#(eyes)

"Sometimes, just one second."

summary: You have a quiet moment with the Doctor. Not your Doctor. (Dhawan!Doctor/Reader)

a/n: i just wanted to write some dhawan!doctor stuff, man. i was lying down on the floor a few nights ago and inspiration gripped me. it’s short but i hope you enjoy! (yes, the title is a Hamilton reference, have at me)

“What are you doing, lying down there?”

His voice startled you - you looked up to see the Doctor looking down at you, his hands tucked into the pockets of his coat. He hadn’t bothered to take his coat off, even after all the chaos of the day. It was weird, seeing him in that posture - you were used to the Master taking up space with his grandiose personality. The Doctor preferred to stay small, sometimes.

“Oh, just chilling,” you said. The TARDIS doors were open, and you could see the stars from your place on the floor. “Not literally.”

“I can tell you, that is a terrible place to take a nap,” the Doctor laughed slightly. “Do you mind if I join you?”

You shook your head, and the Doctor laid down beside you.

“When I go back -”

“ If you go back,” the Doctor interrupted, his eyes still fixed on the TARDIS ceiling.

“ When ,” you insisted, “I go back to my universe, it’s gonna be pretty hard to see you.”

The Doctor turned his head to look at you, eyebrows raised. It was a soft, open expression that you had only seen from O before his reveal, and knowing that you would never see the Master make that kind of face made your heart hurt.

“He has your face.” You held the Doctor’s gaze. It was amazing how his gaze was the same as your Doctor’s gaze, just with a different set of eyes. “You know, the Master. He looks like you, in my universe. It’s gonna be pretty hard to face him after this.”

“Why?”

“You’ve been so kind to me. I don’t know what I’m going to do in a universe where I know someone with his face that’s been kind to me.”

The Doctor turned his face away. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” you said quickly - maybe too quickly, because you heard the Doctor shift away. “It’s just - some silly coincidence that your universe turned out this way. I know you’re still the Doctor. You just - you just have his face.”

“So, in your universe, the Master - is she your Doctor?”

“Spitting image,” you said, your gaze still fixed on him. Please look at me.

The Doctor stayed silent. If he was truly this universe’s version of your Doctor, then the silence was usually a bad sign. He was either upset, or thinking, or both.

“Anyway.” You broke the tense silence. “I must exist in this universe too, right? Do you know me? Do you know a me?”

The Doctor turned to face you again, his brown eyes shining in the light of the stars. Brown eyes like mirrors that reflected the very stars he lived among. He looked at you like you were familiar .. “I did.”

“That’s awesome - wait, you did ?”

The Doctor always chose their words carefully. That change in tense mattered .

“Who was I?”

The Doctor took in a long, shuddering breath. “A friend.”

Gentler approach, now. You could hear the Doctor sigh, drawn out and resigned. “Was I your companion?”

You took the resounding silence as a yes .

You were dead in this universe. Dead, or just gone. It explained a lot of things that this Doctor did. It explained his silence. It explained the way he kept his distance, the way he didn’t sit close to you, the way he wouldn’t truly look you in the eyes.

To him, you were a ghost .

And the Doctor had too many of those already.

“I… I’m sorry,” you muttered, moving to sit up. The Doctor watched you, and then sat up himself.

“I’m not having that,” he said, with conviction in his voice. “I won’t have you apologize for something that you can’t control.”

But that’s exactly what you did…

He moved his gaze to the stars outside the TARDIS door. He scooted forward, letting his legs dangle off into space. He looked very small, against the light of the stars. “You were my companion. Not so long ago, actually.”

You wouldn’t press on. You wouldn’t ask him more questions, like the how’s and the why’s. “Was I still like this? You know, good ol’ me?”

There was something unspoken in your question. Does that hurt you?

The Doctor glanced at you, then chuckled. The sound rang clear and bright inside the TARDIS. "If you’re any evidence, you stay constant in every universe you exist in.”

The answer lay in the Doctor’s eyes. Yes .

“Oh, Doctor,” you whispered. Your heart hurt for him. The Doctor was already such a lonely creature in your universe. You couldn’t imagine how lonely the Doctor was feeling right now, talking to an image from his past. What was the last thing he had said to you? Was he even able to say goodbye?

You moved forward to sit next to him. Mirroring him, you dangled your feet off the edge of the TARDIS. The Doctor sat stiffly next to you, still staring out into space. What was going through his head?

“We would do this, you and I,” the Doctor began softly. “Just sit here, in the quiet of the universe, listening to the stars. Listening to their music.” Then, he laughed quietly - “We’d dance.”

“With no music?”

“It was always your idea,” the Doctor continued. He blushed, then frowned like he was offended by his own expression.

“It does sound like me,” you said, laughing, “the kind of romantic thing I’d do.”

You shifted closer to him and ignored the way he tensed up. You leaned sideways, letting your head rest against his shoulder, feeling the familiar fabric of his coat against your cheek.

The two of you sat in a comfortable silence. If you listened hard enough you could hear the way the Doctor’s breaths stuttered every so often. If you listened hard enough you would hear him whisper your name under his breath.

“I miss you,” the Doctor murmured. He moved to rest his head on yours, the strands of his unruly hair tickling your forehead. His arm snaked around your waist, pulling you closer to him, letting you hear the thrum of his hearts. You found his hand and clasped it in yours.

“I know.”

The Doctor’s voice broke. “I don’t want you to go.”