In Which The Doctor Is, Fortunately, Not An Amoeba
Author: 
nemaline
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related trademarks are the property of their respective owners, mostly the BBC.
Summary: Alison is rather confused about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master.
Author's Notes: So this is all dragonofmemory's fault. I mentioned to her it was Asexuality Awareness Week, she ended up talking me into writing fanfic for it. Shalka!fic, because there can never be enough Shalka!fic. Betaed by the aforementioned enabler: I should have followed a bit more of her advice than I did, but then I came down with a cold, so any remaining flaws are completely the fault of whoever I caught it off.
It didn’t take long for Alison to realise that her new alien time-travelling hosts were a couple. It wasn’t exactly difficult to work out. She’d been sitting with them in the library, exhausted after a quick trip to see the pyramids had ended with a swarm of intelligent giant scarab beetles trying to take over the planet - she suspected that happened a lot around the Doctor - and she’d been sleepily listening to the two men bicker, more interested in fishing the last of the marshmallow out of the bottom of her hot chocolate than paying attention. And then she’d happened to glance up at them and realised the Doctor was sprawled across the sofa, using the Master’s side as a backrest with his head tipped back against the Master’s shoulder, gesturing wildly as he made some point. The Master was glaring at the top of his head, but he had one arm firmly tucked around the Doctor’s torso.
Alison had stared for a moment, then grinned to herself, and decided to head to sleep before she fell asleep where she sat and let the two of them have their privacy.
The next few days and weeks only confirmed it. Neither of them seemed to have any concept of personal space around the other, and then there was the sarcastic sniping that so often came across as the two of them trying to impress each other - except for the times when it got serious, but what couple didn’t fight? And then there was the way the Master worried about the Doctor even as he tried to pretend the very idea of such a thing was ridiculous, or the way the Doctor grinned whenever they got back to the TARDIS, or the way that as soon as they were in the same room, nothing else ever seemed half as important as each other. Alison ended up feeling like a third wheel now and then, but mostly she just found them adorable.
Which was why it took Alison quite a while to realise she’d never seen them kiss.
And neither of them had said anything about it, either - they never referred to each other by anything other than their names, no have you seen that useless boyfriend of mine this morning, Alison? or anything like that, no flirty remarks or innuendos, and no matter how many anecdotes the Doctor told her none of them involved the Master as anything more than a friend. And they still had separate rooms, even though they were right next to each other. She hadn’t thought that was odd, when she’d been shown around the place: there were so many things that were so strange and new here that an eccentric gay couple who liked having their own spaces didn’t even register.
Except that, when she put it together with everything else, it looked more and more like they were trying to hide it from her. Badly, yes, because anyone could see they were together, but still trying.
Alison had never really been one to politely ignore the invisible elephants in the corner of a room. That had been how she’d ended up here in the first place, after all. So the next time they had a quiet morning, the Doctor declaring that he simply had to fix the paratemporal matrix bypass (or the chrono synclastic infundibulum, or whatever it was he’d called it) before they went anywhere, Alison took the opportunity for a word.
He was lying on his back under the console when she came in, bits of brass plating and tangled translucent wiring scattered across the floor around him. ‘This modulator coil is - oh, Alison,’ he said, as he saw her. He’d thought she was him, obviously.
‘Disappointed?’
‘With what? A spare pair of hands could be very useful, actually - pass me the thing that looks like a spanner.’
She found it and put it into his hand, crouching down beside him, looking at the exposed circuits as though she had any idea what they meant. ‘The Master would be more useful, though.’
‘He’s still annoyed at me because I finished his crossword. He’d never have got sixteen down on his own, though, he just doesn’t have enough knowledge of the British agricultural revolution. I met Jethro Tull once, you know - the agriculturalist, not the band. Terribly dull man.’
She’d learnt better than to let him get onto tangents. ‘About the Master-’
‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’ll sulk for a bit and come round by lunchtime. Ow!’ he said, as something sparked in the innards of the ship.
‘I wasn’t worried. I just meant to say - you two, you know, you don’t have to hide anything. It’s all fine with me.’
The Doctor frowned up at her, his expression suddenly tightening, the sharp lines of his face growing even sharper with tension. ‘What exactly do you think we’re hiding?’
‘You being a couple. You know. Together,’ she said.
He mouthed the word together as though he’d never heard it before; then suddenly his expression brightened and he laughed. ‘Together? is that what you think?’ he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement.
It really wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. ‘Well… yes?’
‘Really,’ the Doctor said. ‘Right - can you see something that looks a bit less like a spanner?’
Confused, she hunted down the tool he was looking for; he didn’t offer any more comments on the subject, and she wasn’t sure how to push. She did think, though, as she handed him the tool, that he looked a little sad - or, more accurately, perhaps disappointed.
*
About a week later, Alison was woken from a very nice dream about a chocolate flavoured ski slope by a loud beeping noise.
She slammed a hand around on her bedside table before realising it wasn’t an alarm clock; it was something from outside, from further into the TARDIS, in the direction of the console room. Immediately alert, she jumped out of bed. Was it a fire alarm? It didn’t sound like one, but she was on an alien spaceship, which also meant it could be anything, could mean they were… about to explode or fall into a black hole or something.
She pushed open her door just in time to see the Doctor emerge from his room in his dressing gown, He looked irritated, as he often did, but not at all concerned. She relaxed; whatever was going on, it couldn’t be anything serious. And then the Master appeared behind the Doctor - from the Doctor’s room - and Alison grinned: the Doctor couldn’t possibly deny it now. The two of them emerging from the same bedroom late at night - no wonder the Doctor looked so annoyed.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, stepping fully out of her room, not quite able to keep her amusement off her face. As the Doctor turned to face her, she couldn’t help but noticed that he looked a little flushed.
‘Oh, Alison! Did the alarm wake you?’ He didn’t wait for her confirmation, instead carrying on. ‘It’s nothing - one of the circuits needs changing every hundred years or so, that’s all.’
‘And it sets off an alarm in the middle of the night to remind you?’
‘Only if the pilot completely forgets its very existence for an entire century,’ the Master pointed out.
The Doctor ignored him. ‘We’ll take care of it,’ he assured her. ‘You’d better get back to sleep.’
If it were something else, she’d offer to take care of it herself and let the two of them have some time together, but even though she was pretty good with technology a time machine was still beyond her. She nodded agreement. ‘Hope it doesn’t keep you away from whatever it was you were doing in there for too long,’ she couldn’t resist saying.
The Doctor didn’t seem to notice what she was implying, instead giving her a wave goodnight and heading off to the console room; the Master, though, hung back a moment, his robotic mouth quirked at one corner with amusement. ‘As it happens, we were playing chess, Miss Cheney,’ he remarked, before turning to head for the console room.
Alison raised an eyebrow. Playing chess? It sounded like the flimsiest of excuses. Still, her curiosity awakened, as soon as they’d vanished around the corner she walked over to the Doctor’s room and pushed the door open a little way.
She’d been expecting to see rumpled bedsheets, maybe a few items of clothing scattered around. Instead, the bed was still pristinely made, and clearly hadn’t even been sat on, let alone anything more energetic. There was a fireplace on one wall of the room, and two plush armchairs beside it with a low table between them. On the table, Alison could just see a chess game, in progress, and a half-empty bottle of red wine - which would probably account for how flushed the Doctor had looked.
Huh.
*
And then there were the arguments.
They usually happened about once a week, and always when she wasn’t there, so that she only found out about them the next morning when they were both tight-lipped and short with each other. But when they argued in the Doctor’s room, or the Master’s, Alison was close enough to hear every word. Normally she eavesdropped, trying to glean all information about what exactly was going on with them that neither of them would tell her, like exactly why the Master couldn’t leave the TARDIS.
But when she’d been awake for thirty-seven hours helping save a planet from a plague of cybernetically enhanced giant ants she didn’t really want to listen to the Master’s accusations that he was being kept prisoner and the Doctor’s defiant apologies. Instead, the moment she heard raised voices, she sat up and banged on the wall. ‘I can hear you, you know!’
There was a silence, and then she heard a door open and two pairs of footsteps vanish away quickly, the Doctor calling out, ‘Sorry, Alison!’ as he went. Alison turned over, feeling satisfied even though she knew the two of them would just argue somewhere else, and thinking sleepily about why the Doctor’s people had managed to invent a time machine but not decent soundproofing, and why the two of them kept arguing so much when they seemed so happy together otherwise, and that led her back to wondering why they kept trying to pretend they weren’t together…
… and then she realised that even though she could hear the moment either of them raised their voice above speaking level, she’d never once heard them having sex. And life in a university dorm had taught her that no one was that quiet.
*
For a while, Alison wondered if they were simply that oblivious. They could have both managed to convince themselves that the constant casual touches and the hugs and the way they always ended up sprawled across each other in ways that could be used to illustrate a cuddle-oriented version of the Kama Sutra meant nothing. But Alison kept picking up on more and more signs, like the way the Master would steal food off the Doctor’s plate, insisting that just because he didn’t need food didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it, and the way that the Doctor pretended to be annoyed and still always put an extra set of cutlery out anyway - but not, significantly, an extra plate. And that was just one detail out of hundreds, and no one was that oblivious outside of soap operas and cheap romance novels.
She toyed for a while with the idea that there was some reason they couldn’t have sex. The Master was a robot, after all; he might be built like a Ken doll, or his electronic brain might not be coded to want it. It didn’t seem likely though. The Master seemed quite capable of experiencing any other emotion, and she really doubted that the technology that could produce hands and faces so detailed as to be indistinguishable from the real thing couldn’t manage a cock. She sneaked into the room where all the spare parts and blueprints were kept anyway, just to see, and if he’d been built according to the specifications in them he was definitely fully equipped.
The only thing she could think of was something to do with these arguments, with the fact that the Master couldn’t leave the TARDIS and resented it. Neither of them would talk to her about it, but from what she’d overheard, the Doctor insisted he had to stay inside the ship - he’d implied to Alison a few times that the Master was dangerous, not to be trusted, but she’d been able to tell he felt guilty about it - and the Master was frustrated with feeling like a prisoner. She was pretty sure everything was a lot more complicated than that from the way they treated each other when they weren’t arguing, but she could reasonably imagine the Doctor refusing sex because of that guilt, or the Master refusing it out of spite, or both.
Whenever she tried to bring the subject up around the Doctor, he seemed either oblivious or bemused - and then when she tried to ask about what they were arguing about to work out if that had any bearing on the matter, his expression would go hard and he’d refuse to talk. After a few attempts, she decided not to push him - but there was still the chance of getting something out of the Master.
She sought him out at the next opportunity she had, and found him in the smaller of the two libraries, reading a book where the pages were circular, the text spiralling around them. She’d have thought that made it a real pain to read, but the Master wasn’t even turning the book as he read. He glanced up at her as she entered, but didn’t say anything, which left it up to her.
‘Could I have a word?’ she asked.
He glanced up at her again, one eyebrow raised, then gestured to the armchair beside his in what was presumably an invitation. Alison sat down, feeling a little uncomfortable in the overstuffed, high-back chair, and considered what exactly to say.
‘What exactly is going on with you and the Doctor?’
The eyebrow rose a little higher. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.’
Alison was pretty sure he knew what she’d been referring to, from the amused look on his face, but specified anyway. ‘You and him… it’s obvious you want each other. But you’re not doing anything about it apart from cuddling and fixing each others’ hair and things, and I can’t figure out why not. You’ve got to know.’
‘I don’t see how our love lives are any of your business, Miss Cheney,’ he said.
Alison shrugged. ‘They’re not, I guess. But since I have to live with the pair of you - which you invited me to do, by the way - I’d like to know just how much of a third wheel I am.’
‘I suppose that’s fair enough,’ the Master said, although Alison had the feeling he was only agreeing to tell her because she was amusing him and he felt like it. ‘Although it’s really quite simple. We’re not “doing anything about it” - by which I assume you mean “having sex” - because the Doctor doesn’t want to.’
He returned his attention to the book, leaving Alison staring at him. He thought the Doctor didn’t want to? Maybe she’d been too quick to assume they weren’t that oblivious. ‘Of course he does!’
‘Does he?’ the Master asked, turning a page. ‘And what gives you that idea?’
‘Well - the way he acts. The way he keeps touching you, all the silly little things you keep doing for each other - you act like an old married couple. Of course he wants you.’
‘Oh, he most certainly does,’ the Master agreed, now smirking.
‘But you just said he didn’t,’ Alison protested, by now completely confused. Was he playing some sort of game with her? Because she’d rather have the Doctor’s way of refusing to talk.
‘I said he didn’t want sex, Miss Cheney. Wanting sex and wanting me are two entirely separate premises.’ He looked up at her, paused for a moment, then finally closed the book and set it down on the small table by his side. ‘I believe, in your terminology, he would be… let me see, early twenty-first century Earth…’ He looked past her, scanning the titles of the books as though he expected one of them to hold the answer, even though Alison knew that the shelves behind her held fiction from the Andromeda galaxy. ‘Asexual,’ he concluded.
Alison stared. ‘What, like… he can clone himself?’ she asked, picturing the Doctor splitting down the middle into two separate smaller Doctors. ‘Because I don’t think the universe is big enough for more than one of him.’
‘…It most certainly isn’t,’ the Master said, staring at her with a flat expression but slightly widened eyes, as though he were trying to contain a look of horror. Or possibly of disbelief, though Alison didn’t think he’d bother to hide that. ‘A few million copies of him, duplicating exponentially - that might even be worse than the Daleks. Fortunately, that wasn’t what I was referring to.’
Thank goodness for that. Two hearts was perfectly fine, ditto his respiratory bypass, but reproducing like a amoeba was a little too alien for her. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘So… what did you mean? Without the messing around trying to confuse me, this time.’
‘It’s really very simple, my dear,’ he said, as though she were failing to understand that two plus two equalled four. ‘He simply isn’t interested.’
‘In you?’
‘In anyone. And, much to my regret, not inclined to go ahead and have sex regardless of attraction.’
‘How can he not be…’ Alison said, frowning. In anyone? ‘But… you and him… so you really are just friends?’
‘Oh, there was never anything “just” about the Doctor and I, Miss Cheney,’ the Master said, a soft smirk on his face that Alison almost thought could be a smile. ‘Does that answer all your questions?’
It didn’t, because Alison still didn’t understand how that was even possible. She almost thought it’d make more sense if the Master had told her that all desire for sex had been genetically stripped from their entire species, or something, But the Master’s “much to my regret” remark suggested that he, for one, was interested - and then there were those blueprints, of course. Still, she knew the Master’s question was a dismissal in disguise. ‘Are you going to answer any more questions if I do have them?’
‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ the Master said, picking up his book again. ‘I rather think you’ve had enough of an answer to your misplaced curiosity, don’t you?’
He gave her a pointed look. The so stop bothering me and the Doctor with your silly human questions was unspoken, but she got the message just the same.
‘I guess so,’ she said, and left him to his reading. Not that she thought she’d be able to let it go that easily.
*
Even with an explanation, she couldn’t quite leave it alone. She didn’t bring it up again around either of them, but she kept looking for clues, as she had been before, except that now she wasn’t looking for proof that they were together. She kept an eye on the Doctor instead, noticed that while there were plenty of attractive people in the universe to draw her attention, and the Master’s gaze ended up on various parts of the Doctor far more often than could be coincidence, the Doctor only seemed to notice what people looked like when he was looking for something, or if he spotted something odd, or if he was babbling to her about the makeup used by Tudor women. And he was always a bit oblivious when people were flirting with him. And then when he realised, he looked - well, uncomfortable.
It still took her a while to reconcile the way they acted around each other with the fact that they were just friends - although the Master had been right: the word “just” didn’t belong anywhere near them. But “friends” felt just as wrong, in its own way. They were more than friends, just not the kind of more she’d been expecting, and not the kind of more she knew any way to describe, any kind of word for. That nagged at her, over the following few weeks. She’d worked out what they weren’t, and why, but she still had no satisfactory answer to what they were.
Then they visited Maeella, a moon in orbit around a gas giant where ninety percent of the population were robotic, and suffering from a nanotech plague that left the remaining ten percent struggling to find a cure while caring for all the afflicted. The Doctor found a cure, of course, while Alison managed to track down the flesh-supremacy group that had started it so the Doctor and she could stop it at its source. But when they got back to the TARDIS, they found the Master slumped in the console room, shaking uncontrollably; the Doctor must have carried the virus in with him, when he’d come to synthesise a cure.
He was in the early stages, so he’d be fine when the cure took hold, but the nature of the virus meant that the cure wouldn’t work until the Master passed into the third stage of the disease, which could take a full day or more.
She’d insisted on sitting with them for the first few hours, but then the Doctor had told her to go and get some sleep, and she’d reluctantly gone. There was no chance of persuading him to sleep, she knew, not with the Master so ill. It was a horrible disease; it attacked the motor circuits first, which was why he was shaking so hard. Then it reached the mind, making its victim hallucinate, and then the third stage brought pain; agonising pain that could last for as long as a week before the victim shut down. They couldn’t do anything until he hit the third stage: Alison was only glad that when he did the cure would be almost instantaneous.
When she woke up in the morning, the first thing she did was go to check on him - and on the Doctor, who she didn’t think would be holding up well either. He should be in the second stage by now, the hallucinations, and Alison approached the Master’s room quietly. She could hear the Doctor’s voice before she pushed the door open, just enough to peer in.
‘… and it was probably a little arrogant of me to give the sword back, but honestly I was enjoying myself far too much to stop just because I’d disarmed you. Even if you were trying to kill me. It was like we had our friendship back, just for a few minutes. Challenging each other, just like always.’
The Doctor was sitting up on the bed, resting against a mound of pillows with the Master settled against his chest. The Doctor’s cheek rested against the top of the Master’s head, one hand gently stroking along his arm, while the Master - now immobile, if the virus was taking its usual course - lay there, trapped in whatever hallucinations the virus was provoking. Alison wondered if the Master could even hear what the Doctor was saying, if he was even aware the Doctor was there.
And then she saw the Master’s fingers twitch, just a little, tightening around the Doctor’s collar. he shouldn’t even have been able to move - but he was, and she watched as the Doctor put his hand gently over the Master’s, silent for a few moments before he carried on talking. Alison couldn’t have kept the smile off her face if she’d wanted to, so very glad that they had each other.
And maybe, when it came down to it, that was all that really mattered.
The Doctor noticed her then, looking up at her and managing a smile, though it wasn’t up to his usual standard. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.
She nodded. No point asking him if he’d slept at all; the look on his face told it all. And she didn’t expect he’d eaten anything either. ‘How does tea and a full English breakfast sound?’
‘Wonderful,’ he said, his smile becoming a little more genuine. ‘I haven’t eaten since-’
‘Since Maeella. I guessed,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t thank you for starving yourself, you know.’ He looked sheepish, so she left it at that, heading for the nearest kitchen. Behind her, through the open door, she could hear the Doctor start talking again, voice gentle. ‘I’m so very glad we managed to put that behind us, Master. Well. Most of it. So very, very glad.’
nemaline
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Doctor Who and all related trademarks are the property of their respective owners, mostly the BBC.
Summary: Alison is rather confused about the relationship between the Doctor and the Master.
Author's Notes: So this is all dragonofmemory's fault. I mentioned to her it was Asexuality Awareness Week, she ended up talking me into writing fanfic for it. Shalka!fic, because there can never be enough Shalka!fic. Betaed by the aforementioned enabler: I should have followed a bit more of her advice than I did, but then I came down with a cold, so any remaining flaws are completely the fault of whoever I caught it off.
It didn’t take long for Alison to realise that her new alien time-travelling hosts were a couple. It wasn’t exactly difficult to work out. She’d been sitting with them in the library, exhausted after a quick trip to see the pyramids had ended with a swarm of intelligent giant scarab beetles trying to take over the planet - she suspected that happened a lot around the Doctor - and she’d been sleepily listening to the two men bicker, more interested in fishing the last of the marshmallow out of the bottom of her hot chocolate than paying attention. And then she’d happened to glance up at them and realised the Doctor was sprawled across the sofa, using the Master’s side as a backrest with his head tipped back against the Master’s shoulder, gesturing wildly as he made some point. The Master was glaring at the top of his head, but he had one arm firmly tucked around the Doctor’s torso.
Alison had stared for a moment, then grinned to herself, and decided to head to sleep before she fell asleep where she sat and let the two of them have their privacy.
The next few days and weeks only confirmed it. Neither of them seemed to have any concept of personal space around the other, and then there was the sarcastic sniping that so often came across as the two of them trying to impress each other - except for the times when it got serious, but what couple didn’t fight? And then there was the way the Master worried about the Doctor even as he tried to pretend the very idea of such a thing was ridiculous, or the way the Doctor grinned whenever they got back to the TARDIS, or the way that as soon as they were in the same room, nothing else ever seemed half as important as each other. Alison ended up feeling like a third wheel now and then, but mostly she just found them adorable.
Which was why it took Alison quite a while to realise she’d never seen them kiss.
And neither of them had said anything about it, either - they never referred to each other by anything other than their names, no have you seen that useless boyfriend of mine this morning, Alison? or anything like that, no flirty remarks or innuendos, and no matter how many anecdotes the Doctor told her none of them involved the Master as anything more than a friend. And they still had separate rooms, even though they were right next to each other. She hadn’t thought that was odd, when she’d been shown around the place: there were so many things that were so strange and new here that an eccentric gay couple who liked having their own spaces didn’t even register.
Except that, when she put it together with everything else, it looked more and more like they were trying to hide it from her. Badly, yes, because anyone could see they were together, but still trying.
Alison had never really been one to politely ignore the invisible elephants in the corner of a room. That had been how she’d ended up here in the first place, after all. So the next time they had a quiet morning, the Doctor declaring that he simply had to fix the paratemporal matrix bypass (or the chrono synclastic infundibulum, or whatever it was he’d called it) before they went anywhere, Alison took the opportunity for a word.
He was lying on his back under the console when she came in, bits of brass plating and tangled translucent wiring scattered across the floor around him. ‘This modulator coil is - oh, Alison,’ he said, as he saw her. He’d thought she was him, obviously.
‘Disappointed?’
‘With what? A spare pair of hands could be very useful, actually - pass me the thing that looks like a spanner.’
She found it and put it into his hand, crouching down beside him, looking at the exposed circuits as though she had any idea what they meant. ‘The Master would be more useful, though.’
‘He’s still annoyed at me because I finished his crossword. He’d never have got sixteen down on his own, though, he just doesn’t have enough knowledge of the British agricultural revolution. I met Jethro Tull once, you know - the agriculturalist, not the band. Terribly dull man.’
She’d learnt better than to let him get onto tangents. ‘About the Master-’
‘Oh, don’t worry about him, he’ll sulk for a bit and come round by lunchtime. Ow!’ he said, as something sparked in the innards of the ship.
‘I wasn’t worried. I just meant to say - you two, you know, you don’t have to hide anything. It’s all fine with me.’
The Doctor frowned up at her, his expression suddenly tightening, the sharp lines of his face growing even sharper with tension. ‘What exactly do you think we’re hiding?’
‘You being a couple. You know. Together,’ she said.
He mouthed the word together as though he’d never heard it before; then suddenly his expression brightened and he laughed. ‘Together? is that what you think?’ he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement.
It really wasn’t the reaction she’d expected. ‘Well… yes?’
‘Really,’ the Doctor said. ‘Right - can you see something that looks a bit less like a spanner?’
Confused, she hunted down the tool he was looking for; he didn’t offer any more comments on the subject, and she wasn’t sure how to push. She did think, though, as she handed him the tool, that he looked a little sad - or, more accurately, perhaps disappointed.
*
About a week later, Alison was woken from a very nice dream about a chocolate flavoured ski slope by a loud beeping noise.
She slammed a hand around on her bedside table before realising it wasn’t an alarm clock; it was something from outside, from further into the TARDIS, in the direction of the console room. Immediately alert, she jumped out of bed. Was it a fire alarm? It didn’t sound like one, but she was on an alien spaceship, which also meant it could be anything, could mean they were… about to explode or fall into a black hole or something.
She pushed open her door just in time to see the Doctor emerge from his room in his dressing gown, He looked irritated, as he often did, but not at all concerned. She relaxed; whatever was going on, it couldn’t be anything serious. And then the Master appeared behind the Doctor - from the Doctor’s room - and Alison grinned: the Doctor couldn’t possibly deny it now. The two of them emerging from the same bedroom late at night - no wonder the Doctor looked so annoyed.
‘What’s going on?’ she asked, stepping fully out of her room, not quite able to keep her amusement off her face. As the Doctor turned to face her, she couldn’t help but noticed that he looked a little flushed.
‘Oh, Alison! Did the alarm wake you?’ He didn’t wait for her confirmation, instead carrying on. ‘It’s nothing - one of the circuits needs changing every hundred years or so, that’s all.’
‘And it sets off an alarm in the middle of the night to remind you?’
‘Only if the pilot completely forgets its very existence for an entire century,’ the Master pointed out.
The Doctor ignored him. ‘We’ll take care of it,’ he assured her. ‘You’d better get back to sleep.’
If it were something else, she’d offer to take care of it herself and let the two of them have some time together, but even though she was pretty good with technology a time machine was still beyond her. She nodded agreement. ‘Hope it doesn’t keep you away from whatever it was you were doing in there for too long,’ she couldn’t resist saying.
The Doctor didn’t seem to notice what she was implying, instead giving her a wave goodnight and heading off to the console room; the Master, though, hung back a moment, his robotic mouth quirked at one corner with amusement. ‘As it happens, we were playing chess, Miss Cheney,’ he remarked, before turning to head for the console room.
Alison raised an eyebrow. Playing chess? It sounded like the flimsiest of excuses. Still, her curiosity awakened, as soon as they’d vanished around the corner she walked over to the Doctor’s room and pushed the door open a little way.
She’d been expecting to see rumpled bedsheets, maybe a few items of clothing scattered around. Instead, the bed was still pristinely made, and clearly hadn’t even been sat on, let alone anything more energetic. There was a fireplace on one wall of the room, and two plush armchairs beside it with a low table between them. On the table, Alison could just see a chess game, in progress, and a half-empty bottle of red wine - which would probably account for how flushed the Doctor had looked.
Huh.
*
And then there were the arguments.
They usually happened about once a week, and always when she wasn’t there, so that she only found out about them the next morning when they were both tight-lipped and short with each other. But when they argued in the Doctor’s room, or the Master’s, Alison was close enough to hear every word. Normally she eavesdropped, trying to glean all information about what exactly was going on with them that neither of them would tell her, like exactly why the Master couldn’t leave the TARDIS.
But when she’d been awake for thirty-seven hours helping save a planet from a plague of cybernetically enhanced giant ants she didn’t really want to listen to the Master’s accusations that he was being kept prisoner and the Doctor’s defiant apologies. Instead, the moment she heard raised voices, she sat up and banged on the wall. ‘I can hear you, you know!’
There was a silence, and then she heard a door open and two pairs of footsteps vanish away quickly, the Doctor calling out, ‘Sorry, Alison!’ as he went. Alison turned over, feeling satisfied even though she knew the two of them would just argue somewhere else, and thinking sleepily about why the Doctor’s people had managed to invent a time machine but not decent soundproofing, and why the two of them kept arguing so much when they seemed so happy together otherwise, and that led her back to wondering why they kept trying to pretend they weren’t together…
… and then she realised that even though she could hear the moment either of them raised their voice above speaking level, she’d never once heard them having sex. And life in a university dorm had taught her that no one was that quiet.
*
For a while, Alison wondered if they were simply that oblivious. They could have both managed to convince themselves that the constant casual touches and the hugs and the way they always ended up sprawled across each other in ways that could be used to illustrate a cuddle-oriented version of the Kama Sutra meant nothing. But Alison kept picking up on more and more signs, like the way the Master would steal food off the Doctor’s plate, insisting that just because he didn’t need food didn’t mean he couldn’t enjoy it, and the way that the Doctor pretended to be annoyed and still always put an extra set of cutlery out anyway - but not, significantly, an extra plate. And that was just one detail out of hundreds, and no one was that oblivious outside of soap operas and cheap romance novels.
She toyed for a while with the idea that there was some reason they couldn’t have sex. The Master was a robot, after all; he might be built like a Ken doll, or his electronic brain might not be coded to want it. It didn’t seem likely though. The Master seemed quite capable of experiencing any other emotion, and she really doubted that the technology that could produce hands and faces so detailed as to be indistinguishable from the real thing couldn’t manage a cock. She sneaked into the room where all the spare parts and blueprints were kept anyway, just to see, and if he’d been built according to the specifications in them he was definitely fully equipped.
The only thing she could think of was something to do with these arguments, with the fact that the Master couldn’t leave the TARDIS and resented it. Neither of them would talk to her about it, but from what she’d overheard, the Doctor insisted he had to stay inside the ship - he’d implied to Alison a few times that the Master was dangerous, not to be trusted, but she’d been able to tell he felt guilty about it - and the Master was frustrated with feeling like a prisoner. She was pretty sure everything was a lot more complicated than that from the way they treated each other when they weren’t arguing, but she could reasonably imagine the Doctor refusing sex because of that guilt, or the Master refusing it out of spite, or both.
Whenever she tried to bring the subject up around the Doctor, he seemed either oblivious or bemused - and then when she tried to ask about what they were arguing about to work out if that had any bearing on the matter, his expression would go hard and he’d refuse to talk. After a few attempts, she decided not to push him - but there was still the chance of getting something out of the Master.
She sought him out at the next opportunity she had, and found him in the smaller of the two libraries, reading a book where the pages were circular, the text spiralling around them. She’d have thought that made it a real pain to read, but the Master wasn’t even turning the book as he read. He glanced up at her as she entered, but didn’t say anything, which left it up to her.
‘Could I have a word?’ she asked.
He glanced up at her again, one eyebrow raised, then gestured to the armchair beside his in what was presumably an invitation. Alison sat down, feeling a little uncomfortable in the overstuffed, high-back chair, and considered what exactly to say.
‘What exactly is going on with you and the Doctor?’
The eyebrow rose a little higher. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.’
Alison was pretty sure he knew what she’d been referring to, from the amused look on his face, but specified anyway. ‘You and him… it’s obvious you want each other. But you’re not doing anything about it apart from cuddling and fixing each others’ hair and things, and I can’t figure out why not. You’ve got to know.’
‘I don’t see how our love lives are any of your business, Miss Cheney,’ he said.
Alison shrugged. ‘They’re not, I guess. But since I have to live with the pair of you - which you invited me to do, by the way - I’d like to know just how much of a third wheel I am.’
‘I suppose that’s fair enough,’ the Master said, although Alison had the feeling he was only agreeing to tell her because she was amusing him and he felt like it. ‘Although it’s really quite simple. We’re not “doing anything about it” - by which I assume you mean “having sex” - because the Doctor doesn’t want to.’
He returned his attention to the book, leaving Alison staring at him. He thought the Doctor didn’t want to? Maybe she’d been too quick to assume they weren’t that oblivious. ‘Of course he does!’
‘Does he?’ the Master asked, turning a page. ‘And what gives you that idea?’
‘Well - the way he acts. The way he keeps touching you, all the silly little things you keep doing for each other - you act like an old married couple. Of course he wants you.’
‘Oh, he most certainly does,’ the Master agreed, now smirking.
‘But you just said he didn’t,’ Alison protested, by now completely confused. Was he playing some sort of game with her? Because she’d rather have the Doctor’s way of refusing to talk.
‘I said he didn’t want sex, Miss Cheney. Wanting sex and wanting me are two entirely separate premises.’ He looked up at her, paused for a moment, then finally closed the book and set it down on the small table by his side. ‘I believe, in your terminology, he would be… let me see, early twenty-first century Earth…’ He looked past her, scanning the titles of the books as though he expected one of them to hold the answer, even though Alison knew that the shelves behind her held fiction from the Andromeda galaxy. ‘Asexual,’ he concluded.
Alison stared. ‘What, like… he can clone himself?’ she asked, picturing the Doctor splitting down the middle into two separate smaller Doctors. ‘Because I don’t think the universe is big enough for more than one of him.’
‘…It most certainly isn’t,’ the Master said, staring at her with a flat expression but slightly widened eyes, as though he were trying to contain a look of horror. Or possibly of disbelief, though Alison didn’t think he’d bother to hide that. ‘A few million copies of him, duplicating exponentially - that might even be worse than the Daleks. Fortunately, that wasn’t what I was referring to.’
Thank goodness for that. Two hearts was perfectly fine, ditto his respiratory bypass, but reproducing like a amoeba was a little too alien for her. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘So… what did you mean? Without the messing around trying to confuse me, this time.’
‘It’s really very simple, my dear,’ he said, as though she were failing to understand that two plus two equalled four. ‘He simply isn’t interested.’
‘In you?’
‘In anyone. And, much to my regret, not inclined to go ahead and have sex regardless of attraction.’
‘How can he not be…’ Alison said, frowning. In anyone? ‘But… you and him… so you really are just friends?’
‘Oh, there was never anything “just” about the Doctor and I, Miss Cheney,’ the Master said, a soft smirk on his face that Alison almost thought could be a smile. ‘Does that answer all your questions?’
It didn’t, because Alison still didn’t understand how that was even possible. She almost thought it’d make more sense if the Master had told her that all desire for sex had been genetically stripped from their entire species, or something, But the Master’s “much to my regret” remark suggested that he, for one, was interested - and then there were those blueprints, of course. Still, she knew the Master’s question was a dismissal in disguise. ‘Are you going to answer any more questions if I do have them?’
‘I wasn’t planning on it,’ the Master said, picking up his book again. ‘I rather think you’ve had enough of an answer to your misplaced curiosity, don’t you?’
He gave her a pointed look. The so stop bothering me and the Doctor with your silly human questions was unspoken, but she got the message just the same.
‘I guess so,’ she said, and left him to his reading. Not that she thought she’d be able to let it go that easily.
*
Even with an explanation, she couldn’t quite leave it alone. She didn’t bring it up again around either of them, but she kept looking for clues, as she had been before, except that now she wasn’t looking for proof that they were together. She kept an eye on the Doctor instead, noticed that while there were plenty of attractive people in the universe to draw her attention, and the Master’s gaze ended up on various parts of the Doctor far more often than could be coincidence, the Doctor only seemed to notice what people looked like when he was looking for something, or if he spotted something odd, or if he was babbling to her about the makeup used by Tudor women. And he was always a bit oblivious when people were flirting with him. And then when he realised, he looked - well, uncomfortable.
It still took her a while to reconcile the way they acted around each other with the fact that they were just friends - although the Master had been right: the word “just” didn’t belong anywhere near them. But “friends” felt just as wrong, in its own way. They were more than friends, just not the kind of more she’d been expecting, and not the kind of more she knew any way to describe, any kind of word for. That nagged at her, over the following few weeks. She’d worked out what they weren’t, and why, but she still had no satisfactory answer to what they were.
Then they visited Maeella, a moon in orbit around a gas giant where ninety percent of the population were robotic, and suffering from a nanotech plague that left the remaining ten percent struggling to find a cure while caring for all the afflicted. The Doctor found a cure, of course, while Alison managed to track down the flesh-supremacy group that had started it so the Doctor and she could stop it at its source. But when they got back to the TARDIS, they found the Master slumped in the console room, shaking uncontrollably; the Doctor must have carried the virus in with him, when he’d come to synthesise a cure.
He was in the early stages, so he’d be fine when the cure took hold, but the nature of the virus meant that the cure wouldn’t work until the Master passed into the third stage of the disease, which could take a full day or more.
She’d insisted on sitting with them for the first few hours, but then the Doctor had told her to go and get some sleep, and she’d reluctantly gone. There was no chance of persuading him to sleep, she knew, not with the Master so ill. It was a horrible disease; it attacked the motor circuits first, which was why he was shaking so hard. Then it reached the mind, making its victim hallucinate, and then the third stage brought pain; agonising pain that could last for as long as a week before the victim shut down. They couldn’t do anything until he hit the third stage: Alison was only glad that when he did the cure would be almost instantaneous.
When she woke up in the morning, the first thing she did was go to check on him - and on the Doctor, who she didn’t think would be holding up well either. He should be in the second stage by now, the hallucinations, and Alison approached the Master’s room quietly. She could hear the Doctor’s voice before she pushed the door open, just enough to peer in.
‘… and it was probably a little arrogant of me to give the sword back, but honestly I was enjoying myself far too much to stop just because I’d disarmed you. Even if you were trying to kill me. It was like we had our friendship back, just for a few minutes. Challenging each other, just like always.’
The Doctor was sitting up on the bed, resting against a mound of pillows with the Master settled against his chest. The Doctor’s cheek rested against the top of the Master’s head, one hand gently stroking along his arm, while the Master - now immobile, if the virus was taking its usual course - lay there, trapped in whatever hallucinations the virus was provoking. Alison wondered if the Master could even hear what the Doctor was saying, if he was even aware the Doctor was there.
And then she saw the Master’s fingers twitch, just a little, tightening around the Doctor’s collar. he shouldn’t even have been able to move - but he was, and she watched as the Doctor put his hand gently over the Master’s, silent for a few moments before he carried on talking. Alison couldn’t have kept the smile off her face if she’d wanted to, so very glad that they had each other.
And maybe, when it came down to it, that was all that really mattered.
The Doctor noticed her then, looking up at her and managing a smile, though it wasn’t up to his usual standard. ‘Did you sleep well?’ he asked.
She nodded. No point asking him if he’d slept at all; the look on his face told it all. And she didn’t expect he’d eaten anything either. ‘How does tea and a full English breakfast sound?’
‘Wonderful,’ he said, his smile becoming a little more genuine. ‘I haven’t eaten since-’
‘Since Maeella. I guessed,’ she said. ‘He wouldn’t thank you for starving yourself, you know.’ He looked sheepish, so she left it at that, heading for the nearest kitchen. Behind her, through the open door, she could hear the Doctor start talking again, voice gentle. ‘I’m so very glad we managed to put that behind us, Master. Well. Most of it. So very, very glad.’