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.”
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.
Icarus 