His exclamation seems to combine everything he’s feeling at once; delight, embarrassment, confusion, and warmth. He turns on the spot, taking in the sight before him. He’s known for a day or so that his lover must’ve been planning something, and now he understands. The Doctor has just woken up from a long nap following a few days of avoiding sleep, and he realises Koschei must have been waiting for him to fall asleep to put his plan into action.
The console room is roughly fifty percent more redthan it was before. Red roses line every surface, stems wound around each control on the console. The Doctor sees that the pots on his desk previously containing just pens and sonic screwdrivers now contain flowers too. He loves it. He takes up one of the roses and just stares at it for a moment, beaming.
He’s captivated with the beauty of it all at first, and then at the thought of how much work must have gone into it. Where might the roses even have come from? He doesn’t know, and he’s immediately distracted from thinking about it further when he sees the Master appear in the doorway.
“Koschei!” he almost shouts, racing over to him. His own eagerness speeds him up, and he skids to a halt directly in front of him. It’s certainly the most excited hug he’s ever given him, and the most confidently he’s ever initiated a kiss when he presses his lips firmly to Koschei’s.
“I love you. Why have you done this?” For me, he doesn’t add. I know the facts, I know roses are a nice gift to give someone, but why do I deserve them? What have I done to make you so happy that you’d do this for me? He wants to know, so that he can do it again.
The Doctor gives him another kiss before he even lets him answer, like he’s rushing to expel nervous energy through affection. The smile stays on his face, evident in the crinkles at the corners of his eyes and the energy brought to his entire body.
The Master opens his arms to the Doctor and catches him with a grinning growl.
His answer is so sublimely simple:
“I did it because of what’s happening right now.”
You, overjoyed, childlike, carefree and robbed of your weight and your gloom, you, the way you were before, the last time you saw me when I wore this face, and before that, when we were children; you, with hope.
The Doctor looked up at her love in surprise, having been trying to keep her shivering to a minimum. She had hoped she was doing a good job of hiding them… but apparently not.
“Th-thanks K-Kosch…” She then frowned. “But… what about you?”
The blond clutches at his coat, which dwarfed her, keeping it tugged around her. she buries her nose into the fabric, both smelling it and thankful for the warmth.
“Oh, you know me. A positive furnace.”
It’s true, he loves cold weather; it quells the sweltering of his core body temperature, which has always been elevated, but particularly since his botched resurrected in 2009 London.
So he stands in the frigid air, soaking it into his ever-feverish pores, while beaming down at his slip of a lover.
“Welllll, what d’you know, I’ve a feeling I know who’s snatched me oop.”
The Master secures his arms firmly around the Doctor’s. One forgotten, tired misfit with a few too many wrinkles and silver hairs draws the hands of another to his lips and kisses his knuckles.
He turns in his arms, and burrows close against him, with a smile as drunk as his lover’s, nose rummaging into the skin beneath the Doctor’s chin, eyes closing contentedly.
A merry cackle just broils out the Master’s mouth, a defiant sound of mirth. He reaches back to pinch the Doctor’s trim little sides, and then to tickle them.
“SOMEONE didn’t strategize her attack particularly well!” he roars, spinning to grab and more thoroughly tickle her; somewhere in the ruckus that tickling becomes passionate kissing, on the mouth, the cheeks, and especially, her pale soft swan neck.
“Yes well, I suppose it’s a matter of you wanting a passable substitute, or the delicious genuine article that is me.”
Now might not be the most apt time to tell the Doctor that he’s been eating custard creams out of the TARDIS dispenser night and day, and this may be the reason for the slightest plumping of his midsection in past months … .
The Master welcomes himself directly into the Doctor’s lap. He drapes a garland of little sparkly ghosts and pumpkins around her neck, to match his own. He’s wearing a pair of Groucho Marx glasses, featuring fake bushy eyebrows, nose, and mustache.
“Trick,” he answers, and then hands her a caramel apple anyway, out of which he’s already taken a bite. “You’ll never guess who I am behind THIS disguise, Doctor.”
And then he takes off the glasses, and puts them on her face, and laughs and laughs.
Icarus 