trobadora: Knife's Edge (Ten/Jack) [NC-17]
Title: Knife's Edge
Author: trobadora
Challenge: Whump
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Warnings: serious darkness, sexualised violence, dubious consent, snuff (or as close as it gets with Jack Harkness)
Summary: "The Master couldn't break you. You think I could?"
A/N: I also used the following Porn Battle XV prompts: "Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness, wrong, captive, god".
~*~
"Do you know why I want you?"
Jack's hands are cuffed to the headboard. He is on his elbows and knees, forehead resting on the mattress. There's a hard cock up his arse, and a knife against his throat. He is shivering.
It's not excitement. It's not fear. He's not sure what it is.
The Doctor presses his knife into Jack's throat, breaking skin. Jack feels a rivulet of blood run down to his collarbone. His mind runs along with the slight tickle.
"Because when you die, you come back." With a swift, harsh motion, the knife slices into Jack, through skin and trachea and both carotids. A surreal biting, splitting pain - a warm gush down his neck, and he feels himself bleeding out, fading, fading into nothing.
~*~
Jack, in death, is pliant and limp in the Doctor's grasp. Life has spilled itself entirely - except it hasn't, not to the Doctor's senses. Jack's dead body is not dead at all: Jack's timeline isn't ended, still spins out from this moment forward into eternity. The Doctor can see it. He keeps hold of Jack's hips, pulled tight against him - doesn't let him slip from his grasp, from his cock.
He waits for it, breathing harshly in anticipation. Just a moment longer ...
Jack's whole body jerks, a sudden sharp tightening of every muscle and sinew as life bursts forth from within. His head jerks up out of the puddle of his own blood, his spine arches, and his arse clenches around the Doctor's cock. Vortex energy swirls and bursts around him, filling the Doctor's senses. The Doctor gasps with it, thrusting forward involuntarily, and then again deliberately, and again, harsh sharp jerks of the hips, falling into impossible pleasure.
"I could do this again and again," he rasps, words like a knife. Like the knife he used to make this happen. "All that life, breaking free. The universe breaks itself for you, Jack. You don't feel it, but I do. It twists itself around to keep you. It's wrong, utterly wrong." It overwhelms him, his physical and temporal senses in near-overload. His hips stutter, and he lets out a long, drawn-out moan. "It's so good."
He reaches around for Jack's cock and finds it hard, always hard for him. With a last, inevitable thrust, he comes, letting himself fall forward, into the impossible ultra-reality of the Fact, into Jack.
~*~
Jack twitches a little when the Doctor peels himself from Jack's back and pulls back, pulls out. But he says nothing.
There's a towel conveniently next to them on the bed, and the Doctor wipes himself off without taking his eyes from Jack. "Turn over," he orders, and watches Jack struggle to comply, shifting and twisting and eventually settling on his back, his cuffed wrists crossed over this head.
The sheets are damp with his blood. Jack's throat is covered in it, too, and the left side of his face is smeared from where he'd collapsed into it, dying. Its metallic smell is stuck in the Doctor's nostrils. Its molecules dance in the Doctor's mind, sugars and minerals, blood cells with their haemoglobin and the oxygen it binds. It's revolting and arousing in almost equal parts.
He straddles Jack's hips, looking down at him. Jack squints up at the Doctor, eyes a little unfocused, as if trying to solve a puzzle through a haze. His cock is still hard. Vortex energy is still thrumming under Jack's skin, and the Doctor can feel the timelines twist all around them. He wants to make them twist, wants to shape their dance, and he can - with Jack under him, in his hands, he can. He can feel his own cock fill again and grins, grinding himself against Jack.
Then he slaps a hand across Jack's face, hard. "Wake up," he snarls. "Where's your chatter? Not like you, just lying there all quiet-like. No fun if you're just taking it."
Jack shakes his head, grimaces, and then his eyes seem to suddenly clear. "You have a point with this?" His voice is a croak, but the tone is shockingly mild. The Doctor nearly flinches back. That's not how this is supposed to go.
Instead, he slaps Jack again, and then lazily thrusts against him. "Should have done this ages ago. Silly scruples."
Jack seems to consider. "None holding you back now?"
"Not now." His lip draws up, a contemptuous sneer. "Did you know how much it excites me, having a fixed point under my hands, under me?" he says, almost conversationally. Back on script. Good.
Jack smirks, incongruously, humourlessly. "I suspected." Then he turns serious. "Doctor. What's going on here?" Not worried. He should be terrified - not for his life, maybe, but for his safety, his very sanity. Instead, he sounds a little apprehensive, but not seriously worried.
The Doctor blinks, then blinks again. Something is niggling at the edge of his awareness. He ignores it in favour of another thrust against Jack's body. "Going on?" he says, distracted, already kneeling up and crawling forward on the bed until his cock nudges Jack's lips.
With Jack tied down the way he is, the angle is less than optimal, but he makes do, one hand behind the back of Jack's head, lifting him up, the other braced against the wall behind the bed. "Open up, Jack."
Jack does.
Jack does, and he thrusts forward, sharply, into the warmth of Jack's mouth. "Jack," he gasps, holding still for a moment. Jack's tongue slides against his cock, curls around it. Consciously, instinctively, who knows? "I could throw you into a fixed point in space and time, and make you change it. Pompeii maybe, that would be - yeah. You're a fixed point yourself - I want to see which of you wins. I think it would be you. Oh, I could shift the entire universe with you as a lever. I want to watch the universe break itself to bits on you, and then I want to fuck you in the ruins."
His hips jerk forward at the thought, and for a moment he loses himself in the vicious, delirious pleasure of thrusting into Jack's mouth, harsh against the back of Jack's throat, making him gag. He could suffocate him like this, and feel it all over again, timelines and eternity converging around him, coming into life around his cock.
Later, maybe. Now, he wants Jack to hear. "I want ..." he continues, compulsively, between and around his thrusts. "I want to balance you on the edge of a knife, to split you open and see you knit back together, to keep you on the brink forever. I want to distil the traces of the Vortex from your breath, from the sweat on your skin, from your blood. It never runs out, that's the best part. I could bleed you forever and you'd never bleed dry. And I want my cock inside you while I do it."
He pulls back, out. Waiting for it. "What do you say?"
Jack shivers, gulping harsh, panting breaths. "We can do that."
This time, the Doctor does flinch back. He's not supposed to say that. He's supposed to ... "You don't understand -"
Jack stills. Almost kindly, "Yes. I really do." Then his brow wrinkles into a deep frown. "Except this. I really don't understand how we actually got to this."
What?
"Doc, hang on a moment, all right? Think. How did we get here?"
He doesn't want to think, but his brain has other ideas. He looks around - the bed, the room, Jack in his own blood beneath him. He thinks back. What does he remember last?
And that's when it falls apart, all the oxygen sucked out of the air, cold awareness biting into his skin. The Doctor rears back in shock, in disgust, and his stomach heaves up. He bends over the side of the bed, retching, but he can't expel the revolting memory of the sick pleasure he took. The pleasure he wants to take again.
~*~
Teeth clenched, the Doctor forces himself upright. He undoes the cuffs around Jacks wrists, bats away Jack's incongruous, undeserved concern. It's obscene, having Jack worry about him. He hands him the towel and watches, throat tight, as Jack wipes off as much of the half-dried blood as he can manage. The Doctor's throat is tight, his stomach a painful knot, and when Jack sets the stained towel aside he has to swallow down another retching spell. His eyes fix on the red-brown smears on Jack's face, and he doesn't let himself look away. Forcing himself to face what he has wrought.
"Doctor?"
He swallows again, harsh and deliberate. "It's a nightmare," he whispers eventually. "I didn't notice. It's a nightmare."
Jack blinks and tilts his head to the side. "You're having a nightmare," he says, slowly, as if testing out the words. "You're dreaming, and I'm somehow in your head?"
"Yes." A harsh, hissing admission.
And he waits, waits for it to come, for Jack to realise. With his mind - both their minds - jerked out of the immediacy of the scene, it's inevitable.
It doesn't come. Jack's hand doesn't clench into a fist. He doesn't flinch back. Instead, he reaches out, open-handed, a steadying palm against the Doctor's shoulder. "Can you wake up?"
He shakes his head, helpless. "I tried. We're stuck. I can't stop dreaming." And you saw the kind of thing I dream. Jack's hand burns against his skin, and he shakes him off, turning his face away.
"How? I didn't know that could happen." Jack sounds almost ... interested now, which is the most ludicrous thing imaginable.
"It shouldn't." A helpless shrug. "Something's messing with my telepathic barriers. Some kind of an amplifier? I don't know! There's nothing like that on Sashosa." Which was where they actually were, or had been - in body as it were, fallen asleep on a pallet after a visit to the local hot springs and a bit of a tussle with a renegade Rutan.
"Whatever it is, can't be good." Jack scratches his nose, and shrugs, lips turning up a little. "Lucid dreaming, at least."
The Doctor grimaces. "Not sure that makes anything better." He hesitates. "You still don't know the worst of it. You still have no idea what you've got yourself into."
Jack's eyebrows rise. "There's more?" The apprehension shadowing the blue of his eyes is woefully inadequate.
The Doctor takes a deep breath. Full disclosure. He can't do any less, not now, not after what he's done to Jack. (What he still wants to do. It still plays itself out, somewhere in the Doctor's subconscious.) "I'm a Time Lord. My dreams are ..." He trails off, the words harder to force out than he'd thought, past the rawness of his throat.
Nonetheless, in front of his eyes, even without the words, Jack catches on. He's always been quick on the uptake, after all.
"Potential timelines," Jack breathes, awed realisation in his voice, his eyes.
"Don't look at me like that," the Doctor snaps. "Don't you understand? That means this isn't - this wasn't just a nightmare self. This is me. This could be me, out there, in the real world. One day it might. On some level, this is as real as anything."
Jack's eyes are entirely too knowing. "It would be anyway."
The Doctor cringes. "The things I want to do to you sometimes - you have no idea."
"I think I do." Jack's knuckles brush along the side of the Doctor's face as he leans forward, looking him directly in the eye. "Time Lord."
A grimace full of self-disgust. "Killing you is nothing. If you really understood you'd run away from me, as fast as you can."
"Wrong." Jack says it with a smirk, as if there were a joke somewhere in this.
The Doctor makes another effort to make Jack see. "Didn't you hear me? The things I said. I meant every word. I could smash you to pieces against your own immortality. It would be so easy ..." A harsh breath. "Part of me wants to. Part of me will always want to."
Now Jack does look away. "Doctor - you wouldn't be the first who tried."
The Doctor flinches, but doesn't let it deter him. He leans forward, into Jack's face, forces him to meet his gaze. "Then you should know better." He curls his lips in distaste, produces his best sneer. "He wanted more than that, you know. The Master." He takes a vicious satisfaction from the shadows rising in Jack's eyes at the name, and he continues, ruthlessly, "Did he tell you what his plans for you were? Because he told me, in excruciating, intimate detail. He wanted to make you his, wanted to own you, wanted to keep a fixed point in space and time as his pet." He considers for a moment, then asks, seriously, "The Master couldn't break you. You think I could?"
He has the dubious pleasure of seeing Jack shiver again. His reply is bleak. "If you really tried."
"Oh, come on. You didn't even resist, just now. I slashed your throat and you simply went along. You'd just let me break you, wouldn't you? You're pathetic."
"And you're transparent."
The Doctor looks away for a moment. Point. "Sorry," he manages, hoarsely. "Sorry. I mean it." He has no business insulting Jack. Even if he manages to provoke him into a counterattack, that would never be enough. Jack needs to understand, truly understand. And then there will be no provocation needed. "Still," he continues. "You didn't think I didn't have that same desire in me, did you? You didn't think you were just Jack Harkness to me. Or were you that stupid? That gullible?"
Jack rolls his eyes. "You're the one who's simple if you think that's going to drive me away."
"It's all true." Calmly.
"I know." Just as calmly.
They stare at each other, caught in the terrible honesty of the moment. Jack's face is pale but steady, unflinching. The Doctor struggles to bear the weight of his gaze.
Then, suddenly, Jack sucks in a jerky breath through his teeth. "Damn." He shakes his head, rubs a hand across his face. "Doctor - I think you're still caught up in this scene."
The Doctor's eyes widen in realisation. "You're right," he says, looking down at his clenched fingers. "It's still my nightmare. Doesn't matter if we're aware, it'll keep pushing us in that direction." He grimaces and looks up at Jack, correcting himself. "I'll keep pushing us. Sorry, sorry."
Jack doesn't acknowledge the apology. "I seem to be more able to think past it than you."
The Doctor nods. "We'll keep slipping into this scenario. But it's my nightmare, not yours, and you're not playing by the rules."
"And what's my part supposed to be then?" Jack huffs a humourless laugh. "Don't bother, I can imagine."
He probably can. The Doctor tries to swallow down the sour taste on his tongue. "It's a nightmare," he whispers, almost too low for Jack to hear. "But you're not."
It's the first time he's admitting it, even to himself - there's nothing wrong about Jack. It's the Doctor who's wrong, after all - always he, and now Jack knows it too. Jack might be kind to him, but he's seen the truth of the monster the Doctor is capable of being, he's seen it all now. Sooner or later, when his mind is no longer addled by immersion in another's dream, he'll fully assimilate the knowledge, and then ... well. It's no less than the Doctor deserves.
Jack's voice jerks him out of his thoughts. "So we need to stop arguing and wake up," Jack sums up, succinctly.
The Doctor looks up and meets a wry grin. "In a nutshell," he agrees.
Jack considers. "What do you suppose is happening to our bodies?"
"Out there, I expect we're both comatose." He swallows again, convulsively. "And in here? Well, you're stuck and I'm dreaming."
Jack manages an actual smirk at that. "Great fun."
The Doctor's lips curl down. "Oh so much."
"Focus, Doctor," Jack instructs, almost calmly. "It's your mind."
"I'm trying!" And he is - he's been using every technique he's ever used to bring himself out of a dream, a nightmare, another psychic plane. He's pushed and prodded himself, but it's all been futile. He tries again and again, but he won't wake up. He remains here, in this room in this nightmare, with Jack's eyes on him and nowhere to run.
"I can't," he forces out eventually, shivering uncontrollably. "It's too strong. I don't know how."
Jack's hands are steady on his bare shoulders as they guide him, and then he's held against Jack's chest. Artron energy thrums under him. Jack's impossible, eternal timeline is right there. He wants to grasp it, to shake it apart. He buries his face in Jack's skin, and tries to regain himself in the undeserved comfort of Jack's arms.
"Doc," Jack says eventually, quietly. "There's another option. There's two of us here, after all."
"Oh, come on." The words are out of his mouth before he's consciously thought about it, and he peels himself away, giving Jack an incredulous look. "Surely you've already tried. Time Agency training - you know how to bring yourself out of a mental field, or a dream. You know how to toss a telepath from your mind. But you're still here." He sneers - at himself, not at Jack's psychic training. "Time Lord, remember?"
Jack merely nods, serious and calm. "I couldn't throw you out at the best of times, no illusions about that. That's not what I meant. You can't wake yourself - but how about you try to wake me?"
The Doctor flinches back almost before the words are spoken. "You can't mean that." He'd have to go into Jack's mind for that - properly, all the way, not just insert a scenario. He can't do that. Hasn't he violated Jack enough already?
Jack's throws him a mock-innocent look. "So what, we should just stay like this forever?"
His mouth opens, but no words come out. He stares at Jack, bleakly. Jack is right. There are no alternatives; none.
~*~
The Doctor claps his hand around Jack's temple, a very open threat from a touch telepath. Jack isn't afraid, won't let himself be, not even here in the middle of the Doctor's nightmare. He meets the Doctor's gaze head-on.
"So confident," the Doctor sneers.
Jack knows the contempt is all for the Doctor himself. He throws back his sauciest smirk. "Don't even bother."
"Fine," the Doctor huffs, and looks straight at Jack, darkly. There's a reckless spark in the Doctor's brown eyes, swirling behind. His hand presses against Jack's temple; his mind presses against Jack's. They both know all he has to do is ask.
"Let me in," he whispers. Jack does.
And it slams against him: darkness and power, icy cold, threatening to drown him within an instant. Telepathy within telepathy.
Jack shudders, but concentrates on only one thing: keeping his telepathic barriers wide open, welcoming the Doctor.
He can't not - he has no choice. It's the only way to break him out of the Doctor's nightmare, to force him out of the dream-world that holds them both. And though he knows he should be, he can't bring himself to be afraid.
It sweeps through every nook and cranny of his mind, scouring him, for what feels like forever. Jack is swept under, and he knows he could never keep his self intact, not under that onslaught, no matter how hard he tried.
He doesn't try.
He lets himself be swept with the tide of the Doctor's mind, lets the Doctor sweep and ravage through every part of him. Trusting that he'd be all right.
~*~
Jack doesn't so much slip from his telepathic grasp as vanish from it, one moment to the next. The Doctor sinks to the floor, legs drawn up, arms tight around them. Alone with his nightmares again.
Now there's nothing to be done but waiting.
His lips curl into a pained smile as he imagines himself, limp and unconscious, being carried to the TARDIS in Jack's arms. If he hasn't damaged Jack's mind in his reckless, desperate attempt to break them apart. He can only hope.
In front of him, Jack is still there, of course. Potential-timeline Jack, nightmare Jack, is huddling in a corner, staring at the Doctor with terror and loathing in his eyes, just the way he should. The way present-day Jack never did.
His gut clenches. Part of him still thrills at the sight, part of him wants to slide right back into the nightmare. If he could cut out the pleasure, he would. He deserves it, deserves to face what he, in too many potential futures, will do.
The Doctor closes his eyes against the truth of it, trying to breathe.
~*~
It's like a physical slap, hard enough to mark even a Time Lord's skin. The Doctor's head rings, circles race before his eyes, and his stomach is heaving again. For a long moment, everything is spinning.
Then he finds himself crouched on the TARDIS floor, hands against the metal grating, Jack's arms bracing his shoulders. There's a soothing hum against his mind.
Right. Out of the amplifier's influence. His mind had been drawn out, expanded, far over its natural reach, and now it's been slammed down into its boundaries again. He heaves a few more hungry breaths, and then rips himself away from Jack, staring at him in horror as full waking realisation breaks open behind his eyes.
"What have I done to you?"
There is no blood now. They're both fully clothed, and everything around them looks painfully normal. All the physical traces have been left behind in his nightmare. It doesn't change a thing.
Jack shifts closer again, puts his hand on the Doctor's shoulder. It burns through his jacket, through his shirt, just like it did inside the dream, skin against skin. "You all right?"
The Doctor swallows, throws Jack a dark look. How can he even ask? "How do you stand it?" he rasps. "Why would you put up with it - with me? What I did to just now you was ... unforgivable." A convulsive swallow. "And you know that was real."
"Of course it was." Jack slings an arm around the Doctor's shoulders, seemingly unconcerned. "Tell me something. You were there - right there with me. In my mind, even, at the end. You know what you saw."
"A lot of things," the Doctor mutters. "A lot of things I shouldn't have. I had no right. And I saw everything I did to you. From both sides." He grimaces. "I'm sorry. And believe me, I know how inadequate that is."
Jack elbows him in the ribs, a mimickry of lightness, but his eyes are hard. "You were there," he repeats. "Tell me - did you find any part of me that doesn't want you?"
The Doctor pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Part of you hates me." It was bitter satisfaction, finding that.
"Never denied that," Jack snaps. "Stop skirting the issue. Answer me."
The Doctor looks at him, eyes burning. "No. Not any part of you. Even there, in that place where you really hate me, you still want. How am I supposed to deal with that?"
Jack smirks. More artificial lightness. "You could kiss me."
The Doctor scowls, meeting his gaze with pained eyes. "Your answer to everything."
"Oh, no." Jack winks at him, outrageously, and squeezes his shoulder. "Some things require a lot more than kissing. But it'd be a start."
Jack's banter is a strained attempt at returning things to normal, at pushing the nightmare aside. The Doctor can't let it go so easily. Won't. "I violated you. I murdered you."
"You've done worse to me in your time." The Doctor flinches at that, and Jack hesitates visibly, but then forges on. "Your life's a drop in a bucket against mine. It's not like you could do me any permanent harm."
"Stop it!" It's a shout in the quiet. "Stop it, just stop it! You can't ignore this. You can't just let it go." He pushes Jack away, using the full force of his Time Lord strength, sending him sprawling. "I don't care how indestructible you think you are. You know what I just did to you."
Jack doesn't come closer again, simply sits up straight where he is. He presses his lips together, turns away. "Fine. Have it your way." A deep breath, then: "Did you think you're the only one who feels things like that? Did you think I haven't thought about it, the things I could do to you?" Dark, desperate laughter, and Jack looks at him again after all. "I could lock you up tight, keep you from running through regenerations like so many shirts. I could keep you and make you live through every one of your lives until their natural end, and I wouldn't have to lose you for a long time yet. Don't you think I want that, with all my heart? Don't you think I've dreamed about it?"
The Doctor sneers. "That's hardly the same."
"Isn't it? Wouldn't it break you just the same?"
The Doctor's breath catches in a throat almost too tight for air.
"I'm not a Time Lord," Jack continues, harsh-voiced and bitter, "I don't slip into potential futures in my dreams. But they don't have to be that for me to know how close to real they are. How easily they could be."
It doesn't make him feel better, having forced that confession from Jack. It's not like it's that much of a surprise, anyway.
"It's not just what I could do to you," the Doctor says, not ready to give up. "Remember what I told you, about looking into the heart of the TARDIS? I could be worse than a vengeful god, with you. You're written into the laws of the universe - I could do anything with you. Oh, I'd start with something simple," he says in his best flippant tone, gesturing airly, but he knows Jack can see the deathly seriousness in his eyes. "I could lock you into the TARDIS's temporal core, and watch it rip you apart in slow motion, forever. She'd never need to recharge again."
"I trust you." Jack throws the words back at him like a gauntlet.
"You shouldn't."
"Maybe." Smirking again. Can't anything keep the man down? The Doctor's hearts clench at the thought. "But that's my decision to make." Jack stabs a finger in the Doctor's direction. "Are you listening to yourself? I'm older than you are at this point - I can take care of myself."
"Yes, you can," the Doctor allows. "Question is, will you?" He lets that sink in for a moment. "Jack, please. One way or the other, you know I'm going to end up hurting you."
Jack sighs. "You already did. Long before this."
"Gonna do it again." Bitter, inevitable truth.
Jack knows it too. "No doubt about it. It goes both ways. And it doesn't change a thing." He sighs, deeply, and shifts closer on the floor, reaching out a hand again. Stopping just before he might touch. "I trust you not to break anything that won't mend."
The Doctor stares. "That's ridiculous. I already abandoned you once. How's that for breaking?"
"And you'd never have done it if you'd had to look me in the face at the time."
He snarls. "Naïve."
Jack merely laughs. "Not even a little bit, not even before I met you." He sighs. "Doctor - I'm not afraid of what you might do to me. I can handle that. Your nightmares? They don't frighten me. I only ever worry when my back is turned."
The Doctor sighs, and lets himself start to believe. Lets himself accept the inevitable. "You would just let me, wouldn't you." It's on him not to let that happen. It's all on him. As it should be.
Jack sighs as well, and adds a little eyeroll for flavour. "Doctor, if you really tried, there isn't anything I could do to stop you."
Instant denial. "You stopped the Master. For a whole year."
"He didn't know me. You? If you really wanted, you could snap my mind like a twig." Jack shakes his head, a humourless smile quirking his lips. "But that's not you. When you set out to hurt someone, you don't go for wholesale slaughter."
"And knowing that, you still trust me."
"Yes." Jack cups his face in both hands, forcing their eyes to meet. The Doctor stares at him, nothing less than terrified of Jack's truths. Jack's lips curve, a cruelly gentle smile. "Because only a good man would struggle so much with temptation. Because only a good man could hate himself so much."
~*~
Breathing into Jack's shirt, feeling Jack's heartbeat and the rhythm of his lungs: the Doctor lets himself. He doesn't deserve it, but Jack is here and won't be turned away, no matter how much darkness he throws in his face. The best he's achieved is make Jack throw darkness right back. It didn't help at all.
They've been silent for a long time, just holding on. Perhaps they've had as much truth as either of them can bear.
"You're thinking too much," Jack's voice interrupts his thoughts eventually. "Stop it."
"That's my line," the Doctor complains, his voice muffled against Jack's chest.
A huff of genuine humour. "Well, I'm taking it away from you."
They come apart after all, and the Doctor examines Jack's face, trying to read something in it - anything that wasn't there before, any change at all. He fails.
Jack reaches out, pulls the Doctor in for a kiss, and it's too gentle, too sweet, but the Doctor can't bring himself to change it.
When they pull apart, his chest feels constricted, too tight for his lungs, and his hearts are beating against each other as if squeezed together. "What am I doing," he mutters, helplessly. Jack doesn't bother with an answer.
The Doctor jumps to his feet, and is at the console the next moment. They're hovering in the Vortex, suspended between anywhere and nowhere. No good. He can't take any more of this. If Jack's not leaving, if nothing's actually going to break, if he gets to keep this, undeserved though it is - if all this is still his, it's much too much to keep looking it into the face. He needs to do something, now.
"Well, come on!" The Doctor waves at Jack, and Jack comes to join him at the console. "We can't stay here forever. There's still that telepathic field on Sashosa, remember? Could have killed us, if we hadn't managed to break out. We need to find that amplifier and take care of it."
He reaches for a lever, but Jack catches the Doctor's hand in both of his.
"Yeah, we do," Jack agrees. There's a dangerous spark in his eyes. "But we're in the Vortex; it's not going anywhere. So, first things first." He pulls a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, dangling them from his thumb in front of the Doctor's face.
The Doctor blanches. "No." Whatever it is Jack means - no.
Jack smirks. His eyes are intent, and he's not backing down. "You've been all on about how I shouldn't trust you. Do you trust me?"
~*~
Jack's hands are cuffed to the headboard above his head. He grins up at the Doctor. The Doctor's eyes are dark, utterly unreadable, but his posture is transparent. Desperately afraid.
He doesn't have to be.
"Come here," Jack tells him, quietly. "I want you."
A thin smile; a slightly hitched upper lip; a flash of teeth as the Doctor throws up his hands and joins Jack on the bed, straddling him. "You're a madman. And so am I."
Jack laughs. "What's not to like about a little folie à deux?"
The Doctor snorts a desperate, yearning laugh and leans forward, brushes his lips against Jack's neck, his chin, his mouth. One hand braces against Jack's shoulder. The other, slowly, slowly, closes around Jack's throat. Not squeezing, just holding, almost a caress. "I won't," he rasps. "I promise, I won't."
Jack smiles and swallows deliberately, his throat working against the Doctor's palm. "I know."
They're balancing on the edge of a knife, the abysses of the Doctor's mind on one side and Jack's own vast capacity for darkness on the other. But they are more than their darkness, and if Jack has to believe in his own better self to make the Doctor see his, well, he'll manage that somehow.
He's immortal, and the Doctor nearly so, and so long as they try, they can balance here forever.
All he has to do is make the Doctor believe it.
~end~
Author: trobadora
Challenge: Whump
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness
Warnings: serious darkness, sexualised violence, dubious consent, snuff (or as close as it gets with Jack Harkness)
Summary: "The Master couldn't break you. You think I could?"
A/N: I also used the following Porn Battle XV prompts: "Tenth Doctor/Jack Harkness, wrong, captive, god".
~*~
"Do you know why I want you?"
Jack's hands are cuffed to the headboard. He is on his elbows and knees, forehead resting on the mattress. There's a hard cock up his arse, and a knife against his throat. He is shivering.
It's not excitement. It's not fear. He's not sure what it is.
The Doctor presses his knife into Jack's throat, breaking skin. Jack feels a rivulet of blood run down to his collarbone. His mind runs along with the slight tickle.
"Because when you die, you come back." With a swift, harsh motion, the knife slices into Jack, through skin and trachea and both carotids. A surreal biting, splitting pain - a warm gush down his neck, and he feels himself bleeding out, fading, fading into nothing.
~*~
Jack, in death, is pliant and limp in the Doctor's grasp. Life has spilled itself entirely - except it hasn't, not to the Doctor's senses. Jack's dead body is not dead at all: Jack's timeline isn't ended, still spins out from this moment forward into eternity. The Doctor can see it. He keeps hold of Jack's hips, pulled tight against him - doesn't let him slip from his grasp, from his cock.
He waits for it, breathing harshly in anticipation. Just a moment longer ...
Jack's whole body jerks, a sudden sharp tightening of every muscle and sinew as life bursts forth from within. His head jerks up out of the puddle of his own blood, his spine arches, and his arse clenches around the Doctor's cock. Vortex energy swirls and bursts around him, filling the Doctor's senses. The Doctor gasps with it, thrusting forward involuntarily, and then again deliberately, and again, harsh sharp jerks of the hips, falling into impossible pleasure.
"I could do this again and again," he rasps, words like a knife. Like the knife he used to make this happen. "All that life, breaking free. The universe breaks itself for you, Jack. You don't feel it, but I do. It twists itself around to keep you. It's wrong, utterly wrong." It overwhelms him, his physical and temporal senses in near-overload. His hips stutter, and he lets out a long, drawn-out moan. "It's so good."
He reaches around for Jack's cock and finds it hard, always hard for him. With a last, inevitable thrust, he comes, letting himself fall forward, into the impossible ultra-reality of the Fact, into Jack.
~*~
Jack twitches a little when the Doctor peels himself from Jack's back and pulls back, pulls out. But he says nothing.
There's a towel conveniently next to them on the bed, and the Doctor wipes himself off without taking his eyes from Jack. "Turn over," he orders, and watches Jack struggle to comply, shifting and twisting and eventually settling on his back, his cuffed wrists crossed over this head.
The sheets are damp with his blood. Jack's throat is covered in it, too, and the left side of his face is smeared from where he'd collapsed into it, dying. Its metallic smell is stuck in the Doctor's nostrils. Its molecules dance in the Doctor's mind, sugars and minerals, blood cells with their haemoglobin and the oxygen it binds. It's revolting and arousing in almost equal parts.
He straddles Jack's hips, looking down at him. Jack squints up at the Doctor, eyes a little unfocused, as if trying to solve a puzzle through a haze. His cock is still hard. Vortex energy is still thrumming under Jack's skin, and the Doctor can feel the timelines twist all around them. He wants to make them twist, wants to shape their dance, and he can - with Jack under him, in his hands, he can. He can feel his own cock fill again and grins, grinding himself against Jack.
Then he slaps a hand across Jack's face, hard. "Wake up," he snarls. "Where's your chatter? Not like you, just lying there all quiet-like. No fun if you're just taking it."
Jack shakes his head, grimaces, and then his eyes seem to suddenly clear. "You have a point with this?" His voice is a croak, but the tone is shockingly mild. The Doctor nearly flinches back. That's not how this is supposed to go.
Instead, he slaps Jack again, and then lazily thrusts against him. "Should have done this ages ago. Silly scruples."
Jack seems to consider. "None holding you back now?"
"Not now." His lip draws up, a contemptuous sneer. "Did you know how much it excites me, having a fixed point under my hands, under me?" he says, almost conversationally. Back on script. Good.
Jack smirks, incongruously, humourlessly. "I suspected." Then he turns serious. "Doctor. What's going on here?" Not worried. He should be terrified - not for his life, maybe, but for his safety, his very sanity. Instead, he sounds a little apprehensive, but not seriously worried.
The Doctor blinks, then blinks again. Something is niggling at the edge of his awareness. He ignores it in favour of another thrust against Jack's body. "Going on?" he says, distracted, already kneeling up and crawling forward on the bed until his cock nudges Jack's lips.
With Jack tied down the way he is, the angle is less than optimal, but he makes do, one hand behind the back of Jack's head, lifting him up, the other braced against the wall behind the bed. "Open up, Jack."
Jack does.
Jack does, and he thrusts forward, sharply, into the warmth of Jack's mouth. "Jack," he gasps, holding still for a moment. Jack's tongue slides against his cock, curls around it. Consciously, instinctively, who knows? "I could throw you into a fixed point in space and time, and make you change it. Pompeii maybe, that would be - yeah. You're a fixed point yourself - I want to see which of you wins. I think it would be you. Oh, I could shift the entire universe with you as a lever. I want to watch the universe break itself to bits on you, and then I want to fuck you in the ruins."
His hips jerk forward at the thought, and for a moment he loses himself in the vicious, delirious pleasure of thrusting into Jack's mouth, harsh against the back of Jack's throat, making him gag. He could suffocate him like this, and feel it all over again, timelines and eternity converging around him, coming into life around his cock.
Later, maybe. Now, he wants Jack to hear. "I want ..." he continues, compulsively, between and around his thrusts. "I want to balance you on the edge of a knife, to split you open and see you knit back together, to keep you on the brink forever. I want to distil the traces of the Vortex from your breath, from the sweat on your skin, from your blood. It never runs out, that's the best part. I could bleed you forever and you'd never bleed dry. And I want my cock inside you while I do it."
He pulls back, out. Waiting for it. "What do you say?"
Jack shivers, gulping harsh, panting breaths. "We can do that."
This time, the Doctor does flinch back. He's not supposed to say that. He's supposed to ... "You don't understand -"
Jack stills. Almost kindly, "Yes. I really do." Then his brow wrinkles into a deep frown. "Except this. I really don't understand how we actually got to this."
What?
"Doc, hang on a moment, all right? Think. How did we get here?"
He doesn't want to think, but his brain has other ideas. He looks around - the bed, the room, Jack in his own blood beneath him. He thinks back. What does he remember last?
And that's when it falls apart, all the oxygen sucked out of the air, cold awareness biting into his skin. The Doctor rears back in shock, in disgust, and his stomach heaves up. He bends over the side of the bed, retching, but he can't expel the revolting memory of the sick pleasure he took. The pleasure he wants to take again.
~*~
Teeth clenched, the Doctor forces himself upright. He undoes the cuffs around Jacks wrists, bats away Jack's incongruous, undeserved concern. It's obscene, having Jack worry about him. He hands him the towel and watches, throat tight, as Jack wipes off as much of the half-dried blood as he can manage. The Doctor's throat is tight, his stomach a painful knot, and when Jack sets the stained towel aside he has to swallow down another retching spell. His eyes fix on the red-brown smears on Jack's face, and he doesn't let himself look away. Forcing himself to face what he has wrought.
"Doctor?"
He swallows again, harsh and deliberate. "It's a nightmare," he whispers eventually. "I didn't notice. It's a nightmare."
Jack blinks and tilts his head to the side. "You're having a nightmare," he says, slowly, as if testing out the words. "You're dreaming, and I'm somehow in your head?"
"Yes." A harsh, hissing admission.
And he waits, waits for it to come, for Jack to realise. With his mind - both their minds - jerked out of the immediacy of the scene, it's inevitable.
It doesn't come. Jack's hand doesn't clench into a fist. He doesn't flinch back. Instead, he reaches out, open-handed, a steadying palm against the Doctor's shoulder. "Can you wake up?"
He shakes his head, helpless. "I tried. We're stuck. I can't stop dreaming." And you saw the kind of thing I dream. Jack's hand burns against his skin, and he shakes him off, turning his face away.
"How? I didn't know that could happen." Jack sounds almost ... interested now, which is the most ludicrous thing imaginable.
"It shouldn't." A helpless shrug. "Something's messing with my telepathic barriers. Some kind of an amplifier? I don't know! There's nothing like that on Sashosa." Which was where they actually were, or had been - in body as it were, fallen asleep on a pallet after a visit to the local hot springs and a bit of a tussle with a renegade Rutan.
"Whatever it is, can't be good." Jack scratches his nose, and shrugs, lips turning up a little. "Lucid dreaming, at least."
The Doctor grimaces. "Not sure that makes anything better." He hesitates. "You still don't know the worst of it. You still have no idea what you've got yourself into."
Jack's eyebrows rise. "There's more?" The apprehension shadowing the blue of his eyes is woefully inadequate.
The Doctor takes a deep breath. Full disclosure. He can't do any less, not now, not after what he's done to Jack. (What he still wants to do. It still plays itself out, somewhere in the Doctor's subconscious.) "I'm a Time Lord. My dreams are ..." He trails off, the words harder to force out than he'd thought, past the rawness of his throat.
Nonetheless, in front of his eyes, even without the words, Jack catches on. He's always been quick on the uptake, after all.
"Potential timelines," Jack breathes, awed realisation in his voice, his eyes.
"Don't look at me like that," the Doctor snaps. "Don't you understand? That means this isn't - this wasn't just a nightmare self. This is me. This could be me, out there, in the real world. One day it might. On some level, this is as real as anything."
Jack's eyes are entirely too knowing. "It would be anyway."
The Doctor cringes. "The things I want to do to you sometimes - you have no idea."
"I think I do." Jack's knuckles brush along the side of the Doctor's face as he leans forward, looking him directly in the eye. "Time Lord."
A grimace full of self-disgust. "Killing you is nothing. If you really understood you'd run away from me, as fast as you can."
"Wrong." Jack says it with a smirk, as if there were a joke somewhere in this.
The Doctor makes another effort to make Jack see. "Didn't you hear me? The things I said. I meant every word. I could smash you to pieces against your own immortality. It would be so easy ..." A harsh breath. "Part of me wants to. Part of me will always want to."
Now Jack does look away. "Doctor - you wouldn't be the first who tried."
The Doctor flinches, but doesn't let it deter him. He leans forward, into Jack's face, forces him to meet his gaze. "Then you should know better." He curls his lips in distaste, produces his best sneer. "He wanted more than that, you know. The Master." He takes a vicious satisfaction from the shadows rising in Jack's eyes at the name, and he continues, ruthlessly, "Did he tell you what his plans for you were? Because he told me, in excruciating, intimate detail. He wanted to make you his, wanted to own you, wanted to keep a fixed point in space and time as his pet." He considers for a moment, then asks, seriously, "The Master couldn't break you. You think I could?"
He has the dubious pleasure of seeing Jack shiver again. His reply is bleak. "If you really tried."
"Oh, come on. You didn't even resist, just now. I slashed your throat and you simply went along. You'd just let me break you, wouldn't you? You're pathetic."
"And you're transparent."
The Doctor looks away for a moment. Point. "Sorry," he manages, hoarsely. "Sorry. I mean it." He has no business insulting Jack. Even if he manages to provoke him into a counterattack, that would never be enough. Jack needs to understand, truly understand. And then there will be no provocation needed. "Still," he continues. "You didn't think I didn't have that same desire in me, did you? You didn't think you were just Jack Harkness to me. Or were you that stupid? That gullible?"
Jack rolls his eyes. "You're the one who's simple if you think that's going to drive me away."
"It's all true." Calmly.
"I know." Just as calmly.
They stare at each other, caught in the terrible honesty of the moment. Jack's face is pale but steady, unflinching. The Doctor struggles to bear the weight of his gaze.
Then, suddenly, Jack sucks in a jerky breath through his teeth. "Damn." He shakes his head, rubs a hand across his face. "Doctor - I think you're still caught up in this scene."
The Doctor's eyes widen in realisation. "You're right," he says, looking down at his clenched fingers. "It's still my nightmare. Doesn't matter if we're aware, it'll keep pushing us in that direction." He grimaces and looks up at Jack, correcting himself. "I'll keep pushing us. Sorry, sorry."
Jack doesn't acknowledge the apology. "I seem to be more able to think past it than you."
The Doctor nods. "We'll keep slipping into this scenario. But it's my nightmare, not yours, and you're not playing by the rules."
"And what's my part supposed to be then?" Jack huffs a humourless laugh. "Don't bother, I can imagine."
He probably can. The Doctor tries to swallow down the sour taste on his tongue. "It's a nightmare," he whispers, almost too low for Jack to hear. "But you're not."
It's the first time he's admitting it, even to himself - there's nothing wrong about Jack. It's the Doctor who's wrong, after all - always he, and now Jack knows it too. Jack might be kind to him, but he's seen the truth of the monster the Doctor is capable of being, he's seen it all now. Sooner or later, when his mind is no longer addled by immersion in another's dream, he'll fully assimilate the knowledge, and then ... well. It's no less than the Doctor deserves.
Jack's voice jerks him out of his thoughts. "So we need to stop arguing and wake up," Jack sums up, succinctly.
The Doctor looks up and meets a wry grin. "In a nutshell," he agrees.
Jack considers. "What do you suppose is happening to our bodies?"
"Out there, I expect we're both comatose." He swallows again, convulsively. "And in here? Well, you're stuck and I'm dreaming."
Jack manages an actual smirk at that. "Great fun."
The Doctor's lips curl down. "Oh so much."
"Focus, Doctor," Jack instructs, almost calmly. "It's your mind."
"I'm trying!" And he is - he's been using every technique he's ever used to bring himself out of a dream, a nightmare, another psychic plane. He's pushed and prodded himself, but it's all been futile. He tries again and again, but he won't wake up. He remains here, in this room in this nightmare, with Jack's eyes on him and nowhere to run.
"I can't," he forces out eventually, shivering uncontrollably. "It's too strong. I don't know how."
Jack's hands are steady on his bare shoulders as they guide him, and then he's held against Jack's chest. Artron energy thrums under him. Jack's impossible, eternal timeline is right there. He wants to grasp it, to shake it apart. He buries his face in Jack's skin, and tries to regain himself in the undeserved comfort of Jack's arms.
"Doc," Jack says eventually, quietly. "There's another option. There's two of us here, after all."
"Oh, come on." The words are out of his mouth before he's consciously thought about it, and he peels himself away, giving Jack an incredulous look. "Surely you've already tried. Time Agency training - you know how to bring yourself out of a mental field, or a dream. You know how to toss a telepath from your mind. But you're still here." He sneers - at himself, not at Jack's psychic training. "Time Lord, remember?"
Jack merely nods, serious and calm. "I couldn't throw you out at the best of times, no illusions about that. That's not what I meant. You can't wake yourself - but how about you try to wake me?"
The Doctor flinches back almost before the words are spoken. "You can't mean that." He'd have to go into Jack's mind for that - properly, all the way, not just insert a scenario. He can't do that. Hasn't he violated Jack enough already?
Jack's throws him a mock-innocent look. "So what, we should just stay like this forever?"
His mouth opens, but no words come out. He stares at Jack, bleakly. Jack is right. There are no alternatives; none.
~*~
The Doctor claps his hand around Jack's temple, a very open threat from a touch telepath. Jack isn't afraid, won't let himself be, not even here in the middle of the Doctor's nightmare. He meets the Doctor's gaze head-on.
"So confident," the Doctor sneers.
Jack knows the contempt is all for the Doctor himself. He throws back his sauciest smirk. "Don't even bother."
"Fine," the Doctor huffs, and looks straight at Jack, darkly. There's a reckless spark in the Doctor's brown eyes, swirling behind. His hand presses against Jack's temple; his mind presses against Jack's. They both know all he has to do is ask.
"Let me in," he whispers. Jack does.
And it slams against him: darkness and power, icy cold, threatening to drown him within an instant. Telepathy within telepathy.
Jack shudders, but concentrates on only one thing: keeping his telepathic barriers wide open, welcoming the Doctor.
He can't not - he has no choice. It's the only way to break him out of the Doctor's nightmare, to force him out of the dream-world that holds them both. And though he knows he should be, he can't bring himself to be afraid.
It sweeps through every nook and cranny of his mind, scouring him, for what feels like forever. Jack is swept under, and he knows he could never keep his self intact, not under that onslaught, no matter how hard he tried.
He doesn't try.
He lets himself be swept with the tide of the Doctor's mind, lets the Doctor sweep and ravage through every part of him. Trusting that he'd be all right.
~*~
Jack doesn't so much slip from his telepathic grasp as vanish from it, one moment to the next. The Doctor sinks to the floor, legs drawn up, arms tight around them. Alone with his nightmares again.
Now there's nothing to be done but waiting.
His lips curl into a pained smile as he imagines himself, limp and unconscious, being carried to the TARDIS in Jack's arms. If he hasn't damaged Jack's mind in his reckless, desperate attempt to break them apart. He can only hope.
In front of him, Jack is still there, of course. Potential-timeline Jack, nightmare Jack, is huddling in a corner, staring at the Doctor with terror and loathing in his eyes, just the way he should. The way present-day Jack never did.
His gut clenches. Part of him still thrills at the sight, part of him wants to slide right back into the nightmare. If he could cut out the pleasure, he would. He deserves it, deserves to face what he, in too many potential futures, will do.
The Doctor closes his eyes against the truth of it, trying to breathe.
~*~
It's like a physical slap, hard enough to mark even a Time Lord's skin. The Doctor's head rings, circles race before his eyes, and his stomach is heaving again. For a long moment, everything is spinning.
Then he finds himself crouched on the TARDIS floor, hands against the metal grating, Jack's arms bracing his shoulders. There's a soothing hum against his mind.
Right. Out of the amplifier's influence. His mind had been drawn out, expanded, far over its natural reach, and now it's been slammed down into its boundaries again. He heaves a few more hungry breaths, and then rips himself away from Jack, staring at him in horror as full waking realisation breaks open behind his eyes.
"What have I done to you?"
There is no blood now. They're both fully clothed, and everything around them looks painfully normal. All the physical traces have been left behind in his nightmare. It doesn't change a thing.
Jack shifts closer again, puts his hand on the Doctor's shoulder. It burns through his jacket, through his shirt, just like it did inside the dream, skin against skin. "You all right?"
The Doctor swallows, throws Jack a dark look. How can he even ask? "How do you stand it?" he rasps. "Why would you put up with it - with me? What I did to just now you was ... unforgivable." A convulsive swallow. "And you know that was real."
"Of course it was." Jack slings an arm around the Doctor's shoulders, seemingly unconcerned. "Tell me something. You were there - right there with me. In my mind, even, at the end. You know what you saw."
"A lot of things," the Doctor mutters. "A lot of things I shouldn't have. I had no right. And I saw everything I did to you. From both sides." He grimaces. "I'm sorry. And believe me, I know how inadequate that is."
Jack elbows him in the ribs, a mimickry of lightness, but his eyes are hard. "You were there," he repeats. "Tell me - did you find any part of me that doesn't want you?"
The Doctor pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers. "Part of you hates me." It was bitter satisfaction, finding that.
"Never denied that," Jack snaps. "Stop skirting the issue. Answer me."
The Doctor looks at him, eyes burning. "No. Not any part of you. Even there, in that place where you really hate me, you still want. How am I supposed to deal with that?"
Jack smirks. More artificial lightness. "You could kiss me."
The Doctor scowls, meeting his gaze with pained eyes. "Your answer to everything."
"Oh, no." Jack winks at him, outrageously, and squeezes his shoulder. "Some things require a lot more than kissing. But it'd be a start."
Jack's banter is a strained attempt at returning things to normal, at pushing the nightmare aside. The Doctor can't let it go so easily. Won't. "I violated you. I murdered you."
"You've done worse to me in your time." The Doctor flinches at that, and Jack hesitates visibly, but then forges on. "Your life's a drop in a bucket against mine. It's not like you could do me any permanent harm."
"Stop it!" It's a shout in the quiet. "Stop it, just stop it! You can't ignore this. You can't just let it go." He pushes Jack away, using the full force of his Time Lord strength, sending him sprawling. "I don't care how indestructible you think you are. You know what I just did to you."
Jack doesn't come closer again, simply sits up straight where he is. He presses his lips together, turns away. "Fine. Have it your way." A deep breath, then: "Did you think you're the only one who feels things like that? Did you think I haven't thought about it, the things I could do to you?" Dark, desperate laughter, and Jack looks at him again after all. "I could lock you up tight, keep you from running through regenerations like so many shirts. I could keep you and make you live through every one of your lives until their natural end, and I wouldn't have to lose you for a long time yet. Don't you think I want that, with all my heart? Don't you think I've dreamed about it?"
The Doctor sneers. "That's hardly the same."
"Isn't it? Wouldn't it break you just the same?"
The Doctor's breath catches in a throat almost too tight for air.
"I'm not a Time Lord," Jack continues, harsh-voiced and bitter, "I don't slip into potential futures in my dreams. But they don't have to be that for me to know how close to real they are. How easily they could be."
It doesn't make him feel better, having forced that confession from Jack. It's not like it's that much of a surprise, anyway.
"It's not just what I could do to you," the Doctor says, not ready to give up. "Remember what I told you, about looking into the heart of the TARDIS? I could be worse than a vengeful god, with you. You're written into the laws of the universe - I could do anything with you. Oh, I'd start with something simple," he says in his best flippant tone, gesturing airly, but he knows Jack can see the deathly seriousness in his eyes. "I could lock you into the TARDIS's temporal core, and watch it rip you apart in slow motion, forever. She'd never need to recharge again."
"I trust you." Jack throws the words back at him like a gauntlet.
"You shouldn't."
"Maybe." Smirking again. Can't anything keep the man down? The Doctor's hearts clench at the thought. "But that's my decision to make." Jack stabs a finger in the Doctor's direction. "Are you listening to yourself? I'm older than you are at this point - I can take care of myself."
"Yes, you can," the Doctor allows. "Question is, will you?" He lets that sink in for a moment. "Jack, please. One way or the other, you know I'm going to end up hurting you."
Jack sighs. "You already did. Long before this."
"Gonna do it again." Bitter, inevitable truth.
Jack knows it too. "No doubt about it. It goes both ways. And it doesn't change a thing." He sighs, deeply, and shifts closer on the floor, reaching out a hand again. Stopping just before he might touch. "I trust you not to break anything that won't mend."
The Doctor stares. "That's ridiculous. I already abandoned you once. How's that for breaking?"
"And you'd never have done it if you'd had to look me in the face at the time."
He snarls. "Naïve."
Jack merely laughs. "Not even a little bit, not even before I met you." He sighs. "Doctor - I'm not afraid of what you might do to me. I can handle that. Your nightmares? They don't frighten me. I only ever worry when my back is turned."
The Doctor sighs, and lets himself start to believe. Lets himself accept the inevitable. "You would just let me, wouldn't you." It's on him not to let that happen. It's all on him. As it should be.
Jack sighs as well, and adds a little eyeroll for flavour. "Doctor, if you really tried, there isn't anything I could do to stop you."
Instant denial. "You stopped the Master. For a whole year."
"He didn't know me. You? If you really wanted, you could snap my mind like a twig." Jack shakes his head, a humourless smile quirking his lips. "But that's not you. When you set out to hurt someone, you don't go for wholesale slaughter."
"And knowing that, you still trust me."
"Yes." Jack cups his face in both hands, forcing their eyes to meet. The Doctor stares at him, nothing less than terrified of Jack's truths. Jack's lips curve, a cruelly gentle smile. "Because only a good man would struggle so much with temptation. Because only a good man could hate himself so much."
~*~
Breathing into Jack's shirt, feeling Jack's heartbeat and the rhythm of his lungs: the Doctor lets himself. He doesn't deserve it, but Jack is here and won't be turned away, no matter how much darkness he throws in his face. The best he's achieved is make Jack throw darkness right back. It didn't help at all.
They've been silent for a long time, just holding on. Perhaps they've had as much truth as either of them can bear.
"You're thinking too much," Jack's voice interrupts his thoughts eventually. "Stop it."
"That's my line," the Doctor complains, his voice muffled against Jack's chest.
A huff of genuine humour. "Well, I'm taking it away from you."
They come apart after all, and the Doctor examines Jack's face, trying to read something in it - anything that wasn't there before, any change at all. He fails.
Jack reaches out, pulls the Doctor in for a kiss, and it's too gentle, too sweet, but the Doctor can't bring himself to change it.
When they pull apart, his chest feels constricted, too tight for his lungs, and his hearts are beating against each other as if squeezed together. "What am I doing," he mutters, helplessly. Jack doesn't bother with an answer.
The Doctor jumps to his feet, and is at the console the next moment. They're hovering in the Vortex, suspended between anywhere and nowhere. No good. He can't take any more of this. If Jack's not leaving, if nothing's actually going to break, if he gets to keep this, undeserved though it is - if all this is still his, it's much too much to keep looking it into the face. He needs to do something, now.
"Well, come on!" The Doctor waves at Jack, and Jack comes to join him at the console. "We can't stay here forever. There's still that telepathic field on Sashosa, remember? Could have killed us, if we hadn't managed to break out. We need to find that amplifier and take care of it."
He reaches for a lever, but Jack catches the Doctor's hand in both of his.
"Yeah, we do," Jack agrees. There's a dangerous spark in his eyes. "But we're in the Vortex; it's not going anywhere. So, first things first." He pulls a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket, dangling them from his thumb in front of the Doctor's face.
The Doctor blanches. "No." Whatever it is Jack means - no.
Jack smirks. His eyes are intent, and he's not backing down. "You've been all on about how I shouldn't trust you. Do you trust me?"
~*~
Jack's hands are cuffed to the headboard above his head. He grins up at the Doctor. The Doctor's eyes are dark, utterly unreadable, but his posture is transparent. Desperately afraid.
He doesn't have to be.
"Come here," Jack tells him, quietly. "I want you."
A thin smile; a slightly hitched upper lip; a flash of teeth as the Doctor throws up his hands and joins Jack on the bed, straddling him. "You're a madman. And so am I."
Jack laughs. "What's not to like about a little folie à deux?"
The Doctor snorts a desperate, yearning laugh and leans forward, brushes his lips against Jack's neck, his chin, his mouth. One hand braces against Jack's shoulder. The other, slowly, slowly, closes around Jack's throat. Not squeezing, just holding, almost a caress. "I won't," he rasps. "I promise, I won't."
Jack smiles and swallows deliberately, his throat working against the Doctor's palm. "I know."
They're balancing on the edge of a knife, the abysses of the Doctor's mind on one side and Jack's own vast capacity for darkness on the other. But they are more than their darkness, and if Jack has to believe in his own better self to make the Doctor see his, well, he'll manage that somehow.
He's immortal, and the Doctor nearly so, and so long as they try, they can balance here forever.
All he has to do is make the Doctor believe it.
~end~