Change by becky_h, commentary by unfeathered
Title: Change
Author: becky_h
Fandom: Doctor Who
Commentator: unfeathered
Title: Change
Author: becky_h
Beta: matsujo9
Pairing: Ten/Jack, references to past Nine/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: About 5,000
Spoilers: Parting of Ways and End of Days
Warnings: D/s and S/M
Summary: Change is painful. Jack minds less than he expected. Set after End of Days.
Author's Notes: This fic will become AU on June 16th.
Becky offered up all her fics for the DVD Commentary Challenge and since I adore her writing I knew I wanted to do a commentary on at least one of her stories. I’m not sure why, but this is the one that came into my mind, and once I’d re-read it I was certain I had a lot to say about it. It’s interesting for me in that it’s the last fic Becky wrote before she started asking me to beta, presumably having tired of me pointing out her typos in public and preferring me to do it in private! *grin*
What is absolutely amazing about it is this is a Doctor/Jack reunion fic which was written shortly before Utopia aired. And yet, it feels like canon. If it weren’t for the fact that canon left us with no opportunity for Jack and the Doctor to have a quiet ‘how things have changed’ talk (and sex, of course!) until after the Year of Hell, this would not be AU at all. Because, with the exception of the Doctor’s “You’re wrong, Jack” argument which she couldn’t have foreseen, Becky has completely captured the dynamic between the two men that we saw on-screen in Utopia and, afterwards, at the end of The Last of the Time Lords.
With a bit of added kink, of course! *grin*
P.S. I’ve tried to make this an intelligent, enlightening commentary, but I’m afraid it’s turned into something of a Marti Noxon commentary - there seems to be a lot more squee than thought-provoking observations. Still, I guess Becky will enjoy it!
When Martha excuses herself to sleep, Jack follows. He can feel the Doctor's eyes on his back as he leaves the room and figures the Doctor thinks he's going to crawl into Martha's bed. It's the furthest thing from Jack's mind. He's not in any shape - physically or emotionally - to do any such thing but he turns to give the Doctor a cheeky grin, a wink and something to think about anyway.
(This is an interesting opener. The Jack the Doctor knew before was a complete tart. The Jack we know now, from Torchwood, is perhaps not such a complete tart - he’s a little bit more careful, and a lot less carefree. But he presumably feels he has to behave how the Doctor would expect him to behave.
Or is he just putting up a defence in case the Doctor isn’t interested any more? Trying not to seem too needy, as if he hasn’t just spent the last 140 years waiting for this moment?)
It's been more than a century since Jack was last on the TARDIS but she's still familiar to him. He lets dusty memory and instinct guide him and he finds his way to his room without getting lost in the infinite space or having to backtrack through the twisting halls. When he's standing outside the familiar door, Jack doesn't hesitate. He doesn't think. He just reaches out and opens the door.
Stepping over the threshold is like traveling back in time. Nothing in the room has changed one iota since the last time Jack saw it. It hits him like a physical blow, knocks the breath out of him and rocks him back on his heels. For a long time all he can do is stand just inside the doorway and try to make his lungs work.
(This paragraph, and the few that follow, contain elements of a ficlet Becky wrote a few months previously to this story, Time Capsules. It’s fun spotting the references: the lamp still on and Jack not being able to breathe; the jeans still over the back of the chair; the unmade bed and the smell of the Ninth Doctor. I personally love Time Capsules and I think it still stands in its own right. And I love the whole idea that nothing whatsoever has changed in Jack’s room, that’s it’s this remnant of who he was 140 years ago.)
He steps into the room hesitantly and slowly walks to his desk as if he was moving through the weight of the years. He stops just in front of it and watches himself turn off the lamp as if it was just this morning that he had rushed out and left it on instead of more than a century ago. The click of the switch seems unnaturally loud and, even after the light is gone, Jack has blue-green after-images burned onto his retinas. He hadn't realized he'd been staring at it that hard - or long.
He rubs his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, waiting for the ache to go away, but it doesn't. Eventually he gives up and lets his hand fall away. He shrugs out of his coat, the move honed by years of practice to one of economic grace. (This is a lovely description, and very Jack. ‘Economic grace’ describes the way he moves very well.) He drapes it over the back of the desk chair, covering a pair of jeans that he doesn't look at. He pushes his braces off and takes off his outer shirt too, folding it neatly to keep it from getting wrinkled before the ship decides that it’s morning.
Jack moves to sit on the edge of his bed and as he leans down to unlace his boots he notices, abstractly, that it's unmade. He pulls the boots off, lines them up neatly beside the bed but he doesn't sit all the way up. He braces his elbows on his thighs and presses the heels of his hands against his burning eyes and stops. He just stops there, breathes, and tries not to smell leather and sex.
(I like the way Becky portrays Jack’s tiredness in this sequence. The slow, almost hesitant start reminds the reader that, after all, Jack has just woken from the longest death we’ve seen so far - and things haven’t exactly been peaceful at Torchwood for a while.)
He doesn't know how long he’s been sitting there before he feels someone watching him and looks up to find the Doctor. There's a sense of inevitability about seeing the Doctor there, standing with his hands in his pockets and his feet shoulder width apart. After all the years he's waited, Jack thinks he should be better prepared for being alone with the Doctor, but he's not.
(I love this description of the Doctor. It just shouts ‘Tenth Doctor’ to me. I can see David Tennant standing there, in his pinstripe suit, with that intense Look of his.)
He still doesn't sit all the way up. The only concession Jack makes to not being alone in the room is to fold his hands together and rest his chin on top of them rather than hiding behind them. When he smiles it's faint and fast, little more than a quirk and twist of his lips.
The Doctor apparently takes that as some sort of cue because he looks away from Jack and around the room instead, even studying at the ceiling. (This feels very Doctorish too.) "I haven't been in here in years," he says conversationally. (I’m a bit confused by ‘years’ here. Assuming the seasons of Doctor Who take place in ‘real time’ from the Doctor’s perspective, then it’s been under two years. To me, ‘years’ suggests longer than that.) When he sees the shirt and coat he walks over to them and lifts one side of the clothes, a layer at a time until he reaches the jeans at the bottom. "Finally learned to clear up after yourself, did you?"
Jack wonders if the Doctor could have remembered that those jeans had been there and was looking to see if they'd been moved. He wonders, too, if the Doctor remembers the torn belt loop or how the jeans ended up over that chair and torn, in the first place. (I love this description. So much said without having to spell it out. It gives an indication of what is to come - that Jack and the Doctor always have played rough.) Jack answers the question with another faint smile that lasts a bit longer, but still isn't real. "I've had a lot of time to work on it." Probably not, Jack decides. It's been years.
"Yes," the Doctor says. He draws the word out as he puts one hand down on Jack's shirt and strokes the fabric, contemplatively. "You have, haven't you?"
(This is the Doctor trying to work out what to say, or at least, how to say it.)
Jack watches the Doctor's fingers instead of looking directly at the Doctor - the hand's familiar, even if the man it's attached to isn't (Fantastic reference to Jack’s hand-in-a-jar, and I love the idea that Jack would prefer to look at the hand he knows than the face he doesn’t.) - and snorts softly in response to the Doctor's question, because it isn't one.
The Doctor stands there and pets Jack's coat until the silence is uncomfortable. Presumably it's uncomfortable for the Doctor as well as Jack, since the Doctor breaks it. "Not the same coat."
(And here we come to it: the Doctor’s lesson. Bear with the story, because it does make sense in the end.)
Jack looks the Doctor in the face, his eyebrow raising, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur. "So?" He shakes his head slightly, not understanding.
"It's not the same coat," the Doctor repeats as if the addition of one word will make the statement clearer.
"I wasn't wearing a coat on the Game Station." He stops himself from saying things about death, life and the nature of the universe. He stops himself from punching the Doctor. He does not stop himself from adding: "And I heard you the first time," peevishly.
(I love this. Jack’s only human, after all.
And this is the only reference we get to the Doctor having left Jack on the Game Station. This story doesn’t attempt to explain that. That’s not what it’s about.)
The Doctor either doesn't notice or doesn't care about Jack's tone of voice. He “ahhs” softly and heads toward the closet. "So, the other one's still in here?"
"I don't know.” Jack (mostly) stops being annoyed and frowns with confusion, instead. "If no one's been in here since I left, it should be."
The Doctor opens the closet's double doors and rifles through shirts, T-shirts, pants, vests. He pauses when he comes to something garishly pink and green -- Jack remembers Rose picking that out in Cardiff (I love this: both Rose having chosen Jack a shirt, and the Doctor pausing when he sees it) -- but he goes on quickly until he finds the great coat. He wrestles it off the hanger with a triumphant sound, brings it back to Jack and extends it toward him.
"What?" Jack drops his hands and sits up straight, but he doesn't make any move to take the coat. He doesn't want to take the coat; he doesn't know why. (And Jack’s getting the message, that there’s more going on here than the obvious. He knows there’s a lesson coming; he probably has an inkling what it is; and he’s more comfortable not knowing.)
"Go on. Put it on!" The Doctor emphasizes his exaggerated encouragement by pushing the coat closer to Jack. (Very Doctorish.)
Jack leans back, away from the gray wool that still smells like the cologne he used to wear, something more astringent than anything he's worn for the past several decades. (Yep, Jack’s changed.) He shakes his head again.
The Doctor lowers the coat so he's not quite so far in Jack's personal space. His tone changes, too. He becomes quieter, more serious. "Try it on, Jack. For me."
Jack thinks the Doctor's gone crazy but he takes the coat. He stands to put it on - and that puts the Doctor back in his personal space - but the Doctor doesn't shift and Jack won't ask him to. (Which feels like something left over from Jack’s relationship with the Ninth Doctor.) Jack's not sure he wants him to.
Jack barely manages to get the coat on without elbowing the Doctor or falling over. Once it's on, Jack finds it's not as comfortable as he remembers. It's tight across the shoulders and too short in the wrists. (He’s filled out, in more ways than one.) The collar's too bulky and the whole thing-
"Doesn't quite fit anymore, does it?" The Doctor's voice is almost - almost - casual, but there's a spark of something more than humor in his eyes.
Jack stands there, one hand on the cuff of his - no, not his, anymore - coat and looks into the Doctor's eyes. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's searching. Eventually he gives up and looks at the Doctor - all of him at once - for the first time since he's been back on board. (And Jack finally accepts that this is not his Doctor, not the Doctor he knew. The Doctor’s changed too.) "No," he agrees with a bit of a grin. "No, it's a little tight."
"That's the thing about outsides." The Doctor’s tone is still light but his eyes stay locked on Jack's and serious. "They don't get bigger."
Jack stays silent for a moment before he answers. "Even when the insides grow?" He's out of his depth and floundering.
"Bigger on the inside," the Doctor says simply. (Very, very cool.)
Jack shakes his head again. "I don't-"
The Doctor cuts him off. "Did you go daft or something? Brain atrophy to go with the bondage gear and cleaning kink?" He grumbles under his breath. "Take the coat off."
"I just put it on!" Jack protests half-heartedly, and starts to get out of the coat.
"Stop missing the point," the Doctor tells him.
The Doctor leans forward to 'help' once Jack's got his arms out of the sleeves, but the Doctor's idea of helping is yanking the coat out from behind Jack. It topples Jack off balance and since the Doctor's already leaning against Jack, when Jack falls he falls, too. (This is funny and awkward and I can just see it happening!)
Jack lands mostly on the bed, the Doctor lands mostly on Jack and the coat lands mostly on the floor. The Doctor looks so supremely indignant that Jack has to stifle the urge to laugh at him. "All right," he says as soon as he's sure he can keep his voice even. "I think I get it. Change is painful."
The Doctor smacks Jack awkwardly in the shoulder. "Admit it. You got it all along."
Jack pushes himself further onto the bed so they're not in danger of falling off and puts an arm around the Doctor's waist to keep from dumping him. The other man feels thin and light. (Different Doctor to the one he’s used to. ‘Thin and light’ is exactly how I would imagine him feeling too.) "I'm just a stupid ape, remember?” He shakes his head and smiles. “Atrophied brains?"
"Oh, stop being a ninny," the Doctor grouses. "And help me get my coat off."
"Doesn't it fit?" Jack's joking, he's playing and almost laughing but he's not willing to stop being careful. Not entirely and not yet. Things are different and the Doctor's point - the one he finally got - hasn't gone away. This is painful, even through the play. Probably, it occurs to Jack, for both of them. (Which has come out very nicely in the writing.)
"It fits me just fine when I'm standing up," the Doctor says irritably. "Lying down it's a bit of a tangle."
Jack runs his hands along the inside of the coat and pulls it back away from the Doctor. "Up," he says once he's sure the Doctor won’t end up kneeling on the fabric. "Nice coat, by the way."
The Doctor huffs as he follows Jack's direction. "You can't have it."
"Did I say I wanted it?" Jack holds onto the cuff while the Doctor pulls his arm out of the sleeve and then pulls the coat around the Doctor and off the other arm.
"No, but you had that look in your eye.”
"What look? There was no look," Jack protests. One of the coat sleeves is inside out but Jack decides it isn't worth fixing and tosses it gently on top of the great coat.
(I love the detail in the description of Jack removing the Doctor’s coat, and how gently and carefully he does it.)
"There was a look." The Doctor sounds like he's arguing for the sake of arguing. He settles on top of Jack, shifts and wiggles and Jack hears a soft thud when his sneakers hit the floor.
(And now Jack’s realised the Doctor’s feeling awkward too, the tone lightens and the banter feels more natural.)
Jack tugs the back of the Doctor's shirt out of his pants. He's not being overtly sexual about it, no more than usual anyway; he's just seeking skin. He’s content to brush his fingers across the small of the Doctor's back, right over his spine. "Maybe there was a look," he admits softly.
"Aha. I knew it!" The Doctor rests his head on Jack's shoulder and touches his tongue to Jack's throat at the pulse point.
It feels light, wet - almost cold - against Jack’s skin and it makes him jump with a startled sound. There go his best efforts at not thinking about sex. His fingers flex and press lightly against the Doctor’s spine; his cock starts to harden against the Doctor's stomach. "Know it all," he accuses, his voice gone a bit rough.
(Phew! It’s suddenly got hot in here!)
The Doctor pulls up to look at Jack. There’s humor in his eyes and a smile playing at the edges of his mouth but under it there's something watchful and serious that scares Jack. (Oh yes. That’s the Tenth Doctor. He often does that serious, scary look.) "You know what else I know?" the Doctor asks.
"Everything? Isn't that the point of being a know it all?" Jack retorts as he drags his nails along the Doctor’s sides. He doesn’t make any assumptions because he isn’t sure he knows where this is going, just that it feels like something that has to happen. Jack doesn't know how he feels about that.
The Doctor snorts at him and rolls to one side so he can reach Jack's belt. He unfastens it with one deft pull. "I know you're wearing too many clothes, that I have a fantastic mouth and that you're getting stodgy in your old age."
Jack props himself up on one elbow, looks down at the Doctor and objects: "I am not getting stodgy!" He thinks about adding that he's not that old either but realizes it would be a lie and doesn't bother.
"You're right," the Doctor tells Jack. "You're already there." He opens Jack’s pants, slips his hand inside, curls his fingers around Jack's erection and squeezes. It's perfunctory and would be businesslike, except he never takes his eyes off Jack’s face. (Phew! Very hot!)
Jack forgets the argument and, for a moment, forgets to breathe. The hand around his cock feels shockingly cold and he doesn't think the Doctor - the other Doctor, no the Doctor before - was ever quite that cold. Of course, Jack didn't have his own internal furnace then, either. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
The Doctor strokes down, pulls Jack's foreskin back and drags his thumb right across the head. The sensation is so intense it's almost unpleasant. (Here’s our first real warning that this sex isn’t going to be all sweetness and light.) "I'm sure it's an absolutely wretched idea," the Doctor says matter of factly. "Aren't you?" He is still watching Jack oh-so-closely.
"Yes!" Jack tells him, because he does. It's a really bad idea but he's hard and he's fighting to keep his hips on the bed. "Absolutely. Bad idea. Really stupid. Bound to complicate things."
"Want me to stop?" the Doctor asks Jack. He sounds every bit as smug and self-satisfied as he looks.
When he moves his hand over Jack again, all cool, smooth skin and graceful motion with a faint twist of his wrist at the top of his stroke, Jack closes his eyes and groans. "No."
"Are you sure?" the Doctor asks. Jack can't see the smirk but he can hear it and feel it against the side of his throat for just a second before it's replaced by the tip of the Doctor's tongue, tracing a flickering figure eight and making Jack's pulse jump.
Jack’s reply - and what’s left of his sense - disappears when the Doctor scrapes his teeth along the skin that he's been tasting and presses his thumbnail just behind the head of Jack's cock. Jack's spine arches at the hint of sharpness and he gasps, loudly.
"Ja-ack," the Doctor sing-songs. "Are you sure?" The Doctor punctuates the words by squeezing Jack's cock again, and he's not gentle about it.
(And this is where it gets really spooky. Because this was written before Utopia aired and yet… the Doctor sing-songing “Ja-ack”? It’s exactly like that bit in the radiation room in Utopia. And the Doctor wasn’t being gentle there either. Becky, how did you get this so absolutely, perfectly right?)
"Yes! Yes, I'm sure! Really, really sure!" He's not sure, he's aroused. There's a difference and Jack is certainly old enough to know it - he just doesn't want to. (Well, this is Jack we’re talking about. *grin*)
Before he’s done speaking, the Doctor is in motion. He slides down Jack's body and yanks Jack's pants off so fast Jack barely has time to register that the Doctor's moving, much less lift his hips to make it easier.
Jack grimaces and notes, absently, in the tiny part of his brain that's not fogged by arousal or stunned into silence by the Doctor's speed, that flannel burns on his ass are going to be difficult to explain. (To whom? Martha??? Who else is he planning on showing his ass to? *grin*) He pushes up on his elbows to watch the Doctor, opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it again when he realizes he doesn't know what to say.
The Doctor tosses Jack's pants aside, kneels with far, far too much casual arrogance for the act to ever look submissive and pushes his hand against the inside of Jack's knee. His nails dig into Jack's skin and combined with the outward pressure Jack doesn't have any choice but to move it outward. Not that he's resisting. At all.
(I have to say that I agree with Becky here: I find it very hard to imagine the Doctor in a submissive role. Equal, maybe, but even that would be difficult in a relationship with a human. But he and Jack fall so smoothly into their respective dominant and submissive roles when they’re together.)
Jack falls back against the bed and closes his eyes when the Doctor's tongue touches him. He focuses on what he feels - Licking rather than sucking, light, gliding and perfect- rather than letting himself think.
That tactic works just fine until the Doctor drags his teeth over the head of his cock. Jack's eyes snap open, then, his breath hisses abruptly through his clenched teeth and he looks along the length of his body to the Doctor. (I’m sure this is a refer-back to another of Becky’s previous ficlets, First Night, where Becky first described Jack looking “along the length of his body” and we had a little conversation afterwards about how hot we both found that idea and how much we’d like to look along his body ourselves!) "That hurt," Jack informs the Doctor, unnecessarily, because he has to say something.
"And you didn't really mind, did you?" The question must be rhetorical because he doesn't give Jack time to answer. "Pay attention," he demands.
Jack doesn't say anything. He can't deny that he didn't really mind and can't bring himself to call the (this) Doctor 'sir', (Not exactly a surprise, but confirm that he did call the last Doctor ‘sir’.) but he stays propped up on his elbows and keeps his eyes open. It must be good enough because the Doctor takes him completely in his mouth and sucks.
The Doctor was right, his mouth is amazing. All sorts of amazing. Slick. Cool. The perfect amount of suction. And his tongue, his tongue is abso-fucking-lutely everywhere. (After all, the Doctor does use his mouth a lot - for talking, making faces… it follows that he’d be good at this too.) Jack groans, and keeping his eyes open is effort. He slides his fingers into the Doctor's hair because it's reflex (So he’s not always submissive, then, not with everyone.) and because he needs something to hold on to.
As soon as his hand touches the back of the Doctor's head, the Doctor meets Jack's eyes with a dark look and soft warning growl. The meaning behind both is unmistakable and even though Jack's hand never closed in the Doctor's hair he moves it away and grips the sheet instead. The moment shakes Jack, but he can't think about it while the Doctor's doing that with his tongue.
(I love this description of the dynamic between Jack and the Doctor, carried over from his relationship with the previous Doctor. The Doctor is so scary here - and very believable.)
After that the Doctor keeps his eyes on Jack. The whole thing is just this side of cruel. The suction is tight enough to ache, the Doctor's nails have dug into the soft insides of Jack's thighs, holding them open, and every time Jack starts to look away or close his eyes there's a scrape of teeth that makes Jack cringe and push his hips forward at the same time.
When the Doctor pulls away completely Jack's breathing in ragged gasps, his skin's flushed and sweat slick and his eyes are unfocused. Jack makes a low, protesting sound but he doesn't - can't- really focus until the Doctor snarls at him. "Where," he asks Jack for what isn't the first time if his impatient tone is anything to judge by. "Did you hide the lube?"
"I don't know." Jack tries to pull himself back together to answer, but the answer itself sends him reeling again. "Wherever you left it." Jack really doesn't want to think about the last time, years (and years and years) ago, before death and life and time, but he can't entirely help it, and his throat and voice are both tight. (A bit mean of the Doctor, I feel, to expect Jack to remember. It was only a couple of years ago for him, so he’s got a much better chance of remembering!)
The Doctor bites him. For his answer, for the tone of his voice, for what he's thinking. For both or neither. Jack doesn't know and doubts it matters. There's barely a moment of breath and brush of lips as warning before the Doctor clamps his teeth into the unprotected skin of Jack's thigh.
Jack cries out and collapses back against the bed, eyes watering from the unexpected pain. When the Doctor moves away to rifle through the nightstand, Jack brushes his fingers against the throbbing mark and isn't surprised to find it sticky with blood as well as spit. He leaves his hand there, pressed hard against his thigh, until the Doctor finds what he is looking for and comes back.
(I have to say my reaction to the Doctor’s roughness and cruelty here, and throughout this story, surprised me. Pain really isn’t one of my kinks, and I really don’t like blood - and yet, here, I don’t mind either. Jack’s obviously used to it from the Doctor, and just as obviously enjoys it.)
The Doctor, still dressed, crawls over him and hovers with his face just inches from Jack's. He reaches down and curls thin, strong fingers around Jack's wrist, pulls Jack’s hand away from the wound and presses it against the bed by Jack's head. Jack curls his fingers into a loose fist and lets out an unsteady breath, but doesn’t try to move his hand.
The Doctor nods and there's the slightest bit of approval in his expression before his mouth covers Jack's. For a second it's just a kiss, gentle and affectionate. Then he bites again, not hard enough to break skin this time, but hard enough to sting. Hard enough to make Jack flinch, hard enough to make him gasp, hard enough to send Jack arching up into him. (This is a gorgeous sequence. I love repetition with increasing results.)
The Doctor slides his tongue over the bitten place almost apologetically. He pauses, with the tip of his tongue resting against Jack's lip, and Jack uses the moment to try to catch his breath, orient himself inside the dizzying throb of arousal and the feel of his heartbeat echoing in bruises and bite marks.
Jack can feel the Doctor doing something off to one side but he's given up on keeping his eyes open and the Doctor's letting him keep them closed - for the moment, at least. Maybe the Doctor knows he needs time, maybe the Doctor's just busy. It doesn't matter; when the Doctor shifts and presses two slick fingers into him, Jack knows what he was busy doing.
He barely has time to grimace at the cold and abruptness before those fingers push deeper, crook a bit and press into his prostate, far too directly to be comfortable. Jack makes a sharp, startled sound and opens his eyes again. The Doctor is watching him with a faint smile that Jack doesn't try to understand. Instead, he pulls his knee up and presses into the hand, making his own silent demand.
Jack's almost, but not entirely or even really, surprised when the Doctor complies by pulling his fingers out, adding a third and pushing back into Jack hard enough to make him ache. (Owww, I can just feel this!) He never looks away from Jack but there’s something oddly grim in his expression.
Jack watches the Doctor watch him, unashamed and uninhibited in his responses. (Yep, that’s our Jack!) He pushes his hips back, every time, and his moans are punctuated by the occasional soft, wordless, cry of something that's neither entirely pleasure nor pain. Sensation carries him to a place where there's just warmth, the rhythm of movement, the beat of his heart and the look on the Doctor's face.
He is so focused on the Doctor's eyes that he sees the flicker of intent before the Doctor pulls his hand back. By the time the Doctor places a hand on his hip to urge him over, Jack has already started to flip onto his stomach. He rests his forehead on his folded arms and pulls a knee up toward his chest. Over the sound of his own labored breathing in the confined space of his arms, he catches, just barely, the rustle and shift of fabric and even more faintly the metallic rasp of a zipper being lowered.
He's not surprised when the Doctor drapes over his back. The slick thin fabric of the Doctor's suit and the Doctor's breath are both cool against Jack's heated skin, and it really does feel amazing. He's not surprised by the nudge of the Doctor's cock against his ass, either. He pulls his knee up further, opens himself up just a bit more and with a slow arch and flex of muscle, pushes back into it.
(I feel ‘it really does feel amazing’ is a slight weak phrase, but these two paragraphs do a great job of showing just how well Becky’s Jack and Doctor know each other, how well they work together, and yet make you notice Jack noticing the difference too.)
The Doctor puts a hand on Jack's hip -- nails biting into skin again -- and pulls Jack back as he presses forward. It's not slow, it’s not rushed; it's smooth and steady. But the Doctor doesn't pause after that first thrust and there's no period of adjustment. His next thrust is still steady but it's also brutal, forceful nearly to the point of violence.
Jack grunts, breath driven out of him by the sheer force, and braces himself with a hand against the wall. He quickly discovers that he has to breathe with the Doctor's rhythm. The pace nearly makes him hyperventilate and that makes him dizzy; it's just another sensation that pushes him outside himself into a place where he's helpless to do anything but take it, do anything but feel it.
And so it goes. Jack slowly slips further and further away from himself, into a place where there's just being fucked and letting another’s actions determine when he can breathe.
(Now we not only have violence but a hint of breath control. The level to which Jack is willing to give up control to this man he knows very well but who is different and who he hasn’t seen in 140 years says a lot about how he feels about the Doctor!)
Suddenly, the Doctor leans forward and sinks his teeth into Jack's shoulder. At that point, Jack is a simple creature of instinct, capable of little more than reaction. He shoves himself into the Doctor's hand, (I’m not sure when the Doctor’s hand went back round Jack’s cock) pushes back onto his cock and growls loudly while his fingers scratch against the wall and curl tighter into the sheets.
The Doctor bites down harder, tongue sliding over the skin he's holding in his teeth, and drags his nails along Jack's cock. Jack’s response is every bit as violent as the way he's being fucked. He tightens around the Doctor, arches his back sharply upward and comes over the Doctor's hand, so hard he stops breathing and his vision goes black around the edges.
Jack doesn't get a chance to catch his breath and, no matter how much he wants to collapse, he has to hold himself up because the Doctor still has Jack’s skin caught between his teeth. (Ow. That’s cruel! And sexy.) The Doctor moves his hand from Jack's cock to his hip to hold onto him and keeps moving. Jack manages to hold on and hold himself up until he feels the stinging warmth of the Doctor coming inside him.
Jack lets himself collapse and straightens his legs after the Doctor pulls out and shifts so that he's only half on top of Jack with one arm draped across his shoulders and an ankle wedged between Jack's.
Jack is breathing hard and aching in a dozen different places, not all of them physical. (Lovely line.) He turns his head toward the Doctor, but his eyes are closed until the Doctor presses his thumb against the raw, bite mark on Jack's shoulder. He looks at the Doctor then, but warily.
"Feeling better?" the Doctor asks him. He looks rumpled, Jack notices, but he looks less like he's been ravished and more like he's in need of a good dry cleaner. More cautious than sated. (So it was more one-sided than it seemed, then? The Doctor was doing most of that for Jack, rather than himself. Or is this just spelling out that the Doctor was as unsure of himself as Jack was?)
Knowing how he must look - bruised, bitten, sticky with drying blood, spit, and come - Jack can't decide if he's amused, offended, or if he should try for embarrassed. Picking one proves to be more effort than he expected, so he settles for just answering the question. "Yeah."
"Good," the Doctor says, smiling slightly.
Smile or not, there's something sad in his eyes that makes Jack reach out for him, stroke a hand over the side of his face and into his hair, and, even though his hand is shaking from exhaustion, he's careful to be gentle. "Doesn't quite fit right anymore, does it?" It seems like the thing to ask. Maybe not the right thing, and Jack's not sure he wants to hear the answer, but the only thing all the same. (I love the way Becky brings it back to this. It’s neat, and satisfying.)
"Mm." The Doctor's smile flickers a little brighter, but it doesn’t dispel the sadness. "Not quite, I'm afraid."
Jack is surprised by his lack of surprise, but maybe he shouldn't be. Maybe he's just been waiting to hear the words spoken, and maybe waiting for them was worse than hearing them. (Oh yes. The waiting is always worse.) "I'm sorry."
"For what?" The Doctor doesn't laugh but there's a spark of humor in the warm brown of his eyes now. "Changing? For me changing? Happens all the time, Jack. To me more than most."
"A little more literally than most, too," Jack says with a ghost of a grin. "What now?" And how is that question the hardest one Jack has ever had to ask? It's just two words, and they're not even very complicated.
The Doctor takes a deep breath and stretches. "Now," he tells Jack. "We have a nap. After that - we get you a new room."
(So there is hope for them. The Doctor wants to make this work with Jack.)
Jack searches the Doctor's face for a bit before he's satisfied enough to let lethargy creep over him, make his limbs heavy and his eyelids droop. "One that fits?" he asks, his voice starting to soften and slur.
The Doctor stays silent until Jack has given up on an answer, closed his eyes and fallen most of the way into sleep. By the time Jack feels a hand in his hair, stroking with unimaginable tenderness, (I love this phrase, ‘unimaginable tenderness’, and its contrast to the roughness with which the Doctor has been treating Jack. It’s almost heartbreaking.) he is too far into sleep to react with more than a sleepy murmur.
He’s not quite sure if he really hears or only imagines the Doctor's last, soft words: "You've outgrown more than your room, lad." It doesn't sound like this new man Jack barely knows. It sounds, it feels, like the whisper of an echo of a ghost from the past, and it follows him to sleep. (And a neat little refer-back to the Ninth Doctor to round it all out and give a satisfying ending.)
I have to say that, having looked at this story in depth, I love it even more than I did to begin with. I think Becky is an amazing writer with a wonderful knack of capturing the characters we see on screen and making them feel real in her writing. And of bringing more out of them than we see on the screen.
One final observation…
An interesting thought occurred to me while I was reading this. I found that even though it’s from Jack’s POV, in my head I was watching most of the action from over the Doctor’s shoulder. I started off looking out of Jack’s eyes - maybe because the writing was about him looking round at this room - but at the point where he went to sit on the bed I was left over by the desk, looking down on him. So that when the Doctor came in I more or less just stayed behind him and watched from over his shoulder.
I’ve noticed myself doing this before, even when I’m the one doing the writing - I think it’s that I tend to ‘watch’ from near the person who’s doing things. Which makes sense, but it does sound weird that you can write, or read, something from the POV of someone whilst seeing it from a completely different angle!
Author: becky_h
Fandom: Doctor Who
Commentator: unfeathered
Title: Change
Author: becky_h
Beta: matsujo9
Pairing: Ten/Jack, references to past Nine/Jack
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: About 5,000
Spoilers: Parting of Ways and End of Days
Warnings: D/s and S/M
Summary: Change is painful. Jack minds less than he expected. Set after End of Days.
Author's Notes: This fic will become AU on June 16th.
Becky offered up all her fics for the DVD Commentary Challenge and since I adore her writing I knew I wanted to do a commentary on at least one of her stories. I’m not sure why, but this is the one that came into my mind, and once I’d re-read it I was certain I had a lot to say about it. It’s interesting for me in that it’s the last fic Becky wrote before she started asking me to beta, presumably having tired of me pointing out her typos in public and preferring me to do it in private! *grin*
What is absolutely amazing about it is this is a Doctor/Jack reunion fic which was written shortly before Utopia aired. And yet, it feels like canon. If it weren’t for the fact that canon left us with no opportunity for Jack and the Doctor to have a quiet ‘how things have changed’ talk (and sex, of course!) until after the Year of Hell, this would not be AU at all. Because, with the exception of the Doctor’s “You’re wrong, Jack” argument which she couldn’t have foreseen, Becky has completely captured the dynamic between the two men that we saw on-screen in Utopia and, afterwards, at the end of The Last of the Time Lords.
With a bit of added kink, of course! *grin*
P.S. I’ve tried to make this an intelligent, enlightening commentary, but I’m afraid it’s turned into something of a Marti Noxon commentary - there seems to be a lot more squee than thought-provoking observations. Still, I guess Becky will enjoy it!
When Martha excuses herself to sleep, Jack follows. He can feel the Doctor's eyes on his back as he leaves the room and figures the Doctor thinks he's going to crawl into Martha's bed. It's the furthest thing from Jack's mind. He's not in any shape - physically or emotionally - to do any such thing but he turns to give the Doctor a cheeky grin, a wink and something to think about anyway.
(This is an interesting opener. The Jack the Doctor knew before was a complete tart. The Jack we know now, from Torchwood, is perhaps not such a complete tart - he’s a little bit more careful, and a lot less carefree. But he presumably feels he has to behave how the Doctor would expect him to behave.
Or is he just putting up a defence in case the Doctor isn’t interested any more? Trying not to seem too needy, as if he hasn’t just spent the last 140 years waiting for this moment?)
It's been more than a century since Jack was last on the TARDIS but she's still familiar to him. He lets dusty memory and instinct guide him and he finds his way to his room without getting lost in the infinite space or having to backtrack through the twisting halls. When he's standing outside the familiar door, Jack doesn't hesitate. He doesn't think. He just reaches out and opens the door.
Stepping over the threshold is like traveling back in time. Nothing in the room has changed one iota since the last time Jack saw it. It hits him like a physical blow, knocks the breath out of him and rocks him back on his heels. For a long time all he can do is stand just inside the doorway and try to make his lungs work.
(This paragraph, and the few that follow, contain elements of a ficlet Becky wrote a few months previously to this story, Time Capsules. It’s fun spotting the references: the lamp still on and Jack not being able to breathe; the jeans still over the back of the chair; the unmade bed and the smell of the Ninth Doctor. I personally love Time Capsules and I think it still stands in its own right. And I love the whole idea that nothing whatsoever has changed in Jack’s room, that’s it’s this remnant of who he was 140 years ago.)
He steps into the room hesitantly and slowly walks to his desk as if he was moving through the weight of the years. He stops just in front of it and watches himself turn off the lamp as if it was just this morning that he had rushed out and left it on instead of more than a century ago. The click of the switch seems unnaturally loud and, even after the light is gone, Jack has blue-green after-images burned onto his retinas. He hadn't realized he'd been staring at it that hard - or long.
He rubs his eyes with his forefinger and thumb, waiting for the ache to go away, but it doesn't. Eventually he gives up and lets his hand fall away. He shrugs out of his coat, the move honed by years of practice to one of economic grace. (This is a lovely description, and very Jack. ‘Economic grace’ describes the way he moves very well.) He drapes it over the back of the desk chair, covering a pair of jeans that he doesn't look at. He pushes his braces off and takes off his outer shirt too, folding it neatly to keep it from getting wrinkled before the ship decides that it’s morning.
Jack moves to sit on the edge of his bed and as he leans down to unlace his boots he notices, abstractly, that it's unmade. He pulls the boots off, lines them up neatly beside the bed but he doesn't sit all the way up. He braces his elbows on his thighs and presses the heels of his hands against his burning eyes and stops. He just stops there, breathes, and tries not to smell leather and sex.
(I like the way Becky portrays Jack’s tiredness in this sequence. The slow, almost hesitant start reminds the reader that, after all, Jack has just woken from the longest death we’ve seen so far - and things haven’t exactly been peaceful at Torchwood for a while.)
He doesn't know how long he’s been sitting there before he feels someone watching him and looks up to find the Doctor. There's a sense of inevitability about seeing the Doctor there, standing with his hands in his pockets and his feet shoulder width apart. After all the years he's waited, Jack thinks he should be better prepared for being alone with the Doctor, but he's not.
(I love this description of the Doctor. It just shouts ‘Tenth Doctor’ to me. I can see David Tennant standing there, in his pinstripe suit, with that intense Look of his.)
He still doesn't sit all the way up. The only concession Jack makes to not being alone in the room is to fold his hands together and rest his chin on top of them rather than hiding behind them. When he smiles it's faint and fast, little more than a quirk and twist of his lips.
The Doctor apparently takes that as some sort of cue because he looks away from Jack and around the room instead, even studying at the ceiling. (This feels very Doctorish too.) "I haven't been in here in years," he says conversationally. (I’m a bit confused by ‘years’ here. Assuming the seasons of Doctor Who take place in ‘real time’ from the Doctor’s perspective, then it’s been under two years. To me, ‘years’ suggests longer than that.) When he sees the shirt and coat he walks over to them and lifts one side of the clothes, a layer at a time until he reaches the jeans at the bottom. "Finally learned to clear up after yourself, did you?"
Jack wonders if the Doctor could have remembered that those jeans had been there and was looking to see if they'd been moved. He wonders, too, if the Doctor remembers the torn belt loop or how the jeans ended up over that chair and torn, in the first place. (I love this description. So much said without having to spell it out. It gives an indication of what is to come - that Jack and the Doctor always have played rough.) Jack answers the question with another faint smile that lasts a bit longer, but still isn't real. "I've had a lot of time to work on it." Probably not, Jack decides. It's been years.
"Yes," the Doctor says. He draws the word out as he puts one hand down on Jack's shirt and strokes the fabric, contemplatively. "You have, haven't you?"
(This is the Doctor trying to work out what to say, or at least, how to say it.)
Jack watches the Doctor's fingers instead of looking directly at the Doctor - the hand's familiar, even if the man it's attached to isn't (Fantastic reference to Jack’s hand-in-a-jar, and I love the idea that Jack would prefer to look at the hand he knows than the face he doesn’t.) - and snorts softly in response to the Doctor's question, because it isn't one.
The Doctor stands there and pets Jack's coat until the silence is uncomfortable. Presumably it's uncomfortable for the Doctor as well as Jack, since the Doctor breaks it. "Not the same coat."
(And here we come to it: the Doctor’s lesson. Bear with the story, because it does make sense in the end.)
Jack looks the Doctor in the face, his eyebrow raising, surprised by the apparent non-sequitur. "So?" He shakes his head slightly, not understanding.
"It's not the same coat," the Doctor repeats as if the addition of one word will make the statement clearer.
"I wasn't wearing a coat on the Game Station." He stops himself from saying things about death, life and the nature of the universe. He stops himself from punching the Doctor. He does not stop himself from adding: "And I heard you the first time," peevishly.
(I love this. Jack’s only human, after all.
And this is the only reference we get to the Doctor having left Jack on the Game Station. This story doesn’t attempt to explain that. That’s not what it’s about.)
The Doctor either doesn't notice or doesn't care about Jack's tone of voice. He “ahhs” softly and heads toward the closet. "So, the other one's still in here?"
"I don't know.” Jack (mostly) stops being annoyed and frowns with confusion, instead. "If no one's been in here since I left, it should be."
The Doctor opens the closet's double doors and rifles through shirts, T-shirts, pants, vests. He pauses when he comes to something garishly pink and green -- Jack remembers Rose picking that out in Cardiff (I love this: both Rose having chosen Jack a shirt, and the Doctor pausing when he sees it) -- but he goes on quickly until he finds the great coat. He wrestles it off the hanger with a triumphant sound, brings it back to Jack and extends it toward him.
"What?" Jack drops his hands and sits up straight, but he doesn't make any move to take the coat. He doesn't want to take the coat; he doesn't know why. (And Jack’s getting the message, that there’s more going on here than the obvious. He knows there’s a lesson coming; he probably has an inkling what it is; and he’s more comfortable not knowing.)
"Go on. Put it on!" The Doctor emphasizes his exaggerated encouragement by pushing the coat closer to Jack. (Very Doctorish.)
Jack leans back, away from the gray wool that still smells like the cologne he used to wear, something more astringent than anything he's worn for the past several decades. (Yep, Jack’s changed.) He shakes his head again.
The Doctor lowers the coat so he's not quite so far in Jack's personal space. His tone changes, too. He becomes quieter, more serious. "Try it on, Jack. For me."
Jack thinks the Doctor's gone crazy but he takes the coat. He stands to put it on - and that puts the Doctor back in his personal space - but the Doctor doesn't shift and Jack won't ask him to. (Which feels like something left over from Jack’s relationship with the Ninth Doctor.) Jack's not sure he wants him to.
Jack barely manages to get the coat on without elbowing the Doctor or falling over. Once it's on, Jack finds it's not as comfortable as he remembers. It's tight across the shoulders and too short in the wrists. (He’s filled out, in more ways than one.) The collar's too bulky and the whole thing-
"Doesn't quite fit anymore, does it?" The Doctor's voice is almost - almost - casual, but there's a spark of something more than humor in his eyes.
Jack stands there, one hand on the cuff of his - no, not his, anymore - coat and looks into the Doctor's eyes. He doesn't know what he's looking for, but he's searching. Eventually he gives up and looks at the Doctor - all of him at once - for the first time since he's been back on board. (And Jack finally accepts that this is not his Doctor, not the Doctor he knew. The Doctor’s changed too.) "No," he agrees with a bit of a grin. "No, it's a little tight."
"That's the thing about outsides." The Doctor’s tone is still light but his eyes stay locked on Jack's and serious. "They don't get bigger."
Jack stays silent for a moment before he answers. "Even when the insides grow?" He's out of his depth and floundering.
"Bigger on the inside," the Doctor says simply. (Very, very cool.)
Jack shakes his head again. "I don't-"
The Doctor cuts him off. "Did you go daft or something? Brain atrophy to go with the bondage gear and cleaning kink?" He grumbles under his breath. "Take the coat off."
"I just put it on!" Jack protests half-heartedly, and starts to get out of the coat.
"Stop missing the point," the Doctor tells him.
The Doctor leans forward to 'help' once Jack's got his arms out of the sleeves, but the Doctor's idea of helping is yanking the coat out from behind Jack. It topples Jack off balance and since the Doctor's already leaning against Jack, when Jack falls he falls, too. (This is funny and awkward and I can just see it happening!)
Jack lands mostly on the bed, the Doctor lands mostly on Jack and the coat lands mostly on the floor. The Doctor looks so supremely indignant that Jack has to stifle the urge to laugh at him. "All right," he says as soon as he's sure he can keep his voice even. "I think I get it. Change is painful."
The Doctor smacks Jack awkwardly in the shoulder. "Admit it. You got it all along."
Jack pushes himself further onto the bed so they're not in danger of falling off and puts an arm around the Doctor's waist to keep from dumping him. The other man feels thin and light. (Different Doctor to the one he’s used to. ‘Thin and light’ is exactly how I would imagine him feeling too.) "I'm just a stupid ape, remember?” He shakes his head and smiles. “Atrophied brains?"
"Oh, stop being a ninny," the Doctor grouses. "And help me get my coat off."
"Doesn't it fit?" Jack's joking, he's playing and almost laughing but he's not willing to stop being careful. Not entirely and not yet. Things are different and the Doctor's point - the one he finally got - hasn't gone away. This is painful, even through the play. Probably, it occurs to Jack, for both of them. (Which has come out very nicely in the writing.)
"It fits me just fine when I'm standing up," the Doctor says irritably. "Lying down it's a bit of a tangle."
Jack runs his hands along the inside of the coat and pulls it back away from the Doctor. "Up," he says once he's sure the Doctor won’t end up kneeling on the fabric. "Nice coat, by the way."
The Doctor huffs as he follows Jack's direction. "You can't have it."
"Did I say I wanted it?" Jack holds onto the cuff while the Doctor pulls his arm out of the sleeve and then pulls the coat around the Doctor and off the other arm.
"No, but you had that look in your eye.”
"What look? There was no look," Jack protests. One of the coat sleeves is inside out but Jack decides it isn't worth fixing and tosses it gently on top of the great coat.
(I love the detail in the description of Jack removing the Doctor’s coat, and how gently and carefully he does it.)
"There was a look." The Doctor sounds like he's arguing for the sake of arguing. He settles on top of Jack, shifts and wiggles and Jack hears a soft thud when his sneakers hit the floor.
(And now Jack’s realised the Doctor’s feeling awkward too, the tone lightens and the banter feels more natural.)
Jack tugs the back of the Doctor's shirt out of his pants. He's not being overtly sexual about it, no more than usual anyway; he's just seeking skin. He’s content to brush his fingers across the small of the Doctor's back, right over his spine. "Maybe there was a look," he admits softly.
"Aha. I knew it!" The Doctor rests his head on Jack's shoulder and touches his tongue to Jack's throat at the pulse point.
It feels light, wet - almost cold - against Jack’s skin and it makes him jump with a startled sound. There go his best efforts at not thinking about sex. His fingers flex and press lightly against the Doctor’s spine; his cock starts to harden against the Doctor's stomach. "Know it all," he accuses, his voice gone a bit rough.
(Phew! It’s suddenly got hot in here!)
The Doctor pulls up to look at Jack. There’s humor in his eyes and a smile playing at the edges of his mouth but under it there's something watchful and serious that scares Jack. (Oh yes. That’s the Tenth Doctor. He often does that serious, scary look.) "You know what else I know?" the Doctor asks.
"Everything? Isn't that the point of being a know it all?" Jack retorts as he drags his nails along the Doctor’s sides. He doesn’t make any assumptions because he isn’t sure he knows where this is going, just that it feels like something that has to happen. Jack doesn't know how he feels about that.
The Doctor snorts at him and rolls to one side so he can reach Jack's belt. He unfastens it with one deft pull. "I know you're wearing too many clothes, that I have a fantastic mouth and that you're getting stodgy in your old age."
Jack props himself up on one elbow, looks down at the Doctor and objects: "I am not getting stodgy!" He thinks about adding that he's not that old either but realizes it would be a lie and doesn't bother.
"You're right," the Doctor tells Jack. "You're already there." He opens Jack’s pants, slips his hand inside, curls his fingers around Jack's erection and squeezes. It's perfunctory and would be businesslike, except he never takes his eyes off Jack’s face. (Phew! Very hot!)
Jack forgets the argument and, for a moment, forgets to breathe. The hand around his cock feels shockingly cold and he doesn't think the Doctor - the other Doctor, no the Doctor before - was ever quite that cold. Of course, Jack didn't have his own internal furnace then, either. "Are you sure that's a good idea?"
The Doctor strokes down, pulls Jack's foreskin back and drags his thumb right across the head. The sensation is so intense it's almost unpleasant. (Here’s our first real warning that this sex isn’t going to be all sweetness and light.) "I'm sure it's an absolutely wretched idea," the Doctor says matter of factly. "Aren't you?" He is still watching Jack oh-so-closely.
"Yes!" Jack tells him, because he does. It's a really bad idea but he's hard and he's fighting to keep his hips on the bed. "Absolutely. Bad idea. Really stupid. Bound to complicate things."
"Want me to stop?" the Doctor asks Jack. He sounds every bit as smug and self-satisfied as he looks.
When he moves his hand over Jack again, all cool, smooth skin and graceful motion with a faint twist of his wrist at the top of his stroke, Jack closes his eyes and groans. "No."
"Are you sure?" the Doctor asks. Jack can't see the smirk but he can hear it and feel it against the side of his throat for just a second before it's replaced by the tip of the Doctor's tongue, tracing a flickering figure eight and making Jack's pulse jump.
Jack’s reply - and what’s left of his sense - disappears when the Doctor scrapes his teeth along the skin that he's been tasting and presses his thumbnail just behind the head of Jack's cock. Jack's spine arches at the hint of sharpness and he gasps, loudly.
"Ja-ack," the Doctor sing-songs. "Are you sure?" The Doctor punctuates the words by squeezing Jack's cock again, and he's not gentle about it.
(And this is where it gets really spooky. Because this was written before Utopia aired and yet… the Doctor sing-songing “Ja-ack”? It’s exactly like that bit in the radiation room in Utopia. And the Doctor wasn’t being gentle there either. Becky, how did you get this so absolutely, perfectly right?)
"Yes! Yes, I'm sure! Really, really sure!" He's not sure, he's aroused. There's a difference and Jack is certainly old enough to know it - he just doesn't want to. (Well, this is Jack we’re talking about. *grin*)
Before he’s done speaking, the Doctor is in motion. He slides down Jack's body and yanks Jack's pants off so fast Jack barely has time to register that the Doctor's moving, much less lift his hips to make it easier.
Jack grimaces and notes, absently, in the tiny part of his brain that's not fogged by arousal or stunned into silence by the Doctor's speed, that flannel burns on his ass are going to be difficult to explain. (To whom? Martha??? Who else is he planning on showing his ass to? *grin*) He pushes up on his elbows to watch the Doctor, opens his mouth to say something, but shuts it again when he realizes he doesn't know what to say.
The Doctor tosses Jack's pants aside, kneels with far, far too much casual arrogance for the act to ever look submissive and pushes his hand against the inside of Jack's knee. His nails dig into Jack's skin and combined with the outward pressure Jack doesn't have any choice but to move it outward. Not that he's resisting. At all.
(I have to say that I agree with Becky here: I find it very hard to imagine the Doctor in a submissive role. Equal, maybe, but even that would be difficult in a relationship with a human. But he and Jack fall so smoothly into their respective dominant and submissive roles when they’re together.)
Jack falls back against the bed and closes his eyes when the Doctor's tongue touches him. He focuses on what he feels - Licking rather than sucking, light, gliding and perfect- rather than letting himself think.
That tactic works just fine until the Doctor drags his teeth over the head of his cock. Jack's eyes snap open, then, his breath hisses abruptly through his clenched teeth and he looks along the length of his body to the Doctor. (I’m sure this is a refer-back to another of Becky’s previous ficlets, First Night, where Becky first described Jack looking “along the length of his body” and we had a little conversation afterwards about how hot we both found that idea and how much we’d like to look along his body ourselves!) "That hurt," Jack informs the Doctor, unnecessarily, because he has to say something.
"And you didn't really mind, did you?" The question must be rhetorical because he doesn't give Jack time to answer. "Pay attention," he demands.
Jack doesn't say anything. He can't deny that he didn't really mind and can't bring himself to call the (this) Doctor 'sir', (Not exactly a surprise, but confirm that he did call the last Doctor ‘sir’.) but he stays propped up on his elbows and keeps his eyes open. It must be good enough because the Doctor takes him completely in his mouth and sucks.
The Doctor was right, his mouth is amazing. All sorts of amazing. Slick. Cool. The perfect amount of suction. And his tongue, his tongue is abso-fucking-lutely everywhere. (After all, the Doctor does use his mouth a lot - for talking, making faces… it follows that he’d be good at this too.) Jack groans, and keeping his eyes open is effort. He slides his fingers into the Doctor's hair because it's reflex (So he’s not always submissive, then, not with everyone.) and because he needs something to hold on to.
As soon as his hand touches the back of the Doctor's head, the Doctor meets Jack's eyes with a dark look and soft warning growl. The meaning behind both is unmistakable and even though Jack's hand never closed in the Doctor's hair he moves it away and grips the sheet instead. The moment shakes Jack, but he can't think about it while the Doctor's doing that with his tongue.
(I love this description of the dynamic between Jack and the Doctor, carried over from his relationship with the previous Doctor. The Doctor is so scary here - and very believable.)
After that the Doctor keeps his eyes on Jack. The whole thing is just this side of cruel. The suction is tight enough to ache, the Doctor's nails have dug into the soft insides of Jack's thighs, holding them open, and every time Jack starts to look away or close his eyes there's a scrape of teeth that makes Jack cringe and push his hips forward at the same time.
When the Doctor pulls away completely Jack's breathing in ragged gasps, his skin's flushed and sweat slick and his eyes are unfocused. Jack makes a low, protesting sound but he doesn't - can't- really focus until the Doctor snarls at him. "Where," he asks Jack for what isn't the first time if his impatient tone is anything to judge by. "Did you hide the lube?"
"I don't know." Jack tries to pull himself back together to answer, but the answer itself sends him reeling again. "Wherever you left it." Jack really doesn't want to think about the last time, years (and years and years) ago, before death and life and time, but he can't entirely help it, and his throat and voice are both tight. (A bit mean of the Doctor, I feel, to expect Jack to remember. It was only a couple of years ago for him, so he’s got a much better chance of remembering!)
The Doctor bites him. For his answer, for the tone of his voice, for what he's thinking. For both or neither. Jack doesn't know and doubts it matters. There's barely a moment of breath and brush of lips as warning before the Doctor clamps his teeth into the unprotected skin of Jack's thigh.
Jack cries out and collapses back against the bed, eyes watering from the unexpected pain. When the Doctor moves away to rifle through the nightstand, Jack brushes his fingers against the throbbing mark and isn't surprised to find it sticky with blood as well as spit. He leaves his hand there, pressed hard against his thigh, until the Doctor finds what he is looking for and comes back.
(I have to say my reaction to the Doctor’s roughness and cruelty here, and throughout this story, surprised me. Pain really isn’t one of my kinks, and I really don’t like blood - and yet, here, I don’t mind either. Jack’s obviously used to it from the Doctor, and just as obviously enjoys it.)
The Doctor, still dressed, crawls over him and hovers with his face just inches from Jack's. He reaches down and curls thin, strong fingers around Jack's wrist, pulls Jack’s hand away from the wound and presses it against the bed by Jack's head. Jack curls his fingers into a loose fist and lets out an unsteady breath, but doesn’t try to move his hand.
The Doctor nods and there's the slightest bit of approval in his expression before his mouth covers Jack's. For a second it's just a kiss, gentle and affectionate. Then he bites again, not hard enough to break skin this time, but hard enough to sting. Hard enough to make Jack flinch, hard enough to make him gasp, hard enough to send Jack arching up into him. (This is a gorgeous sequence. I love repetition with increasing results.)
The Doctor slides his tongue over the bitten place almost apologetically. He pauses, with the tip of his tongue resting against Jack's lip, and Jack uses the moment to try to catch his breath, orient himself inside the dizzying throb of arousal and the feel of his heartbeat echoing in bruises and bite marks.
Jack can feel the Doctor doing something off to one side but he's given up on keeping his eyes open and the Doctor's letting him keep them closed - for the moment, at least. Maybe the Doctor knows he needs time, maybe the Doctor's just busy. It doesn't matter; when the Doctor shifts and presses two slick fingers into him, Jack knows what he was busy doing.
He barely has time to grimace at the cold and abruptness before those fingers push deeper, crook a bit and press into his prostate, far too directly to be comfortable. Jack makes a sharp, startled sound and opens his eyes again. The Doctor is watching him with a faint smile that Jack doesn't try to understand. Instead, he pulls his knee up and presses into the hand, making his own silent demand.
Jack's almost, but not entirely or even really, surprised when the Doctor complies by pulling his fingers out, adding a third and pushing back into Jack hard enough to make him ache. (Owww, I can just feel this!) He never looks away from Jack but there’s something oddly grim in his expression.
Jack watches the Doctor watch him, unashamed and uninhibited in his responses. (Yep, that’s our Jack!) He pushes his hips back, every time, and his moans are punctuated by the occasional soft, wordless, cry of something that's neither entirely pleasure nor pain. Sensation carries him to a place where there's just warmth, the rhythm of movement, the beat of his heart and the look on the Doctor's face.
He is so focused on the Doctor's eyes that he sees the flicker of intent before the Doctor pulls his hand back. By the time the Doctor places a hand on his hip to urge him over, Jack has already started to flip onto his stomach. He rests his forehead on his folded arms and pulls a knee up toward his chest. Over the sound of his own labored breathing in the confined space of his arms, he catches, just barely, the rustle and shift of fabric and even more faintly the metallic rasp of a zipper being lowered.
He's not surprised when the Doctor drapes over his back. The slick thin fabric of the Doctor's suit and the Doctor's breath are both cool against Jack's heated skin, and it really does feel amazing. He's not surprised by the nudge of the Doctor's cock against his ass, either. He pulls his knee up further, opens himself up just a bit more and with a slow arch and flex of muscle, pushes back into it.
(I feel ‘it really does feel amazing’ is a slight weak phrase, but these two paragraphs do a great job of showing just how well Becky’s Jack and Doctor know each other, how well they work together, and yet make you notice Jack noticing the difference too.)
The Doctor puts a hand on Jack's hip -- nails biting into skin again -- and pulls Jack back as he presses forward. It's not slow, it’s not rushed; it's smooth and steady. But the Doctor doesn't pause after that first thrust and there's no period of adjustment. His next thrust is still steady but it's also brutal, forceful nearly to the point of violence.
Jack grunts, breath driven out of him by the sheer force, and braces himself with a hand against the wall. He quickly discovers that he has to breathe with the Doctor's rhythm. The pace nearly makes him hyperventilate and that makes him dizzy; it's just another sensation that pushes him outside himself into a place where he's helpless to do anything but take it, do anything but feel it.
And so it goes. Jack slowly slips further and further away from himself, into a place where there's just being fucked and letting another’s actions determine when he can breathe.
(Now we not only have violence but a hint of breath control. The level to which Jack is willing to give up control to this man he knows very well but who is different and who he hasn’t seen in 140 years says a lot about how he feels about the Doctor!)
Suddenly, the Doctor leans forward and sinks his teeth into Jack's shoulder. At that point, Jack is a simple creature of instinct, capable of little more than reaction. He shoves himself into the Doctor's hand, (I’m not sure when the Doctor’s hand went back round Jack’s cock) pushes back onto his cock and growls loudly while his fingers scratch against the wall and curl tighter into the sheets.
The Doctor bites down harder, tongue sliding over the skin he's holding in his teeth, and drags his nails along Jack's cock. Jack’s response is every bit as violent as the way he's being fucked. He tightens around the Doctor, arches his back sharply upward and comes over the Doctor's hand, so hard he stops breathing and his vision goes black around the edges.
Jack doesn't get a chance to catch his breath and, no matter how much he wants to collapse, he has to hold himself up because the Doctor still has Jack’s skin caught between his teeth. (Ow. That’s cruel! And sexy.) The Doctor moves his hand from Jack's cock to his hip to hold onto him and keeps moving. Jack manages to hold on and hold himself up until he feels the stinging warmth of the Doctor coming inside him.
Jack lets himself collapse and straightens his legs after the Doctor pulls out and shifts so that he's only half on top of Jack with one arm draped across his shoulders and an ankle wedged between Jack's.
Jack is breathing hard and aching in a dozen different places, not all of them physical. (Lovely line.) He turns his head toward the Doctor, but his eyes are closed until the Doctor presses his thumb against the raw, bite mark on Jack's shoulder. He looks at the Doctor then, but warily.
"Feeling better?" the Doctor asks him. He looks rumpled, Jack notices, but he looks less like he's been ravished and more like he's in need of a good dry cleaner. More cautious than sated. (So it was more one-sided than it seemed, then? The Doctor was doing most of that for Jack, rather than himself. Or is this just spelling out that the Doctor was as unsure of himself as Jack was?)
Knowing how he must look - bruised, bitten, sticky with drying blood, spit, and come - Jack can't decide if he's amused, offended, or if he should try for embarrassed. Picking one proves to be more effort than he expected, so he settles for just answering the question. "Yeah."
"Good," the Doctor says, smiling slightly.
Smile or not, there's something sad in his eyes that makes Jack reach out for him, stroke a hand over the side of his face and into his hair, and, even though his hand is shaking from exhaustion, he's careful to be gentle. "Doesn't quite fit right anymore, does it?" It seems like the thing to ask. Maybe not the right thing, and Jack's not sure he wants to hear the answer, but the only thing all the same. (I love the way Becky brings it back to this. It’s neat, and satisfying.)
"Mm." The Doctor's smile flickers a little brighter, but it doesn’t dispel the sadness. "Not quite, I'm afraid."
Jack is surprised by his lack of surprise, but maybe he shouldn't be. Maybe he's just been waiting to hear the words spoken, and maybe waiting for them was worse than hearing them. (Oh yes. The waiting is always worse.) "I'm sorry."
"For what?" The Doctor doesn't laugh but there's a spark of humor in the warm brown of his eyes now. "Changing? For me changing? Happens all the time, Jack. To me more than most."
"A little more literally than most, too," Jack says with a ghost of a grin. "What now?" And how is that question the hardest one Jack has ever had to ask? It's just two words, and they're not even very complicated.
The Doctor takes a deep breath and stretches. "Now," he tells Jack. "We have a nap. After that - we get you a new room."
(So there is hope for them. The Doctor wants to make this work with Jack.)
Jack searches the Doctor's face for a bit before he's satisfied enough to let lethargy creep over him, make his limbs heavy and his eyelids droop. "One that fits?" he asks, his voice starting to soften and slur.
The Doctor stays silent until Jack has given up on an answer, closed his eyes and fallen most of the way into sleep. By the time Jack feels a hand in his hair, stroking with unimaginable tenderness, (I love this phrase, ‘unimaginable tenderness’, and its contrast to the roughness with which the Doctor has been treating Jack. It’s almost heartbreaking.) he is too far into sleep to react with more than a sleepy murmur.
He’s not quite sure if he really hears or only imagines the Doctor's last, soft words: "You've outgrown more than your room, lad." It doesn't sound like this new man Jack barely knows. It sounds, it feels, like the whisper of an echo of a ghost from the past, and it follows him to sleep. (And a neat little refer-back to the Ninth Doctor to round it all out and give a satisfying ending.)
I have to say that, having looked at this story in depth, I love it even more than I did to begin with. I think Becky is an amazing writer with a wonderful knack of capturing the characters we see on screen and making them feel real in her writing. And of bringing more out of them than we see on the screen.
One final observation…
An interesting thought occurred to me while I was reading this. I found that even though it’s from Jack’s POV, in my head I was watching most of the action from over the Doctor’s shoulder. I started off looking out of Jack’s eyes - maybe because the writing was about him looking round at this room - but at the point where he went to sit on the bed I was left over by the desk, looking down on him. So that when the Doctor came in I more or less just stayed behind him and watched from over his shoulder.
I’ve noticed myself doing this before, even when I’m the one doing the writing - I think it’s that I tend to ‘watch’ from near the person who’s doing things. Which makes sense, but it does sound weird that you can write, or read, something from the POV of someone whilst seeing it from a completely different angle!