Two Hearts - Jenny/Jack
Title: Two Hearts
Fandom: Torchwood/Dr Who crossover
Characters/pairings: Jenny, Jack, Ianto, Gwen. Jenny/Jack, with a little Jack/Doctor if you squint a lot.
Warnings: Contains smexing - not smut, really, and not much of it, but smexing. Set after Exit Wounds, so there may be spoilers.
Summary: Travelling the universe, just like her father, Jenny finds Cardiff to be dull and boring at first sight. But there may be more to Earth than she thinks...
A/N: This was written entirely for the purposes of copperbadge 's birthday. Originally, I was going to do a Laocoon's Children fanfic, as a not-really-very-subtle hint (I have withdrawal symptoms, dammit!), but then I went back to check my flist, and I read a post in which he said he'd love some Jenny/Jack fanfic. Pretty much with this storyline, which makes me feel hugely unoriginal. But then, it's my first fanfic that isn't actual canon, so I'm still pretty proud of myself, especially as it's a Friday evening and I'm absolutely bloody knackered. And I think it's quite good.
Nothing like as good as his, of course, but I'm quite proud of it. So here's my fanfic gift to the undisputed king of fanfic. 0.0'
Hope you like it, Sam!
Oh, and neither Dr Who nor Torchwood is mine, or they wouldn't have killed off the two coolest characters ¬.¬ They belong to the BBC.
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“Hm.” She looked around the bay, flicking her blonde ponytail back over her shoulder. “It doesn’t seem anything special, really. Cardiff, Wales, Earth. Just another city, anyway. I bet you could go to London or… what was it? New York, that’s what he said. New York, and it would be just the same as this.” Shrugging, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her khakis and set off down the first street that caught her eye, not even noticing the hubbub that was beginning to build up around the spot where she had stepped through the Rift. She thought she heard the word Torchwood somewhere in there, and a little jolt of recognition shot through her. Why? What was so special about Torchwood?
What was so special about Cardiff?
Grey eyes narrowed into the sun of a bright day, she looked to and fro. To be honest, her first thought was how phenomenally dullEarth seemed to be. She’d seen so much, watched a thousand different dawns illuminated by a thousand different suns, met so many races, so many people. She’d died and been born again. And everything she had done, he had done a hundred times more.
“But he always comes back here…” she muttered to herself, wandering down the dull grey road with its dull grey walls and dull grey people, and wondered to herself why, why that could be. He had every world, every time, every experience at his fingertips, and he always came back here. To Earth. To Britain. To Cardiff. And…
A screeching of brakes drilled into her reverie, and she heard somebody yell, “Bloody Torchwood!”
Torchwood. That name again. Something familiar, something that made her blood rush through her. Spinning on her toes, she dived around the crowd of a Cardiff rush hour, sprinting at full speed in the direction of the sound. As she got closer, she could make out the voices; one woman, two men; one with an accent she thought might be American, two with the Welsh accent she had been hearing all day. One of the men was speaking - the Welsh one - but she couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sounds of a city.
“The signal’s coming towards us, sir,” Ianto informed Jack, looking down at the handheld Rift tracker that he was carrying. “Moving quickly.”
Jack nodded, reaching for his pistol. “Remember, we’re aiming to capture, not to kill. It’s probably just a Weevil or something.”
Gwen and Ianto mirrored the movement, neither drawing, but both entirely ready to do so. There was a moment of almost-silence. Then Ianto frowned, glancing up from the Rift tracker. “It’s right around the co…” he began, and was cut off as a slim, blonde flash of lightning shot into view from the junction just ahead, almost knocking him off his feet, and skidded around to face them, her breathing a little heavier than it had been, but not by much.
He drew his gun instinctively, clicking off the safety and aiming it straight at her. Beside him, he could hear Gwen doing the same thing. Not Jack, though, which surprised him. You think you know a guy…
“She’s the signal,” he said, perhaps a little redundantly, and slid the tracker into the pocket of his suit without the barrel of his gun wavering one inch.
“Shh.” Jack raised a hand, giving Ianto a look that said in no uncertain terms that he should shut up. Something about her confidence, the way she stood, the look in her eyes, made the hairs on the back of his fifty-first century neck stand up on end. More to the point, it was making something else threaten to stand up on end.
Stepping forwards, he took his hand away from his gun and proffered it to her. “Sorry about that. I’m Jack - Captain Jack Harkness. Leader of this merry band of vagabonds. No?” He gave that grin that was so very Harkness, chuckling at the confusion on her face. “Ah, well. Earth culture references. Never do seem to go down well with Rift travellers. What’s your name, then, beautiful?”
She raised one eyebrow, glancing at the two guns still pointed at her. “Jenny. My name’s Jenny. I’m… a traveller, I suppose. Travel through space and time, you know?”
A flicker of recognition passed across Jack’s face, so quickly that even he probably hadn’t noticed, then he shrugged. “Want to go back to my place?” he asked, with that winning grin again. “Standard procedure for cute Rifters.”
Jenny gave him a look of such incredulity that Ianto felt the need to step in. Holstering his gun, he stepped forwards. “He means the Hub. Our HQ. Standard procedure for all Rift travellers, actually. We just need to check you out, you know. Make sure you’re not a threat or anything. Although,” he added dryly, as Gwen put her own pistol away, “I don’t guarantee that he won’t try to ravish you somewhere along the way.”
“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Jack interjected, and grinned again. Jenny raised one eyebrow.
“Isn’t it?” she asked innocently, flicking her hair over her shoulder again. “They had a saying on Betelgeuse Three about men with big heads being small in other places.”
To her relief, he laughed rather than taking offence. “No wonder Betelgeusians don’t breed all that much, then,” he shot back immediately, and straightened out his coat. “Care to disprove the theory?”
“Not on a first date.” Flashing him a quick grin, she strode over to the SUV, tugging the door open. “Nice wheels.”
“That’s Gwen’s seat,” Jack informed her lightly. “Next one along.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gwen hastened to reassure the girl, but Jenny just gave her a smile and shunted along to let the Welshwoman climb in next to her.
By the time they got back to the Millennium Centre (which took a fair while, since no matter how amazing the Torchwood team were or how often they put their lives on the line, according to Jack, there was no beating a Cardiff rush hour), Jenny was fairly sure that she’d fallen on her feet. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something about them - and especially Jack - seemed to remind her of something; it nagged at her like an itch, just out of her reach. It didn’t matter, though, because she was almost sure that somewhere like Torchwood - Gwen explained it in the car on the way there - was a bloody good place to start looking for her father.
“We’ll take the scenic route,” Jack said as they left the car, smiling like a Cheshire cat, and offered his arm. “Shall we?”
She laughed, slipping her arm through his, and watched in interest as he led her over to the curb, and onto a specific flag. Gwen and Ianto followed, the four of them standing quite close on the stone (and, she thought, Jack standing a little closer to her than was strictly necessary). Jenny looked around with interest as they began to sink, noting the way that the commuters bustling around them seemed completely oblivious.
“Perception filters? Not something I expected from a planet as dull as Earth.”
“Oh, Earth’s anything but dull.” Jack laughed. “Especially the Hub. We’re not quite sure what the Hub is, but dull isn’t it.”
“Did anyone feed Myfanwy?” Ianto asked suddenly, as they reached the bottom of the lift, and he hurried off.
“Myfan…?” Jenny started, and was cut off by a shriek from overhead. She looked up, her expression changing from curiosity to shock, and then to a wide grin that creased up her face. “That’s Myfanwy, is it?”
“Yup. Finest goddamn pterodactyl since the last Ice Age.” Jack clapped his hands together sharply, stepping briskly off the platform and striding off without looking to see if she would follow.
She did.
“Messaline? Not a place I’ve heard of.” Jack made a quick note on the pad next to him, looking up at her with honest interest.
“You wouldn’t have. It’s a long way away. And it was only colonised for a week before I left - well, actually, a week before I was born, as well. Long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Maybe later.” She sighed, tugging her ponytail tight. “For now, I’d like to know a few things about this place. Like why you’d base a place like this in Cardiff. And what you do with dangerous aliens - do you kill them? Imprison them? What? And who’s Tosh?”
“Don’t know, depends, and where the hell did you hear that name?”
“Login on the computers.” She pushed her chair back, standing up. “Look, if it’s a sore point…”
“Long story. Maybe later.” Jack gave her another of those Harkness grins, which didn’t look nearly as forced as it was. “You said you came here looking for someone. Who?”
“My father.” She shrugged, smiling wryly. “I hate to say it, but that’s yet another long story. And you would get lost halfway through.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been here a hell of a long time. It takes a lot to lose me. But it can wait.”
“It can wait,” she agreed, turning away and starting towards the door.
“Jenny?” he called after her. She turned, raising one eyebrow, and folded her arms with a little nod and a smile. He stood up, running a hand through his hair. “We’re missing a few team members…”
“You’ve known me about an hour.”
“And you know more about alien technology than anyone I’ve met. Well… almost anyone.” He looked reflective for a moment, then shook his head, shrugging. “Point is, I go with my gut when it tells me what to do.”
“I don’t think it’s your gut that tells you what to do,” she said, glancing down for a moment, then back up at his face.
“Give me a little credit,” he laughed, and held the door open for her. “But think about it. It’s not a bad opportunity.”
“Captain Harkness…” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’ve travelled the universe for years now. Seen things you could never even dream of. And I tell you this now; I’m a wanderer. A job, a home - even one like this - isn’t exactly what I’m after.”
And he shrugged, and looked a little annoyed, but not hugely so.
Which doesn’t explain why she’s here now, two months on, still with Torchwood, still with Jack. Or why she is lying under him on the bed in the cheap flat she rented, with his hands roving over her body and his mouth fastened to hers.
Not to say that she’s surprised that it got to this point. It took a week or so before the points added up, and it just makes Jack one step closer to finding her father. And he might be a prick at times, but she has to admit, he’s a very sexy prick, and very persuasive. She’s not fooling herself into thinking that there’s anything more than lust in it for him - and there’s certainly not much more for her - but it’s good to have somebody with her now, not to be travelling alone.
And she’s taken to Torchwood like a duck to water - not to mention taking to Jack. Moaning into his mouth as his fingers trace up her thigh, she forces him over so that she’s crouching on top, his fingers toying with her breasts, his palms flattening over the hollow of her collarbone.
Suddenly, he’s frozen, eyes wide with shock, lips unresponsive. Pulling back, she bites her lip and looks down at him.
“What is it?”
And he looks up at her, in a way she’s never seen him look at anyone before, except maybe Ianto, and says quietly, “Two hearts. Time Lord. Doctor.” And then it all becomes too much for him, all those surprises, all those thoughts whirling around in his head, and he falls back on the pillow with his eyes closed, and all he can say , in a voice that’s almost too quiet to be audible, is, “…You’ve got two hearts.”
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Another A/N: I actually had a sort-of beta for this one! Step forwards, yarukage!
Concrit, however, is still massively appreciated.
Fandom: Torchwood/Dr Who crossover
Characters/pairings: Jenny, Jack, Ianto, Gwen. Jenny/Jack, with a little Jack/Doctor if you squint a lot.
Warnings: Contains smexing - not smut, really, and not much of it, but smexing. Set after Exit Wounds, so there may be spoilers.
Summary: Travelling the universe, just like her father, Jenny finds Cardiff to be dull and boring at first sight. But there may be more to Earth than she thinks...
A/N: This was written entirely for the purposes of copperbadge 's birthday. Originally, I was going to do a Laocoon's Children fanfic, as a not-really-very-subtle hint (I have withdrawal symptoms, dammit!), but then I went back to check my flist, and I read a post in which he said he'd love some Jenny/Jack fanfic. Pretty much with this storyline, which makes me feel hugely unoriginal. But then, it's my first fanfic that isn't actual canon, so I'm still pretty proud of myself, especially as it's a Friday evening and I'm absolutely bloody knackered. And I think it's quite good.
Nothing like as good as his, of course, but I'm quite proud of it. So here's my fanfic gift to the undisputed king of fanfic. 0.0'
Hope you like it, Sam!
Oh, and neither Dr Who nor Torchwood is mine, or they wouldn't have killed off the two coolest characters ¬.¬ They belong to the BBC.
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“Hm.” She looked around the bay, flicking her blonde ponytail back over her shoulder. “It doesn’t seem anything special, really. Cardiff, Wales, Earth. Just another city, anyway. I bet you could go to London or… what was it? New York, that’s what he said. New York, and it would be just the same as this.” Shrugging, she shoved her hands into the pockets of her khakis and set off down the first street that caught her eye, not even noticing the hubbub that was beginning to build up around the spot where she had stepped through the Rift. She thought she heard the word Torchwood somewhere in there, and a little jolt of recognition shot through her. Why? What was so special about Torchwood?
What was so special about Cardiff?
Grey eyes narrowed into the sun of a bright day, she looked to and fro. To be honest, her first thought was how phenomenally dullEarth seemed to be. She’d seen so much, watched a thousand different dawns illuminated by a thousand different suns, met so many races, so many people. She’d died and been born again. And everything she had done, he had done a hundred times more.
“But he always comes back here…” she muttered to herself, wandering down the dull grey road with its dull grey walls and dull grey people, and wondered to herself why, why that could be. He had every world, every time, every experience at his fingertips, and he always came back here. To Earth. To Britain. To Cardiff. And…
A screeching of brakes drilled into her reverie, and she heard somebody yell, “Bloody Torchwood!”
Torchwood. That name again. Something familiar, something that made her blood rush through her. Spinning on her toes, she dived around the crowd of a Cardiff rush hour, sprinting at full speed in the direction of the sound. As she got closer, she could make out the voices; one woman, two men; one with an accent she thought might be American, two with the Welsh accent she had been hearing all day. One of the men was speaking - the Welsh one - but she couldn’t make out what he was saying over the sounds of a city.
“The signal’s coming towards us, sir,” Ianto informed Jack, looking down at the handheld Rift tracker that he was carrying. “Moving quickly.”
Jack nodded, reaching for his pistol. “Remember, we’re aiming to capture, not to kill. It’s probably just a Weevil or something.”
Gwen and Ianto mirrored the movement, neither drawing, but both entirely ready to do so. There was a moment of almost-silence. Then Ianto frowned, glancing up from the Rift tracker. “It’s right around the co…” he began, and was cut off as a slim, blonde flash of lightning shot into view from the junction just ahead, almost knocking him off his feet, and skidded around to face them, her breathing a little heavier than it had been, but not by much.
He drew his gun instinctively, clicking off the safety and aiming it straight at her. Beside him, he could hear Gwen doing the same thing. Not Jack, though, which surprised him. You think you know a guy…
“She’s the signal,” he said, perhaps a little redundantly, and slid the tracker into the pocket of his suit without the barrel of his gun wavering one inch.
“Shh.” Jack raised a hand, giving Ianto a look that said in no uncertain terms that he should shut up. Something about her confidence, the way she stood, the look in her eyes, made the hairs on the back of his fifty-first century neck stand up on end. More to the point, it was making something else threaten to stand up on end.
Stepping forwards, he took his hand away from his gun and proffered it to her. “Sorry about that. I’m Jack - Captain Jack Harkness. Leader of this merry band of vagabonds. No?” He gave that grin that was so very Harkness, chuckling at the confusion on her face. “Ah, well. Earth culture references. Never do seem to go down well with Rift travellers. What’s your name, then, beautiful?”
She raised one eyebrow, glancing at the two guns still pointed at her. “Jenny. My name’s Jenny. I’m… a traveller, I suppose. Travel through space and time, you know?”
A flicker of recognition passed across Jack’s face, so quickly that even he probably hadn’t noticed, then he shrugged. “Want to go back to my place?” he asked, with that winning grin again. “Standard procedure for cute Rifters.”
Jenny gave him a look of such incredulity that Ianto felt the need to step in. Holstering his gun, he stepped forwards. “He means the Hub. Our HQ. Standard procedure for all Rift travellers, actually. We just need to check you out, you know. Make sure you’re not a threat or anything. Although,” he added dryly, as Gwen put her own pistol away, “I don’t guarantee that he won’t try to ravish you somewhere along the way.”
“You make it sound like that’s a bad thing,” Jack interjected, and grinned again. Jenny raised one eyebrow.
“Isn’t it?” she asked innocently, flicking her hair over her shoulder again. “They had a saying on Betelgeuse Three about men with big heads being small in other places.”
To her relief, he laughed rather than taking offence. “No wonder Betelgeusians don’t breed all that much, then,” he shot back immediately, and straightened out his coat. “Care to disprove the theory?”
“Not on a first date.” Flashing him a quick grin, she strode over to the SUV, tugging the door open. “Nice wheels.”
“That’s Gwen’s seat,” Jack informed her lightly. “Next one along.”
“It doesn’t matter.” Gwen hastened to reassure the girl, but Jenny just gave her a smile and shunted along to let the Welshwoman climb in next to her.
By the time they got back to the Millennium Centre (which took a fair while, since no matter how amazing the Torchwood team were or how often they put their lives on the line, according to Jack, there was no beating a Cardiff rush hour), Jenny was fairly sure that she’d fallen on her feet. She wasn’t sure what it was, but something about them - and especially Jack - seemed to remind her of something; it nagged at her like an itch, just out of her reach. It didn’t matter, though, because she was almost sure that somewhere like Torchwood - Gwen explained it in the car on the way there - was a bloody good place to start looking for her father.
“We’ll take the scenic route,” Jack said as they left the car, smiling like a Cheshire cat, and offered his arm. “Shall we?”
She laughed, slipping her arm through his, and watched in interest as he led her over to the curb, and onto a specific flag. Gwen and Ianto followed, the four of them standing quite close on the stone (and, she thought, Jack standing a little closer to her than was strictly necessary). Jenny looked around with interest as they began to sink, noting the way that the commuters bustling around them seemed completely oblivious.
“Perception filters? Not something I expected from a planet as dull as Earth.”
“Oh, Earth’s anything but dull.” Jack laughed. “Especially the Hub. We’re not quite sure what the Hub is, but dull isn’t it.”
“Did anyone feed Myfanwy?” Ianto asked suddenly, as they reached the bottom of the lift, and he hurried off.
“Myfan…?” Jenny started, and was cut off by a shriek from overhead. She looked up, her expression changing from curiosity to shock, and then to a wide grin that creased up her face. “That’s Myfanwy, is it?”
“Yup. Finest goddamn pterodactyl since the last Ice Age.” Jack clapped his hands together sharply, stepping briskly off the platform and striding off without looking to see if she would follow.
She did.
“Messaline? Not a place I’ve heard of.” Jack made a quick note on the pad next to him, looking up at her with honest interest.
“You wouldn’t have. It’s a long way away. And it was only colonised for a week before I left - well, actually, a week before I was born, as well. Long story.”
“I’ve got time.”
“Maybe later.” She sighed, tugging her ponytail tight. “For now, I’d like to know a few things about this place. Like why you’d base a place like this in Cardiff. And what you do with dangerous aliens - do you kill them? Imprison them? What? And who’s Tosh?”
“Don’t know, depends, and where the hell did you hear that name?”
“Login on the computers.” She pushed her chair back, standing up. “Look, if it’s a sore point…”
“Long story. Maybe later.” Jack gave her another of those Harkness grins, which didn’t look nearly as forced as it was. “You said you came here looking for someone. Who?”
“My father.” She shrugged, smiling wryly. “I hate to say it, but that’s yet another long story. And you would get lost halfway through.”
He shook his head. “I’ve been here a hell of a long time. It takes a lot to lose me. But it can wait.”
“It can wait,” she agreed, turning away and starting towards the door.
“Jenny?” he called after her. She turned, raising one eyebrow, and folded her arms with a little nod and a smile. He stood up, running a hand through his hair. “We’re missing a few team members…”
“You’ve known me about an hour.”
“And you know more about alien technology than anyone I’ve met. Well… almost anyone.” He looked reflective for a moment, then shook his head, shrugging. “Point is, I go with my gut when it tells me what to do.”
“I don’t think it’s your gut that tells you what to do,” she said, glancing down for a moment, then back up at his face.
“Give me a little credit,” he laughed, and held the door open for her. “But think about it. It’s not a bad opportunity.”
“Captain Harkness…” She sighed, shaking her head. “I’ve travelled the universe for years now. Seen things you could never even dream of. And I tell you this now; I’m a wanderer. A job, a home - even one like this - isn’t exactly what I’m after.”
And he shrugged, and looked a little annoyed, but not hugely so.
Which doesn’t explain why she’s here now, two months on, still with Torchwood, still with Jack. Or why she is lying under him on the bed in the cheap flat she rented, with his hands roving over her body and his mouth fastened to hers.
Not to say that she’s surprised that it got to this point. It took a week or so before the points added up, and it just makes Jack one step closer to finding her father. And he might be a prick at times, but she has to admit, he’s a very sexy prick, and very persuasive. She’s not fooling herself into thinking that there’s anything more than lust in it for him - and there’s certainly not much more for her - but it’s good to have somebody with her now, not to be travelling alone.
And she’s taken to Torchwood like a duck to water - not to mention taking to Jack. Moaning into his mouth as his fingers trace up her thigh, she forces him over so that she’s crouching on top, his fingers toying with her breasts, his palms flattening over the hollow of her collarbone.
Suddenly, he’s frozen, eyes wide with shock, lips unresponsive. Pulling back, she bites her lip and looks down at him.
“What is it?”
And he looks up at her, in a way she’s never seen him look at anyone before, except maybe Ianto, and says quietly, “Two hearts. Time Lord. Doctor.” And then it all becomes too much for him, all those surprises, all those thoughts whirling around in his head, and he falls back on the pillow with his eyes closed, and all he can say , in a voice that’s almost too quiet to be audible, is, “…You’ve got two hearts.”
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Another A/N: I actually had a sort-of beta for this one! Step forwards, yarukage!
Concrit, however, is still massively appreciated.