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The Master slides into awareness again with such softness that it could nearly be mistaken for awakening from slumber. He even finds himself fluttering his lids as if shedding sleep. This facsimile of life comes so easily. Though he’s loathe to admit it most times, the Doctor’s efforts were well-spent, and he did a good job.
(Loathe, usually, to confess it. Still, he’s warmed by the knowledge that he had cause just the evening prior to mention it. Repeat it, even, given that the damned fool is best inclined to disbelieve him when he’s being earnest. The Master had lowered his tone and met the Doctor’s eyes in the repetition. That had done the trick: the Doctor had nearly cried, and the Master had kissed his cheeks before tears could ponder falling. The twining of their fingers had been incredibly sweet—as sweet as their linked minds, and as their respective parts joined.)
A niggling inclination warns him against such sentimentality. Too soft for the likes of them, it whispers. With a blissfulness born of irreverence and mundanity, the Master shoves the traitorous suspicion aside and stretches. Subtly, mind, as he is the first to awake in this shared bed, and there is another form still weighted heavily beneath the exhaustion.
With a soft and unnecessary exhalation, the Master slips back and inspects his handiwork.
The Doctor’s back is littered with a myriad of little bruises. Upon closer inspection, the Master decides—with some disappointment—that he can only claim credit for about half of them. One particularly nasty mark, yellowing already around the edges, spreads as wide as a palmprint across the hind side of the Doctor’s ribs. The Master frowns: the inner edges of the bruise shade the Doctor’s pale skin a deep purplish-blue hue that reminds him of black holes. Pocks in space and time, heavy things, collapsed furnaces. He recalls the doomed brightness that surrounds their all-consuming weight.
In a brief flash of possessiveness, the Master reaches out and covers the spot with his own hand. He’s gentle to touch. Even so, the Doctor whimpers in his sleep.
And the blasted fool wonders why the Master is inclined to tear the whole damned universe to pieces.
The Master slips his hand across, instead, to one of the marks he can claim for his own. This one sits paler in the flesh, blushing lavender. Funny, between himself and the great wide universe, that the Master should be the gentler, and leave the softer mark. He brushes his thumb across the spot, and the Doctor does not flinch this time.
Good.
He takes his time in the next several minutes, putting his palm, the gentle backs of his knuckles and the pads of his fingertips to each of the marks he is certain he has left. He skims over the ones left by thoughtless deviants and unworthy upstarts. He considers what balms they have on hand and which ones they might stand to procure. He wonders briefly if there’s anything he can do about getting the Doctor to wear additional protective layers, and sighs with the instantaneous knowledge that it would sooner cause a row than anything. They are, after all, still themselves.
The Doctor finally begins to stir about half a span later. The Master does not give him time to put together a greeting. He inclines his head instead, sets his lips upon the nape of the Doctor’s neck, and pulls with the heat of his mouth.
The Doctor stutters out a gasp and the Master, satisfied, releases him with the barest touch of his tongue and another kiss to seal the deal.
“Dare I ask?” the Doctor mumbles.
“Six,” the Master quips.
He lets the silence carry out with no small amount of satisfaction as the Doctor, slow from sleep, trudges his beleaguered mind through the possibilities of what that could possibly mean.
“Sorry?” he tries at last.
The Master, in response, dodges just to the left of the last mark he left and kisses the Doctor a second time. Harder. This time, the Doctor actually sobs.
“Seven,” the Master murmurs.
The Doctor, sounding not unlike he’s just run a five-minute mile, returns with an eloquent, “Ah."
The Master laughs against his spine, and relishes the shiver that follows. “The great wide universe out there,” he continues, “left six of its own. And you do know how I hate to be bested, Doctor.”
“Sure,” the Doctor says. It sounds disappointingly like he’s getting his wits back about him. “But by the count you just mentioned, yourself, you’ve already outdone it. So.”
“So.”
A brief silence goes between them. The Doctor does not roll over, as the Master expects him to. He finds, instead, the Doctor reaching back with a hand, settling somewhere between the Master’s hip and his thigh. He squeezes.
The Master will have to adamantly deny the sound he makes in reply.
“Go on,” the Doctor murmurs, and the Master can hear the smile in his tone, “I do know how you hate to be bested, Master. Go on and set the record straight, why don’t you?”
The Master regards the moment, from the realness of their solid forms to the sparkling of their minds. The Doctor’s is cracking open in invitation and shines like a sun peeking from around side a planet. He always has. The Master presses the pad of his thumb into one of his marks and this time, the Doctor’s whimper is not at all unwelcome.
“With pleasure,” he says, “my dear.”