“Wake up,” he says, patting the Master’s cheek. “I got you a present.”

The Doctor holds a box which is wrapped (badly) in multiple layers of patterned paper. He sets it carefully on the bed next to the Master, delighted in being able to wake him up with this.

“It’s a thank you present. For helping me. I’m not sure whether you can see the impact you’ve had on me – this me – but I’ve never been so happy. Really. And I want to thank you in some way.” He pushes the box closer. “Open it.”

Inside the box, there’s a jar full of tiny paper stars, buttons, and little strips of card. On each piece of card, the Doctor has written a reason he loves Koschei, or something he does that he finds particularly endearing. On the jar itself, he has written in marker pen ’REASONS I LOVE YOU’.

The Doctor sits cross-legged on the bed next to the gift he has presented, watching him hopefully. If the Master so much as smiles at the present, it’ll be completely worth all the effort. If he doesn’t like it, he’ll just have to try again with a different approach. The Doctor is determined to express how grateful he is to just have the Master in his presence, in whatever way he can.

(here you go I know you’re having a rough time at the moment but I hope this makes your day even a tiny bit better!)

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.”

itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

The Master scoffs, a long, drawling snort, while his eyebrows dance acrobatics across his wrinkled forehead.

“Don’t be pervy, I didn’t undress you. I’ve no notion where Humpty
Dumpty took your clothes. Those’re better anyway … roomy, very
blended-in with the locals. Take it from a politician.”

He speaks, at first, distractedly, however acid his wit.

And that’s because he felt the Doctor’s hand lingering on his own.

That’s because, for that millisecond of hesitation, his synapses fired associative tangents and his brain chemistry produced emotions and the result was that horrid thing called hope. For just a moment, a soap-bubble of buoyancy in the pit of his black-tar-infested gut. And quick on its heels, something worse still: regret. But that one, the one connected to culpability and accountability, is still dull. The hope is far keener. If he focuses on anything like regret, he’ll become slippery and stinking with the blood of all the men, women and children he’s sent to become corpses over the millennia. Including the cybermen only a few dozen platforms below this one.

No, best not to filter in the regret, or the hope, or anything but the imperious anger.

So he keeps up the pretense, which oddly is not pretense at all, of two old school rivals, of a married couple, bickering over inanities. He twists his lip at the Doctor’s experimental motions.

“What’re you doing, silently reciting the Hokey-Pokey? I can examine
you if you want.”

He doesn’t await permission; he lifts his black coattails and sits on the bed just behind the propped-up convalescent, feigning that he has not already done this five or six times during the Doctor’s quasi-coma. He measures his pulse, trailing his fingers past his shoulders, down his arms, testing the reflexes, listening to his lungs with an odd rod-like extension of his laser screwdriver.

He prolongs skin-on-skin touch as long as he can, already greedy, so greedy and hungry, to feel that fleeting sensation of uplift again; an addict.

He licks his lips into the silence, and at last lifts his hands off.

“ … lucky for you, more robust than any of these humans. I’ll never
understand what you see in them. Cybermen weren’t my idea, I only
profited. They do that: to each other! And they’re so bloody …”

He looks out the window, scouring for sight of the creature that was once Bill Potts, the girl with eccentricities and quirks, dreams and benign delusions, favorite teas and toothpastes, with whom he spent ten years. Snuffed in a single gunshot, rearranged in a single delivery to a conversion facility. Lost.

“ … . breakable.”

And I fear frailty.

Frailty means you’re in danger.

Danger means you can die.

Death means

you’ll

be

forgotten.

The Doctor has to force himself to stay still and not lean closer as the Master’s hands move across him for far longer than he thinks is strictly necessary. The simple touch of this being, who he has known as long as he can remember, is so much more than the touch of anyone else. More intense, more meaningful. He shivers under those hands and immediately hates himself for it. He should be angry with him — he is angry. But at the moment, he wants to reach for his hand again and hold it to his chest. Don’t go. He’s used to Missy’s casual touch now, but not that of her former self. He finds he enjoys it just as much, misses it, even if it does make him nervous. He hopes that isn’t too obvious.

“Not enough layers,” he comments, quick-thinking to form a false reason for his shiver. “I’m cold.” It’s not a complete lie, so it’ll do. “I want my coat. Or yours.”

He wants his coat and his friend back. Oh, and maybe a little extra power to heal. He can’t go dying today. He hasn’t saved Bill yet, and he hasn’t gotten anyone out of here. That has to be his priority, not himself. As always.

He doesn’t wish to discuss the fragility of humans right now, so he won’t. He’s been reminded of it all too frequently throughout his life, and oh, he just wants to rest. He hurts everywhere and he’s so tired of everything. Why can’t he just rest? Because he’s the Doctor.

The Doctor closes his eyes briefly, feeling the rush of regeneration energy under his skin again. It fades, but not quickly enough for his liking. He glances up at the Master to check that he hasn’t noticed.

“Did you volunteer for looking after me?” He chooses as usual to focus on something else. “Or did everybody else run off before they got stuck with the job? I thought I was the Doctor here.” There will never be a time, whether he’s dying or not, when he won’t take the opportunity to make that joke.

“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.

itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

“No,” the Master yawns, an all-out ornery lie just to get the Doctor
mildly flustered.

His savagely wicked grin, one that rounds his cheeks so much that his sharp little eyes nearly disappear, proves otherwise.

“Yes,” he amends mere seconds later, with a low belly laugh. “you’re
writing my name in your notebook.”

He rolls over swiftly and presses a tender kiss square in the middle of the Doctor’s wavering mouth. He pulls back to look him in the eye, vulnerable and earnest; this is how it’s done, and you’re doing it well, a gaze ordinarily so malicious now gently encourages. He then rubs noses with the old owl, and bites the tip of his nose–hard, but not too hard, but really, how is he still the Master if he’s not a little vicious?–and then squirms back to his original position. He pushes his rear into the Doctor’s pelvis, just slightly, not a sexual overture so much as a clear affirmation that the Doctor may continue to fidget with his back.

He closes his eyes, resolved to croon and coo and perhaps snore a bit, while the surface of his skin becomes a place where the Doctor may regain confidence in physical intimacy. In trust.

The Doctor sighs in what he hopes sounds more like exasperation than adoration (although it is both). Idiot, he thinks loudly. But my idiot.

The kiss surprises him, but he doesn’t pull himself away. He enjoys kissing the Master more than anyone else. Nobody else’s kiss will ever feel the same as that of the first person he ever kissed, all those years ago. The physical forms of either of them are irrelevant. So he returns the kiss in his own gentle way, and stares into Koschei’s eyes when they pull apart. Encouragement isn’t often something the Doctor needs. If he thinks he’s right, that’s usually enough for him. But not with this. The reassurance is most appreciated.

He blinks, brought suddenly back out of his thoughts and his besotted gazing, and gives him a fierce but false glare. It fades almost immediately as they resume their positions.

“I love you.” He says after a while. He’s trying not to fall asleep, purely because he worries that he’ll disturb this wonderful peaceful scene if he ends up having nightmares. He isn’t sure whether Koschei is asleep or not, but speaks anyway. “I love you so much. Always will.” Finally, he stops tracing words and patterns on his back, and hugs him instead.

“Oh knock it off, you’re very much enjoying this.”

The Master turns back around, while tossing out an uproarious belly laugh.

“You pretentious old fart. I love you, too.”

It’s the most peculiar pride the Master derives from knowing he’s aided the Doctor in learning how to express physical affection.

Now, of course, he derives equal part smug satisfaction from knowing that the Doctor still only feels safe doing so with him. Smug satisfaction, or privilege.

His head hums with contentment, a low constant thrumming frequency just like a cat’s purr, as touch-telepathy fills both their minds. He continues to pet hair that is breathtakingly soft, a beautiful silvery cumulonimbus cloud of follicles.

The Doctor’s drowsiness transfers to the Master, and he yawns.

“Ohhhh, don’t fight it. I’ll guide your dreams. Promise.”

itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

The Doctor has been in something between an exhausted stupor and a truly medical coma for over a day.

And the Master has not left his side once; even Missy has been more inclined to wander, to acquaint herself with the local children who recognize her younger self through refugees from another platform of the ship. Refugees who heard what he permitted to happen through conversion centers, even to children, before he hid as Razor. Refugees who whispered to parents, who gasped and pointed, and drew their children close. Yes, gawk away, asylum-seekers, the Master is no stranger to infamy: It claimed him young. Young, unaware, innocent. Like one of those kids.

But that’s a story, true as it may be, that no one will believe. No one but the gray-haired man over whom the Master stands watch.

Nardole initially tried to shoo away the menacing figure in black and red; the Master chased him out with various sharp and flammable objects, to the tune of Missy’s cackling, until at last he yielded.

Since then, he’s been seated on an infernally stiff farmhouse chair, keeping watch. Playing solitaire. Counting the aberrations in the ceiling woodwork. Tidying his eyeliner. Internally screaming.

As the Doctor awakens, the Master straightens in his seat, summoning his mask of callous malice.

“ ‘Auch, it’s me,’” he parrots, with utmost impudence, and a little more
of a lascivious undertone than is strictly necessary, bobbing his head
mockingly back and forth.

“Look here, Grumpy, while Lady, Eggy and Techy were out brainstorming,
I was preserving your injured arse for my own future chance to kill. Don’t
tempt me to satisfy myself prematurely.”

He offers a patient hand to aid the Doctor in sitting up.

The Doctor rolls his eyes. He takes the hand offered to him and forces himself into a more upright position, holding on just a moment longer than necessary.

“Where are we, then?” He finally manages to tear his gaze away from the Master to look around. “I don’t remember being brought here. How long have I been unconscious?” He remembers the rooftop. That memory ends when the Cyberman gets him. Nothing since then, so that must be when he passed out.

That primitive Cyberman alone couldn’t have the ability to kill a Time Lord. Nearly, but not quite. So why is it that he still feels the stirring of regeneration energy within him? Not close to the surface, and not urgent, but it’s definitely there. He can only hope it will fade as he heals. He glances at the Master again. Should he mention it to him? No, it’s probably nothing.

He stretches his legs, assessing the damage silently. No bone injuries, and he can wiggle his toes, so he’ll be able to walk soon. Same with his arms; he stretches them and wiggles his fingers. Everything just aches horribly, which is only to be expected.

Next he takes a good look at the Master. He’s wearing eyeliner. The Doctor wonders if he did it himself, or if Missy did it. He notices that the Master’s colour scheme is very similar to his own, which reminds him — “Where are my shoes? And my own clothes?” It wouldn’t surprise him if Nardole has taken them in hope that it will prevent him from trying to get up and run around.

The Master scoffs, a long, drawling snort, while his eyebrows dance acrobatics across his wrinkled forehead.

“Don’t be pervy, I didn’t undress you. I’ve no notion where Humpty
Dumpty took your clothes. Those’re better anyway … roomy, very
blended-in with the locals. Take it from a politician.”

He speaks, at first, distractedly, however acid his wit.

And that’s because he felt the Doctor’s hand lingering on his own.

That’s because, for that millisecond of hesitation, his synapses fired associative tangents and his brain chemistry produced emotions and the result was that horrid thing called hope. For just a moment, a soap-bubble of buoyancy in the pit of his black-tar-infested gut. And quick on its heels, something worse still: regret. But that one, the one connected to culpability and accountability, is still dull. The hope is far keener. If he focuses on anything like regret, he’ll become slippery and stinking with the blood of all the men, women and children he’s sent to become corpses over the millennia. Including the cybermen only a few dozen platforms below this one.

No, best not to filter in the regret, or the hope, or anything but the imperious anger.

So he keeps up the pretense, which oddly is not pretense at all, of two old school rivals, of a married couple, bickering over inanities. He twists his lip at the Doctor’s experimental motions.

“What’re you doing, silently reciting the Hokey-Pokey? I can examine
you if you want.”

He doesn’t await permission; he lifts his black coattails and sits on the bed just behind the propped-up convalescent, feigning that he has not already done this five or six times during the Doctor’s quasi-coma. He measures his pulse, trailing his fingers past his shoulders, down his arms, testing the reflexes, listening to his lungs with an odd rod-like extension of his laser screwdriver.

He prolongs skin-on-skin touch as long as he can, already greedy, so greedy and hungry, to feel that fleeting sensation of uplift again; an addict.

He licks his lips into the silence, and at last lifts his hands off.

“ … lucky for you, more robust than any of these humans. I’ll never
understand what you see in them. Cybermen weren’t my idea, I only
profited. They do that: to each other! And they’re so bloody …”

He looks out the window, scouring for sight of the creature that was once Bill Potts, the girl with eccentricities and quirks, dreams and benign delusions, favorite teas and toothpastes, with whom he spent ten years. Snuffed in a single gunshot, rearranged in a single delivery to a conversion facility. Lost.

“ … . breakable.”

And I fear frailty.

Frailty means you’re in danger.

Danger means you can die.

Death means

you’ll

forgotten.

itsjustkind:

@masterfulxrhythm replied to your post: ⚠ ooh, can you do missy please?

yeah well we’re at the exact right height to kick you in the nuts

“…I’ll put your things on high shelves so you can’t reach them.”

“Spite won’t save your ballsack from my wrath.”

~~#married~~

❛ We have something special, You and I.❜

itsjustkind:

“Mm?” He doesn’t process the words at first, far too busy listening to the Master’s heartbeats. The Doctor can count on one hand the number of things which can convince him to move from his current position. He’s draped half on top of him, head on his chest so he can hear the beating of the hearts he has such a strong connection to. It must be the most comfortable he’s ever been.

“I know. Nothing is the same with other people. I love other people, but they’re not you.” That’s as much as he can think to say for a minute or so, while he has time to consider it more. “You’re…the best. My favourite living thing. I’ll always love you.” He smiles up at him like an adoring fool. “Look at what you do to me.” He’s referring to the way he’s shamelessly drawing comfort just from being so close to the Master. “Nobody else can do this.”

SHIPPY STARTERS

“Then I trust I’m allowed to say things nobody else is. Such as: you’re
adorable when you get this way. Utterly precious. A sentimental twat.”

The Master’s in a lordly pose, reclined on his back on their bed, twirling and untwirling cloudy gray curls in his fingers, occasionally smoothing down the sheep’s wool of his oldest friend’s hair.

“And I love you boundlessly.”

itsjustkind:

His first feeling upon waking is physical pain. His head hurts and the memories from before sleeping aren’t quite accessible yet. In reality, this is the third time he has woken up, but the first couple of times he was only conscious for a few seconds at most — not long enough to think.

The Doctor doesn’t open his eyes straight away. He’s expecting it to be too bright. Instead, he shifts and tries to work out where he is. He has no shoes, and he’s wearing mostly different clothes, so somebody put him here. Nardole? Missy? Possibly. He doesn’t remember any of it. It’ll come back to him.

He finally opens his eyes, only to flinch in surprise at the sight of a face. It’s the Master, leaning over him. The Doctor goes to sit up a bit, re-establish his control, but finds himself groaning in pain instead. He sighs, giving up for now. “It’s you. What do you want? Come to kill me? Have you been watching me sleep?”

@masterfulxrhythm | the Doctor Falls verse sc

The Doctor has been in something between an exhausted stupor and a truly medical coma for over a day.

And the Master has not left his side once; even Missy has been more inclined to wander, to acquaint herself with the local children who recognize her younger self through refugees from another platform of the ship. Refugees who heard what he permitted to happen through conversion centers, even to children, before he hid as Razor. Refugees who whispered to parents, who gasped and pointed, and drew their children close. Yes, gawk away, asylum-seekers, the Master is no stranger to infamy: It claimed him young. Young, unaware, innocent. Like one of those kids.

But that’s a story, true as it may be, that no one will believe. No one but the gray-haired man over whom the Master stands watch.

Nardole initially tried to shoo away the menacing figure in black and red; the Master chased him out with various sharp and flammable objects, to the tune of Missy’s cackling, until at last he yielded.

Since then, he’s been seated on an infernally stiff farmhouse chair, keeping watch. Playing solitaire. Counting the aberrations in the ceiling woodwork. Tidying his eyeliner. Internally screaming.

As the Doctor awakens, the Master straightens in his seat, summoning his mask of callous malice.

“ ‘Auch, it’s me,’” he parrots, with utmost impudence, and a little more
of a lascivious undertone than is strictly necessary, bobbing his head
mockingly back and forth.

“Look here, Grumpy, while Lady, Eggy and Techy were out brainstorming,
I was preserving your injured arse for my own future chance to kill. Don’t
tempt me to satisfy myself prematurely.”

He offers a patient hand to aid the Doctor in sitting up.

itsjustkind:

｡･:*:･ﾟ☆ masterfulxrhythm:

“Having a good time?”

He asks it softly; he wants to tease the Doctor for his besotted demeanor. But this vulnerability is carefully won. Excruciatingly, in fact. The Master can’t bear to watch the Doctor retreat from him again; he would feel like a man in sweltering heat watching a cool ocean tide ebbing out of reach. Worse. Across timelines and despite his own self-thwarting spite–despite the sacrifices the Doctor’s undergone, in the face of that spite.

He’ll die before discouraging him now.

“HmmMmmmmmmmmMmmmmm,” he groans, and the smile on his face
spreads drunkenly. It takes very little pretense to praise the Doctor
for his courage. “That … feels lovely.”

“Shut up.” He swats the Master’s shoulder gently. Of course he’s having a good time. He’s still here, isn’t he? “You know I am.” There’s an effort made there to shoot him a glare, but it’s softer and much less cold than he usually manages to make it look.

Even despite being teased for the way he’s behaving, he doesn’t change it. His hand continues to move, and he doesn’t try to extricate himself from this hug. He doesn’t mind being teased — he isn’t ashamed. Not of this. Too proud to admit that he loves it, maybe, but never ashamed.

The Doctor’s finger begins tracing a word instead of a vague heart shape. “Can you tell what I’m writing?” He slowly forms the letter K, writing the name Koschei. He knows he’s more likely to start fidgeting if he has nothing in particular to focus on. But he’s not ready to focus on the fact that they’re cuddling and he never wants to move from here again, so he gives himself this task of writing words instead. Avoiding thinking about his quite frankly ridiculous depth of raw emotion is his preferred option, always. There’s no need to make himself any more vulnerable than he already is.

“No,” the Master yawns, an all-out ornery lie just to get the Doctor
mildly flustered.

His savagely wicked grin, one that rounds his cheeks so much that his sharp little eyes nearly disappear, proves otherwise.

“Yes,” he amends mere seconds later, with a low belly laugh. “you’re
writing my name in your notebook.”

He rolls over swiftly and presses a tender kiss square in the middle of the Doctor’s wavering mouth. He pulls back to look him in the eye, vulnerable and earnest; this is how it’s done, and you’re doing it well, a gaze ordinarily so malicious now gently encourages. He then rubs noses with the old owl, and bites the tip of his nose–hard, but not too hard, but really, how is he still the Master if he’s not a little vicious?–and then squirms back to his original position. He pushes his rear into the Doctor’s pelvis, just slightly, not a sexual overture so much as a clear affirmation that the Doctor may continue to fidget with his back.

He closes his eyes, resolved to croon and coo and perhaps snore a bit, while the surface of his skin becomes a place where the Doctor may regain confidence in physical intimacy. In trust.