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Dottore blundered past a guard on patrol at Zapolyarny Palace.
It was a routine patrol, of course: the Second Harbinger was simply in a bad mood, it seemed.
He’d bundled up tightly in his ceremonial coat: his sensitive, Sumeran constitution never did well in the cold, and his servos were even more fragile when the Tsaritsa’s ice and snow were pouring down.
Still: far from slowing down his processors, he was in a rush: the guard was shoved aside like something worthless, falling to his hands and knees in the corridor.
“I’m sorry, sir--” he tried to explain, but Dottore didn’t even turn to look at him: that’s how much of a speck he was in comparison.
But Dottore’s voice bounced around the stone arches of the hallway, like he was everywhere at once.
Even though his voice was low and quiet, his words were still audible.
“I better not see you standing by the door.”
This was the path to Pantalone’s office.
Project Stuzha, the Palestar Edict, even the Pyro Gnosis acquisition plan all lay behind that door.
The guard had been told to protect it with his life…
But if the Second Harbinger gave an order, he would follow it to the best of his ability.
He turned on his boots and left quickly.
Whatever they were doing was high-security, high-clearance, and certainly not anything he needed to worry about until whatever inevitable draft order would be provided to Her Majesty’s troops.
He was sure that it was very, very important.
~~~~~~~~~~
“Oh, what is it you’re after this time?”
Pantalone drummed his fingers absent-mindedly on his desk, the click-click-click- of his acrylics and the tap-tap-tap of his many rings against its dark wood filling the empty space.
“I want another grant. Fifty million mora, plain and simple. I know you prefer when people are straightforward, so that’s what I’m doing,” Dottore explained.
He’d played this game before: it was a common opening line.
“That’s a rather hard bargain you’re driving, there, Tau,” Pantalone replied, taking his first step in their usual dance. “I know you’re new, but try to keep up with the others, could you? I don’t think I’ve met another Segment who’s quite so greedy.”
“The way you differentiate us continues to astound me,” Dottore said. “You, of all people, should be well aware by now that we’re all simply parts of the whole.”
“I don’t know about that… you’re a unique one, Tau, aren’t you? You carry yourself with far more grace than the others deem appropriate.”
“Is that your idea of a compliment?” Dottore asked. “The others won’t be pleased you’d degrade them like that.”
“Well, I don’t think any of the others value grace like yours,” Pantalone replied. “Not like I do, at least.”
“And what sort of a price tag would you put on me and my… grace?” Dottore teased.
“Certainly not fifty million Mora, Tau. Certainly not,” Pantalone answered.
He continued to tap his desk in a rolling motion, like a little wave coasting back and forth between his fingers and the wood.
“...forty million?” Dottore asked. “I can make a few compromises.”
Pantalone did not answer him, leaving him in silence.
Click-click-click.
“Thirty-five million?” Dottore asked again, to no response.
Tap-tap-tap.
“...twenty five million?” Dottore could feel himself deflate as the number continued to get lower and lower. “Look, I could go for fifteen million, but that’s only a fraction of what I need, I would really be pushing it at that point--”
“Oh, dear… you’re thinking about this from the wrong perspective entirely, Tau,” Pantalone said, putting his head in his hands. “Are you sure you’re a scholar?”
“What perspective would you have me adopt, Pantalone?” Dottore asked.
Pantalone smiled.
His eyes glinted like the rings on his fingers.
“What do you think would grant yourself more value to me, Doctor?”
Dottore knew Pantalone.
Every Segment did in one way or another: different facets of the same man, but always the same man.
Pantalone was as cold and soulless as the gems he collected.
Viewed from across the axis of time, from the Segments’ many different angles, he could be kind or he could be cruel, but he was and forever would be Pantalone regardless.
Something precious.
Something beautiful.
Something valuable: someone he could trust.
Dottore knew exactly what Pantalone wanted.
After all, that’s why he’d come here today.
He’d gotten an inkling that reality wasn’t what he thought it was: that pieces were missing, that there was a void in spacetime that hadn’t been filled in ages: ghosts that had changed reality and suddenly blinked out of existence.
If reality wasn’t to be trusted, that was yet another reason to abandon the shackles imposed on humanity.
But if his reality had been altered, who was to say he couldn’t simply alter it further?
If this dive into Irminsul to figure out the truth behind everything was a last-ditch effort, he’d do so after looking in the mirror and seeing something drop-dead gorgeous.
No limitations.
No fears of perception.
No festering doubts at the back of his mind.
Not quite a human being, not quite a machine, and most certainly not quite a man, either.
But as he unveiled himself to Pantalone, as that coat embroidered in silver and furs swayed, then fell to the floor, he could never have anticipated that the warm, fuzzy feeling he got as he installed his core processors would be so overpoweringly intoxicating.
He watched Pantalone’s eyes take him all in like a Ruin Guard’s security system scanning for an incoming threat, unable to make total sense out of what he was seeing.
Wider hips, a slimmer waist, glowing wires around an open, beating heart…
And shining blue lines he could trace down to something beautiful and brand-new.
“Well? Am I still worth less than fifteen million Mora to you?” Dottore asked.
Pantalone’s eyes blinked, and all of a sudden, he was appraising him: his hands landed squarely on his shoulders as he guided him into a seated position on his desk.
With zero fanfare, he flipped up Dottore’s visor with a flick of his fingers: a sudden snap into place that caused Dottore’s whole body to twitch.
Tools that had once been reserved for inspecting forgeries and watches were now being used to poke and pry at the casing over his ocular core, the hole in his face filled with the wires he needed to control his many nerves and muscles.
“I can work with something like this, Tau. Sit still.”
“If you make a mistake…” Dottore grumbled under his breath.
“Oh, Tau. Haven’t you heard enough about me to know that isn’t gonna happen?” Pantalone teased.
Suddenly, he looped a finger around a bundle of wires and pulled it out, through the air, towards him like a piece of thread unspooling from a ball of yarn.
Just like that, Dottore’s back arched as he grit his teeth to bite back a moan that came out embarrassingly higher than usual.
“Because I already know your circuitry inside and out.”
With the wire still pulled taut, Pantalone swept forward and kissed him, warm lips against the cool, artificial skin of a machine: a calculated move to ensure Dottore was unable to stay quiet.
Pantalone was human.
Humans were lesser.
The thought of letting a mere human overpower someone on the path to godhood was unthinkable if it were anyone else in the world.
But Pantalone?
The only man on the planet he could trust with his life and with his knowledge?
Dottore would always give Pantalone exactly what he wanted.
It was humiliating, degrading, but delightful nonetheless.
He might as well be lowering himself to the status of an animal by doing this, letting Pantalone’s fingers dip down between his thighs mid-kiss before he pulled away, breathless.
“Such a pity… I just got these done,” Pantalone said, tapping the tips of his nails along Dottore’s hip bone. “If I hadn’t, I’d probably already have my fingers inside you. You’re certainly wet enough…”
“You’re letting that stop you?!”
Dottore intended the words to leave his mouth like a command, but they sounded more like a pathetic whine as he turned his head in shame, exposing his neck like a dog to the ravenous hunger of Pantalone’s lips and teeth.
“You really want to be filled up by me that badly, do you? If I didn’t know you any better, I’d say it was almost cute,” Pantalone said, close enough to his ear to send shivers down Dottore’s spine. “Come now. You may be a new Segment, but you’re impatient, not a pain slut.”
Dottore shut off his vision: the glowing red light in the center of his face.
He couldn’t look into Pantalone’s eyes when he answered him.
Even after everything they’d been through together, all the experiments they’d conducted, the founding of the Coupon system in Meropide, the Ruin Guard research facility in Lingju Pass… what Dottore said next had to be done unsupervised.
“...you don’t know that.”
Sudden fear seized his heart, or whatever was left of it.
He’d voiced this ever-present, unspoken thought out loud for the first time in his long, long life.
Something about this new body had given him too much confidence, too much self-assuredness.
Tau needed tweaking and refinement, this was too far, too quickly, and--
He found himself being lifted on his feet like a treasured, cherished doll, then turned to face the wall of Pantalone’s office.
Those hands and their nails held his chest, palms over his beating heart as Pantalone pulled him closer from behind.
“Tau~~”
That tone of voice, like a cat about to push a potted plant off its owner’s desk: the sound of someone who’d found what they were looking for at long last.
“You really should have told me sooner. Just look at all the time we’ve wasted together…”
Something about Pantalone’s chest against his back, those familiarly luscious dark waves of hair cascading over Dottore’s shoulder from behind him…
If it were another Segment there, he’d find some way to excuse the sudden peace.
The way his fears seemed to dissipate had something to do with the way now, the two were no longer face-to-face, a purely psychological change.
There was no fear of intimacy, no terror of being perceived, of having that part of himself exposed so thoroughly to another cherished person’s scrutiny.
He could go on and make his explanations, his excuses: whatever he wanted to call them on any given day.
But as Tau, he just arched his back and pressed himself against Pantalone.
“Are you going to waste more time or just put it in, already?!”
Because above all else, he liked it.
He liked the way Pantalone kissed the back of his neck between biting the side of it and sucking it so hard he was sure it would bruise.
He liked the stretch when he finally took him without much fanfare, the sleazy way he dug his nails into his chest like his pectorals were nothing but a set of handlebars, the way Dottore knew he’d be covered in claw marks the next day.
“Archons, you’re soaked…” Pantalone groaned between thrusts, unable to hold himself back anymore.
Any pleasantries or politenesses had flown away as quickly as he’d found out how much Dottore liked being used like this, seen as nothing more than an object for Pantalone’s pleasure.
And even if Dottore couldn’t see Pantalone’s face, he could tell he was overjoyed.
All he could do was moan against the wall, beg Pantalone for faster and harder and there, right there, don’t stop, and he longed for this moment to continue forever.
To never have to go back to being the Second Harbinger again: to just belong completely and fully to him.
No responsibilities.
No fears.
No ever-present yet ever-distant beings enforcing their wills over the world, no constant rejection, no heresy.
Just Pantalone, Pantalone, Pantalone.
If Dottore had been a god, he would have made this moment last forever.
The moment where, with shaking hands, he hit his peak, crying out in ecstasy as Pantalone’s long nails finally raked across his chest in streaks, trailing down to his hips so the final few thrusts could hit their hardest as he struggled through the aftershocks.
Drenched in his own sweat and cum, as pinpricks of blood made themselves known across the scratches, Dottore felt himself falling to the floor…
But Pantalone caught him.
He cradled him in his arms like an obedient doll.
Perhaps in another time, he would have held a certain puppet the same way, and felt his jealousy threaten to burn him alive.
But in this one, Pantalone was there to hold him gently, lick the sweat from his throat, and kiss the tears from his face as he came down.
“When all of this is over… I only want to do this,” Tau admitted. “You and me… forever… always… no more projects… just you, and me, and whatever this is…”
Pantalone hugged him and felt the way he collapsed against his shoulder, shaking and sniffling.
“It’s alright, my dear Doctor,” Pantalone said. “You’re with me, remember? I won’t tell a soul if you cry.”
He did.
He did, and he realized he’d longed for this moment, too.
The moment after, when still in that submissive, emotional state, he could finally let himself let go of everything.
The moment Pantalone so expertly reminded him that despite it all, despite how worthless he felt as just another human to the Celestial plan, trapped within a world that didn’t want him filled with people who hated him…
Somehow, against all odds, Dottore was loved.