The words come out in pitch much like the expression on his face- bitter and biting, tempered, and the syllables tremble just so at the ends. Enough to let even the most unfamiliar of strangers know that should they see any significance or worth to their lives, they won’t risk asking again. The normal rich chocolate hues of his eyes, dotted with umber and burnt sienna are now a more cafe’ noir lined with inky black. The storm is raging just beneath the surface, the result of three restless nights spent pacing the library in search of how to make the infernal nightmares- and, by consequence, the ever present noise of whispers and heartsbeats – cease.
If there is any being in all the universe whose stare can match a hopeless Doctor’s, in both blackness and intensity, it is the Master. He tilts his head to the right; it’s a form of measurement and a signal that he is game for this dark conduct.
“Then I’m sure you won’t mind me joining you. Indefinitely.”
For the challenge in his stare, his words are almost serenely cool.
The Doctor smiles, a slow gesture that crinkles his eyes at the corners and sets them alight with affection. In this moment, his hearts swell and he has no fear in returning these words to his other half.
“Yeah … what? St …stop gawking at me … staw-hop… .!”
The shameless narcissist finds himself here flustered. He plants a hand square in the center of the Doctor’s face and squishes his features, shoving him back.
Both of the Doctor’s hands lift to swat gently, almost playfully at the other’s as it squishes against his face and shoves him backward and he laughs, delighted. He catches up the Master’s wrist in one of his hands, decidedly staring straight at him around the Master’s hand.
“Oh-ho! Oh, now you’ve done it.”
The Doctor reaches out his free hand to thoroughly ruffle the Master’s hair, trailing his fingers down the other’s temple, then cheek, to promptly scratch at the hair on his chin. The smile remains steadfast on his face.
“Come now, you gorgeous Time Lord, don’t deny it- you enjoy this.”
“I’ll bloody deck you,” the Master clawlessly threatens.
He laughs clumsily as he’s snared in the loving touch of his favorite person. The fingers in his scalp and chin hair slacken his features. His eyes blink and roll closed.
The Doctor smiles, a slow gesture that crinkles his eyes at the corners and sets them alight with affection. In this moment, his hearts swell and he has no fear in returning these words to his other half.
“Yeah … what? St …stop gawking at me … staw-hop… .!”
The shameless narcissist finds himself here flustered. He plants a hand square in the center of the Doctor’s face and squishes his features, shoving him back.
The corner of the Doctor’s mouth lifts into a crooked half smile as he feels the Master’s nose against the back of his neck, goosebumps lifting as he felt the other Time Lord inhale his scent. He tilted his head forward in silent tribute, welcoming this gesture as he did all the others. His hand lifted and draped backward, fingers carding through the Master’s hair, gently scratching his short nails along his scalp.
A steady rumble of pleasure rolls up the Master’s throat, as he so very idly, so very confidently, watches his beloved gob react to his advance. Smugly hooded eyes travel to the Doctor’s hair and arms slide through the space between head and shoulders, reaching up to comb, pet, and caress.
Trust these two fools to turn their usual abundant physical affection into something of a contest, because now, Koschei is trying to soothe his Theta into a state of silly bliss. The moment, paradoxically, that he feels the delicious scratching in his hair cease, he will know he has won.
He kisses the back of the Doctor’s neck for good measure.
“Good morning,” he greets sumptuously, even though he has no idea of a daily cycle here, idling in space; it just holds the right hopeful, intimate ring.
He’s reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery, with what ostensibly appears to be detached curiosity. But when he reads the passage aloud, his voice is trembling.
“ ‘You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.’ ”
Oh, Doctor …
The Doctor has been watching, silently, as the Master’s eyes scan the pages of admittedly one of his favorite collections. His frame is leaning against that of the entryway, and his arms are folded across his chest, head tilted in contemplation. It’s only when the Master speaks aloud that his hearts seem to stumble for a moment, and before he can think to stop himself he’s opening his mouth and words are spilling out, voice hushed, shaking as well and seemingly breathless.
“‘You – you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You – only you – will have stars that can laugh.’ ”
“Then why wasn’t I enough? Back in our earliest days. Vanity? Darkness? Did I cling too tight? Did I just become another fence? Another … locked door? Tell me why I wasn’t enough then, after you had already tamed me.”
The Doctor’s eyes flicker downward for a fraction of a moment and his stomach churns, twists inside until his hearts feel the ache and weight of it. He swallows thickly and glances back up, back to the questions, the accusations, the ponderings that the Doctor very much deserves to have thrown in his face. He deserves a lot worse, truth be told.
“You-…” His voice is weak and still trembling, and he has to swallow to force the words out. Blimey, he’s rubbish at this and he can both feel and see his own eyes filling with tears, tears full of guilt and shame. Sod it. Sod every last bit of it. The truth will out, and it will out right now. In the form of rambling so fast it rivaled every other situation in which he’d ever spoken.
“You were too good for me. Better than me. You were better than me and I was weak. I was terrified, I was dark and the noise would never stop. The whispering of the dead in the wind and grass and trees and the rolling of the waves against the shoreline, it never stopped! The nightmares of burning worlds and corpses and I was laughing, I enjoyed it and it terrified me! The only time it ever made sense was when we were together but in the moments when I was alone, when I had to suffer beatings by members of my own House, when I had to hear that I was nothing, that I was broken, when I pretended to be asleep and my own father suggested my Looming was a mistake, it nearly ended me! So yes. Yes, I was weak and I went searching for someone who could make the infernal noise stop! I believed I was broken and I believed I needed fixing, and I wanted to be whole again for you because I didn’t want you to see the darkness in my own mind! I didn’t want it to run you off, to leave me alone like I had been for so long because you were the only thing that ever mattered to me!You! I loved you and I didn’t want to be some broken thing that you had to be stuck with! “
“I didn’t want you to think you’d made a mistake, choosing me, choosing to run with me! I didn’t know they would alter my telepathic frequency, I didn’t know they were lying, I thought they could fix me! By the time I realized what was happening it was too late and I was… I was this, this Doctor and I thought I’d been fixed, no longer in pieces but one solid being that was strong enough to stand at your side and be worthy of you and then… then you heard the noises too. I thought… I thought my mind had tainted yours, I thought it was my fault, that the noise wasn’t real for you because I’d been molded, altered, shifted into believing the noise wasn’t real for me. I thought if you would just let me fix you, if you would just let me remove the- the darkness that’d seeped into your own mind from inside of me then we’d be alright, we’d be able to be together, but you refused.”
“You insisted it was real, as I once thought mine was, and I couldn’t bear the pain of seeing you every day knowing that it was my fault, that I was the reason the noise had taken over your mind. I couldn’t bear the thought of destroying the one I loved so completely just by simply loving them, so I ran… I ran, and I ran as far as I could and every time I saw you it was like taking a knife right to my hearts. Again and again and I kept running, and when the War came I looked for you and you were gone. I searched and I searched and you were gone, and I thought you were dead. I thought I was too late to save you, to take back the horrible darkness I’d put into you and by the time I found out the truth, that it wasn’t my fault, that I’d been manipulated and experimented on and- and tortured into this personification of sanctimonious shit, it was too late! I was wearing this face and you- you jumped into the rift and I lost you again and- and-…”
His rant ends because he is breathing too hard to continue speaking, eyes wide and frightened of the words that have spilled forth, cheeks wet with tears. Hands lift to cover his face and he simply weeps, a sound resembling the words ‘I’m sorry’ spilling from behind those hands again and again between panted breaths.
“But I don’t … I don’t mind. I don’t mind that stuff.When the person you cherish catches a sickness, do you … draw away in revulsion or do you cradle them, happy to catch the ailment so long as they have company?”
From the beast of the pair, the one so often reviled as a mere agent of ruination, it’s a startling, starkly selfless thing to say. But the incredulity on his face can brook no interpretation but that he is sincere.
The Master finds himself in the unparalleled predicament of being the knowledgeable healer, whereas the Doctor remains the lost, the frail, the ill. The mad. Still he draws upon a superior propensity to focused, determined steadiness, which has been innate to his faculties since childhood. He catches the Doctor’s hands, and seeks his eyes.
“Shhh….shh, shhh. My beloved gob, how you talk. Shhh see, I need you to breathe with me.”
Perhaps Time Lords possess a respiratory bypass; yet the act of breathing is universally soothing. The Master draws the Doctor against him, chest to chest, inhales, and exhales. And again, with a slow instructional nod. And a third time.
“They bent us both into something other, my love, but I’ll not let them hurt you again. You didn’t taint me the days, the years, we were together; you gave me hope and purpose. Why else would it break me so, when you were gone? Don’t go, stay and let me help you solve it: anything that’s making you suffer. When you suffer, I suffer. When you heal, so do I. I’m learning not to be so stupid, love. I’m learning revenge isn’t all that satisfying. You’re safe here.”
He’s reading Antoine de Saint-Exupery, with what ostensibly appears to be detached curiosity. But when he reads the passage aloud, his voice is trembling.
“ ‘You become responsible forever for what you have tamed.’ ”
Oh, Doctor …
The Doctor has been watching, silently, as the Master’s eyes scan the pages of admittedly one of his favorite collections. His frame is leaning against that of the entryway, and his arms are folded across his chest, head tilted in contemplation. It’s only when the Master speaks aloud that his hearts seem to stumble for a moment, and before he can think to stop himself he’s opening his mouth and words are spilling out, voice hushed, shaking as well and seemingly breathless.
“‘You – you alone will have the stars as no one else has them…In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night…You – only you – will have stars that can laugh.’ ”
“Then why wasn’t I enough? Back in our earliest days. Vanity? Darkness? Did I cling too tight? Did I just become another fence? Another … locked door? Tell me why I wasn’t enough then, after you had already tamed me.”
Like honestly, where IS everybody? I don’t say this to guilt anyone, because God knows I know how it is for IRL to be always a priority, and frequently overwhelming, but the thing is…it’s summer??? And most people are on academic breaks or take their 2-week work holidays over summer, especially in June. Like, this has been going on since early April, and then I basically was like “well yeah, most Whovians here are in their twenties and it’s final exam time,” but now????
I log in here, though, and I find that even though my follower count is steadily rising, my dashboard has hardly changed. The same two or three people (I’m counting you here for sure) reblog or occasionally do threads. Nobody else. Ever. Posts. Anything. And most of the people who don’t post here? I can hit up on Skype instead anyway, like my main Jack Harkness, my main Thirteen and Nine, etc.
But sometimes, I don’t have energy for immediate social interaction, and I’d rather dick around here, where I have intellectual stimulation but am basically by myself. Because my spoons are just. In the negatives constantly. And I’m having what a good friend coined “compassion fatigue” out the bum.
I attribute some of the graveyard state of my dash to Who being in the off-season until October, but not all of it. Because I’ve been here since 2015 and I never remember having a lack of things to do or write about, before Simm even came back to the show.
People have also migrated to Discord and I d e s p i s e Discord. I hate the interface, it’s unnecessarily complicated, the information flow is not at all organic. It’s for gamers and I don’t fucking game.
It’s incredibly disheartening. All of it. Especially when I perennially am disenchanted with this character just because he has been SO evil (despite my sympathy for what he’s suffered and how he’s been literally weaponized) and feel the impulse to just abandon him.
This was, around Christmas time, my MOST active blog. And don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful for my core of devoted mutuals, and I have a wonderful time when we write together, but….????
I also blame myself. Because Gabriel came back to Supernatural after a character absence of seven solid years and that muse has swallowed my creative energies whole and I feel…weirdly guilty about it? lol.
On that note, honestly, if you want my Skype? And want to move stuff there occasionally? We can. Just pm me.
Koschei is stripped of all armor at once, perhaps all the more endeared that his Theta speaks with such evident and breathless fear. For it’s known, it’s very much known, how hard it is, the act of speaking those three words.
He finds himself uncommonly shy, in that moment, eyes downcast.
“You didn’t have to say it,” he attempts to reassure, leaning greedily into the petting of his face.
Fingers smooth down nonexistent wrinkles on the Doctor’s shirt.
“Really. As you say, I know. I do.”
The remark of vulgarity earns a positively fanged grin.
“It’s bloody well fun, from time to time, to exact a role reversal, eh?”
Hands reach up to ruffle brown bangs into further disarray, affectionate and just slightly needy, always parched for more of his best friend’s follies, always entirely besotted at the exact same time as he can cut through every illusion and see the little boy he fell in love with eons ago. It’s a marvelous double-think, to be able to believe ardently in the persona, and also know the truth beneath it: to know this mysterious wanderer through and through, and relish him all the more.
“In any case, I’ll never forget hearing you say those words.”
Theta feels the shift in atmosphere and he, too, sheds the armor that surrounds him. Mentally, physically, any protective covering that would shield him from something unsavory or potentially hurtful falls away and he, like his Koschei, finds himself entirely enamored. The benevolence and vulnerability surrounding this moment lets him know that he’s chosen the proper time to allow himself to temporarily overcome his deeply rooted fear of those three, simple words that in reality aren’t simple at all. They are complex, as molecular compounds and genetic codes are complex. They mean everything.
Fingertips brush along the other Time Lord’s cheekbone and temple, jawline and forehead, palm never losing the skin-to-skin contact as his hand is sought after by his beloved.
“I don’t say it because I feel the need to reinforce or reassure you of it. It’s one of the few Universal constants that remains unwavering. I say it because I want to. Because.. I feel it, and even though you know, sometimes it needs saying, if not for your sake then for my own.”
That fanged grin is returned to him with Theta’s own mischievous smile, that of a school boy who’s found the most brilliant way to avoid doing his homework while still receiving excellent marks besides. A resurgence to a time and place long past, yet still present. He lets out a breathy half-chuckle through his nose as his hair is ruffled- perhaps one of his favorite signs of affection, in this or any regeneration, the hair touching -and the accompanying eyebrow lift is able to be felt against the other’s forehead.
“You’d be surprised how well I can play at role-reversal. Might also be surprised at the vulgarities I’m capable of, given the circumstances call for it. Been known to thoroughly castigate a toaster or two in my time.”
The mischievous smile softens into one of devotion and reverence, then.
“Just as I’ll never forget nor tire of hearing you say those words to me. I may not say it often, and you may know it regardless of that fact, but- well, I’d like to be able to say it without hesitation. I want to say it as loudly and as often as possible, and they say the best way to overcome something that causes trepidation is to face it. So…”
Another pause, another breathless and quivering confession.
“…I love you.”
There, he thinks, he will stop. Twice in less than five minutes is near a record for him, and he doesn’t know if he can manage a third without becoming faint. At least not aloud. For him, silently speaking the words his lips don’t wish to form within the realm of their telepathic frequencies has always come much easier.
What a courageous declaration this is. His hearts swell with pride.
“I’m sorry I ever called you a coward, my love.”
The Master’s features are so soft and indulgent as the Doctor speaks to him of hope and expectation. The Doctor savors that he has chosen the “right time,” but really, this proclamation is eternally welcome.
“I forget that I am a thing made to destroy, when you say it. I forget anything but what you hope to see in me, vain and sentimental though it may be. It has always been my weakness, this hunger to please and impress you.”
Fingers drop from the Doctor’s hairline and explore the terrain of his face. They trace rakish eyebrows and the bumpy bridge of a sharp nose. They explore cheekbones and epidermis.
“Will you take me on a new adventure, my Theta? Will you pick us a planet and grab my hand and tell me to run with you? Show me you love me: you can have a rest from the Hard Thing of Telling now. Only take me along with you, and I’ll always know.”
The laugh begins in the threshold of the galley. It starts a snicker, and becomes a roaring belly laugh accompanied by applause which becomes leg slaps.
“Oh, NO. Oh NOOOO. The Great Genius of the Constellations, the DOC-tor, felled by a TOASTER! Whatever shall we DO?”
Icarus 