Fic: Different Now
OK, so it may have been a little while, but here's a ficlet to (hopefully) get me off my arse and back onto writing fic again. So long as people want to read it, that is.
Title: Different Now
Rating: NC-17, Sex and angst
Pairing: Jack/Martha
Spoilers: None, I don't think.
Summary: When did Jack ask Martha to come to Torchwood?
The wind whistles up and down the platform, and the dark clouds constantly threaten rain. He meets her from the train with a closed face, still and silent in his greatcoat, and as she steps off, her foot catches. He is next to her immediately, holding her upright, and helping her straighten up. She barely looks at him; she barely looks anywhere but straight ahead, and as others get off the train, Jack feels incongruous. There are friends, and lovers, families being reacquainted, and all around them, small, touching scenes are taking place, whilst Martha just unloads her suitcase, and pulls out the handle. He sighs inwardly, and sets off towards the exit, knowing without doubt that she is following him.
There is no need to speak; they both know why she is here. Not an emotional reunion, but a business arrangement. Torchwood Three needs help in dealing with a dangerous and difficult Hierdro alien, and Jack doesn’t bother with the official routes of enquiry - UNIT, Torchwood Two etc. There’s no point, when he knows there is someone who’s met them.
And so they don’t speak. He takes her to the Hub; she deals with the alien, tripling its own venom to create a poison strong enough to kill it - Jack doesn’t usually condone this way of dealing with a prisoner, but this one had the potential to kill hundreds of people. When she has finished, she washes her hands, turning swiftly away from the varied looks of his team. Gwen looks horrified, Owen impressed, Tosh confused and Ianto impenetrable.
It is gone midnight and he drives her to her hotel in silence. Neither of them had suggested she sleep at the Hub, and she finds the warm hum of the SUV soothing. The heaters and the lights for all of the technical extras intrude softly on her consciousness, and she feels herself being lulled asleep. Jack looks over, watching with an indefinable look on his face as she begins to look more open than she had done all day. The lines around her eyes stretch out, and the stress falls away. He wishes that coming to Cardiff didn’t cause her this much pain, but none of his thoughts show on his face.
He shakes her awake effectively after he’s pulled up outside the hotel. He drove around the block a few times first, to prolong her nap, but she doesn’t need to know that. Instead, she opens her eyes and blinks just once, before coming fully awake. Jack has already stepped back, giving her space, and she climbs out of the car easily, despite having just woken. They walk inside and everyone in the quiet lobby turns to look at them. They seem to exude power. The woman at the desk deals with the reservation, and Jack puts forward Torchwood’s credit card, before taking Martha’s case, and gesturing for her to take the key. Her eyes narrow imperceptibly at the casual order, but quickly she smoothes over it, stepping in front of him to call for the lift.
She knows he’s staring at her out of the corner of his eye, because she’s doing exactly the same thing. And she knows she seems like a bitch, but she can’t work out how not to be when she’s in this place. She hasn’t come here before, since she left him - she works in London now, and has risen up through the ranks a little since then.
He feels like asking her the blunt question, why she left, but knows he can’t. It’s something that is just too personal. So the silence pervades the elevator, enveloping them both again.
They reach her room, and she opens the door with a small fumble. She tries so hard to get everything right, but sometimes she falls just short, and he knows she hates that. As she pushes the door open, he debates whether to enter or not, and he decides to take the risk. He pulls the case in with him, and she knows he’s challenging her. They both know that someone has to speak, but neither of them know what to say.
Eventually he caves in, and when he speaks his voice is filled with a thousand emotions, that don’t show on his handsome face.
“Why did you leave him?”
She didn’t think he’d actually dare ask her. But then, he would wonder. Would question why, when he called to ask if her family needed any help settling back into life, she answered the phone. Why she’d been so distant in all their communications. Why she acted as if she’d forgotten him.
He didn’t think he’d actually dare ask her. He didn’t want to, but she’d been through hell, and it was possible she needed help of some sort. Yet he wasn’t blameless. After a year during which he’d had plenty of time to wonder about when he was next going to die, and how she was coping, he’s still a little curious about it all.
She can’t answer. It is too much. It is too complicated. She had loved him, he didn’t love her, and she knew she couldn’t stay, because she could never live with herself, and she knows that Jack will understand, but she is scared he’ll find it strange, and he is the only person she knows now on Earth who knows about that year, and she…
The tension in the room rockets upwards as she pushes him backwards against the door, her hands grasping his face and she holds it still. She looks straight at him for the first time, and he watches her eyes, as they flow between anger, pain, regret, bitterness, innocence and arousal. She shuts her eyes briefly, as if to regain control, but he knows she has failed when she opens them again. And, for the first time since he contacted her for help months ago, he understands what she needs.
It is almost forced as she kisses him, and her lips pull at his with an aggression that is pleasurable pain. Her tongue reaches for his, and he responds with a tempered passion, but he knows she can sense it. He wraps an arm round her waist, only for her to force herself closer to him against the door. The kiss escalates even more, and with all his experience Jack has never been this scared or this turned on by one kiss. Her energy starts to affect him, and his mouth presses against hers with ever-increasing desperation. Their bodies are aligned in a strong, dark line and his hands start to run over her body as he feels hers tug at his hair. She brings his face closer, and kisses him harder and harder, and their eyes are shut so they can lose themselves in their shared pain.
He knows he is lost when she pulls back for just a moment to get breath, and she whispers in his ear with an angry tone, “I couldn’t stay. I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to be someone different,” and wrenches his head down again.
She is lost in him, merging into him, and he is lost enough that he can’t remember why he shouldn’t be doing this. Instead he can feel her hands sliding underneath his clothes, a steely, shadowy touch, and he knows that she is different now. And perhaps so is he. He gives up, and she must realise, because she steps back, and with a brutal elegance, slides off her jacket and begins to pull off her shirt, her figure semi-hidden by the evening light. He cannot resist her now, and he watches, with dark desire in his eyes, as she strips.
When she is left in her underwear, he decides to take control, and he moves to her, initiating another kiss, but carries on moving, pushing her closer to the large bed in the corner of the room. When they reach it, her hands jerk madly at his own clothes, and he helps her to drag off his coat, and he kisses her hard as he unpeels the many layers he is wearing.
In the heat of the room, he notices in a disjointed thought, her body is covered in sheen of sweat, and when he has finished removing his clothes, he leaves her mouth to kiss down her body at a fast, powerful pace. She starts to moan, and when he reaches her cleavage, he reaches behind her for the clasp of her bra, and unclips it with a flick of his wrist. She pulls it away, and pushes him onto his back, before straddling him. The look on her face is no longer distant or angry, but filled with passion, and as he reaches to touch her breasts, she slaps his hands away, and almost groans,
“Don’t touch. Not yet.”
He lets his head drop back, hitting a pillow, and waits, with short intakes of breath, as she teases him with her lips and tongue, running her hands across him constantly, but never settling.
She knows his eyes aren’t shut, so she makes sure that when she finally reaches his cock, she is looking up at him, over the hard planes of his body, right into his eyes. There is no hate now, just seduction, and she feels herself tense up in a whole new way. He starts to groan, almost growl, as she takes him in her mouth, and tries to make it as good for him as she can. The noises he makes spur her on, and she uses her hands to stroke his chest until she feels him tense up. She prepares herself, but before he comes, he slides out from underneath her and rolls her over so she is beneath him yet again.
He is less torturous now, less so than her, and she arches her back as his fingers slide into her. A shadow falls onto his face, and as he skates his fingers in and out with a punishing rhythm, the pleasure confuses her thoughts, and she could swear the shadows are wrapping around him, and swirling forward to entwine around her. Then her eyes snap wide open again as he touches something inside her that causes her to expel a deep, exotic expletive, and moan his name loudly.
She comes down slowly, and as she lowers her head to look at him, she realises her hands in his hair have messed it up, and that his blue, blue eyes are staring at her from above that curved, beautiful mouth with a sinister glint. She reaches for him, and they may find it difficult to communicate sometimes, but now he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and he pulls himself up her body, making sure that their forms touch everywhere as he does so. The friction causes her to draw breath quickly, and he takes the opportunity to slide between her thighs, and fuck her.
He hasn’t had sex like this in years. With even his more remote affairs, he makes sure he invests enough ‘emotion’ to keep his partner happy, but with Martha, he doesn’t think she wants that. So he lets himself go, pumping his hips to a beat he can match to the blood’s pumping in his head, and knows that even if it seems like a quick fuck in an unpretentious hotel room, he has a deeper connection with this icy woman than he has with anyone else. She’ll accept that eventually, but for now he contents himself with causing her to alternate between screams and groans in that deliciously husky tone.
***
It is the following morning, and Jack wakes to his watch’s alarm. During the night, after their last bout of energy, he’s actually fallen asleep with Martha’s arms wrapped around him, and his head resting on hers. He knows she won’t want to wake up like that, so he pulls himself slowly out of her embrace, and starts to dress silently.
He is surprised when she wakes up; he has a certain amount of experience at leaving before his partner realises. He must be out of practice. They still don’t speak, and he knows it isn’t all alright, but the hard edge to her liquid brown gaze has dulled, and almost disappeared. She looks at him, and knows that he does understand, and that perhaps she understands him too. She knows that because she can tell what he’s going to say before he says it - she answers as he asks.
“Will you stay, work here?”
“Yes.”
Neither of them needs to say thank you.
_____________________________________
Please review :) ???
Title: Different Now
Rating: NC-17, Sex and angst
Pairing: Jack/Martha
Spoilers: None, I don't think.
Summary: When did Jack ask Martha to come to Torchwood?
The wind whistles up and down the platform, and the dark clouds constantly threaten rain. He meets her from the train with a closed face, still and silent in his greatcoat, and as she steps off, her foot catches. He is next to her immediately, holding her upright, and helping her straighten up. She barely looks at him; she barely looks anywhere but straight ahead, and as others get off the train, Jack feels incongruous. There are friends, and lovers, families being reacquainted, and all around them, small, touching scenes are taking place, whilst Martha just unloads her suitcase, and pulls out the handle. He sighs inwardly, and sets off towards the exit, knowing without doubt that she is following him.
There is no need to speak; they both know why she is here. Not an emotional reunion, but a business arrangement. Torchwood Three needs help in dealing with a dangerous and difficult Hierdro alien, and Jack doesn’t bother with the official routes of enquiry - UNIT, Torchwood Two etc. There’s no point, when he knows there is someone who’s met them.
And so they don’t speak. He takes her to the Hub; she deals with the alien, tripling its own venom to create a poison strong enough to kill it - Jack doesn’t usually condone this way of dealing with a prisoner, but this one had the potential to kill hundreds of people. When she has finished, she washes her hands, turning swiftly away from the varied looks of his team. Gwen looks horrified, Owen impressed, Tosh confused and Ianto impenetrable.
It is gone midnight and he drives her to her hotel in silence. Neither of them had suggested she sleep at the Hub, and she finds the warm hum of the SUV soothing. The heaters and the lights for all of the technical extras intrude softly on her consciousness, and she feels herself being lulled asleep. Jack looks over, watching with an indefinable look on his face as she begins to look more open than she had done all day. The lines around her eyes stretch out, and the stress falls away. He wishes that coming to Cardiff didn’t cause her this much pain, but none of his thoughts show on his face.
He shakes her awake effectively after he’s pulled up outside the hotel. He drove around the block a few times first, to prolong her nap, but she doesn’t need to know that. Instead, she opens her eyes and blinks just once, before coming fully awake. Jack has already stepped back, giving her space, and she climbs out of the car easily, despite having just woken. They walk inside and everyone in the quiet lobby turns to look at them. They seem to exude power. The woman at the desk deals with the reservation, and Jack puts forward Torchwood’s credit card, before taking Martha’s case, and gesturing for her to take the key. Her eyes narrow imperceptibly at the casual order, but quickly she smoothes over it, stepping in front of him to call for the lift.
She knows he’s staring at her out of the corner of his eye, because she’s doing exactly the same thing. And she knows she seems like a bitch, but she can’t work out how not to be when she’s in this place. She hasn’t come here before, since she left him - she works in London now, and has risen up through the ranks a little since then.
He feels like asking her the blunt question, why she left, but knows he can’t. It’s something that is just too personal. So the silence pervades the elevator, enveloping them both again.
They reach her room, and she opens the door with a small fumble. She tries so hard to get everything right, but sometimes she falls just short, and he knows she hates that. As she pushes the door open, he debates whether to enter or not, and he decides to take the risk. He pulls the case in with him, and she knows he’s challenging her. They both know that someone has to speak, but neither of them know what to say.
Eventually he caves in, and when he speaks his voice is filled with a thousand emotions, that don’t show on his handsome face.
“Why did you leave him?”
She didn’t think he’d actually dare ask her. But then, he would wonder. Would question why, when he called to ask if her family needed any help settling back into life, she answered the phone. Why she’d been so distant in all their communications. Why she acted as if she’d forgotten him.
He didn’t think he’d actually dare ask her. He didn’t want to, but she’d been through hell, and it was possible she needed help of some sort. Yet he wasn’t blameless. After a year during which he’d had plenty of time to wonder about when he was next going to die, and how she was coping, he’s still a little curious about it all.
She can’t answer. It is too much. It is too complicated. She had loved him, he didn’t love her, and she knew she couldn’t stay, because she could never live with herself, and she knows that Jack will understand, but she is scared he’ll find it strange, and he is the only person she knows now on Earth who knows about that year, and she…
The tension in the room rockets upwards as she pushes him backwards against the door, her hands grasping his face and she holds it still. She looks straight at him for the first time, and he watches her eyes, as they flow between anger, pain, regret, bitterness, innocence and arousal. She shuts her eyes briefly, as if to regain control, but he knows she has failed when she opens them again. And, for the first time since he contacted her for help months ago, he understands what she needs.
It is almost forced as she kisses him, and her lips pull at his with an aggression that is pleasurable pain. Her tongue reaches for his, and he responds with a tempered passion, but he knows she can sense it. He wraps an arm round her waist, only for her to force herself closer to him against the door. The kiss escalates even more, and with all his experience Jack has never been this scared or this turned on by one kiss. Her energy starts to affect him, and his mouth presses against hers with ever-increasing desperation. Their bodies are aligned in a strong, dark line and his hands start to run over her body as he feels hers tug at his hair. She brings his face closer, and kisses him harder and harder, and their eyes are shut so they can lose themselves in their shared pain.
He knows he is lost when she pulls back for just a moment to get breath, and she whispers in his ear with an angry tone, “I couldn’t stay. I didn’t want to stay. I wanted to be someone different,” and wrenches his head down again.
She is lost in him, merging into him, and he is lost enough that he can’t remember why he shouldn’t be doing this. Instead he can feel her hands sliding underneath his clothes, a steely, shadowy touch, and he knows that she is different now. And perhaps so is he. He gives up, and she must realise, because she steps back, and with a brutal elegance, slides off her jacket and begins to pull off her shirt, her figure semi-hidden by the evening light. He cannot resist her now, and he watches, with dark desire in his eyes, as she strips.
When she is left in her underwear, he decides to take control, and he moves to her, initiating another kiss, but carries on moving, pushing her closer to the large bed in the corner of the room. When they reach it, her hands jerk madly at his own clothes, and he helps her to drag off his coat, and he kisses her hard as he unpeels the many layers he is wearing.
In the heat of the room, he notices in a disjointed thought, her body is covered in sheen of sweat, and when he has finished removing his clothes, he leaves her mouth to kiss down her body at a fast, powerful pace. She starts to moan, and when he reaches her cleavage, he reaches behind her for the clasp of her bra, and unclips it with a flick of his wrist. She pulls it away, and pushes him onto his back, before straddling him. The look on her face is no longer distant or angry, but filled with passion, and as he reaches to touch her breasts, she slaps his hands away, and almost groans,
“Don’t touch. Not yet.”
He lets his head drop back, hitting a pillow, and waits, with short intakes of breath, as she teases him with her lips and tongue, running her hands across him constantly, but never settling.
She knows his eyes aren’t shut, so she makes sure that when she finally reaches his cock, she is looking up at him, over the hard planes of his body, right into his eyes. There is no hate now, just seduction, and she feels herself tense up in a whole new way. He starts to groan, almost growl, as she takes him in her mouth, and tries to make it as good for him as she can. The noises he makes spur her on, and she uses her hands to stroke his chest until she feels him tense up. She prepares herself, but before he comes, he slides out from underneath her and rolls her over so she is beneath him yet again.
He is less torturous now, less so than her, and she arches her back as his fingers slide into her. A shadow falls onto his face, and as he skates his fingers in and out with a punishing rhythm, the pleasure confuses her thoughts, and she could swear the shadows are wrapping around him, and swirling forward to entwine around her. Then her eyes snap wide open again as he touches something inside her that causes her to expel a deep, exotic expletive, and moan his name loudly.
She comes down slowly, and as she lowers her head to look at him, she realises her hands in his hair have messed it up, and that his blue, blue eyes are staring at her from above that curved, beautiful mouth with a sinister glint. She reaches for him, and they may find it difficult to communicate sometimes, but now he knows exactly what she’s thinking, and he pulls himself up her body, making sure that their forms touch everywhere as he does so. The friction causes her to draw breath quickly, and he takes the opportunity to slide between her thighs, and fuck her.
He hasn’t had sex like this in years. With even his more remote affairs, he makes sure he invests enough ‘emotion’ to keep his partner happy, but with Martha, he doesn’t think she wants that. So he lets himself go, pumping his hips to a beat he can match to the blood’s pumping in his head, and knows that even if it seems like a quick fuck in an unpretentious hotel room, he has a deeper connection with this icy woman than he has with anyone else. She’ll accept that eventually, but for now he contents himself with causing her to alternate between screams and groans in that deliciously husky tone.
***
It is the following morning, and Jack wakes to his watch’s alarm. During the night, after their last bout of energy, he’s actually fallen asleep with Martha’s arms wrapped around him, and his head resting on hers. He knows she won’t want to wake up like that, so he pulls himself slowly out of her embrace, and starts to dress silently.
He is surprised when she wakes up; he has a certain amount of experience at leaving before his partner realises. He must be out of practice. They still don’t speak, and he knows it isn’t all alright, but the hard edge to her liquid brown gaze has dulled, and almost disappeared. She looks at him, and knows that he does understand, and that perhaps she understands him too. She knows that because she can tell what he’s going to say before he says it - she answers as he asks.
“Will you stay, work here?”
“Yes.”
Neither of them needs to say thank you.
_____________________________________
Please review :) ???