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Yaz’s wristwatch ticks in time with the Doctor’s steady breaths and steady hearts, a relieving reminder that she’s still there; she’s still kicking; she is, first and foremost, still alive.
It was too close, today. She was one wrong step away from losing her for good.
“Yaz?”
“Can we just — can we stay like this for a bit longer, please?”
The arms strung around her shoulders tighten and the chest pressed against hers puffs out with a soft inhale. “Of course. For however long you need.”
Need is the optimum word. Yaz needs her solid, warm body to assuage the fresh memories in her mind that the Doctor survived such a fateful trip.
Yaz readjusts, slipping her arms beneath the Doctor’s coat and snaking them around her waist, fingers coiling around mustard braces. Moulded so close, it’s hard to consider that they are separate persons and not a combined force for comfort.
“This is nice,” the Doctor muffles into the crown of Yaz’s head where she sets up home for the time being. Warm lips find her parting and Yaz sags a little more against her. “My last body hated hugs. This one seems much more yearny for them. I just never know how to ask.”
“Y’can always ask me,” Yaz speaks into the dip of her collarbone. Deft fingers find the base of her neck and glide through dark locks messied by gale force winds. She could do with a shower, but the loss of contact might see her through to mania.
It’s been a long day. It’s going to be an even longer night aboard the ship where her best friend rarely stays still.
“I thought I were going to lose you today,” Yaz tells her slender neck a short time later, still entwined in a hug which is slowly but steadily patching her most vital organ back up. “I went through a whole scenario where I’d get back and have to tell the boys.”
“Yaz.”
“Don’t make me get to that point again, Doctor. Please.” From their muffled vocalisation, her words aren’t angry, but deeply desperate. It shows in the way she’d immediately clung to her upon their escape back to the TARDIS. “If you died, I—“
“None of that, Yaz,” the Doctor interrupts, guilt tightening her hold on shoulders that are only so strong. She makes a mental note to take some downtime before their next trip, especially when Yaz breathes a shaky sigh against her neck. “I’m here; I’m alive. And I’m sorry I scared you like that.”
And Yaz will take that; will capture the words lingering in the minuscule space between them and stuff them beneath her ribs for safekeeping like a forest animal gathers sustenance for winter. “You’re here.”
“I’m here.” The Doctor’s lips find her forehead, next, then a furrowed brow. “Feel me, Yaz. I’m right here in front of you.”
Like a painting finally coming together, Yaz sees the finished piece; the Doctor’s sturdy, complete form. She presses closer, discarding any sense of personal space left and grounding herself to the here and now — or however much she can while in a time machine. “I don’t want to lose you, ‘cause I think I love you. And I think losing you would kill me.”
The Doctor’s hearts quicken beneath her touch and the blonde’s shoulders hike up in instinctual defence.
But one look from Yaz’s glassy pupils casts aside any disregard or excuse. She’s well and truly lost on her. “I love you too, Yaz.”
“And I think it would kill me, too.”