face her in the morning, she spoke. Quietly, almost a whisper, but punctuated by the thickness in her throat. “John?”
He looked up from under his fringe; she was still staring at her hands clasped around her tea. “Yes?”
She was quiet for a moment, breathing so steadily he wondered if sleep was possible in that position. But she continued, even quieter than before. “D’you think there’s life on other planets?”
He stifled a laugh - he’d thought this was about her mum! And she was up at three in the morning reminiscing about space aliens? But in favour of sensitivity, he considered the question and answered almost automatically. “Yes, I do.”
He noticed the tiny lift of a grin from behind the dark shadow of her hair, and she peeked up at him slowly. “Makes sense, seein’ as you’re a bit of an extraterrestrial yourself.” Her usual wit was made more sober through the hoarseness in her voice, but she maintained the somewhat teary smile, looking at him more fully. “Are you an alien?”
“Yes,” he replied, completely straight-faced, until he broke into a grin. She smiled back at him, genuinely, but soon dropped her attention back to her tea. John stared, worried.
“What about-” she began quickly, and then dropped off, seemingly attempting to find a better beginning to the sentence somewhere within the swirls of milk and herb within her beverage, but gave up. “What about other universes?”
“You mean parallel universes?” He still spoke quietly.
She nodded. “Well, I mean - doesn’t have to be. Just… other us’s. Somewhere out there. Other… I dunno, other universes.”
He understood, and his heart sped because he was sure she’d somehow read his mind from just moments earlier. The universe where they’re still alive.
Slowly, he moved to her side and leaned forward against the counter, setting his mug on it with a familiar quiet clack. He saw Clara turn to look at him gradually in his peripheral vision.
“I think…” he examined his tea, wondering if he’d find similar inspiration to Clara’s within it. “I think the universe is big, and full of possibilities, but I don’t think that can ever be it. I think - have you ever heard of the theory of infinite universes?” He cut himself off, suddenly glancing at her a bit more animatedly.
She smiled slightly, and shook her head.
He leaned on the counter with one elbow to face her better and painted a picture with his hands. “The universe is infinite - it’s infinitely big and it never stops creating. We - humans - we constantly create through reproduction and perpetuate the universe around us through recycling and nothing ever disappears, not really - we just keep growing. The universe is constantly creating - through exploding stars and meiosis and ionic processes and nothing goes away, it just keeps growing. And the universe only has so many elements to work with, so despite all the possibilities of combinations of elements and atoms and compounds and formulae - eventually, it must run out. It is, after all, constantly creating. So it makes a copy - a one-in-a-bazillion, copy, of course, but it’s somewhere out there - maybe it’s a flower, or maybe just a single cell, but as it continues to run out it repeats itself, incidentally, and the theory is, well, the theory states that you and I are in existence in our exact copied forms, our exact genetic material - and maybe that exact haircut - not just once, but an infinite number of times.”
Clara watched him as his mind spun out around her and into the kitchen - she could see it, space, infinitely, the bundles of galaxies clustered around like dust and then zoomed in on to reveal another Clara.
“It never stops, so the possibilities literally can never stop,” he mused, eyes bright and green and she could almost see the reflection of the stars he was seeing in them. He continued. “But then you add in free will - humans, we’re stupid and brilliant and impulsive and sometimes we’re just not impulsive enough - and maybe you have a different haircut entirely. In fact, maybe you’re a different person entirely. And you are - every possibility of you is spun out across the universe, constantly happening, constantly changing the world the way you do.”
She moistened her lips, looking away bashfully and trying to hide her grin.
“So,” he said, more quietly now - better suited, perhaps, for three in the morning. “There’s your answer.”
She looked him up and down, and her smile slowly faded into something that was less sad than wondering. She was no longer thinking about a universe where Ellie Oswald was alive and breathing and maybe in this exact kitchen at three am with her - though that was perhaps the most important thought he’d given her thus far - but a universe where she’d met him when she was sixteen and he’d been there for her from the very beginning. She was thinking of a universe where he’d met her when they were five and he grew to know and love Ellie Oswald and she him. Clara thought of a universe where she met him yesterday and they were still, somehow, in this kitchen together at three am cradling cups of tea for inspiration. She saw one where he was an alien and she ran with him from life and fear and existential questions like these, but they were still, somehow, awake at three am in some kitchen in some spaceship somewhere thinking about loss and tea.
She wanted all of them. And according to his theory, she had them.
A thought occurred to her. “So,” she began, more confidently, and there was almost no trace of tears in her voice.
“So?”
Her brow furrowed, and she glanced between his vibrant eyes. “If we’re just two of infinite copies of ourselves - if there’s another me, out there, doing the exact same thing as I’m doing, and we’re destined to carry on like this our whole lives - then what’s the point?”
His face darkened slightly. “‘What’s the point’?” He repeated.
She sighed. “I just mean - in such a big, infinite universe, how can we matter? How can we possibly mean anything when we’re just someone’s yesterday at all times? We’re tiny - If I died somewhere out there, or if I’m not even born yet, or if I never existed in the first place and if I haven’t made any of the decisions that changed the world around me - what does it matter if I’m right here? If there’s infinite me’s anywhere you look? And all you’d have to do, if you could do, is pop over to the next universe to see what I’m like there. I don’t matter here. There’s a billion of me. I could die, and you could just pop off and see me where I haven’t. Like I’m a ghost. Like I’m nothing.”
“No,” he asserted, eyes catching hers intensely. “No, you’re not that.”
She couldn’t discern whether he’d excluded himself for some reason or if he’d meant to exclude her from everyone else. She decided not to dwell on it. “Then what am I? What can I possibly be?”
He swallowed, looking away for a moment, before looking at her again, and laying a hand on the side of her face. “You’re an infinitely complex, impossibly unique mystery that - of all the Clara’s out there, of any human or creature with its infinite beings out there - is the only one worth solving. This you - that’s who I want. And the chance that there’s another is a miracle that I don’t want to question for a single second.”
Clara didn’t know how he did this so often - he took her breath away.
For a moment, she thought he might kiss her - he thought, fleetingly, that he might, too.
In some universe, that’s what happened.
But not this time. Not this way for the most important Clara in the universe, not yet. She smiled at her tea, letting her hair curtain her face from him. After a moment, she brushed it back and glanced at him.
He was smiling at her comfortably. “Does that make you feel any better?”
She nodded. “You make everything better,” she added, lightly punching him in the shoulder to keep the phrase casual where in another universe it was anything but. Perhaps in this one.
“Oi, don’t get soppy on me,” he commanded, shifting away from the counter and clearing their mugs - hers now almost completely empty, and his almost completely full. “I will not have soppiness in the kitchen at three am.”
She dropped off the counter and couldn’t hide her grin as she watched him gulp down the remainder of his tea. “I think you’ve a bit exceeded the job description of flatmate, there, John.”
“Eh?” he gasped as he dropped the cup from his lips.
She shrugged, backing out slowly. “I’m pretty sure talking me out of an existential crisis at three in the morning doesn’t really fit the definition for most.”
“Am I most? Am I like most flatmates in any way at all?”
Clara stopped just at the corner rounding into the hall. She pressed her lips together, her cheeks lifting. “Thank you, John.”
He smiled down at the dishes he was washing. “I was already up anyway.”
Though it was true, he somehow found himself doubting its truth. Perhaps he’d stayed up for a reason, somehow sensing she’d need him to talk about the universe with her at three in the morning. Maybe the people he’d lost had been lost at just the right moment that he’d remember them in just the right way three years later that he’d be up for her when she needed him at an ungodly hour.
He didn’t know about the other Johns, but this one certainly preferred this Clara. This universe. Everything in him was convinced it was the best. Because if the other Claras didn’t have all the little scars and changes and innocences and the exact way she laughed at him when she was tired and a bit sad and maybe she’d sensed he wanted to kiss her, too - then they just weren’t exactly the right flavour of Clara. The exact one he wanted to find in the kitchen crying at three am when he wanted tea.
And just like that, he thought as he walked back down the hall, he’d found another reason to lose sleep. He rather liked this one better.
