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In Clara’s opinion, as far as travelling went, America had a lot to recommend it. 1920s Chicago had been fun. As had New Orleans at around the same time. 40s Los Angeles. Las Vegas in the 50s. New York City was worth a visit in just about any time period. The Wild West had been interesting, even though it did smell uncomfortably of horses and whiskey. And the Boston Tea Party had been a lark.
This, however. Well.
“Where and when the hell are we?” Clara asked, folding her arms.
“2002. Somewhere in Kansas I think.”
“In a shopping strip,” Clara said blankly, looking at the exciting view.
Staples. Home Depot. Safeway. Carl’s Jr. An impossibly large number of children piling out of an older model Chevrolet Suburban. Their mother, a woman, in the 21st century, who still had a perm. An old man with a cane sitting on a bench outside the Safeway smoking a clove cigarette. A guy with a pickup truck and cowboy boots, who, judging by the sorry state of his boots and truck, worked on a farm. A teenaged boy with a much nicer pair of boots and a shiny chrome-trimmed truck, who definitely didn’t work on a farm. A teenaged girl in a pair of Daisy Duke’s, hanging off the boy’s arm.
And everywhere. So. Many. American flags.
All with the TARDIS parked in the middle of the parking lot. Big, blue, and unmistakably British.
“Middle America,” the Doctor said, waving his arms about like a marionette being controlled by a puppeteer with a seizure disorder. “The Bread Basket. The Heartland. The Great Plains.”
One of the children who had tumbled out of the suburban was suddenly, violently sick, and began crying. The permed woman rolled her eyes. Some grey and white bird that Clara couldn’t identify started pecking desultorily at the sick.
Clara glared at the Doctor.
“It has its charms,” the Doctor protested defensively.
“Yeah. Lovely. I’ve had my fill of said charms. Let’s go,” Clara said, grabbing the Doctor by his arm and trying to drag him bodily back into the TARDIS.
The Doctor did not move, his boots planted firmly in place. He shook his head, “Nope. We’re here for a reason.”
Clara raised her eyebrows, suddenly interested. “Aliens? Odd energy signatures detected? Space plague that made that kid sick up?”
“Olive Garden,” the Doctor said, using the same voice and tone he used when he was imparting the mysteries of the universe to her or when he was monologing to alien baddies.
The Doctor gestured to a squat building with a rock garden. Clara could hear the tinny sound of aggressively Italian music from here.
“I’m not following,” Clara said, shaking her head. “We’re here for an Italian restaurant?”
“Yes. No. Well, sort of,” the Doctor said, shaking his head. He abruptly started striding off in the direction of the restaurant, forcing Clara to take several skipping steps to follow after him. Curse the long-legged bastard.
“Are we eating here? Because, I’m not sure I want to eat here,” Clara said.
The Doctor pointed to a sign, reading it aloud, “’Unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks. $5.99.’ Clara, what does unlimited mean to you?”
“I—“ Clara began. Was this a trick question? Was she going insane? “Erm, without limits, I guess?”
“Today we go beyond all limits,” the Doctor whispered mysteriously. “But first we have to get a booth.”
**
So. They had a booth then. A booth next to a cheesy mural of an Italian villa. An archway, creepers on the pillars, creepers that were incongruously actually grapevines, heavy with grapes. No one had bothered to paint a background beyond the pillars and archways. The Italian Villa in the Void. How very Douglas Adams.
Clara turned over the menu she’d been handed over. Wine list. Yes. She was going to need this judging by the fact that the Doctor had pulled out a magnifying glass and was examining the fine print on the special menu that pertained to that unlimited deal.
‘When You’re Here, You’re Family,’ the branding on the menus read. Cool. Tonight Clara was going to be the drunk Aunt, then.
The waitress walked up, smiling cheerfully, flashing braces. Young enough to be one of Clara’s students.
“Can I get you two anything to get started? Drinks? Appetizers?”
“No,” the Doctor began confidently, “We’ll have two—“
“I swear to God, if you order for me, I will punch you in the nose,” Clara interrupted.
The Doctor opened and closed his mouth a few times, then scowled. “This is why you don’t go on dates with anybody but me.”
“Yeah, well, wait—is this a date?” Clara spluttered.
“Unlimited soup, salad, AND breadsticks,” the Doctor scoffed, like this meant anything. Like if, on a date, someone limited your soup, salad, or breadsticks, then obviously they didn’t fancy you. Which, my god, he might actually believe. So, there was that.
“Okay, then,” Clara said, because she could think up no other response than that.
“Your…order?” the young waitress squeaked.
Both Clara and the Doctor started, entirely forgetting the young woman was there.
“Yeah, sorry,” Clara said. “A bottle of your house red, and okay, fine, whatever, unlimited soup, salad, and etc.”
The waitress sighed in relief, scribbling the order down on her pad, pleased she could go back to something predictable, something she understood, rather than the abstract squabbling of two foreigners. “And what kind of soup would you like?”
The Doctor let out a derisive snort. The waitress squeaked again.
“It’s unlimited,” the Doctor said. “Why should she have to choose what kind of soup?”
“I—“ the waitress began, eyes wide and panic-stricken, apparently frightened by the Doctor’s whole angry Scottish milieu.
“Spicy Italian sausage, he’ll have the same, I’m sorry he’s like this, I will tip you so much money, go, go, go before he has a chance to open his mouth again,” Clara said, a rush of words in one breath, because she knew she could talk faster than the Doctor, and she was going to use that to her advantage.
The girl didn’t hesitate at Clara’s words, but instead turned and actually ran back to the kitchen.
“What’re you doing?” the Doctor hissed. “It’s not fair that she asked for the soup, there’s nothing about that in the fine print, and—“
“She is absolutely petrified of you, you caterpillar eye-browed dickhead,” Clara shot back, slightly too loudly. An old couple across the way in an opposite booth stared at her, scandalized. Clara blushed, then lowered her voice. “Eat your damn soup when it comes. If this is a date, then just behave. For me.”
The Doctor frowned. “I’m not sure that’s how dates work.”
“Yeah, well it is if you want a second date with me,” Clara snapped.
At this point, a man in his early 40s materialized at the side of their table, two wine glasses and a bottle of wine in his hands.
“Who are you?” the Doctor asked crossly. “Where’s the other girl?”
The man put on an impeccable, placid customer service face, cheery grin and all. Clara was impressed. The grin almost looked real. This guy was good.
“I’m the manager,” the man said, pointing to his nametag. “Ryan. I thought I’d handle your table personally, since Jennifer told me you were having some problems regarding one of our promotions.”
“We’re fine, really,” Clara offered in appeasement, customer-service-facing Ryan right back, trying to establish a rapport.
“No we’re not,” the Doctor said curtly. “I want an assurance that I can have any kind of soup as a refill, not just the sausage one.”
Ryan placed the wine glasses down in front of first Clara and then the Doctor, all in one smooth motion. He uncorked and poured a small serving of wine out to the Doctor for tasting, all while not breaking eye contact. “Absolutely, sir. We can certainly do that.”
Ryan hovered. Clara cleared her throat, reached over the table, took the wine glass from in front of the Doctor, and knocked the sampler back. Ryan was good, but he had really failed to pick up the relationship dynamics there.
“This is fine,” Clara said. It wasn’t. It was shitty wine. But it was alcoholic, and sometimes that was all that really mattered. “You can take the other glass. He’s not drinking.”
Ryan’s eye twitched. He had a good sense of self-preservation, though, as he said nothing else. Clara did not need a manager at a chain restaurant in some mid-sized hellhole in Kansas judging her life choices.
“Right,” Ryan cheered. “I’ll be right back with the breadsticks and salad. Soup’ll be on the way shortly.”
Breadsticks and salad came. The breadsticks were pretty good, by Clara’s estimation, but the salad had this dressing that was unpleasantly vinegary. To her great shame, the Doctor was eating the salad more out of the large salad bowl than out of his individual bowl, gobbling it up at quite an astonishing rate.
And then Clara choked on her drink of wine when she spotted the Doctor shoving a breadstick first into his glass of water and then into his mouth, whole. He’d just deep throated a breadstick.
He’d just deep throated a fucking breadstick.
She was pretty sure the older couple opposite them were going to die of a stroke. She might just join them, she thought, as he did it again with a second breadstick.
“What…are you doing?” Clara asked.
The Doctor swallowed heavily, his Adam’s apple bobbing. Had he even chewed that one? What was wrong with Gallifreyans?
“Efficiency,” the Doctor said, picking a dubious-looking pickled pepper out of the large salad bowl with his fingers and popping that in his mouth too, at least giving it a few cursory nibbles before he swallowed. “Get the food in there faster. Ever watched a hot dog eating contest?”
“No. And please, never take me to one,” Clara said, pushing her salad bowl away, suddenly not hungry anymore.
Refills on the breadsticks and salad came, along with the first course of soup. Clara was really not hungry at this point, and busied herself with discovering just how little sausage there was in this Spicy Italian Sausage soup. The remarkably sausage-less soup did not seem to bother the Doctor (and why would it when he had breadsticks?), as he tucked his napkin in his t-shirt, and began chugging the soup.
After this, he let out a mighty burp, laid back for a moment, and then sprung up. “Be right back.”
When he returned he redoubled his efforts.
Clara was staring at him with growing horror. The next time he excused himself and returned, she leaned over and whispered, “Are you binging and purging?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the Doctor scoffed. He was working on chicken soup at the moment. “I’m just popping back to the TARDIS, hanging around in the vortex until I’m hungry again, then coming back.”
Clara looked at him mutely for a long moment, then finally said, “Why?”
“Unlimited,” the Doctor answered, his tone implying that Clara was stupid. He was such a charmer. “Haven’t you ever wondered? What does unlimited really mean? The infinite is only a concept, a theory. But here, we can find a definition. What does unlimited mean in Kansas in 2002 in Olive Garden?”
Clara slumped back in the booth, and threw her napkin over her head. She wasn’t watching this anymore. She knew better than to try to dissuade the Doctor when he got in this manic-pointless-science-experiment-mode. She decided to lay back and literally think of England.
Four hours later, Ryan was trying to forcibly remove them from the restaurant and all hell was breaking loose. The restaurant, was, apparently running low on breadsticks, and was completely out of chicken stock. The Doctor was dodging out of Ryan’s grasp, running from table to table to nick breadsticks, his arms full of them already, several hanging out of the pockets of his hoodie. A nicely buzzed Clara, meanwhile, realizing that it wasn’t likely that they had the time for her bank card to get swiped, was mindlessly shoving pound notes at the waitress that had first taken their order.
“Just, just go to a bank. Get it changed or something. Wait. Oh, Christ. Maybe don’t do it until it’s at least the year that the note says it is. It’s not counterfeit, I swear, just, yeah, sorry,” Clara mumbled.
“Clara,” the Doctor shouted, his words muffled as he was holding a breadstick in his mouth like it was the world’s most buttery toothpick, “time to go. Get some salad!”
“I’m not getting the salad,” Clara growled.
“It’s vitally important!” the Doctor said.
Clara sighed, dumped all the change she had in the young woman’s hands on top of the notes, skittered away, stopping by a nearby table and snatching up a nearly full salad bowl, before running full pelt towards the exit.
The Doctor burst out the doorway seconds later, as did Ryan.
“We’re calling the cops!” another employee at the Olive Garden shouted after them all.
Meanwhile, Ryan was proving himself to be exceptionally athletic, and was moving to tackle the Doctor.
Clara saw all this when she half-turned to look. With a sigh, she yelled to the Doctor, “Duck!”
Obediently, the Doctor did, and Clara chucked the salad tongs right in Ryan’s face, which stopped him just long enough for the Doctor and her to get back into the TARDIS and into the vortex.
After a long moment where Clara found herself clutching the salad bowl protectively to her chest like it was some manner of talisman, while the Doctor ate a breadstick from the pile he’d dumped on the console, at a much-more leisurely pace than she’d seen all day, the Doctor turned to her, and asked, “Good date?”
Clara lost it, bursting into hysterical laughter, almost dropping the salad bowl.
Amazingly, it wasn’t the worst date she’d ever had.
“Why is the salad so important, anyway?” Clara asked finally after she got her laughter under control.
“Ah,” the Doctor said, taking the salad bowl from her grasp and dipping some breadsticks in. “Dressing goes really well with the breadsticks.”
Clara fought to control her murderous impulses. “Next time, I’ll pick the date, yeah?”
“You’ll want to do something boring, like watch a movie or talk about feelings,” the Doctor said with a scowl.
“Yeah, not something exciting like all-you-can-eat chain restaurants,” Clara shot back.
“That was exciting. That was experimental and scientific,” the Doctor protested.
Clara hit him over the head with a breadstick she’d taken from his pile. The Doctor made a meeping sound.
“Stop trying to be considerate,” Clara said. “It always ends disastrously. Just be you. I’ve grown quite fond of you. Sort of. Don’t let it go to your head.”
Clara regretted saying that, but luckily, the Doctor was too absorbed by breadsticks to notice.