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The Regrator is a very, very selfish man. Especially with his funds; he would sooner die than take a loss. When he counts out money for his colleagues, his calculating eyes scan every number on his little sheet of assets and he often prefers to offer no more than what is sufficient.
But then someone walked into his life and tipped the scales entirely and somehow– somehow– managed to get him to hand over any amount of funds willingly.
This one man Pantalone hates to death.
“I hate you.” he hisses every night in his office alone, crumpling paper and hurling it into the roaring fireplace that brings his cold skin no warmth. “I hate your silly grin and your joking insults and our conversations in the morning and the putrid tea you brew.”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
The more he says it, the less he can convince himself of its truth.
“I hate that you can talk me into giving you a blank cheque and that I can understand everything you say because I'm less sane than you.”
He seizes another sheet of paper and frustratedly tears it into pieces before tossing it into flames of searing gold and rising amber.
“And I hate the way my heart thuds to a stop in front of your smug face.”
How pathetic.
The Harbingers, they are said to be heartless. They spurn the very idea of romance– for what use is there in love, when there are far greater things to be done in life?
That is not to say they do not love at all. They simply place priority in seizing the thrones of the Seven over interpersonal relations.
And yet the Ninth, with his burning hatred for the gods and a sadistic little smile, he loves and he wants and he is overtaken each day by the desire to take that gnarled hand in his.
He hates it.
And he knows, with all his heart, that the Doctor he fell for would scoff at the notion of loving another in return.
“Love is mortal,” Dottore had remarked one day. “And I was once mortal too, so I loved, for the briefest of times, but those times are long gone.”
It burns a hole into the Regrator's painfully human heart.
There are no confessions, no words spilled from his lips. His affection is never voiced, but ever-present in everything he does. The pink that graces sickly-pale cheeks and brings a gentle light into icy eyes at the sight of that familiar masked face.
Just the sight of the sharp-toothed smile brings stars into chilling amber eyes.
He is aware, it is fully possible he is being played. That the Doctor is manipulating him, just like he does to so many others, for his money, his resources, and when he is bled dry…
Well, a broke banker is of no use, is he?
And how it hurts him, to know of the possibility Dottore will laugh and kick him to the curb the moment his coffers empty.
But he is so enamoured. So devoted to the thought of claiming what Mora cannot buy. So open to being played with in exchange for the slightest bit of care shown to him.
I hate you.
He tightens the folds of his coat around his collar and a sulk plays round the corners of his lips.
It's so unfair.
Why does it have to be Dottore? Of all people across this forsaken land…
He fell for the scientist.
Three knocks sound on antique oakwood, followed by a dramatic flinging open of the door and the creaking of hinges.
“It's your favourite colleague!” says Dottore cheerfully, sauntering into the office under moonlight filtered by stained-glass windows. “How are we feeling today, Regrator dearest?”
“Don't flatter yourself,” grouses Pantalone, folding his arms. “You are far from my favourite.”
It is a lie and both of them know it.
“Am I not?” A smile plays around the corners of thin, cracked lips. “I am most heartbroken.”
“Mm.”
It is undetermined whether Dottore's tone is analytical, or truly worried. “You appear to be unwell.”
“Do I?”
“Your eyebags are prominent today. Most unflattering for someone who cares so much about their appearance.”
“Shut up.”
Pantalone scowls blackly, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a pointed finger.
You know nothing of my exhaustion.
“Oh dear.” says Dottore softly, with a near-pitying shake of the head. One who did not know the Doctor well would have thought he was overcome with genuine worry. (The Regrator personally thinks that this is not the case.)
“…Leave me alone.”
“Oh?” The Doctor pauses. Tilts his head to assess the situation. “But that's not what you want, is it?”
“I– I'm afraid I don't understand, sir.”
There is a sudden meekness in his tone, in the way he folds his hands demurely and dares not meet the older's gaze.
Dottore leans across the desk, carelessly brushing aside a stack of reports. The velvet of his voice cascades over the smitten young man, flooding his heart with a sort of joy that cannot be decoded.
“Call me a narcissist, but you often look at me like you are smitten. And for some nights, I lay awake, laughing at the notion…until I saw the way you looked at me.”
A pen is slammed down, an inkwell knocked over.
“Whatever you are implying, your claims are baseless accusations.” hisses Pantalone, standing up and striding towards the scientist. “I have never seen you in that manner, nor will I ever do so.”
The Doctor's hand slips under a head of dark hair to touch the alabaster skin of an exposed neck.
A blush stains his cheeks like blood once again. Dottore smiles smugly and crosses his arms, as if to say Perhaps I was right after all!
“You–!”
Enraged, Pantalone bites back a scream. How dare he expose him like this. How dare he mess with his mind like this and how dare he make him feel these inexplicable emotions.
"Dearest little economist,” says Dottore, “you make your fondness for me quite obvious. But that does not matter. What I would like to know is– why? Why me?”
A wave of calm washes over firelit pupils, extinguishing anger.
A hand adjusts the scarf wound around the scientist's neck, folding one end of frayed fabric over the other.
“I kneel only to heresy,” says Pantalone softly, touching the symbol of heresy engraved onto the back of his neck in swirling black and violet inks. “And you are a born heretic, so obsessed with achieving godhood without the blessing of the Seven, so determined, so confident. This has gone past admiration a long time ago; you are chaos, heresy incarnate, and it is something I cannot resist but be bewitched by.”
He speaks, smoother than glass and just as clear, heels clacking as he steps backward for every pace taken forward from the other.
“Your attachment is misled.” sighs Dottore. “Appreciated, but misled horribly.”
“Believe me, I would not have loved you either had I gotten a choice.” retorts Pantalone, a twinge of hurt in his eyes as he swallows his pride. “We can't all be emotionless and immortal like you.”
Emotionless.
“May I be honest with you?”
“Yes,” the banker says quietly, and he sounds like he is on the verge of breaking.
Please, please love me back, please grant me what I have wanted all this time…please let me come to you and remove the cracked mask and find what lies beneath…
Please let me love you.
A voice interrupts his train of thoughts.
“Zandik says he loves you, and Il Dottore does not.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Zandik would have loved you back. The small part of me that remains mortal and real.”
There is sorrow in the Doctor's voice as he lowers his head, hand shifting to rest on top of Pantalone's.
“But I, Il Dottore…I cannot do so, I am afraid.”
“Why?” breathes the younger, and there is no calculating Machiavellian light in his eyes that he carries usually. “Why must you forbid yourself from wanting another?”
“The Doctor is a busy man; he has endless duties to perform. He must be up at the crack of dawn working and allows no distractions. He would not have given into something as childish as love.”
“I am a child.” the banker whispers, treasuring every moment their hands touch each other– it may well be his first and last. “I am a child who lives in delusion and falls to his knees now so you will love me, once, just once, and I will know what it is like to be loved by you. I offer you my blank cheque. My affection, unconditionally given. And should you find yourself in any predicament…I am at your disposal. Yours, Zandik. Yours to keep and yours to kill. Wholly yours, even if you would never want me.”
“I would have wanted you, I promise.”
“I thought you said you were incapable of doing so.”
“Not me. Not Dottore. But Regrator…I assure you, ordinary, human Zandik would have held you close and loved you at any cost. He would have.”
“So you do not love me.” Pantalone dips his head and his voice quivers, just in the slightest. “I understand.”
Dottore holds the frail hand a little tighter. The younger's expression softens him. That sad little smile, the clutch of hands, tear-misted eyes begging him to stay.
And for the trembling man in his arms–
He will comply. He will stay, even if it is just momentary.
“Alright.”
“—What do you mean?”
“For this one lonely hour before dawn graces us again,” he says heavily, sitting closer to the banker and resting his head on his shoulder, “I will, for you, become Zandik once more.”
“Will you?”
There's a quickened breathing, a switch of atmosphere, a warmth settling in the air.
“Yes,” promises Dottore, wiping away tears streaking down his banker's moon-coloured face. “Tomorrow, we will never speak of this again. I am sorry I cannot love you more than that— but for this night, I am yours.”
He does not wait for a response. He does not have long left to love.
He kisses the mark of heresy tattooed onto the Regrator’s neck and smiles through invisible tears.
The morning brings silence.
They go separate ways.
But the Doctor pretends to not see the hollow, haunted look in blank golden pools behind those glasses.
And the Regrator glides along the halls, cold and imposing, pretending not to stare wistfully after his beloved.
No one sees the unconditional love he is willing to offer up,
And no one will ever see it.