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It is Bill who is noticed first. This catches her off-guard.
"Is that work for astrophysics?" says this very pretty girl. The waning Oxford sun catches in her dark hair, spooled up into space buns. "I'm tryin' to get into that class, but the professor keeps blowing off my emails. I swear, I'm about to camp outside his office."
Bill laughs, though it's more of a nasally snort. "Might be a good idea, actually."
There are golden bloody flecks haloing this girl's irises! Her brow is set so determinedly! She needs to forgive herself for the absolute mess being an absolute lesbian is about to get her into, again.
"So it is astrophysics?"
Christ.
"Oh! Sort of." She looks down at the equation she's in the middle of solving. Maxwell's Equation, her nemesis. In her other hand there's a half-eaten ham sandwich from Tesco. There's a spot of mustard on one of her fingerless gloves. So sexy. "I'm auditing. Technically."
"But you know the professor, right? You could introduce me. I've seen you talking to him after class."
Okay, there's something in her eyes besides molten chemical number seventy-nine. It's around her eyes, actually; a tightness and a curling-in. Like she hasn't slept for days and like, Bill sees a lot of that around campus, particularly in the cafeteria. But her hands are on her hips, her shoulders are hiked up to her ears. She looks like she's about to punt God Herself into—
Hold on. "Wait, so you are in the...class already."
There's silence for a moment. The girl blinks a few times. As though Bill just scrambled her neurons with a few stupid words.
"Never mind, no worries. Yeah, I can totally introduce you to Dr. Smith. I really should warn you, though, he's a—"
The girl starts to cry. Oh fuck. Oh no. Oh fuck oh no.
"Sorry." She laughs, a harsh thing. "I haven't slept today."
"That's okay," Bill says, very gently. She takes a deep breath and holds out her sandwich like it's a basket full of warm chips. Then she realizes that it's still a ham sandwich from Tesco and has her teeth marks in it. She scooches on the stone bench and finally dumps the whole thing into the garbage can next to her. "Sitting down can help with all kinds of. Bodily secretion. That's....an astrophysics law?"
Her beautiful brow furrows deeply, as though she's trying to parse out exactly which astrophysics law it is, and then solve it all in her head. Perhaps she can do that, like the professor in question. In the last six months, this amount of frenetic energy has become very familiar. "No, I have to go. Besides, I've been a weirdo enough today—sorry, didn't catch your name before."
"Bill," she says. She holds out her hand, grins. "And you're really pretty normal in my book. At least compared to some other books around here."
"Yaz Khan," Yaz Khan says, sticking her hands in her pockets. Her shoulders finally lower into a standard range of relaxed. She looks at the bench like she wants to say yes. Her long stare has too much yearning for Bill's big, gay heart. She wants to ask Yaz what is making her so sad and so devoid of natural melatonin.
It also piques her interest, she realizes. That Yaz wants to see the Doctor, specifically.
"Hey, can I get you a coffee?"
"What?"
"A coffee." She closes her notebook. Maxwell will just have to wait. "You know, the caffeinated beverage. It's all the rage."
"You just met me. For all you know, I'm a Dalek symbiont."
A what. "A what?"
The corner of Yaz's mouth turns up. "Don't worry about it." She wrings her hands together, once. Looks panicky. "I really do have to go."
Bill feels the gears in her head turning, clicking, sliding into place behind doors she can't quite find the key for yet. It's that hazy moment before a complete realization; when all of the Doctor's bizarre ramblings coalesce into one, unified theory. Einstein has nothing compared to Yaz Khan, however, that much Bill knows for certain. Relativity might as well be a slice of wheat bread.
That's a lie. Relativity is so fucking cool.
"No worries, Yaz. Here!" She rummages through her folders for the Doctor's stupidly formatted syllabus. She's certain his office hours are listed there, although she would not be surprised if they were missing. Bill's never seen a student in his office besides her. "I can give you my—"
She looks up. Yaz is gone.
Like. Literally gone.
No, wait. That's her over there by the Schwarzman Centre, making a grand getaway. Bill drops her folders again, frowning. Her shoulders droop, her heart pounds a million beats per second. That door, it's about to unlock. Yeah. There's something about this girl, alright.