Work Text:
The idea first arises out of an incident that occurs while the TARDIS Team are all on the way back from an alien marketplace on the planet Praxis V. They’d spent the good portion of that day wandering about trying to find spare parts in order to repair the Doctor’s laundry machine — which apparently is different from the typical human laundry machine in that it, for some reason, requires extremely rare alien tech which is compatible with something called ‘artron energy’ to actually run. Graham had initially suggested just nipping down to Tescos but apparently that wasn’t going to cut it.
Which is how they ended up here — weaving in and out amid colourful but narrow cobblestoned streets, the gang making their way back to the TARDIS after a long day of exploring various stalls and shops. The sun is just beginning to set, casting everything in a warm golden glow. As they continue the hike Yaz sighs. Her legs are aching, but its a warm, comfortable kind of ache, and the light breeze around them carries scent of perfumes and spices, vendors cooking mysterious and exotic foods.
Despite the trip being pretty much just a run of the mill shopping errand for the Doctor, for Yaz and likely Ryan and Graham as well, everything can’t help but be fascinating. Clutching her share of the Doctor’s various scavenged wires, cogs, pulleys and gears close to her chest, she takes a moment to appreciate the novelty of being able to visit entirely new planets and civilisations. That’s never going to get old. In fact, she has to muster up all her strength in order not to blatantly stare at the other civilians and travellers milling about as they walk past. They all happen to look just a tad bit more alien than the Doctor does.
As Yaz admires all the various trinkets and contraptions on sale, Graham and the Doctor amble along next to her, Graham sporting Audrey Hepburn’s (or were they Pythagoras’?) sunglasses once more. Meanwhile the Doctor is rambling on about how her ‘food machine’ is also currently in a state of disrepair, but she hasn’t seen it in years and by now it’s honestly ‘Rassilon knows where,’ vanished away deep somewhere in the maze-like corridors of the TARDIS. Ryan is a little ways ahead of them, carrying a large rustic contraption he came across earlier that apparently, according to the Doctor, has the ability to produce photos which are actually able to move like something straight out of a Harry Potter novel. The Doctor had promised that when they get back to the ship she’d show him how to get it up and running in her workshop.
Yaz is just thinking about jogging up to him, maybe asking what he’s interested in taking pictures of if they get it up and running, when she hears a voice from behind them.
“Hey! Hey, miss! Miss!”
She turns to see a gawky young man with large glasses waving his hand wildly about in the air after them, some sort of hydraulic cylinder cradled under his arm.
“Miss! You — you dropped your — MA’AM! YOU DROPPED YOUR —“
“Doctor …” Graham nudges the Doctor’s arm says as he continues to shout. “‘Pretty sure he’s talking to you.”
“What?” She looks baffled. “Why would he be talking to —“ Her eyes widen with realisation. “Oh! Right. Right, yeah — Of course. Obviously.” She mutters a bit to herself under her breath, shaking her head before heading over.
Yaz frowns after her as she jogs back to collect the forgotten component, apologising profusely for accidentally ignoring the kind stranger.
“What was that about?” Yaz asks after the Doctor returns having waved goodbye. “It was like you didn’t even hear ‘im or something.”
“Pronouns,” she sighs, adjusting so she can get a better grip on her pile of machinery. “’Just can’t seem to get used to them no matter how hard I try.”
“‘Kinda had a feeling.” Yaz helps the Doctor out by taking some of the spare parts from her arms. “Back on Earth, that first night we met — you asked me why I was callin’ you madam.”
“‘Could’ve sworn you called yourself ‘daddy’ when talking to the TARDIS back on Desolation,” Ryan adds.
“‘Don’t think you could remember your gender when we were investigating Rosa Parks back in 1955 either.” Graham lifts up a bright red tarpaulin that hangs strung between two vendors, allowing them room to duck under. “And last week when we were rainbathing in Kinstarno you told that tour guide your name was ‘John Smith’!”
“All right, all right you lot. I get the point. ‘Gotta admit it is driving me a bit bonkers.”
The Doctor rakes a hand through her hair, leaving it dishevelled, and the little crease that forms in her forehead as she huffs in frustration is more than a bit adorable. Yaz can’t help but find her constant forgetting of her own gender oddly endearing for some reason.
“How long has it been?”
“Since people last called me ‘she’?” The Doctor’s gaze darts back and forth across the landscape in an attempt to access a memory long passed. “At least a few millennia.”
“Blimey.” Graham’s eyebrows shoot up. “You’ve really been a bloke all that time?”
“Sounds awful …” Yaz shakes her head, expression solemn.
“Hey!” Ryan bumps shoulders with her. “Rude.”
“M’ just kidding!”
The Doctor watches the two of them bicker with an amused expression. Then she shrugs. “‘Guess I have … S’pose I had a bit of a problem with being scared of change when it came to who I was back then. Still do, if I’m honest. Not something I’m proud of, but I’m working on it.”
She huffs out a laugh, but it seems a bit half-hearted.
“Well!” Graham claps her on the back, oblivious. “If you ever end up forgetting again we’ll just give you a little nudge, eh?”
“Mmm …” The Doctor hums, gazing off into the distance, lost in thought.
Yaz assumes that she’s just thinking about how she’s going to repurpose the cobbled together machinery they found that day.
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
Initially Yaz dismissed the whole thing as little more than just another brief foray into one of the Doctor’s many odd quirks, but evidently this conversation has a lot more of an impact on the Doctor than Yaz realises because a couple of hours later when they’re all crowded around, sitting in the TARDIS’ new workshop, she suddenly pipes up, completely unprompted.
“Yaz. I want you to teach me how to be a woman.”
Graham chokes on his tea, spluttering, the same time as Ryan snorts, unable to conceal a shit-eating grin.
Yaz feels her face grow hot.
“Uh … I — I’m not sure I’m exactly equipped. For that. Exactly …”
“Sure you are! You’re a human, you’re a woman, and you’re also Yaz. If anyone can do it you can. Just the basics, of course. Like, erm … nail painting? Women … They paint their nails, right? And how you do those —” She twirls her fingers around in the air above her hair. “— bun things.”
“… My space buns?”
“Yes!” The Doctor snaps her fingers. “Space buns! Fitting. I like it.”
“‘Not sure you’ve exactly got enough hair for it but, I could try?”
The Doctor suddenly gasps, throwing her hands up in the air like she’s had a grand epiphany. “Oh! We could have a Girls’ Night!”
They’re still halfway through disassembling what Yaz is now referring to as the ‘Space Camera’ for the Doctor to be able to get at the bits ’n’ bobs inside to figure out what needs to be fixed. Ryan is currently sitting cross-legged on the floor, parts of machinery strewn out all around him, cluttering the room.
Yaz tilts her head to the side with a small smile. The Doctor seems incredibly excited about this idea, eyes practically lighting up at the prospect.
“I mean — I can’t see why not …”
“Brilliant!” She exclaims, before turning to the others, speaking quickly. “Sorry, Ryan. Graham.”
“Really. It’s no problem, Doc. While you two enjoy your … Girls’ Night … we should probably finish this up.”
“Hey. What if I also want to join in on the Girls’ Night?”
“You’re welcome to if you’d like!” the Doctor flings her arm around Yaz’ shoulders, giving her a squeeze, thankfully not noticing the way she starts blushing again.
Graham gives Ryan a stern look before glancing between the two of them with an expression Yaz can’t quite decode. “I’m sure he’s fine staying here for now. We’ve got a lot to do. Right, Ryan?”
Ryan opens his mouth to protest and Graham gives him a nudge with the back of his hand, raising his eyebrows. ”Let’s leave the ladies in peace, hm?”
Ryan pouts, picks up a wrench to fiddle with it. “Whatever. ‘Didn’t want to join in anyway.”
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
Half an hour later Yaz and the Doctor are sitting together, huddled on her bed somewhere hidden deep within the TARDIS’ labyrinthine corridors going through old photo albums, ones that Yaz accidentally stumbled across while looking for a pair of slippers. The Doctor sits cross-legged in a pair of boxer shorts and an oversized t-shirt probably belonging to one of her previous incarnations, Yaz herself wearing some stripy pink PJs she borrowed after some time spent rummaging around in the TARDIS’ wardrobe.
This is part of the ship she has never seen before and the experience of finally being able to see the place the Doctor sleeps is a bit weird but also oddly humbling. Like the Doctor has decided to share some secret part of herself with her. The closest thing she can compare it to is that peculiar feeling you get when you’re a kid and you see your primary school teacher out while getting the groceries. It’s humanising. For a long time Yaz wondered if the Doctor even slept at all, seeming to always be awake even when everyone else was completely exhausted.
That being said, it isn’t exactly the most normal bedroom. It's high-ceilinged and dark blue like the TARDIS itself, with golden glowing star charts engraved into the walls, plastering every square inch of the space. Other than a large king-sized bed that sits in its centre, though, seemingly crafted out of the same material as the crystalline amber pillars in the main console room, the room is relatively barren. There’s no other furniture or detritus hanging about at all save for a stack of books that sits beside the bed head, a half-finished cup of tea balanced precariously on top. Beneath it Yaz can just make out the title of the dog-eared publication: ‘Applied Cryptography : Protocols, Algorithms, and Source Code in C’.
It took the Doctor awhile to cave, reluctant at first to trust her with seeing pictures of her old selves, but once she finally agreed to let Yaz have a look it was revealed that she had actually stumbled upon an unexpected treasure trove.
“Listen. I can explain —“ The Doctor says hastily, shifting the veritable tome balanced on her knees. “There is a reason for that, all right?”
Yaz is actually laughing so hard that she’s crying, has to wipe away the tears from the corners of her eyes. Her stomach hurts.
“I mean — why, though? What compelled you to …” Yaz shakes her head, disbelieving. She tries starting the sentence again. “Did you just really like celery or somethin’?”
“Oh, no. I hated it,” she says, face twisting in disgust.
This sends Yaz into another fit of giggles and she groans, doubling over, clutching her stomach again. “Stop. It hurts …”
“Listen. It wasn’t purely decorative.”
“— Implying that it was at least partially just ‘cause you thought it looked cool.”
“It was also so I could potentially detect gases in the Praxis range poisonous to my physiology! I could have died.”
“Right, sure.”
“It’s true! I’m not lyin’! I’m proper deathly allergic. ‘Bit less of a hypochondriac now though, I’d say.”
“You’re such a dork.”
The Doctor buries her face in the pillow she has huddled to her chest, ruffled blonde hair just peeking out over the top.
When she doesn’t emerge after a few seconds Yaz gives the pillow a poke. “Doctor …”
“‘m embarrassed.”
“Okay — okay.” Yaz sniffs, wiping under her eyes again. She takes a breath in an attempt to calm herself down.
The Doctor sets down the pillow and crosses her arms, somehow at once looking childish and one-hundred percent sincere.
“Sorry for being mean. I think I’m ready for the next one.”
But the split second she says that she starts thinking of the celery again.
“Wait — no I’m not!”
But it’s too late. The Doctor has already picked up her album, beginning to flip through it once more. She stops on a page somewhere near the middle, running her fingers over a photo of a thin man in a striped suit beaming next to a woman with bright red hair. Next to that is a yellowed newspaper clipping of that same woman seemingly mid-jump between the TARDIS and a moving vehicle right in the middle of the M1. Yaz ignores this in favour of making fun of the Doctor a bit more. She leans in, scrutinising the photos with raised eyebrows.
“God. You’re bloody skinny aren’t you?”
“Are you calling me fat now?” the Doctor asks in mock-affront.
“No — no, I was just —“
She’s cut off by the Doctor trying to suppress a fit of laughter and Yaz rolls her eyes, yanking the pillow from her grip and beginning to whack her with it.
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
The Doctor’s request for her to ‘teach her how to be a woman’ while alarming at first, turns out to be incredibly vague. To be honest she has no idea where exactly to begin or what that even constitutes. The Doctor seems set on her teaching her how to use makeup, though, so Yaz suggests that they do makeovers on themselves as practice — which leads to the Doctor revealing that she already has a surprisingly large collection of products stashed away beneath her bathroom faucet. Which … Yaz actually still isn’t quite sure why she has.
“You can do this, Doctor.”
Yaz sits with a mirror balanced between her crossed legs, her chin resting on top as the Doctor leans over, peering into it. Her concentration face is hilariously intense considering that they’re not facing any alien threat and instead just attempting to pull off a vaguely acceptable looking ‘smokey eye’. Various palettes, lipsticks, and brushes sit strewn across the bed. The room also smells faintly of acetone from when Yaz helped the Doctor paint her nails earlier. TARDIS blue — of course.
“Agh,” the Doctor grumbles, adjusting her grip upon the mascara wand in her hand. “My hands won’t stop shakin’. ‘Feel like I’m gonna poke myself in the eye.”
“Try opening your mouth when you do it.”
“How’s that s’posed to help?”
Yaz frowns. Huh. “‘Dunno why, actually. It just does?”
The Doctor screws up her mouth and leans in again for a second attempt, blinking rapidly and managing to transfer black goop all over her eyelids.
And then she yawns, apparently deciding before Yaz can stop her that this is a good moment to rub her eyes.
The look of absolute despair that crosses the Doctor’s face when she realises what she’s done is so comical Yaz can’t help but stifle a laugh. The look is certainly … avant garde. Mascara is smeared all around her eyes and she’s accidentally managed to smudge the gaudy shade of red lipstick she’s wearing from her mouth to across her cheek.
The Doctor sighs, flopping back against her duvet. “God. I’m absolutely rubbish at this. ‘Don’t think I’m all that cut out for being a woman at all.” She groans. “This is hopeless.”
Yaz would have teased her if she didn’t seem so genuinely upset about the whole thing. The Doctor looks so sad that she gets the feeling that this is about a bit more than just a botched cut crease.
“Well … You’re not used to it, are you? No one’s built being able to contour or strut in heels. And none of this stuff makes you a woman anyway.”
“I thought — maybe because how I look changed — and how I thought about myself, really … I should change as well. Or at least give it a go. It’s not that I don’t feel like a woman I just — wanted to embrace it. Am I rambling?”
“‘Bit. But I get it. Y’know, a lot of my mates from work aren’t all that interested in super traditionally feminine stuff either. Some women just prefer acting or dressing more masculine or androgynously. That doesn’t mean they’re rejecting their gender or somethin’. They’re just defining it on their own terms.”
The Doctor seems to think over this for a few moments so Yaz continues.
“Who do you feel like you are?”
The Doctor scrubs at the lipstick on her face with the back of her hand, only really successfully managing to rub it in a bit more. “To be honest I have no idea about that either. You humans are so complicated. I’ve … I’ve never had to think about anything like this before. And now suddenly I feel like I’m expected to. I mean — is my gender determined by how I look? Or how I act? What’s easiest for other people to read me as? How I feel? If I’m being completely honest I don’t ever feel like much of anything. I s’pose I feel like... I could really go for a fried egg sandwich right now …”
“You don’t need to act or be a certain way to be a proper woman, Doctor.”
“In that case, I think I’d like to go back to the workshop, see how Ryan and Graham are faring with the camera. First though — fried egg sandwich. I wasn’t lyin’ about that.”
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
After they manage to clean all the gunk off of the Doctor’s face and stop for dinner they end up reconvening in the TARDIS’ library. By now the camera has been fully disassembled for the Doctor to work on throughout the night so Ryan and Graham decide to join in for their game of Truth or Dare, which the Doctor explains will be much more fun with the whole gang playing. She certainly doesn’t need to convince Ryan twice who is incredibly chuffed that he finally gets to be a part of the much fabled exclusive Girls’ Night.
After only a few rounds though, involving the Doctor being dared to sing a old Gallifreyan drinking song that contains a lot of what are apparently swear words which the TARDIS either decides not to, or is incapable of translating, and Ryan having to try a drink called ‘Zaffic’ which apparently tastes like ‘if someone took meatloaf and then made it into the worst soup, just the worst soup imaginable,’ they end up cutting the ‘dare’ option out of the game after an incident involving the Doctor almost choking while attempting to eat to eight Custard Creams at once.
They all sit on the floor in a circle, leaned up against the couches, surrounded by lolly wrappers. It’s currently Ryan’s turn to ask the Yaz a question.
“So … How’s the Girls’ Night going so far? Has the Doctor managed to fully … embrace her womanly wiles?”
Yaz blatantly ignores the more leading part of that question. Boys. “I think it’s gone pretty well! All things considered. ‘Though, I’d probably say that we’ve realised the Doctor doesn’t really identify so much as a ‘man’ or ‘woman’ so much as an alien. You should probably ask her that question, actually.”
“No, no. ‘Think you did a brilliant job, Yaz. Very succinct.”
Yaz blushes.
“Alien in a woman-shaped casing. ‘Don’t mind what you call me so long as you don’t expect me to put on mascara. I’m rubbish at that.”
“Can do.” Ryan salutes.
And then it’s Graham’s turn to question the Doctor.
He leans forward, scrutinising. “So. ‘Gotta know — how old are you really? You said you were at least several millennia old back on Praxis V.”
The Doctor drums her fingers on her knees. “I thought it was rude on Earth to ask a woman about her age?”
“‘Thought we’d already established that you don’t exactly fall into that category.”
She sighs. “Fine. Four-thousand, two hundred and fifty-six. I think? Give or take four and a half billion years in the middle there. Incident with a confession dial.” She mutters this last part under her breath, scrunching up her face as if recalling a thoroughly unpleasant experience. “‘Wouldn’t recommend it.”
“Four thousand?!” Graham’s eyes widen in shock. “Blimey … And I thought I was gettin’ on. Not to say you aren’t looking good, Doc! ‘Don’t look a day past two hundred.”
The Doctor raises her eyebrows. “Thanks, Graham.”
“All right, all right. Do me now,” Ryan pops a toffee into his mouth.
“Okay … ” Yaz begins, struggling to come up with anything even vaguely interesting. “Uh. Who here would you most like to snog?”
The question makes her feel like she’s thirteen years old again, but this does manage to catch him off-guard.
Ryan’s gaze flits around the circle before he ducks his head, laughing nervously. He fiddles with the toffee wrapper in his lap.
“I mean … “ He jerks his head towards Yaz, not making eye-contact. “Yeah. You. Probably.”
Yaz isn’t quite sure what to think about this but then the Doctor pipes up with “Excellent choice, Ryan!” and she feels her heart stutter in her chest. And yup. This is … more dangerous than she thought it’d be. She didn’t think this through at all.
“Your turn, Yaz,” the Doctor says.
She takes a deep breath. “Sure, yeah. Go ahead.”
“Who here would you most like to snog?” Ryan smirks as if to say ‘Gotcha’ and her brain short-circuits.
Is Ryan expecting her to say him?
“I …” Her gaze darts up to the Doctor who is just looking at her expectantly with those wide, stupidly green eyes of hers before she looks away quickly.
She can feel herself blushing again, which she’s beginning to realise she actually does quite a lot.
“Can we move on from all these questions about snogging?” Graham asks, exasperated, unaware of Yaz’ imminent panic attack. “You’re making this grandad feel like even more of an old timer than he already is.”
“I think we should move on as well. Actually.”
“Hey! Wait — no way. That’s not fair. I had to answer the question.” Ryan shakes his head, disbelieving.
“Fine.” Yaz clears her throat, knowing that Ryan isn’t going to take ‘no’ for an answer any time soon. Now it’s her turn to avoid eye-contact with everyone. “I would … Probably choose the Doctor.”
A silence. And then —
“I knew it!” Ryan exclaims. “You’ve totally got a crush on her! Me ‘n’ Graham were placing bets back in the workshop. It’s funny. He actually thought this whole ‘Girls’ Night’ thing was actually just an excuse for you guys to—”
“No, we weren’t!” Graham interjects hastily.
When Yaz looks up, though, the Doctor is smiling fondly at her.
“I really am proper flattered, Yaz. If it means anything you would also be my first choice.” She frowns. ”Although … My wife, River, probably wouldn’t be pleased. Well, her and my other wife, Rose. But she’s trapped in an alternate dimension. Married to the human metacrisis version of myself from three regenerations ago. And then I suppose there’s also Marilyn Monroe. And Cleopatra … And Queen Elizabeth I. Although — she does want me dead now for some reason, so maybe that doesn’t count.”
Yaz is dumbstruck and a bit lightheaded. Ryan looks impressed.
“Bloody hell,” Graham says once the ramble comes to an end. “Is there any historical figure you haven’t eloped with?”
The Doctor pauses, a pensive look crossing her face, and then she says, “Well. Had a bit of a thing with Madame de Pompadour, but y’know — time travel problems.” She rolls her eyes and gives everyone a look as if this is the most commonplace romantic obstacle in the universe.
“Right, yeah. Yeah.” Graham lets out a slightly hysterical laugh. “Of course.”
•• ━━━━━ ••●•• ━━━━━ ••
A few hours and an order of Chinese later, they all end up half-asleep watching ‘Back to the Future’ while curled up on the new purple sofa the Doctor recently managed to find second-hand. This turns out to be hilarious — especially because every two seconds the Doctor is interrupting to criticise pop-culture’s depiction of time travel.
“I mean — you can’t just make a time machine! Out of what — a toaster?” The Doctor throws up her hands in the air.
Yaz doesn’t bring up that just last month she’d seen the Doctor manage to assemble a teleporter strong enough to zap them out into the middle of deep space using a microwave. This was in conjunction with Stenza technology, though, so perhaps that’s less of a faux-pas?
“And honestly — I’ve never seen a more absurd depiction of flux capacitors in my life!” She shakes her head in dismay. “I mean — what do you people think they’re for?”
“Stop movin’,” Yaz grumbles, mid-way through braiding the Doctor’s hair, her head in her lap.
Graham pops another Spearmint Chew into his mouth, speaks around it. “To be fair, Doc, it is science fiction.”
“Odd genre, that one. Never really got into it.”
Ryan snorts. “What about Star Wars? C’mon. You have to have seen Star Wars.”
“‘Can’t really watch anything to do with war without feelin’ queasy.”
“Fair enough,” Graham says.
“You really haven’t seen any sci-fi? Not even Star Trek?” Yaz runs her fingers through the Doctor’s soft blonde locks to weave in another strand.
“‘Thought it was a bad documentary,” she shrugs with a yawn. “Plus everyone knows 40 Eridani A is inhabited by a particularly obstinate species of vent scrits.”
“Wha’?” Ryan asks, only half-watching the movie now. They’re at the part where Marty McFly meets the young version of his quite nerdy father in a local diner and watches him get bullied by a group of eighties greaser-types.
“‘Kind of rat-like creatures,” the Doctor mumbles, eyes slipping closed. “Space vermin. Depending on how you look at it. On some planets they’re actually a protected species, if you can believe it … “
Yaz is feeling pretty drowsy herself. Her eyelids feel heavy and the muffled voices coming from the Doctor’s oddly archaic box television sound soft and fuzzy in her head.
As she slowly succumbs to the warmth of sleep her gaze drifts around the room — from Ryan sitting on the floor, head tilted back with his mouth open; to Graham curled up at the end of the couch still watching the film through lidded eyes; and finally to the Doctor asleep in her lap, half braided blonde hair fanning out to frame her face; and she can’t help but feel a surge of affection towards her newfound family and the daft old alien who brought them all together.