As It Should Be (3/3) Ten, Rose, Jack (Teen) AU from 'Doomsday'
AUTHOR:sensiblecat
WORD COUNT: 3825
SPOILERS: None, really. It's AU after Doomsday.
CHARACTERS: Ten, Rose, Jack
RATING - Teen to be on the safe side (sexual refs, one profanity)
Thanks todave7 for the story that inspired this one, and to my wonderfully patient beta reader, wendymr
Burning Bridges (prequel by dave7 )
Chapter One
Chapter Two
She stood there for a moment, waiting for him to unbend, to open up, to crack open the layer of ice around his hearts. He did not normally lack courage, but he waited for her next words with a sense of inevitability. Foreboding, even.
No, make that fear. She’d said no lying, and that included lying to himself. That was a habit he’d just have to get out of.
Two hours, twenty-three minutes and thirty-five seconds after she’d run away from him, Rose appeared in the control room. Every neural receptor in the Doctor’s body was on full alert, unfolded and trembling like a newly-opened flower, but he willed himself to keep his back to her and let her speak first.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello.” He didn’t move. He actually had to clench his teeth to keep his voice neutral, it was that bad.
“Look at me,” she ordered him.
She made it sound easy. It wasn’t. Somehow he knew that the apparently simple act of turning and looking at Rose Tyler would feel like removing his skin. He knew exactly what he wanted to say. “Tell me I’m not going to lose you again.” That was it. How could he say that - him, a Time Lord, admit such complete, desperate dependency on a mere human being?
“Did you miss me?” she asked, her eyes soft and gentle.
He was about to counter that she’d not been in her room that long, but he knew she wasn’t talking about that, and she knew that he knew. Rose’s tendency to know things had always been a difficult part of her character for him to manage. It had also made her impossible to replace.
“A bit,” he said at last. “Well…a lot, actually.”
“Oh, come here, you twerp.” She was right beside him now. The air seemed to crackle with her presence. It was everything he’d longed for made flesh, and he owed Jack Harkness for it, and he didn’t know how to start thanking him.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he protested. “I might be a bit frayed around the edges, that’s all.”
“How long’s it been? You never really told me.”
“A while. Lost track of it rather.” He ran his fingertips over the controls, still resisting the overwhelming desire to embrace her, without being quite sure why.
“Why won’t you look at me?” she asked.
“I am….Look, here I am. Standing here. Looking at you.” He turned his head towards her, pushed it forward, invading her space without really touching her. Shoved his hands in his pockets. Smirked a little. He had no idea why he was still playing games with her. Wasn’t this the happy ending he’d wanted? Rose Tyler back in the TARDIS, just as it should be?
“Just hug me, you idiot.” He noticed she was close to crying. Looked like she still quite liked him, then. Good.
She’d come back. He does it all on his own, Mum, she’d said. But not any more, because now he’s got me. Just thinking about it choked him up. That moment when he’d realised it was useless arguing with her. She’d beaten him.
It was only that morning for her. Chances were, she still meant it. If she could overlook all that had happened with Jack.
What else would need overlooking? The fact that he’d never had sex with her? Barely kissed her, in fact? That he’d live for hundreds of years, and she wouldn’t? That he’d regenerate, if she didn’t get herself killed first? That she’d said she’d stay with him for ever, and meant it at the time?
It was an awful lot of overlooking to do. “You’ll never see your family again,” he said.
“I made my choice. I’m never gonna leave you.”
“Do you still mean that?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just wondered. Now you know about Jack…”
“It wasn’t all your fault,” she said.
“Well. That makes a change.” He laughed - it sounded a bit forced, but it was a start.
“Just don’t lie to me again,” she said. “I mean it. That includes pretending you know the answers when you don’t.”
He opened his mouth to protest that they couldn’t possibly have a partnership on that basis, that there’d always be things she couldn’t deal with, and then he remembered the decision she’d made, the simple implacability of it. Not once, but twice. This whole problem with Jack had stemmed from his refusal to take her seriously enough.
After a moment, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I said no lying, didn’t I?” His voice was edged with sharpness now.
“The Beast was right,” she went on. “I used to be a valiant child, but the moment I chose to come back to you, that Rose Tyler died. You have to understand that. And you have to stop trying to do everything on your own.”
That wasn’t going to work, but it was still incredibly touching to look at her, this young human girl, and know she really thought she could help. And then she shook that idea around, turned it upside down and let it fall all over the floor.
“I can’t help you with everything,” she said. “But when I can’t, Jack can. Most of it we can cover between us. You need us both.”
His first reaction was denial. How could he have Jack around when it felt so wrong? Except…he could see him now, lying prone and helpless on the floor, symbolising all the no-questions-asked loyalty humans were capable of, at their best. Jack, who wouldn’t die. What if Rose had given him a wonderful gift, rather than a dilemma he had to spend his life running from?
“He might not want to come back,” he suggested, knowing how unconvincing that sounded.
“He’ll come back,” she said, with a certainty that troubled him a little. “All you have to do is ask.”
“I’ve asked him already.”
“He probably wanted to see how things went with us two,” she replied. “Whether we’re going to go back to Planet Doctor and Rose.”
He moved backwards a step, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and frowned. “The rest of the universe can be a very harsh place,” he said. “But then I think you know that, don’t you?”
She stood there for a moment, waiting for him to unbend, to open up, to crack open the layer of ice around his hearts. He did not normally lack courage, but he waited for her next words with a sense of inevitability. Foreboding, even.
No, make that fear. She’d said no lying, and that included lying to himself. That was a habit he’d just have to get out of.
“I love you,” she said.
He nodded, mumbling. “Quite right, too.”
And then, unexpectedly, she burst out laughing. “God, you prat!” she cried, as guffaws of the mirth he’d missed so desperately convulsed her. “I should smack you round the head for that! You really have no idea, have you?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, joining in the laughter, pulling her into his arms before he’d had time to think about it.
“I’m not gonna run off with Jack,” she said. “Though it would serve you right, you know.”
“I told him he could have his old room back,” he said. “I think he was tempted.”
“He’s more than tempted,” she said. “He’s over the moon. You ask him yourself.”
“But, Rose,” he prevaricated, “There’d be a situation. You see, Jack feels…”
“He fancies you, yeah. Fancies us both. Always has.” She was incredibly matter of fact about it. “That a problem?”
He felt his face soften and he broke into a smile as he heard the words of his last incarnation reflected back at him. He’d been a man of few words in those days. She’d fallen for him anyway. Maybe because he’d been less inclined to witter on about nothing, back then. In fact, he’d practically forgotten how to sustain a conversation. She hadn’t minded. There had been some long silences between them, but they weren’t empty silences. And if anyone knew how an empty silence felt, he did.
“I dunno,” he said. “You tell me.”
“I’m not jealous, if that’s what you mean. When Jack’s around there isn’t just another person. There’s more of you. You’re bigger, somehow. I think it’s because there’s nowhere for you to hide.”
“What about me?” he asked. “What if I’m jealous?”
Then she smiled at him - the wonderful old tongue between the teeth look that always made him grin like a loon. “Maybe you’d finally get around to shagging me if you had a bit of competition?”
“Oi!” he protested. “What makes you think that would be a problem?”
“Maybe that you haven’t even kissed me yet?” she suggested. “Not without some kind of thoroughly Time Lord-y sensible reason, anyway.”
“I’m more than prepared to do something about that,” he said. He didn’t hesitate. He lifted her hair back off her face and bent to lower his lips onto hers. He could still smell the Void stuff on her, but below and around that was the beautiful presence and scent of Rose in all her human glory, from the stuff she used on that blue top to make it fluffy to the very specific combination of pheromones released through her epidermis in situations of sexual stimulation. And just a little toothpaste.
********
Jack wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself once Rose had gone back to rejoin the Doctor in the control room. He knew they were stuck here in the Vortex for a few days at least while the TARDIS healed and he’d mixed feelings about that.
On the one hand, he was right here with the two people he cared about most, but things he’d been able to ignore the last time they’d all travelled as a team were rearing their head more persistently now. The fact was, he’d lived his life on hold for nearly a century and a half, waiting for the clock to start ticking again and conveniently overlooking the fact that you could never quite recapture a relationship you’d once had. He could honestly say he bore the Doctor no ill-will now, but he wouldn’t be human if being told he felt wrong hadn’t hurt and made him hold back a little. Plus, the last thing he wanted to do was get in the way of the reunion between the Doctor and Rose.
As for Rose, his feelings for her had deepened. She’d shown such wisdom and grace, qualities the Doctor sorely needed. He hoped - with a fair degree of optimism, that she’d be able to tame the Doctor’s inner demons and give him the help he needed so badly. The question was where did he fit into all that?
It seemed to be his lot in life, not fitting in. For most of his involvement with Torchwood, he’d kept to a freelance relationship, only signing up officially at the turn of the millennium. He was proud of his team - Suzie, Owen and Tosh - and he wanted to stick around and see what they could become, but they weren’t people he felt particularly close to. Probably because he’d spent such a long part of his life waiting for someone else.
He could go back home, work more closely with them, hopefully build them into a strong, mutually supportive group of people. They were all outsiders in their own way, all with their own histories of pain and disappointment, their particular, personal silences. Certainly, he’d no intention of just leaving them without an explanation. And, depending on where in the timeline the Doctor reinserted him, there’d be a lot to do. A whole war to clear up, thousands of people dead and the illusions the human race cherished more threatened than ever.
He couldn’t see the Doctor signing up to be a part of that.
Avoiding the control room, he wandered the corridors for a while. He was in the library when the Doctor found him.
“You look better,” Jack remarked. The old spring in the step was back. A certain disarray and a gleam in the Doctor’s eyes made it clear how he and Rose had been spending the last hour or two. He was happy for them both. Of course he was.
Apart from the first moments of their reunion, he’d never seen the Doctor in this incarnation happy, but he imagined he’d be a force to be reckoned with. There was a playful - almost manic - quality he’d kept strictly under control before. No doubt some of it was learned behaviour, his strategy for protecting himself from emotionally demanding situations, but underneath that, Jack suspected, there was a core of genuine and totally irresistible charm. Jack resisted meeting his eye, knowing that the first real smile would trap him like a fly in amber. That was probably the last thing he needed.
“Jack,” said the Doctor, simply. “Can we talk?”
“I guess so.” Jack hadn’t been expecting such directness. “I was wondering,” he ventured. “Do I still feel wrong?”
It was hard to read the expression in the Doctor’s eyes as he replied. It almost looked as if there was something very private there, barely acknowledged even to himself. For the first time, Jack wondered whether the dream he’d had of the Doctor kissing him as he lay helpless on the control room floor had some basis in reality. The Doctor’s persona had so many levels to it, and to reach this particular one you’d have to dig deep.
“It’s getting better,” the Doctor replied. Jack felt his dream-memory slot into place, like a ball on a pool table dropping into a pocket with a satisfying clack. He tried to keep his expression neutral. It was the Doctor’s turn to do the hard work.
The Doctor he cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know if it was right for me to say that to you. It can’t have been easy to hear.”
“Best to be honest,” said Jack.
“Have you thought about what you’d like to do? That offer I made before - it still stands. Do you think it could work?”
The tentative hope in his voice caught Jack unawares. Here was a man who’d just got everything he wanted, or so he’d thought. He couldn’t help wondering if Rose had put him up to this, and he didn’t like the thought of being a pity case, an obligation discussed in their pillow talk.
“We’d have to clear a few things up,” he said at last.
The Doctor sighed and raked his hair. “I know… what happened before…you’re bound to feel…I’m sorry. Handled it badly. Knew that all along really. I ran away, and I’m sorry.”
Well. That was progress. “Thanks,” said Jack. “No need to keep raking it up. Let’s try to move on.”
“So?” The Doctor’s gaze was serious, a little anxious. This really mattered to him. “You’ll think about it? We have to stay put for a few days - time to make your mind up…”
Jack decided to go for broke. “Look,” he began. “You’re used to getting what you want. You’ve a lot to offer people and they tend to say yes, more or less on any terms.” Standing now, he paced the room a little, feeling the need to put some distance between the two of them.
But there was no easy way to say this. “That’s not enough for me any more. You two aren’t just my friends. It goes way beyond friendship for me. We can call it quits here - you’re back together, just as it should be, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t stay in touch. I can find someone else, I can make my own life, I could…”
And then he stopped. Shit, he was about to cry. When had that last happened? He couldn’t go on this way. He either had to get real with these two or walk away from them. He wasn’t quite sure where he’d be walking to, and he knew what he really wanted.
Talking about making a life had brought him right to the core of his problem. He didn’t have a life to make. His life was on this ship and, if he wasn’t wanted here, there was no plan B.
“I think you know how I feel,” he said, thickly, at last.
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “I think we do.”
It sounded like a dismissal. They stood apart and waited for someone to say something.
“Like I said, we need to talk,” the Doctor said at last.
“Where’s Rose?” Jack asked.
“Still in bed. My room.”
“Right.”
The Doctor took a deep breath. He stood up very straight, with his hands in his pockets, his thumbs rubbing the edges. After a moment, he moved his hands, coughed, put one hand over his mouth, then humphed and moved both arms behind his back.
Jack tried not to look downwards. He’d already seen that the Doctor was a little aroused. Could just be that he was thinking of Rose, but he wondered.
“Why don’t we head over there?” the Doctor asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind, if you want to, if you’d like to, if you’ve nothing better to do. Or we could just…um…wait until she gets up and…talk or something?”
Whew. Jack hadn’t been expecting that. He’d never even seen the inside of the Doctor’s room up to now - in fact, he’d assumed the Time Lord spent very little time there. And there was no mistaking the tone of the invitation, or what activities would be proposed.
“You want someone in your room who feels wrong?” he asked, unable to trust the words he was hearing.
“It might take me a while,” said the Doctor. “I’m not very good at changing. Sounds odd, that, when all I ever do is rattle about the place looking for adventure and whatever comes my way, but it’s true.”
Jack wondered if the quotation from “Born To Be Wild” was deliberate or not. But he didn’t feel like being sidetracked by the Doctor’s anecdotes about meeting Jack Nicholson, so he kept silent.
“Is it you who wants me in your room?” Jack asked. “Or is it Rose?”
“Even Rose couldn’t get me to do this if I didn’t want to do it,” he replied.
Jack hesitated. He knew the Doctor was more than capable of lying when it suited him.
“This has gone on long enough,” Jack said after another painful silence. And if the Doctor asked what he was talking about, he just might be spitting out his two front teeth before he’d finished.
The Doctor came to him. He opened his arms and after a minute, Jack approached. The Doctor’s hands moved upward, his long delicate fingers tracing his profile. And Jack’s entire body woke up and cried out for him.
“Just fuck me,” he growled, just before the Doctor’s tongue entered his mouth and words became meaningless.
Then the Doctor’s fingertips reached his temples, and through them Jack felt an electric pulse of memory and desire. The psychic wave knocked him sideways. All this time, he now knew, the Doctor had been holding back, denying himself, afraid of what his unfiltered passions could unleash.
“Wow,” Jack said, surfacing at last. “That didn’t feel wrong to me.”
The Doctor smiled. “Molto bene. Just as it should be.” Moving a few steps backward, he studied Jack with eyes that held the depths of centuries, both lived through and yet to come.
“Let’s go to Rose,” the Doctor said. “She’s waited long enough.”
*******
It was late. Well, probably. Rose had no idea what time it was, only that a day that had started with a quick trip home to do laundry and hand over a bottle of Bazoolium appeared to be ending with Jack lying naked on one side of her and the Doctor, apparently dead to the world, on the other. Several lifetimes had been packed into a notional twenty-four hours. Centuries seemed to have gone by in a flash, but minutes like this could last for ever as far as she was concerned.
Drifting in the Vortex had a special quality, which the Doctor had tried to explain to her several times. They were literally suspended outside time - the still point of the whirlwind where they lived, the eye of the storm. She’d sort of understood it, but now she felt it, in the slow beats of the TARDIS’s living power source. It felt as if the life processes of her own body had slipped into the same profoundly peaceful rhythm.
What else could explain the wonderful sense of wellbeing she felt? Unless it was something to do with being with the two men she loved and watching them take equal delight in one another.
The Doctor was smiling a little as he lay on his back, mouth open, head tipped to one side. So much tension released in a couple of glorious hours. Rose still felt his shape inside her, a completeness where awkwardness and uncertainty had been. She hadn’t appreciated how much the unresolved attraction between them had cost her until it was released.
“Wonder how long it’s been since he took a nap?” Jack said.
“He’s earned it, all right.”
“All of us have.” They laughed, moved close, explored each other for a few moments more.
“So what did you say to him, then?” Jack asked. “Why did he change his mind?”
“I don’t think he did change,” she replied. “Maybe I hurried things along a bit. But I think I just did what I usually do - made him admit what was there all along.”
Jack grunted. He didn’t quite seem convinced, but she doubted he’d choose to pursue it.
Perhaps she should. “There weren’t any ultimatums. No saying it’s both of us or nothing. And it’s not about what he’s done, or what you’ve done. It’s just right that we’re together. This is how it should be.”
“Sure?” Jack smiled and looked down on her resting against him. “Seems to me you had plenty of good times without me.”
“Not the sort that last,” she said. “We pretended, but that’s not the same.”
The old Jack would have had some cheeky comeback to that remark. But he’d changed, and now some things were too serious to joke about. If she owed Jack anything, it was this chance to make him absolutely certain he belonged.
“He thinks he’s bad for people, Jack. He tries to be alone but he just can’t do it - there’s too much love in him and it just shrivels up if he can’t share it. And he told me what it was like for him, seeing you lying there on the floor, knowing what you’d done, wanting to tell you…”
“I dreamed he kissed me,” he said, softly.
“That wasn’t a dream, Jack.”
“No kidding?”
She nodded. “All that time travelling together, him and me, and we never went all the way until now. Because he wouldn’t let himself. He always believed it was going to end.”
“Must have been tough for you.”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Now if you’d been on board, Jack…”
Jack rolled over onto his back. “I’ll always be there for him,” he promised. “Even when you can’t be.”
“Let’s not think about that now.” With a happy sigh, she rested her cheek on his chest. He knew her so well, she thought - without any resentment or jealousy, he’d accepted that the Doctor’s happiness mattered more to her than her own.
“We’ll make him as happy as it’s possible for him to be,” she agreed. “But it’s not just about him. It’s about you, too. Welcome back.”
For a moment, she thought he’d cry. It was humbling to have that much effect on the happiness of someone else. She thought of his body, his lungs and his heart, all the human qualities there that she’d so casually, childishly endowed with the inability to stay dead.
“I need you too, Jack,” she said. “I’m in over my head and I need you to keep me straight, to tell me what I need to hear when I’m dazzled by him.”
“Consider it done, Rose. I’ll need to go back for a while, square things up with my team, but after that I’m reporting for duty.”
“We’ll help,” she said. “There’s been a war, there’s thousands of people dead. I want to know what happened to my family. Go back to the Estate. Tidy things up. My mum..." Her voice trailed away.
He sighed and hugged her. “I know what it’s like to lose family, Rose. And he knows what it’s like to lose a world. But the time comes when you just have to stop running.”
He could have meant the Doctor, or himself, or both. Now they all had a past, a life once lived, lurking in the things unsaid. She hoped that, one day, Jack would feel secure enough to tell his story.
Not tonight, though. Not yet.
“Let’s get some sleep,” she said.
WORD COUNT: 3825
SPOILERS: None, really. It's AU after Doomsday.
CHARACTERS: Ten, Rose, Jack
RATING - Teen to be on the safe side (sexual refs, one profanity)
Thanks todave7 for the story that inspired this one, and to my wonderfully patient beta reader, wendymr
Burning Bridges (prequel by dave7 )
Chapter One
Chapter Two
She stood there for a moment, waiting for him to unbend, to open up, to crack open the layer of ice around his hearts. He did not normally lack courage, but he waited for her next words with a sense of inevitability. Foreboding, even.
No, make that fear. She’d said no lying, and that included lying to himself. That was a habit he’d just have to get out of.
Two hours, twenty-three minutes and thirty-five seconds after she’d run away from him, Rose appeared in the control room. Every neural receptor in the Doctor’s body was on full alert, unfolded and trembling like a newly-opened flower, but he willed himself to keep his back to her and let her speak first.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hello.” He didn’t move. He actually had to clench his teeth to keep his voice neutral, it was that bad.
“Look at me,” she ordered him.
She made it sound easy. It wasn’t. Somehow he knew that the apparently simple act of turning and looking at Rose Tyler would feel like removing his skin. He knew exactly what he wanted to say. “Tell me I’m not going to lose you again.” That was it. How could he say that - him, a Time Lord, admit such complete, desperate dependency on a mere human being?
“Did you miss me?” she asked, her eyes soft and gentle.
He was about to counter that she’d not been in her room that long, but he knew she wasn’t talking about that, and she knew that he knew. Rose’s tendency to know things had always been a difficult part of her character for him to manage. It had also made her impossible to replace.
“A bit,” he said at last. “Well…a lot, actually.”
“Oh, come here, you twerp.” She was right beside him now. The air seemed to crackle with her presence. It was everything he’d longed for made flesh, and he owed Jack Harkness for it, and he didn’t know how to start thanking him.
“You look terrible,” she said.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” he protested. “I might be a bit frayed around the edges, that’s all.”
“How long’s it been? You never really told me.”
“A while. Lost track of it rather.” He ran his fingertips over the controls, still resisting the overwhelming desire to embrace her, without being quite sure why.
“Why won’t you look at me?” she asked.
“I am….Look, here I am. Standing here. Looking at you.” He turned his head towards her, pushed it forward, invading her space without really touching her. Shoved his hands in his pockets. Smirked a little. He had no idea why he was still playing games with her. Wasn’t this the happy ending he’d wanted? Rose Tyler back in the TARDIS, just as it should be?
“Just hug me, you idiot.” He noticed she was close to crying. Looked like she still quite liked him, then. Good.
She’d come back. He does it all on his own, Mum, she’d said. But not any more, because now he’s got me. Just thinking about it choked him up. That moment when he’d realised it was useless arguing with her. She’d beaten him.
It was only that morning for her. Chances were, she still meant it. If she could overlook all that had happened with Jack.
What else would need overlooking? The fact that he’d never had sex with her? Barely kissed her, in fact? That he’d live for hundreds of years, and she wouldn’t? That he’d regenerate, if she didn’t get herself killed first? That she’d said she’d stay with him for ever, and meant it at the time?
It was an awful lot of overlooking to do. “You’ll never see your family again,” he said.
“I made my choice. I’m never gonna leave you.”
“Do you still mean that?”
“Do you really have to ask?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I just wondered. Now you know about Jack…”
“It wasn’t all your fault,” she said.
“Well. That makes a change.” He laughed - it sounded a bit forced, but it was a start.
“Just don’t lie to me again,” she said. “I mean it. That includes pretending you know the answers when you don’t.”
He opened his mouth to protest that they couldn’t possibly have a partnership on that basis, that there’d always be things she couldn’t deal with, and then he remembered the decision she’d made, the simple implacability of it. Not once, but twice. This whole problem with Jack had stemmed from his refusal to take her seriously enough.
After a moment, he nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I said no lying, didn’t I?” His voice was edged with sharpness now.
“The Beast was right,” she went on. “I used to be a valiant child, but the moment I chose to come back to you, that Rose Tyler died. You have to understand that. And you have to stop trying to do everything on your own.”
That wasn’t going to work, but it was still incredibly touching to look at her, this young human girl, and know she really thought she could help. And then she shook that idea around, turned it upside down and let it fall all over the floor.
“I can’t help you with everything,” she said. “But when I can’t, Jack can. Most of it we can cover between us. You need us both.”
His first reaction was denial. How could he have Jack around when it felt so wrong? Except…he could see him now, lying prone and helpless on the floor, symbolising all the no-questions-asked loyalty humans were capable of, at their best. Jack, who wouldn’t die. What if Rose had given him a wonderful gift, rather than a dilemma he had to spend his life running from?
“He might not want to come back,” he suggested, knowing how unconvincing that sounded.
“He’ll come back,” she said, with a certainty that troubled him a little. “All you have to do is ask.”
“I’ve asked him already.”
“He probably wanted to see how things went with us two,” she replied. “Whether we’re going to go back to Planet Doctor and Rose.”
He moved backwards a step, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and frowned. “The rest of the universe can be a very harsh place,” he said. “But then I think you know that, don’t you?”
She stood there for a moment, waiting for him to unbend, to open up, to crack open the layer of ice around his hearts. He did not normally lack courage, but he waited for her next words with a sense of inevitability. Foreboding, even.
No, make that fear. She’d said no lying, and that included lying to himself. That was a habit he’d just have to get out of.
“I love you,” she said.
He nodded, mumbling. “Quite right, too.”
And then, unexpectedly, she burst out laughing. “God, you prat!” she cried, as guffaws of the mirth he’d missed so desperately convulsed her. “I should smack you round the head for that! You really have no idea, have you?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said, joining in the laughter, pulling her into his arms before he’d had time to think about it.
“I’m not gonna run off with Jack,” she said. “Though it would serve you right, you know.”
“I told him he could have his old room back,” he said. “I think he was tempted.”
“He’s more than tempted,” she said. “He’s over the moon. You ask him yourself.”
“But, Rose,” he prevaricated, “There’d be a situation. You see, Jack feels…”
“He fancies you, yeah. Fancies us both. Always has.” She was incredibly matter of fact about it. “That a problem?”
He felt his face soften and he broke into a smile as he heard the words of his last incarnation reflected back at him. He’d been a man of few words in those days. She’d fallen for him anyway. Maybe because he’d been less inclined to witter on about nothing, back then. In fact, he’d practically forgotten how to sustain a conversation. She hadn’t minded. There had been some long silences between them, but they weren’t empty silences. And if anyone knew how an empty silence felt, he did.
“I dunno,” he said. “You tell me.”
“I’m not jealous, if that’s what you mean. When Jack’s around there isn’t just another person. There’s more of you. You’re bigger, somehow. I think it’s because there’s nowhere for you to hide.”
“What about me?” he asked. “What if I’m jealous?”
Then she smiled at him - the wonderful old tongue between the teeth look that always made him grin like a loon. “Maybe you’d finally get around to shagging me if you had a bit of competition?”
“Oi!” he protested. “What makes you think that would be a problem?”
“Maybe that you haven’t even kissed me yet?” she suggested. “Not without some kind of thoroughly Time Lord-y sensible reason, anyway.”
“I’m more than prepared to do something about that,” he said. He didn’t hesitate. He lifted her hair back off her face and bent to lower his lips onto hers. He could still smell the Void stuff on her, but below and around that was the beautiful presence and scent of Rose in all her human glory, from the stuff she used on that blue top to make it fluffy to the very specific combination of pheromones released through her epidermis in situations of sexual stimulation. And just a little toothpaste.
********
Jack wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself once Rose had gone back to rejoin the Doctor in the control room. He knew they were stuck here in the Vortex for a few days at least while the TARDIS healed and he’d mixed feelings about that.
On the one hand, he was right here with the two people he cared about most, but things he’d been able to ignore the last time they’d all travelled as a team were rearing their head more persistently now. The fact was, he’d lived his life on hold for nearly a century and a half, waiting for the clock to start ticking again and conveniently overlooking the fact that you could never quite recapture a relationship you’d once had. He could honestly say he bore the Doctor no ill-will now, but he wouldn’t be human if being told he felt wrong hadn’t hurt and made him hold back a little. Plus, the last thing he wanted to do was get in the way of the reunion between the Doctor and Rose.
As for Rose, his feelings for her had deepened. She’d shown such wisdom and grace, qualities the Doctor sorely needed. He hoped - with a fair degree of optimism, that she’d be able to tame the Doctor’s inner demons and give him the help he needed so badly. The question was where did he fit into all that?
It seemed to be his lot in life, not fitting in. For most of his involvement with Torchwood, he’d kept to a freelance relationship, only signing up officially at the turn of the millennium. He was proud of his team - Suzie, Owen and Tosh - and he wanted to stick around and see what they could become, but they weren’t people he felt particularly close to. Probably because he’d spent such a long part of his life waiting for someone else.
He could go back home, work more closely with them, hopefully build them into a strong, mutually supportive group of people. They were all outsiders in their own way, all with their own histories of pain and disappointment, their particular, personal silences. Certainly, he’d no intention of just leaving them without an explanation. And, depending on where in the timeline the Doctor reinserted him, there’d be a lot to do. A whole war to clear up, thousands of people dead and the illusions the human race cherished more threatened than ever.
He couldn’t see the Doctor signing up to be a part of that.
Avoiding the control room, he wandered the corridors for a while. He was in the library when the Doctor found him.
“You look better,” Jack remarked. The old spring in the step was back. A certain disarray and a gleam in the Doctor’s eyes made it clear how he and Rose had been spending the last hour or two. He was happy for them both. Of course he was.
Apart from the first moments of their reunion, he’d never seen the Doctor in this incarnation happy, but he imagined he’d be a force to be reckoned with. There was a playful - almost manic - quality he’d kept strictly under control before. No doubt some of it was learned behaviour, his strategy for protecting himself from emotionally demanding situations, but underneath that, Jack suspected, there was a core of genuine and totally irresistible charm. Jack resisted meeting his eye, knowing that the first real smile would trap him like a fly in amber. That was probably the last thing he needed.
“Jack,” said the Doctor, simply. “Can we talk?”
“I guess so.” Jack hadn’t been expecting such directness. “I was wondering,” he ventured. “Do I still feel wrong?”
It was hard to read the expression in the Doctor’s eyes as he replied. It almost looked as if there was something very private there, barely acknowledged even to himself. For the first time, Jack wondered whether the dream he’d had of the Doctor kissing him as he lay helpless on the control room floor had some basis in reality. The Doctor’s persona had so many levels to it, and to reach this particular one you’d have to dig deep.
“It’s getting better,” the Doctor replied. Jack felt his dream-memory slot into place, like a ball on a pool table dropping into a pocket with a satisfying clack. He tried to keep his expression neutral. It was the Doctor’s turn to do the hard work.
The Doctor he cleared his throat and said, “I don’t know if it was right for me to say that to you. It can’t have been easy to hear.”
“Best to be honest,” said Jack.
“Have you thought about what you’d like to do? That offer I made before - it still stands. Do you think it could work?”
The tentative hope in his voice caught Jack unawares. Here was a man who’d just got everything he wanted, or so he’d thought. He couldn’t help wondering if Rose had put him up to this, and he didn’t like the thought of being a pity case, an obligation discussed in their pillow talk.
“We’d have to clear a few things up,” he said at last.
The Doctor sighed and raked his hair. “I know… what happened before…you’re bound to feel…I’m sorry. Handled it badly. Knew that all along really. I ran away, and I’m sorry.”
Well. That was progress. “Thanks,” said Jack. “No need to keep raking it up. Let’s try to move on.”
“So?” The Doctor’s gaze was serious, a little anxious. This really mattered to him. “You’ll think about it? We have to stay put for a few days - time to make your mind up…”
Jack decided to go for broke. “Look,” he began. “You’re used to getting what you want. You’ve a lot to offer people and they tend to say yes, more or less on any terms.” Standing now, he paced the room a little, feeling the need to put some distance between the two of them.
But there was no easy way to say this. “That’s not enough for me any more. You two aren’t just my friends. It goes way beyond friendship for me. We can call it quits here - you’re back together, just as it should be, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t stay in touch. I can find someone else, I can make my own life, I could…”
And then he stopped. Shit, he was about to cry. When had that last happened? He couldn’t go on this way. He either had to get real with these two or walk away from them. He wasn’t quite sure where he’d be walking to, and he knew what he really wanted.
Talking about making a life had brought him right to the core of his problem. He didn’t have a life to make. His life was on this ship and, if he wasn’t wanted here, there was no plan B.
“I think you know how I feel,” he said, thickly, at last.
“Yes,” said the Doctor. “I think we do.”
It sounded like a dismissal. They stood apart and waited for someone to say something.
“Like I said, we need to talk,” the Doctor said at last.
“Where’s Rose?” Jack asked.
“Still in bed. My room.”
“Right.”
The Doctor took a deep breath. He stood up very straight, with his hands in his pockets, his thumbs rubbing the edges. After a moment, he moved his hands, coughed, put one hand over his mouth, then humphed and moved both arms behind his back.
Jack tried not to look downwards. He’d already seen that the Doctor was a little aroused. Could just be that he was thinking of Rose, but he wondered.
“Why don’t we head over there?” the Doctor asked. “I mean, if you don’t mind, if you want to, if you’d like to, if you’ve nothing better to do. Or we could just…um…wait until she gets up and…talk or something?”
Whew. Jack hadn’t been expecting that. He’d never even seen the inside of the Doctor’s room up to now - in fact, he’d assumed the Time Lord spent very little time there. And there was no mistaking the tone of the invitation, or what activities would be proposed.
“You want someone in your room who feels wrong?” he asked, unable to trust the words he was hearing.
“It might take me a while,” said the Doctor. “I’m not very good at changing. Sounds odd, that, when all I ever do is rattle about the place looking for adventure and whatever comes my way, but it’s true.”
Jack wondered if the quotation from “Born To Be Wild” was deliberate or not. But he didn’t feel like being sidetracked by the Doctor’s anecdotes about meeting Jack Nicholson, so he kept silent.
“Is it you who wants me in your room?” Jack asked. “Or is it Rose?”
“Even Rose couldn’t get me to do this if I didn’t want to do it,” he replied.
Jack hesitated. He knew the Doctor was more than capable of lying when it suited him.
“This has gone on long enough,” Jack said after another painful silence. And if the Doctor asked what he was talking about, he just might be spitting out his two front teeth before he’d finished.
The Doctor came to him. He opened his arms and after a minute, Jack approached. The Doctor’s hands moved upward, his long delicate fingers tracing his profile. And Jack’s entire body woke up and cried out for him.
“Just fuck me,” he growled, just before the Doctor’s tongue entered his mouth and words became meaningless.
Then the Doctor’s fingertips reached his temples, and through them Jack felt an electric pulse of memory and desire. The psychic wave knocked him sideways. All this time, he now knew, the Doctor had been holding back, denying himself, afraid of what his unfiltered passions could unleash.
“Wow,” Jack said, surfacing at last. “That didn’t feel wrong to me.”
The Doctor smiled. “Molto bene. Just as it should be.” Moving a few steps backward, he studied Jack with eyes that held the depths of centuries, both lived through and yet to come.
“Let’s go to Rose,” the Doctor said. “She’s waited long enough.”
*******
It was late. Well, probably. Rose had no idea what time it was, only that a day that had started with a quick trip home to do laundry and hand over a bottle of Bazoolium appeared to be ending with Jack lying naked on one side of her and the Doctor, apparently dead to the world, on the other. Several lifetimes had been packed into a notional twenty-four hours. Centuries seemed to have gone by in a flash, but minutes like this could last for ever as far as she was concerned.
Drifting in the Vortex had a special quality, which the Doctor had tried to explain to her several times. They were literally suspended outside time - the still point of the whirlwind where they lived, the eye of the storm. She’d sort of understood it, but now she felt it, in the slow beats of the TARDIS’s living power source. It felt as if the life processes of her own body had slipped into the same profoundly peaceful rhythm.
What else could explain the wonderful sense of wellbeing she felt? Unless it was something to do with being with the two men she loved and watching them take equal delight in one another.
The Doctor was smiling a little as he lay on his back, mouth open, head tipped to one side. So much tension released in a couple of glorious hours. Rose still felt his shape inside her, a completeness where awkwardness and uncertainty had been. She hadn’t appreciated how much the unresolved attraction between them had cost her until it was released.
“Wonder how long it’s been since he took a nap?” Jack said.
“He’s earned it, all right.”
“All of us have.” They laughed, moved close, explored each other for a few moments more.
“So what did you say to him, then?” Jack asked. “Why did he change his mind?”
“I don’t think he did change,” she replied. “Maybe I hurried things along a bit. But I think I just did what I usually do - made him admit what was there all along.”
Jack grunted. He didn’t quite seem convinced, but she doubted he’d choose to pursue it.
Perhaps she should. “There weren’t any ultimatums. No saying it’s both of us or nothing. And it’s not about what he’s done, or what you’ve done. It’s just right that we’re together. This is how it should be.”
“Sure?” Jack smiled and looked down on her resting against him. “Seems to me you had plenty of good times without me.”
“Not the sort that last,” she said. “We pretended, but that’s not the same.”
The old Jack would have had some cheeky comeback to that remark. But he’d changed, and now some things were too serious to joke about. If she owed Jack anything, it was this chance to make him absolutely certain he belonged.
“He thinks he’s bad for people, Jack. He tries to be alone but he just can’t do it - there’s too much love in him and it just shrivels up if he can’t share it. And he told me what it was like for him, seeing you lying there on the floor, knowing what you’d done, wanting to tell you…”
“I dreamed he kissed me,” he said, softly.
“That wasn’t a dream, Jack.”
“No kidding?”
She nodded. “All that time travelling together, him and me, and we never went all the way until now. Because he wouldn’t let himself. He always believed it was going to end.”
“Must have been tough for you.”
“Yeah,” she laughed. “Now if you’d been on board, Jack…”
Jack rolled over onto his back. “I’ll always be there for him,” he promised. “Even when you can’t be.”
“Let’s not think about that now.” With a happy sigh, she rested her cheek on his chest. He knew her so well, she thought - without any resentment or jealousy, he’d accepted that the Doctor’s happiness mattered more to her than her own.
“We’ll make him as happy as it’s possible for him to be,” she agreed. “But it’s not just about him. It’s about you, too. Welcome back.”
For a moment, she thought he’d cry. It was humbling to have that much effect on the happiness of someone else. She thought of his body, his lungs and his heart, all the human qualities there that she’d so casually, childishly endowed with the inability to stay dead.
“I need you too, Jack,” she said. “I’m in over my head and I need you to keep me straight, to tell me what I need to hear when I’m dazzled by him.”
“Consider it done, Rose. I’ll need to go back for a while, square things up with my team, but after that I’m reporting for duty.”
“We’ll help,” she said. “There’s been a war, there’s thousands of people dead. I want to know what happened to my family. Go back to the Estate. Tidy things up. My mum..." Her voice trailed away.
He sighed and hugged her. “I know what it’s like to lose family, Rose. And he knows what it’s like to lose a world. But the time comes when you just have to stop running.”
He could have meant the Doctor, or himself, or both. Now they all had a past, a life once lived, lurking in the things unsaid. She hoped that, one day, Jack would feel secure enough to tell his story.
Not tonight, though. Not yet.
“Let’s get some sleep,” she said.