Archive of Our Own ^beta

But there was another strangeness on board that was far, far more appealing. Whatever the Doctor had seen in the Matrix, whatever it had done to her, it seemed to have broken something that had been holding her back. And now...now, she was terrifying, and the Master didn’t think he’d ever been more attracted to her in all of his lives. She was majestic, he was so incredibly lucky to be around her, and—

And she was currently lying face-down underneath an absolutely enormous heap of blankets, groaning softly and occasionally flickering through the pile. 

The Master stopped in his tracks on his way to the kitchen, blinking down at her. 

“Theta?” 

She looked up at him. If he looked directly at her face, it was perfectly normal. Look slightly to the left or right, and it would fuzz out at the edges, and he could see more teeth than were feasibly countable, black eyes that swirled with colour like an oil spill. 

“What, Kosch?” 

“You’re lying on the floor,” he said, expectantly. 

The Doctor, apparently not a big fan of picking up on people’s tone, just hummed an agreement and sighed. As she did so, her whole form flickered, and the Master had to look away for a second. He didn’t want to, per se, but he’d had quite enough of the headaches he got from indulging his curiosity too much. 

“Why?” He sank down to his knees, cautiously lifting a hand to smooth the Doctor’s hair away from her face. Ignoring the usual faint static prickle that came from touching her, he continued to stroke her hair, because he knew she liked that. One time, she’d liked it so much that something in her hair had wrapped around his hand and refused to let go. There were a lot of unexplained somethings surrounding the Doctor, these days. 

“Hurts,” she grumbled, like that explained everything. The Master eyed the giant stack of blankets, and the Doctor lying almost perfectly still under them, and raised an eyebrow. He didn’t have to say anything; she’d elaborate anyway. She always knew what was on his mind. “My back. Where the...the things are. This makes them go away a bit, kind of. Doesn’t work very well, but- erm, I ran out of blankets.” 

The Master wanted to ask how she’d managed to stack that many blankets on top of herself whilst she was lying face down, but he didn’t think he’d understand the answer if she gave it to him. 

“Want me to go find more?” He shifted, preparing to stand up, but the Doctor shook her head, reaching out to grab his wrist. Or something did, at least. Her arm was still prone at her side, but something slightly cold had a grip on him, something he couldn’t see unless he squinted and aimed his gaze about four feet above her. Something he couldn’t describe even if he tried. 

“Okay. Staying here.” The cold thing retracted, and the Master wasn’t sure whether to be disappointed or relieved. “You...you got anything more specific? About...this?” 

One part of the Doctor’s bizarre new form was a mass of...something, coming out of her back. It seemed to change form between tentacles or wings or utterly formless smoke at the drop of a hat. It was impossible to touch, except the one time it hadn’t been, and the Master could barely remember that. His brain had thoroughly blocked it out. 

“Uhm...remember when you touched them?”

“Not really,” he said dryly. “But I know it happened.” 

“Right. Yeah. Anyway. I was trying to touch them myself. I thought- right, if I’m not from this dimension, maybe I can stick my hand into the other dimension more easily than you. So I was lying on my front, and concentrating really hard, and then- ow. Big ow. Like someone shot me. They didn’t, I checked.” The Doctor gazed sadly up at him. Her eyes were so nice; a soft hazel, or...or perhaps seafoam green. No- brown, like his own. Black? 

The Master tentatively reached up to the blanket stack. “Do you mind if I take these off? I can see what’s going on, if you want.” 

The Doctor sighed, the sound undercut with a rush of static. “Okay. But be careful. Don’t know if the things are...angry, or something. Don’t really have full control.” 

He nodded, slipping a hand under the blanket stack and placing one on top. Oh, fuck, they were heavy. Weighted blankets. Enough of them to be equivalent to several full grown people sitting on her back, the Master was sure. He could barely lift them, wincing as he dropped the stack on the floor next to him. 

Rotating his now-aching wrists a couple of times, he bent down to study the Doctor’s back. Normally, the things stuck out of her back where wings might, on a human depiction of an angel. The Master passed his hand through them a few times just to feel the strange cold static in the air, and she winced and grumbled. 

“Get on with it, Kosch. Is there anything weird there or not?” 

“Fine, fine. I’m working on it.” He bent low, focusing his eyes somewhere near the top of her head. The faint shapes of two writhing, shifting somethings appeared on her back, dark as night and rippling with all the colours of the rainbow. “Can’t see anything unusual...oh, wait.” 

The Master pressed one hand flat against her back, circling the point where the right thing emerged from her back. He could almost feel it. It was like dipping his hand into liquid pins and needles. 

“Is this where it hurts, love?” 

“...Yeah,” the Doctor mumbled. “What’s up with it?” 

“It’s- it’s more there than usual.” He drew his hand away, shaking it out, and the tingling stopped immediately. Weird. “Touching it must’ve- oh, I don’t know- snapped it into this dimension a bit.” 

“Oh,” she said, frowning. “That’s not good. Hurts.” Slowly, the Doctor shifted from lying down to kneeling next to him, worry written all over her face. 

“Calm down, I’m sure it’s not permanent.” The Master leaned over to kiss her comfortingly, relishing in the now-familiar almost electrical buzz of her lips against his, and she brushed her fingers appreciatively down the side of his face. 

“It better not be.” The Doctor’s eyes flickered pure black for a moment- no iris, no whites. The Master felt his head spin, and he had to brace one hand against the floor. “Really better not be. Koschei- you’re brilliant, great help, really. But- I think this is a me problem. A weird things problem. So I gotta fix it myself. Got to make it get fixed. Because I can do that.” 

The Master had to blink several times to stop himself from staring at her. It happened every time she spoke for too long, like she was grabbing all of his attention and holding it, holding so tight that he had to fight to get it back. 

“Kosch? You should probably stand back.” 

“Oh. Right. Yes.” The Master jumped to his feet, retreating ten metres down the corridor as the Doctor got to her feet. That should be a safe distance, probably. Or maybe there was no safe distance. 

Regardless, he settled back against the wall, watching. The Doctor stretched herself out, her form flickering and...extending, if he didn’t look closely enough. It was beautiful, although the Master doubted that many people would use that word to describe it. But he’d been madly in love with her when she’d looked like a normal person (or at least, as normal as a wildly eccentric Time Lord could get), and so he was hardly going to stop being in love with her over a few tentacles and a bit of fuzziness. 

And then the lights went out. 

It wasn't like a powercut. It was like something had consumed them; like the lights were still on, but some blanket of darkness had wrapped itself around them, and even now was flowing down the corridor, lapping at his ankles. 

A tendril of fear curled in his stomach, despite everything. 

“Doctor? Theta? You still there?” He couldn’t see her, through the thick, velvety curtain of darkness. 

“Yep. This is going fine, I think! I’m, uh...well, what I’m doing is, I think, bringing the...the other dimension here, just a little bit. Just so the thing on my back goes where it’s s’posed to.” 

Okay, then. Stuck here in the dark while the Doctor performed some mysterious dimension-bending ritual. The Master wondered if, a year ago, he could have convinced himself that his life would come to this. Probably not. This was beyond the realms of anything he could have imagined. 

“This going to take long, dear?” 

“Mm...dunno.” 

Helpful. The Master let his head thump back against the wall, squinting through the darkness. If he concentrated hard enough, shapes were visible through the gloom. A pale face, and then it wasn’t a face, and then it was. The swish of too-baggy trousers, or perhaps the swish of something else? 

Something touched his cheek, and he almost jumped out of his skin. He looked around, but he might as well have been alone in the darkness for all that he could see. 

“Theta, did you touch me?” 

“Maybe? No idea. Can’t control this stuff. Don’t even know what this stuff is, isn’t it great!” Her voice echoed strangely, like she was in a cave. 

Right. Comforting. The Master folded his arms across his chest. A second later- something touched him again. It felt like two fingers brushing down his cheek, like the Doctor would do whenever she kissed him. 

Okay. He had no idea what was touching him, but maybe it wasn’t so unfriendly. If this darkness was a part of the Doctor, it probably didn’t want to hurt him. 

He unfolded his arms, letting his hands hang loose by his sides, and it wasn’t more than a second before he felt something curling around them, snaking between his fingers like a cat winding itself around someone’s legs. Experimentally, the Master closed his hand on it- it felt almost solid, but not quite. He could tighten his fist all the way if he really wanted to, but- he didn’t want to. This substance seemed...affectionate. 

Something skittered up his arm, under his sleeve, and then popped out from under the collar of his shirt. The feel of it was slightly cold, but not unpleasantly so, and now it was...brushing against the side of his neck, and up his cheek again, in a soft, kind sort of way that made him close his eyes even in the darkness, tilt his head to give whatever this was more room to touch him. 

It grazed over his lips, like a kiss, and he jumped again. It almost felt like the Doctor, leaving that faint tingling feeling behind wherever it touched. Definitely part of her, the Master thought, curiosity making him step forward, trying to chase the kiss. 

The stuff still wrapped around his hand abruptly pulled him backwards, and he hit the wall again. Okay, it was strong. Strong, and affectionate, and it wanted him to stay here. Right. Keep away from where the actual Doctor was standing, away from whatever she was doing. 

He felt another kiss, another velvety brush against his cheek, and then it was back on his neck, circling, tracing up and down, and that felt...nice, actually, really nice, and— 

The lights came back on. Or perhaps the darkness was sucked back to wherever it had come from. For just a second, something too tall to fit in here was standing in the corridor, a mass of limbs and darkness and awful, unknowable power. 

And then it was the Doctor again, and she was looking at him oddly. 

“Hi,” she said, skipping over to him. “Back pain all gone. For now. Why’re you blushing, Kosch?” 

“I am?” He blinked, flexing the hand that had been held only moments ago, bringing his fingers up to touch his cheeks, his neck. “You don’t...know what happened to me?” 

“No? I was busy over there, doing—“

“Don’t explain! Don’t,” the Master said hastily. “Makes my head hurt whenever you go into detail.” 

“Right. Yeah. Sorry. So, uh...blushing?” 

“It’s probably easier if I show you,” he said, reaching out to touch the Doctor’s temple and share the memories with her. Her eyes widened in surprise. Widened a little too much, but when he blinked, they were back to normal. 

“That’s definitely me,” she said thoughtfully. “But I didn’t know I was doing that. Guess they like you.” She rolled her shoulders fondly, and the sheet of almost-invisible darkness behind her rippled. “Oh! Hang on. Hang on, I bet I can do this. Don’t move.” 

The Doctor jumped back a few feet, and closed her eyes. Something lifted from her arm, something that bent the light into pure darkness, something he could barely see. It reached for him, and the Master tensed- only to still in surprise as he felt that same soft brush against his cheek again. It trailed down his neck, dipping below his shirt, and he jumped. 

She snapped her eyes open with a grin, and the thing dissipated a moment later. “Didn’t know I could do that. Brilliant!”

“You’re using that on me next time we end up in bed together, aren’t you?” 

“Me? Use these dangerous and barely-controllable powers in the bedroom? Never.” Still grinning, with wickedly sharp teeth, the Doctor leaned in to kiss him. The Master could have sworn he felt a tooth go through his bottom lip, but when he ran his tongue over it a second later, it was fine. “Well. Maybe if you ask nicely.” 

The Master didn’t think he’d have the slightest problem with asking nicely. He never did these days, when it came to her. It was hard to maintain any sense of pridefulness in the face of an honest-to-gods unknowable being from another dimension. Especially one who thought that he was pretty. 

“Hey, Kosch? I want waffles. Or...or pancakes, or those big French pancakes. Crêpes. Can we go get some?” 

He looked her up and down. The Doctor seemed to have the flickering under control, like whatever she’d done to her back in the darkness had calmed things right down. She probably wouldn’t immediately empty out a dessert shop if she set foot inside in this state. 

The Master reached for her hand, squeezing it tight. Eldritch creature or not, she was still the Doctor that he’d known and loved for almost his entire life. 

“Yeah. Crêpes. Or waffles, that sounds good. Why not, I suppose?” 

She beamed at him, and pulled him off down the corridor towards her console room at a run. For a second, when he looked at her, he didn’t see any strange dark shapes or flickering- he saw a young blond boy with mad curls, dragging him down the corridors of the Academy and laughing. 

Nothing had changed, really. Well- a lot had, but plenty of things had stayed the same. Whatever this was, whatever they had, it felt good. 

The Master doubted he’d ever been in a stranger situation than this; but equally, he’d never been anywhere that felt so right.