Apparently when I take sleeping pills I write. So here is the first installment of Out of Touch, a two parter looking at the relationship between The Doctor and The Master from their school years til the beginning of the end, and how we all just need someone to understand sometimes. I do not own Doctor Who, BBC does. Read and review.

If there is enough response there will be a short third segment of this.

D.R.

Out of Touch

To Koschei, the day's tech class couldn't have been more boring, and it had only just started. Theta was late, and Theta had no reason to be late since Koschei hadn't been late. The professor didn't even seem to have noticed his friend's absence despite it being all Koschei could focus on, and furtive looks at Drax and Ushas earned him nothing but a glare from Ushas and a helpless shrug from Drax. At least he could more or less rule out that Theta wasn't caught up in something Deca related that he had just been out of the loop on. He gave a halfhearted mental probe towards a general thought of Theta, but it didn't exactly do anything, not without his friend nearby. Not that he had expected it to. They might have practiced so they didn't have to touch, but it didn't go much past a few feet.

Koschei didn't even realize he was tapping until he got another vicious glare from Ushas that had him shuffling his feet and sinking lower in his chair as he crossed his arms. She rolled her eyes at his petulant scowl and turned her interest back to the class as Koschei turned his thoughts back towards Theta.

He and Theta had a spat the night before over that same tapping, but he didn't think Theta would skip class over that. It hadn't even been that big of a deal. They had both been tired and tense, and Koschei had said some things he didn't really mean, and it had been stupid. Anyways, Theta always forgave him because he was Theta, and that was what Theta did. Still, if Theta was going to stay angry about it, so was he, he wasn't about to go asking for forgiveness. Two could play that game.

His resolve lasted through the end of class; in fact, it lasted until he was intercepted by a younger member of The Deca just outside of his classroom.

"Koschei!" Millennia called after him, worming her way through the throng of students. Koschei didn't see her as much as some of the other Deca members as they didn't share any classes aside from Borusa's, but she was hard to miss with her bright blue hair clashing spectacularly with the Prydon uniforms. He lost her for a moment in the crowd and contemplated diving in after her when she resurfaced in front of him, shoving blue locks away from her face and looking vaguely flustered. "I was afraid I was going to miss you, I tried to catch up with you before class but-" She laughed helplessly, at his raised eyebrow she nervously rustled around in her bag, "I um- I told Theta Sigma that I would get him the notes from our temporal engineering class, and he forgot his book." She stammered, clearly anxious in the quickly emptying hall, shoving a text book towards him which he crammed into his own bag.

"Why didn't you just give it to him at lunch or wait until Borusa's class?" That would be their first class after lunch which he was missing because of this, although if he and Theta were still on the outs he wasn't sure if lunch with the rest of their friends would be all that comfortable. It never was pretty when two members were fighting.

She looked at him as though he had just dribbled on his shirt which Koschei was quite sure he hadn't, but the expression rather reminded him of Ushas. It was an entirely logical suggestion, why wouldn't she just give it to him herself? It would have saved her from making the detour to meet him at his class. "Right then, well, just see that he gets it, yeah?" She turned away and Koschei thought that was that, but then she turned back halfway down the hall and called out, "And Koschei?" He turned back towards her, "Tell him I hope he feels better?" His eyebrows which had taken up residence high on his forehead drew down and knitted tightly together, and he found himself tugging at the start of the goatee he had been trying to grow in.

Koschei unlocked the door of the dormitory room he shared with Theta Sigma, "Are these the lengths you go to to avoid me Theta? Hiding in our room?" Still, he wasn't expecting to open the door into near entire darkness or the distinct pungent smell of illness, "Theta?" He asked turning up the lights and dropping his bag inside the door, the lump on the far bed whimpered slightly and curled up into a tighter ball.

Koschei found himself dimming the lights and crossing to crouch down to the beds level. He ran a hand through the sandy hair, brushing it back from the other's face, and rubbed the pad of his thumb in little circles over the tensed muscles he found on his forehead, "Thete…" He trailed off with a sigh, "You know, it's hard to stay mad at you when you're like this." He chided lightly, and a hand moved to weakly slap at him, but it fell short halfway there,

"Hush Kosch." The boy admonished tiredly.

"How long has this been going on then?" Koschei asked mildly, standing and turning to get a glass of water, Theta had to be dehydrated and he didn't seem likely to move on his own.

"Yesterday." Came the bit out reply and Koschei winced. Oops. "Wasn't this bad though… Isn't as bad as it was though either; comes and goes."

"Yeah, sorry about that." Theta actually opened his eyes at the apology to see Koschei looming over him with a sopping piece of cloth and a glass and fixed him with a bleary but wary look. "What?" Theta gave a snort and closed his eyes again. Koshchei dropped the wet cloth onto Theta's eyes, ignoring the protesting squawk and brightened the lights. "Leave it." He warned when Theta moved to dislodge the compress, with another whine at realizing how bright it was, even though the lights were only at a quarter power at best, he pressed the compress deeper into his eyes instead. Koschei bit back an "I told you so" and flopped onto his own bed with his homework on ethics.

Koschei had been perusing Theta's anthology of children's tales. He didn't have to read the words, every child probably had the tale of Snowana ingrained in their minds, but the pictures and text held a comforting familiarity, and a distraction since he didn't have Theta to talk to, the boy having drifted into a fitful sleep. He glanced up when his friend gave a groan of pain, "You alright Thete?" he asked, though his answer came quickly in the form of dry heaving. He managed to get to him before he could face plant off the bed. The heaving subsided and was replaced with ragged breaths; he was crying, Koschei recognized distantly, and he wasn't sure which was worse. "Easy Theta, I've got you."

"Rassilon, my head!" Theta sobbed, clinging to the lapels of Koschei's uniform though he abruptly let go at the next stab of pain to drive his palms into his eye sockets. He continued to sob, writhing on the bed, and it combined with those infernal drums and something deep inside Koschei snapped and he fled.

Millennia found Koschei by chance in one of the labs. He was sitting on the other side of one of the work stations. "I didn't expect to see you here." She said mildly, pulling out a test tube rack and setting it on the bench, "How's Theta Sigma?" Koschei just shook his head "You don't know or-"

"He's sick" The older boy snapped, "He's sick and he's in pain and I didn't know what to do, but I couldn't stay there-" He was mortified to find tears falling down his face and he clenched his hands into fists, nails biting at the soft flesh of his palms, willing himself to stop.

"So you left him?" She didn't exactly sound sympathetic.

"What was I supposed to do? Theta's always been the caregiver and I've always been-" The one who needed caring.

He needed Theta, and with that thought he buried his face in his arms and gave up trying not to cry.

The thought must have been said out loud or else Millennia was an incredibly powerful telepath because she lowered herself to sit next to him and said, "Well, maybe this time he needs you Koschei." She sighed and rubbed a hand across his shoulder blades until the sobs fell away to hiccoughs. "Koschei, I helped out in the medical wing last year, and at exams we had a ton of students in there with migraines."

He gave her a confused look, "So? Lots of students get sick at exams."

"Stress can trigger migraines Koschei."

"Yes, you already said that… more or less."

"Koschei, Theta Sigma has migraines."

He scoffed openly, finally catching her meaning, "You can't be serious, I think I would notice if my best friend was stressed enough to be having episodes like this, he would tell me, anyways, what does Theta have to be stressed about?"

"Oh for the love of Pazithi. You're smarter than this Koschei!" She exclaimed, "Theta Sigma has loads to be stressed about! He's not like you or the rest of us in The Deca, he is failing the majority of his classes, he just can't test, and I don't know what else is going on in that big brain of his, but when he isn't stressing about class and whatever else there is, and more so than all of that, he's worrying himself sick over you."

Koschei looked at her then, blue eyes wide as saucers, "Me?" He asked incredulously, "What-"

She shook her head, blue hair bouncing, raising her voice as he stood and began to pace "He is terrified Koschei, he can't even talk to you because he thinks you're going to go off the edge one of these days, he thinks he's going to lose you forever and that scares him more than his grades, more than anything else, because you mean the world to him, and everyone can see that."

"Shut up, shut up!" He was tugging at his hair frantically, but Millennia pressed on,

"Koschei, he needs you! Can't you see that?" She moved around the workbench to cut him off from escaping at the other end.

"No! Shut up!" He screamed throwing a box of glass test tubes at the wall where they shattered on impact.

"Koschei! You aren't helping Theta Sigma when you're like this, now stop!" He was actually a bit terrifying, well more than a bit, but Theta was her friend too. He did stop though, going nearly limp against the work bench, and when he looked back at her his lower lip had begun to wibble and his eyes were once again wide and shining, "No that's not gonna help either, Pazithi you switch fast don't you, Theta Sigma always said you were a bit… well… Now come on, he needs you, what are you going to do?"

When Koschei returned Theta was sitting up in bed, working on copying the notes over from Millennia's, he broke into a weak smile when he looked up to see Koschei standing nervously in the doorway. "You came back."

"I left, I ran, I-"

Theta cut him off, "You came back, that's what's important, and I am sorry, I am so sorry, I never meant for you to see that. Are you alright?" The question flustered Koschei, the sheer sincerity behind it, and he felt that familiar burning sensation in his eyes, that embarrassing first tear clinging to his lashes. Theta calmly opened his arms, and it took all of Koschei's self-control not to run into them where he would be safe, where he could pretend none of it ever happened. "Kosch" That single word, that shortening of his nickname, that did in his self-control. Theta managed to get a cup of steaming liquid away from Koschei who had been clinging to it like a life line and set it down on the bedside table while at the same time he folded Koschei into an embrace, letting his friend sob out all of the injustices of the day as he rocked him, Koschei mumbled something incoherently into his shoulder, "Pardon?"

The answer was a bit clearer though still muffled in the fabric of his tunic, "You must hate me, you should hate me."

Theta pulled away from Koschei enough to look him in the eye, "You are bone dead stupid you are, you're a genius, you're stone cold brilliant, but you are so stupid. You still can't see the obvious after all these years, Koschei, I could never hate you; I love you too much." And with that he pulled the darker boy back to him in a crushing hug, not letting go until the sobs finally quieted, "And now the real question remains, what is in that cup?" He asked as Koschei wiped his eyes.

Koschei brightened considerably, grabbing the cup and holding it out for Theta, "There's this planet called E-arth, and there's these indigenous creatures in this one region, humans they call themselves, Ushas studies them, and apparently they're an utterly pathetic little race, they look like us, but they only have one heart and this miniscule little life span, completely insignificant, but they found this drink, and they claim it solves everything, everything in just one little cup, though some problems, like politics, take a whole pot. Tea they call it and all it is is these leaves and stuff with boiling water poured over them. Of course we don't have any human bits here, so I just had to make do with what I could find."

Theta raised a brow dubiously as what looked like a stick floated to the top, but Koschei was staring expectantly at him, so Theta took a sip and hid his grimace behind a smile, "I don't know what to say Kosch," He faked a second sip, "In fact, I'm feeling better already, doesn't even take a whole cup." The resultant smile was worth the lie, it would always be worth the lie.

"Really?"

"Really." He set the cup back down. "Um, Koschei, listen, about yesterday, it was no excuse, I-" Koschei shook his head.

"Theta I- I want to try something." And those long nimble fingers that Theta so loved slid into place on his psy points. He resisted at first, trying to clamp down on all his thoughts, to save Koschei from his own despair, but eventually he gave in and placed his own hands on Koschei's face in a mirror image, bringing their foreheads to touch, their thoughts and emotions melding, mingling, pouring everything they hadn't put into words into the other, all of the unspoken fears, everything, and Koschei could feel the remaining tension slowly leave Theta, for a moment there was nothing between them. Eventually Theta broke it, tangling their fingers and dragging their hands down. Their breathing was uneven as they stared into each other's eyes. "Don't lose me Theta, please, don't lose me. Don't lose me and don't give up on me."

Theta gathered him back into his arms, "I never would Kosch, I never would." He promised, holding onto him fiercely, willing to face whatever nightmares would come for him.

Millennia and Ushas walked through the halls later that night, each carrying a stack of papers. Two of their boys had missed the majority of their classes for the day, and Ushas didn't trust the other boy's not to muck up a simple homework delivery.

When the door opened, Theta was half sitting half lying with a drawn look and a slightly pinched expression. Koschei was asleep, curled half on top of him, his head pressed to Theta's chest, precariously near his hearts. Theta was using one hand to take notes while the other idly played with Koschei's dark hair. He glanced up at them as Ushas held up the stack of assignments and smiled faintly waving her in and towards the desk, when he spotted Millennia he mouthed "Thank you" earning him a gentle smile.

Ushas gently removed the notes Theta had been working on, undid Koschei's shoes, and grabbed the duvet from Koschei's bed, using it to cover both of her boys. She brushed her hand across Theta's cheek with a single insistence of sleep, causing his eyes to droop nearly instantly.

She gave them a last fond eye roll as she turned off the lights, but before Millennia could close the door a quiet voice reached them, "Thete," Koschei had half stirred, "I love you too."

"I know you do Kosch, I know you do."