It works, obviously. His resting frown is gone almost as soon as the words are said. People don’t generally tell him that, and he’s quite sure the Master doesn’t mean it. He’s amused anyway, whether it’s a genuine compliment or not.
“I’m not saying that I cried at the Lion King, I’m just saying that I’m never watching it again.”
The Doctor takes the popcorn from the coffee table, evidently deciding it’s his now. He doesn’t really care what they watch, honestly, despite the fuss he’s making. He’d much rather watch the Master watching the film instead. To silently show affection in a way he hopes isn’t too obvious, he leans against his shoulder. He won’t be moved to putting an arm around his shoulders. He’s seen people try to do that to others and sometimes it makes them look as nervous as he feels when he wants to initiate physical contact. No — he’ll just sit patiently and wait.
“What about one of those science films that are completely inaccurate?”
Patience has never been a strength of his. He lays his head on the Master’s shoulder.
The Master’s whole body shakes with his laughter; he’s not trying to hide it, grinning toothily at his best friend.
“You sobbed like a schoolchild at Mufasa’s death–oh WHAT, do you think that when I was crash-coursing myself on the history of the planet in order to pose as a prime minister, I didn’t spend a few hours on Disney? ‘You’re WEL-coooom!’”
And, thusly quoting “Moana,” he selects Jurassic Park from the direct-watch menu.
“How about this one, a Tyrannosaur eats a solicitor while he’s sitting on a toilet, it’s ever so funny.”
He rests his cheek on top of the Doctor’s head, cozily.
That monosyllabic command stops him dead in his tracks.
Because it’s not a command, really. It’s a plea.
Ahhhh yes. What a thrill. He remembers this.
The indescribable sensation of individual organs hemorrhaging and shutting down, on the floor of the flying fortress he designed and built with his own hands, a far younger, far more reckless version of the soul sitting on this bed begging him not to leave him alone.
And isn’t the choice he made on that day the whole cause for the trajectory of his–?
‘How about that. I win lose. ‘
Ohh, no. Don’t do that. Oh whoa. Dangerous terrain, these thoughts. Entertaining ideas of blame again. Stop that.
Let it be a draw, Koschei. Just this once.
Else why did you hover over his bed these past days, w o r r y i n g that the source of your mad strivings was going to be fully extinguished?
“ … .I did volunteer. I didn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe.”
In fact, let him win. With these words.
He takes a pitcher of water from the bedside table, and pours a glass.
He nudges the Doctor’s shoulder with it.
Now, this he isn’t expecting. Why was it so easy? Why has his demand been taken and accepted so quickly? He’d expected at least another sharp comment meant to hurt him. But he’s certainly not going to argue. He doesn’t move either, at first, just waiting in slightly awkward silence for either the comment to come late, or their less hurtful conversation to resume.
He’s glad it turns out to be the latter.
“Well,” he says, sitting up enough to take the water. “Thank you.” It’s a genuine thanks, though he is biting back an assurance that he no longer requires babysitting. It’s difficult to decide what he actually wants. Part of him wants to insist he can manage just fine alone now, and the other part wants the Master to stay by his bedside for the rest of this life (which he’s not fully convinced is going to be too long, if he’s honest).
He uses his free hand to pull the Master’s coat around himself better.
“Any tips on keeping regeneration at bay until I’ve recovered? I’m fine,” — and his tone is defensive and firm, as though challenging even the unspoken suggestion that he might not be. “But my body seems to think regeneration will be easier than waiting this out and healing. I don’t want to regenerate.”
Not now, and not at all. Not again. He can’t do this again. The tiredness has been making itself evident in his eyes over many years now, and it never quite goes away. Even the humans at the university have expressed concern for him. He brushes it off every time, of course, but he knows they’re right. The weight of the universe resting continuously on his shoulders has perhaps exhausted him to a point he can’t return from.
Still. He doesn’t have to make up his mind yet. He’s not dying today. Not yet. There’s still hope, and for him it currently appears in the shape of his best friend, at the side of his bed. He’s still here, looking after him, and that has to mean something.
Easy? Hardly, that was excruciating. And yet he can’t but feel softly. Softly, for the angry, weary, befuddled old man (old, like he is) fumbling for his dignity. And that is all he’s ever wanted to see from the Doctor, in the end: some semblance of vulnerability, or neediness. Some sort of aching empty spot where Koschei used to be. Rather like the facade of an old house, whose shutters have been ripped off, and the remaining rectangular stains haven’t weathered like the rest of the house. Something fresh and vibrant and yet devoid, beneath, within.
At his core, the Master wants to feel … . mandatory. Necessary. Needed.
By this specific person: or who this specific person was.
Softly, yes. He feels softly. Like he never feels.
How terribly, sentimentally ordinary of him.
“You’re welcome,” the words escape before he’s able to stop himself, because they are the truth.
But when the Doctor lets slip his true condition, up flies a protective emotional exoskeleton around the Master’s hearts. Up like the carapaceof an armadillo, circling itself. His eyes blaze and flash.
“Like hell you’re fine,” he snarls, face viciously animated, even while his voice remains discreetly low. Because this is his, this is HIS to hoard, the Doctor told HIM first how badly off he really is, and no one, not a cyberman named Bill, and not even his own future self, can take that away. “If your body is trying to regenerate that’s the very definition of not fine.”
He leans across the bed, feigning an effort to adjust the curtains and shutters, glances around, and continues, in the Doctor’s ear, so close that his scent of cloves and engine grease is overpowering.
“It’s mindfulness. That’s literally ninety-nine percent of it. You have to will yourself not to regenerate. You have to recite it like a mantra, and keep your mind from wandering off the subj … look, Doctor, I’m not giving you advice on how I stopped my own regeneration. You may recall that ended with me dying.”
“Only one thing?” He rolls his eyes and sighs dramatically. “Ah, I rather thought I was useful for reaching high shelves for you. I suppose I’ll have to hide more of your things up there, and then you’ll be sure to appreciate my height.”
The Doctor is privately glad he seems to like the hugs, though. It must mean that even though he’s not a natural hugger, his height gives him an advantage when it comes to hugging people to comfort them.
“Your height — or lack thereof — makes you easy to hug, I suppose, little spoon.” He does enjoy calling him that. It shows on his face.
“HAH! Hehahah! Oho! You were worried. I can feel it.”
The Master dances the fingers of both hands up the Doctor’s chest, straight into his unruly cumulonimbus cloud of curls.
“You were worried your hugs didn’t stand up to some nonexistent test of merit! You numpty, try to remember when we were boys, and pounced each other in red fields and rolled down hills of grass in a tangle of limbs. Were we worried for even a moment, that we might not be good pouncers? No, of course not.”
He stands right upon the Doctor’s feet to obtain the height to kiss his chin.
“We were only overflowing with joy and affection, and expressing those things in the comfortable tactility of three dimensions. That’s all such things are, in the end.”
He then bites his hooked nose.
“I even forgive you for that damned nickname, in light of that fact.”
The Master has spent the past 68 solid hours trying to single-handedly mend the TARDIS transmission that SOMEONE broke jumping too fast between coordinates.
Presently he thrusts upright on the makeshift cot by the strewn cables and guts of the vessel, startled at the tap to his cheek, fumbling for his laser screwdriver. His eyes focus on the man who has basically been his spouse for the past many millennia.
“Oh, golly,” he grunts, scrubbing hands down his face. “What d’you want, Thete? I’m getting bloody nowhere with this.”
He leans against the control panel bleakly.
“What’s that. A thank-you present. Buttering me oop for doing maintenance on the old girl?”
He falls silent at the explanation, silent and very nearly meek.
I’ve never been so happy.
The Doctor just spoke those words, to him. Oh God. His chest is so tight and sharp, what does that mean? What’s happening?
Koschei opens the box furtively. He sifts through the little bits and pieces of affection made tangible. He reads the paper slips and they grow harder and harder to read through astonished tears. By the time he’s read the title on the lid, he has to hasten to wipe his eyes dry.
It’s enormously corny and sentimental, it’s what he would scoff at as folly at any other moment, but now it has profoundest meaning. Now it’s everything, it’s the key to making meaning from the entropy of the universe.
He stares at that stupid hopeful face and for a moment, a frightened rage seizes him, at how vulnerable they both are, and he moves to throw the thing across the room. Instead he cradles it to his chest like it’s a baby, and weeps harder.
His joy ought to be highly evident.
But if it’s not, only a moment or two passes before he mumbles,
“Thanks.”
The Doctor knows how corny the gift is. He’s actually had it for several weeks now, hidden away in a cupboard, waiting until he finds the courage to present it to the object of his affection. It’s the kind of thing he himself might also scoff at unless the time and atmosphere are exactly right.
There are no words to describe the twisting nervousness and anxiety he feels waiting for the reaction to the gift he’s poured his hearts into. The time is right for him, but if the Master is not ready to accept what he offers? The rejection will hurt him, and not purely in a surface level way.
At first, he worries that the tears in the Master’s eyes are tears of sadness or anger or despair. All are equally possible. He tries not to make assumptions, and sits, waiting. His fears come so close to being confirmed when that frightened rage almost wins.
It’s only now that he realises the weeping is not as he thought. It can’t be; not with the way his gift is being held. The Doctor can’t bring himself to move, captivated by the sight before him. He has done something to move Koschei and now he doesn’t know what to do — should he leave? Give him some space? Should he move closer and try to offer a hug? The Doctor may have improved considerably with Koschei’s help, but he’s utterly useless at knowing what to do in a situation like this, and probably always will be.
He decides to move closer. It’s a risky decision and he’s not confident that he won’t be pushed away. He moves so that he is kneeling beside him and reaches an arm around his shoulders. It’s more of an offer than anything. He’s saying come here, I’ll hold you, I love you, but it’s okay, I won’t push you if you don’t want me near. That’s what he really wants to get across. It’s alright. This is alright.
It’s a lesson he’s always found difficult to learn and accept, that it’s okay to be vulnerable with a few select people. He’s still learning it now.
“You are…very welcome.” He doesn’t need thanking. To know that he’s helped the Master in any way is thanks enough.
“This is good, you know?”
At length the Master looks up from the cherished, cradled box of sweet gestures. It’s so rare that he would be the one imparting wisdom, instructing in good behavior, that he half feels this is a strange and wondrous dream.
Oh, but it’s not, it’s better; it’s healing, beside his best friend.
“This is so very good. You did a very good thing. Oh God.”
He ducks his head, embarrassed and yet overcome, as though the words are involuntary, wrenched from the pit of his gut:
“I don’t have to disclose that information, you self-important ass.”
It’s as good as a confirmation; yes, he volunteered, yes, he’s chased off any suspicious or potentially hostile parties with sharp objects; yes, he’s been taking the Doctor’s pulse and feeling his forehead and watching over him and fretting like an old fishwife the entirety of his convalescence.
A sour and petulant look down his nose later, he reluctantly sheds his black and red coat. It smells like cinnamon and engine grease, and some indeterminable clean sharp musk.
He hands it over, peevishly.
“You’re too long for it, so I don’t see the point, because you always regenerate into a lanky bastard in order to make me feel little But here.”
He’s privately too elated that the Doctor wants anything of his to even closely examine how transparent his old friend’s excuses are.
A pause, then, as the Master watches the Doctor through narrow feline eyes, black as antimatter and bright as polished obsidian.
“She’s fine. Bill. The one you’re fretting over right now. The one I probably know better than you.”
Ooh, what a dig. He almost regrets it, almost. But jealousy is such a noxiously potent emotion, and he felt it, the Doctor’s attempt to veer off-course of that painful subject, to run, run, run, as always. And it made him angry.
Like it always does.
“I didn’t say you had to, I just asked. There’s no need to get defensive.”
The satisfaction of putting on the reluctantly surrendered coat is clearly written across his face. He slides his arms into the sleeves and wraps the coat around himself as though it’s the softest blanket he has ever felt. His eyes close for just a moment as he leans back.
It can’t last. Peace, comfort — he’s a fool to think it ever can. He should know better than to allow himself the luxury of enjoying those things. His eyes fly open again at the cruel dig.
A flash of hurt in those eyes, blink and you miss it, a direct result of the jab. Not anger, not hatred, just hurt. Self-control who? He has none of that today. The pain in his eyes is cut deeply into him, and for just a moment, he loses the hold he has on himself. A bright fiery energy breaks free and flares up in his hands, all the control he’s been using to focus it gone now. He can’t balance the two pains he is feeling just now. One is connected to the other; if he allows himself to react to the emotional prods he’s being given, like the exposed nerve of raw emotion he is, he also surrenders control over his body and the way it acts to desperately try and heal. He must balance them.
The energy dies back down into his skin as he glares feverishly up at the Master. He is balancing, for now. The hurt is shielded by anger, and he can restrain himself from letting go.
“Don’t.”
Don’t, because you’re my friend and you’re hurting me. Don’t, because if there’s any time I truly need you at my side, it’s now. Don’t, because I can’t stand it if you do. Isn’t this enough?
There’s no hiding it now. He’s on the very edge of being too injured to keep going without regenerating. A cold, or a hard enough push, might just do him in. If it were his choice, the Master would be oblivious to this. He would manage it alone and get on with it. But if his grasp on his control of the healing process is this poor, it looks like it isn’t going to be so easy.
Don’t, because the pain might just kill me.
In another world he might’ve shouted. Argued, fought, made sure the Master knows he’s wrong. But he’s only been awake and recovering for ten minutes at most, and he lacks the energy to summon the strength again. He’s almost laying down anyway, but he shuffles the rest of the way down and turns on his side, facing intentionally away from the Master. There’s no way he’ll be able to find restful sleep again now. The best he can hope for is to fall into a fitful nap. But until then, he can pretend to sleep. Ignoring the Master might be a good way to fight back anyway.
That monosyllabic command stops him dead in his tracks.
Because it’s not a command, really. It’s a plea.
Ahhhh yes. What a thrill. He remembers this.
The indescribable sensation of individual organs hemorrhaging and shutting down, on the floor of the flying fortress he designed and built with his own hands, a far younger, far more reckless version of the soul sitting on this bed begging him not to leave him alone.
And isn’t the choice he made on that day the whole cause for the trajectory of his–?
‘How about that. I win lose. ‘
Ohh, no. Don’t do that. Oh whoa. Dangerous terrain, these thoughts. Entertaining ideas of blame again. Stop that.
Let it be a draw, Koschei. Just this once.
Else why did you hover over his bed these past days, w o r r y i n g that the source of your mad strivings was going to be fully extinguished?
“ … .I did volunteer. I didn’t trust anyone else to keep you safe.”
In fact, let him win. With these words.
He takes a pitcher of water from the bedside table, and pours a glass.
Icarus 