Prompt : Physical

The Doctor holds out his hand and for a long moment, the Master honestly does not know what to do. He looks up to those pale eyes and for a moment, he thinks about sneering at him. But he remembers that even when he refused to take his hand, the last time, he could do no such thing.

Never, he had said.

How much did he really mean that?

He looks back to the Doctor’s hand and he tilts his head, as if summing it up.

The Doctor waits a long moment. Something in his eyes seems to waver and his palm falls maybe half an inch.

And then it is simply there. The Master has hardly taken a breath, hardly has time to catch up with what he has done, much less bring his mind to attention and fill the blank moments between when he had looked up to those pale eyes and when he had suddenly found himself holding the Doctor’s hand.

It was just a pinpoint of physical contact. Their arms were stretched out between them and in space, in mind, they were so far apart from each other. But he had not refused the offer this time.

The Doctor hesitates, then says quietly, “Thank you.”

He nods, slowly. A minute passes in relative silence. Then, finally, he tells him.

“I need my hand back.” He hesitates, then adds, “But I am not letting go.”

This seems to satisfy the shorter man, and that is good. It will be better if they can pass each other with acknowledgement, no matter how stiff the interaction may be.

They let go and the Master realizes that maybe he does not want to die, after all. Not quite yet.

…

The first time he kisses his cheek, it comes to mean something like a quiet “thank you”. The Doctor had been kind enough – perhaps brave enough – to finally tell the Master that he needed his hair combed a different way. That, in this ugly body he had been given, the hair slicked back by water and wax only emphasized his apparent lack of appreciable visage.

He had done it in such a quiet way, offering to comb his hair. And the Master had been suspicious, but had finally given in. The days here were long, and without travels or schemes or possibilities of death, life seemed relatively plain.

So they passed the time. And when he was permitted to look, he did so with utmost solemnity.

“It looks better this way, does it.”

“It looks fine.” The Doctor had put out, cautiously.

He scoffed. The Doctor hesitated before holding out his comb tentatively.

“You can change it, if you want.”

The Master had said nothing. It was a simple matter to kiss his cheek and leave, and at that point, who really needed words for the whole affair?

…

One day he is horrendously curious and when they stand, nearly touching, he unravels the Doctor’s necktie and loosens his collar. He opens it up to reveal the skin of his throat. And then he leaves, says nothing more about it.

He never even touched skin, to see him.

…

Their first kisses are had in quiet corners at night, when no-one would think to look, and where no-one could see with their eyes. The touch is almost overwhelming, the Master has not had his own sensations for so long.

“Master?” The Doctor asks, and he sounds worried by the way the Master has just shivered.

“Shut up.” He replies. He kisses the Doctor and his mind is confused, but his body is sighing with relief in response. He never wants to forget what it is like to touch.

…

Watching physicians strip him of his clothes to check his pulses, his hearts, his pressure, his lungs, his ribs, his everything – that he had hated. It became almost worse than the fear that, if he were to look at his body, he would find it falling apart underneath him.

The first time they sit in front of each other, chests exposed, both are too enamored and simultaneously modest to say a thing about it.

But he brings a hand to brush his fingertips over the Doctor’s chest, and he thinks some day, he might like to kiss beyond his lips alone.

…

Their bodies feel completely right together.

His body is shuddering and the memory of pleasure amounts to nothing, in comparison to this. They are breathing together and moving together, and he has an incredible, reverent respect for the Doctor’s body. In a strange way, it makes perfect sense, how much he wanted to possess this.

The pleasure all but crashes through them and the smell of sweat and musk lingers between them. They share exhausted kisses, touching lips and everywhere else, just to reacquaint.

He keeps his fingertips brushing against the Doctor’s arms and back and shoulders and neck long after the smaller man falls into a peaceful, exhausted rest. His fingertips are tracing patterns that in some language, must mean something like “I love you”.

He has never learned such a language, but if he could learn it here, against the Doctor’s skin, he might not mind trying to learn to speak it.

…

He keeps looking, hoping to find a letter that says thank you, or I am sorry, or gives some explanation. He finds no such thing and he does not need such a thing to know.

The Doctor has left, and he is not coming back.
He thinks it appropriate, really. First he had collapsed, body-under-mind. Strange how now he stands, collapsing heart under the muscles that still remember how the man had felt in his arms.

The Doctor will not return to this place, he knows it. But he leaves a small note on his bed, anyway. If not just because the physical act of doing so feels better than nothing. And his body needs something so much that he is willing – happy – to take it.

…

Doctor

I am not letting go.



The Master