The Final Game, Part II

[x_losfic]

Title: The Final Game
Author: x_los
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Three/Delgado!Master
Chapter: Part II of III
Summary: In which the Master wins, and the Doctor's attempts to talk his way out of it prove less than successful. Darkfic with consent issues.
Beta: deborah_judge , who made me change a major plot element and rewrite two and a half scenes, and was totally right.
A/N: Ridiculous 'What kind of tree' game courtesy of Mark of the Rani, and high school students with crushes everywhere.

Part I

PART II

He dreamed of the Doctor, sleeping with him in the bed. Of his voice at twelve, clear and burbling. The sound of him at fourteen, riddled with change. That same tenor turned deep and certain in their fourth decade, mellow and complex in their fifteenth.

He dreamed of Theta’s voice cracking, but instead of a man’s voice slinking through the child’s Theta’s voice cracked and was simply broken. Where there should be new, deep tones there were whole words lost to silence, and Theta was so embarrassed he cried. Koschei wrapped his arms around him, because he was young again and he could. But the crying didn’t stop. It just continued on soundlessly, like a human film on mute.

In their close proximity came sweeter dreams of when he still had the right to append the Gallifreyan modifier for ‘mine’ to the Doctor’s name. That was still how he thought of the Doctor, with the possessive prefix for ‘of me.’ But he knew better than to say the name like that aloud. The Doctor hadn’t given that privilege back to him yet. But he would, in time.

The Doctor avoided saying ‘Master’ to his face, though the Master had heard him speak it to his friends. He was hiding in English, where they had no history—a barren language. A fake, or at the least insufficient one, in which they hadn’t even a linguistically constructed relationship.

The last time they spoke properly, the Doctor had used his name. The conversation had unraveled the work of years, decoupled them from each other as if they’d never been united at all. How could you propose to go from being tied so completely that every pain and joy was shared, that you were one cohesive whole, to not even having each other in your lives? It seemed an artificial, impossible transformation to the Master.

But in his dream of the last time they addressed each other by their right names, the Doctor’s voice was all wrong, nothing like it had been. In the Master’s dream the Doctor became progressively calmer, running through the words he’d said then as if reading off an uninspiring script, until he was speaking in a flat monotone. The Master’s pitch remained feverish as it had been in life. “I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known you’d react like this!”

The Doctor seemed terribly bored. The Master almost missed the hitched sobs that had spaced his words the first time around. “What are you saying? It shouldn’t have been about my reaction. People are dead.” The Doctor idly played with a cuff—he was older, the Master realized, he looked as he did now. The Master examined his own hand and found he was also in the wrong body to be having this conversation. “How could you possibly not have known, known in yourself that it was wrong?”

As if drawn to reenact the scene until it met some different end, the Master moved to gather Theta in his arms even as he’d tried then.

“Don’t touch me, god, your hands, they’re—”

“Don’t be stupid,” the Master hissed, “I didn’t do it with my hands. They’re fine, they’re clean. Come here. Let me hold you. I’m sorry, I won’t do it again. I won’t ever do it again.” If he could touch the Doctor he could explain why what he’d done was necessary. The Doctor would calm down. Would agree with him. Would apologize for making such a terrible fuss and worrying the Master unnecessarily with all this absolute nonsense about leaving.

“No,” the Doctor promised, “You won’t. Or at the very least I won’t be here to see you do it.”

“What does that even mean?” The Master asked, desperate as he had been, as if he were expecting a different answer.

“That I can’t stand to speak to you and don’t want to be in the position to do so ever again.”

“But,” stupidly bewildered as he had been, “you love me! You can’t do—”

“Don’t you see I can’t be with you now and retain anything of me?” Where the Doctor had swallowed hard there was just a blank, pleasant space. “Oh, Master. You’ve ruined everything.” And in this version of the day the Doctor wore a polite smile. As if he was vaguely sorry about the whole business, but it simply couldn’t be helped.

“Good morning, Doctor.” The Doctor blinked his eyes open. The Master was standing a few feet away, fully dressed.

Cautiously, the Doctor opened his mouth to respond, not really sure himself of what precisely he was going to say. No sound. He tried again. Nothing. Beginning to panic, he sat up, hand to his throat, to tell the Master something was wrong before realizing oh, how stupid he was, of course the Master knew something wrong, because he’d done this.

“How’re you feeling?” The Master’s glee was poorly hidden behind a glittering smirk. “Well, I hope?”

The Doctor opened his mouth to shout at the Master involuntarily before snapping it closed with a murderous expression. The Master chuckled.

The Doctor clambered out of bed and grabbed the Master’s arm, eyes frantic.

“What did I do?” The Master guessed. “It’s an interesting question. Shall I give you a while to ponder it? I wouldn’t want to ruin the surprise. Besides, they’ve laid on breakfast.” He patted the Doctor on the cheek, expression mocking. “Do hurry along, we’ve a busy day ahead of us.”

“Would you like to know why you find yourself incapable of speech? Aside from your stunt last night, I mean.” The Master cut his poached egg with a knife and fork into precise, evenly sized bites. He looked up at the Doctor. “Well?”

The Doctor rolled his eyes and mouthed ‘yes’ accompanying it with a nod.

“I feel as if something could have been appended to that. Two things, actually. Oh don’t play dull. You know what I want.” The Master appeared to thoughtfully consider his toast before looking up at the Doctor expectantly.

The Doctor mouthed ‘Yes, please, Master.’

“Good. You’re going to let me into your mind. Not to break it—I can’t imagine why you seem to have come to that ridiculous conclusion,” he snapped when the Doctor opened his mouth, “and don’t try to interrupt me, it looks ridiculous when you haven’t any voice to do it with. Merely to establish my presence there. To keep an eye on you, if you will.”

The Master went into the explicit, relevant psychic details of the fate that awaited the Doctor. The Doctor didn’t catch many of the specifics of the telepathic process, though he noticed the Master seemed to want him to feel well informed.

The Master was standing in from of him, having grasped why the Doctor was suddenly absorbed in glaring heatedly at his cup of Earl Grey.

“It won’t be anything like what they did to you. You know it won’t,” he gently stroked the Doctor’s face with his knuckles, and the Doctor, too absorbed by fear of something entirely different, didn’t shirk from the contact. The Master, encouraged, turned the Doctor’s face toward his. He let his touch comfort the Doctor, like a skittish animal wants calmed, and he enjoyed the feel of the Doctor’s skin under his fingertips in the same motion.

The Doctor seemed to come around suddenly. He gave the Master an explicit glare that asked how exactly letting the Master into his mind to—what had he said? ‘Keep an eye on things?’—wouldn’t be at all akin to being telepathically manipulated by the High Council. Certainly their motives differed, and the Master wasn’t likely to inflict the Council’s wanton damage. But having the Master in his mind, doing whatever he would whenever he liked was a threatening prospect, its offered pleasures threaded through with a horrifying vulnerability and dependence. He’d always valued his autonomy, and now that so much of it had been stripped from him he didn’t surrender its remnants lightly.

The Master dropped his hand. “It’s practically non-invasive. I’ll just have access. I’ll be able to read you, to tell if you’re about to do anything foolish to yourself or to me.”

To read me and then to stop me. I’d be offering my mind to a murderer, a man who absolutely can’t be trusted. The Doctor’s eyes narrowed eloquently. So much for ‘waiting until I want you there,’ then.

“How terribly arrogant that look is. I suppose you’re fretting about having your will curtailed? Well, Doctor, sometimes you want stopping,” the Master’s voice was firm.

And if I say no? The Doctor wondered. His nostrils flared with anger. The Doctor wondered if the Master was willing to kill to get him to capitulate. If so this was rather a foregone contest.

“I’m not holding any external leverage over you,” the Master got the jist, “I haven’t any need to. You do so enjoy your own soliloquies, and you can’t stand not to have the last word. Silence will wear you down more effectively than anything else could. The moment you let me in your mind, we can communicate properly. We’ll share thought again, as we should. And I’ll return your voice to you so you can chat with all and sundry at your whim. All you have to do is allow me back in.”

The Doctor was shocked at the almost magic-trick of the Master’s ability to parse him. But why wasn’t the Master just threatening to kill? Come to think of it, why hadn’t he tried that last night? With wondering eyes, he stared at the Master.

“I’m not going to kill anyone I don’t need to,” the Master offered, “That’d be a poor start to my benevolent reign over these primitives. And,” the Master looked into the Doctor’s eyes, tone intense, “I learned some time ago that you’re rather down on my dispatching lives for your benefit.” The Master’s expression relaxed into a wry, mocking grin. “Especially when I do it for your benefit, it seems. You know, you really could learn to accept a compliment graciously.” The Master clucked disparagingly.

He rubbed the Doctor’s chin with his thumb. He couldn’t seem to stop touching him. But there was no reason not to indulge himself, not anymore. Not even the Doctor himself would impede him. He sighed ruefully, because he shouldn’t have needed to force this.

“One day you’re going to forgive me. Oh, you no doubt find the idea impossible now, but given time you’ll be reconciled, and you’ll forgive me all of this. And then you’re going to thank me for being willing to go to such lengths. For being strong enough to do for us what you wouldn’t. I look forward to that too much to let some primitives killed in your courting impede us, just because you couldn’t forgive yourself for deaths in pursuit of something so personal.”

He kissed the Doctor on the forehead, willfully ignoring the Doctor’s expression, which seemed two parts disgusted and one part disappointed in him. “You should get properly dressed. We’ve a lot of work to do.”

For some days his need for the Doctor warred with the shame he attached to their last encounter in his mind. No amount of telling himself that the Doctor was simply being foolish as usual, and that he, the Master, was stronger than this, and should just make the decision for both of them, could quite eradicate his disquiet. Nowhere in his copious planning was a response to a Doctor who wasn’t at his core still his. That evening had threatened his foundations.

The night after it happened, he came to bed some hours later than the other Time Lord, hoping the Doctor would already be asleep. No such luck. The Doctor was staring at the ceiling, limbs pressed tight against his body. He seemed to be pretending their bed was a single, and that he was blind and deaf to the Master’s entrance in addition to being mute.

The Master turned away from him and slumped down on his side of the bed (the left, as always—well, at least they’d kept to that, so something was solid between them). He stared at the wall. He could hear the Doctor breathing, could hear his respiration slow as the Doctor succumbed to sleep. He could hear the Doctor’s hearts beating, and feel his warmth, just impossible inches away. It brought him a species of comfort he’d long thought extinct. He knew the Doctor’s rhythms, and they twined into his own like a lullaby.

The next night the sounds and the nearness made him hard and frustrated. He spent the day snapping at the Doctor, getting even more annoyed with him for not being able to properly banter back. He slept with his fingers buried in the pillow clutched against his chest, fisted in the fabric like he wanted to rip it apart.

Most days he took the Doctor with him. Trailing the Master like a shadow, silent and brooding, the Doctor surveyed the Master’s new dominion. The worst bit of it was that the Master was trying.

On their way to one of the Master’s endless improvement projects they’d driven by the UNIT encampment. The detour had certainly been by the Master’s design, a way of showing the Doctor that they were still alive, as he had said they were. The bulletproof windows had been down. The Master must have had security, at least in London, very well managed indeed, to be so bold.

The Doctor had caught a glimpse of Benton in a sling talking to Jo in the yard. They’d looked well, if not happy. Jo had spotted their car and run the length of the fence to the end. She’d laced her fingers through the metal and called to the Doctor. No doubt she wondered why he wouldn’t respond to her.

“Like a dog on a choke chain,” the Master seemed amused at Jo’s rush to the fence. “She’s certainly a loyal pet, if little else.” The Doctor turned back to him with a seething look, and the Master allowed himself a small smile. Good. He had the Doctor’s full attention again.

The new schools, populated by nervous children in clean uniforms of good material, actually looked to be universally better appointed than they were before the invasion. Everything looked like a public school. Old, lovely manors with pleasant lawns co-opted for the use of inner-city students who’d never so much as seen a properly funded institution before this. They sat at banks of computers a generation before such machines would have appeared in human schools. A cursory glance told the Doctor these were infinitely superior to the Earth’s early models as well.

The Master had brought in off-world experts to manage several of his initiatives until the humans could produce people of comparable caliber and tend to the work themselves. He explained as much to the Doctor. The Doctor wanted to ask the bustling aliens, who seemed so genuinely committed to the welfare of their charges, how they could participate in this obviously politically illegitimate system, no matter what good they thought they were doing for the children specifically. But he’d lost the faculty to question them.

What about children whose families didn’t want to send them to boarding school, he wanted to know. What about the world outside England? During the car ride back to the hotel his desperation to do what he always did, to pick apart a situation until the mass unraveled and yielded the truth at its core, gave him an idea. He grabbed the Master’s hand, and the Master, amused, let him. The Doctor drew his question on the Master’s palm in the circles of their language, running the nouns in small whorls across the mound at the base of the Master’s thumb, threading the verbs through the lines of his skin like reverse palmistry.

You can’t possibly have established this over the entirety of the planet, the Doctor finished spelling, ending with a percussive tap at the heel of the Master’s hand.

“Of course I couldn’t possibly have,” the Master conceded, “Not yet at any rate. No, it’s not like this in regions where there’s little infrastructure to start with. But I’m confident that by the end of the decade we’ll see a complete application of the new system.”

So you intend to force them all into your institutions, regardless of their right to make choices about their own children’s future? You’re not going to endear them to you by dispensing with their perogative to raise their young as they like! The Doctor got the final, tricky consonant across by raking his fingertips down the Master’s palm, and the Master frowned for an instant before he understood.

“Does nothing satisfy you?” The Master chuckled, and there was something patient in the sound. He mock-sighed. “It’s never good enough, is it? Now you’re against universal education.”

The Doctor grew more excited and leaned over the Master, grabbing both his hands and letting the words pour out. No one asked you for this, swirled across the Master’s palm, darting up to his knuckles for a radial vowel, skirting over to his other hand for a relative clause, No one made you World Minister of Education. This is coercive. It’s authoritarian. How can you not understand that makes it wrong, no matter what your intentions or resources are?

“Oh come now Doctor,” the Master scoffed, curling his fingers around the Doctor’s for emphasis, “They’ve access to resources they’d never have known existed without me. Don’t children need the guidance of adults? This precious planet of yours engages in constant, pointless war. Its citizens routinely starve, die in droves from the simplest diseases. We could end that. Doesn’t it follow that we should? Don’t you, with your bleeding hearts, feel a compulsion to aid them? Isn’t that your usual mode?”

The Doctor uncurled the Master’s fingers to smooth out a blank canvas. They’re not children Master, and you’re not their god.

“Ah. So you’d prefer inaction then?” The Master sneered. “Let them wallow in muck and squalor until they can elevate themselves from it. How terribly non-interventionist of you. Perhaps the Council did manage to hammer a lesson home after all?”

The Doctor’s eyes narrowed at that, and he held the Master’s gaze, not looking down at their hands as he furiously sketched out a reply. A species develops at its own rate, along its own path. You can’t determine their course for them. And that aside, if you wanted simply to offer them advancement you’d have no need rule the planet.

“Is there a better way to insure they won’t dicker themselves to exhaustion and then blow up the technology because it confused them?” The Master laughed. “I’m sure you recall the Axonite farrago. I thought they were liable to simply start flinging the samples at each other from the treetops.”

The Doctor had to grin boyishly at him at that. Their faces, he suddenly realized, were close in the cabin of the car. The Master’s dark eyes were locked with his. When had he come to lean into the Master? When had they brought their lips so near? He didn’t even remember having moved. The Doctor stiffened and his expression closed into a sneer. He threw down the Master’s hands and sullenly scooted to the other end of the seat, pointedly looking out the window.

The Master chuckled lightly and passed one of those treacherously communicative hands through the Doctor’s hair. “If there’s anything else you’d like to know, all you need do is ask me.”

The Doctor snorted derisively at that.

The next Sunday morning the Master woke up languid and slow and reached over to touch the Doctor before he quite understood why his ability to do so was so especially notable. The Doctor nuzzled into his touch before coming to a similar realization himself. They both stilled, suddenly and awkwardly.

Slowly, and in complete silence, the Master toyed with the buttons of the Doctor’s silk pajama top, seeming to tease them open nearly incidentally. He brushed the fabric aside, and he tentatively ghosted a hand down the length of the Doctor’s exposed chest, sleepily marveling at the way the surprising muscular definition looked in the dappled sunlight coming through the curtains.

The Doctor tilted his head into the Master’s cautious kiss and then took possession of it. He poured all the agency he’d lacked in the past week into the contact, rolling over the Master until he was straddling him. He pushed a hand under the waistband of the Master’s pants and stroking the stiffness left there from sleep with all the savagery he was capable of in his drowsy, just-woken state.

The kiss continued, long and sloppy, drowsy and warm as the Master found the Doctor’s own cock. The Doctor’s free hand alternated between fisting in the bed sheet and clutching at the Master’s shoulder as the other man moved in infinitely patient rhythm. The Doctor broke off from kissing him when he came, burying his face in the Master’s neck and shaking a very little. The Doctor didn’t remove his other hand from the Master even when he came himself, and the Master spilled himself in the Doctor’s grip as it trembled and clenched in the Doctor’s own throes.

They didn’t speak all morning. They took their time. Nothing penetrative, nothing where they couldn’t see each other’s faces. Recovering, they kissed, sliding against each other. Their sticky fingers at first just traced patterns, then they were clenching at each other’s arms, until the Master flipped them over and the Doctor grinned up at him. He arched an eyebrow, a question and a challenge, and got a breathless chuckle from the Master in response.

The Master reached down and found the Doctor ready for his attention. Their mouths were close. He could taste the Doctor’s shivering breaths as he played with him. The Doctor, eyes wide, threw an arm across the back of the Master’s neck, pulling at him. The gesture was desperate, almost wanton. The Master smiled beatifically. This was what he’d wanted.

It was oddly like being children together again, experimenting in their dorm room, skipping classes to learn how to pleasure each other, making each other come for the first time. You forgot, he supposed, as you grew older, how delicious those touches could be. He’d not remembered until now that they could kiss for hours when they were boys and never tire of it. It had slipped his mind, how Theta’s fingers flitting across his ribs used to almost make him lose control. The Master reveled in the chance to learn the Doctor’s body all over again, to explore it like it was a new country he was claiming for himself. He mourned the loss of some of the Doctor’s old sensitive spots. He discovered all the new ones with gleeful fascination.

He licked behind the Doctor’s ear and slowly, slowly traced the shell of it with his tongue. The Doctor, who’d never cared for that much before, slammed an open palm on his back. His fingers spasamed once, abruptly, before the whole hand curled into a tight fist resting on the Master’s shoulder. The Doctor dug in with his knuckles when the Master lightly bit the lobe. The Doctor’s nails clenched his ass helplessly in a sort of flailing encouragement. The Master hissed and shuddered under the grip, liking it almost too much.

He returned to the reorganization of Earth the next day with a sense of unassailable good will towards his subjects, dragging the Doctor around with a bright, manic excitement. The Master was proud of his work, of the Doctor, of himself. None of the Doctor’s sour looks could shake his conviction that now, at last, they were headed in the proper direction.

The Master leaned back from his calculations, satisfied. He smiled down at the neat circle below him, which worked its way to a complete formulation of his thoughts with the elegant certainty and simplicity of the best geometric proofs.

“Come here,” he called the Doctor over. When he didn’t hear the shuffling noises of the Doctor coming, he looked over his shoulder. The Doctor, splayed out on the velvet chaise lounge with a novel, was peering over the back of it at him with a raised eyebrow, seeming to ask why he was supposed to be responding to his Master’s call like a pet.

“I believe I’ve already clarified my position on things I ask of you, orders, and the surest way to go about the prevention of cruelty to humans,” the Master said with dry politeness, looking over the red leather back of his chair at the Doctor, quirking his own eyebrow back in challenge. “Come here, please.”

The Doctor, with an annoyed look, dropped a bookmark between the pages of The Adventure of the Empty House with pointed insouciance and rose with slow, stately grace. He walked over to the Master and propped a hand on his hip as if to indicate Yes? before dropping his eyes to the Master’s calculations and scanning them almost involuntarily. He sucked a cheek in and nodded, impressed despite himself, drawing his finger to a particularly good point and tracing the ink. He looked at the Master questioningly.

“The engine design for a hydrogen power plant. It should stabilize the reaction enough to contain it, for a few centuries at least.” The Doctor frowned at this, as if suddenly aware of something.

“What?” The Master asked. The Doctor grabbed the pen from his hand and in the margins traced a complicated little addition that would purify all the water that came through the plant, spitting it out clean enough to be potable, regardless of its entry toxin level.

“Oh naturally, broadening the functionality. Brilliant,” the Master praised. Then, unable to resist pointing it out, he smirked. “How very obliging of you, Doctor.”

The Doctor defensively folded his arms over his chest and jerked his head in the direction of the hotel’s entrance to suggest that whatever regime his innovation was coupled to, the technology was in the service of the people out there. If the plant was going to be built, it might as well provide humans with a long-term solution to an environmental problem.

It was rarely terribly difficult for the Master to deduce the Doctor’s meaning. Especially considering that they’d carried on a conversation about the long term effects of what the Doctor had termed the Master’s ‘ad hoc, inorganic, top-down meddling’ the night before. They’d spent a few hours reading in the parlor and covertly passing a note back and forth. They’d pretended to not to hear each other furiously writing responses, covertly grinning behind their books.

They’d meant the argument. Yet it had been too much like they were schoolboys again not to be funny. They’d never gotten caught discreetly slipping each other bits of the day-long epistolary conversations that had kept them entertained through classes. Not until twelfth forum, anyway. They’d been having a fierce debate about something completely ridiculous—they disagreed now over whether it had been over the order of their constantly growing queue of places to go when they obtained a TARDIS or ‘What kind of tree would you be?’

Theta had made the note into a paper airplane and fired it the short distance to Koschei’s head to make his point felt. Theta’s amateur ballistics had prompted Koschei to make an indignant noise, which had caught Professor Flavia’s attention and landed them both having to give mind-numbingly boring putative tutoring for a week to stragglers in the lower forms. After that they’d been seated further apart, and had to become adept interpreters of each other’s body language. Being around the Doctor so constantly now, he was reacquiring it easily.

“Quite right,” the Master smiled, understanding the Doctor entirely just from the direction of the jerk of his head and the particular set of his jaw. “Now kneel.”

The Doctor looked more taken aback than defiant.

“While you were immersed in your novel, I’ve been redefining hydrogen technology for Earth—using only her astoundingly limited resources, I should point out—all day long. And having accomplished something, I find myself in need of relaxation,” the Master explained, stimulated as ever by the Doctor’s ability to grasp and share his thought so completely, and not a little amused by the Doctor’s expression. “Ergo…” he gracefully prodded the desk with his leg, turning the chair to face the Doctor, and gestured at the carpeted floor.

Bracing his hands on the arms of the chair, the Doctor slid down, leaning over him, staying bare inches away from the Master until he sat pooled at his feet. He was trying to use the closeness to weave a bit of defiance into the gesture. But he knew he’d not quite managed it when his own skin buzzed because he’d liked it too much. The Master shivered, but not out of any feeling of being made uncomfortable.

“You know, I find it rather charming when you try to lord it over me. It’s something like watching a child imitate his parents. The way you always try to appropriate my tricks, like you’ve never so much as seen anyone else’s—really, I’m flattered. Now get to work.”

With a snarl the Doctor freed him and slammed his mouth down, taking the Master’s cock in him to the root and working as quickly as possible. The Master went from mildly agitated to fully stiff in the space of moments. The Master gasped and pushed his hips forward so that he was as deep as possible in the Doctor’s throat. In a second he’d recovered and was tugging the Doctor off him by his curls.

“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” The Master panted.

The Doctor looked up at the Master’s face, down at the abruptly hard length of his cock, and back up at his offended expression. The Doctor drew in both his cheeks in an elaborate sucking motion, rolling his eyes.

“Yes, obviously, but not as if you can’t wait to be done with it,” the Master looked exasperated, seeming a bit disgusted with him. “You’re either completely incapable in this regeneration, or completely insensate. Try it again, properly, if you think you can. And take your damn time about it!”

The Master shook his head, but then hissed out a long breath as soft lips, gentle this time, caught just the head of his cock and lapped at the slit like a cat consuming at a bit of cream. The Doctor’s hand busied itself with the shaft, moving up and down at a leisurely pace that made the Master squirm. His legs splayed wider in the chair on either side of the Doctor.

He lifted a hand instinctively to push the Doctor’s mouth further down, but the Doctor batted him off with a his other hand and proceeded to take him in inch by slow inch, sometimes sliding further back up to slowly descend again. His hand came to rest instead on the Doctor’s head, bobbing with the motion of it. The white curls were soft, and the Doctor’s lips were soft and the heat on the Master’s flesh was softer still.

The Master made an undignified little noise. “Faster,” he commanded, but the Doctor just grinned at him smugly around the mouthful and slid back up to the tip again as if to chastise his impatience. The more the Master squirmed, the more even the motions of the Doctor’s mouth became.

“Come on,” the Master grit through his teeth, nearly begging.

The Doctor decidedly did not ‘come on.’ He was working at his own pace. The Master gripped the chair arm harder with his free hand, letting his head drop back, only to snap it forward again to watch the Doctor’s every motion, intent on not letting a detail escape him. The concentration in his eyes was an aphrodisiac. The slight scrape of the nails he drew almost nonchalantly across the Master’s inner thigh made him throb with need.

The sight of the Doctor between his legs was—he swallowed as the Doctor finally took the full length of him in his mouth, and whimpered when he deigned to work his throat around the Master—what had he been thinking just now?—Oh, the Doctor was still capable. Their eyes met, and a shadow in the shape of some deep feeling flickered across the Doctor’s before he looked down again, as if unable to hold the Master’s gaze.

“Look at me,” the Master insisted quietly, “I need you to look at me.”

Slowly, almost reluctantly, the Doctor’s eyes drifted up again, and he flicked his tongue around in his mouth around the captive flesh like a lash, as if to punish the Master for having stilled it. The Master moved his hand from the chair arm to the Doctor’s shoulder, squeezing it hard as the Doctor took him in and held him there, coming hard, fingers tight in case the Doctor tried to slide away without swallowing. Some ludicrous rush to rid his body of the Master’s come would have ruined it. The Doctor didn’t even try, and the Master eased himself out with a sort of caution, afraid to break this.

“You win the point,” he dropped his hand from the Doctor’s hair to trace the rim of his cheekbone, skating his fingertips up around his eye.

The Doctor smirked an of course I do, his expression very fond.

Comments

[redvelvetaddict.livejournal.com]

oooh my ;-; <3
i seriously love how you write 3/delgado!

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Honestly, writing darker!them is hard for me, I'm much more prone to Killing the Groundhog lulz.

Pfffffft your icon!

[order_of_chaos]

Loved it. Especially all the different varieties of non-verbal communication. It seemed so much more intimate than speaking.
*is utterly delighted and at the same time very very sad*

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Glad you liked it! And save the sad for next chapter. No srsly, quoth Wilco, I am trying to break your heart. Or rather the next bit is.

[astrogirl2.livejournal.com]

Wow, this continues to be amazing. So sad, and yet so hot, and so... Man, I don't know. Your version of the Master captures that horrible stalker thing almost too perfectly. It's so utterly repulsive, and yet it is impossible not to feel sympathetic to him, because he's apparently missing the part that understands what the hell it is he's doing, and to him it just feels like love. That's not easy an easy piece of characterization to pull off, I think, and it's disturbing, but it's him.

I absolutely love the language stuff, too.

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

I kind of love the idea of him being unable to understand the wrongness of it. I think it does interesting things to his character/culpability. I'm glad you're liking it!

[bagheera-san.livejournal.com]

I... kind of love it when you talk linguistics. *fans self* Tracing the letters on the Master's hands! If that isn't sexy I don't know what is.

And this is *so* not going how I thought it would. It's still dark, but so much subtler! It's riding the fence between absolute bliss and complete mutual destruction. I think this really is going to break my heart more than a bit next time.

The Doctor clambered out of bed and grabbed the Master’s arm, eyes frantic. That twist made my breath hitch with shock. Ow. That's potentially one of the cruellest things I've seen the Master do to the Doctor specifically in fic. Except... it's kind of okay. In this chapter. I don't know what's making me want to headdesk more - the Master's complete emotional idiocy or the Doctor going along with it. Why not just shoot yourselves in the head?

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

It's riding the fence between absolute bliss and complete mutual destruction. I think this really is going to break my heart more than a bit next time.

*grin* Good, them-fic should go there!

Yeah, it's pretty horrible, which, hopefully, if I write it right, there'll be more of next time. This is kind of the Nice Chapter Before Terrible Chapter.

[gritsinmisery.livejournal.com]

Oh, um. Wow.

This part was (mostly) so sweet, which means the next part is gonna break my heart, isn't it? *whimpers*

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Yeah... a little bit. If I write it right. Way to go guessing what I'm going to do, though!

[eryaforsthye.livejournal.com]

I'm adoring this more and more through each and every (dozen) re-readings I give it.

The fact that there is only one part left in this makes my cry. :(

Can we has the next part soon? Please?

*whimpers*

*goes off to obsessively re-read mem*

*dances*

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Probably next week on part III, sorry to say. But I'm really glad you're enjoying it!

[deborah-judge.livejournal.com]

Mm, nice. The changes really highlight the brainsex. All it takes is communication and they're both lost. Looking forward to the next chapter!

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

As usual, I'm really glad/relieved the changes work for rather than against the thing. Also more sex now, so, y'know, that's so rarely wrong.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Allow me to squee and flail over in the corner for a moment... *cue wild flapping and squeaking noises*

Ahem. Now the awesomeness of this can be found in the details. We have the Master's dead-on understanding of the Doctor to the point where the man doesn't even need to speak and they still know what they're saying to each other. And of course the ever-lovely "I'm holding the last word hostage for your good behavior." (Man, that nearly slays me every time.) Also the burning appropriateness of taking the Doctor's voice away because the Doctor told the truth with his body but lied with his voice.

And the Master imprints his will upon the universe that it was a lie, because it can be nothing else and have him stay in one piece--Nowhere in his copious planning was a response to a Doctor who wasn’t at his core still his. That evening had threatened his foundations.--god, those are glorious lines.

I chortle over the unspeakably brilliant little point that they have sides of the bed! Also, as always, the little details of food cut into bites of precisely the same size and napkins tidied into perfectly parallel lines. Ah, the OCD of a species born into the patterns of higher math must be phenomenal!

And then I hit the porn and, um, what was I going to say again?

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

And the Master imprints his will upon the universe that it was a lie, because it can be nothing else and have him stay in one piece

Looked at like that, there's a certain kind of bravery, or at least incredible self-confidence, in wanting in the Doctor's mind. He's so convinced he's right, that the Doctor couldn't possibly have meant it, that he's willing to see for himself/face the possibility that he's wrong.

sides of the bed!

*Grin* Naturally! I was going to say 'and a showering order,' here, b/c Domestic!Them is ultra-cute, but I can't see young!Master getting the whole Showering Separately thing. 'But why would you want to do something alone when we could do it together? And the possibility of missing out on potential shower-sex is bewildering! I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean when you say you 'want a few minutes of the day to yourself,' but it annoys me nonetheless.'

Also, can I just thank canon for giving me the Doctor--bitchy, belligerant, belicose Six, mind--turning to the Master with a big dewy-eyed 'I think you'd be this kind of tree, lulz!' speculation, and the the Master, rather than getting weirded out, being immediately like 'O rly, wai?! *giggle*' Dude. If that's Six? Then in high school they must have been just retarded about the whole thing.

[prettyarbitrary.livejournal.com]

Self-confidence definitely. The entire universe could be arrayed against the Master to disprove his point and he'd still be sure that he was right! :D

But I think there's also a certain...hmm, desperation isn't quite the word. A refusal to give up. For the Master, the Doctor is synonymous with life. It is a kind of courage, even a terrifying level of courage, but from the standpoint of a man like him, is it even possible to choose to disbelieve when doing so would destroy him?

I'm afraid I don't quite get what you mean when you say you 'want a few minutes of the day to yourself,' but it annoys me nonetheless.

AH hahahahahaha! And canon deserves some kind of award, I think.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

excellent as always. i particularly like the dream with the doctor reading from a script, which is indescribably disconcerting.

actually this part set me off on an enormously long 'sign language in doctor who' train of thought (which you can feel free to skip if you like becuase it's not really to do with this fic, i'll let you know when i'm talking about it again). because i was wondering whether the doctor and jo could have been working secretly at sign language in case of capture (probably not, but... could be) and then i thought - surely its a language and the TARDIS should automatically translate it into spoken (to us) english, i assume this because a) people always seem to be talking in english and in the deviant strain (i think), a nine&rose&jack novel i half read once, the doctor explains all about how the TARDIS doesn't just translate, it fixes idioms and changes names etc and b) some languages (the only one i can think of is the language of the weird wheeley elephant things in 'the amber spyglass' but i'm sure there are others...) rely on movement as well as sound and therefore the TARDIS would have to take this into account. but maybe not and

-HERE I START TALKING ABOUT THIS CHAPTER AGAIN-

i really like the tracing of the gallifreyian symbols on the hand for communication, and the doctor eyerolling and mouthing out sarcastic 'yes'es.

not really sure why the doctor sleeps with the master so soon, it feels like a rather sharp change, but i'm willing to go with it.

and i love the note passing, particularly if it was about which tree they would be, because its so tiny and stupid and shows how much they must have talked about everything else :)

[aralias.livejournal.com]

also, left is the only good side of the bed.

*nods*

it's true.

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

...wait, why particularly the left side?

[aralias.livejournal.com]

because of the ancient alignment of good and evil and...

ok, no. the real answer is because i always sleep on my right and i like to hold onto the duvet and you can't do that if you're facing towards the middle. it occurs to me actually that i am thinking of left as the master looking at the bed, but actually in a bed this would be the right.

well, that's another really long post about something entirely random in this thread so i stop now.

(n.b. because i am too lame for words, i did actually go looking for left/right good/evil thing because i suspect i wasn't entirely making it up. these william blake people (for example) explain that in fact left is evil and right is good (so i was right about it existing, but wrong about pretty much everything else). which would explain why the master is drawn to the left of the bed and the doctor to the right.

... i'll go now.

[evilawyer-fic.livejournal.com]

i like to hold onto the duvet and you can't do that if you're facing towards the middle.

Unless you're trying to sleep with someone like my S.O. There are people out there who can "hold onto" the blankies (i.e., hog and/or steal them) no matter where they're facing.

Sorry to interject myself into your private life but, hey, it's just one of those things I do that make me who I am.

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

I am always confused by the process of sleeping on any particular side, as I tend to land in some bed shape thing in some arbitrary position and never remember it or wake up in the position in which (people tell me) I went to sleep.

Sidenote: While I imagine maintaining control, even of the duvet, even in his sleep, is vitally important to him, I imagine he's torn between that and his urge to obsessively face the Doctor's side to make sure he's got him riiiight where he wants him and that he hasn't absconded in the night or anything.

Wow. I am loving your nerdosity at this moment re: the Blake thing, and I hope you know that. Awesome.

[aralias.livejournal.com]

i think you may be right about the holding onto the blankets. i assume the master would be more intent on holding onto the doctor and to hell with the blankets.

as for the sleeping on one side or the other, i find it completely impossible to get to sleep any other way. too aware of lying down if i'm lying in a different position.

also, i'm glad the nerd thing amuses you, rather than makes you run away in fear *nods*

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

Gestural non-linguistic elements like he and Jo use, though, would those translate? Like, if it's not an agreed-upon language proper? But then if just ganking telepathic thought and spitting it out as a language, maybe so?

Oh no, don't worry, Three yells at himself hard about that one next time. You get more him-perspective, which will be nice, given that most of this has been pretty Master-rific. I kind of wanted this to be the sweeter chapter...b/c the next one's kind of awful.

I maintain that if he and Six had a conversation that stupid /in canon,/ that they must have talked about absolutely everything they could think of at one point.

[evilawyer-fic.livejournal.com]

I am liking this story, but I am having a sinking feeling that the Master will be disappointed in what turns out to be his misinterpretation of the Doctor's non-verbal communications. I will, however, wait patiently for Part III. You will, no doubt, put my concerns to rest.

[x-losfic.livejournal.com]

That or by the Ambivalence of Rassilon. Master thinks a 'yes' means 'we are on the road to recovery and all will be well and surely our awesomeness will be enough to convince you to shove over your silly moral quandries.' Doctor thinks it means 'that one occasion on which I had a moral lapse and said yes, curse my weak will/woe I am torn about all this.' So in that sense, yes: owned by miscommunication.

[arysteia.livejournal.com]

Was so excited on seeing this pop up this morning that I took a chance and clicked on it anyway, despite being at work. If you knew how draconian our net security is you'd realise what a compliment this is.

Am pleased to report that, as I theorised, your purple prose language is elevated enough not to set off the banned words filter. My own lj sets it off immediately, fwiw, so evidently I swear more than I thought.

Is it terribly wrong -- or just a sign I've been in rift fandoms too long -- that I didn't find this remotely non-con? Of course now I'm desperately worried about the Master as unreliable narrator...

My favourite part, apologies to the prons, was definitely the possessive modifier and the revocation of the right to use it. Aiee but that punched my teacher of dead languages buttons.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Wow. My purple prose eats all commers! So baroque not even the computer knows its pr0n!

Well, chapter one is more non-cony, and chapter three has a bit, but this is the Nice Chapter To Show They Could Be A Good Couple And There Is Something Worth Saving Here, so no, not non-contastic. But I'd say Master is increasingly unreliable as he gets into his own head, but not so much in these encounters. So no, Doctor wasn't trying to kosh him with something the entire time. ;p Though as an alternate reading, COMPLETE!Denial!Master is really, REALLY creepy and interesting. And someone should write that.

Oh man, my dead language buttons, let me show you them. I did work in high school on Middle Egyptian (with a Demotic Egyptian prof tho, weirdly) at the oriental institute and they gave me an RL button when I left that occupies a place of pride on That Denim Jacket With Buttons Every Slightly-Alt Girl In College Must Own. ...we are weird, weird language geeks for thinking the possessive modifier thing is sad/hot.

[rusty_halo.livejournal.com]

This is beautifully written. You do a great job of capturing how the Master can know the Doctor so incredibly well and yet completely fail to *get* him. Such a fascinating dynamic.

[x-los.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much. I really like what you said as a way of describing, it, actually. This has been a really interesting take on them to write!