𝐩𝐥𝐚𝐲𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐟𝐢𝐥𝐞 : john logan x fem! bio student! reader
𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐤 𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭 : panic attack-esque breakdown but isn't mentioned explicitly, academic pressure leading to burnout induced meltdown.
𝐞𝐯𝐚𝐥𝐮𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 : Being a biology student was no easy feat, especially when every single one of your classes for the past week had decided to not only give you tests on crucial topics, but also make them count towards your final grade. It's the end of said demon-week, and you only have one test left, but when you've been working on a prayer and a concerning amount of coffee, what happens when it just doesn't work anymore?
𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐜𝐞 : 6k words
𝐛𝐮𝐧𝐧𝐲’𝐬 𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 : Sooooo, this was a request as well!! a little bit of comfort for everyone going through it right now! You guys got this and if you dont, lock in and then read this to cure the burn out, the briar U gang and I believe in you. Thank you @pinkyups for the gif and @somebitchprobably-graphicdump for the dividers !
𝐥𝐨𝐜𝐤𝐞𝐫 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝 : I would really appreciate if you could send in an ask to be on my taglist, it's easier for me to manage and make sure everyone is added!! here is the post of my current taglist. Also, if your user is bolded, I'm going on a prayer that youve been tagged but Tumblr wouldn't let me properly do so. I would recommend checking your privacy settings to allow other people to tag you.
If only a few months ago, someone told you that you’d be sitting on the kitchen island of briar u’s infamous hockey house. You would’ve spat in their face and thrown out witch allegations. But, as it so happens, you were currently proving yourself wrong since you were in fact sat at said kitchen island, at 2 in the morning.
What was especially life altering was the fact that the hockey house at two in the morning felt fundamentally different from the version people saw during the day.
Quieter, obviously.
There was still the low hum of the refrigerator somewhere behind you, the occasional groan of pipes in the walls, distant traffic bleeding through the kitchen windows in soft waves. Someone upstairs snored loud enough that it periodically rattled the ceiling and every so often the house settled with little creaks that sounded almost human in the dark.
You had been staring at the same paragraph for twenty-three minutes, and you’re pretty sure the windows loading screen was implanted into your brain in that time.
From the outside, you still looked productive enough. Your notes were spread methodically across the kitchen island in organised little piles, colour coded tabs sticking from textbooks, highlighters lined neatly beside your laptop alongside enough empty coffee cups to medically concern most people. Your laptop screen glowed brightly against the otherwise dim kitchen, lecture slides open beside three different quizlets and a half-finished practice paper that had slowly become your mortal enemy sometime around midnight.
Your knee bounced aggressively beneath the stool.
One of your hoodie sleeves had been pulled over your hand completely, the cuff half-chewed from absentminded stress while your other hand tapped your pencil rhythmically against the counter.
Tap tap tap.
Pause.
Tap tap tap.
You reread the sentence again, hoping the information would magically inject itself into your brain. Still nothing.
Your eyes skimmed over the words, recognising them individually but refusing to process them collectively, which somehow felt even more insulting considering this was material you’d already revised twice.
You exhaled slowly through your nose, pressing your temples in an attempt to settle the dull ache behind your eyes.
Fine. Whatever. Maybe your brain just needed a second.
You sat up straighter on the stool and reached for your coffee, immediately grimacing when the cold bitter liquid hit your tongue. It truly was a miracle what a red bull and coffee could produce if brewed together. Thankfully, nobody would know of your creation since you cleaned up the evidence and were currently drinking through the undeniable urge to gag it all out.
Your planner sat open beside you, pages covered in your handwriting so intensely neat it bordered on threatening. Every hour of the week had been scheduled down to frightening precision - lectures, revision blocks, assignment deadlines, office hours, reading lists.
And still somehow, the tasks outweighed the hours- the day you made the schedule was the day you cursed those who didn’t warn you that at Briar, everyone here had already been the smartest person in the room somewhere else.
You had spent most of your life being good at things naturally enough that effort felt almost embarrassing to admit to. High school had been manageable. Predictable.
Briar was different, at Briar, everyone was either born with the syllabus out of the womb or could somehow use textbook pages to roll and smoke a joint- still managing to come out with a 4.0 GPA. Which just meant every mistake, no matter how tiny, felt absurdly catastrophic.
You clicked your pen repeatedly while rereading the practice question in front of you.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Your eye twitched.
“Okay,” you muttered quietly to yourself, dragging a hand down your face. “No, because actually what the fuck is oxidative phosphorylation.”
The kitchen answered you unhelpfully with silence, bar the occasional drip of the sink- which didn’t help since it added another item to you todo list, “tell Logan to fix the kitchen sink”. You prayed your brain would remember it for longer than 20 seconds, but given that it could barely splutter together the material you swore was genetically implanted into your DNA , you didn’t have much hope.
Alright, new strategy- you turned your focus to your laptop. You’d make this test your bitch, one way or another.
The diagram on your laptop stared back at you smugly.
Or not. You glared at the behemoth of a biological diagram, weird, blob-like shapes were sprayed across the screen with equally sharp, taunting labels and colours that honestly, should never be used in association with the human body.
Your phone buzzed from somewhere across the large island, most likely beneath a pile of flashcards- you barely broke eye contact with your goliath. It was probably Allie. Or Hannah. Or someone in your intro to human biology class freaking out about the test.
The notification popped up in the corner of your screen, it was both of them. Teaming up to tell you to go to sleep before your body gave out and somebody had to physically remove you from campus again.
You swiped it away dismissively. Not happening.
You still had two chapters left to revise, one practice paper unfinished and exactly nine hours before the test. Which in theory, sounded manageable. In practice however, you would willingly let Dean teach you about anal sex and somehow understand it better than the words in front of you. Your brain was buffering dramatically against your task list.
You rubbed hard at your eyes before leaning back over your notes again, trying desperately to force yourself into focus.
“Just lock the fuck in.” You whispered to yourself, frustrated with the way your shoulders slumped tiredly and legs began to numb from where they were awkwardly folded beneath you.
Just focus.
Your pencil tapped faster, eyes burning as you forced them to read the same line four more times.
Nothing.
An annoyed groan left your lips, because you could feel yourself slipping.
Feel your concentration dissolving around the edges while your body keeps trying to push forward anyway. Your thoughts felt sluggish and overcrowded at the same time, every tiny unfinished task pressing against the inside of your skull until even breathing felt vaguely unproductive.
And still, you scolded your weary body and brain- convincing them to just keep going. One more hour. One more minute.
Because the alternative was stopping, and you wouldn’t dare consider it. Stopping meant acknowledging that maybe you physically couldn’t keep up with the pace you’d set for yourself- and the mere hypothetical made something uncomfortable curl in your chest.
You reached for another flashcard.
Read half of it and… forgot what it said immediately.
A near hysterical laugh escaped you before you could stop it, fingers curling around the innocent card-stock. You wacked yourself with the flimsy thing before pausing with it pressed against your forehead, squeezing your eyes shut for a second longer than you deemed necessary.
You were fine, it's just a little stress. Everyone at Briar was stressed, and you refused to be the coward who was complaining about a little sleep deprivation and one difficult exam.
Your eyes opened again and landed on the digital clock glowing faintly on the microwave, the numbers slightly blurry.
2:07 AM.
You stared at it for a moment.
Then immediately looked back down at your notes like refusing to acknowledge the time would somehow stop it existing.
Tap tap ta-
The pencil snapped clean in half, one side stayed clasped in your hand whilst the other rolled uselessly away from you. At least something was escaping this revision nightmare. You froze, staring longingly at the traitorous piece of wood, scoffing in a kind of exhausted disbelief normally reserved for personal betrayals.
Then you laughed again, burying your face in your hands.
Dangerously close to tears.
The kitchen light had been on long enough that Logan eventually noticed it in his sleep, not at first, just distantly, somewhere beneath the heavy haze of exhaustion and late-night dreams, his brain registered the thin strip of warm light cutting underneath his bedroom door which made him subconsciously shuffle around the bed, eyebrows furrowing when he sensed a change in the environment around him.
Because you were supposed to be upstairs.
More specifically, you were supposed to be asleep beside him.
Logan woke slowly, one arm stretching instinctively across the mattress before meeting cold sheets instead of your body. For a second he just blinked at the ceiling, disoriented in that miserable way people were at two in the morning, before finally pushing himself upright with a tired groan.
He sat up, swaying tiredly as his eyes adjusted to the rude awakening, his room was dark besides the faint orange glow of campus lights bleeding through the blinds and your side of the bed was empty.
Not recently empty either, the sheets had settled and emanated a chill that suggested you’d been gone for a few hours.
Logan scrubbed a hand down his face and began to search for something to cover up with. He already knew where you’d be.
The same place you always ended up when your brain refused to let you rest.
He shoved himself out of bed and reached blindly for the pair of grey sweatpants abandoned somewhere near the desk chair, dragging them on low over his hips before stumbling toward the door. His Briar hockey team hoodie hung half-off the back of the chair and he tugged it over his head without much thought, still too sleepy to care that it was inside out.
The stairs creaked under his weight, making him grimace and shift his feet experimentally- trying to make his way down quietly without disrupting the hushed atmosphere. The house was dead, Tucker wasn’t flopping around the couch yelling at a video game, Dean wasn’t raiding the protein powder cupboard, Garrett's old classic rock wasn’t blaring out of the speaker. It was just silent.
Then you came into view, and it was like seeing a zombie in a graveyard. Logan stilled in his tracks.
It was exactly as he’d pictured you, hunched over the kitchen island, hair fluttering out the braid you’d messily done, probably when you first fled from the bedroom- your legs were pretzeled beneath you as you stared at your laptop, frozen in time with notes covering every inch of the island around you.
The stool you sat on vibrated from the force of your knee bouncing, even the empty coffee cups and highlighters jolted considerably; from what Logan could make out, almost seven different tabs were open across your screen, the garish light illuminated your face as you glanced up a few times, your hoodie sleeve covering half your hand while you aggressively annotated something in the margins of your textbook with enough force to threaten the integrity of the page itself.
He carefully treaded towards you, close enough to make out the look on your face. Sheer exhaustion plagued your features, not the normal version either, you didn’t have a lick of sleepiness on your face, it was probably wrung out from how wound tight you were. This kind of exhaustion settled beneath your skin and turned every small inconvenience into a potential psychological breakdown
Logan paused briefly for a second, just watching you. His chest tightened a little, because this had been your life for the past week. Barely eating unless necessary, sleep was just a polite grievance that you gave into once in a while when you weren’t studying into the night until your eyes were glassy. And somehow, you still thought people would believe you when you insisted that you were fine.
You muttered something under your breath at your laptop before aggressively clicking your pen- the sound was sharp enough to bring Logan back into the scene that laid out before him.
Click.Click.Click.
“Baby?” He came up behind you, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and pressing his hand against your back. You startled so hard that the pen slipped from your fingers.
Logan immediately felt a little bad when you spun toward him with wide eyes, before you expression settled into something defensive.
“I’m studying.”
Logan’s brows lifted as he unscrewed the bottle slowly,
“Yeah,” he said slowly, voice still rough with sleep, “I gathered that.”
You huffed quietly and looked back down at your notes, this close up, he could see how much worse you looked. There were faint shadows beneath your eyes, and you posture had curled inward, hostile in that specific way when you were overwhelmed but trying to hide it
“When did you come down here?”
“Like…” You squinted at the microwave clock, “Midnight?”
Logan blinked.
“Baby, it’s two in the morning.”
“I know what time it is.”
The sharpness in your voice surprised the both of you, mainly you, since you recoiled back and tightened your face apologetically.
“I didn’t mean-”
“It’s okay.”
Logan cut you off gently before you could spiral into apologising. He shifted closer, resting one hand against the counter beside your thigh while looking over the mess of notes in front of you.
Biochemistry.
Jesus Christ.
“You should come to bed.”
“No.”
You didn’t even look up from the equations scribbled onto the paper in front of you, dismissing the idea entirely, like the suggestion itself stressed you out.
You rubbed hard at your eyes before looking back down at your laptop screen.
“I still have so much left.”
Logan studied you quietly for a second. Normally, he would’ve pushed harder. Normally, he’d already be halfway through physically carrying you upstairs while you complained dramatically over his shoulder.
But this version of you would’ve gouged his eye out without thinking if he dared something like that. This version of you was overstimulated, overworked and balancing precariously on a thread built by your psyche.
So instead, Logan just moved beside you, dragging a stool closer so he could slide in and rest a hand on your thigh absentmindedly, leaning lightly into your shoulder.
You exhaled shakily through your nose, when he ghosted his nose against your cheek, nuzzled delicately.
“What are you working on?” he asked softly, tilting his head to squint his eyes at the paper that twitched under your fingers.
“Oxidative phosphorylation.”
Logan stared at you.
“Gesundheit.”
Despite yourself, your mouth twitched slightly.
“There are literally ATP synthase pathways in my nightmares now.”
“That sounds fake.”
“It’s not. I wish it was”
Logan hummed sympathetically like he understood literally any of what you were saying. He didn’t, but he knew enough to know that when your voice sounded too tight, the content was hammering around in your brain with the elegance of a troll.
You clicked your pen again.
And again.
And again.
Logan’s gaze drifted slowly across the kitchen, the empty coffee cups he had noticed before now seemed to be stained an odd ochre colour, definitely not coffee but he wouldn’t question what concussion you had brewed to stay awake. He stopped himself from scolding you about the untouched granola bar beside your laptop and instead focussed on the way your notes depicted the journey of your mental state unravelling, starting out neat and ending up in frantic scribbles.
He squeezed your thigh once, “You eat anything?”
A pause.
Your pencil stopped moving and you bit your lip as you thought. Not a good sign.
“Yeah.”
Logan waited for you to elaborate.
“…today?”
You glared at him weakly.
“That feels judgemental.”
“It’s meant to feel concerning.”
“I had coffee.” You looked over to the sea of cups beyond your materials, blinking at the odd colour their insides seemed to have picked up. That’s not a good sign for your stomach, a problem for future you entirely, “...which I brewed with redbull”
“Baby.”
“I know.”
The words came out as an exhausted sigh.
Logan’s thumb rubbed slowly against your thigh.
“You can’t study properly if you’re running entirely on some demon-drink and the hatred of your TA.”
You let out a short laugh at that, then immediately regretted it when your head throbbed. Logan’s frown deepened when you pressed your fingers against your temple.
Your breathing had changed slightly, thinner, more aware of the toll this was taking on your body. Every inhale was getting caught halfway down and each exhale came out shaky.
He watched you stare at the same page for several long seconds without turning it, watched your eyes scan the same line repeatedly, your fingers tightening in your hair where they were buried- cradling your head.
Your knee bounced harder against the stool.
“Hey.”
You didn’t answer immediately, instead your jaw tightened.
“Baby.”
This time you looked at him, and Logan felt his chest tighten at the shiny film over your eyes. As if you were teetering on the edge of crying, and the only thing blocking the dam was your insistence to continue studying.
You looked away almost immediately, shoulders pulling tighter.
“I’m fine,” you muttered quietly.
Logan, had stopped pretending to believe that about ten minutes ago.
He stayed beside you, one hand still resting lightly on your thigh, thumb moving in slow, grounding circles like he was trying to keep you anchored in the room. He didn’t speak much anymore. Just watched. Quietly observant in that way of his that always felt slightly unfair, like he could read the parts of you that you hadn’t even admitted existed yet.
You didn’t realise you leaned into him but your head had come to rest on his shoulder as you continued to highlight pages. But when you hit a certain word with the electric blue ink, you paused, re-read it and frowned.
“Wait,” you muttered under your breath, you immediately sat up straight and flipped the page back, then forward again, then back.
Logan didn’t say anything, but his thumb had frozen against your leg, his eyes darting worryingly between how fast your fingers were flicking the pages and your face, that was starting to crumple with realisation.
You scanned the entire paragraph again. Then the page. The words weren’t changing, but they might as well have been. They blurred together at the edges, refusing to hold shape properly no matter how many times you forced your eyes over them.
Your stomach tightened.
“No,” you whispered quietly, more to yourself than anything else, your fingers flying to check the lecture slides, then your revision guide. A slow, sinking realisation started to form in your chest.
“No, no, no,” you said again, this time sharper, somehow sitting up straighter as if posture alone could fix the situation.
Logan’s voice came gently from beside you, but you could barely hear it. A rush of panic roared in your ears and it felt as though you were drowning and he was standing above you- trying to communicate through litres of pitch black water.
“What’s wrong?”
You didn’t answer immediately.
Your eyes darted everywhere, from where you were flipping pages with increasing urgency, to scanning headings, rereading annotations you had definitely written yourself but suddenly didn’t recognise as useful.
This wasn’t the right topic.
You had spent hours on the wrong section.
Hours.
Your entire brain stalled for a second, like a car that had been slowly, painfully screeching up a hill- and at the last minute some unknown force engaged the hand brake and you were now rolling down at a speed you couldn’t stop even if you tried
Then, as if somehow slamming on the breaks would help, it tried to compensate by speeding up.
“That can’t be right,” you said quickly, breath thinning slightly. “I swear I already did this. I- I literally did this two days ago.”
Logan leaned forward slightly now, “Baby-”
“No, no, it’s fine,” you cut in immediately, too fast again, the rubber was burning as the wheels grinded against asphalt. “It’s fine, I can fix it. I just need to- I just need to switch it and then I can catch up, I still have time I just-”
Your laptop trackpad clicked aggressively as you opened another document.
Logan watched as your hands shook violently with each click, your breathing shallowed and shoulder tightened even more than before- your knee was bouncing so fast that it felt like your entire leg was vibrating against his hand. It was like you were slowly collapsing into yourself, and all he could do was watch with a concerned expression on his face.
“Hey,” he said again, softer this time. “Look at me.”
“I am looking at you,” you snapped automatically.
Your voice cracked at the end of your sentence and you froze- letting silence interrupt your world speeding to an untimely end.
You swallowed, and then tried to laugh. Maybe if you could trick your body into thinking this was all just one big joke, it would stop trembling like you were in an active war zone. It didn’t come out right, more like a choked sob.
“I’m just being stupid,” you muttered, turning back to the screen too quickly. “It’s fine. I can still revise it, I just lost time but I can make it up if I-”
Your eyes wouldn’t focus entirely, and when your cursor hovered in the wrong place guided by your fingers, that were quaking so uncontrollably, you ended up deleting the entire window.
Your stomach dropped.
“Oh my god,” you whispered.
Then again, louder.
“Oh my god.”
Logan straightened slightly, his hand moving to hover over your forearm- but dropped it back to the familiar place on your leg, “Baby.”
“No, I’m fine,” you said immediately, too quickly again, voice shaking now whether you wanted it to or not. “I’m fine, I just messed up a bit, it’s not- it’s not a big deal I can fix it I just need to-”
You tried to re-open the tabs, but your laptop spluttered hopelessly, lagging out in front of you. Your breath caught when the entire screen went black and rebooted, the forced update screen blinked cruelly at you. And then you felt something in your chest whimper and crumple, like a house of cards met with the softest breeze.
“No,” you said again, but this time it wasn’t frustration, it was fear that made your voice waver as your hands stilled over the keyboard
“I can’t- I can’t do this,” shaking your head you brought a hand over your mouth, almost disbelievingly, like you were hearing someone else say it.
Logan’s hand immediately left your thigh.
“Hey,” he said firmly now, moving closer. “Hey, look at me.”
You didn’t. Couldn’t. You were transfixed by the slow spinning pinwheel over and over and over- like it was hypnotizing you into staying upright in your seat.
“I’m so behind,” you said quickly, words spilling out now that the dam had broken. “I’m actually so behind I don’t even understand how I’m supposed to catch up and I thought I was doing okay but I’m not and I just wasted so much time and I don’t- I don’t have time for this-”
Your voice broke properly at the end, and then the tears finally fell. You didn’t sob, just heaved heavy breaths that were interrupted by copious floods of salty liquid barrelling down your face. It wasn’t dramatic the way you fell apart, it was like throwing a pebble down a ravine, and waiting to hear the sharp sound of it dropping to the floor, you could only notice it if you listened very carefully.
You blinked hard immediately.
Once.
Twice.
Angrily.
As if that would fix it.
“No,” you said again, wiping at your face quickly with the back of your sleeve. “No, no, I’m fine, I’m literally fine I just- this is stupid I shouldn’t be crying I just need to fix it-”
You went to reach for your textbook and pen, you’d do it the old fashioned way then.
Logan stopped you immediately, both hands wrapped around yours, gentle but firm. He pulled the pen and textbook out of your grip, dropping them somewhere on the table.
The thud echoed too loudly in the quiet kitchen.
You froze, staring at him like he had just pulled the plug of your life support. Your breathing became uneven now, chest tightening in a way that made speaking harder.
“I need that,” you said, voice small but urgent. “Logan, I need that.”
“No,” he said softly.
You face crumpled in exhausted confusion, finally spilling over the edges of your carefully curated container of anger and frustration.
“I don’t have time for this,” you whispered, voice breaking again. “I don’t have time to fall apart right now.”
Logan’s expression shifted, something within him went still as he rubbed your knuckles,
“Baby,” he said quietly, and there was something different in his tone now. Less concern about the work. More about you. “You’re not falling apart.”
You let out a broken laugh and gestured to the minefield of study materials in front of you.
“Yeah,” you said shakily, wiping your face again. “Yeah, I am.”
Logan waited for you to continue, as if he didn’t see any evidence for your argument. The silence wrapped around you, compelling you to speak- your voice softer, smaller than before,
“I can’t mess this up.”
Logan barely hesitated, he reached up and cupped your face gently, forcing your attention away from the table and onto him.
Your hands were still trembling slightly where they hovered near your lap. Logan’s palms were on your cheeks, steady and warm, keeping you anchored in place like he was afraid that if he let go you would dissolve back into the kitchen air.
And you just stared at him, not really able to focus on his eyes properly, like your brain hadn’t fully caught up to the fact that the panic had nowhere left to go.
Logan’s thumbs moved lightly under your eyes, brushing away the last of the tears before they could fully settle.
“Hey,” he said again, quieter now. “You’re okay.”
You nodded immediately, a sharp pang in your chest hit you like a ton of bricks, you felt guilty for taking up precious revision time- and for the fact that Logan had dragged himself out of bed because of you.
“I’m fine,” you whispered, but it came out thinner than you meant it to. “I just- I just messed it up.”
Logan didn’t respond right away, just looked at you, how your eyes kept flicking from him to the notes and back to him. Like you were gauging how long you’d be away from them. He couldn’t wrap his head around how you could be sitting in front of him and still think this was about the notes on the table.
“I shouldn’t be doing this,” you said suddenly.
Your gaze stayed fixed on the kitchen island, as if the mess of colour-coded organisation and half-finished revision sheets could still be fixed if you just looked at them long enough.
“No,” you corrected quickly, shaking your head slightly. “No, I am doing this, I just- I just need to focus I just lost time and I can’t afford to lose time right now because if I lose time I fall behind and if I fall behind I-”
Your voice cracked halfway through, your eyes widened and you blinked hard, already angry at yourself.
Logan’s hand didn’t falter, instead they rubbed soothingly along your cheekbones,
“Baby,” he said gently.
But you weren’t listening anymore, the words spilling out now that your restraint had snapped, “I’m not supposed to be like this,” you said, voice breaking around the edges. “I’m not supposed to be the person who can’t handle it. I can handle it, I always handle it, I just need to fix it I just need to-”
Suddenly the tears were back, springing up to your lash line and bubbling down your face, you blinked immediately, wiping at your face like it was instinct rather than thought.
“No,” you whispered again, frustrated now. “No, stop, I can’t do this right now-”
Logan pulled you forward, a gentle tug on both your shoulders- you stumbled off the stool, kicking it back slightly until your forehead dropped against his chest, like your body finally gave up pretending it could hold itself upright alone.
Your hands curled into the fabric of his hoodie, tight at first, as though you were trying to hold yourself together through him- because you weren’t looking at the screen anymore, meaning there was nothing left to organise the chaos with.
“I’m sorry,” you said immediately, voice muffled against him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m just being stupid I don’t know why I’m crying I just need to fix it I just-”
“Hey.”
Logan’s voice cut through gently but firmly.
“Hey. Stop.”
Your breath stuttered, and Logan thought that maybe he finally managed to get you to pause. You tried again anyway,
“I just messed up a whole section and I don’t have time and I thought I was doing okay but I’m not and I’m- I’m behind and I can’t be behind, I can’t-”
Your voice blubbered completely on the last word, you pressed your face harder into his chest like that would erase your stumble. Logan’s armed tightened around you, a slow exhale contracting his chest in relief, that he finally managed to create a boundary between you and everything else.
You tucked your face into his neck and loosely wrapped your arms around him, you wished you could hold him just as tight- but your limbs were exhausted. “You’re not behind,” he murmured into your ear. You let out a shaky laugh that turned halfway into a sob, Logan somehow held you harder against him.
“Yes I am.”
“No,” he repeated, firmer this time. “You’re overwhelmed.”
You stilled for half a second, torn by the accuracy of what he said- you couldn’t fully tell if a weight had been removed for your chest or if it had been pierced by his words. Either way, your breathing hitched again.
“I can’t be overwhelmed,” you said quietly, like it was an unspoken rule you were breaking. “There’s too much to do.”
Logan lowered his head slightly, pressing a kiss against your forehead.
“You’re allowed to be overwhelmed,” he mumbled into your skin.
You wished he hadn’t said that, because it had been the right thing. Or wrong thing. To make your shoulders shake once. And the minute the first racking sob emerged from your throat, you were crying properly the next. Deep, exhausted crying that you had clearly been holding back for far too long, you clutched his hoodie tighter, fingers curling like you were afraid of falling if you let go.
“I don’t know how to stop,” you whispered, voice breaking. “I don’t know how to stop doing this.”
Logan hummed, slowly dragging his hand up and down your back, rubbing soothing warmth through your clothes and against your spine.
“You don’t have to stop,” he said softly. “You just have to breathe for a second.”
You shook your head pitifully against him.
“I can’t waste time.”
That made him pause, then pull back, just enough so he could tilt your face up to meet his eyes.
“Look at me,” he said gently.
You were stubborn to hold onto the one piece of dignity you had left, but the way the words were said so firmly in the space between you two, you couldn’t stop yourself from following his gentle command.
Eyes still wet and red, your expression crumpled in a way that you would normally never let anyone see. Nevermind watch so up-close, letting them look at you the way he was, like you weren’t something to fix, or scold into productivity, just you.
Like a prized possession that had started collecting dust on the same old shelf, and someone had picked you up and dusted you off- Logan studied you like it was the easiest thing in the world for him to love you.
“I do not care about your GPA right now,” he said quietly.
A laugh slipped out of you again, broken at the edges, “That’s easy for you to say.”
“No,” he said immediately. “It’s not.” His hands pressed into your face more firmly, as if he could permeate his intentions deeply into your pores.
You blinked at him, owlish and tired- vision jumping with each uneven breath.
Logan wiped under your eye with his thumb again, slower this time, like he wasn’t in a rush to move past any of it, “You don’t have to earn being okay,” he said.
You leaned back into him without thinking, forehead pressing into his shoulder as your breathing slowly started to even out in small, uneven waves. He held you there, one hand stroking your hair, the other spread across your back- keeping you close so you could safely fall apart.
You didn’t realise when the crying faded into soft hiccups and ebbed into soft breathes but the feeling didn’t resolve itself into manageable, malleable calm. Instead it changed shape, less sharp around the edges but stretched thin all over your body, planting its roots into your chest.
You had moved to the kitchen floor at some point, your head resting on Logan's shoulder as he stroked your hair. The kitchen was finally quiet, peacefully coexisting in the nightly hush with the rest of the house.
The microwave blinked at you. “3:30 AM”
For some godforsaken reason, your body decided to remember everything you were holding back, bottling up, choosing to bring it back all at once.
Your breath catches in your throat, high enough to make you stutter while your eyes begin to flutter with unshed tears. Logan froze with his hand buried in your hair, pulling away to analyse your face when he felt your fingers tighten in the fabric of his sweater. His hand shifts at your back, not rushing you, just adjusting like he’s already bracing for whatever direction this takes.
“Hey,” he calls softly.
You open your mouth, but it was as if you had inhaled a whole packet of tear stained tissues- your answer doesn’t come out cleanly, instead it's broken, cracked around the edges instead.
“I thought I was done,” you whisper.
The tears come again, but differently this time. Less explosive. More like something that had been waiting politely in the background and finally got permission to exist again. You press your forehead back into him automatically, like your body already knows where to go when it stops trusting your head.
“I hate this,” you say, quieter now, words muffled against his chest. “I hate that I can’t just… be normal about it. I hate that I turn everything into this thing I can’t control.”
He doesn’t interrupt, instead he tightens his arms around you, tucking you further into the grooves of his body. You try to match the way his chest rises and falls, your breathing coming out shaky, broken.
“I was doing so well,” you add, like that matters, like it somehow redeems the fact that you aren’t now, “I don’t want to be like this,” you admit, the words spilling faster now that they’ve finally been let out. “I don’t want to be someone who breaks down over a test question or loses control over nothing and makes it everyone’s problem I just- I just want to be okay without it being this complicated thing I have to manage all the time.”
You press your lips together, a sinking feeling filling your stomach- you begin to pull away, accepting the fact that you shared too much, felt too much, hurt too much, for him to still willingly sit with you on the kitchen floor.
But Logan doesn’t falter, his arm stopping you from going too far. He brings one hand up to the side of your face again, gently guiding you back to him before you can disappear into yourself.
“Don’t do that,” he says quietly.
Your eyes are wet again.
“I’m embarrassed,” you whisper.
“No,” his voice is hushed but the word shoots out harshly. Like he couldn’t believe that you were still worried about how strong you forced yourself to be.
“Yes I am.”
“You’re overwhelmed,” he corrects again, softer this time, but firm in the way that he refuses to let you rewrite it into something cruel.
Your jaw tightens, because you know he's right and you can’t argue with it. If you couldn’t rebuild your shattered armour, you’d wipe it clean- and salvage what was left by wiping your tears away harshly with the back of your sweater. Logan catches your wrist gently before you can.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “Stop trying to erase it.”
His eyes dart between yours, watching how you slumped in paralyzing relief. Relief that you didn’t need to think about the armour, that you didn’t need to present yourself as infallible.
“I don’t know how to not be this,” you admit quietly.
Logan’s eyes steel protectively, “You don’t have to know that,” he says.
You shake your head slightly, still crying, still trying to steady yourself like it’s something you can logic your way out of, “I do,” you insist. “I do because I can’t keep- I can’t keep doing this where I fall apart and everyone has to-”
Your voice breaks again which prompts him to pull you in, firm arms bracketing around your body, a hand sliding into your hair with the other pressing steadily into your back, holding you in place while you shake.
He kisses your hair, “You’re not doing anything wrong,”
“I don’t feel like I’m okay,” you whisper.
“That’s fine,” he replies immediately. “You don’t have to feel okay to be okay.”
You let out a small, broken sob against him like your system is finally losing the argument it’s been having with itself all night. Logan shifts slightly, guiding your head up to look at you properly, your face is flushed, messy, completely uncontrollable in a way that terrified you. His thumb comes up to brush away the fresh tears.
“I’ve got you,” he says quietly.
Your body eventually begins to loosen, your breath reaching a slower equilibrium- hiccuping in between but your shoulders begin to drop and your fingers let his sweater out of their death grip.
“I didn’t mean to ruin the night.”
Logan closes his eyes briefly like he’s trying not to react too strongly to that sentence, then he opens them again and shakes his head down at you, “You didn’t ruin anything,” he says.
You give him a look, a look that says, “Sure buddy, and those aren’t crater sized bags beneath your eyes”. Logan leans forward and presses his forehead gently to yours, “No more fixing yourself tonight,” he says quietly. “Okay?”
The air hangs heavy around you as you hesitate, pressing your lips together until you nod, slowly, hesitantly. And ever since this had started, your breathing finally didn’t feel like a chore to push out of your lungs, instead it flowed gently from your mouth in placid waves.
Logan stays with you like that for a long time, intertwining your fingers together and cradling you against his chest, running his knuckles along your cheekbone until your eyes flutter shut.
oh, the whole world it is sleeping (but my world is you)
title from bloom by the paper kites
words: 6, 219 (woah.)
gif credit: @panda-pal
a/n: HELLO GUYS I'M SO HAPPY TO BE BACK!! i'm so sorry the writing train has kind of dried up because i've gotten busier at my internship (which i am posting this from lol) but whatever whatever i'm trying to get back into it slowly starting with... ahaha... this request that got away from me so incredibly fast you have no idea. which is why i made it a separate post instead of just replying to the ask. but uhm hi anon PLEASE let me know if u see this and if u like it!!! again not really proofread bc we die like rory williams enjoy guys i love you!!
———
The Doctor would never admit it to your face, but he was bored.
Oh, scratch that — he would and he had, multiple times in the past when you were stuck together doing laborious, meandering things. Domestics, especially. He had, much to your annoyance, complained at length about his boredom while you were loading your dishwasher after you had (very kindly) invited him for tea at yours. That had resulted in an unfortunate incident which ended in broken dishes, soapy suds covering the entirety of your kitchen floor, and a dishwasher spinning at about a hundred revolutions per second. To be fair, he did apologize, but only after the suddenly upgraded dishwasher had calmed down enough to stop shaking your cabinets off of their hinges.
He, however, would not admit his boredom to you now. Not when you weren't even awake to hear it.
The Doctor understood sleep. However, Gallifreyans needed considerably less sleep than humans. So much less, in fact, that the Doctor could hardly remember when he had last slept at all. It didn't bother him, really — time asleep was time wasted and could be used to do so much more stuff than lie horizontal, practically unconscious, for hours on average. But the Doctor understood your need for it, so when you had retired to your bedroom after a particularly tiring adventure, he had thought nothing of it.
The Doctor didn't know what he thought now, but it was definitely not nothing.
He'd started worrying after the first hour. By the second hour he'd retired to his spot underneath the TARDIS console, tinkering with the tangle of wires and connections for no reason in particular. Just to keep his hands busy and ignore the uncomfortable feeling in his chest. Every so often he would stop and listen closely just in case he could catch the sound of your footsteps leaving your room, or the sound of you calling for him over the sound of the TARDIS singing. Nothing, nothing, and more nothing for another two hours. On the fifth hour he took a little trip to the early 19th century to see the invention of the croissant. He'd come back to the TARDIS on the sixth hour, still smelling like butter, ready to excitedly offer you one of the very first croissants ever made in Paris before remembering that you were still asleep in your room. So he'd eaten them alone before they could go stale. He could bring you to 1800s Paris another time.
You hadn't come out of your room for eight hours. Eight hours, twenty-three minutes, and forty-seven — forty-eight, now — seconds. Not that he was counting.
The typical amount for a normal, healthy human your age was seven to eight hours, and who was he to judge if you wanted to get some extra shut-eye? The Doctor knew he had no logical reason to worry. Out of all of the emotions he had felt, worry was low on the ranks — he hated the anxiety that came with it, the way that it twisted his hearts just enough for them to squeeze unpleasantly in his chest. But, the Doctor pondered, worry was the price that came with having anyone onboard the TARDIS and traveling with him.
Especially when it was you. Wonderful, shining you, who always made him smile and never let him feel lonely, not even for a single second.
So he supposed it was worth it. Didn't mean he had to like it, though.
And yet, worry he did, the strange, gnawing feeling in the back of his mind growing stronger and stronger and louder until —
The TARDIS hummed. He couldn't understand what she was saying, since she spoke without words, but an insistent feeling began to prickle on his skin. Something not too dissimilar from the anxiety that buzzed through his body. It seemed that the TARDIS, in all her infinite and impossible geometries, was worried about you too.
"Oh, alright," he sighed, and pulled a lever on the console. The ship's glass central column bobbed a few times, rising and falling like heavy breaths, before it slid to a halt. He'd pumped the brakes, so to speak, leaving the TARDIS to idle.
Deep, calming breaths, the Doctor thought as he walked through the hallways of the TARDIS and navigated to your bedroom. The Doctor could do deep breaths. In fact, he could do very deep breaths, courtesy of his respiratory bypass system, but that was neither here nor there.
He took a left, then a right, then walked for approximately twenty-six paces until he found himself in front of your bedroom door.
"Hello?" he called. "Are you awake in there? Because this'll be very awkward if you are."
He leaned closer to your door and strained his ears for any kind of sound. Only silence greeted him. The gnawing feeling returned in full force. If his hearts twisted any further they would give out, and he had no intention of finding out what that felt like.
But you could just be sleeping. He could open the door to find you peaceful in your big, comfy bed that the TARDIS had made for you, all tuckered out after a long day of running through time and space. He could tiptoe over to your slumbering form and brush your hair away from your face, maybe steal a kiss on your forehead (as he so often did when you wouldn't notice). He could find you safe, and most importantly alive, and he would have nothing to worry about.
Or it could be the complete opposite and be, in short, very, very bad. The Doctor swallowed.
"I'm coming in," he said, and he slowly opened the door.
The first thing that the Doctor noticed was that it was nearly pitch black. He blinked quickly, his eyes adjusting to the darkness — then he spotted you, and a relieved smile spread across his lips. There you were, curled up underneath your blankets — yes, blankets (plural), you'd insisted on them before you even had a bedroom — and you looked like you were sleeping very soundly indeed.
The Doctor sat down at the edge of the bed, reaching out to brush his fingers against the edge of your cheek and tucking a stray strand of hair behind your ear. "Hello, dear," he whispered, unable to stop the fondness from creeping into his voice. "You're quite the sleepyhead today, aren't you?"
You didn't reply, because of course you couldn't. Instead you exhaled a shallow, shuddering breath, your head lolling against his palm.
The second thing the Doctor noticed was that you were barely breathing.
If the Doctor was one to swear he would, loudly and furiously. But instead any kind of curse he could muster died and turned to ash in his mouth. No, no, no, no, the Doctor thought, not like this, and his mind was racing so much he barely noticed he was muttering the words under his breath. He your face in his hands, moving it so he could take a good look at your face.
Your skin was warm, much too warm to be normal, your neck damp with sweat that rolled off in rivulets and soaked your shirt. Oh, he'd been such an idiot. How could he have not noticed? You hadn't walked to your bedroom all those hours ago, you'd staggered — and the Doctor had been too thick to notice, too swept up in the thrill of piloting the TARDIS to safety, whooping in excitement and lost in the wide-eyed, exhilarated look in your face.
"You're okay, you're okay," the Doctor muttered. Who was he trying to convince? You or himself, his hearts hammering in double time? He swiped a bead of sweat on your temple away with his thumb and —
A wall of fog descended over his mind. His own thoughts, once rapid and rushing like a waterfall, slowed to a heavy crawl. Faint sensations brushed against his awareness — the warm flush of fever, a hollow, bone-deep ache, and a sharp stinging pain blanketed beneath layers of down.
The Doctor blinked. The feeling disappeared.
Illness tended to loosen the mind — and without meaning to, he'd made contact with yours. He frowned, still cradling your head in his hands. The heat of fever and the hollow ache he understood, but the pain? The pain was a mystery.
A mystery he had to solve if he wanted to keep you by his side. And he did want that, more than anything. Enough that it scared him.
"Can you hear me?" he asked, making contact once more. Nothing, not even a twinge of consciousness. This wasn't a healing coma — humans couldn't do that, unless you'd gone off and gotten lessons while he wasn't looking, which was impossible since the Doctor rarely let you out of his sight. It wasn't the haze of sleep, either. If you were simply sleeping, you would be dreaming. And dreams, no matter how small or silly, could take easily shape behind your eyes. A trained telepath such as himself would know.
No, this was something else. If your mind was active at all he could ask really, really nicely and you would let him in. But no one was home. This fog, it felt more like a firewall, keeping his own mind from peeking into yours.
The Doctor shifted, moving his position so he was knelt beside your limp form — but his knee nudged against your side, and you whimpered.
He froze. The sound — a sudden sound of pain — it broke his hearts. He would give anything to never have to hear it again… but his ears pricked up at the noise.
The Doctor gripped your blankets and pulled them aside, and his broken hearts sank.
There it was, the source of the pain that he had felt when his mind brushed against yours. A wound on your side, haphazardly covered with bandages, already weeping blood. He reached out to touch it — trying to ignore the way his fingers trembled — and found it strangely warm to the touch. Infected, he mused, or worse.
Hands still trembling (and still trying to ignore the trembling because he was stubborn and he was doing everything he could to keep himself from spiraling, thank you very much), he peeled the bandages away from your heated skin. A long, thin gash peeked up at him. The edges of the cut were clean and sharp, the skin around them angry and inflamed.
If the Doctor's hearts could break any further, they did. You clearly hadn't done a good job of patching yourself up. A horrible, vivid image sprung to the front of his mind — you, stumbling and in pain, trying to clean yourself up, blood dripping off your skin, and then crawling into bed, weak and alone.
Why hadn't you come to him? He would have done anything in his power to fix you. It was what his name said on the tin, after all. Wasn't he a healer? Wasn't that what he tried to do, every second of every day?
The Doctor swept his sonic screwdriver over your wound. The green bulb at the end washed it with a sickly glow and he shuddered. He shuddered again as he flicked it open and peered at the readings. It was most definitely infected. Whatever had cut you had gotten into you and was taking hold by the minute.
But there was something else. He made another pass with the sonic… there! Glinting in the light, embedded in your cut, was a small piece of glass. He concentrated the sonic on it. It almost seemed to vibrate, a high pitched tone resonating through the air.
"Gotcha," the Doctor said.
How had it come to this? Your life hanging in the balance without even a monster to fight. He should've come to you earlier, shouldn't have waited all those hours to see if you were okay, shouldn't have gotten so distracted by your beautiful, awestruck eyes. But there was no use dwelling on what he should have done. He could still save you now.
The Doctor took the deepest breath he could, pressed his thumbs to your temples, and let the fog of your mind pull him under.
———
Mind landscapes — mindscapes when concatenated, the Doctor loved a good concatenation — were tricky things. Every mindscape was unique, built around an individual's upbringing, culture, society. The mindscapes of simpler beings — no offense — tended to be simple too, and usually never had any interactable form. It was like swimming in a thick soup.
No, not like that — a soup of thoughts, ideas, and memories. To the more telepathically inclined, the mindscape was a sandbox. You could create mind palaces, forests, endless worlds, with the only limit being your imagination. The Doctor preferred his TARDIS console room as his mindscape. It was the safest place in the universe, and therefore the safest place in his mind.
Your mindscape, however, looked nothing like what the Doctor thought it would look like.
When the Doctor opened his eyes, he found himself in a world swathed with white. A towering structure pierced through thin clouds painted against a blindingly bright sky — it was a lighthouse, he realized, squinting up at the building and its bone-white masonry. There was nothing else for miles except the tower, only endless dunes and the memory of salt hanging in the air.
The Doctor couldn't help it. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. An abandoned lighthouse in a dried up ocean… in your mind. How exciting.
But enough of that — he had a job to do, and that was find you. He began to trudge through the dunes he had appeared in, silently bemoaning the sand trickling into his boots, even if it was imaginary. Imaginary sand. Course and irritating but all in his head. As if it couldn't get any worse.
As he walked, he cast his mind out like radar waves, trying to see if the signature of your self would alert him to your presence in this foreign mindscape. There was no where else you could be except the tower, but where? He expanded the bubble of his mind upward… and there!
There you were, a faint fleck of warm thoughts, right there at the very top of the lighthouse. The sound of your laughter washed up against him like soft ocean waves — but not just the sound, but the feeling of it. Light and airy and happy, like a giggle hidden behind a palm.
It should have made him smile, but it didn't. It felt wrong. The Doctor knew the sound of your laugh like the back of his hand — or any of his body parts really. When you've lived in a body for as long as he had, you become very familiar with all of your anatomy. No, this laughter was hollow. Laughter for the sake of laughter. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
The Doctor clenched his jaw and kept on walking.
He stepped into the the tower, shaking the sand from his coat, and lifted his head to narrow his eyes at the almost endless staircase that spiraled to the top of the lighthouse. Another laugh, breathless and shy, drifted below to him.
The Doctor's hearts twisted for a third time. Any more and he would be wrung out.
Shards of broken glass littered each step of the staircase. The Doctor nudged one with his foot, and a jolt ran up his spine — a bright, summer sky flashed before his eyes, and the warmth of family filled his chest along with it. The feeling was so awfully, painfully familiar…
Then he shook his head, and it was gone.
No, it couldn't be possible. But of course… your injury… the glass in your wound and the way it had sung…
The Doctor knew where he was now. But his knowledge would be useless if he couldn't get to you in time.
The last of the steps opened up into a spacious chamber. The pale stonework of the tower arched upward like steepled finger bones. Instead of windows, the walls of the room were covered in mirrors, rusted golden filigree curling over their edges. A hole in the ceiling let a spotlight of sunlight beam down, illuminating your motionless form.
The Doctor let out a shuddering exhale, and let his hearts begin to untwist. There you were.
"Sweetheart?" he murmured, inching closer to you. "Sweetheart, it's me, it's the Doctor. Can you —"
He let his gaze flick upwards to look at your face — and the rest of question died violently on his tongue.
You sat on the floor, your legs folded underneath you, your knees bent and tucked together. Your eyes were crinkled into a pleasant half-crescents. A serene smile spread across your face. Were it any other situation, you could have been mistaken for calm and peaceful, even happy.
But if the Doctor looked, really, really looked, he could see it. Despite the smile on your face, your eyes lacked the sparkle he knew in his hearts should have been there. Instead, they gazed unfocused into the distance. He peered into your eyes and saw himself reflected in them. You were terrifyingly still, too, head tilted to one side like the weight of it was too heavy to bear.
You barely blinked, barely moved, barely breathed. The Doctor's hands twitched, reaching out but barely touching, worried that even a single breath would shatter you like glass. Like glass…
Then your lips parted, and you laughed, that sweet, melodious sound. The mirrors around you shimmered and glowed with light for a moment before returning to casting back your reflections.
Being in the metaphysical reflection of your trapped mind, he didn't have his sonic, but he mimed throwing it from one hand to the other. Anything to keep his trembling hands busy.
The Doctor moved closer to the mirror right in front of you and pressed his face closer to it. His nose bumped the glass and there it was again, those strange sensations, rippling through his mind like clear water. A cold breeze settled against his skin as the room began to darken, the arched ceiling of the lighthouse bending into the shape of a night sky. The solid stone floor beneath him softened into grass brittle with frost. The blurry shape of a pond stretched out in front of him. A pond…
Across the pond, a shadowy figure stumbled and fell face-first. More shadowed figures emerged from the inky blackness of the night, their heads curving into sharp beaks. The one that had fallen twisted on the ground and scuttled backwards on their elbows.
"Help!" they cried.
With a start, the Doctor realized where — and when — he was.
That was you across the water. This was the night you met.
The air began to hum with the wheezing, groaning song of the TARDIS. This bit he remembered well — he watched as his own self stumbled out of the TARDIS, raised his arms, and shouted, "In here!"
He was still dressed in the warmer tweed of an era long gone. Here was a Time Lord, freshly heartbroken, waving his arms frantically like an idiot in the night. One last run, he had decided then. He'd figured one last trip to save someone, anyone, before he would give it up forever. Retire, so to speak. Like the fool that he was, he promised just once more, just one last time before he quit.
But he hadn't saved just anyone. He'd saved you.
"In there?" you cried incredulously. The Doctor nodded vigorously and gestured wildly to the TARDIS beside him. "What?!"
"It's this or getting your eyes pecked out by bird-men!" he shouted. "And trust me, that's no fun at all! Believe me, I've tried! Come on, quick as you can!"
You scrambled to your feet and whipped your head around to look behind you. The bird-men were still advancing, their feathers glinting sharply with the moonlight, their piercing red eyes trained on you. The Doctor felt a wave of fear clench at his chest. Of course. This wasn't just any old memory. This was yours.
"This is crazy," you squeaked, but you turned and ran anyway. Your winter boots crunched against the frozen ground. The closer you got to the Doctor — both his memory-self and his… real self — the more his hearts began to pound, matching the way your own thundered rapidly in your chest. Your fear slid across his skin, cold and clammy. "You're crazy!"
"I've been called worse," the Doctor grumbled. He reached out, hands outstretched. "Nearly there!"
The bird-men were moving faster now. A chorus of incessant cawing sliced through the air — the sound startled you, and you shrieked, falling to the ground once more. Where then he had felt panic at your stumble, The Doctor now felt what he had not noticed on that winter evening — your fear, confusion, and inexplicable resignation paralyzing you and keeping you rooted and prone on the dirt.
Worry coiled his spine like a spring, but before he could move, his memory-self rushed forward.
The Doctor sprinted forward to grab your arm and pull you to your feet. He hadn't noticed it then, the way your eyes had locked onto him as he whipped his sonic out and hit the bird-men with a frequency excruciating only to them. "Back off!" he'd bellowed, his hand wrapped protectively around your elbow. "Bad birdies!"
What was it that had passed across in your teary gaze? Was it simply shock? Or was it a growing awe at this odd, alien (in more ways than one) man that was rescuing you on the weirdest night of your life?
The Memory-Doctor dragged you away with a whoop. The real Doctor followed silently and watched him pull you, with a little bit more force than necessary, across the threshold of the TARDIS. The TARDIS doors clicked behind you, and the both of you fell into a heap on the floor of the console.
"What," you wheezed, "the hell was that?"
"Llaterans," the Doctor panted. "Bird-men. Bad, bad bird-men. Huge hoarders. Extremely possessive. There's a small, struggling colony living on the roofs of your city. Thought they would've made themselves scarce after what happened in 1963, but I guess I was wrong. Bad timing for you."
"Ah." You inhaled a lungful of air. "So what'd I do to piss them off?"
"Pick up a shiny rock, I imagine." The Doctor turned his head to look at you and raised an eyebrow. "Did you?"
You pursed your lips. Then you reached into your pocket and pulled out what was, indeed, a very shiny rock. Perfectly smooth and round. Perfect for skipping across a pond.
"It looked nice," you said, sheepish.
For a while there was nothing but the sound of your ragged breaths and your stuttering heart slowing to a more manageable pace.
The Doctor thought back to this silence. In that moment he had felt nothing. He had just saved a life and he had felt nothing, which was horrifying. For a single, terrifying second he had just stared at you, breathing heavy on the floor of the TARDIS, and wondered if he had made a mistake. If this was what he felt after saving one stupid human life then maybe he was right to exile himself away and quit being the savior of worlds for good.
But then sputtering peals of laughter had escaped you, and the Doctor felt his hearts sing.
The Doctor stared. The walls that he had just started building around his hearts had cracked open just a smidge at the sound of your laughter. It was exhilarating and free - that was it, captured freedom in a bottle, loud and animated, distilled joy spilling from your lips.
The Doctor in the memory had startled, shocked at the sound, but even he ended up smiling. The Doctor watching the memory smiled too. It was the last time he would smile in a long while.
He wouldn't realize, until much later, until his impossible girl had gone once again one rainy Christmas Eve, that he didn't have to be afraid of that song, and the very next day he had gone looking for you again.
The night sky morphed and melted into mirrors. The Doctor staggered backward and turned to face you — you were smiling still, and the ghost of another laugh rang through the air.
"The mirrors," the Doctor muttered to himself. "Your memories."
The Doctor slid to another mirror, the one to your right. As if on instinct, you shifted in place to face it, your expression still and placid. There was no more time to be watching play-by-plays — he let his palm rest just inches above the glass, watching his reflection waver into another memory.
This was one he hadn't expected. The memory played through your eyes. Meters away, framed through prison bars, was him. He turned away from you, bathed in darkness, shadows creasing his face as he stared down a man who had captured you once to hurt him. Never a good idea, that. He remembered it well, remembered the relief he'd felt when you weren't hurt and the ancient anger that had consumed him when he found the one responsible.
He doesn't remember what he had said that dark day. It must have been something cruel, because your heart had stuttered — most likely with fear. The Doctor was so old and so tired, so tired of losing the people he cared about. Most especially you, who had lifted his hearts out of the heavy storm that burdened him. And so what if he was frightening and monstrous, as long as you were safe?
But again, you surprised him. The Doctor could feel the swell of empathy that burned behind your chest then. You shuffled closer and reached in between the prison bars to take his hand. He remembered the fury that had clouded his judgment slipping away when he turned to look at you, the oh-so-gentle smile that had curved your lips taking away any thought of vengeance that had been on his mind and redirecting his focus to your safety.
But looking through your eyes, he only saw his own anguished face staring back at him, his dark eyes softening at the sight of your gentle ones, pleading a million words without having to say a single one out loud.
"Consider yourselves lucky," he had said, his voice sharp as knives, before locking them in the same cell you had just been trapped in.
That memory faded away too, leaving his own expression staring back at him.
He looked stricken. He felt stricken.
The Doctor scurried to another mirror. The two of you in Russia in the 1950s, bundled up in fur coats watching the birth of magnetic fusion. In another mirror, the vision of you gripping his hand tight before he could fall into the abyss at the heart of the TARDIS. Another mirror shone with the light of a dying star illuminating his awe-struck grin.
In the last mirror he looked at was the adventure you had just had right before this. Where you had grabbed his hand tight and told him, with a wild-eyed smile, to run just before the tower you had been in began to shake and collapse. Stumbling over cobblestones and laughing madly as you fell into the TARDIS together, bodies intertwined, chests heaving, blood pumping with adrenaline, just like the night you met.
The Doctor was blown away — not only by the sheer feeling of freedom that was running through your veins, but by the giddy skip of your heart as he turned to look at you and pressed a shaky kiss to your forehead. The warmth of his kiss had followed you all the way as you stumbled into your bedroom and into the darkness, passing out under the covers.
In every mirror was a vision of him, made beautiful by the light of your affection, of your love.
The Doctor's hearts stopped beating in his chest.
You loved him.
And that's why you were stuck here.
Slowly, the Doctor knelt in front of you.
"I know you're in there," he said quietly. "I know you can hear me. I'm gonna get you out of here."
He took your steady hands into his trembling ones. "This is a prison," he continued. Absentmindedly, his thumb began to rub soothing patterns onto the back of your palm. "The planet we visited… when famine struck, everyone left except for the prisoners. So why didn't the prisoners leave?"
You didn't reply, because of course you couldn't. But this time, instead of the fear of finding you fighting for your life, the Doctor dared to hope. "The mirrors trap you. Your happiest memories, your fondest memories. Memories of the people you love. Playing on loop until you serve your sentence. Imagine a prison where no one would dream of leaving. That's what we found when we landed. The crumbling remains of the happiest penitentiary in the galaxy.
"We must've set off some kind of alarm, some kind of self-destruct system that brought the tower down but —" The Doctor swallowed. His throat was dry, all of a sudden, the words forcing themselves out. "But then you got hurt. Bit of the mirror got you. The mechanism that kept the prisoners locked inside their minds kept dormant until you passed out."
Why didn't you tell me? Why hide that you were hurting? The Doctor wanted to ask. He squeezed your hands. They were so, so cold. You could be slipping away in the real world, right now. But in here, the Doctor could still try. He had to.
"Listen to me," he pleaded, tipping his head low and looking into your unseeing eyes. "You're dying, out there. If I leave I can save your body. But I can't save you, not your mind or your soul, not really, unless you wake up and come back to me."
Your eyes flashed like mirrors.
"Come on," the Doctor urged. His hands left yours and he lifted them to cup your cheeks, holding your head steady. Your skin was chilled against his but he willed them to be warm, to give you even a fraction of the warmth you always gave him. "Come back to me. Please."
Your blank eyes flickered, and you blinked. Blinked!
If he was a fool for hoping then he was the biggest fool this side of the universe. "That's it," he said. Ever so slightly, underneath his palms, your cheeks began to flush. "That's it, listen to the sound of my voice. I'm here. I found you."
You blinked again, the strange reflective sheen of your eyes melting away. Behind him, the Doctor heard a mirror crack. It was working! You were waking up!
Quickly, the Doctor pressed his fingers to your temples — how strange, to initiate contact within contact — but instead of the glass's hold on you unraveling, there was a stubborn wall blocking your consciousness from fully surfacing. He probed a little further. This mental wall was solid, nearly impenetrable. One good psychic poke told him it wasn't alien at all, but entirely human. What was this obstinate blockade made out of? He poked it again, and his mind tingled with an anxiety that bled into his skin and clenched at his hearts.
The Doctor dug the contact deeper, and rush of loneliness washed over him. It was so powerful that it would have knocked him over if he hadn't been seated already. The feeling rolled over him like a wave, and he tumbled for a moment in a blinding froth of hurt. You wanted to stay here, because leaving would hurt, but staying hurt anyway.
You were scared. You were scared to wake up.
And how could you not be? How happy were you, dancing in memories of him, never having to face the reality that he might never love you back?
…That was silly. Of course he —
The Doctor frowned. Those weren't his thoughts.
Your thoughts were leaking through to him, even through that wall of fear. But they were slower now, sluggish like molasses. If he wanted to save you, he had to do it now.
What else was there? He was there with you, holding you in your mind and in the real world, pleading softly for you to come back. There had to be something else he could do, something else he could say that would convince you to break out of this prison. Something like…
The Doctor tested the words in his mouth. They were surprisingly bitter. The last time he had tried to say them, he had been just a nanosecond too late. He had waited all of those years to tell her and they had blown away with the heart of a dying star. What a fool he'd been. He was a creature born of infinite second chances, yet he would never allow himself just one. What was the point of trying again?
But he did, didn't he? Endlessly and without question. All because he had done the impossible — he had given himself a second chance — and he'd found something infinitely more precious.
He'd found you.
"I didn't think I was gonna tell you like this. Or ever. I thought I was going to lock it up forever and throw away the key," the Doctor said. "Or run away. Running away 'cos I'm scared. Like always. Not today. Not like this. The last time I didn't say it, it's because I thought she knew. And maybe she did, but you — I'm not gonna hurt you like that. No, today I'm gonna tell you, okay? So… if you're listening, and I know you are —"
The Doctor took a deep breath —
"I love you," he rasped, and his hearts finally, finally, untwisted, the vice around his hearts that had been holding him for who knows how long loosening its grip. What had he been so afraid of? "I love you and I never told you — but I'm not gonna make that mistake again. I love you."
He closed his eyes, your head still cradled carefully in his hands, and did the last thing he felt he could do — he leaned in and pressed a tender kiss to the corner of your mouth.
Everything was spinning. The Doctor couldn't tell whether it was because his hearts had kicked themselves into high gear with his confession, or if it was because he was too late again and you were gone and he was just talking to the empty shell of your mind.
No, it couldn't be, because behind him, there was another tremendous crack, and the sound of shattering glass.
The Doctor opened his eyes, and you were finally awake.
And on the verge of tears. Oh no. But your teary eyes no longer shimmered like mirrors. Instead they sparkled like a sea of stars. Your lips trembled around the shape of a sob, your hands — no longer still as a statue — finding his wrists, shaking fingers wrapping around them.
"Oh, no, sweetheart, it's okay," the Doctor soothed. He rubbed your cheek to wipe away an errant tear. "Shh, it's alright. I've got you."
Your face crumpled. "I'm sorry," you whimpered, and for a strange moment the Doctor had never been so relieved to see you cry. It was so much better than the stillness. Then the concern, quick as a bullet, broke through. He wrapped his arms around you, and the Doctor knew it, sure as the golden sunsets of Gallifrey — you were safe. He was home.
"No, no." The Doctor sighed. His chin came to rest on your shoulder, and he nuzzled his face into the crook of your neck. You inhaled a deep, shuddering breath at that touch. "I'm sorry. I've been careless with you."
He felt you squeeze him back weakly.
"Doctor?" you asked.
He hummed. "Yes?"
"Do you mean it?"
"Mean what, sweetheart?" he asked, leaning away from the hug to look you in the eyes. It was so wonderful to gaze into them and see the sparkle there.
"That you love me," you said, your voice so incredibly small. "That I'm not… still stuck in a dream, or something."
The Doctor smiled — a real one, this time. "Of course I mean it," he said, and the way even saying that made him feel was impossible. He could only imagine how that would feel in the real world. "I do love you. I love you to the end of the universe — and I've been, so that must count for something."
He could still hear the sound of glass, fracturing and falling to the ground like rain. In a few moments you would be really awake, back on the TARDIS and not in some awful prison of your mind, and you would be in a lot of pain. But the Doctor was ready for that. He could be ready for anything, as long as you were there with him.
The tower was crumbling now, the mindscape collapsing around you, broken mirrors folding into themselves — but before it could all fall apart —
"Tell me again when I wake up?" you asked.
And when you opened your eyes, he would, a million times over.
if you've read this far i hope you enjoyed! have a lovely rest of ur day <3
Hello, xuxus! Amanhã é sexta-feira e tem capítulo novo no ar! Então, hoje é dia de postar o "trecho da semana" XD Eu não sei se gostei muuuuito desse capítulo aqui, mas acho que ficou até que legal.
De qualquer forma, fiquem com o trechinho do capítulo da semana: O Negócio da Família!
"Finalmente encontrando uma sala, ela adentrou o cômodo e correu até outra porta. Mas, quando girou a maçaneta, todas as esperanças de saírem dali foram por água abaixo assim que reparou que ela estava trancada. O som de passos pesados e arrastados se aproximando da sala logo alcançaram os ouvidos da Williams e ela arregalou os olhos, sentindo como se o coração fosse pular para fora do peito. Merda, merda, merda, merda.
— Se escondam! Rápido! — sussurrou alto para Rose e Harriet.
Harriet andou rapidamente até um trocador no canto da sala, Rose se escondeu atrás de uma mesa e Sarah se enfiou atrás de uma cortina na parede oposta. Menos de um segundo depois, a porta da sala se abriu lentamente, os passos pesados de Margareth fazendo com que a jovem cientista se encolhesse contra a parede e cruzasse os dedos, torcendo para que nenhuma delas fosse descoberta.
— Oh, que divertido! — Margareth deu uma risada empolgada que fez a pele de Sarah arrepiar. — Criancinhas humanas? Onde vocês estão? — perguntou ela como uma criança brincando de "esconde-esconde". — Minhas lindas humaninhas, apareçam!
Sarah a ouviu começar a caminhar pela sala, as tábuas de madeira no chão rangendo a cada passo. Um pequeno arquejo deixou os lábios da Williams e ela colocou uma mão sobre a boca.
— Eu só quero lhes dar uns beijinhos com meus lábios grandes e verdes. — Os passos pararam de repente, há poucos metros de onde ela estava escondida, e o som da porta da sala se abrindo novamente veio logo em seguida com mais passos pesados entrando no cômodo. — Meus irmãos!
Sarah arregalou os olhos. Irmãos?
— Boa caçada? — disse uma voz masculina e tão distorcida quanto a de Margareth.
Os passos se afastaram de onde Sarah estava e Rose se levantou de seu esconderijo para se esconder na outra cortina ao lado da Williams.
— Maravilhosa! — respondeu a primeira alienígena. — Quanto mais ela dura, mais elas fedem, suam e têm medo!
— Eu sinto o cheiro de uma velha com ossos quebradiços — disse outra voz também masculina, andando até onde Harriet estava escondida. — E de duas jovens maduras, repletas de hormônios e adrenalina.
Sarah mordeu o lábio com força, o gosto de sangue inundando sua boca enquanto os passos se aproximavam de onde ela e Rose estavam.
— Frescas o bastante para dobrarem antes de quebrarem.
Sarah respirou um pouco mais fundo, fechando os olhos com força. Talvez se ela não estivesse olhando para os aliens, ela podia pensar numa saída daquela situação. E ela tinha que arranjar uma saída agora. Os passos se aproximaram dela um pouco mais. Pular pela janela não dava. Um pouco mais perto. Ela também não podia só correr pela sala até a porta por onde elas entraram. Ela ia ser pega. E Sarah não queria isso. Tinha muito o que fazer ainda. Sarah não queria morrer.
A perna de Sarah começou a balançar de nervoso e ela apoiou o joelho contra a parede atrás de si. Os passos voltaram a parar diante dela. Ela tinha que se acalmar, pensar em algo urgentemente e...
As cortinas que as escondiam foram puxadas com força e as duas amigas gritaram assustadas. O alien à sua frente levantou as garras para o alto, preparando-se para atacar. Sarah colocou o corpo na frente de Rose e apertou a mão dela com força.
— Não! — gritou Harriet com os braços estendidos, atraindo a atenção dos três irmãos para si. — Me peguem primeiro!"
✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏
E é isso aí, xuxus! O que acharam? Como eu corri muito essa semana, ainda tô meio insegura com esse capítulo, rs. Mas espero que tenha ficado bom pra quem lê a fic :)
Se você gostou, não deixe de dar uma checada na minha fanfic de doctor who The Run and Go, disponível no wattpad! Eu atualizo ela toda sexta-feira e amanhã tem capítulo novo, então já salva lá pra não perder 😉.
it should be illegal to ask for previous experience if youre offering minimum wage. so you admit that the skill is essential to the job, you dont want to pay to train someone, but youre not willing to pay experienced prices? 🤨
dededos
blakekathryn
origamiaround
2087
areudirty
jacobvanloon
jbbartram-illu
snowghoul
pixelskylines
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
germansingergirl
