Koschei deposits all his work on the long laboratory table and strides over to his husband. He straddles his lap and gazes at him with marmish incredulity.
“Yeah, luv, as soon as you can explain to me how you couldpossibly forget all the reasons. Shall I catalogue them alphabetically or by subject?”
“I thought I was supposed to be romancing you,” he grins. Oh yes, that word means everything to Jack, and the fact that he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no end to them is the most amazing feeling he can imagine.
His hands rest on Koschei’s hips, pulling them ever closer together. He leans down, pressing their foreheads together, and closes his eyes. “I’ll romance the pants right off you,” he smirks before reaching down and smacking his husband’s backside. “Go get dressed, I have an idea.”
Koschei sniffs, imperious and self-assured.
“The fact that you’re romancing me has very little to do with my own degree of effort, my love,” he scolds. “I get to lavish you with praise and affection because just like me, you’re a vain tart.”
He’s snuggled and then slapped on the ass, and that elicits a pleased purr.
“Well okay, since you do know what I like.”
Despite the arrogant bravado, the look he offers his husband is so softly fond.
Then he flounces out, and returns in one of his finest black suits, with a flare of red in the scarf, perfect for the chill of autumn.
“Right, I’m ready.”
“Two perfectly matched vain tarts,” he laughs, not even bothering to deny the obvious truth there.
Once Koschei leaves to change, he hurries to the console to set the coordinates for their destination: Venice, 1720s. The height of the Grand Tour that they replicated on their honeymoon, and the beginning of Canaletto’s rise to fame. Most importantly, it’s a lovely breezy day, just crisp enough to want to snuggle in the cool air, but bright enough to not be miserable about the weather.
When Koschei re-enters, Jack stops and looks at him, smiling.
“You look beautiful,” he says, pausing to kiss him softly, then takes his hand. “Come on, there’s a gondola with our name on it waiting.”
Koschei stands, hands folded across his chest, and steps a foot forward, that well-worn gesture of smug, defiant confidence. He’s pleased to watch his beloved navigating his TARDIS so competently. I taught him that.
When they arrive he turns a giddily suspenseful look on Jack, slips past him and out into the balmy Venetian air.
“Ohhhh, darling. Look at the light, it’s golden-yellow. Did you know that painters here became experts in oil, because the air is too briny and moist for frescoes? Oh, I must show you a Titian or two… . Or better yet, Giorgione’s Tempest … it is so mysterious and sexy.”
He winks at a passing cluster of gentlemen, and by their clerical attire …
“Are we near the Doge’s Palace? ARE we?”
He espies it down the way and points like a lunatic.
“THERE IT IS! OH! Yes, splendid, where’s the gondola, it MUST pass it by! Oh, isn’t it dreadfully romantic that this city is slowly sinking?”
The Master’s in the process of hydrating when Sammy and Vicky rampage around the corner. His eyes go owlish.
He’s barely seized the stairway railing when they collide with his legs. He goes down hard, landing on his ass on a stair, offhandedly grateful that there’s more padding there than in younger years.
“Golly,” he comments, with an infectious thunderclap of laughter. “What a welcoming committee. Either you two want me to do something, or you’re hiding something else.”
He playfully pinches the ear of each twin.
“Which is it, hm?”
And kisses the top of both their heads.
“Bof’,” Sammy grins, impish and happy and proud all at the same time. Vicky nods his agreement, clambering up into his lap. Sammy, however, tugs insistently on her father’s hand. “Got somethin’ for you to seeeeeeeeeeeee.”
Outside, there’s a messy sandcastle near the grill where they have so many of their family dinners. “Look!! We did that, Vicky ‘n me!”
Koschei dons his reading glasses the moment his daughter declares her need to show him the fruit of her labors.
“Both! Oh golly. Are you sure daddy’s ready for sooch a shock?”
Guided, or rather strongarmed, outside, he peeks around the grill to where the monstrous lump of wet sand stands, erected to the glory of the McCoy-Oakdown name.
“Well MY GOODNESS!” he roars, and flings himself down beside it. “What a feat of modern architecture! My children are TRULY avant-garde! That means you invented something all new!”
The Master’s in the process of hydrating when Sammy and Vicky rampage around the corner. His eyes go owlish.
He’s barely seized the stairway railing when they collide with his legs. He goes down hard, landing on his ass on a stair, offhandedly grateful that there’s more padding there than in younger years.
“Golly,” he comments, with an infectious thunderclap of laughter. “What a welcoming committee. Either you two want me to do something, or you’re hiding something else.”
“One … eight hundred … . K I S S,” Koschei speaks, standing charismatically on the bed, wearing nothing but boxer briefs, short and small boned and somehow absolutely magnetic.
He knows. He chose this Peter Pan face and this Shakespearean stage actor voice together on purpose. Regenerations hardly a lottery for the Master.
Koschei clasps Jack by the face, a palm on each cheek, and chuckles at his perpetual clean-shavenness.
“Lemme just remind you, I’ve seen our ‘end,’ if end is the right word for it, and I know we are eternal, you and me.”
The word means so much more to his husband, and he knows it, and he applies it to the pressure point with the accuracy of aim that can be either devastating or infinitely comforting. It’s his particular talent.
“I will dance with you forever, Sam McCoy.”
“I thought I was supposed to be romancing you,” he grins. Oh yes, that word means everything to Jack, and the fact that he knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there is no end to them is the most amazing feeling he can imagine.
His hands rest on Koschei’s hips, pulling them ever closer together. He leans down, pressing their foreheads together, and closes his eyes. “I’ll romance the pants right off you,” he smirks before reaching down and smacking his husband’s backside. “Go get dressed, I have an idea.”
Koschei sniffs, imperious and self-assured.
“The fact that you’re romancing me has very little to do with my own degree of effort, my love,” he scolds. “I get to lavish you with praise and affection because just like me, you’re a vain tart.”
He’s snuggled and then slapped on the ass, and that elicits a pleased purr.
“Well okay, since you do know what I like.”
Despite the arrogant bravado, the look he offers his husband is so softly fond.
Then he flounces out, and returns in one of his finest black suits, with a flare of red in the scarf, perfect for the chill of autumn.
Koschei draws his hands up over his face, and drags them down his cheeks, all the way past his stubbled jaw, and down his long slender neck.
“I hate. Leaving something unfinished,” he retorts crossly: crossly mostly because he knows his husband is right.
He drags himself to his feet and shoves his face into Jack’s chest.
“ … fine.”
Jack chuckles and wraps his arms around his husband, kissing the top of his head. “I know, but you’re not leaving it unfinished, you’re taking a strategic break in order to finish it with more style tomorrow.”
He bends down then and swoops him up into his arms. “Besides, it can’t be anything too important, my birthday isn’t for another 6 months.”
Koschei snorts, a long low sound of indulgent amusement. He tucks in his legs and burrows against his husband’s chest still closer, enjoying the steadfast thrum of his heartbeat. His eyes are closed, and he is, faintly, smiling.
Once placed down on the bed, he clings tighter, and hoards all the blankets around himself in an impenetrable nest.
Despite his “annoyance,” he wastes no time in hurrying over to his husband’s open arms, sprawling over him with his head in Koschei’s lap, braiding their fingers together.
“Mmmm is all of that an option?” he says, smiling up at him adoringly. “I don’t know, I kinda want another girl. But Sammy might pitch a fit if someone tries to steal her throne. Then again, she might be absolutely enamoured with a little mini-me. Definitely going to need to expand the nursery. And yes, new clothes for me. Probably my favourite part, they’ll get their own section in my closet you made me.”
Koschei leans down and squishes his husband’s face between his palms, with a an enthusiastic growl.
“Whyever would anything not be an option? YOU’RE the one doing the difficult work here.”
He sits back upright, petting Jack’s hair in even rhythms.
“Our daughter will adapt as soon as she realizes her little brother or sister is a minion she can send on errands and quests on her behest. Remember, she IS the one who takes after ME.”
Jack laughs out loud, suddenly imagining Sammy ordering around her younger sibling whilst she lounges on a small stuffed chair, every bit the princess she already acts. “Alright, good point. That’s the only reason you want kids, huh? Someone to do your bidding and aid you in all your schemes?”
He’s TEASING, Koschei.
Despite the humor in the words, the Master has long doubted his prowess as a parent, and the jibe hits home. He tightens in Jack’s arms, with an airily surly look.
“Why, because my reputation speaks for itself?”
It’s rare, so very rare, that their frequent mutual jostling taps a real nerve, because both are ever so certain of the other’s benign intentions; trust makes real hurt difficult to achieve. The trouble with this occasion, however, is that Koschei believes Jack isn’t trying to wound him: he’s just speaking from the heart.
“I don’t …really scheme anymore, you know that …”
Oh, it’s a weak riposte. And he knows it. And the embarrassment makes him angrier still. He worms his way loose. But even now he’s grown enough not to make some infinitely cruel and desperate lash-out about Jack’s grandson.
Icarus 