The Doctor is only just awake, but conscious enough to register the movement. Before, there were no arms around him, and he was cold, but now he’s being held. It’s a huge improvement, according to his tired mind.
His hands move blindly to rest over Koschei’s, but he gets distracted from his intention to just leave them there and relax. He ends up tracing the shape of his hands, touching every finger as though he’ll never be able to see them again, and must commit the shape to memory. He measures his own hand against Koschei’s, testing out whether he’s able to cover the whole hand with his own. He can, as it turns out, if he positions his hand just right.
He’s already been lying here, in this half-awake state, for quite some time. But it’s suddenly become much more interesting, now that Koschei has moved so close to him. He considers their position, and what he likes most about it. He very much likes their closeness, and the fact that he’s being cuddled but not restricted. He can move if he wants to, which from time to time is something that’s absolutely necessary for him to be comfortable. He’s okay now, though. He wouldn’t mind more touching.
When he’s been lying in silence for the amount of time it takes him to go through each and every thing he likes about this, he begins fidgeting. Not a lot, but enough to give himself something else to think about. If he moves his left foot three inches backwards, he’ll reach the Master’s foot. He calculates the approximate number of degrees he can tilt his head backwards before his hair will brush the Master’s, then converts it to radians, then loses concentration and thinks about something else entirely.
He needs to move. He doesn’t want to wake the Master, though. Or does he? He wants attention, that’s for sure, but Koschei is sleeping… No, he needs to let him sleep.
He carefully turns himself over, so that he’s facing him instead. That’s much better; now he can study his face. That’ll give him something to think about for ages. He smiles for a moment, adoring. If he wasn’t so concerned about waking him, he might have kissed him. On the cheeks, on the nose, on the lips. Everywhere.
I love you, he thinks. He doesn’t even realise he’s projecting. I love you so much. He’s happy just to lie here and observe, in wait.
SEND FLUFF
Koschei doesn’t awaken fully at first. He took to hearts the Doctor’s demand that he not disrupt his own sleep schedule.
But feeling his Bondmate’s eyes rapturously upon his features has a way of rousing him even from the deepest stupor.
“Mnnnn, what?”
“Hmmmhmhm, Thete. You’re such a closet romantic.”
He speaks as though he hasn’t just described himself. Regardless he burrows closer still, greedily hoarding every gangly inch of his oldest friend. Lazily, he kisses his jaw, and then his mouth, and closes his eyes again.
They spent the whole of a week conversing quietly about painful truths. The whole of a week, while the Master chose to sit by the Doctor’s side, and honor the bond of their childhood, and tend to him without glory, or even hope of a happy ending.
So it’s with these thoughts in his hearts that he reaches his oldest and dearest friend–the one person he might place before himself–and rushes to his side.
He kneels. And then he lies down. And takes his hand.
“Come with me and I’ll show you a different perspective.”
A pause, and he turns to look at the Doctor’s profile. He beholds age and weariness and regret. These will simply not do.
“I’m sorry, Hearts,” he breathes, and means it, and hopes that the strength of that voluntary contrition will empower the Doctor to stand and follow him to safety.
Ps. On top of my regular doodles, I’m doing a 31-day winter/holiday-themed drawing challenge on my ko-fi this month. You can make a monthly donation to follow along here.
[Drawing of a white cat wearing a pink scarf and pink boots walking on a snow while more snow falls in a green sky. There’s a caption that says “I’m going to make it through December, through Winter, through the holidays, and through the year. I’m going to make it.”]
“You’re wet, and fierce, and beautiful, and I have never loved you more.”
The Doctor is panting softly, which says a lot for someone of a species that’s built to avoid running out of breath. Her eyes are a perfect synthesis between annoyance and adoration, part of her wishing to throttle him for enjoying the uncomfortable happenings of wet cloth against skin without knowing specifics and part of her wishing to laugh until her respiratory bypass kicks in.
“I’ll ‘ave you know wot I jus’ went through was… it was… They called me Satan’s acolyte! I didn’t joost- I didn’t joost fall into the water accidentally, they- they… An’ all cos I’m a- a… Oh I tell ya wot, the human race needs t’sort out this whole gender inferiority business cos it’s gonna end up bloody killin’ me.”
She stops speaking with a grunt.
Three seconds pass, her fingers twitch at her sides. She needs a nap, warm, dry clothing, an entire sleeve of biscuits and, if the Master knows what’s good for him, a fair helping of plaudits and adulation. Shoulders slumping, she gives in to that gorgeous look on her beloved’s face and the first hint of a smile appears. Rays of sunlight breaking through the dark.
The misadventure isn’t over yet, but her Koschei gives her hope.
She moves closer, her arms lift to circle his shoulders and before any protestation can be had she’s hugging him tightly to her soaking-wet-self. Forehead pressing against his pulses-point just beneath his earlobe there’s no hiding it- this adventure’s taken it out of her, for many reasons, and she isn’t even done sorting it yet.
“Thank you, Hearts… I love you, too,more than there are stars in the cosmos, I joost-… Thank you.”
Her mouth closes and remains closed, but her mind, interwoven with his own, crimson and cerulean now a perfect and deep violet, is speaking volumes. She’s nervous, and that almost never happens.
Can you help me?
He steps toward her without her ever having to audibly speak the request. Her sheepishness and her flush are expression enough, to the soul who’s known her since they were seven years old. Koschei guides his Theta by the small of her waterlogged back, straight into the bathroom. He strips her down and takes a warm dry fluffy towel and dries her, roughening up the dry volume of her hair. He pauses to kiss her on that ever-worrisome crease between her eyebrows, and to speak:
“Darling, that all depends upon how you define ‘Satan.’ Is it the fallen angel of Abrahamic lore? Or is it the scapegoat, the spectre of a backwards society too fearful of what it fails to understand? Oh my love. Don’t you know how easy it is to weaponize xenophobia?”
He tucks her hair behind her jeweled ear, and kisses the lobe, and tugs his teeth on the little silver chain.
“Don’t take it to hearts. You’re brilliant. Annoyingly so. Kick ‘em in the nuts. Even the royal nuts. It’s the bitch’s prerogative. Okay, maybe I’ll do it, in that case.”
He trots out and hastens back with a dry rainbow shirt–maroon this time, of course–and trousers.
“Coat didn’t get wet, did it? I’d imagine not. Just so you’re aware, I’m actually full of homicidal wrath, and if you’d like me to poison the water source into which you were flung, and the soil along with it, so that the extra-terrestrial parasites within all die, I know you’re into the ‘high road’ and all that golly fluff, but sometimes a moral shortcut is in order. Oh, what, you think I’ve not done research while stuck in this box? Even I in my unstable regenerative state can reach my hand across the TARDIS threshold and collect a soil sample. That pipette’s been banging like a bongo with the mud particulates I collected. Lemme guess, anything interred in that stuff isn’t exactly restive.”
Icarus 