“So this is us. Here and now.”
“Yes. Yes, it is.”
“No more – me today and you yesterday, or you today and me tomorrow?”
“I don’t know.” The Watcher sighed, shifting a little on the pillows and staring up at the images which shifted and refracted in the angled mirrors above him. The swirl of white silk, the spill of darker satin, and the dappled patterns of skin, mottled and scarred and painted with time. “Does it matter?”
“It might.” The Doctor was staring up at the same thing, one knee crooked beneath the sheet, his head resting casually on a muscular stomach. “Might not. Does it matter that my first time with you was your third, or your first time with me was my second? Does it matter that we wore different faces, or that we were friends to each other’s enemies or enemies to each other’s friends?”
The Watcher smiled. “I seem to recall …” he began to say.
“Don’t,” the Doctor begged, turning his head to stare at his company directly. “Not now. Not yet. Let’s just have the now. This now. Being us. Being who we are.”
“What we are,” his fellow Time Lord corrected softly. Their eyes met. Hands crept across the silk to meet and clasp and clung to the enormity of that simple statement.
“Just us.”
The Watcher sighed. “Quite.”