Jan 29
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“Sure.”
The Doctor told Yaz to be sure, because she wouldn't come back the same person.
"Sure" was also the word Yaz used on the beach.
It made me feel things. And I figured if I’m gonna suffer about it, you might enjoy suffering, too.
“Be sure,” the Doctor had told her. Told all of them. All those years ago.
“Be sure,” she’d said.
And there had been no question in Yaz’s mind.
They’d all agreed – Graham and Ryan – but Graham couldn’t live in a house with Grace’s scent still lingering, and Ryan couldn’t stay in the warehouse with Grace’s voice still swirling in his head.
Yaz? Yaz had a family – a living, breathing family – that loved her even as they drove her up a wall. They loved her and they wanted her and they needed her and they were all, mercifully, alive.
But then there was the Doctor.
Then, there was more.
So she’d committed, then and there, out loud, to what she’d already committed to in her head. In her heart, in her bloodstream.
She was the first to say it. Of course she was the first to say it.
“Sure,” she’d said.
Sure.
And now, she was sitting on the beach they’d finally gotten to. Sitting still next to a woman who was never still, who was always positively vibrating with energy; with agitation, even when she was smiling; with hope even when she was raging.
But her body was still, now. Except for the wind in her hair and the slight squint in her eyes. The Doctor was still, now, and it made her look more grounded, more human, almost.
Even more broken, even more hopeful.
Even more beautiful.
Which was saying something, because every single time Yaz laid eyes on her, she thought the Doctor was the most beautiful thing in the universe. The multiverse. All of it.
And now, she found the same word that she’d said all those years ago forming on her lips again.
Sure.
“Can we just live in the present?” the Doctor was asking her. “Of what we have, while we still have it?” Her gaze was flitting between both of Yaz’s eyes, like she was trying to drink all of her in at once. While also restraining herself. Like she couldn’t get enough of looking at her, suspended in this breath, suspended in these moments before everything ended, before everything hurt.
Everything already hurt.
Looking away at the sand, even at her lips, slightly parted and entirely perfect, was easier than looking at the Doctor’s eyes. Her eyes, which were brimming with pain and apology and hope.
Hope that Yaz would agree. That the genre of hurt they would endure would be yearning, would be aching, would be longing, rather than a forced goodbye before their time. That Yaz would agree so that the hurt, the ultimate hurt, the unrecoverable hurt of a final goodbye, would be later, rather than sooner.
So she nodded, and she blinked – once, twice, on and on, because maybe if she kept blinking, her eyes would take the photographs she needed of the Doctor’s face, still and steady and full of terrified adoration and focused only on her, on nothing else. That intense and undivided attention, a rare and precious and encompassing phenomenon, a force of nature – all the storms always crashing in the Doctor’s body, in her brain, kept at bay so that she could behold nothing but Yaz.
It was stunning. It was everything.
It was the universe.
She was the universe.
Yaz blinked up into those eyes, and she nodded, because it was time for her to be brave now, once more, for the Doctor.
For her Doctor.
“Sure.”
making a Sad Thasmin™️ playlist and taking recs
Please
“That’s the way it has to be.” Everything seemed to halt. The world in front of the Doctor slowed for the briefest of moments before it continued on. Or at least that how it felt as the Doctor spoke the words aloud, spoke the words and let realization seep in. Spoke the words to her friends that cared for her so deeply. “And I would do that in a heartbeat for this universe!”
The gentle humming of the Tardis drummed in her ears. Not a comfort any longer, a reminder of what she was about to lose. She surveyed her friends standing before her. “For you,” She finished, carefully keeping her voice steady. “My fam.” Ah, there was the old Doctor, right? Cheerful and bouncy and calling her friends ‘fam’.
She slowly exhaled as her gaze traveled from Ryan to Graham and finally Yaz. The moment her eyes met Yasmin’s she knew. She knew she had made a mistake. A grave mistake. Silly Doctor, always falling for the human girls. The strong, courageous, absolutely brilliant human girls. Oh Doctor, haven't you learned yet?
She turned her back quickly, knowing Yaz all too well. Knowing she would try to stop her.
Yasmin grabbed her arm and the time lord briefly closed her eyes. Wishing it all over. Wishing to hang onto this. Reveling in the electricity that sparked her whole body as Yasmin’s hand rested on her coat.
“Because I Love You” /AdmittedWhilstYellingAtEachOther
Because they yell at each other so much, and one of them is bound to snap about it one day. Ah, this delightful ass trope. Very helpful for chaotic lesbians and disaster bisexuals who cannot Word except by accident.
CW: past gun references and blood imagery, everyone is very much fine
Yaz knew from the touch of his hand on her arm that he must be close by, but his voice sounded like it was at least a hundred kilometers away. And being transmitted through molasses.
“She’s alright, Doctor,” Dan was saying. “She’s going to be alright.”
And it was weird. Her last jumble of memories – so much running, so much screaming, the Doctor in danger, more running, an alien bullet of some kind piercing her side, pain, so much pain, the Doctor raging, the Doctor’s hands, Dan’s hands, the Doctor’s hands, blood, blood, blood, so much blood to match the pain – didn’t seem possible compared to how good her body felt now, how clear her mind felt.
Yaz cracked open her eyes and looked down at her side. She poked at her own torso. No pain. Nothing. She tugged up a shirt that wasn’t hers – hospital-issue of some kind, clearly.
No pain. Not even a scar.
“Yaz?” The Doctor’s voice – cracked and broken and achingly soft – made her look up.
The Doctor wasn’t in her line of sight, so she met Dan’s eyes first. There was warmth in them. And also, a warning. Of what, she wasn’t sure.
Until the Doctor stepped into view.
She knew the Doctor didn’t need nearly as much sleep as humans. But she looked like she hadn’t so much as blinked in weeks. And whereas Yaz was in fresh, clean hospital gear and even Dan seemed showered and in new clothes – if worn around the eyes from worry – the Doctor’s clothes and hair were exactly as Yaz remembered them from before she woke up.
All a shambles and singed and – Yaz flinched – stained deep red in places.
So many places.
But Yaz knew the bullet had gone into her, not the Doctor. Just as she’d intended.
She knew all that blood was hers.
Better than it being the Doctor’s.
“Yaz,” the Doctor said again. “You’re alright.”
She said it like a statement, a question, and a prayer, all wrapped in one.
“I feel great, weirdly.” Yaz sat up. Dan moved as if to steady her, and the Doctor’s eyes flew far too wide. But she did. Feel great.
She’d healed, evidently. Completely.
And the Doctor was fine. The Doctor was safe.
The Doctor who was now swooping toward her, and for a wild moment, Yaz thought she was going to take her into her arms.
Instead, she plunged her hand into her coat and emerged with the sonic, scanning Yaz up and down and side to side until she was, evidently, satisfied that she was, in fact, feeling great.
But instead of the Doctor’s eyes lighting up, they darkened.
“Don’t you ever do that again.” The Doctor’s voice couldn’t seem to decide whether it wanted to be threateningly low or high with panic. It had settled somewhere into a strangled anger that was usually Yaz’s territory when they talked to each other.
“Doctor, I –”
“No,” she interrupted, harsh and broken and rageful. Like she was talking to someone who was about to destroy a planet. Yaz sat up. Dan’s hands hovered by her low back, her shoulder, just in case she was unsteady.
She wasn’t. She was furious.
But the Doctor was still talking. Still… yelling. “You don’t get to explain yourself, Yaz. You don’t get to do anything right now. Because you don’t get to do that, you don’t get to jump in front of a gun for me. Not then, not now, not ever. Do you understand me?”
Yaz stood, now, and stepped right up to the Doctor, who scowled down at her. Yaz tried to ignore the way she could hear every breath, practically hear the thrum of the Doctor’s two hearts, could see the heavy rise and fall of her chest.
“What I understand, Doctor, is that you’re telling me you’re allowed to put yourself into whatever kind of danger you please, but the rest of us can’t protect you.”
The Doctor scoffed, stepping back as she tossed her hands out to the sides. “I don’t need protecting, Yaz –”
But there had been screaming and there had been running and there had been guns, all pointed at the Doctor, and the Doctor had been standing there, defenseless and furious and precious and Yaz could not have stood there and let her just…
“You could have died!” Yaz was the one properly yelling, now. If it weren’t for the blood on the Doctor’s coat – the reminder of how much she could have lost – Yaz would have shoved her again, like she had all those years ago. Dan took a small step forward but stayed quiet.
“And I would have come back!” The Doctor’s voice cracked as she glowered. She opened her mouth as if to say more, but the door creaked open.
“We really must insist that you lower your voice in our hospital –”
“I’m the Doctor, I’ll be the judge of what to lower in hospital.”
The human-sized, bipedal cat in nurse’s garb who had poked her head into the room scoffed in offense. But she did back out and close the door behind her.
The Doctor rounded back on Yaz. But Yaz opened her mouth again first.
“You may be able to tell off cats in hospitals, Doctor, but you’re not the judge of everything.” She knew she was yelling. She knew and she didn’t know how to stop. “Why do you get to run off in danger’s direction all the time, leave us for years because you’ve thrown yourself into the worst danger, but we can’t do the same for you?”
The Doctor squinted and bent at the knees, squeezing her fists in front of her like she did when she’d realizing something, when someone wasn’t yet understanding what she was trying to explain. When the words got caught in her body, in the swirl of her racing thoughts, and they were getting choked on the way out. “Not we, Yaz, you –”
“And why’s that then? Why, because I’m more fragile than you, than the rest of us?” Yaz’s voice cracked. She knew that’s not what the Doctor thought. She did. But the Doctor’s eyes were flashing between frightened and raging, and Yaz was throwing ideas out now to just try to get her to respond, to really respond, to tell her, for once, what was going on in her fast, endless, beautiful, infuriating mind. “What’s the point of us being mates if you won’t let me protect you when need protecting?”
This time, the Doctor threw her hands up, back behind her head, elbows bent. Yaz was used to seeing these movements, these frustrations, when the Doctor was working out a complicated, universe-bending and potentially universe-ending problem.
“I don’t need protecting, Yaz!”
“Yeah, Doctor. Yeah, you do. And you deserve it, Doctor, whether you want to pretend otherwise or not.”
It felt good to yell. It felt good to tell the Doctor with her anger what she didn’t know how to tell her otherwise.
“All those times you put your life in danger for us, Doctor. Tell me why we can’t do the same for you. It don’t make any sense, does it? Because you put yourself on the line every single day, whenever there’s trouble, it’s you showing up, isn’t it? But the moment I help you out –”
“You didn’t help me out, Yaz, you used your body to intercept a weapon you knew nothing about!”
“I knew it was pointed at you, Doctor, and that’s enough! Why can’t you just accept that people care about you, that you’re not the only one who’s competent enough to do the saving? Why does it always have to be –”
“Because I love you!”
The Doctor’s voice was strangled and choked and loud. Her eyes were wild and glistening. With anger and with defiance and with tenderness and with a preemptive defensiveness and terror that were clearly at war with hope.
The only sounds in the room were Yaz’s soft gasp, the Doctor’s panting. Their eyes were locked, and nothing else existed.
Until the door cracked open once more.
“Doctor, really, I have to insist – ”
But before the Doctor could say anything to the cat-nurse coming into the room, or even look away from Yaz’s face, Dan was at the cat’s side. “Hey, let me ask you – have you ever thought about opening a gift shop in the hospital? It could do wonders for patient’s moral, couldn’t it?” He turned to wink at Yaz as he gently steered the bewildered cat-nurse away. He closed the door behind him.
The Doctor spoke first. Her voice was soft and cracked, now. Apologetic, almost. Terrified, definitely. “Yaz, I –”
“Say it again,” Yaz said. She licked her lips and took a deep breath. The first one she’d taken since the Doctor’s last shout. Since the Doctor yelled that she…
“Say it again, Doctor.”
“What?”
“Tell me again. What you said.”
The Doctor’s eyes were wide, now. Her tongue flitted out, just barely, nearly imperceptible, to wet her lips. She gulped visibly, which made Yaz do the same.
“Please,” Yaz added at a near-whisper.
The silence – the deep rhythm of the Doctor’s breathing through slightly parted lips – stretched on so long Yaz started to think she should just accept that she’d never hear it again. Those words. That they’d go on, pretending nothing had been said. That she’d only relive this moment in the early mornings when she would stumble her way into Dan’s room because she couldn’t sleep, and ask him to replay this fight with her, because he heard it too, hadn’t he?
But then, the Doctor spoke. Her voice was full, and low, and tender. The shutters had lifted from her eyes, but the tears remained. The war between terror and hope remained, too.
“I love you, Yasmin Khan. I love you.”
Yaz didn’t know how she crossed the room to get to the Doctor. Didn’t know how she was even breathing, how her body was holding itself up at all. She didn’t know. She didn’t care.
Because the only thing that mattered were the Doctor’s eyes, the fear in them, the shame, the hatred for herself; for saying what she felt, and for feeling it at all.
“I love you too, big head. I love you, too.”
The fear didn’t vanish from the Doctor’s face. If anything, it grew.
But the hope, the adoration, the relief that rushed in alongside it was palpable. Yaz could feel it in her bones the same as she could see it in the shine of the Doctor’s eyes, in the tugging at the corners of her lips. In her gaze shifting down, just once, just quickly, to Yaz’s mouth.
“Damn,” Yaz murmured. The Doctor’s hands hovered by her waist, like maybe Yaz was actually still injured after all, like maybe she was in pain, like the Doctor needed to protect her from something, from anything. But Yaz smiled. “I owe Ryan 50 quid.”
The Doctor’s face scrunched up, and all Yaz wanted to do was kiss her nose. And maybe she would, soon. For now, she watched the Doctor process.
For now, she watched the Doctor laugh.
She watched the Doctor breathe in relief that Yaz was alive, was safe, was healthy. Was here.
And maybe, just maybe, relief that Yaz loved her back. Because of course she did.
Of course she did.
tell us who you are (thasmin)
“Don’t be daft, Yaz,” Graham shook his head. “You know you’re the one the Doc always stops to listen to.”
“She always listens to you, Graham,” Yaz insisted, her arms hugged tight around her chest. “Remember when you wanted to try that alien waffle sandwich?”
“Well, yeah, but that’s not exactly what -”
“And she listens to you too, Ryan, when you need to talk about your nan -”
“That’s cos I’m talking about me, Yaz, not about her.”
Yaz shifted so she could draw her knees into herself, still fighting off the sensation that she was being watched. The sensation she’d had in that not-forest of nothing and everything. That she was being watched, but not her, not really. That those stalks, those lights, were swirling around her dead body. Conscious, but still dead, somehow.
She still felt dead, on the inside, somehow, even since she’d gotten out.
Artron energy, the Doctor had said. From time traveling. So it was being with the Doctor that had saved her. Of course it was.
But Yaz shook her head once more. “You saw her, when I asked if we could visit her home. She ran away from us, Ryan. From me.”
Ryan and Graham exchanged a glance that screamed of private conversations they’d had. About Yaz and the Doctor? About the Doctor herself? Yaz didn’t know, and just then, she didn’t want to know.
But she asked anyway, her voice more a challenge than a question.
“What.”
Again with that look the two exchanged. Ryan nodded almost imperceptibly at Graham, who sighed like he was both surrendering and bracing himself.
“If she’ll tell any of us, Yaz, it’s gonna be you. The way she cares for you. It’s all of us, it’s her gang, right? But it’s also you and her, Yaz. It’s been that way from that first day on the train. Tell me you haven’t noticed.”
Yaz tried to scoff, tried to wave him away. But Ryan, too, was nodding, his mouth grim but his eyes, as ever, soft and understanding.
“She didn’t run from you, Yaz,” Ryan said, like he knew just what her fear was. “She was running from herself, innit? Whatever she left behind on her planet. She said she ran away. Looks like she’s still running. But not from you, Yaz. Not from you.”
“Yes, from me. Because she won’t tell me, won’t let me in. Not any of us, she won’t -”
“What is it she won’t do?”
The Doctor’s voice made the three of them jump. Yaz especially jumped, because this wasn’t the Doctor’s voice when she was peppy, excited, ready to go, rambling on and on about planets none of them had ever dreamed of and worlds that couldn’t possibly make sense but that lived in her eyes.
This was the Doctor’s voice that was low, scratched, barely restrained.
The image, seared into Yaz’s mind, of the Doctor with her fist over her mouth, like she was about to vomit, when O called himself the Master.
The image, seared into Yaz’s mind, of the Doctor using her own body to try to protect the rest of them from as much of the blast as she could when that bomb went off in the cockpit.
Those images flashed through Yaz’s vision as she turned, called to her unbidden by the Doctor’s ragged tone.
So Yaz did what she almost never did in the face of things that terrified her.
She froze.
Graham broke the silence as the Doctor looked between them, eyebrows raised and face carefully arranged into an almost manic calm.
“Won’t take us back to get more of those spy gadgets, is all,” he said, tapping his now normal shoes on the ground while Ryan caught on and mimicked explosive sounds coming from his now non-existent cufflinks.
“Mm,” the Doctor acknowledged, but she kept her gaze on Yaz, who suddenly only had eyes for the TARDIS library carpet.
“Well, Ryan, I think my stomach’s telling me it’s time for a snack.” Graham stood and gave Ryan another one of those significant looks. Ryan stood, too, but put his hand on Yaz’s shoulder.
“Want something too, Yaz?” he asked, and she knew exactly what he was doing - offering her an out. A way to not be left alone with the Doctor.
With the woman who’d saved them all -- again -- who’d saved Yaz when she thought she was going to get torn back to that place, back to that hell, back to that limbo between life and death that felt so, so much more like death than it did anything like living, anything like hope.
With the woman who’d done all that, and then ran them from new planet to new planet, forcing that smile and forcing that rambling technobabble that was more charming than Yaz wanted to admit, usually, but not so much when it was so screamingly obvious that behind the glee in the Doctor’s eyes and the skip in her step was horror beyond anything Yaz knew how to comprehend.
Yet she still wouldn’t tell them. Planet after planet, whisking them on whirlwind adventure after whirlwind adventure, talking the entire time but never, not really, saying anything.
“No, I’m fine Ryan, thank you,” she decided, squeezing his hand in thanks because really, he was the best mate she could ever ask for. She hoped she conveyed that with the squeeze of his hand, the smile that she hoped her eyes made less tight.
“Come on, son,” Graham murmured, smiling at the Doctor and Yaz like nothing was afoot. “I’ll try to save you some concoction, shall I, Doc?”
“As long as it’s not spiked with Judoon ale again,” the Doctor returned.
Graham scoffed on his way out the door with Ryan. “It was just the one time, and it was an accident!”
The Doctor chuckled, but again, with that low register in her voice. It made Yaz gulp, which made her want to physically smack herself out of it.
The couch cushion beside Yaz bounced slightly, telling Yaz -- she was still carefully staring at the door after Graham and Ryan -- that the Doctor had sat down next to her.
Just like she hadn’t done after Yaz had gotten trapped in that place.
It was always the Doctor, who came to comfort her, to check on her, to make sure she was alright.
But she’d been too busy, it seemed, with O. So it had been Ryan who came and found her, doing the job the Doctor usually did. The job the Doctor was supposed to do.
It was her job, wasn’t it? To keep care of them, bringing them along through so many traumas?
But then, Yaz wasn’t really sure what the Doctor’s job was anymore.
All she knew was that this woman had thrown her body against the cockpit door to try to protect them all, with her own flesh and blood, hope against hope, from O’s betrayal.
And that she kept running away whenever they asked her why.
“What is it you lot don’t think I’ll do, Yaz?” she asked, and her voice was still low but with that lilt of apology, that hint of gentleness, that gravity that Yaz had always assumed was from personal trauma but now, she realized, was even bigger than that.
“Tell us anything more than you already have.” Yaz surprised herself with the readiness of her answer, the way she scooted sideways on the couch so she could look the Doctor full in the face without being in kissing range.
No. No one needed to be in kissing range.
“And you don’t have to, you know? I understand, I do. Trauma can be a right and proper private thing, and just because we’re mates doesn’t mean you have to tell us every little thing about yourself. I know that, we all do. But Doctor, you know all about my mum and Ryan’s dad and Graham’s old bus mates, and we’ve had laughs, haven’t we, about what we all went through in school and how we grew up and what we’ve always dreamed of and how none of us ever dreamed it would be this.”
Yaz gestured all around the TARDIS library, fully aware that she was rambling but beyond caring. She could feel the Doctor’s eyes, unblinking, on her face, but she couldn’t bring herself to look at her. Not yet. Not while she was on a roll.
If she stopped, she didn’t know if she’d be able to start again.
“But you, Doctor? We don’t know what you dream about, or what you were like as a little kid. You’re trans, yeah? And that’s fine, of course, even if Graham has trouble getting his head around it sometimes. But it’s more than that, isn’t it? Being a Time Lord. There’s more to all of it, to the reason you practically ran away when I asked you if you could show us your planet. I just wanted to see where you grew up, Doctor, because you’ve seen where I grew up, and Ryan, and it’s... it’s just what mates do, innit? Taking each other around the grand tour of their lives. But our adventures, it’s only part of your life, isn’t it, Doctor? And if you’re still running away, that’s fine. We’ve all got demons we’re running from, but we can run with you, Doctor. You don’t have to do it alone. Not anymore.”
She almost reached her hand out to touch the Doctor’s. She almost bridged the gap she thought about bridging every single day.
But the Doctor stood, and when she did, Yaz saw flashes of O -- of the Master -- in her eyes.
“You think I haven’t had others running with me, Yaz? You think you and Ryan and Graham are the only family I’ve ever had on board with me?”
“I suppose not, but if you never talk about them, then how are we --”
“Because you don’t deserve the kinds of pain I’ve seen, Yasmin Khan. You, or Ryan, or Graham. Grace didn’t deserve it, either, being around me, because look what good it got her!”
“Grace would have loved --”
“Well we’ll never know, will we, Yaz? Because that’s what I am. That’s who I am. The person people want to run away with, and I ask them, I ask you, all of you, to come along, to swan off with me and my box, because isn’t the universe grand? But it’s not, Yaz, it’s not. Because my oldest friend destroyed my home, all of it. I’d lost it, and it was my fault, I was the reason it burned. And then I saved it, my people safe and found again, but I was too much of a coward to go back. But I should have. I should have, because if I had, I might have been able to stop him, to... because it’s all burned down again, Yaz, all of it, all of Gallifrey, and if I tell you, if I really tell you who I am, what I’ve done, the amount of blood of the amount of species and planets and races on my hands... you couldn’t bear it, you couldn’t bear me. Because you are good, Yaz. You, and Ryan, and Graham. And the others. You are good. And if you know me, if I truly answered all of your questions --”
“Then you might realize we’re braver than you think, and you’re not as alone as you’ve convinced yourself that you should be?”
Yaz didn’t know quite when in the Doctor’s tirade she stood up, but she had. She wasn’t sure quite when she’d taken the Doctor’s hands into her own, but she had.
She wasn’t quite sure when her eyes, full of unshed tears, dropped down to the Doctor’s lips, but they did.
“All of those things you don’t want us to bear,” she said, softly, softly, because the Doctor looked, now, smaller than Yaz had ever seen her. Like she would run, again, if Yaz moved too quickly, breathed too loudly. “You don’t have to bear them by yourself. We can --”
“What? You can’t bring my planet back, Yaz, and you can’t change the things that I’ve done.”
“No,” Yaz’s eyes flashed, giving as good as she got, because the Doctor did nothing if not choose her companions -- her fam -- well. “No, I can’t, and I’m not trying to. But I am trying to take care of you, just like you take care of everyone else in this damned universe, Doctor. And you don’t have to accept that, alright? You can be all broody in private, I suppose, that’s fine. But I don’t have to be happy about it, and I can be angry that you’re not letting me care for you properly, alright?”
She gulped air as she finished talking, and she definitely imagined the Doctor’s darkened eyes flitting down to her mouth. She definitely imagined it, because the storm she’d felt oncoming in the other woman was suddenly just... gone. Like it had never been there at all.
Every bit of tension, of rage underneath the surface, of agonies she wouldn’t speak of, seemed to vanish from her, then, as she collapsed back down on the couch and, in the same motion, patted the cushion next to her.
Yaz sat, brow furrowed, body stiff.
“You’re right, Yaz. You are, you’re right. You’re my mates and you deserve to know who you’re risking your life with all the time. But it’s... it’s easier, sometimes, do you know what I mean? To only go on and on about hope, because if I didn’t --”
“Then it would all be gone.”
It was the Doctor, this time, who bridged the gap between them, her fingers reaching out for Yaz’s.
“Yeah.”
“Well, it won’t be. I’ll hang on to hope for you, Doctor. Me and Ryan and Graham. When things get too overwhelming. If something like... what happened with O...”
The Doctor’s fingers twitched of their own accord, and Yaz smoothed her thumb across the Doctor’s hand without thinking about it.
The action made them both gulp. Or maybe it was just Yaz. She couldn’t tell, really.
“We were both in that place. The Kasaavins’... whatever that place was. Their realm.”
“I should have protected you from that. I should have seen it coming.”
“No, Doctor, that’s just it.” Yaz kept smoothing her thumb over the Doctor’s hand, and the Doctor kept letting her, and suddenly she wasn’t sure what was real. “You don’t have to see everything coming. You don’t have to see everything all the time.”
“But I do, Yaz. Everything. The whole universe, thrumming through my head, always. That’s who I am, which means... who even could know what that means?”
“None of us know who we are, Doctor, not really. You’re not all that special, you know.” Her lips curved up of their own accord, and to her delight, the Doctor’s followed suit.
“Ah, so this was conversation was all an elaborate ruse to get me to deflate my ego a little bit.”
“Well, just a little bit, we can’t have the whole universe turning over on itself now can we?”
Yaz almost took the Doctor’s hand fully into her own, almost raised her hand to her lips, almost kissed her knuckles.
Almost.
But the Doctor looked like she knew, anyway, what Yaz wanted to do, the care with which Yaz wanted to do it.
And maybe that knowledge, maybe their fingers slowly interlacing in the gentle teasing before their thoughtful silence... maybe that was enough, for now.
Bad Ass Braids
Yasmin sat cross legged on the floor of the tardis. Her hands rested in her lap.
The Doctor sat behind her, belly pressed to Yaz’s back and legs folding around her friends.
The Doctor softly let her fingers trail through her friends hair, smiling as her companion grinned up at her.
“Been awhile since I’ve braided hair.” The Doctor admitted with a gentle smile, fingers still tangled in Yaz’s long locks.
“Mm.” Yaz replied softly, leaning back against her friend as the time lord’s free hand and her own intertwined. “Well I like braids.” She responded lazily. “So you better find the time to learn.”
The Doctor let her slender fingers ghost along the nape of Yasmin’s neck. “I’ll practice for days if this is what it would be like.” She murmured, squeezing the humans hand.
Yasmin laughed softly, turning her head to study the time lord.
“What?” The Doctor quipped with a grin. “Sure doesn’t seem like you have any objections so far.” She tenderly grazed her lips along the back of Yaz’s neck, causing her to inhale softly.
“Stop.” Yasmin yelped as she pawed the Doctor away.
The alien stilled immediately, panic rising in her chest.
“Stop that or we’ll just be making out for the next hour.” Yasmin chastised, quickly turning and giving her partner a brief kiss on the lips.
The Doctor pulled her closer and chuckled.
Yasmin lay her head on her friends chest as the time lord wrapped her in an embrace. She could have stayed there like that for hours, years even. Wrapped tight in a familiar embrace as she drank in the presence of her friend. Yaz closed her eyes for a brief second. “Braids.” She reminded softly, once again turning her back to her friend.
The Doctor ran her fingers through her friends hair again slowly.
“Braids.” Yaz chimed in again with a small laugh.
The Doctor sighed in annoyance. “I dunno, I quite like this right now.”
“Yeah...I do to.”
Breaking Point
“Don’t you ever do that again.”
Yaz looked up to find the doctor standing in her doorway. Yaz watched as the doctor swallowed before giving her a hard look. “Don’t you ever pull a stunt like that again!”
Yaz could play dumb, could ask whatever the doctor was going on about but she knew better. She clearly remembered the look the doctor had given her at the time. She hadn’t agreed with Yaz’s plan at all, but she new better than to argue with her friend. That if she dared to get hurt or even worse....
Yaz studied the alien standing before her and suddenly became defensive. How dare the doctor be upset with her when their adventures always brought danger? How most times it was in the fact the doctor who made rash decisions.
Yaz stood, crossing her arms. “Don’t tell me you wouldn’t do the same thing.”
The Doctor knew her friend had a valid point. She cocked her head for a second. “Okay,” She relented. “Maybe I would have. But that’s not the point.”