That slap couldn’t be more comforting; the Master barks a laugh.
“You b a s t a r d, got amnesia and still having the time of your bloody LIFE. That is SO you, Thete.”
The Master bares his teeth again at his husband, letting slip the truncation of the Doctor’s school nickname. He smacks down his palms square on each of the Doctor’s thighs and leans in closer still.
“Floppy, pretty, sentimental dandy, you don’t know how happy it makes me that ninety percent of you is still intact.”
And surprisingly, he returns lewdness with chastity, pecking his beloved on the forehead. He saw the lump in his trousers. He knows. Concealing it is a moot point. Yet he allows his friend his dignity, this once, under extenuating circumstances.
“Right. No more monkey business.”
This time he well and properly disentangles himself, stalking over to the smoking circuitry. He straps on a toolbelt. He pulls a pair of goggles from an overhead cubbyhole and wheels himself under the console. The sound of tightening screws and turning gears is plentiful for several moments.
Then,
“Oh, ZOUNDS. Oh, I got it. Oh golly, I’m clever.”
He wheels out, engine oil on his cheeks and button nose, hair a mess, with an expression of mad enthusiasm.
“Darling! I’ve figured out what happened.”
Thete.
So he does have a proper name after all, and that fact only confirms the rest- he is mostdefinitely a prig who’s given himself a title out of assumption rather than achievement, and he can only hope that he’s lived up to at least half of what the word ‘Doctor’ implies. If he hasn’t, perhaps he’ll stick to Thete from now on, even once his memories are sorted and locked together again like so many pieces of a scattered jigsaw puzzle.
“I’ve got a feeling I’m only having the time of my life because you’re in it, Kosch.”
It’s instinct that tells him to truncate Koschei’s own name, and it feels just as natural as he does so. The words are said with a dual tone, both genuine and flirtatious. Even as he can’t remember who he is, who he was, or the history he has with this beautiful man he can still feel it deep down, just beneath the blurred and laundered surface. This is him. This is them, so very them.
A squeak escapes him and his hips jerk upward as palms slap against thighs through pinstriped fabric and, much to his own embarrassment, the lump in his trousers becomes prominent and well defined. He ignores it because he has no choice, the sound of two heartbeats surging through his ears nearly deafening, blood immediately turning warm and causing his flesh to tingle. Scratch his previous thoughts- he needs his memories back, now, so that when he pounces on this gorgeous man, he knows exactly what he’s doing.
His eyes lighten to chocolate even as his pupils dilate, practically shimmering in the light of the room around them and those eyes flicker to Koschei’s bared teeth, then back up to meet his gaze. His breath comes out trembling and his face, once again, burns a deep crimson. His hands clench against the grating beneath him and his body shivers, startled that this man can cause such an immediate and uncontrollable reaction not only in his mind, but biologically as well.
“Blimey, you’re sort of t e r r i f y i n g… it’s q-quite stimulating.”
He’s just said that. Out loud and everything. Gods, he needs to shut up. He holds his breath to ensure no more words can escape, counting silently in his head. To his relief and, somewhere in a more primal place his disappointment, Koschei kisses his forehead and promptly walks away from him. His held breath leaves in a whoosh of air from his lungs and he scrubs both hands down his face, attempting to regain some semblance of control.
’Thete’, as he now knows himself to be, sits silently and studies the room surrounding him as the sounds of mechanical tinkering fills his ears. By the time Koschei announces that he’s sorted out the problem, Thete’s body is thankfully back under his control and he’s settled down quite a bit- at least until the other man crawls out from beneath what appears to be some sort of control panel, covered in oil and soot with his hair messed about.
Oh no.
He barely manages to avoid asking how either of them manage to get anything done when Koschei is so bloody attractive, but thankfully steers his words to a more constructive and appropriate conversation.
“R-Right. What- What’ve you found out? Have I broken something? I’ve broken something, haven’t I? See, I knew I shouldn’t have taken on the title of Doctor without earning it first. What’ve I broken?”
“Well hold onto your corset, you slut,” Koschei teases, still with that wicked, savory grin, “cause you broke your brain while trying to build us a baby-making machine. Literally.”
He clears his throat and rattles off the particulars.
“A short in the Chameleon Arch. You tried to use components from that to help solidify the creation of the memetic primer–the information transference node, part of the genetic loom–without having to make it entirely from scratch. You bastardized one part of our TARDIS–our time travel device, coom on, tell me you haven’t forgotten that–in order to build another part.”
He pauses and holds out his hands.
“Okay, rewinding. Every Time Lord–that’s what you and I are–has a Chameleon Arch dedicated to recording their biodata, and rewriting it should the Time Lord elect to do so, to the point of being able to change species, with or without changing appearance. You and I have both elected to do this before, to become human. That’ll coom back to you, trust me, in both cases the, ah, consequences, were … vivid.”
From the Doctor, he retrieves a little fobwatch, which happens to be singed along the edges.
“So yeah. You broke your biodata nodule, genius. Trying to extract some of it and put into a loom, so your half of the baby we’d planned to make together was accounted for.”
He pauses, and squats in front of his husband, face just laden with wryness.
“Did you joost call me scary, and then stimulating, implying that this arouses you? Oh jolly good. You’re definitely cooming back from the accident, now.”
Icarus 