“Пересекая щиток расстояний, Беспрерывное эхо молчаливых признаний. Я подарю поцелуй и три слова. Голоса нет. Аллергия. Так многого надо- Простыню и пижаму, Взгляд Принцессы Дианы И запой по весне… Еще два банана, Нежности от коалы. Может просто устали?!!”
“What possible travesty could bring you to SAY that? You know, Doctor, you can’t muck about anymore throwing yourself in front of buses and cars and sundry catastrophes for some ‘greater good’ when there are people who love you whose lives you would SHATTER if death claimed you. No, NO. I’M talking now, it’s MY turn! You’re bloody SELF-ABSORBED when you think like that!”
The Master arches an eyebrow at this unsolicited onslaught of sanctimony clad in the guise of “tough love.”
For an uncomfortably long interval, he stares. Not a muscle moves from his precise and frostily detached place of examination. What a fascinating protozoan this person is.
After thirty seconds which feel like thirty years, he glides aside and gestures at the Doctor, puckish and blond, short and fine-boned and elf-faced and thoroughly female.
“As a matter of fact,” he drawls, swallowing a guffaw, “have you met my wife?”
He’d pursued her TARDIS single-mindedly for the past 72 hours, dragging himself from that lift on Mondas to his own vessel, materializing at the source of any blip on any instrument on his dashboard, and come, as though by the inevitability of fate, back to the United Kingdom, Earth, 2018.
A hobble from his TARDIS, disguised to appear identical to hers, blue paint and all, as a cheeky yet bitter lure; a trudge down rain-soaked pavements at night, the whole left side of his body gone numb from Missy’s stab wound, down slippery stairs and into the Tube, ignoring the reek of urine and garbage, minding the proverbial gap, and there she is.
There she is.
There she is.
And that brings him to the present moment, clutching the wound in his back, leaning heavily on a stained wall, spotting her silhouetted by a passing train.
Every time I see you I forget to just bloody say I love you. Every time, every time. I say some other stupid thing. And walk away. And is this my punishment? You, the cloven half of my soul, unable to remember me?
Oh, he could do anything with her in this moment, anything, anything. Make her believe she’s his wife. His ally. His slave. Anything.
But he would rather she know and hate him than lose their infinite and rich history.
“When did you regenerate?”
The Master’s own voice betrays him: it’s soft and tremulous. He endeavors to spark memories with the term; perhaps she can remember she’s a Time Lady, even if the circumstances elude her.
But then his body betrays him. He slides down onto his ass on the filthy floor.
The Doctor’s hazel eyes slide over to him, watching as his lips move from the crook of her elbow to her wrist. She allows a thumb to trace the seam of his lips and smiles.
“You romantic sap… Who would’ve guessed you’d be such a softy?”
The ingenious intergalactic criminal, the beast with fate impaled on its teeth, with death clenched in its jaws, defined from childhood by an act of murder not even his own … looks up now from his kisses with the softest yet smuggest expression.
“ … shut up. It’s your fault entirely.I can’t look at you and even muster a good dose of rage. You’ve taken my reputation and bloody C4′ed it. Why don’t you just sod off with your beauty, brains and vivacity, or have my baby already? Oh wait.”
♣ : slowly pulling them into your lap to curl up and cuddle
She doesn’t say a word as her best friend and other half pulls her into his lap. But she curls instinctively into his embrace with a contented sigh, feeling all her worries disappear as his arms wrap around her.
“There now, my Kookaburra… will you pet my hair?”
“Shhh, my sweethearts. I didn’t even mean to wake you.”
There’s a womblike solace to the darkness of their bedroom, to the way they needn’t fully see each other to still know the topography of each other’s bodies and minds. He collects her assuredly, and obliges her without hesitation, stroking her hair from root to tip, in even rhythms that match the rate of his hearts. Soon their heartsbeats synchronize, and he is as drowsy as she.
▨ : rubbing their back to calm them down when they’re upset
He feels the Master’s hand on his back before he’d even realized his husband was in the room with him. He flinched a little, but then allowed it, his expression pulled into a tight line.
“There’s nothin’ you can do, so you might as well jus’ leave me alone.”
“Rather not, thanks.”
Koschei ceases to rub his Theta’s back and instead descends to sit behind him on his jumpseat, straddling him and slowly, gradually, leaving room for his beloved to decline, wrapping his arms around his waist. When he succeeds at this much, he rests his cheek on the back of his shoulder.
“I enjoy you too much.”
He closes his eyes and waits out the storm.
The oddest things, the strangest habits and dynamics, are constant and forever.
Icarus 