The Sweet Cheat Gone
Title: The Sweet Cheat Gone
Author: x_los
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Three, Delgado!Master, Ainley!Master, Five (Doctor/Master)
Summary: The third Doctor is surprised and upset to see the Master with another man. Perhaps the worst part about it is that he doesn't understand what the Master could possibly see in someone who goes around wearing celery like it's a sartorial statement...
Beta:aralias
Acknowledgments: Apologies to P-dizzle (as we like to call him) for the title. ...no one calls him that. For this anon meme prompt: http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/13938.html?thread=3520370#t3520370 .
The Doctor burst into the dining room through an exterior window, glass shattering around him. He stumbled to his feet, reeling and coughing from the smoke.
“You!” he managed, pointing a shaky finger at the Master. “I knew you were behind all this!”
Behind him, a thick tentacle crashed through the next window in the series and started thrashing experimentally, groping around for its lost prey. The Doctor neatly stepped forward, just out of its range. It continued to flap sulkily in the background.
The Master raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. While I wouldn’t hesitate to claim due credit for unleashing-” he craned his neck to get a better view of the creature, then righted himself, “-a pregnant Jallbeast on central London, I’m afraid I never though to.” The Master, still seated at a table set for two, gave the flushed-orange tentacle a critical glance. “Good heavens, is it in the egg-period?”
“You know very well it is!” the Doctor seethed. “Who but you would have instructed that creature to lay its clutch on Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart!”
The Master blinked, then began to chuckle hard, and to show little sign of stopping.
The Doctor bristled. “I can assure you, it isn’t even slightly funny. The poor man’s sporting an egg pouch! He looks like an furious kangaroo!”
The Doctor’s disclaimer of the hilarity of the situation left the Master choking on all-out guffaws.
“This is most undignified of you,” the Doctor huffed. “Jallbeast hosting is a very serious medical crime, you know.”
“One it seems I’ve neglected to commit,” the Master managed, recovering himself. “Fortunately for you, one of us passed xenobiology.” The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the aspersion to his intellect. The Master pressed on. “I seem to remember your precious Brigadier wearing some rather odious cologne.”
“Something musky and horrible, yes,” the Doctor admitted, grudgingly.
“That’s apiece with the period,” the Master granted. “And, unfortunately for the Brigadier, just the thing to attract to a pregnant Jallbeast in her egg-period heat. Now, how could he have ‘gone courting’ without his knowledge, I wonder?” The Master’s eyes were sparkling, and the Doctor had a terrible feeling about whatever he was about to say. “Has he, by any chance, been standing anywhere near sensitive interstellar transmission equipment while it’s in use?”
“…it’s broadly possible,” the Doctor said, because he could now very clearly remember having said ‘just hold this for a moment, old chap’ to a long-suffering Lethbridge-Stewart, and having thrust just such working a galactic transmitter in the man’s hands for want of table-space. The class of transmitter he’d been using operated on light-particle rather than light-wave theory, literally shunting a hard block of information in atomic format towards the recipient.
Smell, naturally, was a chemical sense. The Doctor had only been attempting to hitchhike to a more technologically advanced planet. His innocent transmission might have inadvertently become bound up with some fragments of the man’s dubious fragrance. When the roaming Jallbeast intercepted the transmission, she could very well have interpreted it as an invitation from a potentially compatible mate, complete with address and request for ‘relief’-though he’d hardly meant the term in the sense she’d taken it.
To judge from both the seasick pull he could feel his own mouth taking and the Master’s obvious merriment, something of the Doctor’s thoughts had made it into his expression.
“I see. In that case, hadn’t you better figure out some means of explaining the situation to the poor woman?” The Master’s glee was hardly subtle. “I’m sure she’d be only too happy to suction her eggs out of your friend’s stomach-once you explain he’s an entirely unsuitable host, and woefully unprepared to brood the eggs for the next five years, naturally.”
“Naturally,” the Doctor snapped back, brushing the glass off his cloak and making for the front door. He pause a moment, then turned back to the Master, taking in the ruined scene. The conspicuously set table-for-two. “Dining with someone?”
The Master grimly surveyed the room, then took out a pocket communicator, tapped at a few keys and slid it back in his pocket.
“Yes, actually. Though I’m afraid we’ll have to relocate to somewhere with less glass and more glasses. A pity-I went to some trouble to get this reservation. I had to hypnotize no less than three separate receptionists.” He snorted, as if to ask what service in the capital was coming to these days.
The Doctor felt a tickle of strange suspicion. “That’s rather exerting yourself, for a business dinner.”
The Master shrugged-standing and gathering his dark coat. The Doctor noticed things he hadn’t had time to a moment ago. The Master had discarded his expected jacket for a charcoal grey suit with a sprightly golden tie. In these bourgeois human settings, he looked like a man dressed for an anniversary, or like the sort of fellow who made a habit of taking his spouse out to dinner in style once a week.
“I’d hardly call it business,” the Master said easily, and the Doctor grew that touch more uncomfortable. The Master wasn’t being short with him, per se-he just didn’t feel obligated to offer up all his plans and intentions to the Doctor, which was unusual, because the Master typically assumed the Doctor was entitled to both.
“Good evening,” the Master said, sweeping past him just like that. No banter, no excuse to remain in his company-not even a good taunt about the comedy male pregnancy the Doctor had accidentally played yenta to.
Silently the Doctor gawped after him, and when the door of the restaurant had closed with an audible clank, he turned to address the tentacle. “Good evening? Good evening? Of all the cheek! As if he’s not only here to see me! As if this isn’t a transparent excuse to rub his sordid little encounter in my face! Sometimes that man is simply infuriating!”
The tentacle gurgled sympathetically, and the Doctor realized he’d been broadcasting on a telepathic level. Rather forcefully. Chagrined, he coughed and rubbed his neck. Well. At least this answered the question of how on Earth he was going to communicate with the Jallbeast. Back to business. He’d worry about the Master later-not that the man merited it.
The Doctor cleared his throat and mind. “I say old girl, you wouldn’t mind reabsorbing your eggs, would you? I understand you didn’t mean any harm, but the man’s a soldier, you see, and he needs his stomach egg-free-for maneuvers and such.”
She warbled, and in the Doctor’s mind something like semantic wind-chimes delivered her thoughts.
The Doctor gave her a nervous look. “I agree, it was very wrong of him to send you such mixed signals. But listen, sometimes a chap can’t-”
“Huzzzzputta!” the tentacle flailed wildly.
The Doctor crossed his arms. “There’s no need to involve me in all this, you know. No one asked your opinion on my personal relationsh-no, please, madam, control yourself! Stop thrashing! This is a listed building!”
***
The Doctor had a brand-new Master detector. He’d used it earlier to track the Master to the restaurant, hotly pursued by the Jallbeast he’d fought off the Brigadier. Now that the Brigadier once again in no way resembled a male sea horse and the Jallbeast had been reliably pointed in the direction of a more compatible mate four systems over, the Doctor emphatically did not use his new detector to track down the other man and see what this dinner date nonsense was all about.
He felt perfectly justified in simply turning it on, however, and thus he discovered the Master was eating at an exclusive supper club (no great surprise there) downtown. Though he wouldn’t stoop so low as to interrupt the Master’s evening, he’d certainly bear that information in mind.
***
UNIT was uncharacteristically quiet the next week. The most exciting interruption occurred on Thursday, when two displaced Victorian Londoners accidentally invented a rudimentary form of time-hopping. The Doctor took the dangerous alien component that had enabled their machine to work away from them, told them to stop adding strange things they picked up at markets in Limehouse to their scientific equipment (advice he’d never followed himself-not even in the letter, as it happened, and certainly not in the spirit), and sent them home.
It was hours before he realized that he might have been able use their technology to jump to a time period he knew he’d visited as a younger man, where he would be able to ask for some help repairing his TARDIS. He was distracted, and it had made him sloppy. It was a terribly good thing the Master was too busy with whatever it was he was doing at the moment to attack, because the Doctor really wasn’t up for it this week.
Annoyed and chagrinned, the Doctor took a walk to clear his head. He enjoyed strolling through town whilst thinking, and often drifted through the grand districts of the city alone, absently appreciating the architecture. The movement of his body schooled his mind into regular rhythms.
It was an accident-or at least, an unconscious whim-that brought him to the front door of the Master’s club, roughly a week since he’d last seen him, at 8:30 in the evening. Which was, coincidentally, when his detector (which had remained active the majority of the week, though of course the Doctor only cast it the occasional glance) usually indicated the Master left the building.
Ever a creature of habit and of controlled routine, the Master stepped out just then, walking companionably with a much taller man. Startled to discover himself at this place and at this precise moment, the Doctor hung back, ducking into an alcove. He wasn’t eavesdropping, he assured himself. Just-evading an awkward encounter. And surely he had a right to keep tabs on what the Master got up to. After all, it was more likely than not something dangerous and nefarious. Like unleashing dangerous alien fiends on the unsuspecting populace. Or unleashing dangerous alien diseases by having unprotected sex with the unsuspecting populace. That was a legitimate danger, and the Doctor found it frankly terrible to contemplate.
“So,” the Master clasped his hands together in front of him, looking up at his companion, “I trust you still suffer from insufficient discipline and infrequent practice?”
The Master’s …friend laughed. “You know for all your sanctimony about technical superiority, I soundly defeated you in our last contest.”
He was young, dressed in sporting gear. The Doctor felt jolted. Surely this man wasn’t the Master’s type at all. The Doctor couldn’t really speak with recent assurance, but he’d somehow thought that whoever had so thoroughly captured the Master’s attention would be-suave. More mature, more obviously erudite. A bit more like him, if the Doctor had to admit it. Surely past experience counted for something. At any rate, the Doctor hadn’t been imagining some lanky near-child with ridiculous hair, who looked as though he were running late to an after-school practice session.
Not that he’d been unhappily, compulsively imagining the Master’s liaisons, really. At least, not in any great detail.
The Master made an absolutely flirtatious moue with his lips, taking a step closer to his companion. “I’ll see what you’re capable of for myself soon enough.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Weak,” he murmured, annoyed by the banter, which, as the Master couldn’t know he was here, clearly wasn’t even being done for his benefit. There was a frank, unselfconscious intensity to the way the Master looked at the other man that alarmed the Doctor, who had only ever seen the Master direct such a look at him.
The couple was in profile to the Doctor, and he could see the stranger give the Master a quick, bright grin. The Doctor’s mood soured further with resentment. Perhaps the Master had been drawn by the man’s simple pleasure in his company-a luxury the Doctor could not himself afford, for reasons that should be obvious to the Master.
The stranger gave him a look. “Really, Master. Simply because I don’t like to boast about my dueling prowess ad nauseam.” He shook his head, mock-disparagingly. “Shall we?”
The Doctor’s head shot up, and his eyes widened with shock. It had been distinctly unpleasant when he’d assumed the two men were negotiating a sexual encounter, but fencing was decidedly his and the Master’s pastime. They’d only just enjoyed a vigorous bout in the Master’s prison cell! Surely this was an order of infidelity even the Master had to blanch at!
But far from blanching, the Master whet his lips, making an ‘after you’ gesture with his arm. Together they started off. The Doctor didn’t know which of them he wanted to punch more.
“You know,” the Master’s friend remarked, his voice growing fainter as they walked away from what even the Doctor was starting to feel was really a hiding spot, “I’ve missed this. I don’t know why we didn’t do it more often. We had ample opportunity.”
The Master chuckled, a touch bitterly. “At least someone here is willing to afford me a touch of satisfaction.”
The Doctor seethed, having decided he would happily punch either of them. Everything about their conversation-its content and its ease-indicated a long acquaintance. What’s more, between the dopey innuendo and the limpid looks, the Master seemed absolutely besotted.
The Doctor supposed that it wasn’t strictly his business if the other man moved on. A Master who’d lost interest in him would inevitably make less of a nuisance of himself, at least in the Doctor’s immediate vicinity. He’d stop dropping by with his mad schemes and his impossible invitations. He’d spend his time crossing swords with some adolescent Milquetoast who apparently even called him by his decidedly-odd-to-contemporary-humans name. Besides, it was only natural that, given enough rejections, the Master would take the hint and try his luck elsewhere. Any reasonable person, the Doctor admitted, would have been well and truly rebuffed by now. Still, he’d somehow relied on the Master’s stupid, decidedly (charmingly) unreasonable persistence without entirely knowing he did. Perhaps it was the end of an era. It was-unexpected. Sudden.
Rather horrible.
The Doctor pictured the Master’s concentration, his fixity, given over to some other partner. Then he told himself to stop it. This was self-indulgent nonsense. It was for the best, he told himself, cross and decisive. And even if it wasn’t, it was done, now. He walked back in the direction he’d come, feeling as if he’d left his stomach in the alleyway.
***
The next time the Doctor ran into the Master, it was with the same man. It seemed the Master had entered into an exclusive relationship with the boy wonder. The Doctor almost felt he should warn the other man. The Master was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. The sooner other fools drawn to him discovered that (and left him well alone), the better.
Running into the pair on yet another date implied that the Master was gadding about with someone who’d truly caught his attention. How like him-he’d always been incapable of casually playing the field (or ‘pathetically single-minded,’ as the Doctor would describe the Master’s proclivities if he were in a truly foul mood, which was generally the case when he considered the Master’s latest romantic exploits).
But this was his field. Why did the strange man the Master was so interested in insist on the Doctor’s favorite bits of England as date locations? The man was either certifiably mad or not from around here, judging from his appalling and (blessedly, because the Doctor could hardly have borne looking at accessories of that ilk on a daily basis) unusual lapel-ornament. He didn’t seem to own more than the one outfit. He might have been wearing the decorative vegetable the last time the Doctor had seen them, as well. The Doctor hadn’t been at the right angle to see it, if he had.
It was a bright Saturday, and he and Jo were warmly wrapped up. Jo had suggested that they should take advantage of this last burst of sunshine to do something outdoorsy, and never one to shy from active pursuits, the Doctor had agreed. He’d already told the Brigadier they’d run some old files up to Liz (while gruffer than usual, the Doctor had also been suspiciously obliging lately, willing to help the Brigadier in ways he’d normally have insisted were beneath his dignity), and so punting afterwards had seemed the obvious choice. Jo had also suggested that it would take the Doctor’s mind off whatever it was he’d been brooding over the past weeks, but he’d ignored that heavy hint to cheer up.
Thus, Jo and the Doctor were floating down the river Cam when they spotted the Master and his… new friend taking a stroll along the river. Arm in arm. The current ensured that the Doctor had plenty of time to collect his thoughts on the matter before conversation was forced upon them, and also that they could hardly escape the acquaintance.
He opened his mouth to deliver a cutting, pithy remark that would shame the Master deeply and baffle his companion, whilst managing to conceal the depths of his annoyance from Jo. Unfortunately the Master’s dripping sop of a paramour was quicker to speak even than the Doctor.
“Ah, hello there!” He had the audacity to smile awkwardly at them, and, to add insult to injury, to try giving a friendly wave. “Nice to run into the two of you.”
“Is it.” The Doctor glowered at him, shoving his pole in the water decidedly, feeling the moment for action had been lost. The Master looked infuriatingly placid, even pleased with himself. As though they were all going to have a nice little chat. The nerve of him!
“I thought you were in London,” the Master said, as casually as if it didn’t much matter to him either way.
“Well I’m not,” the Doctor snapped. “As you see.”
The current had slowed, and the Master’s friend simply strode along the bank, easily keeping pace with them. Pulled via their linked arms, the Master contentedly came along. His excuses and explanations were conspicuous by their absence.
The Doctor gave him a pointed look, and it took a moment to catch his attention. When his eyes fell on the Doctor it was without his restless, relentless, desperate need. There was nothing of yearning in it. He seemed like someone else’s.
“Out for a ride?” the strange man pressed on, in a desperate attempt to mitigate the tension. The sun glared down on the thing on his lapel-a grotesque lump of vegetal matter, wilting in the Indian-Summer heat, which looked not unlike some creatures the Doctor had fought recently. I have lost to the sort of man who wears celery as a lapel pin, the Doctor thought inconsolably.
“Lovely day for it.” The young man took a deep, appreciative breath of the autumnal air. Under the weight of the Doctor’s glare he coughed and turned to the Doctor’s companion, giving her a strangely fond look. “How are you, Jo?” he asked, softly.
“I suppose the Master’s told you all about us, then,” the Doctor interrupted her bemused reply, testing him, meaning he and Jo and UNIT as a larger whole, hoping to discover whether the man was aware of and involved in the Master’s unsavory criminal activities. Not that the Master seemed to have done anything interesting of late. Too busy-the Doctor grimaced-punting, no doubt.
“Oh, we don’t discuss you, really,” the Master’s friend assured him, as if the Doctor should be thankful for their discretion-as if he’d be relieved to hear that his name wasn’t being shouted at inopportune moments.
The Doctor gritted his teeth. “No? I’m very glad of it. Jo, brace yourself, there’s a good girl. I’m going to go faster.”
A long-overdue look of worry dawned on the Master’s face. “Doctor, I think you may have fundamentally misapprehended-”
“What sort of a person you are?” the Doctor snapped before he could quite stop himself, and immediately felt like an even greater fool.
“Doctor,” the Master began, seeming amused at his expense. He turned to address his pretty-boy companion. “My dear-” he began.
Oh, now that was insupportable. “Not another word out of you!” the Doctor snapped, flipping his sonic screwdriver at the water. The boat’s dinky, deactivated emergency motor whirred to life, and the Doctor and Jo sped away with a dramatic splash.
“Doctor,” Jo began when they could no longer see the Master and his beaux du jour, “I-”
“I can’t believe the Master would take up with such an insipid little-what is it, Jo?”
“Is this what you’ve been so worried about?” Jo pressed. “That the Master might have, um-lost track of his old school ties?”
“What?” the Doctor snapped, impatient.
“You know, that he might have-forgotten about how ‘you were at school together’?” Jo prompted, earnest but unwilling to call the Doctor on the point explicitly.
“…Ah.” The Doctor rubbed his neck. “I’d forgotten I-told you that.”
“Listen, Doctor,” Jo took his hand. “I may not know what it feels like to be cheated on, but-”
“Cheated on?” The Doctor snatched his hand back, appalled. “I don’t know what rumors are going around that vile canteen, Josephine, but in this case it is absolutely impossible for me to have been wronged in that sense. I am a confirmed bachelor. I can’t be two-timed if I was never timed to begin with. And certainly not by him.”
“I see,” said Jo in the sorrowful, pensive voice of a woman who had just lost 20 pounds to Sergeant Benton.
“Well,” the Doctor snorted, “I’m delighted to have cleared up that misapprehension.”
“Wait a tick,” Jo sat up straighter, seeming to suddenly apprehend something. “The Master’s just the sort of person who’d actually go through with a ridiculous plan, just to try and make you jealous! I mean everyone talks about that sort of thing, but no one ever actually does it. Trust the Master to take it seriously. And hey, that guy-he might be one of yours! Was there ever anyone else, back on your home planet, he might have gotten to help him out with this? I mean the Brigadier said you used to look different, and then you changed your whole face, so maybe it’s someone you know, who you don’t even recognize-”
“Jo,” the Doctor sat down suddenly, “you’re a genius. An absolute genius. And I’m an utter moron.”
Jo blinked at him. “Am I?”
“Yes,” the Doctor groaned, “I’m afraid so.” And apparently he was destined to drastically downgrade his sense of style to boot. This was a day of horrible realizations.
He was both more and less jealous than he had been a moment ago, but very certain that he needed to contact the Master and discuss this. Violating one’s own time-line repeatedly was one thing, and doing it just for a bit of… friendship was another-but shoving it in the current-Doctor’s face was completely unacceptable. The Doctor ignored the fact that the Master had had the tact to arrange his liaisons across town, or in an entirely different city. He was not in a reasonable sort of mood. Arranging all his dates to take place in the same week constituted neglect enough to merit a stern word, in the Doctor’s opinion. If the Master wanted ‘satisfaction,’ he’d simply have to find it closer to home.
***
The Doctor consulted his detector and glanced up at the long French windows. A persistent beeping paired with pretentious surroundings: this was definitely the place. He would have been thrown if the detector had tried to guide him to a chip shop or something similar.
The French windows earned their name by virtue of their location as well as their architectural style. The Master was being even more discreet than he had been in leaving London, the last time the Doctor had run into him. He’d hopped the channel, avoiding the obvious choices-Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, the French Mediterranean-and choosing instead a quiet, refined house in the countryside.
The house was stately, but homely, inviting in the dark night. The Doctor liked it. That was, he supposed bitterly, probably not unrelated to the Master having chosen it for the evening. When the Master next touched down on the planet, the Doctor had taken Bessie and the ferry, and had hoped to find the Master alone. His own TARDIS, however, had been there to mock him upon his arrival, parked insouciantly in the drive-where he’d intended to park Bessie. The Freudian reading of his indignation came to him a second later, and the Doctor huffed, annoyed with himself.
He did not quite know how to go in, couldn’t bear the hideous possibility of interrupting the Master and whatever version of him he’d brought here. While the other encounters had been, now he viewed them with retrospective calm, relatively innocent, you didn’t bring a man to a country house in the dead of night to fence or take a pleasant, scenic stroll.
The Doctor stewed, waiting for any indication that they’d-finished. It was cold outside, but it would feel wrong to take shelter in the other Doctor’s TARDIS, which, in his current condition, he couldn’t even make off with in an act of petty revenge. The old manor house was surrounded by desolate fields, and compared to the now-familiar atmosphere of London, the landscape was inhuman and lonely. The Doctor seldom had occasion to feel so small.
A shape flitted across the upstairs window, visible through a small part in the curtains. A man in a demure dressing gown walked through the spill of light for an instant. He opened the window, letting in a breath of cool night air (as only someone in a hot, close, post-coital room would do on such an inhospitable night). The Doctor caught little more than the brightness of his hair and the youthfulness of his face.
“Clearly in future I forget the virtues of subtlety,” he murmured nastily to himself.
Someone behind him chuckled. The Doctor turned, eyebrow raised, to confront a man wearing a long, dark cloak-well-suited to the weather, but not to the period.
“You,” he murmured, taking in the man’s unwholesome grin, his beard, his general air.
“None other,” the Master confirmed, as if there were ever any doubt. “Good evening, Doctor.”
“Is it?” The Doctor asked. “It seems that rather depends on when you ask.”
“An excellent point,” the Master conceded, darkly. “I assure you, it was, and is going to be, very good indeed.”
“How very like you to come to gloat,” the Doctor snapped, turning away from him, catching, carried on a breath of air, the cruel, falling sound of someone’s laughter. “It seems at least you never change.”
The Master stepped around the Doctor, placing himself in front of him again.
“Do you imagine I’m pleased about this?” the Master hissed through his teeth. “How convenient for you, to assume your future behavior could only possibly inconvenience yourself.”
The Doctor bristled. “I don’t hear you protesting up there.”
“Oh, I see,” the Master sneered. “It’s your contemporary Master’s indiscriminate desperation that’s at fault. Anyone but him, or rather anyone but you. In fact, you’re the one to be pitied here-your poor, bruised sense of dignity. I was just some sort of willfully malicious tourist trap you stumbled into. For the record, Doctor, I recall this evening with perfect clarity. You’re not protesting.”
There was a real, frothing anger that surpassed indignation concealed behind the paper-screen of the Master’s taunting. For the first time the Doctor considered that his future self, who he’d considered an irresponsible dabbler in their shared timeline, might be resorting to the fellowship of his contemporary Master because, in their own time periods, the situation between the two men had become too complicated to accommodate even the possibility of the companionship the Doctor currently assiduously denied himself. That would go some way to contextualize his poaching. It was a grim enough possibility that the Doctor almost felt sorry for the man he would be.
Then he heard a muffled, luxuriant groan. Without ever having heard its like before, he absolutely knew it belonged to the Master. His Master. The Doctor decided sympathy was terribly over-rated.
“Come on,” he barked at the Master, “I’ve had just about enough of this.”
He walked across the courtyard, his strides long enough that the (still) shorter Master almost had to jog to keep up with him. Not bothering to knock, he used his sonic screwdriver on the door and walked in. He walked up the carpeted stairs, which cushioned his footfalls, and was nearly at the bedroom door when the Master trailing him called his name.
“Wait a moment,” he said, coming up alongside the Doctor. “I’ve a better idea.”
The Doctor turned around to face him, and his eyes opened in shock when, without preamble, the strange Master shoved him up against the wall with an audible thud and kissed him, hard.
“Mmph!” the Doctor exclaimed.
The door banged open beside them, but the Doctor was slightly too busy being kissed to register it.
With a lingering, nostalgic sweep of his tongue, the Master-the Master pressed against him, his velvet crushed against the Doctor’s velvet, his kiss heady and uncompromisingly needful-took a step back. The Master who’d just emerged from the bedroom took a step forward, sparing a quick, venomous look for his successor.
“Right on cue,” the older Master adjusted his cloak. “Running to protect your primary investment. How predictable. Excuse me, gentlemen.” He walked past his predecessor into the bedroom, and locked the door behind him with an audible click.
The Doctor and Master were left standing in the hall-the Master rather flushed, even under his olive complexion. Wearing, the Doctor noted, a loosely tied sort of yukata in charcoal gray. He looked excellent-but quite obviously like someone who’d just come from bed. The Doctor glared at him.
The Master frowned. “You realize it’s only you, don’t you?”
“You didn’t seem terribly placated by that knowledge a moment ago. But yes,” the Doctor said, stiffly. “I had come to that conclusion.”
The Master gave him a bewildered look. “Well then why-”
“Is this a bedroom?” the Doctor interrupted him, nodding towards the next door down the hall, which, given the logic of human architecture, should be just that. Not waiting for the answer, he turned the handle, pushed it open, and went inside. Perplexed, the Master followed him. The Doctor held the door for him and clicked the lock behind him.
“France?” the Doctor murmured, taking off his jacket and laying it over the back of the chair.
“I thought it might be best, after the Cambridge incident.”
The Doctor’s jaw tightened, and he took off his cravat. “And how did you come by the house?”
“Only a rental, I’m afraid,” the Master watched him, eyes active, tone carefully even. “From an estate agent in Paris. I have it on a long lease. We came up this afternoon.”
“Did you?” the Doctor asked, brittle in his cheer, unbuttoning his ruffled shirt, letting it fall open.
“We did,” the Master kept his voice level, and let it dwell, heavy, on the ‘we.’ “You seemed to want something in the way of an escape.”
“I-” the Doctor began a hot denial.
“You explicitly wanted me,” the Master pressed, crossing his arms over his chest. “And if you’d ever shown any sign of that before, you might have something resembling grounds for condemning my choices.”
The Doctor drummed his fingers on the chair he’d been laying his clothing on. As sure as he was of his general moral stance regarding the man, on this particular matter, he knew he had no just grounds for reproaching the Master. He was being petty, irrational, and he disliked himself both for his jealousy and for what he was about to do.
“Well - I’m showing you now, aren’t I?” The Doctor stripped off his undershirt and stood before him in trousers and shoes. His expression was brusque and unbending, but the position was obviously vulnerable. “What more do you want?”
“I think you know that, Doctor,” the Master said, not looking at anything but his eyes, sounding almost pained.
“Well, what more can he promise you?” the Doctor snapped. “Dropping by when he likes-” the Doctor took a breath.
“Can you guarantee me that you’ll operate any differently?” the Master countered. “I haven’t done anything wrong here, you know, and if you’re not prepared to come with me-”
“You know I can’t!” The Doctor walked away from the chair, pacing the length of the room. “And neither can he. But at least tomorrow you’ll still know where to find me.”
“How very true, Doctor,” the Master observed, coldly. “Do you even want me, or do you simply object to your future self having me strongly enough that you’re willing to sacrifice yourself in his place?”
The Doctor turned to the Master. “I want you.” His voice nearly broke on the word ‘want,’ raw with sincerity. He stepped close to the man, looking down at him, eyes as fervent as his tone. Carefully, he brought his lips to the Master’s.
The Doctor hadn’t kissed anyone in this body, and he approached it with a slight hesitation, a sense of occasion. The Master, however, responded to his kiss automatically, perfunctorily, and why shouldn’t he? He’d spent all evening engaged in practice, after all.
With a snarl in his throat at the thought, the Doctor shoved the Master down on the bed, which creaked with the pressure. The Master’s eyes were wide and dark with surprise, and the Doctor straddled him, bringing a hand up to his face, fingertips on the Master’s temple, humbling himself enough to ask for the contact he could no longer initiate himself.
The Master did it for him, almost tenderly, and gasped when the Doctor’s thoughts hurtled into his. The Doctor did want him, so obviously, so desperately, and the force of that must be enough to see them through, to circumnavigate the ideological canyons he could see no way of jumping. He loved him. That would have to be enough.
The Master smoothed the Doctor’s mind, trembling himself. “Of course ,” he murmured, “of course it will be.” He pulled the Doctor down on top of him, holding him, opening his mouth to the Doctor’s insistent kiss.
***
The Doctor, sitting on the rumpled bed and wearing a claret dressing gown, looked up from his book at the soft click of the lock. He blanched.
“Not the Master you were expecting?” the new arrival swept in, his tone insinuating, sour.
“Not precisely, no,” the Doctor admitted, putting the book down. “What happened to-”
“He’s occupied,” the Master said shortly, taking the settee. “As you should remember.”
The Doctor leaned back in his seat. “Ah. This would be the start of the détente, then.”
The Master curled his lip at both the assessment and the quality of the Doctor’s recollection. “‘Ah yes, you remember it well.’”
“It’s hardly the first time we’ve used this house,” the Doctor pointed out. “I couldn’t be precisely sure.”
“No,” the Master leaned back, occupying the settee with a sprawl that was relentless and indolent, like Manifest Destiny. “I suppose you wouldn’t have been. You’ve been carrying on quite the affair, haven’t you? You were,” his lip quirked, “so kind to me. Now that I know this incarnation better, I find it strange. Your warmth, it transpires, is a precious commodity. A nonrenewable resource,” he gave the Doctor a harsh look of appraisal. “There’s so little of it in you.”
The Doctor flinched at the words, but said nothing. His lips were pressed thin, his eyes grew guarded.
The Master, who had wanted some reaction, some hint of reciprocation, grew more vicious at having failed to provoke him. “It was as though you were trying to compensate me for something.” He chuckled harshly. “Is it because you feel guilty about how their arrangement ends? That would be ironic, considering your role in bringing all of this about.”
Uncomfortable, the Doctor got up, and made to gather his clothing.
The Master followed him with his eyes, wishing the man would stop and talk to him. He couldn’t stand how thoroughly capable the Doctor was of ignoring him. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t have ignored the Doctor if he tried.
The Master looked at the Doctor’s abandoned book, spine up on the table. Something from Remembrance of Things Past. Self-consciously ironic. He resented the Doctor to a degree that amounted nearly to hatred for a great many reasons. Still, he did love the man’s easy, natural humor.
“Do you blame me for it having gone wrong?” He gestured to the next room with a nod of his head.
“No,” the Doctor said, sharply casual, having found the majority of his clothing, and tossing it on the bed. “It’s hardly your fault. It was just a terrible idea, I never should have proposed it.”
The Master bristled. “Perhaps you’d like to charge in there and keep it from happening. Protect your own virtue?”
“I’ve half a mind to. The whole thing was idiotic-” The Doctor pulled his trousers up under his robe before taking it off, primly, his movements quick with annoyance. “I don’t know why I thought it was ever going to work. I don’t know why I wanted it to. Daylight antagonism and private truces-fitful, temporary liaisons, as if we could separate waking life from dreams with clean lines, nothing bleeding over. Betraying my friends, despising myself. Ridiculous. People don’t live like that.”
“Yes,” the Master conceded, because he could remember how unpleasant that had been very clearly, could recall the hypocrisy and frustration of it. “You should have simply agreed to my terms. A more total, elegant solution.”
The Doctor scoffed, buttoning his shirt. “I notice you’ve stopped offering them.”
“I notice you never accepted,” the Master shot back.
The Doctor gave him a strange, quick glance. “I thought all of that was off the table.”
The Master looked at him, trying and failing to catch his eye. “If I say, ‘Doctor, would you like a slice of cake?’ half a dozen times, to your polite demurrals, and lay it out on the table, I assume you know that you’re still welcome to it, even if I haven’t parroted back the invitation recently. Though I doubt you’re interested.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, tucking his chin into his chest to fasten his braces.
“No,” the Master sneered, “I thought not. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stop such little pleasure jaunts.”
The Doctor blinked at him, holding his coat but not putting it on. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“I think whoever you are at any given moment is most capable of giving informed consent to any-” The Doctor’s voice built.
“No,” the Master corrected, “don’t be trivial, Doctor. You know I’m not. You can’t claim he knows you as I do. The problem with time travel is that you’re able to walk along the river, to remove yourself from the circumstances that form you-from those you’ve formed yourself. But that detachment is illusory. You can’t claim non-involvement.
“Do you think,” he pressed, “it's fair, or kind,” he practically spat the word, “that I remember having you, and now can't? What do you imagine I thought then, as him? I wasn’t blind; I knew what you were doing, why you were with me. You kept returning to me, and delighted as I was to have you, I knew it hardly boded well for our future together, or for anything I was involved in.”
The Doctor sat down on the bed, not looking at him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” the Master hissed, standing. “I’ve no use for your pallid contrition, your pity. Do you realize I've never so much as gone to talk to you at the Academy?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest that it wouldn’t have come to much if he had, but the Master cut off that nonsense before he had to hear a word of it. “Really Doctor, how many questions did you ask of me at twenty? I could have had you on your back with my psychic signature and a suggestion. And I’ve never attempted it, not even after our most unpleasant encounters.”
“I’m deeply envious of your strength of character, Master,” the Doctor sniped, reaching for his socks.
The Master walked to the bed, catching the Doctor’s chin in his hand, arresting his attempt to dress.
“It’s beneath you to refuse to encounter your actual problems. To conveniently return, whenever you like and without present consequences, to a period when things were easier.”
The Doctor jerked his head away, taking up his shoes. “Yes, thank you.” His voice was rich with sarcasm. “I take your point. I won’t do it again.”
He seemed upset-not simply embarrassed, or affronted at having his sanctimony undermined, but actively unhappy. The Master, standing in front of him, studied him closely. “You’re angry it’s over, aren’t you?”
His jaw tightened, and he didn’t give the Master the satisfaction of a response.
“I never knew that,” the Master murmured. “You simply disappeared.” He’d half assumed his future self and the Doctor must have reconciled themselves, but even then he’d recognized the too-neat notion as the overly sanguine pabulum it was.
“Well,” the Doctor stood, fully dressed, looking around the room for final items, at anything but the Master, who stood right in front of him, “you have yourself to thank, I suppose.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” the Master snarled. “Too stubborn even to consider a real relationship. Perfectly content with this sham, which you know can lead nowhere. That worked out splendidly for your previous self, after all.” He grabbed the Doctor’s arms, forcing the man to look at him. “But you don’t have to lose anything,” he hissed.
The Doctor gave the hands on his arms a cool glance, and stepped away. He looked the Master full in the face, and shook his head. “I don’t want you,” he murmured. “Not anymore.”
The Master swallowed. “You’ll regret this,” he called as the Doctor walked away.
“Perhaps,” the Doctor agreed, pausing, his back to the Master. “In a few regenerations, when things have gotten worse-as they inevitably do, with you. But since you’ve asked, I can promise you that I won’t bother you about it, if I do.” He left quietly, shutting the door behind him.
***
A loud noise from the next room, like someone hitting a wall, made the Doctor pause. “What was that?”
The Master pulled him back down with a hand twined through his curls. “Nothing you need to worry about at the moment, I’m sure.”
With a grin the Doctor conceded the point, and bent back down to kiss him.
Author: x_los
Rating: PG-13
Pairing/Characters: Three, Delgado!Master, Ainley!Master, Five (Doctor/Master)
Summary: The third Doctor is surprised and upset to see the Master with another man. Perhaps the worst part about it is that he doesn't understand what the Master could possibly see in someone who goes around wearing celery like it's a sartorial statement...
Beta:aralias
Acknowledgments: Apologies to P-dizzle (as we like to call him) for the title. ...no one calls him that. For this anon meme prompt: http://community.livejournal.com/best_enemies/13938.html?thread=3520370#t3520370 .
The Doctor burst into the dining room through an exterior window, glass shattering around him. He stumbled to his feet, reeling and coughing from the smoke.
“You!” he managed, pointing a shaky finger at the Master. “I knew you were behind all this!”
Behind him, a thick tentacle crashed through the next window in the series and started thrashing experimentally, groping around for its lost prey. The Doctor neatly stepped forward, just out of its range. It continued to flap sulkily in the background.
The Master raised an eyebrow. “I’m afraid you’re mistaken. While I wouldn’t hesitate to claim due credit for unleashing-” he craned his neck to get a better view of the creature, then righted himself, “-a pregnant Jallbeast on central London, I’m afraid I never though to.” The Master, still seated at a table set for two, gave the flushed-orange tentacle a critical glance. “Good heavens, is it in the egg-period?”
“You know very well it is!” the Doctor seethed. “Who but you would have instructed that creature to lay its clutch on Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart!”
The Master blinked, then began to chuckle hard, and to show little sign of stopping.
The Doctor bristled. “I can assure you, it isn’t even slightly funny. The poor man’s sporting an egg pouch! He looks like an furious kangaroo!”
The Doctor’s disclaimer of the hilarity of the situation left the Master choking on all-out guffaws.
“This is most undignified of you,” the Doctor huffed. “Jallbeast hosting is a very serious medical crime, you know.”
“One it seems I’ve neglected to commit,” the Master managed, recovering himself. “Fortunately for you, one of us passed xenobiology.” The Doctor narrowed his eyes at the aspersion to his intellect. The Master pressed on. “I seem to remember your precious Brigadier wearing some rather odious cologne.”
“Something musky and horrible, yes,” the Doctor admitted, grudgingly.
“That’s apiece with the period,” the Master granted. “And, unfortunately for the Brigadier, just the thing to attract to a pregnant Jallbeast in her egg-period heat. Now, how could he have ‘gone courting’ without his knowledge, I wonder?” The Master’s eyes were sparkling, and the Doctor had a terrible feeling about whatever he was about to say. “Has he, by any chance, been standing anywhere near sensitive interstellar transmission equipment while it’s in use?”
“…it’s broadly possible,” the Doctor said, because he could now very clearly remember having said ‘just hold this for a moment, old chap’ to a long-suffering Lethbridge-Stewart, and having thrust just such working a galactic transmitter in the man’s hands for want of table-space. The class of transmitter he’d been using operated on light-particle rather than light-wave theory, literally shunting a hard block of information in atomic format towards the recipient.
Smell, naturally, was a chemical sense. The Doctor had only been attempting to hitchhike to a more technologically advanced planet. His innocent transmission might have inadvertently become bound up with some fragments of the man’s dubious fragrance. When the roaming Jallbeast intercepted the transmission, she could very well have interpreted it as an invitation from a potentially compatible mate, complete with address and request for ‘relief’-though he’d hardly meant the term in the sense she’d taken it.
To judge from both the seasick pull he could feel his own mouth taking and the Master’s obvious merriment, something of the Doctor’s thoughts had made it into his expression.
“I see. In that case, hadn’t you better figure out some means of explaining the situation to the poor woman?” The Master’s glee was hardly subtle. “I’m sure she’d be only too happy to suction her eggs out of your friend’s stomach-once you explain he’s an entirely unsuitable host, and woefully unprepared to brood the eggs for the next five years, naturally.”
“Naturally,” the Doctor snapped back, brushing the glass off his cloak and making for the front door. He pause a moment, then turned back to the Master, taking in the ruined scene. The conspicuously set table-for-two. “Dining with someone?”
The Master grimly surveyed the room, then took out a pocket communicator, tapped at a few keys and slid it back in his pocket.
“Yes, actually. Though I’m afraid we’ll have to relocate to somewhere with less glass and more glasses. A pity-I went to some trouble to get this reservation. I had to hypnotize no less than three separate receptionists.” He snorted, as if to ask what service in the capital was coming to these days.
The Doctor felt a tickle of strange suspicion. “That’s rather exerting yourself, for a business dinner.”
The Master shrugged-standing and gathering his dark coat. The Doctor noticed things he hadn’t had time to a moment ago. The Master had discarded his expected jacket for a charcoal grey suit with a sprightly golden tie. In these bourgeois human settings, he looked like a man dressed for an anniversary, or like the sort of fellow who made a habit of taking his spouse out to dinner in style once a week.
“I’d hardly call it business,” the Master said easily, and the Doctor grew that touch more uncomfortable. The Master wasn’t being short with him, per se-he just didn’t feel obligated to offer up all his plans and intentions to the Doctor, which was unusual, because the Master typically assumed the Doctor was entitled to both.
“Good evening,” the Master said, sweeping past him just like that. No banter, no excuse to remain in his company-not even a good taunt about the comedy male pregnancy the Doctor had accidentally played yenta to.
Silently the Doctor gawped after him, and when the door of the restaurant had closed with an audible clank, he turned to address the tentacle. “Good evening? Good evening? Of all the cheek! As if he’s not only here to see me! As if this isn’t a transparent excuse to rub his sordid little encounter in my face! Sometimes that man is simply infuriating!”
The tentacle gurgled sympathetically, and the Doctor realized he’d been broadcasting on a telepathic level. Rather forcefully. Chagrined, he coughed and rubbed his neck. Well. At least this answered the question of how on Earth he was going to communicate with the Jallbeast. Back to business. He’d worry about the Master later-not that the man merited it.
The Doctor cleared his throat and mind. “I say old girl, you wouldn’t mind reabsorbing your eggs, would you? I understand you didn’t mean any harm, but the man’s a soldier, you see, and he needs his stomach egg-free-for maneuvers and such.”
She warbled, and in the Doctor’s mind something like semantic wind-chimes delivered her thoughts.
The Doctor gave her a nervous look. “I agree, it was very wrong of him to send you such mixed signals. But listen, sometimes a chap can’t-”
“Huzzzzputta!” the tentacle flailed wildly.
The Doctor crossed his arms. “There’s no need to involve me in all this, you know. No one asked your opinion on my personal relationsh-no, please, madam, control yourself! Stop thrashing! This is a listed building!”
***
The Doctor had a brand-new Master detector. He’d used it earlier to track the Master to the restaurant, hotly pursued by the Jallbeast he’d fought off the Brigadier. Now that the Brigadier once again in no way resembled a male sea horse and the Jallbeast had been reliably pointed in the direction of a more compatible mate four systems over, the Doctor emphatically did not use his new detector to track down the other man and see what this dinner date nonsense was all about.
He felt perfectly justified in simply turning it on, however, and thus he discovered the Master was eating at an exclusive supper club (no great surprise there) downtown. Though he wouldn’t stoop so low as to interrupt the Master’s evening, he’d certainly bear that information in mind.
***
UNIT was uncharacteristically quiet the next week. The most exciting interruption occurred on Thursday, when two displaced Victorian Londoners accidentally invented a rudimentary form of time-hopping. The Doctor took the dangerous alien component that had enabled their machine to work away from them, told them to stop adding strange things they picked up at markets in Limehouse to their scientific equipment (advice he’d never followed himself-not even in the letter, as it happened, and certainly not in the spirit), and sent them home.
It was hours before he realized that he might have been able use their technology to jump to a time period he knew he’d visited as a younger man, where he would be able to ask for some help repairing his TARDIS. He was distracted, and it had made him sloppy. It was a terribly good thing the Master was too busy with whatever it was he was doing at the moment to attack, because the Doctor really wasn’t up for it this week.
Annoyed and chagrinned, the Doctor took a walk to clear his head. He enjoyed strolling through town whilst thinking, and often drifted through the grand districts of the city alone, absently appreciating the architecture. The movement of his body schooled his mind into regular rhythms.
It was an accident-or at least, an unconscious whim-that brought him to the front door of the Master’s club, roughly a week since he’d last seen him, at 8:30 in the evening. Which was, coincidentally, when his detector (which had remained active the majority of the week, though of course the Doctor only cast it the occasional glance) usually indicated the Master left the building.
Ever a creature of habit and of controlled routine, the Master stepped out just then, walking companionably with a much taller man. Startled to discover himself at this place and at this precise moment, the Doctor hung back, ducking into an alcove. He wasn’t eavesdropping, he assured himself. Just-evading an awkward encounter. And surely he had a right to keep tabs on what the Master got up to. After all, it was more likely than not something dangerous and nefarious. Like unleashing dangerous alien fiends on the unsuspecting populace. Or unleashing dangerous alien diseases by having unprotected sex with the unsuspecting populace. That was a legitimate danger, and the Doctor found it frankly terrible to contemplate.
“So,” the Master clasped his hands together in front of him, looking up at his companion, “I trust you still suffer from insufficient discipline and infrequent practice?”
The Master’s …friend laughed. “You know for all your sanctimony about technical superiority, I soundly defeated you in our last contest.”
He was young, dressed in sporting gear. The Doctor felt jolted. Surely this man wasn’t the Master’s type at all. The Doctor couldn’t really speak with recent assurance, but he’d somehow thought that whoever had so thoroughly captured the Master’s attention would be-suave. More mature, more obviously erudite. A bit more like him, if the Doctor had to admit it. Surely past experience counted for something. At any rate, the Doctor hadn’t been imagining some lanky near-child with ridiculous hair, who looked as though he were running late to an after-school practice session.
Not that he’d been unhappily, compulsively imagining the Master’s liaisons, really. At least, not in any great detail.
The Master made an absolutely flirtatious moue with his lips, taking a step closer to his companion. “I’ll see what you’re capable of for myself soon enough.”
The Doctor rolled his eyes. “Weak,” he murmured, annoyed by the banter, which, as the Master couldn’t know he was here, clearly wasn’t even being done for his benefit. There was a frank, unselfconscious intensity to the way the Master looked at the other man that alarmed the Doctor, who had only ever seen the Master direct such a look at him.
The couple was in profile to the Doctor, and he could see the stranger give the Master a quick, bright grin. The Doctor’s mood soured further with resentment. Perhaps the Master had been drawn by the man’s simple pleasure in his company-a luxury the Doctor could not himself afford, for reasons that should be obvious to the Master.
The stranger gave him a look. “Really, Master. Simply because I don’t like to boast about my dueling prowess ad nauseam.” He shook his head, mock-disparagingly. “Shall we?”
The Doctor’s head shot up, and his eyes widened with shock. It had been distinctly unpleasant when he’d assumed the two men were negotiating a sexual encounter, but fencing was decidedly his and the Master’s pastime. They’d only just enjoyed a vigorous bout in the Master’s prison cell! Surely this was an order of infidelity even the Master had to blanch at!
But far from blanching, the Master whet his lips, making an ‘after you’ gesture with his arm. Together they started off. The Doctor didn’t know which of them he wanted to punch more.
“You know,” the Master’s friend remarked, his voice growing fainter as they walked away from what even the Doctor was starting to feel was really a hiding spot, “I’ve missed this. I don’t know why we didn’t do it more often. We had ample opportunity.”
The Master chuckled, a touch bitterly. “At least someone here is willing to afford me a touch of satisfaction.”
The Doctor seethed, having decided he would happily punch either of them. Everything about their conversation-its content and its ease-indicated a long acquaintance. What’s more, between the dopey innuendo and the limpid looks, the Master seemed absolutely besotted.
The Doctor supposed that it wasn’t strictly his business if the other man moved on. A Master who’d lost interest in him would inevitably make less of a nuisance of himself, at least in the Doctor’s immediate vicinity. He’d stop dropping by with his mad schemes and his impossible invitations. He’d spend his time crossing swords with some adolescent Milquetoast who apparently even called him by his decidedly-odd-to-contemporary-humans name. Besides, it was only natural that, given enough rejections, the Master would take the hint and try his luck elsewhere. Any reasonable person, the Doctor admitted, would have been well and truly rebuffed by now. Still, he’d somehow relied on the Master’s stupid, decidedly (charmingly) unreasonable persistence without entirely knowing he did. Perhaps it was the end of an era. It was-unexpected. Sudden.
Rather horrible.
The Doctor pictured the Master’s concentration, his fixity, given over to some other partner. Then he told himself to stop it. This was self-indulgent nonsense. It was for the best, he told himself, cross and decisive. And even if it wasn’t, it was done, now. He walked back in the direction he’d come, feeling as if he’d left his stomach in the alleyway.
***
The next time the Doctor ran into the Master, it was with the same man. It seemed the Master had entered into an exclusive relationship with the boy wonder. The Doctor almost felt he should warn the other man. The Master was mad, bad, and dangerous to know. The sooner other fools drawn to him discovered that (and left him well alone), the better.
Running into the pair on yet another date implied that the Master was gadding about with someone who’d truly caught his attention. How like him-he’d always been incapable of casually playing the field (or ‘pathetically single-minded,’ as the Doctor would describe the Master’s proclivities if he were in a truly foul mood, which was generally the case when he considered the Master’s latest romantic exploits).
But this was his field. Why did the strange man the Master was so interested in insist on the Doctor’s favorite bits of England as date locations? The man was either certifiably mad or not from around here, judging from his appalling and (blessedly, because the Doctor could hardly have borne looking at accessories of that ilk on a daily basis) unusual lapel-ornament. He didn’t seem to own more than the one outfit. He might have been wearing the decorative vegetable the last time the Doctor had seen them, as well. The Doctor hadn’t been at the right angle to see it, if he had.
It was a bright Saturday, and he and Jo were warmly wrapped up. Jo had suggested that they should take advantage of this last burst of sunshine to do something outdoorsy, and never one to shy from active pursuits, the Doctor had agreed. He’d already told the Brigadier they’d run some old files up to Liz (while gruffer than usual, the Doctor had also been suspiciously obliging lately, willing to help the Brigadier in ways he’d normally have insisted were beneath his dignity), and so punting afterwards had seemed the obvious choice. Jo had also suggested that it would take the Doctor’s mind off whatever it was he’d been brooding over the past weeks, but he’d ignored that heavy hint to cheer up.
Thus, Jo and the Doctor were floating down the river Cam when they spotted the Master and his… new friend taking a stroll along the river. Arm in arm. The current ensured that the Doctor had plenty of time to collect his thoughts on the matter before conversation was forced upon them, and also that they could hardly escape the acquaintance.
He opened his mouth to deliver a cutting, pithy remark that would shame the Master deeply and baffle his companion, whilst managing to conceal the depths of his annoyance from Jo. Unfortunately the Master’s dripping sop of a paramour was quicker to speak even than the Doctor.
“Ah, hello there!” He had the audacity to smile awkwardly at them, and, to add insult to injury, to try giving a friendly wave. “Nice to run into the two of you.”
“Is it.” The Doctor glowered at him, shoving his pole in the water decidedly, feeling the moment for action had been lost. The Master looked infuriatingly placid, even pleased with himself. As though they were all going to have a nice little chat. The nerve of him!
“I thought you were in London,” the Master said, as casually as if it didn’t much matter to him either way.
“Well I’m not,” the Doctor snapped. “As you see.”
The current had slowed, and the Master’s friend simply strode along the bank, easily keeping pace with them. Pulled via their linked arms, the Master contentedly came along. His excuses and explanations were conspicuous by their absence.
The Doctor gave him a pointed look, and it took a moment to catch his attention. When his eyes fell on the Doctor it was without his restless, relentless, desperate need. There was nothing of yearning in it. He seemed like someone else’s.
“Out for a ride?” the strange man pressed on, in a desperate attempt to mitigate the tension. The sun glared down on the thing on his lapel-a grotesque lump of vegetal matter, wilting in the Indian-Summer heat, which looked not unlike some creatures the Doctor had fought recently. I have lost to the sort of man who wears celery as a lapel pin, the Doctor thought inconsolably.
“Lovely day for it.” The young man took a deep, appreciative breath of the autumnal air. Under the weight of the Doctor’s glare he coughed and turned to the Doctor’s companion, giving her a strangely fond look. “How are you, Jo?” he asked, softly.
“I suppose the Master’s told you all about us, then,” the Doctor interrupted her bemused reply, testing him, meaning he and Jo and UNIT as a larger whole, hoping to discover whether the man was aware of and involved in the Master’s unsavory criminal activities. Not that the Master seemed to have done anything interesting of late. Too busy-the Doctor grimaced-punting, no doubt.
“Oh, we don’t discuss you, really,” the Master’s friend assured him, as if the Doctor should be thankful for their discretion-as if he’d be relieved to hear that his name wasn’t being shouted at inopportune moments.
The Doctor gritted his teeth. “No? I’m very glad of it. Jo, brace yourself, there’s a good girl. I’m going to go faster.”
A long-overdue look of worry dawned on the Master’s face. “Doctor, I think you may have fundamentally misapprehended-”
“What sort of a person you are?” the Doctor snapped before he could quite stop himself, and immediately felt like an even greater fool.
“Doctor,” the Master began, seeming amused at his expense. He turned to address his pretty-boy companion. “My dear-” he began.
Oh, now that was insupportable. “Not another word out of you!” the Doctor snapped, flipping his sonic screwdriver at the water. The boat’s dinky, deactivated emergency motor whirred to life, and the Doctor and Jo sped away with a dramatic splash.
“Doctor,” Jo began when they could no longer see the Master and his beaux du jour, “I-”
“I can’t believe the Master would take up with such an insipid little-what is it, Jo?”
“Is this what you’ve been so worried about?” Jo pressed. “That the Master might have, um-lost track of his old school ties?”
“What?” the Doctor snapped, impatient.
“You know, that he might have-forgotten about how ‘you were at school together’?” Jo prompted, earnest but unwilling to call the Doctor on the point explicitly.
“…Ah.” The Doctor rubbed his neck. “I’d forgotten I-told you that.”
“Listen, Doctor,” Jo took his hand. “I may not know what it feels like to be cheated on, but-”
“Cheated on?” The Doctor snatched his hand back, appalled. “I don’t know what rumors are going around that vile canteen, Josephine, but in this case it is absolutely impossible for me to have been wronged in that sense. I am a confirmed bachelor. I can’t be two-timed if I was never timed to begin with. And certainly not by him.”
“I see,” said Jo in the sorrowful, pensive voice of a woman who had just lost 20 pounds to Sergeant Benton.
“Well,” the Doctor snorted, “I’m delighted to have cleared up that misapprehension.”
“Wait a tick,” Jo sat up straighter, seeming to suddenly apprehend something. “The Master’s just the sort of person who’d actually go through with a ridiculous plan, just to try and make you jealous! I mean everyone talks about that sort of thing, but no one ever actually does it. Trust the Master to take it seriously. And hey, that guy-he might be one of yours! Was there ever anyone else, back on your home planet, he might have gotten to help him out with this? I mean the Brigadier said you used to look different, and then you changed your whole face, so maybe it’s someone you know, who you don’t even recognize-”
“Jo,” the Doctor sat down suddenly, “you’re a genius. An absolute genius. And I’m an utter moron.”
Jo blinked at him. “Am I?”
“Yes,” the Doctor groaned, “I’m afraid so.” And apparently he was destined to drastically downgrade his sense of style to boot. This was a day of horrible realizations.
He was both more and less jealous than he had been a moment ago, but very certain that he needed to contact the Master and discuss this. Violating one’s own time-line repeatedly was one thing, and doing it just for a bit of… friendship was another-but shoving it in the current-Doctor’s face was completely unacceptable. The Doctor ignored the fact that the Master had had the tact to arrange his liaisons across town, or in an entirely different city. He was not in a reasonable sort of mood. Arranging all his dates to take place in the same week constituted neglect enough to merit a stern word, in the Doctor’s opinion. If the Master wanted ‘satisfaction,’ he’d simply have to find it closer to home.
***
The Doctor consulted his detector and glanced up at the long French windows. A persistent beeping paired with pretentious surroundings: this was definitely the place. He would have been thrown if the detector had tried to guide him to a chip shop or something similar.
The French windows earned their name by virtue of their location as well as their architectural style. The Master was being even more discreet than he had been in leaving London, the last time the Doctor had run into him. He’d hopped the channel, avoiding the obvious choices-Paris, Marseilles, Lyon, the French Mediterranean-and choosing instead a quiet, refined house in the countryside.
The house was stately, but homely, inviting in the dark night. The Doctor liked it. That was, he supposed bitterly, probably not unrelated to the Master having chosen it for the evening. When the Master next touched down on the planet, the Doctor had taken Bessie and the ferry, and had hoped to find the Master alone. His own TARDIS, however, had been there to mock him upon his arrival, parked insouciantly in the drive-where he’d intended to park Bessie. The Freudian reading of his indignation came to him a second later, and the Doctor huffed, annoyed with himself.
He did not quite know how to go in, couldn’t bear the hideous possibility of interrupting the Master and whatever version of him he’d brought here. While the other encounters had been, now he viewed them with retrospective calm, relatively innocent, you didn’t bring a man to a country house in the dead of night to fence or take a pleasant, scenic stroll.
The Doctor stewed, waiting for any indication that they’d-finished. It was cold outside, but it would feel wrong to take shelter in the other Doctor’s TARDIS, which, in his current condition, he couldn’t even make off with in an act of petty revenge. The old manor house was surrounded by desolate fields, and compared to the now-familiar atmosphere of London, the landscape was inhuman and lonely. The Doctor seldom had occasion to feel so small.
A shape flitted across the upstairs window, visible through a small part in the curtains. A man in a demure dressing gown walked through the spill of light for an instant. He opened the window, letting in a breath of cool night air (as only someone in a hot, close, post-coital room would do on such an inhospitable night). The Doctor caught little more than the brightness of his hair and the youthfulness of his face.
“Clearly in future I forget the virtues of subtlety,” he murmured nastily to himself.
Someone behind him chuckled. The Doctor turned, eyebrow raised, to confront a man wearing a long, dark cloak-well-suited to the weather, but not to the period.
“You,” he murmured, taking in the man’s unwholesome grin, his beard, his general air.
“None other,” the Master confirmed, as if there were ever any doubt. “Good evening, Doctor.”
“Is it?” The Doctor asked. “It seems that rather depends on when you ask.”
“An excellent point,” the Master conceded, darkly. “I assure you, it was, and is going to be, very good indeed.”
“How very like you to come to gloat,” the Doctor snapped, turning away from him, catching, carried on a breath of air, the cruel, falling sound of someone’s laughter. “It seems at least you never change.”
The Master stepped around the Doctor, placing himself in front of him again.
“Do you imagine I’m pleased about this?” the Master hissed through his teeth. “How convenient for you, to assume your future behavior could only possibly inconvenience yourself.”
The Doctor bristled. “I don’t hear you protesting up there.”
“Oh, I see,” the Master sneered. “It’s your contemporary Master’s indiscriminate desperation that’s at fault. Anyone but him, or rather anyone but you. In fact, you’re the one to be pitied here-your poor, bruised sense of dignity. I was just some sort of willfully malicious tourist trap you stumbled into. For the record, Doctor, I recall this evening with perfect clarity. You’re not protesting.”
There was a real, frothing anger that surpassed indignation concealed behind the paper-screen of the Master’s taunting. For the first time the Doctor considered that his future self, who he’d considered an irresponsible dabbler in their shared timeline, might be resorting to the fellowship of his contemporary Master because, in their own time periods, the situation between the two men had become too complicated to accommodate even the possibility of the companionship the Doctor currently assiduously denied himself. That would go some way to contextualize his poaching. It was a grim enough possibility that the Doctor almost felt sorry for the man he would be.
Then he heard a muffled, luxuriant groan. Without ever having heard its like before, he absolutely knew it belonged to the Master. His Master. The Doctor decided sympathy was terribly over-rated.
“Come on,” he barked at the Master, “I’ve had just about enough of this.”
He walked across the courtyard, his strides long enough that the (still) shorter Master almost had to jog to keep up with him. Not bothering to knock, he used his sonic screwdriver on the door and walked in. He walked up the carpeted stairs, which cushioned his footfalls, and was nearly at the bedroom door when the Master trailing him called his name.
“Wait a moment,” he said, coming up alongside the Doctor. “I’ve a better idea.”
The Doctor turned around to face him, and his eyes opened in shock when, without preamble, the strange Master shoved him up against the wall with an audible thud and kissed him, hard.
“Mmph!” the Doctor exclaimed.
The door banged open beside them, but the Doctor was slightly too busy being kissed to register it.
With a lingering, nostalgic sweep of his tongue, the Master-the Master pressed against him, his velvet crushed against the Doctor’s velvet, his kiss heady and uncompromisingly needful-took a step back. The Master who’d just emerged from the bedroom took a step forward, sparing a quick, venomous look for his successor.
“Right on cue,” the older Master adjusted his cloak. “Running to protect your primary investment. How predictable. Excuse me, gentlemen.” He walked past his predecessor into the bedroom, and locked the door behind him with an audible click.
The Doctor and Master were left standing in the hall-the Master rather flushed, even under his olive complexion. Wearing, the Doctor noted, a loosely tied sort of yukata in charcoal gray. He looked excellent-but quite obviously like someone who’d just come from bed. The Doctor glared at him.
The Master frowned. “You realize it’s only you, don’t you?”
“You didn’t seem terribly placated by that knowledge a moment ago. But yes,” the Doctor said, stiffly. “I had come to that conclusion.”
The Master gave him a bewildered look. “Well then why-”
“Is this a bedroom?” the Doctor interrupted him, nodding towards the next door down the hall, which, given the logic of human architecture, should be just that. Not waiting for the answer, he turned the handle, pushed it open, and went inside. Perplexed, the Master followed him. The Doctor held the door for him and clicked the lock behind him.
“France?” the Doctor murmured, taking off his jacket and laying it over the back of the chair.
“I thought it might be best, after the Cambridge incident.”
The Doctor’s jaw tightened, and he took off his cravat. “And how did you come by the house?”
“Only a rental, I’m afraid,” the Master watched him, eyes active, tone carefully even. “From an estate agent in Paris. I have it on a long lease. We came up this afternoon.”
“Did you?” the Doctor asked, brittle in his cheer, unbuttoning his ruffled shirt, letting it fall open.
“We did,” the Master kept his voice level, and let it dwell, heavy, on the ‘we.’ “You seemed to want something in the way of an escape.”
“I-” the Doctor began a hot denial.
“You explicitly wanted me,” the Master pressed, crossing his arms over his chest. “And if you’d ever shown any sign of that before, you might have something resembling grounds for condemning my choices.”
The Doctor drummed his fingers on the chair he’d been laying his clothing on. As sure as he was of his general moral stance regarding the man, on this particular matter, he knew he had no just grounds for reproaching the Master. He was being petty, irrational, and he disliked himself both for his jealousy and for what he was about to do.
“Well - I’m showing you now, aren’t I?” The Doctor stripped off his undershirt and stood before him in trousers and shoes. His expression was brusque and unbending, but the position was obviously vulnerable. “What more do you want?”
“I think you know that, Doctor,” the Master said, not looking at anything but his eyes, sounding almost pained.
“Well, what more can he promise you?” the Doctor snapped. “Dropping by when he likes-” the Doctor took a breath.
“Can you guarantee me that you’ll operate any differently?” the Master countered. “I haven’t done anything wrong here, you know, and if you’re not prepared to come with me-”
“You know I can’t!” The Doctor walked away from the chair, pacing the length of the room. “And neither can he. But at least tomorrow you’ll still know where to find me.”
“How very true, Doctor,” the Master observed, coldly. “Do you even want me, or do you simply object to your future self having me strongly enough that you’re willing to sacrifice yourself in his place?”
The Doctor turned to the Master. “I want you.” His voice nearly broke on the word ‘want,’ raw with sincerity. He stepped close to the man, looking down at him, eyes as fervent as his tone. Carefully, he brought his lips to the Master’s.
The Doctor hadn’t kissed anyone in this body, and he approached it with a slight hesitation, a sense of occasion. The Master, however, responded to his kiss automatically, perfunctorily, and why shouldn’t he? He’d spent all evening engaged in practice, after all.
With a snarl in his throat at the thought, the Doctor shoved the Master down on the bed, which creaked with the pressure. The Master’s eyes were wide and dark with surprise, and the Doctor straddled him, bringing a hand up to his face, fingertips on the Master’s temple, humbling himself enough to ask for the contact he could no longer initiate himself.
The Master did it for him, almost tenderly, and gasped when the Doctor’s thoughts hurtled into his. The Doctor did want him, so obviously, so desperately, and the force of that must be enough to see them through, to circumnavigate the ideological canyons he could see no way of jumping. He loved him. That would have to be enough.
The Master smoothed the Doctor’s mind, trembling himself. “Of course ,” he murmured, “of course it will be.” He pulled the Doctor down on top of him, holding him, opening his mouth to the Doctor’s insistent kiss.
***
The Doctor, sitting on the rumpled bed and wearing a claret dressing gown, looked up from his book at the soft click of the lock. He blanched.
“Not the Master you were expecting?” the new arrival swept in, his tone insinuating, sour.
“Not precisely, no,” the Doctor admitted, putting the book down. “What happened to-”
“He’s occupied,” the Master said shortly, taking the settee. “As you should remember.”
The Doctor leaned back in his seat. “Ah. This would be the start of the détente, then.”
The Master curled his lip at both the assessment and the quality of the Doctor’s recollection. “‘Ah yes, you remember it well.’”
“It’s hardly the first time we’ve used this house,” the Doctor pointed out. “I couldn’t be precisely sure.”
“No,” the Master leaned back, occupying the settee with a sprawl that was relentless and indolent, like Manifest Destiny. “I suppose you wouldn’t have been. You’ve been carrying on quite the affair, haven’t you? You were,” his lip quirked, “so kind to me. Now that I know this incarnation better, I find it strange. Your warmth, it transpires, is a precious commodity. A nonrenewable resource,” he gave the Doctor a harsh look of appraisal. “There’s so little of it in you.”
The Doctor flinched at the words, but said nothing. His lips were pressed thin, his eyes grew guarded.
The Master, who had wanted some reaction, some hint of reciprocation, grew more vicious at having failed to provoke him. “It was as though you were trying to compensate me for something.” He chuckled harshly. “Is it because you feel guilty about how their arrangement ends? That would be ironic, considering your role in bringing all of this about.”
Uncomfortable, the Doctor got up, and made to gather his clothing.
The Master followed him with his eyes, wishing the man would stop and talk to him. He couldn’t stand how thoroughly capable the Doctor was of ignoring him. It wasn’t fair. He couldn’t have ignored the Doctor if he tried.
The Master looked at the Doctor’s abandoned book, spine up on the table. Something from Remembrance of Things Past. Self-consciously ironic. He resented the Doctor to a degree that amounted nearly to hatred for a great many reasons. Still, he did love the man’s easy, natural humor.
“Do you blame me for it having gone wrong?” He gestured to the next room with a nod of his head.
“No,” the Doctor said, sharply casual, having found the majority of his clothing, and tossing it on the bed. “It’s hardly your fault. It was just a terrible idea, I never should have proposed it.”
The Master bristled. “Perhaps you’d like to charge in there and keep it from happening. Protect your own virtue?”
“I’ve half a mind to. The whole thing was idiotic-” The Doctor pulled his trousers up under his robe before taking it off, primly, his movements quick with annoyance. “I don’t know why I thought it was ever going to work. I don’t know why I wanted it to. Daylight antagonism and private truces-fitful, temporary liaisons, as if we could separate waking life from dreams with clean lines, nothing bleeding over. Betraying my friends, despising myself. Ridiculous. People don’t live like that.”
“Yes,” the Master conceded, because he could remember how unpleasant that had been very clearly, could recall the hypocrisy and frustration of it. “You should have simply agreed to my terms. A more total, elegant solution.”
The Doctor scoffed, buttoning his shirt. “I notice you’ve stopped offering them.”
“I notice you never accepted,” the Master shot back.
The Doctor gave him a strange, quick glance. “I thought all of that was off the table.”
The Master looked at him, trying and failing to catch his eye. “If I say, ‘Doctor, would you like a slice of cake?’ half a dozen times, to your polite demurrals, and lay it out on the table, I assume you know that you’re still welcome to it, even if I haven’t parroted back the invitation recently. Though I doubt you’re interested.”
The Doctor didn’t say anything, tucking his chin into his chest to fasten his braces.
“No,” the Master sneered, “I thought not. I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to stop such little pleasure jaunts.”
The Doctor blinked at him, holding his coat but not putting it on. “I beg your pardon?”
“You heard me.”
“I think whoever you are at any given moment is most capable of giving informed consent to any-” The Doctor’s voice built.
“No,” the Master corrected, “don’t be trivial, Doctor. You know I’m not. You can’t claim he knows you as I do. The problem with time travel is that you’re able to walk along the river, to remove yourself from the circumstances that form you-from those you’ve formed yourself. But that detachment is illusory. You can’t claim non-involvement.
“Do you think,” he pressed, “it's fair, or kind,” he practically spat the word, “that I remember having you, and now can't? What do you imagine I thought then, as him? I wasn’t blind; I knew what you were doing, why you were with me. You kept returning to me, and delighted as I was to have you, I knew it hardly boded well for our future together, or for anything I was involved in.”
The Doctor sat down on the bed, not looking at him. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” the Master hissed, standing. “I’ve no use for your pallid contrition, your pity. Do you realize I've never so much as gone to talk to you at the Academy?”
The Doctor opened his mouth to protest that it wouldn’t have come to much if he had, but the Master cut off that nonsense before he had to hear a word of it. “Really Doctor, how many questions did you ask of me at twenty? I could have had you on your back with my psychic signature and a suggestion. And I’ve never attempted it, not even after our most unpleasant encounters.”
“I’m deeply envious of your strength of character, Master,” the Doctor sniped, reaching for his socks.
The Master walked to the bed, catching the Doctor’s chin in his hand, arresting his attempt to dress.
“It’s beneath you to refuse to encounter your actual problems. To conveniently return, whenever you like and without present consequences, to a period when things were easier.”
The Doctor jerked his head away, taking up his shoes. “Yes, thank you.” His voice was rich with sarcasm. “I take your point. I won’t do it again.”
He seemed upset-not simply embarrassed, or affronted at having his sanctimony undermined, but actively unhappy. The Master, standing in front of him, studied him closely. “You’re angry it’s over, aren’t you?”
His jaw tightened, and he didn’t give the Master the satisfaction of a response.
“I never knew that,” the Master murmured. “You simply disappeared.” He’d half assumed his future self and the Doctor must have reconciled themselves, but even then he’d recognized the too-neat notion as the overly sanguine pabulum it was.
“Well,” the Doctor stood, fully dressed, looking around the room for final items, at anything but the Master, who stood right in front of him, “you have yourself to thank, I suppose.”
“You’re being ridiculous,” the Master snarled. “Too stubborn even to consider a real relationship. Perfectly content with this sham, which you know can lead nowhere. That worked out splendidly for your previous self, after all.” He grabbed the Doctor’s arms, forcing the man to look at him. “But you don’t have to lose anything,” he hissed.
The Doctor gave the hands on his arms a cool glance, and stepped away. He looked the Master full in the face, and shook his head. “I don’t want you,” he murmured. “Not anymore.”
The Master swallowed. “You’ll regret this,” he called as the Doctor walked away.
“Perhaps,” the Doctor agreed, pausing, his back to the Master. “In a few regenerations, when things have gotten worse-as they inevitably do, with you. But since you’ve asked, I can promise you that I won’t bother you about it, if I do.” He left quietly, shutting the door behind him.
***
A loud noise from the next room, like someone hitting a wall, made the Doctor pause. “What was that?”
The Master pulled him back down with a hand twined through his curls. “Nothing you need to worry about at the moment, I’m sure.”
With a grin the Doctor conceded the point, and bent back down to kiss him.