“Well why WOULD I?” Koschei half-shrills, voice a disbelieving falsetto. “ ‘Escape,’ he says! You silly sausage!”
The nickname of Missy’s invention has stuck, and will stick, indefinitely.
He kicks his legs where he dangles “captive,” taking wholly for granted that his bondmate and dearest friend will hold fast. Even with the extra pound or two that the Master’s put on in middle age.
“What d’you intend to do, then, with my full and undivided attention? Play all the parts to Bohemian Rhapsody, on that bloody guitar? Give me an ethics lesson? Force me into indentured servitude, doing Console maintenance? Kiss me? Kiss me a lot? Kiss me a whole, WHOLE lot?”
“Kiss you? I might.”
He adjusts his hold again. They can’t get much closer to each other, really.
The Doctor tilts his head forward, touching the end of his nose to Koschei’s. For a second, he looks nothing but entirely innocent, loving, and intent on kissing him a whole lot. Then, his smile turns wicked, just as their lips are about to touch.
“Then again,” he whispers. “’That bloody guitar’ does sound rather tempting.”
He’s kidding. He can’t even kid himself for more than a few seconds. Finally, he closes his eyes and kisses him. Once, twice, and a third time.
“I love you. This is…everything I want. You. Me. Forever, if you want. I’ve never been happier.”
He kisses him again.
Koschei hoards his Theta close. He shifts to slide his legs around his waist, and his arms around his shoulders. He rubs his back while bunting the side of his face into the crook of the Doctor’s neck.
“You, bumping into me on that hillside on Mount Perdition, when we were little kids: that’s still the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Forever sounds good.”
“That is … . . absolutely out of bounds, you rule-breaking heathen!”
That the Doctor would regularly surmount his insecurities to display stubborn affection for the Master … oh dear. It delights the jealous Time Lord down to the marrow.
He turns and leaps indelicately into his lover’s arms.
“I’ll show YOU,” and he bites his nose, far from gently.
A cat, and guess who is this notorious, evil genius’s catnip.
“Rule-breaking heathen?”
The Doctor catches him, just about, and holds on tightly. Now that he’s got him, he has no intention of letting him go, regardless of the biting. He smiles instead, pleased to be able to demonstrate that he can hold him, carry him, even if he does look older and less strong than his previous bodies.
He shifts the Master in his arms, keeping one arm firmly wrapped around him at all times. There’s absolutely no chance he’ll be dropping him. The Doctor turns his head and kisses his cheek firmly, then does it again.
“You’ll show me? Oh, no, I think it’ll be the other way around. After all, you did just land yourself captive in my arms, and from where I stand, I don’t think there’s very much you can do about that to escape.”
“Well why WOULD I?” Koschei half-shrills, voice a disbelieving falsetto. “ ‘Escape,’ he says! You silly sausage!”
The nickname of Missy’s invention has stuck, and will stick, indefinitely.
He kicks his legs where he dangles “captive,” taking wholly for granted that his bondmate and dearest friend will hold fast. Even with the extra pound or two that the Master’s put on in middle age.
“What d’you intend to do, then, with my full and undivided attention? Play all the parts to Bohemian Rhapsody, on that bloody guitar? Give me an ethics lesson? Force me into indentured servitude, doing Console maintenance? Kiss me? Kiss me a lot? Kiss me a whole, WHOLE lot?”
“HAL-lo, WIFE,” the Master booms, “and HAL-lo, BABY!”
He kisses each forehead, loudly and appreciatively. And then, in answer to the Doctor’s question, he holds up a forefinger, and lofts an eyebrow.
“Watch this.”
He lifts a small remote control, no bigger than one of the TARDIS’s custard creams. He punches the red and green striped button at the center.
The entire library illumines with a lights display of every Christmas hue, including the shapes of Santa, trees, snowmen, reindeer, stars and snowflakes, to Trans-Siberian Orchestra music.
Koschei puffs up with endearing pride.
“For you, my girls! Ho ho, and a third, very merry, ho.”
For the past twenty minutes, while the Doctor’s been preoccupied flying about the Console Room inputting destination points and monologuing about what intrigues her, the Master has been assembling a holly, ivy, and mistletoe wreath. Every time she flurries past chattering, he’s wordlessly applied another piece of the wreath to her hair, with wry determination.
Ultimately, the entire crown adorns her head, and he smugly lifts a mirror for her perusal.
“Happy Christmas, I now have an excuse endorsed by your beloved humans to kiss you at all hours.”
It’s always the monosyllabic response to which he resorts, when his beloved speaks words of rare candor, and directness. It robs the Master of breath. But today he is older than the last time this took place, and today he is very weary. He gnaws on the inside of his lip, the dark circles beneath his eyes visible, dogged by drums, a specter he has shaken, save at times of great duress.
He’s seated at the edge of the open TARDIS doors, as the vessel idles in space, legs dangling out into the starry void, holding a thick volume in which but a slice of ancient Gallifreyan history is chronicled.
He’s dog-eared a page on the soured relationship between Rassilon and Omega. And it’s made him introspective. So introspective that he hasn’t slept in a week, an interval that takes its toll even on a Time Lord’s body.
“I’m tired of pretending I ever felt differently,” he adds, at length, turning a wistful smile over his shoulder. “Come sit with me. Make the universe make sense again.”
Icarus 