Prompt : Intensive

Something about war had broken this man. He hates seeing it, sometimes – it is so strange to say that it was war that helped make him better. It is sad to say that he was a warrior going in, a softer man coming out.

This man had been so gentle, and he flinches to think of what must have happened to light-colored eyes and softly curled hair and the quiet disposition that belonged to them. He hates to think what must have happened, that somehow he became tall and hard, caught between smiles and anger, always.

Their every interaction is a battle between intensity and tenderness. Their arguments are sharp and angry and fierce, each desperately trying to prove the other wrong in the way that only warriors fight for their beliefs. There are times when they break each other and when everything rises to such rage that the very bonds between them could be breaking. And these times, their love really is like a war.

And then the other side of the battle comes in. Sometimes they come to each other at night to beg forgiveness more than apologize. They gently kiss each other’s cheeks, eyelids, foreheads, chins, lips, everything. Sometimes they are simply desperate to know that each other is alive, because it reminds them both so much of war. Some nights, they cry each other to sleep.

They make love and he is surprised, at first. He never did expect the Doctor to approach anything with such a violent vigor, and once or twice he has to raise his hands to stop this man pressing him – suffocating him – against the wall. Sometimes the pulse of hips is fast – intensive – and everything is over in an instant. Everything ends before it has even begun, and they are breathless and spent and reeling. It is the sort of sex of one who needs, quickly, who takes what he can get because if they have each other for an instant, it is better than never having had each other.

Sometimes the Master makes him go slow. Sometimes his touches simply pet across chest and he does not move quickly when he is begged to. Sometimes their love is painful and slow and it ends in crying.

Once, he would have called it torture. Once he would have reveled in making the Doctor suffer, like this. But now, he is simply trying to teach him.

He thinks if they can make love and make it unlike war, maybe he can save this man.