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.
Koschei drops aside the string of projects on which he’s labored. They are all distractions from too-keen memories of past torments, from the needles and their chemicals, the long stretches of empty blackness and the wild and violent and clammy and nauseous resurrections, the sensation of hearts jolting back to life, the vertigo and the inertia of too many sights, smells, and tactile sensations. There are days these things bunch up and cluster, and he must simply shut down.
And shut down he does, turning into Jack’s chest, smothering himself in cool soothing silence.
Despite how many years it’s been since he was head of Torchwood, Jack still finds it pretty difficult to actually take a break from his duties – especially when his duties are less professional and far more personal. Which makes him feel all the more guilty for needing a break.
At least his husband has a far more logical view of the situation, and Jack reaches out to bring him closer.
“You’re coming with me, though, right? It won’t be the same if I can’t see your glorious bronzed skin, all on display.”
“Literally HOW could you doubt that I would be coomin’ along to show off my gorgeous boy-toy husband?”
The question’s both affectionate and amusing given that despite being alive thousands of years, Jack’s still young compared to a Time Lord approaching middle age in but ONE of his many regenerations.
“It has been far too long since you and I have played self-indulgent bachelors on a fling. Take me anywhere, TODAY.”
Jack laughs at that, far easier than he’s felt in a while, and pulls him in for a kiss. “I can’t remember the last time someone called me a boytoy,” he grins.
And then he gets an idea that lights up those mischievous eyes.
“What do you say to a little roleplay, husband? We can show up separately at some luxurious resort and have a little meet cute, then some hugely passionate romance for the week before we ride off into the sunset.”
“I like it.”
Koschei looks attractively dangerous as he dances his fingers up Jack’s chest.
“I’m the prince of a small sovereignty like … like Monte Carlo, only something …fictitious and you, you’re the reformed cat burglar who feels compelled to return to his craft to win me favors. It’ll be just like that Hitchcockian film, To Catch a Thief. You’re Cary Grant. Good?”
As if on cue, those dimples make an appearance as soon as he sees that Koschei is pleased with the overall composition. Of course Jack was pleased with it, but Koschei is the far more artistically sophisticated, so it’s his praise that would be harder to get.
Jack meanders his way over to join his husband by his side, wrapping an arm around him and tucking them close together. “It really is beautiful. I think we’ll keep her on retainer, what do you think? Yearly commissions?”
“You’d better bloody believe it, Buster Brown. Like my alliteration?”
Somehow Koschei manages to purr all this without moving a muscle, poised regally, chin still canted back in imperial glory.
“One for every damned room in the house, why not? Although considering our collective life expectancy we may have to cap it off somewhere.”
He tilts his face ever so slightly toward Jack.
“Kiss my cheek, I need sustenance.”
“Yes, you’re very clever,” he teases, still gazing down at Koschei like he’s the centre of the universe. And he is, really, at least in terms of Jack’s universe.
He leans down and pecks his husband’s cheek. “So demanding. But that settles it. One in every room in the house. Plus one for here, one for Mum’s room, and I think one just of the twins for the console room.”
“Just the twins, then? Our little compasses, are they?”
Koschei’s aware he’s being admired; it warms round cheeks while he continues to gaze affectionately at the oil painted faces of his children.
The cheek kiss is not enough; he emits a grunt of grouchy dissatisfaction, turns and nips Jack on the mouth, shoves his hips into his and pouts until he gets a proper kiss on the lips.
“I don’t think you know how you saved me when you said ‘yes.’”
He’s caught his husband in a moment of weary vulnerability, but that just means Koschei’s closer to tears, closer to tender admissions. He climbs onto Jack’s lap and pets his bangs out of and back into array, kissing his forehead.
You wanted to snap my neck, I wanted to torment you to hurt the one who left me.
I hope you feel far, far away from those moments now.
Koschei returns to their bed after about fifteen minutes. He crawls under the covers and lies on his back, an unusual pose for him, studying the ceiling. He knows that if he looks at his husband he won’t be able to finish what he is about to say.
“ … Alright, so. Hypothetical. Or well. Not really. Just. Question.”
Then he finds himself too weak-willed; Jack always does that to him, when Jack is despondent. He wraps his arm around Jack’s waist and rests his chin on his shoulder. He inhales, exhales, inhales again and speaks into the velvety intimate silence:
“Do you trust me now? You said, when the Doctor chose to keep me and … rehabilitate me … on his TARDIS, you said to him, ‘you can’t trust him.’ You said all the other things because of that: because you didn’t trust me. But do you trust me now? Can you look at me and say that? I know the answer, but I just wanna hear it from you again.”
“Yes,” he says instantly, not wanting to keep Koschei in suspense. It’s the truth anyway, but he pauses then to give him a more considered answer.
This close, he wraps his arm around his husband, pulling him even closer, and kisses his forehead. “Yes, I trust you now,” he whispers. “I trust you more than I’ve ever trusted anymore. I’ve trusted you with my name, and my family, and all my secrets. I can’t think of anyone that I’ve given all those things to. No one; just you.”
He turns then, curling into Koschei, and buries his face in him, clinging to his space ferret with all his strength. “I was wrong, I was so wrong. I’m sorry.”
“Darling, I don’t want you to apologize. All I needed was to hear what you just said.”
There is really nothing else to say. Koschei props up again on an elbow, and watches Jack expectantly.
“Honestly, truly, from the bottom of my hearts. To be trusted by the one who loves me most is more empowering, more comforting, than I can articulate. Thank you … for telling me what you told me. All of it.”
Koschei clambers greedily onto Jack’s offered hand, and doesn’t stop there: he seizes his forearm, too, and brings it up to his lips, and kisses it, tendons and veins and all, comforted by the pulse against his lips.
“ … One of those dreams again … I … guess it was a dream. Everyone I’ve ever killed, or … you know … done something to. A horde of them, taking this … . black sludge and … forcing it into my eyes, down my throat. Telling me it was what I’d created, over the centuries. Burying me, ehm … ah, suffocating me, I guess, with my own sins.”
Clammy, beads of moisture rolling down his brow and his long neck, he peers up at Jack with eyes that regain clarity.
“I’m genuinely … I’m genuinely scared … you might be the only person in the whole of the universe who knows me, that doesn’t want me dead. Or … you know, wouldn’t be, relieved, I suppose, if I were.”
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.”
This is very kind, sweetheart. I’m so glad we became friends. I hope you’ve enjoyed what we’ve done since then as much as I have.
Standing up for this character is a lonely thing. Sometime I’m not sure it’s worth it anymore, but I’m really glad my work was able to change your mind. ❤
(Well you’re in luck lol, from rumors I’ve heard the dash is gonna be crowded in more conventional Jack pairings and nobody will even notice us 😛 )
Icarus 