DW -- The Final Straw
Title: The Final Straw
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten
Rating: PG
Word Count: 640
Warnings: relatively mild sketchiness
Summary: There is a certain threshold of Time Lord dignity that must be preserved.
Author's Note: This ficlet… developed from a conversation eltea and I were having over gelato while sitting in the Piazza San Marco, where I then developed the basic outline. Although I don't think I actually wrote it out until we were in France. I forget. :( ANYWAY, I think this is actually the last of the trip!fic from June, and hopefully it'll do a little to balance out the various angstbuckets that are being edited right now. XD
THE FINAL STRAW
When the Doctor says, “Right, breaking and entering,” and pulls a crowbar out of his trouser pocket, that is the final straw.
He probably has straws in there, too. Knowing this regeneration, they’d be the crazy plastic kind with loops and corkscrews.
It’s just too cartoonish. The Master lo-resp-apprec-can deal with this Doctor and all of the mad things he is and does, but there is a certain threshold of Time Lord dignity that must be preserved, and feeding a crowbar out of your pocket like a magician with a string of scarves is past it.
The Master is not going to mention various things he might or might not have done under the intoxicating influence of world dictatorship and general supremacy. Those were completely different. Because.
The point is, the Master gets to thinking about the Doctor’s dimensionally transcendental trousers, gets distracted thinking about the Doctor without them (because really, his legs go on forever, and the Master conceptualizes eternity better than most), and then considers how to teach his slightly dense jailer-angtagonist-clearly-not-a-crush why pockets are the single thing in one’s trousers that should not be bigger than they look from the outside.
The Master does a bit of evil eyebrow aerobics, then a bit of finger-steepling-all of this surreptitiously whilst the Doctor mucks about with world-saving and nuclear power plants and orphaned puppies and whatever it is today-and then he has it.
As usual, his exceedingly brilliant plan goes off without a hitch, which is another thing the Doctor could stand to learn from him. All it takes is sidling up beside the Doctor, pretending to be interested in this Scientists Predict Meltdown Imminent (and Also Puppies Are Stupidly Cute) or whatever headline it is, getting just cozy enough to make the Doctor’s brow furrow as he tries not to remember what this kind of closeness feels like, and slipping a deft hand into the guilty pocket. At the top of what seems to be a suspiciously substantial pile of odds and ends, bits and bobs, knickknacks, and extremely large tools, he finds his prize and withdraws it smoothly.
The Doctor doesn’t even notice that his screwdriver is gone.
This is the part the Master revels in second-most, after the triumph of success-this is the part where the opportunities are laid out before him like a field of corpses, like the road less trampled on, and the possibilities are so endless it’s almost incomprehensible.
The Master could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone from here. He could improvise a thousand weapons; gain access to a thousand fortresses; he could infiltrate and conquer and subjugate anything he chose. At the very least, he could disable the GPS tracking chip the Doctor stabbed into his neck while he was sleeping and call it a day.
Or he could do what he does five minutes later, as the Doctor rubs at his jaw and then at his hair, which reacts like an ill-tempered porcupine.
Using one of the screwdriver’s subtlest settings, the Master sabotages the anti-gravitational properties of the Doctor’s pockets, and the sudden realization of their actual weight brings the Doctor’s trousers down around his ankles with a crash.
The Doctor pauses, looks down at his crumpled raiment, and then looks at the Master, one expressive eyebrow slowly on the rise.
It is then that the Master notices that the Doctor is wearing unusual underclothes-unusual shorts. Black ones. Decorated with geometric cubes, and treasure chests, and cubes of cardboard, and crates, and metal containers (one has a cat in it, one doesn’t), and a red telephone booth, and something tall and blue that the Master can just make out on one side.
Yes, the Doctor is wearing box boxers.
The Master concedes defeat.
Fandom: Doctor Who
Pairing: Simm!Master/Ten
Rating: PG
Word Count: 640
Warnings: relatively mild sketchiness
Summary: There is a certain threshold of Time Lord dignity that must be preserved.
Author's Note: This ficlet… developed from a conversation eltea and I were having over gelato while sitting in the Piazza San Marco, where I then developed the basic outline. Although I don't think I actually wrote it out until we were in France. I forget. :( ANYWAY, I think this is actually the last of the trip!fic from June, and hopefully it'll do a little to balance out the various angstbuckets that are being edited right now. XD
THE FINAL STRAW
When the Doctor says, “Right, breaking and entering,” and pulls a crowbar out of his trouser pocket, that is the final straw.
He probably has straws in there, too. Knowing this regeneration, they’d be the crazy plastic kind with loops and corkscrews.
It’s just too cartoonish. The Master lo-resp-apprec-can deal with this Doctor and all of the mad things he is and does, but there is a certain threshold of Time Lord dignity that must be preserved, and feeding a crowbar out of your pocket like a magician with a string of scarves is past it.
The Master is not going to mention various things he might or might not have done under the intoxicating influence of world dictatorship and general supremacy. Those were completely different. Because.
The point is, the Master gets to thinking about the Doctor’s dimensionally transcendental trousers, gets distracted thinking about the Doctor without them (because really, his legs go on forever, and the Master conceptualizes eternity better than most), and then considers how to teach his slightly dense jailer-angtagonist-clearly-not-a-crush why pockets are the single thing in one’s trousers that should not be bigger than they look from the outside.
The Master does a bit of evil eyebrow aerobics, then a bit of finger-steepling-all of this surreptitiously whilst the Doctor mucks about with world-saving and nuclear power plants and orphaned puppies and whatever it is today-and then he has it.
As usual, his exceedingly brilliant plan goes off without a hitch, which is another thing the Doctor could stand to learn from him. All it takes is sidling up beside the Doctor, pretending to be interested in this Scientists Predict Meltdown Imminent (and Also Puppies Are Stupidly Cute) or whatever headline it is, getting just cozy enough to make the Doctor’s brow furrow as he tries not to remember what this kind of closeness feels like, and slipping a deft hand into the guilty pocket. At the top of what seems to be a suspiciously substantial pile of odds and ends, bits and bobs, knickknacks, and extremely large tools, he finds his prize and withdraws it smoothly.
The Doctor doesn’t even notice that his screwdriver is gone.
This is the part the Master revels in second-most, after the triumph of success-this is the part where the opportunities are laid out before him like a field of corpses, like the road less trampled on, and the possibilities are so endless it’s almost incomprehensible.
The Master could do anything, go anywhere, be anyone from here. He could improvise a thousand weapons; gain access to a thousand fortresses; he could infiltrate and conquer and subjugate anything he chose. At the very least, he could disable the GPS tracking chip the Doctor stabbed into his neck while he was sleeping and call it a day.
Or he could do what he does five minutes later, as the Doctor rubs at his jaw and then at his hair, which reacts like an ill-tempered porcupine.
Using one of the screwdriver’s subtlest settings, the Master sabotages the anti-gravitational properties of the Doctor’s pockets, and the sudden realization of their actual weight brings the Doctor’s trousers down around his ankles with a crash.
The Doctor pauses, looks down at his crumpled raiment, and then looks at the Master, one expressive eyebrow slowly on the rise.
It is then that the Master notices that the Doctor is wearing unusual underclothes-unusual shorts. Black ones. Decorated with geometric cubes, and treasure chests, and cubes of cardboard, and crates, and metal containers (one has a cat in it, one doesn’t), and a red telephone booth, and something tall and blue that the Master can just make out on one side.
Yes, the Doctor is wearing box boxers.
The Master concedes defeat.