Never made a fool of you [fic]
Title: Never made a fool of you
Author: shadowbyrd
Rating: R
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Toshiko, Jack/John
Prompt: 32. Feelings for otp_100
Word Count: 321
Summary: Jack struggles to understand love in the 21st century.
Jack has met a lot of people who talk about love and hate as if there’s a Great Wall of China separating them. He has yet to make up his mind whether those people are naïve or if it’s just hangover of the last hundred years, this obsession with tidying the world into boxes and straight lines, unable to bear the complicated clutter of people.
For Jack such lines - if there are lines at all - are hair-line cracks in the ice, virtually invisible unless looked at from the right angle. He’ll be the first to admit it’s not necessarily healthy - he wasn’t honestly all that surprised when John pushed him, just out of spite - or a sound foundation for a long-lasting relationship, but love can only stay that intense for so long. And if it means that for a time he is loved and cherished beyond anything else Jack can stand to pay for it later.
And sometimes there are no lines at all.
He both admires and is irritated by the way Toshiko can focus on his good side without completely ignoring the fact that when he needs to be he can be an unrepentant bastard in word and deed.
Those moments she hates him she doesn’t hold back. Some nights he doesn’t have to anything; the fact that he’s Captain Jack Harkness (or isn’t as the case may be) is more than enough.
She lies curled up under one of his arms, mysterious and almost boringly familiar. She catches him looking and flashes him a smile, eyes too tired.
Love you she mouths. Like it’s a secret too terrible to be said out loud.
He didn’t set her free, just gave her a bigger cage to run around in, more windows to see the life she’s missing.
Jack can’t blame her - Stockholm syndrome’s a bitch.
He smiles back at her, mouth You too.
It never feels like enough.
Author: shadowbyrd
Rating: R
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Toshiko, Jack/John
Prompt: 32. Feelings for otp_100
Word Count: 321
Summary: Jack struggles to understand love in the 21st century.
Jack has met a lot of people who talk about love and hate as if there’s a Great Wall of China separating them. He has yet to make up his mind whether those people are naïve or if it’s just hangover of the last hundred years, this obsession with tidying the world into boxes and straight lines, unable to bear the complicated clutter of people.
For Jack such lines - if there are lines at all - are hair-line cracks in the ice, virtually invisible unless looked at from the right angle. He’ll be the first to admit it’s not necessarily healthy - he wasn’t honestly all that surprised when John pushed him, just out of spite - or a sound foundation for a long-lasting relationship, but love can only stay that intense for so long. And if it means that for a time he is loved and cherished beyond anything else Jack can stand to pay for it later.
And sometimes there are no lines at all.
He both admires and is irritated by the way Toshiko can focus on his good side without completely ignoring the fact that when he needs to be he can be an unrepentant bastard in word and deed.
Those moments she hates him she doesn’t hold back. Some nights he doesn’t have to anything; the fact that he’s Captain Jack Harkness (or isn’t as the case may be) is more than enough.
She lies curled up under one of his arms, mysterious and almost boringly familiar. She catches him looking and flashes him a smile, eyes too tired.
Love you she mouths. Like it’s a secret too terrible to be said out loud.
He didn’t set her free, just gave her a bigger cage to run around in, more windows to see the life she’s missing.
Jack can’t blame her - Stockholm syndrome’s a bitch.
He smiles back at her, mouth You too.
It never feels like enough.