Archive of Our Own

the pull on my flesh was just too strong

stifled the choice and the air in my lungs

better not to breathe than to breathe a lie

'cause when I open my body I breathe in a lie

Taeyong has a secret.

Everyone here does, that’s sort of why they’re here, why Ten hunted them down and strong-armed them into an NDA so airtight you’d have to fire up the CERN Collider to maybe make a dent in it; but there is a distinction that separates the people at Torchwood with their secrets from civilians who just run around having their little affairs and tax frauds.

The distinction is, those secrets could change the world, ruin time, sometimes even throw the concept of reality out of whack. The distinction is, your taxes go belly-up and you end up in four cement walls—Torchwood secrets reveal, humanity loses its fickle illusion of safety. The distinction is, Ten knows all their secrets. To the very last detail, he knows things about them that not even they might understand about themselves.

Johnny, for example, doesn’t know why things always came so easily to him that he was announced a child prodigy at seven and graduated med school and law school by the time he was twenty. All he knows is that his brain works so differently it was never any use trying to connect to people, trying to question it, trying to fit in. It ruined him, like it ruins every precocious child with an ego a little too inflated to survive to adulthood. Johnny was brilliant until he was broken; until he found an alien inside of his brain that he tried to rip out himself—tried to study once it was out and he was bleeding out but still so bloody curious. The creature escaped, Johnny passed out, and two thousand people were no more. By the time Ten got there, the little quaint city by the name of Misty Vales had never existed on any map in the world. He never got to find out where the creature came from but he figured incinerating it on capture was more important than satisfying that same curiosity that once got him cursed. He felt bad for those civilians. Felt bad when he had to go around the world and roofie about twenty thousand more people that knew of Misty Vales, knew and loved the people of it. Felt bad when he finally came back to London and stood there for hours watching Johnny in his cell, hid in the shadows while Johnny cried and cried and cried. Johnny didn’t know—still doesn’t know. He thinks he was always that smart, and the alien was a coincidence, maybe something he caught when he flew too close to the sun in his experiments. He thinks that because his intelligence is still the same, it was just an occurrence, not his heritage. Ten took one look at him and suddenly knew what the alien was, why it came here, what Johnny was created to do. He never told him. Just signed him up saying it would become redemption. Didn’t tell him he was genocide incarnate, a sleeper cell of mass destruction that got too smart to stay that way. There was no use in him knowing. He’s a ticking bomb that no longer ticks, so why add a trauma to a pile that would crumble any other man?

Mark isn’t human, not completely. In fact, most days Ten thinks he knows exactly what he is and how he came to be, but his most reliable source on the topic is MIA, someone Ten can’t see or talk to for another four years, even when he sees that bloody blue box on the street of Cardiff and has to turn the other way. It hurts him and wrecks him, to walk away, to work alongside a man whose eyes sometimes are golden with pollen Ten once saw take a friend away and replace him with someone who was still a friend but was different. Someone who left him behind millions of years away from home. Mark has a secret that he doesn’t know about, has power in his veins that could end wars and build empires, possesses a watch circuit that Ten is hiding from him. Maybe it’s petty and it’s wrong, maybe it’s revenge for crimes that were never really committed, maybe it’s a punishment from the Universe that Ten is inflicting on himself, but Mark has the moles of a girl Ten once loved like his sister, a girl that burned, a girl that cursed him and left him, as well. Mark has the laugh of a boy that was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got trapped there, just like Ten was, but without a faulty vortex manipulator that could get him into a time at least resembling his own. Mark is the amalgamation of a beauty of two people that will never meet their child ever again. Mark is a brilliant engineer in ways humans can’t be and is human in ways that even the circumstances of his birth can’t correct. Most days it’s a blessing; some days Mark looks just like Karina and wrecks Ten’s bones all over again. Ten got him out of the UNIT prison and never looked back; looking back means reliving things he’d rather leave buried. Ghost have faces, and they walk behind you.

And then there’s Taeyong. He knows Taeyong has a secret, but Ten just… doesn’t know it. Can’t figure it out. All the telltale signs are there, Ten could practically write a book off of him about incompetent espionage, but Ten doesn’t know what it is, and it’s driving him crazy. Taeyong didn’t fall out of the rift, wasn’t conceived in a time machine, wasn’t infected before he even came to his planet. He’s plain human, he used to work at Torchwood London as support staff, survived the massacre Ten had to sit out, and begged him for a job for months before Ten finally gave in. There was a pterodactyl involved and Ten got curious. He should’ve been more cautious about that. Curiosity killed a man; satisfaction brought him back and never let him die again.

He watches Taeyong. For two years, he watches. He falls for him a little bit some days, he hates him other days. Taeyong laughs like he doesn’t have a care in the world but his eyes are dark, aching, burning like a sun at the edge of its existence. Ten thinks that he could get burned if he got too close, but it’s not like anything can keep him down. He’s still not sure how it works, even after two centuries, but he believes he’ll end up an insane man at the end of the universe, so what’s some time waiting for a man like him? A man that has nothing else to do but wait.

Taeyong talks like he’s got nothing to hide but Ten just knows it in his unnatural bones that his secret is the biggest of them all. Bigger than Johnny’s, Mark’s, even Ten’s. Because he doesn’t know shit but he knows one thing—Taeyong’s secret is painfully human. They’re all out of this world, even without some of them knowing it, but Taeyong’s never traveled farther than Earth, so whatever it is… It’s devastating. Ten’s traveled to planets and constellations, fought monsters and fucked aliens, and he’s never seen more pain than the one that humans are able to hold within their fragile flesh. Ten doesn’t think it’s something that could ruin them but it’s enough to change things in ways that can never be repaired. And he’s tired. Fixing things, setting them right, destroying them in the name of the greater good, it’s exhausting. And it’s gonna come to him to rebuild whatever it is that Taeyong is destined to wreck. It always is.

So he’s not in a rush. He waits. He’s morbidly curious but he’s patient. It’s gonna come out. One way or another, he’ll learn. And then he’ll learn how to deal with it, how to pick up the pieces. He’s good at that. Ten is a man who waits, who fixes, who screams. Taeyong is a man who smiles and hides. An implosion is bound to happen, but Ten is good with those. He’ll survive, always does.

Ten survived being killed by Daleks. He will not be doomed by something as trivial as a human man.

⌛

Ten finally learns. The hub is aflame around him. There is a woman stripped of her humanity hunting him. Taeyong is dying in his arms. He doesn’t know if the others are alive. There is a dead body in the basement. Ten waits to die, as well, because maybe he’ll know better when he comes back this time. He wishes more than ever for that horrid screeching engine sound and wind that smells of time and fire; but it doesn’t come. Red lights flash and shriek. He feels helpless, powerless. At the back of his mind, in numbness, he thinks—I’ve never been killed by a Cyberman; wonder if it’ll hurt as much as a Dalek beam. Everyone he has ever loved disappears.

Karina and Jack are dead. The Doctor despises what Ten is. He’s by himself, alone, abandoned.

He looks down and makes a decision. Taeyong’s lips are cold and salty, so Ten gives him his breath, until there is nothing left, and maybe he lingers before Taeyong’s eyes finally open. He presses a finger to Taeyong’s lips and stands up, hides Taeyong behind the charred remains of a barrel that he thinks used to contain gasoline.

He stands up and goes into battle. Alone, abandoned, heartbroken. His family is dead again, even if he finds them breathing—Johnny’s genes won’t let him go that easy, and Mark’s biology allows him a do-over, and Taeyong is sobbing in the background. But they’re dead, ruined. Taeyong doomed them after all, and right now, bloodied and bruised in the middle of his wrecked home, Ten isn’t sure he’ll want to rebuild this one.

He’s learned Taeyong’s secret. Later, he’ll learn to deal with it. Now, he hunts the Cyberwoman.

⌛

It takes two months, give or take, for Taeyong to finally look one of them in the eyes again. It’s been a game of back and forth, a silent complacency around the Hub. None of them have any other place to go, other people to look at them and know exactly why they hurt. So they stayed. They allowed Taeyong to stay, as well, when he came to work in a black suit with red-rimmed eyes and smelling of funeral parlors and fresh roses. He came to pick up his things and disappear, but Ten walked out of his office and gave him their usual coffee order, asked to clean up the basement, feed Bartholomew the Pterodactyl. Johnny looked up from his station briefly with a snort, Mark rolled his eyes as he sang along to his latest pop obsession, and Ten walked back inside, closed the door, sat down to do the paperwork. Taeyong stood there motionless for a few minutes, then moved and did all that was asked. Then, he stayed.

They’ve gone on a few cases, hunted down around three Weevils, almost died a couple times, Ten did die once—without the others knowing, thankfully; he’s going to stop catching lucky breaks one of these days and be forced to explain himself to them, but waiting and slinking down narrow escapes is sort of his thing, so. He’s not rushing. Stopped doing that when it got him stranded in the early nineteenth century.

They settle back into their old routine, somewhat, only Taeyong isn’t randomly disappearing into the basement anymore to care for his non-human sister and Ten doesn’t look at him anymore. There is a void in him where what they were used to be. It’s not a new thing, that black mass of agonizing nothingness, he carries several of those with him everywhere he goes and the flesh of his soul that he’s missing never grows back like his bones can. Taeyong betrayed him, plain and simple, really not a lot more to say about it—unless maybe that on the scale of Ten’s biggest disappointments, Taeyong barely ranks above number fifteen. So it hurts but not as much as it could’ve. All in all, bearable.

Aside from times Ten catches himself staring at Taeyong lost in thought and Taeyong looks back but resolutely keeps his eyes somewhere on Ten’s chin, striped cloth of his military jacket, his hair. Never his eyes. It brings Ten sick satisfaction, to see the same loss and more etched into the lines of Taeyong’s face. Taeyong knows exactly what he’s done and what came of it, and there is a battle inside of him between justifying what he’s done and mourning what was lost. It is wearing him down, and Ten is glad for it.

It doesn’t occur to him why he’s enjoying Taeyong’s pain so much until things start to settle, until forced laughter becomes natural and inside jokes make their comebacks without the stink of broken trust all over them. Taeyong looks Mark in the eyes, goes for a night out on the town with Johnny, flirts with Ten offhandedly, just like he used to. They snicker over dead aliens and throw the ball around the Hub, and it’s all like it used to be. And Ten hates it.

Because maybe Taeyong’s made amends. Maybe he’s talked to Mark, Johnny, cried a little, found an equilibrium with them, apologized. They’ve bonded over near-deaths that are practically part of their contract, ran for their lives from a band of homicidal rednecks, cowered together in cold basements waiting for rescue. They’ve moved on. But Ten is still here.

See, when Taeyong slammed them with their betrayal, it made him more like Ten than anything else he could ever do. For a split moment in time, they were plagued by the same sickness—regret, and not just the pathetic version that is experienced by humans every day but a grand, devouring, paralyzing shame that comes after disasters that blow up stars and decimate families. When you exist in that state, you are numb, you are choking, you are alone—and for a moment, Ten wasn’t.

Their pain was different but it tasted the same; and Ten, selfish, liked that it was the two of them. He liked that Taeyong was suffering not because he deserved it but because finally someone knew what it was like; in his anguish, Taeyong became the closest thing to a friend that Ten could have ever had. And now it’s gone again, now he’s moving on, and Ten is staring down another stretch of lonely eternity.

Something needs to be done about it, probably. Ten’s still keeping him on a short leash, and by now he knows Taeyong well enough to know he’s losing his patience with it. Sooner or later Taeyong will barge in and demand to have his place in Ten’s mind back, and Ten will give in, break, desperate to have at least a shard of a connection to another being. He’s a contradiction even to himself because he craves solitude but despises loneliness. He doesn’t forgive people but he gives them second chances. He’ll give it to Taeyong, as well, but only when Taeyong asks for it, when he finally allows himself the ruin of admittance of what they are, could be, almost were.

It becomes so obsessively vibrant on Ten’s mind that days slip. His calendar is extensive, both for survival purposes and the purposes of preventing the universe from collapsing in on itself. He remembers all that’s happened therefore he knows what he has to avoid in the near future. Days he needs to sit out, cases he needs to drop before he gets too close. He’s been managing it well enough for two hundred years; but as is known to every bastard who’s ever thought himself superior, it only takes one bad day.

He forgets the date when they’re called out on a suspicious collision homicide in Thornhill. He never backed anything up on his phone for security purposes and he forgets his old notebook at the Hub when they rush out, and it’s not like his manipulator would warn him, which, in retrospect, is a thing he should’ve thought about at some point during the last couple centuries and not when he’s staring down the barrel of disaster, but oh well. Ten’s quick on his feet.

Which is why it takes him all of two minutes on the scene to be hit with a vertigo of realization. The location didn’t throw him but when his boots crunch over the charred gravel and he sees a pretty red-haired girl in a glowing white dress lying there never-really-alive, he recognizes her. He knows her face, knows her species, knows what the ashen outlines of angel wings around her mean. He knows exactly where she came from and who’s after her and how this whole thing unravels—because he’s lived it all before. His team chatters in the background, waiting for him to give the go-ahead and move in to analyze, but it all fades. He looks around himself, notes the picturesque rural backdrop of farmhouses and windmills. There’s a single yellow one a ways away, and there is a drawing of a cartoon wolf on it, and the clarity of those memories makes him sick. He bites down on his knuckles and pulls out his phone, almost on autopilot, and as paradoxical memories fizzle into his consciousness, he dials the number he didn’t think he’d get to use for another several years.

He can practically feel the questions radiating off of his team when he comes back to their van and holds his hand up, halting them, but he ignores them, listens to the drawing, almost sandy, whisper of the dial. It’s funny. You’d think he’d be worried about the wrong person picking up but he knows that won’t happen, doesn’t he? He knows, because three hundred years ago, he accepted this call.

Ten looks up just before the call is picked up, and Taeyong is looking at him. Into his eyes. Questions in his own, guilt, worry, warmth. It chokes Ten. A voice on another end answers.

“It’s me,” Ten says quietly. The wind picks up so he has to speak up, raising his eyes to the sky to maybe blind himself a little. “Let’s make this quick, not a lot of time. Benny, Lara, Kingleton the Seventh, Jorathene, uh, and then I think Kalia but that was for, like, a week? Anyway, thirteen for the first girl, fifteen for the first boy, nineteen for the first… whatever that thing on Astaria was, I don’t know, tentacles and minty breath, yeah.”

His team stares at him in that bewildered but already familiar way they often send his way. Johnny leans to the side a little, tilting his face to Mark.

“Do those sound like security questions for you?” He murmurs.

“Yeah,” Mark nods. “I bet we can break all his passwords now.”

Taeyong blinks down at him. “Like you didn’t already know how to do that.”

Mark shrugs innocently, and the part of Ten that isn’t listening to the other end of the line is glad he has them, so glad it constricts his breathing.

“Are you alone?” Ten asks. He listens and nods. “I don’t need to tell you we’d both get in trouble if anyone knew. But this is crucial. I know you’re in town. So. Thornhill, seven miles down the marker. Can’t give any hints because I’d be depriving you of a fun hunt, but just be on a lookout for Zygons… This isn’t really them but they’re involved and… Yes, yes, I know, they’re nasty, but I don’t make the rules… Well, yeah, that was a fun night but this is hardly the point, dude.” He almost laughs at the ease of this, at the levity of their conversation, as if it isn’t fucking up both of their lives—the same life, anyway. “Yeah, I’ll stay out of your way. Obviously. Just—”

The silence hangs. He hears whirring that tugs at his heart, and he closes his eyes against the sting of the wind—just the wind.

“Stay safe,” he whispers. “I’ll be seeing you.”

He thinks they hang up at the same time because it feels so final. His bones and lungs and neck ache. With a steeling breath, he signals for the team to pack back into the van.

“We’re not investigating this one,” he announces. “Non-negotiable. Johnny, you’re driving. Let’s go.”

He turns to the local constables and tells them to hang tight, other specialists will come along shortly, they’re a bit weird but what are you gonna do about those nerds; then he jumps into the van, ignores Mark and Taeyong’s looks. Ignores Johnny’s in the rearview because he specifically told him to drive because it’s his questions that always slice too sharply.

“You’re not gonna tell us anything, are you?” Mark asks him, a little sad, with a little smile.

Ten looks at him, his body slack in the tumbling movements of the van over the bumpy road, and smiles back at him, not a word said. Mark nods and looks down at his phone, probably back to his puzzles or hacking Pentagon, Ten isn’t sure and always lets him to just do his thing. But he wonders—does Mark feel something, right now, when a blue box is making its landing nearby? Does he know? Has he ever known, at any moment in his life, that his first, real family has appeared out of thin air somewhere on this planet?

But then he looks at Taeyong, and this time, neither of them look away. Ten thinks Taeyong likes the mystery, likes the challenge. Likes how broken he must think Ten is. For a scorching moment, Ten wants him, in a primal way that leaves no place for feelings or memories. His throat clicks as he licks his lips, and Taeyong’s dark eyes tell him that maybe he wants him back just as strongly.

Taeyong confronts him when they’re back in the Hub. Johnny and Mark branch out to their own stations but there is a tense set to them that preludes an explosion they think is coming. Ten thinks so too but his stride is calm up the metal stairs into his main office. He keeps another one in the back, a secure room tucked away with all his secrets, but he leads the way into the glass dome that overlooks the whole hub and lets everyone downstairs see the show.

“Who was on the phone?” Taeyong asks the second the door clicks behind him.

Ten looks up, still standing, his hands in his pockets. “Nobody. Was talking to myself, wanted to put on a show.”

Taeyong snorts as he walks closer. “Enough with the bullshit, Ten, come on.”

“That’s rich,” Ten drawls. “I gave the case to the experts. End of story.”

“We’re the experts!”

“No, I’m the expert. Mark is, Johnny maybe. At best, you’re a glorified busboy.”

Taeyong’s jaw is sharp, his nostrils are flaring. Ten almost wants to kiss him.

“If there are some other forces at play that could put us in jeopardy,” Taeyong says, with something like a plea and something like a demand in it, “we deserve to know.”

Ten stares him down, chews on his tongue, spits out his words, “So did I.”

Taeyong doesn’t exactly flinch, which is admirable. They haven’t talked about his sister ever since it all happened, and Ten wondered if Taeyong just assumed he forgot and let it go—but he was expecting this fight, barreling toward it. Very well, then.

“Then you know exactly how important it is for us all to be on the same page,” Taeyong says, measured. “Transparency can prevent any more accidents.”

Ten blinks once, twice, can feel his entire scalp moving along with his eyebrows.

“Excuse me?” He sputters. “An accident is when you spill coffee down your shirt. What you did was one more body away from being a massacre.”

He still sees their faces—two girls who were just delivering pizzas at the worst possible time, a surgeon that Taeyong lured in here to help his sister. Dead faces crimson under the blaring alarms. He sees others, too, in his mind; a whole mausoleum of ghosts whose blood was forced unto his hands.

“I know.” Taeyong’s face is almost rehearsed in its quietude. He keeps looking into Ten’s eyes. “I know. And I’ll never be able to make up for it. But I’m still going to try. And asking you to be more forthcoming about things that we risk our lives for is a part of that.”

It would be so funny, Taeyong’s face, if Ten just outright told him everything right now. It would take him a couple hours, probably, but oh, it would be hilarious. And maybe, liberating.

“Climb off, Taeyong,” Ten says with a shake of his head. “You’re not here risking your lives because you’re brave heroes. None of you volunteered for this. Yeah, occasionally we save people and we do protect the world in small ways, but nobody under this roof set out to do this as anything other than punishment. This is your sentence. This is a prison, and you walked in here out of your own free will, and you doomed yourself, just like the rest. I didn’t keep you on out of the kindness of my heart. I kept you here so I could keep an eye on you. That many roofies would fry your brain, so it was either this or a dark ditch. Or well, UNIT prison, but Mark will tell you there’s not much difference.”

He knows for a fact the glass walls are soundproof but he’s pretty sure Mark and Johnny are getting the gist of the conversation anyway. Their faces are buried in their computers but all of them know better. The fluorescents highlight their sins, Taeyong’s hurt, soulful eyes. Christ, that boy has so much soul. It would’ve been easier the other way around.

“So, inmate,” Ten says when the silence begins grating on him. “Go on and do your dailies. Yard time is canceled today. I’ll see you at roll call.”

With that, he turns away with the flap of his coat and sits down to glare down at the paperwork that even now haunts his days—you’d think with his history his biggest daily problem wouldn’t be bureaucracy. He isn’t planning on continuing this conversation, so he skims the papers in front of him while he waits for Taeyong to take the hint and leave. It happens, but not for a few moments and not before Taeyong says something else.

“If this is a prison,” he says, his hand on the handle, “what are you serving for?”

Ten wants to quip back that he’s the warden, but that would violate his flair for the dramatic—and wouldn’t be true. The door closes behind Taeyong and Ten exhales. His reflection in the glass table looks bewildered, wind-swept, scared. He blinks and the image disappears. He’s himself again.

His heart is still frantic, though, because he won’t say it out loud but the answer still swims into his mind—his crimes are too many to count but the jury was rigged and the conviction wasn’t fair anyway, so it never mattered if the penalty was too harsh. He was found wanting; they never asked for details.

⌛

Later on he’ll think that he should’ve seen it coming; but the turmoil of being that rattled by Taeyong took him by surprise. He spent the better part of the remaining day trying to figure out if that conversation managed to push so many of his buttons because Taeyong struck a little too close to home or because Ten has always had somewhat questionable taste in men. Attraction to a guy paired with annoyance with him never meant good things but Ten’s never let that stop him. The only person who ever resisted the charms Ten pulled out for those kinds of situations was the Doctor, but that dude always did manage to catch everyone by surprise.

By the time he snaps out of it, it’s two hours till midnight and Mark is the only one still working, developing some sort of a defense system for the Hub that Ten has avoided asking about—Mark works better uninterrupted. Ten descends the staircase and regards the cluttered space that is the closest thing to home he’s had this century.

“Where’s Taeyong?”

Mark looks up at him, blinking blearily behind round glasses, and looks around as well. Then, he shrugs and gets back to work. Alarm bells reluctantly whir to life in Ten’s head. This time of night, Taeyong is usually on the floor, helping out and taking care of whoever’s doing their overachievement shtick. He doesn’t go to bed until midnight and a quick check of the system shows he’s not in his quarters—Ten moved him in after The Incident, intent on keeping him in sight at all times. In fact, the system shows that Taeyong left half an hour ago. Fuck.

Ten doesn’t entertain any other options as he rushes down to Roath Park, where he remembers the whole thing coming to a head. He drops the car by the lake and runs the rest of the path on foot, bypassing the touristy things scattered here and there and aiming for the alleyways down Kayes Avenue. It’s been centuries but he still remembers this day, so he knows where to aim for, just a little to the left of where they are and between two buildings from where the view would be the best for spying.

Taeyong doesn’t notice him sneaking from behind, his body hugging a stone wall and his eyes glued to four people across the road, arguing loudly because honestly, they never did learn the finer parts of espionage when chasing after aliens. Ten grabs him by the jacket and drags him into the darkness, turning him around and slapping a palm over his mouth, cutting off a scream. It dies just as Taeyong’s eyes land on him, and then they widen, darting toward the street and back at him.

“Fuck,” Ten breathes out, so tired and so frustrated and so fucking sad.

On the other side, through a gap he peeks through, his much younger version high-fives Jack and runs off, while Jack and Karina take another path. Doctor looks like he’s about to take off, as well, but he stills, and Ten’s stomach drops. Those wretched eyes travel between buildings, looking for something he can feel is wrong. Ten swallows and steps just a little out, led by desperation more than logic—their eyes lock. A crease of confusion under amber hair and then—devastation, resignation, a touch of repulsion at what he can see thrumming around Ten, something that hasn’t yet come to pass in his timeline but what he knows is fundamentally wrong.

They stay like that for a few moments. Ten’s eyes sting, and the romantic in him thinks that the Doctor’s are as well. Then, a slow, deliberate nod, a mouthed I’m sorry, and he’s off, chasing after yet another alien, another adventure, another road that will break his heart eventually. And that’s it. That’s all Ten gets.

(It explains a lot. It was never somehow the same after this day in Cardiff, it was never careless smiles and carefree laughter—he was sad when he looked at Ten, sadder than ever, and when they landed on that space station, he already looked resigned. Somehow, he knew it was their last day; but he never said goodbye, and that had haunted Ten until now—until he got his goodbye, given across time and through the dark fog moving into Cardiff.)

When it’s safe, Ten releases Taeyong but doesn’t step away. They’re close, flushed together, and Taeyong is impossibly warm for early March.

“You’re a time traveler,” Taeyong blurts out, eyes wide and infinitely brown.

Well, that was the most logical thing to conclude and say, but Ten is still surprised—briefly.

“Retired,” he specifies. “Let’s go.”

He knows his fingers are too tight around Taeyong’s forearm but he’s too wound up, too thin, too desperately held together by sheer stubbornness alone. His heart is shattered all over again, and its fragments fill up the voids in him, and it hurts but he carries on.

“First of all, you obviously can’t talk about it to anyone else,” Ten says as he leads them as far away from a temporal paradox as he can. “And you definitely can’t go looking for them again. If I see you centuries before our time, it will have changed too much. The fucking universe would explode, and don’t even get me started on my own destiny.”

“Wait, centur— No, wait, if you didn’t see me, then you can’t see me, right?”

“Time is wacky. You’ve no idea the paradoxes that can exist.”

“Ten!”

His voice is almost too shrieky, so Ten stops and glares at him. The park they’re in now is empty, but he still looks around to check. Fucking hell, and it was shaping out to be such a lovely day when he woke up this morning. He didn’t even have nightmares, which probably should’ve been a clue he’d encounter one in the waking world.

“Sorry,” Taeyong says, much quieter this time. But he still refuses to move, feet firmly planted. His fingers are on Ten’s wrist; Ten feels his own pulse reflected in Taeyong’s burning eyes. “But Ten, you gotta— I mean, I know you don’t owe me shit, we’ve established that, but I am naturally extremely curious, and the more mysterious you are the more trouble I’m bound to get into.”

Ten stares at him, a somewhat hysterical laugh itching the root of his tongue. He has a point, actually, and maybe Ten’s just too damn exhausted and too dangerously lonely, and maybe he wants to kiss Taeyong right now as much as he wants to slap him, but… But.

“I’m stuck two linear centuries before my own time and two nonlinear centuries after the time I belonged in,” he says, quick and stuttered, so unlike him that he hopes it’ll make Taeyong listen to him with a minimum of follow-up questions. “I bounced around through time and space for a couple years, and then I got cursed, and lost, and when I tried to find my way back home, I ended up in the 1800s.”

Taeyong gapes at him, blinks too fast. “You… Look good for your age.”

Ten finally releases that laugh and closes his eyes briefly. “Yeah, well, some curses don’t turn you into a beast, they turn you essentially immortal.”

“That’s actually… Cool.”

“Not as cool as you imagine, I assure you.”

Ten steps away, winded, and bumps his back into a tree, wishes maybe a little for it to swallow him up. He could probably survive it, but maybe it would hurt less than everything else. Taeyong is still watching him like he’s starstruck, and that could make Ten squirm if he was a man inclined to squirm. But even with his history of confidence and never backing down, he feels too seen, too exposed. It’s been decades since he was this honest with somebody, and maybe that gives answers to some questions he doesn’t like to ask himself.

“That man…” Taeyong says as he looks down. “The one that saw you just now… That’s him, right? The Doctor?”

Cold water freezes Ten’s bones. “Reading files above your clearance level, are you?”

Taeyong shrugs, all innocence. “Irene gossiped a lot.”

It’s the first Taeyong’s said his sister’s name since Ten had to put her down, and it shudders him so visibly Ten wants to reach out—and he does, wrapping his fingers around Taeyong’s shoulder and traveling to his neck. Taeyong doesn’t shy away; leans in a touch.

“Yeah, that’s him. The most remarkable man I’ve ever known. And the most dangerous.”

“Can he fix you?”

The ground cranes under Ten as he stares at this man, at this boy essentially, who has looked at Ten and heard his extremely condensed tale and figured out a thing that is so fundamental to Ten’s existence, his purpose, his anticipation. He’s lost for words, and his eyes sting again, and all he can manage is a half-nod half-shrug.

“I sure hope so,” he whispers.

“Then why didn’t you—”

“Because the me that he knows right now isn’t the one who needs fixing,” Ten grits out. “I have to… Wait. For him to catch up. I don’t know for sure when that will be. He… stops by once in a while, to charge his ride from the rift, and it takes me a while to figure out where he’s at in his time. He always shows up with people, and I gotta wait until… Until they’re no longer with him.”

Taeyong doesn’t say anything for a long moment, just staring at him, gears turning on the face that was always too expressive for this line of work. Somehow Ten knows he’s figured it out. Those people, what they mean, what they meant, and why Ten can’t see them—even if he really, anguishly wants to.

“So you’re all alone,” Taeyong whispers, finally, and that truth, that revelation made by somebody else—it shatters Ten ever more. “That’s your sentence.”

All Ten can do, yet again, is nod, and then something unexpected happens—Taeyong is suddenly all around him, warm body and cold fingers, his fast breathing on Ten’s neck and his forehead against Ten’s temple. Ten hugs him back on instinct alone, and it makes him acutely aware of how long it’s been since he was held like this. This isn’t an ecstatic hug of joy, this isn’t drunk clinging, this isn’t an embrace of passion. It’s something only friends do, and no matter how much he’s been aching for it, it still feels… not right, from Taeyong.

And still, Ten holds his waist, and Ten waits for it to be over. Like it inevitably will be, in five minutes or five decades.

“Hey, weird question,” Taeyong mumbles into his neck. “That girl… Is it just me or did she sort of look like…”

“Yeah. But it’s more like that he looks like her.”

“How…?”

“Time travel.”

“Huh. Does he know?”

“Nope.”

“Another thing I can’t share with anyone?”

“Yep.”

“Gotcha.”

⌛

So, Taeyong knows his secret now. It’s not as uncomfortable as Ten expected it to be but it’s still not as soothing as he would imagine if he ever let himself. One comfort is that Taeyong found out from him and not from witnessing him getting shot in the head and getting up, like it’s happened with other people before. A reliable relationship killer, that one.

Things are weird now. Well, they’re always weird where Ten is involved, but it’s different weird now. Taeyong still looks at him with sadness but now it’s not just his own guilt he’s trying to make up for—it’s also now shared grief, and Ten never wanted this, never wanted to give up the monopoly on tragic backstories. Taeyong made conscious choices to get himself into that funeral tux, Ten was forced into it. He never wanted to be this way, he only ever wanted to feel like life was worth living, and he will never call stepping into that TARDIS a mistake. Best decision he’s ever made, best years of his life. Even despite what had come of it.

It gets so unsettling to have Taeyong know about him that he decides to confront the problem head on, in his usual manner—muddle it enough for it to be buried under other problems, other bad decisions. He kisses Taeyong when there’s nobody but them in the hub, when it’s just the whirr of the monitors and the distant hum of the rift that never really disappears. Taeyong brings him coffee, Ten thanks him with a nod, he looks up—Taeyong’s right there, and he smells nice, so Ten kisses him. There’s no delay, no surprise, before Taeyong kisses him back; it escalates from there and shapes up to be a disaster as they fall into bed. It’s easy in a way that things haven’t been lately, and maybe this is the best resolution to whatever the fuck they’ve had going on since they met.

It’s good, and he’s sated, exhausted in a different than usual way, post-glow a sheen on his brow. Taeyong’s asleep next to him, forehead pressed into the tattoo on Ten’s shoulder, and things have never been more complicated than this. He knows what will happen next. Taeyong is a romantic, incurable and forlorn, and he will read into this, and Ten can’t allow him to. He’s lonely, Taeyong said so himself, and that loneliness isn’t something that can be cured by a warm body or a loving touch. He’ll disappear eventually, just like Johnny and maybe Mark—Ten’s still not sure how his heritage reflects on his lifespan—and Ten will remain alone. Why bother? It’ll hurt less if it means less.

So he acts like nothing’s happened the next day. Taeyong is joyful and practically skipping, but it changes quickly when Ten brushes him off after the morning briefing. They go out on a call and Ten flirts with two separate EMTs, maintains the same steady and slightly accusatory tone when talking to Taeyong, makes a few more quips about the fact that Taeyong isn’t forgiven yet, and Taeyong seems to get the message. But he doesn’t get sad—he gets angry. Yet again, sickly, Ten enjoys it. Their conversations are short, clipped, Taeyong makes coffee louder than usual, snaps when he’s put on driving duty. It’s fun. And it’s for the best.

They’re often the only two left in the hub at night, but Taeyong avoids him and Ten doesn’t try to change it. Sometimes he watches him, watches the tense angle of his body that was so pliant in his arms, and he wants, and maybe he’ll act on it, but a dark part of him wants Taeyong to ask for it. It’s already inappropriate enough that they hooked up; Ten won’t be the one pursuing him for an encore.

Johnny’s the one to call him out on it, on all of it, a week later. Obviously the whole mess of whatever Taeyong and Ten’s had between them for the past year hasn’t gone unnoticed but they’ve been politely ignoring it; but now that the coffee Taeyong makes is delivered extra bitter, Ten guesses his employees have had enough. It’s logical that Johnny approaches him; and it’s just as logical to assume that Mark was the one to ask him. Mark’s got that man wrapped around his finger. It’s entertaining.

“The whole team’s suffering, boss,” Johnny says as he sits down opposite of Ten in his personal office.

Ten looks around to count the sensitive documents Johnny could steal because he’s never not curious, and then meets his eyes, leans back in his creaky chair, heaves a sigh.

“The team is the two of us, and you and your boyfriend,” he deadpans. “You’ll live.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” Johnny hisses. “But it’s at least nice that you’re not denying anything.”

“I’m an open book,” Ten lies with a sharp grin and arms spread. “I don’t know what you want from me. I’m your boss, not your therapist.”

Johnny looks at him for a long moment. “But you sort of are. It’s not like we have a departmental shrink or can go out and find one. And you have helped me work through… some issues at the start.”

Yeah, like involuntary mass murder and an alien brain parasite. Ten rolls his eyes.

“That’s because I like you. And Mark. Taeyong, I tolerate.”

“Bullshit.” Johnny’s nostrils flare. “You care about him more than about us two. You’re just a dumbass about it.”

“Careful there,” Ten says, even and cold.

“What, you gonna fire me?” Johnny challenges.

“Well, I hear UNIT’s hiring,” Ten informs him. “With your rap sheet, you’ll get a wonderful janitorial position.”

“Cute.” Johnny puts his elbows on the table, disrupting some papers. Ten watches his hands carefully. “You gotta at least try and forgive him. He’s repented enough.”

Ten squints at him. “How is it that you of all people have that short of a memory? She could’ve killed us all. And then she would’ve gotten out and killed the whole city unless someone showed up to stop her.”

With his luck, it’d be the Doctor, and while it would be prime time for Ten to finally reunite with him, he really wouldn’t want to explain the rest of it.

“So,” Ten continues. “How can you forgive him? You’ve been there.”

“Yeah, I have.” Johnny leans back; nothing in his hands and his sleeves are rolled up, so no robberies today. “And that’s exactly why I’ve forgiven him. Didn’t happen overnight but it happened. He’s been working hard to prove himself, and he’s not just an errand boy. He’s good at research, and he’s been helping Mark and me more than you give him credit for.”

Ten sort of wants to give him a whole speech about appropriate protocols and qualifications, but he’s suddenly too tired for it. He doesn’t have a lot to give on good days, let alone now, what with being called out this way. Fucking annoying, if you ask him, that he hired emphatic prodigies.

“I’m trying,” Ten confesses, as truthful as he can afford. “But he broke things, Johnny, things that cannot be put back together. Building something new takes time.”

“It does. Especially when the contractor is trying to sabotage it at every step.”

“Good metaphor. Poor argument.”

Johnny rolls his eyes and gets up, giving Ten a stern look that can probably be classified as insubordination. “We all need this to keep working. It’s not like we’ll live long enough to regret anything.”

“Then finally ask Mark out and spare us the moping,” Ten asks with a sweet smile. “Heart of gold, cute as a button, did time in the worst prison imaginable. What’s not to like?”

Johnny doesn’t reply aside from slight blush on his cheeks. The door creaks behind him, grates Ten’s ear. He watches the muddy glass for a long time, thinking about other doors and other people leaving through them.

Then, he calls Taeyong into his office and asks for coffee; when Taeyong brings it, he’s the one to lean in first. And so the merry-go-round whirrs to life.

⌛

“Humans live for a blink. I’ll have to exist until the Universe goes blind,” Ten tells him in a whisper. “I can’t give you what you’re looking for.”

He’s replying to a question Taeyong didn’t voice but asked with his body, his lips, his gentleness. He’s perfect, in a lot of ways, perfect for Ten, for his longing, for his desperation, for his pain. But he’s fickle, temporary, and every time Ten kisses him he flashes back to breathing life into him under the crimson alarms. He doesn’t think it’s about trying to shield himself from hypothetical pain; truth is, he’s just… done. With caring too deeply. Loved too much, cared too much, and where has it gotten him? Here, to an old mattress on cracking springs and a vent fan cooling the sweat on his skin, with a beautiful but tortured man wrapped around him.

“Then give me what you can,” Taeyong asks, and his eyes on Ten’s shoulder are wet. “It’s not like I ever knew how to ask for anything I actually needed.”

It’s wrong, a mistake, unhealthy for both of them, and there is still resentment in the crooks of Ten’s soul for the damage Taeyong’s done, but maybe he’s on his way to forgiving completely, not understanding—because he already does, and that’s what’s making it so complicated—but making his peace with it.

He strokes Taeyong’s hair and allows himself to fall for him a little, like he used to. It stings but not in a bad way. He can’t give Taeyong what he wants and nobody could ever give Ten what he needs, so all in all, it’s the best they can get. For as long as they have, for as long as a blink lasts.

⌛

Humans like to delay their life, say things like there’s always tomorrow; others rush through every adrenaline source they can scrounge up, say things like you never know what might happen, tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. When Ten was still anything resembling a human, he’d been both of those at different points in his life. These days, his existence is weighted down by the knowledge that something will happen. Always, inevitably, something will happen to him or around him, because he was doomed to insert himself into disaster-prone situations. He ran with the Doctor, he got himself revived by the time vortex, he jumped into another millenia on a whim, he joined up with Torchwood and never left. He has been consistently hiring people who either resemble those he lost completely or not at all, and he has done it with full anticipation of losing them. It’s exhausting but it’s either this or going stagnant, burying himself alive and seeing how long it takes for the clock to run out. So Ten continues to exist, and things continue to happen to him.

Taeyong is one of those. Equally Ten’s own fault and another of Universe’s misguided pranks. It was just like that old cranky bitch to send Ten somebody who looked and sounded like the Doctor but lacked everything that made him the Doctor. Taeyong’s bright, insightful, brilliant, compassionate, too kind by far; but he’s not ruthless, not anguished, not unapologetic. He’s what Doctor could have been if he just stayed at home, perhaps, and even so, Ten looks for him in Taeyong’s face, laughter, whispers. It’s unfair to either of them but nothing’s been fair for Ten since the day on the beach that his brother was taken and he was blamed for it, so he powers through.

There is, however, one thing that they are exceptionally similar in. They’re both traitors. They’ve both done things to Ten that cannot be healed, repaired, or forgiven easily. It has now been almost a year since Irene, a few months since Taeyong’s learned the truth about him, around the same since they first fucked, but to Ten it’s only been a moment, and that ugly thing still flares up in him when he sees how easily Johnny and Mark interact with Taeyong, how unblemished their friendships are with the blood that left a rust-colored stain on the metallic floors. Ten doesn’t think he’s angry anymore, but he’s bitter—and he doesn’t know how to fix it, isn’t even sure it’s worth the trouble; but Taeyong has a space in his heart that he carved out selfishly, and there are days when Ten does admit he belongs there, and once in a while Ten wants to let it go.

But he still remembers red alarms and the fractures of the family he thought he could have. And he’s not sure what to do about it.

It’s raining like it’s hell on steroids, but Ten likes it like this, buried in his coat inside their SUV, fresh breeze from the cracked window and foggy windows. They’ve been here for a few hours now, not a word spoken between them that wasn’t about the case, but Ten isn’t optimistic enough to believe that’s gonna last. Johnny and Mark left twenty minutes ago to run some more surveillance from the hub and probably make out or something, but Taeyong hung back, claiming aversion to water and leaving the car under any circumstance unless there was imminent danger of death.

So it’s the two of them, sitting here in the rain, some shitty local pop band on the radio quiet and smooth, watching the house from which a person who may or may not be their suspect may or may not exit through. It’s the busywork of cases, probably won’t pan out, but the rift has been unsettlingly quiet the past couple weeks, so Ten invented some leads to get his people to get at least some fresh air. There’s been somewhat suspicious spikes in the temporal field around a man named Lloyd Gareth, and it might be nothing—he lived right on top of the rift his entire childhood, so some particles might just be clinging to him—but it might be something big, like those particles have formed a consciousness and are using his body as a nest. It’s an extremely long shot, but better safe than sorry, and sorry in this case is watching Mark put his fist through the wall because he’s been staring at his computer screen for four days.

“I’m bored,” Taeyong mumbles sleepily.

Ten looks over at him, buried in his coat and slinked down in his seat, just his eyes and nose peeking out from the collar, hair mussed and unkempt. It’s sort of adorable. Ten’s man enough to admit it.

“Then this is the wrong job for you,” Ten murmurs, peeking into his binoculars. Their target is still watching a true crime documentary that is admittedly more fascinating than whatever the fuck this guy has going on himself. “It ain’t like the movies. Seventy percent of alien hunting is stakeouts and research.”

“Well, I like the research part,” Taeyong informs him, head lulling to the side. “What’s the other thirty percent? I’m assuming at least ten is legwork? And I’m including chasing after them or running away from them.”

Ten barks out a laugh despite himself. “You’re not wrong. Another nineteen percent is paperwork.”

“We’re not even employed by the government,” Taeyong murmurs. “Which, by the way, who are we employed by?”

“Classified,” Ten says, not in the mood to untangle the complicated and barely-legal web of Crown money, oversea investors, and random Time Lords dropping in from time to time. “But I still have to keep extensive records. For posterity and, you know, future historians.”

“So there will be historians?” Taeyong squints at him with a slight smirk.

He’s been trying to get details about the future from Ten ever since he found out that Ten is, in fact, from the future, but Ten’s been unrelenting. Less because he’s concerned for the course of history and more because he’s entertained by annoying the crap out of Taeyong with his mysteriousness.

“I’ve managed to live here for two hundred years without divulging anything about the future, and people have tried to torture me for it,” Ten points out, meeting Taeyong’s sparkling eyes. “What makes you think I’ll just casually mention anything about it to you?”

“I can be persuasive.” Taeyong shrugs with a wink. “It’s just that you’ve been pushing this whole preparing humanity for the future company line, but how are we supposed to prepare for things we know nothing about?”

“Like the rest of the world does?” Ten deadpans. “You people invent self-driving cars and new currencies under the guise of where the future’s going and nobody’s questioning that.”

“Well, actually a lot of people are questioning it.”

“Yeah, and what are they doing about it? …Exactly.”

“I dunno, man,” Taeyong heaves out, eyes drooping closed. “It’s different.”

“Is it?” Ten leans back in his carseat, settles a little to send blood to his poor limbs. He doesn’t grow old but he does feel like a man of his actual age sometimes. “Humans are always in a rush to enslave each other. Devour themselves. Aliens come here and see the easy prey, because unlike you they’ve figured out a long time ago that turning their bloodlust to the outside is more beneficial for their continued existence. What they don’t realize, though, is that humans would love the option of killing someone else for a change, they just don’t have the means for it yet.” He sighs and rubs his eyes. “You ask me, sometimes I think I should be protecting aliens from humans, not the other way around.”

“Ouch. That’s sad.”

“Don’t I know it.” Ten exhales through his nose and tries to remember where he was going with it, whether there was even a point. He used to always have a point to drive home. These days he’s just glad he has the energy to finish any given conversation. “All I can tell you without compromising the laws of time is… The same thing you humans believe already. You’re gonna be here for a very long time. You don’t quit and don’t give up.”

“That’s inspirational,” Taeyong grins.

Ten meets his eyes. “It’s going to be devastating,” he says, quiet. “But at least… You’ll do more good than bad.”

“Just like everyone else in the galaxy?” Taeyong guesses. “I mean, you can’t tell me all aliens are bad. We’ve met some good ones. Kind and loving.”

“Yeah, and what have you decided to do with them?” Ten’s voice goes deeply dark even to his own ears. “Almost every kind alien I’ve encountered has been radicalized by humanity's treatment of it.”

“Almost!” Taeyong thrusts his index finger in the air. “Not every.”

Ten scoffs and raises his eyes to the sky. “How are you still this optimistic, I’ll never know.”

“Someone has to be,” Taeyong murmurs with a slight pout.

Ten can’t help a fond smile that breaks through, and Taeyong mirrors it—but Ten turns away to look at their suspect again, through the curtain of rain and dirty window glass. Still on the couch, still glued to the TV, still eating his chicken wings. A picture of ordinarity, right there. Ten might as well pack it in right now—but then again, Johnny also looked perfectly ordinary until he didn’t.

“You don’t count yourself as human,” Taeyong points out, more serious now. “The way you talk about us, humanity… You exclude yourself.”

“‘Cause I’m not human anymore,” Ten says slowly, contemplating it. “Not in any way that matters.”

“Now I don’t believe in that,” Taeyong fires up, sitting up straighter. “Yeah, your lifespan is way different from an average human, but you were still born human, right? You still act human, feel human, feel like a human.”

There’s something like hope in his voice, and Ten doesn’t like that. Taeyong might not be outright meaning it but somewhere not-so-deep inside he wants to mean it, and that could mean trouble; but Ten created it when he led Taeyong to his bed, so like all things tragic this side of Gallifrey, it’s all his own fault.

(The other side is purely on the Doctor.)

“Maybe,” he agrees carefully. “But emotions, feelings, they’re not restricted to humanity. You think creatures from the other end of the galaxy don’t love, don’t hurt? They might have different words for it, but the meaning’s always the same. It’s universal. Love, for example, is something everyone I’ve ever met experiences. Sure, most of the time it’s a byproduct of the need to procreate, but it’s still a thing everywhere.”

“Well, now I’m on the edge of an existential crisis,” Taeyong murmurs. “So what’s human then?”

Ten ponders on it. He’s had this thought at the back of his mind for a very long time, since before he joined the Time Agency, since he still carried his birth name and remembered the rustle of sand under his childish feet.

“Curiosity,” he murmurs, almost whispers. “I think, curiosity. I mean, everyone who’s ever invented a warp drive was curious to see what was there in the stars, but the one thing I’ve noticed about humans in space is that they never stop. They’re incapable of it, I believe. I mean, most races I’ve encountered, barring the war nations like the Daleks and the Cybermen, they satisfy it and they settle, they find their place in the Universe and protect it. Humans… Never stop looking. They’re never down with the easy answer. It’s why you’re everywhere in the future. But it’s also why you spill immense magnitudes of blood.”

His eyes focus again from where he’s been foggily staring at the windshield, and when he looks back at Taeyong, there is a mixture of awe and contemplation in his huge, shining eyes. It’s those eyes that Ten fell for in the first place, he thinks; dark and deep like space, treacherous like time itself.

“So… You’re not curious anymore?” Taeyong whispers.

Ten still hears it, over the drumming of the rain and the grating baritone on the radio. He gives Taeyong something between a shrug and a nod, unsure of himself for the first time in forever. Taeyong tends to do this to him.

“I don’t think I see the point in it anymore,” he replies.

“Because you already know what’s coming?”

“...Because I’ve stopped being awed by it.”

Taeyong breathes a little too loudly for a while. Ten avoids looking for the source of it. He knows it’s deeply sad, this view he has of himself these days, but he’s not gonna be pitied, ever. He has his bed, and even if it was made by other people, he’s still gonna be sleeping in it.

But nobody said he has to do it alone, it occurs to him suddenly; so he does something stupid—he reaches out and takes Taeyong’s hand, settles their joined fingers on Taeyong’s thigh, strokes his thumb. Tries to transmit something, perhaps—it’s alright, I’m alright, it’s not on you, and it’s new, because for the first time in a year, he places no blame on Taeyong whatsoever. Something has worn him down, be it Taeyong’s contagious smile or his own fatigue, but it has, and maybe he earned the right for comfort of a lover that he cherishes as something more than just a warm body in his bed.

“What’s the last one percent?” Taeyong says suddenly, his voice just a little breathy.

Ten blinks at him, yet again forced out his reverie by this man and his sudden idiosyncrasies. “Hm?”

“Seventy percent stakeouts and research, ten percent legwork, nineteen percent paperwork,” Taeyong recounts. “One percent left. What is it?”

Ten chews on the inside of his lips, looking him over. So relaxed and warm, so content and in his place. He’s happier than he used to be. He’ll never get over it but he’s moved on, and it’s the healthiest thing a person in his position can be. Ten looks down on their hands, contently fitting together, and heaves out a rattled, maudlin breath.

“Pain.” He meets Taeyong’s eyes. “The inevitability of pain.”

Taeyong doesn’t have time to say anything, anything that could shake Ten once again from his axis, because an explosion of light suddenly goes off in the window they’ve been watching, light so unnatural and sudden that it shocks Ten for a full five seconds. They’re out of the car and Taeyong is already radioing the hub in another five, though, and for the next seventy hours, as Ten chases down a man who did turn out to be a nest for alien insects, he doesn’t have to think about what it means to be human, to be curious, to be hopeful.

But when all is said and done, when the intergalactic dust settles, when Taeyong is next to him in bed and Ten finds himself tracing the lines of his collarbones with his weary fingers, he finally realizes something, a truth he’s been afraid of all this time—Taeyong broke them once upon a time, and Ten was so caught up in it that he didn’t realize there was still more things to break, more shards that still hadn’t reached the finality of their wholeness, and now, they are all in a precious row teetering on the precipice between understanding and destruction—and he wants to know them, study them, taste them so desperately that he, inexplicably, feels human again.

And that terrifies him.

⌛

It doesn’t matter, in the end, that’s the thing.

“I love you,” Taeyong tells him.

It’s early morning, the others are somewhere off investigating, and Ten brought him to his room to find comfort in a man that brims with all the things he doesn’t wish to want. He worships Taeyong’s body but denies himself Taeyong’s soul. It’s a fair enough trade, all things considered.

Ten opens his eyes, and understands then that Taeyong doesn’t expect an answer, and in that heartbreaking revelation hides the big old reason. Taeyong loves him, Taeyong tells him that, Taeyong doesn’t expect anything back—that’s how well he knows Ten; that is what Ten has allowed so recklessly to happen.

“Don’t,” Ten tells him.

Taeyong’s smile now would inspire an artist to blind himself, for there is no painting more perfect than the essence of this man. He tucks his head under Ten’s chin and exhales, and soon, he’s asleep. And that’s it, that’s how it is.

Taeyong loves him. Ten might just love him back. He might even tell him that one day, because he’s an idiot and never knew how to run from danger, and chasing pain is a human habit Ten never kicked. So they might even get a love story out of it, after all, for a fleeting whisper of a pebble in the hourglass. It might be soothing, warm, fulfilling. Ten might break himself to have it after all, or he might not, he might continue on the defense.

Pain is a constant, it could happen either way, whether Taeyong loves him or not, whether Ten loves him or not, whether things work for them or not. So Taeyong tells him he loves him, and Ten tells him not to.

Because it doesn’t matter. Things stopped mattering to him a very long time ago.

⌛

Ten would be lulled into a false sense of security if he didn’t give up on hoping for shit around a century ago. It just never works out for him, because nothing is ever stable, nothing is ever guaranteed, so he never hopes, never lets himself settle down, never truly believes he’s safe. So as it is, it goes dramatically, and while unexpected, it still doesn’t feel sudden, in the end.

He accepts that he’s fallen in love with Taeyong after all on a random Tuesday, standing over the corpse of a grandma that went ballistic on her book club on account of being not a grandma at all but actually a shapeshifting alien with a reckless chaos agenda and a bitch of a right hook. If anyone ever writes down Ten’s lifestory, he hopes they leave that part out, he ponders as he rubs his rapidly healing jaw—the jaw is healing, his ego, on the other hand, is going through something.

Back to more important matters at hand, though, Johnny is at the tail end of the autopsy and entertaining them by walking the granny’s guts around like an octopus—it’s all grossly inappropriate but it has everyone barring Ten in stitches, and there, looking down into the morgue bubble, watching Taeyong honest-to-God giggle, head thrown back and a speckle of Ten’s own blood on his right hand, Ten’s brain catches up to his heart and presents him with the facts. Ten is not fucking amused. His heart is twisted up around his ribs, and they push and cut into it, and it grows and grows and grows until he is nothing but flesh and awe. Mouth dry, Ten exhales, inhales, out, in, out, in. Sounds don’t echo, don’t dull, they’re crisp and clear. Johnny drops a scalpel down on metal, and Ten doesn’t jump, doesn’t shudder, doesn’t even flinch.

He barks at them, as good-natured as he can, to get back to work, and only pushes away from the railing after Taeyong looks up and pokes his tongue out, like he’s a petulant child and Ten wouldn’t die for him if he asked. As Ten walks deeper into the hub, toward his tucked away corner, he ponders on the difference between the stages of his readiness to die for people.

He would die for somebody random. If there was somebody to save, something to help, he would leap without thinking. But to die for a stranger is heroic; to die for someone you love is tragic. Because it serves as proof, is admitted into evidence—you feel. Being a hero is random, spur-of-the-moment; sacrifice is premeditated. A human’s entire life is a leadup to death for a cause. Maybe that’s what he should’ve told Taeyong when he asked about humanity, and then maybe Ten would have a solid reason, a point in time that says he is to no longer be counted among them. He sacrificed himself, he died for a cause, he was done. Not his fault it didn’t fucking stick.

It dawns on him slowly that he’s angry by the time he slams the creaky hull door behind him and leans against it, his coat scraping against his raw, inhuman skin. He did his stint, he made his sacrifices, he should’ve been fucking let out of it, he should’ve been fucking done. Instead he was thrust back, into the goddamn roaring fire, fire that demands his blood and his sacrifice every decade like clockwork. By this point he’s amassed achievements of twenty lifetimes, because all he does is fucking sacrifice, and it just never fucking sticks.

It has been a while since he felt anything but numb indifference about his immortality. Perhaps this is proof not all is lost for him. Perhaps he can still taste things, can still get enjoyment out of a dance whose steps he only performs out of habit. Perhaps this is a jolt he’s needed.

But it’s not, is it? Maybe it’s just another proof he was born human but it is also another reminder that he is something different, as well—because it doesn’t matter if he loves like humans do. In the end, he will still have to make sacrifices that are never asked of them.

By the next morning, he figures he’s over it, has laid his anger at rest. A few inspirational speeches to himself, a few smiles exchanged with Taeyong, a few yearning churnings in his stomach ignored—and he’s fine, good to go, never needed more than a shower to get over somebody. He ditches Taeyong’s texts and in the morning says he passed out early, and Taeyong looks like he believes him, and they go out on a call, and it’s a mundane couple of Weevils that got way too excited by the crowd downtown, and they round them up and zap them into the van—and then Ten looks up with a grin, hand still on the door, and sees a clawed, putrid hand wrapped around Johnny’s ankle. The third Weevil snatches Johnny down into the open sewer, and Johnny goes down hard, and there’s a scream, and he’s gone.

Ten doesn’t run, he just is suddenly down in the sewers, hands fisted in the Weevil’s flesh, nails sinking in as he throws him off Johnny’s body. He doesn’t look, can’t look, is satisfied enough with the blood on the Weevil’s teeth, and it doesn’t really matter, isn’t that jarring of a picture, because the next second it’s his own blood, the beast’s blood and spit; Ten’s hands don’t hurt, don’t sting, when he rains them down, splits its fucking face open, punches and punches as bits of flesh and gums and teeth and brain stain his favorite coat. He doesn’t feel anything, really, until he suddenly does, and everything is crimson and golden; the muzzle underneath him isn’t that of a monster that did nothing wrong but stand in the wrong place on his home planet—it is now his own face, the composite sketch of all the people he’s ever been. A boy, a teen, a man, a god, a beast. An exile, a leper that can never advance, that has to stand at graves and breathe in the dust.

It snuck up on him, that he wasn’t just angry about Taeyong, he wasn’t just angry yesterday. He’s been angry for so long it simply became his state of being, became routine until it was mistaken for dull ordinarity. He’s been angry not just about Karina and Jack and the Doctor, and not just about Taeyong, but about everyone that came inbetween them, all the people he met and loved and lost, all the names in a tattered list that he dares not look at anymore; and it’s been so long. So fucking long since the last one, almost seventeen years now, and he didn’t expect this, didn’t know—the writing is now fresh as the Universe laughs and scribbles Johnny’s name in. Ten gurgles on the ink and descends, and by the time someone drags him off the meaty mess of what used to be the Weevil, Ten is laughing as well.

Things come in flashes. Terror on Taeyong’s face. Mark’s wet, too-bright eyes. Johnny’s bloody face—Johnny gasps and blinks and comes alive. Johnny’s vest, all torn up and battered. His shoulder, nicked but just a little chewed on. The ride back home, his hands steady and wet. Johnny’s laughter while he stitches himself up. Takeout, some pizzas and relief. Ten thinks he says something, but maybe he doesn’t and they just get it. His room, shower, new clothes. The mirror looks guilty. The mirror still has a grin.

When Taeyong comes in later, fresh clothes and rosy cheeks, his face breaks the second he lays eyes on Ten. Ten himself is on the rumpled bed, in just some pants, motionless for the past three hours, staring at the framed picture that doesn’t exist on his table.

Taeyong’s on his knees before Ten suddenly, his fingers on the skin under Ten’s eyes—and it hurts, a little, because he thinks he’s been crying. Taeyong’s huge eyes are so warm and so fucking fragile, and Ten will have to watch him die, and there will no longer be pieces to study. He will become dust, and Ten will choke on it—until his lungs grow back, and all becomes how it was.

“I must be having a mid-century-life crisis,” Ten jokes, raspy, with a broken grin. “Thinking I should get a red convertible spaceship.”

Taeyong indulges him with a small smile but doesn't let up, because Ten never falls for idiots. “Come on, talk to me.”

Ten stares at him, at the skin that split under his fist that night over a year ago, the skin that he could kiss now, touch and be allowed to taste; he stares at the lips that snarled his name and pled for his mercy, at the neck that broke under the grief, at the hands that tried to scoop up a sister’s blood like they could revive her if she just had all of it back, at the body that is so fragile yet so fierce. He focuses on these things, on Taeyong’s body, because to look further, inward, would be to kill himself all over again. It would mean admitting that he’s in love with kindness, spirit, laughter, stupid jokes, blinding light of hope and heat and sorrow and brilliance.

It should have been enough to have Taeyong’s body, to have his obsession perhaps as a little treat for himself. Should’ve been enough, but it’s not, and now Ten will blink and all will be gone.

“I don’t think I will,” Ten says, quiet-like. “It won’t matter soon, anyway.”

Taeyong’s eyes flash with anger, worry, contempt, and that excites Ten in a dull, old way that he didn’t realize he’d shed. He figured he was still an asshole, still liked Taeyong’s hatred, still found his abhorrence exhilarating. But it’s stale now. Rancid.

“You can’t do it like this, you know,” Taeyong says with a sigh. “You can’t just… I mean one day you’re saying we’re just coworkers, and then you… Do… That.”

They both look down on Ten’s knuckles, already well on their way to healed up, and Ten wants to cover them up but that would mean admitting there is anything to hide—and oh, haven’t they been down this road before?

“I missed my kickboxing appointment,” Ten says. “Figured might as well get a few licks in at location. Nothing to do with Johnny.” Taeyong exhales sharply, levels Ten with a look. Ten puffs. “Yeah, I’ll need to work on that. I didn’t even believe myself, and I’m a pro at delusion.”

Taeyong reaches up again, traces a thumb under Ten’s eye, leaves a placating kiss on Ten’s cheek. He’s warm and solid, and it should feel impossible but Ten can feel his finity. It is oxymoronic for something so alive to be doomed for such a small occurrence as a moment of death. It is unfair for Ten to be infinite when all he wants is so fickle.

“This was never a family, you know?” Taeyong says, quiet. “Before, I mean. You… You never said it, but I knew. Why you… Why you were so mad. Why you hated me.”

Ten’s eyes shoot up to his but find no accusation, no anger, just compassion and understanding. Bones and tissue within him crumble, so desperate to turn to ash that can be pressed into diamonds precious enough to be fit to be laid down by Taeyong’s feet.

“You thought I broke our family, didn’t you?” Taeyong whispers.

Ten’s neck creaks as it prepares to turn but Taeyong doesn’t let him, holds his face between his palms, dares Ten to not hear him.

“I broke something, that’s for sure,” Taeyong continues. “But it wasn’t… I know you wanted it to be, maybe we all did, but it wasn’t a family. It was a misguided slammer clique at best.”

“So you’re saying it wasn’t your fault?” Ten spits out, suddenly even for himself, an old reflex that calls for sabotage before vulnerability.

But Taeyong doesn’t relent. “Course it was. I fucked shit up. We’ll never know what we all could’ve been, and that’s my fault. I broke things that weren’t even born yet, and that’s something I’ll have to live with, but that doesn’t mean that absolutely everything got ruined.”

Pieces, shattered but still capable of wholeness, of becoming part of a picture that is just as beautiful as the one they once belonged to. It sings in Ten’s head, has been singing for so long, ignored and buried. Taeyong clasps their hands together and kisses Ten’s knuckles.

“This,” Taeyong says, strong. “We’ve built this. Out there, in the hub, Johnny and Mark are worrying sick about you but they still let you escape here and hide out, because they know you, they know you need this, they know you’re terrified. We’ve built that. That knowledge, of each other and of what we are. You brought us here. You picked up the pieces and trusted us to glue them back together.”

It’s inspirational, really is, and it warms something in Ten’s stomach, but it’s, really, still… Not enough.

“We’re not a family,” Ten says under his breath. “You three are. I’m not—”

“Yes you are,” Taeyong seethes. “You’re ours, Ten. Whether you feel it or not, you are.”

Ten hasn’t been anybody’s for a long time. He hasn’t truly felt anybody’s for even longer. Truth is… He still isn’t sure he does.

“It’s not about you having me.” He cradles the back of Taeyong’s neck, kisses his eyelids. “I told you already, Taeyong. I will never have anything, not really, not in the grand scheme of things. Things pass. I don’t.”

“Then fucking stop.” Taeyong jerks away, an angry red hue to his eyes. “Tough shit, you’re gonna lose everything. I can’t fathom how tragic that is, so I’m not even gonna pretend to try. But right now, right here, here we fucking are, take us or leave us, but we’re here, Ten, we’re here!”

Something crashes somewhere, on another planet in another lifetime. Ten’s mouth opens in a silent scream, his eyes leak out of his skull, his bones burn down; and then time is rewritten, and all of a sudden he breathes again, when he shouldn’t, and he inhales.

“Why?” He breathes out, croaks out, his rattled breathing scratching through his body, his life, his years of wandering. “I am not a good person, Taeyong.”

Taeyong’s mouth opens, glistening and soft, and Ten places his fingers upon it, halts there for three and a half moments of quietude he’s never deserved.

“I am not saying this to… to get praise, or whatever,” he elaborates. “I don’t need you to tell me otherwise, list my virtues, tell me you… you love me. And— and I don’t think I’m an evil person, or a bad one, but I am simply… not a good one.”

“Who is?” Taeyong asks, demands even. “I hid a monster in the basement for a year. Johnny killed an entire town. Mark is probably going to wreck time somewhere down the line. Even your beloved Doctor is, by your admission, the most dangerous person in the Universe. Nobody’s fucking good, Ten, we’re all just… managing.”

“That is not what I mean, it’s—” Ten stutters. He never stutters. “Or maybe it is. I just…”

“You’re just tired,” Taeyong whispers.

His eyes are full of sand as he nods, and it itches, deep in his mind. Taeyong is warm, his skin is there, and he is so crisply present in a moment that is never, ever Ten’s to have.

“I cannot even imagine,” Taeyong says, “what it is like to always love and always lose. It could make the gentlest of men… vile. Corrupt. I do not think of you as that. I think of you as kind, and fierce, and loyal, and so absolutely, devastatingly… Curious.”

It brings Ten a smile, the smallest of grins, and he basks in it, drinks in the life that Taeyong gives him now with his words, his eyes. So human, he is divine. Ten has traveled galaxies, and never before has he witnessed something so utterly, simply… pure.

“And well, tough,” Taeyong reiterates. “Because I do love you, and I will tell you that for as long as I am able. Despite what you think of yourself, and despite what you say in return.” He looks down on their hands, yet again linked, wandering ceaselessly through this conversation but always returning to the harbor of their harmony intertwined. “This isn’t a healthy relationship, that’s for fucking sure, but I don’t think either of us could ever have anything resembling healthy. This is all we have, and I want nothing more. We’re not perfect, but we’re…”

“Managing?” Yet again there is that smile that is so small yet feels so grand, so devastating, it splits his lips; and the blood is golden.

“Until I have to go,” Taeyong whispers. A kiss so tender is placed on Ten’s cheek, and he thinks about the woman that he loved a lifetime ago; the tenderness of her existence written in her son and in Ten’s own bruised flesh. “Until you have to figure out how to do it all over again. Until that inevitable moment, I am here.”

Two centuries later, Ten finally exhales. In Taeyong’s arms, Ten breaks, and he clings to them before they melt as well, before he has to turn away, before he has to watch the earth swallow all that he loves yet again, before all is gone again. Again and again, it is gone.

But now, Taeyong is here, all around him and smelling of honey, and Ten feels alive for a split blink as he crashes into Taeyong’s chest and hides there, hides there until he can remember which pieces of him go where. Until he has to, Ten stops.

“You’re not alone,” Taeyong whispers into his hair, prays almost. “For at least this moment, you’re not.”

And that’s the crux of his ache, isn’t it? He never has to be alone. He can go out and find a body, a soul, a heart to commit to—but only for a moment, and the reminder of that is in every drop of a tear that is spilled in his wake. He used to walk away before he had to watch it fade, until he grew too weary, too tired, until he simply allowed things to happen to him.

So he allows this now, as well. He allows Taeyong to hold him, he allows this moment to hurt, he allows himself to hurt. Just for now, just for this moment; until the world moves around him once again, until the merry-go-round whirrs up yet again.

⌛

He sees the Doctor once more, for the last time in the next three years, a few weeks later.

He’s on the roof of the Millenium Centre, yet again using the Hub’s perception filters for dramatic purposes, when the TARDIS quite literally appears out of thin air. Ten stills, heart hammering, wondering if he should’ve expected this. It’s too early, for him, because he knows for a fact they don’t finally meet until the Doctor begins traveling with a woman currently doing her residency in London; he can’t show himself, but he is so sorely tempted that it becomes too hard to breathe. He watches the blue doors, waits for the telltale creak of the hinges; but nothing happens. If he were to guess, Doctor is refueling and avoiding—his favorite tactic for when in Cardiff these days. Bitterly, Ten cannot but respect the commitment to the bit.

A hand lands on his shoulder, and he almost startles. Taeyong drops next to him, legs crossed, a cigarette dangling between his fingers. He passes it silently, and Ten sucks on it, wonders if he could feel his throat healing before he can even get used to it. He can usually handle a couple of cigars before he has to start all over again.

“Saw him appear,” Taeyong says in lieu of greeting.

Ten tilts his head but doesn’t look away from the most fascinating glorified shed in existence. “Came to hold me back?”

“You can hold yourself back,” Taeyong says. “I’m here for when it starts to hurt.”

“It starts.”

Taeyong links their elbows and leans his head on Ten’s shoulder. They have been about comfort lately. About Ten’s allowance of it, acceptance of it. It is soothing, however much its fleetance burns at him akin to acid.

They both shudder when the doors finally open. Doctor steps out, and the look of them, it relieves Ten and kills him at the same time. She’s blonde these days, and she’s vibrant, but she is alone. She looks new, still startled, still too small for her new skin, and she is alone. It’s wrong. Doctor should not be alone. It is a constant universally fixed that Ten allows himself company and that the Doctor needs it. Both of them become rabid when they go too long without it.

“I love the outfit,” Taeyong comments, calm. “When is it?”

“Afterward,” Ten guesses. “After I… Find her. Maybe during. Time travel is fun like that. Never know which life you drop into.”

Taeyong hums under his breath and rubs his temple against Ten’s cheek. It is peace, with him, with them. Taeyong is peace, and perhaps Ten has gone on for too long in his battle clothes.

She looks up. Perception filters do not work on people who have probably created them without realizing. The eyes that fix on Ten now are just as kind but they are a millenia more weary. She exhales, and Ten thinks he hears it across the space separating them on this square, across the time they can never quite get right. She looks happy to see him. Looks content, no longer scornful. Perhaps they worked it out, will work it out, will have worked it out. Perhaps she has seen him die, finally, or perhaps he will have held her hand as she glowed. Perhaps he’s in the TARDIS, as well, back in his home that echoes with the ghosts everyone that crosses the threshold brings with them in battered old handbags. Possibilities are endless, and Ten, rather placidly, believes that he is finally curious about them again.

Hello, my love, he says with his lips but not his voice.

Hello, old friend, she says back to him.

With a nod and a smile, new in its color but familiar in its intent, she is back inside and gone.

“Didn’t even stay for the view,” Taeyong murmurs.

Ten chortles and kisses his forehead. “She can get all the views she wants. And if that hasn’t changed, the Doctor… Does not like looking back.”

“Because it is no longer fascinating?”

Ten exhales. “Because ghosts usually walk behind you.”

They sit there in silence for a few windy moments. People rush by, their lives bright and short, and they stay here in this moment, whereupon Taeyong is peace and Ten is not alone. Just for now.

“Can you promise me something?” Taeyong says, voice even but prematurely sorrowful.

Ten looks down on him, loses his own sanity in his eyes. “I do believe I am ready to promise you anything. But I do not believe I am capable of keeping oaths.”

Taeyong purses his lips around a sardonic, indulgent smile. For all of his enjoyment of Ten’s oftentimes dramatic idiosyncrasies, sometimes it feels that Taeyong tolerates him rather than cares for him. It is tantalizingly attractive of him.

“Can you try?” Taeyong asks him. “When we’re gone. When we inevitably burn out or bleed out on you, and you are alone again, can you try… not to be? Find somebody. Choose to love them. Choose to… choose them. For as long as you are able, for as long as you…” He looks down, his eyelashes stapled together and glowing in the setting sun. “As long as you still remember me and my words.”

He leans in, a kiss left on Ten’s chapped lips. The cigarette is long burned out. Ten is breathing again, with him and into him.

“Like I said, I’m not sure I am capable of keeping oaths,” he whispers.

“Then simply tell me that you promise.”

“So you want me to lie to you?”

“I want you to say whatever you need now, whatever you feel is true now.” Taeyong nods to himself, and there it is, that indulgent smile that Ten thinks he adores with all that he is. “And then, as time goes by, I want you to try to believe that you told me the truth.”

Ten loves him. He breathes, he is immortal, and he loves this impossible, painfully temporary man. That is his secret now, the secret that is written plainly on his unnaturally smooth skin.

“Then I promise,” Ten tells him. “I promise that I will try.”

He heard the Doctor make the same promise once upon a time. He heard people ask it of him. He watched the doubt flickering over their faces, desperation to be candorful and the pain of knowing he will keep the promise, and he will hurt, and he will have to make the promise again. People who walk away from the Doctor alive are lucky but forever changed, transformed into somebody wise enough to see that the loneliest, most dangerous person in the Universe would crumble by himself.

Ten used to think they were so drastically different, but maybe, at the end of the Universe, when they meet for the last time, whatever forms or faces they wear then, they will be a mirror to each other. And perhaps then, billions of years later, Ten will still remember Taeyong, and he will remember to try. The both of them will.

But for now, Taeyong is his, and Ten is his in turn, and there is a family here for him to know and have, until he can’t. Until this is ripped away from him. Until the Universe remembers that it has a grudge against him and the carousel starts up again, his nauseated but relentless body attached to it with live wires of inevitability.

Until he has to remember to try.

fin