" i don't NEED-- okay. ...thanks. " (8 & Susan)
@eighthxdoctor // hugging ask! // accepting.
Susan’s arms only tightened around him, having wiggled her way between his arms and forced him out of his curled position so she could hug him. “Yes, you do, Grandfather. Especially when you’re all out of sorts,” she replied quietly, frowning slightly.
She’d noticed how this incarnation of him seemed to have lots of emotional imbalances, and memory lapses. Those concerned her much more than the emotions, since those weren’t really bad things, but it was still concerning to see him flicker in and out of different emotions at the most unexpected of times.
She’d found that hugs seemed to help to ground him to the present time, and she was always more than happy to give him as many hugs as he needed. Or, rather, that she thought he needed, since he’d usually go on and try to tell her that one is enough, even though he’d still, very obviously, be out of sorts despite the grounding hug she’d tried her best to give him.
She was never truly forceful about the hugging, but she, at least so far, had learned that those helped him come back to himself the best, or the quickest, so she stuck to it.
Tea seemed to help, too, but only sometimes, and only with a very specific cup that she’d chosen for him. If he were given any other cup besides the simple blue one she’d given him on the first day they’d reunited, it’d end up sending him into another memory, another time, and wouldn’t ground him to the present like the blue cup did.
Particularly since most of the other teacups she owned were fancier, and she knew that her Grandfather had seen a lot, had been to many other places after... After her, so she’d decided on a simple little blue teacup, nothing more than that, and sometimes, the simplicity of it did seem to help, though she was always wary of giving him tea when he wasn’t fully himself... She knew Gallifreyans were resilient, but she had no desire to watch him burn himself, even only a little.
Her head, which had moved to rest against his chest over one of his hearts—habit, even if she was much older than she was the last time they’d seen each other. She was no taller than she had been then, which she supposed helped to keep the two of them comfortable. It seemed he’d always be taller than her, at least they had that as a constant—shifted so she could peek up at him, still frowning in slight worry. “Are you feeling any better now, Grandfather?” she wondered gently, even if she made no move to release him just yet.
gracieabrams
blakekathryn
