A/N: I got the idea of pairing the human 10th with the alternate universe Master from somewhere else [it was either a fanfiction or a fanart, I can't remember now...] Anyway, I hope you guys enjoy!
John Smith. That's all he is, now. That's all he is ever going to be.
It is hard not to let it nag at him, sometimes. Sometimes it eats him up.
Because he can remember a nobler name, even if it never was properly his. He can remember a lot of things—things he wants, things he was, things he wished: things that don't belong to him, things he only thinks do.
He has no identity to himself. Even she looks at him with disdain. And on those rare occasions the look softens, she's only pretending he's someone else.
"I loved you! I really did!"
"And, what, you don't now?"
"What do you expect, Rose? How can I sit here while you look at me like that, day after day after day? I can't take it! I can't live like that!"
He runs. He's always running, the Doctor—only, that's not him. No, not him, not John Smith. Not a human. Not a bystander. Not a captive of a world he used to love.
Oh, how he'd loved this world: this beautiful world with all of it's brilliant, fantastic people. He'd loved them.
But things are different now. Now, he is trapped and caged. Now, he is forced to become a part of the race he loved. He isn't sure what he feels for them anymore. He knows them too well—the distant relative that spoils and sends gifts, and then moves in and becomes a horror.
"Are you leaving? Are you really, actually leaving? You bastard, where are you gonna go, huh? What are you gonna do? How do you expect to make it out there? This isn't the world you know!"
"This is everything I know.
"Rose, please, get out of the way."
"Serves you right, you bastard! Leave! Leave and never come back!"
She was crying the day he left. That's when he really realized. That's when he knew he really wouldn't ever be coming back.
Because he didn't go to comfort her. He didn't even want to. He didn't even try.
That's what he is, this John Smith—a loner, and wanderer. No home, no species, no second heart. Nothing to call his own. Not even a TARDIS.
He always had the TARDIS. That was something that he'd really had, even if only for a moment.
Right now, he had nothing—except a growing stash of missed calls and voice messages from "Tyler House" as well as a handful from "Rose". Sweet that they cared.
Finally, he knows who he is: and it's nothing. No one. A fake name living a fake life. How picturesque.
He doesn't do anything for a while. There's no real purpose to getting away, except to commune with the thoughts pounding away inside his head. He floats from ratty hotel room to ratty hotel room, from bumpy seats on each bumpy bus.
He hates blue buses. He stays away from anything blue.
He's wasting time on a park bench when the loose page of newspaper blows against his feet.
Life—life goes on, and how courteous for it to be put in print, black and white, and recorded like linear data. These humans had it all wrong.
He reaches for the paper, dirtied from its fluttering trip across the street, wondering why exactly the human race felt such a powerful need to record things, and never correctly, but rather in their own, biased, overshadowed ways to twist the truth and obscure the moments they put down.
He loved them, he remembers, he really loved them.
The most imposing headlines is some about taxes, and he pays little heed. But there, off in a corner, is a tiny little paragraph, and a tiny little picture of a man.
Harold Saxon.
Harold bloody Saxon.
And he's alive.
In this world, in this parallel existence, in this corner of the universe, Harold Saxon never died. Something like hope cleaves him in two. He clutches the page, he folds it, tucks it into his breast pocket and he sits, because for all the hope in the world, he has no idea what to do next.
Because Saxon isn't in power, isn't in jail—he's gone. Just gone. Vanished, along with his twisted scheme to take over the planet, along with the poor creatures who used to be human he'd brought down to his level. Gone.
But if he had anything, he had time—although not as much as he would, if things were different. There are days when he can hardly breathe for the empty hollow on one side of his chest.
One heart. How do humans live with just one heart? He can hardly stand it—the lonely, single beat of it.
The rumors are weak and scattered, but he follows them, because what else can he do but find the Master? The Harold Saxon to his John Smith?
Bitter irony winking in the back of his mind tells him it's not the same—that despite the alias, the Master is no human. He won't know the agony of living this way with so much experience and so much life tossed aside and left to rot as memory. He won't understand.
But is that enough to make him stop?
Never.
All his searching, the dead ends, the empty rooms—they all take him to a door.
And the man who opens the door, does not look like the Master at all. He looks broken. His clothes are sloppy, shirt untucked, hair uncombed, tailored pants just a little too long. He is the echo of something brilliant.
In a flash his expression contorts into the mocking smugness John knows so well.
"Well, well, well, what a surprise! What an honor! Good evening, Doctor—tell me, are you here to gloat or just check up on me? Or maybe admire your handy work?" He throws his arms open wide and stands tall. "Well here I am, Doctor. Are you proud? Satisfied?"
He can't seem to find words. "N-no."
All at once, the Master stiffens. He leans forward, brows knotting together, to look the man who never was the Doctor up and down.
"You're wrong." He says flatly. "Why are you wrong? What's wrong with you?" He takes a step closer, and the scowl transforms into a brutish laugh. "Oh this is rich! This is brilliant! Please, tell me who did this. I'd like to shake his hand! Who could ruin you like this? I was honestly starting to think it couldn't be done, and then here you come a'knocking at my door."
"Master, Please-"
Rage overtakes the Master in a flash. "Master? I'm not the Master anymore. I'm not even Harold Saxon, thanks to you. Might as well not even be a timelord except for the second heart-"Something seems to strike the Master at that moment, and his face melts into one of gleeful understanding. "That's it, isn't it?"
He snatches John by the front of his shirt, yanking him forward and slamming his palm against his half-empty chest. The grin peels wide across his face.
"You've only got one. You're human."
Desperation claws from the pit of John's stomach and makes its way to his lonely heart. "I don't know what to do?"
"What, your precious humans aren't enough for you anymore?" He spits, "Don't be so selfish."
The Master looks him over again, and the pleased expression returns to his features. "So, tell me, who did it?"
The words sit thick in his throat. "I did. The Doctor did." It takes a long time to explain what got him here—to this doorstep, this time, this world out of all the others.
When he finishes, the Master does nothing but stare. And after a while, he starts to laugh.
"That's beautiful, you know that? That's really brilliant. How... poetic of you, Doctor—John."
John closes his eyes, still on the stoop as the dusk sets in. "I came here, because there's no one else. You're the only one who-"
"Oh, Doctor, stop. I'm getting all hot and bothered," he mocks, and John pretends not to mind.
"I can't do this." It takes everything he has to keep his voice level. "I can't do this. I'm not the one you hate so much—it isn't me, so please. I'm begging you. Just let me inside."
The Master snorts with disgusted amusement. "Oh, it's you. It's still you. You may have only one heart, Doctor, but that's the same line you've been feeding me for generations: let me in. Let me help. It's bollocks."
"I don't want to help you!" John shouts and his fist meets the door frame. "I want you to help me."
Chuckling, the Master says, "I'm sure I heard you wrong, Doctor—would you run that by me again?"
"Help me," he says, low and serious and desperate. "Help me, before I lose everything."
"Why should I? Making you lose everything is what I live for, Doctor—especially now that you've done as much to me."
"Just let me IN!" He isn't used to it—this rage, fear. It takes a hold of him: blurs his vision along with his thoughts until he's a sodden mess heaped upright on the Master's doorstep. It is the last place he ever imagined himself to be.
The Master says nothing; he just steps to one side.
John supposes it's gratitude rising in his chest, but it's hard to tell around the echo of a missing heart. The Master disappears into the kitchen, and comes back with a mug of coffee. He hands it to John and steps back to lean almost casually against the opposite wall. His shoulders are hiked a little too high.
John sloshes down the better half of the mug, not feeling it burn all the way down. When the porcelain pulls away from his lips, he asks, "Can I feel it?"
The Master's eyebrows raise. "Feel what?"
"Your heart. You don't-" He has to stop, only for a second. "You don't notice it 'till it's gone."
He rolls his eyes, but still dares a step forward. John sets down the mug. His hands shift forward, until they meet with the Master's chest. Beneath his fingers drum the four patterned beats he'd almost forgotten. A sigh breaks past his lips.
He can't remember closing his eyes, but they snap open when the Master's hands come up to cover his.
"All better?" It's snide, but not as much as it should be.
"You have no idea." The Master still hasn't moved his hands. They rest warm and rough on top of the Doctor's—no, John's—own.
"So show me, Doctor."
Surprise makes John flinch back, but the Master's hands on his own hold him in place. "What do you mean?"
He leans in, so that the Doctor can feel his breath buffet his nose. "I went ahead and played Mr. Fix-it for you; I think you owe me some thanks." He's close now—so close. His whisper presses up against the Doctor—John, John-'s ear. "Use my name."
The word comes out of it's own accord. "Master."
The Master closes his eyes with a sigh. "Music to my ears." In an instant, the Master's grip is not on his hands, but his arms, and he's dragging the Doctor towards him with a sharp, hungry movement. The Doctor can hardly think for the mouth hovering just a hair's breadth from his own. When it moves, their lips brush in brief flashes that leave him breathless.
"Are you all better, Doctor? Can you breathe again?"
He doesn't understand how the Master could know.
"I-"
"Now, now—don't talk. You've been through quite a lot, haven't you?" The Doctor can't tell where the mockery stops and the concern begins. "Let me help—let me in." The smirk stretches his face. Another tug and their chests are pressed flush together, the beating of the Master's two hearts punctuated by the Doctor's-
John's one.
He drowning in this foreign feeling. Choking in it.
And the Master's mouth is so close. But he moves with him—draws back when the Doctor draws near. A taunt. Cat and mouse. It's always, always, been cat and mouse.
Though damned if he's ever known which role was his.
The Master has to tilt his head up to keep their lips so close, revealing a neck that the Doctor finds himself seeing in a very different light.
A brief thought flashes through the Doctor's mind—of kissing up that throat and nipping and licking back down—but then it's gone, replaced by the sensation of the Master's palm pressed against his ribs, seeping down his stomach and creeping under his shirt.
Skin to skin—the Master warm and coarse and beautiful. The Master's nose bumps his cheek before it's drawn across to his lips. It's there that the Master's head lifts to press his mouth to the Doctor's jaw and chills rush up and down his spine. It's soft.
But only for a moment.
All of the breath leaves the Doctor's lungs when teeth clamp down at the base of his neck. The arm the Master's let go of moves to curl around his waist. The Master backs him up until his shoulders slam the wall, and he pins the Doctor's hands to either side of his head.
"Tell me one thing, Doctor," he says with a smirk, and his mouth is almost on his again. "Why me?"
"Because it's always you," the Doctor breathes, shifting so their chests are pressed together again. The three hearts pound out of sync—frenzied and wild and impassioned. "And you know it is."
The Master's grin widens. "Exactly what I was hoping to hear."
Finally, finally, the Master's mouth meets his, and it's no gentle affair—a mad battle of tooth and tongue, while the Master's hands move again to roam up the Doctor's sides. They take his shirt with them, and the war of their mouths is forced to stop for the instant the fabric slips up over the Doctor's head. He's smiling against the Doctor's mouth—a wicked smile. Fingers rove across the curve of the Doctor's ribs while their legs tangle until the only thing keeping them upright is the other.
The Doctor lets his hands fall to explore the line of the Master's neck, tracing its contours. He follows the jaw to his chin, where he trails up to lips. The Master stares up at him, that daring look egging him on.
The Doctor tugs him close and reinstates a broken kiss, and they sink to the floor in a jumble of breath and heartbeats.
And for a moment—for a night—the Doctor forgets John Smith, forgets the single heart thudding lonely in his chest, forgets the world. They meld together until the Doctor, or John, or whatever you'd like, can't tell which chest is his any more, or which heart, or which lips. For just a few hours, he is a timelord once more.
And he awakes to an empty bed—cold sheets. Alone in a flat he hardly knows. He wakes up John Smith—one heart. Human. But it doesn't hurt so much anymore.
Because the Master comes back.
He always comes back.
And he'll come back armed with sarcasm and insults—he'll come back with teeth and crashing kisses.
"Are you still here?"
Vain—he's always been vain.
"Say my name."
But always, always, there.
Because there's never been a time without the Master, and that's proof of his identity enough.
A/N: sorry guys, it got a little sappy there at the end, which wasn't what I meant to do, but you know me, I'm such a sucker for fluff