eve11 | Fic: All Her Children She Keeps (Doctor Who, Doctor/Master (academy): PG-13)

Right. I'm supposed to be writing my article, and somehow Doctor Who fic just keeps popping out instead. I'm doomed. I'm also for some reason writing slash. It couldn't be the whole Tennant and Simm hotness. Because for some reason I'm writing academy slash. Le sigh.

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"They'll never let us go, you know."

They lay side by side looking up at the sky. The stars were a blanket of dust scattered across their view, defining the branches above their heads in spindling, black absence. In daylight Gallifrey outshone everything, the mountains sparking silver against burnt orange, demanding to be seen, to be cherished above all else. But at night she contracted. Cloying, close, she stretched her black bars against the untouchable expanse and seemed so very, very small.

Koschei laughed loudly, the sound absorbed into the negative space of the trees before it could even echo. His eyes caught the starlight as he turned his head, making his smile seem almost predatory.

"You're still so institutional."

At night they would come here. Just the two of them in all the world, sharing this prison visage like a secret. They both turned to their sides, all awkward knees and noses as they focused on each other's gaze.

"But, the Academy," he said. "The Time Lords, they--"

"Shh." Koschei leaned forward, chasing him down onto his back. The awkwardness was gone, replaced by the all-present sensation of lips tracing the line of his eyebrow across his temple. "Who says anyone has to let us do anything?"

He smiled wickedly into the dark. "Here I thought I knew you; you're positively subversive."

Fingertips ran lightly down his arm. He let out a groan, arching up from the cold ground, one hand seeking purchase in a tangle of hair and the curve of skull and scalp, pressing forward. But all he could feel was that slow smile, breath teasing the fine hairs on his ear with a maddening lack of touch.

"If that's what it takes to leave," Koschei whispered. "No one will ever know who I am, if that's what it takes."

Then a hand pressed against his side, claiming the space underneath him with sudden strength, holding fast. They came together, all mouths and hands and skin, and it was though that absent silver-orange sky was thrumming inside him, desperate and aching and just as trapped.

Gallifrey hunched over them, a coveting crone, clawing at their backs in the dark.