The Doctor watches him from the doorway, a faint smirk on her lips, but then her expression pulls into one of abject horror and utmost concern.
“Koschei!” she cries as she falls onto her knees at his side, cupping his face in her hands and peppering his boyish cheeks with kisses, her tone and cadence like a dramatic reading of Shakespeare.
“Nobody loovs you?! What tragedy, what absolute HORROR! I am here, my brave soul, my valiant Kookaburra. I’m here! If you allow it, I’ll drown you in a love that could fill a thousand oceans! I’ll love you with every fiber of my being! Just say yes, Koschei! Say yes before you PERISH from LACK of LOVE!”
“How CLOSE a CALL this has been! Why, I nearly felt Death’s cold grasp upon me, until your little hands thawed my cheeks!”
The Master, achieving Vaudeville surely as his wife, seizes the Doctor’s wrists as her fingers clasp his face. He kisses her palms, each one, and hums contentedly.
Her kisses wrinkle his nose, taming his ferocity, flushing his round face.
“YES, then, mine Hearts! A THOUSAND times yes, for each ocean that your love fills!”
The Doctor leaving him again. Of her own volition, or in death; emotionally, or physically, or both. That one’s very, very simple. You have no idea. Even when she gives him no reason to fear it, he’s afraid of it daily because it is the One Thing that would make him give up, and he would take the universe with him.
He’s stepped out of his TARDIS, currently, flirtatiously, in a shape mirroring the Doctor’s police call box, only red rather than blue. All the necessary components for maintenance and merging remain behind in his own console room. For now, he’s striding across the turf between the pair of time machines, holding a bouquet of bright orange zinnias, and a new plush teddy bear sporting a little yellow bow, for his girls.
The Master chuckles at the Doctor’s appearance of feral glee. He licks a palm and smooths down her blond cowlick, with an indulgent smirk.
“What surprise?” he demurs.
Her grin stretches from ear to ear, so wide that she feels as if she might crack in two from sheer joy. He likes it! And more than that, he understands the gravity of what she was trying so hard to convey. Her mind reaches out to his, having missed his telepathic touch almost as much as she missed his hand wrapped around hers.
I’ve always remembered, even when it seemed I didn’t. Even when I let the universe blind me to it. I’ve always remembered you and I and what that meant to me…
Even Zinnia has gone quiet, their ever perceptive child, clever beyond her age. She can sense the quiet intensity of the moment between her parents, but to her, it simply feels like home and happiness. She has known nothing else, and it is the Doctor’s eternal goal to keep it that way. Domestic as it is, as much as past selves might have cringed, the Doctor has never been happier or more fulfilled. After centuries of running, she’s finally come home.
“I love you, Koschei.”
Her voice is soft and warm as a ray of sun, and she squeezes his hand tightly, pulling herself up onto her toes to kiss his cheek.
“Welcome home.”
Even when I let the UNIVERSE blind me, she says.
God, the implication within that statement! That the UNIVERSE, with all its bounties, wonders, varieties and adventures, was a sand grain, a distraction, compared to HIM.
The thought inspires a great rarity in Koschei: tears. He ducks his head, and shakes it.
“You sentimental fool,” he quietly gasps, and laughs wetly. “So. You’re not so different from me, after all. Owning the universe, that’s nothing to me, as seeing it is nothing to you, when I could have you.”
He won’t let her get away so easily; he pulls her against him, savoring the soft sumptuous feel of her little body, savoring just once being the taller, the bigger, of the pair.
“I’ve been home since you took me back. This is just the icing on the cake, Goose.”
He draws his laser screwdriver and dislodges the switchblade component. Fancy fingerwork boasted, he twirls it in his fingers and reaches up to shear off a strand of silver-blond hair, of moderate length.
He knots it into a small circle and slips it around the Doctor’s left ring finger.
“You said you wanted to marry him. Here he is. Marry me today.”
Each insult is more ridiculous than the last and the Doctor is absolutely gleeful to hear each one. His smile only grows wider and wider as the Master pulls back and litters his face with loud, wet kisses. What was blissful happiness is now boisterous joy, and he grabs Koschei’s hands, nearly hopping in place with excitement.
“I’ve got the perfect place! Ha! I know exactly where we should go, a blissfully married couple as we are. As best friends and husbands and lovers and–!”
He stops, stares down at the Master with wide eyes, as if he’s just realized something of vital importance.
“We did it! Can you believe it!? Look out there, where it all started, is it just me or does it not seem quite so frightening now? Because you’re here and you’re MINE and… HA! Alright, hearts. Alright, you mad silly bastard. I’ve got the perfect place for us. Hang on to your hat!”
The Doctor closed the doors behind them and dragged Koschei to the console. He flew around it with wild abandon, grinning ear to ear as he types in coordinates and pulls levers and presses buttons.
“Think edge of the universe. A time before our people became known across creation. Quite literally a pleasure planet. A bit touristy, maybe, but before it gets really popular. But let me tell you… when the third sun goes down over the horizon, there is nothing like that starscape. You can see things for lightyears. Artificial atmosphere magnifies and enhances the view. You’re gonna love it, Kosch. It’s gorgeous.”
The Master leans in the TARDIS doorway, watching his husband animated with more joyous energy than he has seen since their reconciliation. Ordinarily Theta Sigma’s enthusiasm infects him within milliseconds, but right now, Koschei savors the sight of GOOD that he has done simply by being in the presence of his most beloved person.
“I’M the ‘mad silly bastard,’ am I?” he chuckles.
He unwraps himself from where he stands, saunters over and places both hands on the Doctor’s cheeks, drawing him away from the knobs and levers long enough to stare into eyes as clear and bright as the day they met.
“I’m with you. Don’t you understand? I know. We’ve always gone nutters trying to impress each other. But you’re happy, and I did that. I’ll go to the edge of the universe with you. But you’ve already given me everything, idiot.”
The Doctor’s hazel eyes slide over to him, watching as his lips move from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. She allows a thumb to trace the seam of his lips and smiles.
“You romantic sap… Who would’ve guessed you’d be such a softy?”
The ingenious intergalactic criminal, the beast with fate impaled on its teeth, with death clenched in its jaws, defined from childhood by an act of murder not even his own … looks up now from his kisses with the softest yet smuggest expression.
“ … shut up. It’s your fault entirely.I can’t look at you and even muster a good dose of rage. You’ve taken my reputation and bloody C4′ed it. Why don’t you just sod off with your beauty, brains and vivacity, or have my baby already? Oh wait.”
♣ : slowly pulling them into your lap to curl up and cuddle
She doesn’t say a word as her best friend and other half pulls her into his lap. But she curls instinctively into his embrace with a contented sigh, feeling all her worries disappear as his arms wrap around her.
“There now, my Kookaburra… will you pet my hair?”
“Shhh, my sweethearts. I didn’t even mean to wake you.”
There’s a womblike solace to the darkness of their bedroom, to the way they needn’t fully see each other to still know the topography of each other’s bodies and minds. He collects her assuredly, and obliges her without hesitation, stroking her hair from root to tip, in even rhythms that match the rate of his hearts. Soon their heartsbeats synchronize, and he is as drowsy as she.
▨ : rubbing their back to calm them down when they’re upset
He feels the Master’s hand on his back before he’d even realized his husband was in the room with him. He flinched a little, but then allowed it, his expression pulled into a tight line.
“There’s nothin’ you can do, so you might as well jus’ leave me alone.”
“Rather not, thanks.”
Koschei ceases to rub his Theta’s back and instead descends to sit behind him on his jumpseat, straddling him and slowly, gradually, leaving room for his beloved to decline, wrapping his arms around his waist. When he succeeds at this much, he rests his cheek on the back of his shoulder.
“I enjoy you too much.”
He closes his eyes and waits out the storm.
The oddest things, the strangest habits and dynamics, are constant and forever.
The Master’s pupils dilate, hot-blooded carnivorous desire moving him eagerly against the Doctor. His mouth hangs ajar, breath beating down against his oldest friend and soul’s lips.
“I wanted you to get angry,” he gasps, with a heavy-lidded gaze, simultaneously needy and predatory, up at his beloved.
Fingers rake greedily through short shorn hair, nails irrigating trails across buzzed temples.
“I l o v e it when you’re angry … . !”
The Doctor grinds his teeth, his jaw popping with the force of it. He’s angry, truly and properly angry, and it shows in the cold glint of his ice blue eyes.
“You do shit like that t’ piss me off, make me jealous… Well don’t be surprised when that’s exactly what happens.”
His voice is barely a snarl as he grabs the Master’s hands away from him and pins him roughly to the wall. The Doctor doesn’t care if he’s uncomfortable as he presses a knee to Koschei’s groin.
“I’m torn between fuckin’ you right into the ground or tyin’ you up and leavin’ you hard and wanting.”
He regards the Master for a moment, his eyes narrowing and a dark smirk playing at his lips.
“Tell me who you belong to, Koschei. Your answer might affect my decision.”
Koschei’s eyes go drunk, drowsy, with the domination he’s shown. His hands grapple downward to trace delicate circles up the inner thigh of the knee forced against his groin. He grinds there shamelessly, breaths heavy, with a giddy and quiet gasp. He makes no attempt to hide his intoxicated smile. Nothing, nothing in all the universe, so arouses him as his Oncoming Storm, the only creature as wild and dangerous, MORE wild, MORE dangerous, than he.
It’s as orgiastic as standing in front of a black hole and denying oneself the ever-present urge to fall in. Delaying the release of that oblivion, over and over and over and over.
“I have been yours,” he moans, hard already, forcing himself to maintain eye contact even as every inch of his body screams with heat, “since the first day I saw you; since you first took my hand; since you first smiled at me. You had damned well better fuck me until I can’t walk.”
The Master watches his wife with an expression of astonishment as she transparently hoards him, steering him away from the woman ogling his shirtless form at the shaved ice stand. He doesn’t stop her from seizing about thirty napkins–about which he’d been asking aid in locating–and dragging him back to their beach towel.
He sits down beside her steaming form wordlessly.
His gobsmacked expression slowly melts and is replaced by the wickedest grin.
“ … . Well, WELL. What a MARVELOUS role reversal.”
Icarus 