“Or perhaps for us, those two things are synonymous, hm?”
Their brief excursion away from family and inlaws has led to a dangerous situation within a burning building. In mere moments, with superior knowledge of the laws of physics, the Master has constructed a catapult to get both himself and his husband out through the roof, using a crude parachuting system for landing.
At present he’s strapping Jack into the “seat,” as his Time Lord respiratory bypass renders him slightly more immune to the smoke billowing into the room.
Jack only nods, trying to keep from inhaling too much of the smoke. He knows that it won’t do any lasting damage, but he’s also been especially careful about not dying lately, and he’s made it a shockingly long time since his last resurrection. He’s pretty sure all that is about to change (he won’t admit it, but he’ll be disappointed if all his ageing actually resets this time).
“Don’t forget, I am the back up plan when it comes to landing.”
“ … Yeah, alright.”
Koschei speaks the words through lips that move when the rest of his body refuses. The light from the flames licks his face in brilliant orange. He’s not looked so haunted in a long time.
Consent is granted out of respect and returned trust, but it is joyless as a frozen field in January. I could just REGENERATE, he wants to SCREAM, but that, too, is for Jack: he knows his husband’s yawning-wide terror of what sort of person he would be in a new face, just as the Doctor regenerated to call Jack “wrong” and abandon him.
He climbs in in front of Jack and straps himself in front. He reaches back and squeezes his thigh briefly; there’s no time for further declarations of affection.
He punches the button and they catapult out through the open space in the ceiling.
The Master’s sprawled on his belly when he mumbles this, face squished into a pillow, with Jack in turn spayed on top of him, listening through his shoulder blades.
He reaches back blindly to pat his husband’s head, yawns and stretches, intentionally showing off the circuitboard tattoo across his right bicep; he knows Jack finds it arousing.
“Oh you little shit,” Jack says as he flashes that tattoo, knowing the action is fully intentional. He shifts so that he’s fully covering him, mouthing and licking at the inked skin. “Not gonna be sleeping much longer…”
A licentious growl of laughter rolls right off Koschei’s lips as Jack crushes him beneath. He wriggles his bare bottom, face screwed up, and turns away from the affections offered, trying half-heartedly to escape.
Jack wraps himself around his husband as he clings, knowing far too intimately what dreams like that can do to a person. He was plagued by dreams almost identical to that for centuries, drowning in his own guilt until Koschei showed him, slowly and patiently, how to let it go and forgive himself. He can only hope to give him that same peace in time.
“Well, I can tell you right now that your fears are unfounded,” he says. Alright, maybe not entirely unfounded, but certainly inaccurate. “You have a whole ship of people here who care about you, and who would tear the universe apart to keep you safe. Seriously, I’m terrified of what Sammy and Vicky will do if something happens to you when they’re older.” He’s grinning slightly, but he’s also dead serious. Those two are even more potentially dangerous than their fathers, and both those fathers know how crucial harnessing that potential is.
“I was never your first choice. And people look at what we’ve built and ask you why, with such relentless disgust. I can hardly blame them for their skepticism. In another life, with such small and tenuous changes in the causal pathways, you would gladly shoot me in the head and follow the Doctor to an indefinite fate. Oh, Sam, I love you so much, but I know I’m a back-up plan. I know you really do love me. I know you really do trust me. I know you don’t regret our marriage, our kids. But there are days I could break from thinking of how easily I could have never been yours.”
“The capacity to see all possible temporal threads is a curse. The ability to peer into alternate pasts and futures is a nightmare.”
“Koschei,” Jack says, a pained smile on his face. Some of these truths hit a little too close to home, and he holds him ever tighter because of it. “I was never your first choice either. Even now, there’s parts of you that I’m never gonna be able to touch because they’re so entwined with the Doctor. You can’t tell me that, in all those infinite possibilities, there isn’t a version of you that doesn’t even remember who I am, let alone regrets that year on the Valiant.”
These are things he tries so desperately not to think about, not because he can see these alternatives like Koschei can, but rather because he can simply feel it in his bones. He’s not a Time Lord, he can’t visualise the Web of Time like they can, but Jack knows people. He knows how they work, and he can see alternatives that way. And he just knows that, had the cards fallen just a little differently and fate hadn’t been so kind, that he would have ended up alone. Forever.
“Maybe we weren’t each other’s first choice, not at the start,” he says, slowly and quietly and thickly as he feels a lump in his throat starting to swell. “But we are now, and that’s what matters. I would choose you over anyone and anything, no matter what, from now until the final day I die.”
Koschei is scarlet with a rarest emotion–shame–before Jack has even finished gently leveling with him. He nods, at first slowly, then frantically, and places his hand on the center of his husband’s chest, fingers fanned. He looks up into eyes like a tropical sea, bottomless blue glass, eyes that have always dazzled him.
“I know, I know all this. Please forgive me. I spoke in weakness, and it really … really isn’t a reflection of how I feel about us.”
He scowls at himself, puzzled, bewildered by such peculiar grasping uncertainty, after their years of marriage and children.
“Can you forgive the sickness of my mind? The … bizarre moment of doubt that’s almost like … like seasickness of the head.”
He nuzzles his immortal, bunts his forehead into his chin, lifts his face and kisses it, and then his mouth, pleading.
“You are my first choice, you are. You are my forever choice. I’m so sorry, you’re hurt now, I can feel it. It was self-absorbed to just speak so thoughtlessly of my own pain.”
Koschei bolts upright in bed, hair a disaster, and feels his chest and face for some inexplicable component that might have fallen off.
When he focuses on the trio entering the room however, his features lift into a radiant grin.
“Hawww, my LOVES,” he thunders, crawling to the foot of the bed.
He reaches eagerly for his son and daughter, lifts and collects them close, and examines their scribbles studiously.
“That’s the beach! And a tree! And us? Us! Thank you, babies.”
He chuckles, a deep diaphragmatic rich sound, and reaches a free hand out to stroke Jack’s forearm.
“I love you. You didn’t honestly have to.”
“When are you gonna learn,” he chastises, setting the tray down carefully out of the way of little kicking feet and passes him a cup of coffee before kissing him. “I don’t do anything I have to. When it comes to you, it’s all stuff I want to do.”
He settles down next to them, crowding into the family cuddle and resting his chin on Koschei’s shoulder. “These two were giggling to themselves when I got them up, so there must be some devious plan coming your way.”
“Oh, is that so. Well, my darling diva, you’ve never looked more ravishing than when you’re doing what you want.”
Koschei turns an impish glinting stare on his children.
“REALLY, and whatever could you be conspiring to do to daddy, HM?”
He snakes out his hands to tickle their little bellies.
“Uh HUHHHHH, cos guess what I’ve just genetically engineered on an ALIEN PLANET?”
Theatrically, post-kiss, Koschei holds up a strand of succulent dark red bing cherries, one of which he has recently sampled.
“So far, no additional arms or legs sprouted. I do believe it’s a success. Go on, husband, have one, and tie the stem in a knot with your tongue. I know you can.”
“Or perhaps for us, those two things are synonymous, hm?”
Their brief excursion away from family and inlaws has led to a dangerous situation within a burning building. In mere moments, with superior knowledge of the laws of physics, the Master has constructed a catapult to get both himself and his husband out through the roof, using a crude parachuting system for landing.
At present he’s strapping Jack into the “seat,” as his Time Lord respiratory bypass renders him slightly more immune to the smoke billowing into the room.
“And you me, Handsome. Don’t look so wistful, so sad: I am your dragon and you are my golden hoard, and I will protect you with fire and blood. And … all that romantic stuff with flowers and kisses, too.”
Icarus 