Chapter Text
You slept longer that time, and when you awoke you found that your head was much more clear. You still didn’t immediately understand where you were, and the confusing array of colours and seemingly source-less light failed to enlighten you. You pushed yourself upright with one arm, which was was when you realized that while your head was clear, your body was in more pain. A lot more.
“Ah,” you hissed, inhaling hard through your nose. You held your breath, thinking that perhaps if you just didn’t breathe, if you just didn’t move, the pain might be tricked into slinking away and into forgetting out you. But the pain was only beginning to sink its claws into you, and by your third breath you were no longer of the opinion that the word “ah” was adequate, no matter how savagely hissed.
Instead, you decided on an interesting alien word learned on a previous trip, one that had a suitably obscene feel to it and had made the Doctor wince when she’d heard it (something you and Ryan had both gleefully made a note of at the time). You repeated it carefully, and were distantly pleased with the way it hissed out of your clenched teeth.
“Oi!” The shocked voice rang out in the room, originating from somewhere behind and above you and making you jump. “Language! Who’ve you been hanging around- oh, no you don’t!”
The last words were punctuated with a thump as the Doctor leapt the final few rungs down a ladder set against the wall. Startled by her initial exclamation, you had hastily pushed back the blankets, and by the time the Doctor’s booted feet hit the floor you had lurched to your feet.
You then promptly repeated the offending alien word, as what felt like every single one of your traitorous ribs absolutely positively no-doubt-about-it shattered into a thousand jagged pieces. They might have burst into flame, too. You wobbled, red hazing your vision and stealing your breath. Then familiar arms wrapped around you, and guided you back down to the bed.
“Easy now,” the Doctor said, though you weren’t fighting her. “Easy, it’s me, just relax-”
“Hurts,” you said through gritted teeth, squeezing your eyes shut. You felt her push your shoulders, try make you lay back down, and you shook your head weakly. “Don’t- want to sleep. Don’t-” you hissed in another breath. “Just- hurts-”
“Yes, I know it hurts, that’s why you need to lay back down and stop moving,” the Doctor said, exasperated. She continued to ignore your protests and inevitably succeeded at pushing you back down on the bed, her hands still supporting you. “You don’t have to sleep,” she added, still exasperated. “Just stop leaping about- humans, honestly, the worst patients, stubborn little lifeforms wrapped in a stupidly fragile shell and do they ever listen to directions? Oh, no, why would they do that, that’d be clever-”
She was moving about as she verbally eviscerated your species, adding a pillow to the one already under your head so you could sit up more. She also adjusted the blankets back over your legs, though she left your torso uncovered. You realized you were still wrapped in her coat when she opened it, pulling the fabric to the side before matter-of-factly lifting and rolling up the hem of your shirt and revealing your stomach, a weird cast-looking sort of thing, and a mass of ugly discoloured bruises.
Instinctively you moved your hand and tried to cover the area of your side that was blazing with pain, and you weren’t sure why. You knew that you hurt, and that you wanted to hide that hurt away, because… because it was evidence of weakness. And if the Doctor was able to see your weakness, see you as something… less than you had tried to be, than you wanted to be… You were too exposed, too raw to contemplate the finer meanings of your emotions.
“None of that,” the Doctor said absently, deftly catching your hand with her own. She looked up as your hand twitched, met your worried eyes. “See what I mean? Terrible patient.” Her voice had softened, though, and she gently squeezed your hand before letting go. “I’m gonna give you something for the pain first, then we’re going to change the bandaging.” She stood up, then leveled a finger at you. “I will be right back, and if you move one inch from this bed I will- I will-”
“Continue to lecture me on the various failings of humans?” you muttered tiredly before you could stop yourself. There was a startled moment of silence as you both looked at each other, and the Doctor’s eyebrows threatened to vanish into her hairline. Then her mouth twitched in what you were sure was the start of a smile before she hastily pressed her lips together, face scrunching.
“Strap you to the bed, more like,” she threatened, darkly. “Should’ve done from the start… can double as a leash-” she stalked from the room, still muttering to herself. You huffed a quiet laugh despite yourself, then winced and placed a hand on your side.
With the Doctor gone the room was suddenly bleak, empty, and yet at the same time horribly claustrophobic. Your hands twitched with nervous energy, and you suppressed the instinctive desire to stand up, to move. Beyond the inevitable pain it would bring about, you weren’t entirely sure that the Doctor was joking about that leash. Her eyes still flickered with darkness, and that crease had yet to vanish from her brow. You did laboriously add another pillow to the pile behind your head and sit up straighter. It hurt to do so, but you felt immediately better. More in control, more confident… just, more.
The Doctor swept back into the room with an armful of supplies. Her bright eyes focused on you, narrowed. You looked back as innocently as you could manage given the gnawing pain and overwhelming relief at her return. It wasn’t that you had doubted that she would, not really, but just that every time she entered a room, every time your eyes met… life was better, was just, well… more.
“Cheat,” the Doctor said finally, and moved closer. She sat down on the side of the bed, dropped her supplies and rifled through them. She gave you an injection for the pain first, and the relief was a drug in and of itself. You felt muscles relax that you hadn’t even known you were clenching, and you let out a slow, uneven breath, eyes sliding closed.
“Oh, thank you,” you murmured faintly, eyes still shut. When you opened them, the Doctor was watching you, and her expression was so pained that you actually lifted your head in surprise.
“It’s okay,” you said, and weren’t entirely sure what you were referring to, only that you desperately wanted to wipe that haunted, terrible look off of her lovely face. But at your words the Doctor looked down, away, and you could see one of her hands fist on the blankets. Her eyes slid shut, and she looked suddenly so very much older.
“Doctor?” You ventured, true worry unfurling in your gut. She didn’t respond, and you reached for her hand, the one clenched into a tight fist. You tentatively brushed your thumb over it, and at that she finally looked up, met your eyes.
“Really, it’s okay,” you continued in a small voice. “It’s just a broken rib, right?” You hesitated when she just continued to stare at you, silent. Your anxiety increased, forcing words into your throat and past your lips. “I’m… I’m sorry I caused trouble out there, I didn’t mean to, I know you always say to be cautious and I know I messed up and you- and you had to fix it-” you swallowed. “But I don’t… I don’t want to stop traveling with you-” you broke off, your throat closing up. I will not cry!
The Doctor’s hand suddenly unclenched, twisted so that she was the one gripping your hand, and her fingers were warm as they threaded through your own. Her other hand lifted to your face, touched it lightly, so lightly. But she still looked so agonized, so diminished. So much less. She was still staring at you with those unfathomable eyes, and she took in a breath.
“I almost lost you,” she said, and her voice was ragged, the words torn from her and flung into the space between you. “You could have been so easily taken, or- or killed-” she broke off, breathed in sharply. Then with a sudden exhale she leaned forward and rested her forehead carefully against yours. You froze, though your heart was racing with anxiety and confusion and hope and oh, with her, with her, with her.
“It is not okay,” she whispered fiercely, and you could feel her words brush across your skin. “What they did to you, how I reacted, how you keep bloody apologizing-” she hitched in a broken breath. “I almost lost you,” she repeated, so softly you could barely hear her. But you could hear the pain, could feel it.
You didn’t think. You just reacted, reacted to the racing of your heart and the pain in the Doctor’s voice. You lifted your other hand, the one the Doctor wasn’t holding, and you touched her face, moving aside some of her hair. You had never dared to touch her so softly, so intimately, but how could you not, when she was breathing so brokenly? When she was touching you so softly?
“I’m here, I’m fine,” you said. “Doctor, I’m fi-” you broke off, because the Doctor had lifted her head and fixed you with her eyes, and oh, those eyes, they carried starlight in their wake and you were falling into them, falling as they drew closer to you, closer and closer and then-
and then-
her lips were pressed gently (oh, so gently) against your face, and those eyes like galaxies had swallowed you, consumed you.
“Not fine,” she whispered, her lips brushing the edge of your bruised eye. “Not fine,” she repeated, her lips moving down, finding another bruise. “Not fine,” she whispered, again and again, her lips tracing the path of violence across your face, and you couldn’t do anything but lay there, your skin blazing anew with each of her whispering touches because something in you was breaking, cracking, releasing.
“I- uh, I’m, fine,” you managed hoarsely when she paused, her lips so dangerously near to your own. “But if- you don’t… if you want to-” the Doctor made a low, almost amused sound and silenced your stammering with, finally, the touch of her lips against your own. It was gentle and restrained, mindful of your injuries, and for all that it still blazed through your veins, trembled with possibility and promise and, oh-
There was a sudden whistle from the other side of the room, and you and the Doctor both jumped, her head snapping around guiltily as she sat up. She didn’t let go of your hand, though.
“Oh, don’t stop on my account.” Yaz was leaning against the doorframe with an altogether too pleased look on her face, her words a lazy, delighted drawal. Neither you nor the Doctor immediately filled the silence, and Yaz’s grin deepened. The Doctor licked her lips, clearly struggling to decide how to gain control of the situation; you just put your free hand over your eyes as Yaz hollered over her shoulder, “Ryan! I was right, you owe me ten pounds!”
“You’re joking! They- really?” Graham’s voice, coming closer.
“No!” A groan from Ryan, also approaching.
“You lot are being very unprofessional,” the Doctor interjected loftily, or as loftily as one could in such a situation, which was to say not at all.
“Us?” Graham asked, poking his head around the corner. “We’re unprofessional? Aren’t you supposed to be her doctor? That’s gotta be a major ethics code violation, that has, honestly Doc-”
“I don’t think she’s even redone her bandaging yet,” Ryan said, gloomily handing Yaz her money. “Look, there, it fell on the floor.”
Graham tsked loudly and delightedly while you turned your face away, eyes still covered. Remembering that you still wore the Doctor’s coat, you moved your fingers around blindly until you found an edge of the hood, and then pulled it down over your eyes.
“You don’t get to hide if I don’t,” the Doctor muttered, tugging at the hood and revealing your face again. “Especially not in my coat.”
“Plenty of room in here for both of us,” you countered, gesturing. You’d said it automatically, an attempt at conspiratorial humour. Team TARDIS however took the comment in an entirely different light, and their hoots and whistles filled the room again. You covered your eyes back up with a firm tug on the coat, cheeks blazing. But you couldn’t quite suppress the small smile that twitched your lips.
“Oh, really,” the Doctor was saying in exasperation. “You lot, make yourselves useful if you’re going to hang about, go on then. I think we could all do with a bit more tea and biscuits and a bit less carrying on-”
“You referring to us, or you?” Yaz asked, cheekily and to an appreciative snort from Ryan. “Only, if we’re talking about carrying on, then I’d say you’re far more invested-”
“If there is not a pot of tea and a plate of custard creams in this room within the next ten minutes,” the Doctor interrupted loudly, “I am finding the most dull, boring, mind-numbing sunday in the history of dull, boring, mind-numbing sundays and I’m dropping you all off there to rot.” She swept a stern look across the group, clearly of the opinion she’d just laid down a very harsh, no-nonsense ultimatum.
The team was unimpressed with this threat, but they trooped out and away towards the kitchens, still making all kinds of ruckus. Silence reasserted itself slowly in the bedroom, and eventually you peeked out from under the hood to find the Doctor watching you. She looked… unsure, perhaps, but the haunted, drawn look had receded from her face. She took in a breath.
“If you apologize to me,” you said quickly, “if you even try to apologize for what just happened, I will- I will-” you struggled to come up with a suitable threat, but you were still tired, in pain, flustered, delighted. It was a lot of things to feel at once, and when on top of all that the Doctor was looking at you so steadily, her eyes crinkling ever so slightly with what might have been a suppressed smile, well. You huffed out a breath, tried to scowl at her. Failed.
“No apologies,” the Doctor agreed finally, with a crooked smile. She leaned down, reaching to retrieve the fallen package from the floor, a move which brought her face close to yours again. Without thinking, you snaked out a hand and caught the edge of one of her suspenders. Startled, she turned to look at you, and before you could lose your nerve you tugged on the suspender, and then pressed your own lips against hers.
She made a muffled sound against your mouth, still startled, and didn’t move. You had just started to feel the first creeping tendrils of worry and self-consciousness, when the Doctor softened, leaned in to you. Returned the kiss. It was your turn to make a stifled sound, and your fingers tightened around the suspender as you tugged the Doctor closer, you needed her closer, needed to fall into those eyes and that hair and those lips, you would drown of them. But it wasn’t drowning, it was the opposite, filling you with an expanding sense of right, this was right, this was what you had been missing your entire life and you could only just now realize it, could only now breathe truly, oh-
A sudden lance of pain, jarring and unwelcome. In your eagerness you had pressed too hard, asked too much of your abused, wounded face, and your split lip stretched painfully, threatening to tear. Only a little, but it was enough to make you flinch, enough to elicit a soft, involuntary sound of pain from your throat. Enough to make the Doctor pull away from you. She looked at your face, and the half-buried shadow of her anger and pain stirred dangerously in her eyes again.
“Worth it,” you said quickly, and were rewarded when the Doctor’s eyes snapped up to your own, the darkness receding from her gaze. It was replaced with surprise and a dash of annoyance, yes, but at least she didn’t look so tragic, at least there wasn’t the echo of a storm moving under her skin anymore.
“Oh?” the Doctor asked, as you dropped your hold on her suspender to touch your lip gingerly, wincing. “It was, hm?” She sounded annoyed, flustered… worried. You lowered your hand, met her eyes squarely.
“Yes,” you said simply, holding her gaze. Your heart was beating very fast, and you could feel a blush staining your cheeks, but you did not look away, did not break the contact. Sometimes, a situation was too important for anything less than full honesty, full commitment. The Doctor had taught you that; you would not flinch from the truth. Not here. The Doctor stared back at you, and again you saw her lick her lips, uncertain with how to proceed.
Then- oh, then-
The sun rose in her eyes, and the stars wheeled across her face as she smiled, as she smiled. It was a real smile, a true smile, one that lifted her entire face, that lit the entire room. Again you felt muscles relax that you hadn’t known you were clenching (or maybe just one muscle, maybe it was just your heart unclenching, releasing you) and you smiled back. Reached for her.
Another unwelcome lance of pain, this time in your neglected rib, and you winced, falling back against the pillows with a sound of annoyance. The Doctor shook her head and finally retrieved the bandaging off the floor.
“See? Terrible patient.” Her voice was brisk again, but she was still smiling. She finally set to changing the bandages around your broken rib (a weird, advanced material that adhered to your skin somehow and rapidly increased the healing process, or so she said) and she had just moved on to your lip when the rest of the gang paraded back into the room, tea and biscuits in hand.
Predictably, the resulting tableaux presented by the Doctor bent over your face and carefully dabbing at your lips (another weird material that encouraged torn flesh to mend back together) elicited another round of whistles and applause from the gang. The Doctor told them off, though the effect was somewhat diminished by the muffled way she said it around a custard cream, already reaching for a second.
You still didn’t much feel like eating, but you gratefully accepted a cup of tea from Graham. The rest of the team didn’t appear inclined to leave, and instead settled around the room. They seemed to take their cue from the Doctor’s more relaxed behavior (half-hearted scolding as she continued to consume biscuits, traces of a smile still lingering about her eyes and mouth) and they fell into cheerful conversation.
They were already beginning to think of the next adventure, and as a debate broke out between Ryan and Yaz on the merits of past versus future, and earth versus a new planet, you settled carefully against your pillows. The mattress dipped as the Doctor, having finally collected her own cup of tea (you’d long since lost track of her biscuit count, you were only human after all) sat down next to you.
Though she didn’t immediately look at you, having been drawn into the debate between Ryan and Yaz and thus busily contributing with her normal earnest enthusiasm, you still felt your heart flutter. It didn’t make sense (hadn’t you just been kissing, after all, and with most of your shirt off no less?) but something about the Doctor so comfortably settling into your space, her knee brushing against you as she folded her legs… it was just so intimate, so domestic. She almost spilled her tea as she made a particularly enthusiastic point, leaning forwards with her eyes shining, and, well. You took a hasty sip of your own tea to cover the ridiculous blush you felt creeping across your face.
The Doctor’s eyes slid briefly toward you, and again you felt your heart stutter as your gazes connected, felt a familiar thrill run down your spine. You also felt your lip twinge painfully as it curved into a smile, but you didn’t care. You didn’t care, because the Doctor had smiled back, and that smile was worth the stars themselves. She leaned over, closer to you.
“Feeling okay?” she asked you in a quieter voice, her bright eyes flickering over your face. “Are we being too loud? We can always go if you want-”
“No,” you interrupted, and you reached for her hand automatically. “Don’t go- any of you,” you added a touch sheepishly as you realized you and the Doctor now had the keen attention of the rest of the gang, who were eyeing your clasped hands with great interest (because the Doctor hadn’t pulled away, had indeed wrapped her fingers immediately around your own, as easily and automatically as breathing). “If you want, I mean. I- I like the company,” you finished, a bit lamely.
“Yeah, we can see that,” Graham muttered in an undertone to Ryan and Yaz, who grinned.
“Hmm,” was the Doctor’s only reply, continuing to scan your face. She was also still holding your hand. Don’t go, you said again, but silently, with your eyes, with your clutching fingers. Don’t leave me alone again in the dark. The Doctor held your gaze a moment longer, then she nodded slowly, her eyes softening, and she squeezed your hand. She’d understood.
So they stayed, all of them, and they filled the room like sunlight with their banter and ideas and laughter. Mostly you listened, occasionally you participated. Eventually, you drifted. Not quite sleeping (you’d had more than enough of that in the past two days, thanks very much) but the presence of your friends allowed you to finally relax, truly and fully.
The Doctor of course did not stay tethered to the bed, too full of restless energy to ever remain seated for long. You enjoyed the moments where she leapt up and darted around the room, though. You enjoyed watching her when she absently drifted to the plate of biscuits (and when she left the room, then returned with a fresh plate), when she scaled the built-in ladder to find a particular book necessary to prove a point, when she stepped back quietly into the room after having checked the console, hands deep in her pockets and a smudge of grease on her cheek.
You enjoyed it, because she always came back to you, always drifted back to your side as if caught in a gravitational pull. Not always for long, she didn’t even always sit back down before she was winging away in a new trajectory, but it was enough; she moved in and out of your orbit like a blazing comet, and you in turn drifted comfortably, secure in the knowledge that the light would return again.
You perked up a while later when a discussion-turned-debate-turned-competition broke out in regards to, of all things, relative strength. Ryan started it, evidently still fixated on the Doctor’s apparent disproportionate strength. Yaz and the Doctor predictably had a few things to say in reply to that, and before you really grasped that was happening, the team was assembling for an impromptu arm wrestling contest.
It took an embarrassingly short time for the Doctor to defeat them, one and all.
“I really enjoyed that,” the Doctor confided to you in a low voice, sitting down on your bed again. Her hair was tousled, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, and her mouth full with a victory biscuit. “Yaz almost had me for a minute there,” she added, furtive. She slumped back against the pillows next to you, watching with interest as Graham attempted to salvage his honor only to be beaten by Yaz, who seemed to be defending her runner-up title easily, if not humbly.
Your breathing had hitched (traitorous lungs!) when the Doctor lay back next to you, your heart stuttering painfully. The Doctor turned her head to look at you, strands of her hair brushing your face. You could count every freckle that dotted her cheek like so many stars, but your gaze was drawn unerringly instead into the constellations in her eyes. You stared at each other for a moment that lasted a heartbeat, an eternity. Echoes of triumphant laughter still lingered in the Doctor’s eyes, still curved the lines of her mouth. You weren’t sure what she read in your face.
You both spoke at the same time.
“I’m fine-”
“-want another biscuit?”
A moment of startled silence, then you both laughed. The Doctor closed the meager space between you, leaning her forehead against yours even as you reached for her hand. Her lips found yours again in a chaste, gentle kiss that nonetheless altered you down to your very core.
You knew this to be true because you could feel it, could feel your skin changing, blazing, your body shining like a celestial creation- and yet, when you took a breath (when you came up for air, surfaced from that glorious not-drowning) and glanced at your hand, it looked the same as ever.
Perhaps some of that blazing light had been shining from your eyes, however, because the Doctor was still looking at you as if you were a celestial body, as if the breaking light of the universe did emanate from your gaze. You didn’t know what to do with that, didn’t know how to handle that regard, so you just leaned closer, surrendered to her gravitational pull, and fell into another kiss. The Doctor made a low sound against your mouth, a sound that shook you down to your very core again, a sound that you reciprocated without conscious choice.
The sound turned into a growl of mingled pain and frustration as your abused lip (and rib, when had you sat up, leaned over so eagerly into the Doctor?) protested the treatment, and you sat back against the pillows, touched your stinging lip with your hand.
“Oh, I have got to stop letting you do that,” the Doctor muttered, catching your hand and pulling it away so she could look at your lip herself. “Don’t touch it! Just leave it be.” Her face was scrunched in that way you loved so much as she considered your lip, tilting her head back and forth. You couldn’t help but smile, even as her eyes flicked up to yours, narrowed. “The worst patient,” she complained, but her scrunched face had relaxed. You considered making a pointed rebuttal in regards to her own conduct as a doctor, but she distracted you when she leaned over you to grab- yes, unbelievably, another biscuit- before slumping back against the pillows and crossing her ankles.
“They sure do carry on,” the Doctor observed around the custard cream, watching the continuingly evolving spectacle that was Team TARDIS. They’d moved on to pushups, and Yaz was still winning handedly while Graham kept official count and Ryan sweated.
The Doctor’s free hand was still laced comfortably through yours, and when she had leaned back against the pillows the mattress had dipped slightly, enough to shift your body and close the space between you and her. It was again somehow so much more intimate than kissing, and you had held yourself stiffly for a moment, unsure. This was such new, fragile territory, and you were afraid to misstep. But the Doctor settled the matter before you could decide, lifting your interlaced hands and wiggling so that your bodies fit more neatly together, so that your cheek rested against her shoulder. You made a soft sound, nestling your head more comfortably and delighting in the feel of her hair against your face, her shirt against your cheek, of… her. Just, her.
And eventually it turned out that you could sleep after all, because you weren’t alone: the team was still arguing cheerfully around you, their voices filling the room like so many lights, and the Doctor… The Doctor was still warm against you, with no apparent intention of releasing your hand or leaving your side. Though you expected to feel that painfully wonderful heart-stuttering thrill at the contact, instead you found yourself relaxing, softening against the comforting warmth of yes, the Doctor, of her, but also the voices of Yaz, Graham, Ryan. The team, the fam, all around you. They were all of them lights in the dark, and you were safe. You could sleep.
You were home.