The Final Game, Part III

[x_losfic]

PART III

The Doctor lay in bed starring at the ceiling the next morning. The Master got up and dressed, frowning in a few minutes when it became apparent the Doctor had no intention of doing the same.

“Aren’t you coming?” he asked. The Doctor didn’t so much as glance in his direction. The Master walked over to his side of the bed and knelt down, tone playful. “You can’t be planning on deserting me. Imagine how unimaginably dull my day will be without the benefit of your company.” The Doctor still didn’t respond. The Master touched his arm and the Doctor shrugged him off, turned away. For good measure he scooted a few inches over, effectively out of his reach.

“Are you ill?” The Master asked, confused. He heaved an exasperated sigh at the Doctor’s continued incommunicativeness. “Fine,” he groused, standing and walking to the door, “Don’t tell me. Though I’m afraid you’ll be terribly bored here alone.” He paused in the lintel. “I supposed I’ll see you this evening, then?” But he was still addressing the Doctor’s back. He snapped the door closed behind him with a slight growl of frustration.

He purposefully arrived home early. He smiled brightly at the Doctor, who’d looked up at the noise of his entry in the middle of fetching something from one of the suite’s kitchen cabinets. The Master hoped that whatever mood he’d been in that morning would have dissipated. He hung up his overcoat and came over to the Doctor, throwing an arm around his waist and pulling him into an embrace.

“I’ve managed to clear the entire afternoon,” he pronounced, leaning in to kiss him. The Doctor craned his neck away and disentangled himself neatly. He returned to the drawer, found what he’d wanted, and went over to the kitchen table.

“What’s wrong?” The Master asked. The Doctor actually did turn his head to look at him. His wore a dark, mocking smile that seemed to ask what he thought was wrong.

“Well if you’d simply indicate—” the Master snapped, irritation with the Doctor rising, but then broke off, confused, as the Doctor grabbed a stack of papers off the desk. Sheets and sheets, covered in circles. “Have you been writing all day?” He asked, perplexed, walking over to examine them. “At least let me see what you’ve been doing.”

The Doctor carried them over to the sink and took out the lighter he’d found in the cabinet. He flicked it on deftly and caught the corners of the papers. The Master made an automatic catch for them, but the Doctor turned and held them out of his way. He ran the edges through the trembling hot-orange cone of the flame, expression unfathomable as he turned his words this way and that better to catch fire. He dropped the papers when he was satisfied.

Disturbed, the Master watched him. When the ashes curled in the sink, shrank, and dissipated, the Doctor turned on the tap with a dismissive flick. The Master swallowed.

“If you’d tell me,” he tried. The Doctor opened his mouth to let out a harsh chuckle, and couldn’t. He turned a look of frustration laced with loathing on the Master, who bristled defensively in the face of it.

“You know what you have to do to end this. It’s not complicated. It’s not more than I deserve, or more than you owe me. You’ve a terrible habit of making everything harder for yourself.” He turned and stalked towards the door, grabbing his coat off the hanger with too much force. It overbalanced, swung wildly and fell. The Doctor studied it rather than him.

The Master came back very late, having absorbed himself in project after project. He’d startled his assistants with his drive, only relenting and letting them go home in the early hours of the morning.

The Doctor wasn’t in bed. The Master’s eyes narrowed. He walked through the rooms of the suite hunting him, a stray, panicked thought insisting he’d been gone too long, the Doctor might have gotten out, might be anywhere. He might have simply disappeared into the city, which suddenly seemed vast and imposing, now that the Doctor might be missing in it—but the Master told himself their mercenary guard was better than that.

Still, the Master relaxed slightly, finding him sitting up on a couch in the library reading. He wanted to make some sarcastic comment about the Doctor having sat up waiting for him as an apology for his rudeness earlier. But he knew himself better than that. He’d mean it, and the Doctor would hear how much in his voice, and it wouldn’t come off properly as a joke. It wouldn’t sound like anything more than an admission of need.

But then he noticed the Doctor was dressed for bed, with a blanket draped over him.

“I thought we were past this,” he gestured at the Doctor’s makeshift arrangement. Tiredly, the Doctor turned to him and raised an eyebrow. “Look, don’t be ridiculous. Come to bed. It’s late. We’ll have it out in the morning.” The Doctor put his book down and folded his arms over his chest. The Master could either drag him there himself or call in the guards to witness their embarrassing domestic dispute. He wasn’t coming under his own steam.

“Fine,” the Master hissed. He returned to their bedroom to undress, scattering bits of clothing on the floor, uncharacteristically disorderly in his annoyance.

Properly attired for sleep, he returned to the library with a pillow and blanket, resisting the childish urge to drop both on the Doctor’s head. He pulled the other sofa alongside the Doctor’s, dragging the Oriental rug out of alignment in the process. He pushed the couches fully together. He picked up his supplies from the ground, placed them on the sofa and glared at the Doctor pointedly.

“You’re absolutely certain you wouldn’t prefer the bed?” His tone oozed sarcasm. “We’re a trifle old for sleep-over arrangements.” The Doctor simply pressed further into his couch, as if he could hide from the Master in the seam. The Master plucked the book from his hand, turned out the light and clambered onto the couches. In the dark, he tried to gather the Doctor’s resisting limbs to him.

“I’ve put up with quite enough from you today,” the Master whispered as the Doctor struggled, “Now come here. Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”

With a soft exhalation, the Doctor let himself go pliable, and the Master wrapped his arms around him. After an unsatisfying minute or so he picked up the Doctor’s arm and placed it over his own waist. He tried not to wince at the way it fell over his body as if it were an insensate object.

“You were fine yesterday,” the Master murmured to him, “And the day before. It’s a little late to play coy.” Still nothing. Upping the ante, he pressed his lips to the Doctor’s ear. “We spent a whole day just touching each other. And yesterday you sucked me off and smiled about it. I’m sure you remember.” He ran a hand down the Doctor’s back, letting it come to rest proprietarily on his ass. “I know I do.” He ran his tongue down the line of the Doctor’s ear and felt him tremble, smirking to have elicited a reaction, wanting more. “You bite your lower lip when you come,” he half-taunted, “I like it.”

The Doctor, moving suddenly, wrenched the Master’s palm up from his ass and started to trace on it. The Master chuckled, observing the Doctor’s clenched, angry expression, so infinitely better than his blank disregard—self-righteous and glaring at him, just aching to be corrected. He didn’t mind the Doctor like that a bit.

Yesterday I let you goad me into something regrettable. I should have known better. I rewarded your ridiculous behavior. It was wrong. The Master, annoyed by the Doctor’s dismissal of what had been, for him, an incredibly intimate encounter, grinned unsympathetically.

“I hardly goaded you the day before that,” he pointed out. “In fact I don’t recall having had to say a single word.”

The Doctor took a long, calculating pause before responding. We have a certain history, his fingers were tentative, and I let myself fall prey to nostalgia.

“Incredible,” the Master hissed, stung, “that you could be this capable of lying to yourself.”

As if the Master’s anger had emboldened him, the Doctor pushed further. It meant nothing. It can’t mean anything, not like this. Not anymore. How could it, when you’ve done this to me? The Master snatched his hands back as if they’d been scalded.

“You’re a fool,” he sneered, “and as usual you’re wrong.”

The Doctor reached out to say something else and the Master scoffed at him, rolling over, effectively shutting him down. He heard the Doctor sigh, and then settle. When he was sure the Doctor was asleep he turned back around. He watched the Doctor’s chest rise and fall, his lips part invitingly in sleep. The Master observed the bright white of his hair in the pitch room, and, giving in to his compulsion, threaded his fingers through it.

He tugged the Doctor to him, just slightly. In unconscious innocence the Doctor fell into his arms, nuzzled into his neck and threw an arm around him, holding him tightly. His body molded into the Master’s as if by design.

“You’re mine,” he whispered, and the Doctor stirred in his sleep but didn’t contradict him. He ran a hand down the Doctor’s back, pressing the base of his spine to angle the Doctor even closer to him. “You’ll always be mine,” he promised.

In some ways getting what he wanted and then having it taken away was harder.

He threatened repercussions the next morning and the Doctor came with him, uncommunicatively staring straight ahead, taking no interest whatsoever in the things the Master attempted to direct his attention to.

“Docile as a cow,” the Master taunted, desperate for his attention. The Doctor wouldn’t even roll his eyes. His determination to punish both of them for his lapse was an act of self-control the Master could have admired, had it not been leveled at him.

In the afternoon they met with an off-planet ambassador from a near-by commercial centre about importing some terraforming equipment that the Master couldn’t be bothered to make himself. The man tried to address one of his questions to the Doctor, who just turned to glare at the Master. The ambassador, worried he’d made a gaff, rushed to correct his error.

“I’m sorry, is there a cultural prohibition against addressing your partner? I meant no offense. We know so little about this planet.”

“We’re not from here, actually,” the Master corrected, loath to be mistaken for a human among good company and exceedingly annoyed with the Doctor. “And there isn’t one. He’s practicing elective mutism out of sheer petulance. If we could return to the matter of the terraforming module?”

“Of course,” the ambassador conceded, doing his best to politely ignore the vitriolic expression the silent man directed at the unflappable Master.

The Doctor slept in bed that night, apparently having conceded that point to the Master. The Master folded his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. The Doctor did the same, hands down by his side, carefully not touching the Master at any point. In identical black pajamas their bodies made stark parallel lines against the white sheets.

“I’m not enjoying this,” the Master offered. “How could I be? The only person on the entire planet I’ve the slightest desire to have a conversation with,” he didn’t extend it beyond the planet to the universe at large, because that was better left unsaid, even if he suspected they both knew it was true, “and he won’t do the one small, simple thing I’ve asked of him. And believe it or not, I actually enjoy talking to you.” He smiled, self-deprecatingly, dropping his left hand down to rest by his hip. “Do you need encouragement? I miss the sound of your voice. Is that sentimental enough for you, Doctor? You always did like a cloying declaration.”

The Doctor breathed. A soft, thin, sound. He moved his hand just a touch letting it meet the Master’s. The Master casually laced their fingers together.

“I wonder,” the Master continued, still taking in the crown molding, “Every hour, if this will be the one. If this is when you fall. If you’re going to give in because you want to, or because you can see how much your refusal pains me, and how childishly stupid it is to deny me, and yourself. Either would do. I’d prefer both, naturally, but then I so rarely get what I want with you.”

The Doctor curled his fingers down over the Master’s knuckles, silently sympathetic, but firm. Unwavering.

“Not tonight then,” the Master conceded. “Well. Goodnight then, Doctor.”

They had a million tomorrows between them, and sometimes he could see them, stretched out before them like infinity. And on those nights he was patient.

The Master came home, using lunch as a pretext to himself. He found the Doctor still in bed, enjoying a cup of tea and reading the morning paper, which had just started re-circulating. This docility, from the Doctor of all people, offended him to the bone. It evidenced the Doctor’s stupid, unshakable depression, when he should be active and happy in the Master’s company. He was determined to provoke the Doctor into some other response.

“If you’re going to lie there all day I might as well get some use out of you,” the Master pronounced, taking off his jacket and pulling off his tie.

The Doctor gave him a Do you really intend to do this? look that seemed to find him incapable of what he indirectly threatened.

“I’m perfectly serious,” the Master assured him, “I have every intention of taking you up on what amounts to an invitation.” He gestured at the Doctor, dressing gown, bed rumpled hair and all. “Next time you might consider not behaving like an invalid.” He turned to fetch a bottle off the bureau. “Or coming with me,” he muttered.

When he turned around the Doctor wasn’t in any greater dishabille than he had been when the Master walked in.

“Do you need me to make this about consequences?” The Master asked, voice brittle. Every day the Doctor was close and untouchable in equal measure. It was driving him half mad. The Doctor didn’t so much as nod, just starred at him with hard, apathetic eyes that unnerved the Master. But he shouldered the weight of that disconcerting stare, finished undressing and sat down on the bed.

The Master reached over to touch the Doctor’s face. His thumb rubbed over a contact point. “I’ll stop, if you tell me to stop. All you have to do it tell me no. And then I won’t have to force the issue, and will I? Just say ‘no,’ Doctor.” The Master’s voice was a curious mix of bitterness and pleading. The Doctor looked at him with an expression of pity that made the Master want to shut his eyes so he didn’t have to see it. So be it.

“Well. Now you, then.” The Master gestured to the Doctor’s clothes. His voice had shed that vulnerability, and now it didn’t broke compromise. The Doctor pulled off his dressing gown and tossed it to the side. He turned over, pushing his face into the pillow, not wanted to give away anything by his expression.

“Turn over,” the Master wouldn’t have it, and he poured the accumulated ire of the past days into his words even as he briskly coated his fingers with the gel from the bottle, “You look at me when we’re together. You’re thankful for what I give you. You’re where you want to be. You can protest as much as you like, but your body’s not capable of lying to me.”

Reluctantly, the Doctor did as he was told, bearing his over-communicative expression to the Master’s tenacious, seeking gaze.

“There you are,” the Master pronounced. He slipped a finger into him and watched the Doctor’s eyes flare, watched him bite down on a gasp. “And there,” he smirked. But the Doctor managed to school his face into a featureless mask, and the Master became exasperated. Now that he knew how this version of the Doctor eyes shone when he wanted the Master just as much as the Master wanted him, it was harder to ignore the absence of that light.

“I’m not accepting passive resistance as adequate participation. Move, Doctor.” He snapped, and the Doctor looked at him, defiantly refusing to comprehend his meaning. “You hips,” the Master specified, “You know how.”

Slowly, grudgingly, the Doctor began to squirm on the Master’s finger. Satisfied, the Master inserted another, waiting until the Doctor’s hips jumped up to meet him to add a last. Watching, feeling the Doctor work himself on his fingers was an exquisite ratcheting up of the already high tension between them. He pushed the Doctor’s legs up, shoving himself into him. He let out a relieved shudder at finally being in. He snapped his hips and watched the Doctor’s head fall back, exposing his long throat like an offering. The Doctor recovered enough to brace himself with a hand on the Master’s chest, but then his fingers trembled into shapes.

I hate this, the Doctor spelled, quick as he could, Gallifreyan words blossoming on the Master’s skin thought-quick, sinking through into his blood, poisonous, I hate what you make me, I hate y—

Frantically needing the Doctor not to say another word, the Master seized his fingers and drew them into his mouth, sucking hard at the offending digits. The Doctor’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes fluttered shut. He panted hard, would have keened if he’d had the voice to do it.

Hate that, the Master thought, triumphant, letting the fingers go when the Doctor was soundlessly thrashing on the bed below him, his head tossing mindlessly. He went deeper and deeper, further, and took more. The Master got inexorably nearer to coming, felt tight and coiled and almost, but—

Helplessly, he placed a hand to the Doctor’s temple, with the tentative, almost painful grace with which pilgrims touch their long-sought idols. “Say my name,” he commanded, but he was aware it sounded as if he was begging, and aware that he didn’t care how he had to change his tone to hear the Doctor call his name, psychically or verbally, in ecstasy right now.

“Please,” he whispered, “Just say it. Let me in, I need to feel you. Doctor!” The painfully incomplete version of the name brought almost as much tension as it released. But the Master said it because he needed to name him, and even the broken name was something tangible, something near-familiar on his tongue. “Doctor please, just say it.”

The Doctor shut his eyes against the lost look on the Master’s face, and came with a soft sigh like despair. The Master sped up and took him harder, fueled by a savage hurt, pounding into him as if he could fuck the word out of his body. He came with swimming blackness behind his eyes and a pleading noise choked in his throat.

“You came,” the Master spat, looking down at the Doctor with a sense of desperate pride at the debauchery he’d wrought below him.

When he came back out of the shower to dress and return to work the Doctor was nowhere in sight. There was a note in the middle of the rumpled bed.

You could have been anyone, it read, and the Master crumpled it in a shaking fist.

Taking the Master’s somewhat demonstrative advice, the Doctor got out more. Though not, as the Master had hoped, at his side. For the remainder of the week the Doctor puttered around the hotel, turning the kitchen into a lab he puttered about in to achieve some semblance of normality. He sourced samples from the garden, or simply read in it.

There was, as he’d ascertained early on, airtight security around the hotel, and no way to get a message, much less himself, in or out. Thus the Doctor was quite surprised to see a skinny, tow-headed human boy who looked about sixteen, dirty and carrying a gun, striding down a in the hotel corridor. The boy spotted him and raised his weapon, eyes wide and panicked.

The Doctor held up his hands, conciliatory, and wondered how he could question what the boy was doing here, how he’d gotten in. A shot sounded, and boy jerked wildly, red blossoming across his torso. The boy brought a hand to the bullets, instinctively moving to nurse the wound, and fell with almost a spin. The Doctor whirled and saw the Master at the head of a few mercenaries. The Master looked not annoyed, as the Doctor might have expected him to be at the obvious security breech, but vaguely worried.

The Doctor took off in a run towards the boy, who lay already still on the ground. Even knowing it was useless, he tried to take his pulse. When the Doctor drew his hand back from the wrist it was wet and red. He could hear the Master walking behind him. He turned the boy’s body over and let his obvious youth, his wide-fear struck eyes, say what he would have, had he words.

“He was carrying a gun,” the Master said, already defensive. He was committed to his course because there was no taking it back now, and because in some way he knew he was wrong. “He might have fired on you. He was obviously here to kill me.” And all that might have been true, but the Doctor had lives to spare, and he would have lost one willingly to preserve a child.

Nothing he was carrying indicated what he was here for—the panicked confusion in his eyes when he’d seen the Doctor didn’t indicate a planned assassination. The boy must have been part of some resistance cell, out on assignment. Information gathering, maybe, to bring the lay of the compound back to his friends.

The Master didn’t seem terribly surprised by the intrusion. He would have been blustering angrily or whining about human ingratitude if this was the first he’d heard of rebel developments. If he’d suspected the presence of a cell capable of getting someone inside their hotel, the Master would have cheerfully overseen interrogations. He would have murdered confirmed resistance members as guiltlessly as a farmer culled troublesome animals from his herd. All while the Doctor’s back was turned—no need to mention the grittier aspects of his new world order to him, he wouldn’t understand it was necessary. One glance up at the Master’s carefully guarded expression confirmed the Doctor’s estimation.

And you let him touch you, he told himself, this is what you let yourself have. He wanted to flee from his own accusation like he’d jump from scalding water if he accidentally exposed his skin to it. But he held it there, made himself feel it. Let the knowledge, the shock (Oh he shouldn’t have been surprised. But he always was.) make him almost physically sick. The Doctor hoped he could learn the feeling. Could use it like a weapon against his body and his too-fond mind when they protested stupidly that they remembered the Master, that they still wanted him, needed him.

The Doctor passed a hand through the child’s hair. He shut the small, brown eyes. He turned to the other Time Lord with the same look of pained loathing that he’d given the Master the first time he’d killed. When the Doctor had left him. Silently he stood, throwing the Master’s hand off his shoulder and stalking back to their bedroom, shaken by proof of the Master’s callousness, and too angry at him to want to do anything but rest in a dark room, far away from everything. He never really learned to expect this of the Master. He always, illogically, hoped for better of him. It hurt every time he was proved wrong.

Diplomatically, the Master waited until evening to check up on him. He intensely disliked when people who weren’t him pointed guns at the Doctor. To feel that thrill of power in his own hands, to hold the Doctor’s life like the precious thing it was, was to know that it was his, and that he was entirely, absolutely the Master’s. With a weapon at his throat, no word of the Doctor’s could falsely, carelessly revoke that bond. The Doctor could never strip him of a power he took instead of needing given to him. And that brought him satisfaction.

But that other people should usurp that privilege, people who might not stop, disgusted and horrified him. The very sight of it was a trespass. Some little human boy turning a gun on the Doctor in their own home—he’d been distracted all day with the low burning rage of it.

These rebels really were getting bolder than was amusing. The Master would have to make some gesture of reprisal. He knew it would cheer him to take the Doctor, to prove to himself that the Doctor was fine, was so perfectly alive. When they were young there was little they’d liked better than enjoying each other in the wake of some danger, just to prove they’d survived.

He found the Doctor curled in a ball on their bed, sitting up against the headboard. All the lights of the suite were off. Slowly, the Master unfolded the Doctor’s unresisting limbs from their bent pose. He undressed the Doctor, not wanting to fight him and make him do it himself. When he was similarly stripped, he pulled the Doctor down flat on the bed, covering his body with his own.

The Doctor’s eyes were glass-empty, as if he was somewhere very far away. It was with a sort of numb horror the Master realized that the Doctor’s eyes were so bright because he was struggling not to cry. The emotion flickering behind his still face was shame and indignation and disgust, not carefully hidden desire. Not this time.

He put the Doctor’s hand on his hip and held it there.

“Want me,” he demanded, but his voice curdled into something uncertain, “Can’t you just—” he broke off. Carefully, he removed himself from the Doctor and sat on the edge of the bed, head in his hands.

“Was I supposed to let you be shot?” He asked. “Are you asking me for that? Because that’s too much. Even for you.” He wasn’t sure himself whether he meant ‘even for you to ask, after all the ridiculous other things you demand,’ or whether he was admitting there were things he wasn’t capable of, not even if the Doctor promised him everything in exchange for them. Not even if he could believe that promise.

“You’re constantly asking why I don’t understand something’s wrong. And you ask it like there’s a color I can’t see. But you’re an intelligent man, Doctor, and you know it isn’t so uncomplicated.” The Master folded his hands in his lap, not knowing what to do.

He closed his eyes and shivered when a tentative finger traced across his shoulder blade. Can it be enough for you that I say no? Can you be someone I can be with and stay myself?

“I never wanted you to be anything else.”

Then stop. The touch trembling across his flesh. You can’t have me and Earth.

The Master chuckled. “I’m not the one who’s obsessed with the planet. Earth’s of very little importance to me.” He said it to avoid verbally admitting that he chose the Doctor without reservation, almost eagerly. “But that isn’t enough for you, is it?”

No, the Doctor admitted, but I’m not fool enough to think I can have everything in an instant. And it’s something.

“It’s a start.” The Master offered, and gasped when the Doctor kissed the skin he’d been drawing on hard, running his mouth up along the shoulder blade, settling on the Master’s neck and kissing him there.

He turned fast as he could and bore the Doctor down, laughing when the Doctor dragged him down with him and met him, arching his back hard into a passionate kiss.

“You’d come with me,” the Master pressed him still by the shoulders, “No tricks, no evasions, you’d come.” The Doctor looked uncertain. He was still unable to tell what the Master would do in the wider universe; still afraid of the death he’d seen today. He shook his head no. The Master supposed that saying he could give up the Earth had to mean little while he was still in occupation of it.

“But you do want this?” He raked his eyes down the Doctor’s body. The Doctor didn’t indicate anything, but his tongue darted out unconsciously to his dry lips, and the Master crushed their mouths together to taste it. The Doctor pushed him off and the Master’s eyes widened, a bit panicked, but after a second the Doctor lay back down, acquiescent. He nodded, once, and put his hand on the Master’s shoulder, stroking lightly.

“Get me ready,” the Master asked, and without nonverbal sarcasm the Doctor grabbed the oil on the bedside table, unscrewing the cap and coating the Master’s hardness with it liberally. His fingers were defter than they needed to be, his touch more personal than he had let it be on previous days.

“Eager, are you?” The Master taunted, and the Doctor rolled his eyes and chucked the re-caped bottle over the side of the bed absently. Unable to wait longer the Master thrust in, and the Doctor clenched automatically. He brought a hand to the Doctor’s head and let his expression ask. The Doctor looked at him sadly, sympathetically, unable to afford his conscience a ‘yes.’

Instead the Doctor drew the Master’s palm down to his mouth and let his tongue spell out the Master’s name. The proper version. The modifier was a play in the Doctor’s mouth as it had always been, the possessive and possessed implications of ‘my Master’ flowing together in a lovely semantic confusion. It was a transgression of manners of the highest order for the Doctor to do that without permission, such intimacies being a thing of the distant past for them. But the Doctor traced it on his skin with bold eyes. And such a breach entitled, invited him to claim the same privilege.

“Doctor,” he gasped, almost disbelieving, letting the full version of the name spill out of his mouth at last. He surged into the Doctor, repeating the word in time with his thrusts as he fucked him. The Doctor’s hand anchored his hip. His own hand lingered lightly over the Doctor’s mouth, so the Doctor could trace his own repetitions and scattered endearments.

When he removed it, he pressed it to the bed in a fist for leverage, bending down and kiss the Doctor. His eyes shut in bliss when the Doctor raised his head, wrapping his hands around the Master’s head, dragging fingers through the Master’s hair, half lifting off the bed to kiss him back eagerly. He mouthed ‘more’ into the Master’s lips, and the Master smirked into his.

Laying back down the Doctor explored the line of the Master’s neck and shoulders with his hands, half fascinated by the tension in the muscles, half massaging his encouragement.

“Let me see you touch yourself,” the Master’s eyes dragging down to the Doctor’s erection. The Doctor nodded and did, long pulls in time with the Master’s thrusts.

“When you were alone between my visits, when you did that for yourself, you thought about me, didn’t you?” The Master asked, almost casually. The Doctor flushed, looking adorably embarrassed, and reached a hand up to smack the Master's chest lightly.

“I knew it,” the Master laughed, self-congratulatory, kissing the Doctor, whose lips softened under his, because he wasn’t really all that put out. “Nothing to be ashamed of, Doctor.” He gave him another light peck, just out of fondness. “My dear, dear Doctor,” he repeated, relishing the syntactic indulgence of the double-possessive.

The Doctor brought the inside of the Master’s wrist to his mouth and returned the endearment along the pulse point. As much as he enjoyed the feeling of the Doctor’s body clenching around him, he loved that sure tongue, drawing sweetness on the thin skin just above his blood, at least equally.

The Master slipped out early that morning. He couldn’t stand for the Doctor to elect not to come with him after all of that, and so he decided not to give him the chance to refuse. He went about the business of his day distracted. He could leave at any moment. He really could. And the Doctor said no, but if the Master brought him with him, if it was de facto, then there would be no excuses to hide behind and the Doctor would have to—

But then he’d conquered a world, and to give that up because the Doctor couldn’t accept it was weak. He wanted to suggest it was pathetic, but he avoided that adjective even in his head now. It was like a wound—he knew better than to touch it, but he couldn’t help himself from lingering on it. His mind revolved around the word, circling it warily. Perhaps he should force the issue. Stay. Break the Doctor into some new shape that could understand the beauty of power, embrace it even, and love him in the same moment.

He was walking down a corridor of the hotel, heading back up to grab some papers from his office, approaching the guards on the door at the end of the hall with brisk steps. A loud crack sounded, and the Master raised an eyebrow when one of the guards fell to his knees and then, after a flurry of noise that startled the Master, to the ground, clearly shot dead. His companion, at a shouted command from the Master, raced after the unseen assailant. The Master reached the body and bent down. Some of the bullets had bounced helplessly off the advanced armor he’d stocked the mercenaries with, but one or two had lodged doggedly in the vulnerable joints of the neck plating.

The Master picked up a hot shell from the ground, examining it. Human made. The rebels weren’t getting assistance from off planet, then. He palmed the bullet distractedly when it had cooled, wondering how human-only forces had managed to organize well enough to infiltrate his command center.

The only source of well-trained dissent unaffected by his recent security investigations would be the UNIT camp. He hadn’t wanted to do anything to them that might get back to the Doctor—he’d been planning to hold the right to see them out for further leverage, and he wanted them to have nothing but fair reports of their living conditions.

Opening his palm, he frowned—where he’d clenched his hand into a fist around the metal, his flesh had gone black, as if burned. His eyes widened, recognizing what the humans had managed even as he dropped the bullet. They’d coated it in acetylsalicylic acid. How could they have known to? Oh but of course the Doctor would have had to tell his human associates not to ever give him an aspirin tablet for an injury if he was incapacitated. A clever enough person could have deduced that was a biological weakness common to his species rather than a personal peccadillo, and the chemical compounds involved were in household use on this planet.

He followed the path taken by his pursuing guard down the corridor, hearing more firing from somewhere farther away. He ordered the guard standing over the slain intruder to attend to it. He didn’t recognize the dead man as anyone from the UNIT camp—he’d seen all of them at their sentencing, too brief a time ago to feel he was making an error now. They must have managed to recruit outside assistance for the raid. People who didn’t know what he looked like, who would easily shoot the Doctor as well as him.

Acetylsalicylic acid wasn’t a kind chemical. It was one of the few means of death that didn’t allow for the possibility of regeneration. If it entered the bloodstream a Time Lord boiled from the inside. The Master took the gun off the dead man and headed up the stairs to the penthouse. If the rebels were intelligent they’d already cut the elevator cables, and he had a sinking feeling they were. He needed to get out of the building as quickly as possible.

The Doctor was halfway down the stairs, listening carefully to the sounds of the fighting, trying to determine their origin by echoes and ricochets. He was hoping to slip out of the hotel in the chaos, and was surprised to meet the Master halfway. But surely Master would have gotten out of the building and into his TARDIS, wherever he’d managed to hide it, the instant fighting broke out? The ultimate survivor, how could he not be long gone? Absolute shock registered on the Doctor's face.

“You idiot,” the Master responded, grabbing the Doctor by the wrist and turning to run back downstairs, “Naturally I came to retrieve you. Come on. I think we may have overstayed our welcome.”

They burst into the lobby. “We’re through the far doors. My TARDIS is in the garden, disguised as a tool shed.” Before they could make the length of the room the Doctor tugged his hand free.

“We really don’t have the time to argue about it,” the Master insisted. The Doctor edged towards the main door. The Master pulled out his TCE.

“You’re coming with me,” he hissed, “So just move.” The Doctor stared at him, almost daring him to use the deadly weapon. The Master’s hand wavered on it.

“They’re using acetylsalicylic bullets, Doctor.” The Master refused to plead with him, but his insistence was tinged with desperation. He took a step closer to the Doctor, shaking the TCE for emphasis. “This will only kill you once. It’s far better than the alternative—you might regenerate into someone less stubborn, for one. I’m sorry to say we’ve not been invaded by your UNIT friends, and I doubt these people, whoever they are, have received specific orders to spare you.” They stood very close. The Master’s eyes were frantic. “Doctor,” he used the possessive form, so recently his again, his tone brittle, “You—”

The debate was cut off when strange troops poured into the lobby. The Doctor looked around wildly, recognizing none of them. One of the soldiers raised his gun, pointed it directly at the Doctor, and fired.

It was a hard clump of seconds before the Doctor realized what was going on. A voice he knew, some familiar voice he couldn’t place, was screaming at the soldiers to stop. The Master swayed, just a touch, and unthinkingly the Doctor caught him in his arms. The Master’s eyes were too wide. He coughed once, a little blood welling up in the corner of his mouth, dribbling out and down.

There must be blood in his lungs, the Doctor thought, the horror of it coming a second after the conclusion, syncopated like a heartbeat. The Master had been shot. More than once. The Doctor placed a hand to the Master’s black jacket and it came up sticky. The Master’s knees seemed to loose strength and, holding him, the Doctor sank down to the floor with him. The Master had stepped in front of the shot meant for the Doctor. Unthinkingly, the Doctor tried to say something to him. When words wouldn’t come he pressed his hand to the Master’s face and opened himself as wide as he could bear.

There was pain in the Master’s mind, and a growing cloudiness, veined with a hard, bright flash of pleasure upon feeling the Doctor moving through him, and entering the Doctor in return.

Don’t do this, the Doctor pleaded, stupid and desperate because there was nothing that the Master could do about it now. The opportunity to make a choice had come and the Master had met it with his typical conviction. His strange, unfathomable bravery—he’d slink like an eel out of any confinement, plead for his own life as if the humiliation was nothing to him, but when pressed, on certain, fundamental points, the Master was unyielding. The Master had met the prospect of the Doctor’s death with his own. The Doctor couldn’t believe what he’d done, and he whispered it through their minds like an accusation, unable even to finish saying it. You—you—

The Master seemed surprised himself at what he’d done, and yet it was obvious. Of course this was how it ended. Naturally this was how he died. A whole battery of thoughts rushed against the darkness closing on him. He could feel his blood rise, burning, and he hurt, but for a little while longer he could push the pain aside, sheltered as he was in the Doctor’s mind. He was furious at the man who’s shot him. He was disappointed at all the knowledge, all the plans, and the ambition flickering out in him, guttering like a candle flame. Still possessive, still selfish, he hoped the Doctor didn’t move on, couldn’t forget him in the centuries he’d live through after the Master’s death. He wanted the Doctor to kiss him one last time.

At the thought from him, the Doctor’s lips were on his, and it was a good last kiss, chaste and felt. I love you, the Doctor offered, like a bribe to bring him back, like a release of something caged in him. Always, I’ve always— But it was too late for that. Too late for them. The Master didn’t say it back because it was evident. The Doctor knew. He wanted to say something in farewell, but he didn’t have the strength. And what words could possibly have been a fitting end to—

He gasped, and it seized through his muscles like a felt scream, and he wanted to sob, and then it was gone, and so was he.

Shocked, the Doctor studied the body in his lap. In his arms. He felt a light touch on his shoulder. He looked up and recognized the face as Jo, small and worried. “Doctor?” She tried, and he started, because it wasn’t his right name. It lacked something he would never hear again. In his confusion, he touched his face and found it wet. He turned back to the body below him and tried to use the moisture to clean the blood off the Master’s chin. He only succeeded in smearing it a bit, forming a red blur that marred the Master’s skin, paler already in death than it had been in life.

He forced himself to think the words he’s gone.

“Doctor, say something,” Jo pleaded, tone worried, “It’s alright now. We’ve come to rescue you.” When his blank expression didn’t change, Jo tried to explain further. “We tried to stop them shooting, but we were too late. Please, say something Doctor!”

The Doctor removed his hand from the Master’s cold face, lowering him to the ground as gently as a sleeping child. He wanted to say something irrational and childish, like ‘wake up.’ He wanted to scream. He wanted to pour out his feeling and be empty. But he could do none of those things.