sahiya: Five Days in Dry Dock, 1/5 (R) [Jack/Ten]
Title: Five Days in Dry Dock, 1/5
Author: sahiya
Pairing/Rating: R, Jack/Ten
Word Count: 2200 this part; about 13,000 overall
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to Rusty and the BBC.
Summary: The TARDIS needs an overhaul. Jack needs a few days to put himself back together, physically and mentally. Even without a mortgage, it borders on domestic, but the Doctor's feet are mysteriously un-itchy about it.
Author's Note: This is a sequel to Atonement, which I posted here last month, and was written for the "Domesticity" challenge. Many thanks also to my beta reader, fuzzyboo03, whose birthday fic will probably be late because I'm writing this (sorry). Warnings for rampant h/c (again - God, I'm hopeless).
Five Days in Dry Dock
Day One
Bellacosa. The Doctor would freely admit - if someone asked - that part of why he loved that particular planet so much was the way its name rolled out on his tongue. Bellacosa! The sky was purple-blue, shading to red at the horizon, and the water was a soft aqua green. The sand was white, the vegetation plentiful and rarely deadly, and there were, as the Doctor had told Jack, no natural predators, at least not on these islands.
It was a shame, then, that Jack wasn't in much shape to enjoy it.
It had probably been too much to hope that one night of relative comfort and a few antibiotics would cure six months of malnutrition, exhaustion, dehydration, at least one outright death, and a wasting infection of unknown variety. Jack lasted about fifteen minutes after the Doctor closed the door on Glaxon 5 before his knees buckled and he collapsed, catching himself on the edge of the console with a startled oof. "I don't feel so great," he'd said, sounding faintly surprised, right before his eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out.
The Doctor had put him to bed in his old room - not that it was recognizable as such. The Doctor's ninth self had called Jack's room the "Den of Iniquity," but this room was downright Spartan. Even the bed was transformed from the four-poster monstrosity Jack had the first time (complete with discreet metal loops at all four corners) to a much narrower model with a firmer mattress. The walls were white and bare. The furniture was minimal, with sharp corners and clean lines.
It was a soldier's room, if more comfortable than any barracks. It hadn't told the Doctor much he'd not already known about how Jack had changed, but it was disquieting to see it so clearly demonstrated.
The Doctor sighed and closed the doors of the TARDIS on the beaches of Bellacosa. He had two patients to think about - the TARDIS, who desperately needed an overhaul, and Jack, who needed rest and time and looking-after. Once upon a time, the thought of being stuck in one place for four or five days while his companions put themselves back together would have made him itch. Even without a mortgage it bordered on domestic.
But he owed it to the TARDIS, poor put-upon old friend that she was, and he owed it to Jack. He'd promised himself, and Jack, that he would earn the forgiveness Jack wasn't ready to give, and this was where he'd start: by giving Jack all the time he needed before answering any mauve signals and getting them into a run-for-their-lives situation.
The first order of business for the TARDIS was to run a diagnostic on all the main life support systems. She could do that herself, but not in the Vortex, which was why he'd needed to find someplace to park her. He set her to that now, giving her an affectionate pat on the console and silently asking her to let him know when she was done. She nudged back carefully at his mind, a tiger nuzzling a housecat, and he went to see to his other patient.
Jack was sleeping still, tucked beneath a duvet. The Doctor leaned in the threshold to Jack's room and felt generally useless. He'd hooked Jack up to a saline and glucose drip and run a diagnostic on a blood sample as soon as he'd collapsed. There wasn't much left for him to do except twiddle his thumbs until Jack woke.
"Tea," he muttered to himself, pushing off the doorjamb. "Make tea. That always helps."
This was easier said than done. It turned out the Doctor had, without quite realizing it, accumulated an intimidating array of tea, but a brief rummage turned up disappointingly few appropriate for sick people. The Doctor, like most of his companions, was fond of the light chemical buzz provided by caffeine, but the last thing Jack needed was to be awake. There were a few dusty packets of something herbal, but the Doctor couldn't think of any companion in recent memory who might have bought them. He binned them and stood grumbling to himself in frustration until he had the sudden, overwhelming urge to open the fridge.
The TARDIS was preoccupied, so it was fairly empty. But on the bottom shelf, in lonely splendor, lay a piece of ginger root and a lemon. Idiot, he heard the ship thinking at him. Make it yourself.
"Fine then," he said aloud, "I will."
It was the work of a moment to slice up the ginger root. He boiled water in his electric kettle, then poured it into a pot with the ginger. He covered it and went to check on Jack again. Still sleeping. He detoured into the console room to check in with the TARDIS. Still self-diagnosing. He briefly considered stepping outside for a minute - well, five - just to see what the weather was like - as though it might have changed in the last twenty minutes - but even he knew that way lay probable madness. He needed to be patient. He needed . . . he needed to make toast.
He did it the old-fashioned way, in the oven, and ate one piece with butter and strawberry jam. The other two he buttered and put on a plate. By then the tea was done; it went into a two large mugs with a generous splash of lemon and a dollop of honey. The Doctor was just digging a tray out from the cupboard over the sink and wondering what he was going to do if Jack slept on for another three or four hours when the TARDIS alerted him that Jack was awake.
The Doctor felt a sudden surge of affection towards his ship. It wasn't easy, running a systems check and keeping track of her passengers at the same time, but she managed it.
Jack was moving restlessly under the covers when the Doctor nudged the door to his room open with his foot. He set the tray of tea and toast on Jack's nightstand, then seated himself on the edge of Jack's bed.
"What happened?" Jack asked, blinking up at the Doctor. "Was it lizards? Think I remember something - giant lizards, or dinosaurs. Were there dinosaurs?"
The Doctor frowned at him in concern, then rested the back of his hand against Jack's forehead. He was warm, but then, humans always were, hot and cold being entirely relative. A life-threatening fever for the Doctor would be life-threatening hypothermia for Jack. But his forehead was damp, his eyes were glazed, and he wasn't making a bit of sense, all of which pointed towards fever.
"None of the above, I'm afraid," the Doctor said, settling a bit further back on the mattress as it became clear Jack wasn't going to physically kick him off the bed. "You're a bit under the weather at the moment, that's all." He thought he could be forgiven for skimping on the details here; the blood analysis had given him a bit more information, but the Doctor thought opportunistic infection was a lot less reassuring than a bit under the weather.
"Oh." Jack sighed, closing his eyes. "Yeah. I feel like shit." He slitted his eyes open. "Where are we?"
"Bellacosa. Do you remember the -"
"Beaches, right," Jack yawned. "Beaches and nothing to eat. No, nothing to eat us. Gonna work on the TARDIS . . . how is she?"
"All right for the moment. Running a self-diagnostic on the life support systems." The Doctor hesitated, then found Jack's hand where it lay, limp and damp with sweat, outside the covers. He laced their fingers together. "You'll both be right as rain again in a few days."
Jack almost smiled at that. He looked amused, at least, or as much as he could with his eyes closed. "What do you do for the TARDIS when she's under the weather?" he asked, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on the Doctor's.
"This, more or less. Park her someplace nice. Like any - well, almost any - well, at least seventy percent of other beings, she prefers warm and dry to cold and wet. Unfortunately," he added with a grimace, "the best place to fuel her up these days is Cardiff, which is never at any point in its history anything but cold and wet by any sane definition, and is actually intermittently under water, so that's a bit at odds. As for the rest - well, she does a lot of it herself." He smiled and reached out to pat the nearest wall. "She's self-sufficient, my TARDIS. But I do things to help her along."
"Like holding her hand?"
"Well, not -" The Doctor paused and looked down at their hands. "Er. In a matter of speaking."
Jack smiled faintly. "I'm sure she appreciates it."
"Ah. Well." The Doctor rubbed at the back of his neck. "Anyway. You should have fluids."
"I have fluids," Jack said, shifting his arm to indicate the bag of saline-and-glucose solution.
"Yes, but -" The Doctor gestured vaguely. "Hot fluids, tea and chicken soup, that sort of thing."
That startled Jack into opening his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at the Doctor. "Chicken soup?"
"Of course chicken soup! It has all sorts of natural healing properties."
"You're going to make me chicken soup."
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you complaining?"
"No, of course not, I'm just surprised. It's a bit domestic for you, isn't it?"
"Ah, well . . ." The Doctor grimaced. "This me doesn't seem to have quite the allergy to domestic the old me did. Had Christmas dinner with Rose's family and everything. Didn't get slapped, either."
"Huh."
"What 'huh'?"
"Oh, it's just . . ." Jack frowned. "You've changed. I mean, obviously you've changed, but I kept telling myself it was just the outside. But you've changed."
"So've you." The Doctor glanced surreptitiously around the room. The walls were so very bare.
"I know," Jack sighed. "Believe me, I know."
"Anyway," the Doctor went on, a bit awkwardly, "I haven't managed the soup yet, but I have got the tea and a bit of toast. You should have some."
"I'd rather just go back to sleep."
"It's homemade ginger tea," the Doctor said, wheedling him a little, "with honey and lemon. I made it myself - well, the TARDIS helped, she came up with the ginger to begin with. You don't want to hurt her feelings, do you?"
Jack glared, but there was no real heat to it. "That's playing dirty." The Doctor shrugged. "All right, I'll drink the tea. No promises on the toast."
"Fair enough," the Doctor said, and helped him sit up. He handed Jack his mug and settled crosslegged on the end of Jack's bed with his own. He eyed Jack over its rim with worry. Jack looked as bad as he had when the Doctor had first found him by that well - but of course it really hadn't been that long, less than two days, really, and Jack wasn't that sick, not really. He just looked it. And probably felt it.
"Christ, I hate this," Jack said suddenly. He lowered his mug so abruptly a bit of tea sloshed out over his hand, but he didn't seem to notice. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. "I feel woozy just from sitting up for five minutes. And you," he added, opening his eyes to focus blearily on the Doctor, "you, I don't know what you're doing, with the tea and the toast and the, the - I don't know. I don't understand you anymore. My head hurts."
"I can get you a painkiller," the Doctor offered, taking Jack's tea from him before he could spill any more. Jack didn't seem to notice.
"No, I just . . ." Jack sank down, yawning, into the covers, until they were up to his chin. "I'm going back to sleep," he said, eyes already heavy-lidded, voice drowsy. "Where're you going to be?"
"Oh, around. Tinkering. I won't go far."
"Good," Jack mumbled sleepily.
The Doctor hovered, hopefully unobtrusive, until he was sure Jack was asleep. Then he retrieved a flannel from the bathroom and wet it under cold water. Jack's eyelids fluttered briefly when he lay it across his forehead, but he didn't wake. The Doctor paused, considering, then gathered up the tray and left.
The truth was, before the Game Station he'd have done this for Rose without a thought, but for Jack, almost certainly not. He would have left that to Rose and limited his participation to making sarcastic remarks about the fragility of human bodies, even fancy ones with all sorts of Time Agency enhancements. But Rose was gone. If he and Jack were ever going to learn to live with each other without her, it had to be now.
The Doctor chucked the uneaten toast into the kitchen bin, then poured the rest of Jack's tea down the drain. He sighed.
Perhaps he'd have more luck with the chicken soup.
***
Day Two
Author: sahiya
Pairing/Rating: R, Jack/Ten
Word Count: 2200 this part; about 13,000 overall
Disclaimer: Not mine! They belong to Rusty and the BBC.
Summary: The TARDIS needs an overhaul. Jack needs a few days to put himself back together, physically and mentally. Even without a mortgage, it borders on domestic, but the Doctor's feet are mysteriously un-itchy about it.
Author's Note: This is a sequel to Atonement, which I posted here last month, and was written for the "Domesticity" challenge. Many thanks also to my beta reader, fuzzyboo03, whose birthday fic will probably be late because I'm writing this (sorry). Warnings for rampant h/c (again - God, I'm hopeless).
Five Days in Dry Dock
Day One
Bellacosa. The Doctor would freely admit - if someone asked - that part of why he loved that particular planet so much was the way its name rolled out on his tongue. Bellacosa! The sky was purple-blue, shading to red at the horizon, and the water was a soft aqua green. The sand was white, the vegetation plentiful and rarely deadly, and there were, as the Doctor had told Jack, no natural predators, at least not on these islands.
It was a shame, then, that Jack wasn't in much shape to enjoy it.
It had probably been too much to hope that one night of relative comfort and a few antibiotics would cure six months of malnutrition, exhaustion, dehydration, at least one outright death, and a wasting infection of unknown variety. Jack lasted about fifteen minutes after the Doctor closed the door on Glaxon 5 before his knees buckled and he collapsed, catching himself on the edge of the console with a startled oof. "I don't feel so great," he'd said, sounding faintly surprised, right before his eyes rolled up in his head and he passed out.
The Doctor had put him to bed in his old room - not that it was recognizable as such. The Doctor's ninth self had called Jack's room the "Den of Iniquity," but this room was downright Spartan. Even the bed was transformed from the four-poster monstrosity Jack had the first time (complete with discreet metal loops at all four corners) to a much narrower model with a firmer mattress. The walls were white and bare. The furniture was minimal, with sharp corners and clean lines.
It was a soldier's room, if more comfortable than any barracks. It hadn't told the Doctor much he'd not already known about how Jack had changed, but it was disquieting to see it so clearly demonstrated.
The Doctor sighed and closed the doors of the TARDIS on the beaches of Bellacosa. He had two patients to think about - the TARDIS, who desperately needed an overhaul, and Jack, who needed rest and time and looking-after. Once upon a time, the thought of being stuck in one place for four or five days while his companions put themselves back together would have made him itch. Even without a mortgage it bordered on domestic.
But he owed it to the TARDIS, poor put-upon old friend that she was, and he owed it to Jack. He'd promised himself, and Jack, that he would earn the forgiveness Jack wasn't ready to give, and this was where he'd start: by giving Jack all the time he needed before answering any mauve signals and getting them into a run-for-their-lives situation.
The first order of business for the TARDIS was to run a diagnostic on all the main life support systems. She could do that herself, but not in the Vortex, which was why he'd needed to find someplace to park her. He set her to that now, giving her an affectionate pat on the console and silently asking her to let him know when she was done. She nudged back carefully at his mind, a tiger nuzzling a housecat, and he went to see to his other patient.
Jack was sleeping still, tucked beneath a duvet. The Doctor leaned in the threshold to Jack's room and felt generally useless. He'd hooked Jack up to a saline and glucose drip and run a diagnostic on a blood sample as soon as he'd collapsed. There wasn't much left for him to do except twiddle his thumbs until Jack woke.
"Tea," he muttered to himself, pushing off the doorjamb. "Make tea. That always helps."
This was easier said than done. It turned out the Doctor had, without quite realizing it, accumulated an intimidating array of tea, but a brief rummage turned up disappointingly few appropriate for sick people. The Doctor, like most of his companions, was fond of the light chemical buzz provided by caffeine, but the last thing Jack needed was to be awake. There were a few dusty packets of something herbal, but the Doctor couldn't think of any companion in recent memory who might have bought them. He binned them and stood grumbling to himself in frustration until he had the sudden, overwhelming urge to open the fridge.
The TARDIS was preoccupied, so it was fairly empty. But on the bottom shelf, in lonely splendor, lay a piece of ginger root and a lemon. Idiot, he heard the ship thinking at him. Make it yourself.
"Fine then," he said aloud, "I will."
It was the work of a moment to slice up the ginger root. He boiled water in his electric kettle, then poured it into a pot with the ginger. He covered it and went to check on Jack again. Still sleeping. He detoured into the console room to check in with the TARDIS. Still self-diagnosing. He briefly considered stepping outside for a minute - well, five - just to see what the weather was like - as though it might have changed in the last twenty minutes - but even he knew that way lay probable madness. He needed to be patient. He needed . . . he needed to make toast.
He did it the old-fashioned way, in the oven, and ate one piece with butter and strawberry jam. The other two he buttered and put on a plate. By then the tea was done; it went into a two large mugs with a generous splash of lemon and a dollop of honey. The Doctor was just digging a tray out from the cupboard over the sink and wondering what he was going to do if Jack slept on for another three or four hours when the TARDIS alerted him that Jack was awake.
The Doctor felt a sudden surge of affection towards his ship. It wasn't easy, running a systems check and keeping track of her passengers at the same time, but she managed it.
Jack was moving restlessly under the covers when the Doctor nudged the door to his room open with his foot. He set the tray of tea and toast on Jack's nightstand, then seated himself on the edge of Jack's bed.
"What happened?" Jack asked, blinking up at the Doctor. "Was it lizards? Think I remember something - giant lizards, or dinosaurs. Were there dinosaurs?"
The Doctor frowned at him in concern, then rested the back of his hand against Jack's forehead. He was warm, but then, humans always were, hot and cold being entirely relative. A life-threatening fever for the Doctor would be life-threatening hypothermia for Jack. But his forehead was damp, his eyes were glazed, and he wasn't making a bit of sense, all of which pointed towards fever.
"None of the above, I'm afraid," the Doctor said, settling a bit further back on the mattress as it became clear Jack wasn't going to physically kick him off the bed. "You're a bit under the weather at the moment, that's all." He thought he could be forgiven for skimping on the details here; the blood analysis had given him a bit more information, but the Doctor thought opportunistic infection was a lot less reassuring than a bit under the weather.
"Oh." Jack sighed, closing his eyes. "Yeah. I feel like shit." He slitted his eyes open. "Where are we?"
"Bellacosa. Do you remember the -"
"Beaches, right," Jack yawned. "Beaches and nothing to eat. No, nothing to eat us. Gonna work on the TARDIS . . . how is she?"
"All right for the moment. Running a self-diagnostic on the life support systems." The Doctor hesitated, then found Jack's hand where it lay, limp and damp with sweat, outside the covers. He laced their fingers together. "You'll both be right as rain again in a few days."
Jack almost smiled at that. He looked amused, at least, or as much as he could with his eyes closed. "What do you do for the TARDIS when she's under the weather?" he asked, fingers tightening almost imperceptibly on the Doctor's.
"This, more or less. Park her someplace nice. Like any - well, almost any - well, at least seventy percent of other beings, she prefers warm and dry to cold and wet. Unfortunately," he added with a grimace, "the best place to fuel her up these days is Cardiff, which is never at any point in its history anything but cold and wet by any sane definition, and is actually intermittently under water, so that's a bit at odds. As for the rest - well, she does a lot of it herself." He smiled and reached out to pat the nearest wall. "She's self-sufficient, my TARDIS. But I do things to help her along."
"Like holding her hand?"
"Well, not -" The Doctor paused and looked down at their hands. "Er. In a matter of speaking."
Jack smiled faintly. "I'm sure she appreciates it."
"Ah. Well." The Doctor rubbed at the back of his neck. "Anyway. You should have fluids."
"I have fluids," Jack said, shifting his arm to indicate the bag of saline-and-glucose solution.
"Yes, but -" The Doctor gestured vaguely. "Hot fluids, tea and chicken soup, that sort of thing."
That startled Jack into opening his eyes. He raised an eyebrow at the Doctor. "Chicken soup?"
"Of course chicken soup! It has all sorts of natural healing properties."
"You're going to make me chicken soup."
The Doctor crossed his arms over his chest. "Are you complaining?"
"No, of course not, I'm just surprised. It's a bit domestic for you, isn't it?"
"Ah, well . . ." The Doctor grimaced. "This me doesn't seem to have quite the allergy to domestic the old me did. Had Christmas dinner with Rose's family and everything. Didn't get slapped, either."
"Huh."
"What 'huh'?"
"Oh, it's just . . ." Jack frowned. "You've changed. I mean, obviously you've changed, but I kept telling myself it was just the outside. But you've changed."
"So've you." The Doctor glanced surreptitiously around the room. The walls were so very bare.
"I know," Jack sighed. "Believe me, I know."
"Anyway," the Doctor went on, a bit awkwardly, "I haven't managed the soup yet, but I have got the tea and a bit of toast. You should have some."
"I'd rather just go back to sleep."
"It's homemade ginger tea," the Doctor said, wheedling him a little, "with honey and lemon. I made it myself - well, the TARDIS helped, she came up with the ginger to begin with. You don't want to hurt her feelings, do you?"
Jack glared, but there was no real heat to it. "That's playing dirty." The Doctor shrugged. "All right, I'll drink the tea. No promises on the toast."
"Fair enough," the Doctor said, and helped him sit up. He handed Jack his mug and settled crosslegged on the end of Jack's bed with his own. He eyed Jack over its rim with worry. Jack looked as bad as he had when the Doctor had first found him by that well - but of course it really hadn't been that long, less than two days, really, and Jack wasn't that sick, not really. He just looked it. And probably felt it.
"Christ, I hate this," Jack said suddenly. He lowered his mug so abruptly a bit of tea sloshed out over his hand, but he didn't seem to notice. He tilted his head back and closed his eyes. "I feel woozy just from sitting up for five minutes. And you," he added, opening his eyes to focus blearily on the Doctor, "you, I don't know what you're doing, with the tea and the toast and the, the - I don't know. I don't understand you anymore. My head hurts."
"I can get you a painkiller," the Doctor offered, taking Jack's tea from him before he could spill any more. Jack didn't seem to notice.
"No, I just . . ." Jack sank down, yawning, into the covers, until they were up to his chin. "I'm going back to sleep," he said, eyes already heavy-lidded, voice drowsy. "Where're you going to be?"
"Oh, around. Tinkering. I won't go far."
"Good," Jack mumbled sleepily.
The Doctor hovered, hopefully unobtrusive, until he was sure Jack was asleep. Then he retrieved a flannel from the bathroom and wet it under cold water. Jack's eyelids fluttered briefly when he lay it across his forehead, but he didn't wake. The Doctor paused, considering, then gathered up the tray and left.
The truth was, before the Game Station he'd have done this for Rose without a thought, but for Jack, almost certainly not. He would have left that to Rose and limited his participation to making sarcastic remarks about the fragility of human bodies, even fancy ones with all sorts of Time Agency enhancements. But Rose was gone. If he and Jack were ever going to learn to live with each other without her, it had to be now.
The Doctor chucked the uneaten toast into the kitchen bin, then poured the rest of Jack's tea down the drain. He sighed.
Perhaps he'd have more luck with the chicken soup.
***
Day Two