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By all rights, the Doctor should have stopped loving him ages ago. The torments of the past year had been too many and too varied to count or explain away. The things he'd done to all of them. The destruction of Japan, the many deaths of Jack, the violations of both mind and body. But somehow in spite of it all, tonight as the Master came down to talk to the Doctor the two of them fell back to their old chemistry.
Perhaps it was the late hour, or perhaps the vodka in his glass was softening him, making him more the man he'd once been, but the Master spoke to him as an equal, someone precious. He'd even returned the Doctor to his normal age. It was a welcome respite for both of them and it was far too easy for their differences to fall away.
Somewhere along the line the Master kissed him, a gentle, wistful kiss that gave the Doctor every opportunity to back away and deny him this moment. He found, however, that he didn't want to-not even the thought of what his fellow captives would think softened his desire.
If, just this once, the Doctor spoke the words that needed to be said, the Master allowed it, because of how much he needed to hear it, during this impossible moment. Somehow he needed this, and if they could just get enough emotion out during this brief scene of tangled limbs and muffled moaning everything could go back to the way it ought to be.
Just for tonight everything was forgiven and forgotten. They needed to give this to each other, to heal the men they had become and to remember who they'd been so long ago in the red grass of a long dead world. In the morning, nothing would have changed, but for tonight, it was enough.