The Doctor knew very well how to rile Koschei up. After this long, he had become intimately familiar with the particular looks, touches, words that made his husband squirm. That part was easy. What he wasn’t used to was admitting how desperately he needed Koschei.
He continues his work at the console, glancing up at his husband lounging in the jump seat every few seconds, but the longer he stands there, the more his desire grows. The Doctor finally clears his throat. “Koschei…? Think I might get your help with somethin’?
Koschei knows what he’s doing.
Koschei knows EXACTLY what he’s doing.
He’s reclined in the jumpseat–which, on raunchy occasions like this, he’s amusedly coined the “humpseat”–booted legs crossed at the ankle, up on the console, arms crossed behind his head, with a lordly and proprietary gaze at the ceiling.
“Only if you tell me from over there what ‘something’ is,” he leers, ever so smugly.
Send “Mating Season” to catch my muse in a lustful state & needing release.
Koschei has been preoccupied with some new project in his workshop, so the Doctor is left to her own devices. Nevermind that she’s been aching all day, she hasn’t wanted to bother her husband.
So… she retires to their room. It can’t hurt to indulge her desires, so she relaxes, her hand trailing down her body. She can almost, almost pretend it’s him touching her. As her hand slips beneath the covers and between her legs, she exhales a soft, whimpering moan of the sort that Koschei absolutely adores. She’s so caught up that she doesn’t hear the footsteps outside.
Koschei peels off his t-shirt and rubs work-callused palms down his cheeks, scratching the dampness in his trim little beard, dampness that causes the silvery-blond hairs to gleam more on his head, his face, and his chest. He heaves a sigh and sheds his trousers, too, and then his boxer-briefs, padding toward the bedroom and the connected shower.
He hears that whimper, a noise his boisterous wife ordinarily only makes in the throes of their lovemaking. And he stops dead, and licks his lips, as his eyes darken.
He strides in with twice the confidence, but softly, climbs onto the bed and drapes himself across her, slipping his hand inside her trousers.
He says absolutely nothing, but smiles down at her, and presses his naked hips down on top of her, and kisses her with a hungry open mouth.
“Did you really think,” he half-gasps, through another kiss, “that I would have objected to you interrupting anything for this … ?”
He seizes her face, drags his hands down her cheeks, down her impossibly little neck; how can a storm also be so fragile?
His fingers irrigate little red marks down her shoulders, down her arms, then coil around her waist and return up the terrain of her back (that back, it’s held so many burdens, so many w o r l d s of burden!) and his fingers find their home in her hair, and his fingers dig into her scalp, his nails scratch her scalp, and he takes fists of her hair, and he grinds his teeth and he weeps, because sometimes, g o d , sometimes it’s too much for them to resonate on the same frequency so close together, sometimes it’s too sublime, so joyful that it pitches itself close to desolation, sometimes he could sit on the ground and sob at the notion of her existence. Sometimes.
But Koschei loves his Theta Sigma.
He is a round-faced brown-eyed bearded silver-blond, and he is also a black-haired blue-eyed little boy who failed and urinated in his robes in front of a gaping wound in time and space, but who loved, loved, LOVED the boy who took him from there, and held him high with words and dreams.
“Let me fill you,” he gasps, against her ear, “let me fill you and warm you, let me protect you, let me cease to be except with you … !”
“How DARE you, Rose Tyler! What happened to sisters over misters? We were meant to be the bleach-dyed duo and now you’ve gone and spoiled our mojo!”
“You’re tellin’ me that Time Lords have to reduce themselves to bleach? Talk about superior biology. Oh, please tell me hers is bleached, too? We’re not the bleached trio, are we?”
“Well I didn’t exactly bleach my hair during the brief interlude when it was THAT pale a blond; I wouldn’t go for a bottle of Sun-In while I was a cannibalistic electric skeleton running naked about London at Christmastime, now would I? Bit of a complication with being resurrected properly and an angry ex-wife. Some ex-wives want alimony, but mine? Me as a cannibalistic electric skeleton, I suppose, or, you know, rather dead. As for the Doctor, she came out the regeneration with that hair, but I guess we’ll see when her roots grow out.”
Send “I’ve got you” to help my muse wash off blood from their body.
The Doctor doesn’t remember coming home. She doesn’t remember Koschei slowly peeling her layers off, grimacing at the stickiness of dried blood coagulating on her skin. She doesn’t remember his expression of remorse, of all consuming guilt.
All she remembers are the screams.
Even now, she’s not entirely sure what happened. Was it her mistake, or his? Which one of them missed it? A hidden trigger on a timer they’d already disarmed. One moment, the captives were there, breathing a sigh of relief and thanking their rescuers, then the next…
She remembers the smell of smoke, of singed flesh and hair. She remembers the sharp pain of debris cutting at her skin.
What she doesn’t remember is her husband helping her into the bath, or the water trickling down her back. She is hardly cognizant even now of him gently sponging her down and whispering soft reassurances.
It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. You did your best.
But your best wasn’t good enough. They’re all dead because of you. You might as well have set it off yourself.
You should have been in their place.
Hell, you should have died eons ago.
Sometime in the middle of the gentle scrubbing, he relinquishes the iron-reeking sponge to the water and climbs into the bathtub with her. He sinks down in the stained water and claims the filth as his own, because what difference does it make? She is his and he is hers.
He takes her face in his hands and brings together their foreheads. He shuts his eyes, and shuts doors inside his head, expertly occluding telepathic entry, without fear of detection that he is hiding a thing.
The red, the blue, the green, he saw her cut the wires, but a minuscule fraction of a millimeter remained fastened to the green wire. A slight glint in the sun was all that hinted at her error, and then, as he flung himself against her, knocking them both to safety, an instant later, detonation.
But the Master, who took the fall for his best friend, and was branded Death’s Champion, Murderer, Cannibal, Killer, Beast, whose life was carved out of Theta Sigma’s lie before he was ten years old, now lies to the Doctor.
“It was me.”
He takes her face in his hands. He pauses, searching her eyes, fierce in battling her foes, even if she is her own foe. He waits for her to absorb his words.
“I was so excited about making you proud that I got reckless and I missed the last wire I was meant to cut. I made the mistake. Not you. Me.”
He holds her fast, thumbs running across wet cheeks.
“But there’s no shame in it, is there? I did my best. And if it had been your mistake, it’d have been just that: you did your best, and it would have been an accident.”
His eyes are moist; come back to me, come back.
Hearts, come back.
“So we’ve got to forgive ourselves now, yeah? That’s what we’ll do.”
I’ve got you.
Without hope, witness, or reward.
There is a part of her that knows the truth. Even with Koschei’s perfectly crafted telepathic touch (almost too perfect, he was always ever so good at that), she knows that he would rather lie to her and claim the mistake as his own before letting her take the fall.
And moreover, the Doctor knows Koschei knows. Of course he does; the Doctor has never been half as good at hiding that which she wants to keep to herself. But she says nothing to argue his admission. Just this once… she’ll let the lie stand. It’s easier that way, and the both of them know it’s the only way they’ll move on.
Her husband, best friend, love of the ages holds her face and insists on her innocence, but she cannot muster more than an empty stare. She’s trying, for his sake, but the water in their bath is a filthy, muddy red-grey of blood and ash. She can’t stop staring at that color. It’s the color of death.
“Yeah… We did our best,” she echoes, her voice as hollow as her gaze. “It was a mistake. An accident. We’ve got to forgive ourselves… yes… that’s what we’ll do.”
She reaches up and touches his face, her fingertips trembling.
“We didn’t save even one of them, Koschei. They’re all dead… We were supposed to save them, but we failed. How does one go about forgiving that? I’m asking, I’m really asking, because I’ve never quite figured out how…”
“I dunno how.”
“I dunno how, my sweet girl, I dunno. I just know when it’s you, I can. When it’s you, I rage and rampage till I chafe myself raw, for hundreds of years, trying to hate you, and it’s always just! Pointless. I can’t. Because when I see you I see the flaws and the blessings. I see the whole gamut. And the good bits are always bigger and brighter.”
He looks down and he sees the bathwater too, and it hardly fazes him, and he fears that as much as he fears her despairing forever.
Honestly, what the fuck is wrong with him, what’s always been wrong with him, and can he outrun it forever, and make her proud?
“C’mere, let’s get in the shower, okay? No leftover carnage, just. C’mon.”
He takes her upper arms and guides her to her feet; he was always the one better at surviving.
“Let’s go, here, I’ll help you. I don’t have the answers, Thete. I’m not a moral philosopher, I never could be. But I’ll always help you.”
“I’ll tell you a secret: the Doctor isn’t interested in you unless you need them. And I don’t mean need them to carry your parcels or give you driving directions. I mean need them in a deep, aching, existential way. I mean you’re looking for a savior. They can’t resist. Not one. Single. Time.”
“Do you think that’s why he left for so long?” The young Gallifreyan asked softly. “That he was waiting to be idolized in stories and hoping I would grow up longing to be like him that he gained some superiority complex and that’s why he finally returned? While I was in need of someone to help me readjust to this life? He couldn’t just return as my father but as someone who was saving a damsel in distress?”
The Master turns round from where he’s been angrily recording his voice entry, and hastily stamps down his whole palm on the delete button.
He shakes his head, rapidly, and holds up both hands.
“No. No, I don’t. I don’t think any of that applies to his children.”
He’s not lying; he truly believes Ophelia is exempt. Perhaps he’s in error, but mortification and shame are loud inside his head, a clangor louder than drums, because he knows the chief reason why the Doctor ran from domestication.
And that reason is the Master.
‘It’s just. Your father’s marriage was. Arranged. His father, he … was not a good person, Ophelia, and that’s … rich, I know, coming from me, but he … your father won’t want you to know this, so please. Be discreet. But your grandfather beat your father, all through his childhood and adolescence. The House of Lungbarrow is … unforgiving, and. Your father and I were. Were. Involved. Romantically. And. Physically. And our relationship was a point of major contention within his family. He was married to silence all the overwhelming pressure. Your mum was a good person, too, a wonderful person, I’m sure, it wasn’t her fault, but he.”
He missed me. And he missed the lure of freedom I symbolized. The nonconformity. I didn’t seduce him back. Quite the contrary, I despised him for leaving me. But, just the same …
Send “I’ve got you” to help my muse wash off blood from their body.
The Doctor doesn’t remember coming home. She doesn’t remember Koschei slowly peeling her layers off, grimacing at the stickiness of dried blood coagulating on her skin. She doesn’t remember his expression of remorse, of all consuming guilt.
All she remembers are the screams.
Even now, she’s not entirely sure what happened. Was it her mistake, or his? Which one of them missed it? A hidden trigger on a timer they’d already disarmed. One moment, the captives were there, breathing a sigh of relief and thanking their rescuers, then the next…
She remembers the smell of smoke, of singed flesh and hair. She remembers the sharp pain of debris cutting at her skin.
What she doesn’t remember is her husband helping her into the bath, or the water trickling down her back. She is hardly cognizant even now of him gently sponging her down and whispering soft reassurances.
It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known. You did your best.
But your best wasn’t good enough. They’re all dead because of you. You might as well have set it off yourself.
You should have been in their place.
Hell, you should have died eons ago.
Sometime in the middle of the gentle scrubbing, he relinquishes the iron-reeking sponge to the water and climbs into the bathtub with her. He sinks down in the stained water and claims the filth as his own, because what difference does it make? She is his and he is hers.
He takes her face in his hands and brings together their foreheads. He shuts his eyes, and shuts doors inside his head, expertly occluding telepathic entry, without fear of detection that he is hiding a thing.
The red, the blue, the green, he saw her cut the wires, but a minuscule fraction of a millimeter remained fastened to the green wire. A slight glint in the sun was all that hinted at her error, and then, as he flung himself against her, knocking them both to safety, an instant later, detonation.
But the Master, who took the fall for his best friend, and was branded Death’s Champion, Murderer, Cannibal, Killer, Beast, whose life was carved out of Theta Sigma’s lie before he was ten years old, now lies to the Doctor.
“It was me.”
He takes her face in his hands. He pauses, searching her eyes, fierce in battling her foes, even if she is her own foe. He waits for her to absorb his words.
“I was so excited about making you proud that I got reckless and I missed the last wire I was meant to cut. I made the mistake. Not you. Me.”
He holds her fast, thumbs running across wet cheeks.
“But there’s no shame in it, is there? I did my best. And if it had been your mistake, it’d have been just that: you did your best, and it would have been an accident.”
His eyes are moist; come back to me, come back.
Hearts, come back.
“So we’ve got to forgive ourselves now, yeah? That’s what we’ll do.”
Thus speaks the Master-no, frankly, Koschei, he has never been more Koschei than right now, studiously running through the TARDIS manual, the driest reading conceivable, with an orange highlighter and glasses, while draped across the library couch, turning a flustered pink at his fool’s affections.
“Shut up, sit upright and help me find the section on time anomaly relocation distributor maintenance. Or the next time we run into a paradox, we’re toast.”
She is sleepy and ever so content beside her best friend and husband. Nothing in the universe could make her happier than these precious, quiet moments with him. Koschei pulls her closer and she elicits a soft, gentle hum, nuzzling closer and smiling in response to his kisses.
“Mmn, good morning to you too…”
“Hmmhmhmmmmmn …”
He rolls her over lazily, and finds her lips with his own, without even opening his eyes, and kisses her as one savors a bracing meal.
“I dunno if it’s morning or not,” he drawls, “but it is very. Very. Good.”
Icarus 