Koschei looks over the rim of his reading glasses at his husband, skeptically amused.
“Is this your latest ploy to get me to abandon my project and come to bed?”
“Maybe.”
“Is it working?”
Koschei tucks his glasses in his shirt collar, strolls over to Jack and seizes him by the front of his own shirt. He pulls him close and ferociously kisses him.
Then, like an asshole, he puts the glasses back on.
“No.”
Like an asshole whom Jack clearly is utterly devoted to, which is exactly why he bends down and in one swift gesture, grabs his husband around his waist and throws him over his shoulder. He’s far too attached to be put out so easily.
“Tough.”
Koschei barks a laugh, and smacks Jack on the ass as he’s carried to bed.
Koschei looks over the rim of his reading glasses at his husband, skeptically amused.
“Is this your latest ploy to get me to abandon my project and come to bed?”
“Maybe.”
“Is it working?”
Koschei tucks his glasses in his shirt collar, strolls over to Jack and seizes him by the front of his own shirt. He pulls him close and ferociously kisses him.
Then, like an asshole, he puts the glasses back on.
“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.”
How he’s grown, in his husband’s company.
“Darling, I can forgive you anything. I can and I will,” he says, a smile starting to form on his face.
“Listen,” he says, cradling him close and wishing not for the first time that they could simply meld into one physical form. “We’re going to hurt each other. That’s just how it goes, especially in relationships like this. I’d much rather you speak freely with me than to always guard your words for fear of hurting me, okay? We’re solid, rock solid, and no matter the hurt, I can always trust us, I can always trust you. Thank you for telling me that, I know it’s never easy.”
It really is extraordinary how he’s grown, and Jack’s in constant awe of seeing the development of his husband, feeling more than just pride in his husband’s evolution. He buries them back down on the bed, pulling the covers over them both to create one more barrier to hide them from the universe that keeps intruding on their happiness.
“You know, seeing how upset you got over the thought of us not being together was actually very reassuring,” he admits, quietly, like a guilty little secret shared between lovers.
Koschei keeps his eyes averted, but they are tack-sharp, and he absorbs every syllable Jack speaks.
At length he nods once more, but this time it is singular and decisive.
“Right. Of course. That’s our thing, isn’t it.”
He continues to contemplate this truth as he’s bundled and tucked in with his husband.
When they’re tented together, in secret communion, free from the intrusions of the universe, and he’s tracing his finger along the perfect contours of Jack’s face, a smile creeps up one corner of his mouth.
“Really. Really, though? Can you really not know what a jealous baby I am, when it comes to you, my Sam?”
“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.”
Icarus 