Chapter Text
Something, (the Doctor realized as the Master cupped his hand behind her head and kissed her) had just changed between them. Had she started that change when she surprised him in the den? Or had it been happening already, their last encounter merely turning up the heat on something that had already been simmering? She couldn’t be sure, but either way, in that kiss, in that moment, it finally reached a boil.
The kiss felt different than those they had shared before, and she could taste something new in it as his mouth worked against hers. What was it? Not capitulation, surely. Something close. Acquiescence, perhaps. Maybe even whatever passed for peace in the Master’s tormented mind.
Well, whatever it was, it tasted impossibly sweet.
Something inside of her—something between her hearts that had been taut and desperate—eased in answer to that kiss, and the feeling of it was so profound that she grasped his hand and pressed it to her breastbone, as though he might feel it too. As though he might understand (what he was doing for her, for them both), without the embarrassment of saying it aloud. She was too awkward for that, and he, perhaps, too fragile.
They kissed for seconds, for minutes, longer still, and the hand behind her head was so gentle that she almost imagined it belonged to someone else. But his mouth was certainly his own, heated, passionate as ever (she loved his passion, even though it usually came hand in hand with his rage and violence) now that the dam of his resistance had finally shattered.
Perhaps it was just the habit, developed when Missy had been the Doctor’s prisoner, when moments of kindness or vulnerability had been rewarded with gifts and attention (or perhaps it was something else, a desire to give this man, who had lost everything, something to hold onto). But the Doctor found, when they finally broke apart, that there was something she very much needed to do.
“Come with me,” she told him, keeping her fingers clasped around his. His head tilted curiously, (he always did that, as though he could see her better if she was at an angle) but let her lead him, draw him away from the console and into the TARDIS. Down the hall, left and left again, past the karaoke buses and the wardrobe hall, up a flight of steps painted with birds (she couldn’t remember why, or even who had painted them) and through a wide set of double-doors hewn of crimson wood, to the music room.
His lips parted ever so barely in surprise as he looked around a space big enough to be an auditorium, and more organized than most areas in the TARDIS, which no doubt (how often had Missy complained about the lack of cataloguing and categorization, and the Doctor was even messier now than she had been then) would appeal to him. Each instrument had its own little stand or platform, organized by type and occasionally by planet of origin, and there were chairs with velvet seats arranged in neat rows. The golden recessed lighting came up automatically as they entered, sparkling off of brass and silver and polished wood. One of the Master’s hands came up absently to trace a reeded instrument (a disrassioosoe, it was called) made for a species with three mouths as his eyes swept the space, flitting back and forth as though to make inventory before coming to rest in one corner. Then his gaze slid sideways to find her. “You did keep it.”
She kept it. And he would find, if he put his fingers to the keys again, that Missy’s piano was still in perfect tune.
But rather than get into it, the Doctor turned away to explore the space herself. “Do you like music this time around?” she asked, trying to keep things easy and conversational, as much for her own benefit as for his.
“I assume you mean to play, but I haven’t tried yet,” he said, tucking his hands into his pockets. “You?”
“Haven’t tried either,” she admitted, and it felt both strange and fun that they were both about to explore this together. She looked around at the impressive display of options. “What do you think we should try first?” (Maybe there was a recorder in here somewhere….)
“No recorder—at all,” he growled, as though he could read her mind. She gave him her best pout, but he didn’t budge, a look of disgust taking root on his face.
“But what if I’m really good with it again?”
“Don’t care.” He backed toward a platform with a few bellows instruments—an accordion, and a few similar items—and sat on the edge. “If I hear it, I’ll break it in half.”
The Doctor rolled her eyes at him, but it was mostly for show. She didn’t really have the personality for the recorder anymore, anyway. Briefly, she considered picking up a guitar instead, but the instrument had meant so much to her last body that she might be rather devastated if she tried and found she had lost that particular gift. Better to leave it where it was, in her past, safe and incorruptible until another regeneration found their way back to it.
She gravitated instead towards a shelf full of handbells, as the Master took up an instrument from the platform he’d planted himself on. She couldn’t remember the name for the thing, but it was related in form and function to the Earth accordion, though it predated the accordion by roughly three centuries (and heralded from a different galaxy entirely). The handholds were carved of a wood that looked almost indigo under the lights, and she watched with interest as he expanded the bellows, pushed two buttons, and depressed the thing. The sound that issued from the instrument was rather like the sonic equivalent of watching a butter sculpture melt on fast forward.
The Doctor kind of liked it, but the Master instantly declared “No,” and set it aside. “Not that one.”
“Last body, I just knew immediately,” the Doctor offered, picking up a mid-sized bell. It had a pleasant ring as she swung it back and forth, so she tried that for a bit, but without having a group of other players (or ten hands) there really wasn’t more she could do. She set it down, discouraged. “Maybe I’m not very musical this time.”
The thought made her a little sad, actually. She knew she could carry a tune, actually she loved to sing, although she wouldn’t dare let anyone (well she had let him, but that was a one-time deal, or a special case, or just shut up Doctor) else hear her. Either way, that might not translate to instruments.
“Did you first learn the guitar in that body, or did you learn it before and come back to it?” the Master asked, moving over to a touchpad instrument that sounded like a theremin when he prodded it.
“Before. You know I’ve always loved rock’n roll. But I practiced a lot more in that body than I ever had before.”
“Suited you,” he told her, then stuck his tongue out at the theremin-soundalike and moved away from it. She dashed over to take his place as he picked up a french horn and peered down into the bell.
“Yeah?” It’s not like she didn’t know how much Missy approved, but the compliment felt different now that she wasn’t that man any longer.
“Oh, come on, you knew it did. Kept playing it up with the sunglasses and the hair and hoodies.” His head snapped up suddenly. “We could have formed a band. Why didn’t we do that?”
“Oohhh, we should have! You’d have been an amazing keyboardist, I could’ve taught Bill on bass—bass is only sexy when women play it.”
“Problem is, Nardole probably would have wanted lead vocals, and I would have had to kill him.” The Doctor snorted, amused and finally remembered to take her finger off the toggle, letting the humming wail fade away. Turning back, she found that he was staring at her. “Look at you. I made a murder joke and you didn’t even scold me for it.”
“Guess I’m in a good mood. Also Nardol singing sounds like a bloody nightmare.”
“You could say that about anything related to him. Fashion sense. Grasp on thermodynamics. Enabling.”
“No, he was very good at enabling,” the Doctor countered, her smile matching his scowl. “Why do you think I kept him around?”
“Exactly,” he muttered.
“Why does that make you so upset?” she asked, eyes roving over a shelf of flutes and piccolos. She liked the piccolos, how small and ornate they were. She liked small things this time around, things that fit snugly into the palm of her hand and could be squirreled away into even ordinary pockets. She picked one up, toying with the keys as she tried to remember where to put her fingers. She had learned this once, although she wasn’t sure when. Or maybe she was just remembering the recorder. (There had to be one in here somewhere….)
The Master flicked a xylophone key with his fingernail, despite having a mallet in his hands. “Used to be my job.”
Oh. Now that was interesting. The Doctor made a little mental note of that (something to ponder later, when she was alone) and tried to find something light and cheeky to say.
“Well, it’s just you and me now, if you want to do some more….” Her voice trailed away as her eyes settled on the little stand and the polished wooden recorder it held. The Doctor stepped toward it. It wasn’t one of those she’d played, back when she was still small and favored too-big clothes and a moptop haircut. It was a different one, and she suddenly remembered buying it and placing it here after she’d been forced to regenerate, in memory of an identity that had been viciously stripped from her. She’d like being the man she became next, very much, but it had still troubled that man to remember what the Time Lords had done. What they’d taken.
Forced to regenerate. Forced to change against her will, to die and be reborn into something they chose for her…. Her hearts grew louder in her ears as she stared at the thing, the Master’s voice a distant hum that didn’t quite register. Until….
“Oi!” he shouted. “What did I say about the recorder?”
She turned, and he was watching her keenly, although he didn’t look angry, at least. In fact, his lips quirked in a smile as he tossed the mallet over his shoulder and backed away from the xylophone. One finger beckoned her in his direction, and it was somehow familiar. (Yana had done it, she realized, before he’d remembered who he was, had beckoned to her just like that, and she remembered being so smitten then). And she followed, without even meaning to, but she always liked that, even when she didn’t want to admit it. Liked being pulled, whether it be by her curiosity, or by her drive to help, or by her love, or by someone else’s love.
Or by him.
The Doctor could remember so many other times she was pulled by him. Pulled to Yana without either of them even knowing who he was, then pulled to the only other Time Lord in the universe. Pulled to the man who had come to find her in her exile on Earth, who had played the villain for her so that she could take up her favorite role and save the day. Pulled to a boy called Koschei, whose clothes had been far too fine, and who had been far too tall, even when they first met. The Master had followed her around the universe for all their lives (all the lives that she could remember, anyway), but that pull was never as one-directional as the Doctor liked to pretend.
And sometimes, apparently, the Master noticed.
He halted and she stopped in front of him, beside… a drum set?
“Why don’t you give that a go?”
The Doctor blinked in surprise. “D’you think?”
“You’re being enabled,” he reminded her, lifting a pair of sticks from a pouch hanging off the hi-hat and proferring them. “Get going.”
The Doctor didn’t laugh at the way he bowed over them like a squire presenting a sword, though she wanted to, and expected that he wanted her to. She did take the sticks and drop down on the stool, settling her foot over the kick-drum pedal and looking at the kit around her with some perplexity. She was pretty sure she’d never learned how to play the drums.
“Well, how hard can it be? It’s just counting and hitting things.” She tapped one stick against the hi-hat, thoughtfully, then remembered it had a pedal too. She settled her other foot on it. “Right. I’ve got this.”
It took a moment, several moments, but when she got it right she felt it at once, and after guiding herself through a few basic rhythms she began to feel like she could expand, playing with the timing and the crash of the various cymbals. It wasn’t long before she was laughing as well. “Loud is fun!” she told the Master, who was squinting in a way that suggested he wasn’t sure that he agreed.
“I’m getting that impression.”
“It was your idea!”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t regret my choices,” he laughed. She wasn’t sure she’d ever heard him (this body) laugh like that, without malice or care. She spun the sticks in her fingers, executing a complicated sequence ending in a dramatically trilled hi-hat, before letting the drumset fall silent. She was breathing a little heavily with the exhilaration of it, and the Master was just… smiling at her.
“Well,” she suggested, “why don’t you play me something, instead?”
He glanced around the room as though considering what to try next, but despite obvious efforts to avoid it, his gaze eventually settled back toward the corner where the piano stood. Gleaming under the soft light, casting a deep declining shadow against the wall, monochrome keys neglected (only touched when she came down to tune it) for years. His feet carried him there, seemingly as hypnotized as she had been by the recorder, and the Doctor set the drumsticks aside, following him as he sat down at the bench, tucking his coat back behind him and lifting the lid.
The way the Master slid his fingers over the keys, it looked as though he was already playing without exerting pressure, ghosting his fingertips over chords and notes. She leaned against a shelf, not wanting to pull his attention and distract him, not wanting to stop the caress. Eventually he did pause, but it was only to reset his hands at the center of the keyboard. She waited, holding her breath.
… and then he began to play “Chopsticks.”
The dissonance, crossing from baited expectation to the most ridiculous song he could have chosen, stopped the Doctor in her tracks for a moment. And then she burst out laughing. He threw a glance at her (got you, it said) and chuckled too. But eventually that wasn’t enough for him, and he stopped, his head bowed over the instrument as though waiting for something.
Maybe, the Doctor thought sadly, (it’s like the guitar) he couldn’t really remember how playing the piano worked anymore, or didn’t want to remember. Maybe he’d lost that part of himself upon regenerating. It happened like that sometimes, dropping skills and expertise, picking up new ones from body to body, your brain always overwritten with new pathways that prioritized different things. She was about to say something, to pull him away as he had pulled her away from the recorder, when he took a sharp breath and raised his hands to the keys again.
It was Chopin.
The Doctor remembered Missy playing Chopin, but this was a very different piece than anything she had played on that piano. Missy’s favorite had been bold, demanding, a queen of a piece, just like her. She’d struck the keys heavily, the drama never wavering even as the piece moved from wild stomping to heavy elegance and back again.
This was different. It began slow, and a bit melancholy as he played with softness and tempo, dragging out the notes. There was something almost shy about it, almost dulcet, that made her think of how, after he believed he’d broken her irrevocably, his voice had taken on a gentle, soothing note as if to balm the wounds he’d worked so hard to inflict. (It’s over now.) It made her think of O, his kind and adoring face, and how she truly believed that there was more of the Master in that disguise than he would admit, or even knew himself.
And then the piece came up, more of that drama coming to the fore as the volume increased and the tempo crescendoed with it. It seemed random, that change, and to come from nowhere. At moments, the notes were almost dissonant with each other, dramatic just to be dramatic, and that, too, was perfect for him. For this version of the Master who was more somber than Missy and yet even more prone to fits of wildness than she had been.
And then the drama faded, and the shy, sad charm returned as the final notes folded in upon each other, the volume falling like swirling leaves, down into stillness. The Doctor almost wanted to cry as he lingered there, the silence hanging on the air. She wondered what he would do if she went over there and climbed into his lap.
She probably shouldn’t, though.
He drew his fingers away slowly, to prevent a sudden lack of pressure from disturbing the quiet, rolling his neck in a small stretch as he removed his foot from the peddle. “Will that do?” he asked without turning his head. The Doctor pressed her fingers into her palms.
“I almost forgot how much I like listening to you play.”
“It helped pass the decades.”
“We should’ve had sex on that thing,” the Doctor heard herself say. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t thought about it before. She’d thought about it rather a lot, actually, sitting there listening to the music for hours at a time, pretending to read, pretending that every ounce of focus wasn’t trained on Missy. Pretending there were no stirrings in her (his) hearts. Or elsewhere.
It still felt wildly reckless to say it out loud. And terribly transgressive. But the Master’s shoulders were shaking with silent laughter.
“You too?” He peeked over at her, in just the same manner that Missy used to, coy, but far too dangerous to be benign. It made the Doctor’s stomach swoop treacherously. (Strange, how different arousal felt in this body.)
“I always suspected that you knew,” she admitted. “Always wondered if you were onto me. Chuckling behind my back.”
“Nothing to laugh about back then.” The fingertips of one hand traced over the keys again, stroking downward. “You were all look and no touch. Too determined to be gallant.”
“Your face is gallant,” the Doctor blurted. (And who is she right now? Ryan? But how dare he say nice things, what is she supposed to do with nice things?) He could have teased her mercilessly for it. She wanted him to tease her for it, or say something mean, then at least she would know where they stood. She was awkward this time around, and that was fine, it wasn’t the end of the universe. But she didn’t quite know what to make of it when he let that awkwardness pass unmocked.
“You know what’s strange?”
“What?” she asked, as she came up beside him and leaned one hip against the piano.
“The last time you had me here, I was doing all sorts of maintenance. But now you actually keep up with all of that.” His eyes scraped up from the keys to meet her gaze. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’d made an impression.”
“It’s interesting,” the Doctor observed, “how that’s what you’ve struck on.”
“Is it?”
She waved a hand vaguely at herself. “You made me a woman.”
He snorted, his gaze trailing, taking her in. “Oh, is that how it was? Not like you to let jealousy get one over on you.”
It wasn’t the reaction the Doctor had been expecting. She’d thought that either he would be delighted that she was acknowledging his effect on her, his influence, or that he would grow sullen and remind her that she had been a woman before he was ever born. Mentioning it at all had been a risk, but she hadn’t expected him to just… not care.
“I dunno if I would call it jealousy, exactly,” she said. “Well, I guess maybe it was.”
“Always wondered why you never asked me about it. The switch.”
“I wasn’t sure there was anything to say. It just seemed so right for her. For you. Didn’t feel like I wanted to question it.”
He cringed, fingers tapping out a scale in b-flat. “That’s shockingly mature of you. No, I don’t like that at all.”
“Did something happen?” the Doctor asked patiently.
“Why didn’t we?”
“What?”
His right hand continued the scale up until he bumped into her hip and could go no further. He stared at the point where they made contact. “Have sex on this piano.”
She sighed. “I don’t know. I never quite decided if I was scared for you, or scared of you, or just scared of sex in general. Maybe I was just too attached to my whole aloof old professor thing. Maybe I was feeling mostly asexual, at least until you came along, and I didn’t know how to make the transition.” She shook her head. She did remember telling herself that acting on that desire would jeopardize Missy’s recovery (that word isn’t fair, is it, though it’s often how the Doctor thinks of the Master now—infected as a child, plagued by outside forces born of the Untempered Schism, of Rassilon’s meddling, of the decaying, patriarchal, and elitist culture of Gallifrey—which didn’t absolve the Master of responsibility for their choices, but oh did it color them) but that seemed like a self-serving lie, a cover for the Doctor’s own internal struggle. “Feels like I did her a disservice, though.”
“You did me a lot of those,” he agreed, giving a trill at the keys right beside her. “Though I suppose I’d earned them. Would’ve been fun, though.” He said the word ‘fun’ as though he’d just popped a balloon, or dropped an egg—a little bit of chaos in an otherwise straightforward sentiment. She wasn’t sure if it was the sound of that word or the movement of his hand that made her realize that she was very close to being trapped, physically speaking, between his body and the piano. What she was sure of was how much she liked the idea.
She wanted to be trapped, liked the thrill and the danger of it. She had always been a little afraid of the Master, even when he was Koschei, but it expressed itself very differently in different bodies, and right now, it was the sort of fear that excited her. She felt evenly matched with him this time around, and perhaps it was the certainty that they were both in a little bit of trouble that was driving her down this path.
“On the other hand,” she mused, letting her hand fall to the keys, just beside his, almost but not quite touching, “it does feel a bit like he left it for me. Like a gift.”
“He exchanged it before regifting it, though,” the Master tsked. “Packaging’s all knackered, totally different model. Not an equal trade.”
The Doctor could hear something in that tone she disliked. Self-deprecation and insecurity, perhaps even a conviction that he was now lesser than he had been. She knew that feeling, the feeling of looking back at a former regeneration and thinking it better than who she had become. And yes, she still wished Missy could have completed her journey, could have found that courage within herself to choose good and right. That she could have regenerated into something else, someone else, who could feel happy and whole and stand beside the Doctor in that way they both longed for. But if that had happened, he wouldn’t be here, and the Doctor didn’t know how she could want both conflicting realities in such equal, fervent measure.
“I don’t know about that.” She tilted her head at him, a conscious imitation of that way he always looked at her. “From here, it looks perfect.”
There was something defiant about the way the Master met her gaze. As though he was daring her to keep that opinion, to think well of him, even if only in this (in music, in Missy, in sexual prowess, there were several ‘only’s here, so perhaps she could see his point). He slipped his hand over hers, splayed her fingers across specific keys and slapped her hand down onto them, producing a discordant drone that she knew from experience matched his mindscape to a tee.
She gave him a soft smile. “So. Loud drums and loud chords?”
“Too predictable for you?” He plucked her hand up and placed it further down the scale, arranging her fingers again. But his time he laid his hand atop hers and helped her to play a sequence of notes that warbled plaintively.
It wasn’t fair. She was trying to seduce him, he had no right to flirt with her while she did that. No right to touch her hand and make her hearts pound. For an emotional wreck, he was being far to cool about all of this. “Master….”
“We’re going to have a problem,” he said, watching their overlapped fingers with some interest.
The Doctor forced herself to be patient. It was difficult. “Oh? And what’s that?”
“When I used to sit at this piano, I wore skirts.” His eyes shifted over, lingering at her hips. “Nice thing about skirts—they’re easy access.”
The Doctor sucked in a sharp breath. “You…” she needed something to say while she recovered from that abrupt about-face. “...weren’t wearing any knickers then, were you?”
The corner of his mouth curled as he shook his head.
“Bugger,” she said, catching the back of his head with her free hand, tilting it as she leaned down to kiss him. Their lips only met for a moment before he was on his feet and pressing her against the instrument, the back of her thighs issuing another tuneless smash of keys while he laughed deep in his throat.
Loud and discordant was apparently her thing, the Doctor thought vaguely as she tried to suck that sound out of him and swallow it down for herself. She tugged at him, at his hair and his shirt and his mind, drawing him close, determined to trap him to her with equal ferocity, even as he pinned her there with the weight of his body. He allowed it, let her scrabble for every inch of him even if it meant that they couldn’t get much further, her velocity failing to overcome the inertia of their clothing with any real speed.
She was grateful for it, grateful for the ability to lose herself for a moment, to just focus on her conflicting (although they weren’t actually) needs to both devour him and have him fill her. Metaphorically speaking.
Well, okay, not only metaphorically.
She dragged her fingers across his back, but his jacket made the movement highly unsatisfactory so she shoved at him a little until he broke away. “Off,” she instructed, pushing it over his shoulders.
He gave an overacted glower, but did as he was told, letting his coat drop to the vacated bench. “You know, I doubt he would have been anywhere near this pushy.”
The Doctor pulled him back, and this time, with only the thin fabric of his shirt between them, the pressure of her fingers against his back (those lovely muscles) was much more gratifying. “You can’t be sure, though.”
He nipped at her jaw. “What, you think you would have stomped over all grumpy and enlisted your Scottish brogue in barking orders like ‘Clothes, off!’” His impression wasn’t quite as spot on as Missy’s had been, but still passable.
The Doctor grinned and tilted her head back, making room, inviting him to explore. “She’d have liked it if he did,” she points out. “Probably wouldn’t have barked it though. More just... said it, all quiet and stern.”
“Oo…” He laved his tongue over her jugular vein for a moment, seeking out her pulse. “Not ashamed to admit that would have worked on me.”
“Well. I’ll have to try it sometimes.”
The keys bleated out another dissonant rumble as her weight shifted, fading away while he sucked at the juncture where her shoulder met her neck, not hard enough to mark. She gave him a little moan of encouragement, and then a little surprised sound, like a bonus, at the scrape of his beard against her skin.
“Okay, yeah, liking all that.”
He took the opportunity to sink his teeth in around that band of muscle, worrying at it and then digging in to pry the tension from her frame. The Doctor wasn’t sure how he knew (did he know?) that she was tight there, how he found the knotted soreness and cut through it with sharp pain and pleasure. She fisted her hand in his hair and yanked sharply, almost able to feel the sing of it along her own scalp.
There was a hitching sound in his throat and a sudden snap against her spine—he’d twanged the back of her suspenders.
“Ow,” she told him, trying to sound stern and not laugh at the delightful ridiculousness of it.
“You started it,” he retorted, merciless. If you could say ‘merciless’ of someone whose eyelashes fluttered against the skin beneath her ear.
“Not sure that’s true,” she sighed in answer, and pressed a little closer, taking in the heat of his body. Of course, it was possible she had. They were so long ago, those days when she would climb into his bed to hide from her nightmares and shelter in his heat. Two lost little boys, and the tragedy was that neither of them recognized that the child who would become the Master was just as lost as one who had managed to become the Doctor for a second time. (Had it vexed them, the Time Lords who had reset her, that she’d found her way back to that name?) She smushed her nose into the Master’s shoulder, taking in his scent. Yes. Perhaps she had started it.
He pinched at her side, making her squirm. “Are you always this ponderous when you’re trying to get laid?”
“Was trying to decide if you were right,” she told him, finding his eyes. She really loved his eyes far too much. “I mean, you were right about one thing.”
“Only one?”
Cheek. “The trousers.”
He hummed in agreement, one finger tugging at the waistband of the garment on trial. “You’ve got them set up like an obstacle course, between the coat, and the braces being attached. Clearly didn’t expect this was how you’d be spending time when you picked that out.”
“Certainly not,” she agreed. “You want me to get out of them myself? Or do you want to do it?”
The Master raised an eyebrow, his expression somehow chiding. Right. She had started off by giving commands, and now she was changing it up. He didn’t like that, did he?
Alright. Consistency wasn’t always her strong suit, but she could manage it when it mattered. When people needed her. (She liked the idea of him needing her this way, needing direction and a firm hand. …oh yes, she liked that very much.) She caught him under the chin.
“I would like you to do it.” Put like a statement, but definitely an order.
His hands moved across her hips, undoing the buttons at the front of her braces, then tugging from the back to slide them up and over her shoulders, letting them fall down between her shirt and the back of her coat. (He was right, the braces made everything tricky, but she loved them, and maybe also got a bit of vindictive pleasure out of making things complicated for him.) The button on the trousers went next, then the zip (she shivered), but then he paused. “Boots on or off?”
Ohhh… right. Yes, she was wearing boots, wasn’t she? The Doctor stroked a hand through his hair. “Off,” she decided because it was simpler getting her trousers off with the boots gone, but also because there was something sort of fun and vulnerable about the idea.
Also, he would have to crouch down before her.
She should have realized thinking that meant he was bound to do something else entirely. Next thing she knew, he had curled a hand around the back of one knee and hitched her leg up by his hip, reaching back to loosen the laces while his free hand steadied her. She yelped a little, grabbing onto him (although in truth he had her quite securely supported) as he tugged the boot off by the heel and chucked it away, then switched sides and moved to do the same with the other. She could have giggled, but there was also that brush of her thigh along his to be considered, the press of her leg against his hip.
She managed to work her hands in against his torso, untucking his shirt and tugging it up to slide her palms across his stomach and sides. Her other boot hit the floor somewhere behind him, and the piano twanged again as he dragged her hips away to push her trousers and knickers down in one sweep, then deposited her back. It was a new kind of fervency from him, (she was right about the thing that had changed) no longer careful about letting her see what he wanted. How much he wanted.
She dragged her fingers through his hair again, mussing it. His hair was perfect for mussing—she might never let him comb it again. No, she would let him comb it, just so she could muss it again. “Do you know something? You’re very handsome.”
“Even without the makeup?” he said with a wink, one hand sneaking under her shirt to map some skin for himself. “Sort of miss the eyeliner, sometimes.”
“That would look really hot,” she growled at him, and leaned in to catch his lower lip between her teeth.
Another crash as his hands landed on either side of her, pounding at the keys unawares. If there had ever been a pretense to this, it had fractured and littered the floor (they’d have to clean it up later with all their discarded clothes). His hip knocked her legs further apart, and he was closer then, much closer than he had been. Anticipation shivered through her, want and almost and finally… and just a hint of apprehension too. Boldly, she lifted one knee, tucking her leg behind his, encouraging that closeness. Encouraging herself to focus on his body and his breath and the press of his hips and not on the awareness that she was about to try something incredibly, vulnerably new.
He wasn’t the only one for whom this would change things. She should have realized.
“Kiss me.”
He took her face in his hands (her hearts beat out of time) and did as she asked, inhaling as though he could pull her into him, as though he might (her stomach swooped) absorb her. Her hands dropped to his hips, almost forgotten as she kissed him back, her thoughts calming and centering there, on the moment, on the two of them. She grazed his mind with hers, just wanting to touch him everywhere. Needing it, maybe.
His mind cushioned that touch, though he didn’t grant her access. (Probably a bit much, if he was planning to concentrate at all on the task at hand.) She wasn’t asking for that, anyway. But she shivered when he traced her upper lip with the tip of his tongue. Responded by tracing the skin just above his navel with a light, tickling touch. He took that hand up in his own again, but instead of laying it across the piano, he placed it over the fastenings of his trousers and gave her a look.
She waggled her eyebrows at him, clownishly, but got down to business all the same, making quick work of the fastenings before slowing a little to take things in. To follow, with one finger, the line of hair that ducked down under his pants—just a little teasing before she turned her hand and slipped it down beneath the fabric to cup him firmly. His eyes actually crossed.
“Why did I somehow imagine you’d be any subtler than that?”
“I missed it,” the Doctor told him cheerfully.
That got his attention. “Are you talking about my cock as though it’s somehow its own entity now?”
She grinned. Squeezed gently. “Is that weird?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation, despite how he stiffened in her grasp. “Absolutely. The weirdest thing you have ever done. And I’m including the experiment with the Erchion light source you found on that school trip.”
Her grin widened. “That’s not really going to dissuade me, though, is it? I mean, I glowed for a week!”
“Oh no,” he groaned. “Don’t, you… can’t. You can’t set me up like that.”
“What?”
He glared at her. “You say that and then I have to come back with ‘Bet I can beat that’ because literally how am I supposed to say anything else.”
The Doctor blinked. Thought about that for a moment. “Can you beat it, though?”
The change in his posture was like a chemical reaction, a solid converting instantly to a liquid. “Oh—definitely.” His whole body thrummed like one of the eighty-eight piano wires behind her.
It was hard to look skeptical in the face of that. “Yeah? A whole week?”
“Do you actually think you’ll last a week before having another go?”
She gave him a languid stroke. “Now you’re just bragging.”
The Master shook his head. “That’s pure data, love. Based on your previous actions, by the way.”
“Oh, so it’s not your prowess, it’s just me being easy?” she chuckled. “That’s not really as impressive, is it?”
“Only if you assume you being easy has nothing to with being easy for me personally,” he said wickedly, trailing a finger from the hollow of her throat down to the end of her breastbone. “Which it certainly does.”
The statement was so obviously true, it was hard to come up with a retort. Again she thought of those… moments… with Yaz, but the Doctor had been basically throwing herself at the Master since she dragged him on board, so she supposed the two couldn’t really be compared. She gave him another stroke, twisting her wrist a bit, adding a little more pressure as he moved from casual interest to full arousal in the palm of her hand. His lips brushed over an exposed bit of collarbone, one thumb sliding across her hip and down between her legs.
She made an embarrassing noise, somehow eager and pleasured and yet ridiculously strangled all at the same time. Not wanting to do it again, and wanting to taste him anyway, she pressed her face into his neck and sucked at his skin. His free hand slipped around the back of her head, cradling her to him as his thumb parted her and found her dripping onto the keys of the piano.
“How long have you been like that?” he murmured, and she wanted to cackle because this was clearly their thing now, and she would be lying if she didn’t admit that she liked it. (How long had it been since they had an inside joke?) But she didn’t laugh, because he was touching her like that, and because he was hard in her hand, pressing into it as she moved her palm down. No time for laughter, in a moment like that.
“Since ‘Chopsticks’.”
He sighed, sounding ever so put upon. It was terribly cute. “You mean to tell me I could have skipped the Chopin entirely?
"Apparently I’m just basic,” she teased.
His thumb dug in a little, an action that could have served as a warning if it hadn’t felt so good. “It’s fine, I’ll just kill you and we’ll be even.”
She nipped at his neck in answer. “How is that even?”
“Not to put a complete damper on this,” he said apropos of nothing, tugging her back by the hair, “but you have thought about how it works, haven’t you? Because you are a bit absent-minded about, er, everything, and I could just see you not putting two-and-two together and winding up in a very bad way.”
She arched her back a little. “Are you suggesting I don’t understand how sex works?”
“Not that, the other part.”
The Doctor blinked up at him. “What are you…” Then her eyes went wide. “Ohhh. Oh. No. I mean yes. I mean, I did think about it.” She was babbling. “I took care of that a while back. No worries.”
He looked relieved to not have to spell it out for her. “Right then.”
But she cocked her head at him. Smiled a little. “Thanks.”
“No, shut up,” he said, pressing a finger over her lips. “None of that.”
She fell silent. Looked up at him through the bit of hair falling across her face. Waited patiently until he decided she would keep quiet and removed his finger cautiously.
“Thank you, Master.”
“You really are the most…” He started muttering to himself in Old High Gallifreyan at that point, using several temporal tenses and a few very evocative curse words. His hand was still in a nice place, though, so she rocked down against it.
“That’s a bit sexy.”
“What, use of the past declarative conditional?” He slid the pad of his thumb down and then up again, though, so he couldn’t have been too put out.
“Yeah,” she agreed, rocking again. “There’s also something pretty transgressive about High Gallifreyan in a moment like this.”
“Rassilon would surely not approve.”
“Yeah, that’s also sexy,” said the Doctor, and kissed him again, this time with more force. He bit her lower lip and the piano clattered at them again, which did not seem to bother him in the least, no matter how many times it happened. She rolled her fingers along his length, dragged her thumb softly across the head. It felt so good, especially when his hips stuttered in answer. “Come on then.”
He stared at her lips, as though watching the words issue forth granted him some sort of power. After removing his thumb, he shifted closer and let her guide his way. It was a bit awkward for a moment, trying to figure out how to stand at the right angle for her hips to meet his, the piano making distressed noises behind her. Not quite as glamorous as she had imagined it.
But then she was hitching one leg up by his waist again, and her arse was firmly planted (they should have moved, or at least closed the lid, but she wasn’t giving up this moment, not when they were finally here) on the piano keys, and was showing him exactly where he needed to be and—
Oh. Contact.
She’d half expected him to hide, but instead he pressed their foreheads together and sought her eyes out with his own. There was something indescribably soft about it, that for a moment she forgot to focus on sensation at all… which only meant that when she remembered to think of it a few prolonged moments later, the whole thing came to her in a rush.
“How dare you feel like that,” he groused.
“How dare I feel…?” she gasped back. So much more than fingers, and she had to remind herself to breathe, to relax, her sock-covered toes flexing in the air. Her eyelids fluttered, but she forced her gaze back to his. His fingertips skated along the outside of her left leg, but the rest of him remained perfectly steady, which she had to assume was a feat for him. Not only because of the position they’d taken up, but because she’d never known this version of him to be very good at stillness. It was for her benefit.
It broke her hearts a little.
Her impossible friend—so often violent and petty, so lost in self-immolation that he burned down an entire planet, and then tried to burn her down, too—he was holding himself at bay for her comfort. He had considered her comfort. With as much as he had clawed, screamed at her, tried to blow her friends away without a thought, she hadn’t once contended with the possibility that he would be kind. It made her wonder in what other moments he had cared this much, what other careful consideration she might have missed.
The Doctor reached up and dragged her thumb across his lower lip, wet and glistening from their kisses, and sighed.
“There’s my good boy.”
His tongue darted out to swipe at the tip of her thumb before he sucked it into his mouth. She groaned, pushing it deeper between his lips, and a shudder ran through her. Her muscles flexed around him as her body let them both know what it wanted. His eyes gave a bit of a roll at the feel of it, and he scraped at her finger with his teeth, releasing it in the same moment that his hips rocked against hers, driving her back against the wood veneer.
The Doctor moaned again, clinging to him with both hands and one thigh as the pleasure of it shivered through her. It was an easy slide—she was adjusting but she was also so wet, her body welcoming. More than welcoming. Demanding might be the word. She kissed his chin because it was there, beard pricking delightfully at her lips.
“Is this how you would have done it?” he asked, a cacophony of mismatched sound floating up from the piano as he let her down to prepare for another thrust. She bit her lips around a smile.
“Think I might’ve closed the lid.”
“Figures.” He pouted, but pressed up again, sliding deeper than before. She scrabbled at his shoulders.
“Oh….”
His hand came around to brace the small of her back, and he was able to establish a pace of sorts, though the frequent clattering of the instrument even threw him off (with laughter) occasionally. His arm wrapped securely about her felt almost as good as the way he moved inside her and the Doctor hadn’t known she would like it so much. Being supported, being held. Although she enjoyed the odd hug, she wasn’t nearly as touchy as some of her other recent incarnations. Or at least, she hadn’t thought that she was.
The noise was ridiculous (the poor piano) but nothing short of the TARDIS crashing into a comet could have thrown her attention off of him, off the way their bodies came together and the deep, tingling ache inside. She could feel her muscles fluttering around him, almost clinging to him, and her breath started coming in little huffs with every stroke.
“Got off here a few times, you know,” he said, dragging his cheek across her neck (he had figured out that she liked the beard, hadn’t he, oh no—) until gooseflesh broke out all over her arms. A moment later his free hand eased itself between their bodies and down to her clit, ushering her into their rhythm. Sparks danced along and under her skin, and she found herself arching, throwing one arm back to brace herself against the piano even as the other clung harder to him.
“I.. bet you were… beautiful,” she said.
He was watching her, rapt and fixated as he worked inside her and out. “I would cross my legs, knee over knee as I played and just… squeeze.”
She sucked in a breath. “Just that?”
“You have to repeat the motion all the way through, but it makes for a brilliant climax,” he said, giving a little tap with his fingertip. “I kept wanting to try it while you were in the room, but I figured you’d get cross and leave me alone for ages, and that would’ve been bad.”
The Doctor didn’t know what she would have done. “It’s so different, isn’t it?” It occurred to her how lucky she was that he tried it first—it was a bit hard to imagine him thinking about how a woman’s body worked, how different it was, without having experienced it himself. He could be a little… myopic that way. But she could tell he was bringing that knowledge to bear as he circled his finger just so, and she heard herself whimpering aloud.
“Better, in some ways.” At the moment she was hardly inclined to disagree. “I miss getting wet…”
“It is kind of fun.” She could hear the sound it made, and the pressure of his strokes had her trembling a little everywhere. “Ah… that’s. Yes. Yes.”
The way he moved reminded her of the people on Artrus 7, the way they extracted nectar from the flowers of the lyreas tree. The process took time and diligence and also a searing sort of focus, the kind that it took years to cultivate before you could predictably extricate the usual three drops a day. The Doctor didn't believe that the Master had that manner of focus most of the time (it wasn’t a knock, their minds weren’t truly designed to work in that manner, on a single track, or at least she’d never thought they were), and then he went and did something like this, and—
Wait, was she a flower in this metaphor? A flower full of nectar? She shook her head a little, trying to dislodge the image. (This was exactly the thing about multi-tiered thought.) The point was that his attention was impressive, touching, and very, very sexy.
She leaned up to kiss him, murmur his name. His hand increased pressure as he bit down on her upper lip and tugged.
“That’s so good,” she told him when her mouth was free again. Her lip felt swollen. “Master that’s—ah!—so good, I….” She could feel it building, like a flood. Or maybe a fire, the way it tingled and burned, rising up from his circling finger and spreading throughout her body. She held on as best she could, figuratively and literally.
“Come on, then,” he murmured, voice wavering, “show me.” And she figured he deserved to see it.
Her back arched, her muscles contracting as it swept over her in waves (so it was a flood after all) and she could even feel her toes curling. It seemed to last an age, and she was still trembling, little aftershocks running through her as she fell back against the piano. It made a pained sound, and she laughed weakly. Looked up at him.
“Don’t stop.”
He looked like he wanted to question that, but he bit back the impulse and slipped his hand away, raising it into her shoulder. With the other hand still at her back, he had her perfectly anchored and his hips charged then, not too quickly, but with a snap at the end of each thrust, like he could only almost reach what he was seeking. Like he needed more of her body and this was only a pittance. She wasn’t sure what more of her he could have, but in that moment she wanted him to have it.
Her hands found him, the back of his neck, the soft sweep of his hair, and she held onto him with her fingers and her thighs and the gentlest brush of her mind over his, and she pressed his brow to hers.
The Master screwed his eyes shut (as though it hurt somehow), and his lower lip trembled. His breath grew ragged, harmonizing with the sounds of her breath and their skin and her slickness, and the rattle of keys, and she was glad really, that this had happened here because it was music. The sudden fluctuation in his speed, the staccato of his sigh, the way he held on in those final thrusts like the sustaining of a note that was just too gorgeous to cut short. The breathless cry that escaped him, though she was sure he wished it hadn’t.
The Doctor kissed him, to swallow the last droplets of it, sweet like the final notes of his Chopin performance. (She would have to find out the name of that one.) She also clenched a little around him, just for good measure.
“That’s not fair,” he said weakly.
She just hummed at him, and did it again. Held him close as their breathing slowed.
Eventually though, the position started to become rather uncomfortable. She loosened her hold, reluctantly.
“Emf. Gotta move I—ow—I think. ”
He slipped free of her, and in one somehow fluid motion (she had no idea how he managed it at all, it was very impressive) fell back onto the piano bench and dragged her to him, pressing his lips to the curve of her belly. She bent over him, stroking his hair and enjoying the feel of his kiss. It felt right for him to worship that spot, as sweat dried on her skin and slickness slid down her thighs.
“That,” she finally said, breaking the blessed quiet of the room, “was definitely worth the wait.”
He tilted his head up to look at her. “Is that the end of it, then? Got what you came for, now it’s done?” He wasn’t accusing, she realized, but genuinely curious as to the answer.
“Not even remotely.” She hooked both hands behind his head, cradling it, as he had cradled her back. “First, you’re going to take a shower with me.” She was sticky everywhere that she wasn’t, well, more-than-sticky. “And then snacks, and a nap. And then…” she paused, looking down at him with a twinkle in her eye, “Tomorrow, if you’re up for it, you can show me how you’re supposed to use the sex harness.”
She watched with great satisfaction as his pupils dilated. “Oh my god yes.”