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The Doctor stares into the mirror on the wall.

It isn’t – it’s not something he likes to do. It’s uncomfortable, he thinks, to observe the evidence of a long life carved into a face. To confront the evidence of age and time passing, old regrets scoring delicate lines over the brow, the cheeks, beneath the eyes. He considers his reflection and swallows the lump in his throat.

It’s with a trembling hand that he reaches out to his glass counterpart, feeling that even a touch of his skin will send it shattering to the ground at his feet, that a press of his fingers against something that isn’t even him, not really, could break him apart. You’re lonely, you’re lonely, his brain cackles at him, and it sounds like –

In the end, it’s just cold, smooth. Nothing.

He runs his finger over the image of his lips, lets himself slip into memory, lets himself remember being touched there. Allows himself the indulgence of it. A wicked grin; a puff of curly hair; ‘hello, sweetie.’

Before he can stop himself, he’s touching his face for real, just a cup of his palm around his jaw, tracing the shell of his ear. Whispers in his head of laughter he’ll never hear again. He reaches his other hand up and presses his thumb against his lip, staring at himself, staring, staring at his ludicrous reflection, a burn in his gut that he recognises as shame, even as he presses his hands down harder.

The weight of it, the heat of his hands, even despite the judgement of his own gaze, the knowledge of what he’s doing – it feels so good. The Doctor’s eyes prickle, and his throat burns, and his disloyal breath lurches in what could be a sob if he let it be. But he won’t do that.

Despite the empty ache it leaves in his chest, he drops his hands to his sides, looks at the floor, and walks away.

*

“So,” the Doctor says, swirling his pen around on one of his least favourite students’ essays, more poorly thought out than usual, which is saying something. He marks a big red cross at the bottom of the page and draws a picture of himself being sick. “Nardole.”

“Sir.” Nardole smiles genially. He’s ensconced in the green velvet armchair, his arms resting neatly on top of his belly, legs stuck out straight in front of him, crossed at the ankles. This is the purest form of contentment for Nardole, the Doctor has learned, and is therefore the absolute best time to strike; when he’s least expecting it.

“How’s the new head working out?”

“Oh.” Nardole reaches up a hand and pats at his ample cheek. “Quite well, actually, sir.” He strokes his neck a little, tracing a light finger underneath his collar where the seam in his skin is. “Much more efficient processing power.” He gives a little self-conscious cough. “I’ve been having new ideas every fifteen minutes or so.”

“Wonderful,” the Doctor tells him, picking up Rachael Simmerton’s essay on – faith and free will, apparently – and pretending to read the introduction. It’s not, of course. Heavens above, he doesn’t need Nardole having ideas. He’ll have to fix that in a later upgrade. “That’s – fab. Great to hear.”

“Although,” Nardole muses, sinking further into the chair until he’s practically horizontal, “I think Spare Head One is getting a little tetchy. I’m having to go and soothe him almost every day. Really eats into my contemplation time.”

“Well, he’s just been demoted,” the Doctor says reasonably. “He used to be Main Head, and now look at him, stuck in that cupboard of yours, just Spare Heads Three and Four to keep him company.”

Nardole hums. “I suppose. He’s just a bit needy. I can’t get any of my other work done!”

The Doctor perks up, and he draws a smiley face next to a somewhat intelligently argued paragraph. “Such a shame.”

“Oi!”

“Anyway,” he says, tapping his pen on his lip and flipping over the essay, doodling a Dalek firing a laser at Nardole’s head cupboard on the back of it. “I could actually do with borrowing it for the evening, if you don’t mind.”

Nardole turns and frowns at him. “What?”

“Your spare head.”

The frown gets even deeper, brows knitting together, and the cheeks begin their trademark wobble. The Doctor looks up and watches this in fascination – so interesting, how the cheek-wobble has stayed so consistent over five different upgrades. “Why,” Nardole asks, “would you need my spare head?”

The Doctor spreads his arms, leaning back on his chair, balancing it on two legs. “Nardole!” he admonishes. “Don’t you trust me?”

This gets him a suspicious squint.

“Why are you squinting like that?” he says, chastising, thumping back down onto four legs. “Stop it, it’s bad for your eyes. Those are brand new, I just got them for you. Treat them with a bit of respect.”

With a final pissy huff, Nardole says, “Fine. It’s in my bedroom.”

“Ugh, go and get it for me,” the Doctor says.

“You’re the one that wants it,” Nardole argues.

The Doctor wrinkles his nose slightly. “I’m not going in there.” He affects a shudder. “I’m old. And frail. Practically a bag of bones. Who knows what foul diseases or rampaging animals you’ve got lying about? Best not to risk it.”

At this, Nardole pushes himself up with his elbows and stomps over to the Doctor’s desk. He jabs a finger in his face. “Rude. That was rude.” The Doctor shrugs. “You’ve been in my room before, and it was fine.”

“There were pants on the floor.”

“I was in the shower!”

“Ugh.” The Doctor shudders again, deliberately meeting Nardole’s gaze as he does. “Don’t remind me.”

“It’s my room, I can leave my pants on the floor if I want to.”

“My spaceship,” the Doctor reminds him. “And I don’t make you pay rent.”

Nardole rolls his eyes. “Good thing, too, given you don’t pay me at all,” he says, and trundles irritably into the TARDIS. He comes out again ten minutes later, head under his arm like a rugby ball. “Indentured servitude, this is,” he says, and plonks it onto the Doctor’s desk, smudging the rude note the Doctor was trying to leave in the margin of Jeremy Welbum’s shoddy creative writing assignment – so many overwrought metaphors. The Doctor moves it to the side with a sigh, draws an asterisk, and finishes the comment at the bottom of the page.

“Well?” Nardole prompts, putting his hands on his hips. The Doctor glances up at him.

“What?”

“‘Thank you, Nardole, that was very kind of you to go and get this head’, ‘thank you, Nardole, for putting up with my countless fantastical whims’, ‘thank you, Nardole, for –”

“I get the point,” the Doctor interrupts. He sets down his pen. Nardole watches him expectantly. “Ta.”

“Ugh!” He throws his hands up in the air and leaves.

The Doctor waits for half an hour, dutifully ploughing his way through the backlog of assignments he’s been neglecting for the past three weeks. In his defence, Bill had wanted to go to Hawaii. He’d taken her to space-Hawaii instead, three hundred years into the future, and they’d stayed for two months – although of course, he’d brought her back the same evening they’d left. But he’d cultivated a nice tan, got really fit from all the surfing, and had come back with a summer holiday hangover so intense he hadn’t felt like doing any marking for a long while. Nardole had been the one to point out the increasing frequency of frantic emails in his inbox from students wondering when they were going to get their grades. Begrudgingly, he had nodded and agreed that it was time.

He gives Montgomery Klink an A-minus, largely because of his excellent name, and lets out a relieved breath at the realisation that that was the last one. Certain that Nardole isn’t coming back now, he turns his attention to the head.

It’s a little disconcerting, having your cyborg assistant’s decapitated head on your desk, but at this point the Doctor has seen enough of Nardole’s body, given all the upgrades he’s had to do over the past seventy years, that it doesn’t faze him. He’ll end up seeing a lot more, most likely; they’ve still got over nine hundred years still to go. This doesn’t faze him either – certainly not as much as it would have done back when they’d first been stuck here, uncomfortable in their stillness, squabbling with each other just to pass the time.

The first time he’d had his hands in Nardole’s chest, sometime in the late nineties, tinkering with the artificial heart he’d had installed, Nardole had asked him why he even bothered.

“Can’t have my manservant dying on me, can I?” he’d muttered, irritated at the question.

“Oh, is that what I am?” Nardole had bitched.

Covering his face with his welder’s mask, the Doctor let out a snort. “If you shuffle off this mortal coil, Nardole, I’ll have to hire a new assistant. I can’t be bothered.”

“Let me be clear, you're giving me eternal life so that you don't have to hold job interviews?”

“Yes.”

Nardole had looked at him for a long time after that, uncharacteristically silent. When the Doctor was done, he’d grabbed his wrist and squeezed, before standing and making two cups of horrifically sweet tea. The Doctor had drunk the lot.

The point is, the Doctor thinks, holding Spare Head One in his hands, the point is – he knows Nardole. This kind of thing is easier when you know them.

He takes a deep breath, not letting himself overthink it. Carefully, he probes behind the left ear for the on-switch, flipping it over with a slight press of his finger. It takes a moment, but the eyes flutter open and the mouth pulls itself up into a tiny smile. The smile drops off his face when he sees who’s holding him up.

“What do you want?” Nardole snipes.

The Doctor makes an offended noise at the back of his throat. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

“‘Old friend’? I saw you last week!”

“And what a quiet week it’s been,” the Doctor says, and settles the head back down on his desk. His arms were starting to hurt. “Look, I need your help for something. Will you do me a favour?”

Spare Head One, it turns out, has the exact same suspicious squint as Main Head – or perhaps it should be the other way round. Whatever. “It depends what it is,” Nardole says.

“Not very trusting of you.”

“I don’t sign contracts until I know they say. Just good practice.”

“‘Contracts’,” the Doctor mutters.

“Just tell me what you want!”

Now that he actually has to say it, the Doctor finds himself strangely recalcitrant. He clears his throat. “I find,” he starts, halting, “that I am – in this regeneration, anyway – somewhat… oh, how to put it…” he trails off, runs a hand through his hair. “I am somewhat unaccustomed to intimacy. How’s that?”

“Blisteringly obtuse, as always, sir,” Nardole tells him. If he were still attached to the body, or rather, the neck in particular, he would almost certainly be shaking his head, disparaging.

Small mercies, the Doctor supposes.

“Look,” he tries again. “I have been, in the past, physically involved with my companions.”

Nardole’s eyes widen in a pained expression, his chin recessing into his neck. He traces the words with his mouth. Physically involved.  

“I know, I know,” the Doctor agrees, “I’m too old now –”

A squawk. “You were too old then!”

“And Bill’s gay anyway –”

“– Are you saying if she wasn’t –”

“Nardole!” the Doctor snaps. “No. I’m not interested in Bill, like that, at all.”

“I –! But me –?”

“Nardole!” The Doctor’s voice rings throughout the room, and Nardole looks somewhat chastised. “Just – let me explain. Please.”

The face Nardole gives him here is a sitting-back-on-the-haunches kind of face, a settling back-in-the-chair kind of face. Listening. Contemplative.

The Doctor sighs, and buries his face in his arms. “In the past, it was always – adventure, fun, heat-of-the-moment, explosions, running, kissing,” he mumbles. Nardole grunts at the acknowledgement of it. “Now,” the Doctor goes on, “now I just sit here.” He gestures at his office, lushly decorated; dark woods and jewel-toned velvets. Warm, friendly, comforting.

Boring.

There’s silence for a moment, stretching out like a rubber band. The Doctor almost flinches at it, certain it’ll rebound back in sharp rebuke. “I know the feeling,” Nardole says eventually. “I just sit in my cupboard, waiting for my weekly service.” It takes the Doctor a moment to realise he’s talking in his capacity as Spare Head One, rather than Nardole proper. They’re all Nardole of course – same old bitchy robot. The Doctor’s upgrades will never take that away from him. But the spare heads seem to cultivate their own personalities, offset from the Main Head, once they’ve been locked away for long enough.

“Main Head said he was talking to you lot daily,” the Doctor says. He gives him a look.

Nardole puffs out his cheeks. “For a few minutes, sure. But it’s not like we get on.”

“You are exactly the same person,” the Doctor says, exasperated.

“I don’t like him,” Nardole mutters mulishly, darting his eyes to the side. “Anyway, we get ten minutes of updates on his life, and then – twenty four hours! Alone!”

“Not quite alone.”

“Sure,” Nardole concedes, “there’s Spare Heads Three and Four.” He rolls his eyes again. “Like they’re good company.”

“You – they’re you.”

“Mm…” Nardole doesn’t look convinced.

“Anyway,” the Doctor says, “aren’t you all meant to have a shared memory bank? Why isn’t Main Head uploading his data on there? You could watch what he’s up to in real time.”

“I certainly wouldn’t know.” Nardole sniffs haughtily. “Why don’t you ask him?”

“I might.”

“See that you do! I would kill for a livestream –”

“– No killing –”  

Nardole ignores him. “– Because Three and Four are fine, I guess, but it is just the three of us, in the bloody cupboard, and you cannot imagine how boring it is to just stare at cupboard doors all day.” He pouts.

“I have some idea,” the Doctor says.

“Just the same two heads to talk to, and it’s not like we never have anything interesting to say to each other.”

“You run out, don’t you,” the Doctor agrees, and rests his chin on his hand. Even the act of it, of touching his face again – it sends a buzzing feeling through his whole body, like nerves waking up for the first time. His throat feels tight. “When you just stay in the same place the whole time, doing – ugh,” he flicks his other hand at the pile of marked assignments, “work. Nothing fun. No adventure.”

That’s not all of it, truth be told. But the essence is there.

Nardole inspects him carefully. “So you want to – what? Practice kissing with me?”

“Not practice,” the Doctor scoffs, lifting his head again and sitting back in his chair. “I don’t need practice, I’ve done loads of kissing –”

“Do not remind me of what it was like living with you and your missus,” Nardole interrupts, “I have just about scrubbed that from my memory files thank you –”

“You didn’t have to watch –”

“I had no choice!”

“Anyway!” the Doctor says, and pinches Nardole’s cheek to shut him up. It works. “You’re lonely, I’m lonely, it doesn’t have to mean anything more than that.” The Doctor spreads his arms. “What do you say?”

“You’re lonely?” Nardole says, and the Doctor can’t read his voice. It’s oddly – soft.

“Well, since my ‘missus’ left us, I’ve not exactly had the most active –”

Nardole makes a retching noise. “Do not finish that sentence, I don’t need to know.”

The Doctor glares at him. “Sex life,” he says pointedly. “Who am I going to go for, here? The students are practically children, the staff are all supremely irritating.”

“I’m staff.”

“You’re a head.”

Nardole gives him a hurt look. “Hmm…” Nardole trails off, darts his eyes to the side. He twists his mouth a little. “Why me?”

“I just said –”

“No.” Nardole glares at him. “Not, why this at all – why me in particular? Why –?” His throat clicks. “Why Spare Head One, rather than Main Head? I’m outdated. Redundant.”

“I don’t think of it like that,” the Doctor says carefully.

Nardole gives him a frustrated look. “You’re the one that replaced me!”

“You were glitching.”

It was always terrifying. It had happened so many times now, not that the Doctor knew why. It’s just that the longer the heads are attached to the body, the worse they get. The Doctor had spent several decades at this point trying to fix the coding in the base unit at the back of the neck; it just kept corrupting, no matter what he did. The fact is, given ten years or so, the heads fail. And when the heads fail, the body fails.

Twitching, forgetting, collapsing.

“I didn’t want to – lose you.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Silence descends. A rush of spiked discomfort floods the Doctor’s stomach. This had clearly been a bad idea. Nardole doesn’t want – and the problem is, it’s such a power imbalance. Nardole can’t even walk away like this, can’t tell him no, not in any meaningful way.

“You don’t have to,” he says. “Just – tell me to get lost.”

Nardole rolls his eyes. “Ugh,” he says. “Get over yourself. Obviously I’m going to do it, I haven’t snogged anyone in ages – given the whole, head locked in a cupboard thing.”

The Doctor blinks. “You’ve only been in the cupboard for a fortnight.”

“Like I said, eons.” He pouts. “I hope Main Head Nardole is treating Sharon right.”

“Sharon?”

“My girlfriend?”

The Doctor blinks again. “You have a girlfriend?”

“Well,” Nardole says, and the Doctor can almost picture him leaning back in his armchair, stretching his arms over his head. “It’s really more of a friends-with-benefits situation. We just get off with each other; she’s dynamite in the sheets, honestly.” His mouth sinks morosely. “Guess I’ll never get to experience her wicked moves again. Just have to live with the memory of it.”

“Who is Sharon again?” the Doctor asks, wracking his brain. He can’t have met Sharon, surely he doesn’t have to interact with Sharon now that he knows this about her.

“One of the admins. She mostly deals with exam registration.”

“Hm.” The Doctor doesn’t do exams; he gives out grades by instinct. Unlikely they’ll bump into each other then. “So we’re on, then?”

There’s a sly slant to Nardole’s eyes. “I mean, yeah, sure… I do want something in return though.”

“You’re not blackmailing me, Nardole, I’ve got literally all the cards here. You’re a head.”

“That’s what I want,” Nardole says. “Get Main Head to give me, oh, I don’t know, one day a week with the body? I just want to stretch my legs, breathe the fresh air, you know? Maybe visit Sharon.”

The Doctor furrows his brow. “Main Head will never go for that. He’ll see it as a slippery slope. If you can have one day, what’s to stop Spare Heads Two, Three and Four asking for the same thing?”

Nardole shudders. “We don’t talk about Spare Head Two, thank you,” he says primly.

“I can get you fresh air. We can go for walks. But you’ve got to learn to accept what you can and can’t have.” The Doctor stares at Nardole’s neck pointedly. “A body,” he adds.

“Just – even just once,” Nardole says, turning pleading eyes on him. “It can’t be like this forever.” He swallows. “I can’t – I can’t just live like this.”

“You know why you can’t. If you do, you’ll corrupt even further.”

“Ugh!”

“Ugh, yourself!”

“Fine,” Nardole bargains. “What about – daily walks, in the fresh air, and I want a steady supply of sweets and tea.”

“Walks, yes,” the Doctor says. “How in heaven’s name are you going to eat the sweets and drink the tea?”

“You can feed them to me,” Nardole tells him, a stubborn tilt to his lips.

“And it’ll go – where?”

“Fall out of my neck, I imagine.”

The Doctor rolls his eyes. “Fine, daily sweets and tea hand-fed to your delicate mouth, while I dangle you over a bucket. Anything else?”

Nardole considers. “Not that I can think of right now.”

“Sorted then.”

“Great. Shall we?”

It’s not the most romantic overture, all in, but the Doctor has had worse starts to kisses – mostly initiated by himself. “Okay,” he says, reaching out and touching Nardole’s neck. A bolt of static electricity zaps him. “Ow!”

“Sorry!” Nardole says hurriedly.

“It’s fine,” the Doctor tells him. Carefully, he clasps around Nardole’s neck and lifts him, bringing him close to his own head. When they’re inches away from each other, he can’t help but let out a chuff of laughter. “This is very strange.”

“I quite agree,” Nardole tries to nod. “My usual domineering personality is completely lost to the fact that I can’t –”

“Nardole.”

“Yes?”

“Shut up,” the Doctor says, and brings him forward and kisses him.

It really is odd, in a lot of ways – he has complete control over where Nardole is, and he has to rearrange his hands quickly to clasp around the base of his skull so he doesn’t drop him. The other hand, he keeps where it is, cupping Nardole’s cheek, rubbing a thumb over his chin. It feels so good though, to touch another person. To be touched. To be – not wanted, not outwardly desired, but at least in some way capable of providing pleasure, of receiving it. The Doctor moves his lips slowly, sliding their mouths together, tilting Nardole’s head until he finds that perfect angle where their noses slot sweetly against each other and he can taste Nardole’s breath hot in his mouth.

“Guh,” Nardole says, and the Doctor pulls him off, lips tingling. Nardole’s face is red, which is interesting from a technical point of view – no blood, how does that work? – but the Doctor finds he doesn’t really care to think about it at the moment. He feels suffused with life; that empty cavity in his chest at least partially filled in, something present that had been missing.

The body is made to touch, after all.

“Was that okay?” he asks, voice rough. “I mean, is this nice? For you?”

Nardole lets out a little cough. “Well, you know, it is what it is.”

The Doctor feels like he’s been doused with cold water. He pulls away further. “I don’t want to do it if you’re not enjoying it.”

“I didn’t say that.” The Doctor relaxes a little, and Nardole rolls his eyes. “Honestly. Just didn’t want you to get a big head.” He chuckles, lifts his eyes, a little self-conscious. At the Doctor’s continued stare, he goes on, serious. “Kissing is always nice. It just feels nice. It’s different now, a bit, given I can’t really move, but it’s still,” he swallows, “nice.” Nardole blinks a few times, and then focuses his face into a shrewd expression. “You’d better not start feeling any emotions over this. It’s purely physical, you understand?

“Don’t worry Nardole,” the Doctor says, “I’m not going to fall in love with you.”

“Good!” Nardole juts his chin forward, his lower lip. “Come on, then!”

So the Doctor leans in again, and they go again. This time it’s faster, feels slightly more indecent. Nardole relentlessly opens his mouth to trace the Doctor’s lower lip with his tongue, a lingering touch that fizzes in the Doctor’s gut. By now, the Doctor is leaning forward, his elbows braced on the desk, his toes curled up tight in his shoes. Nardole bites at his mouth, gently at first, then harder and harder until the Doctor grunts slightly and pulls away, a string of spit connecting their mouths.

“No?” Nardole asks, the line between his eyebrows deepening. The Doctor reaches a thumb up and presses it until it evens out.

“What?”

“No biting?”

He blinks, staring at Nardole’s dark eyes, pupils blown wide apart. “It was fine.”

“Cool,” Nardole says, and, really, who does he think he is? Miles Davis? “Move me next to your ear.”

“What?”

“I’m going to bite your ears.”

“…Right.”

*

When they’re done, the Doctor takes Nardole into the television room in the TARDIS. He sets him down in the middle of the sofa, and turns away to fish out an Alexa from the ottoman. He fiddles around with some wiring and controls until he’s fairly certain Nardole will be able to turn things on and off with just his voice.

“I can’t believe you have a television room,” Nardole says gleefully.

“Shut up,” the Doctor says, placing the Alexa next to Nardole and queuing up several days-worth of Tomorrow’s World.

“What’s this?”

“A show from the sixties where they tried to predict what the future would be like.”

“Ooh,” Nardole says, “you know I like making fun of people from the past.”

“Mm,” the Doctor says, hands on his hips as he swivels around, makes sure everything’s set up nicely. “Happy?”

Nardole does, in fact, look very content. “Quite,” he says.

“Good-o.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow for our walk, shall I?”

“Yep.”

“Bugger off, then,” Nardole says.

He bumps into Nardole as he exits the TARDIS – Main Head Nardole, with the body attached and all. Settling himself down at his desk, he tells him, “I’m keeping the head.”

Nardole rolls his eyes. “Of course you are.”

*

“I can’t believe you’re taking me with you to visit her,” Nardole says, scathing. They’re wandering through the grounds, as promised, the Doctor clinging onto the ears and holding out the head in front of him.

The Doctor snorts. “You’re not coming in with me.”

“What?”

He gestures at the sports bag he’s got slung over one shoulder. “I’ll chuck you in here.”

They walk past a clump of students who are chattering among themselves. They don’t even balk at him carrying an extremely lifelike head around with him. None of them have. Nardole had said it was because he was ‘super old’ and that young people don’t even notice he exists unless he’s looking frail and delicate next to a traffic light. The Doctor had frowned but hadn’t been able to dispute it.

Still, he makes Nardole hold his expression very still whenever they’re near other people. He’s got a whole story planned out in case he does get asked.

“Professor! Professor Doctor!” some enterprising young thing would say, jogging up. “What’s with the mannequin? It looks just like your assistant!”

“Ah,” the Doctor would say, stroking his chin like he had a goatee – he’d done that once in front of Missy and she’d told him he looked very refined, and offered tips for growing one – “you see, I’m planning a lecture series on death masks in Ancient Greek culture, so I’ve been experimenting with plaster casting.”

“Oh, how fascinating!” the student would say, fluttering their hands in front of their chest. “I’ll have to sign up!”

The Doctor would nod dismissively and stride away as if he had something important to go to. Nardole would almost certainly grumble about the Doctor saying he was dead, but he’d not have a leg to stand on – ha – because he was a robot and therefore had never even been alive. (Well – maybe he had… the Doctor didn’t really remember Nardole’s backstory – River had explained it once while they’d lain together in bed, but he’d zoned out, staring instead at the fine whorls of her ear).

Anyway, no one has asked yet, but he’s prepared if they do.

It’s one of those cold spring mornings where the sun casts its light over the world in a glittering array, bouncing off dewdrops, shattering through windows. The air is sharp and bright, bracing the breath, probing his lungs with its chilled fingers. Everything teetering on the verge of too much. Too bright, too cold, cutting like a knife.

The last time he’d been out, alone, on a morning like this, the Doctor remembered, he’d embraced this muchness, let it fill him up, let it consume him. He’d thought it was the only way to feel touched again. Not by a person, but by the world. Then he’d berated himself; so pathetic, so maudlin. People don’t owe you their touch. It’s enough to have felt it at all. Enough to know.

Greedy, he’d thought. Insatiable. Selfish.

He falters by the sycamore tree, dropping Nardole lower. There’d been a cat here.

There had been a cat that had rubbed up by his legs, purring. He’d been so bright, so lonely. He had it picked up, holding it upside down so he could rub gently at the soft hot fur of its belly. It had let him, for a moment, lax in his arms, blinking, squinting up at the cold sun. Then, it had wriggled and squirmed, saying let me down, let me down, and he had thought, oh, not even you?

Not even you, he had thought as he set it down again, not even you want to touch me, and it had scurried off, heading to the cafeteria where the students likely would give it scraps of bacon sandwiches and drop pieces of cheese into its pleading mouth.

“Sir?” Nardole says quietly.

The Doctor has stopped completely in his tracks, sagging against the tree. “Sorry,” he croaks, and lifts Nardole up again, bracing him against his chest.

“Are you okay?”

He swallows. “Fine,” he gets out. Swallows, throat tight in that way it too often is these days. “There was this cat,” he says awkwardly. “It didn’t like being picked up.”

Nardole is facing out across the grounds, the austere university buildings in the distance, a backdrop, a prison. “They don’t always,” he says, slow and careful.

“It was very soft,” the Doctor says. He pushes his awareness of his body out to his hands, where he clasps Nardole’s ears, to his chest, where Nardole is pressed back. (Greedy, again). But it’s allowed. (Selfish). He agreed.

Suddenly, Nardole jerks. “I want to touch some grass,” he insists.

The Doctor sinks to the ground, back to the trunk of the tree, and places Nardole by his side. He looks up through the branches, the shooting green buds that are peeking out, to the pale sky above.

“It’s not the same without hands,” Nardole muses, shunting about so he lands on his cheek. His face now buried in the grass, he gives several loud sniffs. “Still smells the same though…”

“I don’t see why it shouldn’t,” the Doctor says.

“Put me back again,” Nardole says, voice muffled. The Doctor looks down. He’s managed to tip himself forward so his face is almost completely buried in the field.

“Moron,” he says affectionately. He picks up Nardole and balances him on his lap, facing outwards, brushing some small flecks of debris off his cheeks. They sit there together for a good long while, till the air doesn’t feel cold anymore, till the light stops stabbing, till they’re breathing at sync with one another. It’s almost meditative.

It’s Nardole that breaks the silence. “Shouldn’t you be getting along?”

The Doctor grunts at him, questioning.

“To the woman,” he says, and the Doctor can hear the eye roll. “You wanted to visit her.”

“Mm,” says the Doctor. “But you wanted to breathe the fresh air.”

Nardole puffs his cheeks out. “Well I’m done with fresh air now. I’m getting chilly.”

“I’ll bung you in the bag then,” the Doctor says, sitting up.

“Ugh!”

“Nice and warm in there, you know.”

“And dark and enclosed,” Nardole grumbles.

“Ah, you’re used to it.”

“That doesn’t make it better, you know!” But he lets the Doctor stuff him into the sports bag. “Don’t think I’m okay with this as general practice, by the way,” he warns as the Doctor does up the zip. “I expect at least five bags of sweets this evening, to make up for it.”

“You’ll ruin your teeth,” the Doctor says, standing, stretching his knees. They don’t click, thankfully. He’s not that ancient. Well, he is. But his body isn’t betraying him.

“You can get me more teeth if I need ’em,” Nardole mutters.

“Shut up, now,” the Doctor tells him as they set off. “You are absolutely not allowed to speak while we’re in the Vault.”

There’s a slight pause. “...Or what?”

“Or you go back in the cupboard.”

“Oh!” Nardole huffs. “Oh! I see how it is! I don’t perform to your standards and get relegated to cupboard life again, do I? Oh!”

“Nardole!” the Doctor hisses through his teeth, waving awkwardly at one of his colleagues as they pass each other. He pokes his other hand into the bag and feels around until he finds Nardole’s mouth, clasping his palm over it. “You can live in the television room forever if you like but you cannot speak while we’re in the Vault.”

Nardole bites his hand. He flinches away, drawing it to his chest.

“I’ll be quiet.” Nardole says eventually. His voice is dark and full of promise. “But you’ll owe me!”

“I’m never doing this again,” the Doctor mutters. They’re descending the stairs. “We’re almost there, so actually shut up this time.” He reaches the door and pauses for a moment, resting his hand against it, moving it down an inch to feel the texture of the wood. He breathes. Nardole is blessedly silent.

Being here is its own unique torture. He – they –

The thing is, Missy is the Doctor’s oldest friend in the universe – enemy? He doesn’t even know anymore. Is there a word for what they are to each other? With everything that has happened between them, everything that they’ve done to each other, everything they’ve had done to them by other people, it seems insurmountable, impossible, that they could ever truly know one another again. Comfortably.

But he wants to. So much.

The Doctor swallows and silently tilts forward, pressing his forehead to the door, the entrance to her prison, as if he could mind-meld with it; as if they could become one thing.

Or perhaps they are already.

(Maudlin).

He pushes back, and quickly unlocks the door, opening it with a flourish. “Back again!” he calls, hooking the bag off his shoulder and kicking it to the side. He hears Nardole make a little grunt and glares at it.

When he’d entered, Missy had had something on the table by her side, but she’d stood immediately, putting her back to him and stuffed it under her voluminous skirts. He hides his smile. After a moment’s pause, Missy says, “So I see,” and turns to face him. She gestures to the chair next to hers, and he walks over, sitting in it. She sits too. The light from the artificial windows is low, so she flicks open a matchbox and lights the candles in the middle of the table, not looking at him.

The Doctor’s smile hasn’t left his face, and he directs it down to where his hands rest on the table.

“Up to much?” Missy asks, and she’s resting her chin on her hands, staring at him.

When he flicks his eyes up to meet hers, he takes in the carefully applied makeup, eyeshadow and lipstick and powder, the perfectly painted nails. The hair, artfully tousled, the blouse buttoned up to the collar, the skirt falling neatly to the floor. Her eyes glitter in the flickering light. He wonders if he knows her at all.

“Nothing more than the usual.”

“What’s with the bag?” she asks. “Not seen that one before. You joined a basketball team?”

“Tried that once,” he tells her. “Got kicked out.”

“You thought it was netball, didn’t you?”

He huffs a breath through his nose, smiling again. “I thought it was netball,” he admits.

Missy purses her lips, eyeing the ceiling. “Makes sense,” she says. “It’s a net, and a ball. Honestly. I would understand it if they were chucking balls into baskets.”

“Football has a net too,” the Doctor says.

“And tennis.”

“I might just start calling every human sport ‘netball’ and see how angry they all get.”

Missy frowns. “I thought I was here to learn how to be nice to the wee humans.” She raises her eyebrows, tilts back in her chair. “You’re a bad example, you are.”

This is what they do now, this talking without really talking. Lots of words that say nothing at all. “I can be nice to them and still think they give their sports silly names.”

“Hmph.” Missy says. “So. The bag?”

The Doctor leans back in his chair as well, resting his hands behind his head and looking away from her. “Got one of Nardole’s spare heads in there, I’m trying to fix it up.”

“Nardole, Nardole – is that the funny bald one or the pretty young one?”

“Bill doesn’t have spare heads.”

“Perhaps you should make her some. In case she loses the one she’s got.”

The Doctor turns his head. “That a threat?” he asks carefully.

She meets his eyes. “No.” A pause. “I just worry.” The gentle flicker of the firelight kisses its way over her cheekbones. “For your friends. ”

“No need,” he tells her, “to worry,” and his voice tastes like steel. “Bill is fine. Bill will always be fine.”

“And Nardole?”

“Has some stupid glitchy coding in his system. Hence, the head. And me, trying to fix it.”

“Hm,” Missy says. And then stands. “Let me play you something,” she says, turning to the piano and lifting the lid to reveal the white teeth of the keys. “I’ve been working on this one for a while.”

The Doctor can’t tear his eyes away from her. The line of her back is straight, and she lays her hands on the keys for a few seconds before leaning forward and beginning to play. It’s soft, introspective. Lots of repeating patterns. Broken chords in the left hand and a simple, pretty melody in the right. In the near-dark, she must be playing from memory.

The song flows through him like an ocean wave, and when she finishes she holds the final notes, clutching them with her fingers, like she doesn’t want them to end. She lets them go, and stays turned away.

“Beautiful,” the Doctor tells her.

At this, she turns, her face almost pure shadow.

“Thank you.”

He leaves not long after that, picking up his bag as he goes. As he shuts the door to the Vault and locks it, he rests his head back against it and just breathes. After a few minutes, Missy starts to pick at the piano again. Something darker, more turbulent. She makes a mistake and stops, plays the bar again, slowly. Plays each hand individually before putting them back together. Then she starts back from the beginning.

The Doctor opens his eyes. He climbs the stairs and steps into the sun once more.

*

When the Doctor gets back to his office, Nardole is reclined in his favourite armchair, reading a saucy magazine. The Doctor peers over his shoulder.

‘HIS SECRET SEX SPOTS’, the article screams, ‘HOW TO PLEASE YOUR MAN IN THREE EASY STEPS’.

“Why are you reading that?” he asks before he can stop himself. Nardole looks up and fixes him with a look. “Actually don’t tell me.”

“I’ve got a boyfriend.”

The Doctor blinks. “What about Sharon?”

Nardole sighs loudly. “Haven’t you heard of polyamory?”

“Your spare head hasn’t told me about a boyfriend.”

“Oh!” Nardole says, narrowing his eyes. “Is that why you wanted him? To gossip about my comings and goings?”

“I definitely don’t want to know about your comings,” says the Doctor.

Nardole harrumphs, settling back with his magazine, folding it over itself to hide the cover. “It’s a new development.”

“Well,” the Doctor says. “Good for you, I suppose.” He coughs, putting his hands on his hips and staring out of the window. “Out of interest, what happened to all your other heads?”

Over the top of the page, Nardole gives him a bemused look. “You know about the cupboard, sir? I’ve shown you the cupboard.”

“I’ve given you five heads, all in. You’ve got your main head,” he points at Nardole’s head, “two other spare heads in the cupboard, and my head. Where’s the other one?”

Nardole gives him a sour look. “‘Your’ head.”

“The other one, Nardole?”

He shudders. “We don’t talk about Spare Head Two.”

The Doctor squints at him, and Nardole sighs. He tucks the magazine underneath his arm, claps him gamely on the shoulder and shuffles off.

Once the door shuts, the Nardole in his bag pipes up. “Was that Main Head?”

“Mm,” the Doctor agrees.

“How did he look?”

“Exactly the same as always.”

“He sounded fucked-out,” Nardole mumbles morosely. The Doctor makes a face. “He’s probably just come from seeing Sharon… And now a new boyfriend as well…” He sighs.

“Did you know about the boyfriend?” the Doctor asks, curious.

“No. He’s not putting things on the memory bank.”

The Doctor settles into his chair and pulls Nardole out of his bag. “A dangerous precedent to set,” he says, and chews on his lip. Nardole watches his mouth. “If he corrupts without having saved all his files, he’ll lose them forever.”

“Tell him that.”

“He knows.” The Doctor stares at the armchair.

“Sir?”

He blinks, and focuses his attention back on Nardole. “Yes?”

Nardole’s mouth is open, and he traces his tongue over his teeth. “Thank you for taking me out today.”

“That’s alright.”

“Even if you did shove me in a bag for a few hours afterwards.”

“You win some, you lose some.”

“So,” Nardole ignores him, “do you want –?”

 The Doctor traces a hand over Nardole’s cheek. “Yes,” he says, and leans in.

*

Three weeks have passed, and the Doctor is staring into the mirror again.

He brushes his hands over his cheeks, and it feels fine. Not crippling, like before. Not aching, like before.

It’s okay, he thinks, to live in a body.

*

They get into a routine, which is how they end up getting caught.

They’re in the Doctor’s office again. They usually are. They’ve discovered that if the Doctor lays Nardole’s head flat on the desk and bends over him, still clasping him tight with his hands, he can get better leverage.

As always, Nardole pushes up, slips his tongue in, hot over the Doctor’s teeth. He tastes of sweets – red liquorice straws, to be precise – because he’d spent the past twenty minutes being fed them before letting the Doctor touch him. His lips are soft and nice. The Doctor can’t help but smile slightly.

It feels good. It feels really, really good; the small noises Nardole makes at the back of his throat, the pinch of his teeth, the heat of him. The Doctor’s hearts are beating so hard inside his chest and it feels so right, so full, so not alone, that of course that’s when it has to end.

“What are you doing?!” someone squawks.

Instinctively, the Doctor surges up and flings Nardole’s head clear across the room.

It’s Bill, standing in the doorframe, backlit by the light from the corridor. She’s looking at him, her face a picture of pure shock. Horrified. “Did you behead Nardole?” she shrieks, voice high and shrill.

“I’m fine,” Nardole says placidly. He’s landed ear-down on the velvet chair, face smashed into the arm.

“WHAT!” Bill staggers back. “How is he TALKING?!”

The Doctor scrapes his chair away and stands, half hunched over. “Nardole’s a robot!”

Bill clasps the door very tightly, her knuckles pale and tight. “So you decapitated him?”  

He takes in a scraping breath, walks around his desk. Picking up Nardole, he carries him over to her. “Nardole is fine, Bill,” he says gently. He doesn’t get near her, just holds out the head in front of him so she can see him clearly.

Nardole coughs a little, says, “I really am!” Bill’s grip on the door loosens a little. Nardole twists a little in the Doctor’s hands and she reaches out to take him from him. She holds him out level with her own face, eyebrows furrowed and mouth pinched. “Spare Head One,” Nardole says, “at your service.”

“Nardole’s a robot?” Bill croaks.

“Yes,” the Doctor confirms, quiet.

“And this is his spare head.” She coughs. “One of his spare heads.”

Again – “Yes.”

She looks up at him and her face clears suddenly, transitioning in a second from fear to something calculating. She narrows her eyes. “And you were – kissing it?”

The Doctor says nothing. He’d hoped she hadn’t – that she wouldn’t –

This is –

This – this is. Not good.

What it was, was – what it was –

He had just wanted something. Something that felt nice. Something to touch. To be touched. To experience the freedom of another body, to release that ache. The body is made to be touched. Shame lances through his gut, embarrassment curdling in its wake.

“I’m going to call the real Nardole,” Bill says, and gets out her phone, clutching Nardole by one ear.

“Oi, I’m real,” he protests, dangling by her side.

“Bill,” the Doctor says, trying to sound calm. “Don’t do that.”

She puts the phone up to her ear. “He can’t consent,” she says, her mouth a flat line. “Not properly.”

“Yes I can,” Nardole says snottily.

She holds him up to her face. “You can’t walk away if you want to say no.”

“I could bite his nose off.”

The Doctor touches his nose contemplatively.

Bill screws her face up “Eww!”

“You called me!” Nardole’s voice comes out of her phone, offended.

“Oh,” Bill says, dropping the head by her side again, “you picked up, good. Come to the Doctor’s office.”

“I’m busy!” he protests, and Bill hangs up. She walks over to the Doctor’s desk and puts Nardole’s head down carefully, before dragging two chairs over and flopping in one of them. The Doctor watches her do this with a sense of helplessness, and eventually just – sits down across from her. He puts his feet up on the desk, crossing his ankles.

Main Head Nardole wanders in five minutes later with lipstick on his collar, which Bill clocks immediately. “Ew!” she says, “what have you been up to?”

Nardole fixes her with a glare. “You asked me to come here.” He reaches the table. “Oh,” he says, “what’s my head doing here?” and he picks it up and kicks it into the TARDIS.

“For fuck’s sake,” Spare Head Nardole mutters as he sails away.

“Bill,” the Doctor says, resting his head against the back of the chair, looking up at the ceiling, “go and get him.” She does, muttering under her breath all the while, chucking the head back onto the table with much less care than she had before.

The Doctor doesn’t look away from the ceiling, letting the tension stretch out. He doesn’t mind the awkwardness. He waits.

“Soo…” Main Head Nardole says eventually. “What’s up?”

“Do you know what he’s been up to?” Bill asks. “With your head?”

“This old thing?” Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor watches as Nardole strokes a finger over Spare Head One’s ear. “Not really. He asked to borrow it…” Nardole narrows his eyes. “Sir?”

“Ten minutes ago, I,” Bill says, “walked in – just wanted to hand in an essay! That’s all! – and these two,” she gestures at the Doctor and the head, “were bent over on the desk going at it.”

Nardole blinks. “… ‘Going at it’?” He pauses before spluttering, “Sir!”

“Not like that, Nardole,” the Doctor says. He trails a hand through the air. “I was kissing it.”

Spare Head One huffs. “‘It’,” he says.

“Him,” the Doctor corrects. “We were kissing.”

“Sir!” Main Head Nardole says. The Doctor finally looks over at him, his face a picture of consternation, eyes wide, cheeks wobbling.

He swings his feet back to the floor, turns to the two of them. Three of them. “You know,” he starts, “that I have been alone since my wife – left me.”

“Died,” Spare Head Nardole supplies.

Bill’s mouth drops open. “You’re married?”

Main Head Nardole elbows her. “He was.” He spins the photo of River on the Doctor’s desk around, making as if to grab it, and the Doctor is suddenly furiously, furiously angry. He slaps Nardole’s hand away.

“Do you mind!” he snaps, and clutches River’s picture close to his chest. His breaths are coming harsh and ragged, his throat tightening again. “I have been alone,” he says at last, “for seventy years. Alone in this office, in this building, in this city.” He puts the picture frame back on the desk, focusses on straightening it out, puts it perfectly in its place. “So yes,” he says, and breathing is coming easier now, “we came to an agreement. Me and him.” He gestures to Spare Head One.

“Him and me,” Spare Head One says.

“I see,” Bill says after a moment. The Doctor has hopes that that will be the end of it, that these two might piss off now, but then Bill ruins it by continuing to speak. “So you’re lonely,” she says. The Doctor scowls at her, and her face softens a little. “Babe, is your girlfriend ignoring you again?”

“Girlfriend,” the Doctor splutters.

“You know? The one you keep locked up in your little concrete grief cave?”

His eyes bug out of his head. “Missy? – I – grief cave? She’s not my – ugh!”

Main Head Nardole gives him a disapproving look. “She sort of is.” Spare Head Nardole tries to nod and tips over.

“I –!” The Doctor looks around all of them, the same expression on their faces. He raises his eyebrows pointedly, then draws them into his fiercest scowl. None of them look that intimidated.

“Don’t look at me,” says Spare Head Nardole, nose pressed into the desk. “This was purely physical on my part.” He slips Main Head Nardole a sly look, and then scrunches his face into his most concentrating expression, brows pulled taut together, eyes squeezed tight, mouth pouting. It’s the face he makes when he’s trying particularly hard to save a memory to the memory drive shared by all the Nardoles. The Doctor and Bill exchange a wry glance, before Bill remembers she’s trying to be stern at him and darts her eyes away.

Main Head Nardole’s face goes blank for a second. He makes a low whine, before turning to the side and pretending to retch.

“What is it?” Bill says, reaching out to touch his arm with a light hand.

“Sir,” Nardole says, lifting his head, “Sir, the biting.”

“Eww!” Bill recoils.

“That was all you,” the Doctor protests, jabbing a finger at the head. “I didn’t bite anything.”

Nardole glares at him. “You turned my spare head into a sex toy because you were being maungy about getting dumped again.”

“NOT a sex toy!” the Doctor hisses. “And Missy is not my girlfriend. She’s my –” He breaks off. Bill and Nardole roll their eyes at each other, and he glares at them. He can’t have this, can’t have them ganging up on him. Their eyes light up in unison, and he realises he’s probably already lost that battle.

“‘Dear companion’?” Bill says, doing the quote marks with her fingers.

“‘Oldest friend’?” Nardole joins in.

“‘Best enemy’?”

Nardole clasps his hands to his chest. “‘The other half of my soul’.”

“I never said that.”

“‘Gal pal’,” Spare Head Nardole suggests, and the Doctor shoves him off the desk.

“Don’t you start,” he mutters.

Bill snatches up Spare Head One, who lets out a small squeak, and turns to the door. “How about we just go and get everything sorted out? Communication’s what it’s all about, you know!”

A lance of fear bolts through the Doctor’s chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”

From the corridor she calls, “The Vault!”

“STOP!” he screeches at her, scrambling out from behind his desk and chasing after her. With a sigh, Main Head Nardole follows them both. They scramble across the grounds, students launching themselves out of the way of the onslaught. Library books are trampled, papers are flung. One girl drops an ice cream.

The problem with Bill is that she’s got very long legs, and likes to run on those horrible treadmill machines as a form of torture, or exercise, or both. The Doctor does a lot of running, occupational hazard, but with how things have slowed down in the past few decades, he’s not as swift as he used to be. Or Bill’s just faster, he justifies to himself as he chases her down the stairs, where the entrance to the Vault is.

Somehow, she’s already opened the door, stormed in, and deposited the head on the body of the piano. The Doctor staggers in after her, bending at the waist and pressing on the stitch that’s trying to develop on his left side. Mind over matter, he tells himself sternly, and straightens up. Missy, who had clearly not been expecting visitors, is sat in an armchair with a book in her hands wearing nothing but a white cotton shift and a matching pair of bloomers.

The Doctor averts his eyes, feeling his ears go hot. There’s just – a lot of lace. And frills. She purses her lips, and pointedly doesn’t say anything.

After a minute, Main Head Nardole trundles in, and sighs at the tableau. “Told you what he’s been doing, have they?” he says.

“They most certainly have not,” Missy says, eyes lighting up, and sets the book aside. The Doctor tilts his head to read the cover. Highland Hungere: My Mysterie Werewolfe Lover, it says, in Chiller font, a shirtless man in a tartan kilt gracing the cover. His ears burn even hotter.

“He,” Bill says, jabbing her finger at the Doctor with relish, “has been snogging his,” the finger jabs at Main Head Nardole, “spare head.” A final jab at the head. Main Head Nardole makes the faintly nauseous face again.

“Oh, Doctor,” Missy says, and the tone of her voice is excruciating. She leans forward, baring her cleavage. “Tell me all about it.”

“No.”

“There was biting,” Main Head says, traitorously. Missy’s grin turns feral.

“On whose end?”

“Oh, ew,” Bill says under her breath, and the Doctor glares at her again. It has as little effect as usual.

“Mine,” admits the Nardole on the piano. “But he liked it.”

“Did he,” Missy purrs.

This is apparently the final straw for Main Head Nardole, who mutters one final, “Ugh,” under his breath, turns on his heel and leaves.

Missy draws herself to her feet. Her bare feet, the Doctor’s brain supplies, and he angles his face away from her so he doesn’t start thinking about the – delicate bones in her ankles, or whatever. “You know,” she says conversationally, and walks over to the side of the room. She’s got a shelf full of weird art things, the Doctor doesn’t even know where she gets half of them. She trails a finger over a large sculpture of a mango. “You know what I think?”

“What?” Bill says, leaning back with her elbows on the piano.

“I think,” Missy says, and pulls a lipstick out from behind the mango, running it over her lips and popping them together, “that you,” she tosses her hair at him, “are lonely.”

“I’m not lonely,” the Doctor says through gritted teeth. “I’m demonstrably fine.” He spreads his arms. “Look how many friends I’ve got.”

“You literally just said you were lonely, like, five minutes ago, dude,” Bill says.

Grass, he thinks at her, glaring, traitor. “Shut up,” he says out loud.

“It’s just,” Missy says, twirling her lipstick around in her hand, “I find myself in a similar situation.” She isn’t looking at either of them, just watching herself as she flips the tube between her fingers. “Locked up, away, you know how it is.”

“For your own good,” Bill says hotly. “For like, killing people, or whatever.”

“Or whatever,” Missy agrees. “Anyway. That funny little man, what’s his name?”

“Nardole,” the Doctor supplies.

“Nardole,” she nods. “He waddled in here one day, muttering to himself about some Ponzi scheme he’d been cooking up that had fallen through.”

“Oh, he told me about that,” Bill comments, jabbing Nardole’s head with a friendly elbow. “The police got onto him, shut it down.” She frowns. “Don’t know how he didn’t get arrested.”

“He hacked their criminal database and replaced all their mugshots with pictures of babies,” the Doctor tells her.

“Oh.”

“Anyway,” Missy juts back in, “he came to me because I am, as he put it, an expert on criminology –”

“Because of all the murders,” Bill says.

“I’ve done some money laundering in my time,” Missy frowns. “His point was, he’d been – oh, how did you put it, Doctor dear? ‘Glitching’.”

“When was this?” Nardole asks. “I don’t remember this.”

“Before your time.”

Nardole looks horrified. “I – no. Not Spare Head Two?”

“At the time, he was Main Head, I believe. Had a wee little body to toddle round in.”

Bill looks between them. “What – what happened to Spare Head Two?”

The Doctor is intrigued by this as well. The Nardole now known as Spare Head Two had collapsed in the middle of the cafeteria, right in the cake display, and been transported halfway to hospital before the Doctor had been able to materialise the TARDIS around the ambulance. He’d had to bribe the paramedics and the driver to secrecy, because he was trying, these days, not to steal people’s memories from them. After some negotiation, they had demanded that he come to them once a year and take them on a bespoke two-week holiday to a country of their choosing. Last year it had been Cancun. He clears his throat. “All Nardole will ever tell me,” he says, “is that he ‘doesn’t talk’ about Spare Head Two.”

Missy cackles. “Of course he doesn’t.” She whips the mango off the shelf and plunges her hand into the base of it. “That’s because he’s here!” And with a dramatic spin, she whips out another Spare Head from inside the mango.

“What was he doing under there?” Bill asks, baffled.

Missy rubs her nose. “Well,” she says, pointing at Spare Head One, “he offered.”

“Nardole!” the Doctor cries.

“Oi!” Nardole says, defensively. “She pressured me into it, she did! Said she’d turn me into the police.”

“Well, you are a criminal.”

“It was her, sir, that did all that stuff with the database,” Nardole waffles, “I don’t have any clue about hacking and computers and stuff, you know that.” The Doctor eyes him sceptically. “All she asked for in return was my last head. Spare Head Two was feral, you know that, I didn’t want him in the cupboard with Three and Four.”

Bill throws her arms up. “You have four spare heads? Who needs that many?”

Nardole gives the Doctor an irritated look. “He’s shit at coding them.”

“He really is,” Missy agrees, and flicks the switch behind the ear to activate her Nardole. The mango, she drops to the floor and kicks away.

Spare Head Two blinks awake, awareness dawning on him slowly. Then he spots the Doctor, and his face freezes. “What’s he doing here?”

“Wow,” the Doctor says, and wanders over to the armchair, collapsing into it. He runs a hand through his hair. “The respect is overwhelming.”

“So,” Bill says, and she leans forward, seemingly unconsciously, as though she wants to join Missy but is holding herself back, “he’s fine, then? Even though he collapsed?”

Spare Head Two sniggers. “Missy spent twenty minutes in my neck with a screwdriver and a soldering kit, and I’m absolutely grand. Completely back to normal!”

“Since when have you called her ‘Missy’?” Bill snorts.

The Doctor eyes the head in Missy’s hands. “You fixed him?”

Missy tosses it over to him. “All sorted. You really are shit at coding.”

Turning him over in his hands, the Doctor flicks open the patch at the base of the neck, trying not to admire the wiring, which he can already tell is much improved on his own designs. He flips it shut again, tosses it back. “I didn't want him fixed, he'll be far too efficient.”

“So you fixed him,” Bill says, “and then you just shoved him under a thing on a shelf and – left him there?”

“No,” says Missy. “I bring him out from time to time.”

Bill frowns. “What for?”

Missy’s painted-red lips spread into a wicked smile. “Kissing.”

Bill blinks at her for a second, and then rolls her eyes. “Jesus Christ,” she says. “You two deserve each other.” And she walks out, slamming the door shut behind her.

“Ah, teenagers,” Missy says.

“Bill’s twenty-six.”

Missy walks over to the piano, sets Spare Head Two down next to Spare Head One. The Doctor watches her as she trails her fingers over the two Nardoles’ mouths.

“Do you think we can make them kiss each other?” she says suddenly.

“Oi!” and “No!” the Nardoles say.

She scoops up Spare Head One, the Doctor’s Nardole, and brings him over to him, perching on the arm of his chair. The Doctor can’t look at her face, stares instead at the fine hairs bristling over her knee. It’s so dim in here, always so dim, the light never bright enough to capture all of her.

“Doctor,” she says, voice low, and hands him the head. “Kiss him for me?” The Doctor chokes on his own spit. “I want to watch.”

The Doctor turns his eyes to Nardole, who twitches his forehead in a way that might mean might as well, or might mean get away from me. Slowly, he leans in. Nardole’s eyes get big and round, but he doesn’t say anything, and as their mouths touch he lets out a soft sigh. The Doctor pulls away again and turns his head back to Missy. He raises an eyebrow. “Happy?”

“Very much,” she says, and plucks Nardole out of his hands.

“No, sir, don’t let her!”

“Oh,” Missy says, nostrils flaring, “I fix your head but I’m not allowed a little thank you kiss?”

Nardole narrows his eyes. “Only if you fix me, too.” He sniffs, and darts his eyes over to Spare Head Two, who sits still on the piano watching them all silently. “Like you did him.”

“Done.”

“Oh fine then,” grumbles Nardole, and she presses a dry, almost chaste kiss against his lips. When she pulls back, he has the impression of her lipstick all over his mouth.

“Your turn again,” she says throatily, and passes Nardole back to him. The Doctor leans in again and licks the lipstick off his mouth, smearing the red between the two of them. Missy leans in and whispers in his ear, breath hot, while he does, “It’s almost like you’re kissing me, by proxy, isn’t it?” He grunts, and kisses Nardole harder.

They part with a slick sound, and the Doctor eyes Nardole’s mouth with satisfaction, the faint pink stains all over his lips. He runs a finger over them. Missy leans over, and as the Doctor turns his head she kisses him on the corner of his mouth, pulling back with an irritated scowl.

"You were aiming for my cheek, weren't you?" he accuses. 

“Give him to me,” Missy says, and he complies. She stands, Nardole clutched close to her chest, and wanders over to the piano stool which opens to reveal a full tool set. She grabs a screwdriver, and starts fiddling around in Nardole’s neck.

“Oh, we’re done, are we?” the Doctor says, trying not to sound petulant, and not really succeeding.

She gives him a disdainful glance. “Wanted more, did you?”

“We could – linger in the moment.”

“You know very well that I’m not one for an ‘afterglow’.”

The Doctor sighs, and watches her. She continues to ignore him, faffing around with tiny little tools that seem so delicate in her strong fingers. He sighs again.

“If you huff and puff any more, you’ll blow the house down.”

“Fine,” he says, “I’ll be off then, shall I?” He draws himself to his feet, and she wafts a hand at him.

“Shut the door on your way out.”

“I always do.”

She cracks her head round at that. “I’m well aware,” she says, dryly. “Anyway, you’ll have to be back soon, won’t you, for your valet.”

“Right,” he murmurs.

“Bye then!” And she turns back to her tools, and Nardole’s neck.

“You’re alright, aren’t you, Nardole?”

“Fine, sir,” Nardole’s voice comes back, muffled as it is from being pressed into the ground.

“Cool.” He loiters for a moment more, watching them, and then shakes his head at himself and leaves.

*

Bill gives the Doctor a really sour look when he walks back into his office. He shakes his head at her, and makes for the globe in the corner of the room, opening it up and pouring himself a finger of Jagermeister into a whiskey glass. Swirling it around, he downs it in one, and pours himself another. Then he turns round to Bill.

“What is it?” he says, and it’s only then that he spots she’s brought out Spare Heads Three and Four from Nardole’s room. He didn’t even realise she knew where it was.

“I’m adopting them,” she says. “Not for snogging purposes. I can use them as bookends. My housemates will hate them.” She pats their bald heads. “Walk-and-talk Nardole gave them to me.” Ah, that would explain it.

“Main Head Nardole,” he corrects, feeling pedantic.

“What?”

“He’s Main Head, they’re Spare Heads.”

“Right,” she says, and pauses. “Anyway, walk-and-talk Nardole gave them to me. I don’t know how to make them,” she flops an arm around, “talk. Do I need to water them?”

“Oh,” the Doctor says, and goes over to stand by her side. “There’s a switch behind the ear.” He points it out, but doesn’t turn them on.

“Nice one,” Bill says, and smiles at him at last. He shrugs, a little helplessly. She shoves the Nardoles into her backpack, and draws out a wad of paper, slapping it onto his desk. “My essay.”

“Late,” he admonishes. Hand-in time is four o’clock – it’s well into the evening now.

“Excuse you!” she retorts. “I was perfectly primed to hand it in on time, and then I walked in on you ravishing a decapitated head!” The Doctor ignores her, pulls the essay towards him, flicking through the pages. It’ll be a good one, he can already tell. When he looks up, Bill’s face is complicated and soft.

“I didn’t mean to make you feel bad,” she says. “I’m sorry. You can – obviously, you can do what you want.” She swallows. “I didn’t know about your wife.”

Oh. The Doctor puts the essay back on the desk, and opens his arms. Bill burrows into them, resting her head on his shoulder. “It’s okay,” he murmurs. “You didn’t know.”

“How long?”

“We’re time travellers, it’s difficult,” he deflects. She doesn’t say anything, but pulls back and gives him a look. “About seventy years.”

Bill smiles sadly. “That’s a long time,” she says, “to be alone.”

The Doctor looks down at her hand, and holds it in his own. He smiles at her. “I’m not alone,” he says. “Not any more.”