Heart Heard of, Ghost Guessed (Part II)

[x_losfic]

Part I

***

He and Koschei had just had a real, honest to Rassilon fight. Koschei had positively screamed at him. Him! Koschei had never so much as raised his voice to him before! And about something as stupid as Theta mentioning he might not go home for break, casually suggesting that he might stay over in the dorms alone and catch up on work and finish a special project for xenolinguistics instead.

Koschei had been mocking, livid and said some incredibly unkind things about not wanting Theta’s company anyway that had demonstrated to Theta more clearly than Koschei’s indifference ever could how little Koschei feelings aligned with his own.

He’d stumbled out to his favorite professor’s cottage, needing to talk to someone who wasn’t tired of hearing Theta panic about how remote Koschei was getting. The fight left him craving the emotional high an hour with the older man always gave him. The tacit rush when their hands brushed over a book. The warm pleasure of his company.

The Master had opened the door before Theta could pound on it because he’d seen him through the window, pelting down the hill like he was being chased. He’d tsked. Boys and their melodrama. Well, he supposed the two of them weren’t doing much better now, actually. Only his contemporary Doctor didn’t harbor any such intense passion for him. The Master felt he would have known if the Doctor had any impulse to return to his younger days, simply because he looked so hard for any such tell. His current Doctor, it seemed, was a sphinx without a secret.

Theta stood there with a fist raised to knock and incomparably sad eyes. “Poor thing,” the Master clucked. He felt for Koschei, who had literally (as he wrapped a comforting arm around Theta’s shoulders and drew him into the house) sent Theta running into another’s arms. Oh how he’d kicked himself for it in the morning.

The Master winced remembering the row in question, remembering how furious he’d gotten, and the how truly sorry he’d been, then how worried and finally how poisonously jealous when Theta hadn’t stumbled back in until morning.

“You look a fright. And here I’ve said you always look well. Have some tea, calm down and make me honest.”

Theta gulped down the Trion chai, then moved slower, taking sips.

“I’m sorry to bother you like this—” he started in.

“You’re never a bother to me,” the Master corrected, sipping his own tea with delicate grace. Theta’s eyes fell on the open book on the arm of the chair by the window.

He didn’t think about why that chair always faced the window. In fact it was positioned so that someone occupying it might better track his arrival. The Master’s work was long since completed: his TARDIS pacified and the data he sought securely in his grasp.

Still he didn’t leave. He’d been waiting to play his own role, and he thought he might have lingered even if he hadn’t known he must. Tonight, he knew, he recaptured something he’d lacked for centuries. And that was a prize worth waiting for.

“What were you reading?” Theta asked, wanting not to think about the fight, which he helplessly replayed in his head, persistent and droning as hold music. The Master chuckled lightly, and Theta wanted to twine into the sound like a cat seeking caresses.

“An old man’s poems. Nothing that would interest you.”

“You always interest me,” Theta said, quiet and intent. “Read one to me? Please?”

“Do you think you’ve been especially good, then?” The Master asked, mock stern.

“I think,” Theta caressed the rim of his mug with a finger and stared at the table’s wood grain, “That’d I’d really like to hear your voice right now.” His accent was so like Koschei’s, and his voice was dark and full, like sleep and sex and layered whispers. It comforted him and confused him all at once, and he needed it because Koschei had screamed at him and Theta needed to purge the sound of it, still ringing in his ears like blasphemy.

“You flatter me,” the Master muttered, taking up the book anyway.

“Margaret,” he began, looking up to make it clear just who he was addressing, “Are you grieving over Goldengrove unleaving? Leaves, like the things of man, you with your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

“Ah! As the heart grows older it will come to such sights colder by and by, nor spare a sigh, though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie; and yet you will weep and know why. Now no matter, child, the name: Sorrows springs are the same. Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed what heart heard of, ghost guessed: It is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.” The Master finished reading, snapped the book shut and put it aside on the shelf. He glanced at Theta, seemingly awaiting a response.

For the first time in his young life Theta conceived of how small his light burned against the backdrop of the stars. How brief he was. He understood, as happens to boys his age, for the first time, that he (he himself, with all his hopes and dreams and thoughts—oh it had seemed academically true before, but personally so impossible!) would someday die. Theta felt the absolute centrality of getting the burning feeling licking up the insides of his hearts transmuted into action.

“I want you,” Theta announced, voice trembling through the words. But still he said them.

“Do you now?” The Master asked, so polite. Theta nodded mutely and held out his hand. The Master took it and stroked a thumb over the smaller knuckles.

“Well, then,” the Master said.

Are you sure, he asked, and Theta said yes clear and true. Do you want this, do you want me, and do you think you’re old enough to know, then? Yes and yes and yes. The Master made a meal of Theta’s acquiescence. He savored the clarity and honesty of Theta’s desire. He saved it in himself as a balm to all the wounds the Doctor would inflict on him, as a talisman against all the Doctor’s future ‘no’s.

He led Theta by the hand back into the dark-green walled bedroom and laid him on the bed. He undressed him, and, crouched above the boy, let Theta’s small, un-calloused hands work open the buttons at his collar, shivered when Theta kissed the skin beneath and looked up at him bewildered, not knowing what to do next. Tenderly, he smoothed a hand across Theta’s temple.

“I’m scared.” Theta admitted. And what must it be like to be so unashamed, the Master wondered, so trusting?

“I would never hurt you,” the Master offered softly, and it was the best lie he’d ever told.

Theta was naked and the Master was still clothed, if severely disheveled, and he smiled gently in response to Theta’s clumsy attempts to push at his shoulders and shove the fabric off, leaned back and did it himself.

He leaned in and kissed Theta, not as he’d imagined he might, with all the frustration of his unmended hearts screaming out against the man who’d rent them, but with all the headiness of everything he felt for his absent partner, and in loving memory of the boys they’d been. He could be gentle enough, the Master considered wistfully, to atone for everything he was going to do to him in a few hours, in a few centuries.

He took a jar of salve from the bedside and coated his fingers with it. He traced along the rim of Theta’s entrance. The Master pushed his way in with one finger and waited patiently for Theta’s eyes, which had flung wide with shock, to smooth closed with comfort and then tighten with desire. He used his free hand to pin Theta’s bobbing hips down to the bed.

“I don’t even,” Theta half laughed to himself, beginning to squirm on the solitary finger, so the Master slid another in to teach the boy something about impertinence, “Know your proper name.”

He curled his fingers and listened to Theta’s complaint dissolve into gasps. “I think you’ll find Master will suffice here as well,” he grinned, enjoying the fondly remembered view: Theta bucking beneath him, joyful. It was a reminder of when their love had been so uncomplicated by regret and hate, so unadaulteratedly good.

He held himself still at the entrance, and before he’d even asked Theta threw his arms around his neck. “I’m sure,” Theta kissed the corner of his mouth, licked until it slid open and met his own full on. “I’m sure,” Theta whispered when they parted.

The Master slid in slowly, letting the boy adjust, feeling so proud of the way Theta’s lips fluttered with pain, yet he didn’t cry out, and Theta’s eyes met his with determination, though their pupils dilated with as much pain as arousal. The Master wrapped a hand around the boy’s twitching cock and set about making the virgin comfortable. After a minute Theta nodded, and the Master withdrew and thrust, slowly, keeping an eye on the boy’s face to make sure it was all right.

“Relax,” he used a touch of hypnotic suggestion, taking advantage of Theta’s trusting gaze to make this easier for him. “Just relax. I have you.” And he did. He thrust shallowly. Theta started to mewl and intuitively work back against him, just slightly shifting to push back instead of lying there like a doll. The Master smirked at the beginnings of what would become the Doctor’s fiercely inventive, fully engaging technique.

He plunged in, sinking deeper with every roll of his hips and Theta came, splattering the Master’s absently stroking hand, mouth a big surprised O. The Master laughed, not unkindly, and muttered ‘oh Theta’ and continued to work towards his own climax. The boy under him was shaking like a live wire as his over-sensitive nerve endings got a rush of stimulation they’d never before been asked to handle.

He held up his cum-slick hand to Theta’s mouth, and Theta looked at him bewildered. “Go on,” he encouraged, and Theta’s tongue, cat like, darted out to taste it, looking up at him for approval and assurance that he was doing the right thing, “Good boy,” the Master muttered smugly, eyes bright with pride for his talented pupil.

Theta, with the resilience of young boys, recovered and began to pant and squirm his way towards another orgasm. Completely gone, with no real idea what he was saying, Theta called out ‘Master’ and ‘Koschei’ indiscriminately, and the Master was thoroughly amused.

He pushed into Theta’s mind and Theta’s eyes flew open and his lips landed on a ‘Master’ and he clenched in an immediate, powerful surge of mental energy and physical high that propelled the Master right along with him. Breathing hard, Theta drifted down. The Master wasn’t a lot more controlled himself.

“Oh god. You can do that?” Theta asked when he could talk again. The Master rolled them over so that Theta (still shorter than him, he was gratified to note) was on top.

“It would seem so.” The Master admitted breathily.

“That was—I don’t have. And you—” Theta’s body, which had been infused with adrenaline, hormones and mental stimulation beyond its capacity to process, suddenly collapsed into sobs.

“What’s wrong?” The Master ran a hand down the flustered boy’s back. If Theta took the opportunity to display astounding prescience and denounce him, say this had all been a mistake and flounce off, the Master was going to be severely annoyed.

“Nothing!” Theta insisted stubbornly. The Master rolled his eyes.

“In most of the universe's cultures it's considered impolite to lie to someone who's inside you. I say this for your future edification. And you’re mentally unwound enough that I can feel you lying. Sex tends to do that.”

“I’ll not blather on about my problems, not to you of all people!”

“I think you’ll find I’m long inured to your prattle,” he teased, “So I suggest you tell me. Or, oh I don’t know, I’ll flunk you or something.”

“I’m going to come off an insensitive git.” Theta, rather amusingly, appeared to be making a bid to hide by tucking his head up under the Master’s chin.

“Again, inured.”

“It’s, it’s just—look, you should know I’m in love with my best friend. But I think I love you too, and I can’t believe we just, I mean, and you—and I’d do anything for him and Koschei doesn’t even care!” the boy paused for breath and seemed to recover himself a touch.

“I’m sorry,” Theta warbled, “Here you’ve just given me something wonderful and I’m ruining everything, and I’m so, so sorry.”

“Shh. Save the apologies for when you’ve really offended me enough to earn them,” the Master stroked the line from the top of the boy’s spine down to his thoroughly interesting young arse, “You’re bound to be worked up after that. Quite a step you’ve just taken, Theta Sigma,” he paused, waiting until the boy’s trembling subsided, “And I wouldn’t worry about your Koschei. I think he’ll come around soon enough.”

“But are you—can we do this again? I mean, I love Koschei, but he’s made it clear he isn’t interested. And I love you, and you want me back, and I really—do you love me at all?” Theta asked hopefully, “Even a little?”

“You know,” the Master considered, “I don’t think you’re really ever going to grasp how much. But I have to leave the Academy soon,” before the CIA catches on to the universe’s oddest re-envisioning of Lolita, the Master didn’t say, “And I’m afraid we might not see each other for some time.”

“What?” You can’t be going! When?” Theta panicked.

“Tomorrow actually. The Academy, your excellent company notwithstanding, just isn’t for me. The only thing I’ll regret leaving is you. I’m returning to a project I was working on at the Arcadia lab site. I’m glad you came down tonight, it saved me the trouble of seeking you out.”

“That’s so sudden!” Theta tried to work himself up into righteous anger at the Master for not telling him this before, but he felt so vulnerable and peaceful at the moment that it was hard to do anything but lie there and listen to the older man’s heartsbeat.

“Change often is, Theta. Can you trust me if I say that, in the near future at least, your life will work out quite perfectly?”

“How can you know that?” Theta looked lost.

“You’re going to have to trust me. Can you do that?” Theta nodded, but then frowned again.

“What will I do without you?”

The Master smiled a touch bitterly. “I imagine you’ll survive somehow.”

“I could go with you,” Theta offered, shyly, looking not at him but at the wall. His embarrassment was almost comic considering the Master was still buried in him, and rather endearing, “Get off planet. I could be a help to you, you know I could. I’d like that.”

The thought of whisking an adoring, mutable Theta away from the planet and training him up to accept the Master’s moral vision of the universe, of finally attaining the Doctor as his willing consort, was nothing if not tempting. But it was of course impossible, and even if it wouldn’t play merry hell with their timelines, back on Earth he had an infuriating bastard all his own, waiting for his next visit with poorly concealed anticipation.

Deciding not to spoil his last evening with Theta, he changed the subject. “You know you can’t, love, but it’s dear of you to ask. And I believe you’d miss someone. This boy of yours. What’s so special about him that he has your magpie attention, hmm?”

Theta blushed but rallied, ascribing due seriousness to his emotions. “Are you asking why I’m in love with Koschei?”

“That was the question, if phrased a trifle more prosaically than I’d managed.”

“I love Koschei’s intelligence. I think he’s the brighter of us, but don’t tell him that.”

“Oh, I’d never,” the Master assured him, “Though I suspect he might feel the same about you.”

“I don’t know about that. He’s awfully confident. I love that about him too. Oh, and funny, no one I know is as funny as he is. And creative!”

“So not someone you’d ever be able to accurately describe as an ‘unimaginative plodder,’ then?” The Master prompted. If the Doctor thought that jibe hadn’t gotten back to him, he was dead wrong.

“Rassilon, no!” Theta corrected, looking scandalized, “My Koschei does not plod.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the Master’s tone was teasing, “Anything else, or have you wound down?”

“Not even close! I haven’t started on his body yet—oh! And his mind, in telepathic contact exercises? Tastes like green apples. It’s the damndest thing. So I’ve been chain-eating green apples for months now, don’t laugh.”

“Yours is a bit like lavender.” The Master said helpfully, “It’s quite nice.”

“I don’t think I can grasp what yours reminded me of.” Theta admitted. The Master refrained from pointing out that, as the stronger telepath who didn’t want to expose his identity, his mental sticky fingers filching the memory back out during contact were the reason for Theta’s gaff.

“Not to worry. Perhaps, since I’m going tomorrow and your young man might need some time alone to think after your argument, you should spend the night here?”

“I didn’t say we were roommates,” Theta realized.

Too clever by half, the Master thought narrowing his eyes, but said “My dear boy, at your age it’s always the roommate. So, will you stay?”

“Of course.” Theta snuggled into him, but then popped his head up hopefully. “You know, I have a lot more energy now, I think. I’m not terribly tired is all.”

Remembering Theta staggering into their room looking positively shagged into the ground the next morning, the Master remarked, “You will be. If you’re not tired I think I might have use for you, even at my age. What do you know about fellatio?”

“Er, ‘to be safe and treat my partners with respect and care?’ ” The Master chuckled, because he’d be getting that lecture too in about three weeks from a terribly awkward Verity. She’d figured out they were together with her usual intuitive intelligence, and barged into talking to him about it with her usual complete disregard for the consequences. At least the Doctor came by it honest.

“How would you feel about a practical lesson?”

“Ecstatic?” Theta tried. The Master kissed him soundly.

“Right answer. Curl your lips over your teeth, and I mean that, and let’s start by—you like lolly ices?” Theta nodded uselessly—the Master knew he did. Whole summers of his youth had been spent fixated on Theta and his tongue-lathed bright green ice pops. His lips were always stained that electric green after—oh, they’d been green apple flavored! Well wasn’t that flattering.

A bit chuffed, the Master continued, “Pretend it’s a lolly ice, then. As I believe I said when we met, I expect you to give me all you’re capable of.”

“Yes Master,” Theta smirked wickedly and ducked down. If this didn’t get him through whole hours of the Doctor’s whining about rights and consequences and what all, nothing would.

***

Early in the morning Theta slinked into his room, trying to be quiet and botching it. Every article of his clothing was rumpled. He reeked of sex.

Koschei had been up on his neatly made bed all night, fully dressed, staring at Theta’s empty spot with a rancorous expression. Waiting.

“Morning Koschei,” Theta managed before flopping face down on his bed. To his surprise and annoyance, he was roughly flipped over. Theta moved a bit more towards wakefulness when he processed the rage in Koschei’s eyes.

“Your hands are shaking!” Theta cupped them with his own. “Koschei, what’s wrong?”

“What’s wrong?” Koschei let out an uncharacteristic high-pitched giggle, “What’s wrong? Were you with whatever the fuck his name was? Did you let him touch you?”

“Yeah,” Theta bristled, “Best night of my life, actually. I don’t see what it could possibly matter to you, though. If you’re just going to be prudish about him being a professor, could you possibly freak out over on your bed? Some of us are exhausted. For an older gentleman he thoroughly tired me out.”

Koschei raised his hand, trembling, like he wanted to smack the other boy, but instead turned away, pressing his head into his hands as if to relieve some immense internal pressure. Theta stood up and took a step towards his distressed friend.

“There’s no need to be so vicious,” Koschei hissed, “Haven’t you done enough? Just—” he tried to breathe, “Just tell me, because I think you owe me an answer, even if you don’t see fit to give me anything else. What about me made me not good enough? What about him was better?”

Theta looked at him uncomprehending, and Koschei hated that after what Theta had just done he could still play at being so naïve. Could still look as innocent and untouched as ever he had.

“Cat got your tongue, or is it all tuckered out?” Koschei snapped. “It can’t be that hard to tell me, can it? Give me something specific. Whatever it is, is it something I can change?” Koschei swallowed, “Something I can’t? I have to understand how you could do this to me. Remember how you cried when I broke my arm? I let you coddle me all damn week. You wince like it’s yours when I get a headache, even, and now you don’t even have enough sympathy for me to be discreet!”

Theta was crying, he noticed absently when he looked up. Great big meaningless crocodile tears slicked his cheeks, varnished them bright and hard and red.

“Oh don’t give me that,” Koschei whispered, crossing the distance between them and viciously slamming his mouth down on Theta’s and swallowing the cries, grinding his groin into the other boy’s like he could transfer desire through touch and make Theta feel it just through the sheer intensity of his own need. Koschei broke away and shook Theta.

“Why do you hate this? Why couldn’t you want me, Theta?” Koschei asked desperately, almost crying himself, “You didn’t have to love me, I could have lived with less, but why the fuck couldn’t you want me, even a little? How hard is that, hm? How difficult do I make it?”

“Koschei, I can want you! I do. I always, always do,” Theta responded, “We’re idiots, do you know that? I’m only crying because—how can you not know I only went to him because you don’t notice me? Oh Koschei, I thought you’d never notice me!” He brought Koschei’s hand down from its death grip on his shoulder and put it on his left heart. For Theta it was the truer organ, because both of his parents had it. When he thought, in the human sense, of giving his heart to someone, this was the one he thought of.

Koschei stared at Theta’s face and didn’t dare to hope.

“I love you.” Theta said plainly, emboldened by a promise made by someone he trusted that, in the near future at least, his life would work out quite perfectly.

“Have you somehow missed what everyone knows but you? God,” Theta laughed, “I feel like even the birds in the courtyard and the walls of the room must be onto me. And if you want me, even a little, I’ll never so much as look at anyone else.”

“I notice you,” Koschei whispered, “I’ll always notice you. How can you know me like you do and not know that? Theta. I love you. I don’t know if I’m ever going to be able to tell you how much.”

“Oh Kosch,” Theta started to stroke the other boy’s erection through his uniform trousers, “Let me start to make it up to you.” And it was Theta’s turn to guide Koschei to the bed by hand, never breaking eye contact. Theta sat down.

“Help me out of my clothes?” Theta asked, biting his lip.

Koschei worked his way down, peeling off layers of the other boy’s sloppily buttoned clothes. Koschei felt himself getting angry again, because every article seemed guilty, looked as if it had been crumpled carelessly on a floor. But his anger was subsumed by rising wonder as more and more of Theta’s skin was revealed to his eyes, and to his hands.

“Can I—” Koschei began, hand hovering above the pale breadth of Theta’s chest. Koschei would never admit to it having shaken slightly, so close to something so long desired.

“Yes,” Theta assured him, arching up to make himself more accessible, so that Koschei’s fingers met his skin. He used his own to open Koschei’s curled fingers into a flat palm. With his hand atop Koschei’s, he encouraged that open hand to drag down anywhere, everywhere Koschei liked.

“Undress?” Theta asked, “Let me look at you too, Kosch?”

Koschei nodded and disrobed quickly, without grace or flare, in a hurry to get back to touching something far more interesting than fabric.

When Theta had made a preliminary investigation with his hands and tongue that left Koschei more than a little unsteady on his feet, he swallowed.

“I want to do what he did to you,” Koschei muttered, too shy to say ‘I want to fuck his touch off your skin,’ looking at the wood floor and committing a knot in it he’d never noticed before to memory.

Kissing Koschei and nodding, Theta lay back, reaching behind his head for a pillow to prop himself up with. “Come here. Touch me.”

Koschei’s jabbing, searching fingers were as yet unskilled, and he pried the other boy open a bit too roughly. When he realized his Theta was still wet and stretched, skin glistening with proof of his indiscretion, it was all Koschei to do to keep from screaming. Instead he shoved an unlubricated finger in.

Theta gasped at the contact. “Koschei,” he began in a slightly warning tone, but Koschei ignored him and shoved two more fingers in and twisted them frantically, determined to erase all traces of the man who dared touch his stupid, innocent, feckless beloved.

“Stop that, it hurts! Listen to me!” Theta arrested the dark haired boy’s motion with a hand clenched at Koschei’s wrist. “Slower. Gentler. Do it like you love me, Kosch.”

“I—I’m sorry,” Koschei muttered, shame faced, withdrawing his hand.

“Don’t be, it’s all right,” Theta smiled, a little bit rakishly, “And I don’t remember asking you to go anywhere. I think I’m ready. Have you got anything we can use, because if not, there should be a tin in my bedside table—oh good, you do. Of course you do. Smear that—guh. I see you’ve grasped the principle. Clev—mm. Mm. Koschei. Just like that. God. Let’s try now.”

“I haven’t even asked,” Koschei realized, a little disgusted with himself as the desire to protect Theta, which had been choked out by his anger, flooded back. He began to feel like a right ass. “Do you even want to, now? Aren’t you tired?” Koschei rested his weeping erection on top of Theta’s own and closed his eyes for a moment to savor that.

Koschei hesitated on the brink, wanting to shove himself in clumsily. But he was still half bitter, not quite ready to forgive and forget having been denied something he felt should have been his by right. Koschei was even afraid he wouldn’t be able to measure up to the skill and experience of Theta’s earlier, older lover, that he couldn’t make it good for Theta because he didn’t yet know what he was doing himself.

“Too tired for you?” Theta boggled, “Are you mad? Koschei. I’ve been dreaming about this. Disinterest is one thing you’ll never have to worry about. Come on, stop thinking for once and just—” With that inventive Koschei took himself in hand and pushed in, and Theta promptly shut up and hissed, sore but willing.

“How long have you been dreaming?” Koschei asked, taking it slow, because it felt so warm and good but he could see Theta twitching at every drag of his cock inside him, and while he felt an urge to punish the other boy for having run out on him, he didn’t want to break Theta in half. The other boy seemed, despite his recent adventure, impossibly tight.

“Since that double full moon night we went swimming in the ocean during the vernal break.”

“That,” Koschei gasped, sliding in and out with a bit more tempo now, “Was three summers ago. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Why didn’t you?” Theta countered, rocking back, “And since we’re on it, when did you decide you might be interested?”

“Well,” Koschei buried himself in his friend with a plunge at a new angle that made Theta squeak, “do you mean when I first had an urge to fuck you or when I thought I wanted to be with you? Because I had the latter figured out since I don’t know when, but I wanted to be in you Just. Like. This,” he punctuated with a quick series of thrusts, “when we went hiking and you wanted to explore that limestone cave so badly. You got so excited about it that I thought how cute you’d look bent over a rock formation.

“And I wanted you,” Koschei added absently, focused on what his hips were doing and how nothing he’d imagined felt this good, “to do it to me when you got first in the pub quiz and looked so damn smug about it.”

“We were thirteen that trip!” Theta gasped, “Koschei, you absolute pervert!”

“Shut up and enjoy it,” he growled, “Now, are you ever going to swan off with what’s his name again?”

“N-no! You and only you, forever,” Theta promised, looking ready to drop unconscious but still putting in a good effort to hold on.

“That’s an awfully long time,” Koschei narrowed his eyes, “Say it again.”

“F-forever,” Theta stumbled over the word as Koschei picked up speed.

“And whose are you?”

“Yours, god, yours, Koschei!”

“Good. Keep talking. You can make amends for the rotten night I spent worrying, but it’s going to take you rather a lot of time.”

“Sounds fantastic. Time,” Theta grinned cheekily and put a hand to Koschei’s head, slipping in and starting something glorious, “is exactly what we’ve got, love.”

***

Centuries later Gallifrey had burned, and some time after that it had been reclaimed.

Two men walked along the paths of their old academy. The shorter of them held out a hand to arrest his companion’s progress and pointed down to the empty glen between the copses.

“I had you there first,” he pointed out with a smirk.

“I do remember, thanks,” his companion rolled his eyes. “You know, it didn’t come to me for the longest time? After that whole Kronos farrago, if I recall. I dropped the test tube I was holding when it hit me. Your best Humbert Humbert cost me a whole day’s worth of work.”

“I wondered why you looked so embarrassed to see me again when I turned up at the lunar penal colony.”

“Oh be fair, your ludicrous plastic commissioner’s costume carries at least part of the blame for that.”

“Touché,” the Master smirked, “I just want to take the opportunity to point out that I had you first. And I’ll have you last. Isn’t that neat? I do love a balanced equation.”

“Idiot. You always had me,” the Doctor grumbled and began to walk on, “If you’d asked nicely you could have had me properly in that body. You know, the corresponding me, rather than having to resort to something distinctly statutory.”

“What, really?” The Master didn’t budge. “You’re joking. You would have thrown me out on my ear if I’d so much as leered.”

“If? You were a leering machine! It was all leather gloves and cigars and emphatic leering with you! Still is, minus the cigars. And if you’d so much as offered to spend a day with me in lieu of plotting the Rube Goldberg conquest of Earth you could have had me six ways to Sunday. Boy or man, I always did fancy the Nehru jacket. Well. And the man in it, even if you’re thick as a brick.”

“Good album,” the Master responded automatically, “So even while I was mocking past-us for not being able to discuss and consummate their relationship—you know what I hate, Doctor?”

“The film Flash Gordon for absolutely ruining a beard you’d otherwise have loved to grow?”

“Yes, as well you know. But I was going to say dramatic irony.”

“Ah. Considering how frustrated I remember your little social calls leaving me in that body, I think I agree. But buck up! We’re certainly not ruing our chastity these days! Want to go re-christen every place we’ve ever done it on Gallifrey? Ring in the new model?”

“That,” the Master was dizzied by the logistics, “Is going to take rather a lot of time.”

“Time,” the Doctor grinned, stepping close enough to dart in for a kiss, “is exactly what we’ve got, love.”