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The Master clears his throat, and the Doctor puts out a hand. He doesn’t look: he’s got his nose buried in a manual that he won’t heed, filling his head with instructions he won’t follow and patterns he will just as quickly break. Nonetheless, when the Master places the cup into the Doctor’s waiting palm, there is no wavering, so spills, no strangeness in the transition. They move as if choreographed. The Master slides to the bookshelf to muse, and the Doctor, without missing a beat, brings the glass to his lips.
“This is good,” the Doctor observes. “Something in it?”
“Lemon.”
“No, can’t be. I don’t like lemon.”
“You didn’t like lemon, Doctor. Eighth, I believe.”
“—how do you know? You weren’t around for much of that.”
“Quite,” the Master agrees, doing his absolute best to chase off a smile from where it is trying very, very hard to make its home on his lips. “You mentioned your eighth had something of an affinity for sweets.”
“Well, that doesn’t preclude—”
“And so,” the Master drawls on, while the chasing-off escalates to all-out warfare, “when I discovered a number of abandoned packets of jelly babies, and found that all the lemon-flavored ones were still left over…” He pauses for effect. “I took note,” he says simply, “when I made a point to dispose of them.”
A beat goes between them.
“You threw out perfectly good candy?”
“It was far from perfectly good anymore, Doctor. Rather like myself in that regard.”
“Your problem is,” the Doctor says, and the Master just catches in his peripheral view as the Doctor lowers his book into his lap. Paying attention. “Your problem is, Master, you give up on perfectly good things far too quickly.”
“Hardly,” the Master positively quips. “I’ve never once thought of giving up on you, after all.”
He chances a glance, a good proper one, out of the corner of his eye. The Doctor has either managed well past the twitching phase, or else has given up pretense entirely. He’s looking at the Master, at present, with the sort of careless, childish smile that’s sat easier in other incarnations, and oddly, at times, in this one. It makes his eyes look ever-so-slightly more blue, the Master thinks, then they actually are.
The problem actually is, for all his tactical prowess and affinity for strategic games, the Master has never, ever been the sort to win a war. The good news is, of course, that some simply aren’t worth winning. The Master raises the proverbial white flag, and lets the following chuckle carry his lips into a gentle lift at the corners. Joy sets up the proverbial picket fence and makes its home there.
“Lucky for you,” the Master teases at length.
“Lucky for me! Did I ever tell you,” the Doctor leans forward, elbows on his knees, “how glad I am you stayed?”
Happiness has a funny way of perverting the shape of a situation. The Master ought to be insulted. Instead he surprises himself with an incredulous laugh. “I did not think I had much of a choice in that matter, Doctor.”
“Nonsense. You might have tried to kill me at any point, I certainly didn’t put anything in the frame to stop you—that might be staying, but not with me. You might’ve simply avoided me, that’s not staying. You might even have destroyed the work, spite me, take up an eternity in the Eye of Harmony, instead—”
“Now, whyever would I do that, Doctor?”
“You did when you didn’t take my hand.” The Doctor fidgets. He, too, must feel how uncomfortably close it comes to something true and vulnerable. “Eighth, wasn’t that? Same one as the lemon aversion, apparently.”
The Master considers that.
“A game, Doctor?”
“Ha! Game of what, precisely?”
“Truth and dare, so to speak.” The Master selects a book for good measure, but tucks it under his elbow to approach. He stands in front of the Doctor and lets the man straighten some. They are nowhere near eye level, but the Doctor, it seems, is not off-put by the Master currently holding the high ground. “Which would you prefer?”
The Doctor’s brow shoots up. His smile quirks. “Dare.”
“Say it again,” the Master says, “but plainly, please.”
The Doctor... it is not so much that his gaze wavers, nor that it flickers. It is only that he looks at the Master’s eyes, across his cheeks, to his temples, his jaw, his chin and his mouth, before they meet looks again. Perhaps it is the lighting, or just the easier tilt of his brows, that makes the Doctor’s eyes seem that little bit more saturated.
“I am,” he says at last, “so glad you’re here, with me.”
The Master… does not waver. It is a close thing. After a moment, he nods. “Your turn.”
“Truth or dare, Master?”
“Truth.”
“Are you—?”
“Yes,” the Master says. Judging from slackening relief--the edging joy--in the Doctor’s eyes, the softness of his tone is well enough to excuse the interruption. “Yes,” the Master says. “I am glad to be here. Doctor.”
The Doctor beams. He does not do that very often, in this incarnation, and the sight of it is… unspeakable. By contrivance, mind, unspeakable—it is only that the Master is and always has been ambitious and greedy, and he has no intention of sharing such a thing of beauty with anyone else, if he can help it. The Doctor beams, and stands—the Master does not sway back, or away—and the touch of the Doctor’s fingertips on his arm, the tilt of his head, the press of their lips together, it is…
It is...
… well.
(With neither a truth to necessitate the telling, nor a dare to challenge the silence, the Master keeps his peace, and kisses the beautiful fool in kind.)