drlauramccoy

[drlauramccoy]

Pick your babyface!  😂😂😂 Anyway, the Master napping with an infant, you’re welcome.

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm‌:

drlauramccoy‌:

“Yes, you could,” she says matter-of-factly. “Besides, it seems my natural-born son is incapable of illness anymore, so I’ll just have to dote on you all the more.” She helps him to sit up a little bit more in bed, fluffing his pillows and tucking the blankets around him. “So what’ll it be first? Soup or tea? And don’t worry, I got the soup from a sweet little cafe in a little town in Italy, so it’s actually edible as I can’t make rice without burning it.”

Koschei laughs huskily; it induces a coughing spell, which he struggles to sit up and ease. He struggles for breath, and when he finds it, his smile resurfaces.

     “You say that about Sam almost accusatorially.  But I know what you mean.  It makes him so bloody cocky sometimes.  Suppose it’s why he never gets even a single drop of acne.  Oh, who’m I joking?  He was always that gorgeous, wasn’t he?”

He rolls his eyes, and catches her hand, and simply holds it, comforted by the presence of an inalienably benevolent being.  

     “I love your burned rice.  But I’m famished. Soup, please.” 

“He has incredibly good genes - mostly from his father’s side, unfortunately,” she says as she lifts the bowl of soup to hand to him. “Although I’m pretty sure he could be covered in warts and boils and you’d still find him gorgeous.”

There’s such a kind chastisement in her eyes. It’s all any parent can wish for a partner for their child, someone who loves them so wholly and completely that nothing else matters. It was what she and Franklin had, and one of the reasons his death had been so devastating to her.

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm‌:

drlauramccoy‌:

“Oh, sweet boy, come here,” she says, pulling him in for a massive hug, even though she’s several inches shorted than him. She hasn’t a clue about his secrets or his past, but she doesn’t care about them either. She’s seen him in the here and now, with her son and her grandchildren, and that tells her all she needs to know about him. “You have such a gentle heart, no matter how beaten up it is.”

Koschei flings his hands over his face just as it completely crumbles; he still manages another laugh thick with withheld tears.  He bends at the waist and crushes his face completely into his mother-in-law’s shoulder. 

       “Hearts, mum, Time Lords have two,” he shakily corrects, despite what he says having absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand.   

He hesitates, shoulders trembling. 

     “I have never been gentle to anything in my life.” 

“Two hearts? That means you are twice as kind,” she says, holding him close and gently rocking him. “You’ve never been gentle to anything? Then who was it who sat with my granddaughter this morning and listened patiently to all her wandering stories? And who was my grandson cuddled up to watching the sunset yesterday? Who came to me when I was at the asylum and lifted me out of my bed and rescued me?”

She pulls back enough to kiss his forehead. “My sweet, sweet boy, you are nothing but gentle.”

"Who said you're not a good person? I'll tear them limb from limb, just you watch me!" ~Laura (mum's out for blood)

    “ … oh, mum.” 

The magnitude of the answer is beyond him to speak, so Koschei only laughs wetly.  

[drlauramccoy]

“Oh, sweet boy, come here,” she says, pulling him in for a massive hug, even though she’s several inches shorted than him. She hasn’t a clue about his secrets or his past, but she doesn’t care about them either. She’s seen him in the here and now, with her son and her grandchildren, and that tells her all she needs to know about him. “You have such a gentle heart, no matter how beaten up it is.”

"Who said you're not a good person? I'll tear them limb from limb, just you watch me!" ~Laura (mum's out for blood)

    “ … oh, mum.” 

The magnitude of the answer is beyond him to speak, so Koschei only laughs wetly.  

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm‌:

drlauramccoy‌:

@masterfulxrhythm

In comes Mum, carrying a tray of soup and tea that she sets down on the edge of the bed before she reaches over and feels Koschei’s forehead. “Someone told me you were feeling under the weather.”

      “Aw, hey mum.  You didn’t have to … my body’ll burn through it fast enough.”

Laura is one of a handful of people, exempting even Jack in Koschei’s present state of snarly, grouchy illness, that the patient in question would still treat with such gentleness.  Butterscotch eyes soften at the sight of someone once emaciated, lost in her own horrified sorrow, now fleshed out, rosy cheeked and engaged in the act of nurturing.  

     “Okay, I. Suppose. That I could use a little help,” he reluctantly concedes. 

“Yes, you could,” she says matter-of-factly. “Besides, it seems my natural-born son is incapable of illness anymore, so I’ll just have to dote on you all the more.” She helps him to sit up a little bit more in bed, fluffing his pillows and tucking the blankets around him. “So what’ll it be first? Soup or tea? And don’t worry, I got the soup from a sweet little cafe in a little town in Italy, so it’s actually edible as I can’t make rice without burning it.”

[drlauramccoy]

@masterfulxrhythm

In comes Mum, carrying a tray of soup and tea that she sets down on the edge of the bed before she reaches over and feels Koschei’s forehead. “Someone told me you were feeling under the weather.”

[drlauramccoy]

@masterfulxrhythm

Laura’s taken up her old crochet habit now that the twins are a bit more mobile and can roam around their nursery without her help. And naturally, the boys will be the first recipients of her leisure: she’s made them a smitten, with accompanying mittens.

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm:

drlauramccoy:

She knows a little about the Time Lord ways - Koschei has told her how cold and uncaring they were as parents already, but he’d told it from the perspective of one of their children, not one of their parents. Truthfully, she didn’t know they were capable of this kind of grief. But then, she figures, Koschei is hardly a representative sample of his civilisation. 

She keeps stroking the back of his head, her heart breaking as she hears all of that regret and shame in his voice. She can’t even begrudge him his actions, though she can hardly imagine acting like that towards a child. There’s no judgement in her voice though, no harshness. Nothing but compassion.

“Oh sweetheart,” she says, stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss his temple. “Do you want to know?”

       “ … yes … !” 

Nothing can be worse than this nauseating tide in and out of the passing years that is total ignorance.  

He feels a fool, to grieve so fiercely for a distant ghost.  

He is the opposite of a fool in her eyes. To have carried that grief for so long, in such silence, is braver than she can even imagine. She knows what it’s like to lose a child and be left with nothing but mystery - it is exactly what sent her to an asylum, forcing her to give up the last remnant of her family. The fact that he’s survived all these years with that unanswered question is nothing short of miraculous, in her opinion.

“Then we’ll find out,” she says, a fierceness in her voice that stands in total contrast to the complete ignorance as to how they’ll do it. She’s got two genuises on board a ship that travels through space and time: they’ll figure it out.

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm:

drlauramccoy:

“Of course, darling, of course!” 

She has no idea what’s brought this on, but she instantly picks up Sammy to hand to him before picking up Vicky for herself and bringing him to his side. They may not have shared all their secrets with each other, but she knows what it feels like to lose a child and what it sounds like as well; that is what she hears in his voice now.

A hand comes up to stroke the back of his head. “It’s okay, they’re right here.”

Koschei clutches Samantha, cradling the back of her head, hoarding her.  There is unseeing panic in his black eyes, and he presses his nose into her brown curls, and inhales.  Powder and honey greet his senses. Safe, here.  Safe, here. My babies. Safe, here.  Hold them tight, tight. Never leave an iota of doubt: I love you, daddy loves you, he loves you, loves you … ! 

        “I was a mother once, and I ruined it,” he manages, in a coarse          and grieving voice.  “I ruined it, I never held her.  I didn’t want her.          It was an arranged marriage.  Politically beneficial.  My second          face.  She could have been a hamster in a cage and I’d’ve felt          the same. We loomed her  … it’s … it’s how Time Lords make          offspring. So cold and scientific. No relations of the flesh needed.         I was the worst mother, the worst.  My childhood friend gave me         a brooch to commemorate my daughter.  I think that brooch         meant more to me than the baby did.” 

Not once has he been so unabashedly ashamed of anything, not in front of Laura, not even in front of Jack.  Every time Sammy or Vicky looks at him, there’s the knife between his ribs, the  shame and despair.  Because he should have loved his first child the way that he loves his twins.         “I don’t even know if she’s still alive.”   

He’s trembling, and kissing Sammy, so much, held so close, that she whines, impatient with her father, and wriggles.      “Sorry … sorry, baby.  I. Should’ve been more like grandmum,       huh?” 

She knows a little about the Time Lord ways - Koschei has told her how cold and uncaring they were as parents already, but he’d told it from the perspective of one of their children, not one of their parents. Truthfully, she didn’t know they were capable of this kind of grief. But then, she figures, Koschei is hardly a representative sample of his civilisation. 

She keeps stroking the back of his head, her heart breaking as she hears all of that regret and shame in his voice. She can’t even begrudge him his actions, though she can hardly imagine acting like that towards a child. There’s no judgement in her voice though, no harshness. Nothing but compassion.

“Oh sweetheart,” she says, stretching up on her tiptoes to kiss his temple. “Do you want to know?”

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm:

 The words escape him with the ferocity of a freezing man reaching for a winter coat on the other side of a closed window: 

     “ … I need to hold my child.”  

“Of course, darling, of course!” 

She has no idea what’s brought this on, but she instantly picks up Sammy to hand to him before picking up Vicky for herself and bringing him to his side. They may not have shared all their secrets with each other, but she knows what it feels like to lose a child and what it sounds like as well; that is what she hears in his voice now.

A hand comes up to stroke the back of his head. “It’s okay, they’re right here.”

[drlauramccoy]

@masterfulxrhythm

As she settles down in her chair in his lab, a holobook in her lap, she peers over to his bench. “So what are you working on today?”

[drlauramccoy]

(set in the verse with @masterfulxrhythm )

It’s morning coffee - both the McCoys are taking it black and strong and silent until they’ve finished at least half their cup. This has become a kind of tradition now: Jack and Koschei come to her room once they’re up, help her get dressed and brushed (though she’s needing their help less and less, she still enjoys the attention), then Koschei goes off to his workshop and Jack gets the coffee.

The location always changes, as Laura wants to see as many to see as many rooms of the TARDIS as she can before settling on her favourite. Right now, they’re in a room with a waterfall, a lovely shallow, little lagoon pooling at the base of it with tendrils of soft pink flowers curling up the cliff. She can see the line of little bottles and jars on a rock ledge, and can guess it’s used as a shower by at least one of her boys. It makes her smile, these little hints of their domestic life, and as she sets her mug down, she decides it’s time to chat.

“So, how did you two meet?”

Jack nearly chokes on his coffee. “That’s... a little complicated.”

Laura just looks expectantly at him.

“Timing was bad,” he puts delicately. “We were both hung up on the same guy and... well, we both did things we’re not exactly proud of.”

Now she looks incredibly intrigued.

“It’s in the past,” Jack insists. “We can’t change it, so we moved on from it.”

“So then what changed?” She can’t help but wonder just how dark or shameful it must be if her son is shifting the issue so insistently. But maybe it’s best left buried, something that goes against at least half her instincts as an archaeologist.

Now it’s Jack’s turn to silent.

“I don’t know,” he says at last. “It was little by little. We met up again, years and years later, and we were both very different people. We realised we had a lot more in common than we ever wanted to admit and started travelling together.” He pauses, a chagrined smile on his face. “I’ve never felt more like myself when he’s around. When I realised that, everything changed.”

Laura looks satisfied with that answer, though she’s still certain that her son is concealing far more than he’s sharing.

But she also knows him, knows how jealously he guards secrets and especially his own. Prodding will only make him dig his heels in and calm up even harder. Patience and time is what he needs most times - or she’ll just ask Koschei for the juicy details later and see his reaction. She might not get the full story but she’ll be better able to see if this really is a story better left untold, or if Sam is just embarrassed to tell his mother.

“Did I ever tell you the story of how your father and I met?”

“NO!” Jack perks right up at that, laughing and turning a mischievously wicked grin on her. “I need to know all the details.”

Laura laughs at how easily he can bounce back from the small cloud of remorse - though she’s a little saddened he’s ever had to develop that skill.

“It was my first dig,” she starts, taking a sip of her coffee and setting it aside to tell her story. “I’d done mostly lab work and desk-based assessment work up until that point, but I’d always been itching to get out there into the field. The company I was with at the time sent me to an excavation on Lachter Seven’s moon. It was an old monastery, some order that never really spread, and this was the only known place they’d built a monastery rather than converting it, so it was a pretty big deal. Anyway, halfway through the dig, this film crew came in to grab some footage of us but also start to film a documentary about this order. And your father was the host.”

“No!” Jack nearly cackles, trying to imagine his father as some stoic, boring academic narrator - the image doesn’t come easily. “I can’t believe Dad did that! Doesn’t really seem his style.”

“Oh, I’m using ‘documentary’ in the loosest sense of the word. His whole persona was a bit more Indiana Jones, exploring ruins and climbing mountains and that whole lot. On principle, I hated the whole idea. When I met him, though, it was a completely different story.”

Jack looks intrigued. 

“He was so soft-spoken, completely different than the character they were making him out to be. He was funny, too, and charming and intelligent and oh my goodness, gorgeous.”

“Mum!”

“He was! I had a crush on him immediately - and let me tell you, after spending three months with the same twenty people, he was a breath of fresh air, too. Almost everyone in the camp fell for him, but only ever when he was... well, I guess performing is the best way to describe it. He could turn on the charm and have people falling at his feet, but when he turned it off, it was almost like a cloaking shield. He’d be in the middle of a crowd, and if he wasn’t ‘on,’ no one noticed.”

“No one but you.”

“Of course,” she grins slyly. “His crew was there for a week, and after the second day, I noticed the pattern. If he wasn’t the life of the party, he’d stick to the edges of the group. Still there, but not really. He was especially like that at lunch. People were generally too busy shovelling down food to notice, so I started having lunch with him. Really casual conversations that soon would keep going until someone came to fetch one of us, usually him, and we both went back to work. The last couple days, we’d eat breakfast and dinner too, and just talk away like old friends.”

She pauses and looks at Jack, and he’s hanging on her every word.

“The last night, we climbed to the top of the cliff that overlooked the dig site to watch the stars. I kissed him as we watched the planet rise and as perfect as that week was, I never in a million years thought a one-night stand would ever be more than that.”

Jack has an almost dreamy look as she finishes, happy to have finally heard that story. “What changed?”

“We met again, years later,” she says a little cheekily. “At a conference. He’d ditched the film career idea, but he’d specialised in experimental archaeology. That was one of the driving ideas behind our time at Boeshane, trying to recreate how we thought they lived back then. Your dad was a battlefield specialist, and-” She abruptly cuts herself off there, realising she’s headed down a dangerous path she has no desire to visit right now. “Anyway, I was starting to make a name for myself, and he came up to me after a paper I presented, asked if I remembered him - of course I had - and asked me out to coffee. We started dating, trying to get on the same excavations, which wasn’t difficult when I started running then, and got married just after I won the funding for Boeshane. And there you have it.”

[drlauramccoy]

melodyandpond:

drlauramccoy:

@melodyandpond

“You’re my new student, then?”

“River Song, I’m on my second year.”

Laura gave her a rather dubious look - she’d done her own research on River before accepting her as one of her students, and her work was well beyond the level of a mere second year - but smiled nonetheless. “Nice to meet you finally, River. You ready to get started?”

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm:

Too much. Too much noise too much smell too much texture too coarse too stinking too loud too bright too crowded! TOO MUCH.  And far too like the millennia spent with the pounding of war drums inside his head. He folds in on himself, clutches his head, and wails  for absence. For coolness, and silence, and unconsciousness. He realizes that angry pained howl is wordless.  He  doesn’t care.   He finds a chair and curls into a ball, an almost contortionally tight fetal ball, and waits for the Too Much to pass. 

Two slender arms wrap around him as Laura lays her head on his shoulder. She heard that cry all the way from upstairs where she’d been laying down herself, but nothing on the planet would stop her from finding out which of her kids was in pain. 

“It’s okay, sweetheart,” she soothes, one hand coming up to comb through his hair. “Can you sit up for me?”

[drlauramccoy]

@melodyandpond

“You’re my new student, then?”

[drlauramccoy]

masterfulxrhythm:

drlauramccoy:

Even with that small amount of exertion (that really wasn’t even her exertion), Laura really only has the energy to push herself up to a sitting position on the futon. This is not what she was expecting when he said that they were going on his ship – she’s been on plenty of those, and this isn’t anything like any of those.

She’ll have time to look at it later, though, because right now, she would much rather look at her son – thanks to that mask, she still can’t really see him.

In one swift motion, Jack pulls that mask off and well, he can definitely understand his husband’s affinity for disguises. He drops down beside his mother with a massive, teary grin on his face. “Hey, Mum.”

And then he dives in to press the biggest kiss on her cheek and give her the biggest hug possible.

Koschei grins over his shoulder at the reunion of mother and son, with a giddy levity in his chest.  

        “That’s more LIKE it!” he thunders, and then, once they’re in          orbit, he hastens over to squat and fling his arms exuberantly          around the McCoys.  “Hehhah, MUM!  You’re to become a           permanent passenger, until one day past forever, by my order          and decree, to serve as babysitter on date night, and to dish          embarrassing dirt about my husband, your son, whenever I          see fit.”  

Laura laughs and happily throws an arm around Koschei, bringing him further into the embrace. When they finally all part, she has to lay down again against the futon, but she’s beaming away at those two eager face, both so happy to see her in their own ways.

“My boys,” she says, patting each of them on the cheek. “I wouldn’t dream of disappointing you. Passenger, babysitter, gossiper, whatever you need from me.”

At least, she’d try. She remembers well how much energy babies take in looking after them, and she’s never had to deal with twins before, so she imagines that she may need a bit of time before she’s well enough to watch them both on her own, but she’ll get there. She has reason to now.

[drlauramccoy]

Talk about Laura ~totally anon

     “What’s there to say, but good?  She’s mum!  Laura’s got my        husband’s selflessness and charm, a certain emotional reticence       too, that you have to look out for, or otherwise she puts the whims       of others ahead of her welfare.  She’s a grand babysitter for the       twins when Sam and I want to go off and be naughty and romantic.       She’s really helping their language skills, and she’s already taught         them to ‘excavate’ treasures from the gardens.  My TARDIS has        really taken to her, she just purrs away to help Laura sleep.  And        Laura and I … well. We share a certain mental …”Fragility. But that word is forbidden from his language.       “… . ah, well. We’ve survived external tampering.  A great deal       of it. We lend each other a hand. Frequently.  She has her son’s       eyes, and he adores her, so I like making her happy.”