“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 smiles, and laughs; though the smile is cultivated from Greek statues of boyish renegade gods, and perfectly suited to a politician, the laugh is rough, unadorned and jovial. It’s a laugh that could get just a bit harsher and be truly menacing, yet at the moment, is more like a warm-kindled fire, and very, very infectious.
“Delightful. So you’re a human with no shortage of extra-terrestrial contact. Well hopefully, my dear, that means you’re more enlightened than the average earth ape.”
“Well, I hope so,” the girl returned the smile, but it wasn’t as perfected as his, “I try and be a better person than I was a a year ago, and the year before that. I guess helping people does that to you. I’ve met the Guardians of the Galaxy, mostly alien members. Very nice, and can kick butt when needed. Even though I built an armored suit to fight, it’s rare when I do. I mostly rescue people who can’t get out of buildings or places that can’t be reached. I did fight, however, a robot my dad created. Ultron was unleashed on the country of Sokovia, and all hell broke loose. Not to mention-…I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s just say that my chest has been reconstructed many times.”
The glint returned to her eye, shoulders relaxing from the tense state they were before, “I’m excited to travel with the both of you. The place The Doctor first took me to was Vienna. She found me sitting on a park bench by myself. In less than ten minutes, I guess I poured my heart and soul into someone who would actually listen to me for once.”
“Trust me. I can pick the sharp tacks out. Let’s say I learned the hard way what happens when you underestimate humans.”
He folds his fingers on the table, tapping together his thumbs.
“You built a bodily suit of armor? Does it fly? I should very much like to see the schematics and possibly conduct some experiments of my own.”
The Master’s bristly chin rests on the Doctor’s shoulder. Arms slide around his old friend’s waist like additional appendages, and he reaches for a fist full of marshmallows, which he places directly in his mouth.
“Mhm,” he confirms, with a smirk.
“Well, you can’t have any now. I’m going to drink yours too.” He’s smiling, and it’s audible in his voice, but he pretends it isn’t.
“I’m going to have the rest of the marshmallows, too.”
There are far too many left for this claim to be reasonable, but he holds the bag out of reach anyway. Long arms are useful for many things, the most enjoyable of which being holding things out of the reach of people who are shorter than he is.
“Oh yeah? Just so happens I have leverage, Doctor.”
By now the Master’s standing at the Doctor’s other side, leaning his head back onto his shoulder, coquettish. Wicked.
“If you eat all the marshmallows, I’ll never tell you where I’ve stashed your favorite guitar pic.”
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 lifts his hands high in apparent surrender; they both know better. His eyebrows loft amusedly.
“Like I said, the morphology. You’ve added every single useful scanning, diagnostic, and unlocking component you’ve ever had, and I wouldn’t dream of tooching that. But all of that’s utterly pointless if the shaft is shaped like some sort of…banana or … . vibrator that while it gives me wonderfully naughty thoughts, it’ll slip right out of your hand mid-crisis … . then that’s not of much use, now is it?”
He saunters over to her side, and produces his laser.
“Simple rod shape. Retractable shaft. Easy. Because when monsters are chasing you, my love, I’d like to think you had a fighting chance of unlocking that crucial door to safe escape.”
A rueful smile.
“Take it from someone with an insider’s perspective on monsters.”
She stands there, still as a statue except for an incessantly tapping toe which seems to be containing all her energy. But this stillness belies how quickly her mind is working, imagining what this makeover would look like.
Finally, she speaks.
“Draw me oop some plans. Then we’ll see,” she declares. She’s fairly partial to the way it looks right now, but then…. she’s even more partial to watching him work. And extremely self-centred when it comes to watching him make things for her.
Koschei’s face is radiant. The patina of youthful enthusiasm inherited to match the Doctor three faces back is just as suitable to her elastically joyful new personality. He seizes her arms and leaps up and down like a child on a trampoline.
“Oh, JOLLY good.” No one says jolly good anymore, but the Master certainly does. “YES! I will give you the most rigorously, mathematically precise calculations conceivable, and you will be wooed by my logic! WOOED, I tell you. Oh, darling.”
He claps his hands over her cheeks.
“DAR-ling, thank you! This has worried me EVER so much!”
“WELL! Of course, Button, luv. It’d be particularly droll if we matched somehow.”
The Master flings himself into a seat beside his expecting stepdaughter, combs her hair over a shoulder and then drapes an arm around her.
“So, to brainstorm: puns are pretty delightful. We could be …Spice Girls! You know, a McCormick apron and big fake eyelashes and wigs. Or. French toast! Green with Envy, and you wear a green shirt, my shirt says envy. A deviled EGG! You be the egg, I be the devil, hehHAH. Oh, these are terrible, I love it …”
Ophelia laughed softly, leaning into him a bit, her head resting on his shoulder.
“Why can’t I be the devil? I could pull off a pretty cute one I think. But the egg could work, since I’m starting to show a bit. The bump could be the yolk.”
She gently took his hand and placed it on her stomach gently, her hand resting over the top of it. “I don’t know what to name them yet. I’m still processing that I’m actually pregnant, honestly.”
“I have to admit, that’s exactlywhat I had in mind.”
Koschei’s always been fascinated by the foreign and strange intimacy of womb birth. So when Ophelia brings his hand over her belly, he moves his palm experimentally over the surface of her navel.
“Just barely. If my crash course in midwifery serves me correctly, they’ll begin moving soon, in such a way you can feel.”
He lofts a brow at her.
“Please tell me you’ll consider not giving them a twenty-syllable traditional Gallifreyan name.”
“WELL! Of course, Button, luv. It’d be particularly droll if we matched somehow.”
The Master flings himself into a seat beside his expecting stepdaughter, combs her hair over a shoulder and then drapes an arm around her.
“So, to brainstorm: puns are pretty delightful. We could be …Spice Girls! You know, a McCormick apron and big fake eyelashes and wigs. Or. French toast! Green with Envy, and you wear a green shirt, my shirt says envy. A deviled EGG! You be the egg, I be the devil, hehHAH. Oh, these are terrible, I love it …”
The Doctor always knows when the Master’s mind drifts afield, like a very bright red balloon billowing skyward toward cumulonimbus clouds. That mind is just as bright, framed by an ever-gathering darkness.
All of it short-circuits with that touch.
“How’d you know I was out here?”
On the TARDIS roof, legs dangling, observing an oft-ignored nebula.
“What, landed us at the intended place and time on the first try? Bollocks, open the doors, you fibber!”
The Master dashes toward the TARDIS entrance with a wicked guffaw.
The Doctor rushes towards the TARDIS doors, nearly tripping over herself in her haste to beat him there.
“I proper did it this time! Honestly is it so hard to believe–”
There’s a pregnant pause as she peers out the doors at the chaos on the other side. A swirl of wind and sand, some sort of desert tinged a deep unnatural red. Definitely the wrong place. Immediately she attempts to pull the doors shut again, a deep blush creeping up the back of her neck.
Damn it.
“ … if you’d like I can, ah, pretend to have not noticed you going quiet, and I can sort of, go to the bathroom or something, while you do the Not-Trial-Number-Two. And then come back, and be amazed.”
The Master is trying to sound supportive but he also can’t conceal his amusement, or the way it hitches his powerful baritone to a higher sort of secpn soprano, the more he strives to muffle his laughter.
Icarus 