Chapter Text
Bill squinted through the peephole at the door to her flat and groaned. Bloody typical. She’d informed the Doctor quite emphatically that she was taking the week off, barring world invasion. Actually, scratch that. He could handle himself, for once. This was her time. Even Heather had been ordered away, although she had acquiesced with a gleam in her eye and an understanding smile across her lips.
And now, this goon.
“Can I stay here?”
“No,” she growled. “Absolutely not.”
“Bill—”
“No! You scare me, and you’re mean. I don’t like you.”
“Do you think I would be here if I had a choice?” the Master snarled. Bill raised an eyebrow at his outburst. He couldn’t see it through the door but she had no doubt that he felt its sheer awesome presence, judging by how quickly his face fell.
“I don’t know what to think right now, Master, other than the fact I’m appalled by the audacity that you’d assume I care.”
She watched him for a moment more before falling away from the door and engaging locks three through seven. They’d been the one and only renovation she’d insisted on after moving in. The Doctor had installed them with the indulgent look of someone who was humouring her but knew he could bust past with only the press of a button.
Bill took a step back with the thundering boom entitled to upstairs neighbours and waited for him to fold.
The Master sighed. “Please.”
There it was. Didn’t take too long at all.
“Why can’t you stay in your TARDIS?” she whined.
His reply was grumbled under a breath through the wood. Bill hesitated for a moment before buttoning on resolve like a jacket and unlocked the door to open it a crack.
“What was that?” Bill asked.
“I said she only lets Missy in, now,” the Master snapped.
“Mm. Can’t say I blame her. Just ask Missy to talk to her, then.”
He crossed his arms and scowled. “Missy and I are not talking right now. She put me on the naughty list, whatever that means, and the Doctor just turns his back on me every time I walk in the room.”
“Ha! Classic. Still failing to see how this is my problem. Go bother Nardole. Or find a bench.”
“You know he always takes the Doctor’s side. He locked me out of the Doctor’s TARDIS. Actually, come to think about it, that was before I even…well. Doesn’t matter. Can’t I just stay here? It’s cold out,” he mewled.
Bill raised an unimpressed brow. “There’s no ‘just’ about anything here, mate. You’re fucking insane!”
“Well, yeah. But c'mon, we’ve lived together before! I didn’t hear complaints then.”
“I was literally always complaining. That was like all I did.”
“Bill. Please.”
Bill frantically searched for another solution. This couldn’t be her day off, it wouldn’t be. “What about the Vault?”
The Master sneered, spitting out, “The Doctor and Missy are in there, best not disturb them.”
Okay, gross. She’d third-wheeled them one too many times, though, and it was this thought that finally wore her down. “…fine. But only if you promise not to be evil. Or a bastard. Or creepy.”
“I promise…” he pushed past her before she could change her mind but quickly fell to a dead stop. “Hold on, where’s the furniture?”
Bill pointed at the mattress on the floor. “There.”
“That’s it?”
“Oh, this is like the ultimate boomer finding out about the housing crisis. Yes, Master,” she mocked in the tone of a teacher talking down to a child, “this is what you get when you work and go to school full time. Make yourself comfy. I’m just gonna text my neighbour to call the police if they hear any weird noises. Or if they see a former Prime Minister dragging a body down the hallway.”
“Can you please just let that go?” he whined. “I told you that in confidence.”
“No! And I don’t see how anyone else can, either! You literally look exactly the same, you’ve even aged the normal amount for fifteen years to have passed.”
“Oh, please,” the Master snorted. He waved a hand over his general appearance with the superiority of someone who felt they were committing a successful con. “I’ve this eyeliner now. And facial hair. And look, this is a completely different coat. No one even notices.”
Bill highly doubted that. “You wore a full facial prosthetic for 10 years. Get too uncomfy and decide to just raw dog it?”
“Pretty much,” he admitted.
“Thought so.”
They stood in a bizarre standoff momentarily until the Master sat heavily and rolled onto his stomach to sprawl on the floor.
“So, what did you even do to end up in the doghouse?” She sat only slightly more tidily on the mattress, knees pushed up into her chest as she folded into a semblance of relaxation.
“I tripped a cyclist,” he spoke into the yellowed surface of the linoleum.
“I’ve watched you commit literal war crimes. I fail to see how this is where they draw the line.”
The Master squirmed slightly. “There was a puppy in the basket.”
“What the fuck?! What is wrong with you?”
“I didn’t see it! That was not my fault! And…”
“...What?”
The Master sighed and flipped onto his back. “The puppy went flying off the bike and knocked an old lady into traffic.”
“Holy shit, was she alright?”
“I don’t know, I was too busy laughing and I…” the Master grimaced, before admitting, “I walked headfirst into a traffic light and knocked myself out.”
Yeah, that checked out. Idiot. “So…naughty list.”
“Yeah.”
“You know that was like a microcosm of your whole schtick, right? Do evil, get fucked by life, rinse and repeat. Ringing any bells?”
The Master raised his head and glared at her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Right, yeah, but I’m loving this, actually. You should come over more often, might have a real breakthrough.”
He deigned not to give that a response. That suited Bill just fine. She could be the boulder worn down over thousands of years by the push of the glacier above, content with knowing that even in her destruction she was changing, too.
God, she really needed to spend more time with human people. And wasn’t that a sobering thought.
Bill sank into the mattress on her back and shakily held her phone inches from her face in a battle of chicken she hadn’t once won. She scrolled on TikTok for a bit, and when that got too depressing she opened Tumblr. The app managed to threaten to overheat her phone in impressively few minutes, so she sighed and opened Twitter.
The mattress dipped next to her as the Master dropped down with a huff of air. “Whatcha doing?”
“Checking the Doctor’s Twitter.”
“The Doctor has a Twitter?” he asked incredulously.
“Well, no. But there’s a student run page at the university dedicated to his weirdness, can be fun to see what theories they come up with.”
The Master scooched over until his head lay next to Bill’s shoulder and squinted up at the screen. “What on Earth is a “zaddy,” and why are they calling him that?”
Bill groaned.
There weren’t enough pillows in Bill’s shoebox apartment to build a proper wall, so she settled for tossing her (clean, thank you very much) laundry onto the middle of the bed to construct a barrier down it.
She stepped back and nodded. It would have to do. “Right,” she turned on the Master, “don’t go trying anything weird, cause I’m not interested. Just stick to your side of the bed and if you even think about touching me I’ll taze you so hard you…you’re laughing. Why’re you laughing?”
“You don’t have to worry about that, trust me,” he snickered.
“Hey!” Bill wasn’t sure she was arguing in support of him being weird, but she knew how to commit. “I’ll have you know I’m a catch, I am.”
“Sure. Doesn’t matter, I’m gay.”
“Oh.” She let the thought settle for a moment, and when it didn’t, she asked, “Hold on, how’s that work, then? Just switches up any time you regenerate?”
“For the most part, yeah. Gender and that whole shebang, too.”
“So…Missy is…nevermind. That’s none of my business.”
“No, but it's her business which makes it mine and I do so love drama,” the Master gushed, waggling his eyebrows cheekily. “She’s indifferent towards the whole thing. Sex and stuff.”
“So she and the Doctor aren’t currently fucking in the vault?”
“No, they’re kvetching, which is incalculably worse.”
“What about the Doctor?”
“Don’t know what he’d call himself. All I can say is he’s an exceptionally good lay.”
“Ew!”